Alternatively - 7/65?
Rejoice, I have an approximate number of chapters for this thing!
Do Not Rejoice, this is mostly un-beta'd!
-BAD WOLF-
The Doctor grinned as Rose flashed a small smile in his direction and opened the door a crack before slipping out of the TARDIS.
He joined her, pulling his coat on and closing the door, the blatant enthusiasm on her face infectious. He hadn't seen someone so excited to see something in...
He'd never seen someone so excited to see something.
If this was what she looked like when he took her to a new planet, came the unexpected and somewhat unwelcome thought, what would she look like if she saw her original Doctor again?
He squashed that thought. Knowing him, he probably would rather think that it was impossible to get her back; Other Him would think that she was too precious for him to endanger with his presence. Therefore, This Him could keep her, and that would be perfectly all right. Because he certainly didn't consider her too precious to take with him. Nope. His reasons for keeping her were entirely unselfish. She wanted to see the universe, therefore he took her. And that had nothing whatsoever to do with his inexplicable want to be around her, because of course there was no inexplicable want to be around her.
Of course not.
Satisfied with his logic, he got back to watching her reaction.
She brushed her hair behind her ears as she looked downwards at the purple-toned grass, smiling so widely the Doctor almost wondered if her face would split and remove itself from her skull. Which would be a pity, of course- and most decidedly not because of the fact that it was a very nice face. Well, a bit. But, more importantly, she needed it.
She glanced upwards to the oddly-tinted sky with its yellow sun dangling just in sight, turning the landscape golden-red with its slowly dying rays, then without warning she started to jump up and down to feel the springiness of the earth and the grass.
"I've missed this," she cried as she continued her wild vertical motion before spinning around without warning to hug him.
He smiled and automatically returned the unexpected and not unwelcome embrace, infected with her joy. Qvnaerie wasn't the most beautiful or exciting of planets and the area they were standing in appeared to be a slightly damp field, yet she was completely enthused. He'd had companions who would be irritated because the grass was a bit wet.
They never lasted very long.
"Where are all the people, though?" she asked, glancing around, breathless after her gyrations.
"Good question." Could be that they don't like standing around in slightly damp fields, he considered.
Or it could be because the one village (habitation area, city, hamlet, conglomeration) he could see wasn't in the slightly damp field at all and they were quite sensibly remaining in there.
"Let's try over there," he told her before he set off in exactly that direction.
Rose couldn't contain another slight jump before she followed him. The air smelled different, the grass was slightly purplish, the sky had a reddish tint to it which wasn't entirely the fault of the sunset, and she was off-world. She felt like an addict who had gone into severe withdrawal finding another fix. Only better. Much, much better.
The ground was springy. She nearly twisted her ankle a couple of times, but the ground was springy. Earth wasn't springy. It just kind of squished when you stepped on it. Qvnaerie- she mouthed the syllables and almost got it right- was springy. And smelled good.
She wondered why anyone would want to leave, especially if they'd lived there all their lives.
She wondered why the village looked so empty as they approached it.
She wondered why there were scorch marks on the field beyond the village, surrounding things which distinctly looked like rocket-launchers.
"Got the flight wrong again?" she inquired, a teasing note creeping into her voice, almost disguising a tinge of nervousness. Something nagged at her, an extra sense telling her that something was very distinctly Not Right about this. She just couldn't quite piece it together.
"It's weird," said the Doctor, unconsciously echoing her thoughts. "I told the TARDIS to take us here a few generations after colonisation, and it looks right, but nobody's here."
"And someone's run off with the rockets, haven't they?"
"Exactly."
There was a slightly absent quality about his voice which Rose instantly recognised.
"Trouble," she said, half-question, half-statement.
"Well," he said, pretending to consider it, "no harm in finding out. Come on."
He sped up, miraculously keeping his footing on the damp grass, and Rose found it difficult to keep up with him. She slid a little ungracefully as the ground sloped unexpectedly, but the Doctor was facing the other direction so he couldn't see her. After a moment in which she nearly fell, she managed to regain her footing and continued attempting to follow him.
The village looked abandoned, and hastily so. The houses- odd conglomerates of plastic, metal, unidentifiable bits and pieces which looked like they had been scavenged from a spaceship, and local wood- were completely dark and the hamlet was eerily silent. Rose shivered involuntarily, partially from that unnameable nervousness, partially because the sun was almost completely down and it was starting to get rather cold.
