Off we go again on our lovely... little... thingie...
Disclaimer: I own a rapidly growing collection of chibis... And no, it's not because I forgot to put chibi!TARDIS!Rose and chibi!alt!Doctor in separate boxes. What makes you say that? But anyway, that's it. Heck, the proper chibis all belong to Savannah, I just get the chibis of characters I make up. Or fandoms I like, but she doesn't know about. Or something? I dunno. You think I know chibi-owning hierarchy?
SIAPNIAN: I have had five or six cups of tea today. -giggles- Ooh, this is gonna be fun...
Correction: I re-counted. I had seven. But that was a while ago, so you should be safe for the last two-thirds of the thingie.
WARNING: Unbetad, as I'm suffering from severe review withdrawal and I'm too impatient to wait for Kate to get back with me.
-BAD WOLF-
Rose pushed the latest dream aside, in the deepest and darkest corner of her mind. She knew what was happening now— it would take Mickey to not know what was going on with her...
He's not that much of an idiot, half of herself informed her.
He is inferior, said the other half.
Rose growled and pressed the palm of her hand against her temple. This was getting really, really irritating. She felt schizophrenic, but worse; the two halves of her were in a constant war with each other and she wished that one of them would give up. She didn't much care at this point; the constant feuding was giving her a headache.
Anyway.
It would take a complete idiot not to realise what was going on with her; she was mutating, and she even had a pretty good idea of what she was becoming. But somehow what she was becoming didn't seem to matter any more. She didn't much care now; she just wanted the process over and done with, and the sooner the better.
She had a nagging suspicion she knew which side of her was winning. She had another nagging suspicion that the knowledge should disturb her deeply, but it didn't.
It'd sort itself out eventually.
"Miss Tyler?"
Rose spun around at the sound of her name.
"What is it?"
"The, uh, the creature from yesterday's crash site," said the human. He couldn't have been more than twenty and as Rose hadn't seen him before, she figured that either he was new or she just couldn't keep track of everyone. Judging by his nervousness, she suspected the former.
"It survived?" asked Rose, a little surprised.
"No, it's a different one. It was a two-passenger ship. Anyway, it's not saying anything and we thought that..."
Part of her rebelled. Why did she have to face that thing, anyway? Couldn't someone else do it?
The other part of her rebelled at the rebellion. It was her job, after all, said that part of her.
She shook herself. "Yeah, sure," she said, forcibly silencing herself. "Fine. Gimme a minute, yeah?"
"Miss Tyler—"
"Just a second," she called back as she ran. Everything, she sensed, was falling simultaneously together and apart and she needed to get the one thing that would ensure her survival.
She pulled the desk drawer open, put a few random papers off to the side, and smiled softly as she felt her fingers close around the object she'd been working on so carefully. The amplification wasn't quite as good as she'd hoped it would be, but no matter; she would just have to be content to wait until something came within a few light-years. It wasn't the Galaxy-wide cry for help she'd been hoping for, but it was something.
She chewed on her lip. She'd have to hide it very carefully indeed if she didn't want to get caught; just sticking it in her pocket wouldn't do. She'd have to be a little more elaborate.
Rose only hesitated for a second before she reached for an object she'd hoped she'd never have to use. She glanced around quickly to confirm that no-one else was in the room, hiked up one pant leg, bit her lip and pressed the cold blade against the flesh of her calf.
She failed to keep a slight whimper from escaping her lips as she flicked a switch in the handle and the thermoblade began to live up to its name, cauterising the wound even as it scorched the flesh away in a clean slice.
She grit her teeth and angled the blade down and in, forcing herself not to cry out at the agony. It was necessary, it was necessary, it was necessary, but oh, Zarquon, it hurt.
She pulled the knife out, unable to take the pain for any longer. The pocket of skin was large enough now, anyway.
Rose pushed the circuit that was the remote transmitter into the pouch she had made. The object felt distinctly odd, nestled in her calf, but she could handle it. She rifled through her drawers until she found the partially functional dermal regenerator they'd finally figured out how to replicate (with her help, of course), then pressed it against the wound.
Her skin tingled, then knit itself back together. The damage underneath couldn't be helped, but it looked like nothing more than a bruise, so it wasn't really necessary to worry about that.
She forced herself not to limp as she walked back to where the newbie was still waiting for her.
"Right," she said. "Where is it?"
-BAD WOLF-
The door closed with a click and the alien glanced up.
