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Melting Clock: Med Bay's First Arrivals
Things had been running as usual down in the med-bay, and to first appearances, this week wasn't going to be different.
But first appearances could be deceiving. This week was going to be different. And as the next few days passed by, the Medical Department was going to find that they now had quite a situation on their hands.
[[ooc: Okay, so this post is just for the affected characters who go into the Med-Bay before Quarantine, the Medical peeps who volunteered, and also the people who bring in said affected characters. If you've already organised who you'll thread with for this, just put their names in the subject line. If you're happy for any of the Medical guys to tag in, then just put "Open". There's also an ooc planning post for this if you want to try and plot for this.
Also, please note that both in terms of the timeline, both Kon and Jeka will be the last two to be brought in, regardless of thread order - they're essentially the ones who'll show up right before Quarantine, and be the ones that clue in Medical as to what's really happening here.]]
But first appearances could be deceiving. This week was going to be different. And as the next few days passed by, the Medical Department was going to find that they now had quite a situation on their hands.
[[ooc: Okay, so this post is just for the affected characters who go into the Med-Bay before Quarantine, the Medical peeps who volunteered, and also the people who bring in said affected characters. If you've already organised who you'll thread with for this, just put their names in the subject line. If you're happy for any of the Medical guys to tag in, then just put "Open". There's also an ooc planning post for this if you want to try and plot for this.
Also, please note that both in terms of the timeline, both Kon and Jeka will be the last two to be brought in, regardless of thread order - they're essentially the ones who'll show up right before Quarantine, and be the ones that clue in Medical as to what's really happening here.]]
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So here he was: Second Opinion, Best Choice, Great Taste in Clothing, Eight-Time Body Surfing Champion. Would've been Nine-Time if he hadn't come down with food poisoning that morning. The Doctor turned and began pulling things out of the pack, the toaster quietly clicking in the background. It beeped and winked a light at the patient. When the Doctor turned around, he held what might've once been the Falstiin Blade from that shopkeeper Daniel was bothering, back on shore leave -- these days it didn't look much like the trowel it really was, a string of lights and things scrounged from Stacy and the TARDIS running off it in a messy braid back to the toaster pack. Don't ask where he managed to find a teeny tiny windmill or why it was even plunked on top of the Falstiin trowel.
"Pardon the blinking, I haven't sorted that out yet."
The Doctor waved the trowel whatsit over the patient, resisting the urge to poke at those energy tentacles at the same time. Maybe later.
"When did this all start?"
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"And it was a bit after shore leave."
He remembered that, at least. His ship time was still crystal clear, even if he was losing more and more context.
"I'm taking a nice fly over the city and bam! My brain completely spazzes out and my memory's swiss cheese all of a sudden. Then I went nuts and attacked people, and at the time, I'm pretty sure I knew why it was happening, but now I don't remember. That's why the restraints and the red sun lamps, just in case there's any more surprises."
He suspected it had to do with Luthor, but didn't remember that day he went crazy. Or the code words, or attacking his friends in the Tower...
"The weird thing is even though I remember being on the ship, it's the past that's what's the most fresh. What's sticking out in my head right now is how I got picked up by Science Police and joined up with the Legion--but I've been on Stacy since near the beginning, well over a year. And yet it feels like it was only yesterday Cosmic Boy was giving me another lecture."
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Besides, if he found out more about this from what Conner gave away, then he could possibly put it together better. Find the missing pieces, essentially.
"It's a change in context," Tim said, making his presence known. "It's a gradual change-- that's part of why it seems more about time. That and physical changes."
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The Doctor's start at a voice suddenly next to him was quite small, the Time Lord recovering as if he absolutely meant for someone to be there with him. Friend of this patient he supposed. Or an actual qualified doctor, who knows? The Doctor glanced sidelong at the human. Change in context? Made sense and didn't make sense at the same time -- in other words, it was perfect sense in its own way, if you had a nose for this sort of thing. Well. Eyes and nose and other senses that should've been there if he wasn't somehow blinded to Time for no reason. Clearing his throat, the Doctor continued his scan of the patient, still waving that glorified trowel over him like he was at an airport.
"Wise precautions, don't want you hurting anyone. Or flying into anyone, but I suppose that still counts as 'hurting anyone' and you know, if you're going to stand there, you probably could make yourself useful." The Doctor turned to the human next to him without missing a beat, passing the trowel to him. "Don't drop it, there you go!"
