The Bureau Files: Series 1
ooOoo
Episode 14: The World of the Doctor (Part 2)
"No, of course not. The process is completely different for humans."
Maria's brightly-delivered assurance was met with silence. Muta may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but when the drawer included the likes of Baron and Haru, that wasn't something to be too ashamed of. He was still sharp enough to cut a few fingers when the mood took him and his companion's words had hit home rather hard.
"... Humans?" he eventually echoed.
"Yes. Is there something wrong?"
"Yes, there is something wrong," Muta growled. His voice started at a low snarl and gradually grew in intensity. "There is something horribly, horribly wrong about this place, at what that... man is doing and yet none of you can see that!" Internally he was thinking, 'Oh God, oh God, Haru is with that monster, what if he's already done something to her and where has Baron been in all this?'
He became slowly aware that his shouts had drawn the attention of the whole kitchen and that the half cat, Maria, was staring at him with a mixture of fear and pity.
"O-kay, I think you've spent quite enough time with your head in the steam today." She took a padded hand to his arm and dragged him away from the prying eyes. "Time for a tea break."
"Don't like tea," Muta mumbled. He tried to pull himself free from her grasp, but the young woman was stronger – and more determined – than she looked. She dragged him into a large storeroom, shutting the door after her. She turned upon the fat cat.
"What's all that about, eh? Making a scene like that?" Maria brushed her hands against her apron, as if wishing to rid herself of this awkward scene. "What exactly did you hope to achieve? Now you've gone and upset the staff."
"But this. Is. Wrong," Muta repeated slowly.
Maria looked blankly at him. Not for the first time, Muta got the distinct impression that whatever the Doctor had done to these animals was a lot deeper than the superficial changes. Next time he saw that guy, he was going to knock him into the next kingdom.
Maria cracked a smile, her eyes glazing over in a way that saw past the white feline. "If you say so. But it's none of our business." She turned to leave, but Muta caught her shoulders. She didn't even fight back when he turned her to look at him.
"No, no, it is our business. It's my business because that monster could be turning my... my friend into a creature, and it's your business because of whatever the..." Muta swore briefly and vehemently, "...he's done to you. Listen to yourself! I don't know what you were like before he brought you here, but I can't believe none of you cared." He sighed and dropped his gaze. "And none of this is going in," he muttered. He had seen enough of Maria's blindness and he was sick of it. "Alright, show me out of this madhouse; I think it's time I gave this Doctor a call."
He was halfway to the storeroom door when he became aware that Maria hadn't followed him. "Hey, uh... Chicky?"
The young half-cat was looking at her feet and her eyebrows were doing a strange waggling dance. Muta could almost see the internal struggle of her implanted complacency against... something else. When she looked up to the white cat, her eyes seemed that little bit more feline and just a hint clearer. "Fine. But I'm coming."
"I... don't think that'll be such a good idea–"
"You need a beast who knows her way around this complex, right?" Maria answered, and her tone dared him to contradict her. "Someone who will find the Doctor for you and won't ask any questions–"
"You will ask questions," Muta reminded her.
"Yes, but only the right ones."
"It'll be dangerous–"
"Really? You're going to ask an old man a couple of questions and this is deemed as dangerous?" Maria raised one red eyebrow. "Sounds like you're going to need me to protect you then."
"No, you don't–" Muta abruptly found he had one slender finger posed over his lips. Maria's expression indicated that any further argument on his side would only result in his complete and utter annihilation.
"Listen to me, sonny, and listen well," Maria growled, and her voice blurred into a distinct feline hiss; "no, I don't understand what is going on and I don't see whatever it is you do, but that doesn't mean I can't. If you say there is something wrong with this place, then I want answers."
"I thought you said you were happy," Muta debated back. He swiped away Maria's hand. "I thought you didn't think anything was wrong."
"No, but you do. And your questions..." Maria raised her hands to the back of her head, cradling her skull in her palms, as if this could keep one modicum of normality in her life. She released a long, low sigh. "Your questions make me wonder whether I should have asked the same a long time ago."
The ring of a bell rattled through the building and was quickly accompanied by the sound of hastily shuffling feet outside the storeroom. Maria picked up her head, following the sound of the rabble.
"That's dinner. Come on, if we move with the crowd we won't be spotted leaving so easily." She smiled faintly. "Looks like we've got a mystery on our hands."
ooOoo
"Yes, I saw your friend being taken." The dog-man cracked his jaw from side to side, as if talking set his jaw out of joint. The clicking that accompanied it was enough to set Baron's teeth on edge. He and Toto had been brought to a makeshift shelter, all branches and dry grass, whereupon the dog-man had turned to them and asked for an explanation. He seemed satisfied with their account. Leaning against the side, he took a long drag on his cigarette. The sickly sweet smoke filtered through the shelter. "She went into the Doctor's home."
The two Creations shot to attention at that title. "The Doctor?" Baron repeated. "Why didn't you stop her?"
"I tried."
"You should have tried harder," Baron growled.
Their host – or captor – didn't even blink at the cat's snarled response. There was only another puff of smoke and the answer through the haze; "She saw my form and ran. There was little I could do to save her." A dry, humourless chuckle drifted through the smoke. "Not that it'll matter now."
"And what," Baron asked, his voice struggling to stay calm, "does that mean?"
The dog-man ignored him.
"Your best bet right now would be to return to the world from whence you came. There is nothing you will stand to change from interfering."
"Interfering is something I do best."
"Was interfering something the girl did too?" the half-human asked dryly. There was the crackle of tobacco and paper and the movement of feet as he paced along the side of the shelter.
Baron watched him move. "We're not going."
"The girl will be beyond your grasp now. You would do best to quit while you still have the chance."
"I will never abandon her."
The dog-man stopped and his angular eyes focused on the two Creations. "I've heard of you, Baron–" Baron stiffened at a title he hadn't introduced yet "–and I've heard of your little office; I know all about your fondness for sticking your whiskered nose where it isn't wanted, but this time you may not find that the truth is to your liking. Go home, Baron."
"How do you know of me?"
"The Doctor knows of you, and so I do also. He watched you destroy his first Human World experiment, you know." Another idle puff of smoke was sent spiralling across the makeshift room. "He had created plenty of beasts in this world, but he let those birds out into the Human World as his first test and so he watched. He quickly learnt of what your Bureau was capable of." There was a smirk. "He did his research on you, which isn't all that difficult. You do tend to leave a trail of devastation in your wake, don't you?"
"If, by devastation, you mean we help..." Toto interrupted.
