Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

School Reunion

Chapter 11 - The Demon Headmaster

Schools were one of those things that I could never quite make up my mind about. There were good things about them, of course, like books and learning and teachers who both loved and were good at what they did, but those were so outweighed by the bad that they might as well not have tipped the scales at all.

Sometimes, if the staff, curriculum, or the building itself was interesting enough – oh, what fond memories I had of Hogwarts and the Unseen University –, I could push by that queasily uncertain feeling and enjoy the experience.

Unfortunately for me, Deffery Vale was nothing special in any particular category except perhaps poorly hidden malevolence and a fried food lunch menu that might have passed for half-decent if not for the fact that it was prepared using alien brain-altering oils.

Oh and the UFO sightings that had brought us here in the first place, of course.

As soon as Mickey had contacted the Doctor about it, the Time Lord had landed the TARDIS in London and set about the business of investigation, a business that very quickly came to involve infiltration. Within two days, Deffery Vale had a new lunch lady, librarian, and physics teacher.

Rose, naturally, was the least happy with her new role, if the murderous glances both the Doctor and I were catching from behind the serving counter were any indication. She need not have bothered; the lunch both of us had been given was death threat enough.

For the third time since we'd sat down at our table, I poked the puddle of vomit yellow something with my fork. It almost made me nostalgic for the canned chocolate pudding they'd served at my elementary school in my first life, except this had the additional disadvantage of being both steaming and actively horrible to every available sense.

Personally, as a person who has eaten everything from rat and dirt on down to two-hundred year old radioactive snack foods and the occasional concept, I probably didn't have that much room to complain, but there were still some areas where I wasn't quite willing to go.

"You're really going to have to show me where the TARDIS's kitchen is," I told the Doctor. "I can't survive on this nonsense."

"Come on, it's not that bad," he said as he chewed on a chip, avoiding the suspect smear on his own plate. He swallowed and gave the bit of deep-fried potato in his hand a considering look. "Though I'll admit, the flavor is a bit off."

I took a bite of one of my own. The potato itself was fine, but the frying oil was definitely not an Earth variety, with a slight sourness that stood out if you were looking for such subtle differences. "Different kind of oil, you think?"

"Mmm. If it's an Earth variety, it's not one I recognize," the Doctor said as he munched away at the rest of the chip.

Maybe Time Lord biology was innately incompatible with the Krillitane oil, because I couldn't see any other reason why he would be able to miss the sensation of one's mental gears being greased up and set spinning at maximum speed. Sure, without my limiter on I could probably think and process just as fast and more reliably but while using a standard human set up, the kick in speed and clarity was impressive. Combine that with the neuroplasticity, metabolism, and body weight to caloric intake ratio of the average teenager... well, I could see the payoff – and the corresponding total moral and ethical bankruptcy – of turning a school into a think tank.

"Well, I think they're just gorgeous," Rose declared, stealing a chip off of the Doctor's plate as she plopped down next to us. I could have quoted Mean Girls. I really, really could have, but I imagined that last indignity in the chain of other admittedly worse shit that had happened to the blonde in the last three days would have spelled some kind of disaster – namely, critical annoyance – for me.

She was dressed in those formless pastel-shaded scrubs that belonged to the lowest denominator of the service industry, specifically of the kind people tended to gloss over even as they looked at them. At least fast food work afforded the dignity of a nametag, because the only thing that separated her from the rest of the lunch ladies was the configuration of her face which belonged only – at least as far as I knew – to one Rose Tyler.

She stole another of the Doctor's chips. "Anyway, have either of you found anything? Because it's been three days and if I'd wanted to be bored in a dead end job…"

"Blame your boyfriend. He was the one who put us onto it," the Time Lord reminded her before leaning forward in a half-conspiratorial manner. The fact that his new position kept Rose from stealing more of his food seemed like one of those accidental bonuses. "And he was right. Had a boy in class this morning, Milo, rattling off numbers that he shouldn't have in the first place. And I don't mean upper level stuff. I mean like how to facilitate FTL travel, which you lot won't have a handle on for another couple centuries."

Mmm. Impossible knowledge was one of those things that always put people on edge, usually for a good reason. "So, someone's been feeding him and the others those sorts of numbers," I said. "To what end?"

