Practical Learning

888

Romana rustled the bits of reports and responses to reports and investigative inquiries that littered her desk. Across the desk the Registrar sat. His wrinkled lips pushed thinly together. His robes were old and graying. His nose was sharp, vulturine; his eyes were tiny, glinting flints of obsidian, his face drawn around the cheeks like great frozen lava streams, grayed and pebbled with age.

"The rules on this sort of thing are clear, Madame President!" The old man said. His beady eyes narrowed. "Don't think I don't know the nature of what the child really is. The old blowhard's plan was good enough to get around the letter of the rules, but I'm not stupid, and now that the child has committed this sort of-"

"That is enough, Registrar." Romana replied sharply, as she balanced her temple against her finger tips and looked at the records in front of her, detailing the allegations. "I am aware of the rules."

"Then I will make due progress on the paperwork." The Registrar said standing slowly, clasping an ancient and twisted cane that was more a limb of an old tree than a walking stick.

He turned and walked laboriously towards the president's office doors which hummed open. On the other side was a younger man dressed in green velveteen jacket. The Registrar and the man met eyes; the Registrar grimaced and snorted in disapproval as the man in green made room for him and he sloughed forward, cane thumping as he went.

The man walked into the office stopping in front of the desk. Romana took a deep breath as she rifled through forms. The man deposited a data rod firmly on the desktop surface.

"There, everything you need from the Record of Rassilon." The man said in a stern tone. "And if that's all…I'll leave you to it."

The man started to leave.

"Doctor…" Romana said quietly. "I may need another favor from you…."

The man stopped, he didn't look back. "You're accruing quite a number of debts today."

"I believe this debt may pay for itself in the long run…"

"You really have become part of the political elite…" The Doctor smirked, turning to Romana.

"Doctor, are you travelling with anyone at the moment?" Romana asked as she steepled her hands in front of her.

888

"How could you!?" Toval wandered back and forth in front of the table, seemingly orbiting a pair of invisible masses in a tight figure eight. His hands clenched and unclenched into loose fists as he shook his head. He stopped and turned abruptly. "We worked so hard to get you in and then you do…you do-THIS?"

"I-I was defending myself, Keeva and his friends were-"

"I don't care!" Toval shouted, his face screwing up into a twisted contortion.

"Toval-" Rosat said, her voice firmly calm.

Toval's head swept to his wife. "Rosat, they have that kid in the emergency regeneration ward, sweet Pythia - if the child dies…" Toval returned to pacing, shaking his head. "House Estrechron is one of the most powerful families on Gallifrey; Ossitrix, the boy's father, is on the Education Committee in the lower house of Cardinals…"

"We will cross that bridge when we get to it." Rosat said, again calmly, though a waver did form in the back of her throat. She turned to the teenage child. "You have to tell us everything. Why were they attacking you, Az?"

The boy fidgeted under his mother's gaze. "They-they've been bullying me since I started at the academy." He looked away, reached up and his fingers gently ran down the middle of his forehead. "Called me spike, and crag-head, I ignored it at first. But then I started scoring better than them on exams. And it got worse."

Toval stopped pacing and looked to Azkineet. "Worse, how?"

"They asked me to do their homework for them, help them cheat on the tests…" Az said. "I didn't want to, but when I refused they'd find me, and beat me up when there wasn't anyone around."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Rosat said, she looked quickly to Toval who had a very unhappy frown on his face.

"Who'd believe me? Dad's right, Keeva's dad is connected…they'd never listen to me." Azkineet said, looking to his mother.

"We'd believe you." Toval said, kneeling down in front of Azkineet. His hands gently clasped the boy's. "I may not be a Cardinal in the lower house, but you're old man isn't a slouch when it comes to soft power…"

"I didn't want to cause you problems…" Azkineet replied.

"So how did we get to what happened three days ago?" Rosat asked, with a concerned gentleness.

"I was tired of cheating for them-" Azkineet said, he looked over to his mother. "We had this big, assignment, the kind of thing that really impacts the final score, and they had forced me to do their work for them, and so I did it – wrong."

"Wrong?" Toval asked.

"Yeah I just wrote a bunch of nonsense, made lots of errors, put in some obviously bad information, I even plagiarized." Azkineet nodded, he looked up. "And, well, it made Keeva mad, when the teacher called him out for it. I knew it would be trouble but part of me hoped it would get him kicked from the Academy."

"So that afternoon is when they jumped you in the campus garden?" Rosat asked.

Azkineet nodded. "I like to help the gardener with Tempus Luna blooms…" The boy looked to his father, tears started to well up in his eyes, he started to shake slightly. "I didn't mean to, really, but there were four of them and Keeva had me pinned down and the others were kicking me, I just wanted to get him off of me, wanted them to leave me alone…and the trowel was in my hand and then the next thing I knew Keeva was on the ground bleeding and convul-"

"That's enough-" Toval said quietly gently putting his forehead against Azkineet's. "That's quite enough…" Toval sat back on his haunches and patted the boy on the shoulder. "Go to your room and lay down, your mother and I have much to talk about."

Azkineet nodded quietly and stood walking towards his bedroom. The door slid open and then closed behind him, but he did not lay down, rather resting near the door, his ear against it.

"It's clearly self-defense." He heard his mother say, muffled through the door as she was.

