Night Two:

Striped Spirit

The Doctor awoke, almost like he swallowed his sonic screwdriver and his stomach flipped the switch with a high pitched frequency enough to send a twitchy seizure-like electrical current through both of his hearts. Anything but the Cyberplanner, his mind raced. I had to cheat numerous times to win that chess match and evict that bloke from my head.

He jerked his head to all sides as he lied there on the frozen glossy floor, taking in every surrounding. Nothing. Everything was blank in that spacious room. No furniture, no architecture, not even a cheap painting on the walls—there were no walls! Everything glowed an opaque diamond white with no doors or windows, no horizon or a bit of outdoor vegetation either. No one could see any atmosphere, let alone the hint of stars and planets beyond, though the Doctor loved a good skylight. The room seemed to go on forever with just the gleaming floor and a white haze everywhere, like being trapped in a snow-globe, but the walls of the dome were invisible. Could be a perception filter, he thought. Or not… Where's Clara when I need her?

He jumped to his feet, only to feel dizzy and as clouded as the fog that engulfed him when he and Clara were separated. The chest pain made him lurch forward, stumbling. Oh no, what's the nasty cloud done to you, lefty? He made a fist with his right hand and started punching the left side of his chest, assuming his left heart went dormant. Then he realized it wasn't his heart at all, it was his respiratory system causing the irrepressible chest pain, tightening everything and squeezing his lungs like a stress plushy thing. The same with his head, growing heavier and heavier until his knees hit the ground; the rest of him collapsed on his stomach a second later. Stop it, just stop it… fingers… need custard… fish, fishy fingers… custard…

The floor vibrated with footsteps, him hearing the thuds in the floor against his ear pressed close against it. There was no telling where it came from until they got louder and a set of medium size-heeled sandals covering white ankle socks swerved into view. One foot tapped against the floor, the Doctor wincing at the close sound, before the woman wearing the socks and open toed black comfort heels crouched to eye level. Going by her face, this lady was not Clara at all; her hair was too red and gingery, all coifed with a 1950s pompadour pouf in the front. Her eyes had a bright crystal sapphire gleam to them, somewhat of his dear blue box. Higher cheekbones, taller and leaner than Clara, a mirror image of that ginger beauty school dropout in the teenage poodle-skirt-leather-jacket movie, though she had longer hair than any of the Pink Ladies… She wore a black and white dotted dress with a brown flower belt under a bright periwinkle jacket just barely touching her dress's hem.

"Sup, babydoll?" she coyly chirped in her slight cockney London voice. It was hard to tell where she got that accent from any part of England; he nearly felt he'd never heard that voice before.

He was certain this was a dream. Feeling around his inside coat lining for the pocket, he found his screwdriver, relieved that he didn't swallow it. Pressing the green point against his head and hitting the switch, he checked his vitals until the nouveau drape greaser girl snatched it from his hand.

"Oi! Give that back," he yelped.

"Quiet, Mister Britty," she said, attentively analyzing his sonic.

"You don't know how to possibly…"

She put a finger to her lips before he could get the sentence out. "Shhhhh…"

The Doctor silenced himself involuntarily. He wanted to speak and opened his mouth to do so, but no sound. No, wait a moment, that's my trick, he exclaimed in his mind. That should only work on thick people like Craig and his little baby Alfie, not me!

Paying the Doctor no mind, Miss Rockabilly Ginger kept eyeing his scientific tool of choice, turning it and twirling it like a baton with her fingers. "Hmm, haven't seen one of these puppies in quite a long time," she quipped.

She stopped twirling it in her right hand, pressed the switch three times, and held it down for five seconds on the fourth, flashing the green light in the Time Lord's eyes. Giving it a shake, the prongs flicked open as she held it straight up at eye level.

"Psychic toxicity: thirty-five percent," she said, stating the analysis like a Time Lord diagnosis. "Thirty-eight and nine, oh, honey, you're sick as a dog, poor dear!"

The Doctor suddenly realized he'd forgotten about his flop sweat all this time. When he came to, he thought his suit with jacket vest and purple coat were making him a little warm under the bow tie. Now he felt something wet rolling down his back, lying all stuffy headed and using his finger to pull and adjust the tie. Thirty eight and nine… meaning 38.9 Celsius… slightly above a hundred and two in Fahrenheit… perfect fever unusual in Time Lords, but typical for humans coming down with the influenza virus.

He knew the last time something like this happened. A few specks of pollen got into the time rotors of his spaceship-time-machine and induced a dream state for him and his friends the Ponds. And it all began with a single sneeze; before he knew it, he and Amy with her then-fiancé Rory faced the Dream Lord: a dream where Amy was married to Rory and very round and pregnant in Leadworth, the other in the Tardis flying toward a frost burning cold star. All from a single sneeze, so he fretted if he would start hearing loud bird chirping noises if he did.

