Not A Game, tag: Ariana

Setting up the entire CIA network on the planet was difficult. First of all one had to build the damn offices. Which meant a lot of traffic in and out of the station while people started to realise that in fact, what was left of the Great Citadel and the uncounted millennia of Time Lord and Gallifreyan history was actually just bit pile of dirt. Attractive looking dirt, but all that made Gallifreyans something other than another primitive race was gone. Completely and utterly.

What was to prevent the other temporal powers from wiping out their nascent race? Gallifrey wasn't popular before the War, let alone when they had ripped through time and space (which was to protect all of creation, though when did Gallifrey ever get the credit it was due?), but now, when they had nothing but the odd TARDIS to protect them, they were ripe to any scavenger or opportunist to take advantage of.

What Gallifrey needed was more power, Narvin brooded, as he finished various pieces of paper work. Braxiatel had prepared for this, he realised.

Braxiatel had prepared for everything.

Of course, the trick was now to find the Collection. Which, given its proprietor, wasn't as easy as it sounded. It was actually bloody difficult, point of fact.

He sighed and then rubbed his eyes. He ought to get to sleep soon, he realised with some chagrin. Time Lords didn't sleep as much as humans, but they did need it eventually. He eyed the sofa at the edge of his office, his impromptu bed, most 'nights' if you could designate a time on a station, 'night', obviously a meaningless definition to soothe the more sentimental Time Lords among them.

Cosmos, his mind was doing a fine wander, wasn't it? He'd fall off the edge of the universe if he wasn't careful.

He decided the best cure was to go for a more physical wander, or more precisely a patrol of the station.

As usual little Ariana was messing around with her little portable computer, well messing wasn't really the right word to use in her case. Fiddling would perhaps be a better word, although the other time lords would refer to it as messing. Little Ria was busy scanning her portable computer with her laser pencil, she was busy testing a computer program of her own design. She'd always wanted to help out Gallifrey and this was her chance to prove to her fellow time lords that she was much more than the little 11 year old Gallifreyan they thought she was.

Ria's fingers danced across the keyboard, fixing coding errors and glitches without even a second thought. Then a red error message flashed across her screen, "oh dear," the little girl sighed, a frown forming across her face. There was seemingly some silly little firewall in her way, blocking her from properly testing out her little software. She supposed that she would have to hack it, Ria swung her legs a little. The very picture of innocence, producing her laser pencil she scanned the portable computer almost boredly. On setting 53, with a few taps of the keys. She was in.

"Easy Peasy," Little Ria said to herself proudly "30 seconds, better than usual," She hoped that she had not hacked some thing important, that would be bad would it not? Right now, if it was important, there would be alarms and big red lights turning on and off. She giggled to herself, gosh that would be a funny sight to see. The flashing red lights and the alarms. Ria tapped a button again, allowing the software to run and test itself. Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes! So Ria set it down beside her, carefully she didn't want it dropped.

But she was bored now. Little Ria hated to be bored, then she had an idea. She would sing a nursery rhyme to pass the time. One of those from one of those planets millions of miles away. Perth? Oh Earth! That was it. Ria giggled, she always got things wrong these days. She decided to sing the nursery rhyme as loud as possible to annoy all the time lords walking past, it would be funny if they came in all red faced. As long as they didn't shout. "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water!" Ariana sang at the top of her voice.

Almost the instant Ariana detected the firewall, Narvin's own spybot detected the intrusion and sent a signal to Narvin's personal communicator. Narvin debated for a moment whether to immediately slam down on the perpetrator, possibly sending a fatal electrical charge down the access port, into whatever device that was being used. But Narvin was a spy, not some hyper-paranoid (his degree of paranoia was perfectly reasonable, actually rendering it caution to him if not to everyone else) executioner and a dead hacker couldn't tell him their plans, who they worked for or why they wanted to hack in.

So he quickly overrode his 'other defenses' and settled for monitoring whatever this programme was supposed to be doing.

Once he had done that, he then used his own consummate skill at the computers to track down the source of the intrusion, pulled out his staser and headed that way.

