**Notes: Thank you for the reviews! I'm still relatively new to this writing thing and I really appreciate the feedback. A happy turn in the relationships in this chapter. I hope you enjoy it! **

Chapter Seventeen – A Storm is Brewing

Alex and Evander were shopping for TARDIS parts while Jack and Rose went shopping for clothes and such. Rose couldn't quite remember what planet they were on at the moment, but it didn't really matter. It had been three weeks since Jack had joined team TARDIS once again and everyone was happier since the new arrangements had been made.

The Doctors no longer argued over who got to introduce her as their wife first. They also seemed to be on a mission to outdo each other for spectacular date nights, which meant that Rose was getting spoiled. Plus, Rose was able to spend time alone with Jack without her husbands getting jealous because they all knew exactly where they stood in their relationships.

"So, where did Evander take you last night?" Jack asked with a knowing smile. He was fully aware of their competition to show Rose a better time as they had been asking him for advice on where to go.

Rose smiled as she sifted through a basket of scarves. "A picnic on Woman Wept."

"And?" he gives her a look that says he knows there was more to it than that.

"And he took me dancing. Somewhere in the fifteenth century, I think," Rose said and started walking down the street towards the next shop.

"So, after these date nights, do you all still go back to the same bedroom or what?" Jack couldn't help but be curious.

"It's our room, no one is ever expected to leave. The date nights are for talking and romance, not sex. We have plenty of sex all the time. Sometimes all three of us, sometimes in pairs. I don't think there's any going on without me involved though. As far as I can tell, Evander does it for me, not so much for himself. That could change when someone regenerates, who knows what kind of things might change knowing the kind of relationship we're in when it happens," Rose said with a wink.

Jack just smiled back and said, "Spoilers!" They both laughed and kept shopping. He picked up a few items and held them out next to her before tossing one of the dresses into her arms, nodding towards the dressing rooms.

"You've been spending a lot of time in the library lately," Jack said loudly enough for her to hear him through the change room door.

"I've been studying," Rose replied and stepped out to look at the dress she was trying on in the mirror and get Jack's opinion. "Thought I'd continue with some of the subjects that I started learning in the parallel universe and maybe finish a degree or two through correspondence. I'm not about to stop travelling long enough to actually attend classes or anything, but we have enough books in the library that I can manage." She twirled a bit to see how the dress would move when she was running for her life.

"That's great, Rosie. They must be proud of you for that. That dress looks hot, by the way. You should totally get it."

Rose turned back and forth in front of the mirror once more before nodding and heading back into the change room. "We should probably head back towards that restaurant where we said we'd meet after this. It's almost lunch time," Rose said loudly through the door.

"Not a problem, sis," Jack answered as he stood up from the chair where he had been waiting for her and looked out the front windows of the shop. The sky had turned cloudy while they were inside. "Looks like it might rain. I don't suppose you have an umbrella in those bigger-on-the-inside pockets of yours?"

"I might actually, I'll check on the way."

"I can't believe you beat me to taking her back to Woman Wept," Alex sulked.

"Well, after you took her to see all of the openings of the Harry Potter movies in one go, I had to think of something. These kinds of ideas don't come easily to me in this regeneration, you know," Evander defended as he tossed aside some broken parts that the owner of the shop probably couldn't even identify.

"I know, our eighth incarnation probably would have been brilliant at coming up with these sorts of things. Was your last one any better? You took River out and stuff, right?" he asked and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. Alex had given up on finding anything useful in this shop fairly quickly.

They didn't even need to shop for parts anymore. Evander's last self had managed to grow the rare tree inside the TARDIS that would produce any parts they needed. It would have been extremely helpful after the war, but the TARDIS had taken too much damage to be able to grow one for at least a century and he hadn't needed it before the war. They were only shopping for parts as something to do while Rose spent time on what she called 'retail therapy' with Jack.

"I suppose I was better at it before. I'm certainly not going to take Rose to all the same places I took River, though. For one thing, I'm not going to risk that run-in and I'm pretty sure that I heard somewhere that it was inappropriate to do that," Evander said uncertainly as he scanned his memory for where someone said something about that.

Shaking off the thought, he nodded to Alex and they left the shop, walking back down the street towards where they had agreed to rendezvous. The sky had darkened considerably in the last hour and some niggling thought in the back of their minds told them that it shouldn't be.

They strolled down the streets of the marketplace on the (now found) moon of Poosh, and noticed the people around them were starting to look nervous, several of them pointing towards the sky. The Doctors didn't see anything odd in the sky, it was just cloudy.

"Wait a minute," Evander said as he remembered something important. "After they found the moon, they set up an environmental dome over all the inhabited areas. The weather here is controlled."

"Then why is it cloudy?" Alex asked rhetorically.

~'Rose, love, where are you? Something is wrong here.'~ Alex thought to her.

