Ahead of his time? Was he a time traveler too? Which meant he must know The Doctor. Did the other man Have a sonic screwdriver? Had she found Him? Was all her searching finally getting her somewhere? She moved towards the group looking to see what they were doing. She pointed at Johnny very nearly poking him.

"You! You said its ahead of your time? You are a time traveler aren't you? You know where to find Him."

She glanced over at the man who had been holding the sonic device. Was he the Doctor? When he started yelling at the book she narrowed her eyes. The Doctor threatening to kill another being outright? That wasn't like Him. Had she somehow ended up finding another time lord? Unless he was bluffing.

Hearing the crash from the other room, Alan, being the closest to the doorway, moves to investigate, fearing that the Doctor's threat has produced some unexpected result.

It was another woman! There was something... familiar about her. Until he knew more, however, he decided not to scan her with his binoculars. He could clearly see her, she was only 8 feet away, so why would he need binoculars?

That didn't normally bother him. He'd learned long ago that most humans accepted bizarre appearance and behavior with a certain amount of aplomb. The outre, on the other hand, prompted revulsion, annoyance, concern, anger and even fear. While he didn't think he was any of those, nor would using the binoculars fall into that category, looking at a woman who was so close through the binoculars might make her... uncomfortable, as if he was trying to see through her clothes perhaps.

So, was she a burglar? Had she entered the room to steal? Or, perhaps, she was the maid. She wasn't dressed like a maid, but he couldn't be sure that this place and time had used those styles.

"Pardon me, miss, but what are you doing here?"

Jenny was lying in the shattered remains of the sideboard. Amidst the wood was evidence of other casualties: broken expensive china, fruit from the now defunct fruit bowl, a couple of doilies - they, at least, survived intact - and several broken bottles of very fine quality alcohol. Jenny was scrambling to rise, but it was not easy, as she was clearly a little dazed. Directly above where she landed, the ceiling was darkened by a rosette shape, burned into the paintwork.

As someone had addressed her, she fixed her eyes in that direction. A question! She was good at questions! Not always good at answers, of course, but she was always willing to take a stab at a question as best she could. "Trying to get up, of course! Where am I, anyway? One minute, I'm being chased by a pack of angry Friesianites - and don't let their size fool you, for a race of anthropomorphic cattle, they can really shift - and then my hopper finds a new temporal trace, blows a solenoid, and I'm lying in furniture." She lifted one of the broken bottles and examines it with a frown. "What is ... gin? And why does it sting?" she rubbed at one of several cuts and contusions on her skin, where the alcohol had apparently splashed in the incident.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:01, Wed 27 Feb 2019.

A 'hopper'? She had a time hopper? Alan knew of only one person in the universe that had ever owned one of those, and she'd built it herself. She was legendary where he came from. Oh, not like the Doctor... not yet, anyway. And even much of the Doctor's adventures took place 'off screen'... behind the scenes, so to speak. Details might be sparse but the outcome always seemed to get known.

That explained why she had felt... familiar--she was another Time Lord.

"That should make you Jenny," he replied.

"You are on Earth, Australia, Melbourne, St. Kilda... and the year is 1928. We are looking into the matter of a psychic Babadook."

"Pardon my manners... I'm Alan Quartermain

"Well, that is surprising and not a coincidence. Hello, Alan Quatermain. Do you think Alan Quartermain could give me a hand up? I'm sitting in something sticky, and I don't just mean these sticks!" Jenny tossed a shard of wood aside.

So, this was Earth. Finally! She had been trying to get here for a very long time, but always got diverted somehow. And how did the hopper bring her here? Actually, how did it work at all? It seemed to fire up and go off entirely at random, and since she had no clue exactly how it worked, she had equally no clue about how to stop it happening. She tapped it, and shook her hand out, and listened to the device on her wrist by holding it to her ear. "Hang on just one zarton, how do you know my name? I've never even heard of you!"

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen with the book, but then a figure unfolded itself from under the table. Or perhaps it just grew.

When it was fully upright, it was about 6'6" tall but appeared taller because of the top hat. It appeared as a man... a thin gaunt man with an elongated face with dark sunken eyes and a wide toothy outlined mouth. He was dressed in an old faded overcoat.

"Fire doess not sscare me," he hissed at the Doctor in a deep sibilant voice.

