Doctor Hooey 2.4
Jul. 1st, 2007 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nobleplatypus"Teddy bears," Chrysanthemum repeated, staring at it. Then she turned to the Doctor and screeched, "Sodding teddy bears?"
The Doctor winced and shrugged apologetically.
"You got us captured," she cried, pointing a trembling finger at the teddy bear by the fourth wall, "by a bunch of bloody teddy bears?"
"Well, as I said before, several times, some of them are probably bunnies," he said evenly, as if trying to retain the last few sorry scraps of his dignity. "And," he added, "I wouldn't say I got us captured."
"If you hadn't been mucking about under that tree--"
"Excuse me!" the teddy bear piped up indignantly, and the spectacle of a talking teddy was enough to silence Chrysanthemum. It eyed them both until it was certain neither of them planned on saying anything more, then nodded once. "That's better. Now," it began to pace, tucking its stubby paws behind its back and puffing out its round, fuzzy belly, "your presence on our humble planet is both unappreciated and highly suspect. You will not speak," it shrilled as the Doctor opened his mouth to say something. Chrysanthemum glanced at the Doctor as he leaned back against the wall, and he shrugged at her. "Yet," the teddy amended. "In a few moments, you will be interrogated by our most esteemed Grand Inquisitor, and I dare say you shall have plenty to say to him before he's through with you."
Chrysanthemum shifted and glanced at the Doctor again. Her natural inclination--to be perfectly honest--was to giggle; one little teddy bear was hardly threatening in and of itself, especially one with a comically squeaky voice. But what it was actually saying was very threatening, indeed, and she had no idea whether or not to take the teddy seriously. The Doctor wasn't much help; he watched the teddy with a faint, thoughtful frown and said nothing.
But, like most of the Doctor's silences, this one didn't last long. "Well," he chirped, rubbing his hands together, "shall the 'esteemed Grand Inquisitor' be coming to us, or must we go to him?"
The teddy glared at the Doctor. "The Grand Inquisitor would not inconvenience himself by traveling down here. You shall meet him in the Interrogation Room."
Chrysanthemum entertained the mental image of stuffed animals wielding instruments of torture, and again was torn between amusement and worry. The Doctor was rocking back and forth on his heels, an expression of polite interest plastered across his face. Deciding to take comfort from this, Chrysanthemum turned to the teddy. "All right," she said. "How do we get there?"
"We shall escort you," the teddy replied, fixing its bright button eyes on her. "One moment." It turned away, and in a trice it had wriggled through a gap in the roots and vanished from sight.
As soon as it had gone, Chrysanthemum leaned towards the Doctor. "How worried should I be?" she asked him in an undertone, not taking her eyes off the gap through which the teddy had disappeared.
"I've gotten myself out of worse scrapes than this," the Doctor replied softly with a reassuring smile.
She tore her gaze from the wall and gave him a searching look. "Have you gotten other people out of worse scrapes than this?"
He blinked at her, then waved a hand a little too carelessly. "Yes. Course I have." He cleared his throat, and Chrysanthemum turned back to the root wall just in time to see a three foot wide portion of it start to grind up into the ceiling like a shaggy portcullis.
"Very worried, then," she muttered to herself as the root tips completely vanished into the roof, leaving a squarish doorway. The teddy promptly appeared in the new opening, flanked by two larger stuffed animals--a scruffy sheepdog whose eyes were hidden underneath a stained fringe, and a monkey with a fixed, mad grin. Both animals were holding thin sticks that had been whittled down to wicked points on each end.
"You will follow me," squeaked the teddy, "and if you try anything, my associates will make sure you regret it." The monkey and the sheepdog marched into the cell, waving their pikes menacingly. Chrysanthemum doubted they were capable of jabbing her anywhere above the thigh, and briefly considered trying something just to see what would happen. But as if reading her mind, the Doctor coughed and nodded pointedly towards the doorway. Chrysanthemum followed his gaze and immediately resolved to behave.
