"Whoa there sister," I latched onto Donna's shoulder before she could disappear into the cloud of scarves that were hovering nearby. Almost positive they were scarves, but the way they soared through the air like butterflies, they might have also been exotic birds.

Just, without heads. Or really, any bird bits. Other than the wings.

They did have price tags though, so that supported my 'scarves' theory. Apparently products that just sat on top of shelves was way too boring in the future.

"I'm just looking at the scarves," she shot me a funny look. "Keep your knickers on. Did you see that purple one? I've got just the outfit to go with it."

"Yeah, well. Just don't go wandering off without me." I warned her, knowing full well that if she stepped into that shop, she'd vanish in a haze of floating fabric and I'd never find her again.

"Relax," she tweaked my nose as I tried to swat her hand away. "I'm not going anywhere, I haven't got any shopping money yet." She grinned. She made a good point. Although I kind of suspected Donna of being the type of person who could get just as much enjoyment from window shopping as she would from actual shopping. I knew some really sick people. "Besides, the boys are nearby."

That was actually who I was hoping to avoid. The Doctor was behind us, under some kind of hologram bank, which looked more like a glass tube, but apparently it was all very technological. At least, I assumed it was a bank, since he had said 'Ah, here's the bank' before stepping in through the open door. See? I paid attention. Sometimes.

The Professor was also near the bank, having some trouble with a rather aggressive, and sort of translucent looking beggar. I didn't have any sympathy for him, having already run into a few myself. Although this one did have about eight spare arms to hassle him with.

"Oh," Donna said, noticing my wary look as I turned back to keep an eye on her. "Are you worried about hanging out with the boys? Or just one boy in particular?" She raised her eyebrow with a coy grin.

"Donna, I swear…" I had always wanted a sister, someone to confide in, someone to be your best friend. Someone to think threatening thoughts about every time they brought up those secrets you told them. I risked another glance over my shoulder, but the Professor was still too busy trying to shoo away his new friend to pay us any notice. "Besides, it's not that." I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of specifying what 'that' was. Mostly because I knew if I did, I'd turn bright red.

"Oh? What is it then?"

"Donna, there's a museum." She looked like she was ready to catch me in a lie, ready to start singing 'Fitz and Professor sitting in a tree', but then her nose wrinkled up like she had smelled something rotten.

"Oh," she was less excited that she couldn't really tease me about that. Even Donna wasn't interested in going to the museums with the Doctor anymore, and she partly was him. It had only taken me two visits to universally acclaimed museums to realize that the Doctor's commentary, while actually very impressive, also kind of ruined the whimsy of…well. Everything. At this point, you couldn't have paid me in diamonds to go into another museum with him. Not unless a very secure muzzle was installed. Or if I had those fancy noise canceling headphones. But even then I knew he'd constantly be making frantic gestures, trying to imply that the red stone carving on display was actually a fraud.

"Besides, they're going shopping for…" It was some specific word, it was big too. Related somehow to…technology… "Parts. Of some sort." Nailed it.

Donna smirked but she didn't say anything, knowing what it had been like to have been so generally useless. It was nice of her, but at the same time, I knew they all laughed about it when I wasn't around.

"Not. Interested." The Professor's raised voice caught our attention and we turned to see what was happening. The panhandler was still harassing him, a cup held out in one of his long wormy looking arms. At least two of them were gripping the Professor's shoulder, pleading with him to part with some money, while another one shook his little tin cup. He was speaking English, technically. Donna had explained the whole TARDIS translation thing after I finally asked why everyone we met was British. But his words were still garbled, like he was trying to speak with a mouthful of jello.

"Yes, well, if you can't afford six-thousand offspring, I suggest not having them." The Professor's mouth was a tight line and I saw him reaching for his coat pocket. "And if you don't unhand me right now-" His voice was deadly quiet compared to the constant buzz of the shoppers around us, but I could still hear each and every one of them clearly.

"Er, Donna? I think we're about to see what happens if you put a jellyfish in a microwave." There was no way I was jumping into the middle of that. But a good 'Oi' from Donna should be enough to stop him in his tracks. Or at least slow him down a little. Maybe.

"Ah ah ah," The Doctor scolded the Professor like a child, grabbing his arm just as the laser screwdriver had started to emerge from his pocket. "We do not shoot the Pleabus." The snorts of laughter had to be quickly covered as an uncomfortable caught when the Professor's furious gaze swept in my direction.

"Here you are," the Doctor reached into the large bag he had collected from the bank, because of course he was just going to keep money in a giant sack, and handed a small plastic sheet to the beggar. "Have a lovely day."

