A/N: Many thanks for those of you who are sticking around despite my being such a slow updater.
Spoiler: not a single bit of this is mine.
Doctor Who – The Wandering Wolf
VIII. Partners in Crime
Had someone told a younger Donna Noble that she would one day break the law in order to investigate a possible supernatural incident, she'd have laughed in their face, shot a biting retort and barked at them to let her get back to her wedding plans. The younger Donna Noble, however, had yet had to find out her betrothed was only leading her by the nose to what should have been her death. She had not yet been the unwitting tool in an alien plot to devour all life on Earth.
And she had not yet been saved by a 'weird travelled human' going by the name of Rose Tyler, who had stayed in touch with her for a little over a year, until Donna's father had died. Rose had almost entirely vanished from Donna's life since the day of the burial, not saying a word about the reason she'd given up on her style as a pink, purple and blonde whirlwind, and why the last time they'd met the young woman had become a monochromatic figure who acted less cheerful than an undertaker on the job. A figure Donna supposed she could say she was on the hunt for.
In a very roundabout way, by walking into the lobby of a large business' headquarters and flashing expired HSE ID to their security so that they'd let her in for an investigation.
"Donna Noble, Health and Safety" she snapped at the SP. The man stepped aside just enough to let her through, and Donna walked in like she owned the place. She kept up with that attitude all the way to the conference room where Adipose Industries' CEO would be giving a presentation about a miracle pill guaranteeing loss of weight without diet or exercise. Something which sounded just a bit too good to be true for Donna, and as good a lead as any to unearth the type of oddity her strangest friend would be likely to get involved with.
Donna didn't notice that, above and behind her, hidden in the shadows of the projection booth, Rose Tyler was already doing just that.
"The Adipose capsule is composed of a synthesised mobilising lipase, bound to a large protein molecule" a computer-voice explained as a woman all in black with short cropped white hair and wearing sunglasses barged in uninvited and plopped herself down in the seat next to the projectionist.
"Who are you?" the young man asked quietly.
"Hold on", the woman in black replied, holding up a finger, while her other hand came to rest on a console and started drumming, making the man uncomfortable. Then the woman snorted. "Love a good technobabble. That one's rubbish, though."
"What's rubbish?"
"This presentation."
"How would you know?"
"Studied a fair bit of biochemistry when I was younger?"
The young man shifted uncomfortably. "Who are you anyway?"
"Thought you'd never ask." Rose held out her psychic paper. "Marion Smith, Health and Safety, workplace inspector."
"Oh." The man cleared his throat. "And, uh, it's a dark room, why the sunglasses?"
"That thing you're making run is a video projector. I'm photophobic."
Rose propped herself back up and walked out, never noticing that Donna Noble was sitting amid the audience below.
Donna's next steps took her down to a telemarketing open space – as good a place as any to try and find a lead. A list of customers would be a nice start. Getting in a bit of harmless flirting with a pretty young man would be a plus.
She sat down next to her pick, flashed her old card, smiled and whispered a quick "don't mind me". And he didn't seem to mind.
Rose's next steps also took her down to a telemarketing open space – as good a place as any to get a couple more leads. She plopped herself down unceremonially on a chair next to a young woman in the middle of a call, flashing her psychic paper and whispering a quick "don't mind me".
She peeked at the computer screen in front of the young woman, then spotted the small, pill-shaped golden pendant in its casing on the desk, and leaned forward to swipe the box towards her; the young woman pushed it, explaining at the same time for her customer that it was made of eighteen carat gold and came as a gift for ordering a three-week course of pills – for forty-five pounds.
Not ten metres and two booth rows back, Donna was also looking at one of those pill-shaped pendants, and frowned a bit as she listened to the sales pitch that describe them – there was just no way Adipose industries would ever be making money if they gave away eighteen carat gold pendants for forty-five pounds.
"I'll just need to keep this for testing" she said after the young man had finished his call, all thoughts of flirting forgotten. "And I also need a list of your customers. Could you print it off?"
"I suppose so" the young man replied. "It'll have to wait a little, our boss is coming down for a quick briefing."
"Might as well listen to her" Donna said. "I'll just sit there."
Two rows ahead, the young woman next to Rose had finished her call and now addressed the "health inspector".
"They look a bit gaudy, don't they?"
Rose chortled. "And that customer was asking you for a pen instead – either she's observant or she's really dense. Either way, I'll have to keep the pendant, got to see what the not-gold is made of."
"No problems for me. But you'll have to take those shades off for a better look" the young woman said playfully. "Not that this isn't a good look on you, Inspector Smith."
Rose grinned back. "Thanks. Can't help wearing them, though, I'm photophobic. Any chance I could take a peek at a customer list?"
"Maybe later, we've got the boss coming down for a talk."
"That would explain why this place has been going quieter."
Earlier in the day, Matron Cofelia of the Five Straighten Classabindi Nursery Fleet had been slightly amused by the investigative journalist who was trying to prove there couldn't be good science behind the Adipose pills – there was, just well beyond the benighted primitive's comprehension – but since then, mild enjoyment had given way to severe annoyance. The report on the number of seeds successfully distributed showed the Matron she was very far from reaching the target set for her by the Adipose. It was a bit late for the Matron to address her own errs – "Greater London" was turning out to be somewhat less fertile ground than "New York City" might have been – and she wasn't going to stay long enough to convince her human investors (held in complete ignorance of her real objectives) to branch beyond the area where they'd agreed to launch the Adipose pills for a test run. Notably the lead investor, a rail-thin man she'd once suspected of being another nonhuman infiltrator because of his antiquated speech and unhealthy fascination with a human nanny, but was really a dangerously out-of-touch human who was very particular about securing his early returns on investment in pounds rather than in dollars.
In her cover position as CEO, there was very little the Matron could do to branch elsewhere without her patsy investors' blessings; but her employees she could pressure. Starting with the telemarketers. It wasn't as if she cared about them withstanding an impossible workload anyway, she'd be gone long before they'd get around to suing her for abuse of their worker rights.
