#It stopped displaying on my main screen and only displays on the tablet screen itself despite me not having changed any settings >:0

[redswaberkez]

ok so its been more than a month since my graphic screen is arrived and bein used almost every day for 6-12 hours its time to do a lil review under the cut

(obligatory warning for longreads my english is a crap and yada yada) my bby boaris (kabanchik) cintiq 16'. (old one from 2020) I bought the tablet for a loot of reasons, Very Reasonable ones and not so reasonable too LMAO. Earned money with blood and sweat (literally💥) ANYWAY. Tablet's size is perfect for my needs, not way too small, not way too big, the screen workspace is the same with my old laptop (give or take few mm) This cintiq isnt from manufactor, its used before tablet from someone else in 'from the assembly line' condition. As soon as tab arrived i immediately ordered a ptotective film to prevent the appearance of The Hole. You what im talking about.

I was afraid that it would be extremely inconvenient for me to work with it and that the purchase would generally be unsuccessful, because before ONCE IN MY LIFE 7 yrs ago i had an experience w cintiq 24' and it wasnt really comfortable then. AND i had always used a regular plain tablet. BUT NOOOPE everything is PERFECT and i love it.

PROS!! - brain loves to see what u are actually drawing. Its easier to control every single move and stroke therefore it drastically buffs your skill. The progress of it development i mean. U have to get used to it. the tablet itself wont give u a 'make my skill insane button' u have to WORK ON IT obviously. (says the one who've been stuck in cps for a month straight OUGH) - it works as another monitor. so u can do whatever u wish using two of them. or u can just buy random tablet screen and use it as a SINGLE monitor lmaooo. -doesnt overheat (my main display overheats noticeably thank god i dont need to place my arm over it). -uses one single thicc cable which divides into three at the end (usb hdmi and power cables) - thin, from 1cm to 1,5cm +-, wheights somewhere 1,5kgs, has small stand legs which gives it ahh +- 30 degrees tilt angle. U can travel with the tablet but it needs pc or laptop to be connected with. -i havent seen its guts but i bet the circuits are...fine... i hope so.. at least if it wont overheat then the circuits wont burn down.. makes sense.. yeah.... -I also didnt notice any problems with drivers or connection for this month. u just turn ur pc on and ready to go.

CONS. - ur neck is bout to die if u gonna work like me cuz its tilt is only 30 degs (u can buy a normal stand tho. or a monitor bracket and stop torturing urself). SHRIMP POSTURE CHEEEECK. - it doesn't have buttons like my tablet had. Its a taste preference honestly. for someone its a pros for me its a cons. EASILY COUNTERS BY it might seem crazy what im bout to say A KEYBOARD. you just need to get used to it. again. - should i even mention the price? ofc its a con. since mine is a former usage one it was a lil cheaper than usually. but I knew what I was buying ((WACOM)) so i aint complaining now. - small really small con: sometimes cps wont react to pen button clicks but ig its even a program problem than tablets (easily counters by pressing space button one time). its really just a biiit annoying and nothing special. It works great all of the time. - THE PEN TIP WEARS OFF WITH FIRST COSMIC VELOCITY. ig its affected by protective film (its matte). counters by TITAN PEN TIP (plus now its a weapon if u are brave enough) -due to its protective matte film there is a small insignificant diffs between two screens but its not really this big. At least between mine displays. Diff btw my old laptop screen colors and tablet is fucking HUGE (lap is a 12 yrs old veteran have some respect🙄) - OK OK OK LAST LITTLE NIGGLE. Since I play shooters like valorant and...cs.. and move my hand powerfully across the table, I HAD to look for *that very specific place* for the tablet so that everything would be perRRRFECT by millimeters (ocd moment)

notable mention that takes a special place in my heart

wait while we talk to your displays 😥😥😥😥 omg..... cried....died.... my sons...

thats all i can say for now

[andatsea]

XP-Pen Artist Pro 24 Review

I drew this with an XP-Pen Artist Pro 24, which the team at XP-Pen kindly sent to me for review. I’ve had to opportunity to use this tablet on-and-off over the course of the past several weeks, and while there were a few issues my overall impression is positive.

Unboxing / Contents

Apart from the 24” display tablet itself, the package comes with the usual cabling peripherals, plus some bonus extras. If your machine supports a USB-C connection for display, you’ll only need the one cable (plus the power connection). Otherwise, there’s a HDMI and a USB-C to USB converter included as well.

The extras include: an additional stylus, a one-size-fits-all artist’s glove, and a microfiber cloth.

The container for the stylus twists open to reveal 8 extra stylus nibs. Its cap can also be removed to use as a stylus holder.

Driver (Installation & General Use)

There were a few issues with installation, mostly tied to interactions between the driver, Windows 10 and Windows Ink.

Initially, brush strokes were offset from the stylus’ point of contact with the screen by about 3-4 centimetres when attempting to draw in Photoshop CS6. Random straight strokes also occurred frequently. This same problem did not occur in MS Paint or Photoshop CC 2019. This was fixed by changing the UI scaling setting for the monitor in Windows settings from 125% (which was apparently the default) to 100%.

Initially, brush strokes had no pen pressure in Photoshop CC 2019. Photoshop CS6, on the other hand, did (but suffered from the previous offset problem). This was fixed by turning on the Windows Ink setting in the XP-Pen driver menu. So in other words: CC 2019 needs Windows Ink on to recognise pen pressure, while CS6 didn’t, but was affected by UI scaling.

Interestingly, if Windows Task Manager was in focus and Windows Ink was not enabled in driver settings, stylus input was not recognised at all. There may be other programs that have this issue, but this was the only one I encountered so far.

I will say that I’ve had many problems with Wacom drivers interacting badly with Windows Ink and other things in the past before, so these types of issues are not exclusive to the XP-Pen drivers.

I’m currently using driver version 3.0.5, a beta build that has a lovely UI; it’s clear and laid out well. I did also try version 1.6.4 initially, which was fine — the UI for that version was similar to the layout you find with Wacom drivers.

Apart from the issues during installation that required troubleshooting, I haven’t had many major complaints with the driver in day-to-day use, I do think that there are a few areas for improvement, however.

The driver stops working correctly each time the computer is set to sleep and woken up again. To fix this the driver must be exited from the system tray and then relaunched.

There also doesn’t seem to be a way to bind WIN+SHIFT+ARROW to any of the express keys. WIN+SHIFT+ARROW (left or right arrow) is the Windows shortcut to quickly move a focused window to another monitor, so it’s something I use a lot if I’m on a multi-monitor setup. Unfortunately, attempting to set this shortcut in the express keys menu will simply move the actual driver window over to the other monitor while the custom input is not properly recognised in the text field.

The driver does offer a “switch monitor” option for the express keys that when clicked will transfer your stylus input to another monitor, which is extremely useful.

Screen

At 24” with a 2560x1440p QHD resolution, images are sharp and crisp even when viewed from a close range while drawing. Genuinely, it feels great to paint on based off this aspect alone.

The colour temperature is set to 6500K by default in the the driver settings. I think initially it felt just a touch too saturated, but overall I’m fairly happy with the colour display.

The monitor has touch-sensitive inputs on the top right corner: a -/+ for quickly adjusting the brightness, a menu for further settings, and power. I found myself using these to adjust the brightness throughout the day frequently. The power input requires a few seconds of continued contact from your finger to react, which prevents you from accidentally brushing it and turning the monitor on/off.

The monitor comes with a built-in stand. I found it easy to adjust to different viewing angles and also incredibly sturdy. I had no problems leaning on the monitor while drawing.

The monitor also comes with a pre-applied anti-glare screen protector. I wasn’t bothered by it and it seems to be holding out well after several weeks of use. I think the screen itself definitely needs the additional anti-glare, as being a display tablet means that it’s significantly more reflective than my main display.

Stylus

My first impression of the stylus was that it’s lighter in comparison to the Wacom styluses that I’m used to — there is very little to no weighting on the back end of the stylus, which makes it feel noticeably different when gripped. To be honest, though, I forgot about it when I was actually painting. Still, I would prefer a bit more weighting because I do think it makes the stylus more comfortable to hold overall for long periods of time.

There’s also no eraser nib, but I’ve personally never used those on Wacom tablets (I always use shortcuts to switch between brush and eraser instead) so this was a non-issue for me.

The two shortcut buttons on the side of the stylus sit quite flat to the surface, so I think they would be less likely to bother people who don’t use them. I use them a lot, however, and found that they were still easy to click despite being quite flat.

Unfortunately however I ran into a curious issue with using one of the stylus buttons to activate the eyedropper tool. When the “alt” key is mapped to one of the triggers on the stylus, activation of the eyedropper function in Photoshop (tested in both CS6 and CC 2019) is somewhat unreliable. That is, when the “alt” key is held down, the expected result is that once you tap the stylus on the canvas, a “mouse-click” will be triggered and the eyedropper will activate. While this works perfectly fine if you hold down “alt” from the keyboard (or hold down an “alt” that’s bound to one of the 20 express keys), when you hold “alt” from a stylus trigger I found that tapping quickly with the stylus only seemed to activate the eyedropper about 50% of the time. In order to activate it more reliably, I had to press harder and longer with the stylus, which can become tiring and slowed down my painting process. I also found that frequently, pressing down longer would lock me into the eyedropping function until I clicked the trigger key again.

After submitting feedback about this XP-Pen’s R&D department, I was informed that this issue occurs because the stylus is only able to send one message to the tablet at a time. Pressing “alt” on the stylus and trying to “click” at the same time counts as two messages, which may interact with each other unexpectedly. This is why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.

The buttons seem to otherwise work completely fine for any other functions that don’t require the stylus to send two simultaneous messages, so unless you’re like me and like to bind “alt” to a stylus trigger, this won’t affect you.

Pen Pressure & Activation Force

Most current-gen tablets flash a big number for the pen pressure levels as a selling point. Having used tablets with 512, 2k, 4k and 8k levels of pressure sensitivity, I’d say I noticed the biggest difference when switching from 512 to 2k, but in my opinion beyond 2k the change is minimal and has no real impact on the way I draw. The XP-Pen Artist Pro 24 comes with 8192 levels of sensitivty, which is a very big number, but in practical application all I can say is that it works the way I expect it to and I don’t have any complaints regarding the transition between pressure levels on the default linear pressure curve.

More importantly I did notice that the IAF (initial activation force) was not as low as I would have liked. Very light input is not recognised, or only partially recognised before dropping off and on again. In a practical sense this doesn’t actually impact me through most of (perhaps 97%) of the painting process, but it did give me pause once in a while when I wanted to make a really light stroke and had to adjust my method. The drivers for this tablet do come with a pressure curve you can adjust to your preferences, so this can help a little, although after some tests I preferred to leave mine on the default setting.

Summary of Drawing Experience (tl;dr)

I think the mark of a good tool or piece of hardware is that it does not draw attention to itself during the course of its use. An ideal drawing experience allows me to be fully immersed in the act of drawing without having my focus shifted to dealing with the tool. With this in mind the XP-Pen Artist Pro performed very well for the most part, but was held back by a couple of issues.

Pros:

The monitor resolution honestly feels great to look at; the pixel density means that I can basically forget about pixels even with my face positioned closer to the screen.

The parallax between the tip of the stylus and the actual position of input was very minimal and basically not noticeable for me, especially after the simple calibration process offered by the driver.

At normal room temperature (say up to about mid-20’s celsius) the monitor screen stays impressively cool to the touch and I was never bothered by resting my drawing hand on its surface even when painting for long sessions.

The 20 express keys and 2 roller rings are extremely helpful and I actually found myself using all of them, despite initially thinking that I’d only need half of them. The keys are also comfortable and responsive to click (which sounds like it should obviously be so, but having used some Intuos iterations in the past which had some very annoying-to-click express keys, I don’t take this feature for granted anymore).

Cons:

The driver needs to be restarted everytime the computer wakes from sleep in order to work.

Higher IAF was noticeable when very light strokes were desirable. Also, the input will on rare occasions glitch by performing a completely straight max opacity + max brush size stroke. This seemed to happen primarily when I was trying to get light strokes to register. (It didn’t happen often enough to bother me much since it’s just a quick undo, but it did happen enough times that I noticed it.)

The issue with eyedropping using “alt” mapped to a stylus trigger as detailed above. Quite unlucky for someone like me who has over a decade of muscle memory for this particular mapping.

Overall, as I said at the beginning, my impression of the tablet is positive. While I think it has room for improvement when it comes to driver performance and the initial activation force especially, it also has a lot to offer at a highly competitive price point ($900USD at retail), and it would’ve been amazing if something like this had been available to me back when I first started digital painting. As I do enjoy using it for the most part I’ll probably continue to use it on-and-off in future.

[space-mermaid-writing]

House Arrest [Loki X Reader] Chapter 2

Summary: You are Clint’s 'little' sister and actually a trained Shield agent. But you gave that up a few years ago and became a Chef, because you wanted a normal live. Then one day Natasha shows up at your door and takes you to the Avenger Tower for a while for security reasons.

Tags: Reader is an former Shield Agent, chef!reader, Reader Barton, 2012 Avenger vibes, everything is still alright, Slice of Life, Avengers Family, Loki has a good heart, still the god of mischief, Slow Burn, mention of food and cooking

Read it on AO3

Chapter 2: Not the new kitchen help

You can now call a cozy apartment with two rooms and a nice bathroom your own. You have stored your things in the bedroom and are now looking around the tower. The living rooms seem to be spread over several levels. Either there are really a lot of people living here or they tried to keep a little space to avoid stepping on each other's toes all the time. Living and working together can be quite a challenge for some people. The floors above consist - judging by the signs - of labs and various development rooms. Most of it is probably technical stuff, but some of the doors also have concerning warnings, and you don't want to spend your first day trying to figure out if they're genuine.

You find the outdoor platform with the big A and see, then it’s connected to some sort of party or lounge room. There are several couch sets and a rather nicely equipped bar. Overall, everything is very spacious and you're sure you can walk around here for a few days without anyone noticing your presence. At least once, you think you've lost your bearings for a moment, but then you find your way back to the elevators. On the other hand, there was surprisingly little going on up here.

All floors below the living area seem to be offices, at least the names of the elevator buttons suggest that. You don't feel like visiting them right now, because the exploration tour has left you pretty hungry. The last meal was also your breakfast this morning and now it's almost afternoon. So you look for the room that interests you the most anyway. And you find it near the lounge: a wonderfully large kitchen with fantastic equipment. You explore it with interest and notice that it‘s visibly little used. Among the people and other beings here, there seems to be no one enjoying cooking. Saving the world probably takes up enough of their time. As you open the refrigerator, a voice suddenly comes from somewhere, startling you briefly at first. "Good afternoon, Miss Barton. If you have any requests regarding the food or ingredients, please let me know." You look around, but can't see anyone. "My name is JARVIS," the voice explains. "I am an A.I. and I am available to assist you." "Uh-huh...hello," you merely reply, processing this information. Jarvis, meanwhile, continues talking. "Welcome to the Tower. The other Avenger members have been notified of your arrival in a memo." "Okay, thanks." It‘s a bit weird talking to a room, but apparently modern technology has already reached the next level here. Hearing nothing more, you start inspecting the contents of the refrigerator. The result is quite sobering. "It's all just fast foods," you grumble. "Would you like to suggest changes in the selection?", Jarvis asks. "Yes! Please and thank you." "You're welcome to make a shopping list, and I'll have everything ordered." Why not? Regardless of whether a computer can really do it, you nod. "Okay." "A personal tablet will be calibrated for you. You can pick it up from Mr. Banner."

A few minutes later you find yourself in the labs on the upper floors. The sterile lit hallway reminds you much more of Shield than the lower floors. You turn a corner and have to go down some stairs that lead you into a large room. Here, tables are jumbled with various types of modern computers and equipment. Further back is a robotic arm soldering a hard drive all by itself with a quiet whir. It’s a dream for any technology enthusiast. From one corner, you hear typing and beeping, followed by quiet murmurs. That's where you turn, looking at the whiteboards on the wall along the way, where complicated calculations and drawings could be seen. Then suddenly, right in front of you, a hologram appears in the air and you stop, rooted to the spot. "Oops!" "Oh, sorry." A head pops up from behind a nearby screen and you recognize Bruce Banner. His face is always shown on the news whenever there's been a shot of Hulk. But now you're more interested in the hologram as you take a closer look. It shows a nebulous, pulsating entity. "What is that?" you ask the scientist. "We got some cosmic stones. This was in one of them." "It's moving. Is it alive?" "Living would be an exaggeration, but there is energy present. My name is Dr. Banner, by the way." He reduzes the size the hologram so it's out of your way. "Barton, nice to meet you." "Clint's sister, I read the file. He never mentioned you though." "I didn't want any attention, but didn't quite work out, I guess." Bruce smiles sympathetically and reaches for a cup of tea, which, judging by his expression after the first sip, seems to be cold. You ask for the tablet you came for, and Bruce looks around searchingly. There are a few of them in the room, but the display of one lights up, drawing your attention. You see your name displayed and simply conclude that it's the right one. Briefly you say thank and goodbye, before you go back to your room and start making a shopping list. Please fresh ingredients and please deliver today.

Afterwards, you browse around a bit. The tablet, like every electronic device in the house, seems connected to the main computer and to Jarvis. You pull up a few files on your new housemates and read them curiously. At least the parts that are publicly available. You also take the opportunity to look for your own name. Because even though you know that your records were officially destroyed when you left, you know that no data is ever really gone. So you're almost surprised when you find only a few sentences about yourself and not even a photo. Mainly it was about your and Clint's entry into Shield at a young age as orphans. You had received a pretty good education, which may have also kept you from going off the rails. Besides hand-to-hand combat and firearms training, your specialty was handling knives, while your brother took up bows and arrows. For foreign missions, you had also had to learn various languages and had chosen the widely spoken Spanish and Russian. But you didn't work for Shield for a long time, instead opting out of your career early on. It just wasn't the life you wanted to lead. So you changed cities and mingled with the civilian population. And before you knew it, your talent with a knife led you into a traditional apprenticeship as a chef. You enjoyed this work more than having to fight to death, and you even expanded your knowledge and skills during a year abroad in France. But there is very little of all this in your records.

You set the tablet aside and stretch out on your new bed. Normally, you would be in full swing at work right now. A glance at the clock reveals that it's already early evening. Rush hour in most of the restaurants. But here? Without a task or a plan, there's not much you can do. On the other hand, a little vacation wouldn't hurt you.

At some point, the tablet gave a soft ping and when you checked, it was a notification that the refrigerator and all the pantries had been restocked. By now you are very hungry and you heard nothing about a joint dinner time, so you decide to cook yourself something. Out of sheer habit and to avoid getting your clothes dirty, you put on a chef's jacket and apron you brought from home and go into the kitchen. There's a radio in one corner that you turn on. Jarvis really did get everything you had asked for. It was a dream come true. Now in a much better mood, you grab a pan and get to work. From the freezer, you pull out a fish, which you gut and fill with fresh herbs. It goes into the pan first. Then it's the turn of the potatoes, which are peeled, boiled and rolled in rosemary.

You're so absorbed in your work - you've just poked a knife into the boiling potatoes to see if they're already done - that you don't notice a visitor, who had entered the kitchen at some point, until he makes himself known. "I'll have the course menu and a white wine to go with it." Somewhat confused, you look up as you hear the man's voice and see Tony Stark standing at the sideboard across from you. He notices your look and returns it with a smile. "I didn't realize we hired a new kitchen help." You frown and take a sharpening rod in your free hand to sharpen your knife while not taking your eyes off Tony. "Oh, I'm not a new kitchen help," you clarify. "I'm a chef." "Excuse me. Then would the chef please serve me the course menu and a white wine?" The trillionaire indicates a polite bow, but you merely turn to the stove and take the potatoes off it. You then retrieve a plate from the cupboard. "Jarvis", you direct your voice to the computer, hoping it’s still listening. "Would you please explain to Mr. Stark that I'm not here to cook for him and that he'll have to order his course menu, if he really wants one, from the Chinese place next door?" "Mr. Stark, I'm supposed to-." "I heard her, Jarvis," Tony interrupts the A.I., eyeing you a little more closely now. "That does make me wonder what you're doing here, Miss...? Aside from the fact that there's no Chinese working next door." "Then you should make one move in there," you replay amused. As you do, you wipe your fingers on the cloth you've hung on the apron at your hip and prep your dish. Just as Tony is about to say something clever, the door opens and another person walks in. You recognize Thor at first glance. "What's that delicious smell in the air?", he asks, looking around curiously. You smile and point to the stove. "I was just cooking. There's still some left for you to take." With that, you want to go to your room, but Tony stops you. "Oh, he gets something, but I don't?", he complains. You shrug your shoulders. "He didn't want a whole menu." With that, you disappear through the door and go back to your living quarters. There you quickly change into something comfy and make yourself comfortable on the couch, where you watch an episode of your favorite show while you eat. A little company would be nice, but you don't feel like meeting more people you don't know yet. And you don't feel like searching for Natasha in this huge complex. So you’re fine with being by your own right own.

After dinner, you continue watching the show, but eventually you realize you're getting tired. It really had been an eventful and long day. So you quickly take your dirty dishes back to the kitchen. But just as you're closing the dishwasher, Tony comes back in and leans against the frame with his arms crossed. "So… you‘re a Barton." Apparently he had spent a few minutes of his precious time gathering information about you and then waited for you to reappear. "Surprised there's another one?" you ask with a smirk. He takes that as a sign that you're not holding a grudge against him. He pushes himself off the door frame and comes closer, now leaning his arms on the kitchen island. "Nothing about Legolas surprises me anymore. Met his wife and kids the other day. Nice family. Are you guys a whole circus?" "Not anymore." You shrug. "So, what’s your deal?", he wants to know. "You left Shield in your early twenties. What's normal life like out there? No one waiting for you to come home?" You turn on the dishwasher and grab a water bottle from the supply. "Life is nice. Often stressful, but I have to worry a lot less about getting killed." You don't answer Tony's last question. It's really none of his business. "That is when you're not being yanked out of that life and brought into the house of superheroes", you add. "You'll get used to it. Both that we're super and that we're heroes. I promise." You laugh at his words. Tony seems to be a real egocentric, but also a humorous person. "Well, let's see", you reply, "Now if the welcome speech is over, I'd like to go to bed." "I won't keep anyone away from their beauty sleep. Good night." You wish him the same, then head back to your room, where you make yourself comfortable on the large bed. The strange surroundings were unfamiliar, but not you don't feel uncomfortable and so you soon fall asleep.

[lopsonminolta]



5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

23. Describe the physical environment in which you write. Be as detailed as possible. Tell me what’s around you as you work. Paint me a picture.

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

YOYOYO fangz for the ask!!!!

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

No writing superstitions, I am BLAND as oatmeal on that front.

23. Describe the physical environment in which you write. Be as detailed as possible. Tell me what’s around you as you work. Paint me a picture.

I sit in the corner of a small-sized living room-kitchen combo, the main feature of my studio apartment. The corner I use has the apartment's only window to its left, which, by all accounts, is the correct light orientation to have when your dominant hand is the right one, (or so I've read online). Sometimes, when the weather is merciful, I get to enjoy a cool breeze during a hot, summer day.

It's got a desk with a wooden tabletop that I got from Ikea, but unlike many of its offerings, it's top piece is actually made of wood. I've forgotten the type of the wood by now, but I have not yet erased all the time I spent treating it with toxic, nauseating chemicals. In a sad turn of events, my efforts treating it in a desperate attempt to get it ready for use were somewhat of a failure, as the tabletop has gained a kind of sticky texture that, no matter how often I try to clean it away with mild detergents, never seems to go away.

The desk is held up by two metal legs, cylindrical and white, the cheapest ones I could find in Ikea's page, and a set of drawers, 5 in total. The drawers look rather flimsy, and the screws kind of stick out on the inside of them, (which has scratched up the sides of my drawing tablet), but they're plenty for holding in various trinkets.

On top of the desk sits my personal computer, a desktop that I had built in a different country 5 years ago. The machine still putters on, seemingly still capable of handling my artistic endeavors, both writing and drawing. Might be the watercooling system that it's got that has kept it going for this long with minimal issues...

Next to this machine is the monitor, surrounded by two speakers. The display is from Dell, part of its professional series, dating back a few years by now. It's still a rather excellent option, annoying me only in one aspect: it requires a high DPI scaling value that doesn't play so nice with my drawing tablet's screen. It's fine, though, I can deal with that.

The neat thing about this monitor is that I have all of my peripherals connected to it, so if I ever need to cut off all inputs from my computer, I can simply turn the monitor off and, along with it, all devices go offline.

The speakers on the left and right side of the screen are rather tall, which is not helped by the fact that they sit on top of shock-absorbing sponges meant to trap unwanted sound frequencies. They were made in Poland by one of those Hi-Fi companies that nobody ever seems to know of, that only find their way into dimly-lit high-end audio stores meant only for the richest of folks or those who have saved up money for years on end just to achieve some kind of sonic nirvana, (that's me, I'm of the second kind).

The writing itself is made possible thanks to my special keyboard, an ergonomic contraption that cost me as much as the speakers, that somehow circumvents the tendinitis on my dominant hand. It's both concave and convex, with all of the keys clustered into two main groups, one for each hand, stopping me from crossing them around while typing. It's jet black and, for some reason, the logo is off-center by design. I will never figure that part out.

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

My dearest Steven Universe OC, Coral, has ears. She shapeshifted them into being.

GOSH that was A Lot!!!! hope you like the answers, oh most noble knight of roses

[love-in-the-time]

The Destiny of Stars, 10th Doctor/Donna, 12th Doctor, Donna, Clara, Fix-It, Rated M for language, sex, and violence.

Title: The Destiny of Stars Author: love-in-the-time Rating: M for language, sex, violence. Summary: “It is the destiny of stars to collapse.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson. A cry for help echoes across the universe into the mind of Donna Noble. A fix-it fic wrapped in a battle for the survival of a planet thousands of light-years away, turning around the central point of the Doctor and Donna.

A note: This took me two years to write. Quarantine time is the perfect time to finish fics. I wish all my fellow creators the peace and ability to make their art. Creativity is needed in these times, and you have my gratitude. This fic includes mention of a quarantine, but that idea came to me a very long time ago. Please enjoy, and i hope it offers you a moment of distraction.

She is standing on line for coffee, scrolling through her emails, when someone yanks on her arm and falls in front of her. Startled, Donna Noble jumps back, gasping.

On the floor in front of her is a kneeling woman, with dark hair tied up at the nape of her neck. She is bowing her head and clasping her hands. “Lady,” the woman is saying. “Noble lady, will you help me?”

Donna is astonished, and stands speechless for a moment. “I,” she begins. “I don’t know what you mean.”

The woman lifts her face and there are tears running down her cheeks. “Please help us,” the woman begs. “My people are dying.”

Donna feels a lurch in her chest. “What?” she asks. Her immediate conclusion is that the woman is crazy. “I don’t understand what you mean.” People are staring. She looks around her. “Are you all right?”

The woman stands up straight, wiping at her cheeks and composing herself. “Are you Donna Noble?” she asks, much more calmly.

“Yes,” Donna says. “Why?”

The woman clears her throat and inhales deeply. “I have come to beg your help on behalf of my people, the Mori. Our planet is dying.” She reaches out to touch Donna’s hand. “Please, if you and the Doctor—“

Donna blinks. “Who?” she asks. “Miss, I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She backs off. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” She heads for the door, leaving the woman stunned behind her. She stands blankly for a moment and then seems to make a decision. She follows after Donna, her stride purposeful but her hands shaking. She catches Donna in the street.

“Please, I’ve come so far,” the woman says, and something in her tone makes Donna stop and listen. “Please, hear me. My people sent me to find you, and the Doctor, and bring you to help us.”

Again, Donna blinks. “I don’t know who that is,” she says. “I really can’t help you.” She reaches into her purse. “Can I get you somewhere? Do you need money?”

“No, no!” The woman is distraught. “We need you, and the Doctor, to come and save us.” She is clutching at Donna’s sleeve. “I will not fail them!”

Donna presses the unlock button on her car key fob and opens her car door behind her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I really don’t know what you mean. I can’t help you.” She climbs in and drives away, looking in her rearview mirror to see the woman cover her face with both hands. She shakes her head, disturbed by the encounter and unsure why she feels so unsettled.

By the time she pulls into her driveway, the beginnings of a wicked headache are starting behind her eyes. Donna squeezes her eyes shut and pushes her fingers into her lids for a moment, breathing through the pain. She’d never had migraines before about two years past, when she’d had some kind of accident. No one had really been very clear with her about what exactly had happened, but soon after she and Shawn had gotten married and Donna began to focus on other things.

But sitting still does nothing for the blossoming pain in her head and she makes her way up the stairs to the bedroom, crawling under the covers with her shoes still on. It had been some time since the headaches had been this bad, and Donna is miserable, recalling the first few months after her accident, when the pain had kept her curled on her bathroom floor, a seemingly endless flow of tears rolling down her face. Ever since then it was as if her mind refused to retain the information about what happened to her, so Donna mostly remembers fear and pain and an overwhelming heartbreak, as if she’d lost something or someone she loved. She wasn’t quite sure why being alone affected her so deeply after the accident, but Shawn had gentled her back to life when the pain subsided. Donna feels dragged back to those times.

She rolls over and kicks off her shoes, reaching over to her beside table and getting the paracetamol tablets out. She swallows three of them with no water, winces, and rests her head on the pillow. The room is dark and cool. She remembered it usually took a good nap to get rid of the headache and the echoes of it left bright spots in her vision for a few hours after. This would be one of those.

An hour later Shawn arrives home and finds his wife in bed, eyes closed but not asleep. He comes gently into the room. “Hello,” he whispers.

Donna rolls over. “Hello,” she answers.

“Head hurts?” Shawn comes to sit beside her on the bed.

Donna nods against her pillow and her eyes fill up. “It’s still terrible. It hasn’t been this bad in a long time.”

The migraine is a sign the fail-safe is working, Shawn remembers. Wilf told him everything. She’ll have an awful headache, and she’ll sleep. It’s only if she doesn’t wake up that we have to worry.

The idea of Donna not waking up scares Shawn deeply, that his generous, beautiful, determined Donna could be taken away from him by her past. So he retreats from the room to let his wife sleep.

Mostly Donna is able to fall asleep with minimal fuss but this time the pain only seems to get worse behind her eyes, until Donna is gasping, her eyes squeezed shut.

* * * *

Out of relative silence, the TARDIS’s main computer suddenly sounds an alarm that startles the Doctor and he jumps, banging his elbow against the console. The screen displays a flash of coordinates and the ship yanks itself out of the Vortex with a nauseating lurch. Clara gets thrown against the railing and steadies herself against a kind of flight she hasn’t experienced before. There is no thumping landing this time, only a quick, hard thud. The Doctor is looking at the screen. “London,” he says. “We’re in London. In Kensington.” He turns the view screen to face him and his eyes go wide. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

“What?” Clara asks, coming round the console. “What’s happened?”

