The Girl Scout Guide to Saving the Universe (3/3) by earlgreytea68, commentary by fishface44
The Girl Scout Guide to Saving the Universe (3/3) commentary by fishface44
Author - earlgreytea68
Part 3
“There was no need to wear a suit,” Buffy told him, laughing merrily. “There’s no dress code in the woods.”
“He always wears a suit,” said Athena.
The Doctor watched Buffy with narrow eyes as she moved on to the next parent/daughter unit. “D’you think she’s flirting with me?” [It is amusing to see the Doctor, who is often oblivious to anyone that is really trying to flirt with him, all hypersensitive about misinterpreted-not-flirting in this situation.]
“Flirting with you?” repeated Athena, and wrinkled her nose. “What, like she likes you?”
“Yeah.”
Athena snorted. “No.”
“There’s something off about her,” mused the Doctor.
“Yeah. She smiles too much. But she’s nice. Can you carry my backpack for me?”
“What? Sure,” he said, distractedly, his eyes on Buffy, accepting the backpack as Athena ran off to join her friends.
He was cursing that decision an hour later, as they were traipsing through the woods, and it was hot and bothersome and bloody hell this was why Time Lords had invented TARDISes in the first place. Athena was skipping and chattering away with her friends, clearly overflowing with energy and apparently content to allow her father, who was now over nine hundred years old, to carry her backpack for her as they trudged toward some mythical campsite that the Doctor was convinced didn’t exist.
“So where are you from?” Buffy asked him, falling into step with him.
“Why do you ask?” he countered, suspiciously.
She smiled, undeterred. “Your accent. You and Athena both.”
“London,” he answered, slowly. “And you should know that I’m married.”
Buffy looked bemused. “Me, too.” [Now I wondered about this later. Is Buffy married to a human? Or is there an alien Mr. Buffy running around somewhere? Or is this just part of her cover story? Hmmm.] Her eyes flickered toward his hand. “You don’t wear a ring, though.”
“I wear a tiepin,” he rejoined, stiffly. [ See the story It Never Gets Dull. ]
Buffy laughed. “That’s funny. You’re very funny.” She fell back to talk to the parent behind him.
The Doctor frowned in thought and they continued trudging an impossibly long time, until Buffy announced, “Ah! Here we are! The campsite!”
The Doctor gratefully dropped the backpacks-how they could hold so little and weigh so much was quite beyond him-and looked up as Athena located him.
“We have to put up our tent,” said Athena.
“How are we going to put up a tent without a sonic screwdriver?”
“Dunno. We’ll have to follow the humans, I suppose.”
“You know, Buffy wanted to know where we’re from.”
Athena gave him that look Rose sometimes gave him. “Everyone wants to know that. We’ve got accents.”
“There’s no need for you to start learning how to look at me like that. Your mother’s got that covered.”
“Come and help set up the tent.”
But the Doctor was completely bewildered by the putting-up-the-tent process. He couldn’t imagine how anyone got anything done without a sonic screwdriver. He could have built himself a brand new sonic screwdriver before he’d ever have figured out how to erect a tent without one. So he decided that he and Athena were quite hardy enough not to need a tent and left it in a disorganized heap.
And then they were sent into the forest to find sticks with which to roast marshmallows around the fire that night. The branches had to be fresh, not dry, they were warned, but they couldn’t be ripped off the tree, because that was harming a living thing. The Doctor was all in favour of not harming living things, but it was bloody impossible to find a freshly-cut branch just laying around on the ground. The idea of it was rubbish. Glancing around him, he reached out and snapped a branch off the nearest tree.
The hair on the back of his neck lifted suddenly, and he thought it was more than guilt over breaking the rules to get himself a branch. He stood in place and listened, listened far harder than he had been before. The forest was full of noises, none of which seemed obviously out-of-place. He looked quickly over his shoulder but spotted no displeased alien eyes watching him.
He was being excitable, he thought. He was stuck in the middle of nowhere without a sonic screwdriver and he was being jumpy and he could feel that Athena was comfortingly alright, but he went in search of her anyway, finding her about to get entrenched in a game of Duck, Duck, Goose.
“Can I talk to you?” he said.
“But I-”
“Now, please,” he said, simply, gesturing with his head.
She sighed heavily and followed him. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“There’s something off here, don’t you think?”
“Off? No. I mean, other than being in the woods, no.” She regarded him curiously.
“I don’t…There’s a heaviness in the air. Do you feel it?” [This is where 900 years of experience is very helpful.]
“No. I think you just want to go home before they make you sing a campfire song.” She narrowed her eyes. “Now I’m going to go play Duck, Duck, Goose.”
He sighed in exasperation. “You know, Time Lords really don’t play Duck, Duck, Goose, Athena.”
“No? Then what games did you play?”
