2 - Riot Control

"Guess it'll be the soup and salad bar today," Lilith told the cashier, handing over her badge to be scanned.

A smile from the cashier. "Can't say I blame you. Everything else looks kind of nasty." He swiped the badge in front of the reader on his console, tapped a few buttons, and handed it back to her before waving her on. "Enjoy the rest of your day."

"Oh yes," grumbled Lilith, clipping the clear plastic panel back to the lapel of her jacket and then moving over to grab a tray from the front end of the salad bar. "Two hours of respite, and then I descend back into hell with him." Next came a bowl and tongs to fill the bowl with assorted greenery. "That is, assuming he's still where I left him, and that's doubtful considering his propensity to get into things. Isn't that what he does best?"

"I know she's not in her office at the moment. I just want to find her – surely you can do that for me."

"I'm sorry, but I really can't help you," said the elevator in a tone that was not at all apologetic. "Lunch is a very important time for the Caseworkers, for reasons that I really can't explain because I don't want to bore you with a Sidra anatomy lesson. If she told she'd return after lunch, take her at her word and just go back and have a seat. I'm sure she has some very interesting reading material in her office."

"I'm sure she does, but – " The Doctor stopped for a moment and shook his head in disbelief. I'm arguing with the lift! How could this happen to me? A different idea occurred to him and, forcing all irritation from his voice for just a moment, he tried a new tack. "So where do you go for food around here? I've had a long trip and a bite to eat would really hit the spot."

"That would be the cafeteria, sir. You'll need Curator Lilith to sponsor you, though, since you don't have an official ID card. If you'll just give me a moment, I'll send you along to meet her." All went dark once more, not so much a sensation but complete lack thereof, and then the Doctor was looking out onto the same corridor in which he'd first arrived. "The caf's just on the other end of the hall, sir. Curator Lilith's hard to miss – she always sits by herself with the latest soggy romance novel from the Earth-Human office. Don't know why she never gets company though…"

"Because she's as warm and approachable as a sheet of diamond-grit sandpaper?" the Doctor muttered. The lift made a quizzical noise and he shook his head. "Never mind. Thanks for the tip."

"Not a problem, sir. Have a great day."

"Don't like that ending, not at all," Lilith grumbled around a mouthful of crackers, snapping her book shut and glaring at its garishly decorated cover. "Yvenda needs to tell this one to get her act together – or is it a he? Never can tell." She washed down the crackers with a sip of juice and gathered her emptied dishes in the center of the table; the assorted crockery and cutlery vanished with the press of a button. Smoothing the wrinkles out of her skirt, Lilith rose from her seat and went for a second round at the salad bar, unaware of the catastrophe preparing to kick the cafeteria door open with sturdy black boondocker boots.

"It's you! The Doctor!" This last exclamation came from a waspishly thin woman glaring dangerously from behind horn-rimmed glasses. A glance down at her lapel badge revealed the inscription 'Paxmida – Qu 1, Queem', and the Doctor felt the base pulsing of a headache forming behind his temples. Paxmida – Queem – vivisection. Thank you, Lilith. "You caused the Great Typhoon that wiped out half of my planet's eastern seaboard!"

"That's nothing, Pax," rasped a second being, lifting a sandwich to a shadowy head with the ghost of a hand. "Three new volcanoes and a continent split in half. I barely got out alive."

"But this'll give you an excuse to make up a new body, Arulos," pointed out Paxmida, taking a sip of mineral water through a straw. "Why don't you do something about that nose? The last one looked hideous."

"Noted," replied Arulos, turning figments of eye sockets upon the Doctor who in turn got the impression that he was looking into the vortex of a sentient, angry, man-sized sandstorm. "But what shall we do about this one? I still need new seat covers for my office…"

"I still say we go for the gerbil," a third Caseworker growled, reaching none-too-subtly for her table knife. "The humans have a charming term for it – what is it – "

"Felching," the Doctor supplied, winking down at the last worker to speak. "And it's not as fun as it sounds. Tried it. Now if you don't have any more questions for me, I've got some of my own for that lovely young lady at the salad bar."

"Not sso fasst," hissed a fourth voice, this time from a mantis-like individual who now approached the table with a laden tray. "I want my trophy. Ssit for a moment, won't you, Doctor?"

