Episode 6:1- Dalek
(Disclaimer: Do you wanna fight a Dalek? Or play Calvinball on Woman Wept?)
"Welcome, Slimy Girl, to Woman Wept!" yelled Calvin, stepping out into the bright gleam of a thousand frozen waves, forming into one gorgeous planet.
"Wow!" exclaimed Rose. "This is... this is..."
"Brilliant, absolutely brilliant," Hobbes nodded. "And the best place in the Universe to play Calvinball."
"Calvinball," Rose mused. "Calvinball. A bit egotistical, to name a game after yourself."
Calvin pouted.
"That's not his worst crime," Hobbes said. "He 'discovered' a dinosaur skeleton a few relative years ago, and named it the 'Calvinosaurus',"
"Seriously?"
"That's not even the worst bit," Hobbes laughed. "It turns out the skeleton wasn't actually a dinosaur anyway. It was a bunch of rubbish someone had left lying around in the dirt."
Calvin glared at them angrily. "One day," he vowed. "I will find the Calvinosaurus, name it after myself, travel back in time, and sic it on you."
"How threatening," Rose snickered. "Unless it turns out to be an itsy-bitsy little herbivore." She held up her thumb and forefinger about three inches apart. "That would be extremely terrifying, I'm sure."
"Shut up, Girl." Calvin stomped over to the Time Machine, and pulled a giant sports bag out, grunting slightly. "Right. Calvinball. Spread these around the area, we need to make a proper Calvinball field."
Out of the bag came three rocks, a bunch of croquet wickets, several mallets, a plastic chicken, a picnic blanket, a fez, a backcatcher mask, the shuttlecock from a badminton set, tennis racquets, a volleyball net, a pogo stick, a box of jelly babies marked 'DO NOT EAT', a plastic partridge in a pear tree, one and a half cricket bats, several black masks, and a ball, among other things.
"Okay, I don't even want to know how you got that all in there," Rose said, staring.
"It's bigger on the inside," Hobbes supplied.
They quickly got to work, spreading the items around the place. Calvin helped Hobbes put up the volleyball net on the peak of a particularly large wave, and Rose stuck the wickets firmly into the dry ice. Calvin picked up the masks and tossed one each to Hobbes and Rose.
"Masks?" Rose asked. "Why on Woman Wept do we need masks?"
"DO NOT QUESTION THE MASKS," Calvin yelled, making her jump. Rose hurriedly put it on. Calvin tossed the ball up and down, and twirled it expertly on one finger. "Right. Rules. This is the Calvinball."
Rose waited, but nothing else seemed forthcoming.
"..and?" she asked, after what seemed an age.
"You can't play it the same way twice."
"That's it?"
"Yep! Now, sing with me the Calvinball theme song!"
He cleared his throat and belted out; "Other kids' games are all such a bore!
They've gotta have rules and they gotta keep score!
Calvinball is better by far!
It's never the same! It's always bizarre!
You don't need a team or a referee!
You know that it's great, 'because it's named after me!" He quickly passed the Calvinball over to Hobbes. "The next person to touch the Calvinball without touching the Fez of Doom is declared a Raxacoricofallapatorian, and must be blown up by the Missile of Madness!"
"What?" yelled Rose, standing still as her two friends ran around like lunatics.
"You didn't touch the Fez, Rose," Hobbes commented, now bouncing up the waves on the pogo stick, which is easier said then done on dry ice. Rose picked up the Fez from where it had landed, and idly put it on.
"Wait," she said. "So I can make up any rule I want?"
"As long as you're not doing it more than once, yeah!" screamed Calvin, who was currently undercover in the Blag Zone, whatever that meant.
An evil smile spread across the teenager's face.
"All young boys or tigers are now subject to the Rule of Anachronism, which states that everything is wrong, including this!" Rose yelled, standing on one leg with her arms tied behind her back, and a rubber duckie on her left shoe.
"What does that mean for us?" Hobbes asked, twirling around the Pole of Raining in a spangled pink tutu.
"It means that a shouting match is now engaged between you and Mud," Rose said, untying her left hand with a spare hedgehog. Calvin, whose name had somehow been demoted to Mud, ran over to one of the two Judgement Waves. Hobbes stood at the other.
