No Room to Swing a Cat
This is my first attempt at a who-fic. Please be nice, but remember that I can take all kinds of criticism as I prefer flame to ignorance. You may find that there is very little actual Doctor in the first parts of this story, but you need not worry – he and Tegan are on their way and will become central as things develop.
o o o
The car was skidding again. The young woman was fighting to stay in control, twisting the steering wheel and trying to force the vehicle into submission if not by the laws of physics, then by sheer willpower.
The lime-green hatchback swerved dangerously, but then the tires regained their grip on the tarmac and sent the car off down the road at maddening speed. It was but 70 or 80 kilometres an hour, but through the heavy noon city traffic, it was anything but safe.
Kimoto Takita furiously hung onto the wheel as if for dear life; her small but solid claws carved into the leather and her emerald eyes darted to and fro, searching for an escape even as three black cars took the same turn behind her and at almost the same breakneck speed. This time, a pedestrian had to jump for his life, and one of the black cars swerved as if to avoid him, only to careen sideways into the solid concrete of the building at the opposite side where it seemed stuck for the moment.
Kim could have screamed out her delight at decimating the pursuers, but instead she gritted her teeth, swearing silently in her mother's tongue, knowing full well that the men in the cars would rarely have hesitated on their way to apprehend her - not because of some civilian bystander. The black cars were built to handle the kind of damage sustained from such impact and she was pretty certain that the one car had lost control rather than actually tried to avoid the hapless pedestrian.
Life, she thought to herself, narrowly avoiding another parked car and looking for another turn; another way to loose the remaining pursuers, was rarely a very decent thing. Especially not to the kind of unsuspecting civilians - normal people - crowding the city these days.
They had gotten what they wanted. The ancient Empire had returned, just as some prophecies had promised, and the Takita family held the throne of Honshu II in a firm grip; heeding the old ways and upholding the codes. Her teacher had admonished her innumerable times, reminding her that the ways of old were what the ancestors of these people had craved more than three hundred years ago when they instated the Empire again.
Harrumphing to herself and making another dangerously close pass of some innocent person's car, she bared her canines and frowned. What insanity had placed the Takita family in such a place of power? Who, in their right mind, had wished for the ways of old to befall a planet, part of the Terran Coalition, after several thousand years of developing into modern life, democracy and individualism?
For the life of her, she didn't understand it.
And that was why she took the next road left at speeds that her every instinct warned her against. There was a gap in the oncoming traffic and she seized the chance to drive through it, aiming for the narrower road to somewhere else.
The young man on the bike would not have had a chance, had it been one of the black cars, but when Kim spotted him as if in the crosshairs formed by the front end of the hatchback, she yanked the wheel the other way and tried desperately to pull the lime car sideways so that it would pass behind him.
The biker had stopped, supporting himself and his bike on one foot, staring at her much the same way a hare would stare at an oncoming car. This, sadly, did not leave enough space behind him for the vehicle to squeeze through.
She tried anyway.
And failed.
With a sound like the dying screams of some unnatural monster, the lime finish was scraped off the right side of the hatchback along with parts of the door and various other bits and pieces. The wheels of that side also were damaged beyond the ability to carry the vehicle any further. The biker had thrown himself sideways at the absolutely last moment, just avoiding the car, and now lay sprawled on the tarmac, still staring at the wreck as it lost momentum and stopped.
The driver's door was torn open and a woman jumped out, green eyes flashing and barely offering him a second glance before starting to run down the road she had tried to drive down, her tail lashing behind her.
Her tail?
The man started to get to his feet, trying to absorb that he had narrowly escaped serious injury or even death as a car, driven by what seemed to be one of the rare sheerar women, had been close to running him over.
It was ironic that he was too occupied by this thought to avoid the impact of the black sedan as it skidded to a halt next to the green hatchback. He was lucky, though, as he woke up in hospital finding that he had been admitted to one of the best wards in this part of the world and that expenses and a very handsome damage payment were all being taken care off by others - provided that he failed to mention the sheerar female to anybody. This, he reasoned, made sense and he only told it to his wife some seven years later on the festive evening of their second anniversary.
Kim was running for her life, but her chances were diminishing. She heard one of the cars behind her brake and she heard the ugly thump and crashing sound of what was unmistakably a person being hit by a car.
One of the black cars passed her, made half a U-turn and had men poring from it before it had stopped. The other car had stopped behind her and she could hear running feet from that angle as well.
o o o
Kim tried to make for the door of a shop, any shop, but felt the all too familiar stabbing pain before she had even focused on a door. The small needle like arrows hit as precisely as always and again she felt a peculiar admiration for the efficiency and perfection of the men employed by her father.