"Excuse me everyone, if I could have your attention" she said in a clipped tone as she took place at one end of the open telemarketing space. The workers stood, and she carried on.
"On average, you're each selling forty Adipose packs per day." The Matron looked around sternly. "It's not enough. I want a hundred sales per person per day. And if not, you'll be replaced. Because if anyone's good in trimming the fat, it's me. Now, back to it." Another stern look, and she stayed behind for another couple of minutes as the workers sat back down and the open space began to hum again with the sound of their activity.
She never noticed she had two people not employed by her lying low behind the dividers.
Rose smiled encouragingly at the woman she'd been hiding next to. "Never mind her, upping quotas by a hundred and fifty percent in one go for a whole floor is the wrong thing to do in front of a health and safety inspector. She's gonna be out of a job long before the rest of you are."
"That's good, because I really don't see how I could sell a hundred packs a day" the young woman replied with relief. Then she grinned. "You said something about a customer list?"
"Would love to get one."
The telemarketer tapped a few keys, and then tore a piece of paper she scribbled on. "You'll need a code to get the printer to shell out the list – it's over there, right by the plant."
"Thanks" Rose said, taking the piece of paper. "There's two numbers."
"The second number is mine. Call me after work. I promise I'll keep the lights dimmed."
Rose suppressed a laugh. "Sorry love, ongoing investigation. Can't get involved until I'm done."
"I can wait for a couple of days."
Rose grinned and took off for the printer. She was gone before Donna made her own way to it.
Rose kept the sunglasses on when she went to visit a customer she'd picked at random, one Roger Davey, who turned out to be a tall and rather thin middle-aged man, one not all that happy to see someone turn up at his door in the evening. The time traveller put on her best grin, and flashed her psychic paper.
"Sorry to bother you, Mister Davey – Marion Smith, follow-up rep for Adipose Industries. Do you have a few minutes?"
The man's eyes had opened wide at the mention of Adipose Industries, and his expression lightened. "Sure, come in."
The man led her to a rather dreary and narrow sitting room, whose state confirmed for Rose the man was a bachelor. He plopped himself down unceremoniously on a chair facing opposite his curtained windows, and gestured for Rose to take the one facing the TV.
"You're keeping your sunglasses on?" he asked as his guest got seated.
"Yeah, severe photophobia" Rose offered. "Anyway, I'm not here to talk about me. How long have you been on the pills?"
"For two weeks now. I've lost fourteen kilos."
Rose's eyebrows popped out from behind the sunglasses. "Fourteen days, fourteen kilos?"
Roger smiled. "Yes, one kilo a day exactly. I wake up, and it's disappeared overnight." The smile turned into a grimace. "Well, technically speaking, it's gone by ten past one in the morning."
"You've been weighing yourself every night at ten past one?" Rose asked curiously.
"That's the time I get woken up every night, ten minutes past one, bang on the dot without fail."
"Neighbours?"
"No, burglar alarm." Now Roger looked annoyed. "That's the time it goes off."
"But no burglars?"
"Not one. I've given up looking. I've had experts in, I've had it replaced, I've even phoned Watchdog. Nothing worked. Ten past one in the morning, off it goes."
Rose chewed a bit on her lip. "Mind if I go take a look at your setup?"
"And how are you supposed to help with that?" the man said dubiously.
"I used to work on the most complex designs at HC Clements, shortly before the head of personnel went crazy and offed our boss." Rose grinned. "No resident psycho at Adipose, and no spending days cooped up in underground labs. Totally worth the pay hit."
"I can imagine." The man sprang up from his chair, and Rose imitated him. "Well, doesn't hurt to take a look."
They went back outside, and there a brand-new red motion detector lay, well above the man's door. Rose looked up at the detector, and then back down at the door.
"Didn't nail the cat flap?"
The man looked at her curiously. "No, I've never bothered with it, really. I'm not a cats person."
"Yeah, better stay away from that movie when it comes out" Rose said distractedly, and Roger stared at her.
"What?"
Rose grinned at him. "Don't mind me, just being silly. You're probably not far off the truth, though."
"Is that what you think it is? Cats getting inside the house?"
"Nah, I think something else's getting out."
"Like what?"
"Like a thing small enough to fit through a cat flap." Something chirped inside Rose's pocket, and she gave the man an apologetic time. "Sorry, still got a visit to make" she said, and the man nodded. "Tell you what, though, maybe you could lay off the pills for a week or so. No sense in overdoing it. Bye!"
Rose took off at a run, leaving behind a dumbfounded Roger Davey. She didn't have to go far; the TARDIS was waiting for her a couple of streets away. She unlocked the door as fast as she could and burst inside, heading straight for the controls.
"Alright old girl, game's on. What have we got?" She peered above her glasses at a monitor, her gilded eyes glinting. "Two signals, one active, one went down…" Then Rose groaned. "Of course the active one's at Adipose HQ. Might as well check out the other site, could do with the forensics."
She brought the TARDIS to the back garden of the house inside of which the first signal had gone off, and exited her ship at a run, pausing just long enough to sonic the garden door open. The lights were on everywhere inside the house, but there were no sounds of life to be heard from inside.
Rose quietly crept past the empty living room into the deserted hallway, thankful for whoever was clanking dustbins outside. She noticed the lights on upstairs, and quietly made her way there. She quickly spotted the open door leading to a bathroom and headed there, poking her head past the door. Then she bit her lip.
"Okay, that's strike one" she murmured, taking in the sight of an empty set of women's clothes, complete with shoes and jewellery, and no trace of a body in the messy pile. She went in and scanned the vestments with her sonic, but didn't get much out of them before the screech and roar of a large car running off startled her. Then it was the honking of a horn coming from the front of the house.
Rose dashed off as quickly and quietly as she could – no sense getting caught on the crime scene – and stole back outside and into the TARDIS, promptly sending the time and space ship into the vortex.
Meanwhile, as she watched the taxi poor Stacy Campbell had called take off, Donna heard a sound she'd been hoping to hear for months. She quickly ran back into Stacy's home, crossing through to the garden. But there was no midnight blue Police box waiting there, only a square print on the badly mown grass.