The door led to a long hallway. It was lit by some sort of bioluminescent fungus that coated the ceiling, and in the faint green glow she could see that the hallway was lined with more pike-wielding plushies of all shapes and sizes. There must have been at least two dozen she could see before the tunnel curved upwards, and possibly more beyond that. They might have only been stuffed animals, but they vastly outnumbered her and the Doctor, and they were armed.
"Ye-es," drawled the teddy, having observed their reactions and evidently finding them satisfactory. "You'd best do as you're told. Come on, then!" The teddy spun about and marched up the tunnel, and after each receiving a sharp poke from the monkey and sheepdog, the Doctor and Chrysanthemum followed.
The tunnel was surprisingly high, given that none of the stuffed animals topped three feet, but Chrysanthemum still had to crouch as they walked, and judging by the occasional dull thuds and muffled curses coming from behind her, the Doctor was finding the low ceiling quite problematic. There wasn't much she could do to offer encouragement, so she occupied herself by sizing up the stuffed animals as she shuffled past them. They all gazed straight ahead, fuzzy faces betraying no emotion, pikes at the ready. Once, she could have sworn she caught a rather shapeless brown rabbit looking right up at her, expression curious and perhaps a little wistful, but when she met its eyes, it hurriedly leveled its gaze and rearranged its features into an expression of stern detachment.
Chrysanthemum frowned, but before she could devote much thought to the little rabbit's strange behavior, the teddy stopped short and indicated that she and Doctor should halt as well. She obeyed, still hunched. They were in front of another wall of roots, which again rose with a gritty grinding noise. Once the root tips had cleared the ceiling, the teddy stepped back and waved Chrysanthemum forward. She hesitated, and the sheepdog gave her an encouraging jab with its pike. "All right," she muttered, stepping into the Interrogation Room.
Her mind had been half-expecting to see thumbscrews and perhaps a rack, so it was with considerable surprise that she took in the actual contents of the room: a low table surrounded by three squat chairs, all made of wood, and all painted what looked like a pastel shade of pink (though color was a bit difficult to judge in the green, fungal light). In front of each chair was a cup and saucer, and clustered in the middle of the table was a teapot, sugar dish, and a creamer shaped like a little holstein. Chrysanthemum turned to ask the teddy if they were perhaps in the wrong room and found herself face-to-face with the Doctor. He, too, was taking in the tea set, but he didn't look at all confused. If anything, he looked enormously pleased.
"Aha," he said quietly, as if he had just had a theory confirmed. He straightened--the ceiling in this room was high enough to allow it--and grinned at her. "Isn't this nice?"
"Yes," she said honestly; tea was more welcome than pain. But she was still half-convinced that some mistake had been made. This couldn't possibly be an interrogation room.
Her confusion was somewhat alleviated when the teddy strode into the room behind them. "Sit," he ordered, waving a stubby paw at the table. "The Grand Inquisitor will be with you shortly."
"Thanks!" the Doctor chirped, plunking down into one of the chairs. It was so low that his knees wound up under his chin, but he didn't seem to mind as he examined the tea set laid out on the table. His hair, Chrysanthemum abruptly noticed, was glowing green in a few places--apparently some fungus has wound up in it when he'd bumped his head on the ceiling. She hesitated, staring at the glow and wondering if she should mention it, and both the monkey and the sheepdog prodded the back of her knees. She sat.
A few uncomfortable minutes passed. No one said anything--the teddy stood in the doorway behind them, fuzzy face unreadable, flanked by the sheepdog and monkey. The Doctor fiddled with his cup and saucer, clacking them together (they were plastic and didn't shatter), and then spent several minutes trying to arrange his lanky frame more comfortably in the tiny chair. This, at least, provided some entertainment, and Chrysanthemum watched with growing amusement as he tried to fold himself into several different positions to little effect. Finally he hit upon the idea of stretching his legs out under the low table, which might have worked had he not struck the unoccupied chair a solid blow with one of his feet. The chair shot out from the table and tipped over backwards, and the Doctor froze, looking horrified. Chrysanthemum heard the teddy inhale sharply behind her, and with a supreme effort, she managed to not burst out laughing.
"Um," she said in a quiet voice that shook with suppressed mirth (though she hoped the teddy might interpret it as terror), "I'll just, er, straighten that out, shall I?"
