Glaw

We are Fantastic Stars in the Sky!

When the Doctor discovered that Rose was no longer in the booth he'd left her in, he'd spun about on his heels and craned his neck and looked under tables and behind the counter. And when she didn't appear to be at the cafe at all, he barreled out the front door and very nearly stumbled into Rose herself. He straightened and teetered a bit and he blinked at the squirmy little ugly thing wrenching in her hands.

"Whoa. Feisty little fella!" He laughed and patted the angry flailing plastic on the head, then leaned his hands on his knees to get a closer look. "Much better than a trash bin, I'll say. This is a full-blown auton: he's all plastic -- solid plastic, if ya feel the weight of 'im -- being controlled by a remote intelligence." He tapped his temple with a grin. "Fantastic stuff, just the link we need. Well done, Rose!"

But at the presentation of the little silver key, his expression fell. He smacked the lapels of his jacket and checked all his pockets before he submitted to take the key from Rose's hand. "This little bugger had this key?" The Nestene Consciousness must know what it's for -- which means he was being targeted. Which means the Consciousness knew where the TARDIS was. Which means --

The Doctor was pacing in a small circle, muttering to himself, so he barely heard her questions about Mickey. When he finally did come up for air, he took the little plastic man into one arm and grabbed Rose's hand with the other. "Mickey'll just have to find us on his own, we've got no time. We've got to go back to your apartment, now, and we've got to run. Come on!"

With that, they were sprinting along the roadside and down the quiet dusky streets, the Doctor dragging Rose along without waiting for an answer, back the way they had come.

"This key is the key to my spaceship," he explained as they ran, and he tightened his grip on the squirming little auton. "But why would the Nestene Consciousness need a key unless it had a lock?" This was bad. This was potentially very, very bad.

When they entered the courtyard of Rose's complex, the Doctor let go of her hand and barreled up the stairs, though it was Rose who had the means by which to get into the apartment at all. He was forced to wait for her, pacing, unable to stand still, holding the auton now by both arms with its feet dangling.

Inside the apartment, the TARDIS had gone.

We are Fantastic Stars in the Sky!

Hi, yeah, sorry. I've been in a slump lately. The Doctor, especially, has been impossible to write -- he's just so happy! I've kept putting it off hoping inspiration will strike me. I don't want to write a crap post. :/ I didn't realize I'd put it off THAT long. >> Oops.

Same old story since day one, but I've got no place to run. [bowels & Glaw]

By the time Carly turned around again, Tzich was sitting in the seat she had just vacated, chewing slowly, savoring, a bitten piece of rubbery black omelet in his fingers. He sucked the buttery grease from his thumb. "I know you believe me," he told her as he examined the odd colored shapes in the burnt egg. "Your life makes sense when you know the devil is your father. You're still convinced you'll convince yourself otherwise."

He swallowed. Took a long whiff of onion and cilantro-cinnamon. Licked the omelet like an ice pop, dropped it back in the pan and surged out of his seat with a sudden sharp-eyed ferocity. He grabbed her hand and dragged her to the door with long firm strides. "Your smell is good but it's not enough to taste it," he hissed in a determined passion. "Your humanity gets in the way of your strength."

He grabbed the doorknob and began to throw it open in a dramatic display of showing the way to Carly's true life -- only the door was locked and deabolted, and he frowned and yanked at it pitifully.

Same old story since day one, but I've got no place to run. [bowels & Glaw]

"Ssshh." Tzich hushed her, and he shoved a spatula under the sticking brown mass of yolk and onion. The skillet hissed. "You're always too loud. You drown yourself out. Listen." He flipped the crumbling omelet and it popped and snarled and screeched anew. "The egg is a potential life -- half of a whole life that could've been, half of what makes a breathing, eating, fucking animal. Fragile like a skull, wilder than the woods. They're never-born children screaming. Half a life, in yolk and white or blood on the moon, it's all the same. Smell them burning, unbreathing." He broke a piece off with his fingers and popped the steaming-hot mass into his mouth, contemplative. He'd been staring at the eggs for a long while, letting it burn while Carly took her time getting up. He turned off the stove. "Better never-born than living, better living than dead. Better food than forgotten."

He grabbed the skillet with a bare hand and tossed it scorching onto the table, then shoved the handle of a fork at Carly. "What do you smell?" He went to the window and leaned on the sill, staring out at the empty road and a dog squatting in a neighbor's front yard. He grinned and turned around again, lazy and loose, just to see how Carly liked his breakfast. The omelet was sour and had been drenched in vinegar at one point in its cooking; it was blackened and bubbled and chunky with unidentifiable mounds of green and red and brown. "You smell the colors, don't you?"

