Acallaris

The Novis Carnival Flotilla, Dragontooth Nebula, 19th of February, 52,614

Silence in the room, she stepped up to the edge of the platform with her arms outstretched on either side, like a child pretending to be a plane. There would be a wait now, as the people below observed. There was no spotlight on her yet, the spotlight was still on the ground. She was merely a shadow in the rafters, and it was practice to wait until people spied her silhouette for themselves until she began. As usual, she counted down the seconds in her head as they went up and up and up, all the way to eighty-five. When she reached eighty-five, she would take her first step forwards onto the highwire, which was as thin as fishing line. Halfway between the wire and the podium behind her, the spotlight would 'find' her, at ninety seconds, and the silver leotard she was wearing would shimmer like moonlight reflected in rippling water. Then the impressive stuff would begin.

She'd been doing this for round about two years now, a little less maybe, and the routine became lazy in her practiced muscles. It was like her whole head, her head which never quietened usually, shut down. There were no thoughts, there was no anything, there was even very little focus. It was like an out-of-body experience, which was ironic because her body was so involved in what she was doing, and she did her handstands and cartwheels and the odd backflip on the tightrope with a bored finesse. That was part of the act, that she feigned a few yawns, made it look like she was losing some of her edge as she took passive note of the applause ringing out thirty feet below when she did something impressive (and everything she was doing was impressive.)

And then, just when she had stunned the crowds walking on her palms (very painful), she slipped. She would always slip. The spotlight followed her in her descent, the thing floating in the air next to her. People screamed in the audience, they always screamed, because nobody had noticed the trapeze hanging down. Not that that was their fault, by that point they always assumed she was exclusively a highwire act, and the trapeze was painted to match the crimson walls of the cavernous hall. So often she would nearly laugh with joy as she fell like this, wished she could feel the thrill a little longer, fall a little further, but the trapeze hung as low as she was allowed to have it. She reached up an arm and caught it by the bar, the spotlight never straying from its mark.

It would fly up one way and she would swing herself on top of it and pull it back the other, momentum carrying her so that she was suspended in a standing position, on one foot, but horizontal, inertia keeping her balanced. Then she let go of the two wires on either side in the split second that the trapeze hovered. It was as though time froze around her, and she stepped gently forwards onto a second trapeze hanging much higher than the first. For a moment, it was like floating, she was suspended with nothing to hold her up. She could potentially drift away into outer space. Then her foot found the cold metal of the second bar and she stepped easily to safety. She stood and bowed on just one leg, the other stretched straight behind her, leant a little too far forwards so it looked as though she might fall again.

Everything was very samey after that. The rest of her performance was very trapeze-oriented and she always found it easier than the falling parts. It had less of a thrill, it nearly bored her. Wasn't quite as impressive. Dare she say easy? Well, she supposed she would. It was easier because she didn't cut the soles of her feet and her palms open like on the damned highwire, but it had to be that thin so that the illusion of it being invisible was created. She kept her feet very flat, too, so it looked like she was walking on a solid surface. By the end she dropped herself onto a third, much lower trapeze, and then did about three somersaults in the air off of that one until she landed neatly on her feet on the ground. Took another bow. As usual, Evanlex slunk out of his hiding place in the shadowy tunnel that went to the wings and backstage. She left the ring to loud applause and the sound of him throwing compliments at her until he introduced the next act, calling her The Astounding Acrocallaris – a pun on the surname she had picked out when she had left the Twentieth Century.

It was Sunday, the last day of the show before the circus left the Dragontooth Nebula. Leaving tomorrow morning, it would be a three-day journey through deep space before they reached the next star cluster. Another day after that before they were docked anywhere inhabitable. It was a relatively short trip, however. Sometimes it was two entire weeks in deep space, and then it could get a little claustrophobic. She welcomed those breaks, though, because they gave a chance for her feet and palms to heal a little and callous somewhat. She wondered, if she left the circus, would the scars on her hands go away?

"I think you've cut your foot again," someone said, making her jump. There were people everywhere backstage. No two people were the same species, and there was not one human. Humans, unsurprisingly, were pretty unextraordinary. Humans were the people who wanted to see the circus, see all the 'weird aliens.' Mainly because they were just not a well-liked species in the intergalactic community. It had taken Jenny a lot of tenacity to convince Evanlex the ringmaster that she was not one of them.

"Oh, god, would you not creep up on me?" Jenny said to Olia, hitting them lightly on the arm. Olia was a native of the planet Axxen. In layman's terms, that meant that Olia was a genderless chameleon, who moved very quietly, and liked to make a habit of scaring Jenny. That was only because she had been so boastful about her superior senses, but she had quickly learned that other aliens – aliens like she was, and she really did love calling herself an alien like that when she had been stuck with humans for so long – were not impressed by her being better than a Homo Sapien. Everyone here was better than a Homo Sapien. She liked that. Olia was the assistant of the magician and went on before Jenny. Outside of the circus ring, the air was cold, and she crossed her arms against the chill. Leotards, she had learned, were not the warmest items of clothing.

"Sorry, I was just watching," Olia apologised sheepishly.

"Why? You've seen it a thousand times before," Jenny said, smiling, walking past Olia. This area, right by the stage, was storage. It was packed with equipment and others waiting to go on, but it was freezing. Jenny had seen it all before, and she cut straight through with Olia following. Neither of them had anywhere to be now, but everyone was tacitly expected to leave the wings after they were done, to go back to their rooms. Bedrooms doubled as dressing rooms, and they were small and there were a lot of them condensed onto the 'living floor,' that being the second floor, in descending order. There was the ring at the top of the ship, that was the ground floor. The floor below had pretty meagre storage space for their food and equipment. Then there was the living floor, and the third floor was maintenance. It was not a very large ship, but she'd never been one for large open spaces.

So, the routine after the evening shows was go get changed, most likely have a wash, and then everyone would gather in the mess hall for supper. For once, Jenny rarely had to cook her own meals. Sometimes she would go help, but they actually had a chef, who was not so good but was dedicated and took on board any culinary suggestions of Jenny's. People liked her at the Novis Carnival, she wasn't a weirdo living in a swamp who was exceptionally good at everything. Wasn't a medical officer who knew more about fixing fighter planes than the engineers working on it. The airmen never liked when she tried to repair their busted engines, they preferred when she tried to repair their busted noses after they got into drunken bar fights with men who hadn't gone to war.

"I know, but…" Olia began, at Jenny's heels. Jenny wondered why Olia was coming with her, when all she was doing was going to shower and then have supper. A lot of supper.

"But what?"

"I don't know, I always worry you might actually fall," Olia said, and Jenny laughed slightly. She wouldn't fall. Though she figured she would come back, she still had a bit of an aversion to dying, and religiously carried out safety checks of the highwire and the trapezes each morning. Twice on show days, three times if they were doing a matinee as well.

The hallways of the circus vessel were cold. They were always cold. The rooms were warm, and so was the common area, but the corridors and the mess hall were freezing. It wasn't too bad for Jenny, she was warm blooded and had a fifty-degree body temperature, but Olia, the cold-blooded lizard, spent most of their time frozen to the bone.

"You have cut your foot," Olia pointed out again. Jenny glanced down and saw single, bloody splotches on the floor. It was her left foot, and she lifted it up to see where it had been cut. Olia watched. "That looks nasty." There was a thin, red gash down the centre of the ball of her foot, but it wasn't really painful, and not much more severe than a papercut. "I told you to ask him if you can wear shoes."

