Author's Note: This chapter is written by Fenton Hardy Fan. Both she and Namialus would like to thank those who have followed and favorited this story, it means a lot to us.
Moments after Amy walked away, the "kid" thought that there might be better selection if he went into the back of the store, the place marked "Employees Only" on a pair of double doors. Normally, such a thought would never be acted upon, but now, for some reason, it seemed absolutely brilliant. After all, he wanted to see everything here in order to create the best wardrobe ever. When he pushed open one of the grey doors with a little round window at the top, at first all he observed were boxes of books in the forefront with racks of clothing behind them. Further in, he thought he saw what might have been a pegboard with hats. Just as he reached them however, he finally stood in a position to see into the next room through the windows on the next set of double doors. What appeared to be a complex machine in a state of partial dismantlement sat in the middle of the room. Cables ran from it in all directions, puffs of vapor occasionally escaped from maintenance hatches, and a trio of people in some sort of protective gear appeared to be attempting to fix it.
"I really don't think you should be back here," said a voice from behind him, causing him to jump and almost yell in surprise.
Whirling around, the "kid" saw a very unthreatening looking man who seemed to be looking at him with a concerned expression. "Why not?" he replied before turning away.
"It could be dangerous," answered the man as he grabbed his arm and turned him back. Then the man saw what the room on the other side of the doors contained, "Make that definitely dangerous."
"Do you work here?" asked the kid as he wondered whether he should talk the man away or just slip out of his grasp and run.
"No, but I have considerably more experience with things that are alien. And it seems like usually they turn out to be dangerous."
Extracting his arm from the man's grip, the "kid" abruptly shoved open the right door and stepped into the room. He loved science fiction, and with every neuron in his mind he determined to see this machine up close. Surely he would be safe enough. Behind him, the man still spoke, but anything said went in one ear and out the other. Slowly, one of the two tall figures turned and removed its helmet, revealing a beautiful female face framed by glossy straight brown hair. "Welcome," she spoke with a friendly voice and an accent closer to American than English, "what are your names?" As she spoke, the other two figures also turned to face the two intruders, pulling off their protective head gear also.
"My name's Rory," the man responded reluctantly, "I just followed him back here, and I think we'll be going now."
"And I'm Jay. Jay Jones. Is that a space ship?" asked the "kid," stepping closer.
The young woman laughed; she was probably in her early twenties. "I'm Aniala, and yes, this is a space ship. My ship, in fact, the Yaj Chran."
"And it looks like you have some important repair work to do, so we'll be leaving. Bye." Rory attempted to pull Jay out of the room, but discovered the doors opened towards him and had no handles.
"Repair work we would like your help with," spoke up the shortest of the three suited figures, another woman, this one with curly brown hair spilling over her shoulders. "These Power Couplings have been giving us a lot of trouble, even with the many helpful donations provided by your people."
Jay thought helping to fix this small space ship would be the most worthwhile task in the universe.
"Wait a moment," interrupted Clara, "how do you know what he was thinking?"
"Clara, do you want me to tell this story or not?" The Doctor started to walk away, "It's ridiculous. Let's try and find our way back to the console room, or at least find a different Companion to talk about."
"You can't weasel out of this that easily, Doctor. Now come back here and finish the story. Obviously everything works out well enough in the end, otherwise he wouldn't have his own room."
"Your powers of deduction are as sharp as always," quipped The Doctor, but he returned to her side and sat on the foot of the bed. Clara grinned and seated herself on the edge of the mattress beside the pillow.
"You can't let him work with Power Couplings," Rory exclaimed, "even with protective suits like yours, that could easily prove to be deadly unless you power down the engines."
"I don't dare shut off the engines," argued the curly haired woman, who seemed to be the one in charge of the repairs. "These are J type 351-PRATs, on a ship this small there's no restart system for them."
"Shut up, Aivilo," interjected Aniala before jumping down to the floor with an athlete's easy grace, "This one knows more about our technology than anyone from this primitive planet should. How?"
"Occasionally I help The Doctor with repairs on the TARDIS, although not since I dropped that Thermal Coupling a while back…"
"The TARDIS, is that your ship?"
"Well, it's not my ship, it belongs to The Doctor."
"How interesting." She turned to Jay, "Now, will you help me with the repairs?"
"Of course!" he exclaimed trying to walk towards the ship as Rory held him back.
When Aniala saw this she lifted her eyebrows in a helpless gesture, "Naeth," she called out. Behind her, the third figure raised a blow torch threateningly. He was the tallest, and even the hazard suit could not entirely hide his well-muscled frame. Keeping her eyes locked with Rory's, Aniala laid out a proposition, "I don't need someone under the age of twenty trying to fix my ship, but we've already been trapped on this backwater planet for one fourth of its orbit now, and the three of us must return to Xalag 3 with vital information about our Egelloc enemies. I would prefer not to watch a young man fry himself on our circuits, so to speak, but the three of us must survive. Now you, Rory, apparently followed that young man back here out of the goodness of your heart, so I'm going to offer to let you take his place. Will you?"
Amy watched worriedly as The Doctor poked around in the store for a few minutes. After what felt like an eternity, he exclaimed, "Aha! The energy leakage is from back here." The sonic pointed at the double doors marked "Employees Only" which lead into the back portion of the store.
Amy pushed past him and confidently shoved open the door on the left, "It's just more old clothes and books."
"And a fez!" exclaimed The Doctor as he caught sight of the pegboard holding various hats. Quickly he walked towards it, spinning around once as he reached it. He grabbed it off its peg.