The Doctor waited patiently for me to say more before realizing my question wasn't rhetorical. "Oh, could be anything. I've seen more wetware computation devices than I care to remember, but brainwashing to get an 'in' on the next generation of science, calculating numbers for some kind of intergalactic lottery drawing… I can't really get a pin down without more information. Can't make bricks without clay."

"And it falls to us to supply said clay."

He beamed at us. "Exactly."

The head lunch lady, a wizened spindle of a woman with a mouth permanently puckered into a sour expression, had finally noticed the absence of her youngest hireling hard at work and having picked Rose out from the crowd, was now heading our way.

"Looks like you can't sit with us," I whispered, finally giving in to the need to quote.

"Back to scrubbing," Rose sighed as she stood up and grabbed our abandoned food trays. "I don't see why you get the cushy librarian job."

"Probably because I am a librarian?" I asked.

Both Rose and the Doctor stared at me.

"What? I've had jobs and I like books. It's not hard to find a place where those two areas intersect," I said half-defensively. What, were my youthful looks that at odds with the idea of me sorting books for a living? "'sides, it's easy to use the Dewey Decimal System when you've been navigating it since age six."

Not exactly how I had picked it up, if I was to tell the truth, but telling people that one of my other selves had been a half-loony wizard-slash-librarian-slash-Time Lord-lite from a flat world travelling through the void on a Jenga tower of animals in a past life so rarely went over well, even if I left out the bit about the little blue man who lived in my hat.

A pity; Wee Jamie was almost always the best part of any story he featured in.

Wherever the conversation would or could have gone after that was shoved aside as Rose's supervisor, who I was sorely tempted to dub 'Ms. Bitters', arrived with a scowl that looked like it had been added around the same time anything resembling 'kindness' had been cut out of her soul. Considering that she was probably a member of a people-eating conqueror race, she might have been born that way.

"You are not permitted to leave your station during a sitting," the Ms. Bitters knockoff hissed at Rose.

"Was just talking to these two," Rose mumbled.

The Doctor waved at the evil one, a bright smile fixed on his face. I settled for a level stare.

"He doesn't like the chips," she added, as if this was some great and terrible secret.

Considering the evil one's reaction, it might have been.

"The menu has been specifically designed by the headmaster to improve concentration and performance," the woman snarled before turning her hateful gaze back to Rose. "Now, get back to work."

With that and one final glare, 'Ms. Bitters' vanished back into the depths of the cantina.

Rose rolled her eyes, doing a final turn to face us. "This is me; Rose Tyler, Dinner Lady."

"Save me a bit of the crumble," the Doctor said.

"I'm so going to kill you."

The Time Lord grinned. "Dessert first, if you don't mind," he called after her before she vanished back into the kitchen. He turned around to look at me and found my unimpressed stare now directed at him. "What?"

"Trying to figure out the dynamics here." Particularly how the hell they even have a dynamic, between the 'morally superior in all ways because I'm from a higher species totally not known for being incredible cosmic assholes despite my tendency towards myopic views on just about everything and emotionally based kneejerk reactions' and the 'overly possessive of her people and way too willing to consume an energy field way larger than the Evil Overlord List advises and possibly destroy two universes for the sake of a guy I've known for maybe a year or so tops'.

…actually, I could see how it worked, because Rose Tyler was a teenager with the ordinary expectation that the rest of her life was going to be defined by anything that lasted longer than two months and the Doctor was… well, he was the Tenth Doctor, relatively fresh from the Time War and caught between his old role of 'wanderer through time' and all the responsibilities of being 'the last of the Time Lords'. I just didn't like it because it was incredibly dangerous to anyone else in the vicinity, which combined with the fact that they lived in a space-time machine capable of reaching just about any point in the universe at any possible time meant that literally no place in the universe was safe.

The Doctor just shrugged. "I like her and she likes me. What's there to figure out?"

Everything. Like how to keep that combination of 'likes' from putting other people in needless danger.

"Anyway," he redirected. "I didn't know you were a librarian."

"Surprised I had a life before you?" I asked. What would that reaction would have been if I'd used 'lives'?

The Doctor almost looked abashed for a moment. "Well, one would think that a person with steady employment wouldn't be wandering around London alone on Christmas," he said.

"You would think that," I agreed, taking a sip of my drink. Boxed milk, harmless and without the slightest trace of the telltale sourness of Krillitane oil. "But what we think is often very different from the truth."

