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Here we go.
"No,"
"But!"
"No, just no. You aren't wearing that. I can't let you. I'd be a bad friend if I did,"
As Marion was speaking the Brigadier took that time to re-enter the lab.
He took one look at the Doctor and froze.
"You've changed," he remarked.
"Oh, no, not again," the Doctor groaned. He started side-eyeing the nearby mirror.
"No," Marion said, "He means your clothes, not your face. And you should change again," there was a beat, "Your clothes, not your face,"
"Don't you like them?"
"I thought I made my thoughts on that look quite clear," Marion replied.
Maybe Marion was being a little harsh, but maybe the Doctor was dressed up as an actual Viking.
"UNIT is supposed to be a security organisation," Brigadier reminded carefully.
"Do you think I might attract attention?"
"It's just possible,"
The Doctor shrugged his shoulders and walked back into the TARDIS.
A moment later he emerged dressed like the King of Hearts. Like, the playing card, the King of Hearts.
Marion just raised an eyebrow and said absolutely nothing.
"No?"
Marion's eyebrow raised even higher.
"No," the Doctor nodded and went back into the TARDIS.
And then the Doctor emerged dressed like an old-fashioned Pierrot clown. Lavender, glittery, and just generally upsetting.
Both Harry and the Brigadier shook their heads. The Doctor turned to look at Marion.
"What do you-"
"If you were wearing that, snuck up on me, and I didn't realize who it was, you'd trigger my fight or flight response. You know that don't you?"
"So no to this too?"
"You and I both know that I lean more towards the fight end of that section. So for the sake of both of us, no,"
The Doctor sighed, lowered his head, and walked back into the TARDIS. Then, seconds later he emerged.
Marion had expected that he'd come out with the classic scarf and hat but instead, he emerged wearing...was that a toga? Was it an ACTUAL laurel wreath? Like, made of real actual leaves? How on earth?
"Doctor…,"
Marion said slowly. She glanced towards the Brigadier who said absolutely nothing. He just stared at the Doctor.
He took a hint and spun around on his heels and walked back into the TARDIS.
And then, he came back out.
'Finally,'
"Well, Marion. What do you think? How does this look?"
A long coat, a somehow even longer scarf, a hat, tweed. He looked eccentric, but he also looked like he knew a little bit about everything.
"Perfect. It's very you!" she gave him a thumbs up.
"What do you think, Brigadier?"
"Much better, Doctor. Now, if you've quite finished with your wardrobe-"
"I could try again if you'd like!"
"What? No, no, no, no," Marion shook her head, "You're fine Doctor,"
"Excellent," The Doctor quickly closed the door to the TARDIS behind him. "Time we were off then!"
"Off?"
"Well, you said that there was a crime! You said you wanted us to see it, didn't you?"
The Doctor started walking towards the doorway of the lab.
"The thing is, there's been another rob-"
"Tell me on the way, Brigadier," The Doctor replied, already out of the room, "Tell us on the way. You must cultivate a sense of urgency!"
The drive to the scene of the crime was long and the drive was rather cool. She was thankful for the red sweater and the warm undershirt under it. Actually, speaking of the sweater and what was on it…
"Would anyone like some bread?"
"Bread?"
"Yes Brigadier," Marion said plainly, "bread,"
The question was mostly targeted towards the Doctor, since if she remembered right, regenerating made one hungry, but it would be rude to not offer some to the other people in the car.
"Why do you have bread?"
Marion was already taking the paper bag out of her messenger bag and holding it out to the Doctor.
"I made it earlier. Brigadier, before we got here,"
"When did you have time to do that?"
"I mean before I got here, to this timeframe. In the timeframe where I was before this one, I had the time, so I baked myself some bread,"
The Brigadier was silent for a moment. "Why?"
'Because I couldn't sleep and was feeling stressed and I stress bake.'
"That's personal. Do you want some? You too Harry."
The question "How did the intruders break in" didn't need to be asked. A huge chunk was taken out of the side of the fence. The area around the edges of the huge hole was shinier than the rest of it. Out of curiosity, Marion reached out to touch the singed sides. They were still warm. It reminded Marion of how until someone'd put a strip of duct tape on it, there was always at least someone at the family reunion who accidentally walked through the screen door. Especially when they brought out the smaller cooler that the kids weren't allowed to go into.