“We…looked into the Time Vortex.”
“Was it fun?”
“It drove us insane.”
“Yeah,” said Athena, after a second. “I think I’m going to go play Duck, Duck, Goose now.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” the Doctor agreed.
Athena turned and walked directly into an invisible wall, with force enough that she said, “Oof,” and stumbled backward.
The Doctor’s eyes widened. He leaned over her and pressed at the barrier. It looked as if they ought to be able to walk right back into camp, but his hand would not move forward. Athena leaned her shoulder into it and pushed, then took a step back when she got no result.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Don’t panic,” he said. [Huge sigh here for Douglas Adams. I think he would have loved New Who, and I am sorry he never got to see it.]
“I’m not panicking. I’m just wondering what it is.”
“It’s a force-field.” The Doctor stepped to his left, and then, encountering no barrier, kept walking, every once in a while moving forward to test the wall. “Around the whole campsite.”
“But why?” asked Athena.
“To keep us out?”
“Or to keep all of them in,” suggested Athena. “Maybe to keep everyone from wandering off? You know, keep them safe?”
“I wish I were eight years old and thought that anyone bothers to put up a force-field for a good reason. [I do see potential for use as an Invisible Dog Fence. ] Although.” He took a step back, considering, then crouched, running his hand along the invisible wall until he reached the end of it, not far off the ground. “Yes. I thought perhaps not. A force-field of this size takes energy. A ton of energy. Whoever’s put it up hasn’t bothered to seal it, you see?” He reached his hand under the invisible wall, tapped against it from the other side.
“I can fit under there,” said Athena.
The Doctor, deep in thought, almost didn’t hear her. When he finally processed what she was saying, she was already wriggling her way under the wall. “Hey!” He grabbed her arm before she could completely get underneath it and dragged her back to his side. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’ve got to warn them, Dad. And you’re not going to be able to fit under there.”
“Maybe I could climb a tree and drop over the other side. Anyway, no one’s warning anyone until I figure out what’s going on. Maybe we’re on the side with the danger.”
There were sudden screams from the campsite.
“Maybe not,” said the Doctor.
Athena was staring through the trees, toward the campsite, where the screams were continuing. She’d gone a bit white. “Why are they screaming?”
The Doctor looked up, gauging whether he thought he could climb the tree. Bloody Rose taking away his bloody sonic screwdriver. “I dunno. But I’ve got to go figure it out.”
“Daddy-”
“Listen to me.” He closed his hands around her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “You need to stay here, okay?”
“No,” she said, desperately, her eyes wide with terror. “I’m coming with you.”
“You can’t come. You need to stay here, where it’s safe.”
She swallowed thickly. “But I can help. I know I could help.”
“Stay. Here,” he said, firmly, and kissed her forehead and hugged her tightly. “I’ll be back for you. Stay here, stay out of sight. Platypus." He tapped the tip of her nose with a finger and winked at her.
"Platypus," she managed in return.
Athena watched him climb the nearest tree, scurry along the branch, and then drop over the invisible wall. He landed with an inelegant thud and took a second before sitting up. Then he smiled at her, and gave her a cheerful wave, and went running off toward the campsite.
He was going to get himself killed, thought Athena, annoyed, and immediately squirmed her way under the invisible wall to follow after him. [This is another time I just want to hug Athena.]
********
The screams had gone mostly silent. Athena crept slowly toward the campsite, trying not to be absolutely terrified. It wasn’t going to do Dad any good for her to lose her head here. She came to the edge of one of the tents and looked beyond it carefully. There was an alien in the middle of the campsite. It looked like a giant slug, probably as tall as Dad if it had stood up straight, but instead it was snuffling about, undulating along, leaving a trail of slime. Athena wrinkled her nose in disgust. It was really kind of gross. But it didn’t look like a reason for all the screaming.
She skirted the tent, and came upon a small group of huddling, shivering Girl Scouts. As she almost stumbled right over them, they jumped and gave small cries. Athena, eyes wide, poked her head around the tent again. The slug alien had heard, was now snuffling in their direction.
Athena turned back to the girls. She didn’t know where her father was, but she had to get these people out first. “We’ve got to go,” she whispered. “There’s an invisible wall around us, but we can crawl under it.”
“We can’t move,” Molly whispered back.
“It’ll kill us,” said Ashley.
Athena looked back at the slug’s progress. “We’ve got to move now,” she said, impatiently. “Please move. It’s coming right for us.”
This seemed to freeze everyone into place, rather than moving them. Athena glanced back toward the alien, then made up her mind. “Okay. I’ve got to distract him. When I distract him, you lot run. When you hit the invisible wall, crawl under it. Okay?”
“It isn’t a him,” said Molly, voice shaking. “It’s Buffy.”
