Authors: Boy this adventure is really long. I guess this would technically be part 3 of it if it was part of the TV show. :P

Since the last update I have added an extra part to the start of chapter 13. I said I might add some extra Raven and Star Fire bits between the stories and I've added one between Raven's first two official adventures in the TARDIS.

Book 8

The Darkness of Raven.

Rachels world is starting to fall apart around her, and she doesn't understand why.

Raven on the other hand has problems of her own, as she and the Doctor face off against the Mistress of the Land of Fiction, but the Mistress is not going to give up so easily, and she is anything but a fair fighter. It's such dirty tactics which finally pushes Raven to her limit.

Chapter 49

How to kill A Mockingbird.

Rachel awoke and sat bolt upright with a start, she was half way out of bed before her brain realised she'd only been dreaming.

She sighed a little. Her imagination was really over active tonight.

Glancing at the clock she saw it was 6:00am. Relaxing she dropped back onto her pillows and sighed.

"Dad, I'm so gonna kill you." She said, tasting a little peppered cheese in her mouth. After a few moments of just lazily laying in her bed she decided to get up and do something.

She switched on her laptop with the intention of writing down some notes from her dream. But she was surprised to find what was last written in the Lost Child of Azarath.

"Raven looked down at Gargal Girls equipment. There was a flashing light, and as time marched on the sense of danger became sharper and sharper like a dagger about to be plunged into them. It was Gargals Girls gun. It was going to explode, and they only had seconds left!

"GET BACK!" Raven shouted, waving her hands and casting a black ball around the gun. But she was just a fraction of a second too late. She felt the heat as the weapon exploded and she knew only blackness."

But that's what she'd just dreamt about, and she had never written anything like that down, at all. In fact, it was all written out, all of it, her entire dream.

Had she been typing in her sleep? She must've been. Was it even possible to do that?

She rested her head in her hands. She wasn't interested in thinking about this right now.

On the table next to her she spotted a book. The Twilight Saga. One of her favourite books.

Wait! No it wasn't! She detested this book and everything in it. It was just so sickening to read about. Compared to all the books and stories she'd read it was inferior fiction. But Edward was such a hunk... No! He was a creepy character and not in a good way to her, and a stupid, weak excuse for a Vampire!

I wish I was like Bella... NO I DON'T! Bella was such a dweeb of a character. She had no interesting character arcs. Half the time she was just 'there' and she just expected boys to faun and fight over her. She's a rubbish character and a rubbish role model who enjoys when people fight, as long as its over her. Why would Rachel want to be like Bella?! Rachel wasn't so shallow that she'd like people to fight over her, was she? Bella had all the depth of a Spiders toilet bowl.

She scrunched her eyes up and focused to clear her head.

But I never got past the first chapter... Came a thought. So how can I have these opinions?

But she must've read them. She knew what happened in them...

Rachel looked at her bookshelf. Each book she looked at she recalled what happens in them, and their plot and characters. She got to a book called World War Z by Max Brooks and remembered it was about a fictional Zombie War. She didn't much care for it. The Zombies ran much too fast and they behaved like ants instead of wandering corpses; and that bit about the zombies not attacking the sick and dying. That was just so dumb!

She strongly placed a finger to the bridge of her nose. She was actually awake, wasn't she? She sharply pinched her noses bridge. Yep, she was a wake. Maybe her mind was still half asleep.

Yeah, maybe that was it.

Oranges and Lemons, say the bells of Saint Clemonds.

The following morning Rachel met up with her friends in the school yard as usual.

Rachel wished she'd seen her Dad and Mom before coming to school. She wanted to give her Dad an earful for giving her cheese before bedtime.

What am I talking about? Dad drove me to school like always, and Mom gave me my lunch!

Yeah, that happened alright... So why couldn't she remember it? She shut her eyes and shook her head. It was like her life wasn't flowing properly anymore. Maybe she should try some of that meditation she was always making Raven do in the story.

Maybe, better focus away from her problems and focus instead on her friends and whatever antics they were talking about.

Victor, Richard and Garfield were all animatedly talking about some multiplayer video game they had been playing online. Victor was smug because he'd creamed the pair of them. Richard was calling fowl on his method of play and Garfield hovered in the background.

"Boys..." Rachel shrugged to Stella.

"Yes, they are." Stella answered, misunderstanding Rachels sarcasm. "Did you not accept the friend request from, None-Friend Dolores?"

"Rejected and blocked instantly." There was an awkward silence which followed and Stella looked guilty.

"Is it not a gesture of peace and friendship?" Stella asked.

"More like a method of snooping out your enemies." Rachel sighed. She pulled out her phone and decided to set her privacy setting to its maximum. She hardly used social media, but the last thing she needed was anyone finding her contact information somehow.

"Miss Rachel Roth?" Said a well spoken voice from behind her.

