trans_9 | Sobek the Immortal [Closed]

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Sobek the Immortal [Closed]

Planet Designation: Kalimba Status: Terrestrial, H-class.
Non-sentient life: Extensive flora and fauna.
Semi-Sentient Life: Unknown
Sentient Life: Ruins and step pyramids suggest the presence of intelligent life at some point. Currently: Unknown.
Water: 70.2% of the planet's surface. Heavy rainfall/monsoons.
Climate: Earth-like.
Landscape: Primarily jungle and swamp, some plains, severe arctic conditions in northern and southern poles.
Air: Type I (breathable)
Sky: Blue-green.
Warnings: Medium to high levels of megafauna. Watch your step. Conditions in the atmosphere make several forms of orbital scans and equipment unreliable.
Mission: Archaeological investigation of step pyramids and ruins, investigate for signs of source of abnormal energy signature in target area.

The first thing the group would notice was that Kalimba's air was humid and heavy, with a light breeze. The morning had long since burned off most of the mist, and in the distance, clouds lazily drifted onwards towards the horizon. The typhoon season was a long ways off.

The undergrowth was tangled and dense, seemingly impassable in places. Vibrant flowers and vines took up residence where some of the tree cover faltered. With limited sunlight available, it was every plant for themselves. Disturbed by the archaeology group, "birds", each easily half the size of a person and more salamander than avian suddenly took to the air in a flash of brilliantly colored wings. They were gone almost instantly, slicing through the air and leaving only the ear-splitting shriek behind.

The hill sloped down. The cover of trees broke as they came out onto the stone remains of path that must have once been heavily used. Now, just like everywhere else, massive roots and tanglers tore at the ground, slowly swallowing any signs of civilization back within itself. There were trees of all shapes and sizes as far as the eye could see, a rolling wave of jungle and rainforest. Tan and dirty gray step pyramids, all more massive than those found on Earth, and the occasional obelisk rose through the canopy cover like claws, dotting the landscape.

Stac's scans indicated much of the planet was covered in these structures, with the largest in this location. Aside from the archaeological mission, her scans also indicated the presence of an abnormal power that may be of interest.

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The Doctor supposed he ought to be flattered.

"Advanced being!" He repeated after Sobek. He almost sounded impressed. It did sound impressive, didn't it? Maybe that was what he should do in the future, introduce himself as an "advanced being" if he wanted to be stuffy and irritating. "Ah, so you've got access to all his memories too then, I take it. Obviously."

So that explained that. Whatever Daniel knew, Sobek knew, and he probably knew more than he should because of his clone self telepathically blabbing to anyone and everyone within range. Not much for secrets, that New Doctor, was he? Well, he-turned-she-turned-ginger. Anyway, the Doctor felt he would probably have better luck keeping all his little dark secrets to himself and he certainly wasn’t going to tell the Crocodile God here just how to destroy planets and pervert Time like the Time Lords used to. As brutal as Sobek is, he didn’t think even he could comprehend just what a Time War was like, what it meant, just how twisted a thing it was.

The Doctor tried to rattle the restraints. “Let’s focus less on what a Time Lord is and what one can do. I believe you’ve been spying on Daniel’s memories, yeah? You already have an inkling then.”

If only an inkling was good enough. But the Doctor had a feeling he knew where this little interrogation was going to go and even if he told the God all the details about the Time War and Gallifrey, he felt he would always want more, keep sinking in those fangs in until there was nothing left. He continued to smile as if Sobek was another one of those humans asking silly questions at incovenient times, hoping he could learn how to withstand "questioning" in his new body.

Insolence. Always insolence with the mortal. It would soon be snuffed out of him.

For now, Sobek was content to allow him talk while he had the strength to do so on his own. A Time Lord was self evident, a Master of Time itself, or one who only claimed the title. John Smith was, despite his host's surprise, one too, but he could yet be made to talk. This one however. He still did not recognize how precarious place among the living was even after the demonstration. If the Doctor decided to talk freely, his death would be easier on him than the System Lord had planned, his act as a merciful God.

He could draw his death out into a living hell, reduce him to one of the soulless if he so chose. The insect's death had affected him as well. A weakness of his. Jamie's reaction to the Doctor's punishment indicated a stronger connection than his host had previously witnessed. This too could be used.

I see nothing that puts you anywhere near the Gods," Sobek replied, wandering near the device. " "Speak."

