trans_9 | And you say that time goes rushing by, but it seems so slow to me...

Any other day, maybe, the Doctor might be wandering the ship, looking for something interesting to pull apart or poke his nose into. He still hasn't had a chance to inspect the brain of the ship, after all, and there's that great big city he'd like to explore as well...

But right now, he'd rather not. He's tired and annoyed, and any place he could wander, it wouldn't be far enough. So instead, the Doctor has sprawled on his back, halfway upside down, on one of the couches on the Obs Deck. It seemed as good a place as any to sit still for a while - maybe not the place to go if he wanted to be alone, but he'll take company over quiet just now.

He doesn't actually seem to be paying attention to anyone who might be in the room, though. Instead, he's playing with an unidentifiable bit of patched-together technology - it's got buttons and flashy lights and a little dish and there is absolutely no outward indication of what it actually does. It's... entirely possible it's not meant to do anything, at least at the moment; he just wanted something to do with his hands, though someone to talk to (or talk at) would undoubtedly be a better distraction.

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"Not for my pockets," the Doctor answers simply, and tries not to smile as Komali evaluates the object and gives his opinion. He just barely manages to hold it back. "It picks up energy that leaks out of holes in the universe, or sort of... portals between different parts of time and space. And when it finds them, it does this!"

He reaches over to hit a button - the on switch, as a matter of fact. The whole thing lights up and starts beeping loudly, while the dish whirls in a rapid circle on top; being aboard Stacy is apparently too much input for the device to give any useful information.

"Hmm..." And now the Doctor's pockets were getting suspicious looks, "Does it do that all the time? We're traveling right now, see?"

And because they're on the obs deck, Komali can handily point at the window and the mellifluous, ever-shifting Bleed.

"Oh, I know!" He held up both hands, as if the Doctor had threatened to run away, "Wait right here! I'll show you!"

And off he ran, returning momentarily with a glowing orange globe the size of a ripe cantaloupe. It was glowing faintly, glass smooth and warm to the touch, and somewhere inside it some reflective facet refracted light in such a way that an odd symbol showed through the milky mass of it, and seemed to follow the eye, no matter how the pearl was turned.

"This is mine, okay? You can touch it, but don't drop it. It's really special."

He grins as Komali runs off, and switches off the device while he waits for him to return. The constant beeping is getting annoying. When Komali comes back, he tilts his head to one side, eyeing the object the child's carrying.

"I promise I'll be careful," the Doctor says solemnly, and reaches out to take the object in his hands. Turning it over slowly, he just stares at it for several long moments, watching the way it catches the light, trying to make out the shape inside.

"This is lovely." He sounds entirely sincere, too - he can't identify the sphere as anything he's ever seen before, and it is pretty as well as fascinating. He glances up to Komali as he asks, "Where did you get it? And... what is it?"

"It's Din's Pearl (http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090311222752/zelda/images/1/1b/Din%27s_Pearl.png)," Komali explained, helpfully, "My grandma gave it to me, before she..."

Well, before she'd died. It hardly mattered, with the rest of the Rito as close to dead as Komali could tell. He shook himself out of it, momentarily.

"It's a gift from the Goddess Din. I'm supposed to guard it."

"I'm sure it couldn't be in better hands," the Doctor says with a gentle smile, offering it back to Komali.

"Does it... do anything?" He pauses a moment, and then adds hurriedly, "Not that it has to. It's a perfectly good pearl all on its own!"

"There's two others, from the other goddesses," Komali explained. He only knew what he'd heard from Link's attempts to wring the pearl out of him by diplomacy before resorting to blackmail, "You need all three of them together, to get the power. But, you have to be a Hero to do it."

And if there wa sone thing Komali was sure about, "But I'm not a Hero."

The Doctor had been about to question the 'other goddesses', or ask about what power, exactly, you were supposed to get with the combination of the three pearls... but that last comment quickly catches his attention instead.

"Who says?"

Sure, the way Komali says Hero, there may be some greater meaning the Doctor's not grasping, some specific title or position... but the Doctor's not so sure that's the case.

"From what I understand, just about everyone on this ship's... special, one way or another. Otherwise we wouldn't be here, now, would we?"

"Not everybody," Komali objected, cradling the pearl in his arms, "Lady Stacy said that some of us are only here because we're friends with a Hero."

Though if you asked Komali if Link was his friend, he wouldn't honestly be able to say 'yes,' though the Hero himself might have had a very different opinion.

"But the last time I saw him, he wanted me to give him this," And here the pearl was held up for emphasis, "But I made him prove he was really a Hero. He never came back. I woke up here, instead."

"Did she really?" He hadn't heard that before. Even if it's true, it doesn't seem particularly clever to tell them that... Then again, what does he know? He's not a sentient dimension-hopping ship. The Doctor sighs a little.

"And you haven't seen your Hero friend on the ship since then, either," he guesses, raising an eyebrow in an invitation for Komali to challenge that assumption if it's wrong. But he does seem very lonely, and the Doctor knows how being the last of your kind doesn't help that sort of thing at all. "It's not a very considerate ship, is it?"

"I think she was trying to make us not worry," he explained, glumly kicking at the floor, "But I don't think anyone else from my world is here. I've never seen them, and I go to look, every time."

But...well, it wasn't all bad was it?

"Oh, but I met Samus Aran! And Mister Chief! They're really tall and strong and they're teaching me all kinds of things. I think they're special because nobody else except Sir Brother Cargn wears armor all the time, like they do."

"And... what do they do that for?" the Doctor asks, frowning just a little - or maybe he's just holding back a smile at that child's logic of 'armor = special, somehow'. Well, there's no reason it can't be both. "Do they really think someone might attack them on the ship, or do they just like to look a bit impressive?"

"Lots of times, there's attacks on the ship," Komali scolded. He's a child, but he's not stupid, "One time, there were nightmare monsters everywhere, and if you went outside, they'd eat your brain! Samus Aran told me that one time there were pirates and they killed people!"

Told like that, they might seem fairy tales, but they were, in fact, the truth. The Nightmare King's attack had more than just shaken the young bird prince.

"B'sides, Samus Aran and Mister Chief are the best fighters on the whole ship. They want everybody to be safe."

"But..." the Doctor starts to say, and then shakes his head, cutting himself off. He knows better than to argue with a child he barely knows about someone the child obviously idolizes - he probably won't change his mind, and he very well might upset him.

"I'm sure they do," he agrees after a moment. "'Course they do. If it's that dangerous, though, shouldn't we all be wearing armour?"

"There's not enough armor for everyone, so only the best soldiers get it."

Duh, Doctor. Though that doesn't explain Grif.

"Right. Of course." The Doctor nods solemnly - a little too solemnly to be entirely serious, though it's not (quite) mocking either. He cracks a smile after a moment.

"Just as well, really. The plantsuits are bad enough - I don't think I could handle mandatory armour as well. Makes it a bit hard to leg it, for one..."

And you say that time goes rushing by, but it seems so slow to me...

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