(A/N: Girls. Can't live with them, my hard drive has lost its pink pen.)
Episode 4:1- Aliens of London
RING-RING. RING-RING.
"Hello?!" Calvin yelled down the line. "Oh, hey, Hobbes. Yes."
Pause.
"No."
Pause.
"Maybe."
Another pause.
"Seriously! I'm working on the Time Machine! How bad can it be?"
Long, long pause.
"No, that was a rhetorical question. Of course it's that bad, with the slimy girl with you. Seriously. How accident prone can you get?"
Pause.
"..that was another rhetorical question. Where are you?"
Yet another pause.
"Of course. You're at 10 Downing Street," he said sarcastically. "How could I be so stupid? Just what have you gotten yourself into this time?"
12 HOURS EARLIER...
"Go on," Calvin said, pushing Rose towards the trampoline. "Off you go. Go meet up with your mum and dad. I landed us 12 hours after we left."
"Fine! Fine! Just don't leave without me!" she protested.
Calvin rolled his eyes. "Of course I won't. I'm working on the Time Machine for a bit, it'll take me about 24 hours. Perfect timing, right?"
"Right," she snapped. "And by the way, my dad's dead."
And with that stinging retort, she stalked to the trampoline and bounced out. Calvin huffed a big sigh, and turned to the console to begin tinkering. "Girls!" he complained dramatically. "Can't live with 'em."
"..but wouldn't want to live without them," Hobbes completed.
"Yeah, that's right," Calvin nodded, then turned around sharply. "Wait, WHAT?"
"I said, my drive has lost its pink pen," he said, deadpan.
"That's alright, then," Calvin agreed, and connected a circuit. It sparked angrily, and zapped him with a bolt of electricity. "Hey!"
More sparks and another zap from the interior of the Time Machine. Calvin growled angrily, and shoved a screwdriver into the mass of wires. A small explosion occurred. Calvin raised himself out of the smoking remains of an expensive-looking device, and screamed wordlessly towards the ceiling. When he had calmed down slightly, he jabbed the screwdriver which was hanging loosely from his hand towards Hobbes. "You. Out. Now. Follow Rose, eat tuna, I don't care. Just leave me alone."
Hobbes raised a paw in his direction. "Uh... Calvin? Are you... okay?"
"GET OUT!"
Ten seconds of needless violence later, Hobbes was sitting on his bruised rump on the pavement outside the Time Machine.
"Yowch," he said, rubbing his rear. "Calvin?"
A scream and a puff of smoke.
"I'll be back at five, okay?"
A hammer flew out from the Time Machine, landing dangerously close to Hobbes's tail.
"Okay, I get the message. See you later."
growwwwllll... came from the Time Machine. But Hobbes didn't hear, because he was already walking off.
A newspaper fluttered to the ground in front of the tiger, and he picked it up absently, reading the date. His eyes widened, and he dropped the newspaper, running as fast as he could towards the Powell Estates.
"I'm home!" called Rose, strolling in the front door. "I was just out with Shareen. Sorry I'm a bit late home, I just lost track of time. How are ya?"
Jackie Tyler, who had been sitting on the couch with a cup of tea, dropped the mug. It shattered on the floor, shards flying everywhere. Her expression was one of absolute shock with a bit of incredulity mixed in.
"What?" demanded Rose. "I've come in late before, it's never bothered you."
"Yeah... but... but... but, not this late."
"What do you mean!" she exclaimed, and her eyes fell on the dining room table.
There were five different types of 'Missing Person' posters there.
Oops.
Just then, Hobbes crashed in through the door. "It wasn't 12 hours!" he yelled. "12 months. Sorry. I'll kill Calvin as soon as we get back to the Time Machine, really."
"I'll help," Rose agreed, staring at the posters.
"Rose!" Jackie exploded. "Where have you been?! And where did that stuffed tiger come from? And why are you talking to it? And why am I the one asking all the questions? Oh, forget it! I'm calling the police." She grabbed a phone and dialed.
"No, Mum!" Rose protested. "Honestly, I can explain."
"No buts," she lectured. "We're talking to the police."
"Seriously," Rose mumbled. "Where's Calvin when you need him?" Jackie's astute ears picked this up quickly.
"Who's this Calvin person, then?" she demanded.
"No one... no one! He's just the person I'm travelling with!"
"He's in the Time Machine," Hobbes said, taking no notice of the seething mother next to him, probably reassured by the fact that she couldn't hear him.
