AN: Funny thing - I actually asked my friend Matt who writes for me on occasion to write this. And he did, props to him, but I sort of perhaps butchered his work in my editorials. So this is probably 20% Matt and 80% me? Or even more me? Anyway, though, like I said - the latter chapters of this last Manifest arc would be way better. And would you look at that, they totally are.

Techno-Boy vs. Screech

Mickey

Mickey had been listening to Dr Klein drone on and on about his new Project Crystal formula just like everyone else on the Valiant. He'd been pretty damn impressed when Esther Drummond had blasted off with Rani Chandra in hot pursuit, his attention first on those two and then pulled away again when Rose decided to yell that it was time for Clara Oswald to (finally) die. He'd turned in time to see the motes of golden light residue left in the air from when Rose tackled Clara out of spacetime. And that was all he saw until he was knocked clean off his feet by a knuckled blow to then side of his head. Imagine Mickey Smith's surprise when there was Donna Noble, maniacal and deranged, looming over him.

"Donna!?" he exclaimed. She laughed – well, more kind of cackled – at him, sprawled out on the metal floor, shaking his ringing head. Where the hell did Donna learn to punch so hard.

"Mickey!" she shouted his name mockingly right back at him, copying his own tone of voice. Then she laughed again and delivered a kick straight to his gut, winding him. "Blimey, you're pathetic. Then again, what should I have expected from a computer nerd like you?" Mickey was a bit offended by that – if Donna wanted to punch out a computer nerd, she'd do better going for Adam Mitchell. Adam Mitchell appeared to be trying to freeze Clyde Langer in a block of ice at present, though; he could see them sparring a few metres away from where he lay at Donna's feet.

Donna went to give him another kick for good measure, but he finally came back to himself enough to remember how to fight (of course he knew how to fight – he'd been hunting dangerous aliens for years), and he grabbed Donna's foot and ankle and wrenched. She came tumbling down, and that took some of the amusement out of her as he struggled to stand back up again.

"We don't have to do this, Donna," Mickey coughed, rolling his shoulders and settling into a low, defensive position. But he'd pissed her off by bettering her momentarily, and even if he hadn't he wasn't sure letting her pummel him would be the best way to nullify the effects of Project Crystal.

"No," she said, the smile wiped from her face, "But I really want to."

"You don't have to be slave to whatever he's done to you," Mickey said, jerking his head to the very surreal looking row of Kleins, the lot of them just watching the dismay they'd created instead of joining in. Probably hoping they'd all kill each other off. Hell – maybe they would. "The Doctor!" Mickey exclaimed, getting a brainwave, "He's your best friend – how would he feel if he saw you like this?"

"The Doctor's never liked you much anyway," Donna shrugged, "Besides, why fight what feels good when I could just fight you, instead?"

Mickey braced himself for another physical assault, forgetting completely what Donna's superpowers actually were. Boy was he surprised when he was hit by Donna's scream. It was like he'd had his whole body shoved by a battering ram; the sheer power of her voice was almost visible, waves of pure vocal energy rippling through the air and tearing metal fragments from the Valiant's floor.

For a split second only, he thought he might – might – be able to endure the piercing wail. He was wrong. He didn't stand a chance. With a force so strong entire panels were lifting up from the aircraft's floor and flying away, Mickey was blown off the flying fortress with everything else the screech destroyed in its path.

He blacked out for a moment, the pressure of the scream forcing blood to flow from his ears and nose. When he awoke, he was falling, falling through a mess of metallic debris through the cold sea air to the even colder ocean below, spinning out of control with no way of seeing how much longer he had until he hit the water. He really didn't have time to do anything other than limit how much of him hit the water at once – and it was a good thing he knew how to dive. Sort of. Knew the theory of diving. At any rate, he didn't die, he held his hands in front of himself and hit the Irish Sea like a Mickey-shaped torpedo, punching through the foamy waves into the briny.

Disorientated, it took him a second to figure out which way the light was coming from, but when he did he swam up quickly to surface. There was the Valiant, hanging in the sky nearby, but the current was already taking him away from it. How close to shore were they? Could he make it to Ireland or Scotland from where they were easily? He couldn't see any land at all. These waves, in their funny, streaking pattern, must have been made by Esther and Rani as they zoomed across it not a few minutes earlier. Like how small tremors in the ocean caused tsunamis on other sides of the world.

He saw nearby ripples in the water from where Donna must have landed. Did she think nothing through? He hoped she could swim. They taught swimming in schools, though – but maybe not when Donna was in school. How old was she, again? He watched bubbles burst above the point of impact, paddling quite easily. Despite her minor, psychotic intoxication, he was glad to see her emerge from the sea and cough, spitting out a little fountain of seawater.

"See what you've done?" Mickey said, "We're both in the sea now – are you happy? How are we supposed to get back to the Valiant?"

"I don't care where we are – as long as you die!" she shouted, making his bleeding ears smart a little. Then she unleashed another trademark howl which gouged a trench out of the water, hitting Mickey in the chest and sending him rolling back under the water, much too dizzy to do a lot of anything.