But the Doctor is already away from the console and flying down the ramp to the door. “It’s Donna,” he says, and Clara follows uncomprehendingly. The Doctor is clearly panicked.

They are in a bedroom, a large and spacious room painted in green, and in the room's corner there is a woman lying on a bed, her head thrown back. “Oh, my god,” Clara says.

Donna is lying unmoving on her bed, with a trickle of dark blood from her nose. Clara rushes to the bedside and looks back to the Doctor. He’s standing back, his hands at his sides, very still.

“I can’t be here,” he says. “She can’t see me. Or the TARDIS.”

Clara looks dismayed. “Who is this woman? How can we help her then?”

The Doctor looks around himself and then back at Donna. He comes to stand over the bed, rigid with fear, to see if she’s conscious, then seems to remember himself and points the sonic at her. It makes the slightest noise, on a low setting. “No,” he says. “She’s out cold.”

He turns back to Clara. “Help me,” he says. “Help me get her on the ship.”

The door to the bedroom bursts open and Shawn runs in, looking bewildered and afraid. “Who are you?” he demands of the Doctor and Clara, who freeze over Donna’s bed.

“I’m going to help her,” the Doctor says, and he recognizes the young man from the wedding. “Step back.”

Shawn rushes to the bed. “What are you doing?” He tries to stop the Doctor as he gathers Donna in his arms.

“Helping her!” The Doctor repeats. “Get out of my way!” And before Shawn can do anything further the Doctor and Clara slam the doors of the TARDIS in his face, with Donna aboard, her head lolled back in the Doctor’s arms.

* * * *

The first thing that Donna feels as she regains consciousness is the feeling of slogging out of deep, thick water that is trying to suffocate her. She feels a piercing pang in her head as she gasps for air and discovers the water isn’t choking her after all. She opens her eyes.

She’s in a room that looks like a hospital. Again. Donna feels a wave of dismay and sadness in her chest. She’d seen the inside of too many doctor’s offices and hospitals trying to discover the cause of her sudden, chronic migraines. It seems she’s landed in A&E again. Her eyes fill with tears. “Not again,” she says aloud.

But the person who comes to her bedside isn’t dressed as a nurse or a doctor. Donna looks up into a face she doesn’t know, a young woman with a fringe of dark hair over her open, gentle face. “Donna?” she asks tentatively.

“Yes,” Donna says. She inhales and exhales deeply.

“Are you all right?” the girl asks.

“I don’t know,” Donna says. She pushes herself into a seated position against what she realizes are large, soft pillows. Not like hospital pillows. She feels as if her sinuses are pulsing with dull pain. “Where am I? Is this a hospital?”

“Not quite. I’m Clara,” the girl says. “This is a… er, medical treatment center. We found you passed out in your bed with a nosebleed and brought you here.”

The Doctor is standing at the console watching the med bay on a screen, his face miserable. Donna looks pale and disoriented as Clara tells her mostly credible lies about tests and needing to rest. Donna asks for paracetamol tablets, which Clara promises to bring her. After a few more minutes Clara leaves, but the Doctor keeps watching. He sees Donna look around the room and then lower her face into her hands. He thinks about when Donna cried after Lee, and when she let him sleep wrapped around her on the rare occasions he slept.

Clara comes back to the console, looking worried. “What do I give her?” she asks. “Do we even have paracetamol?”

In response, the Doctor goes to the computer and punches at the keyboard. The synthesizer produces two tablets that look like paracetamol. “One is a painkiller, the other one will make her sleep,” he explains. “I have to figure out how to help her.”

He watches Clara give Donna the tablets and a glass of water and lower the lights in the med bay so she can sleep. He worries that she hasn’t kept asking where she is; she must feel really poorly.

“What’s wrong with her?” Clara asks when she comes back again.

“I need to stabilize her,” the Doctor says, ignoring the question. He circles around his console methodically pushing buttons, his deliberation masking the frantic worry he feels. “Every second she’s here she’s dying.”

“On the TARDIS? It’s the safest place in the universe,” Clara says. “What’s wrong with her?”

The Doctor slumps onto the jump seat.

“You better tell me about her,” Clara says, sitting down beside him.

The Doctor folds his hands together. “Donna showed up twice in my life and the second time she got the hint,” he begins, after a short, contemplative silence.

Clara settles in to listen.

“She’d been set up to be killed by her fiancé, and he was dosing her with particles that are contained in the TARDIS core. So we killed a giant spider queen intent on using Earth as a breeding ground, and I asked her to come with me. And she said no.”

“Did she?” Clara says, laughing.

“But then she came looking for me,” the Doctor says. “Imagine the odds. She found me. I haven’t ever stopped being grateful for that.”

“So why would she die?”

“I… she… some things happened, and she got caught up in a metacrisis, it’s a fusion of DNA kind of thing, it mixes biological materials and it’s very dangerous, and she… her DNA got mixed with mine and made a clone and—“

Clara has long since stopped being surprised at weird alien things. “So that made her sick?”

“It left her with a core of Time Lord energy in her brain,” the Doctor explains. “That kind of activity isn’t normal for a human brain; it sends it into overdrive. It doesn’t have enough synapses to handle it. I had to wipe her memory of me and try and contain the rogue energy. If the containment fails, her brain will explode inside her skull. And I’m afraid it’s failing.”

There is a crystal, horrified silence as Clara takes this explanation in.

“So she can’t see me, or know that she’s on the TARDIS until I figure out how to prevent that,” the Doctor concludes.

“But you don’t look the same,” Clara says. “How will she recognize you?”

Another pang in his chest makes the Doctor sigh. “She knows this face too.”

“How?”

“I… you know that I regenerate?” the Doctor asks. “This face is one that’s familiar to her. I think I must have chosen it, subconsciously. It reminds me I have a duty of care.”

The words are familiar; he’s said them to her before, And they still matter; they matter even more now. He tries not to let Clara see the fear and pain in him as he goes back to work on his computer console. He can’t think how he might be able to control it.

On the screen, Donna sleeps. Even asleep, she looks tired and pale. The Doctor types faster. The pill would ensure she’d be out for a few hours, but he knew she wouldn’t accept being lied to. Donna Noble couldn’t be fooled for long, if at all. The thought of that brings a painful smile to his lips. Donna, always on the front foot, ready to remind him that he wasn’t alone and he had others to consider.

The main concern for him was the containment around the Time Lord energy. If he had a way to extract… if he had a way to make her remember without hurting her…

Ultimately, he knows only one way, the risky way; the TARDIS core. He could connect her to the TARDIS core. The TARDIS loved Donna as much as he did, she would make sure Donna was safe. He could connect her to the core of the TARDIS and extract the energy trapped in her brain, and… and then what? What would happen to the energy? He looks up from the console at Clara, who is sitting quietly on the jump seat.

“I figured it out,” he says, and his voice is flat. Clara sees the unhappiness in his face.

“Tell me,” she says.

“I have to hook her up to the TARDIS core,” the Doctor says. “Before she wakes up. See if I can extract the energy from her brain without tripping the failsafe.”

“That sounds like a huge risk.”

“It is a huge risk.” The Doctor has to fight a rising tide of frustration and anger and keep his voice steady. “It’s an enormous risk I wasn’t willing to take the first time.”

So he and Clara carefully roll the bed Donna is in into the main console room. Donna sleeps on, breathing steadily. Her face is relaxed now. The Doctor gestures for Clara to sit down again and takes a moment to stand over Donna’s bed. His back is turned to Clara so she can’t see his face, but he feels the same helpless love he always felt for her, multiplied now a hundredfold because he knows she’s suffering and she’s been gone so long from him, and she’s back.

“All right,” he says to her gently. “I’m going to connect you to the TARDIS. You remember her, right?” He reaches out to place a small metal disc on her wrist, to measure her pulse and her blood pressure. “She remembers you.” And the TARDIS core glows brightly bluish white in response. The Doctor pulls a long set of cords from the console, attached to two more metal discs. These he attaches to her temples. Donna stirs and frowns in her sleep, too deep under the drug to wake up but still conscious of something happening. “Nothing bad will happen,” he tells her, hoping with all his might that he’s telling the truth. “I promise.”

As he circles around Clara sees the look on his face. She feels terrible for him; he looks absolutely destroyed, and truly afraid. “Nothing bad will happen,” he repeats, and looks up at Clara with his heart in his eyes. He pushes a few buttons and stands back from the bed.

For long moments nothing does happen. Long enough for Clara to look to the Doctor with curiosity, and then suddenly there is a crescendoing hum that rises and rises. Donna stiffens in her bed, as if having a seizure, the readings of her blood pressure and pulse spiking. The Doctor’s eyes fly from the console to her face. Donna isn’t waking, but she gives a final great shudder and lies very, very still.

On the floor of the console room there is a man lying, dressed in a long brown trench coat over a pinstriped brown suit. His hair is messy and spiky, and his face is young. He sits up, dazed, and the Doctor, despite his surprise, leaps in between him and Donna. The Time Lord energy in Donna’s brain has manifested in a copy of himself from long ago, an echo of her mind and heart.

He helps the younger Doctor to his feet and says impassively, “Welcome.” He can feel his pulses going wild in his neck, though he grits his teeth to show nothing. Of course it would be this. How else? He remembered the sheer relief of how they used to understand each other, the open wound of their subconscious emotional bond that pulsed with their shared pain and desire and joy and anger. That had long since closed over in his current form but this man--

The younger Doctor looks around warily. “Where am I?”

“Onboard my… er, your — my ship,” the Doctor says. “The TARDIS.”

“This is not my ship.”

The Doctor shakes his head. “Never mind, I need your help. Someone here needs you to help keep them alive.”

He hustles the younger Doctor down the nearest hallway into a spare room. He swipes the wall to activate the synthesizer computer and makes a large window through into the console room. He stands in the younger Doctor’s line of sight. “There someone here who needs you,” he says. “Needs you, specifically. I need you to be gentle with her.”

The younger Doctor suddenly lights up with the most wrenching expression of fear and anticipation he’s ever seen. “You haven’t,” he says.

The Doctor points out the window. Donna is sitting up on the bed, holding one of Clara’s hands and trying to stand up.

“That’s Donna,“ the younger Doctor says, his eyes fixed on her through the glass. “That’s Donna—” he repeats, and tears out of the room, coattails flying. The Doctor follows him out.

He watches his younger self go to Donna, his face wide with astonishment and joy, and stand in front of her as if to make sure she is really there. “Hello,” he says to her.

Donna breathes a great sigh and her eyes fill up. “Hello,” she says. “I know you.”

“Yeah, you do,” the younger Doctor says, and he catches her up in a great embrace, as warm and solid as he ever had been in life.

There is a piercing pang in her chest, and Donna finally, finally sobs, muffled into his embrace. It’s a sound of simultaneous relief and pain. The Doctor and Clara look at each other and retreat immediately, the Doctor’s face long with unhappiness.

For a long time they stand wrapped around each other, the younger Doctor shedding silent tears against her shoulder. “How are you here?” Donna asks, pulling away from him to look at his face, his dear, beloved, tear-stained face.

“TARDIS made me,” he says, sniffling and smiling at her through his tears.

“Are you real?”

“Yes.” He steps back from her. “Are you?”

“Don’t be daft,” Donna says, wiping her eyes. “Only one of me.”

“I know,” the younger Doctor says. He’s smiling so widely, so guilelessly full of genuine joy, that Donna can’t help herself and she hugs him again, pressing her lips to his cheek. Then she lets go of him and looks around her.

“That means I’m on the TARDIS,” she says, and fresh tears roll down her face. “I’m on the TARDIS.” She puts her hands to the console, finding it changed, and looks to the younger Doctor. “Why did you change it?”

The Doctor emerges into the room. “He didn’t,” he says, and Donna freezes. She looks at him in complete surprise.

“Caecilius,” Donna says, astonished. “You’re that man. From Pompeii.”

“No, no,” the Doctor says, smiling through the tears in his eyes. He comes to stand in front of her. “I’m the Doctor, I’m him.” He takes Donna’s hands in his. “I regenerated. I picked this face. I chose this face because of you.”

Donna is speechless, bewildered.

“I look in the mirror and I see the best of me,” the Doctor says. “You reminded me, you held me to the mark. Whenever I see this face I remember you.”

“But I couldn’t remember you,” Donna says.

“I know,” the Doctor says.

Donna looks over to the younger Doctor. “Isn’t he the Doctor?”

“As you knew him, yes,” the Doctor says. “That was me when you knew me.”

“But then... You are you when I knew you, too,” Donna says, and she frowns momentarily at the strangeness of the statement.

The Doctor winces and the younger Doctor smiles a little bit, so proud of her, like he always was. Donna looks to Clara. “And you said your name is Clara. You traveling with him?”

Clara nods. She doesn’t quite know what to say, for there are so many gaps in her knowledge of this subject that she is on the outside of it. Donna looks from the Doctor to the younger Doctor.

“How?” she asks, and she looks so torn between joy and grief that the younger Doctor puts an arm around her. She looks up at him. “How are you here, the same time as him, and how am I here?” She shakes her head to clear it. “I’m so tired.”

Immediately the younger Doctor starts to help her back onto the bed in the console room but she stops him. “No,” she says, and looks to the Doctor. “My room, is my room still...?”

The Doctor swallows hard. “TARDIS saved it in the memory banks. Every detail.”

Donna turns her back on all of them and walks down the hallway. First door on the right, she says in her mind, as she always had, and opens the door.

The same purple walls, the same ceiling set to display the shifting cycles of Earth day and night, the same impossibly enormous bed, the same everything. Donna inhales and then exhales deeply, and turns to find the younger Doctor standing a little behind her. “It’s the same,” she says, and walks into her memories.

The walls respond to her touch, and Donna, because she remembers how, sets the ceiling to an immense blue expanse, arching clouds above them. She looks so overwhelmed the younger Doctor goes to her and wraps her up, resting his chin against the top of her head.

Donna cries against his shoulder for a moment and then pulls away and slams both fists into his chest. “How could you take this away from me?” she demands, tears rolling. “How could you just do that to me, like I was nothing?”

“It wasn’t nothing,” the younger Doctor says. “Donna, it wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t. You would have died.”

“But I didn’t die!” Donna says. “I didn’t! I lived! And I had to live without you! And I had to live with holes in my head and my heart and my… mind! And you did it!” She thumps her fists against his chest and the Doctor takes hold of her wrists.

“Listen to me,” he says, and Donna regards him with wide, teary eyes. “If I had my choice you know I never would have done it. You know what I wanted.” He lets her wrists go.

“What about what I wanted?” Donna asks. “I said no.”

“Because you had no idea what the consequences would be!” the younger Doctor exclaims. “And I would not let you die. Not that way. Not any way.” His hands close tightly on her upper arms. “You would have had a massive stroke, at minimum. More likely your brain would have literally exploded inside your skull. You would have died screaming, with blood coming out of every hole in your head, and I would never let that happen. Did you want me to let that happen?”

Donna shudders, but she squares her shoulders. “What if that was how it was meant to go?” she asks him resolutely.

“Bollocks,” the younger Doctor says.

“What if it was?”

“It was never going to happen in the first place, so why ask?” he demands of her. “You already know I would save you over everyone, so why would you think I’d ever change my mind about that? Whatever face I have?”

“Because you killed me,” she says, her throat closing up over the urge to cry.

“I saved you.”

“You took away the only good and true thing I had ever had!” Donna shouts, and then bursts into tears again. “I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I had lost a reason to live and I didn’t know why!”

“Better you should have a few headaches and feel sad for a while than be dead forever,” the younger Doctor snaps back, fast as a whip.

“A few headaches? Sad for a while?” An enormous rage and despair bubbles up inside her. “Sad for a while? Do you know how many times I thought about swallowing all my pills? Or just walking out in front of a lorry?” She sobs a few times, a twisted smile pulling her lips back from her teeth. “I’ve already done that once, right? Why not just do it again?”

“What do you mean, you walked in front of a lorry?” the younger Doctor asks.

Donna shrugs. “I walked out into the street to stop a paradox. On Shan Shen.”

“You never told me that.”

She doesn’t answer him. She only crosses her arms tightly around herself. Her face is so sad, and the younger Doctor is devastated.

“You never said that happened.” His eyes are full of pain. “You never told me you died.”

Still, Donna says nothing, because there isn’t anything to say. Silently, the younger Doctor reaches out to grasp her arms, but Donna blocks him and pushes him again. “You put me back in a world I hated, back in a world where I didn’t matter. Again. I thought I had left all that behind with you. You told me I could leave all that behind with you!”

“And I meant that! How could I know what was going to happen?”

“You said you could see everything,” Donna says, stabbing a finger at him. “What was fixed, what was in flux. The past, the present, and the future. The burden of the Time Lord. Isn’t that what you said?”

Again he reaches for her, undeterred, and this time she leans on him. “I didn’t know,” he murmurs to her, his voice broken along the edges. “You know, you know I never wanted you to be hurt.”

“But I was,” Donna says miserably into his chest. “I was, and I didn’t know what to do.”

He wraps his arms around her, one hand cradling her head, and Donna cries, the same silent sobs he remembers from so long ago and from no time ago at all. Finally her arms go around him too, and they both cling on.

“Can you forgive me?” he asks after a long, silent moment.

Donna wraps her arms tighter around him but she says nothing.

“Donna,” he says it pleadingly, softly.

Donna shakes her head into chest and doesn’t move any further except to bury her face in his shoulder and hold on. “You have to give me time,” she says. “I don’t know if I have a lot or a little of it, or how it moves, or what’s going to happen to me, not anymore.”

The younger Doctor moves to help her sit on the bed. She wipes her eyes. They look at each other, filling their eyes and hearts again with the inexpressible comfort of each other’s presence. There is a silence full of unsaid words, because Donna is unsure she could get the words out around the emotions in her throat anyway.

“What do you remember?” the younger Doctor asks, clasping her hands in his.

“Everything. All of it.”

“Does your head hurt?”

“Yes. But not so badly anymore.” Donna looks around herself. “I need water.” She gets up and goes to the synthesizer computer, and because she remembers how to use it, she produces a bottle of fresh, cold water. “Do you want any?” she asks.

“No,” the younger Doctor says, watching her standing in the glow of the computer. She is as beautiful as he remembers, and more, and scarred with pain and wisdom and fear and love. He watches her drink thirstily, and catch her breath after. She puts the bottle down and goes to the big doors on the far wall.

“This is my closet,” she says. “Are you telling me all my clothes are still in here?” She opens the door to see for herself, and the enormous, dimension-crossing room expands before her. She glances back at the younger Doctor, and disappears inside.

All of her dresses, her gowns, her jeans and trousers, her tops, her strange alien clothing from distant planets, her hats and jewelry and shoes and bags are all there. More even than she has at home with her unlimited budget. More than she will ever have on Earth, true in so many ways of this ship. “I will be me again,” she says to herself, and shucks her clothes entirely. She puts on everything she loved, the soft bras and knickers she’d created for herself out of fabric not found on Earth, a deep blue top covered in embroidered flowers, a pair of light blue jeans she’d always liked, and her favorite broken-in flat boots; now that she has them back she feels she can run for miles. She emerges from her closet and the younger Doctor’s face lights up.

“That’s my Donna,” he says, and Donna feels herself smiling.

“That’s me,” she says, and sighs a great sigh of relief. “Is this the strangest thing that has ever happened to me?”

The Doctor smiles too. “I don’t know,” he says. “But how? How did this happen? Can you remember?”

Donna shrugs. “I was in line for a coffee and this woman fell at my feet begging for me and the Doctor. She said she came from another planet.”

“That’s a given,” the Doctor quips, and they both smile again at each other. Something long-crushed in Donna starts to unfold in her chest, and she looks down at her feet before the younger Doctor can see her tears.

“Did she say where?”

Donna nods, and tries to wipe her eyes as surreptitiously as she can. But as always, as always, he knows. He knew the first time she cried after Lance, held her for so many times after that. “Don’t cry,” he says. “Come.” He holds out a hand to her and pulls her back onto her bed.

“She said Mori. The planet Mori. Something about how she couldn’t let her people down.” Donna’s tears dry at the sight of the younger Doctor’s face. He probably doesn’t even realize how he’s looking at her but she knows that goofy smile in her bones. There is the familiar surge of love and joy, threaded through with fear and anticipation, that has always existed in her for him.

“Mori. That’s quite far away, must have taken a huge amount of power to get her to Earth.” The younger Doctor frowns.

“She said the planet is dying,” Donna says. “She was so afraid. And I got scared and I ran. And then I had the headache and I woke up on board.” She shrugs. “What d’you know about Mori?”

“We might be better off sharing this information,” the younger Doctor says thoughtfully. “Maybe he should know? The other Doctor? And that girl?”

“All right,” Donna says. “But, Spaceman--” She reaches out to hold his arm. “Tell me first.”

He smiles at her. “Yeah. They can wait.” He has a feeling she’s thinking the same as him, that they’d spent a lot of time in this bed with conversation and other things. This is where they are comfortable. “Mori is a very large planet in a solar system located a bit closer to the center of the Milky Way than Earth. Say about six hundred million light years? They’re traditionally a technological society, they’ve achieved level ten spaceflight, so they’ve been traveling the universe for a while. Did that woman look like she was starving or injured?”

“No,” Donna says. “Only desperate. She was wearing black, if that’s relevant. She wasn’t young but not old either. And she was looking for us. You and me. Not... that Doctor out there.”

“Well,” the younger Doctor says, grinning at her. “No use breaking up a winning team, eh?”

Donna’s expression is shot through with joy and pain. “Right,” she says, and reaches for his hand. “We’d better tell them.”

They emerge back out hand-in-hand. The Doctor starts up off the jumpseat as they come back into the console room, looking from Donna to the way her hands are clasped with the younger Doctor’s. “I can remember what brought me here,” Donna says. “There was a woman asking for help. She said she was from another planet.”

“Where?” the Doctor asks. He gestures for Donna to sit on the jump seat.

“Mori, she said,” Donna says. “She said the planet was dying and she was looking for us, er... for you and me. Or him and me.” She frowns. “Er. Us.”

“Did she say how?” the Doctor asks. He looks at his younger self. “The Mori are advanced, surely there’s less war these days.” He goes to the console and pulls up the view screen. The younger Doctor, fascinated, comes to look at the new console system. The Doctor pulls up the current Shadow Proclamation reports on the galaxy neighborhood in which Mori is located.

“Nothing is written in the reports,” the Doctor says.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” the younger Doctor interjects. “You never know what’s being covered up, or missed.”

The Doctor inclines his head in acknowledgement.

“I suppose we’d better take a look ourselves,” the younger Doctor says. “It can’t hurt for us to see firsthand what’s going on.” He looks to Donna. “Do you feel well?”

Donna shrugs. “I feel fine. Physically.”

The younger Doctor comes to stand next to her, and both of them feel a distinct sense of calm in their close proximity. The Doctor watches it happen, attempting not to notice the way Donna’s body is turned to the younger Doctor’s, the way they graze hands.

Clara looks between them and sees the way the Doctor swallows hard. She steps up beside him and starts to assist in flight. “Are you all right?” she asks quietly as she moves around the console.

The Doctor shakes his head. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s see what’s going on.”

“I did know how to fly this thing,” Donna says. “Once.” She is observing the way the Doctor and Clara pilot the ship, and the younger Doctor nods.

“The best first mate this ship could ask for,” he confirms. They lean against the railings of the stairs for stability as the TARDIS lurches its way into spaceflight. Donna feels her heart start to race, and her hands start to shake in a mixture of absolute terror and anticipation and joy and excitement, and has to catch her breath. The younger Doctor keeps a close eye on her.

“Oh.”

The Doctor scrambles for the controls abruptly, looking in horror at the viewscreen. “Oh, no,” he says.

Everyone comes to stand beside him to see the screen. There is a planet in its center, blue and brown and green, like Earth, but with huge landmasses scattered across it. There are clouds, but Donna notices immediately the trailing gray and black lines rising from the surface. “That’s smoke,” she says. “It has to be. Like bombs fell.”

The Doctor looks over at her. “You might be right,” he says. She was often right when they were together. He zooms in on a particularly large plume of smoke and inhales. “It’s a crater,” he says. “Absolute destruction. There are hundreds of them.”

The younger Doctor nudges his way forward, a hand resting briefly on the small of Donna’s back. “Is it from explosives or extraterrestrial impact?” He looks closely at it. “It seems like bombs.”

Clara and Donna look at each other. “There’s a war?” Clara asks.

“Or an invasion,” Donna says, and the Doctor and the younger Doctor look back at her.

“What makes you say that?” the Doctor asks. He trusts Donna with the same quiet implicitness he always did.

“It looks like a pattern, like strategy,” Donna says. “Can you zoom back out?” She looks intent. “Look,” she says, pointing. “There’s a ring of holes around that water so no one can get to it.” She scans the screen. “Then there’s that huge one there, might have been a town or a building complex. And here. And here.” She points from crater to crater. “I don’t see anything that looks like an administrative or a hospital building, or any real infrastructure left.”

“That’s brilliant,” the younger Doctor says, and the Doctor nods.

“Let’s find out what this is,” he says. A few moments later they land with a tremendous thud. The Doctor and the younger Doctor start forward at the same time, and give each other a somewhat surprised look. The younger Doctor steps back and the Doctor opens the door. Clara and Donna follow them out into what turns out to be a tunnel, wide, made of metal, and lit with huge roundels. The Doctor looks round, pulls out his sonic, and the younger Doctor follows suit. Donna looks back and forth between them and shakes her head to herself. Between the two of them they scan their surroundings. “There’s life,” the Doctor says slowly. “Humanoid.”

Donna moves closer to the younger Doctor. “The Hath,” she says to him quietly. “Not the same place this time, though.”

“No,” he says.

There is silence in the tunnel. No one seems forthcoming to welcome them. Donna reaches instinctively for the younger Doctor’s hand and feels it close around hers with the same familiar relief.

The Doctor affects not to notice. He takes a deep inhale. “I smell explosives,” he says. “Carbon, magnesium, and sulfur. Wonder why she didn’t land us on the surface.”

“Damage,” Clara says. “There’s probably too much destruction.” She looks up to the ceiling of the tunnel. “Is the atmosphere breathable here?”

“It must be,” Donna says. “The woman I saw was built like a human.” She looks up too. “Maybe we can find a hatch or an access point.”

She and Clara begin to walk down the tunnel a little and both Doctors start to object. “Not without us, eh?” the younger Doctor says, catching up to them. Donna gives him a look of mingled affection and defiance.

“All right, I s’pose we can use you,” she quips. “What with the sonic and all. You can find the door.” She starts forward again, with Clara, and the four of them squint up at the ceiling.

“Here,” the younger Doctor says suddenly. Above them in the dimness of the ceiling is a very large hatch. It has a large metal wheel to turn, and there is a set of very poorly maintained beams screwed into the wall leading up to it. At least fifteen feet, Donna judges, and glances at Clara. “I’ll go up first,” the younger Doctor volunteers. “See if the wheel needs any encouragement.” And he scrambles up the ladder before anyone can protest, sonic in hand.

Donna looks anxiously up from the floor, and then at the Doctor, who has headed a few more feet down the tunnel. He has his sonic out too, looking for hidden doorways or passages. Then she looks back to the younger Doctor who has made his way up to the door. She breathes deeply, and follows him up the ladder.

Alerted by the shifting of the ladder, the younger Doctor looks down. Donna’s upturned face is dimly lit in the tunnel. “Donna,” he says. “What are you doing?”

Donna ascends closer to him. “Don’t want you to go alone,” she says. “If that woman was able to breathe Earth air the air here has to be similar enough.”

The younger Doctor gives her a gentle smile. Still the same Donna, he thinks. “All right,” he says. “Let’s go together.” He looks back up to the hatch, and reaches up to turn the wheel. It makes a tremendous groan and squeal, and Donna winces. But it moves with not much resistance after the first turn. The younger Doctor pushes it up and a circle of blue-and-white sky appears above them. He looks down at her. “Ready?”

She nods, her face illuminated now by the sunlight from above. They climb out and he helps her to her feet.

“Oh, no,” Donna says.

Around them stretches the remains of a city. There is stone and dust scattered everywhere. They have emerged from a manhole in the middle of what was once a wide boulevard. Some of the buildings are still tall, others are collapsed or demolished, and all of them are empty. It is so clearly uninhabited that Donna shudders. There is a smell in the air, like metal and rot.

“Horrible,” the younger Doctor says, squinting around them. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Donna says, wrapping her arms around her middle. “Is anyone alive here?”

“Doubt it,” the younger Doctor says. He pulls his sonic out again and scans around them. He grimaces. “Bodies. Not live ones. Trapped in the rubble. For miles.”

With a shudder, Donna looks back at the hatch. “You said there was life underground. Maybe they ran. Like in the Blitz when they hid in the tunnels.”

“Yeah,” the younger Doctor says. “Listen,” he adds, turning to her. “I’ll keep you safe, whatever’s happening here.”

Donna nods. “I know,” she says. “You always have.” She looks around them again. “If there’s no life here we might be noticed.”

“You’re right.” He turns back to the hatch. “Let’s go back.” They climb down one after the other and descend into the tunnel where Clara and the Doctor are standing looking up.

“What possessed you to go up there?” the Doctor asks immediately, both relieved and indignant at once. “You have no idea what’s going on!”

“Now we do,” Donna says, readjusting her clothing. “No one alive on the surface.” She faces the Doctor the same resolute way she always did. “Someone razed this place to the ground and sent everyone living into these tunnels.”

“We found a stockpile of weapons,” Clara says. “Guns, swords, all kinds of things I’ve never seen before.”

“It’s guerilla warfare,” the Doctor says. He looks to the younger Doctor. “Does your sonic work?” Separating himself from himself is an effort.

The younger Doctor pulls his sonic out from his inner pocket. “At the ready.”

“Now we just have to figure out whether the life down here are victims or perpetrators,” the Doctor says. “It’s not like the Hath versus the humans this time.”

Donna flinches for the barest moment. They start down the tunnel, trepidatiously listening for noise or some indication of life. Then suddenly there is the squeal of metal on metal, hinges of a door somewhere.

“Who’s there?”

It’s a woman’s voice. Knowing this is no indication of safety, the four of them move forward into the light of one of the roundels, hands up. The woman steps out of the shadows. She is holding an enormous gun of some kind, her hair wild around her face. She is heavily pregnant and looks terrified.

“Oh.” It’s out of Donna’s mouth before she can stop herself. “We mean no harm. Not to you or your baby.”

