KAAAA-SCREEEASH!

Another explosion rocked the TARDIS and knocked the Doctor to the ground. Susan managed to regain her balance and pulled her grandfather up to the console.

"Grandfather, we need to find a way to cool down the chrono-stabalizers!" she shouted over the TARDIS' engines which screamed out in anguish as the ship flew over and over through empty space, "if we don't we'll leak retro-causality paradoxes all over the time stream!"

"Yes, yes, child! I'm doing my best!" the Doctor shouted and began fiddling with the assorted switches and knobs on the TARDIS' console.

"Let me help!" Susan ran her fingers across the primary Time-engines and began the process of releasing fusion waves from the Eye of Rassilon.

"Susan! Don't touch anything! Any mistake could be catastrophic for us!"

"Grandfather, I've actually read the TARDIS manual, have you?" Susan finished the coding process and the fusion waves eased out of the ship's engines.

The Doctor sputtered, but before he could come up with a response to his granddaughter the familiar sound of the TARDIS dematerializing from space rushed through the TARDIS control room, followed by a soft rumble.

"See my dear?" The Doctor said, "I told you I had it completely-"

The TARDIS went into a sudden free fall after dematerializing a few hundred feet above the Earth's surface. Susan climbed off the TARDIS floor and dusted herself off, her grandfather was not as fortunate.

"Grandfather!" she shouted. Susan rested her head against his chest. She listened closely. Nothing wrong with his bi-cardio system, she thought to herself, and no regenerative energy is emitting from his body.

She poked her head out of the box of the TARDIS to make sure they at least landed in the correct century this time.

London, Earth, 1963. They made it. Or at least, somewhere close to "it."

A loud car horn startled Susan.

"Oi! Get that soddin' thing out of the road!"

"Oops!" Susan shouted back, "Apologies! So sorry!"

She rushed back in and began to activate the craft's dematerialization when she noticed a countdown on the TARDIS' systems monitor. Above the countdown were the words "demateriazer circuit reconstruction in progress, one moment please."

Susan resisted the temptation to give the console a good whack in frustration, but she stopped herself and took a few deep breaths. That's what grandfather would probably be doing at this moment, she thought to herself. However, it was becoming more and more difficult to stay calm with all the car horns blaring outside the extraterrestrial roadblock. Then came thing that made Susan the most frustrated and surprised of all...a knock on the door.

Expecting to encounter an outraged motorist, Susan rehearsed her most intimidating scowl in a nearby mirror. She thought about how her grandfather looked when staring down Genghis Khan, or the Terrible Techno Tyrant. But what Susan found on the other side of the door was something quite different.

"'Ello!" the friendly faced woman at the door said, "you folks look like you could use a lift!"

Susan stood in the doorway of the TARDIS and did her best to hide the spectacular feat of transdimensional enginnering that was right behind her. The woman wore a dark workman's jumpsuit and a pair of boots so large, she couldn't believe they fit on this woman's feet at all. Her hair was tied up and hidden beneath a blue cap that read "Foreman's Yard."

"Oh! You work for Foreman's?"

"Sure do," the friendly woman said with a smile, "I'm the best bloody mechanic they got too. And standing orders are that if we see this big blue box in danger, we stop what we're doing and help. Wanna gimme a hand with this chain?"

"Oh, I would, could you just give me a moment?" Susan ran back inside the TARDIS. She could hear her grandfather moaning as he slowly tried to get up from the floor.

"Careful, grandfather, careful!" she gently lifted his arm around her neck and took him to his bed room.

"Thank you...my-my child...I'll think I'll just...rest awhile..."

Susan smiled and gave her grandfather a gentle kiss on the forehead. When she walked out of the TARDIS, the ship was already sitting comfortably on the flatbed of the Foreman's Yard truck.

"How did you get it up here so quickly?" Susan asked the mechanic.

"I told you," she said, "best bloody mechanic Foreman's got! Name's Clara by the way."

"Mine is Susan, very nice to meet you."

The two took off in the truck back to the junkyard.

"Where are you from anyway, Susan?"

"Oh, far...far away from here."

"Really? You don't sound like you're from very far away."

"Oh, well that probably has a lot to do with the translation matrix."

"I feel as though I was supposed to understand that sentence, but I honestly don't..."

Susan suddenly realized she let one of her secrets slip. It was difficult being on a planet where so few people knew about five dimensional mathematics or liquified psychic novels. She was finding her adjustment to this simpler world surprisingly, and ironically, difficult. She stared up at the stars above her and wondered if any of them were Gallifrey. She knew this was ridiculous, of course, but maybe there was a chance that one of them...

"Does it seem darker out to you?" Clara asked.