"I missed her" Donna wheezed. "I just barely missed her." She leaned on the garden door, catching her breath. "Now what do I do? I know Rose is on the case, but I've just seen Stacy-"
The red-haired woman pushed herself off the garden door and stood in its awning, clenching her fists. "No, I'm getting to the bottom of this. Whoever made Stacy disappear, they don't just have a problem with a weird travelled human."
Donna hadn't been expecting much of a welcome from her mother; her hollered "And what time's this?" was pretty much par-for-the-course.
"How old am I?" Donna hollered back, and her mother showed up around the corner, towelling her hands.
"Not old enough to use a phone."
There was a small mercy: from the kitchen, she could hear the kettle start whistling, and before long, Donna found herself sitting at the kitchen table and nursing a hot mug of tea – and enduring another of her mother's lectures, delivered while Sylvia finished cleaning her kitchen. Donna tuned her out, really not in the mood to get into an argument with her mother after the evening she'd had. Then again, her mother wasn't really who Donna had wanted to talk to in the first place.
"Where is Granddad?" she cut in, which got an exasperated "up the hill. He's always up the hill" in response.
Donna tuned her mother out again, readied a thermos for her grandfather, and took back off into the night after changing into comfortable clothes.
Donna's way led uphill, but only for a short distance. A few minutes' walk from their home, her grandfather had rented a gardening allotment, where he still tended to a bit of fruit and vegetable as well as his health allowed him.
And there, Wilfred Mott often returned during the nights, to set up the telescope he'd bought shortly after his son-in-law's death, and spend an hour or two watching the night skies before he returned home to sleep. With the occasional chat with his granddaughter interspersed, whenever Donna needed to get something off her chest, which she certainly did that evening.
The old man let out a small chortle when he saw his granddaughter approach. "Aye aye, here comes trouble" he said good-naturedly, and Donna couldn't help a grin, before she issued a sound "Permission to board ship, Sir?"
Wilf gave her a mock salute, which Donna returned. "Was she nagging you?" he said, and Donna knew he wasn't really asking. He got nagged enough himself, and both grandfather and granddaughter had grown practiced at finding ways to escape Sylvia's rants.
Donna gave him the thermos, and pulled a tarpaulin out of the little shed to the side while she asked her grandfather if he'd caught any interesting sights.
Wilf smiled. "Yeah, I've got Venus, there with an apparent magnitude of minus three point five. At least that's what it says in my little book." He gestured at her. "Here, come and see."
And Donna did, kneeling by the telescope and shutting an eye, and looking at the bright evening star.
"That's the only planet in the Solar System named after a woman" Wilf commented, and Donna looked up from the telescope's visor and peered at the night sky.
"Good for her" she said, before returning to the telescope, watching wistfully and wondering if she'd ever get to see another planet herself. Another planet, far, far away… "How far away is that?" she asked her grandfather.
"Oh, it's about twenty-six million miles." Wilf's voice filled with longing. "But we'll get there. One day. Hundred years' time, we'll be striding out among the stars, jiggling about with all of them aliens – just you wait!"
Donna got back up and grinned at him. Then she spotted the book lying on the ground, at the foot of his stool. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? What have you got that here for?"
"That weird wandering friend of yours."
"You mean Rose?"
"Aye." Wilf glanced at the book. "When I got to meet her last Christmas, she said she'd never read the ending of the series. Said I'd lend it to her, but she never came back for it."
Donna sighed. She looked back up at the sky. "I barely missed her tonight. Heard the sound of her ship just as she was leaving."
"That blue box of hers that's bigger on the inside?"
Donna smiled. "It's called the TARDIS."
"Hardly sounds like a proper word", Wilf remarked.
Donna snorted. Then she looked back down and caught the eye of her grandfather. "Why do you think she's been staying away from us?"
Wilf smiled apologetically. "If I had to make a guess, I'd say she's been wanderin' about with her new girlfriend."
Donna stared at her grandfather. "You never told me about that!" And then – "wait a minute, did you say girlfriend?"
Wilf shrugged. "It's not like it's still illegal."
"Thank you, granddad" Donna replied tartly. Then she deflated. "Well, that's certainly lousy news. If she's already found someone, she's not gonna be interested in traveling with plain old me."
"Now, now, don't go putting yourself down, eh?"
"I'm just being realistic" Donna sighed again, and returned to observing Venus. "That girlfriend, she must be a beautiful woman, I bet…"
Wilf picked up the thermos, and began to pour himself a cup of steaming tea. "You're being a bit silly, you know. A woman like Rose, you really think she's only got enough room in her heart for one person at a time."
"Oi, I don't swing that way!" Donna said, scandalized, and her grandfather chuckled.
"Not what I meant. I was just saying, she's asked you if you wanted to travel with her twice already-"
"Three times, she popped up once in China with a weird hairdo." And Rose had showed up on the day of her father's funeral, clad in black for the first time Donna could remember, but the redhead didn't really know what to make of that encounter.
Wilf raised his cup at his granddaughter. "Here's to your weird friend coming around a fourth time. I bet she'd still love to have you on board, if she's kept offering."
"Hope she does." Donna winced. "After all the trouble I just had getting all my stuff ready, I'd hate to have to tell mum why there's no room left in the car's boot."
Wilf grinned at his granddaughter, and their conversation turned into teasing back-and-forth about Donna's preparations for her trip, and whether she'd find a way to squeeze Wilf's copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into her luggage.
Inside the TARDIS, Rose was hard at work scrutinizing the gilded pill-shaped pendant she'd retrieved earlier that day through a magnifying glass and, as was her habit these days, she was talking to her ship.
"Now will you look at that, old girl – seems to be a bio-flip digital switch, specifically for focussed short-range radioactivation of a progestating process. Or otherwise put, this pendant is made for activating a spark of life, which I suppose is delivered through ingesting the adipose pill." She pushed herself back up and took off the magnifying glass. "Really should have tried and filched one of those pills from Mister Davey after all. Maybe I should risk it and get him the teensiest bit involved."
