Klára cast the Doctor an odd look, but took the screen's edges in her hands and started reading the words that were flicking their way across, obviously trying to make herself useful while he fixed the sonic. "Solorith," she read, "feed off of solar energy, hence the 'sol' in their name."
"And if there's not a strong enough source of solar energy?" asked the Doctor to both himself and Klára, typing into the typewriter keyboard with one hand while simultaneously turning little dials of his sonic with the other.
"They consume the blood and organs of other organisms for warmth," read Klára, squinting at the screen. "Rather like a high-protein diet, I suppose."
"Behavioral tendencies?"
Dark gray eyes flitted up to him for only a moment before, nose scrunched up with concentration, Klára scrolled down the screen with her hand. "It says…it says they're compassionate. But that can't be right, they tear people to pieces."
Clicking the last two pieces of his sonic screwdriver together, the Doctor calmed down slightly and sat back in the driver's seat. "Yes, Klára. They may be destructive, but they're also considerate of human feelings. They have extremely high psychic connections with their prey; they're able to look into the social wiring of their next victim's brain and take those who have limited firings."
Klára paled and looked up at him, sitting herself on the handrail around the steering platform. "So they take people who won't be missed."
"Yes," confirmed the Doctor, "people who won't be missed. The alone and the lonely. That's why, I think, they're after me, and I am very sorry for putting you through this."
"They are following you?" asked Klára with confusion. "But—"
"No time for lengthy explanations, Klára," said the Doctor briskly, jumping up and steering back to Seattle before she could ask the awkward questions of why he was a lonely old man in a box. "We've got to figure out how to get the Solorith to leave the planet before they consume every lonely human and then begin to broaden the gray areas of who they can and cannot eat."
He led the way out of the TARDIS after it landed, swinging his sonic around in all directions for signs of the Solorith, but it had started sprinkling out and there were none to be found. "Alright, first off, we need to find their ship."
"'Ship' as in spaceship?"
"Yes, Klára. At what point was it not clear that these were aliens?" retorted the Doctor as they walked briskly up the now-abandoned street.
"Er, right. Of course. I just…a spaceship. Wow."
The Doctor grinned at her. "You were just in a spaceship, you know. The TARDIS is my spaceship."
Klára gaped like a fish out of water. "You're an alien?"
"You think any human man can be this good-looking?" he asked, playing with his braces and waggling his eyebrows at her as she laughed. The Doctor loved making people laugh; no matter how old he was or what body he was in, the good sense of humor was always a constant.
As they walked down the street, the Doctor scanning everything for residue from what the Solorith had used for transportation, the occasional arm of tentacle-like finger would reach around a corner, get dampened by a rain drop, hiss with steam and pain and dart back into its hiding place.
"How long does it usually rain for around here?"
Klára pulled a face as she thought, looking up at the sky, and just as she opened her mouth to answer the falling droplets of water thinned and died away. She and the Doctor exchanged a dark look only moments before more suited men and women walked slowly and purposefully from out of the sheltered holes where they'd been hiding. Several of them were carrying the burnt, mangled corpses of homeless people in their long arms like a mother embracing a baby.
"Oh, God…" gasped Klára, sinking into the curve of the Doctor's side, and he subconsciously shielded her behind him, hoping against hope that he could fend them off for the time being with some dramatic speech about being the Doctor.
"Stay back," he warned her, pulling his sonic from the beast pocket of his shirt and taking aim at the Solorith. "If they attack, go back to the TARDIS, and…well…go north from there."
Nodding compliantly, Klára scuttled back against a nearby wall, crouching beside a fire hydrant.
Solorith arms reached out hopefully, but the Doctor brandished the sonic threateningly, making them cringe back. "That's right," he goaded them, suddenly aware of the hundreds of eyes watching from the safety of the windows up above. "You may not be able to see me, but you can hear me perfectly well in your minds, can't you, you big beasties? You can read the signal from my screwdriver too, the DNA stamp of all I've scanned before you and all who fell. You recognize the Daleks? Then you probably also recognize the signal of me scanning their tarnished multi-colored remains, destroyed by me with the help of only a couple of 83-year-old humans. How about the Cybermen?" he added, turning the sonic in his hand to change signals. "The Atraxi? The Carrionites? The Krillitane? The Wirrne? How about the Slitheen?"
