We Are Humans, We Come In Peace
I ish back, in all my mad glory :) well, here it is,
second part of Smith and Jones. Hope you enjoy it.
"Where are they going?" Martha asked, as the Judoon made their way into the hospital, seemingly breaking through the force field Rose's pebble had been unable to get through.
"I have no idea. Let's go find out, shall we?" the Doctor said, grasping Rose's hand and going back through the ward, Martha following, giving directions.
"This way to the stairs? How many floors until the ground floor?" the Doctor asked, as Martha nodded in right direction.
"Four floors, I think," Martha said, and the three flew down the stairs, three at a time. Eventually, they got to the mezzanine floor, and the Judoon were down below, interrogating the patients and visitors.
"We have to hide," the Doctor said, looking around for a suitable hiding place from the Judoon.
"Behind the plant pots!" Rose said, and the Doctor nodded, failing to spot another hiding place, as he and Martha crouched beside Rose on the ground. "Why do we need to hide?"
"I don't know – I just know it's better if the Judoon don't see me. Or you, for that matter," he said, nodding in Rose's direction.
Martha opened her mouth to ask why, but instead, the Judoon leader took off his helmet.
"Ew! They're like giant rhinos," Martha said, making a face.
"Bo sco fo do no kro blo co sho ro!" the Judoon said, much to the screaming of the people below.
"We are citizens of Planet Earth," a young man – Rose faintly recognised him as Morganstein, one of the medical students she'd met in the hospital - dressed in a white coat similar to Martha's, spoke up. "We welcome you in peace."
"Oliver," Martha whispered, looking shocked.
"Honestly. Who first said 'we come in peace'? Because really, it's become such a cliché," the Doctor said, still peeking out behind the plant, making no move to speak up himself.
Rose voiced this thought. "If you think it's so lame, then you go down and say something, then, Timey," she said, rolling her eyes.
"I'm fine where I am, thanks, Tyler," he replied, before nudging her. "Listen," he said, indicating to the Judoon.
The Judoon had Morganstein up against a wall, and was shining a bright blue light in his face. "Please don't hurt me, I was just trying to help … I'm sorry, please don't hurt me, please don't hurt me," he rambled, literally shaking with fear, visible from where the three were hidden.
"What are they doing?" Rose said, as the Judoon recorded his voice on handheld, red device.
"He's assimlating the language," the Doctor said, as the words Morganstein has said were played backwards. "He'll speak English now."
The Judoon seemed to plug the device into their chests. "Language assimilated. Designation Earth English. You will be catalogued," he said, marking a black cross on the back of Morganstein's hand. "Category is human. Catalogue all suspects."
And that's when the screaming started.
"Honestly, they're only making a catalogue. Like an IKEA catalogue, only with humans, and not furniture. Why do you humans always have to start screaming?" the Doctor said, more to Rose than Martha, who hadn't heard him; Rose rolled her eyes, used to him insulting species now. Although, she had to admit, he didn't insult them as much as he did in his last body.
"Oooh!" the Doctor said, snapping Rose out of her trance and causing Martha to look at them, "Look down there! You've got a little shop. I like a little shop. We should have come to the little shop earlier, Rose! I never knew they had a little shop … " he trailed off, seemingly disappointed that he didn't get to go to the shop.
Rose huffed in amusement. "If we get rid of the Judoon then we can go before we go," Rose reasoned, and the Doctor beamed; Martha had raised one eyebrow, giving him a look.
"What are you, five years old?" Martha asked sarcastically, as if now just wasn't the right time to organise a trip to the little shop.
"Give or take nine hundred," the Doctor muttered, eliciting a little giggle from Rose. Martha ignored them.
"What are the Judoon?" she asked, not taking her eyes off the rhino-like aliens.
"Galactic police. Well, they're more like police for hire. Interplanetary thugs, in my opinion," he said, his breath slowly steaming up the glass their noses were pressed against. It would have made a humourous sight if they hadn't been a) invaded by aliens that looked like they belonged in Animal Kingdom, and b) hidden by plant pots, so no-one could have actually seen the humourous sight.
"And they brought us to the moon?"
"Neutral territory. According to galactic law, they have no jurisdiction over the Earth, so they isolated us."
"That rain, that lightening, was that them, using the plasma coils?" Rose asked, now sitting cross-legged on the floor, her legs having gone numb with squatting for so long.
