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Missy is a great believer in Girl Power, which she understands to be something roughly along the lines of feminism but with a nice non-threatening name of exactly the sort she enjoys confusing people with.
Missy (non-threatening), believer in Girl Power (non-threatening), is also getting to the sort of age where one starts to worry about one’s legacy (extremely threatening, hopefully), and the combination of these facts has led her to apply for a job (a word she always uses in italics since it is a foreign concept) which will allow her to pass on her most valuable lessons to someone younger than herself who is also likely to die long before she does.
Possibly this last part robs the whole plan of any real impact, but she picked it up from the Doctor so if this latest diabolical scheme is nonsensical from the start then surely that’s his fault, not Missy’s?
So, Missy rings the doorbell with the pointy bit on the end of her umbrella, waits semi-patiently for one of the humans to answer the door, and when this finally (finally! They’re so slow!) happens she greets the mistress of the house by extending a hand to be kissed (or shaken, or whatever they’re doing in England these days) and saying, “Hello, I’m Missy, the mysterious yet trustworthy woman you’ve hired to tutor your daughter. How do you do, can I come in?” She pushes her way past the human in the doorway, who was presumably about to invite her in anyway and why should she have to wait for something as predictable as that to actually happen?
“I’m not -” begins the human, and Missy interrupts.
“I’m very good with children,” she says, “I’ve worked with a large number of them before this and almost all of them are still alive, probably.” She peers down the long hallway into the depths of this not-at-all-humble abode. “Where’s your one?”
The human sounds irritated; “I am their one.”
Missy turns to look at the human again, this time taking a moment to compare their relative heights and voice pitch and skin elasticity. “Oh,” she says, “so you are. Please forgive me, I mistook you for an adult.”
The human – the girl - stares at Missy, mouth slightly open, eyes gleaming; the girl is quite baffled.
Missy leans down and lifts the girl’s chin with a finger. “Close your mouth, dear, gaping like that lets people hear your little brain whirring away as you try to work things out. Never let people know that you’re trying to work things out. You must learn to act like you know everything.”
The girl closes her mouth and nods. There, first lesson imparted. This is easy!
Missy gestures. “Take me to your leader.”
“My parents are in the conservatory.”
Well of course they are, this is an expensive house and no doubt they harbour angry thoughts about the taxes involved, this is the natural habitat of conservatories if ever there was one. Missy follows the girl, and because she has not yet done so she asks, “What’s your name, little girl?”
“I’m not little!” insists the sub-150-centimetre creature.
“That’s a very unusual name, does it run in the family?”
The girl pauses and looks at her, baffled once more but she’s hidden it better this time. (See? Missy is good at this!) “My name is Jamie Moriarty. Shouldn't you already know that?”
“Shouldn’t you have already realised that I didn’t?”
Jamie Moriarty looks very thoughtful for a moment, and then she nods. “Oh, I see. ‘Act like you know everything.’”
Gosh, Missy is proud of this one already! “Exactly, my dear. Now, let’s go and confuse those conservative parents of yours.”
-
Missy is assigned a room to use but otherwise expected to provide her own educational materials, which is what was agreed to in the employment contract (such an exotic term!) and therefore not a problem; Missy has brought a bag with her, full of books and charts and scientific instruments and weaponry.
Jamie Moriarty watches Missy pile these items onto the large round table in their classroom, and manages to hold out for a whole forty-seven seconds before she asks the obvious question; “How did you fit all those things into that bag? And isn’t it very heavy?” She looks at Missy, whose arms are nowhere near wide enough to contain all the muscle lifting this bag would seem to require.
“It’s bigger on the inside,” says Missy, delighted. No wonder the Doctor always keeps a human around, they ask all the expected questions even without prompting! It’s adorable! And probably quite annoying after the first day or so, but she can cross that bridge when she comes to it. “No, I’m not going to tell you how to make things bigger on the inside.” She picks a book from the pile. “I’m going to tell you about -” Missy glances at the cover “- poisons that can be concocted from ordinary household items. Oh my, I’m surprised this one didn’t get banned! Or maybe it did. Or will. What year is this, anyway?”
“Don’t you -” Jamie stops talking when Missy glares at her. “It’s 1994,” she says, meekly.
