Chapter Ten
In Which Expectations are Thwarted, Plastic is Contemplated, and Gingers are Confused
A/N: You're going to hate me, but I've actually had this written for most of the past week…I've just been too busy to write it up.
Fox-Like Goblin: For a value of busy roughly synonymous with 'indolent', 'apathetic', 'negligent'…
Fine! Lazy! Christ, Didymus, just play a word!
Sir Didymus: P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-I-V-E. Triple word score!
Um, Sir Didymus…there aren't that many spaces on a Scrabble board.
Sir Didymus: Beg pardon, fair lady; in the Underground, our Scrabble boards expand to the size needed to contain the word. *Sweeps board clean* D-I-L-A-T-O-R-Y.
Hum. Don't know that word. *Blinks* Waitaminute. You can't have that many different letters. There's no way. Not possible.
Sir Didymus: *Poker face* Blank squares, my lady.
Wall of Illusions: *snickers*
Sir Didymus…You haven't been conspiring with a certain Millennium-Item-wielding Fourth Wall to draw the right pieces, have you?
Sir Didymus: …
*Sigh*. Goblins. Even the honest ones will cheat to make a point. Where was I…?
Ah, yes. I'm well aware that technically, Sarah Jane only got into her big alien-investigation phase after encountering the Doctor in 2006, but considering how rarely The Sarah Jane Adventures crossed over with Doctor Who, I feel perfectly justified in screwing with the timeline a little bit. So…she hasn't met up with the Doctor again yet, and when she investigates the school in a couple of years, she's just…giving the kids a week off or something. And, y'know, there's plenty of time in the interim for K-9 to break down and all the other stuff. And no, I don't know how she manages five years without the sonic lipstick. Just work with me here, 'kay? I'll make it work. Anyhow, here's the next chapter. I'm off to find a dictionary…dilatory…dilatory…
"Rupert!"
Giles smiled. "Hello, Sarah Jane."
Sarah Jane smiled brilliantly and opened the door wider, hugging her friend for a moment. "Come in, come in! I thought you were living in America these days," she enthused, leading him into her sitting room. "Tea?"
"Oh, yes please."
As she went into the kitchen to fix a pot of Darjeeling, Giles looked around the sitting room curiously. Several brilliantly-coloured sun-catchers rotated languidly near the windows, throwing little flecks of red, gold, and blue light onto the surfaces of the room. Many of the tables bearing lamps also held photographs, from grainy barely-in-colour prints to clearer, more modern photos picturing Sarah Jane in what looked to be a comfortably-furnished attic, surrounded by three beaming young teenagers—a gangly, pale boy with Sarah Jane's arm around his waist, a tall-but-sturdy black boy with close-cropped hair and a cheeky grin, and a girl with braided hair sat on a step slightly behind the others, but so close to the first boy that it was plain she in no way distanced from the others.
Giles turned his attention to one of the oldest photographs. Ah, there was Sarah Jane, so young but wearing much the same sort of blouse, slacks, and argyle sweater-vests she favoured now. She stood close by a long-limbed fellow with wild white hair and a sharp, beaky nose, who was rather uniquely dressed in a red velvet frock coat, a ruffled shirt, bow-tie, silk gloves, for God's sake…
To Sarah Jane's other side was a stern man in Army uniform, wearing a beret that, when Giles squinted, he could see bore a gold globe emblem. Stern he looked indeed, but Giles thought he could detect a trace of a smile on that face, a tiny softening around the eyes that said that although this man was a soldier of the first water, he was, at the moment, at peace and among friends.
Of course, that could also have been a product of Giles's fancies and grainy film, but he rather thought not.
"Here we are," Sarah Jane announced, carrying in a tea tray. Giles grinned in anticipation as he fixed his cup.
"So tell me, Rue, what brings you to Ealing, of all places?"
Giles took a grateful sip of tea (real tea! Fresh, strong tea he hadn't had to make himself!) and replied "Well, you, in point of fact." This was going to be touch-and-go. But before he could continue, there was a loud thud from upstairs, followed by a cry of what sounded like 'canine'.
"Ah, would you excuse me for a moment?" Sarah Jane asked with a shaky smile, setting down her cup rather hastily.
She mounted the stairs.