Athena had only a second to be surprised by that, before she heard the slug snuffling up behind her. She raced around the other side of the tent, grabbed a backpack that she found there, and flung it as hard as she could to the other side of the campsite. It landed with a furiously loud clatter.
Right in front of where her father was attempting to herd his own gaggle of survivors out of the campsite. He looked at the canned foods still clattering all over themselves as they settled, [No wonder the packs were so heavy!] looked up at the slug that had now caught sight of him. And then looked up and over and met Athena’s eyes. And he shouted in her head, clearly enraged with her.
“Oops,” said Athena out loud, and watched the slug move impossibly quickly toward her father and his band of survivors.
“Go go go go go!” shouted the Doctor, turning to start physically shoving people toward the invisible wall. He had a mix of adults and children, and Athena was aware that it was going to take the adults longer, to climb the trees.
One of the slug’s antennae unfurled out of nowhere, reached across, grabbed a child like it was a rag doll. Erin. Athena froze, watching as the slug tossed Erin into a hole on top of it. And gulp. Had it just swallowed her?
Run! her father was shouting in her head. Bloody hell, Athena, turn around and run!
She looked across at him. He was not running. He was waiting for his band of survivors to run past him. And he was staring in what she could tell was wild-eyed panic at her.
And they were never going to make it. The slug was already getting ready to unfurl its antenna again.
Athena closed her eyes for a second, then picked up a rock and threw it at the slug. The slug paused in mid-attack, with a noise rather like a howl.
“Hey!” shouted Athena, waving her hands about to attract its attention. “Over here!” She threw another rock at it. [By now Buffy has got to assume that Athena and her dad are not really from London after all.]
The slug howled again, turned to attack. Athena stumbled as she turned to run, picked herself back up again. And was knocked over by her father barrelling into her a half-second before the slug antenna wetly hit the spot where she’d been standing. She landed on top of him, and he grunted as he hit the ground.
“You are in so much trouble, young lady,” he bit out.
“No, Mum’s in trouble for taking away the sonic,” gasped Athena, as her father righted her and grabbed her hand and pulled her after him.
“Oh, you’ve got that right,” the Doctor agreed, grimly, glancing over his shoulder at the slug and jerking to the side as another antenna aimed at them.
“Dad?” said Athena. “Shouldn’t we have hit the invisible wall by now?”
“You’re right,” the Doctor realized. “That means he’s shut it down.”
“It’s a she,” panted Athena. “It’s Buffy.”
“Buffy?” He jerked Athena out of the way of another antenna.
“I mean,” gasped Athena, “it’s really not fair, d’you think? She was…really good…with crafts. Why is she eating us?”
“I don’t know. I can’t-” Dad cut himself off, circling back toward the campsite.
“You’re going back,” she pointed out, trying to keep up with him.
“I have to. I need to figure out how to defeat her. We’re not going to outrun her.”
“What kind of…alien is she?”
“I don’t…She looks Phlymyrdian.” He was back at the campsite, skidded behind a tent and paused, peeking his head behind him. The trees had shown the slug down a bit. It was just snuffling its way into the campsite. The Doctor turned back to Athena.
“What do we know about Phlymyrdians?” she asked him. “They have mouths on top.”
“Yes. Well, they can’t have them below, can they? They have mouths on top and they don’t-Oh, yes.”
“What?”
“They breathe through their mouths! That’s why she was always smiling! Couldn’t change the essentials of her biology when she was masquerading as a human.”
“So if we cover her mouth, she’ll suffocate and die?”
“I…Yes.”
“Okay. So we’ll suffocate her.”
“And how are we going to do that?” he asked her.
She looked above her. “I can climb into that tree. I can drop something onto the slug.”
“Something like what?”
“The tent,” she said. [If this tent idea had not worked I strongly suspect that the Doctor would have tried salt to kill the Slug.]
“The what?”
“Our tent. The one we didn’t put up because you couldn’t figure it out. It’s heavy, it’s folded, it’ll cover her mouth.” Athena looked at him. “Right?”
“That might work,” he said. “Except that you’re not going to be involved at all. I’ll climb the tree with the tent. Obey me this time and stay here.” He disappeared, creeping in search of their tent.
Athena watched him, as he moved carefully. She could hear the slug snuffling around in search of them. Dad was listening to the slug as well, as he located the heavy canvas of the tent. She watched him drape it over one arm, as he climbed the tree carefully, trying to make a minimal amount of noise.
And Athena realized the flaw in her father’s plan. How was he going to get the slug underneath him?
She’d done it before, she thought. She could definitely do this again. “Hey!” she shouted, attracting the slug’s attention.
Her father, perched on his branch, looked down at her and frowned. She ignored the displeasure from him that she could sense in her brain.