"The boy iss miiiiine. You cannot sstop me."

The fact that it can psychically manifest materially isn't surprising to the doctor but it is unusual. Now that it is manifest, the Doctor can sense something... odd about it. It's like there's an echo... or a shadow... or a duality. There's something more there than just a psychic manifestation.

And then there's the question of just what created the Babadook.

Triney watched the entity unfold itself with curiosity. She pulled out her device and trying to get any readings that she could off of it. When it spoke of claiming a child she tilted her head. Well she certainly couldn't allow that. The Doctor wouldn't so neither would she.

"Well that's not gonna be happening Mr. whatever you are."

"Spoiler alert," Alan replied to Jenny as he helped her up.

"Let's just say I've heard of you, and you may have heard of me by a different name. Or perhaps not."

"It's hard to tell some days."

Jenny smiled in thanks for the help, and dusted splinters and broken glass off herself. She then rummaged amongst the debris and produced a rather wicked looking plasma pulse rifle. She checked it carefully. "No harm done. Well, to me. Do you think I should pay for the furniture? Not that I have any..." She broke off and shuddered. What the fardles was that? A psychic stink was coming from nearby, and she did not like it one bit.

She quickly flicked the safety off her rifle, and slowly, silently, moved to the room exit. She paused to whisper, "I think you'd best get behind me. Whatever name you're using won't matter to whatever just woke up in this house. I'll protect you!"

That was her genetically engineered soldier instincts kicking in, of course. First response to a perceived threat in a new location - blow it up, then ask what it was. And the thought that Alan Quartermain, of all people, might need someone else to protect him, especially a slip of a girl, was so ludicrous it was practically comical. Not that Jenny knew that. She had learned another thing when she woke up that first time. Protect everyone else, even at your own risk. She had got that from her father.

She paused, then dove through the door into the room next door, where the others had just met the Babadook. She landed behind a chaise-longe, popped her head over the top, and pointed her plasma rifle at the creepy looking psychic alien monster thingy.

"All right, nobody move a muscle!" She looked like she meant business. "Well, metaphorically. I mean, you can move muscles that are essential to standing up, and keep your hearts beating, and all that sort of thing. Just don't move any other muscles! Now what is going on here?" Slight pause. "You can move talking muscles too."

Damnit, that was not the entry she wanted to make! Poor first impression. She regained some threat-credibility by narrowing her eyes and looking ferocious, which would have worked if she did not also look like the cute girl next door. Being pretty was not a characteristic most soldiers required. It was too darned inconvenient when being taken seriously as a threat was necessary.

At the sudden entrance of not one but two (!) people following shortly after (or simultaneously with?) the materialization of the Babadook was both intriguing and potentially dangerous... to everyone in the room.

Was that...? No, it couldn't be. She was dead! Wasn't she? He had waited, but there had been indication of regeneration. Certainly not as it pertained to him... to Time Lords. And yet... it could still be renewal. It had been so long since he'd undergone that that it had never even occurred to him. After all, it was the old way. Could that cloning machine have somehow tapped that?

No, wait! The Source! It could have done that! But was it a temporary one-time deal? Or would it happen again?

And why was she here? Now?

And who was this other person looking for the Doctor. He was positive he didn't know her. Well, as positive as he could be about something like that. She could have been a secretary or a technician or one of the other 'little people' in the background. If he hadn't actually interacted with her, that memory would have been filed in the Obscure Factoid bin of his mind. Something now might open that bin, but, till then...

"I realize you were created to be a soldier, Jenny, but I am equally certain that you have the capability of moving past that," the Doctor addresses Jenny.

"Even my associate here, Mr. Tornado, has managed to do that. I suppose, though, it's a question of Nature vs. Nurture. You were born that way; he wasn't."

Even as he spoke he ran his sonic screwdriver over the psychic manifestation.

He then turned his attention to the woman in the corner.

"Young lady," he addressed the lady in the corner, "I have no idea how or why you got here, though I'm sure you'll enlighten us in due course, but please stay away from this Babadook creature. He's not real, of course, but he can affect your mind. You do have a mind, don't you?"

He was attempting a bit of humor to diffuse the situation because the reading from the screwdriver gave him all the information he needed.

"Now, Mr. Babadook. You are mistaken. The child is not yours, never was, never will be... because you are not real. You are simply a psychic manifestation of fear. You are not even in control of yourself. You are being manipulated."