"Oh, you try and clean things up, I know," the dog-man assured Toto half-heartedly. "But the crux of the matter is that trouble tends to follow you wherever you go and things... well, things tend to get blown up. One only has to hear of your exploits in the Cat Kingdom to know that things often get out of hand. Ten years later, and cats still remember your first visit..."
"What does any of this prove?" Baron demanded. "None of this matters right now – all that matters is that we right whatever the Doctor is doing and save our friend."
"And find Muta," Toto added.
Baron nodded. "And that. And if you don't plan to help us, then I don't see what the point of this conversation is." He started to turn to the exit, but there was the drawn-out sigh of defeat.
"Whoever said I wouldn't help you?" The dog-man rounded on the two Creations, extinguishing his cigarette and clicking his jaw with that same awful cracking noise. "If you really mean to go after your friends then, by all means, I will come also. Your presence is sure to cause some perfect chaos to upset the Doctor's rule."
"This Doctor," Toto started; "who exactly is he?"
The dog-man shrugged. "Never asked. From what we understand, he's a mage or wizard of sorts who dabbled too long and too deeply into magic and evidently started to wonder just how far he could take transformations. His type of magic is not made for what he is doing, and so the results are... well, less than perfect," he said, motioning to his half-dog form. "It only works in this world at all because this world's reality is a lot less stable than in the more established worlds. He calls himself the Doctor... but he was once known as Moreau."
"He needs to be stopped."
The same humourless chuckle could be heard from their companion. "Finally, something we agree on." He caught the eye of Toto, who had been watching his smoking routine. The dog-man only smirked. "Bad habit, I'm afraid. Like master, like dog, huh? Anyway, we all need to find one way or another to cope with the stress. Even here, we can go mad."
ooOoo
Smoke once again filtered through the cracks in the doorway, revealing Montgomery's presence on the other side. The smell was sharper than before and stung Haru's recently sensitive nose. Not that that was the heart of her problems right now; right now she lay curled on her bed, shivering as pain crackled along her back and through her skull. Small cavalries of horses would be more comfortable.
She had no idea how she had returned to her room; the last thing she remembered of the outside was a sudden weakness in her limbs and the world spinning in a blur of colour. She had no illusions that this was natural and she severely doubted that her door was unlocked either. She rolled onto one side and stared at the aforementioned door, where tendrils of smoke betrayed Montgomery's company beyond it.
She pushed herself up, and the shivers travelled along both arms. She groaned and collapsed back into the sheets, just resisting the urge to curl up into a ball again. "Montgomery," she muttered. Her voice was too loud in her head; the words rattled about inside her tender skull. "Montgomery!"
"What?"
He stayed firmly on the other side of the door, and Haru could almost imagine him casually leaning against it, cigarette to his lips.
"What...?" She broke off to another pang of pain. Her breath was withdrawn in a sudden gasp. She made another attempt. "What's happening to me?"
"You're smart. You'll work it out."
Haru snarled, staring hatefully at the smoke squeezing its way between the door and the jamb. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that smoking kills you?"
Montgomery gave a dry chuckle that was reminiscent of the dog-man's laugh. "Oh, there are far worse things out there that will kill me before this ever does."
"So sorry to hear that," Haru returned flatly. "You'll have to excuse me while I wipe away a tear." In mockingly passing her hand before her eyes though, she paused. There was something distinctly different about her hand. She turned it over until her eyes finally rested on her nails. They had sharpened somehow, filing themselves to a point while she had been unconscious. As if sensing her anxiety, the nails – no, claws – sprung forward, extending an extra half-inch.
Haru screeched and pushed herself up, away from the changed hands. She forced herself to relax and the claws retracted into her finger, resuming their unassuming, if sharp, appearance. She ran a hasty tongue over her teeth, the tension running back into her body upon pricking it upon new canines.
"No..."
The pain was almost forgotten; now she had an entirely new dilemma to deal with and it wasn't pretty. She swung out of the bed, stumbling to one side and resorting to using the wall to support to be able to walk, and staggered towards the door. Whatever the exact details of the change, it certainly wasn't the painless one she'd experienced in the Cat Kingdom.
She smacked her fist into the door. "MONTGOMERY!" she roared – and the term 'roar' was a little too accurate for her liking – "MONTGOMERY! He's changing me, isn't he? Isn't he?"
The man took his own sweet time in answering. Haru could hear him rolling another cigarette. "Congratulations. It took you long enough."
"What," snarled Haru, "is he changing me into exactly?"
"Well, if everything goes well, you'll be a beautiful half-cat by the end of the day," Montgomery answered nonchalantly. There was the sound of the cigarette being lit, fizzling with the crackle of tobacco. "That is," he repeated, "if all goes well."
"And if it doesn't?" Haru asked flatly.
"Well, you remember our dear friend, Prendick...?"
Horror bubbled up in her. "He's human?"
"Was. He's a few genes distinct from the human race now."
"How... How many people has the Doctor changed?"
"Only Prendick. Oh, and himself." Haru could hear the idle smile in Montgomery's words. "Prendick accidently came into this world after stumbling through a portal that went wrong on him. We took him in and eventually the Doctor decided to experiment on just how much alteration the human shape can take. You saw the result."
Haru had. And she had looked straight past the half-orang-utan. His face had been so morphed by the mishmash of two species that her eyes had refused to linger too long on the details. In mixing the two, Prendick's face had become neither human, nor orang-utan, nor even a tidy arrangement of the two, but a distorted, uneven fusion of them both. The Cat Kingdom had taken her own features and gently moulded them into a cat's, but whatever had been done to Prendick had left his face looking like something dead stuck into a blender. There was rhyme or reason to the arrangement of it.
A wave of sickness rose through her, leaving fresh trails of goosebumps tracing her skin. She sank down to the ground, her breath beginning to come out in ragged gasps. "Is that... Is that what's going to happen to me?" she whispered. She tried to imagine how a human and cat's face could be combined without a modicum of order put into the mix. She certainly wasn't going to look anything like she had in the Cat Kingdom.
"Hopefully not, but that's why the Doctor's doing this. What can he surmise without data to support his theories? The first few animals-to-humans weren't pretty either, but he got better at it. In time, he'll be able to make humans much closer to the animalistic mark."
"But... But you have to see that this is wrong," demanded Haru. "This – all this he is doing – isn't right!"
"Right... Wrong... Who's to say which is which?"
"If he was so eager to make animal-human hybrids," Haru growled, "he could simply have thrown me into the Cat Kingdom."
"Eh, but you know how mages are. Or maybe you don't. They always love to do everything themselves." There was the sharp hiss of the cigarette being extinguished. "I'd save your strength for later, if I were you." Montgomery began to walk away. "You'll need it for when the screaming starts."
ooOoo
Darkness had fallen over the camp, but silence was far from following after. The two Creations were ready to go at that instant, but their host was gathering together a few choice items into a bag. Among them were a collection of makeshift weapons and a small casket of water-like liquid.