The woman looks from face to face and blanches. She seems to recognize Donna. “Oh,” she repeats back. “Donna Noble. You’re Donna Noble.”

Donna nods.

“You. And the Doctor,” the woman says. Her eyes fill with tears. “We used our last bit of natural fuels to send Agent Karrish to earth and she found you.” She lowers the gun and weeps, and Donna rushes forward to embrace her without hesitation. She takes the gun out of the woman’s hands and puts it on the floor.

“My baby will live!” The woman grabs Donna’s hands. “We had no hope of this actually working.” She puts her hands over her eyes. “I was starting to wish he’d die inside me, I was prepared to give birth to this baby and watch him be murdered or stolen and I--” The rest of her words are lost to tears, and Donna looks from the woman’s ravaged face to the three humans standing solemnly behind her.

“What’s your name?” she asks gently.

“Beni,” the woman says, managing to steady her voice. “My name is Beni. I’ve been living down here for ages.” Her tears are mixed with awe. She moves forward towards the younger Doctor. “You’re the Doctor.”

“I’m the Doctor,” the Doctor says, and Beni looks at him confusedly.

“We were told he was a young man,” she says.

“Outwardly young,” the younger Doctor says wryly. “I’m technically the Doctor also.”

Beni smiles through her tears. “You brought me two Doctors, you clever girl,” she says to Donna, who can only shrug helplessly.

“Your agent found me,” she says. “She begged me for help, she said she’d come a long way.”

Beni turns back to the dimness behind her. “The rest of them will want to see you,” she says. “They won’t believe you’re really real.” She starts to lead Donna in through a large round door carved into the side of the tunnel. The rest of them follow her, and Donna looks anxiously back at the younger Doctor.

There is the smell of waste, which fades as they walk further into the room, and then a sharp smell of what must be disinfectant, and then a whisper of cooking food on the air. There are blankets and sheets scattered everywhere on the floor, large containers near them, filled with water. And there are people, people sitting in the midst of this apocalyptic scene, some of whom do not look up when they walk by.

“Look!” Beni shouts suddenly, in the middle of the gloomy silence. “Donna Noble found us. And two Doctors! The war is over!”

For a moment there is silence, and then people begin to emerge from corners and shadows, disentangling themselves from their hiding places. They are all women, from teenaged to elderly, all of them hungry and wide-eyed and afraid.

“Is that really her?” someone asks.

“It’s her, it’s her,” someone else says. An old woman steps forward with a piece of card in her hand. “Look, she’s like her shrine.”

Donna looks wide-eyed at a painted rendering of herself on the woman’s card. Under it is written “OUR LADY OF THE LIBERATION” and a date. “I visited the Ood shrines to Donna a long time ago,” the lady says. “When I was much younger. The statue there is magnificent.”

“A statue?” Donna is bewildered. “Of what?”

“Of you!” Beni says. “Didn’t you know?”

“No,” Donna says. “Why me? I’m no one.”

“You’re not,” Beni says. “You’re the Lady of the Liberation, you’re the protective goddess of the whole Mridulan galaxy, we’ve known stories of you all our lives.” She shakes her head in awe. “I can hardly believe you’re a real person.”

Donna looks to the younger Doctor. “Did you know this?”

The younger Doctor shrugs. “I had an idea,” he says.

The Doctor, who of course had known, who had visited these shrines many, many times, who had shed tears in front of the various depictions of Donna on many planets, who had thrown flowers at the very statue on the Oodsphere the old woman had referenced alongside all the celebrants of the Liberation Festival, now wonders how much this carbon copy of his old self knows. It must be up until he wiped her memory. At least he wouldn’t remember regenerating.

“Usually they draw you blindfolded,” the old woman says. “But you have eyes.”

Donna is frankly nonplussed. After a few moments she exhales. “All right,” she says. “I suppose it’s my job today to learn information I had no idea about that is disquieting to say the least.” There are so many faces gathered around them, and Donna is starting to feel crowded. “Er,” she says, at their expectant faces, “these are... the Doctors, and this... this is Clara, she’s my friend--” Donna’s gestures are hesitant. “We’ve come to find out what’s going on and help you.” It’s almost a question.

There is a wave of silence over the crowd and someone starts to cry. There are tears streaming down faces here or there. “I wish my husband was here to know this,” a woman says, and a few agree with her. “We haven’t seen our men in a long time.”

“I wish my son was here,” comes another voice.

“Do you know where our families are?” someones asks Donna from the crowd.

“No,” she says.

“Why did they separate you?” Clara speaks up, looking to save Donna from her confusion and unease.

“To make us weak.” A young woman says. She makes a path through the assembled crowd and holds out a hand to shake Donna’s.  “I’m Nina. My husband was a peace officer before the invasion.”

“Who invaded you?” the younger Doctor asks. “I’ve never heard of any surface wars on your planet after the Shadow Proclamation put up the Truce.”

“The Shadow Proclamation are the ones who invaded us,” Nina says.

The Doctor is alarmed. “The universal police invaded you? They’re occupying?”

“They blew our capital to bits.” Beni makes circles on her belly with her hands. “I was in the hospital for an appointment when they hit. Found out I was pregnant twenty minutes before the lights went out. They declared a suspension of our constitution on the basis of emergent need in the light of intergalactic conflict. They told us our planet is a strategic location and they would rearrange our infrastructure to accommodate their needs. They razed us and drove us underground. They took our men and our boys. They shut our banks down and took our farms.”

“But that’s government forces,” the Doctor says. “You’re being occupied by an intergalactic treaty of officials. That makes no sense. They said intergalactic conflict? How is that possible when the Shadow Proclamation is made up of all universal nations?”

“We don’t know,” a woman says. “But our children are hungry and the surface is off-limits to us.”

“But now you’re here,” Beni says. “So maybe it will be over soon.”

They all look so hopeful and relieved.

The younger Doctor has been keeping a close eye on Donna this entire time, to be sure she is safe. “I’m not a miracle worker,” Donna says.

“That’s not what we hear,” Nina says.

The women and children make them welcome among them, bringing them food and water, gathering to watch Donna like an audience. She is distinctly unnerved by it. At first she declines their food on the basis of limited supply but then she realizes it’s almost like offerings. That makes it worse.

“Please,” she says after the fourth person has brought her food, “save your food for yourselves. And your children.”

“How else will we sustain you?” The old woman smiles and pats Donna’s hand. “If you are to sustain us, first we must feed you.” She sits near to Donna, smiling to herself. “My name is Persha,” she continues. “I’ve waited a long time to know if the stories were true.”

“What stories?” Donna asks.

“The liberation of the Ood, for a start.” Persha counts off on her fingers. “The Hath and Human War of Generations, the monster of Midnight, the Adipose, all of them.”

Donna is speechless. All of those are true indeed.

“Are they all true?”

“I... yes,” Donna says, unable at last to lie. And why would she? All of them are gloriously, painfully true, all of them had been taken away from her and now come rushing back with unexpected clarity. “Yeah,” she repeats, and her eyes fill up and spill over. “Yes, they’re all true.”

Persha looks dismayed. “Oh,” she exclaims. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

The younger Doctor moves before the Doctor can. “Donna,” he says to her, in a way that makes the Doctor clench his teeth, and wraps her up in his embrace. “Don’t cry.”

He feels Donna’s muscles tense and relax, and she steels herself. “I’m sorry,” she says, pulling away and wiping her eyes. “It’s all so overwhelming. I wasn’t expecting you all to know the details.”

“But they’re extraordinary!” Persha says, leaning forward to offer Donna a handkerchief made of various pieces of fabric sewn together. “All the things you did, the lives you saved! The two of you!”

The younger Doctor smiles at Donna too. “It’s true,” he says. “You did all of it.”

The Doctor clears his throat. “I wonder if we might ask you all a few more questions?” He wants to sit next to Donna, wrap an arm around her the way the younger Doctor is doing so easily now, comfort her, but he knows she will not regard him the same way she does the younger Doctor. Instead, he turns to Clara. “Will you sit with Donna? If someone is willing to guide us, we,” he indicates the younger Doctor and himself, “can do some recon and get the lay of the land here, so to speak.”

“Of course.” Clara comes to settle herself beside Donna among the blankets and people. Donna looks absolutely bereft when the younger Doctor stands up. He gives her a meaningful look and turns to his current self.

“Let’s solve this problem,” the younger Doctor says. “Two brains are better than one.”

Donna watches both of them walk out of the room, back into the tunnel, and away from her. She exhales shakily. “Please, will you let me talk to her alone for a while?” Clara asks the people who are still watching Donna hungrily, expectantly. They drift away slowly, one by one, some children being ushered by their mothers, others looking back over their shoulders.

“Thank you,” Donna says gratefully to Clara. She exhales and wraps her arms around herself. She looks around. “These people think I can save them,” she says after a long moment of silence.

Clara reaches out and puts a hand on Donna’s shoulder. “They’re glad to see you,” she says, and knows it sounds useless.

“They think I can do something that I can’t,” Donna says, her voice low but urgent. “These people think I can do magic. I don’t even know what’s happening on the surface, I hardly know anything about the Shadow Proclamation. And it’s worse that all the stories are actually true.”

Her hands are moving agitatedly, and Clara covers them with her own. “Don’t forget to breathe,” she says, and Donna slows her movements. “There is no way the Doctor will let you come to harm,” she says, and Donna’s eyes flicker to her face at the certainty in Clara’s tone. “And there is something going on here that you must be meant to be part of. I’ve been with the Doctor long enough to know that.”

Donna breathes steadily, slowly. She also knows this.

“He says you came looking for him,” Clara says. “That you turned him down and then you came and found him.”

“I did,” Donna says. “That’s true.”

“Why? How did you find him? How long did it take you?”

Donna shakes her head. “Took me about a year? Maybe a bit less? I was just... throwing myself into every strange thing that happened, spending my time and money on investigating weird happenings, I just knew he’d be around them.” She smiles a bit ruefully. “My mum was absolutely losing her mind. To her I was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Useless. But I knew. I just knew.”

“And where did you find him?”

“London. Of course,” Donna says. “That was the Adipose.”

“I don’t know what those are, but these people do,” Clara says, grinning too. “Maybe you can tell me the story.”

“They were aliens,” Donna says, “naturally. And they infiltrated a pharmaceutical company and started selling pills that caused people’s bodies to fragment, a kilo at a time.”

Clara grimaces in disgust.

“I mean, literally a kilo of living flesh,” Donna says. “It would detach itself and... walk away. I saw a woman dissolve completely into ten or eleven of the little buggers. Right in front of me on her bathroom floor. People thought it was a weight-loss pill.”

“That’s fucked,” Clara says, and her honesty startles Donna into a little laugh, the first since she’s arrived.

“It was fucked,” Donna says. “And I’m sure you’ve seen plenty just as bad. Almost inevitable with him, isn’t it?”

Clara nods in agreement. “The most exciting, excruciating, terrifying, euphoric things.”

“Yeah. Exactly.” Donna continues with her memories. “We discovered they wanted to use Earth as a nursery, and they’d recruited this... woman, this Miss Foster, to be the nurse, and she must have gotten them this office building they were in. She called herself a nanny. The Adipose dropped her on her head from the roof of the building when they realized they’d been found out.”

Donna remembers how, instinctually, she’d buried her face in the Doctor’s chest as gravity reasserted itself over Miss Foster’s body, how he’d pulled her in as soon as it happened, how she’d clung to him in a way she had wanted to do before, and how it was as natural as breathing to turn to him and feel him hold her close.

“They came in their ships and collected the babies,” Donna says. “We got them off the surface of the planet and out of the galactic neighborhood. No sign of them since, at least not locally. Not that I would know, even if it had happened again, since I was mindwiped.”

There is a little silence. Clara looks around them. “They say they’re being occupied by government forces,” she says. “Universal government forces. But why? For strategic purposes? Who is the enemy of the universal police? They’re meant to be the law that applies no matter the planet.”

“Then something is going on that shouldn’t be,” Donna says. “On one side or the other. You saw the visuals. They’ve cut off resources, made the city impassable. Is this the capital?” She looks around them. “Is this the capital? Or an important location?” she asks, raising her voice so she can be heard.

“This is the capital,” Beni says from her seat on a folding chair. “Bahara Ko Kel. It means ‘city on the blue water.’ There was a lake here a long time ago.”

“Where did it go?” Clara asks.

“It was drained,” Beni says. She drags her chair over to where Donna and Clara are sitting. “There was a... poisoning. It leached into the soil and we had limited natural aquifer capability to filter it out. So the government drained it.”

“What was it in the water?” Donna asks. “How do you know so much about it?”

“I was a city planner,” Beni says. “I was part of the team that designed the containment process and the drainage. As for what was in the water, we don’t know. We weren’t allowed to do tests.”

“How long ago was this?” Donna asks.

“Nine months now,” Beni says. “We’ve been down here almost eight months.”

“How do you get your water here?” Clara asks.

“We tap into the city’s underground pipe system,” a woman says. “We have filtration devices we smuggled down here. We can show them to you.”

Donna declines for both of them. “I won’t put your organizing in danger like that,” she says. “And food?”

“We steal.”

The answer is simple. Donna feels like she should have known. She doesn’t ask where from. She and Clara only look at each other solemnly. “How long exactly have you been down here?” Clara asks.

“We’ve measured by the one natural calendar we have,” Nina says, pointing to Beni. “Eight months.”

“I was four weeks along when I found out,” Beni says. “Now by my count I’m a week from my due date.”

“And... pregnancy is forty weeks among you?” Donna asks. “Are you humans?”

“Close enough,” Beni says. “Excellent question. And yes, gestation is forty weeks on Mori. Some of our relative species go a little longer, but we’re close to human physiology.”

“So they poisoned the major body of water in your city,” Clara says, “then they invaded?”

“About two weeks later,” another woman says. “They shut down the schools and the banks, that was our first indication. We all had to go and get our children from their schools, even those of us who sent our children off-world for their education. They claimed they wanted to do a census of Mori.”

Clara frowns. “Did they count you? Did they put marks on you? Take your names and addresses and details?”

“They just... processed us,” Nina says. “I lost my job. We all did. The men and boys over 12 were told to go one way, and the women and children under 12 the other. Took about eighteen hours to process the entire capital.”

“How awful,” Donna says. She thinks for a moment. “This was such a thorough and complete shutdown of your country,” she says. “They were so efficient, and so quick about getting you all out of the way. Did they do this anywhere else?”

“We aren’t sure,” says a woman. “But we managed to take a cell network for ourselves for two days before they figured us out, and we got nothing. No responses, no pings, no results on a scan. So they must have gotten everyone.”

“You have no communications above ground anymore?” Clara asks.

“We are cut off,” says Nina, and there is a finality about her words that makes Donna shiver.

“How do you know about the baby?” she asks Beni, who shrugs.

“I don’t,” she says. “We’ll see when it comes out.”

A look of dismay passes over the faces of all the women who hear that statement, and Nina says, “We’ll all be here to help when that happens.”

“What about you, Donna?” Beni asks. “Have you got a husband? A child?”

Donna looks down at the wedding band on her left hand. “I do have a husband,” she says slowly, thinking of her life on Earth for the first time in a while. “I... his name is Shawn.”

“What does he do?”

“He, er... he helps me run my foundation,” Donna says. “We... we have a foundation dedicated to science education in London.” She thinks of the building going up, layer by layer, in central London, the observatory she is funding, the giant telescope in the Wilfred Mott Planetarium and Library. The library dedicated to her grandfather, who’d capered through it like a boy when he saw all the stacks of books, the rows of computers, the enormous skylight.

“How long have you been married?”

“Just about three years,” Donna says. “No babies yet, we’ve been busy.” And that is most of the truth, though she leaves out that the migraines had made her fearful of pregnancy, not to mention she’d suspected she couldn’t get pregnant for a while, and now she remembers why; the Metacrisis. She has no idea if it has had a lasting effect on her cells or her DNA, if her time with the Doctor changed her body beyond her former functions. But there have been no pregnancies on earth, though her period has come with healthy regularity. She can be sure of nothing.

“Maybe we’ll see our husbands again soon.”

The statement is met with a general sense of forlorn agreement, the sentiment worn threadbare by hopeful overuse in these dark tunnels. Donna doesn’t even know who said it, just that it hangs in the air like a hungry ghost. She knows it’s renewed by her presence. She feels Clara squeeze her hand and suddenly she is tired. Overwhelmingly tired, as everything seems to catch up with her on a wave of anxious awareness.

“I need to sleep,” she says to Clara, and Persha leaps into action, quickly for all her age.

“Get blankets,” she commands. “Donna needs to rest.”

Donna is practically asleep upright, her eyes too heavy to keep open, as soon as the words have left her mouth. It is a tiredness she hasn’t felt in a long, long time. She rouses herself to lay down on the pile of blankets provided for her, and doesn’t stir when Persha drapes her with a coverlet. Her sleep is so deep and exhausted that Clara is worried. She keeps watch, whispering with the other women, gathering more information while she glances over periodically to check that Donna is breathing.

A long while later the two Doctors return. Donna is still asleep, and the younger Doctor moves towards her instinctively, immediately, and takes over watching for Clara. She goes to sit with the Doctor, who is mulling over a stack of drawings.

“These are layouts of the tunnels,” the Doctor says, glancing up at Clara as she sits down next to him. “They made me a few copies. We saw the water filtration system.”

“What are they doing underground?” Clara asks.

“What are they doing on the surface,” the Doctor says. “That’s the question. They drained that lake on the surface. They said it was poisoned.”

“They said the government didn’t let them test it.”

“I bet they didn’t,” the Doctor muses. “Who’s leading the Shadow Proclamation now?” he asks himself. “We should get back on the ship and do some research.”

“Why don’t we do that now,” Clara suggests. “I wonder if we have limited time before the Shadow Proclamation notice we’re here.”

“Right.”

The younger Doctor seems to take it as a given he will stay with Donna while she sleeps, and he nods at the Doctor when he hears where they’re going. He turns back to Donna’s sleeping face before the Doctor and Clara are even fully turned away.

Her breathing is steady; he can hear it. Her cheeks are flushed and her skin is pink. She seems healthy. He puts two fingers softly on her temple to check her pulse and blood pressure. Both are normal.

Donna stirs at the feeling of his fingers on her skin. She opens her eyes, blinks a few times, and then inhales and exhales deeply. She sits up and pushes her hair out of her face. “You’re back,” she says.

“I’m back,” he says softly. “Did you sleep all right? Are you all right?” He’s seen her in this state so many times, her blue eyes coming to life as she wakes up, her red hair in disarray.

“Yes,” she says. “Did I sleep long?”

“Yes,” the younger Doctor nods. “Clara said you suddenly started to fall asleep, and they laid you down. Does your head hurt?”

“No,” Donna says. “No, I feel rested. I’m hungry.” She looks around her for the parcel of food she’d been handed. They’d all made her a meal of their stash despite her protests. “Eat with me,” she says. “I know you walked a long way. You can tell me what you found.”

“We found more tunnels,” the Doctor says. “They showed me the food and water, the disposal, the weapons.”

“What do they have?” Donna asks. She tears open a package of crackers and hands the Doctor half in the wrapper. They break apart a block of cheese between them, and share the container of water. There are also small grapes.

“Guns. A lot of them. Traditional explosive and laser. Infrared, photon bullets, all that kind of thing. They have scramblers, trackers, small nuclear arms.”

Donna shudders. “Nuclear?”

“Well, that’s common technology for them, it’s not atom bombs,” the younger Doctor clarifies. “But yes, nuclear.”

“Will we be fighting, d’you think?” Donna asks.

“I don’t know,” the younger Doctor shrugs. “We’ll do everything we can to avoid it, of course. As usual.” But there is always the unspoken for him, the resolve that if anyone harmed Donna there would be a painful and certain death for them. “If they’re being occupied by government forces, then something very big is going on.”

Donna eats silently for a moment. “I’m scared,” she says eventually. “I’m afraid these people think I can do magic.”

“Magic?” The younger Doctor looks puzzled.

“That I can save them,” Donna says. “That I can do something that I maybe can’t do.”

“We can only do what we can do,” the younger Doctor says, counting grapes to divide them evenly between them. “Fortunately, I happen to know that you are capable of extraordinary things.”

Donna sighs. “Not you too, Spaceman.”

They both pause. The affectionate name slipped from her as easily as memory does.

“Don’t put pressure on me,” Donna says urgently. “This is life or death, there’s a pregnant woman here.”

“You’re not alone,” the younger Doctor reminds her, reaching across to take her hand. “Don’t forget that.”

“Do they think I’m a goddess?” Donna asks.

“No, I don’t think so,” the younger Doctor says thoughtfully. “I think they think you’re the deus ex machina, though.”

“I’m not,” Donna repeats.

“I know.” He pushes a stray bit of hair out of her face. “Remember what I said to you about coincidence? All that time ago? There’s too much of it around you. Something must be happening again.”

He watches the emotions warring on her face, her beautiful face that he has loved to look at for as long as he has known her. She is full of expression, and her eyes can speak volumes. With the slightest quirk of her lip he knows when she’s joking and when she’s serious. There is fear, excitement, and anticipation. That’s my Donna, he thinks.

“Is it beyond my control?” Donna asks.

“Like many things in this universe,” the younger Doctor shrugs. “And, like every other time, I will be here for every minute of it. And I will protect you and save you and make sure you get out of it alive.”

Donna looks down at her hands. “I trust you,” she says.

He pulls her hand to his lips and kisses it, a gesture out of the past that makes her gasp with the force of memory. Then he looks at her hand again and says, “That’s a wedding band, Donna Noble.”

“Er, yes, I... I got married.” Neither of them would have the knowledge the Doctor has, of her wedding when he’d stood in the graveyard and watched her laugh and smile and love another man.

“Who is he?”

Donna takes a long time to answer. Then she looks at the younger Doctor, the resurrection of all of her hopes and dreams, even removed from him as she had been, and she knows. “No one,” she says. “I’ll tell you about him another time.”

The younger Doctor doesn’t get a chance to pursue the subject. Suddenly there is a group of women gathered around them again. “Are you quite finished?” one asks, and Donna feels her heart sink.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because two of your friends have disappeared into your ship, and we are unable to understand why we have been shut out from it,” the same woman says. “They have not allowed us to know what information they are seeking and we demand to be told.”

“They want to know who’s in charge of the Shadow Proclamation,” the younger Doctor says. “What we can do to help. That’s all.”

“We’ve shown you our water, our food, our hiding places,” the woman says. She is starting to twitch slightly. “We are being suppressed by hostile intergalactic government forces, from achieving our destiny--”

“Hold on,” the younger Doctor says, holding up a hand. “Your destiny?”

“To dominate,” the woman says, and then Nina steps forward.

“To rule,” she says. “We have the superior minds, with our power nestled inside, alive, hungry.”

“Inside?” The younger Doctor’s wariness unfolds into guarded grimness. “Inside where?”

“Inside,” Nina repeats. “In our minds. Our brains. The power lies in them, waiting, ready to consume. We will not let anyone stand in the way.”

“In your brain?” The younger Doctor gets to his feet and puts his hand inside his coat to retrieve his sonic. Nina steps forward and knocks his hand out of the way.

“If you have a weapon you’d best let that notion go,” she says, and Donna notices her pupils are blown wide, a little bit of saliva oozing out of the corner of her mouth. “We will kill you.”

“But we came here to help you!” Donna exclaims, leaping to her feet as well. She comes to stand close to the younger Doctor.

“Don’t try and protect your husband,” Nina sneers, and Donna rolls her eyes instinctively.

“He’s not my husband,” she says, and the younger Doctor, despite his trepidation, feels one corner of his mouth quirk up. The eternal chestnut with them had always been that somehow, surely, they were married. “For fuck’s sake, they’re still doing that?” she asks the younger Doctor, and he shrugs.

“I don’t have any marriage certificate,” he says. “She’s not my wife.”

“Irrelevant,” Nina says.

“Let me help you, Nina,” the younger Doctor says urgently. “If you have something living in your brain you have the right to be free of it. The Mori have no symbiotic relationships with the flora or fauna of this planet. It shouldn’t be there.”

“Oh, no, no,” Nina says, smiling. “It belongs there.”

“What is ‘it’?” Donna demands. She can feel the dread starting to creep up and spread outwards from her chest like a many-armed thing.

“Kalazar,” says Nina, and she pauses a moment to twitch. “He is Kalazar. He is many. They are many. They are us.” She turns to Donna, which gives the younger Doctor the chance to reach for his sonic.

“He’s got something!” one of the women shrieks from the crowd. “He’s got something!”

There is a sound like metal and equipment and the women in the front step aside to reveal a group of armed children. They are holding guns of all variations, some that Donna can recognize, and others not. Donna chokes and grabs the younger Doctor’s arm.

“What have you done with the Doctor?” he demands. “And Clara?”

“We have contained them.”

“What does that mean?” The younger Doctor looks between the children with the weapons and the gathered adults.

“We pulled them out of that box.” Nina rolls her shoulders and shakes her head. She looks as if she’s had a terrible fright, her eyes wide. “We’re holding them. And now you too.”

“Have you all got this... thing in your head? This Kalazar?” the younger Doctor asks. “Is it a single entity? Is it made of parts? Is it a species?”

“Would you like to see? It’s your destiny too, after all,” Nina says. She turns to the surrounding women. “Shall we show the invincible Donna Noble how mortal she is after all? How she is destined to be part of us? And bonus,” here she turns to the younger Doctor, “she’s brought us two Time Lords, clever girl.”

“But what is it?” The younger Doctor is relentless, an old tactic, to keep people talking.

“Kalazar is greater than the sum of its parts,” Nina quotes. She is reciting from memory, as if programmed. “Kalazar feeds on the minds and brains of the untrained, and teaches them the true order. Kalazar is the Way of Thought. The unifier.” She starts to wince, and grimace, and then tips her head to the side.

A viscous, sluglike creature oozes out of her ear and slops onto her shoulder, like a puddle of mucus. It has few discernible features; none, really. Donna gags before she can stop herself. The younger Doctor draws back in distaste.

The blob is the color of dead flesh, mottled livid purple and red. It sits for a moment and then extends an appendage, blindly, until it reaches Nina’s earlobe. At which point it seems to launch its body up into the ear and Nina makes a strangled noise of terrible pain as it slops and forces its way back into her head.

“That is Kalazar, one of many, one of what will be millions,” Nina says as she straightens her head up again. There is a small trickle of blood from her nose. “And I have a goddess, and two fat-brained Time Lords, and a spare human. Basic model, a bit small to be useful for anything but scavenging, but she’ll do.”

“Oh, I think the men will like her.” Persha steps forward, and Donna gives her a horrified look. “Up to you, of course, but if we do come across them they’ll be ravenous.”

“You have one in your head too?” Donna asks, and then feels stupid.

“Of course,” Persha says. “We all do.” She looks Donna over critically. “I’d offer you to them too but something tells me this young man would go berserk.” She points at the younger Doctor. “You don’t have to have a marriage to be a wife, little human, Time Lord or no. You can’t lie to Kalazar.”

“Where are they?” Donna demands.

“You’ll be joining them,” Persha says. “The women will escort you to the room where we will process you and you will become part of us.”

“You said you needed help!” Donna exclaims. “You sent that woman, that agent to find me!”

Nina laughs, nudging Persha with her elbow. “Told you it would work,” she says. “She believed Agent Karrish.”

“She said your planet is dying!”

“So it is,” Nina says. “But we will resuscitate it, through Kalazar. All will be one.”

“Oh,” the younger Doctor says. “I see.” He looks grim. “This isn’t an invasion. This is a quarantine.”

Donna makes as if to grab his arm, but the armed group of children all retrain their weapons on her.  “They razed your city because you were all infected,” the younger Doctor continues. “The Shadow Proclamation is doing damage control.”

“And we escaped them!” Nina declares. “We fled, and we are here to continue the glorious work.”

“Even the children?” Donna asks. She looks to the group of small hands clutching guns, the big eyes trained on them, the serious faces.

“Our most precious resource,” Beni says, and Donna is rendered speechless at the cruelty of it. “And now you.” She comes forward and yanks Donna’s hands behind her back. Donna feels rope wind tightly around her wrists. She sees the younger Doctor is being similarly restrained, but is less perturbed about it than she is. They are frog-marched down several long hallways, followed by two armed children, a boy and a girl, and shoved unceremoniously into a room behind a round door. The Doctor and Clara are sitting against the far wall, also bound, and Donna and the younger Doctor are deposited beside them.

“Don’t be afraid,” Beni says, and the rest of the women dissipate, leaving her and Persha and Nina. “It hurts, but not forever.” She looks back at Persha and Nina. “Shall I begin the teaching? Shall we initiate them?”

Persha nods. “Let them learn. They have arrived at their salvation.” She and Nina join hands with Beni and they begin to chant. “Teach the unbelieving masses, O Great Master Kalazar. Teach the unbelieving masses, O Great Master Kalazar.”

Both Persha and Nina tilt their heads in that unnatural, otherworldly way, and Clara chokes on her breath when the Kalazar oozes its way onto their shoulders, waving blind appendages to the air around them, before forcing their way back into both women’s ears, causing blood to leak from their noses. Nina has tears of blood tracing down her cheeks for a few moments, both of them groaning the chant until their voices normalize.

After a long while of this, Persha and Nina retreat behind Beni. “Let her teach you,” Persha says. She and Nina back out of the room, and pull the heavy door shut with a resounding clang.

“You evil bitch,” Donna says immediately, as soon as the door is shut. “You’re pregnant, you have a baby in you.”

Beni drops her ceremonial pose and leans against the wall. She looks exhausted. “Leave me alone,” she sighs. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”

“Is that even a baby in there?” Donna demands, and the Doctor, the younger Doctor, and Clara all look at her in horror, and then at Beni, realizing that Donna could be absolutely right.

“Maybe you’re the queen bee, maybe it’s you giving birth to those lumps of dead flesh--”

“Shut up!” Beni explodes, turning on Donna. “Shut up, you foolish cunt! Don’t talk about my baby like that!” She is furious. “I’ve been trapped here waiting for one or both of us to die in this hole, don’t you dare accuse me of putting my baby in danger!” She yanks Donna’s hair hard, to press Donna’s head against her belly. “Listen,” she hisses. “You can hear the heartbeat.”

And faintly, so faintly, Donna hears a steady thumping, a tiny drum of life. Beni pushes her head away roughly. Donna winces but her hands are bound and she can’t defend herself. “Fucking humans,” Beni mutters.

“Then why did you let them put that... thing in your head?” the Doctor asks, his tone more measured, non-accusatory.

“I didn’t,” Beni says, her voice tightly controlled. “I begged them not to. They don’t know what it might do to the baby. I agreed to cooperate. For my baby. Come what may.” She is shaking now. “I think they’re going to take my baby and process me once it’s born.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I may never get another chance to have a child, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me that I may never get to hold this one.” Beni starts to weep. “I’m trapped. My poor innocent baby is trapped too.”