"Yes, that was them," he said, looking down at her, "Using an H20 scoop."
"What's that about 'galactic law'? Where did you get that from? And if they're police, does that mean we're under arrest?"
"For trespassing on the moon!" Rose said, and she and Martha dissolved into laugher, and even the Doctor's deep chuckle rang out for a moment.
"No, but I like that," he said, smiling, "Good thinking. No, it's more simple. They're making a catalogue, so that means they're looking for someone non-human. Which is very bad news for me … actually, bad news for us," the Doctor said, taking Rose's hand and squeezing it in reassurance.
"Why?" Martha asked, looking at the pair.
They both gave her identical looks, one eyebrow raised, which plainly said 'what do you think?'
"Oh, you're kidding me."
The Doctor just raised an eyebrow further, if that was possible. They were quickly becoming impossible to distinguish from his hairline.
"Don't be ridiculous," Martha said. Rose was biting her lip, trying not to burst out laughing, and the Doctor just maintained his gaze. "Stop looking at me like that!"
"Well, come on, then," he said, pulling Rose up from her position on the floor. "I need to find a computer, now."
"In here!" Rose said, pointing to a room with a computer; they'd been searching the hospital corridors for ten minutes trying to find one, and the Judoon were hot on their heels.
"Martha! Go and see where the Judoon have got to," the Doctor said, and Martha nodded, running in the direction they had just come; Rose went inside the room with the Doctor, holding the sonic to the computer as he typed furiously.
Martha came back no less than forty-seven seconds later. "They've reached the third floor. What's that thing?" she asked, looking curiously at the sonic.
"Sonic screwdriver," Rose supplied for the Doctor, since he seemed deep in concentration.
"Well, if you're not going to answer me properly," Martha said, looking a little put out.
"It is!" the Doctor said, as Rose waved the slim device around. "It's a screwdriver, and it's sonic."
"What else have you got then? Laser spanner?" Martha challenged.
Rose smirked. "He did have … it was nicked. Ugh, who was it again, Emily Pankhurst or Millicent Fawcett?"
"Emily Pankhurst, cheeky woman. Millicent Fawcett was the one who dragged you to that protest and you ripped your dress," the Doctor said, distracted, as Martha listened in, mouth agape.
"Ahh, so it was," Rose said. "I liked that dress, too."
The Doctor suddenly hit the computer, making Rose and Martha jump simultaneously. "Oh, this computer! The Judoon must have locked it down. Judoon platoon upon the moon," he said, as Rose giggled. He turned to Martha.
"We were just travelling past, I swear, - "
" - Yes, after getting lost around bloody Muswell Hill looking for a Tesco - "
" - Anyway," he said, looking at Rose, who smiled sweetly back at him, "We weren't looking for trouble. But I noticed the plasma coils, that's the lightening, those plasma coils. So, we checked in, the baby is the perfect cover to get in and see what was going on. Turns out it was the Judoon up above!"
"Baby?" Martha asked, looking around as if said baby was going to materialise out of thin air.
The Doctor gasped and turned to Rose. "I knew we'd forgotten something!"
Rose just laughed, and Martha was still looking at them as if waiting for a serious response. Rose pointed to her stomach. Martha nodded in understanding.
"So, what are they looking for?" Martha asked the Doctor, 'they' clearly being the Judoon.
"Something that looks human, but isn't," he said, his hair now looking like he'd stuck his finger in a plug; actually, it was almost identical to the time Rose had caught him sticking his finger in some sort of electrical device.
"Like you. Apparently," Martha replied, clearly not believing him.
"Like us. But not us," the Doctor amended, pointing between him and Rose.
"Well, don't they have a photo?"
The Doctor looked at Martha. "It might be a shape-changer," he said, as if talking to a five-year-old.
"Whatever it is, can't you just leave to Judoon to find it?"
"Aww, that's boring!" Rose said, grinning.
"One, it's boring," he said, nodding at Rose, "And two, if they declare the hospital guilty of harbouring a fugitive, then they'll sentence it into execution."
"All of us?" Martha said, looking shocked and a little sick.
"Oh yes. If I can find this thing first … Oh! Just that they're thick! The Judoon are thick! They are completely - "
"Thick?" Rose offered, and the Doctor beamed.
"Completely and utterly. They wiped the records!" he said, running a hand through his hair, throwing it more into disarray, if that was possible. "Oh, that's clever."