"I have asked him if I can wear shoes, he won't let me," Jenny said, speaking of Evanlex the ringmaster, "It'll be fine, I'll clean it up later tonight." She wasn't sleeping that night, she'd gladly clean up her blood from the scuffed, metal floor. After supper. "No pain, no gain. And it's worth the pain to live here."

"I don't know why you like it here so much, if I had the money to leave, I would," Olia told her, still trailing after Jenny through the halls.

"It's better than Earth, that's why. Anywhere's better than Earth," she said grimly, "I'd best go bandage this up, though. I thought you had to help Jovy pack stuff up, anyway?" Olia paused. Jenny was waiting to go into the stairwell that led to the floor below. Olia seemed keen on following her, and didn't say anything. "What?"

"N-nothing," they said.

"I'll see you at supper," Jenny told her, "He'll get angry at you if you don't help him pack stuff away."

"No, I… I packed up quickly, already, he let me go."

"Why?" she asked. Olia stared at her, with their small yellow eyes. Jenny always thought it was cute how they could point their eyes in opposite directions, she wished she could do that, it would make watching her back a whole lot easier. Not that she really needed to watch her back a lot now, she wasn't working for a criminal empire in Louisiana or New York anymore. People didn't make a habit of trying to kill her.

"It's not important, doesn't matter," Olia finally said, walking backwards, away from Jenny. If they didn't need to help Jovy pack away, where were they going? Olia had a habit of acting strangely, though, so Jenny just allowed them to do whatever they did without question. She'd never met any others from Axxen before, what did she know about them or their culture? Nothing, that's what.

"I'll see you in a bit though, yeah?" Jenny said. Olia gave her a thumbs up, then bumped right into Utal. Utal was enormous and looked like what would be called an ogre in Earthling stories, and Jenny had never heard him speak. He nodded to her whenever he passed, though, which was more respect than most people got from him. His talent was heavy lifting. The strongman, she supposed. Utal grunted at Olia. Jenny was always wondering if Olia had some kind of balance issue, they were always bumping into things when she was around, and their skin seemed to change colour a little uncontrollably. Then again, maybe it was just hard to control natural camouflage? Jenny didn't know, and she was off on her way down the stairs already, semi-limping.

What a different world this was to planet Earth, what an enjoyable two years it had been after she had escaped from that rocky pustule. As she walked, the sole of her foot began to smart a little, and she walked on her heel as the blood dripped onto the floor. Nobody would pay it any notice; it had happened a few times before – Evanlex wasn't the most forgiving of people. She'd spent time with a lot of unforgiving people, though, and he wasn't the worst of them. She dragged herself into her dinky room and dropped onto the small bed in the corner, glancing around at her trinkets.

Jenny didn't have much with her from her old life on Earth. Viola had a lot of her things still, as far as she knew, kept locked up in the loft of her large house in New Orleans. She'd left behind her old hunting rifle in that house, which she still missed sometimes in an odd way, though she didn't have to hunt any food these days. It was tricky to find game when you were stuck in deep space for weeks on end. She didn't think Viola would get rid of her things, anyway. Her fiddle she had made herself one autumn in 1935 because she was bored, old clothes and furs from Tungtrun, those battered credit sticks that had been stuck in the humid swamp for so many years they probably didn't work anymore.

She still thought she was lucky that Viola hadn't tried to get her arrested, or committed, or blackmailed. Alien origins aside, Jenny had always proved trustworthy and valuable to O'Hara. Still, Jenny made good on her promise to herself to get out of there as soon as something better presented itself, though in retrospect she must have a skewed perception of 'better.' When World War Two broke out, and she packed a few bags hurriedly and caught a plane across the Atlantic to Great Britain, just like she said she would if conflict exploded in Europe. Her stint as Viola O'Hara's right hand woman had come to an end early in 1940, when she was only sixteen. Not that she'd fought, no, she'd blagged her way into becoming a nurse, because for some ridiculous reason women weren't allowed to join the army. Then, for six years, the routine had just been her and other women getting passed around various Royal Air Force hospitals. She'd always been better at fixing the planes than the soldiers, though – and she didn't like how they flirted with her all the time. That was just the start of her losing faith in humanity.

She'd lost faith in them in a peculiar way. After a while, and despite all their differences, she began to herself as one of them. She had a brief existential crisis which ended in her realising she owed humanity nothing at all, she didn't exist to clean up the messes of mankind. So when she saw the horrors of that war, which came to a climax after those devastating bombs were dropped on Japan just two weeks after her twenty-second birthday, Jenny DeLacey had upped and left the planet and the period and had chosen herself a new name in the distant future, Jenny Acallaris.

With her, she had the trusty old vortex manipulator of Emmett's, and she still had the boy's ashes in their urn on a shelf nearby. She hadn't thought about taking them back when she'd used the manipulator to get to the year 52,612, and she wasn't inclined to go whizzing about trying to find the Time Agency. She did feel guilty, though, if he had a family out there missing him, that she'd been keeping his remains from them for the best part of the twenty-four years of her life. Emmett DeLacey's ashes were some sort of staple, and she felt like she owed him something still. Felt like she needed to show him that she wasn't just going after her father, not anymore. Maybe two decades ago, but after seeing the species he adored so much almost destroy itself, she was second-guessing him. Could those companions of his really be so wonderful, if they stood by and let things like this happen?

Perhaps she had it all wrong, though. It would be nice to sit down and talk to him about it, but she had abandoned her attempts at searching for him on Earth. He could well have been involved with the war himself and she just didn't know it, and she didn't know him, so she had acted upon that human cliché and had run away to join the circus. And what a good acrobat she was, too. Anyone would think she had been training to do such feats her whole life, instead of skulking around in icy hovels and brewing moonshine in a humid, stinking marsh. Living with a rich girl like Viola hadn't made her eyes immune to the squalor America had to offer, and she was glad to be rid of it.

Jenny pulled a first aid kit, stolen from 1940s, war-torn Britain, out from under her bed, holding her foot over the floor so it didn't get blood on her sheets. She wouldn't be allowed to wash them for a few days yet, so it was best to keep them as clean as possible. The skin on her foot looked odd from the scars of thin wounds like this one, but she had stopped paying attention to scars a long while ago. Scars gave her age where wrinkles did not. They were proof in her appearance that she had lived, lived beyond the assumptions of the people who met her and saw a harmless, tiny blonde girl. But Jenny had these slits on her feet, some in her palms, she had two pin-prick looking marks on her ankle from where a coral snake had bitten her, she had a funny white circle either side of her right calf from a laser sidearm. That last one was more than twenty years old now.

She didn't dislike them the way humans did, though. While, yes, they were not pleasant to receive, these wounds she bore were proof of experience. They were proof that she was living. In a way, they all meant something to her. That was why she didn't make much of a fuss when it came to requesting to wear shoes of Evanlex. Still, she wrapped a fresh bandage around her foot and then stood up and went about getting changed into clothes warmer, looser, and less bedazzled than a silvery leotard. She was, admittedly, not the biggest fan of circus garb.