"YOU'RE WRONG!" screeched Calvin.
"NO, YOU'RE WRONG!" Hobbes yelled back.
"YOU'RE WRONG!"
"YOU'RE WRONG!"
"ADMIT IT, YOU KNOW NOTHING!"
"NO!"
"NO!"
"NEVER!"
"YOU'RE WRONG!"
"Hobbes has stumbled into the Twilight Zone, and has been set upon by the Vampires of Sparklee!" Calvin directed. His name was now Bin McMud the Second, after an incendiary meeting with Rose's Fez of Power, which had received an upgrade. Rose's new name was now Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. Hobbes had somehow been able to stay the same, and was now facing the price.
"Ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-banana," sang Rose, dancing to the beat of the pogo stick, which was hopping by itself.
"Score!" exclaimed Hobbes, kicking the Calvinball through the Pacman Wicket and up Mount Doom. "I'm out of the Twilight Zone, and have scored an extra few Lady Gaga points."
"Dum-dum-duhhh," Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way sang, pointing a Finger of Doom at him, and stomping ominously for extra effect. "Your Gaga points have been subverted into Hannah Montana points, via the evil accordance of Evil Overlord Rule the Eleventeenth."
"Noooo!" Hobbes sobbed, sinking to the ground. "WHYY?"
BING! BING!
The players all froze.
BING! BING!
"Rose?" Hobbes asked.
"Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way!" she hissed.
"Whatever. Is that your phone?"
"No. That's not my ringtone, remember?"
"It's the Time Machine phone," exclaimed Bin McMud the Second.
"You got the Time Machine working again?" Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way asked.
"Yeah," Bin said, nodding from behind his thick layer of mud makeup.
"What was wrong with it?" Hobbes asked, shucking off his tutu and rubbing off his lipstick.
"Someone-" Bin glared accusingly at Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, and scowled. "-someone left a greasy chip on the console. It mutated a few relative days ago, and attacked the interior of the Time Machine. She wasn't happy."
"The Time Machine wasn't happy?" asked Enoby.
"Nope. It's sentient, as you may recall from the Interlude."
Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way thought for a moment. "...nope. Not remembering this."
"Doesn't matter." Bin McMud the Second finished prettying himself up, and shook his hair back to normal spiky proportions. "Right. Let's go see what the Time Machine wants, and hope she's not overeating about something."
"What about the equipment?" asked Hobbes.
Bin had already started walking towards the Time Machine. "Doesn't matter. We've got a time machine, we can come here five seconds after we left. And we can stop referring to ourselves by our changed names now."
"We're not," said Ebony- oops, my mistake, Rose.
"No, the narration is. Never mind. Let's see about the Time Machine."
Calvin passed Hobbes, who was typing into an interface. "What's happening, buddy?"
Hobbes frowned, and poked the screen, which squeaked. "It's... a distress call."
"Are we going to answer it?" Rose joined them at the screen.
Hobbes poked the screen, which squealed in a higher pitch than before. "We have to. They set up a virus in the message, which they aren't supposed to be able to do."
"Wait, who's 'they'?" Calvin asked.
"Whoever sent the message. And the virus, which is a really nasty one. We have to go to the origin point of the call. We can't go over it; can't go under it, can't go around it..."
"We're going to have to go through it," Calvin decided, rolling up his sleeves.
Rose snorted. "What's this, some kinda bear hunt?"
Calvin threw on a jacket, and held on to the railing while he set the directions to accept the call. "You could say that."
"Let's go, then," Hobbes said. "Then, we can get back to Calvinball."
"Great." Calvin hit the button with gusto, and a little bit too much force. "I hate it when the person at the other end's only gone and lost their cat up a tree. It's just annoying."
"What a beautiful day!" Rose exclaimed, twirling as she bounded out of the Time Machine.
"It's a museum," Calvin said, excited. He dashed around a bit, and returned, looking disappointed. "No dinosaurs."
"But here's a Slitheen," pointed out Hobbes, tapping on the display case. A shrivelled head sat on a velvet cushion.
"Ergh," said Rose, just as Calvin said, "Cool!"