Moving universes every decade or so and getting into a metric fuckload of crazy shit in between those shifts had a way of discouraging anything resembling long-term work. Of course, what I considered long term usually was measured out in… decades? Centuries? Sometimes I wasn't even sure myself, but I was sure of the fact it wasn't applicable to anything resembling a human scale.

"Little too quiet in here for my taste," the Doctor said, breaking the awkward silence that had wormed its way into the lull in our conversation. "Would think I would have seen some sort of delinquent behavior by now. Hoodies, ringtones, gossip."

I looked around the room. He was right. There was too little noise for teens and pre-teens shoved into an enclosed space, with the most I could hear being muffled small talk and the sound of cutlery clashing on plastic. Not much in the way of movement either, save for the odd teacher making their rounds, all too often in the style of a predatory beast looking for an injured or sickly animal to separate from the herd and devour.

And above it all, loomed the Headmaster.

I would not compare him to Giles, even if they technically shared the same face. I remembered Giles. All the little quirks, habits, and subtleties of body language picked up over a lifetime, and I particularly remembered his way of conveying 'why the hell am I the only reasonable person in this town' through his eyes alone.

This lookalike had none of them and the visual didn't line up either. The suit was too severe and the hair too slicked back for me to even entertain the notion of them being variants on the same person, but there was also the fact that Giles would never look over a room like he was casually picking out his next victim.

Much unlike the man whose gaze we were now avoiding.

"Definitely something about the chips," I said.

The Doctor nodded, taking another glance at the Headmaster through the corner of his eye. "Oh, definitely."

Being a librarian, it followed that I naturally liked libraries. Deffery Vale's might have been a touch undersized and more than a little underused for my taste, but I could appreciate the slight distortion of L-space it provided as I went about the business of putting away books without my limiter. Despite this universe's ban on magic, the fact of knowledge equals power equals (force times distance squared) divided by time remained. Perhaps it tied in to Quantum Mnemonics or Block Transfer Theory somehow, since those were other reality warping concepts native to this 'verse.

The knowledge accumulated here, unfortunately, wasn't enough to grant proper L-space access, but I did seem to recall some library planet somewhere in the future that was absolutely loaded with reading material.

'Oh, yes. The Library,' a soft, very Scottish voice murmured from the back of my mind, his brogue buzzing and rolling the 'R's like bumblebees in a rock tumbler. 'Always important, things that people call the 'The'.'

I smirked at that. 'Fine words from a man who called himself 'The Doctor', Zeke,' I thought back at him.

'Ah, well, that's a few millennia in our rearview, isn't it?' my personal edition of the Time Lord said around an obvious smile, not even making any movement towards dismissing my toothless accusation that he thought himself important. 'In my old age, I've come to find "Professor Ezekiel Sterling" more than sufficient for my needs.'

Yes. Besides, it was easier than throwing numbers at every model and version of the Doctor I ever encountered, particularly when the temporal specifics decided to get squirrely. Christ, how the fuck was I going to survive the Metacrisis? What would happen if the Doctor ended up regenerating into an unfamiliar face?

'Anyway,' I began after schooling my thoughts. 'What do you think of the situation?'

'Seeing as we have a fair idea of how easily the Krillitanes were dealt with without our input, I'm assuming you're referring to my… successor.'

I shrugged as I shoved a selection of encyclopedias back into their places and started to make my way back to the front desk. 'You would know him best.'

'Hardly. You should remember as well as everyone else that I was separated from that experience about four models before this one,' Zeke said before sighing. 'I can't say you've observed anything I would disagree with. If Miss Tyler wasn't part of the picture, perhaps he might have adopted a less –'

'Grandiose? Impulsive? Self-sacrificing? Needlessly preachy? Wildly careless?'

'Please, Delaine, those are all standard features,' the Time Lord said dismissively before becoming serious again. 'Let's just say… the exact combination of those traits combined with a certain lack of others that might otherwise counteract them have led to a… unbalanced personality? One might even accuse me of being an example of such, though too much brains, too little heart rather than being caught between ancient and immature.'

'At least until you got stuck with this mess,' I said.

'Yes. It's rather difficult to pull off such complicated plans inside of a decade without a TARDIS and exhaustive knowledge of the universe I'm operating in,' Zeke admitted. 'Never mind the twisting of one's history by the whim of a petty cosmic power or the swarm of commentators that do nothing but scream and try to usurp control when one starts moving in directions a little too morally suspect for their liking.'

'Please,' I thought back with a roll of my eyes. 'You know you like us.'