Instead, it came from the painful irritation in the lungs. He wheezed, attempting to gulp more air until something sticky caught in the throat, a sting enough to block the main airway.

Miss Rockabilly Ginger sensed the oncoming cough fit seconds ahead. She tapped him on the neck with her two fingers to stifle any coughing.

"Don't even think about it, love," she said. "You start coughing, the worse the hallucinations get, believe me. I used to have the same thing once, and you really don't want it to get worse."

The Doctor blinked, swallowing the sting that left his throat raw as if he swallowed sandpaper. "Right, then," he said. "Anything I can take for the pain?"

"Leave that to me," the ginger answered. "I'll be right back to wrap you up pretty."

She slid her legs from her leaning hip posture and stood, the Doctor's gaze following her as she reached for a little blue sequined handbag and pulled a pink stick and a vial of clear fluid from her bag. Returning, she took the vial and clicked it into position at the bottom of the pink stick, which reminded him of his sonic screwdriver without the prongs. Hers had a gold and copper painted alloy surrounding the rosey case. Taking his left wrist and unbuttoning the cuff, she gripped the pen and jabbed a vein with the ruby red point. "Hold your breath, love."

She hit the switch as it whirred a low hum. The effect felt like a Cyberman stabbing him with an Epi Pen; the Doctor shouted in alarm. "Gaaaaah!"

She firmly held his arm down, not letting him recoil or retract it. "Hold still! I told you to hold your breath; your arm's going to feel pressurized for a couple moments. You won't be able to move your arm for at least fifteen minutes. Relax."

"How can I relax with you stabbing me like a Sontaran nurse?" the Doctor snapped.

When the vial of fluid emptied, she turned off the pink screwdriver, ejected the vial, and tossed it behind her. Immediately, the Doctor's entire left arm muscles radiated numbness with the feeling of thousands of microscopic Daleks firing their lazing weapons through the skin, and without the belligerent cries of "Exterminate". But the sudden relief from his symptoms was instantaneous. His body temperature began to cool, the chest pain and head pressure had started to fade.

"What did you just do to me?" he asked, sitting up with more ease.

"You mean what I did for you?" she said with a sneer. "That's the recombinant dionytrogen antidote, the first half of it. It should abate the symptoms a little longer until we get you the second half of the antidote you sorely need to kill the nasty bug in your brain. For now, what I gave you should take the edge off, know what I mean?"

This confused him enough. "What? I'm sorry, what? No, no, there must be something I'm missing… What was it?"

He jumped to his feet and started pacing again as if he never felt any of his symptoms at all. The ginger in the periwinkle coat stood too, as the Doctor paced, his hand resting on his trousers' belt held by suspenders underneath his waistcoat. As he mumbled something under his breath, the floor rumbled, causing the both of them to fall back and catch themselves without landing on their backs.

Upon steadying herself, the rockabilly ginger girl said, "You done contemplating your bare surroundings, professor? Because believe me, this empty space-room is all very interesting until it all explodes!"

The Doctor straightened himself, fixing his bow tie and towering above her. "Perhaps that's all what we're supposed to think. Looking by the evidence, I'd say this is a pocket universe sustained with a perception filter, collapsing all over the universe in different areas in the fragments of time. I'd say we've been here, what, under two minutes? So, I'm guessing it's only a matter of minutes until... weh... erm... I wouldn't say a kaboom-ing explosion. You could say we have a small time-space window to find a hole back to our universe before this place..."

"Eats itself?" she said, finishing for him while fixing her hair in her hand mirror she extracted from her blue handbag.

The Doctor gasped in disgust as she put the mirror away. "No! No! Why would you think like that? What is wrong with you? What are you, some sort of-"

"Teenager?" she finished him again. "I guess you could call me that, since technically I am in my adolescence, though I am not as young as you think."

"Really?" he said to test her. "Going by your face, I'd say you're a human female, about five feet tall, give or take, and you're about, what, twenty one, twenty two? You may as well take after Rose Tyler, the last time I saw her, or even Jo Grant before her face and skin got all pruney."

The ginger stomped closer to him, her face hot and her sneer nearly at level with him. "Oh, so I guess I'm not all pruney yet, pardon me, proffy! Early twenties, you say? Flattering, but a long shot from spot on!"

"Then enlighten me, what age are you?" the Doctor asked.

"I'm two hundred and thirty six years old, and dontcha forget it!" Miss Rockabilly Ginger said, all haughty and somewhat Cockney, like a miniature red haired Eliza Doolittle.

"Ah, I don't think I remember much of being in my 230s; not lots going on and I was much more inclined to steal a spaceship," the Doctor said, a cheery quickness to his tone. "But I don't believe I had that biker man phase with my hair greased like that… and wearing a leather jacket or some such tattooed hoodlum nonsense."