“And how long did you say before you give birth?” the Doctor continues, softly, relentlessly.

“A week. Ten days, maybe,” Beni says. She wipes her eyes roughly. “I don’t exactly know. They’ll probably lock me up when I go into labor.”

“You think this is going to go on for ten more days?” the Doctor asks. He scoffs. “Not if I have anything to say about it, I’ve got appointments.”

“You propose to resist?” Beni asks. Her smile is mirthless. “How? They’re possessed. Those blobs control them. They sink into every crevice of the brain, and they live there and grow there. That’s why it hurts when they come and go. It’s attached to the living tissue of the brain. If they... If I... I’m afraid it would make me kill my baby. If I had one. Accomplish the pain all at once, you know? Let me give birth, let the thing crawl into my brain, and dispose of my baby all in one shot.” She starts to cry again. “Fucking fuck!” she says, and it’s a sound of frustration and pain that Donna knows so well. Despair and frustration and loneliness and fear.

“Beni,” she says gently. “We understand your fear. We see you. We will help you when that baby is born and we won’t let them take it, or you. We came here to end this problem.”

“But don’t you see?” Beni asks. “They know you’re not a goddess, Donna.”

“I’m not,” Donna says. “I never said I was. I can’t do magic. I can’t save you.” She also starts to tear up. “I know even less than you do. I was just brought here.”

The younger Doctor moves closer to her. Clara does the same.

“That means they can infect you too,” Beni says. “All of you. They’re planning to. And that means any resistance you try won’t work. You’ll be possessed.”

“We won’t let it get that far,” Clara says. “Circumstances have converged on this situation in a way that is bigger than you can understand. Donna being here is a sign.” Donna starts to object, but Clara stops her. “No, Donna, it’s true,” she says. “It’s time for you to stop pretending you don’t know these are extenuating circumstances. The burden is not all on you, but your presence is significant. You can’t hide that anymore.”

“It’s not,” Donna insists, and the younger Doctor shakes his head.

“No use,” he says. “She was the same with me.”

The Doctor grits his teeth. She was the same with me, he thinks. He adjusts his position, attempting to find a more comfortable way to sit with his hands so restrained.

“Oh, give it a rest, Spaceman,” Donna says. “We’re tied up in this room because I’m so fucking extraordinary.”

There is a little silence. Beni clears her throat. “I don’t think I can get you out of here,” she says. “I’m pregnant and I’m outnumbered. If you’re supposed to be here,” and she pauses. “All of you, not just Donna, then you’re the ones who’ll have to figure it out.” She shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Obviously you can’t make any waves,” Donna says. “They mean what they say.” She shifts against the wall. “But we are going to put a stop to this one way or another.”

There is a bang at the door, and it swings open. All four captives immediately assume positions of submission and a girl, not more than ten or eleven, pokes her head into the room. “Leave them,” the girl says. “Everyone wants to eat.”

Beni retreats towards the door with a wide-eyed stare at the Doctor, who is glaring at her resentfully. She turns back to the door, her face composed, and the girl pulls the door shut with a final look at all of them.

“Fuck’s sake,” Clara says into the silence, a sentiment echoed by all of them. “Now what?”

“We wait,” the Doctor says grimly. “What else can we do? They took my sonic.”

“I have mine,” the younger Doctor says. “Might be hard to get to it, but we’ll work on it.”

“Wait,” Donna says. “The Doctor is right. They’re going to come back for us. And they’re probably going to come for me first.”

There is a small silence because she is most likely correct. “We won’t let them take you,” Clara says.

“What can you do?” Donna asks. “We’re all tied up.” She looks at the younger Doctor and then to the Doctor. “We’ll have to wait. Let them think they’ve won for a while.”

And so they wait. Donna moves closer to the younger Doctor, trying to seek comfort from his presence. He shifts so they’re shoulder to shoulder. He can feel that she’s shaking a little, terrified that her prediction might be true. “We won’t let them hurt you,” he says to her. Donna is only quiet in response. She huddles closer to him.

None of them are sure how much time has passed by the time the door opens again. Nina enters, alone. “Get up,” she says to Donna.

“Fuck off,” Donna says, and spits at her feet. This earns her a casual, vicious slap across the face, and the Doctors and Clara all object at once. Nina hauls Donna to her feet.

“Shut up,” Nina says, to the room at large, and pulls Donna out the door with her.

Donna’s face is tight with hatred and rage as Nina pulls her along the corridors, first one way and then the other. She stumbles and drags her feet deliberately, making Nina slow and stop. It only makes Nina angry, though, so eventually Donna stops, fearing her for own safety. Nina brings her into another room, lit more brightly than the first. There’s a hole in the floor, from which a terrible smell emanates.

“Sit down,” Nina says.

Donna laughs.

“Sit down,” Nina repeats, and kicks her in the back of the knee, forcing her legs to bend. Donna lands on her knees and Nina pushes her shoulder until she sits. “Sit down,” she says again.

Donna looks towards the stinking hole in the floor and feels herself start to shake. Now her heart is racing. Nina kneels down and reaches into the hole, and in her hand is a quivering slop of life, a new Kalazar. “Are you afraid, Donna?” Nina asks. “Goddess of the Ood? The Beloved Companion? Defender of Galaxies?” She steps closer to Donna and Donna can smell the awful, rotting scent of the Kalazar, see the grotesque, pulsing life with the total lack of features. She feels herself start to panic as Nina gathers all her hair in one hand and wraps it securely around her fingers to hold it fast.

“No,” Donna says, puling away. “No, no, no.” Tears well in her eyes.

“Stop moving, you silly bitch.” Nina shakes her head. “This is inevitable.” She puts the slimy blob on Donna’s shoulder. Donna shudders; the cold, wet, stinking weight of it makes her want to scream forever. She feels the blind rooting of the creature, and immediately a stupendous pain flares in her ear and down her neck. It spreads into a vise around her forehead, burning and squeezing until Donna is blind with the agony of it. She can feel the screaming wrenching her throat. It’s worse than any migraine she had ever suffered, worse than the Metacrisis when she had felt her whole body torn apart.

There is a sudden sharp whine and a horrible, nauseating pang, and Donna keels over, eyes rolling.

The Kalazar spills out of her ear, twitching horribly. Then it bursts like a cyst, spilling red and purple and yellow liquid. It is clearly dead, as if it has been torn open by a knife.

Donna lies very still. Nina looks from the ravaged Kalazar to the prone figure of Donna on the floor. For all she knows they are both dead. The Kalazar, certainly, cannot be alive. Nina approaches Donna trepidatiously, finally terrified of the Beloved Companion. She reaches out to touch Donna’s shoulder and Donna stiffens in response. Nina doesn’t know whether to be relieved that she hasn’t killed Donna, but Donna has killed the Kalazar, and that she fears.

A moment later Donna sits up, her nose bleeding. She is dazed and defenseless, but now Nina is afraid.

“How did you kill it?” Nina breathes shakily. She backs away. Donna gags on a sudden influx of saliva in her mouth, and spits. She wipes at her nose and her fingers come away bloody. She looks to the ruined sack of the Kalazar’s body on the floor and her mind starts to work.

“How did I kill it?” Donna asks. “Fear me, Nina.” She gets to her feet, willing away the nausea, the vertigo, the pain. “You got too cocky with me.” She swallows the bile at her throat. “You thought you would try me. Do you think they worship me on a thousand, thousand planets because I’m mortal?” It goes against every fiber of her belief in herself, but she sees she is scaring Nina. “Do you think the Ood carved me into their mountainsides because I can die?”

Nina gropes for the door behind her, but Donna, enraged and exhausted, is quicker. “You thought you would bring some prizes to your masters, eh?” she asks. “Two Time Lords, two humans, well--” She stops herself, sounding like the younger Doctor, “I s’pose I’m not quite human after all.” The idea makes her feel lonelier than she has ever felt before, and reckless. She reaches up and closes a hand around Nina’s neck. “Sides deprive you of oxygen, front I crush your windpipe.” She looks Nina’s face over. “Look at the Kalazar. See his death. Do you think I’ll let you outlive it much longer?”

“You won’t kill me,” NIna says. “I’m a person.”

“Shut up,” Donna snaps. “I’m talking to the glob of snot in your brain.” She shakes Nina a bit. “Fear me,” she repeats, loudly and furiously. “Fear me!” She squeezes the sides of Nina’s neck, and the color flushes Nina’s face. Her eyes go wide and then roll, and the Kalazar slips from her ear to her shoulder to the floor, where it oozes towards the dead spill of its fellow creature. Donna wants to stomp on it, wishes for one of the guns the others had before. She releases Nina’s body and lets her fall to the floor. The living Kalazar lies quivering on the floor next to the putrid puddle of remains. Donna’s face twists in disgust. “I don’t know how to kill you,” she tells it. “But you won’t kill me.”

The door bangs open behind her and she whirls, expecting guns pointed at her. Instead, Beni stumbles in through the door, both Doctors and Clara behind her. Donna makes a sigh of relief and feels her knees give way. The younger Doctor beats the Doctor by an inch and catches her before she goes to ground. She is conscious, just weak and dizzy. “What happened?” she asks.

“Beni came,” Clara says, and she helps the younger Doctor move Donna over to the wall. The Doctor moves towards the putrid hole in the ground where, inside, there are masses of the gelatinous Kalazar, writhing and slopping in steam and stench. He holds his breath, engaging respiratory bypass, and regards the dead Kalazar with the living one sitting beside it. He looks back towards Donna, who is wiping the blood from her nose using a handkerchief produced from the younger Doctor’s coat. He wonders if his extra self has the same hyperdimensional pockets he installs in all his clothing.

“What are you?” he asks.

There is a groan and Nina sits up. She looks from person to person and her face registers dazed fear. “She killed the Kalazar,” Nina says, pointing at Donna. “She killed it, it fell out of her head dead.”

The Doctor feels his throat close with emotion; the safeguard is still working. He advances on Nina. “And this one is from your head,” he guesses, indicating the live Kalazar. “And this hole. This is where you keep them? Or is this where they come from?”

Nina doesn’t say a word. The younger Doctor pulls his sonic out of his coat and moves the Doctor aside. He pulls Nina to her feet and points the sonic at her. “I want you to understand,” he says, in an almost conversational tone, “that it’s in your best interest to cooperate with us, Nina, or I think you’ll find that it will cost you.”

The Doctor looks to his younger self. Death threats were rare from him at any point in history. “This machine I have, kind of like the one you took from my friend here, it does many things,” the younger Doctor continues. “So if you don’t want to find out what those things are, you’ll return the Doctor’s sonic, and you’ll help us. Because I have no problem pushing you into that stinking hole. Let them do what they will with you.”

Nina swallows. “They live in that hole. They were the poisoning of the lake in the capital.” She is shaking. The younger Doctor backs off, holding his sonic still pointed. “We had no choice--”

“You tried to put one of those in Donna’s head,” the younger Doctor grinds out. “That is unforgivable. You did this to children.”

“Ah, but you care more that I tried to do it to Donna,” Nina says shrewdly.

“I care that you did it to anyone,” the younger Doctor says. “You have too much to say for someone who has been actively infesting innocent people with parasites.” He steps back into her personal space. “And you’ll note you did not succeed with Donna, nor will you ever get the chance to try again.”

Nina smiles reflexively, convulsively. “You’re wrong,” she says. “That simple creature, he has the knowledge we need. Our world has been exploited, over-civilized. We’ve become our own worst enemy and Kalazar has come to remedy it all. He came to live in our waters, our good blue waters, and make all of us Mori whole again, and united. There is peace in Kalazar.”

“You lie,” Beni says from where she is standing with the Doctor and Clara. “You lied to me, and you lied to everyone else. You let this happen, you made this happen.”

“Did you?” Donna asks.

“I wanted to help!” Nina says. “We were going to lose everything! I wanted to preserve us, one way or another!”

“You’re the one who sent Narissa,” Beni says, pointing a finger at Nina. “You’re the one who told us we had no choice left. You’re the one who made us stay here.”

“We had no choice!” Nina’s voice is getting louder. “She took too long to come back! We had to do something! Kalazar promised! They promised us!”

“They promised you!” Beni exclaims. “You took it on yourself to speak for us and you ruined our lives! We were trying to resist them!” She puts two hands on her belly, rubbing circles to comfort her baby, whom she feels starting to move restlessly. “You said, if Narissa Karrish didn’t come back, then we’d have no choice. And you didn’t wait. You went to them. You brought them to us. You made us do this.” Her lip is trembling, but she holds herself together as best she can. “And nothing has changed. We aren’t above ground, still. Nothing has been solved. We’re slaves. And it’s your fault.”

Nina shakes her head. “No. No. I did what I did for everyone here. If we had let the planet keep dying, if they hadn’t come here--”

“No,” Beni says. “No more. No more. We made a mistake. We used our planet’s resources. There is nothing left. But you let a parasite into our midst. How could you have ever thought that they would help us?”

There is a silence. “Nina, who are you?” Clara asks. “What was your job before this? You said your husband was a peace officer but you never said what you did.”

Nina’s jaw is tight with fear. “I was the leader of this sector.”

“What does that mean?” Clara asks.

“It means I was charged with the protection of this city and its surrounding areas and I did what was necessary to keep as many as possible alive in the face of a world-wide crisis that resulted from our own negligence!” Nina swallows. “I did what was necessary when all other measures had been exhausted.”

Beni laughs, a sharp, mirthless sound, and the Doctor makes a noise of disgust. “What could have been happening that would make you do this?” he demands.

“Our crops stopped growing,” Nina says. “Our money was worthless, the weather was disastrous, our infrastructure was being destroyed, we had no electricity for weeks--”

“Enough,” the Doctor says. “I’m sick of listening to you. How do we kill them?”

Nina looks at Donna. “She knows, she killed one.”

They look at the blob on the floor, still quivering next to the dead Kalazar. It doesn’t seem to be responding to anything going on around it. “I didn’t kill it,” Donna says. “It fell out of my head. It hurt, and then it fell out of my head and it was dead. I don’t know.”

“Enough,” Clara says. “I seem to recall you’re going to give the Doctor back his sonic.” She shifts away from the Kalazar pool. The smell is nauseating, and Nina edges away from the group. Donna goes for the door and pushes Nina out of the way.

“You’re done trying to fix the problems here,” Clara says, joining Donna at the door, blocking the way out. “Now you’re going to use your leadership for something else.” She straightens her shoulders. “I’m the little one, the one you want to hand over to the men, or make me forage, or something? You’re going to bring those people here and you’re going to see them remove every single one of these slugs from their heads. If they won’t do it you’re the one who’s going to convince them, or remove it yourself.”

Nina looks terrified. “They’ll turn on me,” she says. “I promised them--”

“That’s not our problem,” Clara says. “Is it?”

Nina bares her teeth. “I was trying to help,” she says. “None of you care about that! You just want to blame me for doing my best.”

“This could never be your best,” the Doctor says. “You have my sonic on you. I want it back.”

“I’ll push you in,” Donna says. “Don’t think I won’t do it. I don’t know what they eat but if it’s flesh I feel sorry for you.”

Nina reaches into her sweater and retrieves the sonic. She hands it to Donna, who veers into her face on purpose, using her anger to fuel her recklessness. Donna hands the sonic back to the Doctor and goes back to stand in front of the door. “You tell them you lied to them,” she says. “You tell them what you did. You tell them what they have to do now. And then you take whatever punishment they give you.”

“And then what? Will that rebuild our houses? Will that bring our soil back to life?” Nina demands. “We’ll be back where we started!”

“No.” The Doctor shakes his head. “Because we will help you start again. Even if in small measures. But you have to fix this.”

“Or what?” Nina asks.

“Or what?” Donna repeats. “Or what, Nina?” She points to the dead Kalazar and its motionless live mate. “Or what?” Then she takes Nina’s arm. “On second thought, come here.” She pulls Nina over to the Kalazar quivering on the ground. “You know more than anyone else about these things, you’re the one who let them in here. How do you kill it?”

“I told you I don’t know,” Nina says. “You’re the one who killed that one.”

“How do you kill them, Nina?” Donna asks again. “If you don’t tell me, we’re going to start trying things.”

“People are going to start looking for me,” Nina says. Her voice is unsteady with fear. “They’re not gonna let you hurt me.”

Donna shrugs. “We’ll see if either of those things are true.” She smiles benignly. “How do you kill them, Nina?”

“I don’t know,” Nina says loudly into Donna’s face, who rolls her eyes.

“I guess it’s time to try things,” she says. She looks back at the Doctors and Clara, who shrug and nod in agreement. “Will you all help me keep Nina on task?” Donna asks. “We’ll have a higher chance of success that way. Many hands make light work.”

The Doctors and Clara surround Nina and Donna drops her arm. The younger Doctor is looking carefully at Donna, watching her for signs of stress or changes in her vitals. At one time he’d had glasses that allowed him to see those kinds of things but at this moment he only wants to make sure she’s safe.

“Step on one,” Clara says. “That one right there.” She points to the floor where the Kalazar is sitting. The dead one is starting to congeal and dry out beside it, and Nina swallows.

“Go on,” Donna says, and Nina shakes her head. “Go on,” Donna repeats, and prods Nina forward. Nina starts to shake, and lifts her foot. “Do it,” Donna says. Nina stomps her foot down and there is a simultaneous howl of pain and a scream that could never be human. Nina snatches her foot back, and there is a sickly, bloody liquid spread onto her foot and leg, which smells unimaginably foul. The Kalazar has an enormous dent in it.

Nina cries out again and they can see the liquid has seeped through her clothes and onto her leg where the skin is blistering. “All right, don’t torture her--” the Doctor says, and Donna turns her head to look at him, so unnerving to see the Roman in modern clothes, looking at her like the Doctor used to look at her, as if he were begging her not to leave. She inclines her head in acknowledgment, and pulls Nina back.

The Kalazar lies still for a moment and then, with a slurp, seems to inflate back to its original shape. It starts to slop towards them and everyone jumps back. Instinctively the Doctor draws his sonic and presses the button hard. A blast of square waves splats the Kazalar against the wall. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Donna says, and Beni retches next to her.

Nina takes advantage of the moment and wrenches free of Donna’s grasp. She goes for the door and starts to pound on it. “Help!” she screams! “Help me! They’re killing me! Help!”

The younger Doctor looks to the Doctor. “She’s not going to help us,” he says. “You know she won’t. She’s going to make this worse.”

Clara, Beni, and Donna pull Nina back and pin her against the wall. “I’m sick of talking to you!” Beni screams in her face. “I’m sick of this! My baby doesn’t deserve this! This ends now!” And before Clara or Donna can stop her, she slams Nina’s head into the wall and Nina collapses.

“Oh, shite,” Clara says. “Did you kill her?”

“I don’t care,” Beni says. She steps back. “We need her out of the way. We need that device he has.” She points to the Doctor. “We need him to kill these.” She moves her finger to the pit full of the slopping creatures. “We need this to be over. My baby needs to this to be over.” She winces and puts her hands at her back. “I need this to be over.” She looks to the younger Doctor. “Do you have one of those too? All of you?”

The younger Doctor grimly removes his sonic from his inner pocket. “I have one.” He points to the pit full of Kalazar. “They can go first, but you have to bring us everyone else.” He looks to Donna. “Maybe you can help them. They trust you.” He pauses. “I trust you.”

There is a little silence, and Donna steps back from Nina’s prostrate form. She looks to Beni. “Can we convince them? Without Nina?”

“They think you’re a goddess,” Clara says, and Donna shakes her head. “They do, Donna. They’re victims. There are children. Let’s help them.”

“They’ll listen to you,” Beni says. She grimaces again but shakes it off. “The sooner we do this the better.”

“We’ll take care of the Kalazar,” the Doctor says, and he’s aware of the way he’s looking at Donna, who looks so afraid and tired. And Clara beside her, his lifesaver in so many of the same ways as Donna, determined and compassionate and ready.

Beni opens the door and Clara and Donna follow her out into the tunnel. They walk together through hallways until Donna isn’t sure which way they’re going anymore.

They emerge into the big common space where everyone is gathered, and everyone turns almost as one to look at them. Beni puts her hands at the small of her back. “Listen!” she says loudly. “You need to listen to me.”

“Where’s Nina?” someone asks.

“She’s assisting the Doctors,” Beni says. “I need you all to listen to me. Something’s gone wrong.”

Everyone comes to attention. “What do you mean?” Persha asks, coming to the front of the group. Beni looks her in the eye.

“We have to get them out.”

There is a silence. Beni breathes deeply, feeling a small pain blooming low in her belly. “We have to get them out,” she repeats, willing herself to be calm.

“We can’t,” Persha says. “How will we get back above ground?”

“We don’t need them,” Beni says. “We don’t need them, and they are enslaving us.”

A murmur goes through the crowd at that. A child says, “I don’t want to be a slave!” and that sentence echoes through Donna’s mind.

“Then please, listen,” she says, and raises her voice. “Please listen. I don’t know why but you think I’m someone special, and for the sake of that, take me at my word. Get the Kalazar out. Save yourselves. There are other solutions to this problem and you don’t deserve to suffer.”

“But what about the men?” another woman asks. “What about our sons and brothers and fathers and husbands? How will they know?”

“We’ll have to help them too,” Donna says.

“But we don’t know where they are anymore!” The same woman’s voice breaks along the seams. “I don’t know where my husband is anymore.”

“Then let’s fix this so we can find out,” Donna says. “Please, if you care for yourselves and your children, and your men! The Doctors can help you.” The sentence is strange in her mouth. “Let us help you.”

A prolonged silence ensues, in which Donna can hear children starting to cry. Then some women shed tears too. “How can we?” Persha asks. “They own us.” She winces. “They are our masters. Oh, my head!” And she pitches forward, her eyes rolling back. She starts to shake like she’s having a seizure.

“Help her!” Beni shouts, moving as quickly as her ungainly belly will allow. Persha goes very still as people begin to approach her. Clara gets to her first and kneels down.

“Persha?” she says quietly, and then screams and falls back as the old lady gives a huge cough that sends a gout of blood over her chin and down her neck. Her nose begins to bleed, and then her eyes, and then her left ear. “She’s dying,” Clara says with certainty. She helps hold Persha down as she keeps seizing, a strangled sound coming from her throat.

“It’s self-destructing,” Donna says, feeling her mind start to move, like a fast-catching fire. “It’s going to kill her. Turn her on her side.” She helps them move Persha into rescue position (for a moment she wonders when she’d learned that and feels a familiar sensation stirring in her consciousness) and keep her from biting through her tongue. “If it doesn’t come out it’s going to kill her,” Donna repeats.

“What do we do to make it come out?” Clara asks.

“I don’t know,” Donna says. “It gets into every part of your brain. I didn’t do anything to make the one they put in me fall out.”

Persha makes a shuddering sigh and they watch the life go out of her in what seems like only a second. Clara taps her face and shakes her shoulder. “Persha!” she repeats. “Persha, wake up.”

“Fuck,” Donna mutters to herself, feeling her throat close up. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She says it quietly to herself, and waits for what she knows is inevitable: the Kalazar to seep out, dead and burst and stinking.

Beni grits her teeth and Clara helps her back to her feet. “She’s dead,” Donna says grimly. “And they’re going to self-destruct on all of you. They won’t let you go unless we go quickly.”

There is a momentary silence. “Where’s Nina?” a child asks.

“She’s waiting for us,” Donna says, getting to her feet. “So come with me so we can get to her and fix this problem. Bring your children. Leave your weapons.” She starts to help people line up. They are all looking fearfully at Persha’s body as they go.

“If she freed the Ood, and led them to quarantine the Monster of Midnight, she’ll help us too,” Beni says to the children as they line up. “Everything will be all right.” She walks alongside the forming line and leads them down the labyrinthine hallways again. “We’ll all be all right,” she keeps saying. “This will be over soon.” She ignores the crampy spasm in her back as she helps Clara open the door and Donna leads the first few people inside the big room with the Kalazar pool.

“We’re here,” she says to the Doctors, who have seated Nina on the floor against the wall, their sonics pointed down into the hole. They turn to see her surrounded by people.

“She’s done it,” the Doctor says to the younger Doctor.

“And quite right,” the younger Doctor says, and they both smile at Donna. “Well done, Donna.” Donna smiles back uncertainly, and separates herself from the group to join the Doctors.

“Persha’s dead,” Donna says quietly.

“What?” the Doctor asks. “What happened?”

“It self-destructed in her head,” Donna says. “We have to prevent that from happening again. These bloody slugs are going to kill everyone unless we figure it out. They’re slimy little time bombs.”

The Doctors look over at the assembled women and children. “Self-destruct,” the Doctor says.

“Can you kill them with the sonic?” Donna asks.

“Yes, it seems they’re organic,” the younger Doctor says. “But who’s to say that won’t make them self-destruct also?”

“We do know one surefire way,” Nina speaks up from the wall. “Put them in Donna’s head. She’s the goddess, right? She killed one herself.”

The Doctor moves quicker than either Donna or the younger Doctor, and goes to stand over Nina. “You have no advice left to give us,” he says to her, his voice low and serious. “And to you, Donna is untouchable. You’ve had your turn to solve this problem and you failed. Leave her be.”

“Oh, the both of you?” Nina sneers, and her face is full of revulsion. “What kind of a disgusting whore is Donna Noble, the goddess, the Breaker of Chains, the common human fucking two Time Lords?”

A silence descends. The younger Doctor and the Doctor look at Donna and then away, unable to look at each other. Donna’s face is red. “I think I’ve taken quite enough from you,” Donna says. “I think I’m tired of listening to people tell me who and what I am, and I’m sick to death of being relied upon to fix a mess you made.” She pulls Nina to her feet. “We’re not going to use me, Nina. We’re going to use you. You’re the one who brought them here. If they need a place to reside, if they need to be coaxed out, that’s now your job. And you’ll do it, or you’ll be responsible for the death of every person here.”

Nina starts to pull away but Clara and Beni put restraining hands on her. “It’s over, Nina,” Beni says. “Your life for theirs. Surely you knew this was coming.”

“No,” Nina says. “No!” She appeals to the gathered women and children. “I promised you, I promised you this would work, they’re trying to stop it, please--”

“Persha’s dead,” a woman says. “She died, and the thing in her head killed her. It was like it committed suicide, and took her with it. We need to stop this.”

There is a general clamor. at this “We don’t want it to happen to us! Our children!”

“Spare us!”

“You brought them here, you make them leave!”

“They’ve turned on you,” Clara observes. “You miscalculated.”

“Do I have to die for it?” Nina asks, and then begs. “Please don’t let them kill me, I swear I was trying to help.”

“But you didn’t!” The same woman steps forward. “Now fix your mistake!” She starts to dig at her ear. “Make them get out of us.” Then she grimaces terribly. “Make them get out. Make them get out,” she repeats, and it turns into a wail of pain. A moment later a Kalazar slips out of her ear and oozes to the floor, and the Doctor points his sonic at it. The woman slumps beside it on the floor, insensible.

The Doctor winces and pushes the button on the sonic, sending percussive waves in rapid succession, like invisible bullets. The Kalazar bursts like a sack, spraying the comatose woman and those nearby with stinking liquid. There are shrieks of fear and disgust all around.

Beni grits her teeth against a sharper pain. Please hurry, she thinks. Please, please hurry. She breathes deeply, sighing a bit on the exhale, and Donna looks up sharply. She abandons Nina and comes to Beni.

“Are you all right?” Donna asks her, very quietly.

Beni nods reluctantly, her face twisting with pain. “It’s fine,” she whispers back. “I’m fine. Don’t stop anything. I’m fine.”

“You’re in labor,” Donna says.

Beni’s eyes fill up. “Don’t stop anything,” she begs softly. “First babies always take a long time, right? Help them.”

“You tell me the minute you can’t bear it anymore,” Donna says. “We’ll help you.”

Beni nods but turns away, ushering people into an orderly line while the Doctors and Nina move the unconscious woman out of the way. Donna looks worriedly after her and turns back to the Kalazar pit. “If you kill the ones in the pit will the others self-destruct?” she asks the younger Doctor. He shrugs.

“Don’t know. Is it a chance we’re willing to take?” he asks. “Maybe we should try and get them out first. Knock them out safely and get these bloody things out.”

“Can we do that to the children?” Donna murmurs. “Will they be safe?”

“This is a no-win situation, Donna,” the younger Doctor says. “There are no good options here. You know what that’s like.”

Donna leans her forehead on his shoulder momentarily. “I know. I remember.” She sighs. “We can only try. Whatever is least invasive.”

The Doctor, standing in front of the anxious people looking for a solution, turns to the younger Doctor and Donna. “What do you say?” he asks.

“I’d usually ask you that question,” Donna says, and the Doctor feels his lips quirk into a smile. That’s my girl, he thinks.

“We say knock them out one by one, force the slugs out, and kill them. Hope the people live.” Donna shrugs. “It’s our best guess.” She turns to the younger Doctor. “No promises, right?”

“None,” he reassures her.

“Well, at least we’re working without a safety net, as usual,” Donna says wryly. She tangles her fingers momentarily with the younger Doctor’s, just briefly, and whispers. “Beni’s in labor. It’s early yet but it’s happening.”

The younger Doctor looks immediately over to Beni, who is doing her best to reassure her fellow women with her hands at the small of her back. He can see the pain on her face, the way her skin is pale and the way she is starting to sweat. “Get her out of here if you need to,” he says. “I trust you.” Donna gives him a little smile. “I always trust you,” he adds.

“Same here,” Donna says, and turns to go to Beni.

“Children first,” Beni says, and both Clara and Donna hesitate at the same time.

“Are you sure?” Clara asks her, and turns to Donna. “If a child dies at the very beginning of this process then they might not let us continue,” she points out quietly. “They’re going to blame us.”

“Blame Nina,” Donna says, with a sneer over her shoulder. “She’s the one who brought them to this point.” She clasps Clara’s hand. “You know as well as I do that at some point there are no more good choices. We have to try.”

Beni makes a sharp noise, and clamps her lips shut against it, but Donna is adamant. “You have to go,” she says to Beni. “No more of this for you. Trust the Doctors. They know what they’re doing.”

Beni’s eyes widen and fill with tears. “Who will help me?” she asks.

“We will,” Donna says. “Trust the Doctors. Trust me.” She starts to lead Beni towards the door. “We don’t get to choose when babies come.” She gestures to Clara to take Beni’s hand. “Give me a second,” she says, and walks over to Nina.

“I want you to listen to me,” Donna says, and Nina rolls her eyes.

“What do you want, don’t you ever shut up?” Nina demands. “All I hear is you talking, all the time! Just shut up! I’m sick of listening to you threaten me!”

