And now, we will learn how powerful Rose actually is. More suspense is in the way, and will continue more frequently for the rest of the story.

The first test Sarah Jane Smith performed on Rose Tyler was the one she'd had to perform the most frequently herself: twice as a child and twice again as an adult. She started by telling Rose to turn around and close her eyes, just as her grandmother had done when she was only four years old. Rose obeyed, and then Sarah said, "And now, I want you to guess how many fingers I'm holding up. In the count of three, give a response. Are you ready?"

"Yes, Miss Smith," Rose responded.

"Okay. One, two, three, begin." She held her hands in fists, with only her thump sticking out. As soon as it stuck out, Rose shouted, "One!"

"Good, and now…"she stuck out two more fingers.

"Three!"

She now stopped speaking and simply held up her entire right hand, and within one second, Rose said, "Five!"

Now she stuck out the three middle fingers in her left hand along with all of her right, and Rose immediately exclaimed, "Eight!"

She then bend all of her fingers except for her left thump.

"One!"

"All right, Rose. You got them all correct."

"Great! So what is that supposed to mean?" Rose asked eagerly. So far, she was seeing all of this as fun. She'd been expecting a more complex test, so the fact that this was all she'd had to do was a pleasant surprise. It didn't take much mind reading to figure this out.

"It means that you're able to predict the future."

"And now you know for sure that I can do it?"

Sarah nodded. "Yes, and in such a quick amount of time as well." When she'd done this at the age of four, it took her about ten seconds to picture how many fingers her grandmother was holding up, and as she got older, it still took at least five seconds to give the correct amount, and Rose had been able to do it within one to two seconds. With just this test, she was already able to tell that Rose seemed to be more powerful than she was.

"You know how I've been able to communicate with you by just thinking?" she now asked Rose.

"Yeah?"

"Well now, I want you to try sending a thought across to me just I did to you. It doesn't have to be anything important. As a matter of fact, the simpler and shorter the thought, the easier it is for me to receive it. It's not that different from talking to someone."

"All right. Can I do it now?"

"Yes, go ahead. I'm ready to get your message."

But as a matter of fact, neither of them were ready for the events which followed.

Just as if it was a typical conversation, Rose send this gleeful message through her mind:

Hi, Sarah!

And as soon as she heard it, Sarah bit her lip so hard that she could taste blood, and before she knew it, she lost her balance, and nearly tripped on the beige carpet which covered up the living room floor.

Rose gasped in shock. "Ms. Smith? Sarah Jane? Are you okay?" She tried to walk up to where Sarah was bending on the floor, but she found herself practically glued to the spot where she was seated, incapable of physically moving.

Sarah tried opening her mouth to speak, but an awful pain came from the bitten lip, leaving her speechless and with her hand covering her lower lip, not so much in an attempt to reduce the pain, but because of the shock that seemed to be surging its' way through her body.

And then, many things, both within the living room and outside of it, began falling. First was a flower pot which was stored next to the window. The pot, which was made out of wood, broke in half as soon as it landed on the carpet, resulting in the soil getting scattered around and the sunflower it stored to get withered up, resembling a person whose head was hung. Some books and newspapers which were stored on the top shelves fell after this, with the books landing with a heavy thud which not even the carpet could reduce, and three of the newspapers started floating in the ceiling as if they were paper airplanes. In the kitchen, several plates and the tea pot which was a family heirloom all landed on the hard floor at the same time, resulting in a horrible shattering crash which could be heard very clearly through the living room.

But the most frightening sound of all came from the landing of a black and white family portrait in the hallway, which was taken in 1957 and showed all three Smith sisters, dressed in identical white dresses and smiling in a way which hid all the usual sadness, fear, and disappointments which took up most of their childhood, gathered next to their father, who was wearing a dark suit and for once showed no visible signs of the anguish which was reflected in almost every other picture which was taken of him. When it landed on the floor, not only did the shattering of the glass sound like an explosion, but the ground actually started shaking as if there were an earthquake. The shaking lasted only for a couple of seconds, but its' presence was felt by both Sarah Jane and Rose. And if you looked closely, you could see what appeared to be a reddish brown liquid leaking out of the glass, bearing a strong resemblance to blood.