She kicked the first aid kit away under her bed again and sat back down on the bed. Supper would not be until after the show, and the show still had a good twenty minutes. Then another twenty minutes or so on top of that until it was polite to go to the mess hall – she had learnt from experience that people didn't like her hanging around there forty minutes before food was going to be served. Besides, it was cold. Her bed was not cold, it was comfortable and didn't come with risk of mites or bedbugs or any other microscopic parasite, not like the beds in Louisiana. Fumigation wasn't exactly commonplace in Viola O'Hara's fancy mansion. For every piece of finery she owned, there must have been at least a hundred unwelcome critters knocking about in the folds and the seams.

Did Jenny have anything to do? Not really, but she enjoyed the quiet. She didn't think she had ever been the type of person to be so easily bored – after all, when she only slept once a week, she had to have a good threshold for boredom. Otherwise she would go insane. But no, she was quite content to contemplate things, to read books about the ancient histories of other planets and cultures. She drew up internal lists of planets she thought she must visit at least once in her life, and from reading books of astrophysics and advanced engineering, spaceships she must fly. In 1944, she had learnt she had quite the knack for flying aircraft. Spacecraft, perhaps not so much, since the first and only spaceship she had flown solo had crashed on Tungtrun after barely a day. Sometimes, though, she felt like her calling might be aviation. Though present she did feel like her calling was acrobatics, and before she thought it might be hunting or brewing hooch in a swamp. Maybe she had a lot of callings? She was a pretty versatile person, and she surprised herself with the things she could do just as much as she surprised others.

She did wish she had brought her fiddle with her to the future, though. It was still in New Orleans, unless Viola had got rid of it. She hoped not, Jenny may want to reclaim that someday, that and her other abandoned possessions.

A tome about interstellar navigation caught her eye from her bedside table, one she was about halfway through reading. Non-fiction appealed to her more than fiction, really, it had a genuine application in the world. She may one day have to know about interstellar navigation; it certainly would have helped her out after she abandoned her kin on Messaline. Besides, she thought it was fascinating, though no-one else was of the same opinion. That volume was what she passed the next forty minutes reading, she read two whole chapters, and the chapters were extraordinarily long and in a language she didn't initially recognise. Though she understood it, it took a while longer for her brain to automatically make sense of the words.

Her imagination conjured a smell of succulent food which drew her away from the book, her subconscious hunger reminding her that dinner was probably about ready, and she really ought to get going. If she was too late, Olia would come looking for her unnecessarily. Jenny always felt bad about making them waste a trip to the bedrooms when they could just as easily be eating, and didn't know why Olia was so bothered about Jenny having food on time. Olia really was one quirky space chameleon.

Jenny trudged through the hallways, which had more people collected in them now than they had done earlier, people all generally heading the same direction as her, to supper. Though the Novis Carnival spent most of its time in the recesses of deep space, it still ran internally on a twenty-four-hour clock, which was nothing if not convenient. Twenty-four hour clocks were more familiar than some other clocks she'd read about, ones on planets far away from suns where there were three short 'routine cycles' pressed into the space of a solid day, with naps that were never quite long enough slicing the time apart in between. She liked the twelve hour shifts of day to night and back again, though there was an unfortunate lack of what she had come to think of as 'day' on the Carnival ship. Everything happened later than it used to, though. It was eleven o'clock in the evening and the whole ensemble were sitting down together for another meal, that wouldn't have happened when she lived with Viola. Viola needed what she called 'beauty sleep.' Jenny didn't understand the concept of 'beauty sleep' particularly, because she herself always looked alright and hardly ever slept, but she supposed it was just another thing Earthlings were probably wrong about. They were wrong about lots of things, like their wars and their politics. She wanted to stay away from wars and politics for the present, lest a bomb get dropped on her.

Supper was slop. It was always slop. It was ladled into a plastic bowl and varied in colour night to night, across a gradient spectrum that went from grey to green to brown and made room for every dull, sickly colour in between. It was damn-good tasting slop, though, and she didn't know why people made such a fuss about food looking nice. If it tasted alright, what was the big deal? Presentation was overrated, as was chewing, going by the amount of gunge she consumed on a daily basis. Saved her jaw some aching, though. As nice as alligator was, it took a lot of grinding on your molars to get through it properly. She could drink this oddly tasty, hot slime with a straw if she wanted, and that actually appealed to her as she took her bowl from the chef with a smile and went to sit down on one of the smallish tables. She imagined that this was what it must be like going to school, from the stories she had heard. Occasionally she felt as though she was missing out by not having experience with that particular

The glamorous show of the circus was replaced by aching bones and tired faces, all eager for their energy to be replenished by slurping up a bowl of goop late at night. She watched Evanlex drift in to pick up his supper and take it elsewhere – he never ate with everybody else. She couldn't blame him if he wanted privacy, though, people never stopped asking him questions about this or that, refurbishments, renovations or suggestions. She didn't know if she had the patience to be in charge of so many people and their welfare, she often thought she was better off on her own without the extended responsibility of taking care of masses of other people.

As promised, Olia soon arrived, their skin a dark, shiny blue. Jenny knew that shiny blue was bad, though – that was Olia's angry colour. Olia hadn't been angry when Jenny had seen her earlier, something must have happened. But she had to wait until Olia had retrieved their supper to ask about it, and ask she most certainly did. She hated to see her friends upset – anybody upset, for that matter.

"What's wrong?" she inquired.

"The humans who live in this cluster. Some of them snuck on, again. Evanlex has Utal trying to scare them right now," Olia explained. Blech, humans. Jenny thought. Her least favourite species. The universe's self-proclaimed genocidal 'overlords.' Always looking for something or someone new to claim faux supremacy over. "They asked me, 'what are you supposed to be?' and if I ate live animals. I'm not a snake, you know."

"I do know," Jenny assured her, "Sorry about them."

"Why do you insist on apologising for them?"

"Because they're too ignorant to apologise for themselves, and somebody ought to do it," Jenny answered. Olia watched her with an expression she could not deduce. Truthfully, the shade of blue they presently were was so dark and had such a funny sheen to it in the glaring lights of the mess, it made trying to read faces even harder. And then there was the fact every single intelligent race had a totally new etiquette of body language. Sure, she could speak any language, but this was an entirely different and hard to master skill. "For the record, they're not any better to each other."

"Why do you never talk about your time on Earth?" Olia asked.

"Because every happy memory I have of Earth, or anybody who lived there, is tainted," she explained. And that was all she would explain. She didn't want to give Olia the full details, Olia did not need the full details of the atrocities humanity had carried out against itself. Every inkling of faith she had in that species had been destroyed in the summer of 1945. Every time she thought to herself that she understood why the Doctor spent so much time drifting around the Twentieth Century and beyond, carrying humans to and fro through the universe, had been subverted in her memory. A lapse of judgement. No wonder her father had seemed to against war, seeing the wars of humans, the devastation they caused. She had seen what they had done and had renounced every part of herself in which she saw their influence, then she had runaway as far to the future as she could manage.

"What do you mean?"

"It doesn't matter what I mean, I don't want to talk about it. I don't even like thinking about it." She went back to her slop.

"I… I'm sorry."

"What? No, it's nothing to do with you. Figure I might be curious about your past if you were a time traveller who never talked about themselves," Jenny tried to lift the mood, but she didn't do a very good job of it. She tried not to ask her colleagues invasive personal questions, it just seemed rude. A lot of them were not her close friends, they were just acquaintances. Even her actual friends like Olia, though, she didn't question. She didn't want to be rude. If there was something someone wanted her to know, something that was her business, they would tell her. That was what she relied on.