"I can detect the threads of another mind that are pulling your strings."

"The real question is: why? The who is incidental. I shall deal with them in due course, and I think they know that. After all, they are manipulating you through time. How could they think I wouldn't detect them?"

He made an adjustment to his screwdriver, pointed it at the creature and activated the device. Almost immediately, the Babadook started writhing in pain. Not really; it just sort of looked like that. The form started stretching and twisting out of shape. When the face did that, it looked like it was in pain.

"Are you watching this, Alan?" He was hoping that Alan was using his sonic binoculars to watch the psychic contortions.

Whatever was controlling the Babadook, the shifting of the psychic energy should reveal that. It might even cause them a bit of discomfort.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:29, Sun 10 Mar 2019.

Triney stared at the doctor as he used his sonic screwdriver on the... Creature? Manifestation? She'd done it. She'd found Him. She was sure of it now. She took an unsteady step towards him.

"You! You're Him. You're The Doctor. I knew It! I knew you were real! They said I was crazy but I Knew!"

With that the tiny woman swayed and fainted. Her excitement and the immensity of it all, compounded with being ripped through space and time overwhelming her. Her lashes fluttered as she fell and the device fell from her hand with a heavy thunk.

Jenny immediately dropped her supposedly aggressive stance. After all, if he was here, then it was almost certainly superfluous. Moreover, she had spent the Source knew how long hopping the time trails in the hope of reaching him. Even her prior visit to Earth, laden with peril and Ood as it had been, hadn't produced the Doctor. But this time... this time, the time hopper had got her where she needed to be. And it took a malfunction to do it.

There was probably some sort of profound lesson inherent in that incident, but it eluded her, for now. She was just too happy to be here. Yes, they had some monstrous psychic doodad going mental at them, and unless the hopper had managed to avoid being time-traced, there might be a herd of very angry Friesianites popping up any second, but... this was a family reunion. Especially meaningful because one of the members of the family didn't even know they had a family. So. Important.

She hopped to her feet, and with a deft motion, pumped the primer on the plasma rifle. Then she gave a smile like the first sunrise after a Scandinavian winter, and said brightly, "Hello, Dad!"

All of which would have been especially meaningful and nostalgic for the girl and her parent, except someone fainted. Jenny blinked in surprise and looked down at Katrina in surprise. "Well, that's new. Did you do that on purpose, or is stupefying girls purely a side-effect of your presence now?"

He'd followed Jenny back into the dining room, and, at the appearance of the Babadook, he'd immediately began examining it through his binoculars.

He'd seen what the Doctor had seen, but as the Doctor put the manifestation through its paces, he was looking for the source.

Ah, there it is! But what exactly is it? Disguised? Hidden? Blocked? Chameleon? Composite? Temporal desynchronization? Hmmm. Yes. All of the above.

He lowered the binoculars and shrugged his shoulders, giving the Doctor a knowing look even as he said:

"No, Doctor, I could not find it."

He had no idea how much of what the Babadook saw and heard was getting received/perceived by the entities manipulating it, but better not take a chance until the thing was completely gone.

"You sound like the charlatans in London," she said with far more equanimity than someone from this time period should have had... under the circumstances.

"However, while I can't explain what I am seeing just yet, I tend to deal with things a bit more directly."

She reaches out and grabs the book off the table, opens it about half way, and then proceeds to rip it in half down the binding.

"This may not work, but since destroying the book while it was still in it didn't work, we'll just see what happens now that it is out of the book!"

Jenny turned and gave Miss Fisher a long appraising look. And then beamed even wider. She did like to smile. "I like you. You've got moxie!"

She wasn't sure what that was, precisely, but someone said it to her and it sounded complimentary. She climbed over the chaise-longes and went to check Katrina out, carefully examining for sins of trauma, hypotension, or some form of toxin. The battlefield medicine she had hard-wired into her brain was coming in useful for once!

"Does anyone have a laser scalpel or a hypospray? She might need a shot of adrenaline. Or trepanning. I admit, this is all a bit hard without a diagnostic scanner."

Triney's eyes flutter again as Jenny checks her out. She doesn't look as if she is injured, but possibly a bit dehydrated and malnourished. She stirs, blinking up at Jenny.

"Who are you?"

