The Doctor wasn't real hard to find, considering Dean had to pass through the Sun Room to get outside the cafeteria. Dean paused as he entered the darkened room - it wasn't fear (although fear was always a good thing to have of the dark in this job) but he was definitely a little bit more cautious. Kind of an auto-pilot thing, complete with this itch to check for his sawed-off. It only lasted for a split second as his eyes adjusted to the darkened room, taking in the curtains covering the windows and the rearranged furniture. There were a few folks here and he could make out just enough light to see the Doctor's head.
Dean made for him, and flopped down next to the other patient, not even sure where to start. Trying to explain last night to Sam hadn't really done the real deal any justice.
The movie hadn't started yet. Dean was as much for watching King Kong as the next guy, but there was a difference between checking it out a fuzzy motel TV and being "encouraged" to have a good time by the Landels staff. The crappy motel TV didn't seem so bad. He'd been trying to keep an eye on the rotation of the staff but security was pretty tight during the day. Not a lot of opportunities he saw to slip out, especially since they knew his face.
Dean kept his voice low but conversational. "So what happened last night, Doctor? I thought you had shields up and were going at max warp or something."
At the very least, he would've expected the TARDIS to have more protection from what pulled them back into Landels, especially after it'd easily withstood those Dalek death rays. From the last time he'd seen the Doctor across the TARDIS's console, he guessed it was a pretty big surprise to him, the kind that was more like a ninja-knee-in-the-gut surprise than the found-a-hundred-on-the-sidewalk surprise. What he didn't get was if the Doctor had access to the TARDIS why he didn't just pop back further, go five, ten, fifteen years back and stop Landels before it got off the ground.
And there was also the question of what the Doctor was even doing with a time machine in the first place. Although it hadn't really done a whole lot of time traveling when he'd been there - kinda been too busy rolling around like a bad Star Trek set and sparking on their heads and that'd been pretty much it. Maybe he could believe it could travel and obviously it was bigger on the outside. The time travel thing was pushing it. Was kind of a lot of hearsay at that point.
It would've been easier to brush off if he hadn't stepped inside that damn box in the first place though.
It seemed Dean was ready to talk. The Doctor glanced at the man who had just joined him, giving him a brief nod in lieu of a greeting.
"The shields were up," he answered. "The last thing I can remember was leaving the time vortex; we were, well... 'landing', you could say. Nothing should have been able to get at us as long as we were in the TARDIS."
Sometimes things could get in the TARDIS, but taking things out was another matter entirely. It wasn't exactly impossible, but it was very, very improbable. It shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't have been able to happen twice: first when he'd originally arrived at Landel's, and now this.
And everything had started while they'd still been in the time vortex. That shortened an already short list of possibilities to next to nothing that could have been capable of it.
"I don't know what happened. It shouldn't have happened. Whatever technology this Institute has access to... it's good. Very... very good. Good enough to get into a TARDIS and past TARDIS shields, and that's, well... There's not much in the universe that can do that."
It was like every time the Doctor opened his mouth that he tossed all this stuff into Dean's lap that was even more insane then the first. Dean guessed now he was supposed to believe that not only could the Doctor time travel, but he could also travel the universe...in a wood box that was apparently protected against vacuum and death rays. Dean was already fighting off the urge to rub at his forehead.
This wasn't helping narrow any of this down.
"Okay, so you're big on galactic roadtrips," Dean said. There might've been a little sarcasm in there, but he couldn't help it - he couldn't even believe he was still talking about this stuff like it was anything more than just theory or goofing around. "You've gotta have some suspects. Any idea what we could be looking at?"
He couldn't help but wonder if those Dalek things had anything to do with it. Giant robots with phasers wasn't exactly normal, much less the fact that the people out there in Chiswick had been missing - he guessed it was possible they'd been death rayed before the Doctor and him showed up, but he would've thought there'd be more damage to the area. Blown up houses and stuff like that with the kind of heat the Daleks had been packing. Dean flicked a glance at the Doctor. The guy sounded about as in the dark about this as he was, and he wasn't so sure that was real comforting there. If the Doctor had told him this was the work of an evil sonuvabitch of a demon, Dean wouldn't have blinked. Getting told it was the work of some super-advanced super alien (or whatever)?
"Oh, yes; I am," the Doctor agreed. 'Galactic roadtrip' might not have been the phrase he would have used, but it was certainly fitting... aside from there being no roads involved. Just the time vortex. "With a ship that can go to any time and place, you can't possibly think I'd restrict myself to only visiting one planet when there are so many more out there to see."
As for getting past the shields, well... If he were to be perfectly honest, the TARDIS shields weren't in as great a shape as they could have been these days, but a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator had also been integrated into them to make up for shortcomings. Excepting the very, very advanced, nothing should have gotten past the closed doors.
"Of course I've got suspects. The Daleks, for one, at the height of their power. Huon particles, certain transcendental beings, or those capable of transcendental engineering... Well, it's not the Daleks. If it were, I can't think anyone here would still be alive."
