tampered | (no subject)

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When; November 11th, early afternoon
Rating; Hmm. PG-13 for blood and possibly moderate language.
Characters; Janine Farehouse, Rose Tyler
Summary; Janine has some puncture wounds from a pre-Poly encounter with a T. rex. She's also never seen a human body since becoming a Quetzalcoatlus. Rose can help with both!
Log;

Janine swung her big head down to look at the toothmarks on her underside again. It was tough to see anything through the bloodied not-hair covering most of her body, but one of them was dripping. Moriarty hadn't been biting down - not until he'd shaken his head and everything had gone dark, anyway; she had no idea what had happened then - but he'd still picked her up with a maw full of six-inch teeth, and she was not weightless.

It did hurt. She couldn't deny that. But her body did seem to have a high pain tolerance; what probably would have been enough to have her whimpering as a human was just a persistent stinging that got worse when she moved and the scabs broke open. That movement part bothered her. She wasn't hungry now - she'd just come back from a meal when all this had happened - but she would be later. Her body had to eat, often.

Whatever'd happened, here, worrying about it and wondering wouldn't fix anything. Janine refused to dwell on whether this was a trick, if Moriarty had bitten a huge chunk out of her after she'd passed out and this was a dying hallucination or anything like that. It wouldn't help her.

She kept an eye out in the general direction of that city. Janine knew she was bigger as a pterosaur - not that that had been hard, she'd always been short as a girl - but expected it to be in the six-feet-or-so range, so it was at around her own towering eye level that she was looking.

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Rose gets together a first aid kit, not having a clue what sort of thing Janine might need but she figures first aid can't be that different. Although if more than some ointment and gauze is needed, she might call the Doctor, not that he'd know anything about Quetzalcoatlus first aid.

She's walking at a good pace and when she sees Janine in the distance, she picks it up to a full fledged jog. There's a lot of running involved in being the Doctor's companion so it's something she's used to. When Rose does finally approach her there's a huge smile on her face she can't wipe off. It's a bloody ~~dinosaur~~ Quetzalcoatlus, a living breathing and also literally bloody one. That fact sobers her a bit. She waves up at Janine and holds aloft the first aid kit.

"Hi, I'm Rose."

For Janine's information human body wise, Rose is a rather short one standing at about 5'5. She's also small in size and the Doctor is fond of pointing out how pink and yellow she is. She's not entirely sure why. It's just something he does. TARDIS on the other hand tends to point out how smiley Rose is.

Movement catches her eye. Janine's host, the mostly-sleeping Quetzalcoatlus whose body this is, stirs for long enough to make a rapid wordless evaluation which boils down to too big to make good prey. Because of that, Rose gets quite a bit closer before Janine registers that she's not another of the feathery small dinosaurs she's gotten used to seeing.

There's a startled moment of Is she a midget?, but the woman has utterly normal proportions, which fit those of the trees and surroundings around here in all the expected ways. Which means, of course, that Janine is much, much bigger than she'd believed before. Her beak is longer than Rose is tall.

Janine does not laugh incredulously. Pterosaurs don't make that kind of vocalization, and she's lost the habit of projecting the sound when amused. But the feel of it does creep up out of her.

The sound coming from her beak is vaguely birdlike, a hoarse chattery noise, but there's her "voice", too. < Wow. Okay. > She lowers her head to her shoulder level, having to extend her neck out to do so. < A little surreal. >

Rose does sort of feel that and it's odd because she's been around the Doctor enough and knows enough about how to push her emotions into him that she realizes something is up. It's not her laughter, she doesn't think but she is sort of giddy at the idea of meeting a species she's never seen before much less met. It feels like traveling with the Doctor again and that is incredible.

Rose holds a hand out, almost asking permission to touch the beak that hovers at her shoulder level.

"Yeah...you're tellin' me." It's said with a grin and that absolute delight and curiosity that's probably radiating off her.

This is decidedly ridiculous but, for whatever reason, it's ridiculous in the good way. She'll take that.

The hand-out gesture looks a lot like a handshake; she knows it's not, but the whim hits her. Deftly, cautiously, Janine moves her head, opens her beak slightly, and catches Rose's sleeve, then nods fractionally. More or less shaking hands.

The last ten inches or so of her enormous beak are sharp-edged, but not enough so to cut the cloth even if she'd applied pressure. The keratin on those edges isn't unlike the texture of fingernails, though coarser. She smells rather distinctively like ocean, and a little of fish.

Janine lets go and, wry, says, < So I guess that means I'm absolutely enormous. Kind of assumed I wasn't. >

There's a moment where Rose's eyes go wide and there's some fear. Janine is enormous and then she relaxes and can't help laughing. "This is brilliant. You are brilliant."