"Millions of volts running through the wretched thing, and for all the good it was, it might just-," the Brigadier turned on his heel and noticed the Doctor had strayed behind, "Doctor? Doctor, will you please pay attention."
"He is," Marion defended.
"Look!"
The Doctor held out his hand. Resting on it was a pressed dandelion head that had been squashed down to the point that it was practically two-dimensional.
The Brigadier sighed.
"Doctor, I have every respect for your concern for ecology, but really, one squashed dandelion," he sounded like he was trying to remind himself that the young man he was speaking to was the same as the older man he'd spent years taking the advice of.
"Not just squashed, flattened," the Doctor stood up, still cradling the smushed flower, "Almost pulverised,"
He gently blew on his hand and the flower fully crumbled into yellow dust that flew at the Brigadier's face.
"Well, I suppose it was stepped on," Harry reasoned.
"You aren't going to get a flower that flat from simply walking across it. I don't know if you've ever tried to press a flower before, but to get one like that, you need either a whole lot of pressure over a long period of time or something incredibly heavy,"
"According to my estimation of the resistance to pressure of vegetable fibre, you would need something that weighed a quarter of a ton," Marion moved to keep up with the Doctor as he walked through the gaping hole in the fence. "Come along. I'm sure that there's something important for us to- oh hello there…,"
The Doctor lightly rapped his knuckles against what might've once been a wall that someone had considered sturdy and now more closely resembled one of those paper things that American football players ran through at games.
Was that a thing? Did they do that? Marion had heard that they did that, but the only time she'd paid any kind of attention to sports was when people she knew were playing. And no one she knew that well had played football.
"Not cut or blown open," the Doctor observed, "It's been torn!"
"Yes," the Brigadier walked inside, "None of our security could stop them. They had the run of the place. Funny thing is, they left a lot of valuable and top secret stuff behind. Here's a list of all they actually took,"
He handed the Doctor a clipboard.
"Hmm," the Doctor considered, "Just what you'd need for the control circuitry of one powerful, compact technological device. A disintegrator gun, for instance?"
Despite having driven there in a normal car, they intended to leave in a landrover with a large truck bed in theory big enough for two people. Marion climbed over the side and leaned back with her legs and her arms resting on the edge. The Doctor climbed after Marion, resting his head against one of her legs and shutting his eyes.
"So, what are we looking for?" The Brigadier asked.
"Something that brushes chains and electric fences like cobwebs. Something intelligent, that takes only what it needs and leaves the rest. Something that kills a man as casually as it crushes a dandelion,"
"And what sort of thing is that?" the Brigadier asked. "Is it human,"
"What?" Marion asked in disbelief, "The thing that walked through an electric fence like it was a flimsy screen door, killed a man, stole some stuff, and then pulverized a daisy into nothing? Brigadier, do you think a human being is capable of that,"
"It wouldn't be the first time I've met a human doing things that ought to be physically impossible," He stared pointedly at her. "Like the time that-,"
"Ah ah ah-" Marion cut him off, "Whatever you're about to say, Brigadier, I ought to remind you that my only memory of you from before today was that incident with the Cybermen and the transistors and Professor Watkins. No spoilers! I will not know what you're referencing."
He looked away from her and to the Doctor.
"Well, whatever it is, how do we find it?"
"By locking the next stable door in good time," the Doctor replied.
"Huh?"
"It, whatever it may be, has stolen the plans for the new disintegrator gun. It has also in its possession the necessary control circuitry,"
"In other words, it's almost got everything that it needs. Everything but the…," Marion trailed off.
"The focusing generator,"
"Yeah, that,"
The Brigadier held up a walkie-talkie.
"Greyhound Leader to Trap One. Over," he said. The radio made that noise that a radio makes when it's on, but no one is speaking for a bit, and then Marion heard Benton's voice on the other end.
"Trap One. We read you, Greyhound Leader. Over,"
"Mister Benton, red priority. Emmett's Electronics, a smallish factory in Essex. I want blanket security. Every available man. Air cover as well. I'll meet you there in one hour. By then I want that place better guarded than Fort Knox. Out,"
"It won't do much good," Marion said plainly once he was done talking, "because it's gonna get in regardless of what you do but…,"
"What do you mean it's going to get in regardless, Miss Henson?"