Plus there was the fact that the Daleks being back should be impossible this time, no matter what he'd seen last night. After talking to Brainiac 5 about his similar experience, the Doctor couldn't quite be sure any more if the Daleks had been real, or simply an elaborate trick. He hoped that it was, but he had to get out of here and back to the TARDIS and London and then to make absolutely sure. He could never allow the Daleks to win.
Dean flicked a glance forward as one the nurses began to fiddle around with the projector, flanked by an orderly. It whirred and began to show King Kong, something he wouldn't have minded kicking back for if this was in the comfort of a motel and not, y'know, here. Dean waited for the nurse to move out of earshot before he continued.
"Think you got to slow down there, McFly," Dean said. Transcendental engineering? Huon particles? The hell was that all supposed to mean? Man, the most he had was a GED under his belt and plenty of experience busting ghosts: this was more than a little above his pay grade. "So those Dalek things. I'm guessin' our buddies back there weren't at the height of their power. What's their deal anyway?"
He was sure there was a whole list of usual suspects. The Doctor hadn't exactly cleared it up though, not with that motor mouth and if he didn't know better, the guy was just thinking outloud on him and winging this. Then again, he figured you ran into a bitchy bunch of robots and there was certain amount of winging it if they could get nuke happy at any second.
"No, they weren't," the Doctor confirmed. "Or at least, I don't think they were. I hope they were just stragglers who survived; when they're like that... they're practically just scavengers. The Dalek Empire on the other hand..."
He trailed off, glancing away and turning his eyes if not his attention to the movie. The Dalek Empire was not something to trifle with. If the Daleks they'd seen hadn't been lone survivors or some kind of trick, and if they'd been behind the disappearance of the humans... He wanted-no, needed-to put a stop to it. He couldn't afford to be stuck here if the Daleks were roaming free.
He remained quiet for a long moment. Dean had been in just as much danger as he had last night, so he deserved to know something about what they'd been running from...
"I've travelled all over time and space, and I know that the Daleks are the single worst thing in all of creation," he said finally. "They're... evil, ruthless. Their entire race is focused solely on hatred and death. They kill everything they hate, and they hate everything that is not 'Dalek'."
Dalek Sec had become different, and even Dalek Caan had felt remorse about the destruction their race had wrought, but they were exceptions.
So not only were the Daleks armed with friggen death beams, but they were also into the whole sick racial cleansing BS.
Nice to know.
If those were stragglers, Dean hated to see what this Empire looked like: just the three of them had run them down and practically nuked the car out from under them last night. If they hadn't crashed into the TARDIS, Dean was pretty sure they wouldn't even be speaking face to face like this. Granted, he had only the Doc's word to go by that there were more of these things out there, but after last night, after seeing these things himself, Dean was more than a little willing to give the guy some leeway there.
The next question was real simple to Dean. "So how do we kill 'em?" he asked. "We're not exactly packing heat here."
It wasn't like his usual weapons were gonna do much good against a robot. Sure, the guns might but short of trying to snipe the damn things with a rifle, there weren't exactly great odds at trying to get close on foot. The fact he was even trying to realistically figure out how to take down a sci-fi movie reject was just blowing his mind and that he was doing it while talking to McFly here with King Kong in the background? Unbelievable. He thought it would've made more sense in the morning after talking about it with Sam except his head was still spinning over this.
Man, this almost made him miss the demons and ghouls. Those made sense. Twisted, sick sense, but still.
As much as the Doctor normally disliked killing, his mercy was all but used up when it came to the Daleks. Nevertheless, he had offered to save Davros when the other "him" had committed genocide. And then there was what Davros had said to him...
He wanted to tell Dean to just run when he saw a Dalek, that he didn't need to kill anything and the Doctor would take care of the situation somehow. But the truth of the matter was that without any knowledge of how to defend himself, Dean would be vulnerable and the Daleks wouldn't hesitate to kill him if they had the chance.
He may not have liked it, but Davros was right about him.
"If you blind them, that'll be enough," he finally said. There were weaknesses-plenty of weaknesses-that he could tell Dean about, but he would try to prove Davros wrong. He wasn't going to unintentionally fashion yet another human being into a weapon. "The eyestalk-blue light up on top? It's protected, but... if you can blind them, do it and run. They tend to panic when they can't see."
How to destroy it was the trick. He added, "Guns-ballistics are practically useless against a Dalek."
Well, it wasn't the first time he'd run into something that shooting it didn't do much more good than a love tap.
"Won't they just be even more trigger-happy if they're wigging out?" Dean frowned. In his experience, it was when something that was wounded and scared that it got even more dangerous - all bets were off once the hunt knew it was cornered. He had to admit, he wasn't real comfortable with the idea of just turning his back on one of these things and hoping a poke in the eye was enough to make it turn tail. "Seems to me like you got a big chance of someone getting hit even if the damn thing can't see, Doctor."
Taking down the Dalek seemed like a more viable solution. Frankly, it was the one he was most comfortable with: zombie, draug, spirit, Dalek or whatever, it was just safer all around if they were stopped, all permanent-like. Less of a chance of stray death rays hitting anyone, even on accident. Except that was easier said then done when he still didn't know how to get close to one of these things without getting fried - did they have scanners? Other weapons besides those beams? Normally he knew how to kill something, or at least be able to hit up some contacts and figure out how. Being on the other side of this without that wasn't real cool.