The 'Pleabus' responded by grabbing the Doctor's hand and grunting, or gurgling, his excited thanks before leaning back and hawking an inky black loogie onto the Doctor's palm. It then shuffled off and disappeared into the crowd.

"Oh blimey," the tone was all wrong, and he was smiling. I know if a hobo had spit on me, I would have been livid. "Wow." He wasn't just smiling now, he was grinning. He was positively giddy. "Look at this!" He turned to us, showing off his hand that was covered in a sludgy black stain. I was still missing the part where he was so excited when the powerful smell hit me and I stumbled a few steps back.

It was awful.

"Yeah, I see it," Donna had put the back of her hand over her nose, and while she wasn't as horrified as I was, she also didn't seem nearly as excited as the Doctor. "Do you mind keeping back-" But it was too late, a thick chunk of the stuff dripped from his hand onto her pant leg. "Oh sod it." She growled as she tried to wipe it off with a scarf she had plucked from the air.

"This is Pleabus phlegm! This is the luckiest substance in the galaxy!" His hand swung around to give me a better view. I was loads craftier than Donna and dodged away from his gooped hand.

"It sure doesn't look lucky," I scowled at him.

"Ugh," Donna groaned. "Lucky my arse. It smells." She held the offending scarf out away from her body now, though there was still clearly a black stain on her leg.

"Did you know that there have been three separate attempts in the last century to replicate this substance by the best biological engineers in the Seven Systems? They've each failed miserably, of course. Actually, two of the experiments ended in violent explosions…" His voice trailed off, the smile on his face briefly dimming.

"Sounds like a fun job." I rolled my eyes but the Doctor was still too preoccupied with his hand to be bothered by my attitude.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm buying it, alright?" Donna scowled at the vendor who was gesturing angrily at the, now soiled, scarf in her hand. "Oi, moneybags. Pay the man, will you?"

"Yes, of course. Here you are." The Doctor balanced the brown bag against his chest in order to preserve the slime on his hand as he pulled out another couple plastic sheets and handed them to the disgruntled man.

"Ah, here we are. Proper shopping money." Donna went ahead and helped herself to a small stack of them. "Coming Fitz?"

"What?" That seemed to snap the Doctor out of the love affair he was having with his hand. "With you? But we were going to the museum. They've got the only remaining brick from the foundations of the original Mall of America, from earth!" He added. "Well, at least, they think they do. It's actually…well, no matter. And didn't you want to go with us to the Electrocil?"

"Er…about that…" the Doctor had, once, on a terribly misguided whim, tried to show me how to replace a fuse on the console once.

Actually, I just made that up. I don't have any idea what he actually tried to show me. It had something to do with the ship, he seemed to think that I could be taught, no matter how many times I promised that I was really really terrible with that sort of thing. Still, he had insisted. I'd managed to start a small fire in less than four minutes. When the Doctor had finished explaining that I really shouldn't tap exposed wires together like I had seen in the movies, he decided it would be better to just show me how to do things. And I had sort of snuck off at some point, trying to see how I could best trim my hair to hide the singed ends.

Considering how bad it could have gone, I thought it was almost a success. But I guess 'lost cause' wasn't something the Doctor was familiar with.

That was okay, I had plenty of time to teach him.

"No, we're going clothes shopping." Donna said as she stuffed the cash into her pocket and chucked the ruined scarf into a nearby bin.

"But I have clothes." I said stupidly.

"Well, sure." She raised her eyebrow at me. "But I mean, proper clothes. Not like those." She said it with a certain kind of disdain. Another jeans and t-shirt day for me, and Miss fashion week was clearly not impressed with them.

"What's wrong with these?" I asked with an edge to my voice.

"Well, nothing," she corrected herself quickly. "I just mean. We'll get an outfit for you, yeah? A fancy dress. We're going dress shopping." She even seemed genuinely excited about it now.

"When am I ever going to need a dress?" The TARDIS had a few, but the longer I had been on the ship, the further and further they seemed to get hidden in the closet. Smart girl. I was starting to reconsider this whole plan to escape with Donna. Was it too late to decide that I could handle one more museum with the Doctor? Maybe if I bought him a candy apple on the way, or something else equally sticky.

Do they have peanut butter in the future?

"Oh, I don't know," she said, exasperated and possibly starting to seriously consider leaving me behind. "We'll go somewhere nice after we get the ship fixed up. Won't that be fun? Oh!" She clapped her hands together. "I know, we'll go to Atlas!" It didn't really sound like she was talking about a map, but then, stranger things had happened on my adventures. Maybe she was totally psyched about a book of maps. "Doesn't that sound like fun, Doctor? See the Whalen perform? Have a night out, all of us?"