"Just what I said Harry,"
Referring to a person by their first name directly after they address you by your last is what we in the business call a "power move".
She was still peeved about the whole "trying to get her to help him sedate the Doctor" thing.
And even though her logical side said "Don't be so mean, it's not like he could've known!"
The part of her that had felt no remorse upon seeing the Reverend drown said "He's lucky that we're talking to him,"
"Miss Henson, really though what do you mean! he can't simply not send men there solely on your word that it'll be pointless?"
The Brigadier sighed. "Dr. Sullivan is correct. But that being said, I do not want to send my men to their deaths. Will I be?"
"I-,"
Marion closed her eyes and thought back as hard as she could. It was hard to remember little details like that. Although, she supposed, here, a person's life wasn't simply "a little detail". Anyone who died here wasn't a nameless background character. They were a person. A person who had a life, and then wouldn't. So it was very, very important that she focused on this.
"Miss Henson?"
Marion held up up a finger as if to say "Wait a moment,"
"Have...your men guard the outside of the facility, but don't let anyone inside of the building where the generators are. Not even to guard it. Not even with a submachine gun. Not even if they hear something. There's no point in a man losing his life for something that's doomed from the start. Because they will lose their life,"
"Right then,"
The Brigadier lifted the walkie-talkie back up and turned it on.
"Greyhound Leader to Trap One. Over,"
"Trap One. We read you, Greyhound Leader. Over,"
"Have men stationed outside of the vault with the generator, but under no circumstances is anyone to enter it,"
There was a second of silence.
"Did Miss Henson say something, Sir?"
"Yes, Mister Benton,"
"Understood. I'll tell the men that no one is to be stationed inside. Out,"
"You're-you're just going to lower your guard just because she told you too?" Harry said incredulously.
"I trust Miss Henson's judgment on these kinds of things. At this point, it'd be more foolish not to,"
That...actually made Marion feel kind of nice. To know that her advice had been taken and had actually saved some lives was surprisingly comforting.
If Harry had planned on saying anything next, it was cut off by the Brigadier getting back inside of the car and starting it. Marion braced herself where she sat in the back and just hoped that the ride wouldn't be too bumpy this time.
By the time they got there, the place was so well fortified, that not even a mouse (assuming it had the strategy and strength to attempt such a thing) could have broken into the vault and stolen the generators.
Unfortunately for UNIT, they were not dealing with a mouse. So this basically amounted to not much more than security theater.
"It's not that I doubt you, Miss Henson," the Brigadier said as they arrived on the site. But I just don't see how anyone could make it inside! Armed patrols have every inch of the perimeter under observation. Helicopter patrols overhead. Inside that factory is a vault. Not a safe, a vault. Inside the vault, there's a casket. A metal casket containing every focusing generator in the place. Believe me, the place is impregnable,"
"Never cared much for the word impregnable," the Doctor replied. He sat up and looked out onto the site. Sounds a bit too much like unsinkable,"
"What's wrong with 'unsinkable'?"
"Nothing, as the iceberg said to the Titanic,"
Harry blinked. "What?"
"Glug, glug, glug,"
The Doctor sat up and hopped out of the car. Marion joined him.
Benton saw their group in the car and ran towards them.
He saluted. "All patrols posted, sir,"
"Everything secure?" the Brigadier asked.
"Yes, sir. The lads are so close together they're standing on each other's feet,"
"Good," the Brigadier nodded, "Well Miss Henson. Even without a sentry inside of the building, it's protected from both the sides and the top,"
"That still leaves one direction," the Doctor reminded. He held up a hand and then pointedly pointed at the dirt beneath their feet.
"From below"
Marion could hear rumbling from underneath her feet. It wasn't anything like the TARDIS mind you, she could just feel the tremble.
"Marion, is that?"
"Yup!"
Marion was thankful that she couldn't hear the sound of gunshots. No sentry, no bodies. Perfect.
The Brigadier and Harry lept out of the car and sprinted down the path towards the vault. The Doctor followed after them, his hat flying off his hand. Marion leaned down to grab the hat that had flown off the man's head and sprinted right behind the men.
