Seltsamkeit:
There are now three chapters!
[Rating: General
···
Length: Very Long ···
Genre: Humor ···
Word count (chapter: 2, 287 ) (total:48, 32 153 )]
[ Chapter
One ·
Chapter
Two ·
Chapter
Three ·
Chapter
Four]
The warped fabric of their reality screaming in her ears,
Erin frowned. Why should she keep going, against what
seemed a gail of wind, when all that it would do was run
her late for dinner? A blur to her left, presumably the
Doctor, reached out and pulled her onwards. The garbled
words of
“Must keep going,” whipped past her, causing her frown
to deepen. He owed her pie. Before she could further formulate
her thoughts however, she suddenly felt the wind evaporate
and a wall pressed into her back. A soft hum from above
reminded her of a tune she had once heard.
“Your on my foot,” The Doctor helpfully stated.
“Well, what do you expect! If you have a foot, chances
are I’m going to step on it at some point.” Erin pointed
out cheerfully, then closed her mouth again rather quickly
to avoid the mass of hair that had tried to choke her.
“Who’s hair is that?” She ventured.
“I think it might be mine.” The Doctor replied. After
a pause and a lot of shuffling about, Erin finally found
a more comfortable position realized where they were.
“Why are we in a closet?”
“Perhaps it isn’t a closet,” The Doctor mused,
“But a very large shoebox.” There was another pause as
Erin thought this through.
“Still, it’s pretty useless being stuck in here, shoebox
or nae.”
“Yes…Are you chewing on my sleeve!?”
“Well, I’m hungry. And it was you who promised me pie.”
“But it was another me-”
“Yes, yes, but this particular you has a very palatable
sleeve. And I happen to be in a small, dark confined space
with you and you have absolutely no chance of stopping
me. Therefore now is the perfect time to satisfy my hunger.
Stop wriggling your arm!”
Wishing that the other strange girl had come with him,
he suddenly found the wall in front of him falling away.
With a startled cry Erin tumbled from the small space
and found herself suspended mid-air from the Doctor’s
sleeve. Grossing her arms angrily she waited to be pulled
back up. The Doctor however was in no fit shape to do
so and they were both soon plummeting downwards.
With thump they landed in a tree. Well, it looked
more like an umbrella, but it was as big as a tree.
“Ow!” Erin angrily cried when the Doctor landed on her
leg.
“Gerrrof!”
“What?” Unlatching her jaw from the Doctor’s sleeve Erin
repeated
“Get off!” And the Doctor did. Not quickly enough, though,
as he was poked for a good while afterwards.
Unsteadily they got to their feet. They appeared to be
standing on a flat, roundish surface carpeted in tiny
lime green leafs. After some tentative poking about, they
discovered that whatever supported the carpet of foliage
was as solid as concrete with no gaps. Here and there
they could see other foliage, all manner of shades and
sizes. High above them a stark metal roof, honeycombed
by hexagonal metal supports, held bright lights that shone
in all directions, giving everything multiple shadows.
There was a slightly tropical air about the enclosure,
the trees stretching right up to the far, smooth wall.
Near the ceiling, on either side of the room, where two
hatches. A metal bar supporting a cable with all manner
of furniture dangling from it made its way between the
dark squares of the hatches, humming slightly.
The side of a wardrobe that was now making its way into
the hatch had landed a few trees away.
“See, it was a wardrobe!” Erin proclaimed triumphantly,
sitting down on the soft treetop to think. If she could
only remember the words to that song…
Glad that the leaves had softened their fall, the Doctor
carefully lay down on his stomach and looked over the
edge.
“’ello!” chattily said a small leaf to Erin.
“Hellimahoo. How’s life as a leaf?” She replied, only
half paying attention.
“I’m not a leaf!” It replied. True enough, it shuddered
and took on the shape of a flamingo. Unfortunately, it
took the rest of the platform with it and the Doctor suddenly
found himself with a face full of dirt.
“I’m a wifferdill. My name’s Mortimer. What’s yours?”
Just a tad unnerved, Erin shook it’s proffered wing and
said
“Well, I’m an idiot, but you can call me Erin. The guy
with the chewed sleeve and dirt on his face is the Doctor.”
Miserably the Doctor sat up and turned back to Erin and
the flamingo.
“’ello!” It seemed to smile, which is no mean feat with
a flamingo’s beak.