"Luke!" she hissed, opening her son's bedroom door. "What is going on?"
"I don't know!" her son replied, frantically piling pillows against the walls to muffle the sound. "Mum, the door!"
"Oh," she gasped, closing it just in time to keep a boxy metallic shape from sliding past her.
"K-9, what is the meaning of this?" the reporter demanded.
"Unfamiliar energy signature detected on the floor below, Mistress! Sitting room!"
Sarah Jane was pulled up short. "Sitting room?
"Affirmative, Mistress!"
She frowned. "But…all that's there is my friend. K-9, in-depth report? Please?"
"Energy has similarity to Huon particles," K-9 chirped. "Source of energy is internal and organic. Specimen is Human, pure, male; analysis of blood may reveal trace quantities of exhausted chronon energy or radioactive substance with similar pattern of decay."
"What—like he was exposed to a source of chronon radiation and it burned out in his blood?" Sarah Jane asked.
"Accurate, if unscientific, Mistress," K-9 confirmed.
"Chronon—is that like Artron?" Luke asked.
"Negative, Master Luke. Artron radiation is a by-product of Huon particles. It is created by the displacement of space caused by time travel. Chronon radiation comes in several different forms, most of which are inert and present in all locations in which Time is extant."
"I'm guessing Mum's friend's been exposed to one of the non-inert types?" Luke said dryly.
"Affirmative, Master Luke. However, he is producing the unidentifiable Huon-like energy signature. The energy is more stable than Huon particles and is likely not damaging to organic life forms in its present state. Nevertheless, suggest caution, Mistress," K-9 added, computerised voice taking on the brisker yet somehow more human-like tone of normal conversation. "It would be. Distressing. If you were damaged."
"Of course, K-9," Sarah Jane promised, touched.
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"Sorry about that," Sarah Jane said when she returned. "My son, Luke…managed to overturn a bookshelf, of all things."
Giles chuckled along with her, but inside he was suddenly wary. He'd spent his life around books. If that had been a bookshelf, the thud would have been preceded by a rumbling like the mother-of-all-hailstorms as the books fell out. Furthermore, the bookshelf would have had to defy most of Newtonian physics and fallen down onto the wall. Giles knew what the sound of something hitting the floor sounded like from underneath said floor; he'd heard it often enough while raiding vampire nests with Buffy and the others.
But he still needed information, and so all he said was "I didn't know you had a son," and took a sip of tea.
"Oh, yes, I recently adopted him," Sarah Jane admitted with a soft smile. She picked up the first photograph Giles had examined and handed it to him, pointing at the boy she had her arm around. "His name is Luke."
"He certainly looks like a fine boy. I'm sure you're a fantastic mother," Giles said truthfully.
"I hope so," she said softly, smile fading. "What did you need to speak with me about?"
"Ah." The Watcher set down his cup and gently re-placed the photograph on the table beside the couch. "I, ah, I believe that in the—70's, was it?—you were involved with UNIT?"
"The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce," Sarah Jane recalled. "Or at least, it used to be. Can't seem to make up their minds what 'U-N' stands for. You believe correctly. Mostly secret, though," she warned him.
"And UNIT deals with some rather…extraordinary creatures, yes?" He watched her reaction carefully. "Extraordinary beings, even?"
"Why do you ask?" Sarah Jane's face might have been carved from stone, for all Giles could read. Slightly nervous stone, true; but unfortunately, stone was stone, and immobile.
His next words were very soft and very grave. "Because if so, Sarah Jane, then I find myself in quite dire need of your assistance."
"Oh?" She looked a little gentler now; evidently I need help was more appealing than I need classified information. Giles also recognised the opening; he was to ask what he needed immediately, and she'd give him his answer without ever agreeing to disclose international government secrets.
"Humanoid, apparently male, intelligent, charismatic, with a binary vascular system and super-human body temperature," Giles rattled off swiftly. "A doctor, if he's to be believed."
Sarah Jane froze.
A few minutes later, Giles found himself outside with her soft parting words in his ears.
"Ask him yourself. And tell him Sarah Jane says hello."
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The Doctor did not like feeling helpless. He didn't like not knowing things.