It was the same species as the creature Rose had shot, a sort of cockroachy thing. There was a thick black shell on its back, but the dark-brown, leathery body was distinctly humanoid. The head was distorted and deformed to accommodate the myriad black eyes. It was far from unscathed, but the damage appeared to be superficial. It sat neatly in one of two chairs in the smallish room; Rose didn't sit in the other.
"Hello," said Rose.
"I remember you. You killed my father," said the creature instead of returning the greeting. Rose thought the voice might be female, but wasn't quite sure through all the clicks in the background.
"Look, ahm, what's your name?"
The creature made a noise involving seventeen clicks, a crunch and an odd buzzing sound.
"Right," she said uncertainly. "I'll just call you Becky, then. Anyway, Becky, your father would have died anyway."
"He would have got better."
Rose raised an eyebrow. "In forty-seven years, maybe."
"Six months," snapped the creature.
Rose couldn't quite think of a retort to that.
"And I've heard of you," continued Becky. "The great Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth. I've heard, we all have where I come from. You saved the lives of a ship of our scouts."
Rose thought back. She recalled a small group of dragonfly-like creatures a few months back and assumed that those were the things Becky was talking about now.
"But you..." Becky looked scathingly at her, little black eyes sweeping up and down. "You are nothing like that merciful, thoughtful woman they spoke of." The eyes went back up to look dead into Rose's.
"Who are you?" the alien asked. "What have you done to her?"
Rose felt an unexpected anger rising in her chest. "I am her."
Becky shook her head. "Dekklakkrsch do not lie. Something has happened to you since our species last met."
Rose grabbed what she assumed was a wrist, eyes blazing as her fingers dug into the leathery skin. Becky's eyes glinted with pain and just the slightest hint of fear and that, she thought, was good.
"Tell anyone," she growled, "and I'll kill you too."
Becky scoffed. "You won't get out of here without being caught."
"Then I'll kill my captors." Rose's eyes, almost crystalline in her rage, left no room for argument. Her free hand moved to Becky's throat.
"I'd like to see you try," hissed the alien. Irritatingly enough, Rose's attempts to strangle her didn't seem to be working much, if at all. Damn aliens and their stupid biology.
She tensed a little, inhaling, before she suddenly emitted a grating screech that tore through Rose's mind as effectively a morning-star to the brain. She pulled her hands away from Becky to cover her ears with her hands, but the noise savagely continued.
Hissing in pain, stumbling backwards, her back collided with a one of the walls and she collapsed, sliding down its flat surface. She lashed out with one leg, but missed Becky and hit nothing but air.
The door crashed open and the noise finally ceased. Rose got up, a little wobbly now.
Becky appeared to be almost irritatingly calm. "I assume you saw what happened?" she inquired. Rose's eyes spun around to see the guards who had opened the door and stopped the alien's screaming.
One of them nodded solemnly and went over to Rose, who was still trying to use the wall for support and failing miserably.
"Rose Tyler," said the man who was closer than the others, taking one of her forearms and extracting it from behind her back, "I am relieving you of duty on the grounds of—"
"What?" she interrupted. She'd probably done something wrong by Torchwood standards. What was it? What was going on now? Zarquon, she couldn't think with the painful echoes of that bloody attack still throbbing deep inside her tattered brain.
The words finally sank in to the functional part of her mind and she lashed out, trying to escape. The guard closest to her had both her wrists now, but she managed to kick him fiercely and his hold loosened enough for her to tear away from his grip. She made for the door, instinctively raking her fingernails across the face of the guard directly in her path. Her distinct lack of aim and habit of chewing those particular weapons meant that it was useless, but it surprised the human enough for Rose to shove her out of the way.
She was almost halfway to the door when someone made a grab for her and ended up with her upper arm. She spun around to attack, but the guards closed in all around her.
Something cold and metallic pressed against the side of her neck; there was a sharp pain where the object touched her, and everything went suddenly and forcefully black.
-BAD WOLF-
Rose woke up and didn't like it.
Keeping completely still, her eyes closed, barely even daring to breathe, she tried to ascertain her precise location and condition.
She was on a floor, tiled, from the feel of it against her cheek. She felt sick and dizzy and her leg hurt like hell, but she was otherwise undamaged. There was the unmistakable rumble of air-conditioning coming from somewhere and the faint paint-smell that they had never quite been able to fully remove drifting about in the air.
So she was in Torchwood, somewhere around the basement, and presumably safe.