"Oh!" continued Jackie. "So you've been travelling, hm, missy? Because I don't recall ever seeing your passport leave the spot where you left it. And you've been travelling with a boy!"
"And a tiger," Rose muttered, throwing a glance at Hobbes.
"Huh! Get rid of that ratty old thing, already!" Jackie huffed, grabbing Hobbes by the tail- it looked extremely odd- and throwing him out the window. Rose heard a startled yelp from the garden.
"Stop that!" she yelled. "Look, Mum, I can't talk to you about this. I called you, remember?"
"Yes. Yes, I do remember. I remember you giving me one cryptic phone call, two days after you left. And then nothing. Where were you? Where did you go?"
Rose blinked at her, almost in tears, before turning and bolting out the door.
Rose climbed the escapeway that ran up along the side of the building. It was a pastime she had developed as a child. Whenever life had felt a little too much, she would climb up to the roof, and just sit there, thinking or reading a book. She mounted the side, and clambered to the top of the building. It was a windy afternoon, the breeze sweeping bits of rubbish around the flat-topped roof. She stepped over to the edge and sat down, letting her legs swing out over nothing. The estate lay sprawled below her.
"What are you thinking about?" asked Hobbes. He had padded silently up behind and sat down just next to her. Rose sighed.
"Ah... just... nothing really."
There was a companionable silence for a few moments, and then-
"It's just- I can't tell her anything! I can't tell my own mother where I've been for the last three days, and she thinks it was a whole year! No, she's right. It was a whole year."
Hobbes shrugged. "The disadvantages of being a time traveller," he remarked wisely. "Your head starts to hurt."
Rose chuckled. "Heh. But still. It's like, I've seen all these things, right? And now I can't go back. I'm probably one of the only people on Earth who know that aliens actually exist. And I can't tell anyone. No one else knows anything about this, and they probably never will."
A loud screeching noise from above made them both look up.
A large, disc-shaped space ship was pivoting wildly through the sky, weaving this way and that. Twin streams of black smoke sprayed out from its rear end. Rose's and Hobbes's eyes followed it as it flew into an inelegant barrel roll, spun twice, and crashed directly into Big Ben, blowing a massive hole through the center of the big clock.
They stared at the scene for a moment, before Rose found her voice.
"Seriously?" she groaned. "That just had to happen, right?"
Hobbes laughed in delight. "Oh, you bet it did! Come on, let's go!"
"More running?" Rose got up.
"Almost certainly, yeah."
"Then what are we waiting for?"
Hobbes produced the Transmogrifier Gun from behind his ear, and zapped a loose candy wrapper with it. It turned into what looked like a hovercar.
"It's a hovercar," he explained. The small grey vehicle was just a platform with a long stick running up from the center. It wasn't bigger than a meter squared. Rose hopped on, and Hobbes gripped the pole, maneuvering it forwards. The hovercar shot forwards and off the building, and into the afternoon sky.
"But won't people notice a hovercar?" Rose asked, peering down at London, spread out below them like a map.
"Yup."
They flew over some rooftops, and a few children pointed and stared at them from windows.
"Then...?"
"There's already a crashed spaceship in the smoking remains of Big Ben. Seriously. Is some futuristic technology going to make much difference."
Rose considered that, and nodded, before grabbing the control stick from Hobbes.
"I can do a better job than you at this, you know," she informed him. He raised an eyebrow.
"Wanna put that to the test?"
Hobbes grabbed the stick back and guided them towards an empty rooftop, where he landed. He grabbed a loose tile from the roof, and transformed it into an identical hovercar, except for one fact. It was light pink. Rose squealed in delight, and ran over to it, revving the control stick twice. She turned to her tiger friend.
"Oh, you are so going down."
Hobbes laughed, and they took off, rising into the air in synchronisation. Rose flew low, darting through alleyways, and only rising up when she approached pedestrian areas. Hobbes, on the other hand, prefered to stay up as highly as humanly (or felinely) possible. He reached out a claw, and snagged a bird mid-flight, before plucking a few feathers off and letting it continue unharmed, albeit slightly dazed. The two hovercrafters met up half a kilometer away from their destination, and started flying side-by-side, each competing to be there first. Hobbes put on a burst of speed, and Rose decided to do the stupidest thing she had ever done.
She flew up next to Hobbes, and jumped from her craft to his. In mid air.
Hobbes shook his head, amused, and jumped to Rose's pink vehicle, quickly saving it from the mystery spaceship's fate, namely, crashing into Big Ben.