The trio split up, walking around the museum, and occasionally calling out the names of things that they recognized. Rose swore she saw a futuristic-looking hair dryer. But it was Hobbes who found the most unusual item of all.
"Rose... Calvin... I think you need to have a look at this."
"What is it?" Rose asked, curious. She reached the glass case where Hobbes was standing, and gasped.
"This better be interesting..." Calvin grumbled. "I was looking at a- oh. Wow."
What they were currently staring at was a detailed replica of the Transmogrifier Gun. It was perfect in every detail, even the tiny chip on the base from when Calvin had angrily drop-kicked it across the control room. Calvin removed his own Gun from his pocket and held it up to the light.
"Someone..." Rose said quietly. "Is a really big fan of yours."
"It's an exact copy," agreed Hobbes.
Calvin delivered a swift kick to the Plexiglass case, and hopped back clutching his foot in pain. He glared at the case as if it had offended him somehow, and zapped it with the Transmogrifier Gun. The front side of it vaporised into multicolored bubbles that floated through the air. Calvin snatched it up, and compared the two.
"Nope," he said. "It's not a 're the same one."
Rose took it from him, and checked it over. He was right. She lowered it slowly. "So... what does that mean for us?"
"It means..." he said, looking around. "...that at some point in the future, there's going to be a paradox."
"Calvin," Hobbes said conversationally. "Did you know that most museums have alarms to warn security when you take things out of their displays?"
Calvin looked shocked. "Really?"
The room lit up red, and flashing lights and alarms turned on all over the room.
"Yeah, really," Hobbes nodded, as a bunch of armed guards swarmed in and escorted them from the room.
"Why does this stuff always happen when I'm around you two?" Rose grumbled.
"We have talent," Hobbes said, sounding like he was being squished up against the chest of a security guard. "Mmph. Mmmmph."
The tall man in the black business suit paced unrelentlessly around the trio of time travellers. "You know..." he said. "...I've heard a lot about you, Mr Calvin."
"Oh?" Calvin asked. "If it was the Noodle Incident, I deny everything. It never happened."
"The Noodle Incident?" the man asked. "No. Never heard anything about that. But we did find a lot of information; news reports, photos, eyewitness, about you being in various parts of history, usually accompanied by a tiger and a girl. Now, I wonder where they are, these friends of yours?"
"Hello!" Rose waved.
"No, no, no, not you. Sometimes you do appear in these reports, but not always. There's a black girl in there too-"
("Slightly racist of you," Hobbes scowled. The man paid him no attention.)
"-a redhead, a ginger and a girl with dark brown hair. And the tiger's not here either."
Calvin considered. "Don't know anyone like that, apart from the girl with dark brown hair, and I'd never be seen dead with her anyway. As for the tiger, well," he waved a hand in Hobbes's general direction. "There you are."
"A stuffed tiger," the man's brow darkened. "Who do you think you're talking to? Do you even know who I am?"
"Christopher Eccleston?" Calvin guessed.
"NO! I am Henry Van Statten, alien artefact collector extraordinaire, and you two are the biggest experts on alien life I've ever known about."
"Us three," Rose corrected.
Van Statten glared. "There's only two of you! Do I look stupid to you?"
"Yes," she told him honestly. This was apparently not the best thing to say. His face turned beetroot-red, and she was sure that steam would come pouring out of her ears.
"Now, now, Tyler, what have I told you about aggravating evil alien dictators?" Calvin muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
"He's not a dictator," Hobbes said. "Or alien. Or even necessarily evil."
Calvin thought for a moment, and shrugged. "Eh. The point still remains."
"Right, little girl," Van Statten hissed. "You," he pressed a button on the intercom system. "You can go with my assistant. He'll take care of you while we talk." He made it sound like talking was a thing that you didn't want to be doing anytime soon.
"Sure, sure," Rose grumped. "Send me off with your assistant. And you boys can have all the fun."
Henry Van Statten smiled, and even though his teeth were immaculate, it was a horrible smile. "Yes, we do. See you around, girlie."
His assistant, who was a young boy around Rose's age, arrived at the door, and took her down the hall. The door shut with an ominous snap, and Calvin stared at it for a moment, before getting down to business.