She pointed a finger at him and stormed off into the white void. Suddenly, the Doctor noticed there was something familiar about this young lady, as if he knew all of her mannerisms, her speech, and the way she dressed as if they used to be a part of him. She embodied the soul of a whole other person he used to be in one moment of his life, more of a past regeneration. He looked down at her shoes. She wore socks with her pumps, but she was now changing them to a pair of sneakers she pulled out of her purse. She had a purse that was bigger on the inside, or was it really? Not only that, the sneakers she strapped to her feet were Converse high top Chuck Taylors, periwinkle sand shoes to match her coat.

Upon feeling and hearing something rumble close by, the Doctor recognized one more thing as he glanced one last time at the ceiling. As there were no cracks, falling rubble, or even a light, cloudy overcast, this place was a long way from being under an implosion. Checking his gold wristwatch again, he ran to the ginger as she finished tying her shoe and grabbed her by the arm.

"I know and I'm sorry! I know exactly what this is now and I swear I am loving this," he said with a childish smile that faded when he got to the next sentence. "But we have to keep from running."

"Oi, I just put on my trainers!" said the ginger. "My dad used to wear a pair like these, and I've just bought them for such an occasion. So you're telling me not to make a mad dash for it, is that all? Let go of me!"

"All right, but just listen to me," he said, releasing his grip on her and taking her by the shoulders. "Do you have any idea why this room is so empty?"

She paused a moment to think. "Haven't given it a thought, no. But there is the fact that the ceiling is, well… swollen."

For five seconds or more, there was dead silence that intrigued both of them enough. "Swollen, you say?" said the Doctor.

"Yeah, says me, but it's actually still swelling up," said the ginger. "The whole room keeps expanding, like a temporary parallel pocket universe that, instead of eating its face like a tormented bloke gagged and strapped to a chair listening to that 'Love Me Like You Do' Ellie Goulding monstrosity on repeat in a dark, locked room for hours, like it's supposed to do, it keeps gorging, like a kid on Halloween coming home with a ten pound sack of trick or treats."

The Doctor stepped back as the lady with the brand new sand shoes opened her purse again and began chewing on something very pink and sugary as if from a carnival. Still perplexed by her scientific knowledge of space-time travel, horrible fifties fashion sense, and a personality akin to his former regeneration, he put one last question to her.

"What's your name?"

"A very excellent question so late in the conversation," she said, innocently and politely chewing on the pink candy with her mouth closed. "Or perhaps it is too early to tell."

She took the candy bar wrapper from her handbag for another piece—bubblegum disguised as fluffy clouds of sugar from a state fair, which puzzled him more.

"You didn't answer my question," the Doctor added. "How could you have lived for two centuries when you look…?"

"Young?" she said with a perky grin. "I guess that's the secret of my family."

"Your family?"

"Well, yeah, my dad brought me up a little about his home planet, or he tried to right around my birthday. His girlfriends were great help too, until some loser general shot me in the chest. Though in reality, he was aiming at my father and almost shot him when I got in the way to save him. So I died in my dad's arms the day after I was born, quite rightly. And then! The unthinkable! I woke up as if I had a quiet little nap on a great big spaceship full of humans and aliens, where the ship had grown trees—its own ecosystem! Then I realized I was never dreaming… and it was up to me to find my father's home, travel the universe, and do a whole lot of running, just as he did. That is who I am."

The Doctor stood in dumbfounded paralysis. He now knew what she was exactly. "You're a Time Lord?"

"Time Lady, dearest, and a genetically engineered one at that," she said, correcting him. "I may not have been born on Gallifrey, but I do have two hearts. Folks call me all sorts of things: GI Jane, Ginger, Jenny, Sandy—heaven knows why—even Sylvia Plath named a poem after my nickname Lady Lazarus. Killed herself in an oven, poor babe. Anyway, the Time Lord Academy refugees from the Time War made me their honorary leading lady by inducting me as The Stripe, or The Doctor's Daughter, though they're not really great names at all. I prefer to call myself Miss Wonder Woman!"

The Doctor's mouth hung open in shock. She had to be lying, if only he had never felt her pulse. For when he seized her arm, he knew she had a double heartbeat, just like his. She might have the perfect red hair, at least, he thought, but she did resemble everything they did together with Martha Jones and Donna Noble, the two 'girlfriends' as she called them. He thought he lost her forever in the seven-day war of humans and a race called the Hath, but there she was right in front of him.

His daughter just came home.

"Jenny?" was about all he could muster.

"Yes, lovely to meet you," Jenny said at last. "Though I'm hoping you'll refrain from calling me that in the future while I get to learn about you, just call me The Stripe or Miss Wonder Woman for now, seeing as we're not going anywhere at present."

Taking one last piece of cotton-candy bubblegum, she offered the leftover king sized bar to the Doctor, totally oblivious from the thought of her father's incredulous reunion with his daughter.

"Air Heads?" she said.