Susan glanced around and noticed that the once crowded street was, with the exception of the Foreman's truck, suddenly barren.

"The roads do seem very empty all of a sudden. Is that bad?"

"No," Clara said with a quiver of anxiety in her voice, "not bad. Probably. No. Definitely. Nothing bad here."

The headlights slowly illuminated a figure miles ahead. It was a man dressed in a dark overcoat and top hat. He stood as still as a granite statue against a hurricane.

"Do you know him?" Susan asked.

"Kinda, I feel like I do. I've never met him...but he feels like the devil, and birthday clowns, and the worst ex you've ever had all rolled into one."

Susan had no idea what calling this man an "x" had to do with their situation. He certainly had nothing to with Greek and Roman alphabet, and he definitely had nothing to do with the mathematical variable that could change within the equation.

"I'm going to do something that will seem very bad, but I just need you to trust me here, okay?"

"I'm not-"

Clara shifted the truck into the next gear. The wheels pushed on against the London streets moving closer and closer to the wicked man in dark clothes. He continued to stare at the women in the truck, unfazed by the tons of steel heading straight for him. The truck and the man collided, but instead of blood or internal organs smeared across the road, the man vanished in a mist dissipated into the night sky."

"Who was that?!" Susan asked.

"Bad news," Clara answered.

When they returned to the junkyard, Susan snuck back through the TARDIS doors as Clara began preparing to lower the blue box back into its place among the scrap heaps. The lights inside the TARDIS were flickering on and off. Strange whispers ran along Susan's skin like ice water. She charged into her grandfather's bed room.

The man in the top hat stood over the Doctor. His arm reaching into the Doctor's chest without any trace of a struggle on behalf of the Time Lord. The Doctor's face was twisted in a silent cry of anguish.

"Get away from him!" Susan shouted.

The man looked at Susan then vanished. Susan backed away, and then felt something behind her.

"The Doctor's kin," the man sneered, "no doubt you'll become as much of an intergalactic nuisance as this simpering old fool someday."

"What are you?" Susan slowly shifted around the man and bumped into the TARDIS.

"I am everywhere and I am nowhere. I was born when this universe came screaming into existence and I shall remain so long as there is hate in the heart of living things," with a dapper wave of his arm, the man removed his top hat and bowed, "I am the Great Intelligence. And you should be honored to have your life extinguished by me."

Susan tried to avoid the grasp of the man, but tripped and fell to the ground.

"Pathetic," the man sneered, "you're as incompetent as that decrepit geriatric."

"For someone called the 'Great' Intelligence, you certainly aren't bright," Susan reached up beneath the console and removed a hidden laser pistol which she fired into the stomach of her attacker. The ethereal creature burst once again and was carried off by the air. The TARDIS door opened at that moment and Clara ran in carrying a massive wrench.

"Susan what happened-?"

Clara looked around stunned.

"It's...it's big-"

The Great Intelligence reformed and grabbed Clara by the throat.

"Incredible," he muttered, "how many times will we meet along this time stream? You will not stop me from taking my-"

Clara swung the wrench and struck the Great Intelligence across the jaw, twisting his entire head 180 degrees. The creature released Clara and grabbed itself by the neck. I then twisted its head back into place with the sound of thick liquid shaking in a glass container. Susan held her laser pistol at the ready. With her eyes she signaled toward a second bedroom right behind Clara. Clara nodded quickly and sprinted towards the door. Susan fired shot after shot to herd the Great Intelligence toward her trap. Clara made it into the room, and the Great Intelligence followed, appearing from nowhere right in front of the door. Clara gripped her wrench tightly, ready to attack.

"Please, do try to strike me again. I'm beginning to find the futility of this quite amusing. In fact, I will allow you to feebly strike me once more before I end your life."

Clara took a deep breath and she hoped silently that this incredibly stupid idea might just work. With the fury of a lion, she charged and jumped at the Great Intelligence, flew through his intangible body, and rolled back into the TARDIS' main control room. Susan quickly pressed a button on the control panel.

"Secondary bedroom, deleted." a voice in the TARDIS said.

The Great Intelligence's eyes went wide as he vanished along with the entire bedroom. The two women fell to the ground laughing over their victory.

"Well," Clara said, "remember to tell Foreman what a great job I did."

"I will," Susan said, "thank you for everything."

Clara walked through the doors of the TARDIS. The next morning, on her way to school, Susan saw a newspaper headline that stole her attention. A massive crash occured in the middle of the city. A junkyard truck was involved. The driver was killed. Susan didn't need to read anymore, and she went to school that day with a sadder heart than usual.

That was the last time Clara would ever see Susan...but it wouldn't be the last time she saw the Doctor...