"The Doctor has used a chemical to keep the beasts in his complex calm," the dog-man explained. "It's the reason why they stay stupid and slow – so they won't overthrow him. Fortunately, those of us here aren't quite so stinted, so we've found a way to counteract it. If we can just get this into the water-system..."
Toto coughed, interrupting the half-dog's explanation. "What did you say your name was again?"
"Never gave it. But the name my previous master gave me was Bernie." It suited him the same way Cuddles would suit a porcupine.
"Bernie, earlier you mentioned that, well..." Toto glanced to Baron. Baron took over for him; he had the same question burning to ask.
"When we spoke of saving our friend, you said it wouldn't matter now," Baron finished curtly. "What – precisely – did you mean by that?"
"What I meant was that it'll be too late for her now." The dog-man stopped by the shelter's entrance, leaning against the doorway. He finished his cigarette and snubbed it out with the toe of his boot. "The Doctor doesn't make any distinction between humans and animals. By now your friend will be well on her way to joining the bestial race."
Baron moved so suddenly that he didn't seem to move from A to B; at one moment he was standing nonplussed in the middle of the room, and the next he was inches away from the half-dog, his gloved hands hoisted around Bernie's jacket. "Why," he growled, low and slowly, "didn't you mention that earlier?"
The half-human strained against Baron's grip, moving onto his toes to keep Baron's hold on his jacket from strangling him. "Because it's too late," Bernie snarled back. "Even by the time I returned here, she would have been injected with one of the Doctor's serums. Admit it, Baron, you're too late."
"It's never too late."
Baron dropped the dog-man and started out of the shelter. Toto hastily followed him, reading the signs.
"To the complex?" Toto asked.
"To the complex."
ooOoo
Haru leant against the door, kneeing her eye to the level of the lock. Through its metal depths she could only see the shadow of the key lodged inside. It was hardly the peephole she had been hoping for. She turned one furred ear to the wood – for once grateful of the extra perks of being half-cat – and listened to the dull silence from the corridor beyond. There was only the faintly acidic smell of smoke from Montgomery's lingering presence, but otherwise there was no sign of anyone.
Haru pulled out a hairpin from her bob and then, after a brief moment's hesitation, removed the rest, stowing them into her jacket pocket. She sighed in contentment as her hair flowed out of its tight bun, which had become noticeably uncomfortable with her new feline ears. She had let her hair grow longer in the last few years, but now she was beginning to contemplate cutting it back to what it had been after the Cat Kingdom adventure. Long hair was turning out to be a hassle.
All the same, it had provided her with hairpins.
She wielded her weapon of choice and edged it into the lock. After wrestling it alongside the key, Haru managed the grand feat of getting it stuck. She removed her hand and watched it stay in the lock, firmly wedged between key and bolt. She flicked it idly and there was no movement.
"Great. And the films make it look so easy."
She brought out a secondary pin and carefully manoeuvred it alongside the first, not entirely sure what she was trying to do but aware that she had to do something. Anything was better than thinking of her slow descent from humanity. Already patches of fur had spread across her face and that might have been okay, but the fur was irregular. The most recent check had revealed that fur was dominating the right side of her face, rising along her jawline and around her eyes – all of which had succumbed to the feline shape. Her left side, however, still had a noticeably human outline. She didn't have a mirror, but she didn't need one to know that it wasn't pretty.
In biting her lip, her new canine teeth drew blood.
There was a half-hearted clunk and the key tilted in the lock. Haru tried to prompt it out, but it seemed rather comfortable halfway in the lock and wasn't about to budge again. Haru made a mental note to invest in some practical lessons when – or if – she got back. Lockpicking, acrobatics, and some form of martial arts would be at the top of that list. Several more stinted seconds of fruitless fiddling went by without any change. Eventually Haru gave the door a swift, irritable kick.
"Stupid... Stupid!"
She groaned and let her head fall against the door, forehead bearing down into the wood. She wasn't even sure whether she was calling the lock stupid, or herself, but she was very certain of the pounding headache beating down on her skull.
There was a delayed creak and then the clunk of something small and metal hitting fabric. Haru picked up her head instantly, ignoring the wave of dizziness that accompanied the action. Sure enough, when she looked through the keyhole, she could now see the corridor on the other side.
Haru had originally given her dilemma quite a bit of thought – or, at least, quite a bit of thought of how she'd seen others manage to escape – and had had the foresight to tear off a piece of the bedding's sheet (it was the least she could do after all their hospitality) and push it beneath the door. That way, when the key was pushed out of the lock, it would – hopefully – fall onto the material. As she now pulled the fabric back onto her side of the door, she could see this had worked.
"Five points for the Bureau," Haru whispered victoriously; "zero for the mad scientist."
The door opened with barely a click and Haru was stepping out into the empty and ever-white corridor. She drew the door to a close behind her and glanced both ways . Suddenly it wasn't so easy to remember just which way Montgomery had taken her the first time, and it all looked the same.
"Whatever happened to internal decorating?" she muttered. "They always have conveniently placed paintings or suits of armour or something in the films. You know, something to help the daring heroine find her way through her prison..." She found that talking helped to fill the strangely hollow silence that was brought about by the soulless white walls. It helped to still her hammering heart.
"I mean, I guess I could be classed as the heroine... It's not like there are any other girls in the Bureau," she reasoned idly. She decided that right looked as good as left and began trotting along the corridor. "Well, I assume not. Come to think of it, I know nothing of the Bureau's past... I wonder whether there's ever been any other members..."
She came to a junction in the corridor and glanced along its breadth. Neither looked particularly discerning. What annoyed her was the fact that she couldn't remember coming to a junction so soon last time she came out. That said, she hadn't been paying that much attention at the time, so they could have gone past a number of crossroads in the corridor and she probably wouldn't be any the wiser.
"Well... this is just peachy," she concluded.
She decided to carry along her designated direction. If she kept on going forward, she would have to find an exit sooner or later, right?
Of course, her luck didn't usually hold out for that long. She didn't expect it to here.
Finally a perceptible difference in the surroundings jumped out. She had wandered past plenty of doors so far, but this was the first one to be marked with an inscription naming it to be the Doctor's office and explicit orders for the beasts not to enter. Haru took this order at its word; it said nothing about other humans.
She tactfully forgot that she was slipping out of the human category.
The door turned out to be unlocked – but then, with the beasts being so complacent, was there any real need to lock it? – and so Haru pushed it open and stepped into the room. She turned to shut it behind her – an ajar door would catch attention in the monotonous corridor like an elephant in a phonebox – and registered the key left in the lock. On the inside.