"Is everyone gone, or are they just hiding, do you think?"
"Hiding." The Doctor turned abruptly to her. "Colonies around their second or third generation, when there doesn't appear to be any chance of failure, will cannibalise their shuttles. Thus the extra bits stuck on the houses. They wouldn't have had the same number of spaceships as they did when they arrived, there wouldn't be enough fuel left to power all of them, and the population would have been too large to fit all of them on the spaceships even if they still had them and they could fly back to wherever. No, there's someone here."
Something whirred ominously behind Rose.
"And... here they come," said the Doctor, the faintest note of anxiety destroying his attempt at flippancy.
Rose turned around and was not at all surprised to see someone pointing a gun at them. The Time Lord reached for her forearm and slowly drew her behind him before raising his hands very, very slowly. Rose mimicked his gesture with one hand, the other fingering the cold metal in her pocket as she calmly pretended to surrender.
"Why is no-one ever happy to see us?" muttered the Doctor under his breath. "We can be saving their entire planet, but no, they've got to go and threaten our lives. Of course."
Okay, thought Rose. She's had a grand total of one adventure with him, only just agreed to travel with him, and he's saying that no-one's ever happy to see them. It was unexpected and a little odd, and she wasn't entirely sure what to think about it, so she didn't.
"Who are you?" asked the girl with the gun. She was maybe sixteen, perhaps a little older, with straight black hair. Then again, it might have been brown. Rose couldn't really tell in the light, or lack thereof. She held the weapon as if she wasn't quite sure what it was, much less what to do with it, which simultaneously reassured and distressed Rose.
"I'm the Doctor and this is Rose," said the Doctor. "Might I ask why you're wanting to kill us?"
"No, I don't know either of you," said the girl, stepping forwards a little bit. "Where'd you come from?"
"We've got a ship. Just... wandering, you know. Passed by Qvnaerie, thought why not?" The Doctor paused, eyes flickering to the weapon. "Would you really mind... dropping that?"
She tensed for a moment.
"We can help," offered Rose. "With... whatever."
The girl paused before letting her arm drop to her side. "Not like it matters anyway," she muttered, tossing it randomly aside. It collided with a rock, sparked violently (making the Doctor and Rose instinctively flinch), and stopped its rhythmic, malevolent humming. "That zarking creature's gonna kill us all. Everyone left behind."
"What creature?" asked Rose, relaxing and removing her hand from her pocket. She had never liked that thing, never liked using it, especially didn't like using it on frightened teenagers.
The frightened teenager in question looked up. "How can you get on this planet and not know?"
"We only just arrived," said the Doctor, putting his hands in his pockets.
"Then you'd have to see it when you came down-"
"It just sort of appears. Now what is going on?" interrupted the impatient Doctor snappishly.
The girl blinked and shied away a little bit as if his very voice was dangerous. "It's a heliovore," she said, not even trying to conceal the hopelessness and fear in her words.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows and glanced upwards. "Ah," he said. "There."
Rose glanced up and saw nothing but stars and an ominous-looking, luminous cloud near the sun, so she naturally assumed it was the cloud.
"Funny thing, heliovores. Never met one of those I liked. Well, I've never met one. It's... sort of pretty, though. Isn't it?"
"S'pose," said Rose, squinting at it.
"Nice. Anyway." He glanced down at her. "Eats suns, like the name suggests," he explained.
"Wouldn't that burn it to death?" she objected.
"Nah, it's a gas cloud. Like a living nebula, only it eats stars instead of making them. Surrounds them and absorbs all the star's energy, then goes on floating through space."
"So that thing's gonna eat the sun."
"Unless we stop it."
"You can't stop a heliovore, now you're just being completely ridiculous," scoffed the girl.
"What was your name?" asked the Doctor, wandering over to her.
She looked warily up at him. "Illa."
"Well then, Illa," he said, enunciating each syllable excruciatingly clearly, "maybe we can stop it and maybe we can't. And if we can't, we shove all of you in my spaceship and take you somewhere else. All right?"
"One spaceship can't hold-"
"Bigger on the inside," he interrupted.
She gaped at him. "That's impossible," she insisted.
"Course it is! That's why I like it!" he said, grinning. "Now," he said, abruptly slipping into a mood of considerably more gravity, "can you tell me anything that might help?"
"Like what?" asked Illa.
"Oh, I dunno. Anything you know, really. Planet, heliovore, kronkburger prices on Castor 36..."