"Yes," he smiled, tearing his attention away from his hand. "Yes, actually, that's a brilliant idea. Did you know, the last time I was there, I was invited to be a special guest performer." The Doctor cupped his clean hand around his lips and started to make noises like a dying whale. It was awful. People stopped to stare.

"Yes, I'm sure it was lovely." Donna said delicately, pulling his arm down. "Save some of it for the reunion, shall we?"

"Of course," the Doctor said, still beaming. "Are you sure it's safe to be splitting up?" He was looking directly at me now, like I was the problem.

"It'll probably be safer,"

"Safer?" He frowned at me. "How could it possibly be safer?"

"Well, you have kind of a problem with…attracting trouble." Actually, they all did. But I had noticed, on more than one occasion, that when Donna wandered on her own, she usually managed to avoid it. It wasn't a foolproof plan, but it was a plan.

"Nonsense." The Doctor waved his goo covered hand at me dismissively.

"We did just get chased off a planet by a robotic army of security guards."

"She has a point." The Professor finally added to the conversation.

"Well, sure," the Doctor looked between the two of us, defensive. "But that was just poor timing."

"How about the cliff diving incident?" I raised my eyebrow. That had been a fun surprise. The kind of fun surprise that ends with us base jumping off the side of the deepest canyon in the universe. Without a parachute.

Not the general definition of 'fun' I guess. Closer to 'Oh jesus we're all going to die'.

Fortunately, when they said 'deepest', it wasn't just a scam to bring people in. I had enough time to scream, suck more air into my lungs, scream again, and then float over to the Doctor and punch him in the shoulder several times while he was calling Donna to come retrieve us with the TARDIS.

"Well," he pulled a face. "That turned out alright…"

"Sure. And the plastination? How did that go? Did that turn out alright?"

He gulped. "On a purely technical level, yes." But he was looking much more guilty now.

"Doctor. I was a mannequin. For three days." And I was still finding wax in some…less than appropriate places. The good news was that I wouldn't have to shave my legs for another two weeks. The bad news was that I was still drawing on half an eyebrow every morning. Also, I had been a statue. That made it a bit harder to think about the silver lining.

"Blimey, it does sound bad when you put it all together like that." Donna sighed.

"Yes," he shot Donna a look. "Well, I did apologize for that. Several times."

"I thought it was a great improvement." The Professor added helpfully.

"I couldn't move." I glared at him.

"Or speak." He smiled. "As I said, a great improvement." I was pretty sure he was kidding, but that didn't stop me from taking an involuntary step forward in my desire to punch him in the face. Just a little.

"Professor," the Doctor said warningly, putting himself between the two of us. Normally that wouldn't scare me, but with that toxic sludge on his hand. Ugh.

"Look, it's nothing personal. I'm not harboring a grudge or anything," okay, maybe sometimes, but not in this specific instance. "I just want a nice easy day is all."

"Alright," the Doctor said, still looking grumpy, but I'm sure his alien spit would cheer him up shortly. "We'll meet back in the TARDIS in a few hours." He turned to Donna. "Keep an eye on her. And yourself."

"Yes mum." She made a obnoxious face at hi. He gave a short nod with just a hint of a smile before he turned to wander off. It wasn't long before he started gesturing to a nearby stall vendor, who produced a jar and waved him off, refusing to accept any money from the man who smelled little worse than death. The Doctor started to scoop the offending substance into the jar before giving us a thumbs up.

"Alright then Fitz, let's- Oh," Donna said, remembering. "And heels. We'll definitely need to get you some heels."

"What?" I paled. Heels required balance, coordination, poise. I possessed none of those qualities, even in their smallest measurable increments.

"Come on you big chicken," Donna pushed my shoulder. "It'll be loads more fun than being shot at."

I had some serious doubts about that.

"Er…" I turned to find the Doctor, maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe I could still change my mind. I could just see his floppy hair, but closer, was the Professor.

"Have fun shopping." The Professor drolled, the corner of his lip just curving up.

"Oh shut up." I scowled at him. Nothing could be worse than dealing with an afternoon of his smugness. I hoped.

A full two hours and eight shops later, I was feeling decidedly more grim about my decision. I mean, it was basically a giant floating shopping mall. How much trouble could they have really gotten me in? And I was practically immune to the Professor's smugness at this point, I would have been fine. Nothing could be as awful as this slow painful trudging from store to store listening to 'Oh, look at that' and 'Fitz, you have to try this one on!'.

It was exhausting.

