This is being posted a little early, but after I got such a wonderful review from AnitaHoward on the last chapter I just couldn't resist. Besides, this is my favorite part of the story, and I couldn't wait to share it with you all! Don't worry - this is by no means the end of the story. We still have to find out what O'fila and her friends are up to, and stop them if necessary. But from here out, the Doctor's going to have his best friend back.

Finally, a second interview! An American paper company was opening up an office in the City of London, and were in need of a receptionist to man the front desk. The pay was only decent, but the company tended to promote from within, and the only way to go from the bottom is up! For the first time in months, Donna had a good feeling about her chance of being hired.

She took the Tube, and was sure to take a train that arrived in the City a full forty-five minutes before her interview. No delays were going to jeopardize this opportunity! Besides, it gave her time to stroll the sidewalks at a leisurely pace, letting the fresh air clear her mind and keep her level-headed.

Naturally, all that calm evaporated the moment she saw a skinny man in a suit and the most ridiculous haircut she had ever seen turn to walk down an alley. She would have been willing to swear in court that she'd never seen the man before in her life; yet, she found herself following him before she even realized what she was doing. As if it was the most natural thing in the world.

She found the alley he had disappeared down, and turned to follow, only to stop dead in her tracks. There, sitting in the middle of the alleyway like it owned the place, was a police box. Somehow, she knew that it was a 'police box' and not a 'police public call box', that it was in fact not a police box but a vehicle in disguise, and that it was where the skinny man had gone.

"He never did get that Chameleon Circuit fixed," Donna muttered to herself, and then immediately wondered why.

There was nothing for it but to go in herself.

The door opened easily, almost before she had even touched the handle. It made a creaking noise that somehow fit the box perfectly. Without hesitation, she walked through the door and up the ramp into the room beyond.

Up the ramp, on a raised mesh platform, was a rounded hexagonal control panel that tapered into a large clear tube. Bent over the control panel, and pushing buttons seemingly at random, was the man she had seen on the street. He glanced up at her approach, went back to looking at something on some sort of monitor, then did a double take and stared at her in shock.

The shock she could understand; she had, after all, just entered his police box uninvited and unannounced. But for a split-second, he had looked at her as if her standing there was the most natural thing in the world. And that scared her.

She looked around at her surroundings, but not in surprise or confusion. Rather, almost like a person entering a house they hadn't visited in awhile, but had spent a significant amount of time in before. "It's bigger on the inside!" she exclaimed, although not with as much awe as there should be. And, really, why shouldn't it be? It would be a very cramped ride if it wasn't. And with transcendental engineering, it could be any size on the inside while maintaining the same size on the outside. Besides, it would need space for the dematerialisation circuits, the navigational systems and sub-systems, the inertial dampers, the atom accelerator, the architectural reconfiguration system and fabrication dispenser, and other systems; not to mention the additional systems that had been added later, like the Hostile Action Displacement System, the Tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator, the various Emergency Programs ...

This time, when the headache came, it came hard and fast. There were no warnings, no opportunities to fix her mind on something else and avoid disaster. The pixie dust taunted her by flickering in front of her eyelids, golden flames dancing to the throbbing in her head. And, oh, ruddy hell, the pain! She found herself holding her head and gasping from the sheer savagery of it.

Even through the pain, she felt another set of hands join hers at her temples. These fingers were cooler, calmer. "Let me help," a male voice mumbled, echoing in her ears and her mind. And then she could feel him in there, in her mind, searching for the source of the blaze, trying to find the offending bits and remove them, take them away, take them, again ...

"No!" she cried out, and was surprised by her own ferocity as she pushed him away both physically and mentally. She couldn't let him do that to her again, couldn't let him ... couldn't ...

She was becoming disoriented again, and something about this time told her she'd probably burn up before she could black out. This time was different. She cried out at a particularly strong wave of burning pain, grasping for anything to make the pain go away.

And then, almost instinctively, she knew what she had to do.

It was simple, really. All she had to do was spread the golden light across her entire body. And, for a time, it worked. Her head still burned, but not as much as it had. She felt an odd tingling all across her skin, and looked down in amazement to see her hands glowing.

She had only a moment's reprieve, however. With an odd whooshing noise filling her ears, the entire world suddenly caught fire. The searing pain returned, but this time all over her body. It felt like every single cell in her entire body was bursting, was burning, was being destroyed. The feeling built, and it almost felt like it was building towards something, when, with one last scream of pain, the flames reached its crescendo ...

... and, just like that, she was fine.

Better than fine, truth be told. She was great. When was the last time everything was this crisp? She could see, hear, smell, feel, and think with such wonderful clarity! Was life ever this dynamic, even before her odd illness?