Besides, as far as sharing personal information went, Jenny had already shared plenty. Her origins and her time on Tungtrun, her real species, real talents, real father, none of this was a secret. Sure, there were still people who thought she was crazy, she couldn't possibly be the Doctor's daughter (the further into the future she found herself, the more infamous her father became to even the most ordinary or secluded of people), but her medical tests didn't lie. She had the x-rays and the scans, two hearts beating away fiercely in her ribcage there for all to see. All to hear, too, if they had a stethoscope.

"What?" Jenny asked, getting drawn out of her thoughts by Olia looking at her. The blue was receding, replaced by spots of a brightening yellow, nearly fluorescent, patchy on Olia's hands and face.

"What?"

"You look like you want something," Jenny said. The yellow grew. "What does yellow mean? On your skin?"

"Nothing of note," Olia said quickly. She could be wrong, but to Jenny it seemed like they were lying. They were always going yellow, but they would never explain what emotion it correlated to. It got more extensive when Jenny asked about it though. "Can I ask you something?"

"It's not something else about Earth or humans, is it?"

"N-no, nothing like that, nothing at all like that," Olia said. Jenny waited expectantly, but Olia didn't speak.

"...What?" It was as though they were struggling to get the words out. Jenny just frowned, puzzled. She hoped it wasn't something else to do with her injured feet, another attempt to get her to beg Evanlex for shoes she didn't care for. Maybe Olia was working on Evanlex's behalf, come to tell her something urgent. It briefly crossed her mind that Evanlex might have decided to sack her, perhaps she didn't bring in as much revenue as she thought? But in her time there, she'd only ever seen Evanlex fire one person, and that was for stealing money from the circus, a bit more severe than not being the star act. Jenny was under no impressions that she was the star of the show, the star was the closing act, Kyylan, a pretty phenomenal shape-changer. Olia remained silent, though.

"This soup. Don't you think it's great? I think it's great," they finally said.

"Uh… well, it's okay. I'd prefer if it had more meat in it," Jenny replied. They just nodded in an exaggerated fashion. All of the blue was gone from their skin now, and they were so yellow they might be a firefly. "I don't really hope for much when it comes to synthetic food, though." Transporting fresh meat around space was draining on time and money. It had to be dehydrated extensively – in which case taste suffered – or had to be dragged around at light speed, which always made it a bit metallic, and caused static shocks. Having your teeth electroshocked was incredibly unpleasant, and she'd rather avoid it. So synthetic slime it was, but it wasn't so bad. It was more hygienic than all of the game she used to hunt, for starters. No ticks or lice swimming about in her bowl.

"I'll tell the chef."

"Tell her what?"

"That… that you think it's okay. She asked me to ask you," Olia said. Again, it sounded like a lie.

"Are you lying?"

"No! Why would I lie about that? That'd be… well, it'd be crazy, wouldn't it? Who would do something like that? It'd be completely pointless, completely. I never lie," Olia was covering for themselves, but covering for themselves about what, Jenny hadn't a clue. Then again, there was always the possibility that Olia was telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and Jenny just couldn't deduce it.

"Did she not ask what you think?"

"I just think she values your opinion more than mine. I'm always asking for battered huviens," Olia said, moping a little. A huvien was some kind of large, common insect on the planet Axxen. As best as Jenny understood it, it was like a dragonfly, but huge, and was the staple food for the space chameleons. Maybe she would try it one day, if she was every lucky enough to go to Axxen. The carnival didn't really head that way, though, or hadn't so far. God knew how Olia ever got picked up onto it.

"Tell her if you want, but I don't see what she can do about the lack of real meat," Jenny shrugged. She didn't have to spend five hours of her day stalking, hunting, killing, skinning, filleting and cooking her dinner, so a drop in taste was a small price to pay for the end of those gruelling activities which used to make up her life. Even the finest food of the Twentieth Century, that which Viola O'Hara allowed herself to palette, came with risk of polio or cholera.

"How's your foot?" Olia seemed eager to change the subject.

"It's fine, don't worry," Jenny assured her with a smile. The yellow had been dimming a little, fading to the green Olia appeared as most of the time, but when she said that it returned. What kind of weird emotional response was being triggered? It was surely a mystery she would be hard done by to fathom. "I'll clean up the blood tonight, when everyone's in bed, like I always do."

"I wish you would get shoes…"

Jenny sighed, "I know you do, but it doesn't bother me. The scars I have just show that I've lived, I've been places, done things. You know?"

"Not really. To me they just seem like you don't take care of yourself. It…"

"What?"

"Nothing." Jenny waited to see if Olia might say what had been on their mind a second ago. She had nearly finished her gruel now. At about three in the morning, she would make her way into the kitchen and heat up the leftovers and have her mid-night meal. That was the tricky thing about having an obscene metabolism and only sleeping once a week, she needed to consume a lot of very large meals. Although, when she lived with people like Utal, her 'large meals' didn't seem very large at all. It was only by comparison to humans that her diet became freakish. She was allowed access to the leftovers if she washed up all the utensils afterwards, and this suited her just fine, because she saw it as therapeutic. Besides, it wasn't like she had much else to do.

"Okay. But, they aren't your scars, so they're not for you to think about," Jenny told Olia. She stood up, climbing over the long bench attached to the table and picking up her empty bowl, "I have to go clean, anyway."

"Wait," Olia said quickly. Jenny raised her eyebrows at them. Yet again, they just didn't know what to say. Why ask to speak if you weren't going to? It was just weird. Maybe it was a custom from Axxen? "…be sure to tell her what you think of the food."

"Right. Sure. Will do. Always honest, you know me," she smiled again. Some of the yellowness came back to Olia for a second, but Jenny had left them and their particular brand of weird by that point. She didn't mention what she thought of the food to the chef because, as she kept pointing out, there was nothing to be done about it. Bags of synthetic nutrient paste were not the most versatile of ingredients, that was a fact, and there was only so much seasoning one could do to it. Jenny was not a fussy eater.

On her way back to the stores in the wings of the ring, where her bloody footprints began, she wondered why Olia was so bothered about how Jenny looked after herself. She looked after herself just fine, she thought. She gotten herself to twenty-four years old without having to regenerate, and that suited her fine. Who cared if she had a few cuts and bruises?

She didn't dwell on that particularly, though. Olia constantly proved themselves to be an enigma, one Jenny didn't think it was her business to solve. Privacy was a glorious thing, and people were always grateful when you allowed them some. No doubt her father would agree, would think she ought to live like she was made of glass, wouldn't approve of the reckless way she behaved. But as every month went by, the less she cared about him. The less she cared about a lot of things, it was like there was something missing from her life, and she knew what it was; a purpose.

As much as she liked acrobatics, it wasn't something she wanted to do for the rest of her life. And the way things were shaping up, the fact she hadn't aged at all since the day she was born, who knew how long that would be? Did Jenny really want to be jumping between ropes, balancing along wires, falling and flying and falling again, forever? She didn't think she wanted to that any more than she wanted to be cleaning her own blood off of scuffed metal floors all night. She sat cross-legged, scrubbing blood from the ground, contemplating her life and herself. That was what she spent most of her time doing, anyway, she had yet to find something so constantly distracting that she could avoid it. Probably, if she was living in a time machine-cum-spaceship, she'd never get bored, she'd never retreat into the lonely recesses of her own mind. And, god, was she lonely sometimes.