"They got away with the casket," Harry remarked. "Maybe they should've stationed a guard in here after all,"
"Wouldn't have helped. All that that would've done is make it so there'd be a corpse where you're standing right now," Marion remarked, handing the Doctor his hat. She walked down the stairs to the front of the huge roughly dug pit in the middle of the floor.
"There seems to be a very large rat about, Brigadier," the Doctor remarked. He took off his scarf and slowly lowered it down into the pit, trying to get a rough measurement based on the number of stripes. It disappeared into the darkness without showing any signs of ending.
"Rat?"
"Perhaps you should employ the services of a very large cat?"
"Perhaps we should head back to-,"
The Brigadier held up his walkie talkie.
"Greyhound Leader to Trap One. Over,"
"Trap One. We read you, Greyhound Leader. Over,"
"Mr. Benton. I want a search of the local area. There's a large tunnel through the floor and I need the other side of it. Over,"
The radio buzzed for a moment, and then they heard Benton's voice.
"Understood. Over and out,"
"Marion, do you have any idea where the other side might be?"
"I might. Let me see,"
Once you knew that the hole that you were looking for was going to be smoking and that it'd be on a hill surrounded by trees, it was fairly easy to locate and so once she had, Marion called the rest of them over.
"Well," she said, "this is it,"
"This is the other end of the tunnel?" Benton asked.
"Yup,"
Benton leaned down to look at it.
"It's not a proper tunnel,"
"Hm?"
"I mean, no props or anything. Just earth has been shoved aside. Whoever went through it wouldn't be able to breathe,"
The Doctor crouched down next to Marion overlooking the smoking hole.
"That's fine. Whoever went through it didn't need to breathe,"
Looking down at the hole gave her a bit of vertigo in the "at a high place looking down" sort of way and not in a "the Doctor is danger sort of way,". She stepped back and then stumbled when a part of the earth was lower than she had figured that it was going to be. Marion looked down.
"And here's the thing's footprints," She stepped out of the huge rectangular impression in the dirt.
"Ah, good work Marion," the Doctor said, "Is there anything else in the area do you think, or should we return back to HQ,"
"HQ," Marion replied. "Sarah Jane's going to be back from the Think Tank in a little bit, and when she does, we want to be there. So we should head there, like now,"
"So, what are we dealing with? An Invasion from outer space,"
This question was mostly targeted towards Marion as the Doctor was laying across what was a thankfully empty bench with his hat covering his face.
"Nope," Marion replied, "Most aliens that have the tech to steal those components already have the technology required to make them themselves. No, I'm afraid that this time, the call is coming from inside of the house,"
Marion paused.
"Has that movie come out yet? What year is-,"
The Doctor, who had been lying down on top of a lab table, sat up with a jolt and began to pace around the room. "Why should some alien life form invade Earth just to steal a new weapon? If they were that advanced, they'd have weapons of their own. Ha. Rather a splendid paradox, eh, Brigadier? The only ones who could do it wouldn't need to,"
"Enemy agents?" the Brigadier suggested.
"Well, they might steal the plans, sure, but why steal the circuits and generators? I mean, surely an enemy government would have those things itself right?"
"So where does that leave us?"
"Well Brigadier," Marion counted on her fingers, "if it's not aliens, and it's not someone from an enemy government, then what's left?"
"I think your enemies are homegrown, Brigadier," the Doctor explained, "People with access to technological information and a most unusual weapon. A weapon that walks and thinks. In a word, anthropomorphic,"
"Well, I suppose that narrows the field a bit," The Brigadier considered, "Do we know anything else about these people?"
"They're just fine with both theft and murder in the process of committing theft," Marion commented, "So there's that,"
"Yes," the Doctor stood up and stuck his head out of the door to the lab, and looked around for a moment. He frowned.
"Marion? When did you say that Sarah would be back?"
Marion hadn't said, seeing as she hadn't known. Doctor Who wasn't known for using timestamps so that the audience would know exactly how long it took things to happen. Still, the Doctor had only just begun stacking the thing on top of the lab table into a neat tower and Sarah Jane came rushing in with Harry.
"An enormous robot over seven feet tall!" she exclaimed. "Marion! Why did your little note mention that the man was the assistant, not the woman, and not that there was a giant robot!"