"Doctor, look," cried Amy, who followed him to the hats. She pointed through the window of one of the second set of double doors. Inside the next room she could see Rory just finishing putting on some sort of hazard suit.
The Doctor stood beside her and looked through the window in the other door, "What is a Xalagian ship doing here?"
"Who cares about that, Doctor. What is Rory doing in a weird nuclear radiation protection suit!" She attempted to push the left door open but it had been locked shut somehow.
After watching the scene for a few seconds, The Doctor replied, "He's going to get himself killed trying to repair the Power Couplings of a powered up J type 351—"
"I don't care about the model number, Doctor, just get him out of there!"
"Right," The Doctor jammed the fez onto his head, used his sonic screwdriver on the doors, and dramatically pushed open both at once, "Rory, step away from those Power Couplings," he ordered. Amy entered the room as soon as the doors opened, watching her relieved husband stepped back as The Doctor continued, "Now, Mr. Pond, what is going on here?"
"These people are some kind of intelligence gathering party trying to return to their home planet. They crash landed here about three months ago and have spent the time since then trying to repair their ship," answered Rory.
Aniala strode up to The Doctor, "Who are you?"
Amy walked past The Doctor and the woman. When she reached Rory she spoke just louder than a whisper, "So, you didn't try on one of the mind control outfits after all." She smiled at him, "I'm so proud."
"Mind control outfits? Would those be made up of clothing identical to what I already own?" Rory responded in the same quite tone as The Doctor carried on an enthusiastic conversation with Aniala.
"Oh yes."
"Oh, and you thought I would say, 'hey, this is exactly like my favorite hoodie. I may have found it in an American store a few years into the future in a store seeping odd energy readings, but I'm sure it's perfectly safe to try on."
"Not when you put it that way," Amy punched him in the shoulder, "Listen, stupid, I was worried about you, take it as a compliment."
Rory put his arm around his wife's shoulders as The Doctor finished his conversation. "Alright, Ponds," he shouted up at them, "you can come down from the ship; I'm going to help these people home."
"I was hoping he would say that," murmured Rory before calling down to the young man standing at the base of the ship and staring at it with an empty fascination, "Jay, we're coming down now, and you'll need to leave with us."
"But I want to stay here!" argued Jay, looking up at last.
"Oh, Rory, we're not leaving just yet," exclaimed The Doctor, "I'm going to help Aniala fix her ship."
"But Doctor," argued Amy, "you said it would be suicide to attempt to mess with the Power Couplings while the engine runs."
"Never mind what I said, Amy. These people need my help."
"The fez," muttered Amy to herself.
"What?" Rory looked at her in confusion.
"The fez, he picked it up on the way back here," mused Amy, "Doctor!" she shouted down, "take off your fez before you come up, okay?"
"Amy, is now the right moment to criticize his fashion choices?" inquired Rory.
"Now is always the right moment to criticize his fashion choices, but that's beside the point. I think that fez is one of the mind control shape changing things. He was talking about them earlier while we looked for you; they take a person's natural interests and twist them around to suit the fancy of the device's creator." As Amy finished speaking, Naeth approached the couple threateningly with his blowtorch.
"If either of you makes an attempt to remove the red hat from The Doctor's head, I'm going to—" Naeth never had a chance to finish his threat. The Time Lord reached the edge of the ship and lifted a hand to grab the first rung of the ladder, but as he did so, Jay snatched the fez from The Doctor's head and slammed it onto his own cranium.
"Wooah, that's much better," The Doctor shouted, "and I never thought I'd say that about someone stealing my fez," he added as an aside.
"What!" Aniala sounded like a small child about to throw a fit, "Why would you even want an ugly hat like that, Jay?"
"Ugly? This is one of the coolest hats I've ever seen!" replied the teenager.
"Some of the most dangerous mind control technology I've ever seen," interjected The Doctor, "defeated by a young man's excellent fashion sense." He laughed. Suddenly he extended his hand through a nearby hatch and flipped several switches, turned a knob, and slammed his hand down on a large red button. "Now," he locked a pair of very serious eyes with Aniala as Aivilo started to panic and yellow lights began to flash. "I've just powered down your craft's engines," he whipped out his sonic screwdriver, "and on a Xalagan ship of this size and make, that means we're only a few minutes away from your craft activating its self-destruct mechanism. So all of us are going to head out my ship, which is parked out front. I'll take you home, but first we need to wait for your ship to finish melting into a gooey puddle of its base molecules so the three of you can help me perform a detox on the remains to prevent anyone living near here from contracting radiation sickness. Then, after a lecture on basic morality, I'll drop you off at your base. Now, if only there were a way to clear out the store until it's safe…" He activated his sonic screwdriver, and two seconds later the fire alarms all began to sound. "Everyone out!"
Several hours later, The Doctor stood in the console room watching the trio exit the TARDIS. Once they had left, he turned to a wide eyed Jay Jones, who had finally been relieved of his mind controlling jacket and fez. Even when Jay's mind returned to normal away from the influence of the items, he clearly still wanted the fez for himself. "You may have saved my life today, Jay," he opened a conversation with the tall young man.
"Saved your life? All he did was snatch away your awful fez, and you don't give me any thanks for doing that." Amy was playacting at being jealous.
"Oh all right, Pond," The Doctor turned back to Jay, "You saved my life, after a fashion. And because of your obvious love of fashion, I've decided to thank you by giving you a trip to the mall."
"The mall?" scoffed Amy.
"Yes, my favorite mall. It's just like any other mall, only in space. And the manager owes me a favor."
Jay nodded vigorously at the proposal, "Awesome."