"Maybe not the last one," said Rose as Illa bit her lip.
She hesitated. "I don't know a lot about any of it," she said. "I always liked just reading and stuff... But my brother would know," she added. "Know more than me, anyway."
"Where is he, then?" the Doctor inquired.
Illa paused, then turned. "This way," she said, and started walking.
-BAD WOLF-
Ah, yes. Pity, really, that Rose had to pick up that thing in the first place, much less use it, but what else could she do? A twenty-one-year-old who gets in as much trouble as she does has to be able to defend herself somehow. She doesn't exactly look threatening, after all.
She got the blaster from the body of a strangely fanatical creature. It and its thousand-or-so friends had been hired by their artist, who had for some reason wanted to paint a rather lovely depiction of the deaths of six entire sentient species to protest the casual genocide several other sentient species enjoyed practising. Naturally, the paintings needed the six species in question to be dead first, and unfortunately humans were one of the artist's targets. Rose had tried talking to them and got herself captured for her efforts. Torchwood had tried shooting at them with rather more success, and as soon as Rose managed to escape her cage she stole the first weapon she found and started using it with a skill which surprised her colleagues. Well, to be honest, it was surprising to them until she admitted that she did like playing this universe's virtual-reality version of Halo, even though she always wondered if she was accidentally furthering an alien plot. After the battle with the rather hypocritical aliens was over she just kept the thing in case another group of art-fanatics decided to not listen to her frankly brilliant logic and carry on with their massacre.
And yes, I did have something to do with that.
No, her decision to keep the weapon, not the art fanatics themselves. Stupid mortals. As if I'd nearly get her killed and painted just to keep her from getting killed in the future.
All right, all right, so I nearly killed her when I used her as my host, but that is most definitely not the point no matter what the White Guardian or anyone else might say.
-BAD WOLF-
The problem with Qvnaerie, thought the Doctor, was that it was picturesque. It looked absolutely beautiful, with the unnaturally large, reddish moon hanging in the starry sky and the massive trees and the springy grass. It was good for painting. It was not good for walking on in the middle of the night, especially if one's companion was human.
The human in question was limping a little bit from an unfortunate incident involving some grass which unhelpfully disguised a distinct and violent unevenness of the springy earth. Thankfully, she had begun her descent in just the right direction to collide with the Doctor, and thus she never actually managed to hit the ground and was also able to preserve some semblance of her dignity. They had been walking for roughly five minutes and fifty-eight seconds, but it felt longer even to the Doctor and the Time Lord knew that Rose would miscalculate even more. In addition to that it was getting cold and Rose didn't have his resistance to changes in temperature, although knowing her even as little as he did, he naturally assumed she wouldn't mention it.
"How much longer, do you think?" came her voice from the darkness.
He would never admit it, but he jumped a little bit at the unexpected interruption to his thoughts.
"No way of telling," he said. "But I don't think it should be too long."
"Good," she said.
"You all right?" he inquired, glancing over at her.
"Fine," she said. "Just a bit bored. I mean, not exactly exciting, is it, a heliovore? Not like a Slitheen or whatever, it doesn't chase you or anything, just sort of... dangles at you."
He smiled a bit. "Oh, never assume that there won't be any running, Rose," he reassured her.
She looked sceptical, but didn't pursue it.
Without warning Illa darted ahead until she was almost out of sight. "Vynn!" she shouted. "I'm back!"
And with that she sat down and pushed herself off the edge of the ridge before them, skidding out of sight. A faint rustling sound reached the Time Lord and his companion and the top of Illa's head came into view.
The Doctor went up the leaf-strewn slope first, then helped Rose next to him before stepping off the ledge, dropping down the steep embankment and landing easily, with all the nonchalance he carefully maintained. Rose stuck her tongue out at him momentarily for showing off (not that he could see it, anyway) and, not wanting to risk hurting herself again, she sat down on the edge and pushed herself off from there, landing a little awkwardly next to the Time Lord.
There was another village before them, larger than the last and with considerably more people. The air of hopelessness pervaded the place almost tangibly as the humans wandered about, presumably preparing for sleep. Illa and a man roughly her age were standing a few feet away in a shady area which seemed, by some sort of unmarked and unquestioned sensation, to be just beyond the border of the village.
"Vynn," said Illa, "this is the Doctor and she's Rose. They said they might be able to help."
