who_contest | Observing The Small Things (Reply)

Title: Observing The Small Things
Rating: PG (for slight suggestion of language)
Genre: Humor, and some heartwarming (is heartwarming a genre?)
Word Count: 1716
Pairings or Characters: Eighth Doctor
Spoilers: none
Warnings:none
Summary: A ship is about to be blown to pieces, with the Doctor on it. But all he cares about is the rat in the corner of the ship.

I was trying to figure out which story to place into this challenge. I was actually thinking of two separate ideas, one already partially written, for this. This story was being written to pass the time...and then I realized this would be perfect! So here it is.

A man in a velvet coat sat, and pondered what to do next. Above him were countless officers deliberating on an escape plan. The ship that he was on was probably going to be blown to smithereens in moments.

But, in a time when most people were panicking, he was silent. He noticed a rat in a corner of the ship.

“How did the rat get on the ship?” he asked another passenger. The passenger seemed to be too busy on trying to keep the rapidly decreasing shields up from enemy fire to answer the Doctor's request.

The Doctor, seeming slightly annoyed at being ignored, stomped rather loudly to the main floor of the ship. The ship known as the Blazing Eternal (or just Blaze) was originally meant as a holding container for the survivors of the dissolution of the human colony Eternal (such names almost seem to test Fate to cause a catastrophe) . As such, it had many floors, but custom had decided that floor 39 was the main floor. The passengers would like to think that this decision was made for a great purpose, but the Doctor greatly suspected it was made just because most of the bathrooms was on this floor. Speaking to the Captain, the Doctor said “Why is there a rat running about on the floor?”

Captain Zieb-uck , who had many other, more pressing matters on her mind (like the explosions rocking the ship) gave the Doctor a look that said “I couldn't care less, and I'm two seconds away from throwing you from the ship. You would do well to step away slowly”

Unfortunately, the Eighth Doctor, unlike his last incarnation, seemed incapable of deciphering implied communication of immediate desire to exit, or in colloquial language, was incapable of knowing when someone was saying “to GTFO.”

The Captain was of a short stature and relatively young age, but made up for it in her ability to scare someone to submission. “LISTEN, you rat-lover. Unknown aliens are attacking us. We don't know why they hate us, or how they are tracking us. All attempts at communication have failed. Our life support systems may have been damaged. Our septic system was certainly damaged, considering the smell.” She considered whether she had listed enough grievances to show the import to the situation, and added “Our snack dispenser is broken.”

(She immediately felt stupid for saying that, but irritatedly noticed that the broken snack dispenser was the first to get a reaction out of him.)

“So, having heard all of the catastrophes I'm dealing with,” she said. “DO YOU THINK I CARE ABOUT A RAT?” Recovering from that (controlled) outburst, she moved some platinum blonde hair out of her face, and waited for him to also get out of her face.

The Doctor didn't. “You say communication has failed? How so?” he asked.

This man didn't give up. Sighing, she said “Every time we try to communicate, all we get are pictures of this weird ape-creature.” She flicked a switch on the holo-console, and a weird ape-creature came on screen.

“It looks like a baby ape”, said the Doctor.

Captain Zie-buck agreed that it looked like a baby ape, if you had bad eye-sight and/or brain damage.

“Captain, they're readying another weapon!” said an officer.

The Captain asked “How are our shields?” She already knew the answer from the officer's mournful expression.

(Behind her, the Doctor was pestering a mother for a picture of her infant. Apparently, he said he had already asked, and received, the baby's consent.)

The Captain, it should be noted, had been the captain for only 3 weeks. She was actually originally the cook, but then the captain died of old age, and she just so happening to be the daughter of the captain. Fortunately, she had been privately schooled in military and ship directing knowledge. But se had never been prepared for giving a speech for a crew about to die. She turned to see the crew that entrusted on her with their lives, and realized that she failed them. She knew that she should give some big speech, but speech-making was not one of her biggest talents.

But she had to. She was the captain, after all. “I'd give a big speech, but that would be trite. We're up against impossible odds. Maybe my father....” She nearly began to cry. But the captain couldn't cry, or else the whole crew would fall apart. That was one of her father's first lessons. “No, he isn't here. So there's no good worrying about the past. We're in a tough fight. I honestly don't know whether we will survive. But whatever happens, I hope you know that I enjoyed serving with you all--”

“Excuse me,” the Doctor interrupted, “but would you mind uploading this baby picture to the attacking aliens? Wonderful speech, by the way. ”

Before Captain Zie-buck could begin to give him the worst tongue-lashing he'd ever received, the Doctor said “Just do it. If you don't, you could destroy our last chance of saving this crew.”

