Hello my fellow Whovians! I apologize profusely for the lateness of this update. Simply as an explanation and not an excuse, I've been preparing for the ACT test and for college and I'm still doing work, so... sorry. :/ I haven't had much time to write. But today I FINALLY got a break! So, without further ado, I present to you, Chapter... Next Chapter! XP
James had grown quite sick of the Judoon's questioning very quickly. Eventually he grew tired of sitting as well, so opted to stand and pace, which made the Judoon look very alert and suspicious of him, but he couldn't have cared any less at that point.
They had asked him simple questions at first, trying to determine just how much he had in common with the Doctor, and how much he differed. They asked him about numerous historical questions, most pertaining to the Doctor's timeline and determined that James knew nothing past the destruction of the Crucible.
After getting bored again, he sat back down and watched the Judoon putting information into a clear screen on the table. Having apparently finished, it closed the screen and looked at James. "The Shadow Architect will determine your fate within the hour."
"Yeah, about that," James started, "It may be too late now, but it's very important that you delete those files as soon as possible. See, if you catalog me, there's a strong chance I won't get to go hom-"
"Shadow Proclamation database is impenetrable. Your files will be read only by those with the highest clearance."
"Oh, really?" James said, then reached into the inside pocket of his coat, pulled out his sonic screwdriver that the TARDIS had made for him, and clicked the button. It whistled for a second and suddenly the screen on the table filled with all of James' newly acquired information popped up.
The Judoon eyes widened in surprise and anger, then looked at him in shock.
With an irritated scowl, James put it back into the inside pocket of his coat and crossed his arms. "I didn't need my sonic to do that, either."
The Judoon glowered at him, then stood from the table. "You will remain here until your fate is determined by the Shadow Architect."
James shooed him with his hand, "Alright, run off then to your mistress, Big Boy. I'll just wait here then," he said mockingly, completely unaware at how Donna-like he was being. It mostly came out when he was irritated.
The Judoon did not leave, but took a step closer, making James a little nervous, then held out its hand.
James looked at it. "What? Do you want a high-five for a job well done? Well, honestly, I think your interrogation skills could use a little work. Not worthy of a high-five, I'm afraid."
"The sonic device," the Judoon growled.
"Oh, that," James said, then dug a hand into his pocket. "Hmm... I think I lost it somewhere in there. Tell you what, why don't I save us both some time and trouble and just keep it in there?"
The Judoon remained, unfaltering and glaring daggers at him.
James shrugged. "Suit yourself. Don't say I didn't warn you, though," he said unconcernedly, then stood up and began digging through his pockets, which (unbeknownst to the Judoon) were bigger on the inside, courtesy of the TARDIS, and began emptying them out onto the interrogation table.
The Judoon watched in annoyed fascination as James put all kinds of ridiculous and much-too-big-to-fit-in-his-pockets items onto the table, ranging from a pear to a hockey stick. Soon the table was covered in dozens of pens bits of trash and wrappers, a timey-wimey-detector he'd put together when he'd been unable to sleep, a brown paper sack of jelly babies, (of which he offered to the Judoon, who in turn did not appear to appreciate the gesture) a few eating utensils, a mug, a jar of mayonnaise, a banana, far too many pairs of glasses and quite a few small electronic devices that looked very much like garbage covered in wires and flashing buttons. Finally when he began trying to pull a golf club from his pocket, the Judoon lowered his hand, grabbed James' coat and pulled it roughly off of his shoulders.
"Oi!" James protested.
The Judoon folded the long brown coat over its arm, then turned and marched out of the room without another word.
James frowned. "I'd better get that back. I love that coat," he mumbled to himself, then looked at the table, still covered with the items he'd removed from his coat. His frown deepened, wondering to himself if he had room in the pockets of the dark blue suit jacket he was wearing for all of this. He had only just gotten bigger-on-the-inside pockets today, but somehow, in that short amount of time, he had managed to fill them to the brim.
He began the arduous task of putting everything back into whichever pockets on his jacket or jeans would fit them.