Edited 2012-01-20 23:14 (UTC)

The Doctor had maybe a few centimeters of give on the neck restraint. He rested his head back against the interrogation bed/chair/he wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to be aiming for.

"I think I've spoken enough. If you were less of a God, you would stop what you're doing, return Daniel Jackson, and pretend we'd never met," the Doctor gazed up at the ceiling, turning his head as best he could to stare across the room at Sobek.

The thing was he already knew. Sobek knew too much. He had seen that glimpse of Gallifrey. If the parasite had any self-preservation at all, he would take that was a warning -- one warning out of more than this thing deserved. But he'd gotten a nasty visual of just what this beast inside Daniel was and he knew where this would likely head, had already come to that conclusion when the big armored guards strong-armed him into the room. The Doctor wouldn't speak. He wouldn't give Sobek the Moment. That inkling of what a Time Lord could really do was enough. The main thing was he was just hoping he could survive this. Regenerating in the middle of trying to keep his mouth shut might be...tricky.

Tricky as he wasn't sure if he would be in the right state of mind to remember he was supposed to be resisting interrogation.

The Doctor smiled at Sobek. All right. They had had their little word games.

If he were less of a God, he would be weak, actually considering bowing, even if just for a second, to the demands of a prisoner who had no rights. He would also be dead, killed by Bastet and Kali. But he wasn't. He was what he was. This man was in no position to bargain with him or imply any threats. He wasn't a threat, not like a System Lord at this moment. He was an unknown species strapped to a chair and just as susceptible to energy weapons and physical injury like a human.

Sobek turned and slid his talons into what looked like a shimmering gel. It wrapped around his fingers, cool and dry, all the way up to his elbow, reading his signature. The device reacted. It began to hum underneath the Doctor, spines and needles snapping out from the chair and embedding themselves all over the side of his body, all the way up to his temple. The needles began to administer something red and thick to his veins.

He would immerse the Doctor in his past and present, make him relieve the worst and tell him.

The hum told him he probably needed to brace himself, his eyes flicking down involuntarily toward the device before it activated.

The Doctor rocked back into the device as it suddenly shoved the spikes into him from all sides, punching into his skin before he could effectively shrink away. He felt more than heard the gasp shake loose from him. The Doctor’s hands clenched together as he squeezed his eyes shut, but already he could feel something. More of a Something, and suddenly he was standing with his hands on Donna Noble, poor, amazing, incredible Donna Noble, stealing what she’d told him was the best year of her life away as she begged. One of the worst memories he’d had out of a big terrible load of them. It bled out because it was one of his more recent shames, a violent impression of colors and the hum and groan of the TARDIS blurring together in too-sharp detail.

She’s another one came the thought, old, sad, and not even surprised. Not really. Not in the end. He knew in the bottom of his hearts that this was how it would end. This or something else. And yet he kept visiting the humans. Because he couldn’t say no to Earth and their funny little humans.

The Doctor found himself white-knuckling the edges of the device slab, aware of the spikes imbedded several centimeters all over in all the wrong places and also of killing the woman he’d been effectively best friends with, her cheek burning to the touch.

Time stretched out wrong. Felt wrong. His sense of the ebbs and flow of Time had been off since Stacy but this was even worse than usual. It felt like weeks with Donna in the TARDIS, not the couple of minutes it took to finish.

Sobek kept his hand where it was, the gel throbbing gold, and leaned forward, watching the holographic scene play itself out in the air in front of him. Another species, Tau'ri, begging as the Doctor played at being a God and wiped her memories.

Telepathic as well. Perhaps by touch. Another ability he hadn't shared with his host, but was perfectly willing to exploit when he found it necessary. Another casualty, Daniel thought, and the vessel wasn't as surprised as he should be. Smith's words and the strange, half remembered memories from before only made more sense. A blue box. This his host had at least seen, and the memories that sprang up were especially vivid, a small exterior shell and a surprising amount of rooms somehow contained inside. Technology that could easily prove itself useful to a System Lord, with weapons or containing fighters for a mothership. Capacity limits would no longer be a concern. The image blazed through their minds, a near infinite number of ships per ha'tak, only limited by production.

Sobek sent a thought pulsing through the controls, directing the increase of the drugs and stimuli, to pull the truth from him. There had to be someone he trusted. Someone he would talk to.

The Doctor's eyes flickered behind his lids as he tried to fight off the drugs and stimulants running through him. Donna. Donna Noble. That name kept circling around him, just the latest in a string of all the people he made the mistake of taking with him.

