trans_9 | Happy-Fun Splorey Times

The Doctor stood there, staring and gaping at the horizontal Jaime. Slowly, he grinned. "Oh, that is so neat. That is... that is neat, that is."

And then he was off, turning a couple corners until he was standing on Scorpius' ceiling. "So neat."

Scorpius sighs. Children, both of them.

"Yes, yes, simple experiments in gravimetrics and dimensional perceptions. That is nothing compared to what has been required to reach across multiple universes and possibilities to gather us all. The very fact that they have gathered us all means they must have mastered a very potent weapon indeed."

His eyes narrow.

"Wormholes."

The Doctor put his glasses on to get a better look around. "Well, or something else entirely. Wormholes, I mean, they're a bit, well, simple aren't they? Just sort of giant spacetime... toilets. Yeah, I mean they're dangerous and weird, but using them's not very sophisticated, is it?"

"Not...!" He starts to hiss, then clears his head. "Doctor, have you considered the applications of controlling a wormhole?" He steps towards the Doctor, joining him on the ceiling, one hand grasping his other wrist behind his back.

"Beyond the ability to move massive armies over vast distances in the blink of an eye. Beyond the ability to travel to infinite possibilities of reality in order to find new technology and duplicate it within your own universe." He looks around, taking in the room.

"Suppose I opened a wormhole here in this room... and it connected to the inside of a sun."

He gestures around him. "As impressive as this vessel is, it would be gone in an instant. As would all its inhabitants."

He points to Jaime, but he's still speaking to the Doctor. "Would Earth... the entire planet, in one scorching instant of nuclear bombardment... have any defense against such an attack?"

In an instant, the Doctor switched from affably wonder-filled to serious. "Yes, yes it would have a defense. Me. And in other universes, others like me."

"Oh, this is so much easier in my own universe, where people actually know what 'Time Lord' means. I actually know quite a bit about wormholes, as it happens. You see, I learned their uses at school as a child. Trust me, there are much, much more efficient ways to destroy a world or ship."

He made a face. "And transferring technology between realities is really, really a bad idea. Just trust me on that one."

Scorpius hisses. "My point, Doctor, is that the fact that we have been gathered from so many different universes is indicative of a massive amount of power. More so than these simple parlor tricks. And whatever they want us for... if they possess this kind of power... they likely need us for little more than sacrificial pawns."

"Skilled sacrificial pawns," Jaime said, walking along until he was upside down in relation to Scorpius. "Like you said, someone attacking my world with a wormhole? That they were trying to hook up to a sun? We'd stop it. We have stopped stuff like that and worse, time and time again. The whole world was coming apart at the seams, multiple universes were being split apart and crammed together--there were other worlds in the sky, and a giant satellite, phased out of reality, programmed with the knowledge to kill every metahuman on Earth was using innocent people as its attack drones to do just that--all at the same time--and we stopped it."

Partly thanks to his helping everyone actually be able to TOUCH the damn satellite.

Mostly thanks to everyone else fighting with everything they had. Thanks to sacrifices, like Superboy's.

Thanks to his own sacrifice: an entire year of his life, gone, in the blink of an eye.

"If they grabbed us to fight for them, they want us as pawns, but they also recognize that most of us have got something useful, even beyond superpowers--human potential. Adaptability. Craftiness and cleverness. A complete inability to just lay down and give up. And those same qualities are probably in the non-humans they've grabbed, too, because Earthlings don't have a copyright on them, they're just kind of common in us. I know Khaji's got 'em," Jaime said, tapping his head, and then he jumped, experimentally, from one stairwell to another, feeling how the gravity shifted as he landed.

"Problem is, they're likely not expecting that to get turned against them. They probably think we can be controlled. We're just simple little things, most of us are just pink apes. You have a species go on long enough to get this advanced technologically and they get awfully set in their ways, they expect things to happen according to plan, so when you go off course..."

He hooked a hand up, instead of following the walkway and climbed into a doorway, then fell sideways into it as gravity adjusted.

"Huh. This leads deeper in, if you guys can get over here."

He looked back at Scorpius with an even stare.

"Seems like you've put an awful lot of though into how you can weaponize wormholes. Purely intellectual interest, huh?"

Edited 2008-06-26 21:16 (UTC)

He doesn't answer at first, just moving to follow Jaime.

"Do not judge me, Jaime. As lucky as your race has been in facing great threats... and as blindly lucky as you have been in my experience... if you were to face the threats my people do, you would understand."

"Not judging. But my Earth probably has faced similar threats. Just because of the sheer number of threats we've faced."

Sinestro Corps, aliens, aliens, and more aliens, Imperiex. The Anti-Monitor. Villains on Earth. The Reach.