He had just deposited the last little electronic device (the function of which he could not remember) when he saw someone pass the door through the small little glass window placed in the door's center. He looked up, saw the figure pass, then watched them back up and lean back to look through the window. The face on the other side of the door grinned widely, then opened the door and peaked inside.
"Doctor?"
James froze, staring at him in confusion. How in the world...
Mr. Boots smiled excitedly, fully entering the room and shutting the door behind him. "Well, what luck! Two Doctors in one day!" he exclaimed, crossing the room and holding his hand out to James.
James just sat there staring at him for a second as he let everything process. He'd called him Doctor, so he didn't know who exactly he was, which meant this must be a past version of Mr. Boots...
What?
What was a past Mr. Boots doing in the Shadow Proclamation? No, that wasn't quite the question. What was a past Mr. Boots doing wandering around the Shadow Proclamation like he owned the place?
"Um... hello," James muttered nervously, shaking his hand, then decided to add in order to play along, "Who are you?"
"Oh, nobody important, really," Mr. Boots said pleasantly. "But people around here call me Greg Samanto."
"The Doctor," James replied. "But it looks like you already knew that."
"I'm a very big fan, Doctor. Very big. Did you know the future you is here?"
James nodded. "We're actually here together."
This seemed to get Mr. Boots even more excited. "Really? Where are you headed? Anywhere in particular? Anything important happening? How long are you here for?"
James blinked at him. "Um... Yes. Not sure yet. Again, not sure yet. Not really. I'm not sure."
Mr. Boots stared at him for a minute, then laughed a bit. "Spoilers, eh?"
James stared at him. "I'm sorry?"
"Future you- or Eleventh you, if you'd rather; he's not telling you much?"
James paused, considered his answer, then shrugged. "Hard to say. I prefer to avoid paradoxes when I can help it."
Mr. Boots nodded. "Understandably," he said, then stared at James for a long moment, looking more pleased than when a child hears the ice-cream truck coming down the road. He shook his head. "I just can't believe my luck. The two of you, in the same place, at the same time."
James smiled awkwardly.
"Honestly, I thought I would have to wait for-" he stopped as his eyes fell onto the table top, "-a while... longer..."
James' brow furrowed, then followed his gaze down onto the table...
... where he'd accidentally left his own file open.
His eyes widened in alarm, and reach for his sonic screwdriver to close it, but grabbed at air. He had forgotten the Judoon had taken his coat. He contemplated just throwing the table, but by the time the thought had passed his mind, he looked up to see Mr. Boots looking at him with a new expression, one he couldn't quite identify.
"You're... not the Doctor?"
James swallowed. "Um... well, you see, it's a little complicated. There's really no reason to get upset, because I'm just like the Doctor and-"
"Then... who did I... who did I see?" Mr. Boots pondered to himself.
James shut up at that, his interest now piqued. "What?"
Mr. Boots' eyes were plastered to his open file, but they were unfocused, lost in thought.
"Mr- Um... Greg," James said. "What do you mean? Who did you see? When? Where?"
Mr. Boots didn't respond, but instead began pressing buttons on James' file and it took him a moment to realize that he was copying it.
"Greg, Greg, wait, you don't know what you're-" he started, trying to stop him.
Too late. Mr. Boots copied the file and sent it most likely to some place he could access it later, then stood and walked purposefully out of the room, shutting the door behind him, (which automatically locked it) the spurs of his boots clanking in a fast beat to his steps.
James felt panicked. This was bad. This was very, very bad. Thinking quickly, he stood from his seat and with a flourish of his fingers, accessed the computer screen on the table. He bypassed security easily and got into the mainframe of the Shadow Proclamation's network, then proceeded to make every single alarm go off, shutting and locking doors to ensure that Mr. Boots didn't get out with his file. Then he accessed the intercom.
"Doctor!"
The Doctor, Rory, Amy and the Shadow Architect were hurriedly making their way down the corridors of the Shadow Proclamation when suddenly hallway was filled with the sound of an alarm going off and the doors on every side of them beeping as they locked. Not seconds later, the intercom came to life with static buzzing, followed by a very alarmed shout.