She notices the smell and kind of files it back in her head. She takes this to mean that Janine's diet consists of fish. It's handy information to know.

"Sorry. Yeah, absolutely enormous."

And then she remembers why she's there. "Oh! First aid. Lemme see if I can get a look at those injuries. She's going to bend a bit and move to Janine's side to see if she can get a good look at what's wrong. She winces a bit. "Do they hurt?"

< If that's Brit for 'good', we're golden, > Janine says, keeping her voice light. She'd caught the eyes widening, felt a moment of unease.

< A little. Aaah, here. > Shifting her weight from four limbs to three, Janine lifts one wing/arm up from the ground and stretches it out, making her underside less of an enclosed space. A couple of the puncture marks twinge unpleasantly as she does this, she can feel them pulling, but if they start bleeding again it's a seep, now, not dripping yet. It's her paler chest and belly that have the deeper ones. The teeth hadn't gone in as far on her back.

[OOC: A little like this (http://images.plurk.com/08d8bf81a2c429b0e2b41efbccfcd32b.gif), though not reaching as far. Second reference image (http://images.plurk.com/797e9dce5176e9d951ade198bbe70547.jpg).]

"That's Brit for more than good," Rose grins as she sets down the first aid box and reaches out to lightly touch the puncture wounds, examining them careful. "All right, I'm goin' to get 'em washed out first and then put some ointment on 'em that should help. Think it's gonna need a bandage. That's goin' to stick to the hair but can't be helped."

She goes to work dabbing peroxide on the wounds so they can be treated somewhat properly.

It stings, and the feel of tiny fingers - or tiny-seeming ones, anyway - is utterly bizarre to Janine. Her facial expression can't change, unlike mammals her skin can't twitch, but her wing membranes tremble uncomfortably and her third eyelids slide out to cover her eyes again. She can see through them, if more dimly and with less detail than when they're open.

Bearing up under it, forcing herself to hold still, Janine rambles in a dry 'voice'. < This body went through a lot even before I got to it, but I don't think rex teeth were ever involved then. Moriarty wasn't exactly in top form, either. So inconsiderate of evolution, not giving them the ability to brush their teeth. >

Rose tries to be gentle, aware it probably stings and hurts a bit. "Men, can't even be bothered to brush their teeth before diggin' in." She's teasing Janine, trying to make this a less painful experience for her.

"Healin's good, yeah? I mean you heal well." She's a little worried about infection.

< If he was even male. ...I don't know what gender anything was, back there. > Janine chose to believe her own body was female despite the brightness of her crest. Wasn't like it would make a difference either way, with everything being internal.

< So far. I got hit by lightning, or almost, and couldn't use a wing, couple days ago, but I got better. > She moved her big head and neck in a gesture that could be taken as a shrug.

"Lightning? Wow. Think that'd take most people down for longer than that." Not that she's human but Rose uses people in a very loose sense after meeting the Doctor and traveling with him.

She starts smearing ointment on some of the wounds. It shouldn't sting except for the light pressure of her fingers.

< It was fun. By which I mean it wasn't, not at all. Never got the chance to find out if that's a Quetzalcoatlus thing, rapid recovery, or I'm just special, but I'm not gonna press it. >

Wing membranes tremble. Janine's inflexible tail twitches. < Cold. >

"Either way, it comes in handy I bet."

Rose sees the tail twitch and winces. "Sorry. I'll try to warm it up a bit."

She rubs the ointment between her fingers a bit before smearing it on this time.

[Sorry, I got busy.]

< So far. > She waits with, she thinks, admirable patience. Janine is... not hungry yet, not even really leaning that way, but she could eat again. There are some squirrels around. She picks them out, locates them, without any real intent to pursue.

< The ones on my back aren't so deep. None of those are bleeding now, anyway. >

[no worries!]

Rose sees the way Janine eyes the squirrels and glances up at Janine as she finishes up treating the wounds on her belly. "Want me to take a look at 'em? Probably shouldn't move 'round too much 'til these heal a bit."

As a response, Janine crouches her forelimbs. One at a time she shuffles her feet back and clawed hands farther apart, awkwardly supporting herself so she's not quite lying on her belly. Muscles protest this weird new use. She ignores them, tipping her massive head to look along her own back out of one red eye.

< Might as well. I guess you can just... climb on me. > It didn't look terribly practical to try to stand on the ground and reach with those little human arms. Her wings and wing membranes sprawled out too far. < But be careful. >

"Promise. Careful as possible."