She turned and looked up at a tall man in a dark suit. His long white hair betrayed his great age, but his eyes and body language looked as youthful as a man in the prime of his life. He had a long, hooked nose, craggy features and a stern, yet warm look to his face.

This was Doctor Pertwee, the deputy head teacher of the school.

"Yes, Doctor Pertwee?" she asked.

"May I have a word with you; in my office, please?" He sounded serious and official about it. Was she in trouble?

She looked at Stella. "She's not in trouble is she?" The red head piped up.

"Oh no, no. But I need to talk to her, and it's probably best if its done in private, my dear." and for some reason he glanced at Victor, Richard and Garfield.

"Sure." Rachel shrugged. "I'll catch you guys up later." She raised her hand in a little wave and walked with Doctor Pertwee into school, up a flight of stairs and into his office.

His office was covered in posters of a scientific nature. The refraction of light through a prism, splitting it into many colours. The periodic table of elements. A rather childish poster explaining Hooks Law of springs. All betraying Doctor Pertwees love of science. This Doctor was a great scientist and a seeker of truth in a sea of seductively comfortable ignorance. At least, that was how she saw him.

Rachel liked Doctor Pertwee, she liked all the 'Doctor teachers' here.

Doctor Teachers? A weird way to describe them.

He sat her down and offered her a glass of water which she accepted.

"Now," Doctor Pertwee cleared his throat and looked like he was choosing his words carefully. "We've had a complaint."

"I thought you said I'm not in trouble." Rachel asked defensively.

"You're not, my dear." Doctor Pertwee reassured. "But we have received a complaint that I must follow up on." He held up a piece of paper for her to read. "According to this a friend of yours, Garfield. He touched someone inappropriately."

Rachel rolled her eyes, it was Garfield, it wouldn't surprise her. But she hadn't witnessed anything.

"What makes you think I have anything to do with it?" she asked.

"The incident happened yesterday, in your mathematics class." Now it made sense to her. Garfield had put his arm around her in a friendly way she didn't appreciate, and she'd bluntly told him to remove it. Which he had done like a scared animal.

"I didn't report anything." Rachel said, confusion on her face.

"It was reported by a 'concerned student.'" Yeah, Rachel could guess which one.

Silence filled the office for the next few seconds and Rachel didn't know what to say, and she got the feeling neither did Doctor Pertwee.

"Did he?" he asked at last.

"He's my friend." Rachel said choosing her words carefully. "We mess with each other. At times we even irritate each other. We interact with each other, sometimes physically." She didn't know how best to explain their friendship.

"So you do not wish me to go through with the complaint?" Doctor Pertwee asked.

"No!" Rachel said hurriedly and flatly, "if he did it to any other girl, then fine, throw the book at him, he'd probably deserve it. But he's my friend, he treats me like one, that's all we are and he knows it. If I wanted to complain about it I'd have done it myself."

"Calm down, my dear." Doctor Pertwee said. "I was sure it wasn't anything serious, but you understand I need to check up on it. The Head-mistress is very serious about such accusations, but since it was a third party reporting it I was sceptical and wanted to look into it."

"It was Dolores wasn't it?" Rachel blurted out.

"I'm not at liberty to say, my dear." Doctor Pertwee said, putting the paper down. Though upside down Rachel could read it, however there was no signature to say who had sent it. "But I take it you wish me to dismiss this complaint." It wasn't a question.

Rachel paused. Garfield had irritated her a lot in the past few days and for a brief second considered this as a kind of revenge. But no, no. She knew what the consequences would be for him and she didn't want that. It would be like replying to a slap across the face with a shotgun in the stomach.

"Dismiss it, please." Rachel said firmly. "Garfield is my friend, he's irritating and sometimes doesn't understand his friends boundaries; but when it comes down to it he is respectful."

"I quite understand, my dear Miss Roth." Doctor Pertwee said. "I understand school ground politics all too well. Heavens knows the world is practically ran by it. I trust you will speak with Master Garfield and make him understand."

"I'll twist his arm off if I have too." Rachel said with humour, though it might have been a tad too dark.

"Oh, that shouldn't be necessary." Doctor Pertwee said with deadpan humour. "But I am glad we sorted this out."

The bell rang for first period.

"Hurry now!" and Doctor Pertwee gave Rachel a slip of paper to explain her absence to the teacher and sent her on her way.

As Rachel left the office and shut the door she lent up against the wall, breathed in deeply and as she let it out she felt her anger start to boil.

Not satisfied with going after her, Dolores was now targeting her friends.

"WHAT-A-COMPLETE-AND TOTAL- BITCH!"

During first, second and third lessons it was a little awkward with Garfield now. She didn't have an opportunity to talk to him nor her friends to explain why she was now being funny with Garfield.