"Remain seated!" shrieked the teddy. Chrysanthemum had started to rise out of her chair--now she plopped back down, making the tiny thing creak ominously. The teddy must have poked its head out into the tunnel and signaled for backup, because three more teddies entered the room and managed to right the chair through a combined effort. These three had an old-fashioned, sturdier look to them--the sort of teddies whose stiff limbs were posable because they were attached to the body with joints and not just stitching. Still, they seemed to have some difficulty righting the chair, which must have been quite heavy from their perspective. That explains the pulleys, Chrysanthemum thought wryly to herself.
The three teddies had just finished straightening the chair when the original teddy cleared his throat importantly. "The Grand Inquisitor!" it announced. Chrysanthemum and the Doctor were both prodded to their feet, the Doctor earning several extra jabs as it took him a few moments to extricate his legs from beneath the table. Still, he managed to stand without upending anything, and it was with a pleased and slightly smug smile that he turned to face the entrance.
The Grand Inquisitor sauntered into the room with the air of someone too convinced of their own importance to hurry. All the plushies Chrysanthemum could see had snapped to attention; he acknowledged them with a wave of his yellow paw, then headed for his chair, absently straightening his little red shirt as he walked. He sat down, then indicated that Chrysanthemum and the Doctor should do the same. They obeyed, the Doctor winding up with his knees under his chin again and looking rather glum about it. Chrysanthemum, however, was fighting back giggles once again. She recognized the Grand Inquisitor. Anyone would have recognized him.
"Leave us," said the Grand Inquisitor. His voice was lower than the other teddies', breezy, faintly tired, and completely familiar. With brisk salutes, the plushies obeyed. Shortly after they had cleared the room, the root portcullis was lowered, shutting them in.
"My, my." The Grand Inquisitor turned his sharp gaze from one prisoner to the other, and Chrysanthemum felt some of her repressed mirth evaporate. He wore an expression of calculating contempt she never would have expected to see on his otherwise familiar face, and she realized with a jolt that despite the lack of torture devices, they were going to get a proper interrogation.
And it was going to come from Winnie the Pooh.
The Doctor winced and shrugged apologetically.
"You got us captured," she cried, pointing a trembling finger at the teddy bear by the fourth wall, "by a bunch of bloody teddy bears?"
"Well, as I said before, several times, some of them are probably bunnies," he said evenly, as if trying to retain the last few sorry scraps of his dignity. "And," he added, "I wouldn't say I got us captured."
"If you hadn't been mucking about under that tree--"
"Excuse me!" the teddy bear piped up indignantly, and the spectacle of a talking teddy was enough to silence Chrysanthemum. It eyed them both until it was certain neither of them planned on saying anything more, then nodded once. "That's better. Now," it began to pace, tucking its stubby paws behind its back and puffing out its round, fuzzy belly, "your presence on our humble planet is both unappreciated and highly suspect. You will not speak," it shrilled as the Doctor opened his mouth to say something. Chrysanthemum glanced at the Doctor as he leaned back against the wall, and he shrugged at her. "Yet," the teddy amended. "In a few moments, you will be interrogated by our most esteemed Grand Inquisitor, and I dare say you shall have plenty to say to him before he's through with you."
Chrysanthemum shifted and glanced at the Doctor again. Her natural inclination--to be perfectly honest--was to giggle; one little teddy bear was hardly threatening in and of itself, especially one with a comically squeaky voice. But what it was actually saying was very threatening, indeed, and she had no idea whether or not to take the teddy seriously. The Doctor wasn't much help; he watched the teddy with a faint, thoughtful frown and said nothing.
But, like most of the Doctor's silences, this one didn't last long. "Well," he chirped, rubbing his hands together, "shall the 'esteemed Grand Inquisitor' be coming to us, or must we go to him?"
The teddy glared at the Doctor. "The Grand Inquisitor would not inconvenience himself by traveling down here. You shall meet him in the Interrogation Room."