"What are we looking for?"
"Ugh, I don't know. Any patient admitted in the last week with unusual symptoms. Maybe, just maybe, there's a back up … " he trailed off, deep in concentration once more as his fingers typed at the keyboard with such speed it was a wonder that he didn't make any mistakes.
"Just keep working. I'll go ask Mr Stoker, he might know," Martha said, hurrying out the room.
Rose turned to the Doctor. "Who's Mr Stoker when he's at home?"
"No idea," the Doctor muttered, distractedly, indicating that Rose should hold the sonic against the computer again, and she did so.
He typed quickly, a small smile appearing on his face and it got bigger and bigger the more he typed. "I've done it! Florence Finnegan, came in six days ago. Salt deficiency, it was diagnosed as," he said, jumping up and kissing Rose soundly on the lips, before grabbing her hand and running out the room.
"I've restored the back-up!"
"I've found her!"
The two spoke simultaneously; Rose was the only one to be silent.
"You what?" the Doctor said, and saw two Slabs running up the stairs after Martha. "Run!" he said, pulling Rose along by the hand, Martha following as they ran into a MRI room. "In here! I have an idea that might get rid of them!" he said, pushing Rose and Martha behind the protective glass.
"What are you doing?" Rose said, as the Doctor inserted his sonic screwdriver into a gap in one of the handheld x-ray machines.
"When I say 'now', press the button!" he said, appearing not to have heard Rose.
"I don't know which one!" Martha said, looking at the array of buttons in front of her and Rose, in a variety of shapes and colours.
"Find out!" the Doctor said, as the Slab began knocking down the door.
"Look!" Rose said, managing to find a User's Manual, and pulled it out, flicking through the pages urgently. Martha spotted a good-looking page that said 'X-ray machine' and had a big, yellow button displayed on the page.
"It's our best bet," Martha said, and Rose nodded in agreement.
"Now!" he yelled, and Rose smacked her hand against the button; the Slab glowed blue, his skeleton visible through his thick leather get-up. Next thing they knew, he was dead on the ground.
"What did you do?" demanded Martha, who was staring at the Slab on the ground with morbid fascination.
"Increased the radiation by five thousand percent. Killed him dead."
Martha frowned. "Isn't that likely to kill you?"
"Nah, don't be silly. It's only radiation. I played with roentgen bricks in the nursery," he said, looking down at his feet with curiosity. "You can come out now, I've absorbed it all."
Rose and Martha immediately stepped out from behind the screen, Rose walking to the Doctor's side at once while Martha approached the Slab, poking him with her toe as if to make sure he was dead.
"Right, all I need to do is expel it," he said, as Rose dramatically sighed.
"This better not take as long as last time!" she said, pointing her finger as if scolding a naughty child.
"I don't think it will. Key word: think," he said, "If I concentrate, I can shake the radiation out of my body and into one spot. It's in my left shoe," he said, for Martha's benefit.
"Last time he did this, it took him an hour to get it all out," Rose supplied, as Martha frowned again.
"Out, out, out, out, out. Out, out, ah, ah, ah, ah. It is, it is, it is, it is, it is hot. Ah - hold on!" he said, before whipping off one of his Converse and throwing it in a bin that was nearby. "Done!"
"You are completely mad!" Martha said, eyes wide.
"You're right," he said, looking down at his one bare foot, "I look daft with one shoe on." With a dramatic flourish, he wrenched off his other shoe and threw it in the bin beside his other shoe. He wiggling his toes against the cold tiled floor. "Barefoot on the Moon!" he said, grinning like a lunatic.
"Best way to be, isn't it?" Rose said, grinning as well. It was contagious, because Martha even started smiling, if somewhat reluctantly, as if if someone caught her smiling they'd cart her away to the looney bin with the two 'aliens'.
(Although she still didn't believe they were aliens.)
"What is that thing?" Martha asked, pointing to the Slab, as the Doctor and Rose just kept grinning at each other like lunatics, "And where the hell's it from? The planet Zovirax?"
Rose struggled not to laugh, dearly hoping she wasn't this … human when she'd first come aboard the TARDIS. Like asking if everything was from Mars, like Donna, or using planets like Zovriax as if they were real. Which it was, incidentally, but no-one ever went there because of the cold sores. They covered your entire body, and it wasn't a pretty sight. Rose had seen in, from inside the TARDIS - when the Doctor had taken her because she didn't believe him, she wouldn't let them outside. Because Jackie would have single-handedly killed him if he'd taken Rose back covered in cold sores.
