So, I think this is the longest chapter so far. Looks like episodes are going to be a lot longer than I intended chapter-wise. I think I'll try to do one episode a month instead of one chapter a month, I think it'll work out better that way. Sorry about not updating last month! I'm not going to offer an excuse other than I was too lazy to sit down and write. But, I literally just sat down all day today and wrote; I think it's been about 7 1/2 hours since I first started and this is 4002 words (minus this part) so I'm going to leave you with this.

brookiet720: fuck you too bae

TheLightBehindHerEyes: I know I PMed you but I'm also going to answer this here in case anyone else is having trouble with it. Akane's name is pronounced Ah-Kahn-ay, but it's really up to you on how you want to pronounce it in your head. And thank you!

Anyways, enjoy!

Akane could hear the pressure releasing from a pipe as steam billowed from it. The Doctor had grabbed her hand just in time before pulling on her arm to drag her along; it was all she could do to quickly reach for Rose behind her. And then all three were running down a corridor while the mannequins, Autons, Akane reminded herself, stiffly followed behind. More Autons were swinging their arms through the bars of several other storage spaces, but the Doctor kept running and so did Akane and Rose.

Akane was barely containing her grin as they went along, even as they were pulled down the corridor and onto an elevator. She was with the Doctor! He was right there in front of her! Big ears, leather jacket and all. The squeal that had been building up inside the girl quickly manifested into a yelp as she and Rose were practically thrown against the wall of the elevator; the Doctor needed both his hands to tug off the arm of the Auton trying to get into the elevator. Each tug that he made caused the elevator to jolt just a little bit, her and Rose had to hold onto a bar on the wall to steady themselves.

Finally though, the Doctor ripped the arm off of the Auton and the elevator took off, it's doors now successfully able to close. Rose stared at it and the Doctor in disgust. Who was this man? What was he doing down there?

"You pulled his arm off," she commented.

"Yup," the Doctor confirmed. "Plastic." He tossed the arm to the girls to show them and Akane caught it first before passing it off to Rose. Didn't the arm come back to life at some point?

"Very clever, nice trick," Rose praised sarcastically. "Who were they then, students? Is this a student thing or what?"

"They can't be," Akane countered. "He just ripped one of their arms off!"

"Oh, you're American!" the Doctor exclaimed, surprised on the new finding. He uncrossed his arms to point at the universe hopper. "And good. Keep thinking like that and you just might get through this." Akane's eyebrows shot up; she would've taken a step back had it not been for the wall behind her. He had been much easier to follow on screen, but the way he kept jumping tabs, going to different things like he'd just done was so confusing.

The man's eyes narrowed as he swung his head over to look at Rose, who was still holding the plastic arm, re-crossing his own arms as he did so. His posture was stiff, either like he wasn't used to dealing with people or like he was superior to them; Akane couldn't tell which it was. "Why would they be students?" he asked, staring at the blonde girl. He was testing her out, Akane knew. Trying to gauge what kind of person she was based on her response.

"I don't know," Rose answered after a second, she hadn't really thought about why she said 'students.' It had just made sense at the time.

"Well you said it. Why students?" he asked, turning back to watch the elevator doors.

"'Cuz… To get that many people dressed up and acting silly, they got to be students," the blonde rationalized. It did actually make sense in Akane's mind, even though she knew that that was not what had happened. If there were enough people that were as resourceful in costume making like she and her friends were, she could easily see students doing something like that given that there were enough people. Though how they would've gotten into a store like Hendrik's she didn't know.

"That makes sense. Well done," the Doctor smiled, turning around to look at her.

Rose smiled as well, though a little warily. "Thanks."

"They're not students," he dismissed immediately, again turning to watch the doors.

"Whoever they are, when Wilson finds them he's going to call the police."

"Who's Wilson?"

"Chief electrician," Akane offered. Here she was, meeting the Doctor for the first time and she'd barely said a word the entire conversation. Even in front of her hero her conversation skills were nill.

"Wilson's dead."

Rose's face fell at the Doctor's news, the elevator doors opening as the elevator landed with a soft 'bing' from the speakers overhead. He quickly walked out, reaching into his jacket for a small, silver tube. Rose followed angrily, the plastic arm still in hand.

"That's not funny!" she insisted. "That's sick!"

"Hold on, mind your eyes," the Doctor commented, grabbing Rose's shoulders and pushing her back. Akane followed by going to stand behind Rose, she did grin this time as she caught sight of the tube; it was the sonic screwdriver! Of course, she had her own copy of it back home, as well as Eleven's. Her cousin had the Master's laser screwdriver and, for whatever reason, a Doctor Who pizza cutter.

"I've had enough of this now!" Rose shouted as she got no explanation from the man in front of her. Instead, the Doctor used his screwdriver to disable the elevator with a loud and spark-filled 'bang!'