"In my note, I told you that you had to be careful! You needed to be surprised when you saw it! If you weren't and they caught onto it, that might've been bad. You've seen enough at this point that having prior warning might've kept you from having an honest reaction. They already were suspicious of you for being a journalist with UNIT,"
"Well, and I suppose you knew that if I looked surprised, they'd let me leave unharmed. "
"That's about the size of it."
"The size," Sarah Jane commented, "All seven feet of it,"
"Oh it's not all bad Sarah," the Doctor looked up from the stack of odds and ends, "You've found exactly what we were looking for after all. That is what we're looking for, isn't it? It's not a red herring,"
"It's not," Marion agreed.
"Brigadier, there's something very odd going on at Think Tank!"
The Doctor piled more and more things on top of the lab table as Sarah tried to get the Brigadier to do something.
"Look, it's obvious that that Think Tank lot are involved. Why don't you just raid the place and arrest the lot of them?"
"I very much doubt if I'd get the authority. And if I did, it'd cause so much fuss they'd have plenty of time to hide the evidence. I must have more to go on. "
"More than just my word, you mean?"
The Brigadier nodded, "Or Marion's for that matter,"
"Honestly," Marion remarked, "You'd think that after the past five years, the people in authority would take your word for when you tell them that they need to do a raid on some lab because some megalomaniac is trying to take the world over again. They'd get your request and be like," Marion raised the pitch of her voice a bit in a mocking tone, "What do you mean you need...what? UNIT HQ in London? Oh yeah. We'll send you whatever you need. Yeah. Thanks for saving us all those times. Keep up the good work!"
"Yes. Well, unfortunately, the British Military doesn't work that way,"
"Unfortunately," Marion agreed.
Harry stepped forward, "You know, you need an inside man,"
"What?"
"Well you know," Harry explained, "somebody planted on them to keep his eyes and ears open,"
"Hey!" Sarah snapped her fingers, "that's not a bad idea,"
The Brigadier turned to look back at Sarah, "It'd have to be someone they'd accept, someone with the proper scientific qualifications,"
The Doctor looked up from the still-growing pile of junk "Scientific or medical,"
"That would work," Marion looked pointedly at Harry.
"Oh," the man looked around for a second as if he wanted to confirm that Marion was looking at him and no one else, "I say. Me?"
"Why not? Your chance to be a real James Bond,"
"But..."
"Might work," the Brigadier considered, "We could fix you up with a cover story,"
"I could, I could wear a disguise!"
"Wait look out!"
"I'd like to talk," The Doctor added another thing on the top of the tower and turned to face to rest of them. "To professor Kettlewell,"
The tower fell over with a crash making Marion jump.
By the time that they arrived, at the house, the sun was starting to set and the sky was a deep orange. And Marion knew that by the time they left Kettlewell's house, it would be properly dark.
Dr. Kettlewell looked like the kind of man who would build a giant robot. And he sounded like the kind of man who legitimately believed that the shady organization that he had been working for had actually gotten rid of the robot.
Mostly because that was what he was telling them.
"But I saw the robot!" Sarah insisted.
"What's that?" Dr. Kettlewell turned to face Sarah Jane and squinted, "Oh no, that's impossible. I gave orders for him to be dismantled,"
The Doctor stepped forward and took some of the spare papers off the table.
"Yes. And I'm sure that the people you left because they weren't trustworthy were trustworthy enough to dismantle them when you told them too," Marion crossed her arms. Dr. Kettlewell finally noticed what the Doctor was doing.
"Would you kindly put those papers down, sir?"
The Doctor tilted the page so that the scientists could take a look at it. "Plans for a new solar battery!"
"That folder is private and confident-"
The Doctor cut the man off. "This will never do you know,"
"There are many years off-."
The Doctor cut the man off again. "If theta over x coincides with your disputed factor, you're still losing half your output,"
Kettlewell took the paper from him, "Oh rubbish. I checked all those calculations myse-,"
"Look, the error's in the third part of the calculation," Kettlewell took a calculator out of his pocket and began to rapidly tap buttons, look back at the paper, and tap more buttons.
"Bless my soul!"
