A/N: Oh my god guys. You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome! Thank you so so much for all your support and your excited messages! Seriously, that was just absurdly overwhelming and I had all sorts of generally pleasant squeeing feelings. You. Guys. Are. Awesome. HUGS FOR EVERYONE.
Also, you should totally check out AshRain114's art of Fitz. I have no idea how to link in a story but I'm putting it on my profile. It's the coolest thing anyone has ever done for me. And it's AWESOME.
There was something to be said about traveling by Tardis. Namely, that it wasn't whatever the hell we'd just experienced. It felt like being stir-fried. And then stretched out like taffy, and subsequently boiled. Everything was awful, and spin-y, and blurry.
No, hang on, that's just my glasses getting knocked off my face.
There, things were less blurry, but still powerfully nauseating. Every joint ached and my head felt a little explodey. A lot explodey. It was on par with one of my worse hangovers, thank you Jack, but with the addition of having an elephant crushing me. Unpleasant was probably the most polite way to describe it.
Fucking awful is what I was going with.
"Urk," is what actually came out of my mouth. Couldn't yet handle standing, so I was on my hands and knees, half squinting at the ground.
"Sorry, Vorma travel is a little rough if you're not used to it." Chimed in captain obvious. It was a little infuriating that she'd managed to remain upright. She didn't even sound like she was going to spill her guts all over the place. Showoff.
"Nah," I finally said, closing my eyes in an attempt to make the spinning stop. Nope. Bad idea. I opened them again, and while it hadn't stopped, it was certainly slowing. That would have to be enough. If I'd had more to eat than like, four shots of espresso, it would probably be decorating the dusty orange ground beneath me. Thank god for poor breakfast decisions. "This was great. Let's go again."
"Happy to hear that, since it looks like we've missed the mark." She better not be serious. Pretty sure I just dry heaved thinking about trying that again.
"Oh good. Not only are you a kidnapper, but you're a bad kidnapper." With a grunt, I finally pushed myself up from the ground. She probably couldn't fully appreciate my snide attitude if I was at her knees. It was important that she appreciate it.
Of course, my next snotty comment choked off when I finally bothered to survey our surroundings. We were in the middle of some kind of dusty desert valley, jagged red teeth rose up on the distant horizon of an otherwise flat plain. Very Mars chic.
But it was sort of the sky that had most of my attention. The purple hue was a little disconcerting, but the enormous yellow Saturn looking planet was really what caught my eye, since it basically took up the entire upper atmosphere. My mouth kind of hung open for a moment. There had been plenty of impressive things to see on the Tardis, but this was the first time I'd actually been dumbstruck. Well, by something other than an awkward conversation.
"I'm not a kidnapper." She muttered, still sparing more attention for her badly programmed wristwatch than myself. Her petulant tone brought me back from my space gazing.
"Really, because when I look it up in the dictionary, I'm betting I'm going to find a grouchy picture of you-"
"Kidnapping: to steal, carry off, or abduct by force or fraud, especially for use as a hostage or to extract ransom." She rattled off in an alarmingly rapid fashion. "There's no hostage or ransom intention here. Maybe some mild coercion, but I was kind of in a rush." She stole the thunder of my stupid joke, which was annoying. But also her encyclopedic knowledge had sort of dulled my sparkle.
"Holy crap I've been kidnapped by a robot."
"I'm not-jesus." She shook her head. Her decidedly android looking head. I mean, who pulls off a fauxhawk like that in real life? No one. No one can pull that off. It's definitely a wig.
"Yeah, as soon as I get this piece of junk working again, I'm taking you back where I found you." She thwacked it against her hip a few times. Somewhat reassuring to know that in the future, physical abuse was still a valid form of troubleshooting. "I grabbed you too early anyway. This has got to be way before the vale incident."
"Before the what?" It was reassuring to hear she planned to put me back, less so that it sounded like she had plans on coming back for me at a later date. "I'm sorry, who even are you?"
"I'm Max," she said with an irritated sigh. "And this is just such a stupid idea. I thought I could- God." She ruffled her hair, making it stick up more than it had before. "This has just been such a shitty week."
It was easy to recognize the warbling tone in her voice as someone who was about to lose it. I should have been gleeful, but since it was something I'd experienced pretty regularly in my travels, it was hard to relish the victory.
"Listen, I'm not really in the kidnapping business, but it's generally more professional to pretend that things are going according to plan." At least that's how the Doctor always played it. He seemed to know what he was doing. Most of the time. Or never. But the point was that he looked like he knew what he was doing.