And then there was Amy.

Amy suddenly stood next to him, her hand on his. The Doctor turned his head toward his best friend, frowning at her and trying to remember if she'd come with him on the mission or not because the funny thing was, he didn't remember her being there. Neither her or Pond 2. Or maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was old and daft and she'd been there all along, got a bit lost what with all the humans running around and poor Eneesh and it had been more than a busy day, actually. How did she -

"Escape?" Amy had that Amy Pond; I Can Get Myself Out Of This smile of hers. "Easy, big blind spots with helmets like those.”

The Doctor’s lips parted. It didn’t seem to him that was quite plausible but Amy was already trying to tug at the restraints, pulling at them as if sheer force of will was enough to get them moving.

“You didn’t tell them anything that can – ” Amy made a blowing up motion with her hand. Amy the Poet, he supposed. Not a very good one and actually he suspected she was probably terrible at it and Rory was loads better at it. “That. Blow us up.”

He frowned, gazing at Amy and watching her being impossibly there and feeling the same sense of wrongness creeping in his body, trying to sort out what it was and not yet aware that he’d turned to stare sightlessly over at Sobek. Spend 900 plus, give or take, Ish years in a few of your own bodies and it was only a matter of time before you knew what was where. It was either that or maybe a Time Lord’s physiology wasn’t quite agreeing with the dosage, the Doctor shuddering now as a wave of nausea swept over him.

The world spun horrifically for the Doctor, a whirlpool of greens and pinks, and lights, tearing at reality and time and space. Maybe it was the drugs. How long had he been down here? Maybe he imagined being brought down here. Maybe Sobek and the Jaffa had long gone.

"Close your mouth, the fish look's not working for you, moron," Amy smiled at him through her hair.

Amy returned to the straps with all the determination that kept her fighting the psychiatrists, the ones who always told her, in just about every variation, the Doctor didn't exist, that he was made up. She believed in the Doctor that much to keep fighting for him. Amy got one strap free with a crow of success. She smirked at the strap. That's right, one down and a ridiculous number to go. She had this.

"You have a plan yeah? I mean you always do, but you have to have something at least by now. We might actually stand a better chance of getting shot at less this time if you share it with us for once."

Edited 2012-01-26 07:09 (UTC)

Not only was the world doing a spinny thing that wasn't entirely natural, Time itself felt like it was stuttering on him. Like he thought he could see those tangents again, the paradoxes, the splits and slivers, and oddly enough, some of them were flickering right back toward the corner where Sobe - Rory? No, Amy, he had his humans right -- had wandered in from. The Doctor tried to concentrate as Amy proved that maybe some alien knots were going to out-Scot a Scot and she was taking an awfully long time to free him, wasn't she? Only one strap! Amy Pond; The Girl Who Takes Forever At Rescues!

Something in the Doctor's head clicked, fighting off the drugs coursing through his system and a dosage that was, quite frankly, not prepped for a Time Lord's physiology.

"Plan? Pond, you know how I am with plans. You of all people!" The Doctor heaved a laugh and was surprised when the laugh turned into a choke as his breath caught in his lungs. The Doctor struggled to breathe as his body went rigid against the restraints. He tried again. "You're hardly professional at jiggery-pokery anyway. Not the level we need."

He seemed like he was about to say more when the Doctor suddenly blinked, seemed to come more aware of his surroundings and then glanced over blindly toward that corner. He caught a glimpse of burning coals for eyes out of the fog.

Something wasn't right. Those hadn't been there before, he was sure of it. The Doctor seemed less interested in having a conversation with Amy now, those eyes drawing him in and making him start to suspect this room wasn't as empty as Amy claimed: so much for the guards taking a lunch break.

"Would you prefer to bite your way out? I'm trying!" Amy said through her teeth. Another strap undone. Was he going to critique her on breaking him out next? And she thought getting her driver's license was nerve wracking.

Seeing the way he looked around an empty room as if it was the most fascinating thing ever, Amy had to set her foot down. She cut into his field of vision, obscuring the glowing coals in the fog, in that brief instant, her eyes glowing in their place. She blinked and it was gone. A trick of light. "They gave you some sort of drug; there's no one in here. I know you don't have a plan immediately, you're making it up on the fly half the time, but you always have something. Now would be a good time!"

