Thrill Ride 1977

[Sarah Jane]

TORCHWOOD FILE X-GALLIFREY-2011

IN A BOX SITS A TINY CRYSTAL CUBE THAT IS A GALLIFREYAN MEDIA DEVICE

THE RECORDING HAS NEVER BEEN VIEWED BY ANYONE EXCEPT RENEGADE TIME LORD SCIENTISTS

THERE IS NO PLAYER ON EARTH THAT CAN CONVEY THE CONTENTS OF THE CRYSTAL

IT'S CONTENTS AND THE EVENTS PROCEEDING ARE RECORDED BELOW

IF YOU ARE READING THIS

YOU ARE PROBABLY A RENEGADE TIME LORD SCIENTIST

AND ARE SUBJECT TO PUNISHMENT AND FINES

Sometimes, she thinks she hears the TARDIS. Every time, she perks up, stock still, listening harder only to hear nothing. Or to hear some distant balky car moaning its way toward ignition. Today, she is two blocks from home, walking with a big briefcase and rather formal clothing. It helped them take her more seriously at the South Croydon Daily. And serious it had become. Her adventures were now the size of the neighborhood, not entire civilizations, but she had learned each battle really only came down to a few key players. Battling for clean water in schools was not so very different that negotiating with war mongers. Or so she told herself. Anyway, it is two blocks from home that she stops again, thinking maybe she heard that groaning portent of the TARDIS' arrival. It is not. It is just a garbage truck laboring a few blocks over. Now there is only that, the click of her pumps and the birds as she continues on home, her formal gray woolen skirt suit nearly at odds with her Hobbit ville surroundings. Still, a smile finds it's way to her face again, false alarm nearly forgotten in the beauty of the day. It didn't hurt that she knew she looked good in her new suit.

[Captain John Hart]

With how things were going, John actually went out and brought a warehouse. Which left him to wonder if he was becoming more like Jack now… He had spent months traveling around Earth in the whole 21st century trying to understand what his former partner saw in this planet. When he finally thought he got his Vortex Manipulator fixed, he ended back up in bloody Cardiff again. Without knowing truly what was wrong with the Vortex Manipulator, it was all trial and error.

After a couple of times of thinking he got the wrist strap fixed, he ended back in Cardiff yet again, this time 50 years in the past. It was then he broke down and brought a warehouse, the same one he kept ending up in. He spend a couple of weeks in that century, living life and trying to keep from being bored all the while trying to get his Manipulator fixed. When he finally got it fixed, he ended up on some strange planet.

Sure the planet had great drinks, the kind that could get him drunk after two shots. But something wasn’t sitting right with him so he ended up going back to Cardiff. But instead of ending up in the 21st century, he found himself looking at a city out of the 70s. A groan was giving and he glared at the wrist strap. ”Why won’t you work correctly, you bloody bastard! He yelled at the leather strap on his wrist. Sure on top of what he was wearing, the huge sword and two guns at his side, that would earn him more than enough stares from those around on the street.

John didn’t care though and sighed deeply before moving out of the alley and into the streets. Walking with that swagger he had, he stood there looking at those few who were around, wondering if and when Torchwood from this time period would show up. After all, it didn’t take much to set off the alarms that belonged to the 21st Century Torchwood. That got him thinking about how different this Torchwood would be. Thought he thought it was best to avoid them.

After a moment, he started to walk down the street and pushed up the doors of a bar and walked in. He sat down on one of the stools and asked for a bottle of vodka. As long as he was here, he might as well have some fun.

[Sarah Jane]

She did hear it. This time for certain. That sound of time bending. Not the mechanism itself, not the groan of that, but that strange shuddering of time moving. Fluctuating in and out. Struggling. She stood straight, lower lip showing how much she did not want to be the fool. After a moment of her head arguing with her heart, she went inside. That would have worked if she hadn't heard it again.

Faint, few, and far between was that TARDIS-like vibration. She tried the crossword puzzle, and some nice chamomile tea. The fourth time she felt it, she threw down the paper and traded her pumps for her boots. She snapped up a short, furry little coat in bright blue, and a matching, furry Fedora. Out in the front yard, just as twilight hit, she felt that ripple again. In a moment she was on her feet and moving at a good clip in the direction it seemed to have come. It was like a sound against her skin.

Twice more she stopped and waited, trying in those quiet moments not to think of what she was doing. That she was pining after him. That her mind was simply playing tricks on her because she missed him so. This felt different, this was no cranky-engine like she had miss heard again and again, this was something distinct that she had not felt in a year.

A more rational part of her knew that there may be something other-worldly to be found, but that she had no reason at all to think it was the Doctor, none at all. Whatever was making that sound-that-was-not-a-sound should be investigated, be it some Traveler's forgotten luggage or just a hiccup in the long gullet of time.