The Doctor walked past both of the girls, clearly having a mission to follow in his head. Akane quickly decided to follow, unconsciously stealing some of Rose's questions as she did so. "So who were those things downstairs? And who are you? How'd you know we were down there?" she asked. She saw Rose come up on the other side of her, a scowl still on the other girl's face.

"They're made of plastic. Living, plastic creatures," he began to answer as they turned a corner. "They're being controlled by a relay device in the roof which would be a great big problem if I didn't have this." The Doctor paused to pull a bomb out of his jacket, several beeps and wires coming out of it. "So, I'm going to go up there and blow them up," he reached for the fire doors and opened them, corralling the girls through but not going through himself. "And I might well die in the process, but don't worry about me. No, you go home. Go on! Go and have your lovely beans on toast. Or, eggs on toast since you're American. Don't tell anyone about this because if you do you'll get them killed." Then he swung the door shut.

Akane and Rose stood there for a second, completely dumbfounded at what had just happened, although for very different reasons, before looking at each other. Rose began to turn away, ready to go home and put whatever had just happened behind her when the door opened again. Both girls jumped and looked at the Doctor again as he was back in the doorway.

"I'm the Doctor by the way, what're your names?" he asked, the bomb still ticking away in his hand.

"Rose."

"Akane."

"Nice to meet you Rose, Akane," he grinned before holding the bomb up. "Run for your lives!" he exclaimed, shutting the door again as he prepared to run up to the roof.

And so they did. With one, quick, bewildered look at each other, the girls decided to run down the street. They didn't exactly know what was going on, well, one of them did but Rose didn't know that, but whatever the Doctor was actually doing, there was a bomb about to go off inside Hendrik's and neither girl wanted to be within the blast radius. They almost got hit by a car on the way, but they made it across the street in time for the bomb to go off; even from there they could feel the heat of the fire. Screams immediately broke out as glass began to rain down on the surrounding sidewalks, cars stopping in the middle of the road to look at what had just happened.

Akane tensed up and sucked a deep breath in at the loud noise, but Rose was already pulling on her arm and dragging her down the street. She failed to notice the blue-police box as they passed it, her senses too overwhelmed with everything to take in anything else. All she wanted to do was run, every time this happened she wanted to run, and this time she could.


Jackie Tyler threw open the door with a cry of 'Rose!' before the blonde could even take her keys out, scooping up her daughter as soon as she had the chance to. Akane was next. Even though she'd barely been there a month, Jackie had seemed to take motherly ownership of her, believing that she should take care of the girl since her parents were still 'across the pond' as Akane had put it.

"Oh thank goodness you two are alright!" she cried, going back to hugging Rose. "I was losing my mind trying to figure out what happened to you! You could've been dead for all I knew!"

"We're alright Mum," Rose softly laughed. For whatever the Hell had just happened, her Mum was still there worrying about her. Not everything in the world was going crazy today. "Honest. We weren't even in the shop, we were outside when it happened."

"Still, you two could've been killed," Jackie insisted. "C'mon. In you go. I'll get the kettle going. You want coffee Akane?"

"Er, if you wouldn't mind, yeah."

"Nonsense, sweetheart," Jackie waved off, going into the kitchen to prepare drinks for all three of them, prattling on about how worried she'd been as she went.

It was almost an hour later when Mickey burst through the door, quickly spotting Rose sitting on the couch and running over. Jackie had gone back to the kitchen as he came in, on the phone with another of the family's friends and making another thing of tea.

"I've been phonin' your mobile," he said worriedly. "You could've been dead. It's on the news and everything. I can't believe that your shop went up!"

Akane was glad that she had chosen to sit on the other couch in the living room when Mickey quickly settled in the spot next to Rose so that he could hug her. "I'm all right, honestly, I'm fine! Don't make a fuss!" the blonde softly exclaimed, tired from the day's extraordinary events.

"Well what happened?"

"I don't know!"

Akane smiled at the interaction; she'd always liked Rose and Mickey as a couple. Sure he'd been kinda wimpy in the beginning, but not everyone was cut out for battling alien invasions. It made her think of her most recent ex-girlfriend; she and Mickey would've gotten along. Both loved sports and were complete worry warts, but were extremely loving all the same. Of course, Akane's ex-girlfriend was back in her own universe, just like most everyone else the girl knew. She didn't have anyone to fret over her like Jackie and Mickey did for Rose, well except maybe Jack but she still didn't know what the deal with him was. He called to check up on her every few days or so, but it was at least once a week. She was grateful for it, of course, he was the only one who really knew anything about what she was dealing with, but she was still confused on how he knew her in the first place, on how close he seemed to be with her if their exchanges were any indication.