Rose stuffs her pockets with pre-moistened pads to clean the wounds up with, ointment and bandages then she scrambles on trying to take care not to grab anything that could hurt or get too near the wounds on Janine's back. Once up there she sits backwards, legs on either side of Janine's body.

"All right?" She wants to ascertain she's not hurting her before she begins treating the wounds.

Janine's wing membranes are much more sensitive than the parts of her skin covered with not-hair. Fortunately she can also tense them, so that the thin layer of air sac and tough fibers embedded in muscle and skin becomes rigid, like the skin of a kayak.

And now Janine has the odd impression that she's playing pony for a small child. She could stand up... she won't stand up. Past her shoulderblades, her back slopes sharply when she's up, and Rose isn't on her shoulderblades.

< Fine. Hey, you ever have the feeling that something happened, once, and then your life became weird? > Janine twists her long head around on her neck to start indicating where the toothmarks are with the tip of her beak. Her head and beak are actually longer than her torso is.

Rose appreciates so much not getting dumped on her face. She studies the toothmarks carefully, grinning at Janine's question.

"Oh yeah. Like that one thing changed your life from normal and even borin' to weird and even amazin'? What was that one thing for you?"

There hasn't ever been one thing. The M.I.N.D. Machine had been a bright, flashy, obvious change to, well, everything. Now Janine is an extinct flying reptile with powers and abilities she doesn't entirely understand.

But it wasn't like everything had been normal, before. Normal had ended years ago, when they'd had the call saying Janine's dad couldn't come home alive.

Janine has some self-control. It was a long time ago, and even from the start she'd known she had to be strong for her mother. The flash of mixed, unhappy emotion - she has no mobile face for it to reflect on, but it's there all the same - is gone quickly.

< Loki, > she says, to cover it. < That's what I call him, anyway. He doesn't have a name. >

Rose feels it a bit and she softens her touch. She's not really in the position to hug Janine or she would.

"God of chaos or somethin' of that sort. Sounds like it was appropriate. What'd he do?" And then a pause as she checks the bandages. "All done up here if you can let me down."

On that, Janine either doesn't notice or doesn't comment. She'd rather no one know that she has weaknesses. That's why she has trouble with sincerity.

< The Trickster, actually. > She rattles it off wryly as she lowers her body as far as she can without lying on her belly, so Rose can slide off her shoulder. < Saved me more than once, generally at the last moment since he has a sense of drama, taught me to fly, how to live on my own... abandoned me and came back... Lots of things. >

When Rose is off she gradually comes back up to her standing height and shakes her neck so the not-hairs flare out like a dogs'. Loki, Janine considers saying, is sort of her first boyfriend. She doesn't know if she loves him or not, but there's something there. But she doesn't say it. It wasn't a weird thought back there. But here, where there were humans everywhere...

Rose slips off Janine's shoulder and lands on her feet then steps back a bit so she can look at Janine as she talks. Her description of Loki sounds a bit familiar. In fact, very familiar.

"Sorta...showed you the world, yeah?"

Janine's shoulders aren't flexible in that way, but the ducking/rising gesture she makes with her great head and neck does manage to suggest a shrug. < Yeah. Part of it I did on my own, but I couldn't have gotten that far without Loki. >

She misses him already, though without the rising panic she'd felt days ago whenever he was out of her sight. Probably because he has left already, she muses. < I thought he'd follow me forever, but we'll have to see, hmm? >

Rose reaches up to lay a hand on approximately Janine's shoulder. "You never know. He could show up here. Sorta the way this place works, yeah?"

Janine's 'voice' is light now. < Eh... maybe. Is it just things that can talk that show up here? > She suspects that Loki would be considered an animal... and she supposes he is. He wouldn't have any use for the communicator things, that's for sure.

Rose hesitates because honestly she's not certain about that. "I...don't know. TARDIS was here with the Doctor and she's sentient but she didn't use a device 'til she got a body that could talk."

If she had an eyebrow - and if she'd ever been the kind of person who could raise just one, Spocklike - it would be going up right now. < Care to explain any of that? Who's Tardis, f'rex? >

An unkind or possibly just even more cynical part of her automatically thinks back to the shortened version of retard, but Janine says nothing. She's been cruel in the past, she thinks, but even if she hadn't resolved to be lighter she's never used that as an insult. Too much the kind of thing that gets used against the kids she actually halfway likes.

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry. TARDIS is--was the Doctor's ship: Time And Relative Space Dimensions. Time travelin' machine but she's not a machine so much as...a being? She was a police box that was bigger on the inside and she's sentient."