Jenny was right in the middle of cleaning her footprints in the stores, the water in the soapy bucket next to her getting cold and pink-coloured, when she heard a clatter in the room. Of course, the room was very large and had some pretty astounding acoustics, not to mention was chock-full of precariously balanced and heavy objects, all crammed onto shelves and each other. She figured something had just fallen nearby, so she thought nothing of it. Until she heard another noise, a much more organic noise, like someone or something grunting, then a very strange, kind of soft noise, followed by a cacophony of metallic bangs as things definitely did fall over. But they weren't falling over of their own accord, she was now sure. She dropped her soiled sponge in the murky, lukewarm bucket and stood up, wiping her soapy right hand on the hem of her sweater, going to investigate.

A ruke – small common vermin, bright blue in colour and resembling a mouse, but with three eyes and six legs and a stubby tail – dashed passed her, and she dodged it. Those things got everywhere and they chewed everything that wasn't sealed away in a titanium crate. Evanlex had, years ago, stopped trying to get rid of them. The carnival ship was so huge, and they always needed to be on the move so that they actually made money, it was practically impossible to eradicate the rodent-like aliens completely. They just kept having babies, and the babies kept having babies, so they invaded every crevice they could find, and when they couldn't find a crevice they hollowed out new ones for themselves with their teeth. But Jenny thought they were kind of cute, in their own way. Sometimes she fed them, not that she told anybody that. Everyone else hated them, but she didn't really see why they ought to be exterminated just because they were stupid and an inconvenience. The usual thing to do when someone on the ship saw a ruke was to immediately kill it; step on it, or something. She didn't do that, though, she pitied it, and she was much too curious in what the noises had been and what had scared the ruke away to begin with.

She came around the corner of one of the shelves – the place was like a library, but with circus supplies rather than books – to see an entire shelf had been pushed over. And that just didn't happen on its own. She sighed and went about picking it back up, keeping a careful ear out for anything suspicious. She was still a pretty difficult person to get the drop on, though, especially if she was expecting it. Which she was, because who could have pushed this whole shelf over? Even she might struggle a little, and she had exceptional strength. Well, Jenny Acallaris had exceptional everything. There was nobody to be seen, though, nobody except for the ruke, which must have been nesting, or something, and got spooked by the noise.

Then the unthinkable happened.

This was not just a simple case of somebody knocking a shelf over and then getting out of dodge because they didn't want to be caught and chewed out for their mistake, but they also couldn't be bothered trying to clean it up. She lifted a large cape (she didn't know who it belonged to, there were a lot of capes and cloaks and shawls in that room) and saw a body. A dead one. The body of Kyylan, the shape-changer, with his throat torn out by what looked like a pretty enormous, clawed hand. Probably why she hadn't heard a scream. But what could possibly have done that? She didn't know just by looking at it, but she knew that it must have been massive, and she definitely didn't see any massive monster in the storage hall. She took a few steps back, not wanting to contaminate the crime scene, knowing Kyylan was so dead she couldn't possibly do anything for him. The poor guy. He was cocky and full of himself, but he was a good person, she was sure. Then again, Viola used to tell her she had too much compassion, that she thought everyone was a good person. How did the Earth phrase go again? - Innocent until proven guilty. That was how she was with people. No snap-judgements.

Jenny stared around the room, looking for the culprit of this crime. It had just been a few seconds ago – how could they possibly have gotten away so fast? It was impossible. Especially when they were so obviously gigantic. But the star performer was dead, regardless, so this didn't bode well. Forced to take matters into her own hands, at least until she told somebody else what was going on, she left Kyylan's body and prowled up and down the shelves. But nobody jumped out at her, nobody caught her eye, nothing even moved except for her own shadow. How could that be? She was sure she had seen Kyylan in there less than ninety minutes ago.

After ten minutes of searching, she resolved that whoever had done this was gone. Gone, or hiding. But who could hide so well? No-one in the carnival could turn invisible. Well, no-one except… but no. Olia might be a chameleon, but there was no way on Messaline they could have done this. They didn't have the resolve, motive, or capability. Sure, Olia had never exactly seemed fond of Kyylan, but a lot of people weren't fond of Evanlex's pampered star performer. In fact, a lot of people really weren't fond of him. Was that motive? Motive for about thirty different people? The only person she was absolutely sure had not killed Kyylan were herself and Evanlex, as much as she didn't want to think Olia had anything to do with it. But there was one way to find out if Olia was in the stores and hiding or elsewhere, and that involved going to their room and finding them, so that was what Jenny planned to do. Olia, then Evanlex, to tell him the bad news.

She slipped out of the room, leaving the bucket behind, half-jogging down the empty corridors. It was late at night, almost one in the morning, nobody was out and about, they were all in their rooms. At least, she hoped they were. Perhaps yelling for everyone to come out would eliminate some suspects? Then again, it would probably also cause chaos, unless it were a mass conspiracy to murder Kyylan. They might not like him, but they would get paid less if he wasn't around. And besides, murder wasn't very nice. And she liked to think the people she lived and worked with were nice. They always seemed to be nice to her, anyway. Ultimately, Jenny resolved that calling for people to vacate their bedrooms so they could be questioned wasn't the best course of action. It would cause panic, and also, Evanlex wouldn't be happy with her to see her taking charge in this sensitive tragedy, the killer still at large. He was a bit of a control freak, the power-hungry sort, a firm but fair leader. She may have found the body, but this was not her business and she was no detective, clever as she was.

So, Jenny made a beeline for Olia's room, the first and only person she wanted to tell all of this to, and knocked on the door softly. For a brief moment nobody answered, and she feared the worst. Then she thought maybe Olia just hadn't heard, if they were there. She reached up, ready to knock again, but Olia opened the door anyway.

"Oh, thank god," she immediately said, relieved, "Can I come in? I have to come in," Jenny pleaded. Olia began turning yellow again, but Jenny had more important things on her mind than deducing colour-based emotional responses in chameleons. Olia said, of course she could come in, she could always come in, and then stepped aside. Jenny generally didn't like going into Olia's room. It was pretty weird. It was always boiling hot and everything seemed damp, and she refrained from sitting down. She just paced in her socks, whatever the substance in the room was soaking through the fabric. She figured it was some kind of lizard-originating secretion, or something to make sure the room stayed hot, so she didn't mention it. After all, she didn't understand the struggles of being cold-blooded.

"What's going on?" Olia asked.

"I just – I was just cleaning, like I said I would, and there was this bang, and now Kyylan's dead," Jenny told them quickly. She didn't warn Olia of the nature of the information she was about to disclose, but it was much too important to worry about shocking them too much. They would be shocked regardless, unless, of course, they were the killer. But it didn't look like they had left their room at all since supper ended.

"What?"

"Kyylan, he's dead."

"Dead?"

"Yeah."

"Seriously!?" they exclaimed. They were going pink.

"Yes! He had his throat torn out, died right while I was in the room, I think," Jenny explained. She kept pacing, Olia went to sit down on the edge of their bed.

"So you saw who did it? Who killed him?" they asked.

