And the Doctor, of course, is always bound to come running when Des tells him there's a strange creature who wants his help. Not that that happens often, but... Well, not really the point.
The Doctor bounds into the building and through the door into the front room like an overeager puppy, all bright grins and more energy than any normal person is prepared to deal with.
"Des, are you sure this building is actually- whoa!" He comes to an abrupt halt, seeing the hydralisk. Not what he was expecting. Not the usual sort of monster the Doctor's encountered since coming through the Rift. Now he understands what Des meant when he said it could eat his face.
"Oh, hello!" he says, his voice softening a little the way it tends to when he runs into something interesting that he's never seen before and isn't trying to kill him at the moment. The Doctor grins and moves a little closer to the hydralisk, starting to circle it slowly so he can examine it from a few more angles. Let's hope this is the creature Des was talking about, or the Doctor
( ... )
The hydralisk observes him as much as xes limited flexibility in the region of the head and neck will allow, occasionally repositioning xemself with a stationary halfslither when the Doctor moves too far outside xes range of vision. This time it's the Doctor's voice xe chooses to mimic.
{"Greetings, surfacedweller! I represent a peaceful consortium of various species living beneath your city...."}
The Doctor's mouth drops open for just a second, and then the grin is back, and even brighter. "Oh, that is brilliant, that is! Aren't you a clever little thing?" The way the Doctor's fawning over it, you'd think it was a puppy that just performed a trick, rather than a living war machine that could tear him apart if it wanted. "Right, sorry. Peaceful consortium of various species... Go ahead, I'm listening!"
The hydralisk is unphased. Social niceties of any sort don't really register to xem, so social mis-steps won't, either.
{"We have existed for several grand climate cycles in the network of passages beneath your surface city, composting the various runoff for application in our agricultural industry. However, recently this runoff has been contaminated with significant amounts of heavy earth metals and radioactive elements which make it unsuitable for composting and threaten our foodcrop. I have come to request to lodge a civil complaint against those polluting our fertilizer. Your assistance in this pursuit is respectfully solicited!"}
And this is the moment where Des arrives. Due to the fact that until one has an actual business, one cannot actually have functioning business hours, he generally comes in when he wants, so he steps into the office (is that door supposed to be unlocked?) with a box of office supplies he may or may not have jacked from some storage space in the Conrad Basement (don't ask- those closets occasionally have weird things) and a bagel dangling out of his mouth.
He notes the Doctor, notes the hydralisk, and makes something akin to a WTF expression around the bagel.
The Doctor notices Des coming in and grins at him around the hydralisk. "He's got my voice!" he says, in a way that suggests that is the most wonderful thing he's run into in a long time, and that Des should clearly share his enthusiasm.
"Could I see it?" he says to the hydralisk. "The farming, the... everything?"
The hydralisk turns to Des, with a friendly {"Greetings, surfacedweller!"} to him in Des' own voice, before turning back to the Doctor and re-adopting the Doctor's voice. {"A visit to our farming community is acceptable and can be initiated at your leisure."}
Des gives the Doctor a look that could mean any number of things, nods at the hydralisk, and then puts the box down so he can remove the bagel from his mouth.
"It's like a parrot." He looks up at the hydralisk. "A very large, scary, slightly predatorial parrot."
He takes another bite out of the bagel and mutters around it, "Sure. Let's all take an adventure into the sewers. Charlie and Grace will love us forever and buy us ponies for giving them something fun to chase us into."
He says that like he doesn't want to go, but, really... Well, he's half-torn. On one hand, adventure is FUN. On the other hand... Well, he's been in situations like this and given how half the people who come to him for cases lead him into traps, he's a bit wary.
"Oh, how do you know it's predatory? It hasn't tried to eat either of us yet..." The Doctor is still grinning. It's a little unnerving, really, because when the Doctor starts grinning too much, a certain amount of running and general insanity tend to follow. "No one's making you come along, Des." He doesn't say it, but there's a bit of an implied though I may think less of you if you don't tacked onto the end of that.
Des just gives him another one of those looks, although different from the first one. Des has a lot of looks and they're nearly impossible to explain. They just happen. "Doctor, I may not be big on the whole evolutionary procedure, but when something looks like that, I don't think it evolved to hug puppies, but, you know, it hasn't tried to eat us, and that's a plus in my book anyway."
He finishes the bagel and wipes his hands on his jeans. "Oh, I'm definitely coming. No doubt about that. Just getting the general 'this is going to end so badly, you know that?' comments out of the way first."
It might say something about both of them that this is probably the closest they'd ever get to a real, tried-and-true male bonding exercise with each other.
"Optimism, Desmond D. Descant," the Doctor says brightly, and you know he's in a good mood if he's calling Des by his full name. "You should learn it. A little optimism never hurt anyone." He pauses. "Well, maybe never is going a little far... Hardly ever? Usually. Let's say usually doesn't hurt anyone." Because that's encouraging.
"So. Should we go now, then?" Of course they should go now. Now is the best time for every adventure to start.