But he loved finding things out. So he fought the uncomfortable prickling on his skin and ventured deeper into the ruined high school. He'd long since tucked the timey-wimey detector away; there was so much energy floating around he'd have to be blind, deaf, and numb to be unable to follow it.
"Doctor? Are you sure there's something down here?"
Blind, deaf, and numb; or human.
"Trust me, Pond. I know everything, remember?" He grinned at her. Amy wasn't convinced.
"So what happened to this place?" Amy wondered, peering into a ruined classroom half open to the sky. A scorched, dismembered plastic skeleton rotated gently in the night wind, grinning at her with its slagged, melted jaws. She shuddered.
"Blew up, apparently," the Doctor replied absently. His head flicked from side to side, always searching.
"What, like the gas line went or something?"
"Not likely. We passed the stairs to the boiler room a while back, and the damage is worse the further in we go. I think we're getting close to the source."
"Of the explosion, or the energy?"
"Both."
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Dawn tried to ignore it when Willow twitched again, just like she'd seen druggies do on CSI when Brass hauled them in for questioning. It wasn't exactly something she wanted to ponder, you know? But she couldn't ignore it when Willow abruptly said "Hey, Dawnie? I gotta make a quick stop."
"But the movie—"
"We'll get there in time," Willow said dismissively, leading her down one of Sunnydale's numerous dark alleys. "Come on." She took Dawn's hand and pushed through nothing.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
"Where are we?" Amy asked, voice hushed.
"Mayhem central," the Doctor replied, doing something with his tongue that reminded Amy of a toddler who'd just been force-fed spinach. "The heart of the blast, and home to whatever's making Sunnydale into a battlefield, with any luck."
"Luck? With any luck, this isn't the sort of place where we die, Doctor!"
"Die? Die? Amelia Pond, I know I didn't teach you such negativity. Honestly," the Doctor scoffed. He rubbed his hands together. "Ooooh, this is going to be good." He grinned ghoulishly, the oh-dear-you-forgot-I-wasn't-human-again-well-let-me-get-all-creepily-excited-over-weird-things-that-send-sane-people-running grin.
She was really going to have to think of a shorter name for that expression; he used it too often for her to think something that long every time.
The Yay, monsters! grin. Yeah, that was it. Of course, then the Time Lord turned the grin on Amy and she couldn't help but return it. Adventure! Madness! Mayhem! Life was good!
"Now then." The Doctor looked around, seeing bits of paper fluttering around. The remains of an oblong table, chairs, and bookshelves. The ruined, hollow arms of a double staircase. A twisted bit of metal that looked like the front of a cage, which the Doctor instinctively shied away from before he realised that it was a cage: a book cage.
"I guess this used to be the library," the Doctor concluded.
"Funny, my high school library didn't have a giant skeleton in the middle of it," Amy commented. Her voice had only gone up about a quarter-to-a-half octave; surprise, not terror. The Doctor looked where she pointed, spotting a massive, half-shattered skull and a long, coiling sort of spine-y thing.
"A snake." A beat of silence. "A giant snake. In a library. Dead." Another beat. And another grin. "Oh this is Christmas!"
"So. To sum things up: vampires, giant snakes, and time energy. Well, that all makes perfect sense."
"It does?"
"No, stupid, it doesn't! I was waiting for you to come up with something!" Amy fumed.
The Doctor shrugged and left the snake skeleton alone for now—it was dead, after all, not like it was going anywhere. He was going to maybe investigate some of the bookshelves, when something caught his eye.
"Amy, come have a look at this."
Amy came up behind him, looking through the open doorway into a small room. "Librarian's office?" she guessed.
"It's empty," the Doctor said.
"Well, yeah, it's not like there's a librarian anymore," Amy began, but the Doctor cut her off.
"But if it was done after the explosion, why empty out the office…but not the library?"
Amy looked from the cleared-out office to the very-much-cluttered library. "Oh," she observed softly.
"And is it just me, or are there not as many pages in here as there should be, what with all the shelves?" The Doctor studied the scene thoughtfully. "Pond?"
Amy shook her head slightly. "If it was done after the explosion?"
Slowly, the Doctor nodded. "Yes. Yes. Oh, it's so obvious!" He grinned. "The librarian set off the explosion!"
"What?"
