Hello all :) Again, a slightly delayed update. Apparently I have to do work to get my degree. Who knew? Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter :)
In no time at all the Doctor had grabbed Daisy and raced towards the TARDIS, leaving a disgruntled Rose to run and catch up. When they reached the outside, the Doctor spared no time in gesturing for the young girl to go inside, which she did with only a slight hesitation. Rose caught up, shutting the door behind her when she too reached the TARDIS. She was so wrapped up in the Doctor's 100 mile per hour jabbering that she quite forgot to check out the face of the young human that they had brought onto the alien ship, quite casually, as though it were an everyday occurrence to find a spaceship disguised as a small blue box in the middle of Oxford University.
"Magpies, you see… Magpies!" The Doctor grinned unabashedly at Rose, also forgetting the consequences of his actions. "Magpies, they love shiny things. Shiny, pretty things. And then they steal them. And our young Miss Trinder here, with a mind like hers, well, anybody would be tempted."
Pouting at the Doctor's obvious admiration for Daisy's extraordinary intelligence, Rose turned to look at the girl for the first time since entering the TARDIS. Upon doing so, without turning back to the Doctor she tugged at his coat sleeve.
"Um… Doctor? I think… we might have a tiny problem."
The Doctor turned around, pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose as he did so.
Daisy was staring at him. Not in the usual, overawed way that people usually did when they saw the inside of his frankly magnificent ship, and not even in the way he had occasionally thought he saw Rose staring at him. She looked manic. More than that. Hungry. Desperately hungry. Desperate and manic and altogether not human.
"Daisy?" he asked cautiously.
"Daisy is no longer present." Insisted a raspy and yet oddly metallic sounding voice.
"What do you mean?"
"Daisy is no longer present."
"Yes, but what does that mean?"
"Daisy is no longer present."
"Oh my God, what have they done to her? Doctor?" Rose muttered under her breath to a shrugging Doctor.
"Okay, then who am I talking to?" He thrust his hands in his pockets and looked determinedly at 'Daisy'.
"I am the last of my species, the last of my kind. I am the Picarion."
"Never heard of you." The Doctor looked somewhat confused. "Why are you on this planet."
"You wouldn't have heard of us, Doctor. But I have heard of you, oh yes. Lonely Time Lord, lost in his box, with his girlfriend by his side, tragically mortal."
"She is not my… How do you know that?"
"You scanned the Vessel's body. I intercepted and sent the wave to you."
"You can't have done. I'd have noticed."
"But I can. I did. Now all of your secrets are stored in this human brain."
"It'll implode."
"Only if I leave. This body is my host, I am resting in its brain. Without me the things she knows would make her fry."
"You, Picar-whatever. You need to get out of her, right now." Rose interjected, feeling an unexpected wave of pity for the thin little body in front of her.
"Oh, but I can't. You see, this girl, my host and Vessel, she is so very clever. So very, very clever. The most clever ape on this planet. Her mind is almost as wonderful as yours, Doctor. But I have made her greater. I have fused her mind into the most perfect machine, capable of storing vast tracts of language, of knowledge, of power. So you see, I don't want to leave." The voice paused, momentarily to look at the pair in front of him. The silly human and the deluded God. "You think you can force me to leave? There's the rub. You see, it's like I said. I have made this body great. You really think a human child can hold the amount of information I have given her, the amount of information stored in her brain, information she barely knows that she has possession of? Should I leave this body, and allow it to die? Would you murder this girl, in order to murder me?"