"But you're doing vital work, Professor. Earth's human race should have started tapping solar power long ago,"
"This new solar battery," Kettlewell explained, "will provide an endless supply of pollution-free energy at a fraction of the present cost and they haven't the wit to see it,"
Marion scoffed, "It's not like they haven't the 'wit' to see it, they're just making so much money with what they're doing that they don't want to stop just because it would 'help the planet'. They're banking on being dead by the time they actually have to deal with the consequences,"
The Professor sighed, "I wish I could say that you were wrong,"
"Concerning this robot-,"
He cut the Brigadier off.
"You be quiet, young man. You know, ever since the days of Galileo-"
"And Copernicus," the Doctor added.
"And Copernicus, scientists have had to-"
"Professor, I think you ought to tell us about the robot." the Doctor reminded.
He signed and his posture deflated. "Yes. It was the last project I worked on before I decided to leave. I gave orders for him to be dismantled. It was like putting my own son to death. I thought it was for the best. His power, his capacity to learn had begun to frighten me."
"But it wasn't destroyed, was it,"
"I don't know," he That woman, Winters, might have countermanded my orders,"
"Supposing that she had," the Brigadier asked, "could the Robot have been used to commit crimes"
The Professor was very quick to try to shoot that idea down. "No, no, no. You say that people were hurt, even killed?"
"Yeah,"
He shook his head. "Oh, it's out of the question. You said he refused to harm you, didn't you? Yes, well, I gave him my own brain pattern. He has my principles, my ideals,"
"But the circuitry you built could be altered or tampered with," the Doctor suggested.
"Doctor, not even I could effect such a change. As for Jellicoe and Miss Winters, well, they're incompetent nincompoops,"
"If you really based it off of your personal ideals, I'm not sure that you would have to tamper with it too much. You'd just have to convince the robot that what it was doing was the right thing. Something it had to do,"
"But Marion," the Doctor replied sounding less like he was disagreeing with her, and more like he knew where she was going with what she was saying and was giving her something to bounce off of, "the first law of robots is that they shall not harm humans-,"
"Yes. Or allow humans to come to harm via inaction. And there's the loophole. See, what if you managed to convince the robot that not killing a particular person was an inaction that would allow more humans to come to harm? What then?"
Kettlewell frowned "I suppose that they COULD get my creation to commit those crimes then, but it would still force him to go against his prime directive. They'll destroy his mind if they do that. He'll go mad!"
When they returned to the lab, it was very late evening. Marion barely had time to sit perched on top of the lab table when a UNIT soldier that Marion didn't recognize came into the room with a report. There had been a break in, a murder, and a theft. The Brigadier flipped through the photos from the police and showed it to them.
"There was a triple security thermolock on that safe made from case-hardened Dynastreem. It was completely disintegrated!"
"Disintegrated?" The Doctor took the photos from the Brigadier and flipped through them. He angled himself so that Marion could see them as well.
And yes, there certainly was a hole that'd been burned into a metal wall with a laser. The cut was clean in the sense of it not being jagged. But you couldn't really call it a clean cut because of the scorch marks that had been left around the edges.
"But there's nothing that could do that," Sarah Jane exclaimed, "Dynastreem's indestructible,"
"Well, they've got to cut it somehow, safe shapes chunks of it don't naturally appear in nature,"
"I think the Brigadier has an idea," the Doctor said, looking up from the photographs, "eh, Alastair?"
"Anyway, the neighbours heard a commotion, but by the time the police arrived, it was all over. The safe was empty,"
The Doctor held out one of the photos. Instead of being of the crime scene, it was taken of the victim. The photo was taken in front of...some building with large ionic columns in the front. She wasn't sure where it was.
"Joseph Chambers," the Brigadier explained, "Cabinet Minister. He had certain special responsibilities in the area of security. I've been carrying out a full security check on these Think Tank people,"
"Anything interesting?"
He shook his head. "Oh, not really. They seem to be an exemplary lot. Just one oddity. Quite a few of them were members of something called the Scientific Reform Society."
"Oh, really? And who might they be?" the Doctor asked.
"Annoying," Marion remarked.
"They're a little tin pot organisation founded years ago. It wants to reform the world on rational and scientific lines. You know the sort of thing. Harmless bunch of cranks, if you ask me. Recently-"
The Brigadier flipped a page in the file and trailed off.
"Yes? Go on, then,"
"Well, they've had a sudden rush of new members. Quite a few well-known scientists. Younger people, too. Computer technicians and so on,"
"Is Miss Winters a member?" Sarah Jane asked like he already was pretty sure of the answer.