"No. I didn't see anyone, or hear anyone, I have no idea who it was," Jenny told her, "I didn't know what to do, so I came straight here, to see if you… I mean, to see you." She didn't want Olia to know she had been a little suspicious of them. Her suspicions seemed irrelevant now anyway, Olia didn't need to know a single thing about them. What was she supposed to think, though? Mysterious death, no visible culprit? Unluckily for Jenny, she underestimated Olia's intelligence. Well, they were always so odd when they were around Jenny, but in the panic it was like talking to a whole other person. One who didn't slowly turn yellow whenever Jenny was within ten feet of them.

"You thought it was me?" Olia asked. Perhaps they didn't ask it, perhaps they just stated it, knowing immediately for it to be true. Why didn't they suspect that Jenny wouldn't just use their friendship to come and confide? Wasn't that what friends did? She didn't know, she didn't think she'd ever had a real friend, one who didn't want something out of her.

"No! Of course I didn't… don't you think we should go find Evanlex?" Jenny suggested hopefully. She had stopped moving, was stood still letting the damp soak through her socks onto her freshly bandaged feet.

"You mean so you can bring your prime suspect to right under his nose? Trick me into coming with you so that I can't get away? Frame me? Maybe you're the one who killed Kyylan, for all I know, you just said you were in the room with him alone," Olia argued.

"You must know that I would never kill someone," Jenny told them seriously, "Never." And she meant it, she wouldn't. She had only killed once, and she didn't want to ever do it again. Sending someone into nothing like that… it had changed her. As the years rolled by, what innocence she felt she had was being chipped away, little by little. What sort of person would she be in another decade? In ten? If she would even live that long?

"But it's alright for you to think the same thing about me? I thought you knew me. I thought I knew you, I thought I…"

"What?" Jenny asked.

"It doesn't matter what I thought," Olia snapped, "For you to come in here and just accuse me of murder-"

"I didn't accuse you of murder! And who's to say I do know you!? I don't know anything about you! You seem to act like a different person around everybody else than you do around me, what does that say about you? Are you more than just a physical chameleon, are you a social one as well? Maybe you did kill Kyylan, and here you are, covering for yourself, painting me as some sort of psycho!" Jenny protested.

"So now I'm the psycho?" Olia demanded, getting to their feet.

"How should I know? I don't really know you!"

"Our friendship doesn't even mean anything to you?"

"If you can call it a 'friendship.' I don't know if you acting weird all the time really counts."

"Acting weird?"

"Well what would you call it, hmm?" Jenny questioned, crossing her arms.

"Me?" Olia asked, their face falling a little, as though the anger was briefly stemmed, "I suppose I wouldn't call it anything, then, if you're going to be like that."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"You've never even asked anything about me, Jenny, how can you complain when you don't ask? You're so closed off, you just sit in your bedroom and read books or mope around the kitchen and try to change the recipes! It's so hard for anybody to get through to you!"

"I don't ask because it's not my business! If someone wants me to know something, then they should tell me themselves. Otherwise I have no right to know, or to intrude," Jenny said.

"You're completely self-interested."

"I'm self-interested? Me? Where's this even coming from!? I'm sorry about thinking it might be the person who can turn invisible who murdered someone! I don't really think I was jumping to conclusions!"

"If you're so obsessed about people telling you things, how about I tell you this: I'm in love with you, Jenny. And you spend so much time obsessing over how you think you're destined for greater things, about how you're 'lost in the universe,' you never even noticed!" Olia shouted at her, and Jenny was stunned into silence. Every thought about Kyylan disappeared from Jenny's mind. "Unbelievable. I wear all my emotions unwillingly plastered right across my face, and you still couldn't stop thinking about yourself for five seconds to figure it out."

"You're in love with me?" Jenny asked.

"That's what I said, isn't it?" Olia questioned coldly. All gone was the bumbling awkwardness, the shyness, the yellow. Was that what yellow meant? Yellow meant Olia liked her? Did everybody else know that? And nobody ever even thought to tell her that she was being oblivious, being an idiot?

"No-one's ever been in love with me before…" she stared at the floor, spoke quietly. She couldn't meet Olia's eyes, their face, couldn't even look at them now.

"And they won't be for much longer – you're unbelievable. Kyylan's dead, and now you're obsessing over this. It's not important."

"Don't say you're not important," Jenny said.

"So you never pay attention to me at all before, and now because suddenly I have feelings for you, I'm important? More important than our dead colleague? This isn't about me; this is about you. It's always about you, Jenny, you, you, you. What are people to you? Friends? Are they all just placeholders until you find this lost father? Until you find people who are 'worthy' of you?"

"Worthy? Of course not! I like everyone, I value everyone!" Jenny argued, "Especially you!"

"But it wasn't 'especially me' five minutes ago! You would have just sauntered off out of here at the next opportunity any day before now, and you still would. You think you're above every single person you've ever met – you think just because you saw the 'worst of humanity,' or something, it gives you a right to lord over them and everybody else! You're too used to them thinking you're special because you look like them and you can do fancy tricks. You're not special. You're just like the rest of us here, but you just can't get it through your head."

"I do not think I'm better than you all!" Jenny protested.

"Of course you do! Look at you already, playing detective instead of going right to Evanlex, wanting to be the one who brings the killer to justice so you can get a pat on the head."

"I just want to do the right thing!" Jenny yelled.

"The right thing for your ego, maybe! So you hang around here with the other rejects of polite society, pretending to be one of us, but you're not. You still don't fit in, you know, you don't fit in anywhere," Olia said, "And you never will if you don't get your head out of your rear-end. You don't know anything, anyone, you don't know how to be a person. You're just pretending, but you don't even know what you're pretending to be."

"Thanks! Thanks for this! This was really nice of you, Olia, you just decide to tell me you apparently like me, and then list my every flaw. At least, my every flaw in your opinion," Jenny said, "What do you even seek to gain? What do you want from me?"

"I want you to get out of my sight! Out of my room!" Olia shouted. And with that, Jenny did. She didn't say another word, she just stormed out and marched away down the corridor, the door automatically closing behind her, heading straight for Evanlex's office. Except now, her entire view of her life, herself, her reality had been flipped on its head. She didn't know what she was doing, or why she was doing it, or why she was there. What was her goal in life? Find her father? Was she really obsessed, could Olia be right? Surely not. The thought of reuniting with the Doctor didn't occupy her every thought, she didn't pore over his myths and his legends every waking moment. She hadn't been basing her life around chasing a paternal ghost for a quarter of a century. Had she?

And then Jenny realised that Olia was right. She didn't know anything. She wasn't special, but she thought she was. She did think she had a greater purpose, she did think she should be doing something else. She shouldn't have been living in near-poverty working as a second-rate performer in a carnival, she should be somebody. Olia's words had the opposite effect on Jenny than their intention. She was planning out her future, thinking of decades. Having her eyes opened, knowing all this, how could she possibly stay with the circus after that? It had been a good stint, an adequate two years, but this was not the place Jenny Acallaris wanted to be. Acallaris wasn't the person she wanted to be, not anymore.

Her father wouldn't say in a carnival doing cheap tricks for two years, she was sure. Her father never stopped moving, never stopped learning. Maybe she should never stop moving? Maybe she should dedicate her long life to charitable causes? Go and find some war, latch onto it and become a one-woman relief effort? She had liked patching up soldiers well enough during the Second World War, she could do that again. She could do that all over the place… She could become a doctor. A real doctor, not like her father. Learn about medicine, how to fix people. Learn about anything, about spaceships and physics and ancient history and science.