"Look, Amy! The office is empty—emptied out before the explosion, all the librarian's things out of harm's way—"
"Anyone could have emptied out the office to save the poor woman's—or bloke's, I guess—stuff, before blowing the place," Amy pointed out, quite reasonably.
"Yes-yes-yes but the library? There aren't enough books in there, Pond; the library was emptied out too, as much as possible without looking too suspicious. If this was some student prank, or even someone else on the staff, why go to all that trouble? Unless you cared about what happened to the books. And who cares more about the books—"
"—than the librarian," Amy finished, getting it.
"If only there was some way of finding out who the librarian was," the Doctor mused, eyes sliding out of focus like they did when he thought too intently.
Amy looked around, some idea niggling about in the back of her head. Her eyes alighted on the door to the office, blown off its hinges and face-down on the floor of the main library.
"Doctor, the door. Help me flip it."
The Doctor blinked. "Hm?"
Sighing shortly, Amy bent down and gripped the edge of the door, struggling to lift it.
"Oh, Pond!" The Doctor crouched beside her and added his strength to the effort, and the two of them easily hauled the door upright.
"Now what was that all about—"
For the third time in as many minutes, Amy cut him off, pointing at the pane of Perspex set into the door.
More specifically at the gold lettering upon it.
"Wish granted," she said smugly, unable to supress a slight smirk.
The Doctor blinked, staring hard at the name on the door. R. Giles. "Amy, I can't remember. Do I believe in coincidence?"
"Don't think so, why?"
"Buffy's friend, the one she took me and Dawn to see after the vampire attack. Clever chap, English, name of Rupert Giles."
"R. Giles," Amy recognised.
The Time Lord nodded. "Add in the snake with the suspiciously shattered skull and we have ourselves a map. Clever Mr Giles empties the library of all he holds dear, rigs it, lures the snake in, and blows the place. While empty, at that; they didn't find anyone in the school, according to the article I read. That's neat work. Hope the snake deserved it." He looked grim. "Unfortunately, none of that tells us anything about the energy signature. I'm going to look around, see if I can find anything—well, weird. Coming with?"
Ultimately, Amy and the Doctor split up. The Time Lord wasn't altogether happy with the plan, but Amy's look had clearly stated that she didn't care if that was when things always went wrong in horror movies, this wasn't a horror movie and it wasn't like they were the dumb film students with cameras anyway, if anything they were Mystery, Inc. and no one ever died on Scooby Doo, did they?
Or maybe he was reading too much into it. Either way, it was a very persuasive look.
Such is the process of searching that the thing you're searching for is always in the last place you would ever possibly even think of looking—not in 'the last place you look', you always found what you were looking for in the last place you looked, because honestly, you weren't going to keep looking once you found it, were you? So it was with the Doctor. Only after he returned to the front of the library to wait for Amy did he finally find what he was looking for.
It was tiny—you had to really look for it—but there was a break in the tiles of the library floor. The Doctor circled the break, until at last he stood before a rather reasonable pit. A muted orange glow bathed his face, so faint it almost wasn't there, except that when he looked down at the source, a glow there was indeed. He started to get a bad feeling. There was something very familiar about the not-glow from this hole.
Then it—the idea, not the hole—hit him.
Oh no. Oh Rassilon no. Someone please, please tell him that the Nestene Consciousness hadn't set up shop in Sunnydale? And if it had…
Now there was a thought. Plastic vampires.
And a girl who felt like a Time Lord and fought like Leela of the Sevateem.
By the Six-Fold God, he loved this town!
Then reality caught up with him, and he realised that plastic vampires, while feasible, weren't actually in Sunnydale, or his whole fight-against-the-genocidal-instinct thingy wouldn't be slowly turning him back into a moody Time Teen.
The Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver, whirring it over the pit. He tried not to capitalise that last thought; now that he'd eliminated Autons as a possibility, both the circumstances of discovery and the readings from the sonic were far too similar to Krop Tor for his taste. He knelt down and eyed the non-glow dubiously. Yep. His trouble radar hadn't failed him yet.
"Come along, Pond," he said abruptly, certain she must have arrived at the front by now.
"Pond?" Nothing. He stood, his eyes scanning the library nervously. "Amy?"