"So. What's the big deal around here? Why so many guards? It's just a museum."
Van Statten raised a finger up in the air. "Ah, but not just any museum. It's a museum of alien history."
"Right. That's the reason there aren't any dinosaurs. But why did you call us here? And, for that matter, how did you do it?"
"We have dinosaurs, actually, but that's beyond the point. We called you in for the main reason that you're clearly aliens, as you're capable of time travel."
"Hold on, hold on!" Calvin protested. "That's insane troll logic right there. Just because there happens to be people that look like us in those places, at those times, means we're capable of time travel and therefore aliens."
"Yes."
Hobbes and Calvin shook their heads at each other.
"Calvin," Hobbes whispered. "Should we hit him on the head, so he can see me?"
Calvin considered. "No. If we keep it quiet, you can be my secret weapon."
"Oh goodie," Hobbes deadpanned. "I always wanted to be a secret weapon. You do realize that's what America called the nuclear weapons?"
Calvin wasn't listening, and had kept on talking to Van Statten. "What do you need us for, really?"
He nodded. "We need you to examine an alien organism that we found and bought a few years ago. Since you're an expert, presumably, you should be able to tell us all about it."
"Righto!" Calvin yelled in a mock-British accent, leaping up from his seat. "We mustn't waste time, old chap, then? Tally-ho and all that!"
"Cup of tea, my dear fellow?" Hobbes added in possibly the worst attempt at an English voice there will ever be. Fortunately, only Calvin and us heard him.
"Security coding Bad Wolf One," said Van Statten quietly to a guard, who nodded in recognition, and keyed that code into an access panel. The director of the alien museum followed the mad boy and his tiger out into the hallways.
"So, I'm Rose," said Rose to Statten's assistant. "Who are you?"
"I'm Adam," replied Adam. "Adam Mitchell. I'm Van Statten's personal assistant." He puffed himself up in pride, and immediately lost any respect Rose had ever had for him.
"Uh..." Rose struggled for words, and gave up. "...that's nice. What do you do?"
He shrugged. "I mostly just buy stuff. On Ebay."
"That's nice," Rose repeated, not finding the need to waste any more words on him.
They reached a doorway that had a scrap of paper pasted to it. The paper read "Adam's Place" and looked frankly kind of pathetic. A smily face was drawn underneath, in a vague attempt to make it look more cheerful. It didn't work.
"My office," he explained, and pushed open the door. It wasn't in the least 'bigger on the inside'. In fact, if possible, it was smaller. He gestured mildly to a chair. "You can sit down if you want."
Rose did. Adam shuffled awkwardly around.
"...uh..." he said after about a minute of this silence had passed. "So. You want to do something?"
Rose tilted her head. "What kind of 'something'?"
"Um, I could show you those articles with... you and your... friend? Son?"
Rose crinkled her nose in disgust. "Ew. Not my son. And not... not really my friend either. But sure. Let's see."
Adam opened up a file with a question mark printed on it in big black ink. "Well, we found this one of you at the Boston Tea Party."
Rose looked at it. It appeared that Hobbes was attempting to push Calvin into the water, while she was laughing nearby. "Nope. Haven't done that yet."
Adam looked confused. "Okay, then. There was this article about a space probe on the Moon, where they found footprints of... girl's flip-flops. And pawprints. And a golf ball."
Rose scrutinized the article, which was from New Scientist. "Really? Only one golf ball? I could've sworn we left a few..."
"So you really did go?" Adam said, surprised. "Really, really?"
"Really, really," Rose laughed. "Let's see the next one!"
They went through the rest of the photographs and articles, Rose gleefully pointing out some of the places they'd been, and quickly setting the other ones aside. There was no point in causing a paradox, after all. Finally, they came to the last article, which was from a gossip magazine a few years after Rose had been born. Rose read the article's title, and froze, her face turning stony. She scanned it, looking more and more upset as she went. Quickly, she stuffed it in her pocket, and plastered a smile on her face. "Alright. That's that done. So what else is interesting around here?"
"You can't do that!" Adam objected. "That's property of Mr Van Statten!"
Rose pulled off her coat and draped it over the back of the chair. "I'm sure you can make an exception for me, yeah?"