“Thank you,” says Missy, resolving to fix the meekness sooner rather than later (who knows how long she’ll last here before she gets bored of being so helpful and productive?) and sits down next to Jamie, opening the book between them.
“This seems like an odd curriculum,” notes Jamie, but she’s already devouring the pages with her eyes, the greedy little poppet. A girl like this must be destined for great things. (Missy has checked, obviously. She wouldn’t waste her time educating someone who wasn’t certain to succeed at it!)
“Exams are easy,” says Missy, “and you don’t need anyone to teach you things your posh school already taught you. I,” she says, grandly, “am here to teach you how to be a criminal mastermind.”
Jamie considers this for a moment. “Good,” she says.
Missy tuts. “Don’t insult me, girl. ‘Good’ is for other people. Now, pay attention, you’re about to learn from the very, very worst.”
-
Jamie does learn from Missy, and quickly too. By the end of the week her blossoming mind of evil has progressed from Minor Mischief (a natural talent of children, it seems) all the way to Plotting The Overthrow Of A Democratically-Elected Government In A Single Afternoon, zooming through all the steps in between, an instant virtuoso at all the classics like Cruelty To Animals and Malicious Phone Calls.
Whether this is due to Missy’s skill at teaching or Jamie’s skill at being an absolute nightmare of a human being is anyone’s guess, but either way the results are impressive.
-
“Are you married?” asks Jamie, mid-lesson, because she is increasingly difficult to control (Missy is very pleased with this development; the meekness has been shaken right out of the girl, which will be to Jamie’s later benefit and nobody else’s).
“I have a boyfriend,” says Missy. “He's always pestering me to tie the knot, but I value my independence. As should you,” she adds, more to keep up the appearance of education than because she thinks Jamie doesn’t already know how important it is to be your own woman.
Jamie’s nose wrinkles adorably. “I don’t like boys. Or girls. Or friends.”
This is probably where Missy is supposed to give A Talk about grown-up things like love and relationships and divorce. That should be easy enough. “Men are simple creatures,” she explains, “and they need a firm hand to guide them towards their own inevitable destruction. So do women, and ladies, and whatever else you have on this planet.”
“Their hearts are all in the same place,” says Jamie, who is full of wisdom these days, because Missy has poured it into her with such diligence, “and poison works equally well on everyone.”
Missy beams at her protegee (she’s never had one of those before, but maybe this can be a new hobby for her, to fill in the dull bits between adventures). “You’re going to go far, even by the standards of little girls with rich parents and disturbingly high IQs. The world is your shellfish, my dear.” Unless Missy decides that she wants to keep Earth after all, which she might. But that’s another bridge that can be burned later if the need arises.
Jamie is clearly pleased to be praised so highly by a woman she respects and admires, but she doesn’t blush or try to brush off the compliments. Jamie has a healthy arrogance to her and is turning into an excellent judge of how modest she must pretend to be to make herself seem non-threatening to people.
There’s no need to pretend around Missy, of course, so Jamie doesn’t waste her energy on those sorts of lies during their lessons. She saves that nonsense for her teachers at school, and the other children, and her parents.
“Oh!” exclaims Missy, “I forgot to teach you forgery!”
That had quite slipped her mind! It shouldn’t have, because Jamie Moriarty is herself a work of art. Missy’s very own work of art, painted on a canvas of fine quality with the shape already sketched out on it, but the colours and the details have been added by her own hand and all that is needed to complete the work now is a signature.
A forged one, for preference – no one will suspect a thing! And – oh! - that’s another thing she forgot.
“You’ll need an alias at some point,” says Missy. “Or several. Names don’t matter at all, but they’re also very important.” She reaches into her handy little (on the outside) bag for the calligraphy tools. “Pick a fake name and we’ll practise making fake identification documents for it. Don’t go for anything too fancy or interesting, sometimes it helps to be forgettable.”
Jamie Moriarty has a very good brain and this is a simple task; “Irene,” she decides, and from the sound of things she has also decided to be American for now. “I’m going to be Irene Adler.”
Missy hands her a fountain pen. “You’d best write it down before you forget it; nobody is going to remember a name like that.”