The thing you should know is that everyone is in really big trouble. Yeah. Even you.

[cityship]

Ax had escaped the Controllers on board. Brainy had not been so lucky. Neither had Sam and Tim. And who knew how many others on board had Yeerks wrapped around their brains, controlling their every movement, pretending that everything was normal until the time came to strike.

Who do you trust, podlings?

Comments

[stalkersuperman.livejournal.com]

Out through the door, and a sharp right-angled bank to take them hurtling down the fleshy corridor, and--

What the hell, the robot is still following them, and gaining! And West can't shoot again without losing his grip on the Doctor. He has a small bomb or two in his pocket, but he's not sure he can reach those without dropping the man, either.

"Why won't you DIE?" he yells in frustration, though he doesn't look behind him. He's flying too fast for that to be safe.

[stingslikeali.livejournal.com]

"Hey, if were getting into philosophical questions, why did you shove a giant pole up your reactor linkage?" Bumblebee speeds up, closing the gap even more.

[fluffinasuit.livejournal.com]

"PUT! ME! DOWN!" The Doctor was angry, but it was a futile sort of angry; what could he do, struggle? Sure, he'd fallen further (and possibly faster) but that wasn't precisely incentive to try it again.

"Can't we all just talk about this over a cup of tea and gallon of motor oil?!"

[kindofscary.livejournal.com]

The Master's in hot pursuit, an armful of gadgets in tow. So his screwdriver was lethal, but not all of these were.

[stalkersuperman.livejournal.com]

Okay, this isn't looking good for West.

What happens if, when Bumblebee is right behind him, he banks without warning in a three-hundred-sixty degree turn that leaves he and the Doctor rocketing back the way they came?

Of course, now they're just flying straight back towards the Master. Goddamnit. Maybe they'll make it over his head before he can do anything damaging to them.

[stingslikeali.livejournal.com]

Bee's also got great maneuverability, which is why he's back on West's tail within a split second.

"Nowhere to run man. Just put the guy down and we'll think about going easy on ya."

[fluffinasuit.livejournal.com]

"Yes! Put me down!" The Doctor likes this idea, did not like that sharp turn back there, "Put me down and I'll make sure the Master doesn't kill you. Can't get better than that at this point, kid. So put me down!"

[kindofscary.livejournal.com]

Okay, so a minute ago he was chasing the flying kid and now he's about to be run down by a sickly yellow Mustang. He grabs the first tool in the pile, scattering the rest and brings it in an arc towards West.

"Listen to the man. Ridiculous hair, but he does give good odds."

[stalkersuperman.livejournal.com]

West -- or whatever West is at the moment -- is really not happy with the situation in which he's found himself. He should have made sure the odds weren't so heavily against him, or lured one of the organic ones closer to the Pool. He should have been given a more powerful host, but no, all his higher-ranking superiors got to have the ones with actual usefully offensive skills. Typical.

He doesn't like the idea of dying.

Of course, he likes the idea of being punished for failure even less.

...He really didn't want to do this in midair, but if he has to, then so be it. Not slowing down, he wraps his legs around the Doctor's so as to gain a better grip, wraps one arm firmly round the man's skinny chest and uses the opposite hand to fish something out of his own pocket. Not a gun or a bomb -- a fat test-tube filled with something grey and liquid and squirming.

(It's a stronger grip than he'd feared he'd have, but still, he hopes the Doctor will continue this delightful trend of not struggling.)

West yanks the stopper out with his teeth, and holds the open end of the test tube over the Doctor's right earhole.

[fluffinasuit.livejournal.com]

The Doctor, feeling something at his ear, tried to jerk his head away. Unfortunately he wasn't fast enough, and that something grey and squirming slipped in.

"Master!" he shouted desperately, hoping the other Time Lord would understand what was about to happen. Their telepathic link suddenly disappeared, as if it had never existed. Over the next few seconds the Doctor's face flickered; frustration, anger, blank control, stubbornness, then fear.

And suddenly, his face blanked out and the Doctor went limp, apparently dead. His invader found itself completely unable to control a mind that had shut down almost completely, and the Time Lord's body began to cool rapidly.

He hoped, with his last conscious thought, that the Master could still recognize a healing trance and wouldn't decide to laser through him.

[stalkersuperman.livejournal.com]

...Oh Jesus, that wasn't meant to happen.

