Not very happy was hardly a good descriptive word for the Rutans. While Atlanta discovered that her Dad's old car had been unpleasantly slimed by Rutans leeching the energy out of the car, the Rutans discovered that they had just lost their only means of escape. Basically, they were stranded on Earth. Since the Doctor was nearly invariably correct, the Rutans' plan was to wipe out the population of Earth. If nothing else, it would give them pleasure, and if something else, it would weaken Earth's resistance to a later Rutan invasion.
The Doctor and Atlanta walked back to the shop in time to see poor, innocent people being electrocuted by what looked like Atlanta to be green blobs with tentacles – but she didn't think the Doctor would care for that description very much, so she kept it to herself.
"What can we do?" she asked the Doctor quietly. She didn't want to look inside the shop, though the Doctor seemed quite intent on following the scene to its bitter end.
"I'm trying to think," the Doctor whispered back. Atlanta sighed impatiently as another strangled, dying cry met her ears.
"Explosives?" she asked. The Doctor turned his head away from the massacre.
"Explosives?" he demanded. "Is that the only thing you can think of?"
Atlanta shrugged. "What else defeats a jelly monster?" Oops. There went her plan of keeping that description to herself.
To Atlanta's surprise, though, the Doctor laughed. "I'll have you know, Atlanta, when I last saw a Rutan we blew it up."
"Then why don't you now?" Atlanta asked impatiently. Another strangled cry and a dull thud as the body fell to the floor.
"Well, at the time the Rutan had already summoned the mother ship!" the Doctor snapped, all laughter missing. "These two, they can't do any real damage."
Atlanta eyed the Doctor steadily. "Do you know what this reminds me of?" she asked him angrily. "That night. The night... everything changed."
The Doctor wasn't sure what to say. He hadn't remembered it, of course, but Atlanta's entire life had collapsed five weeks ago. She always seemed so bold and confident.
Atlanta pursed her lips at the Doctor's silence, which she assumed was out of refusal to admit he'd lost an argument – pathetically short argument or not. In actual truth it was because he wasn't sure whether to agree with her or keep arguing.
"You're despicable, Doctor," she told him suddenly. "You would have all the town die."
"And you would have all the Rutans die," the Doctor retorted, but he chose rather the wrong moment as a young girl – maybe six or seven – was the latest to scream her death. Evidently, the shop had been rather crowded.
Atlanta was infuriated. "Explosives," she told him stubbornly.
"Why?"
Atlanta shook her left arm angrily. "Because we need to save the town!" she snapped angrily.
"There are more subtle ways to defeat an alien invasion, Atlanta."
"Like what?"
"Heat."
Atlanta paused. "But it's so cold here," she protested.
"Exactly," the Doctor grinned. "The Rutans sent out a fog to make the Earth more habitable for them."
"How do we turn up the heat?" she asked, bewildered. "You can't just go up and say, 'Hi, Mr. Sun, we'd like it a bit hotter here please.'" She paused. "Well, I didn't think we could."
"There's a very obvious source of heat," the Doctor told her, grinning.
"And what's that?"
"Fire." He withdrew a matchbox from his pocket.
"What are you going to do, set the building alight?" Atlanta asked. "That's barely better than my idea."
"So you admit it is, at least, barely better then," the Doctor told her. The screaming inside ceased. "Quickly, before the Rutans leave and find us."
Atlanta sullenly took the matchbox, struck a match, and threw it at the familiar shop. "Won't that also kill them?" she asked. "Why were you making such a big deal out of my plan when yours was barely any different?"
"Barely any different? It was very different!"
"How?"
"I made it up."
Atlanta rolled her eyes and the Doctor grinned. "Come on," he told her, "I'd rather like to return to my TARDIS now."
It took several hours for the two to get back to Melbourne. The main reason, of course, was because the Doctor had gone on several detours, and it was midnight by the time they finally got there.
"That was the most unexpected Tuesday I've ever had," Atlanta yawned. The Doctor grinned.
"You'll be fine now," the Doctor told her. "We repelled the second invasion."
Atlanta paused guiltily. By virtue of the fact that she'd had a six-hour journey home, she'd had a lot of time to think about things.
"I'm not sure I want to stay here," Atlanta said almost apologetically.
The Doctor thought about this. "You want to join Sarah and I on the TARDIS, don't you?" he asked curiously.
Atlanta nodded. "I've got nothing here," she protested. "It was too dangerous to go school after year 10. The money my parents left won't last forever. Everyone I know died five weeks ago."
The Doctor grinned. "Well, I'll have to ask Sarah about it. Come on, Atlanta."
Atlanta gave the Doctor a grin of her own as she followed him into the TARDIS and it disappeared.