If he hadn't seen the Doctor in action last night having one hell of a pissing contest with those Daleks, he wouldn't have been as likely to believe him on how to handle these things. Wasn't like there was a play-by-play on How to Kill a Robot.
Actually, now he was wondering just how the Doctor ran into these things in the first place and survived.
This whole Q and A session wasn't actually clearing up anything. Dean found himself paying more attention to the Doctor than the movie, still frowning. He still couldn't come to terms with that freaky blue box, either. Sure, it was kinda cool, but a lot of it was just plain weird. Dean liked knowing the scope of stuff. Real funky, weird shit was usually a bad sign in his book and running into the TARDIS had left him feeling way off-balance here.
"Anyone get close enough to even blind 'em before?" Dean paused, looking at the Doctor critically. "You ever do it?"
It wasn't like the Doctor was all muscle. He couldn't exactly picture the guy hauling a gun around. He had that lean look like he was a good runner, and he guessed if you made it a habit to get phasered at all the time like last night that being a badass runner was just a requirement at that point.
"Of course they'll be more trigger-happy; that's the idea really. Well... more or less. That's why you get out of the way." The Doctor leaned forward, lacing his fingers together, and elaborated, "If they're can't see what they're supposed to be aiming at, they can't see what they're not supposed to be aiming at. For all their defenses, Daleks are still vulnerable to their own weaponry."
He regretted saying it almost as soon as the words had left his mouth. Dalek or not...
"But... running at the start is better," he said, continuing on swiftly. He would just have to keep talking; if he kept talking, he could dissuade Dean from trying to take on the Daleks in the first place. Assuming he ever encountered them again... which seemed unfortunately likely, if he stayed around the Doctor.
"Getting close isn't a problem-well, not for me at least, but I'm......" Different. The Daleks last night had been keen on shooting first and answering questions later, but usually... Usually he could get them to talk. Usually he could find out how they'd come back, and what they were planning on doing next. Once he knew what they were doing, he could come up with what he needed to do to stop them. Keeping everyone alive until then was crucial.
He trailed off, but then abruptly shifted into another thought, "The Daleks used to be easy to blind; you could just toss a something like a hat over the eye-and I did that once... no, twice with a hat-and that was the end of it. Then they started using shields. Even if you do blind the eye or take out the shields, you're right: there's a 'big chance' of the wrong thing getting hit in the crossfire. If you see a Dalek again... run and find me. I'll figure out what to do."
Dean couldn't tell. It sounded like the punchline of a bad joke. Hell, he would've felt better if it had been a bad joke in the first place. If he hadn't just survived a life or death situation with the Doctor last night, he would've been leaning toward the "dude's gotta be jerking my chain" thought and rolled his eyes. Funny thing about getting nearly phasered - it made you suddenly a lot more likely to believe the guy running away with you, even if he claimed to be a time traveler. At least regarding the parts where he said he'd run into these jackasses before. It was like every time Dean thought he was getting a handle on the conversation, he would get hats or Dalek Empires thrown on top of the mix and it was back to ground zero.
This wasn't just some patient using some sci-fi movie plot to cope with the weird crap out there. He could've chalked it up as that if he hadn't, yknow, been there.
What Dean didn't get was how he was still alive. Sure, he got the Doctor had some serious balls on him after last night with the Daleks, the zombie, and the Indy obstacle course. Balls only got you so far though. There had to be something else, and striking Kickass at Running Away off the checklist didn't really explain how the Daleks could run into this guy again and again and not smoke him.
"So what if you get killed? I mean, it's kinda asking a lot to expect you to be there all the time to take care of these things," Dean pointed out. "You can't just sit there and hope maybe, just maybe, they'll shoot each other."
What if there was only one? The Dalek wasn't going to shoot itself and the more Dean thought about it, the more he wasn't entirely behind the Doctor's awesome Sun Tzu impression here. Too much of a chance of people getting hurt if they didn't figure out a permanent way to take these things out.
What Dean didn't get was why the Doctor was so peace-loving tree hugger about this. It wasn't like the guy was a wuss from what he'd seen of him. Total opposite, in fact. Dean scratched at the nick in the chair's arm, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
Why did the Doctor think he could handle this better than anyone else? The guy's solution so far seemed to amount to kicking dirt in the Dalek's eye and that was it. No weapons. Nothing.
The Doctor grinned at Dean. He'd heard that sort of argument before-that he couldn't always be there. It was true that sometimes he wasn't, but if he wasn't, he could be. Would be. As soon as he knew about it, he'd be there to set things right.
"Taking care of these things is what I do! Taking care of things and fixing things; that's me. Protector of the Earth from alien threats!" he said. "Besides, I'm a time traveller. If there are Daleks about, I'll be there sooner or later, before you even know it. They haven't managed to finally kill me yet; I don't think they'll start managing it any time soon."