"It doesn't matter. Keevestrechron will not end up in trouble, nor will his cronies; you know how it is, Rosat." His father said. "The Academy is one of the oldest institutions, and it has all the problems all the other parts of Old Gallifrey has. His family will see to it that any protestation of self-defense be shouted down or ignored. Best case scenario Az is kicked out of the Academy, worst case scenario, if this Keeva kid dies…and everything else comes out, we could lose Az, we might even end up in some penal facility."

"I won't let that happen!" His mother said. He heard the chair slide across the floor. His mother's voice trembled. "I won't let them take Az away from us."

"Them upstairs aren't likely to let this pass. And I may have some connections but I can't fight a potential murder investigation in relation to the son of a Cardinal." Azkineet's father said.

There was a chime from the front door. For an epoch of a moment silence fell on the other side of Azkineet's door. Azkineet held his breath. The moment was punctuated by a second chime. Azkineet heard his father stumble towards the door, and then there was a loud shout of shock. Some sort of great conglomeration unfurled as there were many voices of shock and the sound of his father bumbling and rambling. Azkineet opened the door of his room and rushed outside, half prepared to fight whatever intruder had come either for him or his parents, and as he burst into the room he stopped short.

His father was standing straight as a board, his arms glued to his side. His mother was bowing slightly. Azkineet's eyes moved to in the direction of his mother's bow. In the antechamber of the front door were three people. Two were men dressed unmistakably in the red and gold armor of the Chancellery Guard; the third, a woman, was about as tall as his mother. She had short blonde hair, a youthful pink face and sharp blue eyes. She was dressed in white and pink robes, with gold etching throughout, cinched tightly in the middle to give the robes more of an appearance of a dress than robes. She had a bemused look of frustration on her face as scanned the room and her eyes fell upon him.

"You must be Azkineet." The woman said quietly with a smile. She then frowned as she looked to his mother and father. "Do stand at ease, or better yet sit at your table. I'm the one showing up unexpected after all."

Azkineet's father fumbled and seemed trapped between two actions, before the woman in white urged him with a sharp hand motion and he melted back to a chair at the table. His mother already had slid into a chair but was still sitting quite stiffly as her eyes refused to leave the woman in white.

"Apologies Ma'am, I may call you Ma'am, or would you prefer Lady President, or Madam, or-" Azkineet's father stammered.

"I would prefer, Romana, as it is the form of my name I've become, enamored with." The woman said quietly, if slightly annoyed. "If you must, you may call me Fred, if Romana is too much for you to handle, but that would be most silly, and to be quite frank, it's not my favorite term of address."

"Yes Ma-err, Romana." Toval said as he fidgeted with his hands, as if he'd never had them before and didn't know what to do with tall those pesky fingers.

Romana walked forward, the two guards – didn't. She sat at the table between Azkineet's father and mother. She lifted her hand and beckoned Azkineet to sit at the table with them.

"I have some good news and some bad news, and some more good news." Romana said, leaning forward slightly. "Good news Keevestrechron will live, the medical staff were able to figure out what happened to him, apparently there was some material on the trowel that he had a severe hemo-inflammatory reaction to. Bad news is the Registrar is quite animated about all of this, he is not a very forgiving man, at the best of times, and the Estrechron house has significant power over him…"

"You have to understand, Lady Romana, Azkineet was only defending himself…if-" Toval started.

"No, I don't 'have to understand'," Romana said lifting her hand to cut off Toval. She sat back slightly and looked at Azkineet, "That's the wonderful thing about understanding; it's a kindness, an empathy. And a person in my position it's a kindness that can readily be rescinded in times of duress and demand, and is sweetest when given in the freedom and fullness of one's hearts."

Both Toval and Rosat seemed crestfallen by this turn in demeanor. Romana took a deep breath.

"However, reading the reports, and knowing Keev and having gone to school with his father, I am of the opinion to believe Azkineet's claims and I do – understand. But the Academy is largely out of my hands. The Registrar is a weird position of Gallifreyan law that, within its narrow purview, seems to supersede even the Presidency, no matter how horrible its decisions are."

"So you have come to inform us, that Azkineet is not to finish his Academic training…" Rosat said, lowering her head and sighing.

"He will not be welcomed back to the Academy, if that's what you mean, yes." Romana replied, as she threaded her fingers together in front of her, a clever smile forming on her face. "However, I didn't become President of the High Council just on my pretty face." Romana leaned forward. "I must say Azkineet's grades were exemplary, especially considering he was doing them what, three times over? I think Azkineet represents the very best of what Gallifrey could be, if we tried, and there are special provisions in the rules, for those looking to achieve the rank of Time Lord, to do so through, let us call it 'practical learning'." Romana turned to the two guards. "Go, get him…"

"Practical learning?" Rosat asked.

"It's very rare, but on occasion there have been times when the High Council or the President have allowed some to finish their Academy training not through course work at the Academy but through field training experiences with a mentor, so to speak." Romana said, and then she smiled. "I availed myself of similar training when I was younger and I thought your son could use the same opportunity."

The two guards returned with a third man, dressed in a velveteen green jacket. The man walked forward and smiled to Azkineet.

"Hello, I am the Doctor-" The man said as he extended his hand to the boy.