~'We're on our way back to... what the hell is that?!'~ both Doctors could hear her and felt her sudden shock at whatever she was seeing.

~'Show me,'~ they thought to her at the same instant.

Rose sent them the image of what she was seeing in the sky from her viewpoint and they both turned to find it from where they were. There was a swirling maelstrom of dark clouds in the direction the Doctors had come from and there were large arcs of lightning splitting the sky near the disturbance.

~'We should meet up near the TARDIS so we can use her sensors on whatever that is,'~ Alex told them. He felt their agreement and everyone started moving quickly towards their time ship. They didn't run, as they were hoping to avoid sparking panic in the crowd that was already on the verge of it. But people could get seriously hurt if they started running and pushing like a mob.

By the time the Doctors arrived at the TARDIS, Rose and Jack were already there and Rose was trying to get some kind of readings with her sonic, but it didn't have the range needed.

Evander opened the doors with a snap of his fingers and they all ran inside to see what information they could get.

The Doctors ran straight to the monitor and started typing in commands. Rose and Jack watched over their shoulders. Jack ended up pacing, looking nervously at their faces for signs that he should start worrying, since he couldn't read the swirls of Gallifreyan on the screen.

"Something has cracked the containment dome," Alex observed.

"And whoever it is, is pumping some kind of alternative atmosphere inside. That is what those dark clouds were. It's creating a huge disturbance as well as replacing the air," Evander added.

"Do you recognize the gases?" Rose asked. "Can you tell what aliens would want that mix in their atmosphere?"

"It's definitely toxic to everyone here. We have to solve this fast or everyone out there is going to choke to death. Why does that seem familiar?" Alex asked as he began to ramble, a sure sign that he was starting to feel the pressure of the situation. Rose squeezed his shoulder to help calm him a little as they worked this out. He placed his hand over hers for a moment in thanks.

"Familiar? Have we seen this before?" Evander asked with lowered eyebrows and a scowl on his face that indicated his mind was swirling with thoughts and connections in a way that only a Time Lord's could.

"Well, do you keep like a database or something in the computer to reference things you've encountered in the past?" Rose asked.

Both Doctors looked at her like she had grown a second head for a moment. "Why would I need to do that? My memory is perfect," Evander insisted.

Rose crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at that. He had already admitted to her that the memories of meeting her in his earliest incarnations were fuzzy due to the amount of time that had passed for him. Even with an incredible brain like his, two thousand years was a very long time to remember everything.

"Alright, alright... it would be a good idea, but no, right now there is NOT a database of every deadly mix of gases or chemicals that I've ever run into and what aliens were associated with them," Alex said quickly to halt this argument. They didn't have time for that, they needed to focus. "So, me being the younger of us and closer to the early memories, give me a minute."

Alex closed his eyes as his face showed his intense concentration. He thought back to the various instances of toxic gases that he had encountered and thought about why this particular mix seemed familiar. Sontarans? Nope, not them. This didn't match the atmosphere they had tried to create on earth with the ATMOS systems. Exhaust? Why was the idea of exhaust sticking for some reason? Hang on, hang on... cars... motorway... OH!

"Macra!" Alex yelled, making Rose and Jack jump a bit and Evander looked up sharply at him.

"The exhaust in the motorway on New Earth is what reminded me, but we didn't evaluate that... the reason this looks familiar is that we DID get a full analysis in our second incarnation. That colony that had been taken over by the Macra. THAT is what this gas looks like!" Alex said excitedly. He jumped around the console to type in a few more commands.

"Ok, we now have a scan coming up of the ship in orbit. It's definitely big, which fits the theory of Macra, those things were huge," Evander announced to the room as he too, called up the memory of the colony he had visited so long ago with Jamie, Ben and Polly. "The gas is being pumped in through the crack they've made in the dome, but I wonder if we could do something with the environmental control systems in place here to push it back out again or filter it away somehow."

"We also need to stop them from continuing this attack," Rose added. "Should we split up? Two of us work on the systems down here while two go up to their ship and try to stop it from there?"

Rose could feel their apprehension at either of them separating from her in the middle of an invasion, but she knew they couldn't argue her logic. She watched as they looked at each other, trying to make a decision.

~'You know she's right,'~ Evander said privately to Alex.

~'Doesn't mean I have to like it,'~ Alex replied.

~'You take Jack and the TARDIS up to the ship. There are masks in the compartments below, we should probably take a couple of them too in case the atmosphere gets bad down here,'~ Evander said, making the executive decision on teams.

Alex narrowed his eyes at Evander for a moment. He knew there were several logical reasons for the particular split that he suggested, but he didn't want to be away from Rose. ~'Fine. Get what you need and I'll show Rose how to download a map of the city into her sonic.'~

Evander headed down the stairs to the area below the main console room to find masks for everyone. And Alex began searching the local computers for a map of the city.