“Hey! Buffy! This way!” The slug began moving toward her. Athena backed up, trying to keep her distance. “So is that why you were asking us where we’re from?” she demanded, as the slug snuffled its way toward her. “Because you thought maybe we’re not from London? Well, you’re right. We aren’t. We’re from Gallifrey.” [Gallifrey must be completely alive to the kids because they can see it in the Doctor's mind.]
And her father dropped the tent directly over the perfectly positioned mouth and followed it down, applying pressure. The slug flailed about, antennae flying, but there wasn’t much it could do. It was, all in all, Athena thought, as it finally went still, antennae drooping into the dirt, a pretty stupid alien.
Her father slid off the slug. He was covered in slime from struggling to keep his purchase on the slug’s back.
“She totally picked the wrong Adventure Scouts to cross,” Athena told him, as he came over to her.
He sat and startled her by pulling her into his lap and cuddling her tightly. “That’s because we’re not Adventure Scouts,” he said against her hair. “We’re Time Lords.”
********
“What happened?” Rose asked, in shock, when they trudged into the TARDIS, covered in slime and lacking both backpacks.
The Doctor looked at her. “You are never taking the sonic screwdriver away from me ever again.”
Rose stared at him, as he moved past them. Athena clambered onto the captain’s chair and embarked on her story about her Girl Scout troop leader who had changed into a giant slug and begun killing people, until she and her father had managed to suffocate her. Brem and Fortuna and Rose stared at her in silence when she was done.
“I’m hungry,” said Athena, as the silence stretched. “Can I have something to eat?”
“Yeah,” Rose agreed, dazedly. “But clean up a bit first.” She wandered down the hallway, found the Doctor fresh from a shower, hair damp, stretched out on his back on top of the bed. He was staring up at the ceiling.
She sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry,” she said, and was surprised to hear her voice shaking.
“I almost died today,” he said, not looking at her.
“I didn’t-”
“When she threw the rock at it, to get its attention, and she was just standing there, this wide open target, and I really thought I might die if anything happened to her.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Rose, wiping tears away. “I hadn’t any idea-I mean, I would never have-”
“How could we forget that? How could we forget that this is the life we lead? How could we forget that every time we walk out of this TARDIS with one of them, it could…”
“I can’t believe I took it away from you,” said Rose, grabbing for his hand because she wanted some comfort that, yes, everything had turned out okay, after all. “I’m so sorry.”
He looked at her finally. “I know. I’m not meaning to make you feel like it was your fault. It isn’t. And I’m not sure that it would have gone all that differently had I had the sonic screwdriver. I’m just saying that…today our daughter saved the world. How did our kids get to be so bloody brilliant?”
“I think we had precious little to do with it,” admitted Rose.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “She’s fine.”
“Brem told me there was something wrong, he said he could feel it, but I convinced him it was just you sulking. Doctor, I’m so sorry.”
He reached for her, and she buried her head against his chest.
“Tell you what, though,” he said, as he smoothed her hair and kissed the top of her head, “if you’re going to be stranded without a sonic screwdriver with a huge slug bearing down on you, you want Athena Tyler watching your back.” [Applause.]
********
The Doctor knocked on Athena’s open bedroom door. She was sitting in the centre of her bed, systematically going through every craft she’d made in Girl Scouts.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi,” she responded. “I’m tossing everything away. I don’t want any slug crafts in my bedroom.”
He sat beside her on the bed and watched her for a second. “I really ought to ground you for your next three regenerations,” he said, finally. “The number of times you ignored me today is really quite shocking.”
She looked up at him. “I had to save your life,” she said, simply. “I couldn’t have her…The way she did to Erin…”
He cupped her cheek. “You were very brave. And you did everything you could. You could not have done anything differently. You understand that, right? You did everything just the best you could.”
“Do you think it hurts to die? I mean, do you think it hurt Erin?”
He could think of nothing to do but lie. “It doesn’t hurt. It really doesn’t.”
Athena nodded. She looked down at the Girl Scout worry doll in her hands.
“Thanks,” he said. “For saving my life.”
“Any time,” she said, and then she beamed at him. “I think we would have had fun, camping. If it hadn’t been for Buffy the slug. Don’t you think?”
“Not really, no.” [They are really, really Not Adventure Scouts.]
“Can we try it again? Without the slug? We can take Fortuna along.”
“Really? Camping again? Wouldn’t you rather just…have a tea party with your dolls?”
“Not too ‘girly,’ that?”
“Athena, what I’ve learned is that you are the last person in this family who needs to learn survival skills.”
“I could have told you that months ago,” she said. “It was fun going to the meetings with you.”
“We’ll just spend an hour together every week, how’s that?”
“Yeah.” She suddenly threw her arms tightly around his neck and hugged him, burrowing her face into his neck. “I was so scared, Daddy. I wasn’t being brave at all. I was just so scared.”