The Doctor whirled back on his patient and leaned over him. Rory had said this one was a metahuman and he'd had it confirmed with a mention of powers. Believe it or not, humans weren't exactly known for being very flight-worthy all on their own. Not very aerodynamic. Terrible bone structure for it. The Doctor had no point of reference for this "Legion" or "Cosmic Boy", but at this point, he was much more interested in the now. Or relative now, because if time was unraveling, "now" could easily change.
"Did you see anything strange during shore leave or right after? Before your swiss cheese. Like the world jumping or people repeating themselves. Answers to questions they never asked."
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He thought back to shore leave.
"As for shore leave and after--nothing really sticks out."
The clock thing certainly didn't. He'd been in plenty of weird shops and it wasn't the only one.
"Or really, everything sticks out. Most of those shops were pretty weird and I touched a bunch of different stuff looking over what I wanted to buy," Kon pointed out. "I could've been infected or--or whatever this is by just about anything. I didn't feel weird until the swiss cheese, so I don't even have a clue what could've done it."
The problem would be narrowing it down.
Before he could say another word however, Kon suddenly shuddered, and then his body jumped to an earlier stage in his life. They'd find that he shrank right before their eyes, losing several inches of height and a great deal of muscle mass as he went backwards through a growth spurt, making his clothes slightly baggier. His hair suddenly became different, a little longer and a touch more stylish than his former farmboy crop.
"What the hell just happened?" Kon said looking down at himself. "Either I just really hit the SlimFast or now I'm missing the memory of a growth spurt."
Because he did remember being a pretty large dude during his time on the ship.
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Instead, he focused on what Conner was saying about shore leave. He was still trying to figure out the cause himself, but there wasn't a lot to go on. Logically, shore leave was the most likely-- since that was the main time they could have been exposed to new, foreign agents. If he could cross-reference where other people affected had been... "It's unlikely it was from anything in a store we were in together, since I've yet to show any signs of it." At least, none that he'd noticed-- though he knew that his demeanour would have been an obvious change for his friend, at least, had there been a change.
He was about to say more when there was a fairly dramatic physical change-- speaking of-- and he fell silent again. He was still going back, obviously. With a glance at the doctor he said, "It seems to be in bursts, considering the physical changes like that one." Even the hair length changes earlier hadn't been very gradual. "And not overly consistent, either."
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On second thought, it was probably better the Doctor didn’t quite get to that.
It was always fascinating to see time changing before your very eyes. He supposed to some lifeforms it might seem like magic. To be entirely honest, the Time Lords had sucked anything magically about it out a long time ago. Time was just another force, another ebb and flow with its own shifts. It’d taken him awhile to see it as miraculous again.
“We’ll have to see if anyone else can remember where they were or what they touched. At least your memory of that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.” Not quite the point of reference he would’ve liked. Still a start though. The Doctor glanced at Tim, who looked to him like he could use a good brood. Now probably wasn’t the best time for it, given his friend had a missing growth spurt. “Well, that’s what things are like when time gets wibbly.”
The Doctor frowned. He could try to take the patient to the Zero Room in the TARDIS, although he had no idea if the Zero Room’s stasis even worked in this universe, given that time travel or any sort of travel wasn’t. The Doctor chewed on the end of his scanner, eyes thoughtfully narrowed on Kon. Suddenly bursting into motion, the Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked deceptively like a candy cane. He held it out as if it was gold.
“Here, try this, and don’t bother chewing on it. Everyone chews on it. I keep telling them not to.”
He began putting away his scanner, having seen all he needed to.
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"What the hell's a candy cane gonna--aaugh!"
Another switch, catching him by surprise before he could do anything about the candy cane. That's what the scream was about. Not pain, a sudden, confusing change in context.
He was suddenly a scrawny dork, even scrawnier than before, the clone of a long-dead hero, a nobody, in the shadow of an older brother cloned from Doomsday. From a world without Young Justice. His time being that way was brief, until Bart fixed the timeline.