No one would know she had gone out looking for him this night and think her silly, she told herself when shame brought heat to her cheeks. Just this once, she would investigate. Isn't that what she did? It was time, perhaps to prove herself wrong. Or right. If she was wrong, she'd never believe that she heard the TARDIS again, and simplify her life.

There it was again.

She snapped her head a few inches to the left, dark hair whipping in opposite exclamation, and walked briskly in that direction. Twenty minutes later (most of it spent stock still and waiting for direction), and two more pulses later, and she was standing on the walkway to the Pub. With a deep breath she strode into the bar as if she did it every night. Certainly some nights she did, with her friends. But never alone. She was not. . . looking. The warmth inside hit her cold brightened cheeks.

It was nearly imperceptible, but when the flaw in Captain John Hart's Vortex Manipulator sang out again, the television picture crazed for a moment, someone knocked over their drink, and the man next to her sneezed.

The blond man at the bar was made finely chiseled, and as though quite a talented artist had done the carving. There was very much the fairy Puck in him, if Puck could have carried grenades. Not that the man seemed to have any on him, but he looked like the type that could. Sarah could feel the sound come from his direction as clearly as if he had spoken to her, even as faint as the sensation was. She is trying to catch his eye, walking straight toward him.

[Susan Foreman]

However out of practice she was, there was no doubt that Susan Foreman – or Arkytior, her proper name – was still a Time Lady. She could still feel the telepathic weight from time. It weighed heavily upon her shoulders. And with that ability, the knowledge of when the timeline changed drastically came with it. It was a genuinely rare occurrence; although she supposed it was happening more frequently now that humans were able to use and abuse time-traveling. For this reason she could understood why the Time Lords had tried in vain to keep the knowledge from other, less responsible species.

It was because she could sense such a change that she was acutely aware what had happened when she woke up on a dreary Monday morning. The little villa she was residing in temporarily still looked the same, but it was noticeably less friendly. She had tried to ignore that pressing feeling for the better part of the day. Coffee and cinnamon stick breakfast, jog around the park, lunch at her favorite Chinese restaurant (affectionately named the Hairy Fish restaurant).

And that’s when she had decided that something devious and terrible had happened. Instead of the friendly Chinese man that normally greeted her, a slimy green thing had barked at her to take a seat. But her usual seat next to the aquarium had not given her the usual, childish pleasure: the age-old hairy fish was nowhere to be seen.

Unable to take such grievances against all of hairy fish-kind, Susan had left in a deliberate huff to figure out what was wrong in the world. Her useless grandfather – the Doctor – was supposed to be handling matters of this kind, but apparently he was off in Jamaica at the moment. Blue eyes grouchily narrowed, the Time Lady made her way down to the library vault. A list of Very Important People concerning Earth had been drilled in her head. Most, if not all, had met the Doctor at least once. At least two-thirds of those VIPs had been a regular companion. She herself had been one, but he had kicked her out like chopped liver. (Better not to dwell upon those darkest of dark days, she convinced herself).

She ran through the list of people: Gandhi, Rose Tyler, Charles Dickens, Douglas Adams, Martha Jones, JK Rowling. Half an hour later she was slumped over. Forty of three hundred names crossed of her mental checklist, the weary woman lifted drowsy fingers. Sarah Jane Smith. She skimmed over the report, halting when she found the date of death. It was considerably earlier than what she had remembered; at the very least thirty years too soon.

Susan lifted herself out of the library seat. That had been the relatively easy part; figuring out who had made the world such an ugly, unfriendly place. Now that was left were the important, slightly more difficult questions. When, where, why, and how. She jogged back to her apartment, grabbing her notebook and the time vortex manipulator. Susan knew it was before the death date, and after Sarah’s last stint with the Doctor.

Lovely. That only left about ten years. That was only 3652 days for her to sift through. The Time Lady rubbed her forehead, dressing in late twentieth century fashion.

------

Three hundred and sixty two trips to the past later, Susan was feeling less than generous towards the future.

She walked out of the alley, wearily scanning for any trace of the woman. She bit her cheek, almost cursing that she had landed at yet another wrong place, wrong time. (Really, her grandfather should be handling these matters. He was the one who liked this pathetic planet. She just wanted her restaurant back, right?) However, as she raised her wrist to redial towards another day, a bright blue coat caught her eye.

And inside of the coat was the face that was familiar even though she had never actually met the woman. Hopeful that this wouldn’t turn out to be another awkward, disappointing time, she followed the woman inside of the pub carefully. Susan’s mouth was dry, as though she had been snacking on cotton-balls for a day. She had rehearsed what she would say a thousand times, although each time she practiced it in front of a mirror, she had rolled her eyes and tossed it in the metaphorical wastebasket. Those lines had ranged from: “Sarah J. Smith? Come with me if you want to live,” to “the New York Times are hiring, Sarah!”.