Vynn gave the Doctor and Rose a sceptical look. "Help against a heliovore?" he inquired, scorn prevalent in his tone.
"I'm very good," said the Doctor by way of explanation. "Just today Rose and I defeated a ship full of Racnoss."
Today? Rose gave him an amused look. Other him had asked her twice, this him hadn't been able to wait a few hours...
"Never heard of them?" he inquired, sounding more than a little disappointed at their silence.
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" asked Vynn with unexpected coldness.
"Vynn!" said Illa sharply.
"They could be anyone, or anything!" snapped Vynn back at her. "For all we know, they're aliens."
The Doctor opened his mouth and Rose, foreseeing an incredibly asinine comment preparing to be spoken, elbowed him sharply to make him shut up before he managed to say it.
"What's wrong with that?" asked Illa exasperatedly. "If you hadn't been so stubborn, we'd be dealing with aliens anyway. And it's not like they look alien. Stop being so xenophobic."
"I'm not being xenophobic, I'm being cautious!"
"Look," said Rose, very calmly, "we're safe. I'm human, at least. He's... not, but at least I am, and that's got to count for something, yeah?"
Vynn gave her a witheringly suspicious look.
The Doctor, who had been glaring at the leaves above them and bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, suddenly decided to stop trying to be quiet. "Look, either we're nasty evil things who kill you before the heliovore gets you, we're nasty evil things who are going to watch as the heliovore gets you, we're good people and we try to help and fail and the heliovore gets you, or we're good people and we try to help and we actually manage it. The situation doesn't seem that bad to me, but what do I know? I mean, I could tell you-"
Rose shut him up before he started listing ways in which he was more intelligent than Vynn or anyone else.
"Vynn, please," pleaded Illa.
"You know more about this place than any of us," said the Doctor. "You could help us. And keep an eye on us if you insist on it, but more importantly you can help."
Silence.
"I don't like it," muttered the human.
"But you'll help?" pursued Rose.
Another pause.
"Yes."
"Good," said the Doctor, relaxing considerably. If a frightened teenaged girl was allowed to carry a 37∂6679.5CRBSK like the one she had so rudely pointed at them, there was no telling who else they gave weapons to on this planet. "Let's get started, then." He leaned back on the slightly moist embankment. "What can you tell me," he said conversationally, "about the heliovore?"
Do Not Rejoice, this is mostly un-beta'd!
-BAD WOLF-
The Doctor grinned as Rose flashed a small smile in his direction and opened the door a crack before slipping out of the TARDIS.
He joined her, pulling his coat on and closing the door, the blatant enthusiasm on her face infectious. He hadn't seen someone so excited to see something in...
He'd never seen someone so excited to see something.
If this was what she looked like when he took her to a new planet, came the unexpected and somewhat unwelcome thought, what would she look like if she saw her original Doctor again?
He squashed that thought. Knowing him, he probably would rather think that it was impossible to get her back; Other Him would think that she was too precious for him to endanger with his presence. Therefore, This Him could keep her, and that would be perfectly all right. Because he certainly didn't consider her too precious to take with him. Nope. His reasons for keeping her were entirely unselfish. She wanted to see the universe, therefore he took her. And that had nothing whatsoever to do with his inexplicable want to be around her, because of course there was no inexplicable want to be around her.
Of course not.
Satisfied with his logic, he got back to watching her reaction.
She brushed her hair behind her ears as she looked downwards at the purple-toned grass, smiling so widely the Doctor almost wondered if her face would split and remove itself from her skull. Which would be a pity, of course- and most decidedly not because of the fact that it was a very nice face. Well, a bit. But, more importantly, she needed it.
She glanced upwards to the oddly-tinted sky with its yellow sun dangling just in sight, turning the landscape golden-red with its slowly dying rays, then without warning she started to jump up and down to feel the springiness of the earth and the grass.
"I've missed this," she cried as she continued her wild vertical motion before spinning around without warning to hug him.
He smiled and automatically returned the unexpected and not unwelcome embrace, infected with her joy. Qvnaerie wasn't the most beautiful or exciting of planets and the area they were standing in appeared to be a slightly damp field, yet she was completely enthused. He'd had companions who would be irritated because the grass was a bit wet.
They never lasted very long.
"Where are all the people, though?" she asked, glancing around, breathless after her gyrations.
"Good question." Could be that they don't like standing around in slightly damp fields, he considered.
Or it could be because the one village (habitation area, city, hamlet, conglomeration) he could see wasn't in the slightly damp field at all and they were quite sensibly remaining in there.