Chrysanthemum entertained the mental image of stuffed animals wielding instruments of torture, and again was torn between amusement and worry. The Doctor was rocking back and forth on his heels, an expression of polite interest plastered across his face. Deciding to take comfort from this, Chrysanthemum turned to the teddy. "All right," she said. "How do we get there?"
"We shall escort you," the teddy replied, fixing its bright button eyes on her. "One moment." It turned away, and in a trice it had wriggled through a gap in the roots and vanished from sight.
As soon as it had gone, Chrysanthemum leaned towards the Doctor. "How worried should I be?" she asked him in an undertone, not taking her eyes off the gap through which the teddy had disappeared.
"I've gotten myself out of worse scrapes than this," the Doctor replied softly with a reassuring smile.
She tore her gaze from the wall and gave him a searching look. "Have you gotten other people out of worse scrapes than this?"
He blinked at her, then waved a hand a little too carelessly. "Yes. Course I have." He cleared his throat, and Chrysanthemum turned back to the root wall just in time to see a three foot wide portion of it start to grind up into the ceiling like a shaggy portcullis.
"Very worried, then," she muttered to herself as the root tips completely vanished into the roof, leaving a squarish doorway. The teddy promptly appeared in the new opening, flanked by two larger stuffed animals--a scruffy sheepdog whose eyes were hidden underneath a stained fringe, and a monkey with a fixed, mad grin. Both animals were holding thin sticks that had been whittled down to wicked points on each end.
"You will follow me," squeaked the teddy, "and if you try anything, my associates will make sure you regret it." The monkey and the sheepdog marched into the cell, waving their pikes menacingly. Chrysanthemum doubted they were capable of jabbing her anywhere above the thigh, and briefly considered trying something just to see what would happen. But as if reading her mind, the Doctor coughed and nodded pointedly towards the doorway. Chrysanthemum followed his gaze and immediately resolved to behave.
The door led to a long hallway. It was lit by some sort of bioluminescent fungus that coated the ceiling, and in the faint green glow she could see that the hallway was lined with more pike-wielding plushies of all shapes and sizes. There must have been at least two dozen she could see before the tunnel curved upwards, and possibly more beyond that. They might have only been stuffed animals, but they vastly outnumbered her and the Doctor, and they were armed.
"Ye-es," drawled the teddy, having observed their reactions and evidently finding them satisfactory. "You'd best do as you're told. Come on, then!" The teddy spun about and marched up the tunnel, and after each receiving a sharp poke from the monkey and sheepdog, the Doctor and Chrysanthemum followed.
The tunnel was surprisingly high, given that none of the stuffed animals topped three feet, but Chrysanthemum still had to crouch as they walked, and judging by the occasional dull thuds and muffled curses coming from behind her, the Doctor was finding the low ceiling quite problematic. There wasn't much she could do to offer encouragement, so she occupied herself by sizing up the stuffed animals as she shuffled past them. They all gazed straight ahead, fuzzy faces betraying no emotion, pikes at the ready. Once, she could have sworn she caught a rather shapeless brown rabbit looking right up at her, expression curious and perhaps a little wistful, but when she met its eyes, it hurriedly leveled its gaze and rearranged its features into an expression of stern detachment.
Chrysanthemum frowned, but before she could devote much thought to the little rabbit's strange behavior, the teddy stopped short and indicated that she and Doctor should halt as well. She obeyed, still hunched. They were in front of another wall of roots, which again rose with a gritty grinding noise. Once the root tips had cleared the ceiling, the teddy stepped back and waved Chrysanthemum forward. She hesitated, and the sheepdog gave her an encouraging jab with its pike. "All right," she muttered, stepping into the Interrogation Room.
Her mind had been half-expecting to see thumbscrews and perhaps a rack, so it was with considerable surprise that she took in the actual contents of the room: a low table surrounded by three squat chairs, all made of wood, and all painted what looked like a pastel shade of pink (though color was a bit difficult to judge in the green, fungal light). In front of each chair was a cup and saucer, and clustered in the middle of the table was a teapot, sugar dish, and a creamer shaped like a little holstein. Chrysanthemum turned to ask the teddy if they were perhaps in the wrong room and found herself face-to-face with the Doctor. He, too, was taking in the tea set, but he didn't look at all confused. If anything, he looked enormously pleased.