He hoped not, at least. He'd only barely escaped fully regenerating the last time, and he didn't want to regenerate again any time soon. On the other hand, there was always the possibility, slim though it might be, that he could be killed without enough time to start the regeneration process... in which case he'd be dead, forever, instead of living on in his own memories. He especially didn't want that to happen.
"You don't have to sit back and hope, but... What the Daleks are like can be used against them, but they don't show mercy. I can buy enough time to do something because of who I am, and you might be able to do the same simply because of knowing me..." he added quietly. Being used by the Daleks to get to him was better than being killed right off the bat, but neither option was ideal. "Just whatever you decide to do, don't die. I don't want anyone else to die."
Dean almost snorted at that. Don't die. Yeah, right, he'd work real hard on that. He had less than a year left - he hadn't exactly been planning to check out early if he had a say in it. No point letting that red-eyed bitch shortchange him. "Cross my heart. I'll try not to keel over."
The corner of his mouth quirked up in a dry smirk. Dean had to admit, it was downright weird to get treated like a civilian, complete with a nicer version of the "stop screaming, stay behind me and don't freak out at the gun in my hand" speech. He couldn't tell if he was more amused or just annoyed by it. The Doctor was asking him to believe in a lot here. Dean continued to pick at the chair's arm, glancing up at King Kong. He wasn't entirely sure if he could buy the Doctor as a real time traveler himself. But the guy had experience with the Daleks, he'd shown him that insane TARDIS, and he'd healed that burn on his hand that shouldn't have been fixed that fast. As far as Dean could tell, the Doctor had told him the truth and nothing but the truth which was...also kinda weird. Dean wasn't used to anyone being that upfront with him, especially when he wasn't waving a badge in their face to get them cooperative. The Doctor would've been the perfect witness any other time.
"So," Dean tried again. He fixed eyes on the Doctor, "Look, I don't even where to start. If you're really able to McFly around time, then how come you didn't know about the Daleks attacking Chiswick? Wouldn't cities being wiped out be in the history books?"
You'd think it would be. Dean had a hard time getting a read on this guy, plain and simple. He was truthful but then he'd go off on a tangent and Dean would start to think he'd have this huge ego, what with the "who I am" bit like he was more qualified to deal with these things when he wasn't even armed. This didn't look fixed to him. Those Daleks were still out there. People had probably already been death rayed considering how trigger-happy the Daleks were. Dean was sorely tempted to point out that the Doctor might want to rethink that part of "taking care of things and fixing 'em" on his resume.
Dean didn't think he was a hunter at all. Fixing things, sure. That rang true of the job. But aside from Angel, no hunter would pass up the opportunity to gank something and give folks some peace of mind, free of charge. Or ramble on about alien threats, like ET was gonna start probing people. If the Daleks didn't show mercy, then why should they? There was turning the other cheek, but this was pretty off the wall.
If he wasn't gonna kill 'em, then what exactly did the Doctor have in mind? Hunting these things seemed like a kickass idea to him.
The Doctor would take Dean at his word that he wouldn't go looking to get killed by any Daleks. Or anything else, for that matter; there were more nasty things in the universe than just Daleks, and the Doctor didn't want to see anyone die.
"Why didn't I know?" he echoed, focusing in on Dean's question. "Well..." He was obviously new to the world of time travel, so that would take some explaining.
"Time isn't a straight line," the Doctor said, deciding to start with a basic explanation before he launched into the specifics. "From where you stand, in whatever point of time you're in, it only seems like it is. One moment progresses into another, and then another, and then another. Where you are, you can only move forward one second at a time; you can't move backwards, or side to side. But that's not what time is; it's just what time appears to be."
How to explain the rest? Time was like a ball-wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey-but maybe that wouldn't be the best explanation in this particular case. Approaching from another angle might be better. "From where I stand, time looks different. Some things always happen-some things must happen-but everything in between can change. I didn't know the Daleks had attacked Chiswick because they already had and had been stopped, but relative to then, when I left, they hadn't attacked it again."
He leaned back in his chair and scratched at the back of his neck, trying to think of if he'd covered everything. That was assuming, of course, that Dean had been able to follow the simple explanation; sometimes people needed examples to get it. Maybe the ball would have been better after all? "Unfortunately, the Daleks have their own time travel technology. Which is, of course, what makes it possible for them to wipe out a city without making it into some versions of history books. It would only be in the history book if it happened and when it happened and until it no longer happened."
Maybe he should just smile and nod - getting pulled into a full on discussion about time travel was out of his league.
"So you're trying to tell me that it's looping or something?" Dean had to struggle to get his head around that one. For him, a spirit wasn't gonna gank itself just 'cause time said so - a hunter had to track it down and do the job. He still saw it as past, present, and future, all in a line that made sense to normal folks. "Even if it's not in the history books, I think a bunch of goddamn robots taking out a city would be kinda noticeable."
And maybe it wasn't just the whole fact that it plain didn't make sense that bugged him. This reeked almost like that pre-destined crap, the kind of thing where people just shrugged like it was out of their hands. It didn't matter if it was Daleks or a haunting to Dean. The fact was, he didn't like the idea of sitting around on their hands like there was no stopping it, that maybe that family living on cursed land absolutely had to die like it was some fixed point in time. In his experience - and maybe he didn't run around with a TARDIS or a kickass trenchcoat - you had to step in and do the job.