In about two minutes, the grandfather clock started ringing, indicating that it was now four o'clock, and even though this made the scene a little more frightening, it also marked the end of it. Sarah was now able to move, despite the fact that she was trembling as if she were dying of cold. She placed her hand gently around Rose's arm and said, "Rose? How are you?"

The child's face was as white as a sheet, but she was starting to slowly move again. Her eyes looked bewildered, and her mouth hung open, as if she were trying to scream but didn't have the strength to let all her fear out. Pretty soon, she was softly crying, and the first thing she managed to say between sobs was, "Did I hurt you, Sarah Jane?"

Just the simple fact that she was calling her by both her first and middle name, just as her family had always done, as opposed to simply Sarah, as some her friends and Mickey Smith called her, was a sign that the child was being serious in a way which was beyond her years.

"Only a little, but I think the house suffered a lot more damage than I did," she responded with a weak smile which did little to hide her own fear. The house was indeed a large mess now, but getting started on cleaning it was the last thing on her mind.

"I… I'm sorry for what I did," Rose sobbed. " I knew I could do stuff like this before, but I never thought something like this could happen."

It was telekinesis. Sarah Jane had once encountered an alien with multiple eyes which were able to move objects around whenever they blinked, but she'd never met a human who could do this. Such abilities were more rare in humans than ESP was, and throughout her life, she'd encountered somewhere around fifty people (and several unearthly creatures, the majority whom she saw when traveling with the Doctor), who shared her abilities, and fifteen of them were people she'd exposed as cons throughout her career as a journalist, including the Soviet spy from one of her first investigations in the early seventies. Telekinesis in humans was something she'd only seen in horror or science fiction movies. To think that this five-year-old girl possessed such a strong power was unbelievable.

"I should be the one apologizing, dear. I didn't know you could move things with your mind. Those kinds of things are almost never seen. And yet, I don't think I should be surprised either. I've been seeing strange things my whole life, but until today..."

"You'd never encountered a person as powerful as me," Rose responded, completing the sentence for her. All traces of sobbing and tears were now gone.

"That's right," Sarah said with a nod. Then, with her arm around Rose's shoulder, she said, "Did you have any questions about this?"

"No. I don't want to talk about it right now," the child responded.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"My head hurts a little."

"Don't worry about that. The pain usually passes, but if it continues, I'll get you something for it."

They just sat there for a while, and then Sarah asked, "Rose, does your family know about your powers?"

"I don't know. My mummy had no idea before, but now, I think she's starting to think that there's something different about me, and I don't have a daddy, so there's no one else who knows about this."

This information was new to her, but it wasn't surprising either. Such a young child had to be careful about letting others in on this secret. The majority of Sarah's family didn't know the full extent of her abilities until she was a teenager, and only few of her friends (including the Marshes) knew about it at all.

"And there's something else I haven't told you about yet."

"Go ahead and say it, Rose."

Rose started talking about the topic Sarah had been waiting to be brought up throughout the entire visit:

"Ever since I started nursery school, I've had this strange friend. Everyone thinks he's imaginary, but I can always hear him very well in my mind, and sometimes I even see him the way I would see any other person. At first, he seemed like just a friendly man who wanted to have fun with me and comfort me when I was sad or scared, but after a while, he started getting more strange, even scary, and half the time when he talks to me, it's to warn me about something bad that's going to happen."

"Is this man's name John Smith?" Sarah asked rather desperately.

"Yes. Have you met him before?"

And at that moment, Sarah Jane saw the man whom appeared to Rose Tyler. He was middle-aged, with slightly grey hair, and wore a beige jacket and matching hat, along with suspenders and a tie. Although he was slightly different from the two versions of John Smith she'd known almost twenty years ago (although he bore a strong resemblance to his Fourth form, of whose regeneration she'd witnessed ), a part of her knew for sure that this was indeed the Doctor.

"I did, a long time ago. I was a lot older than you, fourteen as a matter of fact, when he first started appearing in my dreams. Only I later learned that I was actually having visions of his life. I don't even know if I can find a way of explaining all this to you."

"Can you at least try to?"

Sarah Jane took a deep breath and began:

"John Smith is not a really a man, and he does not go by his real name. Most of the time, he's known as the Doctor. He's actually part of some group of aliens known as the Time Lords, whom all live in a planet called Gallifrey. They are able to travel through time and space, coming in contact with all sorts of creatures and places which most people don't know the existence of. At one point, as an adult, I was able to do all this with John Smith while traveling in a machine called the TARDIS after I met him in person for when I was twenty-five."