"Let's try over there," he told her before he set off in exactly that direction.
Rose couldn't contain another slight jump before she followed him. The air smelled different, the grass was slightly purplish, the sky had a reddish tint to it which wasn't entirely the fault of the sunset, and she was off-world. She felt like an addict who had gone into severe withdrawal finding another fix. Only better. Much, much better.
The ground was springy. She nearly twisted her ankle a couple of times, but the ground was springy. Earth wasn't springy. It just kind of squished when you stepped on it. Qvnaerie- she mouthed the syllables and almost got it right- was springy. And smelled good.
She wondered why anyone would want to leave, especially if they'd lived there all their lives.
She wondered why the village looked so empty as they approached it.
She wondered why there were scorch marks on the field beyond the village, surrounding things which distinctly looked like rocket-launchers.
"Got the flight wrong again?" she inquired, a teasing note creeping into her voice, almost disguising a tinge of nervousness. Something nagged at her, an extra sense telling her that something was very distinctly Not Right about this. She just couldn't quite piece it together.
"It's weird," said the Doctor, unconsciously echoing her thoughts. "I told the TARDIS to take us here a few generations after colonisation, and it looks right, but nobody's here."
"And someone's run off with the rockets, haven't they?"
"Exactly."
There was a slightly absent quality about his voice which Rose instantly recognised.
"Trouble," she said, half-question, half-statement.
"Well," he said, pretending to consider it, "no harm in finding out. Come on."
He sped up, miraculously keeping his footing on the damp grass, and Rose found it difficult to keep up with him. She slid a little ungracefully as the ground sloped unexpectedly, but the Doctor was facing the other direction so he couldn't see her. After a moment in which she nearly fell, she managed to regain her footing and continued attempting to follow him.
The village looked abandoned, and hastily so. The houses- odd conglomerates of plastic, metal, unidentifiable bits and pieces which looked like they had been scavenged from a spaceship, and local wood- were completely dark and the hamlet was eerily silent. Rose shivered involuntarily, partially from that unnameable nervousness, partially because the sun was almost completely down and it was starting to get rather cold.
"Is everyone gone, or are they just hiding, do you think?"
"Hiding." The Doctor turned abruptly to her. "Colonies around their second or third generation, when there doesn't appear to be any chance of failure, will cannibalise their shuttles. Thus the extra bits stuck on the houses. They wouldn't have had the same number of spaceships as they did when they arrived, there wouldn't be enough fuel left to power all of them, and the population would have been too large to fit all of them on the spaceships even if they still had them and they could fly back to wherever. No, there's someone here."
Something whirred ominously behind Rose.
"And... here they come," said the Doctor, the faintest note of anxiety destroying his attempt at flippancy.
Rose turned around and was not at all surprised to see someone pointing a gun at them. The Time Lord reached for her forearm and slowly drew her behind him before raising his hands very, very slowly. Rose mimicked his gesture with one hand, the other fingering the cold metal in her pocket as she calmly pretended to surrender.
"Why is no-one ever happy to see us?" muttered the Doctor under his breath. "We can be saving their entire planet, but no, they've got to go and threaten our lives. Of course."
Okay, thought Rose. She's had a grand total of one adventure with him, only just agreed to travel with him, and he's saying that no-one's ever happy to see them. It was unexpected and a little odd, and she wasn't entirely sure what to think about it, so she didn't.
"Who are you?" asked the girl with the gun. She was maybe sixteen, perhaps a little older, with straight black hair. Then again, it might have been brown. Rose couldn't really tell in the light, or lack thereof. She held the weapon as if she wasn't quite sure what it was, much less what to do with it, which simultaneously reassured and distressed Rose.
"I'm the Doctor and this is Rose," said the Doctor. "Might I ask why you're wanting to kill us?"
"No, I don't know either of you," said the girl, stepping forwards a little bit. "Where'd you come from?"
"We've got a ship. Just... wandering, you know. Passed by Qvnaerie, thought why not?" The Doctor paused, eyes flickering to the weapon. "Would you really mind... dropping that?"
She tensed for a moment.
"We can help," offered Rose. "With... whatever."
The girl paused before letting her arm drop to her side. "Not like it matters anyway," she muttered, tossing it randomly aside. It collided with a rock, sparked violently (making the Doctor and Rose instinctively flinch), and stopped its rhythmic, malevolent humming. "That zarking creature's gonna kill us all. Everyone left behind."