"You are such a reassuring person. I feel better about life already." Sarcasm thy name is Descant, but he's grinning with that weirdly manic 'that sounds evil, let's do it' look of his on his face, so it's only teasing, really.
"And You'd think we were going to Candy Mountain, the way you're talking." He's amused though and it's not like he has anything else to do other than put this building in working order, and since that is both (A. A false hope and (B. Not nearly as interesting, adventure it is. "Okay, why the hell not?"
"Between sewers and Candy Mountain, Des, always choose the sewers," the Doctor says, pausing a moment to pull out his journal and scribble a quick note in it. "Much more interesting."
Finishing the note, he tucks the journal back in his pocket and straightens, turning back to the hydralisk. "Right then! ...Oh, I love saying this. Take us to your leader!"
The hydralisk's jaw lolls open. {"Assumption of hierarchical command structure,"} xe says, tilting xes head a few degrees. {"I will show you to our primary labor organizer. Please follow me."}
Then xe turns, slithering back toward the basement and leaving another set of grooves in the floor overlaid on the ones xe made in coming up here.
"Because the sewers are so much more pleasant than candy," Des snickers, finishing a note to Grace that will probably cause her to panic uncontrollably with a flourish and sticking the journal in his back pocket (it's a tiny journal, dammit).
And he will not comment on the 'take me to your leader' bit. He will not. He'll just arch his eyebrows in a way that suggests he thinks the Doctor is enjoying this far too much and follows the hydralisk to the basement, while giving a rather sorrowful look at his floor.
The Doctor deigns to ignore that arched eyebrow from Des - if they're really going to have a conversation about the ridiculous things they choose to say, the Doctor would have a few things to point out. He trots along cheerfully after the hydralisk, hands in his pockets, exuberant smile like a kid on a field trip. It's a field trip to the sewers. In Chicago. With a giant alien creature leading the way.
Really, there are few things more exciting than that.
The Doctor bounds into the building and through the door into the front room like an overeager puppy, all bright grins and more energy than any normal person is prepared to deal with.
"Des, are you sure this building is actually- whoa!" He comes to an abrupt halt, seeing the hydralisk. Not what he was expecting. Not the usual sort of monster the Doctor's encountered since coming through the Rift. Now he understands what Des meant when he said it could eat his face.
"Oh, hello!" he says, his voice softening a little the way it tends to when he runs into something interesting that he's never seen before and isn't trying to kill him at the moment. The Doctor grins and moves a little closer to the hydralisk, starting to circle it slowly so he can examine it from a few more angles. Let's hope this is the creature Des was talking about, or the Doctor ( ... )
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{"Greetings, surfacedweller! I represent a peaceful consortium of various species living beneath your city...."}
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{"We have existed for several grand climate cycles in the network of passages beneath your surface city, composting the various runoff for application in our agricultural industry. However, recently this runoff has been contaminated with significant amounts of heavy earth metals and radioactive elements which make it unsuitable for composting and threaten our foodcrop. I have come to request to lodge a civil complaint against those polluting our fertilizer. Your assistance in this pursuit is respectfully solicited!"}
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He notes the Doctor, notes the hydralisk, and makes something akin to a WTF expression around the bagel.
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"Could I see it?" he says to the hydralisk. "The farming, the... everything?"
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Xe's such a friendly giant war machine.
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"It's like a parrot." He looks up at the hydralisk. "A very large, scary, slightly predatorial parrot."
He takes another bite out of the bagel and mutters around it, "Sure. Let's all take an adventure into the sewers. Charlie and Grace will love us forever and buy us ponies for giving them something fun to chase us into."
He says that like he doesn't want to go, but, really... Well, he's half-torn. On one hand, adventure is FUN. On the other hand... Well, he's been in situations like this and given how half the people who come to him for cases lead him into traps, he's a bit wary.
...That says a lot about Des though, honestly.
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He finishes the bagel and wipes his hands on his jeans. "Oh, I'm definitely coming. No doubt about that. Just getting the general 'this is going to end so badly, you know that?' comments out of the way first."
It might say something about both of them that this is probably the closest they'd ever get to a real, tried-and-true male bonding exercise with each other.
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"So. Should we go now, then?" Of course they should go now. Now is the best time for every adventure to start.
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"And You'd think we were going to Candy Mountain, the way you're talking." He's amused though and it's not like he has anything else to do other than put this building in working order, and since that is both (A. A false hope and (B. Not nearly as interesting, adventure it is. "Okay, why the hell not?"
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Finishing the note, he tucks the journal back in his pocket and straightens, turning back to the hydralisk. "Right then! ...Oh, I love saying this. Take us to your leader!"
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Then xe turns, slithering back toward the basement and leaving another set of grooves in the floor overlaid on the ones xe made in coming up here.
Down into the sewer farms you go, kids.
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And he will not comment on the 'take me to your leader' bit. He will not. He'll just arch his eyebrows in a way that suggests he thinks the Doctor is enjoying this far too much and follows the hydralisk to the basement, while giving a rather sorrowful look at his floor.
Carpet would probably be a good investment.
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Really, there are few things more exciting than that.
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