"I... I guess..." he stammered, face turning slightly red.
"Thank you. You are sweet," Rose said, breathing out a mental sigh of relief. She would have to talk to Calvin and Hobbes later about the article. "Can we go see what the others are doing, then?"
Adam's face fell. "Sorry. We can't."
"Oh." Rose did her best to look disappointed and moistened her lips slightly. "Are you sure?"
"Well..." Adam moved over to his old fashioned PC, standing forlornly in the corner, and switched it on. It booted up surprisingly fast for such a beat-up looking computer. "...we could check the monitors. I guess."
Rose leaned forwards in her seat, searching the rows of images, before pointing at a certain one. "There!"
Adam clicked on it, and it enlarged to fill the screen. "They're apparently in the Cage," he said, attempting to be professional.
"The Cage?" Rose wondered. "It sounds like it has a capital letter. What do you keep in the cage?"
Adam scrunched up his face slightly. "Well, it's the only living creature that is kept around here."
"But what is it?" she prodded.
"See for yourself," he said, pressing the arrow keys, so they could both have a better view of the action going on it the Cage.
Down in the Cage (which, coincidentally, did have a capital letter) some extremely dramatic action was going on. Have you ever noticed that you can't type sarcasm?
Calvin and Hobbes stood staring at something that resembled a giant metal pincushion with a toilet plunger coming out the front. It didn't move in the slightest.
"Are you sure it's alive?" Hobbes asked. Calvin relayed this question to Van Statten, who simply shrugged.
"It moves occasionally, and starts shouting out nonsense about 'the Predator' and 'the destroyer'. But other than that, it just stays put. Do you recognise it?"
"The Destroyer," Calvin mused. "That would be a cool nickname. Nope. Don't know what it is, sorry. Hey, saltshaker thing!" This was directed at the robot. "Do you know who I am?"
To everyone's surprise, the creature-thing moved to point its eye stalk directly at Calvin and Hobbes. The stalk flickered with a dim blue light.
"YOU... ARE... THE... DESTROYER," it croaked in a mechanical monotone.
Calvin stared. "Okay..."
"THE-DESTROYER-MUST-BE-EXTERMINATED," it continued, gradually picking up speed and volume. "EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE."
A streak of bright blue light shot out of its plunger. Hobbes dragged Calvin out of the way just before he was vaporized from existence. More streaks of light, accompanied by more yells of 'EXTERMINATE'.
"Run!" Hobbes yelled, tugging at the door of the Cage. It opened, and he tumbled out, followed by Calvin and Van Statten. He slammed it heavily, and locked it, panting like a dog. Which is an odd thing for a cat to do.
"What is it?" Van Statten demanded. "Do you know? How does it know you? What should we do?"
Calvin considered. "I don't know, no, no idea, and stop asking me questions I don't know the answer to. And by the way, bye."
"What?"
But by that time, the boy and the stuffed tiger were long gone. They had dashed off down the hallway, leaving the director of the illegitimate alien museum standing there, mouth half-open, and looking like a complete moron.
"What?" he repeated stupidly. Behind him, the door clicked twice, and began to creak open.
Ready or not, here it comes.
(A/N-
This has to be the most adventurous divergence from canon I've made so far. And I plan to keep going like this! Thanks to A Drama Queen, who is being way too perceptive for her own good. I really need to do something about that. It might involve a Mind Probe...
No! Not the Mind Probe!
Ahem. Hm. Also thanks to all the people in the PPC chat room, who have given me a new perspective on metaphors, and also have had the courtesy to laugh at my work when I cue them in. Thanks, guys!
THINGS I PLAN TO ADD IN THAT YOU WON'T EXPECT... (spoilers, sweetie!) ...
An organization called A Charitable Earth run by a girl with a penchant for explosives
Australian Indoor-Rules Quidditch
More Harry Potter references
Someone called Sentience... I wonder who they are! ^_^
And a Calvinosaur. Eventually.
I appreciate all feedback, as always, so PLEASE review!
Good night, citizens. Good night.
~Kitty, who is signing off after an extraordinarily long AN. She'd better stop now, and stop talking about herself in Third Person.)