"What creature?" asked Rose, relaxing and removing her hand from her pocket. She had never liked that thing, never liked using it, especially didn't like using it on frightened teenagers.
The frightened teenager in question looked up. "How can you get on this planet and not know?"
"We only just arrived," said the Doctor, putting his hands in his pockets.
"Then you'd have to see it when you came down-"
"It just sort of appears. Now what is going on?" interrupted the impatient Doctor snappishly.
The girl blinked and shied away a little bit as if his very voice was dangerous. "It's a heliovore," she said, not even trying to conceal the hopelessness and fear in her words.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows and glanced upwards. "Ah," he said. "There."
Rose glanced up and saw nothing but stars and an ominous-looking, luminous cloud near the sun, so she naturally assumed it was the cloud.
"Funny thing, heliovores. Never met one of those I liked. Well, I've never met one. It's... sort of pretty, though. Isn't it?"
"S'pose," said Rose, squinting at it.
"Nice. Anyway." He glanced down at her. "Eats suns, like the name suggests," he explained.
"Wouldn't that burn it to death?" she objected.
"Nah, it's a gas cloud. Like a living nebula, only it eats stars instead of making them. Surrounds them and absorbs all the star's energy, then goes on floating through space."
"So that thing's gonna eat the sun."
"Unless we stop it."
"You can't stop a heliovore, now you're just being completely ridiculous," scoffed the girl.
"What was your name?" asked the Doctor, wandering over to her.
She looked warily up at him. "Illa."
"Well then, Illa," he said, enunciating each syllable excruciatingly clearly, "maybe we can stop it and maybe we can't. And if we can't, we shove all of you in my spaceship and take you somewhere else. All right?"
"One spaceship can't hold-"
"Bigger on the inside," he interrupted.
She gaped at him. "That's impossible," she insisted.
"Course it is! That's why I like it!" he said, grinning. "Now," he said, abruptly slipping into a mood of considerably more gravity, "can you tell me anything that might help?"
"Like what?" asked Illa.
"Oh, I dunno. Anything you know, really. Planet, heliovore, kronkburger prices on Castor 36..."
"Maybe not the last one," said Rose as Illa bit her lip.
She hesitated. "I don't know a lot about any of it," she said. "I always liked just reading and stuff... But my brother would know," she added. "Know more than me, anyway."
"Where is he, then?" the Doctor inquired.
Illa paused, then turned. "This way," she said, and started walking.
-BAD WOLF-
Ah, yes. Pity, really, that Rose had to pick up that thing in the first place, much less use it, but what else could she do? A twenty-one-year-old who gets in as much trouble as she does has to be able to defend herself somehow. She doesn't exactly look threatening, after all.
She got the blaster from the body of a strangely fanatical creature. It and its thousand-or-so friends had been hired by their artist, who had for some reason wanted to paint a rather lovely depiction of the deaths of six entire sentient species to protest the casual genocide several other sentient species enjoyed practising. Naturally, the paintings needed the six species in question to be dead first, and unfortunately humans were one of the artist's targets. Rose had tried talking to them and got herself captured for her efforts. Torchwood had tried shooting at them with rather more success, and as soon as Rose managed to escape her cage she stole the first weapon she found and started using it with a skill which surprised her colleagues. Well, to be honest, it was surprising to them until she admitted that she did like playing this universe's virtual-reality version of Halo, even though she always wondered if she was accidentally furthering an alien plot. After the battle with the rather hypocritical aliens was over she just kept the thing in case another group of art-fanatics decided to not listen to her frankly brilliant logic and carry on with their massacre.
And yes, I did have something to do with that.
No, her decision to keep the weapon, not the art fanatics themselves. Stupid mortals. As if I'd nearly get her killed and painted just to keep her from getting killed in the future.
All right, all right, so I nearly killed her when I used her as my host, but that is most definitely not the point no matter what the White Guardian or anyone else might say.
-BAD WOLF-
The problem with Qvnaerie, thought the Doctor, was that it was picturesque. It looked absolutely beautiful, with the unnaturally large, reddish moon hanging in the starry sky and the massive trees and the springy grass. It was good for painting. It was not good for walking on in the middle of the night, especially if one's companion was human.
