Chapter 12 Startling Moments
Reality burst forth into their presence. Around Envy and the alien the light scattered. They were sprawled in the same place they vanished from. Envy, still in his monstrous form, was belly side up, his clawed feet kicking the air.
A strained cry reached him from down the hall, snapping the Homunculus into alertness. Envy kicked and rolled over, seeing the green monster clattering down the hall after Elisa. He gave an angry snarl, and charged after it. The alien was clearly unaware of what lay behind her because she changed her step to one that would let her pounce when the opening came. Envy bellowed, exchanging his gangly true form for the finer honed liger one he took earlier. Both Elisa and the alien started, and as Elisa jumped mid-step, twisting around out of impulse, the alien faltered, clattering forward into Elisa.
Elisa, in a heightened state of fear, shoved her hands out to block the alien, almost unaware of the giant feline coming up behind it. It must have been luck, or some internal sense of self-preservation, but her hand that held the forgotten talon found itself guided to alien's black, shining eye. It was the unrestrained momentum of the alien that drove the talon inward, and with a sickening crunch, the floor delivered the final blow. Elisa got tripped up in all this, and found herself trapped under the dead mass of the falling alien. The air was knocked out of there as she hit the floor. Even though it felt miles away, Elisa could hear the clicking of claws on the floor and the scraping they made as Envy slid to a stop.
With his massive paw, Envy rolled the dead alien off and away of Elisa. Envy's furry liger face appeared over her, and she gasped, "Envy." She pushed herself up, and Envy pulled her into him. Elisa coughed and buried her face into his mane.
"You did well," Envy simply said.
Soon they turned to the alchemist alien. It lain on the floor like a forgotten ragdoll. "So what do we do with him?" Elisa said, still shaken. Envy stood beside her still in the liger form, letting Elisa bury her fingers in his mane.
"There's nothing he's useful for anymore," Envy answered candidly. "Looks like the Truth took his entire nervous system as payment, and now all he can hear is the souls of the Philosopher's Stone. Huh. Serves him right." He spied his knapsack a few yards away, where he must of dropped it in their encounter, nosed the back strap over him and returned to his human form.
"Uh- yeah… let's go," Elisa said, and led the way to the far end of the corridor.
The hallway split into one continuing corridor and a set of stairs. Glancing around, Elisa saw a glint of something on the stairs, and she looked closer. The sonic screwdriver. "They went this way- look," Elisa said abruptly while picking up the device. They heard some sound coming from the floor above them, and they dashed toward it.
Inside the darkened controls room, the Doctor was in a tight spot. Reserve power had kicked in, and the various light of the computers shown dimly on the figures. The Slitheen had him surrounded in a room filled with banks of unusable electronics. What's worse, he lost his sonic. This was bad news. 'You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into,' he thought, 'now you're forcing me to be clever.' Bad news- for the Slitheen, to be precise. But just how, he didn't know.
Envy and Elisa charged across a catwalk suspended over the simulator, when Envy skidded to a halt and said, "Shit!"
"What?" Elisa turned to him, concern flooding her face.
"The gravity sim," Envy said, pulling his tablet out of his knapsack, "if all else fails, our only hope is to have it malfunction. Here. Trade you."
"Trade? Trade me what?"
"This bag for that screwdriver." Envy started to punch and drag icons on his device, pulling up the schematics.
"Are you kidding?"
"I need the screwdriver to fix the collider; you need to get to the Doctor. Besides, I hate getting into fights."
"You? That's a load of bull. Hey- what have I got for defense?"
"Everything in that bag- Oh, come on now, it's me, what would you expect?" He ripped the screwdriver out of Elisa's hand, leapt over the railing and onto the simulator, then took off running. "Go!" Envy called over his shoulder.
Elisa sighed and slumped, hating that know-it-all attitude of his. But this wasn't the time for that. She loosened the pull cord, not bothering to shoulder the bag, and hoped she never needed to use whatever she might pull out of it.