"Is he actually a doctor?"

"He claimed to be a special kind of doctor, but I never learned for sure. Anyway, the time I spend with him were the best years of my life. As a matter of fact, I wanted to keep traveling with him for the rest of my life, and the Doctor was more than willing to let me do that. He always told me I was the strongest human companion he'd ever had, and that if he could choose one person to always be by his side during his travels, it would be me."

"But you didn't stay with him. Why was that?"

There was a loud knocking on the door. It was Mickey, probably growing very impatient by now, but Sarah Jane went on.

"Things got very complicated. I was in danger many times, and it turned out that my powers weren't always enough to keep me safe. A group of people who investigated aliens and advised the Doctor, who were part of an organization known as UNIT, were aware of this from the start, and they'd done everything they could to make our travels safe for him and me, including sending that old friend of mine, who was an actual doctor, along with us," and at this, she nodded at the photo of her and Harry Sullivan (the only photo she had from her time with the Doctor), taken by her father during a brief "holiday" they'd had on Earth. "But at the end, none of this was enough, and during one of our adventures, when I was in so much danger that I was almost killed, the Doctor and I decided that it was best if I went back to Earth, and we had to say goodbye."

The knocking continued. It had to end now.

"I know you probably have a lot more questions, but I can't go on with this right now. I'll try to have us meet again some other time alone, and we'll discuss even more about all this. There's only one other thing I have to let you know."

"What is it?"

"If your powers ever make you sense any kind of trouble that you don't think you could handle on your own, call out to me through your mind like you did just now, and I'll do whatever it takes to help you."

"But what if I end up hurting you or damaging something?"

"Don't worry about that, Rose. From my own experience, all the evil beings in any universe, whether they're aliens, ghosts, or people like us, do a lot more harm than a decent person with psychic powers ever can. It's not easy being gifted, but you will learn to live with it, and perhaps even make this world a better place with them, just as I did."

This was something Sarah Jane had been trying to convince herself of her whole life. Her grandmother had told her this hundreds of times, and the Doctor about as much in just two years. And with all the foes she'd encountered her whole life, from the deleks to her corrupt grandfather (her father's wealthy and cruel father), from the sontarans to a scheming psychiatrist who tormented her father, as well as Sarah Jane herself at one point, and could have gotten him stuck in that awful hospital for years if her aunt Lavinia hadn't intervened, and from evil spiders to school bullies (despite what the woman at Rose's school had said, some children were not angels), she had many reasons to believe that this was true. But of course, one could never know for sure.

She gave Rose a small hug before walking up to the door to let Mickey and K9 back in the house. Neither of them suspected that anything had gone wrong, and to Sarah's and Rose's astonishment, there was almost no trace of the damage that was done in the house. All the books and newspapers were stacked up neatly in the bookshelf once again, the teapot was stored in the cupboard along with all the china plates which were rarely used, and all the dishes that were stored next to the sandwiches and pastries were back there in perfect condition. If anything, the house actually looked a lot better than it did fifteen minutes earlier.

However, the family portrait remained broken, and part of the photo remaining stained in that strange liquid, around the face of young Lucy Smith, who wore a red ribbon around her long black hair, and whom young Sarah Jane was holding by the shoulders. Lucy, who had been so beautiful and optimistic when she was young, was the only person in the photo who was dead, and her dark days as an adult led her to resent her family, especially Sarah Jane. All of this seemed to be reflected in the destroyed photo, and if you looked very closely, the joyful smile on Lucy's face now appeared to be a scornful smirk.

In addition to this, there was one book that remained on the floor. It was a sketchbook with drawings by Jane Harris, and among them included several sketches of the visions she'd seen of the dreams her teenaged granddaughter's dreams. In it, you could find pictures of the Doctor as an old man, as well as several of the TARDIS, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, cavemen, the planet Skaro, the Thals and the Daleks. But the most vivid drawing in there was that of Susan Foreman, whom upon first glance, Jane Harris had almost believed to be her own granddaughter, and if closely examined with a sketch of fourteen-year-old Sarah Jane on the next page, one could correctly observe the strange similarities between the two girls.