'Speak of the devil,' Akane thought as her phone began to ring. Only three people had her number, and one of them was right in front of her. But this was Jack's ringtone, jokingly set as "Moonlight Serenade." He had gotten her a phone from this time period as well, the distance between the technology and it's capabilities was too great to let her keep using the same one. It was just a regular flip phone from Motorola, but it would help her to fit in better.

"Hello?" she answered, getting up off of the sofa and going into the hallway by Jackie's room.

"Hey. You alright, Princess? I just saw the news," Jack greeted. She could practically see him sitting at his desk in Torchwood, his feet propped up on it as he held the phone to his ear.

"Yeah, no. I'm fine. We were outside when it happened. We're okay," Akane assured, pacing the hallway as she did. She always did that on the phone, she remembered reading somewhere about how it was the brain's way of making up for the lack of matching visual to accompany the sound, but she wasn't completely sure. All she knew was that she could never stay still.

"We?" he questioned.

"Rose and I. We were on our way back from work, I was just walking her to the corner like usual when it suddenly just blew up. I have no idea what happened," she lied.

"What about the apartment? Is it okay?"

"I-" Akane paused, her apartment had completely slipped her mind throughout all of this. It was right next to Henrik's top floor, right by the roof. If it wasn't on fire by now it would've at least been severely damaged. "I don't know. I hadn't even thought about it until just now."

"I'll look into it. Where are you now?"

"Thanks Jack. I'm at Rose's. I think I'm gonna end up staying the night."

"No problem. Hey, Princess-"

"Yeah?"

"It's him isn't it?"

Akane laughed. "Was I that bad?"

"No actually. Which is honestly worrying," Jack answered, causing Akane to laugh again, though she didn't explain why she could lie so well. "No, the store name sounds familiar. That's all."

"Well yeah, it is, just to answer your question," she answered teasingly, a grin planting itself on her face. Mickey walked by at that moment, the fake arm in hand. He waved at Akane with it to which she waved back, her grin staying on her face.

Jack was quiet for a moment after that, and Akane could tell by what he said next that he had been smiling. "You're going to do great, Princess."

Akane's grin softened into a smile at that. She did have one person who cared for her, whatever way it was that they knew each other like they did. "Thanks, Jack."

"You're welcome kid. Now remember; keep your head up and no matter what, don't give up."

"Did you try to make that rhyme?" the brunette teasingly questioned, scrunching up her nose as she stopped pacing and leaned against the nearest wall.

"Akane."

"All right, all right. I got it; keep my head up."

"Good girl."

"Listen, I'll talk to you later. Alright?"

"Alright. Talk to you later, Princess."

"See ya." And with that, Akane snapped her phone shut and walked back into the living room. Her and Rose stayed up for another hour or so, talking to each other and Jackie before going to bed. Both girls wanted to talk about what had just happened, but with Jackie flitting in and out of rooms it was hard to do so.

Jack did end up sending her a text near 10 o'clock saying that her apartment had been ruined beyond repair, so all in all, Akane's night had been fan-fucking-tastic.


Akane slept through Rose's alarm the next morning. She had fallen asleep on the couch the night before like she usually did when she slept over, and 7:30 was way too early to wake up at when she didn't have to work. She had woken up by the time Jackie was up, however. It was impossible to sleep through her nagging at Rose. This time it was to start searching for another job.

"There's Finch's. You could try them. They've always got jobs," Jackie offered.

"Oh great," responded Rose with a roll of her eyes, playing with an apple. "The butchers."

Her and Jackie were sitting down at the kitchen table when Akane came out of the bathroom. She had the same jeans on as yesterday, but it was hard to tell since she had changed her shirt. There was no way that she would fit into Rose's clothes as Rose was too skinny, but she always kept an extra shirt in her bag incase of emergencies. As opposed to the plain blue shirt from yesterday, Akane now wore a red, short sleeved shirt with Marvin the Martian on it. The irony of it did not go unnoticed by her.

"Well, it might do you good!" Jackie exclaimed when Akane sat down. "That shop was giving you airs and graces. And I'm not joking about compensation; you've had genuine shock and trauma, both of you!"

Akane rolled her eyes as the older woman got up to go get ready; "shock and trauma" as Jackie had put it was nothing new for her.

"Arianna got two thousand quid off the counsel just because the old man behind the desk said she looked Greek!" Jackie continued without missing a beat as she moved towards her room. "I know she is Greek, but that's not the point. It was a valid claim!"

As Jackie entered her room, a rattling started by the door. It was the door of the cat flap and Rose knew it.

"Mum!" she called out as she got up to go check the flap "You're such a liar. I told you to nail that cat flap down. We're going to get strays!"

"I did it weeks back!" Jackie called back. Rose rolled her eyes, causing Akane to laugh as she too went to go investigate.

"No, you thought about it!" Both girls knelt down to examine the cat flap, but found that the nails that actually had been holding it shut were now on the floor. Akane picked one gingerly, turning it over to look for anything weird about it. She jumped back. Something had just poked through the cat flap. Rose bent down further and tentatively poked the piece of plastic as Akane looked on.