They both touched down in front of a huge crowd that had already gathered.
"I win," declared Rose, jumping off Hobbes's hovercar.
"No way!" Hobbes protested. "I so beat you!"
"But you won using my hovercar, so technically I did win!"
"Girls," Hobbes grumbled, zapping the two 'cars back to their original form. A candy wrapper and a brick shingle fell to the ground with a scratch and a thump, respectively.
Hobbes and Rose then noticed the crowd that was staring at them.
"Oh, he-llo!" cried Hobbes, then noticed that no one could see him, except for the kids. He nudged Rose, who smiled and waved.
"Uh, hi. I'm... uh... Annabeth Chase? I represent the Department of Extremely Odd Stuff, and... I'm investigating. Investigating the investigation with my investigative powers. Yes. So, if you could, sort of, move aside?"
She motioned with her hand. Everyone shuffled out of the way.
"Thanks. Let's go."
She and Hobbes started across the path that people had cleared for them. They had got to about two meters away from the giant smoking wreck when they were stopped.
By the military, no less.
Five minutes later, they were walking home, having deemed the hovercars too risky at this point in time.
"Well, that went well," complained Rose.
"Seriously. You though 'Annabeth Chase' would work? And, 'The Department of Extremely Odd Stuff'? Honestly."
"Well, it's better than 'The Ministry of Silly Walks'. Why don't we have some kind of identity giving paper, like... I dunno, psychic paper, or something?"
Hobbes looked at her strangely. "Where did you get that from?"
Rose shrugged. "It just came to me. What do we do now?"
Hobbes tapped his chin with a claw. "The obvious thing. We watch it on the television."
"Big Ben has been destroyed. Police have been drafted in from across the country to help with the impending panic."
Rose reached up to the remote, and switched it off. "Nothing we don't know. Honestly. You'd think the news people would be more efficient."
"Nah, not gonna happen. It's like asking for a non-corrupt politician."
Rose grinned, tongue poking out from the corner of her teeth. "What now?"
Hobbes shrugged and yawned, stretching his paws out, and knocking the remote off the top of the television, where it had been placed. It clattered to the floor. The TV turned on.
"-body has been found, of non-terrestrial origins. A retrieval squad is being sent in..."
Hobbes and Rose stared at each other, then to the TV screen.
"What in the..." Hobbes said softly.
People were filing into the Tyler's living room, and Rose couldn't successfully communicate with Hobbes without looking like some kind of weirdo. Not that she was, of course. It was quickly turning into some sort of 'Welcome Home, Rose!' party. People kept coming up to her and asking where she had been. But of course she couldn't tell them.
"My life is so complicated!" she screamed mentally. "It's like some insane fanfiction author took a popular TV show and crossed it messily with a comic strip, getting rid of main characters when necessary and making fun of key elements. And they did it badly, and they're not getting the reviews they think they deserve."
Followed by-
"Where did that come from?"
"Mystery still surrounds the whereabouts of the Prime Minister. He hasn't been seen since the crisis started, and- oh, hold on a moment. There's Joseph Green, MP for Hartley Dale. He's Chairman of the Parliamentary Commission for the monitoring of sugar content in exported confectionary."
There was a pause.
"With respect, he's not really that important right now. Sorry, Joe."
Rose sighed, and headed out to the balcony, where less people were located. Hobbes was out there, leaning on the railing.
"Where did you get to?" she asked him.
"Your mother threw me out the window again. I spent a good fifteen minutes getting up, and another ten trying to keep out of her sight."
"Uh," Rose looked slightly embarrassed. "Sorry, I guess. Mum's a bit of a neat freak." She quickly changed the subject. "So. About the space ship. What should we do?"
Hobbs rubbed his left ear. "Well, I don't really think it's that important."
"What!" she demanded. "How can an alien invasion not be important!"
"That's the thing. I don't actually think it's an invasion. I think- no, I'm 99% sure that this is humanity's first contact with alien life. We can't really meddle with something like that. That was an actual crash landing, a complete accident. It wasn't intentional."
Rose crossed her arms. "So what, we just stay here and wait it out?"
"No," he corrected her. "You stay here and wait it out. I'm going to go find Calvin to see if he's over his temper tantrum, and then... we might do something. I don't know."
"Huh." They gazed out over the Powell Estates together. "Promise you won't disappear?" Rose asked abruptly. Hobbes looked scandalized.
"Of course we wouldn't do that!"
Rose looked unconvinced.