Dean made an annoyed sound as he passed his hand over his face. Didn't do much to focus him.
"I don't see how you can fight something if they've got their own time machines, Doctor," Dean said. He was trying real hard to take this at face value; it was much, much harder than it looked. The Doctor was just giving him his crazy take on this but Dean saw it another way. It was like he was being asked to change his whole view on just...well, just about everything, if he had to buy this Time Is The Circle of Life BS or that there were robots out there with time machines and they could go back and gank everything in sight.
"No, not a loop exactly," the Doctor said, shaking his head. "It's more like... Well, it doesn't have a definite form that it has to follow. It's variable, it can change; it's not rigid and defined at all. It has a basic structure, of course, and there are laws, but... Well, in regards to history books: it's only noticeable because we were there. That's why I had been trying to take the TARDIS back such a short period of time, and to another part of the city: I wanted to find out what had happened, how and why the Daleks were there when their fleet had just been destroyed, so that I could fix it. If it never happened in the first place, from the perspective of those within the normal flow of time, of course it wouldn't be noticeable."
Of course, even doing that had been a bit risky; something had obviously changed, but Earth in that period was part of his personal past. He wanted to stop the Daleks, but not at the risk of crossing into his own timeline and creating a paradox.
Somehow, it was easier to explain all of this after he'd shown someone time travel first-hand. Dean was almost there-having been in the TARDIS-but if they had just been able to land properly and go outside before the night had ended... The whole situation was frustrating.
"The Daleks... It's difficult to fight them," the Doctor admitted. "Every time I think the Daleks are finally... finally gone for good, that this time they won't be back... They always turn up again."
Dean made for him, and flopped down next to the other patient, not even sure where to start. Trying to explain last night to Sam hadn't really done the real deal any justice.
The movie hadn't started yet. Dean was as much for watching King Kong as the next guy, but there was a difference between checking it out a fuzzy motel TV and being "encouraged" to have a good time by the Landels staff. The crappy motel TV didn't seem so bad. He'd been trying to keep an eye on the rotation of the staff but security was pretty tight during the day. Not a lot of opportunities he saw to slip out, especially since they knew his face.
Dean kept his voice low but conversational. "So what happened last night, Doctor? I thought you had shields up and were going at max warp or something."
At the very least, he would've expected the TARDIS to have more protection from what pulled them back into Landels, especially after it'd easily withstood those Dalek death rays. From the last time he'd seen the Doctor across the TARDIS's console, he guessed it was a pretty big surprise to him, the kind that was more like a ninja-knee-in-the-gut surprise than the found-a-hundred-on-the-sidewalk surprise. What he didn't get was if the Doctor had access to the TARDIS why he didn't just pop back further, go five, ten, fifteen years back and stop Landels before it got off the ground.
And there was also the question of what the Doctor was even doing with a time machine in the first place. Although it hadn't really done a whole lot of time traveling when he'd been there - kinda been too busy rolling around like a bad Star Trek set and sparking on their heads and that'd been pretty much it. Maybe he could believe it could travel and obviously it was bigger on the outside. The time travel thing was pushing it. Was kind of a lot of hearsay at that point.
It would've been easier to brush off if he hadn't stepped inside that damn box in the first place though.
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"The shields were up," he answered. "The last thing I can remember was leaving the time vortex; we were, well... 'landing', you could say. Nothing should have been able to get at us as long as we were in the TARDIS."
Sometimes things could get in the TARDIS, but taking things out was another matter entirely. It wasn't exactly impossible, but it was very, very improbable. It shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't have been able to happen twice: first when he'd originally arrived at Landel's, and now this.
And everything had started while they'd still been in the time vortex. That shortened an already short list of possibilities to next to nothing that could have been capable of it.
"I don't know what happened. It shouldn't have happened. Whatever technology this Institute has access to... it's good. Very... very good. Good enough to get into a TARDIS and past TARDIS shields, and that's, well... There's not much in the universe that can do that."
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This wasn't helping narrow any of this down.
"Okay, so you're big on galactic roadtrips," Dean said. There might've been a little sarcasm in there, but he couldn't help it - he couldn't even believe he was still talking about this stuff like it was anything more than just theory or goofing around. "You've gotta have some suspects. Any idea what we could be looking at?"
He couldn't help but wonder if those Dalek things had anything to do with it. Giant robots with phasers wasn't exactly normal, much less the fact that the people out there in Chiswick had been missing - he guessed it was possible they'd been death rayed before the Doctor and him showed up, but he would've thought there'd be more damage to the area. Blown up houses and stuff like that with the kind of heat the Daleks had been packing. Dean flicked a glance at the Doctor. The guy sounded about as in the dark about this as he was, and he wasn't so sure that was real comforting there. If the Doctor had told him this was the work of an evil sonuvabitch of a demon, Dean wouldn't have blinked. Getting told it was the work of some super-advanced super alien (or whatever)?