“I know, Theenie,” he sighed. “Believe me, so was I.”
Author - earlgreytea68
Part 3
“There was no need to wear a suit,” Buffy told him, laughing merrily. “There’s no dress code in the woods.”
“He always wears a suit,” said Athena.
The Doctor watched Buffy with narrow eyes as she moved on to the next parent/daughter unit. “D’you think she’s flirting with me?” [It is amusing to see the Doctor, who is often oblivious to anyone that is really trying to flirt with him, all hypersensitive about misinterpreted-not-flirting in this situation.]
“Flirting with you?” repeated Athena, and wrinkled her nose. “What, like she likes you?”
“Yeah.”
Athena snorted. “No.”
“There’s something off about her,” mused the Doctor.
“Yeah. She smiles too much. But she’s nice. Can you carry my backpack for me?”
“What? Sure,” he said, distractedly, his eyes on Buffy, accepting the backpack as Athena ran off to join her friends.
He was cursing that decision an hour later, as they were traipsing through the woods, and it was hot and bothersome and bloody hell this was why Time Lords had invented TARDISes in the first place. Athena was skipping and chattering away with her friends, clearly overflowing with energy and apparently content to allow her father, who was now over nine hundred years old, to carry her backpack for her as they trudged toward some mythical campsite that the Doctor was convinced didn’t exist.
“So where are you from?” Buffy asked him, falling into step with him.
“Why do you ask?” he countered, suspiciously.
She smiled, undeterred. “Your accent. You and Athena both.”
“London,” he answered, slowly. “And you should know that I’m married.”
Buffy looked bemused. “Me, too.” [Now I wondered about this later. Is Buffy married to a human? Or is there an alien Mr. Buffy running around somewhere? Or is this just part of her cover story? Hmmm.] Her eyes flickered toward his hand. “You don’t wear a ring, though.”
“I wear a tiepin,” he rejoined, stiffly. [ See the story It Never Gets Dull. ]
Buffy laughed. “That’s funny. You’re very funny.” She fell back to talk to the parent behind him.
The Doctor frowned in thought and they continued trudging an impossibly long time, until Buffy announced, “Ah! Here we are! The campsite!”
The Doctor gratefully dropped the backpacks-how they could hold so little and weigh so much was quite beyond him-and looked up as Athena located him.
“We have to put up our tent,” said Athena.
“How are we going to put up a tent without a sonic screwdriver?”
“Dunno. We’ll have to follow the humans, I suppose.”
“You know, Buffy wanted to know where we’re from.”
Athena gave him that look Rose sometimes gave him. “Everyone wants to know that. We’ve got accents.”
“There’s no need for you to start learning how to look at me like that. Your mother’s got that covered.”
“Come and help set up the tent.”
But the Doctor was completely bewildered by the putting-up-the-tent process. He couldn’t imagine how anyone got anything done without a sonic screwdriver. He could have built himself a brand new sonic screwdriver before he’d ever have figured out how to erect a tent without one. So he decided that he and Athena were quite hardy enough not to need a tent and left it in a disorganized heap.
And then they were sent into the forest to find sticks with which to roast marshmallows around the fire that night. The branches had to be fresh, not dry, they were warned, but they couldn’t be ripped off the tree, because that was harming a living thing. The Doctor was all in favour of not harming living things, but it was bloody impossible to find a freshly-cut branch just laying around on the ground. The idea of it was rubbish. Glancing around him, he reached out and snapped a branch off the nearest tree.
The hair on the back of his neck lifted suddenly, and he thought it was more than guilt over breaking the rules to get himself a branch. He stood in place and listened, listened far harder than he had been before. The forest was full of noises, none of which seemed obviously out-of-place. He looked quickly over his shoulder but spotted no displeased alien eyes watching him.
He was being excitable, he thought. He was stuck in the middle of nowhere without a sonic screwdriver and he was being jumpy and he could feel that Athena was comfortingly alright, but he went in search of her anyway, finding her about to get entrenched in a game of Duck, Duck, Goose.
“Can I talk to you?” he said.
“But I-”
“Now, please,” he said, simply, gesturing with his head.
She sighed heavily and followed him. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“There’s something off here, don’t you think?”
“Off? No. I mean, other than being in the woods, no.” She regarded him curiously.
“I don’t…There’s a heaviness in the air. Do you feel it?” [This is where 900 years of experience is very helpful.]
“No. I think you just want to go home before they make you sing a campfire song.” She narrowed her eyes. “Now I’m going to go play Duck, Duck, Goose.”
He sighed in exasperation. “You know, Time Lords really don’t play Duck, Duck, Goose, Athena.”
“No? Then what games did you play?”
“We…looked into the Time Vortex.”
“Was it fun?”
“It drove us insane.”