As she slunk inside of the bar after the important woman, her eyes landed on what Sarah had seen. An attractive young man. She had seen him multiple times in Sarah’s future – if only brief glimpses, but there he had been. He had seen him elsewhere, too; when Cardiff had been on the edge of burning. This man was no good. And despite the gravity of their situation (as in, how she was paralyzed while she watched Sarah striding towards the No Good Man), she couldn’t help but feel a flutter of victory in her chest.

Her legs were put into motion, moving gracefully and quickly on their own account. She grabbed Sarah’s wrist, and stood in front of the woman quickly. Her heart thumping in her chest wildly, she gave the woman her most charming smile. ”Sarah? I know you don’t know me well, but I don’t like to beat around the bush,” she said, standing firmly in the woman’s way. ”I know you know the Doctor. I have information about him.”

And here she stepped back, her heart quickening even more as she prepared her gamble. She held out her hand, stepping to the side so that Sarah may brush her off or not. She held her smile on, appearing confident.

”Interested?”

ooc| pm me if there's something i need to change..

[Sarah Jane]

It may have chagrined the Doctor's rebellious granddaughter if she ever learned that this action of hers would ever be recorded as one of the most subtle and delicate time interventions ever accomplished.

By having so clearly identified the moment of cusp, and intervening with an appeal for trust, Arkytior righted the the derailed locomotive of time back on to it's proper track with hardly a bump.

Over millennium it has been (will be, ever shall be) pondered by great minds as to what exact instant that, dark, wild offshoot of a time line that Arkytior (and everyone else in the universe) had experienced that morning was righted and restored. Was it when Arkytior had spoken? Was it it when Arkytior had decided to speak? Was it when Sarah Jane Smith decided to speak with this new comer instead of the man with the intriguing bracelet and fathomless eyes?

Even now the moment was more in flux, for some bookish Time Lords, three to be exact over the course of Time Lord History, had broken many laws and taken many risks to seed this room with sensors, wanting to gather data to support their own pet theories.

To examine a thing too closely is to change it, and perhaps become it, and that is what happened in that instant. Realizing their mistake, all three Time Lords pulled their sensors from that time and place. It would have been a good move if each had been aware of the others. As it was. All three actions at once caused a hiccup in the gullet of time that had pulled Captain John Hart off course and landed him here in the first place.

Where he and Sarah Jane met. When a timeline began where Sarah Jane Smith never did all the things she was destined to do, and the Universe became a darker place.

Curiosity killed the cat, and had given the Universe many a bungled knee due to the Time Lord's curiosity. This moment, refereed to as Incident 100011110001was now a forbidden study. Still, some grainy footage remained .


Sarah Jane Smith had a much closer view. She gasped, then stood, mouth softly open in surprise. A lovely willow of a woman about her own age was suddenly before her with a bold grip on Sarah Jane's wrist, and speaking of the Doctor as though Sarah Jane had conjured this information by sheer desire. In a way she had, her need to know what was going on out in the greater Universe again drawing her to this moment, and in fact, helping to create it.

Sarah Jane's eyes, deep hazel like a storm at sea went back and fourth, incredulous, from the woman who spoke of the Doctor, and the man whose device was clearly not of Earth manufacture. It was the offered hand that made her choice. She took it with her own, now studying that ethereal face before her, framed by dark hair cut in a perfectly artistic, pixie, baby peggy page boy. The woman smiled while the man glowered.

"You bet I'm interested." Sarah Jane said, her voice nearly breaking with it, and giving that hand in hers a squeeze.

For those rebel scientists paying attention at this point, readings show that the moment is critical, and that the time line at this point, had not yet been restored. Danger was still too imminent. There is even an unfortunate hint of a wild third line being created where Captain John Hart's actions also have dire effect on Arkytior, probability 6.29 % and growing.

[Susan Foreman]

The woman took her hand with seemingly no hesitation. Susan watched as the human studied her carefully; the way the hazel eyes drank her in. Susan felt pins and needles run down her spine, almost unnerved by the way the keenly intelligent eyes bore into her. She looked down at their intertwined hands and smiled victoriously. The battle wasn’t over, but Susan felt as though she were out of the trenches. ”You bet I’m interested,” Sarah told her. Susan looked back up to her eyes, her smile spreading into a grin. Those simple four words sunk quickly into her, and she squeezed the woman’s hand in return.

She made an elaborate sweeping gesture, pointing her free hand towards the door. ”Then talk we shall,” she responded. She took a hesitant step towards the door, glancing behind her to urge the woman to follow her willingly. ”But not here. We need somewhere more…” the Time Lady drifted off, searching for the right word. ”Private,” she finished.