The TARDIS gave what Rose interpreted as a reproachful hum, and Rose groaned, before starting to drum her fingers on the console. "Not again, old girl, how many times do we need to have this argument? I don't need someone to keep me company and keep me grounded." She sighed. "We're all much better off if I'm on my own for when I finally go off my rocker."
Another hum from the TARDIS, this one mournful.
Rose pocketed the pendant and walked away from the console. She went to the side of the central room, where she patted one of the coral extrusions. "I promise you we'll find the Doctor before I go completely bonkers – or maybe he'll find us first. You won't be away from him forever. And I want to hear what he was going to say that time."
The time traveller went in the direction of the door. Stopping at the railings, she retrieved the leather jacket she'd discarded there, put it back on, and whipped out her sunglasses from their pocket. "Alright then. Time to go back to work."
Night had fallen by the time Rose landed the TARDIS in a back alley close to the Adipose building. It was just as deserted as she'd hoped; the only trace of human presence was a deep blue car parked there, next to a lamppost supporting a waste bin. The time traveller walked away quietly, making her way to one of her destination's emergency exits. Her sonic screwdriver made quick work of granting her entry, and in she went, trying to figure out a good way of finding more answers about what was going on.
And she found a way. Hanging by the side of the CEO's office in a maintenance cradle, and listening to a conversation through the wall with a stethoscope, Rose bit back a "bingo" as she heard the CEO taunt a captive journalist with a "this is the spark of life". The tone of the conversation, however, put a damper on Rose's mood instantly – the CEO sounded like she had no intention to let the reporter she'd caught leave the building alive, which meant she could only let the talking go on for so long.
She did get to hear the CEO state she had chosen a name for herself – "Foster, as in foster mother". And when she presented her "children", Rose knew her cue was about to come. She crept up above the windowsill level, watching in the direction of the little creature on the desk at first, then taking in the room and the two machine-gun armed security goons, and–
–and she stared in shock when she spotted Donna Noble spying the scene from behind the round window of the door opposite.
"Donna?" she did not say, but articulated exaggeratedly, and the grinning woman opposite responded in kind with a "Rose Tyler!", to which Rose replied a "But, but, what?" that got a mouthed "Oh! My! God!" in response.
Rose couldn't believe her eyes. She forced through a "What are you doing here?", which got her a signed "Looking for you!", prompting Rose responding a "Me? What for?"
Donna then proceeded to sign and mouth an explanation of how and why she had come here, investigating the very person standing in the middle of the room – a person who, Rose ended up realizing, had gone silent, watching one woman, then the other.
She mouthed a quick "Run!" and dropped back into the cradle, before she popped up just long enough to point at the door opposite with her sonic and cause it to lock – giving Donna a few seconds at least. She then pointed her screwdriver upwards and forced her vehicle to climb back up at full speed. As soon as she could, she jumped out of the cradle and onto the roof, then ran for the stairwell.
Four flights of stairs down, she ran into Donna, who caught her in a fierce hug.
"Oh my God!" the redhead exclaimed herself. "I don't believe it!"
"You're squeezing the life out of me, you better believe it before I pass out" Rose said as she pretended to be choking. As she disengaged herself from her friend. Donna mock glared at her, but Rose couldn't hold back a huge grin, and neither could Donna.
"You're back to being silly, that's a good sign. Why did you keep the white hair? And what's with the sunglasses?"
"Questions later, I can hear company downstairs" Rose said, grabbing Donna by the hand and pulling her back up the stairwell at a run.
"Just like old times!"
"And here I thought you hated them!"
The pair made it back to the roof, both women talking animatedly as they burst through the door.
"How did you end up investigating this Adipose thing, Donna, that's just crazy!" Rose slammed the door shut, and set herself to sonicking it locked.
"Because I thought, how do you find Rose Tyler? And then I just thought, look for trouble and then she'll turn up." The smaller woman sprang back into a run, and Donna ran alongside her, continuing to talk between hurried breaths: "So I looked everywhere. You name it. UFOs, sightings, crop circles, sea monsters, I looked, I found them all."
They reached the maintenance cradle's platform, and Rose dropped to work on its controls, firing back her reply: "You know most of those reports and sightings are hoaxes, right?"
"I know, just like that story about a replica of the Titanic falling towards London granddad told me about, that one just couldn't be real" Donna said, missing Rose's grin, "but then there's the really weird things that go on, like the bees disappearing and stuff like these miracle pills. I thought, I bet Rose is connected."
"I've not even been doing this for twenty years, and the Doctor has for several hundred. You were much more likely to stumble upon him doing the investigating" Rose pointed out. "Might have even been found out by someone else, like a unit from UNIT or that Mayor Me who took over sending the Sto refugees home."
"Mayor Me?"
"Mayor Busybody. Had to stop her from retconning your granddad. Lovely man! Promised he'd lend me his copy of–"
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, yes" Donna said, looking around for possible incoming. "He passed it to me so I could hand it over."
"Finally. I've been wondering whose side Snape will end up having truly been on for far too long" a grinning Rose replied as she pocketed her sonic. "Thanks for the news, and for the lookout!" She got back up, and began to walk past Donna, continuing to talk. "What did you mean, the bees are disappearing?" She started up the ladder back to the cradle.
"I don't know" Donna said from the foot of the ladder. "That's what it says on the Internet. Well, on the same site, there were all these conspiracy theories about Adipose Industries and I thought, let's take a look."
Rose groaned. "Now there's irony for you, that kind of website's what I used to ferret the Doctor out back in the day."
"Really?" Donna grinned. "You've got to tell me the story."
"We'll save it for another time, it's three past run-for-your-life. In you get!" Rose hollered, beckoning to Donna.
"What, in that thing?"
"I promise I won't let you fall."
Donna shook her head. "Not what I'm worried about. But if we go down in that, they'll just call us back up again!"