"Okay, maybe Calvin would. But I'd stop him. Here."
He tossed her a small red button set on a metal backing. It had a hole in the top so you could loop a string through it. Rose caught it and examined it. "What is it?"
"It's a Time Machine key. Thing. Sorta like the garage car door opener. If you press the button, and the Time Machine's around, the doors unlock or lock. If the Machine's not around, it sends out a signal so we can get you. Cool, huh?"
"Very cool." Rose tucked it into her jacket pocket. "I guess I'll see you later."
"You will," he promised, and leapt off the balcony with a cry of 'Geronimo!' In midair, he sprouted wings, which were probably a product of the Transmogrifier Gun, and flapped off.
Rose watched him go. Unnoticed, Mickey (remember him? He's Rose's boyfriend. Or ex. I don't know. It's complex, and I'm only 12. I don't even have a boyfriend yet. *starts crying* Oops. I'm off topic again. Sorry, back to the story.) was watching the tiger fly off. But he could only see a stuffed tiger levitating through the air.
"What in the world?" he muttered. Something was going on.
Hobbes, as a matter of fact, did not go towards the Time Machine, like Rose expected him to. He valued his life, health and sanity too much than to encounter Calvin when he was in such a bad mood. Instead, he transformed himself into an invisible flying penguin and headed towards Number 10, Downing Street.
This oughta be good.
He flew in through a window, which just happened to be in a hallway where an interesting argument was taking place.
"Let me in!" demanded a woman whose name tag declared her to be 'Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North'.
"I'm sorry, no," replied the Junior Secretary. There was an awkward pause.
"Damn, that didn't work," growled Harriet. "Would you like a cup of coffee?"
"Thank you," the Secretary said, taking the cup she held and sipping it contentedly. "Hey!"
Harriet Jones had ducked in through the door when he wasn't looking, and shut the door behind her. No one was there, or at least that's what she thought. An invisible Hobbes, in the form of a penguin, was there too.
Harriet Jones walked over to a red box, handily labelled Red Box. She placed a sheaf of papers inside it, before noticing a file marked 'Emergency Protocols' inside it. She frowned, and took it out. Hobbes crept up behind her, holding his breath. Harriet began reading, and Hobbes read the file too.
There was loud thumping from outside. Hobbes jumped, but Harriet didn't notice anything. She just flipped a page over, and continued to scan the text. Hobbes dashed over to the door, and flung it open. He ran down the hallway, in the direction of the thumping.
Harriet didn't notice a thing.
Hobbes sped down the hallways, heading towards the Cold Chambers. He zapped himself with the Transmogrifier Gun, turning himself into a non-invisible, non-flying tiger. A regiment of soldiers was marching down the corridor, and he dashed behind a pillar.
"Emergency defence plan delta!" the tiger screamed, and continued on towards the noises. The soldiers all glanced at each other, shrugged, and decided to follow the orders given from seemingly nowhere.
Hobbes reached the cool room the thumping was coming from just as the freezer burst open and something came out. It was...
"A pig?" the scientist standing nearby screamed.
Indeed it was. It was a pig in a spacesuit. Hobbes sidled up to the scientist and rapped her on the back of the head with his ever-present rubbed mallet. She started, and stared at him.
"Yes, yes, I'm a tiger, get over it already," he said, waving his hand. "Back to the crisis at hand. Was this alive when you put it in the freezer?"
"N-no."
"Great. Just perfectly peachy."
The pig squealed, and ducked behind a filing cabinet. Hobbes crept up to it on all fours, purring softly. "Hm. Are you an alien menace? No. Of course you're not."
The door was smashed in, and a troop of soldiers stormed the place. They were all carrying guns. Hobbes sucked in a deep breath. "Don't shoot!"
Of course, the soldiers couldn't hear him. To them, he was just a stuffed tiger toy. So they shot. And they didn't miss.
(A/N: Welcome back to the world of Calvin Who, which is what I'm calling this series now. Thanks for all the positive feedback, and please, please, please review, and tell me what bits you liked! I need ideas, and I'm asking YOU!
Extra special thanks to GoldenKeyblade, who gave me ideas for if I get to Season 8. Not likely, but I appreciate the notion.
THERE WILL NOT BE AN UPDATE NEXT WEEK, due to me having school camp, but the week after that I'll be right back in action.
Also: I need info. Where can I find some other good Calvin and Hobbes/Doctor Who crossovers not on this site?
Lotsa Luv,
~Kitty Eden)