Haru's mind ran through several scenarios and quickly settled on the assumption that the Doctor had hastily left earlier and had forgotten to lock it afterwards. It also probably meant he planned on returning soon. Probably too soon.
Regardless, Haru pushed forward into the room. This was too good an opportunity to miss.
The room was a tall, open space, marked along the walls by cabinets and bookshelves that were filled by tomes and bottles of strange substances that Haru decided she really didn't want to look too closely at. She had grown accustomed to the underflow of magic in the Sanctuary, and she could feel the same essence here. Someone had used this place to perform a good selection of spells, but they were spells that had gone wrong somewhere. They made the place feel... wrong.
One desk was piled high with an assortment of glass tubes and vials and liquids that bubbled with a vivacity that quite defied gravity. Papers littered where the tubes left space, cursive writing steaming across the pages. Beyond the desk were a selection of cages, large and small, that were – at this precise point in time – unoccupied. Haru was drawn to the desk.
At the top of one of the papers was a very familiar name. Hers. She pulled it forward, dislodging several of its comrades in the action. Words like 'Cat Kingdom' and 'residue traces' scorched across the page. The Bureau lay in passing comment, betraying the fact that whoever had written this had been watching her – or, more precisely, the Bureau – ever since their involvement with the birds. The Doctor had done his research.
Her eyes travelled back to the notes on her trip to the Cat Kingdom – perhaps the cats that had been taken from there had spoken of her past – and realised just why he had chosen to mix feline traits with her own. It didn't appear to have worked though.
She shifted a few more things about and her fingers curled around something small and glassy. She lifted up a syringe marked with her name again and, for the first time since waking up in the complex, paid new attention to the ache in her upper arm. She had originally dismissed it as sleeping strangely, but now she rolled her sleeve up she could see the pinpoint from the needle's intrusion. Her lips were pursed thin.
"Infecting me while I was sleeping... Now that's just cheating."
Unfortunately, though, there didn't seem to be any convenient vials marked 'remedy' to hand. Haru hadn't expected it to be that easy... but still, she had hoped.
"Well, what have we here?" A cold, smooth voice intoned the words from the doorway; the words were spoken in such a way that it seemed – if such a thing were possible – that they would be the kind of words to stroll to the listener's ear, casually stopping to admire their surroundings to give the full force of just how much Trouble the receiver was in. "It looks like the cat is out of its bag."
Haru froze. "Doctor," she greeted icily. She turned and met the half-human's avian eyes. Beside the Doctor squatted the orang-utan creature, silently watching the frosty confrontation. "It looks like you've been planning my... change for quite a while," she said, motioning to the desk behind her.
The Doctor only chuckled; with his mixed animal heritage – if that was the right word, but nothing better came to Haru's mind – the mirthless laughter was also a blend of strange animal sounds. If Haru had been able to pin it down to one creature, she might have been more consoled, but it was the indiscriminate tone of no single beast which set Haru's teeth on edge.
"You overestimate me, my dear," he answered. "I had no idea that you would so casually wander into my home, nor that the opportunity for a new experiment would present itself so easily, but... here you are. Your history with the Cat kingdom only made the choice of feline all the better – I had hoped that your past half-cat status might have made the transition smoother, but..." The Doctor shook his head and started on another line of thought. "I knew that you and the Bureau had been looking into my affairs, but I was not aware that you had knowledge to reach me. Out of curiosity, how did you discover my whereabouts?"
"Griffin," Haru growled. "We saw what you did to him."
"He would not have turned mad had he stayed here," the Doctor replied casually. "Even so, Griffin was always a very... interesting case..."
"He hated you."
ooOoo
Muta came to an open door and heard Haru's clear voice ring out. He stopped, almost causing Maria to walk straight into him. He caught her by the scruff of the neck before she slipped onto the floor. A claw was raised silently to his lips.
Maria pulled herself loose of Muta's paw and nodded her understanding. She glanced round the doorway and visibly shuddered.
"Something wrong?" Muta whispered.
"I've been here before," Maria said. She shivered. "Once. When I first arrived, I was taken here and... and..." She gagged on her words, the shaking travelling up her body. "It hurt," she whispered. "The other beasts call it the House of Pain."
A grim line was set in Muta's mouth. "Then we're getting out of here." He began to steer Maria away, but spotted several familiar forms in the heart of the room. Or, at least, forms that had once been familiar; he could recognise the stance and hair of Haru, but her outline had already succumbed to the magic of the Doctor. Muta's grip on Maria's shoulder tightened. "Not on my watch, you don't."
Maria strained to see what he had seen, even as he led her away. "What? What is it?"
"He's already begun changing her." There was a growl at the back of Muta's throat that contained unspoken expletives.
"She's there? Aren't you going to help her?"
"Yeah," Muta muttered. "But this is one rescue mission we don't have the luxury of botching. We're finding Baron."
ooOoo
"Yes... Out of all the beasts, Griffin was the one on whom the pacifying drugs had least effect on. He was the first one to leave the complex and begin the pathetic so-called 'rebellion'." The Doctor drifted across the room, his primate companion lumbering mutely behind him. "But even as he turned to hate the work I was doing, he found himself longing to become human. He heard of my experiments of sending the beasts into the Human World and took it into his head that maybe, if he was strong enough, he could survive the Human World and become more human because of it. He stole in, freed two dogs that were in the process of changing, and fled through to your world." The Doctor gave his selfsame strange, unrecognisable laugh. "Oh, don't bother looking for the portal he used. I took the liberty of dismantling it after that little incident. You won't be escaping that way."
"It was worth a shot," Haru muttered. Her hand drifted across the desk behind her and found a grip on a glass vial. "As is this!" She brought her arm around and delivered a swift throw in Moreau's direction. The Doctor ducked and the vial smashed against the wall. It fizzled gently. Haru took the distraction to flee towards the open door.
A huge, leathery hand smacked into her side, bringing her down to the floor with an uncompromising thud. She lay there for several seconds, winded and watching the world blur and eventually registering her attacker as none other than the half-human orang-utan, Prendick. She contemplated rising, but knew that she wouldn't get more than a few feet before she was brought back down. She had seen primates before; she knew just how strong they could be. Even with her feline traits, she would be no match for him.
As she stared at the half-human, a sickening mixture of grief and anger rose up in her. "Why?" she whispered. "After what he's done to you, why...?"
Prendick looked away, and even in his monstrous form of half-orang-utan, half-human, fully-neither, there was something akin to shame in his strange eyes. He made no step to help her.