"It's just a Slab. They're called Slabs. Basic slave drones, see?" the Doctor said, crouching down beside the leather-clad finger and shaking him slightly. "Solid leather, and the way through. Someone's got one hell of a fetish."
Rose poked the dead Slab in the shoulder; sure enough, it was tough and kind of squishy. She made a face and retracted her hand. Martha hadn't even crouched down, preferring to stay standing and look down her nose at it. Not in a bad way, just as if it was … well, Rose didn't really know what she was doing, but it was understandable considering she maybe wasn't as cut-out for this life as Rose herself was.
"It came with that woman, Mrs Finnegan. It was working for her, like a servant," Martha said, an urgent tone lacing her voice.
"Told ya – Finnegan," the Doctor said to Rose, who was still crouched over the other side of the dead Slab.
"You're telling me like I doubted you," Rose said, teasing, and stood up. "Well, we better go find this Finnegan person before the Judoon does."
"Yep. Hold on," the Doctor said, rushing over to the x-ray machine and taking out the remains of a burnt and melted sonic screwdriver. "My sonic screwdriver," he said, looking at it as if he was a five-year-old who had just dropped his ice-cream in a particularly muddy puddle.
"She was one of the patients - " Martha was carrying on, oblivious to what the sonic actually was.
"Sorry, Doctor. Will you get a new one?" Rose said, inspecting the sonic, coming to the conclusion it was well and truly melted.
"She had a straw like some kind of, some kind of vampire - " Martha wasn't even listening, but said the final word with disgust on her face. The Doctor just stared at Martha. Note to self: never suggest to Martha to go to Transylvania. Particularly the North-West. Last time he'd gone, he'd been accused of being from an enemy vampire clan (if there was even such a thing, as the Doctor believed they'd just made up the story as an excuse to kill him) and Rose had narrowly escaped a wooden spear through the heart. It was a memorable trip, for all the wrong reasons. He'd only gone to show Rose that all vampires weren't as friendly or as good-looking as Edward Cullen.
A spark came from the sonic in his hand, reminding him of his broken and beloved screwdriver. "I loved my sonic screwdriver …" he was back to the broken tool in his hand.
"Doctor!" Martha said, impatiently, and Rose realised this was the first time she'd called the Doctor 'Doctor'.
"Sorry!" he said, lovingly throwing the sonic into a bin. He'd make another one, it wasn't too hard. Not like rocket science, or anything. Rocket science was so easy once you got the hang of it, it really was. Ask Rose – or better not, if you want her to go on and on about the migraine she got after trying to understand it. "You called me Doctor!" he said, looking pleased.
"Anyway!" she said, impatiently. "Miss Finnegan's the alien. She was drinking Mr Stoker's blood!" She said, carefully pronouncing each word, clearly hoping for one of them to tell her she was hallucinating due to lack of oxygen. They were in no such hurry, and looked at each other, the answer clearly being on the other person's face.
"Funny time to take a snack," the Doctor said, starting to pace, stroking his chin as if he was stroking a beard, reminding Martha scarily of Dumbledore from Harry Potter.
"If she was an alien, you'd think she'd be hiding," Rose said, pacing as well, although she wasn't stroking an imaginary beard.
The Doctor looked at her, dumbfounded for a moment, before smiling widely. Martha had no idea someone could actually smile so wide, and that was his mouth halfway open. "Rose Marion Tyler, you are the official genius of planet Earth," the Doctor said, gleefully. Rose smiled, although in Martha's opinion she looked as though he just asked her if she knew the directions to Tesco. Which, judging by their earlier comments, she didn't. The Doctor proceeded to snog the daylights out of her, only breaking apart when Martha coughed.
"Sorry," the Doctor said, not looking sorry at all. "I think … no, I know … Miss Finnegan is a shape changer. Internal shape changer, of course. She wasn't drinking the blood, she was assimilating it!" he said, clicking his fingers. "If she can assimilate Mr Stoker's blood, mimic the morphology, she can register as human. We've got the find her and show the Judoon. Come on!" he said, running out into the corridor, dragging Rose by the hand; leaving Martha to trail after them, wondering when her day had gotten so impossibly weird.