"I don't think so. You see, as long as she's here, you can't do a thing to me…"

Hell, I knew it would be him. Wincing, Lilith straightened up from her crouch behind the salad bar just in time to make contact with the unmistakable pair of pale blue eyes, now grouped with a megawatt smile and cheerful wave of greeting which she did not return. And that's S'shalish he's going after now… a Frebe never takes no for an answer. But that idiot Doctor is expecting me to do something – like what?

"That'ss technically true, Doctor," said the mantis, gathering itself for action. "We cannot kill you ssince Lilith is here…"

"But there's one of her," grated Arulos, "one of you…"

"And four of us," finished Paxmida, rising from her chair. "The least we can do is make you very uncomfortable."

The grin did not deaden even a fraction as the Doctor looked back to Lilith, who had taken a jar full of crushed red powder to hand and had begun surreptitiously unscrewing the top. "Two to four, Miss Curator. Time to work off those lunchtime calories, eh?"

"Speak for yourself, meatbag," Lilith retorted coldly, wrenching the jar open and grabbing a pinch of the powder in her fingers. "Cover your face!" She then flung the powder towards Paxmida, dropping the jar and kicking it out like a grenade to scatter its contents to prevent any outside intervention. Paxmida vanished with a loud sneeze and Lilith grinned fiercely back at her client. "Two to three, Doctor."

Next to discorporate was Arulos, hit with a splash of Paxmida's mineral water and cursing as he disappeared, leaving a small muddy patch in his chair as the only sign of his presence. "Two left," came the jovial commentary, along with a "whoops" and splat as the Doctor dodged a barely edible missile. "You're kinda good at this for a desk monkey, you know that?"

Yvenda of Earth was the next to fall, skidding along a slick patch created by an upended tureen of soup. "Advanced creative riot control techniques. Had to pass the class in order to get my Caseworker license; I just never thought I'd be using it on my own people." It was Lilith's turn to duck as S'shalish pitched a projectile resembling a live octopus with leathery bat wings towards her, bending aside and snatching up a bottle of vinaigrette from the salad bar.

"What can I say, I bring out the best in people!" The Doctor, startled as he was by the flying octopus, was not so quick to evade a spoonful of gelatinous goo as it impacted on the front of his jacket with a messy glorp. "All right, that does it! Just had this cleaned, too."

It had taken Lilith a moment or two to prize the dressing bottle open, but when she did she wasted no time in splattering it over the insectoid form of S'shalish. The mantis roared as its hide began to bubble, and Lilith skidded over to the Doctor while her opponent was thus occupied. Reaching out desperately, she grasped his begrimed hands in hers and willed them both away from the scene of carnage.

This time, instead of the nothingness, there was a feeling of being bathed for two heartbeats in warm golden light before the scenery resolved itself into the calm orderliness of Lilith's office. The Doctor let out a gleeful hoot of laughter as he looked around, letting go of Lilith's hands to pat himself down and make sure all parts were accounted for. "That was something else! What kind of teleport was it?"

Lilith turned pink and looked away for a moment, muttering, "That wasn't a teleport. That was me."

"Self-transporting, choosing your form, creative riot control – what a lovely race! What else can you do?" Lilith felt her blush deepening under the brilliant focus of her client's inquiries, a subtlety that did not go unnoticed. "Ah. Not only are you demi-godlike, but you're bashful too. I'll stop now." A curious finger-wipe into the goop that yet festooned the front of his leather jacket, the finger put into his mouth and the substance sampled carefully before a diagnosis was given. "Have you tried the Jello? It's very orange."

The absurdity of the situation took a moment to get to Lilith, but when it did it proved very hard to suppress her laughter. "Oh my god. You're a goof, you know that?"

"Guilty as charged." Again the finger-swipe, only this time the gelatin was transferred onto the tip of Lilith's nose. "Gotcha."

It was equally hard to maintain her indignant glare as Lilith reached up to clean her nose off. On a whim she sampled the goo as well, then shook her head with a barely-concealed grin. "You're right, it is very orange."

"You people have access to the culinary masterpieces of the cosmos, yet you still show a bizarre fascination with Jello," the Doctor mused, then held his hand out once more. "Truce?"

"Even after what I said about you and your people? That wasn't very nice of me, you know."

"I know, but it's not like I didn't earn it. After all, I did come swanning in right before your lunch break, making things all complicated…"

Lilith sighed, taking the offered hand and squeezing it in a firm grip. "Fine, truce – "

"C'mere, you." With a playful growl the Doctor yanked Lilith into a bear hug, her gasping when she realized that all of the myriad mystery messes suffered to his jacket in the cafeteria skirmish had transferred to the front of her own blazer. "Gotcha again!" Clasped in tightly as she was, Lilith could not miss the pulse of two hearts just scant inches away from her now flaming red face. She could not deny that she was embarrassed any more than she could deny that the dual heartbeats were comforting in some odd way, and then something in her brain convulsed, its shock radiating out through the rest of her body. "What's the matter? I don't smell funny, do I?"