"That thing I did with the controls, I locked them with a sonic cage – my screwdriver's the only thing that can control it, unless someone else's got a sonic device like this one, which would be very, very bad luck."
"Or you jinxing us like you did that other time with the mummy."
"The way I remember it, you did the jinxing, Donna. I had nothing to do with it!"
Donna groaned, and she made her way up and into the cradle. The moment she was in, Rose activated the sonic, and the women began to make their descent by the side of the building.
Until the cradle suddenly picked up speed, and Rose had to hang on tight to aim her sonic back up towards the pulleys, her screwdriver flashing red in the night. The cradle stopped brutally, level with the nearest windows.
"I really should take up gambling against myself" Rose groused, and Donna glared at her as she pulled herself up, holding a wrench.
"Just help me smash those windows open!"
"Don't bother, they're made to withstand a shock from a small bomb" Rose said, and she pointed at the nearest window with her screwdriver. "But unless she can deadlock the whole building from up here…"
"Unless she can what?"
Rose let out a shout of frustration and punched at the window. "I might have opened it had I not jinxed myself twice!"
"Rose…" Donna's voice was shaking, and with a pull on the smaller woman's sleeve, she got her to look up. "She's cutting the cable."
"Wait a minute – hey!"
The cable snapped, and the cradle fell sideways, sending both women tumbling. Rose managed to grab the cradle's railings and caught her sonic between her teeth; her sunglasses were the only casualty, sent flying overboard. Donna, on the other hand, did not have the same success. She barely managed to catch onto the severed cable, and found herself sliding down it with a shout, only managing to secure purchase on one of the safety mechanisms.
"Rose!"
The white-haired woman snatched the screwdriver from her mouth. "Hold on, Donna, got to block her from cutting the other one!" She pointed her sonic upwards, gritting her teeth. "Here's hoping she's not experienced enough with these to see it coming."
Rose's sonic whistled in the night, and there was the report of a shock from above.
"Ahah!"
Leaning backwards, Rose managed to snatch the other sonic device, and pocketed it along with her screwdriver.
"Alright, Donna, I'm going to pull you up!" she said, turning back to the other woman.
"My hands are hurting" Donna shouted with despair, "I can't hold on!"
"I promised" Rose growled, and she braced herself inside the cradle and began to pull on the severed cable with a strength that caught Donna by surprise, a Donna who just now noticed that her strange friend's eyes were faintly gleaming gold in the night.
"The Bad Wolf" she whispered. But the sight reassured Donna, and persuaded her Rose would not let her go. She held on, and within moments, she found herself caught in the arms of the other woman, holding onto her for dear life.
Up above, Foster was looking down on the pair of women, and Rose glared back at her, knowing the glow of her eyes would be spotted. "Strike two", she growled before she took out the sonic pen and pointed it at the nearest window. "Can't sonic my way past a deadlock, but don't need to when I've got the key."
She pocketed the pen again, and helped a remarkably composed Donna back up through the window she'd opened into Foster's office, where the CEO's prisoner was still bound on a chair.
"I was right, it's always like this with you, innit?" Donna grated, earning a surprised look from her friend.
"You're taking nearly dying fairly well."
"I've already met my quota of big scares for the day."
"Is either of you two going to tell me what's going on?" the woman tied to the chair piped up, and then she gulped when she saw Rose looking away from Donna and straight at her.
"You're a journalist, right?" Rose said quietly, pocketing one item to get out another.
"Yes… What's that got to do with anything?"
"You're investigating little white squishy babies made of fat, generated by an extraterrestrial foster mother, and a young woman with glowing eyes shows up and cuts your bonds off with a magic wand, and nobody knew about any of it? Doesn't sound like someone above your paygrade's suppressing information to you?" Rose said as she applied her sonic to the woman's bindings, releasing her. "Just go home, make yourself beans on toast and switch the telly on, and watch whichever silly program you like and forget everything about this incident. Much safer for you and everyone you care about."
"Trust me" Donna chimed in from behind the time traveller, "you don't want to be involved in all this stuff. Do yourself a favour, run away and never look back."
"And what are you two going to do?" the journalist asked fearfully.
"Get involved." Donna turned to Rose, grinning. "Time to run off again, Miss Wolf?"
Rose shook her head. "Better you two get to safety" she said, "I'll go and hold them off."
"Oh no, you don't" Donna said, scandalised. "I've only just managed to find you, I'm not letting you one more second out of my sight."
Rose's gilded eyes locked onto Donna's steely blue ones. "It's been ten minutes, and I've already nearly gotten you killed once."
"And I barely escaped being found out earlier and didn't run away either, Spacegirl. I'm not runnin' just because you're askin'."
Rose looked at her in silence a bit longer, and then hissed out a "Fine" before she took off, Donna following.
The pair left the office, and took off at a brisk pace.
"So, where to?" Donna asked.
"Call centre" Rose returned. "Fastest and most obvious way to get out, and only way people unfamiliar with the building would remember in a hurry. They'll take a shortcut to try and catch us there, which I'm counting on. Need a little chat with the boss."
"That was tricky, wolf lady" Donna said with a grin. "You've gotten clever in your mid twenties."
"Actually, I'm fifty-five."
Donna stopped dead in her tracks. "You're kidding me."
"Long story."
"You look at least ten years younger than me! How do you do it?"
"Can we save the questions for later? We've got a date with Missus not-Foster."
So it was with a head full of questions that Donna followed Rose to the call centre where, sure enough, the CEO and her two armed escorts showed up from the exit's side, halting ten metres away from the two women.
The CEO took off her glasses, a little smile on her lips. "Well then, at last."
"Hello" Donna replied sarcastically, with a little hand sign. "I'm Donna Noble."
"And I'm Rose Tyler." The white-haired woman let her hands drop to her sides, letting them drum a four-beat rhythm on her thighs.
"Partners in crime" the CEO replied smugly, and Donna and Rose exchanged a look. "And at least one of you is an off-worlder, judging by the eyes."
"Not me, born on this planet" Rose said flippantly.