He realised backup might be wise but given how far inside the intrusion was, it would be doing the Guard a disservice to assume that none of them would be able to get to an intercom or security panel, he doubted that whoever it was was big.

Still, just in case they were that bad, he set up his communicator to send for help if he should not reply to it after five microspans or his lifesigns became erratic.

As he approached his destination, he heard a girl's voice singing. This did not relieve him in the slightest, one doesn't travel the universe without realising that threats come in all shapes and sizes and small doesn't translate to safe.

He rounded the corner and pointed the weapon.

"I'm Coordinator Narvin of the CIA. Who might you be?"

All said perfectly calmly and ever-so-slightly smugly. But that's just Narvin in a good mood.

One minute she was happily singing Jack and Jill at the top of her lungs and the next some meanie with a weirdo weapon thingy was pointing it at her. Ariana folded arms and stuck her bottom lip out, pouting. "It's not very nice to point weapons at people, mummy told me so! My mummy's always right so there!" Ria said with child like smugness and confidence that most had with their parents' abilities. Well Ria had never known her father but was pretty sure about her mummy, her lovely mummy who had gone missing. Which wasn't nice at all.

"My name is Ria, mummy used to call me that. It's short for Ariana but Ariana's so fancy pants that I decided to call myself Ria instead and Aria sounds stupid! But you pointed a freaky weapon thing at me, so you have to call me by my fancy pants name Ariana," The little girl smiled happily, before pressing down on the main button of her laser pencil which had been concealed by her duvet. It was the same color as her laser pencil so it concealed itself well. Ria smiled cutely when she saw the brightly colored sparks appearing.

"Mummy also gave me this for my birthday," she gleefully showed him the laser pencil, "I didn't want you to hurt me with that creepy weapon thing, so I broke it a little to stop you," Ria said with her usual air of childlike smugness. "What's the CIA? Mummy didn't tell me about that. Why do you have a big fancy name like Coordinator? Did you do something special to deserve it? Do you work with computers? I like computers, I have my own see!" Ria produced her little portable computers "Mummy also gave me it! It was my birthday!"

She frowned a little at him "What do you want with me? Did I do something wrong? Or did you do something wrong? I don't think that I did," Ariana frowned again, like she was thinking. A memory struck her, of her when she was older when not older but younger. But she looked older? Did that even make sense? Of herself, hurting things and being bad. Ria blocked it out. She did not want to remember that, Ria was scared of herself like she was back then. Everyone thought that she couldn't remember, the regenerative crisis leaving her permanently with the mind and body of a child but she could. What she was before, it scared her. So Ria hid, as a little girl who knew nothing. When she knew quite a lot of things.

Narvin was not impressed by this creatures attempt to appear like a girl. Particularly a supposedly Gallifreyan one. When he was eleven, like all of his classmates, he was grown out of the dippy stage which most children do at that age. Worn down by their tutors who, frankly, did not tolerate such emotionalism from them, an attitude supported by the bullying older students who preyed on the weaker students, including Narvin. So the giggly schoolgirl rambling about her mother simply encouraged Narvin to believe this was some manner of alien intruder in disguise.

"It's not nice to pry into business that's not your own."

Which is five kinds of hypocrisy, but this wasn't just any information, this was for Gallifrey's security.

Narvin is not a nice man. Nice men do nice things. They sign up for public service (Rassilon help them), have families or even turn renegade. They do not, however, give their lives to the CIA. They do not make good spies nor carry out necessary but morally ambiguous (or, indeed, immoral) missions like the ones Narvin has. Narvin is the kind of person that the idealists need to keep their hands clean so they can make the moral choice. So, on balance, Narvin is satisfied with the duties that make up the role of 'Not a Nice Man'. It suits him.

This means that when Narvin's weapon is disabled, he drops it, and once the 'girl' or whatever she is continues to blither on like an idiot, he takes his chance and grabs the girl, disarming her quickly.

"CIA: Celestial Intervention Agency."

He explains casually, as if he wasn't subduing a little girl.

"Basically we take care of the cosmos and the timelines and protect it from unwanted interventions, those that threaten Gallifrey."

A cruel smirk.

"Such as you."