A new spasm of agony flashed through her, erasing all thoughts but the overload of pain. The transformation pains were back with a vengeance that rendered her unable to even consider fighting back. A scream was ripped from her throat and this time her whole jaw shifted, echoing with the rippling change of vocal chords.
Doctor Moreau stepped over to the whimpering woman, a sad sort of glimmer in his eye.
"The pain will pass. I promise you that. Prendick?"
The creature raised his head.
"Put our guest in one of the cages. We can't have her escaping. Again."
ooOoo
Baron was forced to come to an abrupt stop, one hand rising to catch his top hat before it slipped off and the other grasped tightly around his cane. For, running in the opposite direction, was Muta and a pale half-cat who he had no recollection of meeting before. "Muta!"
The fat cat barely stopped in time. "Baron! You're here... Good."
"Muta, have you seen–?"
"Haru?" he hazarded. "Yeah."
Baron sagged a little in pure relief. "She's alive then."
"Yeah, but..."
"But what?"
Muta's shoulders gave a little roll that indicated he had tried to shrug his shoulders but hadn't the energy because, really, he had no desire to impart the next bombshell of information. "She's... Well, she's not exactly..."
The Creation's eyes narrowed. "Human," he finished with a growl. He pushed past the newcomers, his grip on his cane tightening further. "I was afraid of that."
"You're going after her, aren't you?" While the words were posed as a question, the tone indicated that the speaker had no doubt of Baron's actions.
"Yes." Baron looked back to the speaker. "I know you have other plans, but you're not going to stop me. Go your way and I'll go mine. Muta, you're coming with me."
Muta started after the ginger feline, but then paused to glance back to the dog-man. "Hey, Baron, who's the dog?"
Baron stopped, but the tension in his inanimate form indicated that he was not happy with the break. "Muta, this is Bernie. Head of the rebellion."
"I'm going to free the rest of the beasts," the dog-man supplied gruffly.
"Yeah, well, good luck with that," Muta snorted. He pointed one paw towards Maria. "I've see what the animals here are like. They're not going to rise up any time soon."
"That's because they've been drugged. I have something that will reverse the effects."
"I'll go with you." Maria suddenly became the focus of attention. "I know my way around this complex," she added defensively. "The others trust me too. What?"
"Maria, I thought you said there was nothing wrong with the Doctor's reign," Muta queried.
"Yes, well..." Maria suddenly looked surprised at her own offer of aid. "I... I don't know anymore," she eventually answered. "I know I thought that once, but now I think... something's changing. Anyway, I want to help you." She looked to Muta. "If this helps you save your friend, then I will."
If Baron noticed the light blush on Muta's cheeks – and, with his pale fur, it wasn't so easy to miss – he didn't mention it. He only nodded once to the half-cat. "Thank you, Miss Maria. Your help will not go amiss."
Maria grinned and started along the corridor, taking Bernie towards the beast's accommodation.
Baron stole a glance back to Muta. "She's a nice... cat," he eventually settled on. "Sensible, too."
Muta coughed and started at a rather hasty pace back along the corridor. "Do ya want to save Haru or don't ya?"
That sobered Baron within a second. He caught up alongside the other cat, his pace almost outstripping the larger feline's stride entirely.
"Where's Birdbrain anyway?"
"Outside the complex. He's ready for if we need to make a quick getaway."
There was a pause in the conversation, then Muta's casual, "Are we going to need a quick getaway?"
There was a rare smile from the Creation. "Don't we always?"
ooOoo
Haru had been left alone with no one but the mute Prendick for company. The Doctor had wandered out – for more supplies or about a problem or something; she hadn't really heard the reason – and so now there was only her and the half-human, half-orang-utan being.
If he could even be called that. To simply say he was half one and half the other would be to simplify his appearance down to words. And words didn't give it justice. Prendick had become a grotesque mix of neither.
Haru rested against the bars of her cage, silently watching her lumbering guard.
"You could have helped."
Prendick turned his inhuman eyes on her. Round, wrinkled, there was nothing but blackness in them. And yet... there was enough familiarity of them for show a flicker of guilt. He looked away, but not before Haru had registered that weakness.
She moved to the front of her prison, forehead leaning uncomfortably into the bars. "You could have helped," she dully repeated. Her voice had dropped half an octave from the last pack of changes, and already an animalistic growl was lying underneath. "Look at what he's done to you – to me! He's turned us into monsters, but if I get out, I can find someone who can turn us back–"
Prendick managed a hoarse scoff; a gruff vibrations of the throat that indicated his disbelief.
"It's true!" Haru insisted hotly. "Baron will find a way, I just know it. He wouldn't just abandon me." Haru sighed and slipped to her knees, turning her head and resting the back of her head to the cage's side. "He wouldn't."
Another huff of doubt was emitted from her sentry.
"He wouldn't," Haru echoed, but her voice was softer this time; soft even with the changes. Something akin to admiration – and something just a little deeper – buried itself into her tone and made her heart ache. "You don't know him like I do. But I do. I do, and I've seen him take down kings and face down sharks and if there's one thing I know about it, it's that he never, ever gives up on someone."
This time Prendick was silent.
"It's no use appealing to his humanity." Montgomery's rugged voice, hoarse through too many cigarettes, rolled through the room. "He lost it a long time back." The telltale scent of smoke began to peruse through the air.
Haru glanced back. Prendick had moved away, and now Montgomery leant idly against the other side of the cage. The burning ember of his cigarette was a single dot of glowing red. "I don't understand," she said. "Why doesn't he hate the Doctor for what he's done? After what it's turned him into?"
"He hopes that Moreau will one day turn him human. It's the one thing that's kept him loyal – or whatever the desperate equivalent is..."
"The Doctor isn't trying to turn him human," Haru growled. The underlying snarl – the hint of the feline chords – was beginning to resurface, and some words didn't come out as words at all but as rumbles. "He doesn't care about that – all he cares about are his stupid experiments and if... if..." The words gagged on her tongue and her jaw disjoined itself and realigned like a cat's. The syllables she needed wouldn't come; they lingered just out of reach, just out of verbalisation. She retched and dropped her head to her knees.
"Ah, Moreau guessed this would happen. It happened to Prendick too."
Haru had both hands to her neck, choking on sounds that were purely limited to the vocal range of the average cat. Unfortunately, this seemed to be the average non-talking cat. Somewhere along the line, Moreau's magic failed to take into account cats' ability to talk, leaving her - literally - lost for words.
She looked to Montgomery. She was really beginning to hate him; him, with his ever-present smirk and constant cigarette and eternal whiff of smoke about his person; he could have stepped in any time and yet he had just stood back. He had stood back, even as he knew what had been done to her.