'Like gnome jokes and haggis, it's an acquired taste.'

With that, his mental presence receded into the back of my mind to mill around with the rest of the little pinprick points that made up my other selves.

I sighed as I settled into a comfortable perch on the stool behind the front desk, pulling a yo-yo out of my warehouse before strapping my limiter back on and starting the process of idling. Zeke hadn't given me any answer I could work with, but I couldn't quite blame him. After all, he knew about as much about the current model of the Doctor as I did and, like the Doctor had said earlier, you couldn't make bricks without clay.

The yo-yo jumped up to and down from my hand before making a quick detour around the world before I snapped it back to rest into my palm.

"Testing the local gravity?" an amused female voice asked.

I fell off my stool, dragging a number of papers off the desk with me as I went. The yo-yo that smacked me in the face a few seconds after that was merely icing on the humiliation cake.

"Are you alright?" the woman asked, her brown hair swaying as she leaned over the counter to look down at me. Sarah Jane Smith. Eee! "Are you hurt anywhere?"

"Just in my dignity," I groaned. "Also possibly my coccyx."

"Unfortunate," the alien wearing the Giles-skin said, not sounding particularly invested either way. "Anyway," he continued as I pulled myself off the floor. "This is Miss Sarah Jane Smith, a reporter. Miss Smith will be writing a profile on me for the Sunday Times and I expect you to render her as much assistance as you are… capable."

With that, the Headmaster turned on his heel and left the library.

"All business, isn't he?" Sarah Jane asked.

"He knows what he's after and has a pretty good idea of how to get it," I said, not looking away from the door. Universal domination through the exploitation of children, I didn't add. "Anyway, was there anything you needed from me, Sarah Jane?"

She blinked and then her face settled into a considering look.

"You know," she said carefully. "Most people begin with Miss Smith. Or just 'Sarah'."

Fuck. "I've known some Sally Anns, a few Mary Janes, and a couple Sarah Lees. A Sarah Jane isn't so off the mark," I said as casually as I could manage. "Of course, if you would prefer 'Just Sarah', I suppose I could –"

Her amused look was back. "No, Sarah Jane is fine." She looked around. "Where is the cellphone signal best in here?"

I pointed towards the back of the library, which was mostly window. "It's not the greatest, but it's steady if nothing else."

As soon as Sarah Jane was out of earshot, I started kicking myself. Idiot. Iiiidiiiot. Sixteen thousand years old, still making an ass of myself in public.

Could I use the excuse that I hadn't been a dominant personality since the absolute beginning? No, nobody got to use the 'senility' excuse. I came by my social stupidity honestly.

Just like my general jumpiness.

"How's the snooping going?" the Doctor asked from just behind my shoulder, just barely ducking out of the way of the wild swing I took in his direction.

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" I hissed, running my hands down my arms and desperately wishing I had some kind of jacket on. I didn't like being exposed, especially when presented with someone whose face and voice brought back nightmares.

"Are you alright?"

Do alright people look this scared? Bad enough that the not-Giles was putting me on edge, I didn't need flashbacks of Kilgrave every time a certain someone decided to get up in my personal space.

I straightened my waistcoat and shoved my stress back into a little box to be dealt with later. "Anyway, what was it you wanted, Doctor?"

The Time Lord gave me a searching look very much like the one Sarah Jane had given me earlier, but he didn't push it.

Maybe I should have worried about that more.

"Just wanted to know if you'd found anything," he said.

I dragged a hand back through my hair. "The absence of evidence is evidence in itself," I said as I turned to the computer and flicked on the appropriate screens. "You say that these kids are able to whip out impossible numbers? Well, they aren't getting them from here. Barely any activity outside of class projects. I'd say Sarah Jane's getting more out the room right now than most of the students."

"Sarah Jane?"

Don't play dumb, Doctor. "Smith. The award-winning investigative journalist? I somehow doubt that she's been sent here to write a mundane puff piece. Besides, even if she was sent to do a report on the upswing in school scores, it would be an article about the school in general, not a profile on the headmaster." I turned off the computer and turned to look at the Time Lord. "She's playing off his ego to get what she wants."

"And what is it you think she wants?"

Playing dumb again or feeling out my thought process? "Answers, clearly. It's the question that's unclear," I finished.

No it wasn't. She'd probably heard about the alien activity as well and was here for the exact same reasons as us. But I wasn't supposed to know that.

