Home Calls

Watching her beloved children scamper out of the room, Frizzle absentmindedly stroked Liz as the creature intently watched a buzzing fly, pink tongue licking green lips. Frizzle couldn't help but smile a little as she watched the last of the class leave, blissfully unaware of the turmoil in their teacher's mind, the dark thoughts she had been keeping at bay all day. With a near inaudible sigh, she pulled paper out of the hidden pocket in her dress and gazed at the coded message written there. It was the same message that had been playing across her mental wavelengths throughout the school day.

Come home. You are needed. Come home. It is time.

She snorted in irony at that. For a race devoted to time, who called themselves lords of it, they were still in essence its slaves. Obey or be destroyed. She knew the cause too. It was the same cause that was happening in the past, the present, and the future. It was one of the only reasons someone like her would be called home. War.

Frizzle had been so careful to keep her darlings away from the horrors of true war. Bacteria and natural selection aside, they never experienced the bloodlust of war that caused men of all species to go mad, be they born, loomed, or bred in genetic labs. She kept her children away from the gore and misery of walking amongst the dead which had in life been your friends. She remembered the first time she had experienced death firsthand. She had walked hand in hand with her old friend as they traversed what would in future years become a wasteland, but was now the fresh site of so many fallen soldiers. She could still hear their cries of agony in their final throes of death.

She had been sickened while her friend had merely been curious. It was one of the first warning signs of her friend's derangement. She was still just a child then, practically an infant barely past her third decade, and yet the girl beside her who was less than two years older than her had seemed so different. That group excursion for time children had marked Frizzle for life. Never would she subject children to those horrors. Learning and growing was all fine and dandy, but she believed there was a certain age to be passed before they were old enough for something so brutal, if one could be ready. Baby steps into the world of life and death.

And so how could she tell her sweet children she must leave to fight and kill and murder? Especially when that first smell of death and decay still filled her nostrils in memory?

She remembered when she had gazed upon the Untempered Schism. Her friend's two former colleagues and fellow year mates had been the prime examples of those who either went mad or ran away. Her friend, on the other hand, she could not tell if she had been truly inspired or driven utterly mad. She seemed to have both qualities at times. As for Frizzle herself? She didn't know she had been inspired or simply ran away. Though, here she was, stagnant on Earth living the life of a (semi) normal human. The only contact of her old life she truly had left was her prototype TARDIS and Liz. She still remembered fondly first meeting the tiny green reptilian alien after Liz had been stranded on Melissa Majoria by her negligent caretakers, and saving her from the rather annoyed indigenous species that disliked her taste in food.

After losing one friend to inspired madness, she had been very lonely, and greatly appreciated the camaraderie that Liz gave her. It was fortuitous that similar creatures were native to Earth, and that her preference to the purity and innocence of children's company left her surrounded by those still with an imagination not to question why a lizard could drive a bus. Though, sometimes the imaginations took her by surprise, such as when one student had believed her to be a vampire, for how at all did she resemble Earth's concept of those creatures? So amusing.

Liz, sensing her thoughts, turned her attention to her friend and placed on scaled hand on the woman's. Tilting her head in worry, she offered whatever comfort she could. Frizzle welcomed it, and offered her dear friend a small smile. With no children around, the need to pretend was greatly lessened, and the more pessimistic attitude could show.

"I need to go, Liz. They're calling." She didn't need to be mildly telepathic to get Liz's reaction to her words. The lizard lookalike stuck out her tongue and made a disgusted face. "Liz," Frizzle gently chided with a laugh. She knew the small alien girl did not care much for her friend's race of people. Not that she could blame her. They were rather stodgy. "They're calling us all back." She sighed and glanced around her classroom. She hoped she would not be gone for long. Though she knew that to this world she could be gone for barely five minutes, she did not know the days or years she would be gone in her own time, and it greatly distressed her. Or if it would change her. Physically, as well as mentally and emotionally. Just as it had done to another she had once known and held affection for...

As if reading her mind, Liz took a pen off the desk and drew a rather unfortunate picture of the Lady President on a spare piece of paper, sticking her tongue out again once it was done, making her displeasure known.

"I know, Liz. But I've hid out here on Earth long enough. If my people need me, then I must return. I will surely not be gone long. If you desire, you do not even need return with me, and can wait for my arrival here." She laughed at Liz's rejection of that idea. "No, I'm not trying to get rid of you, you are my dearest friend." She gave Liz a scratch under her chin as she preened. "Come now, then. We must inform the bus."

She hoped her bus's sisters did not antagonise her. Frizzle had changed much about the TARDIS, putting in different sorts of alien technology, turning it into something completely different. It was in a way not even truly a TARDIS anymore, something she was glad of, as her bus could now communicate far more easily with her. Though words were not spoken, Frizzle could read her expressions, and easily check her mood and condition. And though she was fond of this life, and her ginger hair, she would willingly sacrifice this regeneration to protect her beloved bus. True, she had had this face for so long, she had almost forgotten it was not her original. And, unless something unthinkable happened, nor would it be her last.

"Come," she softly repeated, standing from her desk. Liz hopped up her arm to settle on her shoulder, the little alien's mood darkening as she realised they could not put it off any longer, and anxious for what it would mean for her friends. "Do not worry, Liz. After this trip, perhaps we will take the class somewhere new and exciting. I wish I could show them other planets besides the ones in their own solar system. Jaconda, perhaps. Or Delphon."

Sighing, Frizzle and Liz paused at the doorway, looking back at the classroom, eyes seeing everything and nothing all at once. Her knowledge of future events was becoming clouded. She did not know when she would return. She only prayed it was soon. Her children were counting on her.

"Let's leave a message at the front office, detailing our leave of absence, shall we?" she inquired as she grabbed onto the handle and started closing a door. "A family emergency, hm? No idea when we'll be back...but never say never."

With the briefest of last looks behind to the empty and quiet classroom, Frizzle gave a small, pained smile before closing the door behind her. The latch clicked in the silence.

For years the mysterious disappearance of their favourite teacher, "The Frizz", would plague the students until well into adulthood. They never forgot her, though. And every year, on the anniversary of her and Liz's and the Magic School Bus's departure, her last class would come together and relive their adventures with the zany, and strange, and wonderful woman who had taught them so much. They would tell their children, their children's children, and so on and so forth until their end of days. Above all, they repeated one of the most valuable lessons they had ever learned. And through it, Ms Valerie Felicity Frizzle lived on.

"Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!"

Fin