Envy glanced from schematics to gravity simulator. He was beginning see it now, even as he worked under pressure- how all the components of the machine fit together, what each object's purpose was. The whole design had some sort of eerie beauty; something so delicate could unleash such power, like a transmutation circle. Could this be why alchemists acted like jealous older siblings toward the particle physicists who are now getting all the attention? Jealous? Envy chuckled- for once, it wasn't him. Now that he knew better, he saw how elegant the simulator really was. Let those simple Human alchemists cling to their narrow views. Envy had become a Time Lord.
"Oh little booyyy," a gurgling voice called. "Come down, little one, I can smell you up there."
'Undoubtedly,' Envy mused, continuing to fiddle with the machine, 'the Doctor and Elise would try some sentimental spiel to placate those overgrown bugs. The day that works will be the day I get nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.' He made one final adjustment to the panel and got up, dusting his hands off. He could two other distinct voices conversing with the first one.
"Why, little Human, you looked so young and handsome, let me kiss you with my big, green lips."
'Is that what you like," Envy purred to himself as his body began to crackle. 'Then I know what will all make us happy.' Envy leapt off the collider, back arched in a pounce.
The Slitheen's faces had probably never contorted so much in horror as they had now. Instead of the lean, pale youth they had anticipated, the aliens were gaping at a monster, covered in human bodies, eight ripped and taloned limbs, and an animal's face peeled back in an open mouthed grin that issued a bloodlust laden laugh that not even the fiercest of their kind could match. The beast landed, sending tremors through the floor, except for one of their party, who had stirred too late to avoid the beast's front-most left paw, cracked and splattered underneath it. The spray struck everyone, including the monster, which licked the innards off its muzzle, acting as though it was curious about the taste.
"Not bad, but it needs more… body," it said, turning to face the remaining Slitheen, a demonic grin plastered on its face.
Envy's opponents were caught in a struggle between two instincts: they were natural hunters in their element, but now a long forgotten function of their endocrine system sparked to life with the competing message to flee. It was almost too amusing to keep face. One of the bugs jumped at Envy's face, gouging out the eye. Snarling at the pain, Envy clawed it off and swiftly crushed the skull. He let it drop admiring how the limp figure bounced when it hit the floor.
That left only one. "Pucker up, sweets. Didn't you want to kiss me?" Padded forward on his second set of front legs, the first tucked up under him, ready to capture. "What's the matter- I thought you thought I was young and handsome?" Rising up off his haunches like an alerted dog, he stalked the alien, a cackle building deep in his throat. The alien's conviction broke.
"Slitheen," the Doctor begged, "you've got to be mad; there's no reason to create a black hole to hide evidence of crimes." He paused, looking perplexed. "Come to think of it, there's no reason to commit crimes. Unless, of course, the law itself is corrupt- but then breaking the law isn't really a real crime, is it?" The Doctor caught the aliens' expression. "But that's not the point. Look- the Earth still has billions of years left in it. Humans have so much potential, so much- ahead of them -you can't just toss that all away when they've only just begun. Think about it: there was a time once when the Raxacoricofallapatorians were just as the Humans are now." He looked from one advisory to the other and back again. Neither seemed willing to entertain the idea of sympathizing.
Elisa stood on the other side of the door rummaging around in Envy's knapsack. She pulled out a couple of items rubber-banded together. The read the labels on both, and then the instructions written in messy, angular scrawl on a post-it note: "DoNoT MIX UNTILL MOMENT S BEFORE USING".
"Mentos and Coke," Elisa reread the labels of the packages aloud, "What the hell is this supposed to do?"
The Slitheen fled the monster behind her, but felt a stinging crack along her side, and realized that instead of running, she was flying. Then two sudden cracks lashed her on both sides, then squeezed, and began falling. There was a sudden impact and release and alien hit the floor, finding herself trapped beneath the monster's paw. After a few seconds, the pressure released, and she lay still, hoping the monster would stop if she looked dead. It waited for a bit, then poked at the alien, then gave her a good swat. The Homunculus was playing with the poor thing before he killed it…
There was a bank of computers in between the Doctor and the taunting Slitheen. That wasn't much. It was, however, the brain of the gravity simulator. If only he had his sonic screwdriver.
