Rose

Frenemies

Within three minutes, there had been rows about where to go. Ten tried to insist they stay as one big group, but when everyone decided to go to a different section first he was overruled and they split off into smaller groups, none bigger than three, but Rose hadn't been paying attention. All she knew was she'd ended up stuck with Clara. And Jenny. Through one way or another, Ten and Eleven had decided to split off, taking Jack with them and heading to the bottom floor. Rose and Clara were doing their best to ignore Jenny, but it was proving tedious.

"You can't fool me, I'm a Time Lady. I know you're not friends, you were gonna split up as soon as you were out of my sight," she said.

"Jenny, go get some sleep," said Rose.

"Sleep? I'm a Time Lady, I don't need sleep," she said, "I already slept anyway."

"Did you? Going by what Jack's been saying, you sleeping isn't at all what happened," Rose said, and for a moment she thought the Doctor's daughter was going to give her a face full of fist. She was wrong. She got a faceful of palm. Jenny had slapped her, and her face was stinging.

"Deserved that," said Jenny. Rose raised her arm to punch, not caring that Ten might be a tiny bit annoyed if she clobbered his daughter, but something was stopping her.

"Don't hit her!" said Clara, pulling Rose's arm back.

"Why?!" Rose demanded, fighting against Clara, who was definitely the weaker of the two of them, needing two hands to restrain just one of Rose's as Jenny on looked, smirking vengefully.

"She's not worth it," said Clara.

"You're just scared to hit a girl," Jenny said. Rose and Clara both stopped and squinted at her.

"Are you drunk?" Rose asked. Jenny definitely looked out-of-it, and more than a little clammy. And she didn't appear too hungover, unlike her father, who had been complaining of a headache all morning.

"No, how can I be drunk? I've slept, Rose," said Jenny.

"Sleeping doesn't cure drunkenness," said Rose.

"I am not in the least bit drunk," said Jenny, finger wagging. She wasn't slurring, but she turned around and almost collapsed into a bin, which got a lot of funny looks cast in their direction.

"Oh my stars you are!" said Clara. "What if we get kicked out?"

"Why would we get kicked out? We're not rummaging through a bin," said Rose, nodding at Jenny, whose head and arms were all deep in the nethers of the space bin.

"Maybe it's illegal or something. They've probably got a reputation to keep up," said Clara, eyeing someone nearing them who looked suspiciously like security. Just as they were concocting a cover for their drunk friend, the man mooched over and flashed a fancy silver badge.

"Mall security," he said.

"'Mall'? Where are you from, America?" Clara asked.

"Yep, and where might you be from? I don't know that accent," he said. He sounded Texan, but if Texan was still Texan a few hundred thousand years in the future, Rose didn't know.

"I'm from... Hoth..." she said meekly.

"Hoth? Never heard of it."

"Really? It's very icy. There was a battle there, too... Against the Empire," she said. Rose was highly confused.

"Which Empire?"

"The... Imperial... Empire..?" she said. Rose realised what she was talking about and stomped on her foot.

"Are you making this up?"

"No! It was a battle in some wars... in the stars..."

"'Star Wars'? That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. You look lost. Want a guided tour?" he said. Rose stepped away, the guy (whoever he was) was getting way too close to Clara, Rose knew if Eleven was here a storm would be kicking up about now.

"Her husband works here, he's just downstairs with his brother now. He already showed us around this area. We were just taking Jenny here back to them," Rose said coldly, motioning to Jenny, who had knocked the bin over so it's contents scattered all over the floor.

"Really? Well you and... Jenny... go on ahead. I'll stay here with Hoth Girl, show here some of the best spots on this floor," he reached for Clara's arm, but Clara managed to step back, feign a slip, and kick him sharply in an unmentionable place. They grabbed one of Jenny's arms each as the guy swore and buckled behind them, running off to find an elevator.

"Don't touch me... Frenemies..." said Jenny like she had just thought of some genius insult. Why had nobody else noticed she was still completely smashed and could hardly walk straight? Rose was glad they hadn't strayed too far from the TARDIS, and that she had a key.


"Well, whaddaya know. There's a non-human slimeball everywhere you go nowadays," said Rose as they entered the food country, so aptly named because it was probably as big as a country with high speed platforms whizzing about to your chosen restaurant. There were hundreds of them, and the closest one without anyone there was at least a five minute walk, and there were already others headed that way. This was just one small hall, the actual food places weren't even in this room.

"It's gonna be ages until we get some food," said Clara.

"Not with this," Rose waved the battered leather wallet she'd swiped from Ten's pocket, opening it to reveal a blank piece of paper, psychic paper. "We're undercover maintenance."

"Excuse me, we're going to have to commandeer this pod-thingy," said Clara to the couple at the front of the longest (and closest) line. They were both stood straight as sticks with expressionless faces, addressing the man curtly despite his rude attitude which they were about to discover.

"Why? You're lying, you're just queue-bargers," said the bloke angrily.

"No. We're maintenance," said Rose, flashing the paper at him.

"Ah, maintenance."

"Spot inspection," said Clara.

"Yep, I've heard about these. Take the Whooshform," he stepped back and allowed them onto the floaty thing, which was apparently a 'Whooshform'. It sounded like a brand, then Rose realised it was a brand, a logo stamped on the glass below their feet proved that. The logo had the product name splashed in a spectrum of colours in a comet's tail, and in the tiny comet itself was TM, the symbol that it was a trademark brand. Some things never changed.

"Right... How do we work these?" Rose whispered to Clara, they were both staring blankly at the selection, which was all garbled, spacey words.

"Planets? Systems?" Clara suggested.

"I don't know any of them," Rose whispered, trying to look official, like she were examining something.

"Look, there's one of those 'I'm feeling lucky' buttons you get on Google searches," Clara pointed out. Before Rose really knew what was happening the button had been tapped on the strange, holographic touch-screen. It was very futuristic, but somehow Rose found it hard to focus on that as she tried not to scream since they were zipping through the air at a thousand miles an hour. It reminded Rose fondly of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which Ten had made her watch at Christmas after she had inquired about what he meant when he said 'very Arthur Dent', regarding saving the world in pyjamas.

They stopped outside a restaurant. That was all Rose knew. There were chairs and tables and everything was blue and seemingly themed around the sea, but the name wasn't even in English. It took the translation matrix a moment to decipher it. They stepped off the Whooshform, and it shot away again, pulled along by stiff, horizontal cables.

"Fruits of the Sea?" Rose stated the name of the place. Clara seemed to be paying more attention to the decor rather than the name though, but glanced up when Rose read it out.

"That's what they call seafood in France," Clara said, frowning. "Doesn't look French to me."

"Well whatever. It could take a millennium to find a decent place in here, let's just order what we understand." They agreed this was the best option and went inside and found menus, in the same paper-in-plastic displays above the counter you got in McDonald's. Was it a chain store? The person behind the desk looked human enough, at least.