So many assignments to do. Stupid essays, and lab reports, and court reports, and more essays. If only I could write them as easily as I do this stuff.
Anyway, here is your chapter.
The Doctor watched his companion as the Tardis cruised through time and space. Despite the fact she'd been a historical topic back on Gallifrey, one of the greats of Time, he couldn't make the connection between the young woman in front of him and the portrayal in the history books. The fearless warrior just seemed like a girl just about holding on to herself.
Moving over to a screen not facing Max, the Doctor pulled up the texts about her. He felt a bit bad about looking up her future, it was all set in stone for her. If she saw it then the consequences were unlikely to be good, especially with her reputation. She seemed zoned out, balancing on the railings.
The Doctor skimmed the early life, there wasn't much documented about her until she got to Earth and even then she didn't become a major figure until the Kira case. Time Lords knew of Death Gods but they had an agreement to leave each other alone. He started off in the third year of Hogwarts, making a mental note to visit there again, he wanted to see if had actually changed since his last visit.
They finally landed. Floating around in time and space had become boring after a while. Max had come back to reality so the Doctor stopped reading about her life, it wasn't fair. It would also be only too obvious to her what he was doing. Shinobi were famed for being practically mind readers from the smallest hints.
Max peaked out of the door, weary of finding another place she knew would end up as an unavoidable disaster. She was met with at least three guns pointed at her. A slightly assorted group of people accompanied these guns.
"Bollocks." A quick glance around the surrounding area, aided by FA showed she was on a spaceship.
"How did you get on my boat?" asked one of the armed people. At that moment the doctor popped up behind her with his huge grin firmly in place.
"A bit of chrono-spatial-metaphysical transcending displacement." It took Max a few seconds to process that as pretty magic time ship. It was clear only one person from the group had understood all of that, but was sceptical of its validity.
"Say what now?"
"Magic box," Max said bluntly, she was getting a bit tired of being on the business end of these guns. It was about then a young woman ran in and tackled Max, taking advantage of the preoccupation with the guns. It took a few seconds to untangle herself and hold the other girl at a distance that didn't intrude on her personal cube.
Things took a bit of a surreal turn as Max studied the girl, there was an eerie similarity between the two women. The stranger stopped struggling and held out a hand.
"River," she offered. Max tilted her head, a bit confused by this girl but politely returned the handshake.
"Max." River squealed and release her hand clapping in joy, grabbing Max's hand, she dragged him over to the smartly dressed man.
"This is Simon, my brother." She seemed quite proud of this fact from the great big smile. The Doctor moved up to Max, keeping an eye on the siblings. River then let go of her brother and gestured to the surroundings. "This is Serenity." The girl then bounce around introducing the rest of the crew in the room
"Hold on. Just who are you?" The guy who had first asked the question asked. Mal, if Max heard correctly.
"I am Max, this is the Doctor. We travel and get kicked out of bars." She couldn't resist adding the last part, she was mischievous by nature. It helped the mood, the guns were no longer pointed at the time travellers, but still within easy reach.
"I don't suppose you have any fuel in that box of yours?"
"Why are we asking? We should just look and take what we want. They're stowaways, they ain't got no rights." One of the men with guns, Jayne attempted to whisper to Mal.
"I'm afraid you do not have that option," Max said coldly, facing the man who might have been trying to be discreet. The man just laughed at her while Max allowed a small smirk. Both reacted, drawing their weapons.
In hindsight Max realised that the P-90 was a bit too big to have been concealed on her person. She had summoned it from a seal on her belt, a real one nicked from one of her visits to the SGC. It was also a bit too flashy and probably overkill, she was just hoping no one called her out on it.
The Doctor stepped forward ready to intervene and placate the both sides along with the presumed captain. Before anything could be resolved a voice spoke up over the ship wide speakers.
"We've got incoming Reavers."
"Reavers?" the Doctor repeated half questioning, then his eyes grew wide as he faced Max half sizing her up. The captain had dashed over to the nearest communication box on a wall to talk to the pilot.
"Reavers are mutated humans, the result of an experiment gone wrong. They are horrifically violent, they will torture, kill, rape, and eat you. If you're lucky in that order." The doctor muttered to her. He knew she was confused and she would be able to help.
"Ok, I have some bad news, they have seen us and we can't out run them with our current lack of fuel. Any other options?"
"I can help," Max said looking at the Doctor for confirmation. It was cheating a bit but for some reason Max couldn't shake off this feeling about River.
"What do you need?" Mal asked, he was hiding the panic quite well. Reavers seemed to instil a deep fear in all of the crew.
"A view of the ship will do," Max said with a smirk, she patted locations to check she was armed. She didn't want to use the gun until she knew if it would penetrate the walls of the ship. She did not want to go out into space unprotected.
As she was escorted to the cockpit she idly realised the Tardis was taking them where she, or her skills, were needed before letting her do her time loop. She wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not.
