Doctor! Doctor! Give me the news!!

Inquirer

Leon and Roy blink in consternation as I (still invisible) open and close the door a few seconds after they'd entered the building. Not every day they see an "ordinary" (nonpowered) door apparently open and close itself, I'll bet!

The Doctor

"What the hell?!" Roy blanches as Inquirer allows herself to become visible.

Leon, meanwhile, is just about as stunned as Roy Batty, but as it stands his tongue is more tied up than the group leader so he fails to add to the conversation.

Both of them have their backs to me, but . . . I shall let my wife take the lead this time around. I can be generous. Or rather, allow Inquirer the honor of introducing the person who shall lay out our proposition (or just lay these Replicants OUT if push comes to shove).

Push comes to shove I can always use my Venusian Aikido to handle any violence thrown my way. That or a nervelock or three. Nerve locks which, if done for too long on ordinary human beings can cause permanent nerve damage . . . paralysis (like the type I'd used on that one rather unpleasant chap, Professor Eric Stahlman, under circumstances that totally justified my actions . . . . just ask Betty and Ragan all about it. They'd watched it all in that one TV series episode which eerily mirrored my life, Doctor Who: Inferno).

. . .

Would have caused Stahlman permanent nerve damage if the Brigadier hadn't . . . requested I desist. Never did care for chaps who try to bash my brain out with batons . . .

. . .

That said . .

Of course, these gentlemen, being rather . . . shall we say, prone to violence due to their upbringing (that is, they'd been created to be soldiers . . . against who or what the movie never really did say) try to do something . . . regrettable just almost as soon as Inquirer returns to the land of the visible.

The swat she gives Roy is a few degrees gentler than what she gives to Leon. Leon goes down like a ton of very stunned bricks, moaning softly. Roy, meanwhile is staring up from where he'd landed (none too gently) on the floor. Winded. She had been easier on Roy (despite his rougher treatment of her) because . . . . Well, Roy's closer to death! Do too much to him and it'll only bring it about faster . . . and who wants that?

Oh, not saying that Roy's a pleasant fellow. He and his friends had slaughtered a lot of people in order to get free and clear down here to Earth. Then again, if I and my companions start going about killing others (without doing our upmost at avoiding needing to kill others). . . . Well, then I wouldn't be the Doctor and my friends wouldn't be my companions, eh?

. . .

Working her jaw a little bit, Inquirer sighs.

"Don't do that again," she advices the Replicants as they unsteadily to their feet, still looking like they cannot believe what had just happened to them.

Sovay

"By all means do not do that again," she says, frowning slightly. "Not healthy at all, considering that on the scale of things you could put me as a perhaps a Nexus 16 to your Nexus 6."

"Huh?" Leon blinks, still a little woozy and clearly thinking he'd misheard.

Not unreasonable, considering the rather harsh landing he'd had there a few seconds ago.

"Now, listen very closely to my short friend behind you with the fox tail," Inquirer finishes up, not bothering to answer Leon's grunted inquiry. "She might look cute, but she's to be taken VERY seriously."

Roy, warily, turns slightly towards me (not to totally turning his back to Inquirer as if unwilling to expose himself that way to any harm from the Golem) and then . . . stares at me.

"You're wanting us to listen to something a petiod* has to say?!" he begins to protest, only to go silent in shock as I will myself to cycle through my various other forms (that is the humanoid fox and full fox form) before cycling back to my (most) human form.

1. "Can petoids do that?" I ask him, ears wiggling a little. Rather do find the process of shifting to be . . . enjoyable.

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