Post by magnusgreel on Jan 5, 2009 21:46:15 GMT
In the middle of an horrific reaction to some pills I had to take, I somehow managed to write the following start to a Four/Leela story. The mood of this is basically the opposite of the mood I'm actually in, proving that life is nuts. Anyway, I got impatient to have it seen and get feedback, so here it is unfinished...
************
"Doctor..." Leela said, while looking over the Tardis controls, almost as if she thought she could operate them given a chance. "What are the various things that men can be made out of?" As she said this, her hand reached out for a dial on the console; then she thought better of it and retracted her hand.
"Well... well, Sarah it's really quite simple...." The Doctor answered from below, pre-occupied with fixing something underneath the console.
"My name is--"
"Yes, I know, I know. Well, the thing you must remember about that, Toos, is-- Wait, you asked a question a moment ago, what was it?" The Doctor's head was now entirely within the base of the console, and his voice was very muffled. "I don't know what she's on about, there's absolutely nothing..."
Leela repeated, "Doctor, I now know that there are metal men. I wish to know more. Are there other elements that men may be made of?" The Doctor would have seen a very earnest look on Leela's face, had he felt it necessary to stop what he was doing, and actually look at her.
"Oh, that..." The Doctor worked on a connection, and there was a fizzing sound and a certain amount of smoke. "Don't worry, Harry, that's exactly what's supposed to happen. In fact, flames and foul-smelling smoke...."
"My name is--"
"You'll have to wait just one moment, Susan. I'm afraid my Tardis is on fire!" He took off his grey frock coat and beat the base of the console with it, as if beating it into submission, and then did the same to the console itself, as several small sparks flew from it and grew into small fires.
He looked into her face, finally. "Oh, it's you, Leela. Are you supposed to be here yet? I thought that I wasn't entirely done with Sarah... No, dropped her off at Aberdeen. That girl could do with a long, brisk walk. So, Leela... here you are! And we're getting on like a house on fire! Did you ever meet Sarah? She's my best friend, you know!"
"Thank you, Doctor."
"Oh, think nothing of it..." The Doctor waved a cloud of smoke away from his face, as several more sparks leapt from the controls. He attacked them with his coat again, over and over, until they finally went out.
"Now that your house is no longer on fire, perhaps you will answer my question." Leela said.
The Doctor flipped a few levers and twisted knobs until the console sprang to life, emitting its characteristic electronic hum. The column started moving up and down. "Aha! Ah... HAH! Yes! Success! Creation out of destruction! Disabling those particular circuits made it possible to divert power from less important functions into the main drive! We're free to travel the cosmos once again, Brigadier!"
"Destroy and be free," Leela deadpanned.
The Doctor peered into Leela's face as if to study her, then gave up after a second and a half and looked down at various readings on guages and monitors. "Quite so, yes.... To answer your question, we're travelling smoothly and uneventfully, and should arrive just about... now!"
Leela stiffened. "That was not my--"
"Oh, I know your name, Leela, stop going on about it, will you? It's becoming quite tiresome. Look, we're there!" The scanner showed a vast expanse of green grassland, interspersed with rocks, some small, some large, and the occasional small hill. Each hill had a sizeable upright stone at its peak. The sky was blue, and there were cumulus clouds on the horizon, threatening rain. A gentle wind was rippling through the grass.
They emerged from the Tardis and looked around them. Leela broke the silence. "The air is sweet." She paused and her eyes opened a bit more, and she gasped slightly. "Spirits walk here. Men here are made of wind."
"Many have said much the same thing about me on occasion." The Doctor gestured off to his right. "I plan to commune with these spirits just over.... there, by lying on one of their lovely green hills, and eating an orange. It may take some time. You're free to join me of course, but I'm warning you, when I commune with spirits I tend to snore rather loudly." He breathed deeply. "Yes, Leela, the air is sweet. Well, I'm off! Don't wander off too far!"
Leela had already run as fast as she could in the opposite direction, and her joyful voice called faintly from a quarter of a mile away, "No, of course not, Doctor!!"
"Good girl," The Doctor answered without looking in her direction, as he loped off toward said hill.
**********
A shadow passed over the Doctor's face as he lay on the hill. He could sense the darkness even with his eyes closed. "My good man, you're interrupting me when I'm terribly busy being completely unproductive. I know I'm breaking some sort of local law, after all I am just lying here dozing off hurting no one, but is that any sort of excuse I ask you? If you allow me to get away with harming no one in full view of the public, it will lead to a total breakdown of law and order, and we can't have that." Silence. The shadow persisted, and the Doctor saw no reason to bother opening his eyelids. "If your superiors are signatories to the Fourteen Planets Compromise, then I'm allowed a court-appointed defence counsel and a basket of local fruits, both of which I intend to refuse because after all who knows where they've been?" More silence, except for the wind.