The Doctor hummed as he busied himself around the desk, pausing only as he found a book I'd been reading. "The Demon Headmaster?" he asked, holding up the hardcover.

"Thought it was thematically appropriate."

"Mmm," the Doctor replied, flipping through the pages. "Bit of an obvious villain, isn't he?"

I raised an eyebrow. "And you're calling the guy who's a Nehru jacket and a goatee away from being a Bond villain 'subtle'? I mean, what kind of guy stands on a balcony to loom over everyone at lunchtime, if not to watch all within his domain eat his strange chips, which have quite possibly been spiked with alien brainwashing oil?"

The Doctor lifted up a finger as if to argue the point and then lowered it again. "Okay, point. Finch is too tied into this not to be a major player."

Thank you for confirming what I already knew and told you.

"Anyway, when did you want to go out on that double date with Rose and Mickey?" I asked as the bell rang and Sarah Jane walked out, casting another searching glance our way. "Tonight?"

The Doctor checked his watch. "Four hours, you think?"

"Five works better."

"It's a date then," he said with a wink, disappearing before I could ask him never to do that again.

Sneaking into buildings after dark, schools or otherwise, is old hat for me. Still, there's always that edge of caution, because you can't always know what's waiting for you. So it pays to be quiet, cautious, and well-prepared.

This group is barely any of those things.

"You know, it's weird being in a school at night," Rose said as we slunk through the darkened hallways of Deffery Vale. It could have easily been an entirely different building, as what the sun had painted in uninspiring shades of tan and brown, the night sunk into bruised black and blues. "When I was a kid, I used to think the teachers actually slept in the school."

"Someone wrote a book about that, actually," I noted in a half-whisper, more to myself as to her. I'd taken my limiter off before we arrived and could afford to have multiple focuses, though admittedly one of them was keeping any of my powers from being obvious.

More trouble than it looked like sometimes. So much for night vision.

"Really?"

I winced at the volume. Stealth mission, stealth mission.

"Apple Island, or The Truth About Teachers, by Douglas Evans. Fantasy-Satire, 1998," I recited from memory. "Recommended for children eight to nine years old."

The interest that had colored Rose's tone withered away instantly. "Oh, nice."

And there was any positive feeling I might have generated with the blonde gone. Vanished. Poof. And there was me, not quite capable of bringing myself to care. Outside and closer to the building than I would like, there were sounds of movement, of leathery wings a lot bigger than the average bat disturbing the air.

Krillitane. At least they had good sense to keep a lookout while the rest slept.

"Alright, team," the Doctor said a little too loudly for comfort before losing his train of thought. "Team… don't quite like the sound of that. Gang? Comrades?"

"Fellowship of reckless idiots?" I offered.

The look the Doctor gave me didn't have near as much heat as Rose's did.

"Anyway," he continued. "Rose, you go to the kitchen, get a sample of that oil. Mickey, all the new teachers are Maths Department, so check out that wing. Delaine –"

"I'll go with Mickey, he doesn't know the layout." And I really didn't want to be a third wheel during the grand Doctor and Sarah Jane reunion. Talk about a mood killer.

"Right. I'll check out the Headmaster's office," the Doctor said as he started to run up the stairs. "Anyway, be back here in ten minutes, try not to have a crisis without me."

With that, the Time Lord disappeared into the dark and Rose broke off towards the kitchens, leaving me and Mickey to head off into the tangle of hallways that led to the shared Maths and Science wing.

"So, uh, we haven't been introduced yet," Mickey said as we stopped at a break in the hallway. "I'm Mickey. Mickey Smith."

"Delaine." I scanned the hallway again. Empty, though I couldn't say how long it would stay that way if the Krillitane decided to make their move. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Better that I was in a position to put down any that got the idea.

"So how'd you meet the Doctor?" Mickey asked as we slunk down the hall, testing doors to see what was unlocked. Unfortunately for our snooping session, most of them were and the broom closet that wasn't was of questionable value to the investigation.

"Naked mole rat aliens tried to steal Christmas. Rose was at an ABBA concert."

With no response immediately forthcoming to that, I pushed on another door. Locked. If I really wanted to, I could force it open or use some fine point telekinesis to open it, but would it be worth it?

…well, if absolutely necessary, yes. Still, it would be a bitch to explain.

"You some sort of alien then?"

I spared Mickey a half second glance as I tested another door. "What makes you think that?"