Not so easy.
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As for getting past the shields, well... If he were to be perfectly honest, the TARDIS shields weren't in as great a shape as they could have been these days, but a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator had also been integrated into them to make up for shortcomings. Excepting the very, very advanced, nothing should have gotten past the closed doors.
"Of course I've got suspects. The Daleks, for one, at the height of their power. Huon particles, certain transcendental beings, or those capable of transcendental engineering... Well, it's not the Daleks. If it were, I can't think anyone here would still be alive."
Plus there was the fact that the Daleks being back should be impossible this time, no matter what he'd seen last night. After talking to Brainiac 5 about his similar experience, the Doctor couldn't quite be sure any more if the Daleks had been real, or simply an elaborate trick. He hoped that it was, but he had to get out of here and back to the TARDIS and London and then to make absolutely sure. He could never allow the Daleks to win.
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"Think you got to slow down there, McFly," Dean said. Transcendental engineering? Huon particles? The hell was that all supposed to mean? Man, the most he had was a GED under his belt and plenty of experience busting ghosts: this was more than a little above his pay grade. "So those Dalek things. I'm guessin' our buddies back there weren't at the height of their power. What's their deal anyway?"
He was sure there was a whole list of usual suspects. The Doctor hadn't exactly cleared it up though, not with that motor mouth and if he didn't know better, the guy was just thinking outloud on him and winging this. Then again, he figured you ran into a bitchy bunch of robots and there was certain amount of winging it if they could get nuke happy at any second.
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He trailed off, glancing away and turning his eyes if not his attention to the movie. The Dalek Empire was not something to trifle with. If the Daleks they'd seen hadn't been lone survivors or some kind of trick, and if they'd been behind the disappearance of the humans... He wanted-no, needed-to put a stop to it. He couldn't afford to be stuck here if the Daleks were roaming free.
He remained quiet for a long moment. Dean had been in just as much danger as he had last night, so he deserved to know something about what they'd been running from...
"I've travelled all over time and space, and I know that the Daleks are the single worst thing in all of creation," he said finally. "They're... evil, ruthless. Their entire race is focused solely on hatred and death. They kill everything they hate, and they hate everything that is not 'Dalek'."
Dalek Sec had become different, and even Dalek Caan had felt remorse about the destruction their race had wrought, but they were exceptions.
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Nice to know.
If those were stragglers, Dean hated to see what this Empire looked like: just the three of them had run them down and practically nuked the car out from under them last night. If they hadn't crashed into the TARDIS, Dean was pretty sure they wouldn't even be speaking face to face like this. Granted, he had only the Doc's word to go by that there were more of these things out there, but after last night, after seeing these things himself, Dean was more than a little willing to give the guy some leeway there.
The next question was real simple to Dean. "So how do we kill 'em?" he asked. "We're not exactly packing heat here."
It wasn't like his usual weapons were gonna do much good against a robot. Sure, the guns might but short of trying to snipe the damn things with a rifle, there weren't exactly great odds at trying to get close on foot. The fact he was even trying to realistically figure out how to take down a sci-fi movie reject was just blowing his mind and that he was doing it while talking to McFly here with King Kong in the background? Unbelievable. He thought it would've made more sense in the morning after talking about it with Sam except his head was still spinning over this.
Man, this almost made him miss the demons and ghouls. Those made sense. Twisted, sick sense, but still.
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He wanted to tell Dean to just run when he saw a Dalek, that he didn't need to kill anything and the Doctor would take care of the situation somehow. But the truth of the matter was that without any knowledge of how to defend himself, Dean would be vulnerable and the Daleks wouldn't hesitate to kill him if they had the chance.
He may not have liked it, but Davros was right about him.
"If you blind them, that'll be enough," he finally said. There were weaknesses-plenty of weaknesses-that he could tell Dean about, but he would try to prove Davros wrong. He wasn't going to unintentionally fashion yet another human being into a weapon. "The eyestalk-blue light up on top? It's protected, but... if you can blind them, do it and run. They tend to panic when they can't see."
How to destroy it was the trick. He added, "Guns-ballistics are practically useless against a Dalek."
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"Won't they just be even more trigger-happy if they're wigging out?" Dean frowned. In his experience, it was when something that was wounded and scared that it got even more dangerous - all bets were off once the hunt knew it was cornered. He had to admit, he wasn't real comfortable with the idea of just turning his back on one of these things and hoping a poke in the eye was enough to make it turn tail. "Seems to me like you got a big chance of someone getting hit even if the damn thing can't see, Doctor."
Taking down the Dalek seemed like a more viable solution. Frankly, it was the one he was most comfortable with: zombie, draug, spirit, Dalek or whatever, it was just safer all around if they were stopped, all permanent-like. Less of a chance of stray death rays hitting anyone, even on accident. Except that was easier said then done when he still didn't know how to get close to one of these things without getting fried - did they have scanners? Other weapons besides those beams? Normally he knew how to kill something, or at least be able to hit up some contacts and figure out how. Being on the other side of this without that wasn't real cool.