"What am I even doing he--"
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That's because that's what he was right now. A lost teenage boy, far from home, conscripted into a war he'd been all too eager to fight in that he didn't want to be in anymore. A member of the Paradocs, the medic unit tasked with recovering wounded soldiers from an instellar war. He had seen such things, such horrible things that he didn't want to remember, that he wished he could un-see. He'd held...parts of people together with his TTK, parts that shouldn't have been disconnected like that, held together only by stringy bits of--
Sometimes the soldiers were not much older than he was (relatively speaking, given his technical age of five). They cried for home. They cried for their mothers. The worst thing was when they didn't cry for anyone, just stared at him all quiet as he patched the pieces of them together that he could, in shock, making him wonder if they'd ever stop staring that way, bug-eyed, even if they got healed, if they'd die bug-eyed staring at nothing.
Rather than take the candy-cane, he leaned back away from the Doctor, recoiling as if he was offering poison.
"I know what you're trying to do! I know what this is!" he cried out, hysterical, writhing, trying to break his bonds. "Making me think my world is gone? Bringing Tana back? You're just going to have her die again! You're just going to take everything away, everyone I care about away until I have nothing left. Well, I'm onto you! I can see right through this stupid simulation of yours and as soon as I get the chance, I'm going to rip it apart at the goddamn seams!"
He wasn't yelling to Tim or the Doctor, he was hysterically screaming something to someone else, unseen, tears in his eyes that he wouldn't let fall, face twisted up into a furiously defiant expression.
"You can't break me, you witch! YOU CAN'T BREAK ME!"
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"Conner," Tim said, moving quickly past the Doctor and to his friend's side. Of all the pain that he'd gone through... Tim understood it, but couldn't imagine reliving it (beyond any stray nightmares). Since Conner was still restrained, he couldn't do much in the way of comforting gestures beyond placing a solid grip on his shoulder. "It's not happening anymore," he said. Conner knew it was a simulation, but reassuring words from an outside source might still help. He just wished he could do more for him. "It'll be over soon."
This was also forcing him to think more about what the Doctor had already figured out, though Tim didn't want to dwell on it. How far back could Conner really go?
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Pulling his hand back, the Doctor turned toward Tim.
"I'll have a look at the readings. Make sure he takes his time with this," turning to eye Conner thrashing about, the Doctor opted instead to set the not-candy cane to the side, wheeling around to face Tim again.
The Doctor eyed Conner, then checked his wrist watch, as if that was the most important thing to do in the world. The hands spun, twitched and stuttered backward in uneven bursts. He dropped his hand to his side. Collected his tools. Glanced back over at Conner with Tim by his side.
"He'll be fine," the Doctor lied. "But to be safe, I'd consider trying to put him in stasis. Multi-dimensional ship this size, I'm assuming it would have a proper stasis chamber onboard. At least temporarily."
After all, Stacy had pulled them not across multiple dimensions and planets, but entirely different time periods. That wasn't exactly easy and there had to be something in place to protect the ship and her inhabitants against cross-dimensional temporal infection, right? At least the kind of massive, broad kind, not the "smaller" ones that apparently slipped through, like Conner's case. As it was, the Doctor thought he could try to sort this out, but he needed to know what he was dealing with and get a closer look at those readings. Right now he couldn't save Conner with what he had on hand. The Doctor shot a last look over his shoulder at the two and then left, heading back toward the Hanger and the TARDIS.
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"You won't--you can't--you're not going to get to me, you're not--"
That gave way to something else as soon as he forgot it.
"I got Bart killed. I got my best friend killed. I got us all trapped, it's all my fault--why did anyone listen to me?"
He turned to Tim, suddenly furious.
"Why do we always listen to you? You've probably got your little bat-plans to take all your friends down, just like Batman, just like--"
Now he was farther back, to a place where things were a bit less hectic and he looked terrified.
"What's wrong with me?" he said, his voice almost afraid. Almost.
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Something that was compounded when his friend continued in his fear and his rage, degrading through some times where 'rough' would be an understatement. He hated that he couldn't do much for Conner right now, standing by while he was berated for the 'plans' he theoretically could have. 'Plans' that he'd promised himself he'd never have-- not for Conner, certainly, among a few others. He'd kept his word on that.
He hated seeing his friend like this.
The teen kept his hand on Conner's shoulder, hoping that the physical presence could be a sort of comfort, at least. "I-- you're still going 'back,'" he said, as much as that was obvious. "We're still figuring out 'why,' but we'll stop it." They had to. There was no way he was going to let it keep going like this. "I won't let this keep happening to you."