Everything.

Things that could destroy the world in the blink of an eye. Things that wanted to do worse than destroy it.

"Which gets you a little cautious around people." Especially ones in leather bondage get-ups. "Because it hasn't just been luck that's let us win. Sometimes it's figuring out who the threats are and taking them down before they strike and blow up half the Earth or release their deadly virus or mind control the world. I try to keep my eyes open. That's pretty reasonable, isn't it?"

It may have just been a statement. It may have also been 'I'll trust you for now, but don't ever think I'm not watching you.'

Edited 2008-06-26 21:40 (UTC)

The Doctor had started to tune them out as the conversation devolved into what he considered a my-race-is-better-than-yours competition. As a Time Lord, it was obvious that he was the most powerful, angst-ridden creature present, with the very slimly possible exception of Stacy.

He was much more interested in this 'it goes deeper' business. Backing up slightly he ran and leaped at Jaime's doorway. The fall at the end was hardly graceful, but he sprang back up quickly.

"Right, shall we?"

Scorpius nods and moves to follow.

"That's a very intelligent choice, Jaime. But there's one more thing worth noting... the computer here claims to be able to hear all discussions anywhere on the ship... that we are authorized to go." He gives a small smile.

Nothing further needs to be said on that topic, of course. These individuals are proving themselves to be somewhat intelligent, at least.

Pssh. Humans weren't better than anyone. They were just very good at certain things. That was part of why the Doctor thought they were so brilliant, after all. At things like hope, and courage, and self-sacrifice, at things like tenacity, they were wonderful. At other things, they utterly failed.

Like at not having wars, and not taking the freedom of other humans away, at being nice to people that were different from them, at not doing things for utterly selfish reasons.

Humans rocked; humans sucked. Suuuuuucked. So badly. But you had to protect the stupid people anyway. Because of the good. Because of the vastness of human potential.

But he knew they sucked, and that he was not the best man he could be, and might never be (not that it would stop him from trying). He was a tiny, tiny person, with a tiny bug-rock on his spine, in a very big universe.

His dad always said 'A proud man can learn humility, but he'll be proud of it.'

"It's getting darker," Jaime noted. It was. It was dimmer here. The edges seemed to...shift. Like his vision was going double. Corners were sprouting more corners than they should've held.

Edited 2008-06-27 02:57 (UTC)

"There... is more to it than that." He reaches out as if to brush his hands through the air. "There are... leaking energies here."

The Doctor frowned, keeping an eye out for movement. "Cooling down, too. Wonder what's in here."

Ever cautious, he got out his screwdriver.

Jaime kept navigating the stairways, it took more climbing now, more guessing to get on the right path.

But he found the more he thought, the more it blurred together.

It was intuition that seemed to work better, choosing the paths to go on a whim.

The scarab trilled at him, confusedly.

"I know," he murmured to it. "It's impossible. I know."

There were too many ANGLES.

"Except that it clearly is not only possible, but it is," Scorpius replies, eying the Doctor's tool. He's not certain what that device is, but he's curious.

"Indeed, if there are different possibilities down this way... we may have located the source of their universal travel."

"Maybe." The Doctor doubted it. "Or we may have found the reason they have all those buildings. Which would be much more interesting."

He didn't pay much attention to where his feet were taking him, more interested in absolutely everything.

The landscape was getting darker...and stranger. More twisted.

More menacing.

But Jaime felt like... something was tugging him along. He was supposed to keep walking. His curiosity was getting almost compulsively stronger.

Almost like something was mess with his head--

The scarab suddenly screeched its warning.

Jaime flinched, as that strange compulsion faded, as it was shut out.

"Something's trying to mess with me telepathically. I don't know if you guys can feel it, too. Like...compelling us along."

Edited 2008-06-27 05:10 (UTC)

Scorpius hisses as he exhales.

"I feel the manipulation, yes."

"So do I." The Doctor tilted his head and, instead of closing his mind off safely, kept it open and listening. "I'm going to see what it wants."

Scorpius hisses. "I'm not certain that is the best course of action, Doctor."

The Time Lord shrugged. "Only one way to find out. I mean, what's the worse that could happen?"

"Well, besides my brain exploding into jelly."

"That one's pretty bad by itself," Jaime said, but he said that as he started stepping forward himself, down a winding walkway was that starting to assert itself into a straighter route.

"Or you could cause the brains of Jaime and myself to also explode."

Nonetheless, he follows. "However, if you are set on this course of action, I will accompany you."

They seem the most capable here of those he's met thus far. The last thing he wants is for them to die... or, just as bad, discover something important without him.

The Doctor set off with Jaime. "I'm not making you come. If your brain explodes, it's not my fault." Though he'd still blame himself.

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