(Untitled)

[thedistantrose]

Who: Rose Tyler and [OPEN]
What: Rose is displeased.
Warnings: TBD. (This will probably contain spoiler for the latest episode of Doctor WhoRose hadn't slept much for the past couple of nights. Running with Jenny and Guy had been a good distraction, something that she hadn't done in awhile, and she'd enjoyed it so much that afterwards Rose had

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[drumstowar]

"Well, honestly, if you serve into the net, you're going to get scattered into atoms, that's just the way the game is played." The Master, cellular telephone pressed to his ear, strolled into the lounge with enough glibness hanging off of his shoulders to choke a cast member from Friends. Showered and pressed after his doubles match, he was again the very picture of uptight British society -- right down to the teacup-shaped cuff links.

"-- What do you mean you've never heard of Raxacoricofallapatorian Rules Tennis?" A snort. "Well that's not my fault. Why don't you make your friends out of something sturdier than carbon atoms next time. I can't help you if you don't help yourself."

[thedistantrose]

Raxacorico....fallapatorian?

Rose's head snapped up from the book, cutting off Thomas Lang in the middle of whatever he had been saying. Good author, sure, but Raxacoricofallapatorian wasn't something heard - or pronounced correctly - every day.

There wasn't any hiding the interest in her face, but Rose refrained from gaping in blatant human astonishment. She didn't interrupt the conversation either, just marked the place in her book and tucked it in her lap, waiting for the conversation to be finished.

[drumstowar]

The Master continued to rattle on, heedless of any other occupants in the room. "Do you know how they play tennis on Thrill Palace Five?" The Master enunciated into the phone, "if you fail to serve, you end up serving -- literally -- at least three Parumphan lifetimes in the reeble mines on Level Four. And they make you work without dental benefits."

He scooped the phone against his ear and shoulder, freeing his hands to rummage about in the fridge. Cool air licked inside his collar -- a bit of a reprieve from the humidity of the outside courts. "Consider this my great mercy," he said and, after a rabbling from the other side, he warmed considerably. "That's a good girl. Yes, quite. I'll see you next week, my dear. Same court. Same stipulations. Ta!"

The Master flipped the phone shut and gave a commiserating look in Rose's direction. "Betty White," he explained with smear of a smirk, "she's always trying to skirt the rules of engagement."

[thedistantrose]

The words, the entire way of talking, it was all so familiar. There was a youthful and spirited lift to everything he was saying, and it was only serving to raise her curiosity. This wasn't someone Rose had met before, and yet she wondered why considering the degree of similarities.

"Right," she said, nodding her head a couple of times. "Raxacoricofallapatorius, you said?"

[drumstowar]

The Master's already buoyant mood was given another kick toward the sky. "You can pronounce it!" he crowed, "what a good little mimic you are! I used to have a minah bird just like you. Brunette, though. Obviously. Could speak fourteen languages and play dead when you asked it to. One day it just kept on playing --" he touched a hand to his heart "-- I wept."

He cracked a juice box off a six pack and stabbed the straw through the top, toasting her. "You," he began, "know an awful lot about things. I can tell." He slid a foot toward her, the rest of his body slinking behond. "Oh yes, I can see it in your face. Oooh!" he suddenly squealed, "you have stars in you!"

[thedistantrose]

Rose broke into a laugh. "Do I?" she asked, because out of all of the things she'd heard herself called before, she'd never once been thought of as one to possess stars in her. Then again she'd been...well, would he believe her? Something told her that he might.

"Well, I've done a bit of traveling," she said, which had been the standard kind of response for similar inquiries. "But you seem to know more than I do." She avoided any question about the bird - poor thing must have dropped over.

[drumstowar]

The Master fluttered his lips and wagged his wrist, as if the whole thing was a terribly doddering joke. "Oh, please. I give that line to everyone I meet; it sort of sounds twee, don't you think? Eliminates the crazies right off the mark."

[thedistantrose]

"Well, it does eliminate a lot of questions," Rose said, tucking her legs up beside her on the sofa. It left room for him to sit, too, if he chose. "But by traveling, I'm guessing you don't mean to Japan, right?" She was guessing, but it was one with good reason.

[drumstowar]

"Oh, I've been to Japan. Cherry blossoms in Springtime --" he closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose, face positively beatific "-- kirei desu!" He neglected to mention that he had only seen the cherry blossoms in Japan at the beginning of the Thirty-Eight Year War, AD 774. Those had been simpler, innocent times. You could barely raid and pillage anymore without encountering a mile of red tape from the government.

"I do travel," he continued. "Quite extensively, as a matter of fact."

[thedistantrose]

Rose had never been to Japan, she'd never seen the country but it had been somewhere she'd wanted to go. She sat back and listened, and something about the way he talked tugged a familiar string in her that she didn't have a name for yet.

"Around the world, or?"

[drumstowar]

The 'Or' was interesting. The Master could quantify and qualify humans at a glance and he instinctively knew that this one -- this blonde with the lonely eyes -- had seen a lot of the 'Or' in her time. He wondered, briefly, if she had been pulled across the universe from a future when human being were smart enough to travel outside of the sad blue marble.

"Or?" he repeated, doing his best to look lost. He would find out what she knew, then maybe respond in kind.

[thedistantrose]

"Or beyond?"

Rose put a little pause between the first and last word in the question, adding a lilt of her own that touched on her own curiosity. Now she was curious, and the answer she was looking for was coming closer to staring her in the face.

"Beyond anywhere that most people could imagine, to put it bluntly."

[drumstowar]

The Master drew his lips together and made a soft moue of sound, both brows tucking up toward his hairline. "That sounds like a very intrepid imagination," he observed, sitting down on the arm of the couch. Let's be treehouse pals. His face was game, eager and uncompromised. A little bit of the Doctor's charm with a hint of his own malevolence.

"I have a very boundless imagination. I suspect that you do, too." He leaned in a little closer, scrutinizing her without being overbearing. He had been kidding before about the stars. Now, when he looked at her, he saw things that would chill most other men. "Are we talking outer space?" He made a warbling little whistle sound and twisted his finger up toward the ceiling.

[thedistantrose]

Rose pushed her elbows onto her knees and rested her chin atop the peak they made when she entwined her fingers. "Oh, I'd think that would be a good place to start," she said, her tone conversational. "You know, looking up at the stars wondering what's really out there." It wasn't a completely outrageous kind of statement, but there was most certainly more behind it and Rose wasn't so oblivious as to think he wouldn't see it there.

[drumstowar]

"Harumph --" The Master puffed his cheeks and looked up at the ceiling "-- lot of hot gases, rampaging nebuli, collapsing stars, dark matter and space, I wager." He tapped his fingertip against his pinstriped knee and gave her a salty sort of smile.

"That's what I think, anyway."

[thedistantrose]

"Oh, is it?" Now Rose lifted her eyebrows a little more, an amused sort of grin lifting up her mouth. "What about things beyond what we can see here? Any idea about what those might be? What else might be out there?"