That makes Donna laugh. “Oh, my god,” she says, and she feels a wave of warm ache wash over down her face and her scalp, making her shiver. “It isn’t me who’s going to shut up forever, you silly little cunt, it’s you.” Bright spots appear in front of her eyes and then disappear, leaving Nina’s contemptuous face. “I don’t care that you were stupid enough to believe psychic slugs. I don’t care that you’re enough of a silly bitch to have victimized your own people. I don’t even care that your planet is dying. You can fuck off and die as far as I’m concerned. Alone and in pain? Better.” Another shivering wash of pain down her neck, as if someone were pouring bath water down her back. She imagines thunder. She remembers the words Oncoming Storm from somewhere in her consciousness. “I want you know to know that when this is over, when you’ve done your job and helped the Doctors clean up this mess, we are going to let your people do whatever they want with you. Whether they turn on you, or forgive you, and I think that’s unlikely, we won’t be stopping them. But if you put a foot out of line anymore, any more mistakes, I promise you I’ll take the decision out of their hands.”

“Fuck you.”

“Shut up,” Donna says, and it’s quiet but final. “Shut up now, Nina. You don’t understand what’s happening.” She shoves Nina back and goes back to Beni and Clara. “Let’s go,” she says. “I don’t want to look at her anymore.”

Beni has to stop a few feet down the hallway to double over in pain. “Do you know how to deliver a baby?” Clara asks Donna, who nods.

“Yes,” she says somberly, because Donna Noble did not know how to deliver a baby in such detail and with such precision, but the Doctor does. She breathes deeply against the headache. It seems to subside, and Donna relaxes. “Let’s get her somewhere warm,” Donna says. “And safe. We need blankets and water. Hot water. And scissors. Or a knife. Where’s the water pump?”

“I’ll take you to it,” Beni says. She straightens herself out and starts to walk again, resolutely, down the long, dim corridors. A few minutes later they have to stop again for Beni to groan against a wall. Donna and Clara count her through it, holding her up and massaging her back.

The room with the water pump is large and damp, and Donna and Clara scramble to find buckets. Beni works the pump for them so that the water gushes out, and Donna and Clara fill two big plastic containers full. Beni pauses to breathe deeply. “I’m so afraid,” she says, watching Donna and Clara drag the containers towards the door.

“Where are all the blankets?” Donna asks. “Where’s the place you all were sleeping?” She leaves her container to come and hold Beni’s hand. “We’re going to get you there and settled and we’ll make sure everything is all right.” She sounds more confident than she feels, something she knows in her bones the Doctor does all the time. It reassures her at the same time it makes her afraid.

“It’s the next room,” Beni says. She grits her teeth and opens the door to the room full of sleeping areas. Clara and Donna drag the water containers into the room and Beni leans against the wall.

Clara lays out blankets on top of another and Donna helps Beni onto her knees. “It’s gonna be all right,” she says to Beni. “Don’t forget you’re not alone.” She looks around herself. “I wish we had soap,” she says to Clara, and Beni groans again, this time from lower in her core.

“Me too,” Clara says. She reaches out to clasp Donna’s hand. “We’re going to do this and it’s gonna work and she’s going to be fine.” She starts to rummage through the gathered items in the room, not caring who they belong to, and emerges with a small penknife, which Donna eyes dubiously, and which Clara immediately sets to scrubbing with some of the water and a towel.

Over the course of the next few hours Clara and Donna help Beni walk until she can’t anymore. They give her water to drink and tell her stories; she is particularly enthralled with Donna’s account of Shan Shen and the Time Beetle. They stop to help her through contractions, and finally, when Beni can no longer listen to them or respond, she surrenders and lies down on a pile of blankets, sweating and straining with the urge to push.

“Oh, oh, help me,” Beni moans. “I feel something, I feel it--” The words trail off into a wail of pain, and Donna looks down between Beni’s thighs.

“Here it comes,” she says, feeling her throat closing with anticipation and emotion.

Beni is screaming, her chin pressed to her chest as she pushes. Donna is kneeling between her thighs, ready to catch the baby, and Clara is holding Beni’s hand, helping her count the length of the pushes and letting Beni crush her hand. “Just hang on,” Donna says to Beni, “you’re doing so well, Beni, just stay with it.”

Beni screams again and delivers her baby, into Donna’s hands. Donna sees that baby emerge more clearly than she has ever seen anything in her life, the new little life come gasping into outraged cries, and spontaneous tears roll down her face. “Well done,” she says. “Oh, well done, Beni!” All three women are crying with relief and joy, and the baby is flailing in the cool air of the tunnel. He’s so decidedly alive in the midst of all the death and destruction, that Donna is reminded why she does everything she does, and suddenly, deeply and forcefully, she wants to find the younger Doctor and tell him.

They wrap the baby in a blanket. Donna cuts the cord with the penknife and hands him to his mother. “What will you call him?” Donna asks.

“I hardly know,” Beni says, her eyes alight with exhilaration and love. “I hardly could allow myself to hope that he’d still come in the middle of all this—“ She looks up at Donna. “Isn’t he lovely?”

“He’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen,” Donna says, and she means it.

“I’ll call him Toivo,” Beni decides. “It means hope. He makes me have hope.”

Donna sits back on her heels and breathes deeply, to calm herself. Toivo has stopped screaming his objections to the sudden cold world he’s entered and is looking at his mother, squinting and blinking slowly in that curious way of newborns. “I’m going to wash up,” Donna says, and walks away from Clara and Beni without another word.

She goes for the water pump, working the handle in a kind of daze. The water surges out and Donna scrubs herself in the torrent. She is bloody to the elbows and her clothes are ruined. Donna feels as though she could sob and laugh and dance and sleep all at once, and a pain flares briefly behind her left eye. She puts her wet hands to her face and wipes away the tears she’s been shedding since she turned away from Beni. These are not for joy or for the beautiful son Beni had delivered, they are for herself and the things she wants and doesn’t have. They are for her fear and her loneliness, the great relief of seeing her Doctor’s face again, the dearest face to her. They are for her guilt at loving him as much as she did before she got married. They are for all the things she had tried to build and that had been put on hold, for the loss inside her that only has one remedy.

Donna breathes in and out deeply and splashes her face again, rubbing her hands and arms to make sure she’s completely clean. “Come on, Donna,” she says to herself. “Come on, girl. Get up.” And she walks back into the room with the blankets.

“All right?” Clara asks, looking penetratingly at Donna, who smiles tiredly at her and nods. “Shall I go have a wash? Beni’s been cleaned up.”

“Please,” Donna says, and Clara goes into the next room.

“Oh, Donna,” Beni says. “Thank you.”

“Oh,” Donna echoes. “Please. We’re all in this together.” She smiles at Beni.

“You must be exhausted,” Beni says.

“Me?” Donna laughs. “Not as much as you.”

“No,” Beni says. “I feel the most alive I’ve ever felt.” She looks down at her baby, whose little face is tranquil in sleep. “You have to hold him. He’s practically yours.”

Donna receives the little boy with a natural embrace, tucking him the crook of her elbow. “Hello, sweet boy,” she says to him softly. “I’ve just seen you come into the world, d’you know that? You’re beautiful, yes you are. Thank you for coming.” The baby opens his eyes for a brief moment, all the way awake, and looks up into Donna’s face. He smiles, a shining, toothless smile, and drifts back to sleep in her arms.

“Ah, see, he loves you,” Beni says. “Children know.”

Donna hands the baby back to Beni. Clara comes back into the room and Donna gets to her feet. “Let me find the Doctors,” she says. “Maybe they’ve managed as well as we have.”

She makes her way down the hallways. Behind the big doors she can hear a noise, like low rumbling, and she approaches trepidatiously. She pushes the heavy door open and the smell of the Kalazar assaults her nose. “Disgusting,” she says, stepping into the room. The Doctors look up from the boiling pit of the alien slugs. There are people lying on the floor, leaning against the walls, some unconscious, but all alive.

“You did it,” Donna says.

“We did it,” the Doctor says, and both he and the younger Doctor look her over to make sure she’s all right.

“Everyone all right?” Donna asks.

“Mostly,” the Doctor says. “Everyone is alive.”

“Right,” Donna says. “And the slugs?”

“Dead, or dying,” the younger Doctor says. He steps back from the pit. “All right?” He would love for it to sound offhand, but that’s impossible. He sees Donna’s face change briefly, the way she has to master her self control for the moment.

“Baby’s born,” Donna says. “It’s a boy.”

“Ah,” the Doctor says. “First piece of good news in too long, I think.” He steps back from the Kalazar pit. “I think this is done,” he says.

“And we really didn’t lose anyone?” Donna asks.

“No one yet,” the Doctor says.

“Well done,” Donna says, and actually smiles at him.

The Doctor wants to reach out and push her hair out of her face, or embrace her, or any number of things, but he doesn’t have the right so he asks instead, “Where���s Clara?”

“She’s with Beni,” Donna says. “Anyone hurt?”

“No,” the younger Doctor says. “We’ll have to keep an eye on them for a while yet.”

“Where’s Nina?” Donna asks. She looks around the room, and finds Nina sitting against the wall.

“Oh, go away,” Nina groans. “I did what you wanted, go away!”

“I want this to be the last time I speak to you,” Donna says. “I don’t want to look at you anymore, or think about you anymore. I just wanted to make sure you were still here.” She looks Nina over one last time, contemptuously, and says, “Sick of you.”

“Now what?” the Doctor asks the younger Doctor. “Get them back to the sleeping room?”

“Those who can walk,” the younger Doctor says. “The children, definitely. They’ll need to eat. Everyone will eventually.” He looks around. “Donna, will you help us get these folks organized?”

People are coming to, sitting up, looking around. Mothers are embracing their children. Some are crying, others are too dazed to say or do much. Donna helps the Doctors form everyone into a straggling queue. She leads them back towards the sleeping room, where Clara and Beni are waiting. They lock Nina in the room with the Kalazar pit, Donna giving her a shove back away from the group leaving the room. “You’ve lost your rights here,” she says to Nina, who screams once, piercingly, from behind the door as they walk away.

Once everyone has managed to settle themselves among the blankets and sheets and pillows again, Donna helps organize a few of them to retrieve food. She goes to sit with Beni and Clara again, who have moved to a spot against the wall. “How’s your little chap?” Donna asks, feeling her chest loosen a little bit at the sight of Toivo’s tiny face.

“Hungry,” Beni says, smiing.

“All right?” Clara asks. “Everyone’s back. They must have done it.”

“They succeeded,” Donna says. “Everyone seems to be alive. Nina’s in the room still. Alone.”

Clara’s face blanches. “They let you leave her in there?”

Donna shrugs. “They didn’t ask.” She shifts uncomfortably. “We’re going to let everyone decide what to do with her anyway. She’s earned that much.”

Beni tightens her arms around her small son. “I don’t want to be part of that,” she says. Donna gives her a sympathetic squeeze.

“I’m sure they can work it out,” she says. “You focus on this baby. He’s all that matters.” She lets her breath out and says, “I wish I could go home.”

“Me too,” Beni says. She reaches out to hold Donna’s hand. “You know you saved us,” she adds. “You keep telling us you’re no one but you’re someone, Donna. You’re someone who does extraordinary things.”

Donna shrugs. She has nothing to say any longer, so she leans against the wall and watches the Doctors move around the room. They are assessing vital signs, asking cognitive questions, and checking the children closely. “Where’s the TARDIS?” she asks Clara eventually. “Would be great to see my own bed.”

Clara lowers her voice. “She’s cloaked. She panicked when they captured us before. I’m sure we can find her, though.”

Rather than letting the potential disappearance of the ship overwhelm her, Donna just nods, winds her arms around herself, and sits quietly. A faint echo of headache tumbles across her sinuses. No use panicking. No use feeling much of anything at the moment, honestly, since she has no idea what to do next.

“What will they do with Persha’s body?” Clara asks, and points to the blanket draped over the old woman’s form. It’s been moved into a corner at the Doctors’ direction, but a dead body is a dead body. Beni holds her son closer. Donna shrugs.

“Right.”

The Doctor comes to stand in front of them, and exhales sharply. “We’ve gotten in touch with the Shadow Proclamation from my universal mobile. Bit of work given that their cell towers are down. Had to ping it off a satellite from a neighboring planet.”

“I used to have one of those universal phones,” Donna says.

“Yep,” the Doctor says. “You did. Useful, right? They’ll be here in a few hours. They had no indication of the Kalazar deaths.”

“So we can leave?” Donna asks, feeling hopeful for the first time in ages.

“As soon as they get here,” the Doctor says. He looks over his shoulder at the younger Doctor. “We ought to get a move on looking for the TARDIS, I’m sure she’s in some corner somewhere.” He sees the tiredness on both Clara and Donna’s faces and adds, “D’you want to wait here while we look?”

“Absolutely not,” Donna says, getting to her feet. She looks down at herself. “I’ve got blood and ooze on me. I want this to be done.” She looks down at Beni and says, “We’ll be back when we’ve located the ship. Stay where you are. Keep that baby safe. The Shadow Proclamation is coming.”

Beni nods and Donna and Clara join the Doctors. “Let’s go, let’s go,” Clara says quietly. “I want to be sure no one messed around with the ship. I can’t wait to stop smelling this place.”

It takes a while, and a good bit of sonicking, but eventually the TARDIS blinks into view in the corner of the same room they’d landed in. She is a bit wobbly from dematerializing so quickly, but Donna breathes an enormous sigh of relief to see her. The Doctor makes sure she’s stable, stethoscope to the door, and nods. “Right,” he says. “We’ll hide her again until the Shadow Proclamation arrives, and then we’ll go.”

Donna is ready to protest, but the younger Doctor reaches out to touch her shoulder. “We have to see it through,” he says. “Remember? Even if we can’t save everyone, we see it through.”

“I remember,” Donna says softly. She leans on the younger Doctor. “I’m just tired.”

“Almost over,” he says, and reaches for her hand.

In the end it takes four hours for the Shadow Proclamation to arrive, along with a detachment from UNIT and three agents from Torchwood. They are from all over the universe, of all ethnicities and species, dressed in hazmat suits and busy. Donna, Clara and the Doctors are relegated to the side as the agents all move around, removing Persha’s body and going for the room full of Kalazar. Uniformed officers take statements from the four of them, and address the problem of Nina by placing her under arrest.

“It’s almost anti-climactic,” Clara says as they turn to make their way back to the TARDIS.

Donna huffs a laugh out her nose. “I don’t mind.” She is impatient to get back aboard the ship, ready to shed her ruined clothes and wash every trace of this from herself.

“Wait!”

Someone shouts from the crowd. “Wait! Are you leaving?”

They stop, turn, and people step forward. “Yes,” the Doctor says. “Time for us to go, don’t you think? Let you get on with it?”

“I quite fancy a shower, actually,” Donna says. “So if it’s all right--”

“We’ve been visited by Donna Noble,” a woman says, turning to face her fellow people. “Most of us couldn’t even be sure the stories were true, but they are. They are, and we got to learn that for ourselves.” She looks over at Donna. “Thank you. All of you.”

And then what else is there to do but go back to the ship, find the blue box waiting for her like a promise kept. Donna lags behind the Doctor and Clara, and murmurs, “Spaceman,” clasping the younger Doctor’s hand in hers as they walk. He’s beside her immediately.

“Let’s go home,” he says. “Eh? Have a kip? A drink?”

“All of those,” Donna says with certainty. “A bath, for sure.” She doesn’t drop his hand when the Doctor unlocks the TARDIS to let them inside. She stands in the console room still holding on to the younger Doctor. She watches Clara and the Doctor circle the console and put the ship into flight. She stands off to the side while the ship comes to life around her, and her fingers twitch in the younger Doctor’s grasp. She feels the semi-electric sensation of the subconscious bond she shared with the TARDIS stir in her senses, magnified by the Time Lord energy in her and next to her in the form of the younger Doctor. Even the presence of the Doctor himself awakens a part of her that has been blindfolded and suppressed.

“I need to go,” Donna says after a few minutes. She turns to leave and touches the younger Doctor’s sleeve so he’ll follow. Inside her room she shuts the door and leans on it. She looks around the room and says, “Fuck,” on an exhale. “All right.” She seems to pull herself together. “Shower,” she says. “Bath. Get out of these clothes. Fucking filthy.”

The younger Doctor watches her shed her clothes and find a towel. “Are you coming?” she asks him from the doorway of her bathroom.

“Er, yes, of course,” he says.

Inside the huge bathroom she’d had built for herself back when she first arrived, Donna swipes the wall and activates the computer. She sets a hot temperature for her shower and steps in. The Doctor takes up a position on the big countertop he’d sat on many, many times in the past, when he and Donna used to laugh uproariously, not caring to end their conversation just for her to wash her hair.

“All right?” Donna asks, letting the water run over her. She taps the side of her shower twice to make the wall transparent so she can see him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Remember this?”

“Yeah,” Donna echoes. She can’t help but smile at the shelf of products she’d amassed so long ago, all exactly as they’d been, preserved by the save function of the TARDIS mainframe. She scrubs herself, lathering her hair and drenching it in the conditioner she’d bought on the planet Jocunda. The younger Doctor sits and watches, hungry for the sight of her, for her laughter, for her dear face. Even having sprung fully-formed from the TARDIS, a new metacrisis of memory and Time Lord energy and Donna’s indomitable life force, he is the same as he was. Nothing about him is half-formed, nor can it be since the first metacrisis. They are made of the same thing now more than ever.

“You’ll have to tell me what you’ve been up to,” the younger Doctor says, and Donna taps the wall to turn off the water. She emerges from the shower and takes her towel from him, wrapping herself up securely.

“Oh, you mean when not killing slugs or reintegrating into your freaky time traveling world with two of you calling yourselves the Doctor and one of them being that guy from Rome?” Donna asks, and the younger Doctor laughs, a sight that makes Donna’s heart jump.

She feels herself relax. "I’ve done a lot, Spaceman,” she says. “I won the lottery, but I bet you knew that.”

“I didn’t,” he says. “But that’s no more than you deserve.”

“Triple rollover,” Donna says. “We got six hundred million pounds.”

“Whoa!” The younger Doctor laughs again. “Oh, Donna,” he says. “You gave everything, it’s only right that you should have everything in return. What’ve you done with it, eh? Fancy cars? Holidays?”

Donna shakes her head. “I’m building an observatory and a library in London.”

“‘Course you are,” the younger Doctor says.

“Named it after my grandfather, he’s absolutely over the moon,” Donna says, and then grins. “Sorry. Bad pun.”

“Good old Wilf,” the younger Doctor says. Donna recognizes the look on his face; something that was just for her, something he didn’t share with other people. “You have done a lot.”

“Bought a house,” Donna says. “Got a better car. You know. Saving for the future.” She shrugs. “What a stroke of impossibly good luck.”

“You earned it,” he says. “Things come around.” 

“I hope it’s all worth it,” Donna says. “I just couldn’t see wasting it on nothing.”

“You could never be nothing.” The younger Doctor slides back onto his feet and comes to stand close to her. “Don’t forget that.”

Donna leans on him, hungry for comfort and contact. He puts his arms around her and Donna gives in and embraces him too. The feeling is so familiar, so beloved, and her body and mind have lacked him for so long that she wraps him up in her arms. He pushes his face into the curve of her neck the way he used to, and they stand that way for a long time. “I missed you so much,” Donna says quietly. “I had no reason to live for a long time.”

The younger Doctor cradles her face in his hands. “You are the most important woman in the universe. You saved us all. There will be never be a time when you are without a reason to live.” He kisses her, the same way he used to do, and Donna doesn’t hesitate for an instant. “I wish I had had a chance to tell you this,” he says against her lips.

“I wouldn’t have believed you anyway,” Donna says, and that makes them both laugh.

“I know,” he answers her, wrapping her up around the waist.

“Come,” Donna says, and leads him back into her room. She drops her towel and pulls him onto the bed with her. Both of them are alight with the memory of shared desire and pleasure, fueled by relief and the old familiar subconscious connection built between them. Donna helps him off with his suit and embraces him with all four limbs, her hands clutching his back and then his behind to get him as close as she can.

The rush of memory and pleasure is so incredibly comforting, Donna wishes she never had to give it up. Beside him afterward, both of them not ready to let go, she thinks about her life on Earth. She thinks about her house, her marriage, her library and observatory, how she could leave it all behind for this man beside her. How she had once left a life not worth living for him. How much more she has to live for now, even without the Doctor, younger or older. How hard she’d worked to build something worth living for, the the face of the nameless wound in her since she lost her memory.

She knows she forgives him. This man, who has validated her when nothing and no one else would, is forgiven. You already know I would save you over everyone. Those words will stay with her forever.

“Spaceman?”

“Yeah,” he answers, and he sounds contented and comfortable.

“D’you... are you permanent now?”

“What d’you mean?”

Donna pillows her chin on her hand, leaning on his chest to look into his face. “I mean... are you a human? Are you like the other one? Do you stay?”

The younger Doctor pushes the stray hair out of her face. “Don’t know,” he says. “I was made from the stored Time Lord energy in your brain. I... I think my existence might be dependent on yours. It’s the energy that keeps me sustained.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere,” Donna says. “I plan to keep living, so you’re stuck now.” They both laugh quietly.

“That’s all right,” he says. “As long as you’re here, I’m here. When you go, I go.”

Donna’s eyes well up for a moment, and then she masters herself, the way she’d always done. The younger Doctor thumbs away the one tear that escapes and says, “You’re alive, Donna.You’ve been alive this whole time.”

“I used to feel it wasn’t worth it,” Donna murmurs. “I guess it is now.” She sits up, wrapping herself in the sheets. “I’ve done so much. I’ve got so much now, in London. The library, the foundation, it’s all there. I would love for you to see it.”

“I would love to see it. Have you got kids?” the younger Doctor asks. He reaches out to take her hand. “And your husband?”

Donna smiles, and there is no trace of guilt or shame in her face. “No kids,” she says. “Maybe it’s the metacrisis. And as for my husband. His name is Shawn.” She looks down at the little diamond on her finger, the one Shawn had offered to replace for a much larger one when they’d won the lottery, and that Donna had refused to change. “He’s lovely. He’s wonderful. We’re a team.” She shrugs. “He knows that something happened to me, and he knows about you... before. The traveling bit. But there’s nothing else for him to know.”

The younger Doctor sits up too, and grins. “You’ve always been a good secret-keeper.”

Donna reaches out to tap his cheek gently. “This belongs to me. To us. To no one else.” She tilts her head to regard him affectionately. “Are you hungry?”

“Nah,” he says. “But we might be being a bit discourteous here, hiding away.” He stretches a bit. “Maybe we ought to go back out there.”

Donna inhales deeply through her nose. “Right,” she says. “Apparently that’s the real Doctor there,” she says.

The younger Doctor smiles. “He is, you know.”

“I know,” Donna says, and her face gets serious. “I know. i can feel it. But he’s not you. I don’t know how to talk to him.”

“Yes, you do,” the younger Doctor says. “The way you talk to me.”

“He’s the guy from Pompeii,” Donna says, and both of them laugh. “He said he picked that face because of me. I didn’t know you had any control over your new face.”

The younger Doctor shrugs. “Gallifreyan regeneration is usually random. Had to have been a particularly powerful impulse in him to carry through the clean slate process.” He lets that statement be for a moment, and then adds, “Can’t say as I blame him. He’s got to be dying to talk to you.”

“Maybe,” Donna says. “Don’t know how I feel about that.” She gets off the bed and onto her feet, and stretches, a sight the younger Doctor takes in greedily, the way he used to before. There were very few things he’d allowed himself to be greedy about, but Donna is one of them. Was one of them. Would be one of them?

“What is it?” Donna asks, seeing his frown.

“Nothing,” the younger Doctor says. “I’m sorry, I had a thought.” He gets up too, and reaches for his clothes. “You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Donna says. “I do know that.” She reaches for him and embraces him close. “Thank you.”

He clasps her back. “Always,” he says.

They get dressed again, Donna disappearing into her closet and emerging in a long blue-green dress and sandals. She has beautiful gold earrings in her ears and bracelets on her wrists, and makeup. She’s done her hair half up and half down in that familiar way he loved before. “Much better,” she says. She readies herself and takes his hand.

In the console room the Doctor and Clara are talking softly between themselves. When the younger Doctor and Donna emerge back out, the Doctor clears his throat. “Do either of you need medical attention?” he asks. It’s all he can think to ask, and he tries not to ask Donna specifically.

“No,” the younger Doctor says. “Just a chance to unwind.” He looks around. “Why don’t we have a good meal? Some drinks? Park us in the Vortex and just relax for a little while.”

“I like that idea,” Clara says. “Come on, Donna, let’s go find some wine.” She threads her arm through Donna’s and they go down the hall, leaving the Doctors alone.

“She all right?” the Doctor asks.

“Yeah,” the younger Doctor says. “She’s all right. She’s... so much has happened to her.” He examines the new console in front of him.

“No one knows that better than me,” the Doctor says. “I’m trying to protect her.” He pushes buttons and flips levers, and they brace themselves for the lurch into the Vortex.

“So am I,” says the younger Doctor.

“But not from me,” the Doctor says, and both of them grow serious.

“There’s no need for me to protect her from you, is there?” the younger Doctor asks. “You’re me. Aren’t you?”

The Doctor relaxes. “Technically. You know I mean her no harm.”

“Yes,” the younger Doctor says. “I do know that.” He looks up from the console. “I don’t know if she’ll talk to you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” the Doctor shrugs. “She can do whatever she wants.” He leans on the railing around the console. “You all right?”

The younger Doctor nods. “I think so.” He looks towards the hallway both the women had walked down. “You better tell me about that Clara girl.”

The Doctor nods in reply. “Something about her. She’s rescued me. She’s supposed to be around.” The younger Doctor smiles a little at the softening look on the older man’s face. “She’s good.”

“Yeah.” Both of them are quiet. “Well, let’s go eat,” the younger Doctor says. “We lucked out.”

“I’ll follow you,” the Doctor says. “Want to put on the parking brake.”

The younger Doctor departs and there is silence for a minute.

“Doctor?”

The Doctor looks up from the console, and smiles. Donna is standing there, looking like herself, her beautiful self. She looks cautious but not afraid. “Doctor?”

“Yes,” he says, and he steps back from the computer. “All right?”

Donna nods, coming into the room further. “Came to talk to you. Couldn’t deal with the silence anymore. My fault.”

“Not your fault,” the Doctor says. He is ready for anything she might say.

Donna comes to stand in front of him. She regards him frankly, as she always had, but gently, openly. “I need you to listen to me for a little bit,” she says. “Will you?”

“You don’t even need to ask.” He feels such relief looking at her that he will grant her anything.

Donna takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry for being afraid of you.” She holds up a hand to stop him from replying. “You have to understand that you’re a stranger to me--”

“I’m not a stranger,” the Doctor says, and Donna gives him a wide-eyed look.

“Yes, you are,” she says.

“I’m not, he’s only the projection of your memories of me!” the Doctor says. “Donna, I’m—“ He takes a breath, embarrassed that he’s lost control over his feelings so quickly. “Something in me must have known this was coming because this face has everything to do with you.”

Donna is quiet. She looks down at her feet. “I know,” she says quietly. “I’ve been trying to stay alive for a long time without him-- you, I mean. And I’ve been pushed back into it without any warning, which I suppose I should be used to, but--”

“Donna,” the Doctor says, stopping the flow of her words. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Donna’s eyes fill up and she steps forward to embrace him. “Me too,” she says. And actually, it’s a relief, as much as it was to embrace the younger Doctor.

“You saved them, you know,” the Doctor says, wrapping her up tight. “Don’t cry, Donna.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” she says, pulling back and wiping her eyes. “I just wanted you to know. I’m just trying to adjust.”

“What do you want?” the Doctor asks gently. “Anything.”

“Honestly?” Donna asks. She sighs. “I want to go home.”

In the little silence that follows, the Doctor understands something. Her head must hurt. Her mind must be exhausted, working overtime with the Time Lord energy, diluted as it might have been in synthesizing the younger Doctor. She is still human, beautifully, painfully human.

“I can do that,” he says. “Now? Or will you eat with us first?”

Donna smiles. “Let’s eat.”

And the four of them end up laughing over big plates of delicious food conjured out of the TARDIS kitchen computer, and bottles of wine, until Donna puts her fork down and says, “Right. I’m tired.” A wave of pain rolls through her head, down her face, and she tries to hide her grimace. It’s been at the edges of her consciousness the entire time they’ve been back in the TARDIS. She gets up to move from the table and promptly collapses, and the younger Doctor leaps forward to catch her before she hits the floor.

“Not again,” he says. 

“Get her into the medbay,” the Doctor says, and helps Clara to her feet and over Donna’s prone figure. “Can you get the door open? Go.”

Clara moves quickly and the younger Doctor gathers her up. “This is only going to keep happening,” he says to the Doctor. “She can’t keep doing this.”

“I know,” the Doctor says.

“I mean it, she’s got limited chances.” The younger Doctor sounds tired himself.

“I know,” the Doctor snaps. He takes a second look at the younger Doctor as they go. He looks pale suddenly, as if he’s losing stamina. 

As they arrive in the console room Donna suddenly starts to shudder, her eyes opening. “No, no,” she says vaguely, struggling against the younger Doctor. “No more.” Her movements force him to stop, and lower her to the floor “Stop. Stop.” She curls her fingers into the younger Doctor’s jacket and shirt. “My head hurts. Again,” she tells him. “It’s hurting again.” Her eyes are overlfowing with tears. “When does it stop?”

“I know,” the younger Doctor says. HIs face is anguished and he looks up at the Doctor and Clara. “What else can we do?” he asks them.

The Doctor goes for the console, and Clara for water and a blanket, feeling the strain of fear for Donna, whom she has known for so little time but who has clearly made such a permanent impression on her Doctor. She can see the helpless love on the younger Doctor’s face, and the traces of it on the Doctor’s face. She has respect for that; she knows what it is love to someone on the other side of a wall.

Donna cringes at the pressure, the way she can feel her pulse pounding in rhythm with the pain. “Listen,” she says to the younger Doctor. “I don’t want anyone else to hear. I’m scared I’m gonna die.” She sounds urgent and terrified.

“You’re not gonna die,” the younger Doctor says, as the Doctor punches the console in search of a solution.

“We can be with each other forever now,” Donna says, feeling the terrible spreading pain her head. It feels so final, all of it. “I never wanted to leave you.”

“I didn’t want you to go.” The younger Doctor’s face is soaked with tears. “I’m here because of you. Again.” He clings to her, his cheek pressed to her hair.

“No,” Donna says. “I’m here because of you.” She reaches up to him and kisses him, not caring who sees. She knows somewhere in her mind that it’s the last time, so she holds onto him. The pain squeezes and squeezes around her head and neck in a thick band of agony. “It hurts so much,” she whimpers to him. “I wish it would go away.”