The warm stench of alcohol drifted around them. The lazy, heavy waft of voices surrounded them. There were too many people here; too many witnesses to the delicacy of time travel. Humans weren’t meant for that yet. It was far too volatile for such an irresponsible, hedonistic species. She may have been raised by the Doctor, but she had been burned far too many times for her to be as trusting of humans as he was. Her grip on Sarah Jane unintentionally tightened as the bitter woman thought of the way the Doctor locked her out of the TARDIS.

Susan was brewing over what ‘new information’ she had of the Doctor. She hadn’t seen him in what? Two hundred years? The man could be dead for all she knew. This woman knew about her own grandfather than she did. The only thing Susan had to offer were brief glimpses of his personal life; her own parents, the time they spent on Gallifrey before he was exiled, and various other adventures that were of no consequence. The Doctor seemed to enjoy doing that. Picking up someone – his own family, even – and getting them involved to the point of no return, and then simply dropping them off as though they were a stray cat.

She turned back to Sarah. Her hand was still grasping Sarah’s, but her grip had lessened. She looked around them, taking another step away from the pub. ”Are there any coffee houses here?” she asked. The trips through time had worn on her nerves and energy, and she was convinced if she didn’t have some sort of caffeine and a seat, she was going to collapse on Sarah – which would have gone against the grain of ‘saving the world because my grandfather has decided to vacation on the job’ theme of this little outing.

Keep her with you, a voice inside her head urged. Her smile faltered as she recognized the sudden appearance of logic.

Sarah Jane Smith was one of the more important companions her grandfather had picked up. She had a bright future ahead of her, and if Susan lost the woman’s interest now… that was all over. There would be no more Hairy Fish restaurant, no more friendly smiles from the local aliens she could pick out. ”How much do you know of Time Lords? Of what the Doctor is?” she asked curiously, lifting the woman’s hand and pressing it to her chest, allowing Sarah to feel her steady heartbeat. She slid the hand to the other side of her chest, to her other heart.

”Maybe we should go to your home, instead of a coffee shop?” Susan suggested lightly, letting go of the other woman's hand. ”It could be dangerous for him, or for us, to be overheard,” she explained.

ooc| sorry that I assumed Sarah followed Susan out of the pub. Feel free to make me change it, buut I couldn't give you a post of any decent length if I had left it where Susan was tugging on Sarah's wrist. ^^;

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[Sarah Jane]

That sweeping bow was so like the Doctor, she found herself believing this stranger a little more. The good grip the young woman kept on her as she led them through the bar and out into the night was reminiscent as well, and oddly comforting. Who could she be? And was she responsible for the odd noise Sarah Jane had heard? No, surely it had come from the blond man she'd left inside.

The other stopped gripping her so tightly, and was now glancing nervously about, graceful as a deer at the edge of a wood. She looked tired. Sarah Jane was sure there was more to this story than it first appeared. This was no casual meeting. As Sarah Jane drew breath to ask about what that sound had been and who that man was, the other woman started throwing questions at her, each question more alarming than the one that proceeded it.

"Are there any coffee houses here?”

”How much do you know of Time Lords? Of what the Doctor is?”

In that instant, Sarah Jane feared that she had erred, and this person was in fact seeking information, not delivering it. She was about to draw back when the woman unexpectedly took Sarah Jane's hand and pressed it over her heart. She could feel the steady rhythm there. Sarah Jane was staring at her own hand, hoping nothing was about to break out of the young woman's chest and grab it or anything terrible like that. Then the woman moved Sarah Jane's hand over to the other side of her chest, keeping it pressed there flat.

A second heartbeat. Two hearts. Gallifreyan. Sarah Jane raised her other hand and placed it over the woman's first heart to feel them beating both at once. The first proof she'd had in such a long time that she really hadn't dreamed her years with the Doctor. Two hot, fat tears spilled effortlessly down her cheeks as she looked up to the Time Lady's dark eyes. She is grinning, at odds with the tears in her eyes and the fierceness of her words, voice pitched low to avoid being overheard.

"You know, if this is a trap for the Doctor, he'll smash you flat when he gets here. Come on, my place is only a few blocks North of here." She headed off in the right direction, giving the woman a come along gesture with her hand. "What is your name?"

Natural Time Line Restored : End Recording

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this classified material is prohibited. Time Infringement regarding this Incident, including Infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the High Council, and is punishable by house arrest to a single time and place for a period of 15 T.U. and a fine of 3 uncompensated Quests
assigned by the High Council.

((Follow the continuing adventures of Susan Foreman and Sarah Jane Smith on "The S.S. Thrill Ride" found at the link below.whoniverse-rp.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=doctorfive&thread=5542))