15 Minutes Ficlets Challenge: Fretful
Appraisal
by Red Wolf
Wolf sat on the bench, kicking her legs and listening to the swish of fabric on fabric. The Doctor had shown her the TARDIS' wardrobe and she'd ferreted out a t-shirt and jeans. She was fascinated with the cut and feel of the garments and ran her fingers over the denim drill, enjoying the tactility of the weave.
She looked up at the Doctor, watching as he fiddled with monitors and scanners and things that made beeping noises. "This medical check isn't going to involve some kind of dodgy surgery, is it?"
"No, no. Nothing intrusive." He waved a scanner over the areas of her injuries and checked the readouts. The Doctor frowned and ran through the data a second time. "There should be an indication of where the fracture was, but it's like it never happened."
"I heal fast." The Doctor looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "And really efficiently." Wolf shrugged, hopped off the bench and wandered around the room. Examining the back of the monitor the Doctor had gone back to frowning at, she ran her fingertips over the vents at the back and smiled at the pleasing noise it made.
The Doctor scrolled through another page to information. "This is odd. According to the readouts, you're biologically compatible with most humanoid and canid-like life forms in the TARDIS' database and, weirdly enough, also the giant gas-based cloud people of Throol." He shook his head. It didn't make sense. Evolution forked to adapt life forms to available conditions. It didn't cast a wide net to take all possible variants into account.
He looked up at Wolf, who'd taken an interest in his sonic screwdriver and was cycling through its settings. "Somebody put a lot of effort into making you."
"That would be my parents." Wolf grinned as a beam shot out the end of the screwdriver. The Doctor rescued it before she accidentally melted something or someone. "They weren't like me."
"Fully human?" Wolf nodded. That made things even more interesting. The ability to manipulate genetics to such a degree would be beyond Earth scientists for centuries. "From what I can see so far, I'd have to guess that whoever cast your ball of DNA rolling was looking to make themselves their own little army."
"Good guess." Wolf looked at the data on the screen. "That's what we used to be, but it was long before my time. There's only a few of us now, making us something of a contingency plan." She ran a finger along a row of data. "Ooo... I can breed with Hyenas. Kinky."
Sighing, the Doctor wondered if her short attention span was built in or she came by it naturally. He smiled, at least he'd always be able to distract her with shiny objects. You never knew when that would come in handy.