“Yeah,” said Athena, after a second. “I think I’m going to go play Duck, Duck, Goose now.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” the Doctor agreed.
Athena turned and walked directly into an invisible wall, with force enough that she said, “Oof,” and stumbled backward.
The Doctor’s eyes widened. He leaned over her and pressed at the barrier. It looked as if they ought to be able to walk right back into camp, but his hand would not move forward. Athena leaned her shoulder into it and pushed, then took a step back when she got no result.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Don’t panic,” he said. [Huge sigh here for Douglas Adams. I think he would have loved New Who, and I am sorry he never got to see it.]
“I’m not panicking. I’m just wondering what it is.”
“It’s a force-field.” The Doctor stepped to his left, and then, encountering no barrier, kept walking, every once in a while moving forward to test the wall. “Around the whole campsite.”
“But why?” asked Athena.
“To keep us out?”
“Or to keep all of them in,” suggested Athena. “Maybe to keep everyone from wandering off? You know, keep them safe?”
“I wish I were eight years old and thought that anyone bothers to put up a force-field for a good reason. [I do see potential for use as an Invisible Dog Fence. ] Although.” He took a step back, considering, then crouched, running his hand along the invisible wall until he reached the end of it, not far off the ground. “Yes. I thought perhaps not. A force-field of this size takes energy. A ton of energy. Whoever’s put it up hasn’t bothered to seal it, you see?” He reached his hand under the invisible wall, tapped against it from the other side.
“I can fit under there,” said Athena.
The Doctor, deep in thought, almost didn’t hear her. When he finally processed what she was saying, she was already wriggling her way under the wall. “Hey!” He grabbed her arm before she could completely get underneath it and dragged her back to his side. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’ve got to warn them, Dad. And you’re not going to be able to fit under there.”
“Maybe I could climb a tree and drop over the other side. Anyway, no one’s warning anyone until I figure out what’s going on. Maybe we’re on the side with the danger.”
There were sudden screams from the campsite.
“Maybe not,” said the Doctor.
Athena was staring through the trees, toward the campsite, where the screams were continuing. She’d gone a bit white. “Why are they screaming?”
The Doctor looked up, gauging whether he thought he could climb the tree. Bloody Rose taking away his bloody sonic screwdriver. “I dunno. But I’ve got to go figure it out.”
“Daddy-”
“Listen to me.” He closed his hands around her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “You need to stay here, okay?”
“No,” she said, desperately, her eyes wide with terror. “I’m coming with you.”
“You can’t come. You need to stay here, where it’s safe.”
She swallowed thickly. “But I can help. I know I could help.”
“Stay. Here,” he said, firmly, and kissed her forehead and hugged her tightly. “I’ll be back for you. Stay here, stay out of sight. Platypus." He tapped the tip of her nose with a finger and winked at her.
"Platypus," she managed in return.
Athena watched him climb the nearest tree, scurry along the branch, and then drop over the invisible wall. He landed with an inelegant thud and took a second before sitting up. Then he smiled at her, and gave her a cheerful wave, and went running off toward the campsite.
He was going to get himself killed, thought Athena, annoyed, and immediately squirmed her way under the invisible wall to follow after him. [This is another time I just want to hug Athena.]
********
The screams had gone mostly silent. Athena crept slowly toward the campsite, trying not to be absolutely terrified. It wasn’t going to do Dad any good for her to lose her head here. She came to the edge of one of the tents and looked beyond it carefully. There was an alien in the middle of the campsite. It looked like a giant slug, probably as tall as Dad if it had stood up straight, but instead it was snuffling about, undulating along, leaving a trail of slime. Athena wrinkled her nose in disgust. It was really kind of gross. But it didn’t look like a reason for all the screaming.
She skirted the tent, and came upon a small group of huddling, shivering Girl Scouts. As she almost stumbled right over them, they jumped and gave small cries. Athena, eyes wide, poked her head around the tent again. The slug alien had heard, was now snuffling in their direction.
Athena turned back to the girls. She didn’t know where her father was, but she had to get these people out first. “We’ve got to go,” she whispered. “There’s an invisible wall around us, but we can crawl under it.”
“We can’t move,” Molly whispered back.
“It’ll kill us,” said Ashley.
Athena looked back at the slug’s progress. “We’ve got to move now,” she said, impatiently. “Please move. It’s coming right for us.”
This seemed to freeze everyone into place, rather than moving them. Athena glanced back toward the alien, then made up her mind. “Okay. I’ve got to distract him. When I distract him, you lot run. When you hit the invisible wall, crawl under it. Okay?”
“It isn’t a him,” said Molly, voice shaking. “It’s Buffy.”
Athena had only a second to be surprised by that, before she heard the slug snuffling up behind her. She raced around the other side of the tent, grabbed a backpack that she found there, and flung it as hard as she could to the other side of the campsite. It landed with a furiously loud clatter.