Still a little dazed, but bursting with energy, she remembered the man in the suit who had tried to help her. The Doctor, her mind supplied, and a rush of memories came flooding back. For the first time in a long time, however, the memories didn't burn. They simply were there, ready for her use, like memories should be. Donna looked over at the Doctor now. Earlier, when she had pushed him away, he had fallen back and landed on the grating of the platform; that's where he was still, sitting on his bum, with a look of pure shock on his face.

"What the bloody hell was that?" she demanded of him, and was surprised when her voice sounded strange in her own ears. He didn't respond to her with so much as a flicker of an eyelid. "Oi!" she called again, and was again surprised and very much annoyed when her voice wasn't quite as forceful as she was used to.

Finally, she seemed to get through to him. His mouth snapped closed with an audible click, then opened again, then closed. For the first time, she reflected, her Spaceman was rendered speechless. Finally, he seemed to decide on something to say that sufficiently conveyed his confusion, concern, and reassurances over what had just happened. "Donna?"

"No, it's the flippin' queen," she mocked. "Yes, it's Donna." But she was starting to wonder herself. Her voice wasn't just off, it was different. Like, different, different. The Doctor finally stood up, and when had he become that much taller than she was? Honestly, all of a sudden he had a good ten inches on her.

"Donna Noble?" he tried again, with enough hesitation that it was starting to make her worried.

Was there something wrong? She focused inward, running a quick self-diagnosis. Breathing and all respiratory functions seemed normal, if a bit elevated from stress. Internal body temperature was typical. Brain activity was fine. Her heartrate, however, was greatly accelerated. Was she going into some sort of cardiac arrest? It was hammering away at almost double her normal rate. In fact, it was almost as if ... as if ...

"Donna," the Doctor tried again, this time in a voice filled with awe. "That's ... what?!"

In 900 years of phone box travel, the Doctor had pretty much seen it all. Very few things could surprise him anymore, and even fewer could surprise him enough to render him speechless.

In her time with him, Donna Noble had accomplished it an impressive three times. The first was when she punched through the TARDIS' shielding to suddenly appear in the console room equipped with nothing but a wedding dress and an attitude. The second was when she popped up from behind a computer bank on the Crucible and stopped the reality bomb with a glib "That button, there?" and a cheeky grin.

The third was when she regenerated into a full-blooded Time Lord.

"But ... that's not possible!" he cried. Although he didn't know why he even bothered, at this point. Words like "possible" just didn't seem to apply to Donna Noble.

Donna was getting more and more frustrated with the Doctor. "What's not possible?" she demanded. "Oi! What's goin' on?!" She went to shake a finger in his face, just to drive home the point, when she noticed the freckles. Quite a lot of them, in fact; much more than she remembered having. And her hand was smaller than it should be, and the fingers longer. Come to think of it, everything about her body was off - the way she held it, the way it moved and flexed. Even the way her fingers curled into her palm was different. She looked down at herself in alarm, steadily rising towards panic.

"You've ... well, you've regenerated," the Doctor had recovered enough to explain. "It's this process-"

"I know what regeneration is, Spaceman," she bit back at him. It was scary how fast she was becoming accustomed to this new voice. It might not have the bite of her first voice, but its more melodious quality clashed with her more sarcastic comments in a way that was rather shocking. She could work with that. "What I don't know is how it happened in the first place." Her arms were about the same thickness, although these had just a tad more muscle to them. Also, was it her, or was this new, very freckled skin even paler than before?

"The meta-crisis, I suppose." The Doctor was starting to find himself on more familiar ground - as the resident expert, explaining things he knew well and understood fully. "If you recall, the meta-crisis went both ways. We initially thought you only got a Time Lord's brain." He grinned at her. "Maybe you got some physiological characteristics, as well. Such as, oh, I don't know, the ability to regenerate at death?"

By this point, however, Donna was barely paying attention. She was too busy examining the rest of her new body. It was pleasantly curvy, although well muscled. Her arms and legs looked longer than before, although overall she seemed to have lost a few inches. Her toes, however, seemed to have taken a cue from her fingers and had decided to grow a bit longer than normal - cute and useful with fingers, not as much with toes. See if it stopped her from going barefoot at the beach. "Then I suppose there's only one question remaining, isn't there?" she asked, dipping into the memories and knowledge that was just starting to come back and accessing the Doctor's own regeneration memories.

He swallowed nervously, unsure of what her "one question" was going to be. "And what's that?"

She finally turned to him, and allowed a small smile to play across her features. "Am I ginger?"

He grinned at her, then, that huge grin of his that lit up his entire face. "You're Donna Noble. Is any other colour possible?"