Edited 2012-01-29 10:53 (UTC)

A drug. Right. Yeah. Seemed like that would explain the burning feeling going through all veins and other bits, the Doctor shifting as best as he could tied down and finding that it didn't really help things along.

He found his eyes wandering past Amy, as if he could see right around her if he really, really, really tried and put his back into it. The twin coals. Something didn't seem right. Couldn't place a finger on it, nevermind two or three or the rest of his fingers (which, by the way, were still somehow attached -- they hadn't gotten to the bits with the fingers like he assumed they would). The Doctor had to struggle to remember that as a human, Amy had terrible teeth for biting through restraints like these and they literally could be here forever waiting for her to get anywhere.

It was about those two lights he'd seen. The Doctor was sure that if Amy just turned around, she'd see them and do the humany thing and investigate. Maybe find a release switch.

"You knowing wouldn't make a difference, Pond," the Doctor said with a grunt. He didn't sound quite as slurred as before, as if he was starting to revive. He blinked again, trying to focus better on Amy and deciding that this was one of those times that he'd rather have that Something Amy talked about when he was free and not tied to a torture device. "There has to be a release button in the room."

Now that he thought about it, the more he decided any plans or Plans or anything in between was better off staying with him. Amy was tough, but she was also only human, and there was no saying how she could handle Sobek's treatment. Speaking of that God, where was he? Hard to imagine he wandered off in the middle of this!

Of course, the Doctor's way or the highway. The Doctor always knew best. Except for those times he didn't, and in the time she'd traveled with him, there was plenty of that, sometimes because he was so old, so alone, like the Star Whale, like Edwin Bracewell. The man might be mad, wondrous, knew more about the universe than she did, but sometimes he needed someone to help him see.

"You don't know that. You always told me to look and see, notice everything, not always take everything you say at face value 'cause you said it. If you have a plan, maybe I can help," Amy pressed. Another strap undone. She leaned close, eyes flickering in the glow of the machinery. She worked at another strap, but it seemed to tighten the others instead.

"Tell me. Please."

The Doctor glanced down at the straps, then at Amy's face. Amy was about as beautiful as any human -- not that he was a decent judge of that, never said he was -- but right now there was something terrible about her face. Maybe it was the lighting. Something about her didn't quite seem like the friend he'd known almost literally since childhood (well, hers, anyway. His was quite a bit off) and the more he fought against the fog in his head, the more he started to think that Something Really, Really Wasn't Quite Right here.

He found himself shaking his head.

"No," he said. His voice came out stronger. "No, I don't think you need to know. Maybe you better go back."

He found his gaze once again drawn to that corner. The eyes were back, blazing out from the darkness as a shape began to solidify: metal plates like scales, the outline of a crocodile cocking that head in his direction.

Amy's face distorted like glass bubbling under extreme heat, or maybe it was the Doctor's vision that went. It didn't last long, a blink and the effect washed away. A normal human with fiery hair. Amy pulled the straps tighter. Behind her, one of the crocodile statues creaked, shedding stone chips, cocking to watch them from the shadows like a gargoyle slowly coming to life in the evening hours.

"You won't tell me how to save you." Her voice flattened itself as the Doctor's grew stronger. Her face lost some of its animation. The world wavered. She wasn't going to go back until the Doctor talked. "Tell me. Tell me everything."

"I'm starting to think saving me is overrated. Don't think I need saving, actually!" The Doctor was definitely recovering far earlier than any human should have, fixing a critical look at Amy and thinking that she looked downright ugly, all harsh lines and an inhuman sort of glint in her eyes. "Off with you, then! I'm busy. Go on!"

He flexed his fingers. Maybe he couldn't escape, but his head was clearing up and he could feel his hands and feet again, which was as promising as the fact that both hearts seemed to be beating just fine and he was sure they weren't alone in the interrogation room now. The Doctor looked at Amy, really looked at her, and it occurred to him that a human's face shouldn't be bubbling in and out. This wasn't his Amy Pond. This wasn't the girl who waited all those years just to take a cricket bat to his head first chance she got. This wasn't the young woman who kept marrying and un-marrying herself.

The Doctor wasn't sure what this was.

He ignored Amy as if she wasn't there, trying to struggle himself and try to work at the restraints as best he could without some imaginary friend being absolutely useless. Sweat beaded and rolled down his skin, his hair matted to his head as he began to revive further from the drug that Sobek had been pumping into him.