“My brother knows you,” It padded forward and proffered
it’s wing again.
“Really?” The Doctor muttered.
“Frobisher.” The flamingo prompted.
“Ahhh! Yes, who can forget good old Frobisher.” Seemingly
forgetting his mucky face, he jumped up and grinned at
Erin.
“Frobisher was a good friend of mine a regeneration or
two ago. Lovely chap, though a little prone to being a
penguin.”
“Oh, I see.” Erin said, though she didn’t. Noticing her
(more so then usually) vacant expression, Mortimer explained
“Wifferdills are shape-shifters form the planet Xenon,
this isn’t is coincidentally, and most of my family find
a form of bird to be rather comforting. No need to worry,
dear, only my third cousin bites.”
“Then why were you a tree thingy?” Erin frowned.
“I’m a bit of a-” The whifferdill turned into a black
sheep and then back into a flamingo.
“And my favorite form is that of the giant lime zorgs
of Mondas. Unfortunatly there aren’t many planets where
I can turn into one without arousing suspicion as the
Cybermen wiped them out long ago.
Erin’s face cleared slightly, but that was due to the
fact she had just remembered the words to the song she
had been puzzling over.
“Ice and water, stake and cow!” She suddenly burst out,
causing Mortimer to suddenly turn green with shock.
“Autumn this year and last week, thought and words, rain
and cloud, A, B, C, D!” She was dancing about now.
“Is she quite alright in the head, doc?” Mortimer, now
pink again, whispered to the miserable timelord.
“I’m not entirely sure,” He replied with a sigh.
“It’s this week and so is Friday, how ‘bout moons and
headlights, what I say and what I think, A-B-C-D-E-F-G!!”
Trying his best to both scrub his face clean with the
back of his hand and ignore Erin’s musical ramblings,
the Doctor asked Mortimer
“So just where are we?”
“The industrial planet narvey horman. This is sublevel
two, the furniture unit to be exact. The perfect place
to be a tree because they grow all their wood here. It’s
very easy just to blend in.”
Erin barreling into him, yelling, cut Mortimer short
“By the flat of NAAAAAAMES!” Instinctively he turned into
a spring and bounced out of the way of her flapping arms.
Finally pausing for breath she looked about herself.
“Well, Doctor, where are we?”
Deciding he had a headache, which is a very rare occurrence
for time lords, he repeated everything Mortimer had told
him, except the bits that related to being a tree. He
sometimes wished he could be a tree. It would be so much
simpler.
“You haven’t seen a teleportation device, have you?”
Erin asked Mortimer, still looking at the ceiling above
them.
“Nup. That’d be in the computers section I’d guess.” Mortimer
was looking at Erin’s odd hat with interest.
“That, my odd human, is a very nice hat.” Erin suddenly
defensively whipped it off, dropping into a crouch and
cradling the fabric to her chest.
“Your not getting it.” She said firmly. Shrugging as
best a bird could, Mortimer turned back into a tree.
“Please yourself. You can find your own way to computing.”
“Well, that was smart!” The Doctor grumpily muttered
to Erin as they wandered away.
“Would you have given your hat to a shape-shifting flamingo
called Mortimer?” She asked, pulling the aforementioned
garment back on her head.
“If it meant another step towards finding and rescuing
my friends, yes.”
“Stop being so heroic. It’s irritating. Get a haircut.”
The Doctor suppressed his urge to tell this girl just
how irritating she was, and where she could shove her
haircut, but being the understanding time lord that he
was just sighed.
“Look, there’d have to be a sign or something.” She
pointed out. They were near one of the huge walls now.
“Ooh, look, a button!” And before the Doctor could yell
at her to stop, she’d pressed it. A small screen appeared
next to the button and what resembled a chipmunk with
sunglasses droned
“Hello, you have reached the Narvey Horman information
line. Please state your inquiry.”
A coffee cup appeared from the edge of the screen in the
chipmunk’s paw.
“You, my good fellow, need some slee-” Before Erin’s
sage advice could be completed, the Doctor nudged her
in the ribs and stepped closer to the screen.
“Hello, I’m the Doctor and this is my assistant. We are
here to look at your latest range of computers to check
the flange ratio.”
“Just a minute, sir.” The chipmunk put down the coffee
and, offscreen, some typing could be heard.