"Don't worry; you'll get used to it." Montgomery's chuckle echoed throughout the hollow room, fading as the man left.
Haru turned away, curling in on herself. Tears pricked at her eyes and a hopelessness she had never experienced came crushing down on her. Where was the Bureau? Where was Baron?
Her chin, leaning into her arms, felt strange against her skin. Her jaw jutted out further than it should, the line of the bone now slenderer and finer than her familiar human jawline. Her shoulders were attempting to realign themselves further back, almost pulling her arms out of their sockets and she knew it was only a matter of time before walking upright would be beyond her grasp.
There were the soft footsteps of a naturally light-footed person, and a gentle hand curled itself around Haru's tender shoulder.
She recoiled back with a growl, twisting away to snarl at the stranger, only to come face-to-face with Baron's heartbreaking gaze. Her grimace dropped away and she attempted to cry out, but only a strangled noise shivered through her throat. Something akin to a sob rippled in her mouth and she attempted to turn away.
Baron's gloved hand caught her head before she could do so and his eyes travelled over her altering form.
She was more cat than human now – she knew that much – and the occasional prodding of face had told her that her head was well on its way to becoming feline, but she could not see the result. Not like Baron could.
He could see the face that was nothing more than a cat's pockmarked by the occasional streak of humanity. One eye was scarred with a dark human iris, while the other had succumbed to a slit and faded to a golden brown. The whiskers had grown unevenly, dominating the right side, but barely more than half an inch on the other. The fur had yet to spread to the whole face and even one of the triangular ears was still bare.
Something in Baron broke. It felt like a heart.
"Oh, Haru..."
The brunette uttered something that came out a soft rumble; all sound and no words.
"Gee, Chicky's worse than I thought."
"We'll get you out of here," Baron pledged. "We'll find a way to reverse it, I promise."
Haru nodded mutely.
"Muta, if you would do the honours."
"Sure thing, Baron." The huge cat waddled over to the cage and administered the sudden force of his full weight into the door. The lock decided it was never meant to bear such force and neatly snapped the bar in half. The door swung inward; mildly dented, but none the worse for wear.
Baron knelt down before the still-curled Haru, lifting her chin up with a gloved finger. "Miss Haru, can you walk?"
Haru nodded again, fiercely this time. She used the cage's side to pull her to her feet, but quickly found her legs giving way beneath her. She fell back to the ground, her hands landing before her to steady her. She stayed there.
"Miss Haru? Haru?"
"Chicky? Everything okay? You know, beside the obvious."
A strangled choke gargled on her throat, but her hands didn't move. Baron's gaze moved to them – no, they were paws now. Her palm had elongated and the tips of her fingers had altered their jointing so they went at ninety degrees to the rest of the finger – the wrong way. They lay flat against the ground while they should – in any normal human – have been perpendicular. The mix of feline and human physiology didn't – couldn't – work. Eventually Haru found the strength to try to rise to her feet again, but this time she just fell even quicker.
"Haru, I'm going to carry you," Baron gently informed her.
The young woman didn't even try to claim otherwise this time. Exhausted, she merely leant into him as he hooked one arm around her back and the other under her legs. He could feel her shivering.
"Ah, the Baron himself finally arrives. You took your time, von Gikkingen."
Baron froze. Then slowly he stepped out of the cage, lowered Haru to the ground, and set her against the wall. A soft, reassuring smile touched his lips, even if it couldn't quite reach his eyes. "I'll return you to normal. I promise." He slowly rose back to his feet and turned to face the half-human form of Doctor Moreau. The smile slipped away and his eyes hardened, pure emeralds in the dim light of the room. "You've made a grave mistake, Doctor."
The Doctor emitted his strange, hybrid laugh. "You think so?"
Moreau's image could be seen reflected in those green orbs. "I promised myself that I would never let anything happen to her, and now nothing can change your fate."
"She is just a girl–"
"SHE IS MORE THAN THAT!" Baron roared.
Moreau only smiled. He almost looked... pleased at Baron's outburst. He hooked something out of his coat and dropped it onto the desk. "Every experiment I make brings me slightly closer to making a race capable of anything," he remarked lightly, as if the conversation was over a simple fact: the weather or what they were having for dinner. "People beyond our physical restraints, beyond anything ever seen before. Just imagine it, Baron! A world, where humans could possess the agility of a cat, or the strength of a gorilla! And you... you could be human."
Muta glanced to the Doctor, and then to his friend. "Baron..."
The Creation's form had gone rigid. "What's in the bottle?"
"My experiment on Miss Haru had brought me closer to a solution," Moreau said. "To the answer of how to overcome the madness obtained upon entering the Human World. All it needed was essence from a human tainted with the animal genes, and it would combat the fatal affects. Of course," he added, in that same deceptively light tone, "the feline aspect would mean that it would only work on converting cats to human and I've only made enough for a single person so far, but still..." he trailed, and his avian eyes focused on the Creation, "there's no reason why it shouldn't work."
"All I desire is for you to return Miss Haru to her human form," Baron retorted, but his eyes didn't move from Moreau and the potion.
"Oh, that'll be easy. Take her back to the Human World – she is a human, so – like the cat you took to the Cat Kingdom – she'll revert upon returning to her true world. She'll be fine." The Doctor gave a strange, fang-filled smile. "See, Baron? You have no quarrel with me."
"Yeah," Muta interrupted, and he pointed past Moreau to the open doorway, "but what about him?"
The lumbering form of Prendick squatted in the outline of the entrance. He had been standing there long enough to hear Moreau's last admission, and his pearl-black eyes stared across at the Doctor. "Oook?" he managed to grunt, and this single syllable somehow contained more hurt and betrayal than any number of words could have conveyed.
Moreau curled his lip and rolled his head. "Don't look at me like that," he snarled hoarsely. "If I had told you of that, you would have wanted to go home and then you would have brought more from your world to stop me. I couldn't allow that, could I? It was what was best for my research – for the good of all."
Prendick's eyes darkened, if possible, and he advanced towards the man. Moreau only gave the same smile as before and raised one glowing hand – the same glow that had preceded the fireballs. "Oh, Prendick, you know you could never beat me. Don't try my patience."
Prendick stopped, but his eyes never left the Doctor.
Moreau looked back to Baron. "I'm offering a once-in-a-lifetime chance – and even in your extended life, this is a rare one. I believe my magic will even work on a Creation such as yourself."
"I just want to take Haru back," Baron reiterated, but a little of his previous confidence had faded.
"No, you don't," Moreau countered confidently. His eyes flickered once to the curled form of Haru, slumped against the wall and unaware of anything except for her own sphere of personal pain. Shivers wracked her body as the transformation swept over in a new wave. "She is quite a find, I'll grant you that. Plucky, brave, not all that bad-looking, although," the Doctor added with a mirthless chuckle, "I've been away from other humans for too long to be a good judge. But I can understand what you see in her."