That was what she needed to do, Jenny realised. She needed to learn. Without knowledge, without a skillset beyond moonshine-brewing, fiddle-playing, game-hunting and acrobatics, could she even do anything useful? Could she even make a difference? Her father made a difference, the day she had been born, he had ended a war. And she had died to save him. Maybe Jenny wanted to end wars on her own, though, find her own conflicts to resolve. Starting with those conflicts inside herself. She needed to make him proud, and she needed to discover herself. Jenny didn't even know who she was.

She drew up to the door of Evanlex's office finally, though, late that night. Looking haunted, she knocked on the metal, she waited for him to answer. He didn't, so she knocked again. Then, fearing the worst, she just pressed the button so that she could enter the room herself. She didn't want the mysterious, invisible murderer to have gotten to Evanlex, too. What if somebody was picking them all off, one by one? What if, now, Olia was going to die? What if they were already dead, and Jenny had just left them to be the victim of whoever was stalking the spaceship's halls?

Her fears were unfounded, Evanlex was home, and alive. She nearly bumped into him on his way out of the shower in a bathrobe, that exceptionally tall and stern ringmaster.

"I'm so sorry," she apologised.

"What are you doing wandering in here so late, Acallaris!?" he demanded of her in a booming voice. That was his thing, whatever species he was (the name had a very odd kind of letter that, despite her miraculous linguistic capabilities, she could never pronounce or remember how to spell), his voice. He boomed through the ring as he made announcements, didn't even need a microphone to do it. It astounded her.

"Something's happened," she said, trying to collect herself enough to deliver this news. Evanlex was going to hate her after this, as though she were the person who had killed Kyylan. On the floor nearby, another ruke scurried past, like that one in the storage room.

"What is it?" he asked her, and she didn't speak, looking at the vermin. He shouted, "Out with it!" and she jumped and focused her attention back on him and her delivery.

"Kyylan's dead," she told him. He stared at her, and she stared back. She met his gaze and held it, though his expression turned sour and furious and sick. She couldn't look into Olia's eyes, but she could look into the twisted face of Evanlex as he discovered his star performer was dead.

"Dead?"

"In the storage room, he had his throat torn out," Jenny said, and Evanlex went to sit down in his chair, like he couldn't stomach what Jenny was telling him. Maybe he couldn't. "I'm sorry."

"Well who did it? Who else was there?"

"Nobody, it was just me, I don't know who did it," Jenny said.

"What do you mean, 'just you?'" he asked her coldly, gritting his teeth.

"I was cleaning, and I just heard this noise and went to look and found him, dead," she said, "I didn't see anyone there." Evanlex mulled this over. Her account blatantly painted herself as Kyylan's killer, but why would she turn herself in like this? Hopefully he wouldn't see it that way, wouldn't see it as her pulling off a trick. She was getting tired of doing tricks.

"You didn't see anyone?"

"No, sir."

"Haven't you talked to that chameleon? The one who dotes on you?" Evanlex said, and she felt her hearts sting when he told her Olia 'doted' on her. "Maybe they thought they could take Kyylan's place as a shapeshifter, try to make themselves look like things…"

"It wasn't Olia," Jenny said stiffly, "They couldn't have made wounds like the ones I saw, his neck was ripped out, there was blood everywhere."

"Really?" Evanlex asked.

"Yes, really. It… the only person I can think of who could have physically done it is Utal," she said, "But Utal can't just disappear into thin air, and he's huge! I would have seen him. And I don't know why he would want to kill Kyylan, or anybody, anyway." But Evanlex didn't reply. He sat there, as though in deep thought, in his plush chair. Jenny just stood, her socks still damp and warm. She thought the wounds on her feet must have opened again, she must be bleeding. It wasn't worth it to be suffering these injuries every week for something she wasn't even passionate about, to perform feats that to her were easy.

"And you didn't see anybody? Nobody?"

"No, I keep telling you," she said.

"Not even something that didn't look like one of us? Something else?" he asked. Jenny paused, frowned.

"…What do you mean, something else…?" she asked slowly.

"Anything alive."

"There… there was a ruke," she answered, remembering, "It ran right past me."

"Did you kill it?" Evanlex asked her urgently.

"No… I know we're supposed to, but I think they're cute," she argued.

"CUTE!?" he bellowed, "You let the killer get away!"

"Excuse me!?" Jenny exclaimed, "How does a ruke tear somebody's throat out!?"

"How, indeed, Evanlex?" a smooth voice interrupted. Jenny and Evanlex both turned to see somebody leaning against the wall next to Evanlex's bed. Jenny jumped and stepped back, not knowing who this mysterious stranger was. They had shiny, blood-red skin that looked matte in the lighting, all-black, gleaming eyes like onyx stones, a bone structure that made their face look sharp and sculpted. They were humanoid, but very thin, with the usual two arms and two legs. Jenny recognised the species as a Wexilok, the same species as Kyylan. Kyylan's skin tone had always been a little more on the orange side rather than this dark red, though. For a split second, Jenny thought perhaps this was Kyylan, and Kyylan had faked his death as some kind of joke.

"Ralyyx," Evanlex said. Jenny had heard that name before, she was sure of it.

"Isn't he the person you fired years ago for stealing money from the circus?" Jenny asked, realising where she remembered Ralyyx's name from; warnings she had gotten when she first joined about the consequences of stealing. Not that she intended on stealing, she would never steal if she could help it.

"I only took my dues," Ralyyx said, "You're the one who's really stealing from this circus, who isn't paying people the amount they deserve."

"You were never one to understand fairness – and now to murder Kyylan? One of your own?"

"I don't even know him. He replaced me. He took everything from me, you didn't even change his moniker on the listings, and I was dumped in the middle of hyperspace at some crusty fuel depot!" Ralyyx argued, his smile vanishing. He moved slowly towards them and turned his twisted gaze on Jenny, but continued to address Evanlex, "I had a simple plan. Kill Kyylan, kill you, and replace you."

"You couldn't keep form for long enough to trick anyone. You were never a very good shape-changer," Evanlex spat. Jenny didn't think intimidating him was the best course of action – he could shapeshift into something that could kill them with one fell blow of its enormous fist. She was sure that was what had happened to Kyylan, that Ralyyx must have morphed into Utal, or something similar, and crushed him that way. And then had scurried past Jenny as the ruke, escaping and wending his way through the gnawed crevices of the carnival flotilla until he got to Evanlex's quarters.

"She ruined it. When did you stop letting your acrobats wear padded soles, Evanlex? If you had just let her, she wouldn't have been cleaning up her own bloody footprints. She wouldn't have witnessed anything. We could all have carried on, marvelling at the tragedy of Kyylan's murder, pinning it on Utal, the only one who would be able to smell the different scents, who would have been able to mark you as me," Ralyyx advanced. Jenny and Evanlex backed off, "It would have been the perfect crime."

"People have been trying to commit the perfect crime for tens of thousands of years," Jenny said.

"And a lot of them have," Ralyyx remarked, "And I would have joined them."

"Why not just get over it, Ralyyx? You always hated this life," Evanlex said, "Just leave now."

"I can't leave, we're in deep space, the only way out is death or success."

"A life for a life, seems fair," Evanlex said coldly.

"What? You can't kill him," Jenny interrupted, "You can't. You shouldn't kill anyone." Ralyyx laughed.

"This girl's soft."

"This is circus business, Acallaris, we settle it internally," Evanlex told her sharply.