Realizing that Jenny may not have had much experience dealing with REAL people, Alan hurries around the table to the corner where the other person clearly fainted.

"She just fainted, Jenny," he tells the Doctor's daughter. "A bit too much excitement. Hmmm. She also looks a bit malnourished."

He starts fishing around in his pockets and finally pulls out a granola bar. He opens it and offers it to the newcomer as he helps her up, all the while keeping an eye on this amazing Phryne character... and the book.

As Phryne ripped the book in half, the Babadook appeared to be ripped in half as well! It certainly would have been a gruesome sight if the Babadook had been a creature of flesh and blood! Fortunately, it wasn't, though it couldn't really be determined what it was made of. Something dark and shiny and yellow... not fluid or soft or anything like that, yet not quite solid. Perhaps a bit like the psychic paper that the book was made of.

If anybody had been expecting a particular result, they didn't get it... quite. The tear down the middle of the Babadook was just as rough and jagged as that of the book. Yet the Babadook seemed not to be affected in the least. Both halves continued to stand there with half of a malicious grin on each side of its face. It no longer spoke. And then the two halves just seemed to dissolve away.

"Don't that beat all!" Johnny spoke up. "So I could've just shot the book after all!"

Triney stood up carefully and took the granola bar with a bit of an embarrassed smile. She nibbled at the bar as she watched the creature dissolve. She wasn't sure that the thing was gone but she would let the Doctor deal with it for now.

"Sorry, I forget to eat sometimes, when I'm working, and it's been a big day.  Doctor, I'll need to talk to you when you're done with whatever that was."

"Fainted?" Jenny seemed a little puzzled at the term, then the penny dropped. "Oh, fainted!" She gave a happy little smile. "I can't do that. They removed it from me, genetically, when I was made. Not much use... you know, middle of a battle, and WHOOPS! Accidentally fall over because of fear or something. So embarrassing!"

She also got to her feet and held a hand out to Katrina, answering the question the other girl had asked. "I'm a generated anomaly! But everyone calls me Jenny. It's all his fault, of course!" She pointed at the Doctor with a bright smile, and gave a friendly wave. "Hello! Still here!" Then she lowered her voice to a mock-conspiratorial whisper. "He likes to be all stern and things, but he's a pussycat really. I mean, a terrible absentee father, but a good role model, if you don't count the grumpiness and the fact he can't fly a ship without bits dropping off the console. Oh yes, I know! I asked Donna, she had all the facts!"

She looked about, not especially worried about the vanishing Babadook, as she expected it to die, which is what happens when you tear someone in half. She had far more important concerns. "Doctor... where is Donna? You've not lost her again?"

Jenny didn't know. How could she?

"I have no idea what just happened," Phryne spoke up. "So, there really was a creature in the book? What appeared to be a creature at any rate. It was clearly an illusion since nothing organic could have behaved that way."

"If the Babadook has been separated from the book in whatever manner that involved, is the book completely inert now? If we burn the book this time, will that completely destroy it? And keep this Babadook from returning?"

She was quite sympathetic towards Lady Phryne since she herself had been in the same situation before... well, twice before... kind of.

That bus ride had changed everything.

She still didn't know as much as the Doctor, but she was now aware of how much she didn't know.

"An interesting observation, Phryne," she commented. "What makes it a tad dangerous is that we all saw the same illusion. I do not know of any substance that will do that. But, modern chemistry is making unbelievable strides these days."

"I'll let the Doctor tell you about the book."

"My dear, there's nothing wrong with fainting," she then says to Katrina.  "I can't recall a time that I would have done that, but then I had a much different upbringing than most people."

"So, you've been looking for the Doctor but you have never met him. I presume that means he has never met you either. With the Doctor, you can never be quite sure on that matter."

"Now, suppose you tell us who you are and why you've been looking for the Doctor? And how you got here?"

Triney hesitated and chewed her granola slowly. She figured that the doctor had more pressing matters at the moment than her appearance.

"No we have never met as far as I know. He is known in my time as fiction but I believed. I stumbled across something I likely should not have. As to how and why I am here we can save that story for after."

As soon as the Babadook dissolved, the two halves of the book that Phryne was holding also began to dissolve, bursting into flame that consumed the book halves from the bottom up to where they were being held yet not burning Phryne at all.

Within seconds, all trace of the book was gone.