"Aha," he said quietly, as if he had just had a theory confirmed. He straightened--the ceiling in this room was high enough to allow it--and grinned at her. "Isn't this nice?"
"Yes," she said honestly; tea was more welcome than pain. But she was still half-convinced that some mistake had been made. This couldn't possibly be an interrogation room.
Her confusion was somewhat alleviated when the teddy strode into the room behind them. "Sit," he ordered, waving a stubby paw at the table. "The Grand Inquisitor will be with you shortly."
"Thanks!" the Doctor chirped, plunking down into one of the chairs. It was so low that his knees wound up under his chin, but he didn't seem to mind as he examined the tea set laid out on the table. His hair, Chrysanthemum abruptly noticed, was glowing green in a few places--apparently some fungus has wound up in it when he'd bumped his head on the ceiling. She hesitated, staring at the glow and wondering if she should mention it, and both the monkey and the sheepdog prodded the back of her knees. She sat.
A few uncomfortable minutes passed. No one said anything--the teddy stood in the doorway behind them, fuzzy face unreadable, flanked by the sheepdog and monkey. The Doctor fiddled with his cup and saucer, clacking them together (they were plastic and didn't shatter), and then spent several minutes trying to arrange his lanky frame more comfortably in the tiny chair. This, at least, provided some entertainment, and Chrysanthemum watched with growing amusement as he tried to fold himself into several different positions to little effect. Finally he hit upon the idea of stretching his legs out under the low table, which might have worked had he not struck the unoccupied chair a solid blow with one of his feet. The chair shot out from the table and tipped over backwards, and the Doctor froze, looking horrified. Chrysanthemum heard the teddy inhale sharply behind her, and with a supreme effort, she managed to not burst out laughing.
"Um," she said in a quiet voice that shook with suppressed mirth (though she hoped the teddy might interpret it as terror), "I'll just, er, straighten that out, shall I?"
"Remain seated!" shrieked the teddy. Chrysanthemum had started to rise out of her chair--now she plopped back down, making the tiny thing creak ominously. The teddy must have poked its head out into the tunnel and signaled for backup, because three more teddies entered the room and managed to right the chair through a combined effort. These three had an old-fashioned, sturdier look to them--the sort of teddies whose stiff limbs were posable because they were attached to the body with joints and not just stitching. Still, they seemed to have some difficulty righting the chair, which must have been quite heavy from their perspective. That explains the pulleys, Chrysanthemum thought wryly to herself.
The three teddies had just finished straightening the chair when the original teddy cleared his throat importantly. "The Grand Inquisitor!" it announced. Chrysanthemum and the Doctor were both prodded to their feet, the Doctor earning several extra jabs as it took him a few moments to extricate his legs from beneath the table. Still, he managed to stand without upending anything, and it was with a pleased and slightly smug smile that he turned to face the entrance.
The Grand Inquisitor sauntered into the room with the air of someone too convinced of their own importance to hurry. All the plushies Chrysanthemum could see had snapped to attention; he acknowledged them with a wave of his yellow paw, then headed for his chair, absently straightening his little red shirt as he walked. He sat down, then indicated that Chrysanthemum and the Doctor should do the same. They obeyed, the Doctor winding up with his knees under his chin again and looking rather glum about it. Chrysanthemum, however, was fighting back giggles once again. She recognized the Grand Inquisitor. Anyone would have recognized him.
"Leave us," said the Grand Inquisitor. His voice was lower than the other teddies', breezy, faintly tired, and completely familiar. With brisk salutes, the plushies obeyed. Shortly after they had cleared the room, the root portcullis was lowered, shutting them in.
"My, my." The Grand Inquisitor turned his sharp gaze from one prisoner to the other, and Chrysanthemum felt some of her repressed mirth evaporate. He wore an expression of calculating contempt she never would have expected to see on his otherwise familiar face, and she realized with a jolt that despite the lack of torture devices, they were going to get a proper interrogation.
And it was going to come from Winnie the Pooh.