"There it is." Mal pointed out after a brief introduction to the pilot. The ship he was pointing to looked disgusting. There were human bodies mutilated and chained to its hull.
"Ew. Well, back in a jiffy," Max said in an overly posh English accent before apperating over to the Reaver ship.
Max did have to blame the Tardis for all these situations. She was tearing through creatures who could no longer be classed as human. FA came in really handy, she didn't want to accidentally blast through an outer wall. That would be worse that shooting it. Leaving a trail of butchered chunks of flesh in her wake, Max worked through the ship. Survivors were not allowed on her watch.
They tried not to have too much of an emotional goodbye. Having shared a meal, after Max had cleaned all of the blood off her skin, they did a fair amount of bonding. The various foods Max kept in scrolls went down a treat. It was a habit she'd never gotten out of. Some countries in the hidden continents didn't have much of a variety of food so Max had found that she could sometimes bribe ninjas with some of the food rare in their area. One such fruit was strawberries. Kaylee, Serenity's mechanic had been practically glowing with delight.
Eventually the Doctor and Max were back in the Tardis, floating through time and space. The Doctor had figured that the box would take them where she needed them to go and no amount of levers or buttons he pushed would change her mind.
Max had been waiting for this stop as she looked out into a familiar cave. It was where that dragon boy had been years ago, she spared a thought to wonder what had happened to him but knew she wouldn't have much time to finish her own quest.
It didn't take long to find the clearing with two teenage girls passed out. She placed down some of the items she'd picked up on her travels and then dripped the potion Morgana had given her into both of their mouths, watching them regress to children.
She was careful not to touch them, doing so could cause a paradox. On the edge of her senses she could feel her old teacher heading in that direction. She wanted to stay for a while and talk but she knew it couldn't happen. What had happened from when the two toddlers woke up was set in stone. She knew that for certain, she was one of the girls.
Flickering out of the clearing she headed back to the Tardis, wishing she could have done more. She'd felt a bit out of her depth to begin with, covering it up with hyperactivity and sarcasm. Laura had it worse, not having much of a clue about the place she'd been dumped in, just dragged along for the ride. This at least explained how they had ended up physically toddlers when they had first turned up.
As only seemed logical to Max, she was deposited many years later in Konoha ready for the time loop to be sent on its way. Here she would save as many as nine lives, including her own. Akatsuki was too dangerous to leave in one piece. She couldn't completely destroy all trace but the rings were unique and vital to the group. The easiest thing was to steal and cripple the organisation. She had a plan for each member she hadn't stolen a ring from, a few hints on the note from her past self.
She henged into Murdock, as far as anyone who wasn't Itachi was concerned Murdock was the ring thief and it would stay like that.
It took a while to do, the last one was a stroke of genius, weed killer. The fact it had actually worked was surprising but hilarious.
After sending the crate to Ducky for her to get later Max knew she was coming to an end of her travels with the Doctor. The next time she stepped out of the Tardis she recognised the London feeling. She was back in her own time. Three days later if the paper was correct. She wondered if Itachi had gone home. Maybe at some point she would too, but not now.
The Tardis faded from view with its customary noise and Max was alone down a deserted alley in the middle of the day. She started to walk, no concrete destination in mind. Now she had no mission it was boring, that niggling feeling saying go home was ignored. Even though there would no doubt be missions there it still held the sting of betrayal.
It was as she was wandering down a street she was pulled from her thoughts as someone tried to grab her. Without consciously trying, she had the man bent over a small garden wall, his face pressed up against the brick, his arm pulled painfully behind his back. It didn't matter that he was pretty much twice her height, he'd picked the wrong person to grab.
"Uh, can you release him please?" Max turned to find a blond man watching her with alert eyes. The calculating eyes of a soldier. Former soldier by the relaxed posture. Max released her hold and allowed the man to stand. He seemed to be studying her as his dusted himself down.
"I always wondered if the government had started using children to do their dirty work." The tall man mused. Max supressed her smirk, the man was right but she wasn't one of them.
"I'm sure you know I am not a child."
"Of course not, your file said you are almost 20 Rho." The way the blond was looking at the man implied that this knowledge was not supposed to be known. "Mycroft really should stop leaving work out when he's running late."
"I thought I was finally done with people who say cryptic things then expect everyone to know what they're talking about," Max grumbled. From the smirk on the blonds face she wasn't the only one with that opinion.
"John Watson," he said with his hand out. Max shook it, a nice firm handshake.
"Max Hakie. Who's Mr tall, dark and assaults people?" The dark haired man seemed to realise he was being referred to a and turned to her, somehow with a flourish.
"Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective."
Yes, back to real time. Shouldn't take so long to write now, got plenty of ideas to write about.
Reviews are probably going to be better than the feedback I got for my first draft of my court report. Would have been better if my lecturer had actually marked it.