"Impossible even if you are a mutant, judging by your sonic technology which is definitely not from a level five planet."
"Oh yes, I've still got your sonic pen" Rose said, taking it out and showing it off. "Brought back memories from school. Pretty little thing", and she held it out to Donna.
"Oh, it's definitely sleek." The red-head pulled on the cap. "Nice, you've even got a real pen inside."
"Fountain pens are so last century" Rose said with a scoff, drawing out her sonic screwdriver and holding the two devices aloft. "Still, if you were to sign your real name with your pen, that would be?"
"Matron Cofelia of the Five Straighten Classabindi Nursery Fleet; Intergalatic class."
"So basically, you're a glorified wet nurse, using humans as surrogates."
The Matron levelled a cold stare at Rose. "I have a far more important job. I've been employed by the Adiposian First Family to foster a new generation after their breeding planet was lost."
Donna and Rose exchanged another look. "What do you mean, lost?" Donna said. "How do you even lose a planet?"
"Oh, the politics are none of my concern." The Matron's smile returned. "I'm just here to take care of the children on behalf of the parents."
"So, like an outer space super nanny" Donna replied.
"Yes, if you like."
"So… So those little things", and Donna gestured to make out the shape of the little white creature from earlier, "they're made out of fat, yeah. But that woman, Stacy Campbell, there was nothing left of her."
"Oh! In a crisis, the Adipose can convert bone and hair and internal organs" the Matron explained smugly. "Makes them a little bit sick, poor things."
Donna was clearly shocked by the tone taken by the Matron, and not a little bit incensed. She took a couple of steps forward. "What about poor Stacy?"
Rose stepped up by Donna's side. Her voice had turned stern. "Seeding a level five planet is a violation of the Shadow Proclamation."
The Matron's smile faded. "Are you threatening me, Miss Tyler?" she said quietly.
"Got another name I go by, and seeing as how you're already on strike two, it's time I warned you about the risks of pissing the Bad Wolf off."
The Matron's smile returned. "Quite droll. Crossing paths with the Bad Wolf on her own is even less likely than crossing paths with the Doctor on his own."
"You know, actually, you're lucky the Doctor isn't the one you're dealing with" Rose said pleasantly.
"Oh?"
"Yep. He's a no-second-chances type of guy. My rules are a bit more lenient, I'm a three-strikes-and-you're-out person."
"And she just said you're already on two" Donna interjected.
"Oh yes." Rose raised her free hand, closed in a fist, and her voice turned flinty. "Strike one" she said, raising her pinkie, "seeded a person illegally and got her killed. Strike two", and Rose raised her ring finger, "tried to kill my best friend. I'd really call it quits if I were you, Matron Cofelia. Your chances don't look too hot if you decide to keep going."
"You will not stop me" the Matron replied smugly, and next to her, both her escorts armed and shouldered their guns. "I hardly think the Bad Wolf can stop bullets."
"Who says I have to?" Rose stepped right in front of Donna, pen and screwdriver still in hand.
The Matron smiled coldly. "Neither of those devices can create the type of barrier you'll need to survive."
"Never wondered what happens if you hold two identical sonic devices against each other?"
The Matron let out an uninterested "No."
Rose grinned. "Forgot to mention, I'm also a 'show, don't tell' kind of person."
She activated both sonic devices, and a loud screeching noise reverberated through the call centre. The assault had little effect on Rose's senses, attuned as they now were to far worse aggression, and Donna was quick enough to cover her ears, mitigating some of the effect, but the Matron and the two gunmen were caught by surprise, all three shouting and dropping to the ground as around them, all kinds of glass surfaces shattered.
Donna tugged on Rose's sleeve just before It became too much for her as well, and both women ran off before the other three could regain their senses. They barely made it past a corner in time to avoid being pelted with lead.
The pair took off and ran. Rose went in the lead, and headed for a service area, Donna hot on her heels. The redhead almost bumped into the whitehead when the latter skidded to a halt, sonicked a door open and rushed inside. Donna barely had the time to avoid a ladder that got thrown out of the cupboard by her companion.
"Well, that's one solution" the redhead said, unfazed by the near-accident. "Hide in a cupboard. I like it."
"You know what else I like? Rose said, pulling Donna inside before she pointed her sonic at the bare concrete wall at the back. "This place, at the precise coordinates where the TARDIS pinpointed the Adipose signal – ahah!"
"Was that supposed to do something?"
"Apparently not" Rose replied with a grin. "It's good news, deadlocked door means I've found the right door. Plus, I've already got this." She whipped out the sonic pen and ran it along the wall; as she did so, the concrete panel slid sideways to expose a piece of futuristic, tubular machinery glowing with green lengths and motes of blue.
Donna stared at the alien contraption. "What does this thing do?"
"Remember what happened to that woman who was converted into a herd of Adipose?" Rose asked back as she pocketed the sonic pen.
"Poor Stacy Campbell?"
"That's what this thing does."
"Brilliant" Donna said sarcastically. "How do we wreck it?"
"Still working on that part" Rose replied, and she beckoned at her friend. "Shut the door of the cupboard and get in here. I'll deadlock us in, they won't be able to catch us."
"You keep talking about deadlocks" Donna said as she shut the door. "What does that mean?"
With a whir, Rose swiped the sonic pen at the door. "Well, when you lock a door, you don't leave the key in the lock, right?"
"I'm not an idiot."
"A deadlock's sort-of like shutting the door and keeping the lock in the key. No space, nothing to open with a key, unless that's also a key that can push the key that's still in the lock that makes the lock not-exist."
Donna blinked. "That explanation made no sense, spacegirl."
"You really don't want to hear the real explanation." Rose was now running the sonic pen over the alien machinery. "Looks like this thing runs from the top to the bottom of the building. Mind holding that wire- it's not live."
"It rather not be." Then Donna's voice became gentler. "Still traveling on your own?"