Basement.
She cracked open her eyes and could see nothing but whiteness— white floor, white walls, white ceiling. The room was small, each wall being perhaps ten feet in length and height, forming a perfect cube. There was one door and one window, both on the same wall— but now that she knew where she was, she understood she'd never be able to break free on her own.
She tensed the muscles in her damaged calf and felt them flex painfully around the little device inserted therein. She hissed at the momentary discomfort, but at least the thing was still there.
Still transmitting the intergalactic equivalent of a mayday. Someone would come soon. She just had to wait.
She pushed herself to her feet, cursing that bloody alien who had provoked her. In hindsight, perhaps she shouldn't have been so obvious in her change; she could easily have blamed it on stress or something. But she'd got angry at Becky's assumption that her mutations were inherently bad, and her judgement had been clouded as easily as any lesser creature. Stuck halfway between Dalek and human, thought Rose mournfully, was not a good place to be. All the hate, none of the rationality.
She wobbled over to the window facing the hallway, willing the room to stop spinning. Her brain felt odd.
There was no-one there. She growled quietly to herself and hit the thick window with the side of her fist, leaning her forehead against the coolness of the scratched acrylic.
This, she thought, was not good. Logic started to take over; no matter how desperate her signal, it didn't go very far. Even if it attracted a spaceship soon, it would probably be one of the scoutships or traders that so regularly irritated her. She would probably be trapped here for some time before someone managed to get her offworld.
She cursed quietly, then swallowed rapidly. Irrational reactions to situations that did not quite go to plan was a human trait and a trait that had got her in the circumstances she was in now. She had to swiftly cut it out before it did any more damage.
"Hello?" she inquired.
No-one answered. She turned around to slide down the wall and sit on the floor, head cradled in her hands.
This, she thought, was bad.
She fell asleep; she'd escape when she woke up, she resolved as her eyes slipped shut.
Wasting away outside the shell. She had no nourishment, there was nothing; she was starving and she couldn't do anything about it. The only way out was absolutely inconceivable to any Dalek; she would rather die as she was than live tainted...
-BAD WOLF-
The door slid open and she jerked into awareness.
She gave the Styrofoam plate piled with chips a dubious glance. Where had it come from? What was she supposed to do with it?
How could it help her escape?
She decided it couldn't, and glanced at the door.
Then again, maybe it could.
"How are you feeling?" asked the human in what Rose assumed was meant to be a kindly voice.
"I want out," she replied succinctly.
The human chuckled. "I'm afraid we can't do that until we properly understand what is happening to you and how to stop it."
She cautiously got to her feet, schooling her features into an expression of innocent confusion. "D'you know anything?"
The human shrugged. "Well, we're not sure yet," she said. "Which is why we need a sample of your blood."
"What'll that do?" Rose asked as she carefully edged forwards, millimetre by millimetre.
"Well, we can—"
She pounced, pushing the human aside and darting for the door. Exhibiting surprising strength and reflexes for such a seemingly harmless female, the creature caught Rose's arm as she tried to flee. She turned to try to free herself, but the human gave her arm a vicious twist which sent pain all the way up to her shoulder and threw her off-balance. She let go, leaving Rose to stumble, gasping, against the wall, cradling her arm.
She slipped through the door. It began to close.
"No!" yelped Rose as she tried to get to her feet. She struggled into a position which was approximately vertical and ran for the door.
It closed a split second before she reached it.
Fury flooded her mind, breaking a resistance she hadn't known she had. With a howl of rage she pounded the wall, the door, the window. She felt a vague sting as the skin of her hands split and warm blood began to trickle down her arm, but ignored it. Perhaps if she struck the surface harshly enough, it would break and she would be able to exterminate the female.
There was a vague crunch as one of her metacarpals snapped. Part of the end broke out from under the skin and she screamed in mingled pain and anger as she renewed her efforts to break free.
The door slid open. She turned to face whoever was coming for her now, her fury burning in her eyes, but before she could so much as touch them something cold and sharp pressed against her neck.
There was a hissing noise, a horrible chill in her blood and she fell lifelessly to the floor.
-BAD WOLF-
Aww, poor Rosie.
Meh, whatever. Woo! -wanders off to get some tea-
SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION: I've made a music video which (according to a lot of people) is my best so far. It's Tenth Doctor and is to the song "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby". My username on Youtube is BadWolf1121, if anyone's interested, which no-one is.