"Ah… just something about you."

Smart boy. Much smarter than anyone gives him credit for. That or I forgot to keep my night vision turned off. It was hard to miss silvered eyes, even in the dark. "I was human last time I checked."

The next door I tested opened easily, though the chemistry lab on the other side was definitely not what we had come here for. Still, it was the first door that had led to a room that was at least a little useful, so Mickey started looking around anyway.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that we were looking for computers, so I started looking around as well.

Typical desk contents, typical lab gear, typical dissection tools –

A door creaked open and Mickey screamed as a wall of vacuum packed rats fell down on him.

I resisted the urge to facepalm. Typical fuck up right at the typical worst time. If stealth had ever been a part of this mission, it sure as hell wasn't now.

I should really give credit to the Doctor Who companion cardio program; it only took the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Rose a little under a minute to get to us and none of them acted the slightest bit winded by the effort.

"Find anything interesting?" the Doctor asked as he ducked in the door.

"Mickey can hit a high C," I deadpanned before I pointed down at the floor. "Also; that."

"Oh god," Rose cried as she saw the mess all over the floor. "Rats! Dozens of rats! Vacuum packed rats!"

"Screaming like a girl over a couple of rats? I expected better from you, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said, deftly stepping over the small pile and the fact that he was not surprised by Mickey screaming about the same thing. "Besides, I've seen bigger. Big enough to gnaw a man's leg off."

"Yeah, yeah, rats so big you had to take an elephant gun after them, I get the idea," Mickey spat. "They took me by surprise!"

"And your response was to scream like a little girl."

"It was dark and I was covered with rats!"

"I'm thinking nine, ten years old. Frilly skirt, pigtails…" the Time Lord continued. Mickey clutched at the back of his head, as if by merely speaking the word had somehow added pigtails to his hair.

"But why are there rats in a school?" Rose asked. "It doesn't make sense."

"For dissection, of course," Sarah Jane replied, a touch snippily. Ah, so Rose Tyler had employed her noted diplomatic tactics; namely, the complete absence of such. "It's a basic biology class… or perhaps you haven't gotten to that bit yet. How old are you?"

Aaah. Excellent.

Rose didn't even flinch. "Excuse me, but they don't do dissection in school anymore. They haven't done it for years. What, are you from the Dark Ages?"

The Doctor and Mickey looked back over to Sarah Jane, apparently ready for the return salvo. I, on the other hand, was ready to do something else.

"Excuse me –"

"They did dissection at my school," I interrupted, toeing a piebald rat as I did so. Probably would have been cuter if it wasn't dead. "Never heard anything about rats, but we did cow's eyes, pig's lungs, and cats."

There are a few ways to redirect people's attention. The best way is to drop some kind of bomb. Explosives would work, sure, but saying something too goddamn weird to ignore worked even better. Things too goddamn weird to ignore that just happened to be complete and total truth were simply the best material for said bombs.

"What?" Sarah Jane asked faintly incredulously.

"Second grade… oh, different system than you, so about age seven, we cut open cow's eyes in health class. They were all blue and shiny on the inside. I think they were… yeah, tapetum lucidum, that's what it was called. Real pretty stuff, all iridescent for the purpose of night vision," I continued in an artfully blasé tone after taking a moment to swirl my finger around the general shape of my own eye. "About two or three years after that were the pig's lungs, which we did in the cafeteria. Found a bit of food in ours, that wasn't particularly appetizing."

I started counting off on my fingers, more nonsense than any meaningful action. "Didn't do any in middle school, but I heard about some of the others people did. Earthworms, chicken legs, frogs. High school was supposed to be cats, but I skipped that class. Can't abide hurting a cat, even if it's already dead." I looked up, letting my eyes boggle a little before I dropped my voice into as close to the Fourth Doctor's I could get without someone realizing that the noise coming out of my mouth wasn't one it should have been capable of making. "I heard someone found kittens."

Mickey looked ready to have kittens himself, though everyone else settled for different combinations of disgusted and disturbed.

"What kind of school did you go to?" Sarah Jane asked, that incredulity returning with a side of revulsion.

The way I'd phrased it sort of did make it sound like some kind of serial killer training ground, didn't it?

"Rural America, where the sports get all the money, the arts get shafted, and the grade points, the attendance numbers, and the test scores are the only things that matter because that's what judges how much they get paid," I said before flashing a Cheshire grin that might have glowed in the dark. "Nothing particularly special."