“I wish I could make it go away.” The younger Doctor feels the sensation in his hands lessen just a bit, just enough so he knows this can’t go on much longer. Neither of them can go on much longer like this. He wraps her up tighter because he still has his strength. Donna turns her face into his chest. “But you’re not alone,” he tells her. “I’m here, I’ve always been here. I go when you go.” Donna clings on to him with what strength she can muster in her hands. Both of them are sobbing now, Donna with less and less force as breathing becomes slower. It’s so easy to slip into sleep, she thinks. So easy to let go, because he’s holding her and she won’t fall. So easy…

She doesn’t know that the younger Doctor has gone, dissolved into nothing around her, and the Doctor has wrapped her in his arms instead. She doesn’t know anything until she takes a great gasping breath under a cacophony of doctors and bright lights, and the headache is gone.

* * * *

They subject her to a battery of tests, scans, bloodwork, and questions. But everything is fine. Donna knows this with a certainty in her bones, a kind of organic knowledge. Everything is going to be all right, she assures them, with a kind of secret smile that no one can decipher. Her MRIs come up clear, her bloodwork is pristine, and her body feels better than she has in years.

But the biggest part, the best part, is that she has her memories. Everything, from her ruined wedding and Lance’s death to the moment she woke up in the hospital this time. Everything is there. It is a bittersweet feeling, painful and joyful all at once, a longing for the stars mixed with the desire to be home, around people she knows and loves. She wants to see her library, half-built as it is. She wants to be in her house, dancing around her kitchen. She wants to stare through her grandfather’s telescope like she always had, looking for something in the sky.

After a week the doctors let her come home, pronouncing themselves mystified. Donna drives herself, despite protests, and Shawn sits in the passenger seat looking worried. But Donna is smiling, and she reaches over to hold her husband’s hand. “Everything is going to be fine,” she tells him. “Everything is okay. The Doctor saved my life. Again.”

And she’s right; the Wilfred Mott Planetarium and Library is finished within the year. The Noble Foundation holds its opening gala just before Christmas, and Donna, dressed in a wine-red ball gown with long lacy sleeves, helps her grandfather hold the giant scissors to cut the golden ribbon across the entrance to the building. There is cheering, everyone toasting to each other. The press is there to take photos and interview Donna and her family. Shawn beams beside her, handsome in a dark velvet jacket and trousers, and speaks to the reporters with pride in his wife and all the good work they’ve done together.

Donna mingles with her guests, eating hors d’ouevres and drinking champagne. She looks beautiful, she feels healthy, and she imagines the blue box in the sky watching their little party in London. At that thought there is a tug in her subconscious, something that pulls her away. She excuses herself and follows her instinct into the telescope room. Alone in the half-light, she puts down her champagne flute and goes for the small telescope, her grandfather’s, set up next to the large one. She aims it for the sky and looks into the lens. The sky is clear and she can see the expanse of spangled blackness above her. What a joy that the sky is no longer a stranger to her.

She stays there for a few moments longer, dwelling in her memories, and then steps back reluctantly. She doesn’t want to be missed. She closes the doors behind her, painted a certain dark blue. The people who love her are waiting.

[imagine-lcorp]

Mustand Ride (Part VII)

A/N: Hello beutiful beans, it’s been a while I know since I updated this story and in general since I posted anything. But I don’t see any of you complaining so I take it as a good sign...or should I? Anyway, here’s the next part of Mustang Ride if you still enjoy it. Kudos to y’all.

Lena Luthor x Shapeshifter Reader//Word Count: 1,565

Series: Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V - Part VI -  Part VII

"Did you find anything that can connect our three suspects, agent Schott?" J'onn asked after Winn had displayed all the information he could find about Michael Withers and Ronald Hamper.

"I found…absolutely nothing." Winn replied pulling himself out of his chair and walking towards the screens. "You see, I have crosschecked their records and everything I could find about them. There is zero evidence they even knew each other and the only thing they have in common is they erased themselves off the face of earth a month ago."

"What does that mean exactly?" Kara asked finally turning her head away from the screens.

He pulled his tablet out and started typing, the computers searching for any bit of information wherever they could until the message 'Records nonexistent' popped on the screens. "That's what I mean."

"What about the third?" Alex asked.

"Nothing." Winn frowned. "I've been looking for clues everywhere I could think off but since we didn't get a clear shot of the face of polar guy I haven't been able to find anything useful."

"Did the cameras at the bank get anything?" Lena typed on the main computer showing the footage from the bank.

"Zero. He never faced the cameras." Winn replied as everybody in the room watched the video closely.

"It's like he knew where the cameras where and was trying to avoid them." Alex pointed out.

"If that's the case, this wasn't the first time our suspect did something like this." J'onn said crossing his arms.

"Guys, I'm gonna need more than just type bank robber on the system if we want to find this man." Winn left his tablet on the control room and turned to face J'onn. "Could you get something from him before he turned all Tasmanian Devil?"

J'onn denied shaking his head. "Nothing useful, anyway. Incoherent thoughts and images, his mind was in all places, so to speak."

"But wait, you still could have seen something, right? It may not have been much but whatever you saw in his mind could give us a clue of who he was." Kara suggested hopeful.

J'onn seemed to meditate her words for a moment before agreeing. "It's worth the shot. Anyone else wants to bring something to the table?" He finally said and then all eyes in the room fell on you.

You had been staring at the screens of the control room without really watching anything, barely listening to anything they had been saying. It had not been your intention but the images of the fight you had had just an hour ago kept playing in your head. You could still feel the claws of those three trying to reach your skin and the feeling was worst now that they were in the lab downstairs, waiting for an autopsy. That made you swallow hard. Now more than ever the questions were bubbling up in your head. Who were they? What did they do before all this? Were they aliens? Shapeshifters? Meta-humans? How did they get to this point? Why did they die? The worst part of it all, however, was that you still had no answers.

"(Y/N)?" Lena's voice brought you back to reality. You looked at her, and then at the rest of the team, waiting an answer from you.

"Seems like we got all sorted out." You added after a small sigh.

Lena and J'onn were the only ones that seemed to sense how much this had affected you but decided not to comment on that in the meantime. In the meantime, knowing how close you were he would let Lena help you through that. He was sure you could rely on her, or in any of the Superfriends if necessary.

"Well then, I'll pass you any information I can recall, see if there's anything useful, agent Schott. Agent Danvers, inform us about anything you find once you receive the results of the autopsy. Everyone else, thank you for your help. We'll keep you updated." J'onn said as a way of dismissing everyone else in the room.

Lena approached you soon after as you started to leave. "Hey, are you alright?" She said placing a hand on your shoulder.

"Good, just really tired." You tried to shrug it off.

Lena suggested you got checked again by Alex before leaving the building but you assured her you were alright. You were unharmed during the fight and the only thing left lingering in your body was the previous injury in your shoulders and a lot of exhaustion from the fight itself.

"Let's go home, I think we both need to rest."

"Agreed." You put your arm around her waist and placed a soft kiss on her temple as you walked outside the room. There was nothing else you could do there at the DEO and even with the thousand questions around your head it was better to leave the rest to the professionals. You arrived later to your apartment with the only desire to sleep the rest of the evening but Lena had something else in mind.

You sat on the couch and, still holding each other, you lied down to rest your head on its arm. You pulled Lena closer to you and she settled on your chest, hearing the steady and strong beating of your heart. You started to rub small circles on her back a bit absent-minded.

"So, what's it?" She asked, turning her head to look at you.

"Mmh?" She drew your attention back to her. "What's what?"

"I can tell something is bothering you. I mean, besides of what we talked about in the training room."

You shifted a bit awkwardly in your position. "Right."

"Do you want to talk about what happened?" She asked softly but, needless to say, you did not want to. She could tell by the sudden change in your heartbeat.

"No, but there is something about all this...I cannot say exactly what but I feel we're missing something and I won't be able to get it off of my head until we find it." You admitted.

"We will and we are going to figure out what's going on."

"I know." You sighed. "I know."

Lena placed her head once again against your chest and you lied on the couch for a few moments more, feeling the way your lungs filled with air as you breathed.

However, as you tried to leave the events of the day behind of you, Lena's mind drifted back to the moment she found you on the training room. She had to put on her best poker face to hide the full shock she felt after seeing you tear the cardboard people apart. After the conversation you had she understood better your need for some time alone and the urgency you felt to know and solve the mystery behind those criminals. But she had never seen you so... feral, and concern had grown in her. She started to wonder how it would be, if you really lost all control, how could she help you then?

A small growl from your stomach startled her, bringing her back from her thoughts.

"Sorry. I guess it's been a long day." You said sheepishly and only then she realized you hadn't eaten since breakfast.

"Indeed, darling." She smiled at you shaking her head and pulled herself up. "We should eat something."

"Yeah, but I think we might have a little problem." You pulled yourself up too. "I don't think I have anything edible in my fridge anymore."

Lena remembered you had spent the last days on her own apartment, only coming to your home for a change of clothes from time to time and making sure no one else was trying to live in here while you were gone. You suggested going for some take out from the little Italian restaurant a block away. You had taken Lena there in one of your first dates and she had enjoyed Nonna Giulia's dishes so much she didn't object at the idea. Daylight was fading in the sky and turning it a beautiful shade of blue. The rest of the day almost seemed to be forgotten while you took her hand in yours and walked down to the restaurant.

Nothing prepared you, however, for the sting you felt on the back of your leg halfway through the block. You winced in pain and stopped abruptly. Lena had to catch you by the arm as you had almost tripped.

"Hey, is everything alright?" Lena asked you, worry clear in her eyes.

You reached for your leg, trying to find the source of the pain. Dizziness you hadn't felt in years started to creep up to your head and it wasn't until you pulled whatever that was in your leg that you got an idea of what was happening. You observed the small tranquilizer dart between your fingers with a frown as you raised it in front of your face.

"That snake." You mumbled before turning to Lena, who looked at you with the most confused face you hadn't seen in her since you first showed her your powers.

"(Y/N)?" You could barely hear Lena's voice now as you started to slip from her arm to the floor.

"Run." Lena heard you say before you finally dropped to the floor and the screech of tires became louder and louder in the distance.

[tales-of-abysia]

Mind of a Madman - Draconoid

“What is it?” Azure squinted at the screen, the blurry image there. Hush sat across the table, quietly observing

“I’m not entirely sure. It appeared down in the city so I set Animus to follow it and… well, this is the last still image before it got destroyed. It is probably still gathering information but with it underwater I can’t actually receive any data. You know what’s down there.” Audio sighed and dropped the tablet onto the large table. A light went over it, centering on the tablet as the image grew larger and displayed over the whole library.

Mari was in the corner reading, but as the light basked over her pages she sighed. “Boys, the library is supposed to be quiet.”

“It never is” the two both said at once. Azure continued, “You know, this monster looks kind of familiar.”

The heavy wooden doors creaked to a close, and they turned to see Techtonica approaching. “That is no monster. It’s a beast.”

Mari perked up a brow and leaned forward on her knee. Her ruffled skirt spilled over the edge of the bench she rested on as she dropped her book with a light thud. The layer of long black lace between her skirt and stockings shimmered as the cloth moved “Is there really a difference?”

Tech stopped in his tracks for long enough to give her a bewildered look. “Hmph. Monsters are creatures that exist outside of natural order, they fit nowhere. These beasts are not like that. I crafted each of them to exist within the environment of the Bin…” He examined the form before him. It was a dragon-like creature, blue scales and three whip-like tails. The creature’s wings were webbed, as well as its feet. Fins on its back and legs revealed that it was likely a water-based beast. “But this beast has mutated. I did not make it to appear this way.”

Audio shook his head. “I don’t get it. There’s no one else even down there. Who could change things?”

Azure had his arms crossed, staring at the large holographic image. “A number of options. It could be Duske or Dawne, Crucible or one of the dark twins, Damien…” There were plenty down there. Laila still existed as well, he realized.

Hush sat up and straightened his grey clothes. “Aqua exists down there.”

Everyone turned his way. Tech spoke first. “Aqua was shattered into pieces.”

“So were you, but part of you was big enough to come back. She called through me once and then attacked Artisan. She exists down there, far past your island of beasts, correct?”

Techtonica leaned onto the table. His mind was running very quickly. “The beasts keep her at bay. Any time she got close to breaking my perimeter I made a new breed… If she has managed to conquer one and send it here, she could do it again.”

Azure stared still. “If she gets to the main part of the bin then the fragments there are in danger. Anyone who wasn’t destroyed could be used against us… or consumed.”

Hush turned his attention to Techtonica. “Luckily we didn’t take to your Folding idea. There would be more of us down there right now. Instead we need to start extracting things.”

Mari spoke up, “or we take the fight to her. Make more beasties, draw her up here and have Bastion hit her with the Red Blade.”

Techtonica turned to Mari. “Aqua is in initial fragment, one that you step from. If she gets annihilated, what happens to you?”

“I still win because she would be fucking dead. Give me the sword, I’ll go down there and do it myself.”

“Nobody gets the sword.” Azure spoke sternly. “This can’t continue though. Mari, fetch Jaxx and Bastion. I’m sending you out on a mission.

“Fucking finally, something that isn’t boring.” She picked the book off of the floor and tossed it onto a cart. It read “Intimate dreams” across the cover in red stitching. She left the room through the large doors.

Azure sighed. “How many of these did you make?”

“Beasts? Hundreds.” Tech began explaining types of creatures he classified. Amorphoids like Jaxx and Kaje, several draconoids like the one here, a variety of hybrid beasts and even spectral creatures.

Audio zoomed in on the monster's neck. “Do you guys see how dark those veins are?”

Techtonica's eyebrow rose. “Yeah I see that, it… its venomous!” His eyes widened, he turned and bolted out of the library.

___

Clora sat at the balcony, overlooking the great ocean that their world had sunken beneath. The tops of buildings raked the waves as they tried to roll over. Skeith wandered up behind her and after a moment of looking at her, turned his attention to the water. His expression was as blank as ever. “So… whatcha doin'?”

“Hey Skeith. I’m just staring out at the city. I think it's beautiful the way the water glimmers between the broken buildings.”

“Oh, I know how you get with beautiful things.”

“I just want ‘em.”

“I don’t think the ocean will fit in your pocket. Maybe get a pet fish?”

She laughed, he stared. “Maybe I will. A pretty fish with colorful scales.” She moved her gaze from Skeith back to the city. The reflections beneath seemed slightly erratic to her, the ebb and flow was to and fro. But this light reflected back and forth instead. “Hey, you see that?”

Skeith leaned over the rail. “Hm. It’s moving.” He placed a hand over one eye and it changed shape, elongating like a telescope. “Swimming. No wait, flying. It’s hard to see against the blue of the ocean. Wait! … It dove under.” He returned his body to its initial form.

“I don’t like waiting. I want to see it again.” She held out her hand and small pink sparks zapped between her fingers. They grew to be more often, a tone ringing out as they danced around her fingers. It echoed out over the ocean…

The figure burst from the water’s surface, glimmering in the sun as it flew through the sky. Skeith stared on. “Hm. I would be impressed.”

“Thank you! It is good to know how you would have felt, if it was your thing.” She smiled sweetly at him. He spared her a smile as well, and then looked over the balcony again.

“Watch out.” He spoke calmly.

“What do you m- AHHH!” Clora quickly fell backwards off of the railing and hit the metal flooring, just as the draconoid smashed through the raining with great force and into the city. Clora tried to get to her feet, but this monster turned around and with one of the tails whipped her leg out from under her. It then turned, opened its mouth wide and two long fangs began to strike down at her.

Skeith stood, an arm grew to a great size and he held it out. The Draconoid's fangs cracked the stone-like surface and slowly his pale ceramic arm began to grey. “Clora. Move.”

She nodded. Quickly getting to her feet and running round the beastie. It whipped out it's tails to hit her again, but she leapt and rolled, stopping for nothing. She bolted toward the center of the city.

Skeith held his free hand straight, his fingers together. This arm grew long and thin, and as he swiped as the creature it released his arm. He turned toward the creature and went to change the shape of his arm… to no avail. He glanced down with the same expression. “Well. Shit.” He had made himself a larger target. This creature blocked his only escape. He turned his focus to the ruined balcony. To hit the water from this height would be like impacting concrete.

Another loud tone rang out, and the draconoid whipped it’s head in pain before turning around and spotting Clora once more. A slash rang out from the wing of the creature and it turned to see Skeith had struck it, tearing the precious membrane on its left wing. It roared, wrapping the whip-like tails around Skeith’s massive arm and then took off down the road, galloping on its winged arms.

Clora closed her palm and the ringing noise stopped. She convinced herself that she totally just saved Skeith’s life. I mean, he would be dead if he was cornered, right? She reached the end of the road and turned right, making a direct sprint to the park above the Library. The draconoid slammed into the stone walls behind her.

“Ow.” Skeith said as he smashed across the ground and then into the wall. The draconoid then pulled itself from the stone and began chase again.

Clora saw the doors of the library open up, and her sister marching toward the downward stairway. “MARIII!”

Mari turned to see Clora running her way. It made her smile a little… then she saw the monster behind her, the bursting fixtures down each side of the road being bulldozed as it pursued her. Mari reached down and pressed at her skirt, causing the fabric to flow wide and glimmer once more. Clora slid as she reached her, dipping beneath the skirt and out of view. From the fabric, Mari pulled out a broadsword with runes carved down the broad side. The skirt shrank in size two times, and as the draconoid bit down to her she held the sword out before her. The creature bit down onto the blade, its sharp teeth parrying the sword.

Clora dove out from the side with a thin metal whip, which she swung at the neck of the beasty.

“What the fuck is going on down here?” Darkside walked down a stairway into the clearing.

Clora let out a large burst of her electricity, a stun directly to the neck of this thing. It roared in pain and then whipped its tail around, tossing Skeith at the girls. They dove opposite directions and the Draconoid tossed the sword to the side.

Darkside approached the Draconoid. As Skeith flew towards him, Darkside's form became dark, clouded, and finally burst around Skeith in a rush of smokey chains reforming on the far side. He continued walking to the beast. It lashed out at him, trying to bite at his chest. Darkside moved to the side, nearly being bitten as the head of his enemy went under his arm. He caught the creature by the neck and with all his force, lifted, twisted, and snapped.

Techtonia burst out of the building. ”Marian, wait!” He stopped suddenly and stared at Ds over the creature’s corpse. “Derek how.. Did you do that?”

Darkside dropped the head with a fleshy thud. “Hm? Oh, sorry about your feral pet.”

Mari stood up and brushed her skirt off. “Uh, I really prefer just Mari.” She motioned to her clothes. “My dress is filthy now! Ugh!” She brushed it off and held her hand out. The broadsword flew to her hand. “Thanks, Godsbane.” She gave the blade a quick peck and then flipped the weapon around and stabbed it into the lace, which quickly sucked it in and formed a new pattern there.

Clora wandered up and slipped her whip under her sister's skirt as well, and the trim at the bottom of the lace returned. “What was that?”

Techtonica sighed. “Someone has experimented with my beasts.”

Skeith stood up. “Aren’t they all just thoughts?” His arm dragged behind him, larger than his torso. He stretched, pulled an orange orb from the hand and then the whole thing crumbled. He replaced it at his shoulder and slowly it began to stretch back out. He had been upgraded so he wouldn’t be armless again. Not after last time.

Darkside let out a sigh. “They are, but thoughts can be dangerous. Especially depending on who is thinking them.”

Mari sighed. "I have to get some people."

[falke-scribblings]

Equivalence Principle [Thematic Thursday 04.13]

note: I am breaking all sorts of personal rules posting this. It’s an unfinished first part of a draft chapter for a sci-fi story I’ve had kicking around for a while. I wasn’t supposed to start it yet (I have too many projects underway as-is) but this Thursday's theme was sci-fi and it’s just too much fun to play around in this AU.

So, ye be warned: this is incomplete and subject to change or total cancellation. I’m not happy with where characters are yet, I have a lot of research left to do, and, what, 80 percent of the story still to write. By reading, you agree to get cliffhangered for an indeterminate time.

McKinnon Anchorage Ganymede L2

The last time Nick had been down here, CEC had been shutting down an illegal phone booth, of all things.

They'd pulled a bootleg antenna out of the power grids that fed the freight dock's big magnetic cradles. It had ended bloodlessly enough, with a couple of arrests and an indignant tech team that spent all day undoing sloppy power splices on one of the mains.

But Nick was still getting looks, even during station's morning when traffic was light. And Dogen didn't seem all that happy to see him, either.

The brown bear didn't even look over when Nick rapped his helmet on the doorjamb. He filled the far end of his tiny office, where banks of repeater displays were scrolling manifests and schedules.

"What do you want, Wilde?"

"I'm just stopping by to talk, Dogen."

"Last time we talked you still shut us down for four hours to play with the power lines." Dogen levered himself out of his chair to cross his arms and loom over Nick. He looked the armored pressure suit up and down and raised an eyebrow.

Everywhere else, CEC orange tended to get at least a little respect. Dogen had never been all that impressed, even with all the help the police had given him with the comms incident, and with the occasional troublemakers and theft they'd dealt with for the last few months.

"I'm on my own this time. Not even on duty." Yet.

Dogen motioned him aside.

Nick stood back to let the dockmaster pass. They went to the catwalk over the main bay, where they could look down on mammals stacking crates of food and oxygen that would be sent down the gravity well to the inner moons.

"What do you want?"

"First crack at the Earth shipment."

"Earth?" Dogen twisted his massive frame to frown down at him. "It's late."

Nick could have told him that. The supply freighters were whole lakes of space-scarred metal, almost as big as the Spar itself. They were hard to miss when one was sitting in dock. "How late?"

"Two days, at least." He pointed to the spiral patterns of the local Jupiter map on the wall behind them. "Mars transfer was already behind schedule because of all the raiders jumping out from behind rocks. They convoyed up."

"Ah."

"I hope CEC's not shipping anything sensitive domestic. Be a shame to lose a bunch of mil-spec gear."

Nick had hoped he wouldn't have to tip his paws so early. It wasn't the sort of thing a cop would be able to live down. But the bear was already looking at him like he could smell something, and the commercial suffix was going to confirm it anyway.

"It's not for the police. Personal order."

"From Earth?" He coughed a laugh. "How many paychecks did that cost you?"

The leftovers from three, not that Nick had counted all that hard. Some things were worth it. "I'm independently wealthy, Dogen."

"Yeah, you're out here chasing pirate scraps in the tail end of nowhere for the thrill of it." He was enjoying this a bit too much. He waved a paw. "We're not a delivery service, Wilde. And it's not like you'll miss when it gets here - it'll be bouncing you out of your bunk, like it always does."

He was already turning to go back into his office, in a clear indicator of just how far he trusted and respected Nick when the matter wasn't official - and Nick didn't have the time to reason with him. They were supposed to be prepping to leave the station right now. But maybe he could at least arrange something.

"Come on, Dogen. You owe me."

That made him stop and turn again, with one paw braced on the doorway. "Is this you collecting?"

"Consider it settled on delivery." It was too late to back out now - but he'd probably have something new to dangle over Dogen's head in a couple of weeks anyway. Again, worth it.

He was studying Nick, in what passed for the quiet of a pressurized loading bay on a space station. Nick could feel the air exchangers ruffling the fur on his ears.

"Fine." The dockmaster drew a tablet from a pocket on his coveralls. "What am I looking for?"

"Perishables box. About half a cubic meter." Nick clipped his helmet to his belt and held out his paws to demonstrate.

"Food?"

"Do you have to sound so incredulous?" Nick sighed. He tapped at his own tablet to send the shipment code, and saw messages waiting. Oops.

"Okay." Dogen gave a derisive grin down at his screen. "Your overprised sashimi or whatever is at the top of the pile. We'll call you; you can pick it up here."

"Pleasure doing business," Nick said.

Dogen turned and lumbered off. Nick headed for the intrasystem terminal on the other side of the station, and flicked through the messages. A call would be faster than typing a response.

"Nick, we're going to be late."

It made his ears lift. He'd barely had time to open the channel. "Good morning, Carrots."

"Where did you go?"

"I had an errand on the other side," Nick said. "I'm on my way now. Five minutes, maybe."

If she was sighing, her headset wasn't picking it up. "Hurry."

At least it was faster than traversing the station the long way. When he made it to the other side of the Spar, Nick found a visibly agitated Judy giving a wolf in a rumpled mechanic's jumpsuit an earful about commerce regulation, apparently just to fill the time. One of her own ears twisted as Nick came up.

"Do you want to end up in hack, Solanoff?"

"What, you going to throw me there?” He sneered. “It's going to take more than a bunny."

"You seem to think I won't," Judy said. She put her paws on her hips. "But if you try this again you won't be giving us a choice."

He looked over at Nick, too, and seemed to reconsider the confrontation. This time Judy's curt wave did send him slinking away.

"Catching up with friends?" he asked.

"You know Solanoff's not a friend," she muttered, and turned to lead the way down the stairs to the priority bays. She was stepping carefully in her boots. "He's hawking his independent repair services again. I warned him last week, too."

"You could cite him."

"We don't have time." Judy shook her ears out and glanced up at him. "And I'm worried he knows it. Where were you?"

"I had to follow up with logistics. Sorry it cramped the schedule."

But they weren't late yet, even if the Prowler on the tiny landing pad down here was already firing its engines. Their gear for the three-day shift was loaded and ready to go. Nick had his preflight check going in his HUD.

The only downside was he didn't have his special delivery ready in time to shore them up for the duration. These shifts tended to make Judy anxious enough as it was, which was the whole point of pushing right up until he ran out of time, just in case the cargo had arrived soon enough.

They'd have a chance to relax afterward, probably. But it just wasn't the same.

Nick pulled the gullwing hatch shut behind them. The cabin pressurized with a hiss that made his ears hurt. "Morning, Sergeant."

Marki, their pilot, looked back from the flight deck. "We're pushing off now," she said. "Strap in."

Nick checked Judy's harness and she checked his, and they locked their seats for flight. The gravity shift alarm sounded its quiet tone as the lift took them to the launch bay, up out of the effects of the AG plates. The tail end of a tension strap floated up off one of their bags.

Nick magnetized his boots right as their ship's thrusters gave an almost imperceptible thrum and they started out, throught the landing bay and into black space and stark sunrise on the dayside.

Nick and everyone else called it the Spar, because McKinnon Anchorage was a mouthful. It was the second-biggest station at Jupiter, after the habitats at Europa, but it was mostly science traffic from the insystem side and mining and shipping on the outsystem side. Civil Enforcement had a modest presence to keep an eye on things - a tiny post on the station itself, and a couple wings of pilots.

And there was a set of separate observation posts on the perimeter, with their arrays of sensors and just-in-case railguns. Most cops didn't like the duty - Judy included - but Nick found the steady focus enjoyable every time they pulled a detail out here. It would give him some quiet time with his partner, which was always nice.

Within minutes their ship rotated to mate its dorsal collar to the companionway. Marki leaned out to look down into the cabin again.

"Sealing for transfer," she called.

Nick gave her a thumbs-up. The door slid shut between them.

The routine was familiar: Check his suit for seals and air - with the gloves, and the tail sleeve, and his helmet collar - and then check Judy's. Her relaxed ears floated in the null-G until she brushed them flat under her own collar and donned her helmet. The seals flashed green. Nick ducked his head to catch her face through her visor, trying to decide if he should go for a smile. But she still looked distracted.

The first airlock hissed open above them. Judy negotiated their bags with effortless ease and sent them coasting along the bright tunnel until the gravity gradient from the habitat caught them and pulled them smoothly down. She followed them - clicking her magboots onto the "floor," following transfer protocol so she wouldn't get disoriented or unbalanced.

Nick glided, like he was swimming. She scowled at him.

"Inner doors secure," he sent over the operations channel, once they were through the station-side airlock. "Thanks for the lift, Sergeant. Safe flying."

The deck under them thumped.

"Prowler two-eight, free and clear."

And they were alone, in a tiny closet of an observation post. There were two bunks, a head and food prep station in this room, and through the archway was the sensor booth with its tiers of consoles and displays. Home sweet home, at least for the next 72 hours. Judy pulled her helmet off. Nick followed suit in time to hear her breathe out a lungful of recycled air.

"I know I almost made us late," he said.

She cocked an ear for him. "Will you at least tell me what it's about?"

"It's a surprise. And it can still be a surprise. Special." He hefted his bag onto the upper bunk - because he didn't intend to use a separate sleeping arrangement. "It's just taking time to arrange."

"Safe?" She unsealed her boots and stacked them by the bunk.

"And legal." Nick pulled her close from behind, so her armor clacked against his when he kissed the top of her head. He didn't think she would actually worry about that, but he figured he could reassure her anyway. He didn't like keeping things from her, either. Not even the little romantic gestures. "What about you? What the deal with that wolf? That's the second time this month."

"You know Solanoff. He needs his reminders," Judy said. She held up his tablet for him. "Just ignore him."

He squeezed her. "Okay."

It wasn't exactly okay. Not yet. But Nick had to let her go, so they could start what they were out here to do. She was right, the way she was staying focused on the job right now. They had a timetable to keep.

[reverend-dog]

Iron Bonds

Nike flipped through the images on the tablet with a fingertip. By itself, none of them held any special drama. A rural power plant that sustained a massive short-circuit, apparently because a large, conductive object had crossed several lines and transformers. Tractors and trucks with parts torn away, as if struck by some massive object. The most striking was a train wreck, where a locomotive at full speed met a proverbial immovable object. The unexplained part? Whatever had been large and solid enough to stop a train and scatter its cars across a New England railbed was missing by the time rescuers and authorities got there. Other than the locations and the damage, Nike saw nothing to connect the images.

Nike looked up from the tablet, at the man seated on the other side of the desk. The window behind him displayed skeletal trees weighed under coats of snow, with no sign of nearby humanity. Nike remembered the drive up here from the nearest town, an antique village called Rockport. Time had forgotten this corner of Maine, and its residents liked it that way.

“So?” Nike asked, her tone as neutral as if she sang a verse to an old children’s song.

The old man nodded. Thin and weathered, but neither bowed or frail. His receded hairline emphasized the height of his brow, and eyes that needed no glasses regarded her with crystalline clarity. He reclined in his chair with his arms folded across his chest, and nodded at her. “It’s what they left out,” he told her. “The best any regular search can find. I’ve done all I can, but even with my clearances, I’m just an old man. That’s why I need Worldwide Restorations.”

“No,” Nike corrected him in a nurse’s gentle voice, “that’s why you want Worldwide Restorations. Whether you need our services is our call.” She leaned forward and slid the tablet across the desk, then reclined in the creaky, leather-bound chair. “What makes those pictures important?”