Nothing happened. Rose poked it again, pushing it further up so that she could look through it. Akane couldn't see what it was, but Rose gasped and jumped up onto her feet. Akane followed suit as the blonde opened the door just in time for the Doctor to stand up as well.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, staring at the girl as if being in her home was a monstrous thing to do.

"I live here," Rose answered, the nonverbal 'duh' coming through in her voice.

"Well what do you do that for?"

"'Cus I do. I'm only at home because someone blew up my job," she complained drily, but the Doctor didn't pay her any mind as he took out his sonic screwdriver again and inspected it.

"And I'm here because the resulting blast ruined my apartment," Akane added, folding her arms across her chest.

"Huh. Must've gotten the wrong signal. You're not plastic are you?" he asked, clearly believing that this was an obvious option as he then tapped on Rose's forehead with his knuckles. "No, bonehead. Bye then!" he waved as he turned to leave.

"You. Inside. Right now" Rose almost growled, not letting her chance at getting information slip away. The Doctor's eyebrows shot up as the human pulled him inside and shut the door. He turned towards Akane, who had been trying to hide her grin at his reaction, and waved his hand helplessly towards Rose as she went to go pass off a lie to her mother.

Akane giggled, "She's like that."

"Don't mind the mess. Do you want coffee?" Rose asked after the Doctor had finished denying her mother's advances. Akane sat back down at the kitchen table, finishing her own coffee and grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl to finish off her breakfast.

"Might as well, thanks," the Doctor agreed, taking a look around the flat as Rose went into the kitchen to make it.

"We should go to the police, seriously. All three of us," Rose called from the kitchen.

Akane watched amusedly as the Doctor ignored Rose to instead pick up several things. The first was some news magazine, her grandmother would've called it a rag, with a comment of "That won't last; he's gay and she's an alien." The next was a book called "Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold. Akane had read it herself a few years back, and agreed with the Doctor when he said it had a "sad ending." Then he found an envelope and, with complete disregard for personal privacy, looked at it, reading aloud the name "Rose Tyler."

"Ah, could've been worse. Look at the ears," he commented, gazing at himself in a nearby mirror. He reached up to flick his own earlobe, as if that alone made his ears big. Akane giggled when he tried and failed to shuffle a deck of cards and got them all over the floor.

"Oh hey, I didn't know you knew how to play 52 pick up," she grinned, causing the Time Lord to glare at her. His attention was diverted by another rattling sound, a pale streak of something darted behind the couch.

"What's that then? You got a cat?" he called back to Rose, who promptly answered with a 'no.' He went over to the couch that the streak had darted behind and peered over the edge, Akane curiously following. She knew what it was, but still. It was a moving mannequin hand. It was cool. The hand darted up from behind the couch, quickly latching onto the Doctor's throat and choking him.

"We did have, but now they're just strays."

Akane gasped as the man in leather staggered backwards, strangled cries for help flying from his throat as he tugged at the plastic hand. Akane quickly rushed over and started tugging as well. By the time Rose had meandered into the living room with coffees in hand, asking something about the Doctor's name, Akane and the Doctor were able to pull it off of him. Akane staggered backwards with momentum from the final pull. Weird, she thought. She was holding a living, plastic hand. That was new. She didn't have time to further that thought as the hand turned to attack her instead. She let out a sound that was somewhere between a yelp and a scream as the hand pushed her back against the wall.

Rose quickly realized what was going on a started to pull at the hand, as did the Doctor. It was the Doctor, however, who went tumbling into the coffee table with Akane as he tried to jerk her free. She paid no attention to the fact that she was now on top of the Doctor. Instead she found that it was getting harder and harder to breath as dots began to swim in the little vision she had. With every tug and pull that was made against the plastic being, it held on tighter, completely covering Akane's mouth and nose. She felt hands pull her up off the floor before the plastic hand pushed her into the couch; it was trying to get away from the Doctor.

Half-pinning her from the side, the Doctor was finally able to rip the arm off of Akane's face and destabilize it with his sonic screwdriver. Akane caught her breath as the Doctor stopped the hand from moving, the fingers slowly flexing before finally resting.

"It's all right. I've stopped it, see? Armless!" the Doctor joked, not at all fazed by the fact that the arm had nearly killed him and one of the girls.

"D'you think?" Rose quipped angrily. That thing had nearly killed one of her friends and he was cracking jokes! She took the arm from him and whacked him with it.

"No, seriously Rose. It's fine," Akane assured, causing Rose to half-smile at her. "He dis-armed it."

The soft look on the blonde's face quickly hardened as she turned and whacked Akane with the arm too, reveling in her pain as the Doctor burst out laughing, "Oh, I like you!"