"Thanks for that."
"Also, what kind of a name is Max? Isn't that like, a dog's name?"
"Yeah, you're one to speak, eh, Fitzgerald?" Her green eyes glared at me, evidently I'd hit a nerve.
"Well at least it's not a dog- Hey, how the hell do you know who I am?" Because she was a robot, obviously.
"Read it in your file." She said in an offhand way, like it wasn't remotely alarming. You know who had files on people? Robots. Another damning piece of evidence that the robot apocalypse had arrived and I'd somehow found myself smack dab in the middle of it. The Professor was going to be supremely smug about that. I mean, immediately after he was done being furious about it.
Couldn't blame him really, since my penchant for trouble was starting to annoy even myself.
"File? What file?" What kind of robot wants a file on me of all people? Was it a medical history? Or was it more thorough. Like, did they know about that time in second grade when I accidently stabbed Stacey Martin in the eye with a writing utensil? She just sort of took a dive into my hand when I was holding a freshly sharpened pencil. I'm not sure how she thought that was going to turn out, but she definitely had worn an eye patch until the summer. The point was, no one pressed charges, and I really shouldn't be held responsible for that sort of thing.
Or maybe it had my credit score in there, which would be useful, since I had no idea what that was.
"Nothing. It's not important. I'm just going to reset this and we'll be off. You can write it off as a bad dream. Just…try and be a little less hostile when I show up next time, right?"
"Sweetheart," My most condescending smile plastered itself on my face. "You have not yet seen hostility. If I've got a file, then it damn well better show that somewhere. I've worked years to master my hostility, and this? This is not even the tip of the enchilada."
"Oh come on!" She was angry at the vortex manipulator again, not even listening to my threatening speech about hostility. That was annoying, since I'd busted out my extra ominous glare. My eyes searched the ground for a rock, not to throw it, just to…look like I might throw it.
Unfortunately, out in the middle of dusty ass nowhere, there were no rocks. Only finely powdered orange dust that was slowly coating the lenses of my glasses, and everything else I was wearing.
She continued to mutter at her wrist, fiddling with dials in some attempt to get it working again, but I wasn't listening. The breeze had picked up, blowing the particle fine grit directly into my face, but it also made a strange wheezing noise. One that was slowly growing louder, and more recognizable.
"Hah!" That was the Tardis, which was good, because if we were going to be stuck on this planet much longer, there were fairly good odds that I was about to resemble an oompa loompa. "Now you're in for it."
The nice thing about your extended network of friends being time travelers is that it might take them a bit to get organized, and even a while to track you down, and there was most probably an extended break where they all had to argue about whose fault it was that I'd gotten into trouble this time. But, eventually, they always made a well-timed entrance and, ideally, rescue.
Max looked up then, the sound now too obvious to be mistaken for wind. Less than a few feet from us, a blue box started to flicker into view.
"Great," she actually sounded relieved, which was sort of unexpected. "He can sort this thing out."
"No. You don't get to be excited. He's not going to help you sort anything. He's going to take you to a space prison and make sure you're eating freeze dried potatoes for the rest of your life." It wasn't super clear to me if there actually was such thing as a 'space prison'. Or if they served freeze dried vegetables. But it was important to me that she knew she couldn't just snatch people out of their jobs and expect things to work out all hunky dory.
"You're a bit ridiculous," Her eyebrow once again raised in my direction. "You know that?"
"Yes, the file definitely should have mentioned that." Starting to be real unimpressed with the file, as a whole. Whoever was keeping their records, had done a shoddy job of it. It had somehow missed my hostility and my ridiculousness. If 'idiot' wasn't in there somewhere, underlined several times, I was calling bullshit on the whole thing. That's not a file, that's a picture of my face with my name written on it.
"Here we are," the Tardis doors opened, but instead of the familiar bow tie wearing doofus, some stranger stepped out. "The second Apocryphal of Murish." He was tall and stringy looking. He wore a blue pinstriped suit, with a flapping brown jacket over it, likely to protect him from the blowing orange dust that pretty much covered every inch of me now. He pulled off his glasses and stared at us, a frown creasing his forehead.
"Well who the hell are you?" I blurted out in a slightly uncouth way. He opened his mouth to argue, but I squawked and leapt backwards, because something else had rolled out of the Tardis behind him. It was nearly as tall as him, bulbous round protrusions stuck out from its sides, all in a gleaming coppery color. It was something I'd seen before, streaking across the skies of a war torn Gallifrey. "Hit the deck! It's a killer salt shaker!"