"Baron..." Muta muttered.
Baron stole a glance to the other cat. Muta gave a subtle shake of the head. The action grounded Baron, bringing him back down to his usual self. He gave an almost-normal smile. "I'm sorry, Moreau, but I'll have to refuse your offer. I have a friend to help."
This didn't discourage the Doctor. Instead, he only picked up the vial and tossed it to the Creation. "Take it," he said. "As a token of goodwill between us. Now, why don't you run home with your pretty friend and consider what that little bottle could do for you?"
Baron caught the bottle more out of reflex than thought, but when he did, a little of his earlier resolve crumbled. Moreau was right. It would be so easy – so simple – a simple mouthful would change his whole life around. He glanced back to the apparently unconscious Haru. The pain had passed and she had slipped further into a feline, dropping into restless sleep with the change. There was just something about the young woman; something that meant he was sad to see her go and overjoyed to see her return and that he knew that he would never, ever let anything happen to her. It was a strange, mixed feeling in the pit of his stomach that he couldn't entirely explain, lest of all why it made him happy.
He looked back to the bottle. It would be a trap; it had to be. But then again... Moreau was so caught up in his experiments that the idea of successfully turning a cat – even a Creation like him – was a challenge and adventure in itself. Underlying it all, he knew this wasn't a trap. This... strangely enough... was a genuine offer.
His eyes trailed back to the uneasily slumbering form of Haru, and as he watched her he knew what he had to do. He raised his arm–
And flung it into the desk.
It smashed into a million pieces, raining glass across Moreau's other experiments. The Creation turned a grim smile to the silenced Doctor. "Sorry, Moreau," he said hoarsely, "but I'm afraid I'm just not interested." He changed his grip on his cane, raising it between them.
Moreau stumbled back, the paling of his features indicated that he felt he'd just fatally misjudged his visitors. "But... why?"
Montgomery chose this precise moment to run into the room, holding a hand to a dripping cut across his forehead as he stumbled into the doorway. "Doctor, the beasts, they've – they've overcome the drugs – they're running wild and I think they're going to... to burn... the place..." His voice faded, taking in the unexpected scenario before him.
The Doctor turned desperately to his hired help. "Montgomery – help me with these intruders–"
Montgomery only had to take one look at the calm, dangerous glint in Baron's eyes to decide his loyalty – what little of it he possessed – stretched nowhere near enough to warrant intervening. "No chance, old man; I'm getting out of here!"
"Coward! Deserter!"
Baron's smile only became grimmer. "I see you don't choose your companions with care."
"Companions?" Moreau snarled. "He's nothing more than an assistant, someone too corrupt to ask questions as long as he was kept from the death sentence of his world."
"Well, that would explain it."
"Uh, Baron?" Muta prodded Baron's arm.
"Yes?"
"Um, I think the guy was telling the truth about the fire."
Baron lowered his cane and lifted his head into the air. Now Muta had mentioned it, there was the faint whiff of acidic smoke – and not just the sharp tang of cigarette smoke. His smile became tainted with the mirthless humour of irony. "Well, well, Doctor. It appears your delicate house of cards is about to come crashing down about you. The very creatures you created are rising up against you; they will destroy the very equipment you used to change them. Somehow, it seems fitting."
He turned back to Haru and lifted her gently into his arms. He started for the doorway, Muta in tow and a bewildered Doctor left stood in the middle of the room.
"So, that's it?" Moreau demanded. "You're just going to walk out? Just leave me alone?"
"Oh, you're not alone, Doctor. You still have Prendick." Baron never stopped his hardened smile, and he never looked back.
Only when they had put several corridors between them and the Doctor's screams did Muta risk a glance to the Creation. "Baron, that was... I mean..." He faded, lost for words.
"He made his bed. Now he has to lie in it," Baron answered thickly.
They came to the exit of the complex and found Toto hopping at the doorway. "Thank goodness; what took you so–?" The crow's eyes rested on Haru's shivering, inhuman form and the question abruptly halted. "I'm going to ask for details later," he said, "but now we need to get to the portal."
"Wait," interrupted Muta. "What about the others? You know, the changed beasts?" he reminded his friends. "We should take them back to their kingdoms."
"We haven't got time."
"Course we got time. The Doctor must be as dead as a doornail and–"
"Exactly," Toto intoned. "He's dead – or dying. He was the one who forged the first portal to this world and he has made no secondary anchor–"
"And that means what exactly?" Muta growled.
"It means we are running out of time," Baron breathed. He leapt onto Toto, quickly and curtly explaining his meaning. "Doctor Moreau was the first to create a portal to this world, so he served as an anchor between here and the other worlds. Now he's dead, that link is dying with him and we will be stuck here forever unless we return through the portal before that happens." Something that sounded suspiciously like a curse rattled through his lips. "I don't know why I didn't think of that before..."
"It doesn't matter," Toto insisted. "We just need to go – now!"
Muta glanced back to the building burning. While painted white, it was still, undeniably, made from wood, and so burned with a fiery blaze. "But... Maria..."
Baron hesitated. He motioned for Toto to wait before flying off. "Muta, we have to go," he said softly. "Haru will never be human again unless we take her home."
Something in Muta's posture changed. At Haru's name, the memory of the young woman's predicament hit him all over again. He turned to his Creation friends and nodded solemnly, although it seemed to cost him everything. "Alright. Let's go home."
ooOoo
Gentle sunlight stirred Haru from her sleep; her eyes eased themselves open to register the familiar surroundings of her bedroom. And in the open window, framed by the same sunlight that had woken her, were the silhouettes of Baron and Muta. She didn't move just yet, she didn't want to alert them to her waking. For that brief minute, she just wanted to savour the peace of the morning and the reassurance of her friends by her side – before it was shattered by overcrowding questions and worries over her health. Life had been one long seesaw between the Bureau's adventures and normality's mundane backdrop, but for the first time in a long while the Bureau was completely relaxed.
Muta was the first to glance back. He nudged the other cat. "Hey, Baron... Chicky's awake."
Baron turned and a soft, relieved smile filled his eyes. "Haru."
The brunette pushed herself up and swung her legs over the side of her bed. The mirror on her desk confirmed that indeed everything was back to normal. She smiled into her reflection and her reflection smiled back with perfectly human teeth – even if the canines were perhaps that little bit sharper than before.
She looked over to the felines perched on her window sill. Almost everything from the last few conscious hours were a blur, dotted only by the occasional memory of clarity. She looked for her favourite crow Creation. "Toto..."