“Sixty years ago, or so,” the old man said, “a visitor came to Rockport, Maine. He crashed off the coast, and washed ashore.” Thin fingers tapped one temple. “He’d sustained a knock on the head, which rendered him amnesiac. Hungry, confused, he wandered around the back woods, until he met a local boy. The boy befriended him, took him in, taught him about things.” The ghost of a wistful grin snuck across withered lips. “They had a fine time.

“Problem was,” the old man continued, “it was the wrong time and the wrong place. America was just coming out of World War Two, and getting used to the idea of a Cold War. Enemies were everywhere, the government warned us, not just the ones on the other side of the world ready to push a button, but right among us. It took only a few reports of mauled machines and weird sightings,” he nodded at the tablet, “for a paranoid government to send a paranoid agent to check things out.

“See,” the man regarded Nike, “the visitor, unknown to himself, was a soldier from another place. War was all he knew, before he crashed. He was literally b… raised for it.” The ceiling lamp struck reflections off the man’s scalp as he nodded. “The boy taught him different. He taught him,” he coughed at a catch in his throat, “he didn’t have to be what his master made him. He could be whatever he wanted. Instead of taking lives, he could save them. And he did.” Another nod. “He saved the entire town, as well as a large chunk of the Maine coast.”

“So why was it covered up?” Nike probed, but softened the challenge with a smile. “What was the government afraid of? That a Soviet soldier turned into a local hero?”

“Soviet?” the old man echoed, and rattled another derisive laugh. “Yes, they were the big evil back then. It wouldn’t have looked good for one of Them to be any sort of savior. But no,” he corrected, “the truth is a good deal more complicated.”

“Mr. Hughes,” Nike offered, and sat forward in her chair, “you’ve danced all around a story you’re dying to tell.” She stabbed a finger at him. “You were the local boy who befriended the lost soldier, and watched him taken away.” She made her expression compassionate, a feat that took little effort because she did feel for him. “I bet you’ve tried to tell the story before, many times, to many people, and not only have you been not believed, you’ve been silenced. How many times have you gotten phone calls or visits from people completely devoid of humor, delivering the message that you should forget it all, move on with your life, enjoy your family, because it’d be a shame if your persistence brought them any sort of difficulty?”

Mr. Hughes’ face split in a smile, as if Nike’s questions had been arrows to strike an overripe melon. “I lost count,” he admitted, and wet glinted in the corners of his eyes. “That’s why I drove them all away, made them hate me or forget me. And of course, the government did a fine job discrediting me when I did go public. They tore down the monument in the park, erased all the records from the rail inspectors, power engineers, Navy, Army, even local eyewitnesses.” He rasped an ironic chuckle. “Even the agent who broke the story to him, they locked him away until he died in jail.” A moment’s fury flashed in Mr. Hughes’ eyes as he added, “Though the bastard deserved worse than that.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Nike pressed. “Bring the truth to light, clear your name?”

Mr. Hughes swatted the suggestion with one hand. “No!” he snapped. “I want you to set him free!”

Nike tilted her head to one side. “The soldier?” she probed. “Surely he’s dead by now? We are talking about a grown man from, what, the late Forties, early Fifties?”

Mr. Hughes grinned. “Not this one,” he corrected her. “He can outlive all of us. The problem is,” and his face turned grave again, “sooner or later, his masters will come looking for him, and they won’t be happy to find him held prisoner. Scoff if you wish, Ms. --”

“Nike,” she supplied with a smile, “like I said at the door. Nike is fine.

“Nike,” he conceded, “but I promise you this: alone, he brought an armored company to a standstill, and nearly destroyed a Navy ship. The only thing that held him back was what I taught him. Now, consider an army of soldiers just as powerful, but without his knowledge of compassion and nobility. They come here, find one of their own a prisoner. What do you think they’ll do?”

Nike let her gaze drift around the study. She had scanned it when she entered, to add color to the preliminary profile given her about the potential client, but in light of their conversation she took a second look, at book titles, themes of artwork -- not just what she saw, but what was absent. Then she returned her gaze to the old man.

“You made contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence,” she told him, “and now you believe it’s being held in a secret facility, its arrival and existence erased from history. And you want Worldwide Restorations to find it, rescue it, so it can convince its masters not to blow Earth away for being so rude.” She noted how he had shrunk in his chair, assurance and challenge wilted. “Is that an accurate summation?”

Mr. Hughes shook himself, and scooted straighter in his chair. “Langjokull Glacier,” he stated, “Iceland.”

“Yes?” Nike prompted.

“That’s where they’re keeping him,” the old man confirmed.

“Evidence?” Nike pressed.

Mr. Hughes smiled wide for the first time, and spread his hands wide. “You’re the ones with spy satellites,” he told her. “Take a look for yourself.”

Nike spent twenty minutes in her car, her face bent over the screen of her phone, in scrutiny of images beamed to her in real time from halfway across the world. Then she tapped on the oak door, and smiled back at the old man who answered. “All right, Mr. Hughes,” she promised, “we’ll find your giant friend.”

[thegeeklee]

Nintendo Switch Presentation - January 2017

It’s not the first time we’ve seen the Nintendo Switch, but the original reveal did not give us too much info. Now we finally get more information about the console thanks to the Nintendo Switch Event. Here’s the main details you’re probably chasing:

Release

The Nintendo Switch will launch on March 3rd, 2017 in Japan, US, Canada, some of Europe and other territories, which includes Australia. That’s only about 7 weeks away.

The price will be $299.99USD/$469.95AUD. While it is probably worth it from a technical point of view of what it can do, that price range def takes it out of the impulse buy price range. I bought a Wii U about a year or so ago with Super Mario Maker for $300AUD on special. I played Super Mario Maker a few times and then the Wii U gathered dust ever since. I really like the Switch’s portability, but I don’t travel enough to get the most out of this feature, so not being a huge Nintendo combined with my buyers remorse (other that continuing my console collection) with the Wii U, makes me think I won’t be grabbing one of these on launch. I probably won’t consider it until there’s a significant price drop. I mean you can get the much more powerful PS4 or Xbox One S for about $100 AUD cheaper, so it’s not very competitive on price.

There’s two Switch packages you can get. The only difference being the colours of the joy-con controllers. The Joy-Con controllers come in 3 colours currently, grey, neon red and neon blue. One Switch package comes with two grey controllers, while the other package comes with one blue and one red controller. I’d be definitely picking the grey controller package. I may be bias as grey is my favourite colour these days, however I just think it looks awkward, having one red and one blue controller connected to Switch.

Other than the 2 joy-con controllers, the other items you get in the box include the Switch tablet console itself and the dock for connecting to a TV. The Joy-Con Grip that holds your two joy-cons together for a more traditional controller experience. Two wrist straps that connect to the Joy-Con that make them easier to hold and stop them flying across the room. Plus of course a HDMI cable and AC adapter.

Specific accessory pricing includes:

Switch Pro Control (available in grey) - $69.99USD/$99.95AUD

Pack of 2 Joy-Con Controllers (available in grey, neon red, neon blue or neon red/blue combos) - $79.99USD/$119.95AUD

1 Joy-Con Controller (available in grey) - $49.99USD/$69.95AUD

Joy-Con charging grip - $29.99USD/$39.95AUD

Switch Dock set (including dock, ac adapter and HDMI cable) - $89.99USD/$129.95AUD

Joy-Con Wheel (set of 2) - $14.99USD/$24.95

If you combine the prices of all the components that you get in the box together equals $199.97USD/$289.85AUD, which means you’re paying about $100USD/$80AUD for the actual Switch console tablet. That probably sounds like a good deal when put like that. Either that or it shows that the accessories are quite expensive. I’d hate to be a parent with one of this in the house, having the buy multiple docks, fighting over who gets to use it, constantly dropping big dollars to replace easy to lose controllers etc.

Specs

There are 3 modes to the Switch. TV Mode whereby you put the Switch into the dock and play on the TV. Tabletop mode, where you utilise the Switches kickstand to have it stand up independently and use the Joy-Cons detached from the console. And of course handheld mode, where you have the Joy-Cons attached and can use it like a portable tablet gaming machine. In Handheld mode it will get 2.5hrs – 6.5hrs of battery life dependent on the game (Zelda will get about 3hrs battery life). This seems reasonable. Should mean people can play triple A titles on the train or bus to work or extended long gaming sessions playing simple indie or retro Nintendo titles without running out of battery. You can also play it while charged it via a USB-C cable.

Other specs include no region locking which makes sense for a console they are promoting to use on the plane. It has a multi touch display, 6.2” display that runs as I predicted at 720p. So smaller than an iPad mini but at the largest spectrum of a smart phone screen size. The same size screen as the Wii U tablet but higher resolution. When docked it will run in 1080p. There’s 32GB of internal storage which is pretty disappointing but can be expanded by a micro SD card. Up to 8 Switches can connect together for multiplayer.

The Switch will of course support digital download games, but also has “Game Cards” for physical games, not too dissimilar to the 3DS. The dock has 3x USB 2 ports plus of course a HDMI and AC adapter ports.

There’s been no mention of the actual performance of the machine. Some of the graphics was looking a bit rough in places, so don’t expect it to in any way compete with the Xbox One or PS4 in the graphics department.

Controllers

The main controllers as mentioned at the Joy-Cons. Think of them as smaller Wii remotes. They attach to the sides of the Switch in portable mode but can also be used separately. They have NFC and support Amiibos.  The left controller has a screenshot button that will later support video. It has an accelerometer, and IR motion camera sensors, which of course open up much more potential as to what you can do with them. It also has an advanced “HD” rumble feature built into the Joy-Cons that supposedly helps you feel things (the example they showed was ice being put into a glass).

Being so small you wouldn’t expect many controls but it amazingly includes on each controller a joy stick, plus or minus button, left or right button, d-pad or A/B/X/Y buttons, ZL or ZR button, release button, SL button and SR button. I think the fear at first was the Joy-Con might be quite limiting, but this has clearly been designed so you should be able to play just about any game with even only one Joy-Con controller.

The wrist straps when connected a Joy-Con help beef up it’s physical size including likely making the SL and SR buttons easier to use.

For when you want a more traditional controller setup you can plug the Joy-Cons into the grip and it will also charge the Joy-Cons. If you want even more advanced controls, then there is also the Switch Pro Controller, similar to what was available for the Wii U.

Online

For the first time, Nintendo’s online services will now cost you money to use (like Xbox and Playstation). There will be an initial free trial and then it’s time to pay up if you want to continue. This also could get costly for parents. Though there is one bonus. Each month you will get to play a NES or SNES classic game for free. With Playstation Plus and Xbox Gold you get multiple free games per month and you can play them as long as you are subscribed, and even when you resubscribe. That doesn’t look to be the case here, so price will be critical to not seem like poor value compared to the alternatives. Smartphones will also be able to connect to it’s online service for chat and arranging online games.

Games

This is great and all but it doesn’t matter if there isn’t a big selection of games to support it. This was the major problem with the Wii U. It wasn’t overly apparent during the presentation what the full launch line up was but Nintendo assures us  that there’s currently over 50 devs working on over 80 games for the Switch. Here’s some of those games:

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, after much speculation, is a Switch launch title.

1-2-Switch is a series of mini games that make use of the joy-cons. It is primarily a game that you don’t watch the screen while playing. It’s a launch title and could be the Switch’s equivalent to Wii Sports.

A boxing style game called Arms is also making much use of the joy-cons. Each player needs two joy-cons each, one for each hand. You play split screen in TV mode, or use two switches to battle, or online. Released in Spring (US) 2017.

Super Mario Odyssey is the first large sandbox Mario game since Sunshine. There’s parts based in like New York with regular size people, which is just bizarre. Mario’s hat being thrown is a major game mechanic. Out end of 2017.

Project Octopath Traveler from Square Enix looks like pixel art paper Mario/final fantasy style game. No release date as of yet.

Other upcoming titles include FIFA, Ultra Street Fighter 2, Skyrim, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Has Been Heroes, Just Dance 2017, Snipperclips, Super Bomberman R, Arcade Archives, Disgaea 5 Complete, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, Farming Simulator, Fast RMX, Fire Emblem Warriors, Minecraft, Puyo Puyo Tetris, Rayman Legends, Rime, Skylanders Imaginators, Syberia 3, Steep, Sonic Mania, NBA 2K18, Lego City Undercover, I am Setsuna, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and more.

So there you have it. Pre-orders are now open and going by how hard it’s been to get a NES Classic mini, it could be hard getting a Switch at launch. That shouldn’t be a problem for me, because at that price, I’m just not big enough a fan, or trust Nintendo’s game support to wanna jump in straight away. With the expensive price of the console and accessories, plus a lack of launch titles, it’s just not competitive at a time when Nintendo really needs to be. Perhaps by Christmas with a big price drop and a larger library it might be worth it. I also a bit disappointed with it as Nintendo weren’t touting the Switch as a successor to the Wii U, yet Wii U games aren’t backwards compatible with it.

The presentation overall had it’s highs and lows, and some seriously awkward moments, and somewhat underwhelming unless you’re a Nintendo fanatic. Still I commend Nintendo for a great design and it will be interesting to try it out sometime. Because I would like a portable hybrid console like this some day. It does feel like the future.

If you like what you’re are reading, then follow The Geeklee on Tumblr or like The Geeklee on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGeeklee/ 

[cdrforea]

Huawei Mate Xs Review: Folding Marvel, Frustrating Flaws

New Post has been published on https://bestedevices.com/huawei-mate-xs-review-folding-marvel-frustrating-flaws.html

Huawei Mate Xs Review: Folding Marvel, Frustrating Flaws

"The Huawei Mate Xs is a technical master class that is affected by faulty software and a disappointing speaker."

Excellent construction

Can be used both folded and unfolded

Nice screen

Quick charge

Useful multitasking functions

Excellent camera

Unreliable software

No Google Mobile Services

Bad audio

Very expensive

Shelf life is unknown

Smartphones are usually easy to check. For example, the shape and general functionality rarely change drastically. However, the Huawei Mate Xs is not easy. Not only is it completely different from most other phones because it folds up, but also because it costs £ 2,300 or about $ 2,750 and has no Google mobile services on board.

Still, it remains a convincing phone, and it's impossible to ignore the dramatic benefits that come with owning it. They range from the viewing experience to the camera to the cache for using such a futuristic phone. There are frustrating elements, but I never wanted to stop using the Mate Xs.

design

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

The Huawei Mate Xs is what many people would consider a real folding smartphone because it looks and works like a normal smartphone before it unfolds into a tablet. This way you can quickly send a message with one or two hands at any time without opening the phone or watch a video on the big screen. To achieve this, the large screen of the Mate Xs can be folded back on itself and becomes "normal size" until it is needed again.

I found that under normal circumstances I didn't have to flip the screen open and typing when the phone is closed is easier as it is just like any other large, modern smartphone. This versatility – phone in one minute, tablet in the next – is addictive, and the return to a non-collapsible phone is restrictive. It's also less noticeable when you use the phone in public, unlike the Galaxy Fold, which has to be unfolded to be really useful. This comes in handy if you don't want to draw attention to the fact that you're using a $ 2,750 smartphone.

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

A rail on the right side of the phone has a button that can be used to release the screen from its collapsed position. It's easy to look with your index finger without looking, but you need two hands to unfold the Mate Xs. The central hinge has a wonderful, firm and high quality effect with just the right resistance. It snaps into place without much fuss and remains completely flat after completion.

This is a big deal because if it were only a few degrees away from flatness, the screen would look poorly constructed. Regardless of whether you look at the Mate Xs screen folded or unfolded, it always looks just right. There is a crease, but it is hardly noticeable when you look directly at the phone.

When folded, the lines are clear, as the back of the screen folds flat against the rail and creates a thick piece of smartphone that you can hold. It is 11 mm thick, closed and only 5.4 mm thick at the thinnest point. At 300 grams, however, this is one of the heaviest smartphones currently available.

When closed, it is slippery due to the rounded sides and the lack of grip. You can use it closed with one hand, but you must hold the phone firmly. I mostly used it like the Galaxy Note 10 Plus and other large phones, holding it in one hand and wiping it with the other. When opened, the vertical rail on the right becomes an excellent stopping point and an inspired design piece.

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

How about durability? The design and materials of the screen have been improved over the Mate X, but there is still concern that the exposed screen will be destroyed quickly. I have been using the Mate Xs with other devices for a few weeks now. The screen has collected a few small scratches on which it bends sideways. However, I cannot immediately notice them when the screen is on.

Whether it collects more scratches will only become apparent over time, as will the hinge. It has eased somewhat in recent weeks, but remains firm.

screen

Using the Mate Xs with the screen closed is like any other Huawei smartphone. The 6.6-inch OLED has a resolution of 2480 x 1148 pixels and shows strong, dynamic colors with excellent clarity right down to the app icons on your home screen.

Compare it to the stunning screen of the iPhone 11 Pro, and the Mate Xs really questions its superiority. It produces the same natural tones that make the Apple phone screen a winner, and then adds a pleasant saturation to give it a visual boost. It is wonderful.

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

The fully unfolded 8-inch screen with 2480 x 2200 pixels differs in some respects from the Galaxy Fold. Both are amazingly sharp when playing 1440p videos, with the Mate Xs again showing a little more liveliness than its competitors, but missing some of the richer, more natural tones. The unfolded Mate Xs offer you a fantastic video experience, but with black bars above and below the picture.

I can live with the black bars, but not with the Mate X's frankly terrible speaker. It's a single speaker on one side of the device, and it can't come close to the excellent audio experience of the Galaxy Fold and most other flagship phones. It's a big disappointment for such an expensive video focus device.

Samsung Galaxy Fold (left), Huawei Mate Xs (right) Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

Since the phone only consists of screens with partially deactivated areas when folded, some problems with touch sensitivity occur when using the phone in the closed landscape format. Buttons near the fold may stop responding until you adjust your touch point, and scrubbing through videos can be frustratingly difficult to activate. However, there is no such problem on all other sides of the phone.

Visually, the Mate Xs with its beautiful, perfectly calibrated screen exceeds expectations, but due to the poor audio experience it does not become a dream partner for mobile films.

camera

There are four camera sensors on the Mate X, all of which are positioned in the side rail on the back of the phone. The main lens has 40 megapixels and an aperture of 1: 1.8 and is complemented by an ultra-wide 16 megapixel lens, an 8 megapixel telephoto lens and a flight time sensor.

You won't find a dedicated selfie camera with the main lenses doing selfie tasks as you turn the phone. This will activate the screen on the back so you can see what's going on. It's a clever, simple solution and can be used when taking photos of other people so they can review their pose.

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

The camera can be used with the screen open or closed, and the app interface is changed to be more suitable for the larger screen. The app offers a wide-angle shooting mode, a 3x optical zoom and a 5x hybrid zoom. There is also Huawei's night mode, both portrait and aperture mode for images with a bokeh effect, as well as a macro mode.

Up to 4K 60fps can be recorded for videos. Huawei collaborates with Leica on its cameras, and there are several Leica camera modes to choose from that work similar to conventional filters and give photos a unique Leica look.

I love the photos taken with the Mate Xs. The color balance, vibrancy, details and tone are expertly assessed to ensure that the scenes have atmosphere and emotions. The Leica filters can be cumbersome, but when used carefully they give nice results. Edge detection in portrait and aperture modes is excellent, and even super macro mode works well. 3x and 5x zoom shots are great, but the 50x digital zoom is only for display because the photos taken are pixelated.

Above all, I like the reliability. Regardless of the situation, I know that the Mate Xs will make a great, usable photo for me. The lack of a selfie camera is a problem: there is no face unlock on the Mate Xs. The power switch on the side has a fingerprint sensor that is relatively fast and reliable. However, I miss the convenience of face unlocking, especially when there are problems with notifications that I'll talk about next.

Given Huawei's track record with cameras since the P20 Pro, it should come as no surprise that the Mate X's camera works so well. Quality is one thing, but I also think that the different modes, the artificial intelligence and the simplicity of the app increase my creativity so much that I just like to take photos with the phone to see what I can get. For me, this is the hallmark of a great camera.

Software and connection

Google Mobile Services (GMS) is not installed on the Mate Xs. Therefore, you need to use the Huawei App Gallery, Amazon App Store or APK files to transfer your favorite apps to the device. I've tried a few workarounds to get GMS on the Mate Xs, but none of the easy routes work, and although there are more technical routes that work, they may have questionable effects on the phone. I found that the more apps I installed from alternative sources, the less reliable the app became.

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

Using the methods above, I installed most of the apps I need. However, for almost all Google services you need to use a browser. I chose Firefox so that I can easily sync all my bookmarks with Chrome, although you can install Chrome with an APK, just like with Google Maps. The problem with this, however, is that you can't sign in to your Google Account to use saved places or bookmarks.

There is another problem with downloading apps from the Amazon App Store and APK files that has to do with notification support. It's random at best, as the Mate Xs almost never provide Twitter or Messenger notifications.

The usually reliable Huawei email client became problematic even after a software update and often refused to sync my Exchange account. I could use WhatsApp, but not with my chat history. What was worse was that Line Messenger, an app that I use a lot, does not work and there is no mobile payment system. The app situation on the Mate Xs and P40 is so complex that I wrote a completely separate article about it.

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

Another annoying change is the inability to use an app drawer on the Mate Xs. This is not the case with the Huawei P40 or any other EMUI 10-based phone I use. However, there is no alternative here to distribute all of your apps across multiple home screens. The software is sometimes unreliable. Some apps can only be opened after the phone has been restarted, and the search function in the settings does not always work.

Finally, the Today pop-up is not very helpful. It only contains a few shortcuts, the screen time and a list of messages. Even worse, all messages came from sources behind a paywall, making them completely useless for those without a subscription. Coincidentally (or not) the stories from news UK publications, a group that recently partnered with Huawei to add their apps to the App Gallery, have been merged.

What about the good things? EMUI 10.1, based on Open Source Android 10, is smooth and fast, and tailored to make switching between screens on the Mate X seamless and comfortable. It works really well. Regardless of whether you expand the "Settings" window, the e-mail client or the browser, it is adapted immediately and attractively, so that you have more screen space and more control. The gesture control system also responds. I like the indicators on the sides of the screen that indicate that your swipe gesture has been recognized, and the system-wide dark mode looks brilliant.

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

Huawei's multitasking is also top notch. Swipe and hold the page for a second to bring up a quick launch bar with apps. Then drag the displayed apps. If you simply tap an app in the bar, it will appear as a floating window.

The large, square screen is very suitable for productivity. The SwiftKey keyboard is standard, but Gboard can be installed as an alternative. I don't like SwiftKey because of its massive keys, desperation to register, and crowded keyboard layout.

However, it does have a split screen where the thumb can be entered when the screen is open that Gboard doesn't have, so I have to use it more often. However, the split screen has to be activated manually and won't return to normal view when you close the phone – another thing you should hate about SwiftKey.

Unfortunately, the software on the Mate Xs frustrated me more than on other Huawei phones, including the new Huawei P40. Some changes felt like a step backwards while others still felt like a work-in-progress, making me less willing to accept the changes I need to make to live without access to Google Play. While Huawei can't fix this aspect of the Mate Xs, the other parts are in good control and can change with future software updates.

Battery and power

Inside is a Kirin 990 chipset with an integrated 5G modem, 8 GB RAM and 512 GB storage space as well as a second 4G SIM slot. A 4,500 mAh battery supplies the Mate Xs with power and is charged using the supplied 55 W charger, which, however, cannot be charged wirelessly. The superb SuperCharge system fully charged the battery in 55 minutes after 30 minutes to reach 80%. With a few photos, games, surfing and about 30 minutes of video, the battery has enough power to last a whole day.

I was able to perform the following benchmarking tests based on the apps available to me. The results show that it is next to the LG G8X dual screen, but far behind powerhouses like the Galaxy Note 10 Plus. The results come from apps that are not available in the app gallery, which may have affected the results. In my opinion, this does not show the absolute performance of the Kirin 990, which has proven to be strong and fast in every situation.

3DMark 2,791 (volcano)

Geekbench 5: 2693 multi-core, 761 single-core

Games play well and the Mate Xs has effective cooling so the phone doesn't get hot. In contrast to the Galaxy Fold, games can be played with the phone folded or opened. However, note that when playing some games on the larger screen, some cropping takes place due to the aspect ratio. This is noticeable in asphalt legends and games like Hill Climb Racer. but not for games with vertical alignment like Cut the Rope 2.

Andy Boxall / DigitalTrends

Network reception and performance are often only mentioned when it comes to garbage. However, the Mate Xs should be recognized for their first-class ability to receive a signal. Switching from the Galaxy Fold with poor reception shows how much better the integrated 5G modem can detect a 5G signal. The reception is great across the board. The 4G performance in my region is significantly better than some other phones.

Price, availability and guarantee

The Huawei Mate Xs costs £ 2,300, which is around $ 2,750. It is available through Huawei itself, Carphone Warehouse and in a contract with Three UK. Huawei grants a two-year warranty in the UK. The Mate Xs is not sold in the United States, but can be bought as an import.

Our opinion

The Mate Xs is almost the most expensive smartphone from a mainstream manufacturer that you can buy today. The cost can be justified in part by the amount of cutting-edge technology in terms of design, screen, and hinge, but is much more difficult to justify when considering software vulnerabilities and audio trash. The Mate Xs is impressively versatile, has a strong battery and performance, a beautiful screen and is equipped with an excellent camera. This makes it a great everyday companion that is fun.

Is there a better alternative?

The next competitor is the Samsung Galaxy Fold, valued at $ 1,900. It can be folded inwards rather than outwards. Although there is an outer display, it is too small to be used for much more than displaying notifications or Google Maps. However, it does have Google Mobile Services on board, the camera is also very good, and the audio is better than that of the Mate Xs. On the other hand, it's not only flawed because of the outer screen, but also because of its bulky design. The Huawei Mate Xs is the better folding phone.

If you just want a big screen smartphone, the 6.4-inch Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is $ 1,400 and the 6.5-inch iPhone 11 Pro Max is $ 1,100. I would probably go for the $ 1,100 Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus, which offers many features of the S20 Ultra as well as the S Pen pen at a cheaper price.

The Huawei Mate Xs is the better folding phone.

If you boast with a folding phone and want to spend less, the $ 1,400 Galaxy Z Flip is another option, though again, this is a different offer than the Mate Xs because it has a normal 6.5-inch screen, which can be halved for easy transportation and convenience.

If you want something bizarre, check out the cheaper LG G8X Dual Screen, which offers some great multitasking benefits, is a lot harder than the Mate Xs, and also has a great price.

How long it will take?

The Mate Xs isn't waterproof, so you need to be careful with it, and you'll likely be concerned about the screen's durability, despite Huawei's assurances that it's more robust than the first-generation model. Treat it badly and it will likely get scratched, but that's true of almost every phone. Huawei regularly provides updates for EMUI, but it is not known how long it will take for Android 11 or higher to appear on a current Huawei phone.

If you buy it now, you have one of the most modern, futuristic smartphones currently available, and this ensures that it stays fresh and powerful for many years. Huawei has numerous software and hardware improvements that ensure that the software runs smoothly and the capacity of the battery is optimally used.

Yes, you will spend a fortune to get one. Assuming you can now live with the lack of Google Apps, the Mate Xs will serve you very well in the coming years. During this time, Huawei promises improvements to the app gallery so that it could become more accessible to international audiences in the coming months.

Should you buy it

No, but not for the reasons you might think. The lack of Google Apps is a problem, especially when you're deep in the Google ecosystem. However, for many people, little adjustment may be required to cope with it on a daily basis. Instead, it is other aspects of the Mate Xs that make it difficult to recommend. The audio is disappointing, and the unreliable software doesn't meet my expectations for Huawei, so it doesn't live up to the expectations you'd get after paying the extremely high price.

Editor's recommendations

[manojvarmaposts-blog]

It’s A Time To Give A Review Of Tablet For New Lenovo Tab P10

The Lenovo Tab P10 is an affordable Android tablet that turns into an Alexa smart speaker with a display when docked with an optional speaker dock

What Is The Lenovo Tab P10?

The Lenovo Tab P10 injects new life into the standard concept of tablets. It's a fairly typical Android tablet - not an tab challenger. However, when connected to the included speaker dock, the device converts to a large-screen Alexa smart speaker.

It's the smart home center in the kitchen; the classic time-wasting tablet in the living room.

Neither of these parts sets any new standards in their respective fields, but the neat implementation makes the Lenovo Tab P10 worth considering. Yes, buy the Kindle Fire HD and the better-sounding wireless speakers for £250, for £100. However, you will miss the relative elegance offered here. Tablets also have some features that are missing from the Kindle Fire HD 10.

Lenovo Tab P10 - Design

The Lenovo Tab P10 looks and feels higher than Online competitors. Its back and front are flat glass panes with aluminum sandwiches in the middle. The structure is similar to the more expensive Samsung Galaxy Tab S4.

This is a classic widescreen tablet designed for landscape use. Of course, nothing prevents you from using it in a portrait mode. If you want to read an article or a graphic novel on the Lenovo Tab P10 then you should do so. However, please note that it is not as heavy as the iPad.

Like most Android tablets, the key to enjoying the Lenovo Tab P10 is "Don't expect the iPad."

Insert the tablet into the top. The plastic guide keeps the Lenovo Tab P10 at a slight angle and the plastic bracket at the bottom prevents the speaker base from tipping over. On the other hand, this may end up being a cumbersome gimmick, but Lenovo has more experience in integrating digital assistants with devices like tablets than anyone else. It makes Smart Display the center of the Google Assistant.

When you insert the screen into the dock, the Lenovo Tab P10 switches to the Alexa display, which loops through the most recent titles and sets the dock's microphone to listen for voice commands. You can interact with it just like you would with an Echo smart speaker. Alexa skills, like the online Voice Assistant app, work great. Obviously, the standard requirements for music and fluffy trivia are also valid.

Lenovo tried to reconstruct the sensitivity of the Echo speaker using three far-field microphone arrays. However, it is not as sensitive as Echo; you need to be fairly clear and the volume is right.

But it does work, especially if you plan to use the Lenovo Tab P10 like me, you can honing on the kitchen bench to listen to podcasts and music while cooking. The sound quality is not very good, but it performs better than Echo Dot and has the power needed to make music workable.

There is a reasonable bass, enough volume to compete with the extractor fan, humming the microwave and other various kitchen sounds. The Lenovo Tab P10 base can also be used alone, as it operates in a surprising way.

Small metal contacts connect the base to the tablet, but this greatly shifts the power supply. The audio connection is actually done via Bluetooth. When the cradle sits alone, you can connect your phone and listen to music in this way.

The volume and Bluetooth buttons are at the top.

Lenovo Tab P10 - Display

The Lenovo Tab P10 has a 10.1-inch, 1920 x 1200-pixel screen. At this size, you can see clear pixelation if remotely turned off. But if you don't spend more, you won't be more acute.

According to their own advantages, Android tablets are difficult to compete with the iPad.

