Chapter 4: Running never really failed. 'Cept...

'No one sent me,' The Doctor squeaked; he had been trying to sound tough and manly, but that had unsurprisingly backfired on him. A lot of things had backfired on him in the past; what mattered if another had been added to that long list of things?

'But you work for Torchwood.'

Suddenly beeping noise started to emit from Sarah Jane's lightsaber.

Damn it, she thought, the bloody batteries are going to run out.

'Yes,' the Doctor replied, feeling much better with each passing second, mainly due to the fact that the lightsaber was losing power.

'Drat.'

Sarah Jane turned around to look as her weapon of mass destruction slowly became one that looked just cool but wasn't capable of any destruction, mass or otherwise. She groaned and whirled around to face the Doctor.

'Anyway,' she said calmly and pulled out a notebook out of her pocket after pocketing the harmless lightsaber. 'Why are you stalking me?'

'Becauseyouremindedmeofsomeone,' the Doctor mumbled quietly.

'Pardon?' Sarah Jane was feeling a lot calmer than before and began to actually think about what she was doing. With a mad guy from Torchwood. Who was stalking her.

She wondered if she should move from that petty topic and onto one more worthwhile and was contemplating about the fact that humans had at least nine senses and if perhaps she really should slap the man with her trustworthy notebook, when the Doctor spoke up again.

'Because. You. Reminded. Me. Of. Someone.' The Doctor spoke carefully and slowly, wondering if all humans needed help with listening, or if Sarah Jane's age had finally caught up with her.

'EXCUSE ME?'

All of a sudden a stinging sensation that was oddly felt like paper sent the Doctor reeling back into a few cardboard boxes.

'GET OFF! GET OFF!'

The Doctor tried and failed to stand up, instead breaking about seventy-eight percent of the precious vinyl records that resided in the boxes below.

Sarah Jane's face was oddly calm, but it wasn't a good calm – it was the sort of the calm there was right before a storm.

'Right, first you stalk me to my home and then to work.' Sarah Jane had taken this chance to force the Doctor into a corner and was drilling holes into his very body using her eyes. She slipped her notebook back into the pocket that was filled with fake IDs.

'Then, you interrupt my work. Then you wreck the vinyl records in that box.'

She was gesturing wildly trying to emphasise her very important points to the infantile man cowering in the corner.

'Not only that! You stalked me, because I merely looked like someone you knew, and then you have the guts to call me old!'

Oops, the Doctor thought miserably, seems like I said that out aloud. I really am rude and not ginger. I miss being able to change faces. No one would ever know who I was. But then, I am feared in many galaxies...I suppose they would recognise me anyway.

Tap, tap, Sarah Jane spun around to locate the sound and unlocked the door swinging it open.

It was a cheery-looking young man. He was wearing an inexplicably cheesy grin as he said, 'Sorry SJ, but something came up, and I have to leave now. I'll come back to check the guitars out later.'

'Of course, Matt, the lovely person who will try to remember to never address me as SJ ever again in his long and healthy life. I'll get someone else to fill in your position.'

'Is it him?' Matt asked curiously.

'Yep.'

The Doctor stood up at that moment with a grin on his face, and proclaimed, 'I haven't worked in a shop before, and will I have a name tag?'

'Yes,' Sarah Jane took off Matt's name tag (mysteriously enough, it had the name "Fred" on it), handing it to the Doctor. 'You can be him for the afternoon.'

The Doctor got all misty-eyed at this simple gesture and began to weep; Matt and Sarah Jane decided that this would be a good time to leave the obviously deranged man.

After they left, they clearly heard him murmur, 'Oh, Romana, I remember how you wished to be called Fred.'

Matt left to catch the train to his mother's flat, while Sarah Jane dragged the Doctor out to instruct him on what to do for the rest of her shift. Which was fixing guitars and stacking CDs.

Half an hour into his shift, the Doctor was immensely bored; there was nothing available to entertain his powerful and knowledgeable Gallifreyan brain. Saving the universe was so much more fun that re-stringing guitars.

So, after double-checking that Sarah Jane was preoccupied with her insane guitar playing, he began to emit the shrill, high pitched sonic screwdriver noise that never worked. His shrill sound coming out of his mouth that was meant to fix guitars and unlock doors, unfortunately, didn't work.

Instead, many customers started suddenly to have mysterious twitches in their faces; some of them were kissing the floor (they'd fainted from the noise). Sarah Jane was unaffected due to the headphones covering her ears. The warehouse looked as though Keith Moon and Pete Townshend had gotten to it; the racks had all toppled over, the guitars were smashed to pieces, the posters looked like they'd been put through shredders and re-hung, and all the Doctor's favourite plecs were all split in half. All that was left was a wooden door leading...somewhere.

When Sarah Jane realised the guitar she had playing was broken and the headphone's wires were fried, she looked up, observed the scene before her, strode calmly towards the Doctor and fish-slapped him twice with great deliberation.

His face was surprisingly filled with guilt when he looked deeply into her eyes and said with a hoarse voice, 'I am so sorry.'

Sarah Jane rose an eyebrow and said, 'This when I should ask you why are you so sorry, and then really should kick you out, but I won't because you need to clear up this mess, and I have to meet Pete in five minutes.'

'Pete?'

'Head of Torchie.'

'Torchie,' the Doctor deadpanned.

'Yes, Torchie, or Torchwood,' Sarah Jane deadpanned back, using her "yes-tourist-I-am-talking-to-you" voice.

The ambulance arrived soon after, and Sarah Jane directed the ambulance officers into the store where they started lifting out the suffering customers, who were all glaring at the Doctor. As the Doctor stood guiltily in the corner with the cleanest bit of floor, Sarah Jane telephoned her insurance company and told them that 'a strange man was using inappropriate ultrasonic devices which destroyed everything'. The insurance people assured her that all costs would have to be covered by the 'strange man'.

As soon as the invalid customers had left, Sarah Jane hung up, zipped out of the store and locked up behind her; she had locked up every exit before the Doctor had even registered what happened.

He looked up then and discovered a note floating about which, by a pure and impressive coincidence, landed neatly on top of his head.

Clean up and I'll let you out. Eventually.

Cheers,

SJS

P.S Good luck!

He sighed and trundled off to find a broom. Or an exit. He soon found a broom that hadn't been shattered and started to sweep. He then spied a ventilation shaft; he grinned and dashed off to yank the cover off. The screws had been unscrewed because of his high-pitched sonic-ing.

He slid the front half of his body into the shaft before he tried to climb in, then realised something was wrong. Very wrong. His hips would not let him into the shaft; he struggled and struggled, but nothing would work. This time, running away hadn't worked for him. He had tried to escape from the shaft, but couldn't get out. His hips were stuck.

He flailed around for a while, but nothing worked.

He, the Doctor's clone, was stuck and unlike the Doctor, he had no companion to rescue him from this awful predicament.

And he was fat.

A/N: Sarah Jane and a lightsaber was produced through thinking about it during maths.