Good Intentions

888

"Wha' you mean we can't leave?" The dark skinned woman asked as she looked at the two aliens standing to one side of the control room.

"They have the TARDIS locking mechanism…" Missy replied shrugging her shoulders slightly. "Can't unlock a lock that isn't there and the dimensional field beyond is completely inaccessible…" She looked over to the two other humans, as the rotund egg man observed them. "I presume they are fine…"

"Yeah, just some knocks to the head…" the android said turning and adjusting the pair of spectacles resting on his nose.

The two aliens seemed to be conferring with one another. Missy narrowed her eyes. "You two, stop gossiping there in the corner…"

"We were talking to each other…" the alien on the left said its face moving, but its mouth covered in a dense layer of hair or possibly microfilament tentacles. The rest of its head was round almost tear-drop shaped, with no notable features other than a soft fleshy-gray complexion and tiny dark eyes.

"Well then, do you have something to share with the rest of the class then?" Missy said getting up, bracing against her umbrella as she did walking in a stately manner forward, her dress swishing along with her. "Maybe what you are doing, and why you seem to have the temerity to think you can keep me here. Why did you attack those two giblets over there?"

"Humans have in the past, caused problems when they have come to our world for molybdenum, we won't allow it again." The lead alien said rather confidently. "None of you will be allowed to leave the area of the Sensephere…."

"Hang on! We've not done anything wrong!" The woman said walking forward.

"And some of us aren't even human!" The egg-man said rushing forward.

"Well, you aren't completely human; I saw the bargain myelin sheathes the old boy bought for your maintenance…" Missy said, sniffing slightly before turning her attention to the aliens. "Sensephere…really…hmmm." She walked closer to the two aliens. "So, you won't let us leave, you're just going to leave us here, to what, rot?"

"No, you will all come with us, a habitat has been established, you will be cared for by us for the rest of your lives." The lead alien replied.

"I don't think so!" The woman said quickly.

"Too right, Bell! I knew you would be my favorite." Missy said. She turned to the robot and silently mouthed 'sorry' to him.

"Bill-" Bill said narrowing her eyes.

"Hmm, dear?" Missy replied turning her attention to Bell.

"My name's, Bill, not Bell..." the woman said in annoyance.

"No one cares, really…" Missy said rolling her eyes and shaking her head. "That favorite spot just opened up, you still got a chance golem." The robot was about the protest but Bill stopped him. She turned her attention back to the aliens. "As...Bill...said we're not staying here. After all, my needs are quite refined and I doubt you could satiate them! And I simply won't be kept hostage on – ugh – the Sensephere."

"You will do what we tell you, because you have no choice!" the alien retorted.

Missy quirked an eyebrow. She walked forward, she stopped short, hung her umbrella on her arm and gently clutched at would have been the lapels of her blouse top. "Now see, there, honey, you've gone and overplayed your hand. Because I'm most certainly not going with you anywhere…and you are most certainly not confining me, or my associated lessers…"

"Hey now!" the robot yelped.

"You will come with us!" The lead alien repeated before Missy could respond to the egg-man. "We do not wish you harm, but you cannot be permitted to leave the Sensephere…and you will not get assistance from the others."

"Yeah but we don't need help from the others, you know that!" Bell said.

"We know that you can lock doors, we can unlock them..." the alien stated.

"Oh, see now you've gravely underestimated me." Missy said as she stepped forward, umbrella deftly dropped down to be clutched by her hand as she walked and put herself very close to the lead alien. "Now listen to me, quite closely, I'm only saying this once and that's because I'm trying, very hard to use my words." Her eyes got icy. "You've taken some of my stuff and you will return it to me, or you will find me quite capable of making you wish you had never taken my stuff in the first place. I can be quite inventive when roused, and be so in many gruesome and untoward ways."

"You are in no position to threaten u-" The lead alien started. He then gargled and winced before staggering backward.