The human in question was limping a little bit from an unfortunate incident involving some grass which unhelpfully disguised a distinct and violent unevenness of the springy earth. Thankfully, she had begun her descent in just the right direction to collide with the Doctor, and thus she never actually managed to hit the ground and was also able to preserve some semblance of her dignity. They had been walking for roughly five minutes and fifty-eight seconds, but it felt longer even to the Doctor and the Time Lord knew that Rose would miscalculate even more. In addition to that it was getting cold and Rose didn't have his resistance to changes in temperature, although knowing her even as little as he did, he naturally assumed she wouldn't mention it.
"How much longer, do you think?" came her voice from the darkness.
He would never admit it, but he jumped a little bit at the unexpected interruption to his thoughts.
"No way of telling," he said. "But I don't think it should be too long."
"Good," she said.
"You all right?" he inquired, glancing over at her.
"Fine," she said. "Just a bit bored. I mean, not exactly exciting, is it, a heliovore? Not like a Slitheen or whatever, it doesn't chase you or anything, just sort of... dangles at you."
He smiled a bit. "Oh, never assume that there won't be any running, Rose," he reassured her.
She looked sceptical, but didn't pursue it.
Without warning Illa darted ahead until she was almost out of sight. "Vynn!" she shouted. "I'm back!"
And with that she sat down and pushed herself off the edge of the ridge before them, skidding out of sight. A faint rustling sound reached the Time Lord and his companion and the top of Illa's head came into view.
The Doctor went up the leaf-strewn slope first, then helped Rose next to him before stepping off the ledge, dropping down the steep embankment and landing easily, with all the nonchalance he carefully maintained. Rose stuck her tongue out at him momentarily for showing off (not that he could see it, anyway) and, not wanting to risk hurting herself again, she sat down on the edge and pushed herself off from there, landing a little awkwardly next to the Time Lord.
There was another village before them, larger than the last and with considerably more people. The air of hopelessness pervaded the place almost tangibly as the humans wandered about, presumably preparing for sleep. Illa and a man roughly her age were standing a few feet away in a shady area which seemed, by some sort of unmarked and unquestioned sensation, to be just beyond the border of the village.
"Vynn," said Illa, "this is the Doctor and she's Rose. They said they might be able to help."
Vynn gave the Doctor and Rose a sceptical look. "Help against a heliovore?" he inquired, scorn prevalent in his tone.
"I'm very good," said the Doctor by way of explanation. "Just today Rose and I defeated a ship full of Racnoss."
Today? Rose gave him an amused look. Other him had asked her twice, this him hadn't been able to wait a few hours...
"Never heard of them?" he inquired, sounding more than a little disappointed at their silence.
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" asked Vynn with unexpected coldness.
"Vynn!" said Illa sharply.
"They could be anyone, or anything!" snapped Vynn back at her. "For all we know, they're aliens."
The Doctor opened his mouth and Rose, foreseeing an incredibly asinine comment preparing to be spoken, elbowed him sharply to make him shut up before he managed to say it.
"What's wrong with that?" asked Illa exasperatedly. "If you hadn't been so stubborn, we'd be dealing with aliens anyway. And it's not like they look alien. Stop being so xenophobic."
"I'm not being xenophobic, I'm being cautious!"
"Look," said Rose, very calmly, "we're safe. I'm human, at least. He's... not, but at least I am, and that's got to count for something, yeah?"
Vynn gave her a witheringly suspicious look.
The Doctor, who had been glaring at the leaves above them and bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, suddenly decided to stop trying to be quiet. "Look, either we're nasty evil things who kill you before the heliovore gets you, we're nasty evil things who are going to watch as the heliovore gets you, we're good people and we try to help and fail and the heliovore gets you, or we're good people and we try to help and we actually manage it. The situation doesn't seem that bad to me, but what do I know? I mean, I could tell you-"
Rose shut him up before he started listing ways in which he was more intelligent than Vynn or anyone else.
"Vynn, please," pleaded Illa.
"You know more about this place than any of us," said the Doctor. "You could help us. And keep an eye on us if you insist on it, but more importantly you can help."
Silence.
"I don't like it," muttered the human.
"But you'll help?" pursued Rose.
Another pause.
"Yes."
"Good," said the Doctor, relaxing considerably. If a frightened teenaged girl was allowed to carry a 37∂6679.5CRBSK like the one she had so rudely pointed at them, there was no telling who else they gave weapons to on this planet. "Let's get started, then." He leaned back on the slightly moist embankment. "What can you tell me," he said conversationally, "about the heliovore?"