If he hadn't seen the Doctor in action last night having one hell of a pissing contest with those Daleks, he wouldn't have been as likely to believe him on how to handle these things. Wasn't like there was a play-by-play on How to Kill a Robot.
Actually, now he was wondering just how the Doctor ran into these things in the first place and survived.
This whole Q and A session wasn't actually clearing up anything. Dean found himself paying more attention to the Doctor than the movie, still frowning. He still couldn't come to terms with that freaky blue box, either. Sure, it was kinda cool, but a lot of it was just plain weird. Dean liked knowing the scope of stuff. Real funky, weird shit was usually a bad sign in his book and running into the TARDIS had left him feeling way off-balance here.
"Anyone get close enough to even blind 'em before?" Dean paused, looking at the Doctor critically. "You ever do it?"
It wasn't like the Doctor was all muscle. He couldn't exactly picture the guy hauling a gun around. He had that lean look like he was a good runner, and he guessed if you made it a habit to get phasered at all the time like last night that being a badass runner was just a requirement at that point.
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He regretted saying it almost as soon as the words had left his mouth. Dalek or not...
"But... running at the start is better," he said, continuing on swiftly. He would just have to keep talking; if he kept talking, he could dissuade Dean from trying to take on the Daleks in the first place. Assuming he ever encountered them again... which seemed unfortunately likely, if he stayed around the Doctor.
"Getting close isn't a problem-well, not for me at least, but I'm......" Different. The Daleks last night had been keen on shooting first and answering questions later, but usually... Usually he could get them to talk. Usually he could find out how they'd come back, and what they were planning on doing next. Once he knew what they were doing, he could come up with what he needed to do to stop them. Keeping everyone alive until then was crucial.
He trailed off, but then abruptly shifted into another thought, "The Daleks used to be easy to blind; you could just toss a something like a hat over the eye-and I did that once... no, twice with a hat-and that was the end of it. Then they started using shields. Even if you do blind the eye or take out the shields, you're right: there's a 'big chance' of the wrong thing getting hit in the crossfire. If you see a Dalek again... run and find me. I'll figure out what to do."
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Dean couldn't tell. It sounded like the punchline of a bad joke. Hell, he would've felt better if it had been a bad joke in the first place. If he hadn't just survived a life or death situation with the Doctor last night, he would've been leaning toward the "dude's gotta be jerking my chain" thought and rolled his eyes. Funny thing about getting nearly phasered - it made you suddenly a lot more likely to believe the guy running away with you, even if he claimed to be a time traveler. At least regarding the parts where he said he'd run into these jackasses before. It was like every time Dean thought he was getting a handle on the conversation, he would get hats or Dalek Empires thrown on top of the mix and it was back to ground zero.
This wasn't just some patient using some sci-fi movie plot to cope with the weird crap out there. He could've chalked it up as that if he hadn't, yknow, been there.
What Dean didn't get was how he was still alive. Sure, he got the Doctor had some serious balls on him after last night with the Daleks, the zombie, and the Indy obstacle course. Balls only got you so far though. There had to be something else, and striking Kickass at Running Away off the checklist didn't really explain how the Daleks could run into this guy again and again and not smoke him.
"So what if you get killed? I mean, it's kinda asking a lot to expect you to be there all the time to take care of these things," Dean pointed out. "You can't just sit there and hope maybe, just maybe, they'll shoot each other."
What if there was only one? The Dalek wasn't going to shoot itself and the more Dean thought about it, the more he wasn't entirely behind the Doctor's awesome Sun Tzu impression here. Too much of a chance of people getting hurt if they didn't figure out a permanent way to take these things out.
What Dean didn't get was why the Doctor was so peace-loving tree hugger about this. It wasn't like the guy was a wuss from what he'd seen of him. Total opposite, in fact. Dean scratched at the nick in the chair's arm, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
Why did the Doctor think he could handle this better than anyone else? The guy's solution so far seemed to amount to kicking dirt in the Dalek's eye and that was it. No weapons. Nothing.
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"Taking care of these things is what I do! Taking care of things and fixing things; that's me. Protector of the Earth from alien threats!" he said. "Besides, I'm a time traveller. If there are Daleks about, I'll be there sooner or later, before you even know it. They haven't managed to finally kill me yet; I don't think they'll start managing it any time soon."
He hoped not, at least. He'd only barely escaped fully regenerating the last time, and he didn't want to regenerate again any time soon. On the other hand, there was always the possibility, slim though it might be, that he could be killed without enough time to start the regeneration process... in which case he'd be dead, forever, instead of living on in his own memories. He especially didn't want that to happen.
"You don't have to sit back and hope, but... What the Daleks are like can be used against them, but they don't show mercy. I can buy enough time to do something because of who I am, and you might be able to do the same simply because of knowing me..." he added quietly. Being used by the Daleks to get to him was better than being killed right off the bat, but neither option was ideal. "Just whatever you decide to do, don't die. I don't want anyone else to die."