“I think you would want the showers section, sir. There
are no computers with flanges.”
“Precisely what I need to check. Cant have a computer
with a flange you know.”
The chipmunk paused for a minute.
“Are you sure, sir?”
“Positive my dear chap.” Looking as skeptical as a chipmunk
could, it once again reached offscreen and pressed a button.
“Doctor and assistant to computing for regulation flange
check. Could the nanobots please report to furniture deck
to assist the Doctor and assistant to computing for regulation
flange check.” The screen disappeared and the wall seemed
to shudder. Suddenly thousands of tiny grains of sand
rained down. As they hit the ground they grouped together
to form a basic platform.
“Ladies first,” Erin chimed, pushing the Doctor onto
the platform.
After a minute of gliding across the space, a few inches
above ground level, Erin asked
“Just what is a flange, Doctor?”
“Mmm? Oh, it’s the bit the water comes out of in a shower,
but most creatures have no idea what it is so it can be
a very useful word. Just our luck to get an intelligent
Chasprin that does.”
“Chasprin?”
“That little furry fellow we were talking to. The species
came from a dreadful incident involving chipmunks and
aspirin. It sort of bumped up evolution and made them
more intelligent, the chipmunks that is, not the aspirin.
From what I can tell we must be in the Sydineon sector,
about three thousand light years from earth, as the Chasprin
don’t exist much further out at this point in time.”
“Right…” Blinking as she usually did when presented with
an explanation even more silly then the one she had in
mind, Erin sat down, crossing her legs and producing a
game boy from one of her copious pockets.
The Doctor could remember a time when he too had a talent
for producing ridiculously large objects from seemingly
small pockets, his fourth regeneration to be precise.
The more time he spent with this odd human the more he
found himself thinking of how similar she was to his fourth
self, bar the 17 feet of scarf and the being a male timelord…
“Stop staring at me like I’m your long-lost puppy…It’s
rude!” With a jolt he realized he’d been staring.
“I wasn’t staring at you, I was staring through you.”
He replied, nudging her with his shoe.
“I think were arriving anyway,” Replacing the still beeping
game boy into he pocket, Erin grumbled
“So you had a glass dog. How disconcerting of you.” And
sprang to her feet.
Another Chasprin, this one with a smiley badge that said
‘Hi, I’m Chungie’ somehow dangling from it’s chest, stood
in front of an open door in the wall.
“Hi, I’m Chungie,” It said.
“Hello, I’m the Doctor and this short humanoid is called
Erin.”
“Heeeeeeeey! I’m your friend! Why didn’t you say ‘and
this is my friend Erin’!?!” Protested the short humanoid
called Erin.
“You are not my friend if you try to eat our guide’s arm.”
The Doctor said pointedly. Frowning, Erin dropped the
rather unnerved Chasprin’s arm.
“Hi, I’m Chungie,” It said weakly.
“Yes, and a very nice name it is too. Tell me, young Chungie,
are you here to show us to the computing section?” Chungie
nodded and wobbled off through the door. After poking
the Doctor and grinning, Erin followed.
“Hi, I’m Chungie,” said the Chasprin to the speaker at
the edge of a hatch they had come to.
“Hello Chungie. Have a nice day!” Replied the door, swinging
open to reveal a he expanse of beeping and glittering
electronics department.
“Hi, I’m Chungie.” Said the Chasprin, amazingly gesturing
that the ‘Doctor and his short humanoid friend should
go and check the flanges now.’ Miming just as amazingly
back, Erin replied
‘Yellow llama dishcloth el sosho no lazy plastics corporation’.
The Doctor rolled his eyes and grabbed Erin’s dangerously
flapping left hand and dragged her off towards the Warpthingamywhatsit
department.
“Sorry about her, young Chungie.” He called over his shoulder.
He need’nt have apologized however, as the aforementioned
Chasprin had a wonderful idea and was soon the manager
of the hit pop group, Yellow llama dishcloth el sosho
no lazy plastics corporation, with their hit single
‘I was looking for your flange’
“Terribly spiffing young Chasprin, but a little short
on the vocabulary.” The Doctor commented as they stepped
onto the nearest Warpthingamywhatsit.
“Yes,” Erin agreed before they disappeared,
“But his arm could have done with some tomato sauce.”
[ Chapter
One ·
Chapter
Two ·
Chapter
Three ·
Chapter
Four]
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