Okay. So. Talking to Donna was, obviously, futile. He'd learnt that by now. The only thing left – aside from trying to knock her out, but knocking somebody out when they were in the sea and you were not actually a trained lifeguard wasn't a good idea at all – was evasion tactics. He thought he heard her shout something very loud about how he was a 'typical man' who 'didn't even know how to die right.' Possibly she mentioned Shaun, but he had water in his ears. Eventually, she'd get tired trying to keep afloat for so long, and hopefully by that point one of the others might come to lend their assistance.

Perhaps, if Mickey remembered what Donna's other, newer power was, he may have hoped for the Project Crystal to wear off enough for her to use it to rescue them. Of course, he didn't remember, so when she used it, it came as a huge surprise. He'd never been attacked by a plane before.

There was Donna, he could see her swimming nearby, him lurking, glad of the ability to breathe underwater. And there, above him, something grew. A portal began to stretch itself into existence, bridging the gap between one place and another, a flickering hole breaching reality itself under the sea. He couldn't see much more than black-and-white movement on the other side, crackling like it was drowned in static, until a hulking mass of metal and flame and propeller crashed into the present. Mickey had never swum so fast and so desperately in his life than when Donna Noble opened a doorway to a downed Spitfire, cockpit vacated by its ejecting pilot, and sent it hurtling for him. If it hit him, at its velocity, it would take him down into the depths of the ocean so pressurised his head would burst.

The current the plane created still tried to suck him down into the sea with it, and it was a long while of struggling until it sank far enough away into the Atlantic's opaque belly. Just before it disappeared completely, it exploded, the orange flames put out almost immediately. Mickey barely felt the shockwave. Good thing the plane had been empty. He didn't know what Donna would do when she was freed from her stupor if she'd become a murderer. He was beginning to think that the best thing to do would just be drag her under the water until she lost consciousness. He saw her take a lungful of air and duck below the surface to get a look and see if she'd been successful in her latest attempt on his life.

"I don't want to have to hurt you!" he shouted, muffled, wondering how well he could hear her. He saw her grin, hold in a laugh that might choke her. In the water she leant back, and he wondered what she was doing. He didn't think she would risk opening her mouth and risk drowning, but Mickey underestimated the dampening affect Project Crystal clearly had on her brain functions, because that was exactly what she did. He also underestimated the effect that one of her screams would have down there. He couldn't really hear it, but it still packed a powerful punch and made the water feel as though it were humming. He was knocked wildly backwards, rolling over and over in a very dizzying way.

And then Mickey felt his body tingle and he fell, hard, onto a wonky, damp surface, tonnes of water cascading down on top of him. Habitually he still gasped for air, but the air was freezing cold, colder than the Irish Sea had been seconds earlier. The fact he was soaked didn't do much for him, and the panicked screaming didn't do much for his burst eardrums.

Wait.

Panicked screaming?

Had he mentioned how disorientated he was…?

Mickey saw behind him one of those shimmering portals of Donna's, the other side blurred and impossible to discern, the edges crackling and indigo. Whatever he was standing on was moving. It wasn't level. It was very un-level, in fact, crooked, and only getting worse and worse and worse. He glanced to his right and saw there dozens of lifeboats and hundreds of people with chunks of bright white ice floating through them. And in front of him was the sea, because they were sinking. He and all the people dressed in their old-fashioned, upper-class clothes, they were all heading down together.

"Oh my god," he murmured to himself, "This is the Titanic." And not the good, fake Titanic with Leo and Kate, the bad, real one, where thousands of people had drowned. Donna had to take them back to the Valiant, and she had to do it soon, or the April Atlantic would freeze the both of them en route to New York City. Except that Donna wasn't there yet.

Suddenly he was struck with the horrifying thought that Donna Noble might be trying to strand him there to die – since that was what any sane evil person would do. Maybe not sane. Clever? Somebody knocked right into his shoulder and nearly pushed him over, turning him to face the portal again. Through it he could just about make out the blurry outline of his pursuer swimming to greet him. So hopefully he wouldn't quite get stranded. Now it was going to become a battle between what happened first – the wearing off of Project Crystal or the sinking of the unsinkable ship.

He ran and scrambled away from the portal with the stern slowly lifting and lifting and lifting underneath his feet. The further it lifted the faster the boat would sink, so now he wasn't only fighting against Donna – who'd nearly appeared on deck with him – he was fighting against time itself. Every bit more water the ship took on was every bit closer to the both of them freezing to death in it. He heard a scream from behind him and felt the whole structure of the boat literally shudder; it was a wonder that he had survived as long as he had.

By the time Donna came flopping out of her portal (obviously forgetting that gravity was a thing) with gushes of cold water following behind, the stern of the boat had nearly risen to his peak. It was like trying to climb a mountain, keeping level on that, and Mickey hid behind a metal staircase as best he could. After Donna came through, he just saw the portal vanish behind her. Their exit route was gone. She had better be able to do the same thing twice, or they were doomed.