She wondered if this really was an unattainable dream as she descended into a warm, quiet darkness. The last thing she noticed were gentle arms preventing her from actually falling to the ground.
Gentle arms... She felt that so rarely these days...
o o o
The bed was immaculate. The upholstery was the best that money could buy and some of the décor of the room was beyond what money could buy.
But it did little to soothe the young girl in the bed.
Kim was recovering from the anaesthetic administered by the Imperial Guard as they had apprehended her somewhere downtown. It was not an unfamiliar feeling as this had happened, what, seven or eight times before? And, as always, once she came round, the drug wore off within minutes.
After her first attempt at going outside the palace for a taste of a freedom that had been denied for too long, she had made what could best be described as a scene when the guards found her. After that, at her second escape, her father had ordered the use of drugs to prevent any more scenes.
So far, it had worked. How the accidental maiming and injuring of civilians during the guards' pursuit did not count as scenes, she failed to guess. She didn't know if that often happened, but she knew that this time out, the young man on the bike had been a victim.
Tossing in the sheets, she wondered again if she was just being a spoiled little rich girl and if the risks for others were risks she was allowed to take? That man on the bike could be dead for all she knew. Would his blood be on her hands?
She hid under the silk blanket and bit her lower lip till she tasted metal.
She discovered that she didn't care if it was because she was spoiled or not. If this was being spoiled, then she would remain spoiled and keep up her attempts at fleeing the palace. It was a cage with golden bars and jewelled linings, but it was a cage all the same and she detested it. Hated it. Abhorred it beyond her wildest dreams.
Wild...
That was what her father saw her as: A wild beast to be tamed and put to use, much like Tagreen, the tiger.
She missed her freedom, but she missed Tagreen almost more bitterly. That tiger had been more than a palace pet or a thing for the décor, he had been a friend.
Her friend.
And that was why she had killed him three months ago.
After seven years of building a close relationship between herself and the snow white tiger with the deep blue eyes, some advisor had whispered corrupt ideas to her father. 'The princess is part feline,' he had said. 'The tiger is male and people are starting to gossip. It would be unfortunate if people found anything unnatural to take place between the princess and her beloved tiger!'
Unnatural indeed! And what, Kim wondered for the nth time, was not unnatural by the way her father had made her mother, his concubine, bear her? Meeriun was sheerar: A huge, golden and highly intelligent feline, walking on all four most of the time, but fully as intelligent as most humans. She had been a beauty, a wild and yet sophisticated creature, and she had been made the concubine of the Emperor. The human Emperor!
For reasons beyond Kim's grasp, it had been seen as a sign of social prowess amongst human males to court sheerar females. And it seemed quite acceptable for the Emperor to have such a gracious being amongst his concubines.
Statistics made for less than one percent of such relations to bear any fruit and more basic laws of genetics and inheritance disallowed any such thing all together. But it happened, from time to time, and a rare few of such offspring - always females - survived their first difficult years to reach adolescence and eventually adulthood. Most became courtesans as they were valued in this trade and were unable to conceive. The rest tried, often in vain, to lead normal lives in spite of their special appearances as a cross between a great feline and a human.
Kimoto Takita was one such living half-sheerar woman. Well, teen anyway. She was not destined to become a courtesan as she was a princess, but she found the bickering regarding the unnatural occurrences between herself and Tagreen was so ridiculous that she paid it little attention.
Until her father decreed that Tagreen should be taken from her and given to a zoo on one of the other coalition planets - as far away from Kim as at all possible.
Caging a huge tiger for interstellar transport would imply the use of heavy drugs. It would risk his life and he would not stand a chance in a zoo with other, wilder, tigers. If he survived the journey, he would have little chance of making it in a zoo unless he was placed in a solitary cage. Solitary... Alone...
So Kim had played with him, rolled in the park with him, pretending to him that it was but another game and to the guards that she was having a last bout before the parting. They had played it roughly, as always, and he had minded the small sting very little.
He had fallen asleep almost instantly and was dead within the minute.
Kim had been too sad, too angry, to shed any tears before the curious eyes of either guards nor servants.
Not that day.
Only in the darkness in lonely nights, unseen by anybody, did she mourn the loss of her friend, but at least now Tagreen was free.
Kimoto Takita was anything but free. She pouted a little and licked a few drops of blood from her bitten lip before she finally emerged from under the silk linen to look at the all too familiar room.
Other girls her age had small rooms with posters of well known boy bands, sports people, loved ones and the likes on the wall; painted in nice colours, furnished with comfortable furniture and perhaps equipped with a suitable computer or console.
Not this young girl.