"Just lock him up!" she argued, "Nobody has to die."

"Somebody already did," Evanlex growled. Ralyyx laughed, Evanlex darted to the other side of the room to his drawers, pulling them out and rifling through them, looking for something. Jenny was stuck in the middle of the room, between both sides. Ralyyx was going to kill Evanlex if Evanlex didn't kill him first, and vice versa. And there was Jenny, caught between, not wanting anybody to die.

"Just calm down! There must be a peaceful way to resolve this," she shouted.

"He threw peace out of the airlock when he murdered my star performer, girl," Evanlex said furiously, "The only way for justice to be served is for him to die." And then Evanlex turned around, holding a gun, a micro blaster, one that could be easily concealed. As soon as he pulled the gun on Ralyyx, Ralyyx made a lunge and grabbed Jenny tightly, holding her in front of him like a shield.

"Is it worth the risk of hitting your best acrobat to try and kill me?" Ralyyx jeered. Jenny struggled against him, Evanlex held up the gun and aimed it for Ralyyx. In front of her she saw his arms shift into those hulking grey ones of Utal, whatever his species was, keeping her pinned. She was strong, but she was finding it had to break free.

"Let me go, nobody has to die," Jenny said, but Ralyyx didn't budge, he just shifted his arm higher up so that it was against her neck, restraining her just hard enough so that she was stopped from speaking. Even breathing became tricky, but not impossible. She wildly tried to kick at his legs and his shins, but as soon as she clipped what she thought was an ankle with the bony heel of her foot, he tightened his grip, lifting her slightly off the ground.

"She's only trying to stop there being more bloodshed, Ralyyx, leave her alone," Evanlex ordered.

"Or what? What if I kill her, too? Use her body as a shield to get to your gun, crush you? I could wipe out the whole circus if I wanted," he said, as Jenny began to feel herself choking. This was not good, not at all. "Your whole legacy would belong to me."

"You wouldn't dare, you know these people," Evanlex said.

"I know you, as well, and I'll kill you just as quickly."

"Let her go. We can settle this another way."

"I think I might break her neck."

"Drop the girl!"

"Or what? You've never been a good shot. You could so easily miss and hit her instead of me." Jenny met Evanlex's eyes, gave him a pleading look. She couldn't breathe, her windpipe was being crushed, he whole head and face and lungs were starting to ache and burn.

"This is your last chance-"

"Do it!"

A gunshot ripped through the air.

Someone knocked meekly on the door into Jenny's room aboard the ship. It was nearly the morning, nearly time for routines to begin again, but Jenny was out of sync with her usual schedule. She was packing bags. Still haunted from the events of a few hours ago, she dropped the clothes she had been folding onto her bed and went to answer the door. There she found Olia, lightly yellow, looking nervous.

"Thank god you're alright," they said, and they threw their arms around her in a hug. She didn't hug back, though, she pushed them off. She hadn't forgotten the things Olia had said, near death experience regardless. "What? What's wrong?" Olia asked.

"What's wrong?"

"What are you doing…?" Olia questioned her carefully, seeing the mess the room was in, as though it had been completely upturned. Clothes and books and trinkets everywhere, and there on the bed was a large bag, just over half full.

"Packing," she answered shortly.

"Packing why? What happened? Somebody told me something about you, and Ralyyx, and Evanlex. What's going on, Jenny? Put that stuff down," Olia ordered her, but she didn't listen, she just went about her business. Olia, of all people, had no right to tell Jenny what to do anymore, no right to advise her. Not after the things she had said.

"Ralyyx is dead, Evanlex got a lucky shot," Jenny answered shortly. That was the truth, Evanlex had hit Ralyyx right in his head, and he had let go of Jenny and collapsed to the floor, nearly crushing her. At least she healed quickly, she was very nearly recovered from being asphyxiated. "He snuck on board and killed Kyylan, framed Utal for it, wanted to shift into Evanlex and ruin the circus."

"Oh. Well, it's good that he's dead, right? Why are you packing?" Olia kept asking her. She dropped her things again.

"Good that he's dead? In what world could it ever be good that he's dead? People don't need to die; nobody has the right to just take life away. Is the point of a prison to punish the person who did the crime or to keep the rest of society safe? We should have locked him up, should have put him in prison. It's where he belongs, not… not in the void. Not in all that nothingness," Jenny said, "So it's not good that he's dead, okay? It's not."

"He deserves to be punished."

"No, he deserves to be forgotten about, and everybody else deserves to be safe with him shut away somewhere, without acting like gods who think they're justified to murder. Evanlex killed Ralyyx, that makes him no better because Ralyyx killed Kyylan," Jenny said, "That's why I'm leaving. I don't want to live with or work for anyone who condones that."

"What? Leaving? And going where?"

"I don't know, Olia, anywhere. I could go anywhere in time and space – why should I hang around here?"

"You've taken the opposite meaning from what I said than what I intended," Olia told her coolly.

"Well so what? Why should I listen to what you think? You weren't exactly nice about it. I don't belong here. I shouldn't be here," she threw things haphazardly into the bag, thinking of decades and eras of places where she could go, where she could find her place in the world. Maybe she should learn, go somewhere to get an education? There was only so much she could learn from reading books.

"You can't just go!"

"Yes, I can. I can leave, I can… I don't know, go to school? Find my father?"

"Why is it always about your father with you!?" Olia shouted, "He left you, Jenny! You just have to accept that."

"It's different! He didn't know I was still alive! If I could just find him, I'd… I know who I was. I don't have a clue now, none at all, but this isn't where I belong. There has to be somewhere I fit in. What do you want from me? You say you're in love with me, but you want me to change everything about myself? Drop all my goals, my ambitions? I want to travel, and to see things, and not to cut my feet on a highwire and do the same old tricks four times a week! It's driving me insane." She was just throwing things in the bag now, desperate to get away. This carnival was toxic.

"Why are you so obsessed with the idea of being special!?"

"Because I'm one of only two Time Lords left! I'm unique! I'm… a genetic anomaly, okay? I could do so much, I could be so much more, and you have absolutely no right to try and shape me into what you want. Nobody tells me what to do, alright? I make my own choices, and you trying to get me to stay, for you, just makes me want to leave even more. You were my friend, you weren't anything else, and that's the truth," Jenny told them. Harsh, possibly, but no amount of amorous revelations could change her feelings about someone. Controlling outbursts, though? They could. Olia was not the person she thought they were.

Jenny Acallaris was already dressed, all ready to leave, her feet bandaged up again, all of her keepsakes safe in her bag. She gave up trying to cram all of the books she had accumulated into it, left a lot of her spare clothes lying around. She only took the important things, like Emmett, and she zipped the bag closed with Olia still lingering nearby, as though Jenny were about to pull a romantic declaration out of thin air and they would somehow match up with whatever fairy tale Olia had conjured in their head.

"You cannot just disappear!"

"I can! I can and I will, that's my prerogative. Get out! Leave me alone! You'll never see me again, most likely. Forget I existed, make yourself feel better about the fact you're one of the reasons I'm going. Mark my words," Jenny said, finding the vortex manipulator underneath her pillow and programming in her destination, picking up her bag once she had strapped it to her wrist, "I will find my father. I'll find the Doctor. And then I'll be where I belong." She hit the button and disappeared in a bright blue flash, leaving the Novis Carnival Flotilla behind for good.