The straps pulled around his chest. Amy stared at him, eyes empty like a Nestene duplicate, then melted like so much wax. Nothing else changed about the room in the next few minutes. Machinery beeped. The Jaffa were gone, replaced by pillars in their likeness. The world settled back as it should. Even time almost felt right.

Until one of the statues moved. It was the same one that moved before, eyes flaring, life breathed back into dying coals. The Crocodile God stepped back into the Doctor's world. Each step was purposeful, powerful yet light on his feet, as he crossed the room to the Doctor's left.

He sank his claws into the Doctor's sides. No preamble, no words, Sobek sank them in, gold plated armor burying into flesh, talons closing in on themselves, and ripped back outwards, with the precision and care of a butcher. A simple whim to feed a brief urge, to shake off the frustration from the drug wearing off. The ornate helm gave no sign to any other emotion underneath and yet the God's body language made it clear that he and Daniel had both got a trickle of pleasure from indulging himself.

At the same time, the hand device came up, over the Doctor's head. The drug had failed, but it was that, a drug. The Will of the Gods however...

The gem set in his palm glowed as he reached towards the Doctor's minds. He would tell him what he desired, starting with his people. Their technology. Why time and reality felt wrong around them, what abominations were they.

The sudden stabbing pain in his side was definitely not Amy Pond. The Doctor cried out, tried to bite it back, and found it was rather difficult when y ou could feel the God’s claws trying to rip their way through your rib cage. No idea yet if he’d punctured any vital organs that were, well, vital. The Doctor’s body tried to instinctively pull away from Sobek, blood bubbling up against the armored talons and it looked as deceptively red as any human. The spike of white hot pain from where his ribs hadn’t decided yet if they were coming out of his body with Sobek’s claws, the Doctor unable to twist away as the Crocodile God brought up his other hand. The jewel in the palm began to glow, the Doctor’s eyes flaring open as he gasped and found that he couldn’t look away from the light.

It pierced into him. Questions without words. Abominations. Time and space swirled around him, threads and paradoxes and stars he’d been there to see their births and deaths. It feels wrong around you.

Time Lord. Gallifreyan -

- burned because of the Moment.

The Doctor had to concentrate, struggling to make the connection that those words weren’t him. He could feel a presence bearing down on him like a solid thing, a wave of Other, trying to worm into his mind, force its way in. The Doctor groped out blindly. His hand brushed up against Sobek, close enough to actually make contact. The connection between them jolted as it became two-way, a shock running up his fingers into the God as he saw glimpses of Sobek’s past atrocities, working his slaves to death, punishing them. A female human, buried up to her head and exposed to the elements because her husband dared to transgress, until he begged and begged and finally Sobek saw it in him to be “merciful”. A mercy kill, apparently. That was what Sobek called it. “Mercy”. Killing the woman in front of the whole tribe and the sinner…wait.

No, it wasn’t just that. Making them watch as it took days to get to that point.

He didn’t feel sick watching it. He felt old and tired and angry, all at once, because it was another reminder that beasts like Sobek and all the others like him were out there in the universe as well.

The Doctor tried to keep his hold on Sobek even as he struggled not to lose too many of his memories at the same time. Sobek wading into battle, reveling in the gore. Quetesh, somehow escaping. A God being fallible enough to have more than just a grudging respect for another God. Gallifrey using Time itself as a weapon, killing and un-killing and killing again because the first time wasn’t enough. The Doctor’s knuckles had turned white, his arm trembling as he shook.

The pain threw the Doctor off, perhaps more so than the ribbon device at first. It didn't matter to the God which it was. All that mattered was the opening. Sobek swooped in through the momentary distraction, and took. He took and took what he could, always rooting for more. He gorged himself on whatever information he could seize. Time. He could see time itself, saw how the Doctor saw. With it, he thought he saw futures and pasts, variations and possibilities. He saw potential.

These people, a now dead civilization, had once controlled Time. He had wiped an entire planet from existence, condemned it to hell in a mere moment. Not even their fleets could have stopped it.

The Doctor still retained this knowledge. It would pass from his hands to that of the Crocodile God, and he would finally surpass Ra himself. Sobek-Ra, he would call himself. He would trap Bastet and Kali first in this bubble of horror that the Doctor trapped Gallifrey, then turn his Will on all the other System Lords. He would take the universe and guide it as only an Immortal could.

The hand device intensified. The last thing the Doctor might see of the outer world then was the mechanical eyes of the crocodile helm. Sobek was just getting started.

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Sobek the Immortal [Closed]

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