Replacing the screwdriver in his pocket and spreading his arms wide, almost as if to welcome the Solorith into his embrace, he rose his voice to a shout so all the street could hear. "The faces may have changed, but the defender of Earth remains the same. So if you think you can waltz onto this planet and consume its people just because your readings tell you they are inferior, then you'd better think again! I'm the Doctor, and your telepathic signals won't allow you to take me, because whether they know it or not, the universe will miss my protection!"
People above him started to whisper curiously, wondering who this aged defender was, but the Solorith pack-leader seemed only confused, tilting its head curiously and stepping forward. "My…brothersssss…" it whispered in a hiss of steam emanating from the enormous mouth, "never wisssssssshed…for you…Doctssssor."
As the other Solorith began to tilt their own heads probingly, creeping forward, Klára shouted, "Doctor! Throw me your screwdriver-thingy!"
"I'm sort of using it right now, Klára," he called in a voice of forced calm without looking away from the monsters, re-aiming the tool at them as though the ability to put up some shelves in a jiffy would scare them off.
Klára made an audibly frustrated noise. "Doctor, just trust me!"
The very moment the Doctor, voicing his own impatience, turned to throw the sonic back to Klára, the long spider-like arms darted out toward and past him, reaching for Klára as she deftly caught the screwdriver and pointed it at one of the spouts of the fire-hydrant. The cap shot off, followed by an icy, fat jet of water, showering not only herself and the Doctor but the Solorith leader. It was reduced to a grayish-black mound of ash within seconds, the smaller Solorith in the back scuttling away as quickly as their slow limbs would allow to escape the fate of over half of their brothers, as the citizens watching from up above cheered.
Sputtering and dripping after ducking out of the spray, the Doctor walked purposefully to Klára and gripped her upper arms in his bony old hands, her eyes widening with alarm. "I," he loudly said with a jerk of the head that sent large droplets of water over the now-severely-concerned, damp girl. "Could. Kiss you, Klára Frost."
Klára's eyebrows shot up with surprise and she grinned. "They didn't get me!" she cried, ecstatic with her own victory as the Doctor crushed her in his arms, soaking her further as she laughed.
Releasing her and shaking water out of his ears, he then regarded the piles of saturated ash with a small hint of melancholy forming on his previously-triumphant face. "There was probably a kinder way of getting rid of them, that didn't involve killing," he said, softly and mostly to himself. "But they aren't exactly an endangered species; there are millions of Solorith tribes all across the universe. But on the other hand, they're slow and blind and probably terrified, which could, of course, make them even more vicious now, and—Oh, bloody hell, why must this body be so contradictory? Last one wanted to kill but was too good for it, and the body before that was so wishy-washy about 'everybody lives!' it's no wonder this one's confused.
"So…did I do a good thing or not?" asked Klára over the water still gushing from the hydrant and handing back his sonic. He aimed it at the open spout and the flow abruptly stopped. "Are you furious or pleased as punch?"
The Doctor looked down at the murky ash-water seeping down into the gutter. "I'll let you know," he said, walking purposefully across the street. "Either they'll go back to their home planet and rally the troops for war on Earth, migrate to the desert and live off of this weaker sun for as long as they can before they starve to death, or stock up on human gore and move on to their final destination."
Panic ghosted over his companion's face. "None of those sound good!" she squeaked, shivering now from the breeze combined with the cold water. "What if we got them to send some telepathic message back to their mates to not come to Earth, or find a different sun to migrate toward? Or…or what if we stopped them from sending anything? I think that could be message enough."
She faltered at the sight of him shaking his head. "No. No message might mean good news to the boys back home; we'd be better off if we send them running with the knowledge that Earth is officially off-limits." Now across the street, he marched into the nearest building, not concerned with the dozens of people watching him in awe. "I'd like to borrow a spray bottle full of water, please," he announced. "Two or more would be preferable, but I can manage with one."
This is nice, he thought to himself as people darted into their offices like startled mice to find the spray bottles for watering their plants and tossing a total of four down to him. "Thanks!" he called, ducking back out and throwing two bottles to Klára with instructions to: "Arm yourself," tucking the other two, gunslinger-style, into his belt-loops.
"Let's weed 'em out!" he called in a very badly-attempted Texan accent, wishing for a new Stetson while Klára laughed at him.