The Slitheen pounced. The Doctor ran, grappling at the panel to help push himself along. Giant claws gouged the controls as the Doctor narrowly missed becoming minced meat. He rounded one bank, the Slitheen turning to follow, when the control room door burst open with Elise hurling some large angry container at the Doctor's pursuer.
kwa-foomph! tsi-tsi-tsississsssss…
"Doctor!" Elise shouted over the growling alien.
The control panels sparked, and the Slitheen stopped pacing once it realized that its skin was burning off. It tried to get away slipped in the sugary froth, and falling to the ground, writhed in agony.
The Doctor dashed over to Elisa. "That was Envy's idea, wasn't it?" he asked.
Elisa nodded. "More or less, yeah," she gasped. The Doctor grabbed the knapsack and began to dig around in it.
"He's coming along quite well then," he commented. He pulled something out and held it up. "Ah, here it is, acetone burner, that should fuse the door shut*. Don't tell him I said anything, though. We don't want to encourage him too much," the Doctor continued as he lit up the burner.
"Not a word," Elisa agreed.
There was her freedom, right in front of her. The facility doors. Extremely battered and bruised, the Slitheen gimped on one fractured leg, the other sporting a torn tendon, supporting herself with her long arms. The monster slowed its pace, as if it intended to drag her suffering out as long as possible. She reached the doors when it charged. She grappled with the door, then read "Pull," and swinging the door open, she stumbled out into… a mass of beefed up vehicles and swarms of humans wearing red borates while brandishing some nasty firearms.
"Torchwood? How-" the Slitheen groaned. She was beaten sore, exhausted, and fell victim to the element of surprise too many times to count. She sighed, shoulders stooped. "Oh, I give up. You don't have to say anything. Just get me away from the thing inside."
It took several hours of mitigation before everything was cleared up between Torchwood and the Doctor and his posse. It turned out that Torchwood had been watching the construction of the LHC for a while, but only decided to move when it picked up the TARDIS's telltale signals in the facility's vicinity.
What Torchwood was more concerned about was the Homunculus, whom was officially listed as dead, being very much alive, and of greater shock, following the Doctor.
"raceist! raceist! raceist!" It took both the Doctor and Elisa to clamp Envy's mouth shut, restrain his flailing arms, and glare wrathfully at him until he submitted.
"It can't be helped," the Torchwood captain sighed, staring at the sulking Envy. Envy sat on the ground, back turned to the captain and Doctor, his long hair partially veiling the bareness of the small of his back, lithe and slender. He had his arms draped around his knees, framing his legs muscular smoothness…
"Jack," the Doctor sternly warned. He had gone through all that effort to give his troublesome apprentice safe clearance, explaining the entire situation involving the Homunculi Time Lords, and so the Doctor by no means wanted to reiterate the... feistiness of Envy's personality. It was perfectly evident to him that even if Jack is immortal and far from choosey, any relationship of that sort with the Homunculus is sure to not end well.
"I have absolutely no idea why humans consistently jump into things without any idea what they are getting into," Envy sighed as the Doctor was guiding him through the TARDIS's controls. "They thought there was a possibility that the LHC could make a black hole, and they still went through with it."
"Hey, wouldn't you want to find out how the universe began?" Elisa challenged as she propped herself against a railing.
"It'd be interesting, sure, but still…" Envy watched numbers fly by on a monitor.
"Well, you said yourself that you'd no idea what you were doing when you choose to follow the Paradox and me," the Doctor said, "and here you are."
"Well, that's because the chance was there," Envy flipped a lever when the right number came up.
" 'Because it's there,'" the Doctor said. "Humans need no greater reason than that."
*Acetone is not a toy. Acetone should not be used by people whose answer to any "what if…" question is "Well, let's try it and find out." I heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who said he saw it happen…