Rose stopped working and turned to look at the other woman. "I've already gotten two of my companions killed – their names were Sally Sparrow and Astrid Peth – and poor Martha Jones' family all have heavy PTSD. When I did save a friend's life, I screwed it up so badly just being in his general vicinity hurts both the TARDIS and me. And recently I watched two of my future companions jump to their deaths. I'm nowhere near good enough to let anyone risk sharing my travels."
Donna mulled that reply over for an instant. "You said you were fifty-five."
"Kind-of" Rose replied with a shrug.
"How can you be kind-of fifty-five?" Donna shook her head. "Don't answer that, wasn't my point."
"And your point was?"
"Thirty-five years of travels, four deaths. You're safe enough that I could stick with you for a bit."
Rose scowled, and then she turned her attention back to the machinery. "I spent most of that time locked up in space and time school – don't snicker!"
"Then I'll be over there chortlin' while you remember I already know you can never stay in one place and nobody can keep you in one place."
"You're impossible."
"Look who's talking. And why is this thing lightin' up?" Donna added, pointing out at the machinery, and Rose winced.
"It's lighting up because she's starting up the main programming, and if every telemarketer got as many customers as that gal that wants to sleep with me did, that's a lot of customers."
Donna's face lost its colour. "There's over a million people who have bought Adipose pills. What's gonna happen to them?"
"That thing's set up for emergency parthenogenesis" Rose replied, and she caught one of the wires between her teeth. "Tha'sh goin' to make jhem loshe weigh" – she grabbed the wire again – "sorry, they're only going to lose weight first – hold that one, would you? – but when they run out of that, it starts converting-"
"-everything" Donna finished for her. "Bones, organs, even the hair. That's a million people dying like poor Stacy."
"Not if I cancel this thing's signal" Rose said as she took out the golden pendant she'd seized earlier.
"That's not real gold" Donna remarked, "they're scamming people with those."
"Yeah, that's a bioswitch that relays this device's primary signal. I can use that to cut off the…" Then Rose kicked at the contraption. "Damnit, she's doubled the signal – I can't override it now! She's going to kill everybody!"
Donna's voice was shaking. "There's nothin' you can do?"
"Not without a second capsule – I could make a resonance using that and her sonic, but there's just no way I could get… just no way I could without…"
"-one of these?" a relieved Donna made, holding out her own capsule and pendant.
Rose stared at her friend for an instant, and then broke into a tongue-touched grin. "Donna, you're brilliant!" Then she grabbed the pendant and jammed it into the wiring, followed by the sonic pen. The instant Rose activated the pen, the whole computing array went dark.
Then the room started to rumble.
"Tell me you aren't goin' to crash the buildings on our heads" Donna said tartly, and Rose snorted.
"Hardly. But this thing's given birth to a lot of Adipose babies, and it's also made to bring them up – there's a levitation post in there." Rose grinned again. "Want to see the Nursery?"
"You're not meaning a crèche in Notting Hill when you say 'nursery', do you?" Donna replied. "Also, do I still need to hold this thing?"
"No, and no."
Then a screen blinked to life to Rose's left, and the time traveller pivoted towards it and ran her sonic over it.
"What's going on now?" Donna inquired, and Rose flashed her a grim smile.
"Trouble. But not for us, this time." She held out her hand. "Come on, let's go watch the babies go."
"Shouldn't we, you know, do something?"
Rose quirked an eyebrow. "What for? They're babies, they did nothing and they're not dangerous. Being born isn't a crime. Now come on, let's run."
The white-haired woman grabbed her friend by the hand, and the two made their way back upstairs, all the way to the roof, where they arrived just in time to see the last Adipose babies fly past them and up towards their mothership.
"It's beautiful" Donna breathed, and then she waved back at an Adipose baby that had just waved at her. "I'm waving at fat."
"I've done stupider things" Rose replied cheerfully as she, too, waved at the babies.
"And here comes Madam Foster" Donna noted. "Why is she stopping – why are you stopping?" she repeated in a shout at the Matron, who ignored the redhead and glared at Rose.
"If you think I am just going to let you arrest me-"
"I'm not" Rose replied, all cheer gone from her voice. "I told you before, Matron, three strikes and you're out."
The Matron sneered. "Like you are going to murder me in front of your friend."
Rose shrugged, earning herself a shocked look from Donna. "I don't have to do anything, Matron. In particular, I don't have to help you; all I have to do is let the Adipose get rid of their partner in crime, like they must always have intended to."
And then the light from the levitation beam faded, and for a second, Matron Cofelia looked at Rose with horror in her eyes; and then gravity took hold again, and the Matron plummeted, screaming all the way down to her demise.
Donna had shut her eyes, and she jumped when the sound of the woman hitting the pavement reached them. Then she stared at Rose, dumbfounded. "You just left her to die."
The time traveller didn't reply; she just nodded sharply as she began to drum a four-beat tap on her forearm while Donna kept staring at her.
"You didn't even try to help her…"
Rose nodded again. "That's another reason you're better off without me in your life. It's not just traveling around with me that's dangerous. I'm dangerous."
Donna didn't have an answer. She went for a question instead. "Why are you doing that?"
Rose quirked an eyebrow. "Trying to scare you off?"
"I already know why you do that, you said I'm your best friend not ten minutes ago" Donna shot back with a scowl. "I was talking about your drumming – you just keep beating those four beats when you're standing around".
Rose's reply came as barely more than a murmur. "That's because I can hear them."
Donna swallowed. "All the time?"
"All the time. No matter where, no matter when, no matter how busy, no matter how tired, I always hear the drums. Tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four… They never stop."
Donna swallowed again. Then she stepped forward and caught Rose in a hug that made the time traveller stiffen. "Donna…"
"I don't care" Donna replied with a flinty tone. "Makes you traveling on your own even worse."
Rose let out a mirthless laugh. "I don't need to have someone along when I finally go insane or get myself killed.
Donna let go of Rose, but only to grab her by the shoulders and make the other woman look at her. "You need someone" she said in a tone that brooked no contradiction.
"What, so that someone can stop me from doing stupid things?" Rose replied sarcastically, and Donna gave her a flat look.
"That Doctor of yours."