By the time I realized Donna had no intention of letting me get away without at least making one purchase, I was hanging on by my badly chewed fingernails. So I gathered all of my energy, and the very last of my wits and exploded with glee the next time we found a dress that fit me and didn't have glitter on it. Donna had beamed at me, clapped her hands. I might have caught her doing a little cheerful dance.

If this whole 'plucky adventuring' thing ever fell through, I should really get into acting.

Unfortunately, even my Oscar worthy performance didn't get me back to the TARDIS. Because Donna was still shopping. We were in a nauseatingly rose colored store, hopefully the last, because I was running out of energy to smile at her wardrobe choices.

"Oh, this is so the one." Yeah, she had said that a record breaking four times now. All of them had been purchased and sent back to the TARDIS. At least I didn't have to carry bags. That was something. She spun around once in the mirrors for me to admire, or really, for her to admire, and me to make noises of approval.

"Yeah." It had been two hours, that was as good as it was going to get.

"Alright, alright." She huffed at me, still winking at herself in the mirror. "This is it, I'll pop out and we can head back. But hey, no shooting whatsoever. That's got to be a positive, yeah?" She grinned as she disappeared into the changing room. If I had been shot at, the Doctor probably would have already found his way ass backwards into a solution, and we'd be on our way to the planet of Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory. But I kept that thought to myself.

After four minutes of listening to her swearing I finally offered my assistance.

"You need some help in there?" I asked, still unwilling to get up from the chair. Hey, it was cushioned, and she hadn't said 'yes' yet.

"No no," she grumbled. "I've got it. Just need slightly longer arms-"

A woman screamed from the front of the store and I looked over my shoulder out the curtained doorway that separated us from the other shoppers. There had been all sorts of weird screams and shouts, which had been nerve-wracking for a while, but now it was just annoying. But this wasn't the 'I've found the shoes I've been looking for my whole life' kind of scream that I was expecting. It was more the kind of terrified shrill sound that I had become more familiar with in my time with the Doctor. Mostly because it seemed to follow us wherever we went. I could still hear Donna grunting with her wardrobe malfunction so I cautiously rose from the chair and peeked out past the pink drapery.

"This is a robbery!" I heard very clearly from the front. There were only three people in the store though, including the screaming woman. It was slightly less dramatic than I had be led to believe from all those heist movies I had watched. It was also confusing when the man appeared, short, sturdy, and yellow. The confusion wasn't the fact that he looked like a neon pig, but the fact that he was walking around with a chain that he was handcuffing people to. And he hadn't once asked anyone to open their purse.

It didn't make sense, but I had the feeling that I didn't want to end up on that chain with everyone else. I pulled the curtain shut while he was hooking the last of the shoppers up and backed away.

"Donna," I whispered at the crack of her door. "I think we're in trouble."

"I'll say, if this bloody zipper doesn't-"

"Shhh!" I hissed at her. "Shut up, there's a man out there robbing people. Let me in!"

What?" At least she was being more quiet, though it didn't sound like she had any idea what I had said. Whispers didn't travel very well through wooden doors, in case you were wondering.

"Open the door!" I said with slightly more volume and urgency.

"Alright, alright. But then you're helping me get out of this thing-"

"Quickly, quickly-" I heard the door jiggle but it didn't swing open.

"It's jammed, I can't-"

"This is a robbery!" I heard the broken record repeat as he ripped back the curtain.

"Uh, hey there." I plastered a smile on my face as I turned around and tried to look calm. "Funny story, I don't actually have any cash, sooo…"

"I don't want yer stinkin' cash." He snorted, now looking and sounding a bit like a pig.

"But…you did say something about a robbery, didn't you?" I frowned. What kind of criminal wasn't interested in cash? A crappy one, I was guessing.

"Ya, here for the parts." He grunted as he stepped forward with a pair of handcuffs. It was also linked to the chain that held the worried looking group of people behind him. Actually, they weren't really that worried looking, they were more…annoyed.

"Parts? I don't have any parts." I was growing more and more convinced that this man, or pig, or whatever, was definitely an idiot.

"Body parts," He grinned, several of his teeth missing. "Takin' yer to the chop shop."

My brain didn't really understand what he was saying, not immediately. But there was something very alarming about the words 'body parts' and 'chop shop' being used so closely together. I stumbled away from his outstretched arms but found myself stuck against Donna's door.

"No. No. No thank you." I added, thinking the politeness couldn't hurt my chances.

"Sorry love, just business." He smiled as he snapped the cuffs onto my wrists faster than I could say 'Lay off pig man!'. "Off we go." He grunted and clapped his fist over the blue button that hung on a bandolier across his chest.

"Don-" I just had time to shout before the world around us spun and I felt like I had been sucked into a whirlpool.