"The left eye, I think. I always seem to get into more trouble when I open the right eye first," he said cautiously. Left eye opens. It was just a dark cloud passing overhead. "What a disappointment, I do so love being taken to people's leaders, all the circumstance and pomp... exotic fruits you daren't eat.... " He started noticing something almost familiar in the cloud pattern taking shape above him. "Writing rude limericks on the wall of your prison cell after everything goes horribly wrong, the whole thing is just so wonderfully.... " His eyes opened further and he grinned widely. "I say, Leela, that's a bunny rabbit eating a Wellington boot! That sort of cloud formation would never happen without a great deal of argon in the atmosphere! Leela?" He looked around. "No Leela. I swear, all I have to do is blink and the girl's off."
He closed his eyes once again, and tried to recapture that comfortable state between sleep and wakefulness that he enjoyed so much. Twenty seconds later however, another shadow passed over his face, a considerably darker one this time. "My good man, you're interrupting me when I'm terribly busy being completely unproductive. I know I'm breaking some sort of--"
His speech was broken off abruptly, by a nauseating set of sudden shifts in gravity that caused him to dig his fingers into the earth, in a desperate attempt to hang on for dear life. The ground was also lurching this way and that. For eight very bizarre seconds, gravity seemed to go into reverse, and the Doctor was suspended a couple of feet in the air.... then gravity returned with a vengeance. He was slammed so hard into the hill that his body had compressed the soil, and had dug a pit a foot and half deep. If there had been any rocks beneath him, his spine could have been broken.
The gravity was now easing very gradually, and the Doctor decided to stay right where he was. He didn't know if he had been injured, but he found it impossible to believe that he hadn't been, after all that. He now had a chance to turn his attention to the sky, and try to make some sense out of all the radical, wild shifts between light and darkness. It had been alternating between full daylight and pitch blackness every ten seconds... it had now stayed dark for half a minute or so, though. Then he noticed that the sky was becoming light again more gradually, but still very quickly. It was now day. Then... he was startled to see this system's principle sun, a medium-sized K-type orange star, soar over his head as fast as a car on the motorway. The ground lurched again, and the Doctor did his best to hold on to his breakfast as the sky seemed to be attempting to wrench him out of his hole.
Gravity, light though it was now, returned. He had a feeling that a very cold night was coming which very few had experienced before, except perhaps the ancestors of the Cybermen. He tried to move. Some sort of shelter would be necessary; the temperature was already dropping. Two separate jabs of pain in his right leg and left arm told him, however, that he would have to do without.
***********
The ground became more uneven the farther Leela ran, and the hills became larger, with a wider variety of fascinating and baffling shapes. It was as if they had lain here for eons, just waiting for her to come by and puzzle over them. She felt strangely energized by it all. The land around her was asking questions that she could almost but not quite hear. Invisible giants, spirits of air, paused as they passed, noticing her presence. She could feel it.
@@@ A large chunk of earth roughly the shape of a teacup that had been almost completely turned over caught Leela's attention. It was a sort of nearly-inverted hemisphere that had very thick, green grass growing all over it. The grass struck her as being some sort of camouflage. This could not possibly be some random bit of landscape. It drew her closer to itself.
She ran up it, and buried her face in the sweetness of the alien grass. She was observed, knew, and did not care. She fell into sleep for hours. It was impossible not to, she knew to surrender to it.
She was jolted awake. A blue-green man stood over her. Suddenly it was two minutes later, and she knew it was. She and the man were in the middle of their conversation, as if a book page had been turned over too early. He was becoming more and more exasperating. She wanted a simple answer to her question, and finally she demanded to know why he refused to answer. What question? he asked. Then she realized that she did not know.
In a flash, total mental and physical chaos. Her limbs were flailing and it took a few moments to begin to understand. It was not due to an outside force. She was doing it purposefully, could feel the need to move as she was doing, but could not remember why. She almost stumbled, as she nearly halted in confusion, but she then felt the coordination and pattern and rhythm in her movement. It was not chaotic after all. The confused part of her joined the rest of her who was responsible for this movement.
She was running across the plain, muscles flexing, stretching, relaxing, lungs filling, emptying... it was exhilarating, but there was an idea tugging at the back of her mind, and she sensed danger, which increased with every yard she ran. It was only at this point, when she had a chance to stop thinking about the strange sensations in her body, that she took notice of the scene in front of her.