Right in front of where her father was attempting to herd his own gaggle of survivors out of the campsite. He looked at the canned foods still clattering all over themselves as they settled, [No wonder the packs were so heavy!] looked up at the slug that had now caught sight of him. And then looked up and over and met Athena’s eyes. And he shouted in her head, clearly enraged with her.
“Oops,” said Athena out loud, and watched the slug move impossibly quickly toward her father and his band of survivors.
“Go go go go go!” shouted the Doctor, turning to start physically shoving people toward the invisible wall. He had a mix of adults and children, and Athena was aware that it was going to take the adults longer, to climb the trees.
One of the slug’s antennae unfurled out of nowhere, reached across, grabbed a child like it was a rag doll. Erin. Athena froze, watching as the slug tossed Erin into a hole on top of it. And gulp. Had it just swallowed her?
Run! her father was shouting in her head. Bloody hell, Athena, turn around and run!
She looked across at him. He was not running. He was waiting for his band of survivors to run past him. And he was staring in what she could tell was wild-eyed panic at her.
And they were never going to make it. The slug was already getting ready to unfurl its antenna again.
Athena closed her eyes for a second, then picked up a rock and threw it at the slug. The slug paused in mid-attack, with a noise rather like a howl.
“Hey!” shouted Athena, waving her hands about to attract its attention. “Over here!” She threw another rock at it. [By now Buffy has got to assume that Athena and her dad are not really from London after all.]
The slug howled again, turned to attack. Athena stumbled as she turned to run, picked herself back up again. And was knocked over by her father barrelling into her a half-second before the slug antenna wetly hit the spot where she’d been standing. She landed on top of him, and he grunted as he hit the ground.
“You are in so much trouble, young lady,” he bit out.
“No, Mum’s in trouble for taking away the sonic,” gasped Athena, as her father righted her and grabbed her hand and pulled her after him.
“Oh, you’ve got that right,” the Doctor agreed, grimly, glancing over his shoulder at the slug and jerking to the side as another antenna aimed at them.
“Dad?” said Athena. “Shouldn’t we have hit the invisible wall by now?”
“You’re right,” the Doctor realized. “That means he’s shut it down.”
“It’s a she,” panted Athena. “It’s Buffy.”
“Buffy?” He jerked Athena out of the way of another antenna.
“I mean,” gasped Athena, “it’s really not fair, d’you think? She was…really good…with crafts. Why is she eating us?”
“I don’t know. I can’t-” Dad cut himself off, circling back toward the campsite.
“You’re going back,” she pointed out, trying to keep up with him.
“I have to. I need to figure out how to defeat her. We’re not going to outrun her.”
“What kind of…alien is she?”
“I don’t…She looks Phlymyrdian.” He was back at the campsite, skidded behind a tent and paused, peeking his head behind him. The trees had shown the slug down a bit. It was just snuffling its way into the campsite. The Doctor turned back to Athena.
“What do we know about Phlymyrdians?” she asked him. “They have mouths on top.”
“Yes. Well, they can’t have them below, can they? They have mouths on top and they don’t-Oh, yes.”
“What?”
“They breathe through their mouths! That’s why she was always smiling! Couldn’t change the essentials of her biology when she was masquerading as a human.”
“So if we cover her mouth, she’ll suffocate and die?”
“I…Yes.”
“Okay. So we’ll suffocate her.”
“And how are we going to do that?” he asked her.
She looked above her. “I can climb into that tree. I can drop something onto the slug.”
“Something like what?”
“The tent,” she said. [If this tent idea had not worked I strongly suspect that the Doctor would have tried salt to kill the Slug.]
“The what?”
“Our tent. The one we didn’t put up because you couldn’t figure it out. It’s heavy, it’s folded, it’ll cover her mouth.” Athena looked at him. “Right?”
“That might work,” he said. “Except that you’re not going to be involved at all. I’ll climb the tree with the tent. Obey me this time and stay here.” He disappeared, creeping in search of their tent.
Athena watched him, as he moved carefully. She could hear the slug snuffling around in search of them. Dad was listening to the slug as well, as he located the heavy canvas of the tent. She watched him drape it over one arm, as he climbed the tree carefully, trying to make a minimal amount of noise.
And Athena realized the flaw in her father’s plan. How was he going to get the slug underneath him?
She’d done it before, she thought. She could definitely do this again. “Hey!” she shouted, attracting the slug’s attention.
Her father, perched on his branch, looked down at her and frowned. She ignored the displeasure from him that she could sense in her brain.