"Rose, love, could you bring your sonic over here? I'm going to get you a map of the area. You and Evander will go to the atmospheric control centre to find a way to clear the toxic atmosphere down here. Jack and I will take the TARDIS and try to stop the Macra from up on their ship," Alex rambled quickly while fiddling with Rose's sonic. It was obvious that he was not completely happy with the plan.

Evander ran back up to the main room, masks in hand. He left two of them on top of the console as he handed one to Rose and placed another inside one of his trans-dimensional pockets. "You are brilliant with electronics, darling. I'm sure between the two of us, we'll get this part sorted in no time," he said as he took her arm and they ran for the doors.

"Stay safe you two!" Rose shouted back at Alex and Jack before closing the doors behind them. She heard the TARDIS dematerialize behind them and gripped Evander's hand tightly. She called up the city map on her sonic and showed it to him as she tried to figure out exactly where they were in relation to it. "This way!" she announced once she was oriented correctly.

Rose pulled the Doctor through the streets with her towards the atmospheric control centre and he ran awkwardly after her. He inwardly fumed at the awkwardness. What was his problem? He used to run with her hand-in-hand all the time. Why is this incarnation not as comfortable with that arrangement as he once was? Perhaps it went along with 'the hugging thing.' But he had found a way around 'the hugging thing' with Rose. It occurred to him then that it hadn't really been an issue in the adventures they'd had since her return. They had either walked with their arms linked, or she'd run while Alex pulled her along and he took up the rear, just in case. Maybe he needed to find a comfortable way around this too. For now, he let her tug him ungracefully toward their goal.

They reached the ominous looking building fairly quickly and ran up the steps only to be stopped by security before they could enter. The Doctor flashed his psychic paper and immediately began his usual explanations. "We have been sent to repair the obvious malfunction in the control systems," he said gesturing towards the churning clouds in the sky. "We are specialists and it's quite lucky that we were here, so we'll just be off to the control room then. Which is located on which floor again?"

The security guard looked mildly panicked and dazed by the quick explanation, but managed to sputter a response, "Uh, ... floor thirteen, sir."

"Lucky! Thanks for that," Rose told him as they burst through the doors towards the lifts on the far side of the lobby. Rose jabbed at the button to summon the lift and paced back and forth to expend some of the energy that the adrenaline of the situation had released. It never ceased to amaze her how she wasn't exhausted from a long run now that she was a Time Lady. She still would have been fighting to catch her breath after sprinting through the city at this point if she were still human.

There was a small chime as the doors opened and the Doctor guided her into the lift with one hand on her back. He pressed the button for the thirteenth floor and used his sonic on the panel to try and speed it along. Rose looked at his sonic and considered how the styling really didn't suit him. He had told her that his last incarnation had made this one and had quite liked flicking it around at the time. Now, he was just, sort of, used to it.

As the lift chimed their arrival and the doors finally opened, Rose and Evander dashed straight into a room filled with computer screens showing the various areas of the dome and images of the atmosphere in different colours to indicate changes in temperature and composition. There was only one technician in the room and he was obviously in a panic to figure out what to do in this emergency. Rose approached him while Evander went to work on the computer systems, flicking various lighted switches as he dashed from one panel to another.

"We're here to help. We're specialists, alright," Rose said as she put a hand on his shoulder to calm him a bit. "I'm Rose and this is the Doctor. What's your name?"

"Rutherford... Jake Rutherford," he answered shakily.

"Ok, Jake. Don't you worry about a thing because the Doctor and I fix stuff like this all the time," Rose reassured him and went to her husband's side to see how she could help.

Jake looked at them warily, but he had no idea what to do and decided that these strangers couldn't make it any worse; he hoped. He slumped into a nearby rolling chair and tried to gather his scattered wits.

Evander set Rose to the task of boosting the fan outputs while he reprogrammed the systems. It would take a while, perhaps longer than the air would be safely breathable.

"You!" he shouted, pointing at the technician that he couldn't remember the name of, "Head-In-The-Clouds, can you get a message out to the people in the city to go inside and block their doors and windows; keep the freshest air possible around them? It won't be safe outside by the time we can fix this," he said with his usual authority.

Jake nodded mutely and ran off, presumably towards some sort of communications area. Evander went back to work and Rose smiled at his gruff demeanour. This incarnation was even more rude than her 'rude and not ginger' Doctor. She wondered about his last incarnation. Never having met that version, Rose had no idea if he was rude or sweet or compassionate. Judging from the photos and some of the memories he had shared with her, she thought he seemed a bit silly and scattered perhaps. Maybe one day, she might meet him too.

Rose shook off those thoughts and focused back on her task of increasing the output from the fans that supplied the fresh air to the system so that they could clear the contaminants as quickly as possible.