Usually, she would have ignored him. But his expression showed her that he was serious this time. She nodded approval to the communication officer, and soon the picture of a smiling human baby was uploaded to an entire alien war-fleet.

At first, nothing happened.

Then, a loud explosion rocked the ship.

“No more shields!” said a despairing ship officer. He quickly hid under a table.. (Only a panicking human would immediately hide under a table to hide from an exploding ship. Human survival instinct can be bizarre sometimes.

“Well, this is very embarrassing,” said the Doctor.

“Actually, this ship has slow Internet,” said the communications officer. (Why is a space network still called the Internet, when the actual infrastructure has nothing to do with Earth Internet? The same reason why you still say that you “hang up” a cellphone, or the Save function on a computer usually has a floppy disk symbol on it). “It may take them a minute or so to get our message.”

A few more seconds of silence passed, and the officer under the table peeked his head out.

“Wait. They turned their weapons off!” the communications officer said.

“What did you do?” asked a surprised Captain.

But the Doctor was already running down the halls. Soon, he returned with something in his hand. It was the rat.

“Upload a picture of this, quick!” said the Doctor.

After receiving the message, the communications officer said “They're giving out the Quivik standard sign for peace, and wish to board.”

“Let them,” said the Captain. Then she turned to the Doctor. “Now tell me what you knew. Why is a picture of a baby and a rat stopping them from killing us?”

“Oh, it's not necessarily anything I knew,” the Doctor said, with just a slight air of smugness. “I observed. For example, are you sure this is a rat? Look closely.”

She did. And then noticed something odd about the rat.

“It's got two tails?” she said.

“Actually, the tail's bisected, but close enough,” the Doctor said. “ Because this isn't a rat at all. It's a Quivik infant, which is easily confused for a young rat. You must picked it up somewhere along the way.”

The mother whose infant's picture had saved the Blazing Eternal said, “Actually, I started seeing the rat—I mean alien infant after we did that stop at the trading market on Rubity.”

“Poor thing. Must have been lonely without its parents,” said the Doctor.

The Captain wasn't done asking questions, though. “And the picture of the weird ape thing?”

The Doctor said “I already told you. It looked like a baby gorilla. They must have scanned, and seeing there were primates on board, and having never seen a primate, they sent out pictures of what they assumed baby primates looked like. They hoped that, through those pics, we would know they were looking for a baby. When we did not respond with what they could understand, they assumed the worst, and began attacking in revenge for the dead baby. When we showed that the baby was alive and well, they quickly stopped attacking.”

Just then, two Quiviks came on board. They looked like...bipedal rats. Well, they looked like human-sized rats, with bisected tales, plus horns, and bony ridges on thir backs. Oh, and they had metal armor with flamethrowers. But besides all that, they looked like bipedal rats.

The small “rat” in the Doctor's hand suddenly began chitterring, and jumped out of his hand and towards the adult Quiviks. Soon, all the Quivik were chitterring. It became very apparent from the body language that the two adult Quivik were the parents.

“Aww, that's so sweet,” said the officer under the table.

“Yep, isn't it beautiful?” said the Doctor, a big smile plastered on his face.

Even the Captain had to agree. “I actually feel bad about attacking them now,” she murmured. Memories of her father came to her, and she actually did begin to cry. Just a little.

Then the Quivik walked out with their child.

“Wait, no thank you?” said the Captain, her tears (almost) forgotten.

“Well, we did just fight them. I guess not blowing us up is thanks enough,” said the comms officer.

“All's well that ends well,” said the Doctor.

“Wait!” said an officer. “The Quiviks are shooting another beam at us!”

There was no time to dodge. The shields weren't even depleted, because the shields were gone.

Instead, the shields were replenished.

“Their beam is fixing the Blazing Eternal's damage!” said Captain Zie-buck. “They're helping us!”

“Of course!” said the Doctor. “Whenever the Quivik can live in a place long enough to get a mental map of a place, they can upload it to a computer and use it to reconstitute the ship to original condition! Since the baby was in our ship for so long, they could put the ship back to mint condition!”

Then one final picture was uploaded. It was of the little baby Quivik, in the arms of its parents, clearly happy.

All's well that ends well, indeed.