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The corner of his mouth quirked up in a dry smirk. Dean had to admit, it was downright weird to get treated like a civilian, complete with a nicer version of the "stop screaming, stay behind me and don't freak out at the gun in my hand" speech. He couldn't tell if he was more amused or just annoyed by it. The Doctor was asking him to believe in a lot here. Dean continued to pick at the chair's arm, glancing up at King Kong. He wasn't entirely sure if he could buy the Doctor as a real time traveler himself. But the guy had experience with the Daleks, he'd shown him that insane TARDIS, and he'd healed that burn on his hand that shouldn't have been fixed that fast. As far as Dean could tell, the Doctor had told him the truth and nothing but the truth which was...also kinda weird. Dean wasn't used to anyone being that upfront with him, especially when he wasn't waving a badge in their face to get them cooperative. The Doctor would've been the perfect witness any other time.
"So," Dean tried again. He fixed eyes on the Doctor, "Look, I don't even where to start. If you're really able to McFly around time, then how come you didn't know about the Daleks attacking Chiswick? Wouldn't cities being wiped out be in the history books?"
You'd think it would be. Dean had a hard time getting a read on this guy, plain and simple. He was truthful but then he'd go off on a tangent and Dean would start to think he'd have this huge ego, what with the "who I am" bit like he was more qualified to deal with these things when he wasn't even armed. This didn't look fixed to him. Those Daleks were still out there. People had probably already been death rayed considering how trigger-happy the Daleks were. Dean was sorely tempted to point out that the Doctor might want to rethink that part of "taking care of things and fixing 'em" on his resume.
Dean didn't think he was a hunter at all. Fixing things, sure. That rang true of the job. But aside from Angel, no hunter would pass up the opportunity to gank something and give folks some peace of mind, free of charge. Or ramble on about alien threats, like ET was gonna start probing people. If the Daleks didn't show mercy, then why should they? There was turning the other cheek, but this was pretty off the wall.
If he wasn't gonna kill 'em, then what exactly did the Doctor have in mind? Hunting these things seemed like a kickass idea to him.
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"Why didn't I know?" he echoed, focusing in on Dean's question. "Well..." He was obviously new to the world of time travel, so that would take some explaining.
"Time isn't a straight line," the Doctor said, deciding to start with a basic explanation before he launched into the specifics. "From where you stand, in whatever point of time you're in, it only seems like it is. One moment progresses into another, and then another, and then another. Where you are, you can only move forward one second at a time; you can't move backwards, or side to side. But that's not what time is; it's just what time appears to be."
How to explain the rest? Time was like a ball-wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey-but maybe that wouldn't be the best explanation in this particular case. Approaching from another angle might be better. "From where I stand, time looks different. Some things always happen-some things must happen-but everything in between can change. I didn't know the Daleks had attacked Chiswick because they already had and had been stopped, but relative to then, when I left, they hadn't attacked it again."
He leaned back in his chair and scratched at the back of his neck, trying to think of if he'd covered everything. That was assuming, of course, that Dean had been able to follow the simple explanation; sometimes people needed examples to get it. Maybe the ball would have been better after all? "Unfortunately, the Daleks have their own time travel technology. Which is, of course, what makes it possible for them to wipe out a city without making it into some versions of history books. It would only be in the history book if it happened and when it happened and until it no longer happened."
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Maybe he should just smile and nod - getting pulled into a full on discussion about time travel was out of his league.
"So you're trying to tell me that it's looping or something?" Dean had to struggle to get his head around that one. For him, a spirit wasn't gonna gank itself just 'cause time said so - a hunter had to track it down and do the job. He still saw it as past, present, and future, all in a line that made sense to normal folks. "Even if it's not in the history books, I think a bunch of goddamn robots taking out a city would be kinda noticeable."
And maybe it wasn't just the whole fact that it plain didn't make sense that bugged him. This reeked almost like that pre-destined crap, the kind of thing where people just shrugged like it was out of their hands. It didn't matter if it was Daleks or a haunting to Dean. The fact was, he didn't like the idea of sitting around on their hands like there was no stopping it, that maybe that family living on cursed land absolutely had to die like it was some fixed point in time. In his experience - and maybe he didn't run around with a TARDIS or a kickass trenchcoat - you had to step in and do the job.
Dean made an annoyed sound as he passed his hand over his face. Didn't do much to focus him.
"I don't see how you can fight something if they've got their own time machines, Doctor," Dean said. He was trying real hard to take this at face value; it was much, much harder than it looked. The Doctor was just giving him his crazy take on this but Dean saw it another way. It was like he was being asked to change his whole view on just...well, just about everything, if he had to buy this Time Is The Circle of Life BS or that there were robots out there with time machines and they could go back and gank everything in sight.
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Of course, even doing that had been a bit risky; something had obviously changed, but Earth in that period was part of his personal past. He wanted to stop the Daleks, but not at the risk of crossing into his own timeline and creating a paradox.
Somehow, it was easier to explain all of this after he'd shown someone time travel first-hand. Dean was almost there-having been in the TARDIS-but if they had just been able to land properly and go outside before the night had ended... The whole situation was frustrating.
"The Daleks... It's difficult to fight them," the Doctor admitted. "Every time I think the Daleks are finally... finally gone for good, that this time they won't be back... They always turn up again."
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