"Now see, there you are wrong again." Missy said as she pulled her arm back revealing the dagger hidden in her sleeve. The other alien started to balk, before Missy swept the umbrella up. A bolt of laser energy lanced through the alien. She smirked slightly before continuing, "Firstly, that wasn't a threat…it was a promise…secondly-"

"STOP PROGRAM!" Came an angry Scottish voice, well it was a Scottish voice the anger really need not have been stated.

The aliens, Bell, the android and the humans disappeared; the control room itself wobbled revealing the innards of the vault. Missy turned, her umbrella and the dagger also disappearing as the projection program ceased. She narrowed her eyes as she watched the flailing jacket and plaid pants bouncing towards her attached to the body of craggy old man with far too little hair styling.

"What? I had the situation under control the humans and Ted and Bill were quite safe!" Missy remonstrated loudly.

"You killed the Sensorites!" The man retorted looking at her agog. "How did you even get those things?"

"Well, you're not the only one capable of coding a matrix program…" Missy said as she swished past the man. "A girl's got to protect herself; it's a rough universe out there!"

"I said no one could die!" the man retorted.

"No one did, dear, no one did!" Missy replied, walking towards the dais and sitting at the piano bench that formed there. The man narrowed his eyes, his eyebrows doing a furious rendition of a monochrome heath edge as he pointed to the floor where the simulacrums of the Sensorites had lain. "What?"

"Missy, are you even taking any of this seriously?" The man asked as he pinched the bridge of his nose, shook his head and turned away. "We've been at this for weeks, months, you're nearly there…but you have to take this seri-"

"How can I!?" Missy retorted angrily, standing up. "This isn't real; I can see the planck pings in the matrix reconstruction! For crying out loud, when's the last time you were in one of the human space ships of this era!? No one uses analog knobs in that century! And why the heck does everything in the simulation have some weird grayscale filter over it! And really….Sensorites? The wet-noodle half-cousins of the Ood? About as threatening as a dozen plastic spoons, and a third as charming…if these are the challenges you're presenting me then, no, I'm not taking this seriously! How can I? Give me Daleks, Cybermen, heck give me a Sycorax with a broadsword…"

"You have to walk before you can-"

"This isn't walking, Sensorites aren't walking pace. Sensorites are rolling on the ground unable to maintain proper continence." Missy retorted, her crystal blue eyes narrowing. "How stupid do you think I am?"

"It's not stupidity that I'm worried about." The man replied. He walked to the edge of the dais.

"You said it yourself I'm there, I just need to take it seriously." Missy said as she stepped to the edge and looked down at the man. "Doctor, there's only one way for me to take it seriously…there's only one true test to see if I'm truly ready." She looked at him intensely; she put her hand on his chest. "You know in your hearts it is true."

The Doctor broke eye contact. "You'll need observers, and companions." Missy started to protest. The Doctor's eyes shot to meet hers with a level of ferocity that Missy in her quiet moments might have called quite 'exciting'. "No, if I'm going to let you out in the wild, then you're doing this my way. Everyone, has to stay alive, you are not allowed to kill anyone. You have to take it seriously."

"Incontrovertibly." Missy said looking at the Doctor as she took a step backwards and curtsied. "I will accede to all your rules and maxims."

The man narrowed his eyes. "You have to take it seriously…"

"Deadly-" Missy said lifting her head to make eye contact.

"I have to set things up…it may take some time." The Doctor said as he took a tenuous step backwards.

"Take all the time in the world, dear, I have nowhere else to be." Missy said as she sat back down to the piano. Her fingers danced quickly on the keys, she thought of what it would be like to be in the open world, outside a TARDIS or a vault.

And as she thought the song under her fingers shifted the fingers slowed, other thoughts, faces, names, places. She could feel them swelling as the song slowly evolved into a dirge. She stopped playing and found the depths of the feelings and at the bottom she could feel the warmth. She opened her eyes, and a tear slid down. She was ready. She would show him, show him that they truly weren't that different after all, and that she had become ever so much like him, even if he couldn't see it quite yet.