The bedroom was the size of a small ballroom and had a bed in it, big enough to have five or six people resting comfortably all at once. The chairs along the one wall were plated with gold and cushioned with silk, and the vase in the corner could, if filled with water, substitute for a kiddie pool.
The three women at the foot of the bed also wore expensive silk kimonos and their hair was donned in such a fashion as to defy gravity. They all looked at Kim with eyes lined in black and faces powdered to a pale complexion, and none of them spoke.
"Yaaaah," Kim yawned and hid her face under the blankets again. "Mmmm awake now, I'm fine. Go away. Please."
"I am sorry, your highness," one of the women said, curtseying slightly as she spoke. "But your father has given orders to prepare you to see him as soon as you are fit to do so."
"Father?" Kim exclaimed, rolling out of bed and tossing the blanket down, staring at the woman in the pink kimono. "What does he want, Allindra?"
"I am sure he will let you know, your highness," Allindra said. "I beg of you to allow us to do our job. His Imperial Majesty would be most upset if you do not meet him soon and in proper attire."
"Proper..." Kim muttered, more to herself. "It would show him a thing or two if I came in miniskirt and a tank top showing my belly button, wouldn't it?"
"You jest, highness," Allindra smiled as she started to help Kim out of the light gown she had been wearing during her sedation.
"Yeah, I do," the young princess smiled back. "T'would kill him right there and then it would, and I wouldn't inherit the throne anyway."
The other women did not say anything, instead they started to help Kim into the formal dress required when she was to meet with her father. Allindra had been her trusted maid for years and in spite of the formal tone, a deep respect had grown between the older woman and the young sheerar-crossbreed.
They combed her long tabby hair and oiled it with expensive oils before arranging it into a complex hairstyle adorned with silver and a few well placed emerald studded pins. She refused the white for the face, as always, but accepted rouge to underline her almost triangular face. They didn't even ask if she wanted the dark eyeliner as they knew that her sensitive feline eyes would water from the dye and that this would not look good.
She graciously accepted a few red silk ribbons wound loosely around her tail, more as a subtle match with the mouse grey and red rimmed outer kimono than any real décor. The golden ring in her one ear was left as it was and silver bands placed around her neck and wrists and, almost as a long tradition, Allindra asked if she should oil or wax the whiskers - which Kim, also traditionally, refused.
Slipping into a pair of handcrafted silk sandals, Kimoto Takita, princess of Honshu, was finally ready to go see her father, Emperor Inin Takita IV of Honshu.
And she was not looking forward to it.
o o o
Meanwhile, in another time, at another place - approximately.
"Doctor?" Tegan Jovanka was trying to discern what part of the mess on the floor was the Doctor and what was but strange objects from the console. It looked as if her friend had opened a door into the console and from that exhumed every last cable, wire, strange object and piece of indefinable machinery that he could possibly fit into the surrounding room. "Doctor? What are you doing?"
There was no immediate answer from the other end of the legs that poked out from under the console.
"Is there a problem?"
As if to answer the Australian's question, the floor lurched and threw her onto it as everything seemingly wobbled like the floor of a roller coaster. The lights dimmed briefly and the otherwise stable hum of the TARDIS struck a discord. Just before everything turned really bad, it all stabilized again and the Doctor came out, his face a grimace between pain and puzzlement.
"That was odd," he observed, resting a hand on the edge of the console and running the other over his head where a large bruise was already forming. "Really quite odd!"
"Doctor!" Tegan's voice cut through the settling dust of the room as she looked at him, accusation in her eyes. "What was that?"
"Ah, a bit of a delay, I'm afraid," the Doctor said as he got up.
"Delay?"
"Yes, there seem to be a slight problem here. Some of the cables of the influx booster stabilizer have been seared and are malfunctioning"
"Can't you just get another cable then?" Tegan asked as she, too, got up from the floor, making sure that she had injured nothing other than her dignity. Again.
"Well, that's the problem, really. You see, it has to be a vulcanized 07 beta-cord made from an alloy of-"
"Save me the technicalities," she moaned and sat down on a welcome chair. "What does it mean?"
"It means," the Doctor smiled, pushing a few buttons on the console and observing with some smugness as the central column continued to rise and fall unabated by the earlier events, "that we have to get new cables before we can fix the old girl."
"And until we do?"
"I'll have to make a few adjustments to the influx boosters."
Tegan sighed, kicked off her shoes and pulled her feet up on the chair. She knew only too well when the Doctor became like this. He would rummage on and inside the console, pushing buttons, pulling cables and no matter what she said, he would not supply her with any useful information before she started to yell at him. And even then there was a real chance that he would not give anything.
As it was, she could just as well go for some tea. After all, this could easily take a lot of time.
o o o
To be continued…