There wasn't anything interesting that happened in the first three lessons. Doctor Hartnel had taught more about plant germination; Doctor McCoy had begun teaching them about a book called 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and gave them an assignment to read it; and Mister Vale had again tried and failed to captivate them on statistics, how to read them, draw them and collect data; but mostly he tried to teach how bad conclusions could be drawn from incomplete statistics.

Now it was lunch time, and she could talk freely to her friends, and importantly, out of ear shot of Dolores.

While taking their seats at the cafeteria tables Rachel had gone to the toilet and when she had returned she saw that the only space left on their table was next to Garfield.

Alarm bells rang in Rachels head and quickly she asked Victor to swap seats, so she sat across from him instead of next to him. Garfield looked a little confused, and then a little defensive when Rachel looked at him with a gaze that was like a laser beam.

She sat down and tried to get Garfield to understand what Doctor Pertwee wanted to talk to her about. But it was difficult to make him understand.

"I said I was sorry." Garfield said, looking betrayed.

"I'm not the one who made the complaint!" Rachel fired back. "Someone else made it."

"Who?" Garfield asked, looking around the cafeteria, worried.

"Three guesses." Rachel said with a tone betraying that it was obvious.

"Stella?" Garfield said seriously. God, Rachel wanted to hit the idiot right now.

"She's big, she's round, she's had more attention to her nose than Michael Jackson, and there are things she could teach to tropical skin diseases."

Garfields attention went to a teacher in the corner with a small nose and a large chest.

"Dolores 'Umbridge', you idiot!" She finally hissed at him.

"Oh." Garfield said, and shrugged as if this was no big deal.

"No 'Oh'." Rachel said firmly, "Gar, you could've gotten into serious trouble if Doctor Pertwee hadn't come to me first."

"Why would she do that?" Garfield asked.

"I think because she wants to get at Rachel through any means, including through us." Richard said, his voice direct and cold. "Its a warning. Stop protecting her, or get caught in the cross fire."

"You think she'd really hurt us to get at Rachel?" Stella asked. She sounded like this was so far-fetched, like someone wouldn't be so despicable to do this.

"I've seen it happen before. Some people think the ends justify the hurt they cause to others." Richard said.

"Yeah, I've seen it before, too." Garfield piped up. "On the show Bad Cops."

"Yeah, but that's not real." Victor said, mocking Garfield.

"Didn't Doctor McCoy say all fiction is based on fact?" Garfield asked.

Were Rachels ears deceiving her? Or did Garfield come out with an intelligent parry to the jab?

"That's not the point." Richard said getting everyone's attention back to himself. "The point is, she thinks threatening us will force us to move aside."

"Fat chance of that happening." Victor said patting Rachel on the shoulder like a brother would a little sister.

"Yes, friend Rachel." Stella said smiling sweetly, "We shall not let her win."

"Yeah, we'll stand by you!" and Garfield began to stand up. Rachel didn't know what he was about to do but she quickly hissed at him.

"Sit down!" and instantly he did so.

"What?" He asked, worried he'd caused offence.

"Moby Dick is watching us." Rachel could see Dolores in the corner with Marya. They were looking at her. "Don't give her an excuse." She stared into Garfields eyes like she was looking into his soul. "Don't approach, or even touch another girl. I don't want you to get in trouble."

"We'll need to be extra cautious around her." Richard said. "She's clearly not beneath using systems designed to protect others in order to attack." Richard clicked his knuckles as his fists rolled up and clenched tightly. This had really gotten him fired up.

"Man, Garfield sounds like a dweeb." Beastboy laughed, "who's he supposed to be?"

Ravens face fell. "You mean you really can't tell?"

Beastboys smile faltered a little and his cheeks, despite their green hue, were going a little red. He fully knew who she was talking about. He looked away from her gaze.

She decided to move on before this got any more awkward.

To Be Continued...

Authors notes: Dolores is somewhat also based on Cartman from South Park. Someone who'd often find ways to use and abuse systems that are supposed to protect others because they are easy to abuse and difficult to fight against. An example would be in one episode where he literally pretended he had tourettes (a serious condition that affects millions of people.) just so he could swear, and call people names all he wanted and never get punished for it. Such power was seductive to him. When Kyle called Cartman out, knowing he was just faking it all, Cartman then relished in the fact that the adults would over-react and either attack or berate Kyle for daring to be skeptical while at the same time comforting the fraudulent Cartman. Something Cartman was only too delighted to encourage.

Now you know the difficult position Rachel and her friends are in, in their battle against Dolores; and worse, how far she's willing to go to make life uncomfortable for them.

Anyone who's read 'To Kill a Mockingbird', might connect why I've called this chapter, 'How to Kill a Mockingbird'. Originally I wanted to call it, 'How to Kill a Mockingbird and get away with it.' But the title was too long to be accepted.