Cautiously, he poked through the shelves as far as he dared, knowing Amy wouldn't have gone further. "Amy! Poooond!" he bellowed.
No answer.
"Amelia?" he whispered hopefully.
By the time the night had silently swallowed his words, the Time Lord was off and running.
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Desperation had forced the Slayer to enlist Spike in Operation Find Dawn. The vampire raced through the alleyways, shoving the dumb-arse humans out for a night stroll from his path. It went well until he encountered one of them moving roughly as fast as he was.
"Sorry," the man panted as he narrowly missed smacking into the vampire.
"Whatever," Spike grunted, taking in a breath to speak. He regretted it an instant later. Oh God, that was some fine-smelling blood!
Dawn. Find the nibblet. The bit was in danger.
"Don't suppose you've seen a ginger in a hurry?" the other Brit asked. "Amy?"
Amy. The rat witch. So that's who was pulling Red down.
"Sympathies, mate. Bit of help?"
"Sounds good to me. James Bowman," the man introduced himself.
"Spike. Right. Let's go, then. Looking for a girl named Dawn, too, seen 'er?"
"Dawn? Her too?" Bowman looked horrified.
"Why, you know her?"
Face grim, the bloke nodded. "Let's go."
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
"Sorry for all this," the blonde boy whispered. He looked around nervously. "It's just, we needed one of you two, but the guy was a little creepy, you know?"
Amelia Pond was, if possible, even less amused with her erstwhile captors after that dig at the Doctor. He was weird, not creepy. So she glared at him. The boy quailed.
"I'm r-really sorry," he stammered. The other boy, the short one with dark hair, smacked him upside the head.
"What are you doing, dork-face? You're the villain, she's the damsel—"
"Oi! Watch who you're callin' damsel, you son of an Adipose!" She put her face up close to the short one's. "That 'creepy guy' you were too afraid to go up against? I'm his mother-in-law!"
She smirked as her captors exchanged uneasy looks.
"Oh, bravo, knife to the heart!"
The other lights in the basement flicked on, revealing a rather posh den filled with comfortable furniture, technology that would have been state-of-the-art eleven years later in Amy's time, and many bits, gadgets, and old books.
None of that was what caught and held Amy's attention, though.
The newly-arrived leader of the Trio, all spiked hair and shark-like smile, followed her gaze. His smile widened. "I see you've spotted our pride-and-joy. Don't worry, we just need a touch of your hand…"
Amy started struggling. "No!" No, no, no, no, no! "He'll stop you! The Doctor will stop you! Doctor!"
Her three captors looked blankly at each other.
"Doctor who?" the leader shrugged, and grabbed her hand. "Hold her still," he ordered the other two.
Then he brought her hand squarely down on the metal dome of a Dalek.
A/N: Dilatory (n): indolent, procrastinative, lazy…HEY!
Sir Didymus: I have no comment on the matter.
Didymus…
Sir Didymus: Ah, my apologies, Lady Anbee; it seems Lady Sarah requires my services. I must attend to her forthwith.
I'll give you forthwith, you sorry one-eyed fox-nosed excuse for a—
*Computer fizzes, dies*
…
*Computer starts up again*
Sorry 'bout that. Bloody fox. He'll be back, just you wait. He always is. I swear, the way he avoids his job, you'd think he worked in a reeking fetid bog or something…oh wait…
So, raise your hands if you saw the Dalek coming!
*The entire imaginary audience raises their hands*
…Okay…Anyway. Finals week is OVER! No more school! No more hardship and heartbreak! And actual chapters of a few select individuals' favourite Buffy/Doctor Who crossover! Chapter 11 is well underway and rather interesting, if I do say so myself. Thanks go out in advance to Lise-Lyla, who's been going over these chapters with me and is (hopefully) going to loan me one of LYLA's pet Plot Bunnies in exchange for playing editor. You're awesome, L&L!
Yami: *Pokes his head through the Wall of Illusions* Wait. You let LISE and her yami in, but you keep me back here?
Yami, I love you, but you need to go back to Shadow House with the rest of the YGO cast.
Yami: Why did you have to pack all of us up in one house in your imagination…?
Because I could. And I didn't pack all of you up. Just the interesting ones…
Argh. Whatever. R&R!