The hills and patches of swamp and grassland, the strange grass covered mounds, everything in the world in front of her was slowly receding. She was running as fast as she possibly could... backwards.
************
"Doctor..." Leela said, while looking over the Tardis controls, almost as if she thought she could operate them given a chance. "What are the various things that men can be made out of?" As she said this, her hand reached out for a dial on the console; then she thought better of it and retracted her hand.
"Well... well, Sarah it's really quite simple...." The Doctor answered from below, pre-occupied with fixing something underneath the console.
"My name is--"
"Yes, I know, I know. Well, the thing you must remember about that, Toos, is-- Wait, you asked a question a moment ago, what was it?" The Doctor's head was now entirely within the base of the console, and his voice was very muffled. "I don't know what she's on about, there's absolutely nothing..."
Leela repeated, "Doctor, I now know that there are metal men. I wish to know more. Are there other elements that men may be made of?" The Doctor would have seen a very earnest look on Leela's face, had he felt it necessary to stop what he was doing, and actually look at her.
"Oh, that..." The Doctor worked on a connection, and there was a fizzing sound and a certain amount of smoke. "Don't worry, Harry, that's exactly what's supposed to happen. In fact, flames and foul-smelling smoke...."
"My name is--"
"You'll have to wait just one moment, Susan. I'm afraid my Tardis is on fire!" He took off his grey frock coat and beat the base of the console with it, as if beating it into submission, and then did the same to the console itself, as several small sparks flew from it and grew into small fires.
He looked into her face, finally. "Oh, it's you, Leela. Are you supposed to be here yet? I thought that I wasn't entirely done with Sarah... No, dropped her off at Aberdeen. That girl could do with a long, brisk walk. So, Leela... here you are! And we're getting on like a house on fire! Did you ever meet Sarah? She's my best friend, you know!"
"Thank you, Doctor."
"Oh, think nothing of it..." The Doctor waved a cloud of smoke away from his face, as several more sparks leapt from the controls. He attacked them with his coat again, over and over, until they finally went out.
"Now that your house is no longer on fire, perhaps you will answer my question." Leela said.
The Doctor flipped a few levers and twisted knobs until the console sprang to life, emitting its characteristic electronic hum. The column started moving up and down. "Aha! Ah... HAH! Yes! Success! Creation out of destruction! Disabling those particular circuits made it possible to divert power from less important functions into the main drive! We're free to travel the cosmos once again, Brigadier!"
"Destroy and be free," Leela deadpanned.
The Doctor peered into Leela's face as if to study her, then gave up after a second and a half and looked down at various readings on guages and monitors. "Quite so, yes.... To answer your question, we're travelling smoothly and uneventfully, and should arrive just about... now!"
Leela stiffened. "That was not my--"
"Oh, I know your name, Leela, stop going on about it, will you? It's becoming quite tiresome. Look, we're there!" The scanner showed a vast expanse of green grassland, interspersed with rocks, some small, some large, and the occasional small hill. Each hill had a sizeable upright stone at its peak. The sky was blue, and there were cumulus clouds on the horizon, threatening rain. A gentle wind was rippling through the grass.
They emerged from the Tardis and looked around them. Leela broke the silence. "The air is sweet." She paused and her eyes opened a bit more, and she gasped slightly. "Spirits walk here. Men here are made of wind."
"Many have said much the same thing about me on occasion." The Doctor gestured off to his right. "I plan to commune with these spirits just over.... there, by lying on one of their lovely green hills, and eating an orange. It may take some time. You're free to join me of course, but I'm warning you, when I commune with spirits I tend to snore rather loudly." He breathed deeply. "Yes, Leela, the air is sweet. Well, I'm off! Don't wander off too far!"
Leela had already run as fast as she could in the opposite direction, and her joyful voice called faintly from a quarter of a mile away, "No, of course not, Doctor!!"
"Good girl," The Doctor answered without looking in her direction, as he loped off toward said hill.
**********
A shadow passed over the Doctor's face as he lay on the hill. He could sense the darkness even with his eyes closed. "My good man, you're interrupting me when I'm terribly busy being completely unproductive. I know I'm breaking some sort of local law, after all I am just lying here dozing off hurting no one, but is that any sort of excuse I ask you? If you allow me to get away with harming no one in full view of the public, it will lead to a total breakdown of law and order, and we can't have that." Silence. The shadow persisted, and the Doctor saw no reason to bother opening his eyelids. "If your superiors are signatories to the Fourteen Planets Compromise, then I'm allowed a court-appointed defence counsel and a basket of local fruits, both of which I intend to refuse because after all who knows where they've been?" More silence, except for the wind.
