'The Time I met the Doctor' - part 2

It was still raining, and hard at that. I rotated my cup, swirling my remaining coffee around a bit before having a drink. Coffee has a strange effect on me. Sometimes, it makes me all hyper, other times it relaxes me. Currently, I find it to be quite relaxing. So here I sit, sipping at coffee, watching it rain, and occasionally chatting with the rest of the group at the table.

Victoria, as I expected from her, is a very polite eater. She sips at her tea carefully, quietly. When she bites at her sandwich, she doesn't bite off much, but what she takes in gets chewed thoroughly. She does not speak with her mouth full and daintily dabs at her mouth with her napkin if she suspects crumbs. She's very, well, feminine I suppose, moreso than I've ever seen before. She's very mannered and I'm not used to that.

The Doctor doesn't eat much and does so absentmindedly. He looks around a lot, taking in everything around him, his eyes wandering here and there, but not in a lecherous searching for women sort of way. It's as if he's trying to observe everything around him in order to understand something that he's not sure is there yet. Eating is something secondary. If something comes loose from his sandwich and falls onto his black coat or checked pants, I don't believe he'd notice.

Jamie is stuffing his face. He's crude but not totally so. He doesn't spit crumbs across the table or grab stuff from other people's plates or anything like that, but he is taking full advantage of the fact that this meal is free, a concept I have no problem with at all. He's mentioned a few times during the course of the meal how nice it is to have 'real' food for a change. It doesn't seem like he'd be on any special diet or anything. Perhaps they travel on a budget and often have limited meals, so he's taking advantage of this free one to fill up on items he rarely gets to have. Seems likely. I wonder why he'd never had pizza before then. That's a good cheap food. If they were on a budget, I'd think they'd eat pizza often. Perhaps it's a cultural thing. Being American, I'd eat pizza as cheap food, maybe they'd have something else. Still, he didn't even recognize the stuff. I'm sure they have pizza in Britain, so it seems odd.

"That cloud looks unusual," the Doctor notes. His face then drops, he picks up a napkin and cleans up a bit of something that he obviously thought had been swallowed from the table.

"Which one?" I query, returning my attention to the sight outside the window again.

"That one up there." He gestures upward. I frown but look up anyway. What's he talking about? "Oh my goodness, that shouldn't be there." This thin hazy cloud seems to be forming up near the cafeteria ceiling.

"That much I had guessed. I didn't believe indoor precipitation to be normal around here. Then again, I've seen more unusual things."

All the same, where could that be coming from? "Maybe the air conditioning is turned on too high and the heat from the kitchen is causing some fog to form?"

"Perhaps." He doesn't sound convinced. That's fine as I don't think much of my logic either. Still, it was better than nothing.

Jamie leans back in his chair, looking quite content. "Oof, Ah think Ah've had enough."

Victoria gives him something of a look. "I should hope so James Robert McCrimmon. You made quite the pig of yourself given a free meal."

"Worry ye not. Had I been hungrier I should have been sorely tempted to join him in his feasting. A free meal is a free meal." I dragged myself up out of the chair. "Now that we've fed, shall we start our tour?"

The Doctor bounced eagerly out of his chair. "Yes, that sounds like rather a good idea."

"Is there any particular area that you're interested in?"

"You have laboratories, don't you?"

"Of course."

"Those."

Imagine that.


We wandered around the halls, past a number of classrooms, into a few empty lecture halls, past the music room (but not into due to band practice), hither and yon, heading for the laboratories. Once I got going and relaxed, I was chatty, remembering interesting stories to tell regarding some of the room or teachers we'd seen. Hopefully I was interesting. The Doctor grew more and more energetic as we neared the laboratories. I think he could sense their nearness somehow. It was about then that Jamie piped up with the information that "Hey, we're being followed ya know."

"Really?" I was surprised. I couldn't see any reason why anyone would follow us. I turned around to see who it was. In retrospect it was a stupid thing to do, but at the time it seemed quite logical. Standing in the middle of the hallway, peacefully watching us was this pretty, vaguely oriental looking young lady with long hair that was tinted blue. I smiled, doing my best to look reassuring and non-threatening. "Can I help you?"

Hearing me speak seemed to do something to her. She stepped forward hesitantly and then continued to walk towards us haltingly, as if fighting the motion. Jamie tensed next to me as she grew near, as if he was preparing to fight if she attacked. She didn't. Silently, she walked up to me and stood before me for a moment, looking up into my face curiously. I smiled back, but I was getting a bit nervous and confused, which was probably transmitted to my expression. She really was very cute, not pretty, as I originally thought, not attractive, but cute. "Hullo," I said, looking for some sort of response, something to continue this on. She said something in a language I didn't understand but assumed was Japanese and wrapped her arms around me tightly, nestling her head into my chest. It felt nice in a way.