"Is at the Bureau," Baron smoothly answered. "In case of any new clients."
"And, everyone else in the Doctor's world...?"
"Still there," Baron said quietly. He didn't meet Muta's eye. "We barely had enough time to get ourselves out before it collapsed."
"Can't you just open another portal–?"
"'Fraid not, Chicky." Muta's voice was unusually gruff, even for him. "With Moreau's death, the link between that world and all others has been severed. Nothing can be done."
Haru was silent for several seconds, taking in the layers of information she'd just been handed. Then, "Moreau's dead?"
"Killed, by Prendick," said Baron.
"Oh." Haru couldn't pretend she'd liked the guy – actually, hatred would have been closer the mark – but to learn of anyone's death was sobering. That brought to mind the other human in the Doctor's world. "And Montgomery?"
"Fled, although I doubt he got far."
Muta chuckled humourlessly. "The animals would have got him."
Haru was again silent, but the silence lasted longer than before. When it came down to it, only the members of the Bureau appeared to have escaped from the Doctor's world unscathed. Her eyes travelled over the two felines before her. Physically, anyway, she mentally amended. There was a ghost in Muta's eyes that hadn't been there before and Baron...
Her gaze centred in on the cat Creation as the vague recollection of a hazed memory returned to her. "Baron, what was the Doctor talking about?"
"He said a lot of things, Miss Haru. What detail in particular were you thinking of?"
Haru's brow furrowed into a frown. The memory was just beyond her grasp; she could only see the flurry of movement and the rain of glass. She remembered a tension that could be cut with a knife suffocating the room upon the arrival of that small, insignificant bottle. And a word came to her – human.
"The potion," she finally answered. She saw something in Baron's gaze shift. "The one to turn you human." Something in his eyes made Haru sit up that little bit straighter and meet his gaze, despite the overwhelming desire to sink back into sleep. She coaxed what little memory she had of the incident. "He offered you the chance to be human and you–"
"I threw it away," Baron confirmed.
Haru shook her head. It wasn't that which was bothering her. "You considered it," she stressed. "Why?"
Baron froze. This was an angle he hadn't been expecting. His pre-prepared answer died away and for a heartbeat he floundered. His mind raced over the myriad of answers he could give, all true – but some were truer than others. He looked to Haru – she was beautiful to him, even now, even after everything she'd gone through – and he remembered why he had thrown away the vial in the first place. "I merely felt that the option of being human would make this job easier," he answered sincerely, his smile gentle but his eyes apologetic. "It's not always easy being a Creation."
"Oh." Haru's eyes dropped to the floor. "Yeah, that makes sense," she mumbled. A smile that came as bittersweet as Baron's rose to her lips. "Suppose I should have seen that."
There was a brief, abrupt knocking at Haru's door, followed by Hiromi bouncing into the room. Haru was forced to hurriedly pull the curtains closed, hiding her unique guests from view.
"Haru! You're back! Strange – I didn't hear you come in..." Haru was, without warning, drawn into a tight hug. "Where have you been? I didn't see you at all last night and I even tried calling your boyfriend to see if he knew where you were!"
"He's not my boyfriend."
"Meh, but you like him, don't you?"
Haru paused in her attempt to free herself from Hiromi's embrace long enough to consider this unyielding remark. She couldn't deny that being around Michael made her happy, that she loved to simply be able to go out in an evening without some death threat hanging over her head. That there was a certain charm about his laugh. That she looked forward to going to work simply to see him.
Yes, there was a kind of love she held for him; it was a different quality of love compared to the nervous, steadily growing affection she had for Baron, but it was still love.
"Maybe," she conceded.
"Hah, I knew it – I knew it! Come on – when I mentioned you hadn't been seen all night, he came straight over – he's outside the apartment right now!"
"Now?" Haru echoed. "But I–"
"He's been worried sick, Haru. What after those birds, and then that madman, well... I guess anything could have happened to you."
Haru chuckled lightly. "Alright, I'll go. Are you coming too?"
"No fear; I want to hear why you weren't back as much as he does."
"There's no story, Hiromi. I just... stayed out too late and forgot the time."
"And you didn't even leave a note?"
"There wasn't really time..."
From behind the curtain, Baron listened to the fading conversation of the two young woman. The sad smile on his lips faded as he felt Muta's glowering presence beside him. "What?"
Muta grunted and looked away. "Coward."
"I gave her an honest truth."
"Yeah, but not the truth."
"And what would that be, Muta?" From their vantage point, they could see Haru and her friend wandering out of the building, laughing and joking alongside one another.
"You could have told her how you feel." Muta's voice dropped to a gentler tone, but no less disappointed. "You could have told her that. Why didn't you?"
Haru spotted Michael standing by the roadside and rushed towards him, laughter rippling through the air as she was dragged into another tight embrace. Baron watched the proceedings with a tired resignation.
"That's why."
ooOoo
Haru freed herself from Michael's arms to glance once up to her bedroom window. She watched a familiar crow flew to the open pane and land alongside his friends. There was a quick discussion and a rapid flow of information that indicated a new client had just turned up at the Bureau.
"What are you looking at, Haru?"
"Nothing." Haru turned her gaze to her friends and a wide smile filled her features, her eyes sparkling with the thrill of adventure. "I know you've all been very worried about me and all, but I've got to go." She hugged Hiromi and graced Michael with a swift kiss on the cheek and then started in the direction of the Bureau.
"But... where are you going?"
Haru only laughed. "I don't know! That's the beauty of it!"
Normality was a state of mind, but Haru decided she rather liked this one.
ooOoo
Inspired by: The Island of Dr Moreau. Written by H. G. Wells.
References:
The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. Written by Douglas Adams.
The Discworld Series. Written by Terry Pratchett.
ooOoo
A/N: So that is the first (and possibly last) series of The Bureau Files. I am up for writing a second series, depending on the overall response to this and whether people would enjoy that. For me, this was an enormous amount of fun; I've never found anything quite like this in this fandom, so writing something that felt novel was a true enjoyment.
(If there is a second series, I can promise you that you'll learn more about Muta's mysterious past, Haru's absent father, and exactly where Toto and Baron came from - is that enough bribary to leave you interested? Additionally, if there are any original characters in this series that you'd like to see make a comeback in a second series, leave their names in your review and you might just see them return.)
There will be no new story next week, because it is only one week before Advent starts and you all know what that means – another Christmas Special! (And I've learnt that one story at a time is quite enough for me...) But, to fill the gap, there will be a special chapter of The Bureau Files next week, so keep watching!
On a final note, who's excited for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary episode tomorrow? All the Whovians out there, shout "Allons-y!"
Cat.