"Doctor!"
"That's James!" Amy exclaimed.
The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and began running down the halls, not waiting to make sure that everyone was keeping up with him.
Rory and Amy quickly ran after him, and after a brief hesitation, the Shadow Architect followed as well.
The Doctor soniced open doors that were in his path until he reached the interrogation room James was in. He burst through the door and found James sitting in one of the chairs, fingers flying feverishly over a computer screen on the table.
"What happened?" the Doctor asked in alarm, looking all through-out the room for Mr. Boots, but there was no sign of him.
"He has my file," James said, then slammed his hand down on the table angrily as he stared at the screen. "And I can't lock him down!"
The Doctor looked at the screen at the small infrared dot he was trying to stop. He locked doors, blocked entrances, but Mr. Boots seemed to know the layout quite well, and managed to escape rooms with ease.
The Doctor looked at James and put a hand on his shoulder.
James didn't respond, he just continued to try and stop him.
"James..." the Doctor said gently.
"I can change it."
"What should we do?" Rory asked uncertainly.
"Should we go get him?" Amy suggested.
"James."
James abruptly stopped typing and buried his head in his hands, running them up and through his hair in frustration.
"Doctor, what's going on?" Amy asked, looking between the two of them anxiously. At first, neither answered, but after a quite sigh, James responded in a quite murmur, head still buried in his hands.
"It's a fixed point."
"What?"
The Doctor sighed. "This was a fixed point," he answered. "It had to happen. We couldn't change it."
"I don't understand. Why?"
"Wait, what was a fixed point?" Rory asked.
"Mr. Boots discovering who James is. That was his plan in doing this... well, future Mr. Boots' plan, anyway."
"Oh..." Amy said.
"Which means I can't go back to Pete's world," James said.
"No. It means you might not get to go back. There's a difference," the Doctor corrected him, then gestured for James to move, "Now, let's do a bit of damage control." With that, he pulled out his own sonic screwdriver, opened up James' file, and promptly deleted it. Then he returned the sonic screwdriver back into its pocket and turned. "Now, if you have a problem with that, Shadow Architect, maybe you should consider getting better security measure for your-" he stopped as he looked between Amy and Rory. "Where's the Shadow Architect?"
Both and Amy and Rory looked around them for her, but she was nowhere in sight.
"Why weren't you two watching her?" the Doctor asked accusingly as he stepped out of the room to look down the hallway.
"You didn't tell us to," Amy said defensively.
"It was implied," the Doctor said, then sighed. "Well, we've lost the Shadow Architect."
Suddenly the alarms went off again, this time followed by the calm, automated female voice announcing "Code Red" over and over.
The Doctor looked up, then at James.
James raised his hands innocently. "It wasn't me!"
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Can't we go anywhere without setting off some alarm?" he complained, then pointed the sonic at the speaker above them, silencing it.
"We're not that meddlesome, are we?" James asked.
The Doctor shrugged.
"Well, trouble does kind of follow you, Doctor," Rory said.
Suddenly beneath the blaring of the alarm, a soft electronic groaning noise began to over-shadow the alarm as, slowly but surely, the TARDIS appeared in the interrogation room.
"Speaking of trouble," the Doctor said with a grin, then clapped his hands happily as River opened the door of the TARDIS. "Doctor River Song! Glad you could make it! Come along Ponds and Smith! We've got a lot of work to do."
"I heard what happened," River said.
"Yes, and we still have time to fix it," the Doctor said, moving past her into the TARDIS. The Ponds followed after him, followed by James, who glanced at River, fully expecting her to ignore him or even glare, but she did neither. She looked right back. He wasn't exactly sure what was in that look, but she didn't give him much time to contemplate it, as she turned away from him to shut the doors, then head up to the console with the Doctor.
Alrighty, so it is revealed how Mr. Boots knew about James. One of you guessed it by yourself (Kudos! :D ) I will try to get to the next chapter as soon as I can, but I can't make any promises that it will be soon, unfortunately. :( Once again and as always, your reviews and critiques are always appreciated.