Same old story since day one, but I've got no place to run. [bowels & Glaw]

Yes, yes it is. Wholeheartedly agreed. x3

[Skybreaker] Royal Wings [Glaw]

So the young noble was older than he had at first appeared, but still fresh-faced and shielded from the workings of the world. That jewel at his ear was brilliant enough to attract the blindest of bandits -- and Cyrus was obviously not as experienced with the sword as he thought. Rulan paused a moment, unsure whether this had really been a good idea. There was only so much of youthful incompetence he could take.

"I've abused a loophole in my contract with the Dragon," he explained with a fangy smirk. "I can continue to live in human form as long as I'm near someone of moral worth who has shared responsibility for my actions. If I wander too far from you, I'll go back to paws and wings. If I kill a human being, both of us -- you and I -- will become winged lions, no matter how far apart we are. You've cosigned my contract; if I fall, so do you." His eyes narrowed. "So it's in your best interest not to lose sight of me, isn't it?"

Cyrus could only blame himself, Rulan mused with a grin. Only a fool would say words aloud when he had no clue what they meant. All this, a lifetime of strife and anger, for the sake of a feather.

Same old story since day one, but I've got no place to run. [bowels & Glaw]

x3 So I guess I didn't give you anything except a rather messy house and a strong smell of burning eggs.

Same old story since day one, but I've got no place to run. [bowels & Glaw]

He followed her, of course. Hands in his pockets, loping through the pothole-puddles, keeping a few streetlights' distance between them. Her tears shimmered tracks like the wet dark road, like diamond dreams leaking, he thought. She was volatile, now. Tzich grinned to himself.

He broke into her house, naturally. The window was easy enough to crack open, and he fumbled through a bush to throw his long leg over the sill. Books and magazines tumbled quietly from a table with his boot on it. He picked up a potted plant, peered at his reflection in the TV, surveyed the pictures on the wall like a high-nosed curator. He left wet muddy tracks in the carpet. He ate the leftover chicken in the fridge, and he carried a leg around the house, chewing, digging in closets and sniffing every box and jar he found.

Eventually, with the chicken bones left in the bathroom trash, he knelt in front of the toilet and swirled the water with a finger, muttering in a language countless churches had named forbidden. The bowl turned black like blood, and he leaned over it and retched. Slammed the heel of his palm into his stomach. Gagged and coughed. Choked. Until that wormy leech of a demon wriggled out against its will. He sank his fingernails into the rubbery flesh, yanked, dropped it with a dull dark plop into the toilet, and flushed. He found a toothbrush on the sink and gave his tongue a good scrub. He washed his hands and whistled.

He found some clothes and jackets in a ground-floor back room, and he spent the rest of the night trying them on and surveying the tunics and trousers and dresses with a critical eye.

Eventually he ventured up the stairs and looked in on Gimpy sleeping -- but, not caring to be present when she woke up, he slipped back down to the kitchen and gleefully began making an omelet. A big, butter-burnt omelet with beans and mushrooms and fish pieces and ketchup. Breakfast of kings. She didn't know how good she had it.

[Skybreaker] Royal Wings [Glaw]

Hee, yay! I wasn't sure whether you'd be down with it. x3

[Skybreaker] Royal Wings [Glaw]

Rulan's eyes were cold. He watched Cyrus for a long, silent moment while he accustomed himself to standing on two feet. Finally he took a breath, opened his mouth, and showed the young prince his teeth: the sharpened teeth of the Casseion, filed to points on every child's sixteenth birthday. Just to drive the point home, he dropped the cloak to his waist and turned around in the dust, so Cyrus could see the faded tattoo of a gnarled old tree that stretched its roots over his back. The image had repeated throughout history, in every Casseion mural and sculpture, a symbol of ancestry, wisdom, honor and loyalty to the clan.

"I escaped my cell in Lothray the night before my execution," he said in a low voice, factual and unphased. It had happened so long ago, it only occurred to him as a passing memory. "But I was hunted. There was a dagger around every corner, an arrow on every rooftop, no matter where I hid. So I went to the Dragon." He shrugged the cloak over his shoulders again and turned to face Cyrus. "I offered her my memories in exchange for my safety, on the condition that I could continue the hunt. So she gave me claws and wings, and she took everything I knew before the night I escaped. I've been playing god to idiot villages ever since." He gave the young prince a sharp grin. "I might as well tell you this, because you're stuck with me for awhile. You just made an oath, in the old language, to never leave my side."