A/N: Okay, so, I realize this is a very odd crossover between two fandoms that rarely intersect. Midnighters is a somewhat obscure book series by an amazing author about a small town in Oklahoma, and Doctor Who is a legendary British sci-fi TV series that is lesser-known (okay, so its popularity is gradually snowballing over here, whatever) in the US. Suffice to say, if you've read/watched one but not the other, you probably should. They're both amazing. I'll try to write this so that if you haven't experienced one side of the crossover, you can still have fun trying to figure the other side out. If, by chance, you're one of those amazing people that's familiar with both series, I hope you'll enjoy this all the more for it.

Also, this particular fic features the Tenth Doctor. I do realize we're on Eleven now, but Ten seemed to fit the story better. This takes place between Waters of Mars and The End of Time on the Doctor's side; it's post-series for the Midnighters, but with Melissa and Jonathan deciding to finish out the school year in Bixby before going on their road trip (because Melissa didn't suffer through those first three years to not get a diploma.)

So, without further blabbering on my part, Allons-y!

"Physics," he said, writing it so that it dominated the whiteboard, all caps, underlined. "Physics, physics…. Physics. I hope you're all getting this down." Most of the students immediately started scrambling for their supplies. Jonathan simply tipped back his chair, one foot on the front of the desk. The new guy looked fresh out of college, second or third year teaching at best. A bit eccentric, which was always fun with teachers, and a generic name, to boot. Honestly, who names their kid John Smith?

Over Christmas break, their old physics teacher had finally had her baby. It had gotten old, her obsessive ultra-sound showing, odd cravings, and general hormonal grumpiness. This guy, on the other hand, looked like he would either know what he was doing, and do it in an entertaining way, or would blunder through the first few months and finally get a handle on things mere weeks before the end of the year, when it didn't matter anyway.

"Well…." He said, long and drawn out, "They really gave me no clue how much you guys know, so I'm gonna ask a few questions. Two identical strips of nylon are charged with static electricity and hung from a string so they can swing freely. What would happen if they were brought near each other?"

Jonathan sat up. The new guy wasn't reading from any kind of book. He was coming up with his questions off the top of his head, which meant he did know what he was doing. Of course, Jonathan knew the answer, but he knew that everyone else in the class should know this one, so he kept quiet.

"Anyone? No?" Looked like it was up to him, then. Pretty sad.

"They'd repel each other," he said, trying to sound bored.

"Yup. Can you tell me why, um… what's your name?"

"Jonathan Martinez. And it's cause they have the same charge."

"Molto Bene," he said. Apparently, he didn't realize that Bixby High only taught Spanish and French. He was pacing in front of his new desk, and eventually settled for sitting on top of it. "Now then. A car accelerates on an asphalt road. What force is moving the car? Someone other than Jonathan, please?"

Ashley, a mousy, small kid who had skipped a grade five years ago, raised her hand tentatively. "Yes? You, in the back?"

"The friction between the road and the tires."

"Good. Now, when you flip a coin, does it stop at the top of its arc before it comes back down?"

Jonathan choked on nothing. That was…

The classroom felt mind-gratingly empty without Jessica there to exchange their little look, the secret inside joke that no one else had ever picked up on, about that question. Thing is, their old teacher had mentioned enough that the class had come to expect the answer to come from him. It was a running gag in more ways than one, but this was the first time it had been mentioned since Halloween.

The class stared at him expectantly. It made Jonathan sick. The teacher raised his eyebrows.

Jonathan took a deep breath, swallowed, and somehow managed to say "No," without having a complete breakdown.

"Why?" the teacher persisted.

"Because," he swallowed again, "Because we're on the earth, which is orbiting the sun, which is hurtling through space at eight thousand some miles per minute. Aside from that, the coin is spinning on its own axis and more than likely traveling in an arc." He sat back and sighed. Thankfully, the answer had been said enough that it was still automatic, even after all this time. The new guy looked confused for a moment, raising an eyebrow at him for a second before moving on.

The rest of the class went as usual for the first day after Christmas break: not much learning, discussion of who did what over their respective "Vacations". The new guy turned out to be good with names. People started laughing, talking loudly, about just about anything, relating to physics or not. Contrary to the average teacher, though, who would either try to control the class or hunch over their latest lesson plan on their mandatory school OS desktop, Mr. Smith was in the middle of it all, still perched on the front desk. He talked to them like people, which was refreshing, but expected of a teacher his age.

And for the last twenty minutes of physics, for the first time since October, Flatland got a little closer to being three-dimensional.

Mr. Smith caught up to him next to his locker after class. He was leaning against the one next to Jonathan's casually, hands in his pockets, giving Jonathan the raised eyebrow as he loaded up his backpack. Jonathan shut his locker and returned the look, making the middle-of-the-year replacement look up. Honestly, the guy acted more like a student than a teacher.

"Can I have a word with you, Jonathan? That is, unless you have a bus to catch or something." Jonathan nodded, confused. It was only the first day back from Christmas break, he couldn't have screwed up anything yet…

"What for?" He decided to ask. Mr. Smith was already leading the way down the hall, Jonathan on his heels. The teacher stopped in the doorway to his room, as if he couldn't talk if he didn't have something to lean against.