"I've finally got you, Mickey!" Donna shouted, making him wince. He wondered what Martha would say about Donna wrecking her husband's hearing when they got back to the TARDIS. Because they would definitely get back to the TARDIS. He wasn't going to even begin to think of an alternative outcome for this rather damning situation. "You've nowhere else to run now!" She didn't know where he was, though. He was still relatively safe. How was she not scared for her life!?

Anger taking Donna over, she screamed again, and it made his ears ring and the earpiece he had in buzz with feedback. Hold on. That earpiece. It was still working? He had forgotten about it, or assumed it had died when he'd hit the water. Of course, though, Oswin Oswald wouldn't let something as arbitrary as waterproofing disrupt her inventions. And Mickey Smith would be damned if, along with being a water-breather, he wasn't also a technopath.

He pulled it out of his ear, the thing red with blood, and held it in the middle of his clenched fist.

"Come on, Mickey. We all have to die one day, and today's yours. Are you upset you'll never see Martha again? She's too good for you, anyway. Best let her live her life without you – move on to somebody new," Donna taunted. If Mickey hadn't already seen blatant evidence that Donna was completely off her face (like, hello, bringing them onto the most famous sunk ship in Earth's history and getting rid of their escape route), he may have been annoyed by her talking down about his marriage. "Come out!" she bellowed, dazing him. He was numb to all sounds except for Donna's yelling, and felt himself wobbling as the ship rose and rose and rose.

He was done fiddling with the earpiece, though. Thank god one of them wasn't being a complete idiot. There was no point reasoning with her anymore, he only hoped that a sudden scare was enough to sober Donna up. Or was he thinking about hiccups? Nevertheless, it was too late. He balled up his fist and lobbed the earpiece, newly converted into a very ingenious micro-bomb he actually kind of wanted to tell Oswin about later (if he didn't die), sending it rolling along the deck. He nearly fell and had to grab the railings of the staircase so that he didn't just fall off into the ocean.

"What the hell is-" Donna said as the little white object rolled past her on its way down to the sea. It blew up before it could go too far though, right at her feet, and sent her flying. Luckily she landed on the base of one of the enormous, black and red funnels, of which there were only two left now above the surface of the water. People hardly even noticed what they were up to, too busy trying to save themselves. He heard a clang, barely, like she'd hit her head on the funnel, and he had to slide carefully down the wooden deck to get to her.

"Donna!?" he shouted, his own voice making his ears hurt. No response. "DONNA!?" He noticed her, very blearily, open her eyes. In that moment it was a fifty-fifty chance whether she would murder him on sight (one more scream from her and he would be thrown into the iceberg's wake to be submerged there forever) or whether she would actually help him. Or panic so much they both died anyway.

"What's going on?" she asked wearily.

"Oh, thank god… bloody hell – you have to do something!" Mickey shouted. Donna, not realising quite how precarious her position was, sat up on her hands. And then she looked around. And she noticed. And – how smart of her – she screamed again. It wasn't so bad because she wasn't directing it, this one was out of pure terror rather than being weaponised against him, but it made him wobble so much that he fell down onto the funnel as well, behind her.

"WHERE THE HELL IS THIS!?"

"It's the Titanic!"

"WHY THE HELL ARE WE ON THE FLIPPING TITANIC!?"

"You brought us here!"

"WELL WHY WOULD I DO THAT!?"

"Klein drugged you! You've been trying to kill me!"

"I've what!?"

"You brought us through a portal – you have to do it again," Mickey pleaded, "We'll both drown if you don't, or freeze first!" She screamed again in panic and he nearly fell off the round funnel.

That was when the stern reached tipping point. There was a brief second where it stopped moving, stopping rising, as though the entire world was trapped in a frozen moment. That was when it began to properly sink, very quickly. They were nearly falling. Donna was wailing. So was Mickey, come to think of it. Something in the water, or the engines, or who knew at that point, made the entire vessel jerk. The jerk was not too big, but it was enough to throw Donna from the funnel.

"DONNA!" Mickey yelled, and without even thinking that he couldn't do a single damned thing to stop the pair of them just falling into the sea and becoming Mickey Smith and Donna Noble flavoured ice lollies, he jumped after her, and it was like being in slow motion. They fell in bullet time and Martha's face swam into his head, one last look at his wife before he was sure his life would be over.

Then he saw it, behind Donna. She must have done it by accident, but it was there, that was for damn sure; a static-y rip in the fabric of the universe, purpling at the edges and twitching like it was made of time itself, opening to catch them both in its arms. And catch them it did. He had thought he would die in those moments, he had been absolutely sure of it, when he crashed onto the metal floor of the Valiant's hangar.

And if you were to ask Mickey Smith after that day if, when he fell off the deck of the Titanic's doomed stern, did he maybe pee himself (just a little), he would outright refuse to answer and skulk away awkwardly without a single word in his own defence.