A/N: The Chibi's Are Stalking Me, Cordelia-Lear, GSRgirlforever, Isis the Sphinx, Jessa L'Rynn, Kathryn Shadow, NewDrWhoFan, Olfactory-Ventriloquism, Rynne, SilverWolf7, and TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel are proud to present the Second Annual Doctor Who October Project.
Each author has one character assigned, in the mode of the Canterbury Tales. Jessa L'Rynn edits.
Disclaimer: Of course we own Doctor Who. In our dreams, in alternate universes, in strange dimensions, in imaginations, LOTS of places. Just not in real life.
The Companionable Tales
Chapter 12: A Different Sort of Jelly Baby
Today's Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Isleen laughed gleefully as Martha concluded her story. Martha was looking fiercely triumphant at her conclusion, at least in Donna's opinion. "And here I was, thinking he always came out on top," Isleen observed through her giggles.
"He gets himself in his own trouble," Donna said, thoughtfully. "Half the time, it's his own cleverness that catches him. Bites him in the bum, usually."
Sarah Jane fell off her chair, chortling with hilarity. "Oh, I didn't need that image in my head!" she declared.
The whole room cracked up at this, with only Lucy abstaining in any way. She did smile a bit though, Donna noticed, at least when someone said something about refusing to take him too seriously.
"I feel bad, though, laughing at him when he's not here to defend himself!" Isleen admitted.
"He can't complain," Martha shot back. "He's the Doctor, and laughter is the best medicine."
At this rather horrid cliche, the whole room still managed to dissolve into more giggles. Then, at once, several people said, "Look, there was this one time..."
They stared at each other and waved hands and gestured at everyone else to go. Finally, it was Mickey who reclined in his chair, put his feet up on the arm of Donna's chair, and started talking.
Mickey was roused slightly from a deep sleep by something vaguely wet touching his foot.
He rolled over and tried to push it away, hoping it would go somewhere else, not really awake yet.
Gloggle.
His eyes shot open at the wet wobbly noise and in one movement he sat up and shot to the other end of the bed. Blinking incredulously, he looked back.
There was a thing very like a baby seal on his bed, with big dark eyes and flippers and soft fur, only it was pale blue and mostly covered in a thick layer of something faintly slimy and jelly-like.
"What the hell?"
The thing that wasn't a baby seal looked at him with sad big eyes and made a soft 'murp' sound, and wriggled. Its face and flippers lost a little more of the jelly stuff, but it remained encased in the rest of it.
Mickey sighed at the state of his bed. How had the weird alien gotten up onto it, anyway?
His question was answered almost immediately as the baby seal thing drifted up in the air, then floated down again.
It couldn't seem to control where it landed or else wasn't very good at it, because it landed on the very edge of the bed and promptly fell off. For a moment its expression was that of something crushed by the unexpected cruelty of the universe, before it led out a heartbroken wail.
In spite of himself, Mickey couldn't help the cry tugging at his heartstrings. "Hey, you're alright," he told the baby seal thing, getting off the bed and approaching it cautiously. "You're still covered in that stuff. You just fell off the bed."
The baby seal thing's wail died down a bit to a sort of muffled murmur, and it stared at Mickey.
Sighing, he hoisted it into his arms, jelly and all, where it snuggled up to him, apparently happy with its change in circumstances.
"Right," he told it, "Let's go find the Doctor, so I can kill him."
The baby seal thing murped agreeably.
Mickey and the alien wandered around the TARDIS for several minutes, with no sign of the Doctor. Eventually though, Mickey heard the Doctor's voice, speaking in a weird mix of commanding and exasperated and pleading tones.
He emerged from one hallway to see the Doctor surrounded by baby seal things. He was shooing them with his hands, trying to herd them along, but some of them were still too covered in jelly and others were wandering off in the other direction, and one was wailing anxiously.
"Come on, don't just sit there staring at me," the Doctor scolded a couple of baby seal things that were staring soulfully at him, apparently perfectly happy to sit there and adore him from where they were. "I'm not your mother, I'm a nine hundred year old Time Lord and you are in my ship, and currently making a large mess of it."
His words had no effect on the worshipful baby seal things, which were unable to comprehend a word he said and still convinced that he was their mummy.
Mickey snorted. The scene was ridiculous.
The Doctor spun around at the sound, and a look of mingled embarrassment and guilt appeared on his face. "Ah, Mickey," he greeted him brightly. "Um." He scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. "I'm trying to get them all out before Rose finds them."
Mickey smirked, and guided a crawling baby seal thing back towards the Doctor with his foot. If Rose saw them she'd never let the Doctor live it down, and probably try to adopt one of them to boot.
Coz really, they were adorable, he admitted, but only in his head, because if he said it out loud he'd sound like a sap.
One of the baby seal things levitated gently, its hind flippers gently smacking the Doctor in the back of the head. He turned in surprise, just in time to get a hind flipper in the face as the creature dropped.
Mickey chortled, and the Doctor turned back to him, looking disgruntled and with faintly green-tinted slime across his nose and mouth.
"I see you found one of them yourself," the Doctor said, choosing to ignore Mickey's amusement and pulling out a large handkerchief to wipe his face.
Mickey glanced down at the pale blue baby in his arms. It had gone to sleep.
"Found it on my bed when I woke up. What's with the jelly stuff?"
The Doctor looked at him in surprise.
"Oh, that's the remains of their eggs," he said cheerfully. "They grow up pretty intelligent, see, like humans, so their heads are too big for the birth canal if they're only born at full, well, infant development. So instead they're born in this protein-rich, breathable, kind of gelatinous membrane, so that when they're born they can spend the first few weeks lying around happily in their eggs, absorbing nutrients from the jelly around them, until they're old enough to clean themselves up and join the adults."
The Doctor frowned down at the baby seal things.
"Only I left the TARDIS door open, and a half-hatched colony ended up in the TARDIS. They're probably all over the ship by now."
Mickey joined the Doctor in trying to herd the current group of baby seal things towards the console room, so that they could get them out the TARDIS door and back to the lakes where they belonged.
The Doctor suddenly stopped short in the doorway to the console room.
"What's up?" Mickey demanded.
A voice spoke from the room ahead.
"Are there more of these things, Doctor?"
Mickey peered around the embarrassed Time Lord to see Rose sitting on the console room floor, surrounded by resting baby seal things.
The ones that he and the Doctor had been herding gambolled over clumsily to join the others, delighted to see them.
"Well..." the Doctor began.
Rose stared at him.
"Probably, yeah," he confessed, rubbing the back of his neck.
Mickey smirked as Rose just shook her head and muttered about daft aliens.