“Hey! Buffy! This way!” The slug began moving toward her. Athena backed up, trying to keep her distance. “So is that why you were asking us where we’re from?” she demanded, as the slug snuffled its way toward her. “Because you thought maybe we’re not from London? Well, you’re right. We aren’t. We’re from Gallifrey.” [Gallifrey must be completely alive to the kids because they can see it in the Doctor's mind.]
And her father dropped the tent directly over the perfectly positioned mouth and followed it down, applying pressure. The slug flailed about, antennae flying, but there wasn’t much it could do. It was, all in all, Athena thought, as it finally went still, antennae drooping into the dirt, a pretty stupid alien.
Her father slid off the slug. He was covered in slime from struggling to keep his purchase on the slug’s back.
“She totally picked the wrong Adventure Scouts to cross,” Athena told him, as he came over to her.
He sat and startled her by pulling her into his lap and cuddling her tightly. “That’s because we’re not Adventure Scouts,” he said against her hair. “We’re Time Lords.”
********
“What happened?” Rose asked, in shock, when they trudged into the TARDIS, covered in slime and lacking both backpacks.
The Doctor looked at her. “You are never taking the sonic screwdriver away from me ever again.”
Rose stared at him, as he moved past them. Athena clambered onto the captain’s chair and embarked on her story about her Girl Scout troop leader who had changed into a giant slug and begun killing people, until she and her father had managed to suffocate her. Brem and Fortuna and Rose stared at her in silence when she was done.
“I’m hungry,” said Athena, as the silence stretched. “Can I have something to eat?”
“Yeah,” Rose agreed, dazedly. “But clean up a bit first.” She wandered down the hallway, found the Doctor fresh from a shower, hair damp, stretched out on his back on top of the bed. He was staring up at the ceiling.
She sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry,” she said, and was surprised to hear her voice shaking.
“I almost died today,” he said, not looking at her.
“I didn’t-”
“When she threw the rock at it, to get its attention, and she was just standing there, this wide open target, and I really thought I might die if anything happened to her.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Rose, wiping tears away. “I hadn’t any idea-I mean, I would never have-”
“How could we forget that? How could we forget that this is the life we lead? How could we forget that every time we walk out of this TARDIS with one of them, it could…”
“I can’t believe I took it away from you,” said Rose, grabbing for his hand because she wanted some comfort that, yes, everything had turned out okay, after all. “I’m so sorry.”
He looked at her finally. “I know. I’m not meaning to make you feel like it was your fault. It isn’t. And I’m not sure that it would have gone all that differently had I had the sonic screwdriver. I’m just saying that…today our daughter saved the world. How did our kids get to be so bloody brilliant?”
“I think we had precious little to do with it,” admitted Rose.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “She’s fine.”
“Brem told me there was something wrong, he said he could feel it, but I convinced him it was just you sulking. Doctor, I’m so sorry.”
He reached for her, and she buried her head against his chest.
“Tell you what, though,” he said, as he smoothed her hair and kissed the top of her head, “if you’re going to be stranded without a sonic screwdriver with a huge slug bearing down on you, you want Athena Tyler watching your back.” [Applause.]
********
The Doctor knocked on Athena’s open bedroom door. She was sitting in the centre of her bed, systematically going through every craft she’d made in Girl Scouts.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi,” she responded. “I’m tossing everything away. I don’t want any slug crafts in my bedroom.”
He sat beside her on the bed and watched her for a second. “I really ought to ground you for your next three regenerations,” he said, finally. “The number of times you ignored me today is really quite shocking.”
She looked up at him. “I had to save your life,” she said, simply. “I couldn’t have her…The way she did to Erin…”
He cupped her cheek. “You were very brave. And you did everything you could. You could not have done anything differently. You understand that, right? You did everything just the best you could.”
“Do you think it hurts to die? I mean, do you think it hurt Erin?”
He could think of nothing to do but lie. “It doesn’t hurt. It really doesn’t.”
Athena nodded. She looked down at the Girl Scout worry doll in her hands.
“Thanks,” he said. “For saving my life.”
“Any time,” she said, and then she beamed at him. “I think we would have had fun, camping. If it hadn’t been for Buffy the slug. Don’t you think?”
“Not really, no.” [They are really, really Not Adventure Scouts.]
“Can we try it again? Without the slug? We can take Fortuna along.”
“Really? Camping again? Wouldn’t you rather just…have a tea party with your dolls?”
“Not too ‘girly,’ that?”
“Athena, what I’ve learned is that you are the last person in this family who needs to learn survival skills.”
“I could have told you that months ago,” she said. “It was fun going to the meetings with you.”
“We’ll just spend an hour together every week, how’s that?”
“Yeah.” She suddenly threw her arms tightly around his neck and hugged him, burrowing her face into his neck. “I was so scared, Daddy. I wasn’t being brave at all. I was just so scared.”
“I know, Theenie,” he sighed. “Believe me, so was I.”