The Doctor gave me an airily curious look. "Friend of yours?"

"I've never seen her before," I stammered. The next thing I knew, I was getting wet. I looked up and saw that it was raining on me. A small cloud hovered over my head, dumping rain on me. I sighed. This day was getting far too strange. Then I heard the laughing. I peered through the rain and saw a familiar figure run away laughing. "Kenshiro!" Things started to make a certain sense suddenly.

"Who's Kenshiro?" Victoria asked.

"He's one of Erik's friends."

"Well," Jamie queried, "who's this Erik then?"

So I explained Erik to them, as I will to you now.


Erik was my nemesis. Sounds silly doesn't it? Perfectly hard working super heroes in this world wishing for a good nemesis and me, a peaceful college student who'd just as soon not have a nemesis or enemy has one. I'd like to think the term nemesis leans towards hyperbole, except the fact that he often concocted schemes to try to humiliate or discredit me and, one more than one occasion, referred to me as 'my nemesis' when he was talking to me.

Of course the next question is probably: why? If he was my nemesis, was there a reason behind him feeling this? Yes. He was fond of my former girlfriend/fiancée Heather, very fond. For a time he tried to break us up. When that didn't work, he grudgingly stopped the attacks, apparently viewing me as a worthy adversary who had won the right to be with this beautiful woman and, as such, I was not allowed to screw it up. Needless to say, when word reached him that Heather was available and that she and I were no more, he went insane all over again. For messing up my beautiful relationship, I was to be tormented further. Oddly enough, he never did try to win Heather's favour, well, he never asked her out as far as I know. It could well be that his renewed attacks upon me were an attempt to win her favour and when one of these was deemed successful he would have been worthy enough to date her. On this point I am not sure. Oddly enough, nemesises (nemesii?) don't always explain all their motives to you, despite the fact that movies and television teach otherwise. Still, I believe my theory sound here and am sticking to it.

So, when I saw Kenshiro, Kenshiro being one of Erik's friends (Actually, despite his name, Erik was of Oriental decent as well. His real name was one of those long complicated ones that most people mispronounce horribly upon seeing so he changed it to Erik instead, as no one mispronounced that. When we first met, I saw his real name and was close in my pronunciation, a fact which impressed him, but it's been a long time since that and I can't remember enough of it to reproduce it even closely now), I knew that Erik had started another of his plots. In some way, this young lady and the rain were from Erik.


"Still, why should it be raining on you?" Victoria questioned.

"More interestingly, how have they managed to make it rain on Patrick?" mused the Doctor. "Does his personal rain have anything to do with the rain outside? What does this young lady have to do with it, if anything?"

Her head still buried in my chest, she murmured a few words that I still didn't understand. "If I spoke Japanese we might have something of a hint. She does seem to be trying to tell me something."

The Doctor was still puzzling over the matter, his fingers intertwined, his gaze on me, yet not. "It's not Japanese," he noted casually, "I can speak Japanese and whatever she's speaking it's not Japanese."

I found this discouraging. I had rather hoped that we could find a translation book and be on the road to solving this latest caper. "Chinese?" I asked hopefully.

"It's not that either."

"How about . . ."

He intercepted my next guess. "It's not an Earth language as far as I can tell."

My heart sank despite the comforting cuddle of the strange young lady holding me. Not an Earth language? That would certainly reduce the possible number of people who could speak the language, wouldn't it? I sneezed, the rain already giving me chills, and apologized to the young lady for almost sneezing on her head. I couldn't understand her and, I realized suddenly, had no way to tell if she could understand me.

The Doctor snapped from his immobility, suddenly clapping his hands together loudly and smiling widely. "Nevermind that. I may pick it up as she goes along. I'd rather like to investigate the cloud you've accumulated. Is one of these laboratories available for use?"

"I'll find out. There should be something for you."

"Excellent, excellent," he said, rubbing his hands together furiously. "Now then," he started, turning towards Jamie and Victoria, "can you two find your way back to the Dean's office and collect the umbrella he had earlier?"

"Aye," Jamie replied.

"It's bad luck to open an umbrella indoors," Victoria noted, quickly surmising the reason he wanted it collected.

"I'll take that chance," I noted. "I prefer a bit more bad luck to pneumonia."