"Anyway!" The Doctor interrupted. "While this conversation is very interesting, I would like to remind everyone that we did come here on a mission, which was…"

"Not die."

"No. Yes. More of a guideline, actually," the Time Lord said, shifting on his feet a bit. "Anyway, since Mickey's catlike tread couldn't have gone without notice, we really should leave… after I take a look around Finch's office."

Ducking out into the hallway, Rose and Sarah Jane quickly pulled head of the group as they resumed their passive-aggressive combat.

"I don't mean to be rude or anything, but who exactly are you?" Rose asked.

"Sarah Jane Smith. I used to travel with the Doctor."

I nudged Mickey. "Ten quid says the office is full of nasties."

"No bet," he said before casting a considering look at the bickering women. "Ten quid Rose tries to kill the bird before we leave school grounds."

Somewhere ahead of us, the blonde cut in with, "Oh. Well, he's never mentioned you."

I looked at Sarah Jane, who'd stopped giving Rose the dignity of eye contact. I was more on her side than anything, though how much of that I could grant to her being Sarah Jane or the other option being Rose fucking Tyler was up in the air.

"Oh, I must've done. Sarah Jane. Mention her all the time," the Doctor said weakly, his spiky hair seeming to wilt a little at the sudden spotlight on his silence.

"Hold on. Sorry. Never," Rose said around a vicious grin before she turned a corner.

"Does that count as a murder?"

"Feels like it should."

"What, not even once? He didn't mention me even once?" Sarah Jane asked as she turned around, her eyes darting to the Doctor and the hurt obvious on her face before she followed the blonde around the corner to the Headmaster's office.

"Not unless your name used to be Teagan or Adric."

Mickey sped up a bit, clapping a hand on the Doctor's shoulder. "Now, this may be the point where I would make a comment about 'the Missus and the Ex'," Mickey said, ignoring the annoyed glance the Doctor shot at him. "But I'd like to think I'm above that sort of pettiness. So I'll just settle for welcoming you to every man's worst nightmare."

With that, he giggled.

"And thank you ever so much for that," the Time Lord said as he pried the boy's fingers off his shoulder. "Now go bother with monkey business somewhere else."

Mickey shrugged before going to join Rose, Sarah Jane, and I at the door, where I'd taken over picking the lock.

"You're rather good at that," Sarah Jane noted.

"Practice," I said as the final tumbler shifted into place and the lock clicked open. That and the gentle application of telekinesis on the appropriate mechanisms to speed up the whole process. "And there we go."

We opened the door slowly, peering into the darkened interior of the room.

"Mmm, remember what you said, Rose?" the Doctor asked coolly as he looked up at the ceiling. "About teachers sleeping in the school?"

One of the Krillitane stretched its wings in its sleep, disturbing the calm slumber of its fellow next to it. Though it was hard to call from this angle, each one had to be about six feet tall with a wingspan of… what? Fifteen or eighteen feet? Either way, they were certainly nothing a normal human could take in straight combat.

"I'd say you're about right," he finished as he ushered us out of the room and towards the exit.

I doubted anyone besides me noticed the sound of leather wings following us to Sarah Jane's car.

Author's Notes

The updates have been coming a little quick on this one, haven't they? Well, part of that is that I have a bit of backlog on the material (though anything after School Reunion is far from done) and a burning need for people's approval. Call it the result of not getting enough praise for my creative endeavors as a child. Or teenager. Or just in general.

Six is love. Six is life. Six gets a better deal (and more character development) in the audios. The Wrong Doctors is a good example of that development. Unfortunately, the primary Doctor for this story was chosen by the roll of the dice (which I'm still a little annoyed about because the thing was unfairly weighted towards New Who), but I might do some omakes featuring other Doctors and some of Delaine's other selves. Depends on how the muse hits me, but I do have a few ideas.

And on the subject of Handy, Arashi, the word is 'spoilers'.

Yes, Uberch10, it was meant to be the Fourth. Basically, if jelly babies, yoyos, and being a troll come up, it's probably Four. Hooray for the interwebs, that incredible series of tubes, home of information and misinformation.

Lightsbane: Yep, the Interstellar Market chapter was all me.