However, this is a pretty good monitor for what is a mid-range tablet. The color is so colorful that the red color of the YouTube logo is almost lifelike. The maximum brightness is also very good. I think this is a "home" tablet, but the backlight is bright enough to handle outdoor activities.

The rugged IPS panel means that the Lenovo Tab P10 has no angle viewing. The fingerprint scanner is located below the display, allowing you to log in securely without a password or password.

Lenovo Tab P10 - Software

Lenovo successfully refreshed the tablet concept by merging it with the smart assistant. However, Lenovo Tab P10 software is not so new. It runs Android 8.1.0 instead of the current Android 9.0.

However, this does not seem to be a huge loss for the tablet. The Digital Wellness feature lets you monitor when your app is used, which is the most compelling new feature in Android 9.0. The problem with tablets is that people have stopped using them, instead of using them like mobile phones.

First of all, the Lenovo Tab P10 seems to use a simple, if not inspired, custom interface. It's just Android, because you see it on your phone and don't take advantage of the larger screen area. However, drill down into the Settings menu and you'll find the tablet-specific mode.

It is called productivity. This will add a sliver at the bottom of the screen. It saves thumb-friendly soft keys and all applications in the multitasking menu as icons. This did not significantly change Android. It just pastes another interface. However, it does make the app switch easier and faster.

Lenovo Tab P10 - Performance

The Lenovo Tab P10 has 3GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 450 CPU, the same as the Moto G7. This is more powerful than the Samsung Galaxy Tab A and Huawei MediaPad M3 Lite processors.

However, the performance is not perfect and is slightly worse than my expectations for the processor. There are no real devastating problems, but the online Tab P10 is usually a bit slow when exiting standby or occasionally switching between applications.

Considering that Android phones with the same CPU feel a bit of a hassle, this may improve with software updates - if Lenovo releases it.

Game performance prices are solid, but apparently comparable to high-end Android tablets or "basic" 9.7-inch iPads. You can play Ark: Survival Evolved but it only allows you to use "low" graphic presets. PUBG can only be played with "low" visual effects. The older Asphalt 8 works fine under the "high" graphics settings, but falling to the level below gives the game the smoothness it really needs to shine.

Many of Android's best games won't make the Lenovo Tab P10 nervous, but if you're passionate about games that look like AAA console games, keep in mind that the big screen highlights the visual clips needed to make them run perfectly. Lenovo Tab P10 has 32GB of storage space, although not very generous, but for many games is enough. There is also a microSD card slot.

The four-way speaker is one of the main features of the Lenovo Tab P10 tablet. They all sit in front: when the table is in the landscape, two are at the top and the other two are at the bottom.

However, they are a bit disappointed. Although you can get stereo sound and feel the audio coming from your head instead of a point, the best tablet speakers have little extra volume or bass. It sounds very thin. They do not provide the performance expected of a four-drive array.

Lenovo Tab P10 - Battery Life

The Lenovo Tab P10 has a 7000mAh battery, about 10% more than a Kindle Fire HD 10 battery. According to 2014 Mobile mark test results, Lenovo said it will last for 15 hours - this is a fairly old benchmark. How to use it on Android devices is also a mystery. This is Windows software.

To further understand the battery life, I set it to stream long video. For six hours, about 60% of the brightness consumes 50% of the electricity. Let it continue to play for two hours and see that the drain continues to maintain the same speed, which indicates that the Lenovo Tab P10 will last 12 hours of streaming video.

This is similar to the endurance of the iPad Pro. In other words, if it's not a 15-hour statement, that would be great.

Use the speaker stand to purchase the Lenovo Tab P10, which ideally requires charging on the base. The tablet has a USB-C port, but the base uses a cylindrical power plug. You need to pick up another power adapter to charge separately because you get a cable but no separate power box.

Lenovo Tab P10 - Camera

Like most tablets, the Lenovo Tab P10 has a basic camera. There is an 8 megapixel sensor on the back of the device and a 5 megapixel unit on the front.

It has an HDR mode, but you have to open it manually, it is very slow. Standard lenses are much faster, but because the hardware is not very good, using HDR will get better results.

Image quality is best passed. Even with HDR, the dynamic range is limited, some tones are muted, and there is a lot of purple distortion. However, the Lenovo Tab P10's rear camera does have autofocus, so it's not basic at the bottom; the camera I've seen on the tablet is much worse.

Still, if you have a good budget call or a better budget call, then it will need a better image.

Here are some images taken with the Lenovo Tab P10 :

Why buy Lenovo Tab P10?

The Lenovo Tab P10 itself is not a perfect replacement for the iPad. It's not that powerful, and the overall feeling is a bit slow.

However, it is a reliable replacement for the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 10. It sounds better than a tablet with a Show Mode charging dock and has a more stylish glass and metal construction. But most importantly, it has more traditional software - not the hegemony of the Amazon Fire OS.

verdict

Lenovo showed off one in the tablet and smart speakers, injecting more life into the tablet concept.

  Are you looking for the best tablet repair centre in the UK? Then look no further visit www.tabletrepairer.co.uk

[ecotone99]

[SF] My first short story: ERS 176-0505/013

Disclaimer: I am not a native speaker. I have been learning English for ~10 years. For the last 6 years it is an integral part of my day-to-day life. But it might show at some points.

CnC welcome!

The automated checklist only found two issues. Remarkably few for a transport of this age. The backup starboard data bus had a connection issue and one of the xenon tanks is losing some pressure again. Nothing too serious. It‘d be enough for the departure burn. After that, I‘ll pump the remaining fuel into other tanks. I will have to take a look at that data bus issue in a few days anyway and while there I can check on that tank. When I arrive at the science station at Mars L2 I‘ll either know which replacement parts to get or have fixed the issue. Knowing my technical skills: Probably the former.

The departure burn will take almost an hour. The acceleration is barely noticeable. No wonder with my decades-old half eroded ion engines pushing 56 standardized interlocking space transport containers (SISTCs). The computer ignites the engines automatically at the correct point in time. The only reasons humans are still present in spaceflight is because we are pretty darn good at fixing problems and improvising and even the best computers are not. Remote control is not an option either, due to the speed of light delaying communication. It is going to be a long flight. About 260 days. There are a few other cargo ships using the Earth-Mars transfer window today. The next time a transfer will be this cheap is in two years. So I could chat with those. But most of the pilots are annoying idiots. I prefer solitude anyway. You kind of have to. The flight would be unbearable otherwise. I could watch the movies being broadcast over the solar system. I definitely will. As always. But I decided to read more. So I downloaded a whole bunch of books. I actually brought some of the expensive physical ones. I once considered bringing a cat. But most adapt poorly to the lack of gravity and their hairs clog the air filters. And the naked ones look like I imagine aliens looked if they existed. Also, their food costs too much money for me to afford. So I lean back into my gravity couch, pull one of the monitors towards my face from what could be considered above my head and open up the first book. I feel at home here. I love my ship. I have never given it a name, even though I have lived here for years. I mean it has a name. “ERS 176-0505/013”. One of the previous owners had called it “Hercules”. It is written on some of the inventory badges and previously the outside of the ship, although that has been painted over by another – or the same – previous owner. The computer informs me that one of the engines is slightly underperforming, extending the burn another 6 minutes and leading to a 13% reduction in my fuel margin. But there is nothing I can do about that now. It’ll be fine.

It has been 28 earth days since my departure. Well, my sleep cycle extended, so it has been more like 20 days for me. The data bus issue just magically resolved itself. I have no clue what it could have been. I thought it was a stuck bit due to the Van Allen radiation in one of the container’s interface controllers. I have no clue where that container had been previously. But these don’t usually fix themselves. I am no engineer.

FUCK. Something just happened. We are just over the halfway point. In case you were wondering. The ship just shook. It is not supposed to do that. It is supposed to stay basically motionless throughout the entire transfer. Something just got fucked. One of the SISTCs sends an error message over the bus. “TSCE-0451”. Very descriptive. I check the transport manual of that container. Wow. It is the top secret one. Second from the back. I scroll through the pages. Destination. Legal shit. Acceleration limits. Handling instructions. Error codes... 451... “Breach of main pressure vessel”. That does not sound good. “Material: Unspecified [Non-corrosive]”. That’s at least something. I am pulling down the digital periscope. The crew “department” (room really) is at the very front of the ship. It is shaped more or less like a cube with things sticking out. I am looking along the two rows of containers locked into one another. At the very end of the ship, there is the drive section containing most of the tanks, a small reactor, and the engines. I zoom in on the periscope. I can see the leak. A white container on the very back has a cone-shaped white plume coming out of a valve integrated into the shell. SHIT. This is gonna throw me off course. I am gonna miss Mars by gigameters or even worse crash into it. I hit some buttons on a touch screen to turn back on tracking on the ship to determine the course. The maneuvering thrusters should be able to handle that. Only a fraction of a meter per second difference. What does the manual say on how to seal the leak? Go out there and close a valve manually‽ Are they kidding? Why is that not motorized? Shit.

I started cleaning up all the loose stuff floating around the cabin and packing it into random pressurized and unpressurized lockers. I should have really taken more care of the cabin. I never thought I’d need it. I knew there could always be a situation where I’d have to depressurize the cabin with only little preparation time. Like, as an abstract concept. My previous EVAs had always been planned. Not now. And it had to happen quickly. Wrappers. Unused underwear. Tools. Detachable tablets and other devices not in their correct slots. Where does that screw belong? It’s not important right now. I unhook the rubber bands holding the spacesuit inside the little niche in front of the hatch. How I hate this thing. It is probably even older than the ship. The inside reeks of other people’s sweat. All the rubber joints that have probably never ever been very loose have hardened over time. It also has quite a lot of technical issues. One of the helmet lights is broken and I don’t think anyone manufactures these bulbs anymore. Worst of all: The backup oxygen scrubber has been clogged for as long as I had had that suit. So if the main one blows I’m screwed. I have to contort myself to get into the suit. It was made for people of a totally different build. After minutes of struggling, I finally get in the suit sealed up. I turn off the safeties and depressurize the cabin.

Two minutes later the green lamp lights up and I can pull the rectangular hatch into the cabin. I stick my head out into space. The sun is blinding without an atmosphere in the way. I look down the length of the narrow ship. I cannot even see the leak from here. It is hundreds of meters away at the end of a seemingly endless chain of SISTCs. I hook my safety carabiner into a wire on the outside of the cabin and grip the first handrail. This is going to take a while. I sigh and turn on the audio newsfeed broadcast all the time. I have a button set up for that on my underarm display. Nothing interesting seems to be going on outside of my little ship. I reach the first container, hook my safety tether to the handrail running down the SISTC and push myself along its edge. NOVASTEEL INDUSTRIES. Never heard of them. Probably some low-end asteroid ores. I should really have read the cargo manifest.

Parallel to the handrail, there are a few tubes and wires. Not in any sort of casing since this is pretty much the cheapest SISTC you can get. They carry power and oxygen from the reactor in the back to the front where the cabin is. Each SISTC interfaces with the next and thus provides a continuous system. The containers can also tap into the power and gas supply. Some are pressurized with nitrogen to not expose their contents to the vacuum of space. The faulty container seems to tap into the ship’s oxygen supply. I am losing pressure in that system since the malfunction half an hour ago. And apparently there only is a manual valve connecting it to the main pipe. Those things should be illegal. I should have locked down the port side oxygen pipe and hoped that I can resolve the issue before anything in the other containers gets damaged from a lack of oxygen. Well, it is too late now. The text to speech voice on the newsfeed calmly informs me that an iron refinery on Mars had a minor meltdown with no casualties. Nothing really too important.

I reach the faulty SISTC. There is an access panel near the leak. I rip it open. The panel is not hinged and floats off into space. Shit. A tiny monitor displays the same error code I got in the cabin. I think. Or at least something similar. There are a bunch of valves. I start turning the one labeled “oxygen master valve”. The venting stops after a few seconds. What caused that malfunction anyways? I open up a bigger panel on the side of the container. Carefully this time. The inside of the container looks like the engineering section of a spaceship. There are wires and pipes running everywhere, connecting tanks and computers housed inside. Way too many LEDs blinking in different colors. Can anyone actually tell anything about the status of the payload by looking at these? I think not. At the core of the container is another huge pressure vessel illuminated by my helmet light. I recognize this. It is a modified livestock transporter. What the frack‽ I don’t ever transport living things. I don’t even have a license to do that. I am going to report this first thing when I get back! Frustrated I close up the access panel and turn the handle to lock it into place.

While I am back here I might as well check on the xenon tank issue. I make my way over the last container to the engine section. One of the peripheral tanks used during refueling or fuel pumping indicates an issue with a red LED. I examine it closely. One of the connecting hoses became brittle and has tiny cracks. Maybe I can just get that hose replaced. It might be cheaper than replacing the entire tank. So I can make my way back. I turn around. Did I not lock the access panel on that faulty SISTC? For some reason it has swung open again, suspending the door into the void of space. Something else appears to be there. Dark tentacles, barely contrasting with the blackness of space behind. One of them opening the hatch to its fullest. They push against the walls of the SISTC and something massive starts to pull itself out of livestock transporter, extending some if its tentacles towards me.

submitted by /u/Kamik423 [link] [comments] via Blogger http://bit.ly/2VhjhCx

[suhelk]

Samsung Galaxy S9 Unlocked Smartphone - US Warranty

  #galaxys9  #samsungunpacked  #samsungnews  #SamsungSOTD #SamsungSOTD     #Note9  #GalaxyNote9  #GalaxyS9  #S9   #ticket  #s9 #Android #Samsung  #S9 #purple

This phone is truly a work of art. When you first peel off the cover, the phone feels and looks like the most high end of products. It really is a gorgeous device. In a smartphone, there are 3 main features that I look for: screen, camera and various features. I have a more extensive list but basically, the S9 checks every box and fulfills almost every single piece of criteria that I look for. Display So let's talk about the screen. This is arguably the most prominent part of the S9. At 6.2 inches and a 1440p resolution, you will not be disappointed. Using the phone is a blast with everything much larger it almost feels like a small tablet and really makes for a satisfying experience. The screen is also OLED which means each pixel lights itself up which makes for amazing viewing angles and a beautiful image. This also allows for features like always on display which only lights the pixles that display time when the phone is asleep. There aren't really any phones that can even touch the S9 except maybe the iPhone X. But even then you have the notch and a significantly smaller screen. So good screen? No, the best screen. Camera The second aspect that I will focus on is my favorite part of the phone: the cameras. This is the first S series phone t ok implement the dual camera system and it really is nice to get a telephoto lens at the press of a button. But the telephoto lens is trivial on comparison to what else Samsubg has done with their cameras. First of all that have implemented a feature entirely new to the smartphone world: a variable aperture lens. If you aren't a camera person this may not mean anything to you but it is a big deal. See, a camera lens on a smartphone typically has a fixed f stop, or how wide open the lens is. However, Samsung has managed to install a tiny ring around the camera to switch the aperture so as the let more or less light in. This makes for better performance in really bright or dark scenes. The second big camera feature is the slow motion capability. The S9 can record video at 960 frames per second. This means you can record video at 30 times slower than normal speed. However, that slow of video would typically take up lots of storage and be very difficult to process so what Samsung has done is made the slow motion capture when it detects movement and only for a short amount of time. This may seem like a big trade off but the feature works well and is a big step in smartphone cameras. As far as the camera goes there are a few more points I want to touch on. First is that it records 4k video at 60 fps which is impressive. Samsung also implemented their own version of animogies which are kind of creepy and none will really use them but they are there so that's cool I guess. There is also a slow motion mode which is 240 frames per second at 1080p which is pretty good. Everything else is as expected for a Samsung phone and is one of the best cameras on a smartphone. However, I do have a few complaints. First, the rear sensor is still 12 megapixels which is good but they have had that for quite a few years and they really should give the camera an increase in megapixels. I also wish Samsung would have opted for a monochrome sensor instead of telephoto but that is a pretty complaint with all the other amazing camera features considered. Basically this is another feature of the phone that is the king in the smartphone market with competitors only in the iPhone X and Google Pixel. Now onto everything else. Personally when I buy a phone I need waterproofing which the S9 has. It also has new audio which I appreciate very much. The phone has the bottom speaker as normal but also uses the phones earpiece as a tweeter if sports for the high end. It really sounds very good. It may not be as good as the Razer Phone or Google Pixel but still sounds great with a surprising amount of low end and highs that get a little crunchy but not to bad. Overall, very good speakers. With these new speakers is the inclusion of Dolby Atmos. This is a really cool audio feature that makes audio sound so much better. Basically what Atmos is is an audio system that places sounds in 3D space so you can hear audio in a 3D space. It is really an immersive experience with the included headphones. Let's talk about those. Samsung had the AKG earbuds with the S8 but this is my first time using them. For included earbuds, they are amazing. They have very good bass and highs. They are very clear and are pleasurable to listen to. But they are earbuds so they do get uncomfortable after a while but that include interchangeable eartips so they can be as comfortable as possible. Samsung has really perfected their audio and it really impressed me. A couple other cool features are a working, but kind of impractical iris and face scanner, quick fingerprint reader, USB C, all the useful features of android, a headphone jack (we are in 2018 where most phones don't have them), and much more. The list goes on and on. I really don't have anything bad to say about the S9. Really the only thing is that is is kind of hard to hold, it being all glass makes it slippery. The second to last question I would like to address those who are debating the S9 verses the S8. The only thing you need to consider is the camera. If you want a phenomenal camera, go with the S9. If you don't, go with the S8. Either is an excellent choice. Finally there is only one barrier between you and your S9: money. Yes it is cheaper than the iPhone X but not by a whole lot. The plus model is $840 and the normal one is $740. This is quite a lot of money for a phone. But is that all smartphones are? No. The cameras alone are almost reaching DSLR territory and they are also capable gaming devices. Smartphones are most peoples computers. If you purchase the S9, you are buying much more than a phone which is why I believe that if you have the money, it is worth it. So in the end would I recommend the S9? Absolutely and unequivocally yes. It is the best smartphone you can buy. Read the full article

[ifind-recovery-blog]

How to recover files on windows 10 data recovery software

https://www.ifind-recovery.com

1．Summary data recovery software, Now that the computer has become an indispensable item in life and office work, almost any work has its existence, and the Windows system also upgrades from XP to Win7 to Win8 to now Win10. With the upgrade of the system, many problems have emerged endlessly. Many of my friends often mistakenly deleted Windows files when using the Win 10. They wanted to recover files but found that the recycle bin was empty. This article provides solutions for friends who encounter this dilemma and tells you how to recover lost files under win10 system. 2．The main reason for file loss Free Photo Recovery Software, According to the author's experience, the main reasons for the loss of win10 system files are: 1 Partition Formatted: In order to maintain the normal operation of the computer, we often format the hard disk partition to delete th wrong file. But this time there will be a problem, that is, too many file files in the partition, and sometimes forget to delete some useful files. 2 Virus Attack: We usually use the computer may find the file is inexplicably lost, and finally found the virus inside the computer with antivirus , is likely to result in a virus attack. 3 Operating System Crash: When the computer is under heavy load for a long time, it is easy to overheat and cause problems on the computer. At this time, it is very easy to cause the risk of the operating system crashing, resulting in the loss of files. 4 Partition Lass: Since the operation of creating a hard disk partition involves the data activity of the hard disk itself, if an error occurs in the process, it may cause the loss of files in the hard disk partition. 5 Device Not Recognized: Sometimes due to some urgent things, we may directly remove the mobile hard disk that is in use. This will cause the removable hard disk to be inserted into the unrecognizable, which is also a kind of file loss. 6 Card Unreadable: Losing all photos on the SD card may be disturbing. Everything can now be stored on SD cards, from photos to important sensitive data. However, like any other electronic storage device, photos can disappear in some way or the SD card suddenly appears unreadable. 7 Recycle bin empty: Some friends in life often take a long time to work, making their own rest time less lead to lack of concentration, accidentally delete all important data, and directly empty the recycle bin. This situation is something we do not want to see. In fact, for computers, all the stored data is stored in the hard disk, so the files in the computer are all placed on the hard disk. What kind of hard disk is it? In fact, the internal hard disk of the computer is what we usually see. C disk, d disk, e disk, etc., the specific hard disk partition according to each computer, each system is different, some computers can be separated from the f disk, h disk, and some computers are only a simple two or three disks. In the process of using a computer, we always encounter the situation where the loss of system files causes the computer to malfunction. This article explains how to handle computer files when they are lost. 3．Win10 main features usb data recovery software, Win10 seems to be an upgraded version of win8, compared to the win8 system to bring a lot of improvements, but also brought a lot of new features. The following is a summary of the author's new features on Windows 10. 1 For desktop users, Microsoft restored the original start menu and integrated the "start interface" in the Windows 8.x system into the menu. The Modern application (or Windows Store application) allows the desktop to run in windowed mode and use Win7's Aero Snap mode for side and full-screen attachment. 2 The Charm Bar on the right side of the desktop is still retained, while the left side slides into the desktop and the quota changes to multi-task preview that attempts to quickly select and switch between applications that you want to use with the current task. In addition, the user can also perform a global search of local or online content at the bottom of the Start menu (consistent with Windows 7). 3 The new generation of Windows 10 is turned on by default and directs users to use the “workspace” (traditionally named “virtual desktop”) feature. This feature was implemented in the Windows XP era until Windows 10 mentioned higher user priorities. Users can run custom group applications on different desktops to facilitate switching between different scenarios and usage requirements. 4 The two-in-one variant includes surface and other devices with a dedicated desktop form. Under this mode, the Modern interface, start menu, and power options will coexist in the form of resident forms and the taskbar, and will be presented directly on the desktop. 5 Microsoft uses Windows 10 as a unified brand name covering all categories and sizes of Windows devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, etc., to achieve windows one. After introducing the new features of the win 10 system, the author then introduced a new free windows 10 data recovery software to everyone, telling everyone how to effectively reply to the missing files. First attach a download link for this free product: https://www.ifind-recovery.com/. 4．Procedures to use sd card recovery windows, The first step: Select the function: Lost File Recovery: This feature is for file recovery on an existing partition. This partition may be destroyed or formatted, or the file may be deleted. Lost Partition Recovery: This function is to restore the partition after the partition is deleted or lost, and then recover the data on the partition. Scan Result List: This function can save your every scan result. You can choose any scan result to recover the above file, which can save you a lot of time. Step 2: Select the partition to be restored: All the partitions will be listed here. Select the partition to be restored and click ‘’scan”. If you do not find the partition you need to recover, you can try the computer to reconnect the device and click “Refresh”. Step 3: Scanning: This page shows the process being scanned, and you can decide 1: stop, 2: pause, and you can see the various real-time information scanned. 1: Cancel: Click this button, the program will terminate the ongoing scanning process, and return to the device selection page of the second step, please click carefully. 2: Pause: Click this button. The program will pause the scanning process and display the found files. If you don't want to wait until the scan is over, you will know if you have found the file you need. Click this button. At any time, you can click the 'Resume' button to continue scanning. 3: This place will display the number of files found in real time. From top to bottom, all the files, pictures , media, compression, and documents are listed in order. Step 4: This place will show the found file. 1: If you do not find the file you need, click "Resume" button to continue scanning until you find the file you need. 2: If you find a file that you need to restore, click the "Recover" button, then select a local disk location, save the file you found to the local. Be careful not to save to the partition to be restored. The above is what the author introduced for you - super useful Win10 system free data recovery operation tutorial. After many comparisons, I strongly recommend this free data recovery software. ifinddata recovery is really a good free data recovery software that is very suitable for win10 system.

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[catsynth-express]

Forced Togetherness Fridays: Open Floor Plans and Sexism

[By Mozilla in Europe (Flickr: London Workspace) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

Open floor plans are de rigeur in the high-tech industry, but they have also become trendy of late in other industries as well.  The are loved by some, hated by others. On a purely aesthetic level, I quite like open-floor-plan spaces.  After all, CatSynth HQ is a two-level open-plan space.  When they are modern, with lots of light, air, glass and metal, they can be quite beautiful and inviting.  The example from Mozilla’s UK office that opens this article is one such example.  On the other hand, some can just be boring and utilitarian, as if someone just took an old office space and knocked out some walls.

[By Benn (https://www.flickr.com/photos/benn/196447297/) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

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Aesthetics aside, the problems with open plans aren’t the spaces themselves.  It’s what happens when you put a lot of people in them.  For some, a busilling hive of activity with constant access to other people can be a boon, but for many is a source of intense anxiety and can feel even more confining than a small private office.

The problems of open office spaces can be especially challenging for women.  As reported in this article in Fast Co Design, the open design combined with everyday sexism can exacerbate the difficulties or challenges that women face in the workplace:

Fascinatingly, the study did not start out as an examination of gender specifically–it was meant as an examination of how workplace culture shifts when office design changes radically. It was only when Hirst, who conducted interviews on-site and spent a lot of time observing the workplace, began to feel pressure to dress in a more feminine way herself that she began to wonder about it. “She was surprised by the unusual amount of care she took over her own appearance, a degree of self-consciousness that she found burdensome as time progressed,” the researchers write. “To ‘fit in’ with the modern, clean aesthetic of the building itself and a dress code that was widely adopted, she departed from her usual preference for wearing jeans and no makeup; adopting a smart trouser suit and putting on makeup.”

Many of the examples in the main article as well as a follow-up featuring stories from readers focus on the extra pressure women feel about their appearances in these environments.  Interestingly, my own experience is somewhat different, but retains the overall sense of pressure.  I usually dress up and always wear makeup for the office, because I enjoy it and it makes me feel good.  But I do feel very self conscious in the open spaces in different ways.  First, I am worried about how mistakes or faux pas may be visible.  And in the world of high-tech, the almost religious embrace of casualness and the way many men, even in leadership, treat their slovenly appearance as a badge of strength or honor, can add subtle pressure.  As a woman, does one fit in, trying to be “one of the guys”, or be oneself and stand out in the sea of casualness?  I could write an entire article just about attire and dress codes – and I will – but there are other forms of sexism at work in open spaces as well.

The biggest problem that I have observed is the lack of privacy, even the privacy to conduct one’s own work efficiently, or conducting those aspects of personal life such as doctors’ appointments or things with family and children, that one has an expectation, even a right, to do from the office. Some companies, including ones where I work, sometimes set aside small spaces, either completely or just slightly enclosed, but it may not be enough, as one reader, Jean A., related:

The open office layouts I’ve sat in have both had ‘privacy’ rooms available, though these tend to be used as one-on-one meeting places almost as frequently as they are used as rooms in which individuals can call someone or even just take a brief rest. One thing in particular that I have noticed is that I like to be able to schedule doctor’s visits (for myself and my mother, whom I care for) while viewing my work calendar so that I can try and avoid missing meetings, but there is really no way to effectively do that privately in an open office floor plan. I have to drag my laptop into the privacy room, hope that the wireless works in that room (which it only rarely does)…

Another reader describes how the lack of privacy in open spaces can exacerbate workplace bullying, as described by reader Elizabeth G:

“The open plan office was in a college and not only was it very exposing as the managers were in a mezzanine level and looked down on us but the desks were butted up against each other and in rows. There was absolutely no privacy, and judgments about folks were made that amounted to a kind of covert bullying. Any absences from the room were noted and commented on. There were two small meeting rooms but they required booking. There was no room to spread documents out if you needed to and anyone could see what was on your screen. Most of us adopted a kind of blindness/deafness to our neighbors. It was also noisy at times, which impacted our concentration or ability to conduct telephone calls. I stuck it out for a year but was relieved to leave.

I have myself experience the stress and drain that comes with the lack of privacy in open spaces, the constant feeling of being watched.  I have also had to deal with novel types of bullying that are rarer in closed spaces.  On several occasions at multiple companies, I found myself chatting with a colleague about a technical matter related to a task at hand, only to have a male colleage come charging over and offer his unsolicited opinion – the ubiquitous and annoying phenomenon of mansplaining.  Sometimes he would be wrong because of missing context, but this did not stop a confident and overbearing manner, which crosses the line into bullying.  One particular egregious example involved my explaining an iOS-specific design requirement to a colleague working deliving a graphic, when suddenly a business-focused male coworker came over and erroneously explained why I was wrong – on top of this, he didn’t even address me directly, just my male colleague at the neighboring desk.  Similarly, some workplace bullies (invariably male in my experience) will use the open space to verbally corner or humiliate a co-worker, something that is unpleasant even behind closed doors, but far worse when it is in view of the entire company.

Then there is the simple problem of constant distraction.  As someone who is trained to use her ears critically, it is difficult to not be distracted by constant conversations happening in an open space, some of which can even be amplified by the acoustic properties of the space.  It is possible to filter them out metally, but this takes a lot of energy that is then drawn away from actually getting work done.  Many companies, including the one I described in last week’s article, have taken to offering noise-cancelling headphones to workers.  While it does cut down on noise distraction, these is merely a band-aid on the problem, and a band-aid that can itself lead to other problems like ear fatigue.

These and other issues, not surprisingly, can lead to increased anxiety.  And while men and women both face anxiety in the workplace, women face the additional challenge of being scrutinized for any display of emotion or “losing one’s cool.”  Open floor planes often leave very little place to work out anxiety, take an emotional break, or simply hide when necessary.  There is the bathroom, and there is going outside.  I use both strategies, including going for long walks away from the office – something that itself can be scrutinized in places that prize forced togetherness.  Readers in the follow-up article also releated similar stories, and in this quote from Emily S:

“I was one of three women at the company. I struggle with anxiety, and the cramped, nowhere-to-hide office layout made matters worse. When I felt an anxiety attack coming on, I would walk a block to a hotel around the corner and hide out in their basement bathroom until things subsided.

“It wasn’t until after a few months of working there that I mentioned this to my other female coworkers and found that they, too, had ‘hiding spots.’ One had a sibling who lived nearby and would go to his apartment, another would go to a department store a few blocks away.

“When I left the company, I made a note in my exit interview that the office setup exacerbated my anxiety and suggested that more consideration be given to employee mental health. I’m not sure if anything changed, but I do know that in my current office–still an open floor plan, but much larger–where there are places to escape to (like sofas, or a phone booth), I’m much happier.”

Of course none of these issues are unique to open floor plans, and many aren’t caused by them.  Sexism and bullying is rampant in a great many environments including the virtual world.  But an open work place where one feels trapped in the gaze of others can make it far worse.  Like Emily in the last quote, I look to companies that offer a variety of heterogenous spaces, some private, as well as opportunities to be remote from co-workers.  And I appreciate companies that put a priority on their workers’ mental health and well being as part of their operations.  It remains to be seen how that plays out in particular in the “forced-togetherness-as-virtue” tech industry, and whether some firms move away from open plans towards more variety of spaces.

Forced Togetherness Fridays: Open Floor Plans and Sexism was originally published on CatSynth