Rose's eyes narrowed. "What about the Doctor?"
"Would he have let that woman die?"
Rose locked her eyes onto Donna's; for a moment, gold glared into blue.
And then Rose lowered her eyes. "He wouldn't have" she mumbled.
Donna brought her forehead down to meet Rose's. "You need someone."
"It's dangerous to be around me" came the quiet reply.
"Yeah, I have experience."
"I'm dangerous."
"You've said that before." Donna shook Rose lightly. "I don't care, spacegirl. You're worth every mad bit of it." She released the hug and tugged lightly at Rose's arm. "C'm'on. Snape's story is waitin'."
The two women made their way back down to the entrance of the building, and from there back to the streets of London, Donna leading the way back to her car – and spotting the TARDIS with a grin, parked not fifty metres away from it.
"See? This is like destiny! And I've been ready for this" she said with mirth as she opened the boot of her car, exposing a complete array of suitcases. "I packed ages ago, just in case" Donna explained as she started putting suitcases in a quiet Rose's arms. "Because I thought, hot weather, cold weather, no weather – she goes anywhere. I've gotta be prepared."
"That you are" Rose said bemusedly. "What's the hatbox for?"
"Planet of the hats?"
Rose couldn't help laughing, which forced Donna to intervene before the topmost suitcase tipped over. "Watch it, wolf lady!"
"Sorry, just thinking of the one I visited – but you can't wear any of the hats, it's a crime over there, so there's all those hats going walkabout by themselves and they even strut, and can you imagine a hat strutting?"
"You'll just have to show me. Do I need to get space injections first? You know, like when you go to Cambodia. Is there any of that?"
Rose shook her head, and the top suitcase in her pile wobbled. "The TARDIS takes care of that, gets you rid of anything your body can't handle." She took a deep breath. "I'm not going to change your mind, am I?"
Donna knocked on one of the suitcases. "Nice try. Still no."
"I've still got to warn you." Rose put down the pile of suitcases on the pavement and stood back up, her eyes glowing softly in the lamplit night. "The Rose Tyler that went on adventures with you before, she's almost gone. Someone did… terrible things with me. I already didn't register as human before, and I'm even less of one now – I'm a mix between three different species, and a mix between three different people, and one of them really isn't a nice person. And then there's the drums, the drums in my head, always present, always beating. I keep traveling because I try to run away from all of this, all that's happened to me, all that's still happening to me – and one day, that Rose Tyler you knew, she's going to be completely gone, leaving behind this cold, demented creature you've seen a glimpse of before. You're not going to be traveling with a nice person. You're not going to be traveling with a good person. I'm pretty sure before long, I'm going to do something else that you'll find really shocking and I won't even realize what I'm doing is horrible – you've seen it happen earlier."
"And I don't care" Donna said flatly. "Because the Rose Tyler I know, she's still in there" and Donna bopped Rose's forehead, earning a squawk of protest. "She's lookin' after me right now, and I'm going to return the favour. I'm coming."
Rose looked at her friend thoughtfully. "I could live with having a mate onboard."
"I don't swing that way, wolf lady" came Donna's growled reply. "Friends, yes, with benefits, forget it." The redhead scowled as she noticed the other woman staring at her dumbfounded. "What?"
"Where did you even get that idea?"
"Traveling with a girlfriend when my granddad saw you, casually talking about girls that want to sleep with you, and now you're saying I get to travel with you as your mate? And how would that even work – quit grinning, will you?"
Rose only grinned wider. "I love you, Donna."
Now the redhead looked scandalized. "Seriously?"
"Nah, just pulling my best friend's leg" Rose replied, and her grin turned tongue-touched while Donna harrumphed, and snarked her own reply.
"Congrats on gettin' me goin'."
"Phrasing." Rose giggled at her friend's flat stare. "Sorry, too tempted."
"Yeah, you're still Rose Tyler. Now give me a minute, I've still got my mum's car keys, got to find a place to drop them."
Donna walked away, headed back in the direction of the Adipose building, calling her mother as she walked. Over there, by the police barriers, she had noticed a bin by which two bystanders were chatting – a small brunette and an older gentleman who could be her father. She hung up on her mother, dropped the keys in the bin, and approached the pair. The older man was scowling – Donna thought in passing that he had attack eyebrows – while the young woman smiled at her and addressed her.
"I've always wanted to meet you, Donna Noble."
Donna quirked an eyebrow. "And you know me because?"
"I'm Clara Oswald" the young woman said, holding out her hand. "I travel with Rose like you do, but hundreds of years later in her time."
Donna shook the proffered hand firmly. "Good. And he is?"
"Nobody important" the man said with a scowl, his accent distinctly Scottish. "Clara has already said too much."
"Come on!" the brunette squawked in protest. "She's the woman who saves-"
"Rose is already going to give us the mother of all scoldings when we get back to the TARDIS."
"There's no way that scolding's worse than the ones my mother gives" Donna interjected. "Tall, blond woman, called Sylvia – you'll see what I mean when she gets here. Tell her that bin there, all right?"
"Sure" said Clara. "Nice to have met you."
"Nice to have met you two. Good to know Rose will have someone in her future."
Then Donna walked off, heading back to the TARDIS. She facepalmed when she reached her now emptied car. "I'm a dummy. I just dropped the keys and left the car open."
"Locked it!" Rose called out from the TARDIS' doorway, twirling her sonic screwdriver.
Donna blinked. "Right, I forgot that."
She walked into the TARDIS, and Rose closed the door behind her.
"I think the old girl's going to get you a beautiful room, but never mind that now" Rose said, and she gave Donna a tongue-touched grin. "So, where to? Planet of the Hats?"
"Two and a half miles away" Donna replied, and Rose blinked. "We're saying 'hi' to my granddad. And you're thankin' him for the Deathly Hallows."
"I sure will."
And so it was that Donna Noble began her time as a full travelling companion of Rose Tyler.
A/N: And I'm looking forward to watching both David Tennant and Catherine Tate return under RTD's direction. This is going to be a hoot and a half!