Yeah Rose realizes that she keeps mixing up past and present tenses. It's complicated with the TARDIS. "Anyway, now she's in a human body and she can't travel through space or time. She was here before though, when she was a police box."

Janine blinks, semitransparent third eyelid visible for a moment. < Oh-kay. > Her neck flexed as she made the shrug gesture again. < Aaah, that's not much weirder than me. >

"Yeah. I was sorta thinkin' that when you were talkin' 'bout M.I.N.D."

She hesitates, not sure whether she ought to bring it up or not. "Was there any chance of gettin' home for you?"

< Well... >

To stall, and on the pretense that she's weary of keeping her head level and low at around five or six feet off the ground - Janine thinks she's adjusting quite well to being bigger than she thought she was - she changes the angle, so the tip of her beak gouges into the ground. Her eye level's still about the same - Janine's beak is just that big.

A great breath luffs hot and fishy-smelling out of Janine's nostrils, not quite forceful enough to be a sigh but likely enough to stir Rose's hair. It takes several seconds; she's got decidedly impressive lung/air sac capacity.

< There was, > she says, her 'voice' airy but distant. That enormous red eye isn't focused on Rose at all.

"But you didn't take it."

There's no judgment in her voice. She understands. She had a way home and she turned it down. Of course then the choice was made for her but she fought her way back even then.

< I might have, > Janine says. She's not sure, and sounds like it. < I chose no, at first, but later... I don't know. Either way I'd be losing something. >

Is it a relief, to not make that choice? Here, as long as this lasts, she has a kind of balance of the things she'd have lost or kept with either decision. It's a good thing, she decides abruptly, ignoring the tiny knot that forms in her keeled breastbone. < Out of my hands now, anyway. You know the last thing I remember before this? >

Rose smiles sympathetically. She can understand so much more than Janine probably realizes. She reaches out and runs her fingers down Janine's beak a bit.

"What's that?"

< Moriarty, > Janine says. The touch feels weird - distant. Her great beak is keratinized; it's like a touch on the thumbnail instead of the skin, but not.

< Moriarty, and getting shaken like you shake - I don't know, a can of pop you're about to give to someone you want to see get fizzed on. I must've blacked out. >

Abruptly she snorts; it's a surprisingly big sound, made resonant by the hollow space in her beak. < Must've taken me half an hour after this before I could start trying to get my bearings. >

Rose takes a deep breath, almost a gasp when Janine tells her what her last memory was. She nods and her hand stills on Janine's beak. She's not sure whether she finds it comforting or not but that is how it's meant.

"M'sorry. I think it'll be better for you here. 'Least in that regard."

< We'll see. If it lasts, if it doesn't last - better than being eaten. > There is a world of fatalism in her 'voice', more than might be expected for a fourteen-year-old, even one who's just gone through something like that.

< I'm not going to worry about it. It doesn't do any good. >

Regardless of her age, Rose is a bit saddened by the fatalism. She doesn't like to see anyone come to that sort of attitude.

"I think...I think the City's the sorta place that you can kinda make the most of your life here."

< 'You' meaning me, or general 'you'? > Janine asks. She sounds cynical, but wearily so. It occurs to her that though Rose's relative size makes Janine assume she's young, she is several years older than Janine. A couple weeks ago that would have meant a lot.

But Janine's not human anymore. Social conventions related to that kind of thing don't apply - this is a good thing. Hasn't she always wanted to be an outsider? < Guess it's tabula rasa, anyway. How loud does that ticking get when you're alone? >

"Both, I guess. M'probably too optimistic 'bout the City though." She knows most people hate the City and she understands why. She just can't bring herself to loathe it. Not even a little.

Rose bites her bottom lip. "Don't know. Never been alone." The Doctor was in the City before she showed up and met her at the fountain. "If it gets too loud, gimme a call. We'll talk."

She says, < There's good and bad about everywhere. If you can't leave, it's probably better to make the best of it. >

< Never? Huh. > Janine gently dislodges her beak from the ground, raising her head, and scans the skies above. White clouds, blue skies. It's not a bad day. She blinks, realizing that she's half looking for Loki, and put the thought aside. < I think I'm more of a loner than you. But all right, I'll do that. >

"Yeah. Might as well. 'Stead of bein' miserable all the time."

She shrugs a little. "The Doctor got here 'fore me so when I showed up he was here to meet me." She smiles at her and nods. "Probably." It's not that Rose can't be alone. It's more particularly tied to the Doctor. They're practically glued together at the hip. When they've lost each other as often as Rose and the Doctor have, it's a bit understandable.

Also a bit co-dependent but they're aware of that and don't really care.

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