"N-no, it's just that…" Images staggered through Lilith's mind like a broken film clip, and with effort she wrenched herself away from the soothing embrace she'd somehow found herself locked into. "Every once in a while, I get these visions of the future, and…" She made her way over to the blank wall behind her desk and leaned forward onto it, supporting herself with a hand. "…unlike the visions that my people usually see, these ones… They aren't a potentiality like with everyone else. They always come to pass."

"Neato. Let's see it, then?"

The expressionless tan of the wall Lilith leaned against began to change, rippling outwards from her hand into a coherent picture like a movie projected onto a screen. Green grass, nice little valley, a picnic – looks like a mother and her child – She frowned in puzzlement when she saw that the woman stretched out on the checkered blanket was none other than herself, the child a boy perhaps nine years old with blue eyes and an unruly thatch of dark-brown hair playing with a toy robot and making mock laser noises at a trail of ants that crossed the corner of the blanket. Well, could be worse. I'll work with this.

"Hey Mum," the boy was saying, looking up at her expectantly, "when did you say that Dad would be back?"

"Any moment now," replied the vision-Lilith, glancing around the valley as a light breeze began to blow.

The real-world Lilith felt a chill creep through her body when she recognized the next sound in the vision, a strange whooshing scrape that she'd heard only once before. I heard that through the ducting earlier on, and I thought it was just a coolant problem. Then he showed up – nooo!

An immediately recognizable blue box faded into view, and the boy jumped up from the blanket with a happy crow of laughter. "It's him!"

The door to the ship creaked open, real-Lilith wishing this were only a dream as a figure stepped through the doorway and out onto the grass.Look at that hair. The kid's definitely his… "Told you I'd be here," the man announced, holding his arms out expectantly. "Just in time, as it were."

"Barely so," vision-Lilith grumbled as the boy rocketed into his father's embrace, laughing all the way as he was picked up and twirled around. "Always have the worst sense of timing, you do."

The boy was carefully set back to the ground and vision-Lilith took his place in the newcomer's arms, welcoming him with a deep kiss that was only interrupted by a chorus of juvenile disgust from within the ship. Two girls appeared in the doorway, making identical faces at the adults and complaining, "Ew, get a room!"

"Get a body," the boy retorted, having returned to the blanket and his toy robot.

The vision ended then, Lilith falling back against the desk with a reeling mind. "What in great – elder - was that?" she hissed, the vision playing in her mind even after it had faded from the wall.

"That was us," the Doctor replied after some time in the clenched tones of barely-restrained nausea. "That means I'm going to die! And just as I was getting used to this body, too… I need a drink."

"Me too," echoed Lilith, fumbling for one of the desk drawers and pulling a flask out. Fingers trembling, she unscrewed the cap and took a deep swallow of the contents, gasping and hacking as the fiery liquid brought clarity to her brain once more. She then passed the flask to the Doctor and sank weakly into her chair, cradling her throbbing cranium in her hands. "It just has to happen to me…"

"Funny, I thought that was my line," her companion muttered, likewise taking a lengthy pull on the flask and sputtering when the strength of the drink hit him. "This isn't alcohol, is it?"

"Hardly," Lilith replied, relieved to be on a different subject after the shock of what she'd seen. "I've got a cousin who works in the private sector, runs a restaurant and bar. That's a little something he brews up in the back room for times like this, since he knew I wouldn't be able to imbibe at work even without the problems excessive alcohol causes for our race." She managed a wan smile as she lifted her face up to look at him, answering the unspoken question with "Don't ask. Why don't you get cleaned up a bit? There's a washroom tucked away by the coat closet – I keep it there for guests and emergencies."

"Doubly useful in this line of work, I take it."

Lilith was then left alone in the office for a moment, turning events over in her mind to examine every nook and cranny for possible meanings. "That chain of events means that things will turn out either very well or very poorly," she mused, gazing thoughtfully at the closed washroom door. "Either my father's going to come back or I'll lose my job because I've been disgraced so badly by that leather-jacketed lout that I'm barred for eternity. Let's just hope it's the former, shall we?"