[kindofscary.livejournal.com]

The Master's face runs through the following-- shock, more shock, anger, joy, even more shock and right back to anger. He's been shot or otherwise mutilated several times over the years, so it's not outrageous to assume he knows what a healing trance looks like.

But the Master's outrage is far beyond that. This- this punk very nearly killed the Doctor. He had no right, not when better men have died trying.

"Okay, now I'm making the odds," he screams whilst opening fire, "You can decide whether to drop him or not, you're still leaving stuck to the wheels of Unleaded over there!"

[stalkersuperman.livejournal.com]

He's being fired at again. And this time, lumbered by the Doctor's unconscious body, he doesn't have the agility needed to dodge.

West shouts out and crumples in the air as he's hit, and both he and the Doctor are very suddenly heading downwards in a steep curve. The test-tube slips out of his hand and meets its untimely demise on the floor, smashing open to release a lot of greyish goop and a number of writhing, sluglike creatures.

[stingslikeali.livejournal.com]

And said slugs are turned into paste by Bee's wheels, right before he leaps and attempts to catch both the Doctor and West before they hit the ground.

[kindofscary.livejournal.com]

The Master drops everything and darts over, "Rassilon-- what the hell was that all about?"

[fluffinasuit.livejournal.com]

The Doctor's body, now relatively safe in the clutches of Bee, continues to chill past the normally accepted temperatures of the dead. As frost begins to form on him, a slug tries to make its escape out of his ear, slowed by the rapid, intense cold overtaking its host's body.

[kindofscary.livejournal.com]

He makes to grab the thing before it can wriggle off anywhere. Damn non-space transcendental pockets, he hadn't any vials to stash it in. He holds it indefinitely, an arms length way from anything remotely resembling an orifice.

"What are we guessing this kid has one of these in his ear, too?" He fishes back into his pocket with his free hand, finding the Judoon scanner.

[stingslikeali.livejournal.com]

"I'd say that's a pretty safe bet. What is that thing anyways?"

[fluffinasuit.livejournal.com]

As soon as the yeerk is out of his ear, the Doctor's condition seems to stabilize. As the others talk, he even begins, slowly, to warm back up.

[kindofscary.livejournal.com]

"Judoon species analyser. Run it over that boy." he tosses the device to Bumblebee before kneeling by the Doctor, "We didn't have any tea."

[stingslikeali.livejournal.com]

Bee did as ordered "...it says it's a Yeerk. Sooo, what's a Yeerk? Y'know, aside from a mind-controlling slug-thing?"

[fluffinasuit.livejournal.com]

Luckily for the Doctor, what his body's doing doesn't require tea, though he certainly wouldn't mind some.

Slowly, slowly, the Time Lord comes back to himself. His hearts beat faster again; instead of every ten seconds, every seven, every five, laboriously picking up their accustomed speed and beat. Superganglion that have been wrenched free in a desperate attempt to maintain control carefully realign, rejoin, and reconnect the Automic brain to the brain at large. His internal temperature races back up to a cool, comfortable 15°C.

What he could, technically, achieve while awake with great concentration and a few hours is repaired in minutes as, for once, the Doctor's body works without the distraction of his consciousness prattling on. And so blearily, uneasily, the Doctor begins to wake up. Not enough to stir yet, but his mental presence has returned.

[kindofscary.livejournal.com]

The Master scans through his own sizeable brain for anything relating to the Yeerk's. He holds the one he still has a firm grasp on into the sickly light.

"They're not native to our reality. Blind, but compensate with pedipalps," ho-hum, he rips those off so that if it gets loose it's pretty much lost. When he does so, he recoils, planting a finger from his free hand into his ear, "Ow. Apparently communicate through ultrasound. I'm not fluent, so let's try something else--"

Mind contact was always his strong suit, and he even had a physical channel. The thing thrashes in his hand momentarily, before dying down.

"... Of course! Oh you clever little thing, you!"

[stalkersuperman.livejournal.com]

West, or at least his Yeerk, might be counted on to add something to the conversation. But they're both currently doing the whole stunned-and-unconscious thing, draped in what will probably be a very uncomfortable position once they wake up.

This narration apologises for their current state of being boring.

[stingslikeali.livejournal.com]

"...What's up?" Bee asks the Master.