Booklover: Yeah, I'm not the biggest Rose fan but I am trying to not… overplay her worst traits, because that just strikes me as lazy writing. Unfortunately, I'd say that neither School Reunion or Age Of Steel/Rise Of The Cybermen were highlights for her character (or Season 2 in general, but again, I have a really low opinion of Rose Tyler at the best of times) but I did cut out her most obnoxious bits from Tooth And Claw, so maybe I'll end up being able to pull that off in other places (where canon and my own original storylines allow).

There's also the fact that she and the primary POV character really don't like each other – the mental image I get when I think about them interacting is just two Sims doing the red negative signs at every turn –, so that's another aspect that colors the narrative. If Rose was the primary view point character, Delaine would not come across as likable as she is, since most of her humor and thought process is kept internal or shared with characters other than Rose.

Plus there's the fact that they don't have that much common ground between them, considering that Rose is about 19 years old, reactive and impulsive without regard to the consequences of such behavior where Delaine is 16,000+ years old and very aware of the damage her actions can do, physically or otherwise. They might come from similarish backgrounds originally (before Rose started travelling with the Doctor and before Delaine started on the whole jumping thing), but they really display how different their approaches to life are in the way they act, which will get highlighted more as the story continues. Even comparing the Delaines from this story and Shadow Savers (which is roughly 16,000 years back in Dimensions In Time Delaine's backstory and right at the beginning of her Jumpchain) should show a lot of character development between here and there, though I don't doubt that even early Delaine would dislike Rose on a deeply personal level.

I think the primary reason I'm able to cut Rose any slack at all is that she's a teenager and I remember quite strongly how good my decision making process and brain-to-mouth filter were at eighteen and nineteen (spoiler: not very), not to mention I've seen the dumb shit that teenagers will do in the name of 'love' (shout out to the random cousin who got knocked up by a guy she described as a gang member, dropped out of high school, kept the kid, and got married to him despite him STILL DESCRIBING HIM AS A GANG MEMBER AT THAT POINT).

But just because I understand it doesn't mean I have to like it.

The canned chocolate pudding sticks in my memory because they literally gave is little flat tins that we had to open ourselves (with little pull tabs) and the contents was… well, about thirteen or fourteen years after the fact, all I can remember is the… whatever that was in those cans was brown, smelled awful, had a liquid discharge, and that out of a cafeteria of maybe eighty or so kids, only one of them actually dared taste it and fell immediately ill afterwards.

On Wednesdays, we wear pink.

L-space (or Library-space) is a concept from the Discworld books, and is, to quote the l-space website, 'the ultimate portrayal of Pratchett's concept that the written word has powerful magical properties on the Discworld'. Basically, the idea is taking 'Knowledge equals Power' to a logical conclusion covered earlier in this chapter.

In short, if you get enough books in one concentrated space, space and time begin to warp.

Anyway, since the Discworld books are amazing (both in humor and content), I recommend them highly. GNU Terry Pratchett.

The Nac Mac Feegle (little blue men) may have also belonged to Terry Pratchett, but anyone asking them about who they belong to will be informed – possibly alongside receiving a good swift kick – that the Nac Mac Feegle have nae king, nae quin, nae laird, nae master, and correspondingly, nae owner and that they will not be deceived on this subject again on pain of many vicious headbuttings.

Regardless of ownership, the Wee Free Men do feature in a number of Mr. Pratchett's books.

Think I mentioned this before, but in a reposted chapter so there's a fair chance that a number of you missed how Delaine's got a version of the Seventh Doctor among her 'alters'. Long story short (the long one will be covered when I get to the Buffy fic in this series), Halloween happened.

Coccyx – tailbone. Also a minor reference to a conversation the Third Doctor, his companion Jo Grant, and the Master in the Time Monster (which started after Jo fell down and bruised her tailbone, the Doctor said 'I'm sorry about your coccyx', had to explain the word, and then the Master hijacked the TARDIS scanner to say 'I'm sorry about your coccyx too, Miss Grant').

With catlike tread, upon our prey we steal. In silence dread, our cautious way we feel. No sound at all, we never speak a word. A fly's footfall would be distinctly heard. – The Pirates Of Penzance, an opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, 1879. If you want to get a grasp of how loud that song is, look it up on Youtube.

Tarantara.

One last question; did anyone actually notice that one comment in the Doctor's final conversation with his selves? The 'I'm sure the young lady was interested in more than just a little petting' bit. I mean, I thought at least one person would have commented on that. Maybe the term 'petting' was too old-school, but the joke wrote itself.

Anyway, feed me [the reviews], Seymour.