"The left eye, I think. I always seem to get into more trouble when I open the right eye first," he said cautiously. Left eye opens. It was just a dark cloud passing overhead. "What a disappointment, I do so love being taken to people's leaders, all the circumstance and pomp... exotic fruits you daren't eat.... " He started noticing something almost familiar in the cloud pattern taking shape above him. "Writing rude limericks on the wall of your prison cell after everything goes horribly wrong, the whole thing is just so wonderfully.... " His eyes opened further and he grinned widely. "I say, Leela, that's a bunny rabbit eating a Wellington boot! That sort of cloud formation would never happen without a great deal of argon in the atmosphere! Leela?" He looked around. "No Leela. I swear, all I have to do is blink and the girl's off."
He closed his eyes once again, and tried to recapture that comfortable state between sleep and wakefulness that he enjoyed so much. Twenty seconds later however, another shadow passed over his face, a considerably darker one this time. "My good man, you're interrupting me when I'm terribly busy being completely unproductive. I know I'm breaking some sort of--"
His speech was broken off abruptly, by a nauseating set of sudden shifts in gravity that caused him to dig his fingers into the earth, in a desperate attempt to hang on for dear life. The ground was also lurching this way and that. For eight very bizarre seconds, gravity seemed to go into reverse, and the Doctor was suspended a couple of feet in the air.... then gravity returned with a vengeance. He was slammed so hard into the hill that his body had compressed the soil, and had dug a pit a foot and half deep. If there had been any rocks beneath him, his spine could have been broken.
The gravity was now easing very gradually, and the Doctor decided to stay right where he was. He didn't know if he had been injured, but he found it impossible to believe that he hadn't been, after all that. He now had a chance to turn his attention to the sky, and try to make some sense out of all the radical, wild shifts between light and darkness. It had been alternating between full daylight and pitch blackness every ten seconds... it had now stayed dark for half a minute or so, though. Then he noticed that the sky was becoming light again more gradually, but still very quickly. It was now day. Then... he was startled to see this system's principle sun, a medium-sized K-type orange star, soar over his head as fast as a car on the motorway. The ground lurched again, and the Doctor did his best to hold on to his breakfast as the sky seemed to be attempting to wrench him out of his hole.
Gravity, light though it was now, returned. He had a feeling that a very cold night was coming which very few had experienced before, except perhaps the ancestors of the Cybermen. He tried to move. Some sort of shelter would be necessary; the temperature was already dropping. Two separate jabs of pain in his right leg and left arm told him, however, that he would have to do without.
***********
The ground became more uneven the farther Leela ran, and the hills became larger, with a wider variety of fascinating and baffling shapes. It was as if they had lain here for eons, just waiting for her to come by and puzzle over them. She felt strangely energized by it all. The land around her was asking questions that she could almost but not quite hear. Invisible giants, spirits of air, paused as they passed, noticing her presence. She could feel it.
@@@ A large chunk of earth roughly the shape of a teacup that had been almost completely turned over caught Leela's attention. It was a sort of nearly-inverted hemisphere that had very thick, green grass growing all over it. The grass struck her as being some sort of camouflage. This could not possibly be some random bit of landscape. It drew her closer to itself.
She ran up it, and buried her face in the sweetness of the alien grass. She was observed, knew, and did not care. She fell into sleep for hours. It was impossible not to, she knew to surrender to it.
She was jolted awake. A blue-green man stood over her. Suddenly it was two minutes later, and she knew it was. She and the man were in the middle of their conversation, as if a book page had been turned over too early. He was becoming more and more exasperating. She wanted a simple answer to her question, and finally she demanded to know why he refused to answer. What question? he asked. Then she realized that she did not know.
In a flash, total mental and physical chaos. Her limbs were flailing and it took a few moments to begin to understand. It was not due to an outside force. She was doing it purposefully, could feel the need to move as she was doing, but could not remember why. She almost stumbled, as she nearly halted in confusion, but she then felt the coordination and pattern and rhythm in her movement. It was not chaotic after all. The confused part of her joined the rest of her who was responsible for this movement.
She was running across the plain, muscles flexing, stretching, relaxing, lungs filling, emptying... it was exhilarating, but there was an idea tugging at the back of her mind, and she sensed danger, which increased with every yard she ran. It was only at this point, when she had a chance to stop thinking about the strange sensations in her body, that she took notice of the scene in front of her.
The hills and patches of swamp and grassland, the strange grass covered mounds, everything in the world in front of her was slowly receding. She was running as fast as she possibly could... backwards.