"It's about Jessica Day." Jonathan's throat went dry. Why the hell was this new guy, a teacher, a daylighter, a flatlander, suddenly curious about Jessica? It was bad enough that he only got to see her an hour a day. "She went missing around Halloween, right? Weren't you her boyfriend?"

"She… she's not the only one, you know. I mean, you heard about what happened this Halloween, right?"

Smith hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah, there were seventeen others missing, one of them found dead. It doesn't make any sense with the story that was in the news."

"So why single out Jessica?" Jonathan asked. He got the sneaking suspicion that Mr. Smith knew more than he should, and was going to try to figure out just how much the guy was sure of. But just as Mr. Smith was opening his mouth to answer, Jonathan caught a glimpse of something black, just barely inside his field of vision. The kind of black that only existed when the rest of the world was blue. He turned to face it.

It meowed. It looked close enough to a regular black cat, but somehow seemed much more predatory. And it was waltzing right up to them, in the middle of a hallway full of fluorescent lighting and steel lockers, in broad daylight. By all logic, it was just a normal cat, but instinct told Jonathan otherwise.

Mr. Smith was no where near as concerned. He cheerfully squatted down in front of the creature and held out a hand, inviting it to rub up against him. He muttered to it, asking it how it'd got in here almost like he expected it to answer. Every time he tried to touch it, though, it shied away. Jonathan caught a glimpse of its eyes for a split second, but that was all he needed to make his decision.

"Indescribable." The cat's hair raised, and Mr. Smith gave Jonathan an odd sort of look. "Thought so," Jonathan muttered. "Disproportion." Mr. Smith stood up when the cat started hissing and spitting. "Revolutionary Determination." The cat turned tail and ran.

It took a few seconds for Jonathan to realize his teacher was staring at him.

"What was that all about?"

Mr. Smith had an eyebrow cocked, chin down, wide eyes boring holes through Jonathan over his wide-rimmed glasses. The teen stared at him for a second like a trapped rabbit, then sighed. "It's… complicated. Very. When where you born?"

"Sorry?"

He shook his head. "Never mind. Listen, I've gotta go. My dad will flip if I'm home too late." Not quite the truth, but it got him away so he could find the others. Without waiting for the teacher's response, he turned and went.

"See you tomorrow!" Smith yelled after him.

"May be a little sooner than that," Jonathan muttered once he was out of earshot.

There was a police box in Bixby.

Dess had seen it nudged in an alley on the way to school. It was an honest-to-goodness 1950s British police box, and it was still there when school got out, so she decided to check it out. A few of the details were wrong: it was made of wood, not concrete, the windows were too small, it looked a little disproportioned, and, oh yeah: It was in Bixby. Bixby. Small towns in Oklahoma shouldn't have police boxes, didn't have anyone (save possibly herself) weird enough to pull a prank like this, and no history geeks that would dare leave this thing by a dumpster, reenactment gear or not. The phone didn't work, but that was to be expected with the thing showing up overnight(or really, morning. She hadn't seen it there at midnight). Even odder, the doors were locked.

It was weird, and not normal Bixby weird. Just… completely random. She wouldn't have even known what it was if not for the Discovery Channel. At least with midnight, she could figure things out. But the police box wasn't a problem she could solve, it was just…there, like a variable without an equation.

She was thinking through all this; tinkering with Ada when the phone rang. She rushed to get it, desperate for something to get her mind off the box.

"Martinez?"

"Yeah, Dess, it's me."

"What is it?"

"I need to talk to you. Can you meet me at the museum in, say, ten minutes?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Good." He hung up.

Dess smiled. Finally, something was happening.

Getting a job as a substitute teacher hadn't exactly been what the Doctor had planned to do in Bixby, but if it helped him get to the bottom of things, it seemed like it would be worth it. This was a funny town, Bixby, and it wasn't just what had happened with Martinez that afternoon. There were sets of thirteen everywhere, in the town seal, on doorways, even the town's name. Thirteen was woven into the very fabric of the place.

"Thirteen…" he muttered to himself, tilting his head over the back of the seat to stare at the TARDIS's ceiling. "It's so odd. Most of the time, humans go out of their way to avoid thirteen, so why…?"

He shot out of the seat. The words Jonathan said to the cat. The whole situation had been odd, with Jonathan seeming afraid of a simple kitty, but all the words he had said to chase it away (or at least, that's what he seemed to have been doing) had been 13 letters long. So why had the cat been afraid of thirteen-letter words? Was the constant usage of the number to protect from cats?

Ridiculous. Why would a whole city need to protect itself against cats? The whole thing was incredibly superstitious: black cats and the number thirteen. What was going to show up next? Witches?

Not that he hadn't dealt with witches before.

The Doctor only realized he had been pacing when he stopped. He might as well get out and see the sights, not that he was sure there were many in Bixby. But supposedly there was a natural history museum somewhere…

The Doctor smiled. He loved museums.