"Apparently. And Jellicoe too, and quite a few of the Think Tank lot,"
"Doesn't sound their style, does it," Sarah asked.
Marion crossed her arms. "A bit? I mean, it sounds like a club for people who think that scoring high on some test means that they're entitled to rule the world. I mean, it's not so surprising that a bunch of young scientists and computer programmers would join something like that,"
"Oh well," Sarah Jane stood up and started making for the door.
"Where are you off to?" the Brigadier asked?
"Home to bed. Busy day tomorrow. I'm still a working girl, you know,"
"Good thinking," Marion replied, remembering that calling tomorrow a busy day would be a severe understatement. What with the Robots and the Arks and the Sontarans and the Daleks and the Cybermen and the Zygons and honestly, she was somewhat thankful that the way she experienced the Doctor's timeline meant that she was unlikely to have to experience those things back to back to back to back with no breaks.
"Make sure to get a good night's sleep and eat a decent breakfast, Sarah. You're going to need it,"
Sarah Jane nodded.
"Yes, quite right too. You leave all this business to us." the Brigadier called sarcastically after him.
"One thing about reform societies. They're never adverse to a bit of free publicity. Anything I should know?"
"Wear shoes you don't mind having to run around a lot in,"
"Right,"
Sarah shut the door behind her.
"Well, Doctor, what do you think-"
Marion looked away from the door to see what the Brigadier was staring at. The Doctor was lying on top of the workbench as if he was preparing to go to sleep.
"Doctor, what are we going to do? Or shall we leave it all to Miss Smith?"
"You and I, Brigadier, will pay a visit to the Think Tank tomorrow. We can ask them to demonstrate Professor Kettlewell's robot. Marion, you'll go with Sarah Jane,"
"I will?"
"Well of course you will. You and that psychic paper of yours will be invaluable,"
The Doctor was right. And it would be nice to spend some time with THE Sarah Jane Smith. It was just well she still didn't want to leave the Doctor alone. But he was a 750-year-old man, he could take care of himself.
But Ten had been older than that and he'd-
No. No. No. No. She shook that thought off.
Besides, she'd gone her separate ways from the Doctor before, and it hadn't ended in him dying. She needed to get a grip. Besides, maybe she could hint to the Doctor to not follow Kettlewell's letter right off the back so that she could go with him and feel even better. So, she shifted her weight and said:
"Sure! Might be fun actually! Promise me that you won't do anything dangerous or stupid while I'm there."
"I would never!" the Doctor nodded, "Brilliant! Glad that's sorted out. Good night!" The Doctor reached up to the pull cord of a nearby lamp. Marion turned the light back on. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Brigadier see himself out.
"Doctor!" Marion said.
"Marion!" the Doctor replied.
"You can't just fall asleep on the lab table!"
"Well, why can't I-,"
"Well, for one thing, that can't be comfortable, I mean look at you! I don't think I'd barely be able to comfortably lie on that table and you're more than a foot taller than me,"
"Well, I can't exactly sleep on the floor then!"
Marion closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and then opened them again.
"Doctor..."
"Yes, Marion..."
"You do have a room in the TARDIS right?"
The Doctor's eyes widened.
"Oh I DO! Don't I,"
Marion sighed deeply. "Yes."
Next Chapter: You're Doing This On Purpose, Aren't You?
Marion: It's funny that I've only met Four twice but both times, homicidal robots were involved.
Umm. So, my tumblr is lunammoon. I do have a Twitter that some of you have found, but I want to make it clear that while I don't care if you follow me there or not, Twitter isn't really a good place if you want updates concerning my fic. If you want updates, go to my tumblr.
Speaking of my tumblr, there's an ask meme going around that's probably your best bet if you want Celery content in the interim.
The link to the original meme post is here:
lunammoon [Put A Period Here] tumblr [Put A Period Here] com/post/666409122637496321/aro-romana-id-text-reading-pick-any-passage
And me answering it is here:
lunammoon
[Put A Period Here] tumblr [Put A Period Here] com/post/665131949546962944/sorry-this-is-late-but-this-is-for-the-fanfiction
If you want director commentary or to otherwise send me an ask, go right ahead.
What else…
I might be doing a Five serial next. So there's that.
Later skaters!