creepy and hatboy – romana wants her tardis back

the door opens

we were drinking melon-flavoured refreshments on a beach near the kingfisher bay resort, when the door suddenly exploded.
inward.
i guess, then, that i should say the door imploded.
hatboy took another sip on his drink before pointing at the smoky ruin which had destroyed our sunset.
“that’s wierd,” he said. “i thought that door was explosion-proof.”
i nodded, finishing up my sand castle. it was a fifteen storey affair, with many windows. i liked the moat the best, and had even imported a few crabs to act as dragons. they were preventing the storming of the castle by rogue sea horses, who had been trampling my vegie patch.
i’d have to deal with them, i thought, and began littering the patch with sultanas. that’d do it. sultanas were the food of the devil.
“looks like we’ve got a visitor,” hatboy said, reaching for the last packet of salty treats.
and through the dead door a delicate little figure stumbled into the ocean and began flailing about in an effort not to drown.
“maybe you should get rid of the water,” i said.
hatboy sighed, pressed some bottons on his remote, and everything disappeared.

hey!

i was sitting on the foil carpet beside our couch. “hey!” i cried. “my sand castle! it took me weeks to get the mould to grow over it like that!”
“you can build another,” he said. “besides, i had to get rid of everything. if i hadn’t, the grid would’ve collapsed once i removed the water. beaches don’t like being without water. it does unreasonable things to their psyche.”
i pointed. “and what about your drink?”
he took a careful sip, obviously putting some thought to his answer. “that,” he said at last. “is another matter altogether. and, without possessing my superior understanding of the physics involved in holo-manipulation, you just wouldn’t understand.”
giving up, i turned to our visitor, who was busy bleeding onto our foil carpet.
she had a rather large and exciting-looking hole in her side.
something about the burnt-to-a-crisp face seemed naggingly familiar.
hatboy bent down to have a look. he used the remote to poke at her wound. she groaned, obviously unconscious. this was probably a good thing.
“well, doctor hatboy?” i asked.
“i’m a doctor, creepy. not a miracle worker,” he said.
“dammit, doc’, you’ve got to try! this is a human being, not some roadkill to be put on the radiator for lunch!”
“very well,” he said, pulling off his coat. “your speech has moved me. now, pass the band-aids.”

silver in the fishbowl

when i was young, i bought a fish bowl and filled it with fish, who ate each other very quickly. as each little wriggling creature died it would float for a while, then sink to the pebbles where lone bottom-feeders could graze on its elegant skeleton for many days.
after a while, the glass became furry on the inside, and soon i couldn’t see the fish within, but now and then i noticed the glinting of their scales as they flitted through the murky water.
at least, i hope it was fish and not some psychotic fish-eating xenomorph with silver hair and spikey tail.
watching the mould scrape itself across the glass like an insubstantial octopus with wide wet arms taught me a fine lesson on life: if you don’t keep your face clean, it will grow green, and little insects will gnaw on your cheeks.

burning the midnight lamp

the velvet moon cushions the stars. we sit on the shore as lemon waves tickle the beach, watching our visitor who sleeps on our couch.
hatboy washes his hands of her blood.
“you know, i really think we know her from somewhere,” he says.
“i was thinking the same thing.”
“something about her face…”
“no, not her face. her hair.”
“maybe. but i think her hat looks familiar, too.”
“i don’t recognise it. italian, is it?”
“could be. or french. one of those wacky places of much-hat-makey, anyway.”
“that hole seems to be healing quite fast.”
“must be the band-aids. they cure anything. i once used them to cure a common cold, you know.”
“really?”
“no. but it sounded true when i said it.”

faces of death

“i’ve been thinking -”
“don’t hurt yourself.”
“-that it’s not her face, or her hair, or even her hat which we recognise.”
“do tell.”
“well, my valued super-sidekick and trusted cynic of my abilities, my sherlock creepy powers have divined the origin of this here visitor and, if you will allow me to demonstrate, you will notice something rather significant…”
“if she finds out you just lifted her skirt while she was unconscious, she’ll kill you.”
“then we’d best keep the knowledge between us. well, did you notice?”
“notice what?”
“she’s wearing no underpants.”
“oh. that. and what kind of evidence is that, if not a sign of your slow spiral into depravity and evil perversion for which no doubt i will have to reap justice on your sherlock creepy self?”
“elementary, my dear hatboy. take note, if you will. no timepiece, digital or analogue, on her wrist or in her pockets.”
“so? she doesn’t like to know what time it is. maybe she’s a student. she’s almost dressed like one. frilly shirt and silly coat and all.”
“concentrate, hatboy. she has no watch, therefore she does not percieve time to be of any importance, or rather, perhaps, she views it in an entirely different spectrum altogether. perhaps, she’s not quite so linear as we are led to believe, which brings me to my third, and final piece of evidence.” and i point at her shiny black shoes with pretty little silver buckles on them.
hatboy’s intake of breath is dramatic to say the least, and his eyes widen as the full power of my sherlock creepy finally unveils itself in all its melodramatic glory.
“the shoes!” he cries, falling to his knees and kissing the silver buckles with great delight. “it’s the shoes!”
“yes,” i tell him. “when you remove all impossible stuff, what stuff is left, no matter how silly or deranged, is likely to be the most reasonably probable stuff of much-knowy. therefore, you know who this is…”
“romana!” he cries, as our guest slowly opens her eyes, sees the two of us, and groans.
“oh timegod,” she says. “not you again.”

romana

when last we’d seen her she was sitting on a hill watching her tardis implode, which was not a pretty sight at all.
hatboy had been running away in the opposite direction, burdened by the weight of many spare parts lifted from her tardis, and i was trying to scurry after him. lucky for us, we had found the tear in space and time which had long stood guard over my bed, or we may have been stuck in 1936 with her.
she sits back on our couch and notices the glittery machinery which make up the guts of hatboy’s project, and sighs. “i was wondering where that got to.”
“well, don’t look at us,” he says. “we bought all this stuff from two very reputable dealers.”
“what were their names?”
“uh, thaybo and precey?”
i pat his back and smile at her. “i think she fell for it,” i say through the corner of my mouth. “but just in case, let me try.”
she glares as hatboy nods and goes back to recalibrating his somethingorother.
“romana!” i cry, trying for a hug, which she skillfully avoids. “how great to see you? how’ve you been? seen any good movies lately?”
“as a matter of fact,” she says. “i’ve seen far too many movies since two imbeciles marooned me on this dustball planet for well over seventy years!”
“marooned, huh?” i try to look glum, but probably failed. “bummer.”

the alien of doom

the first forty years weren’t too good for her, although she did admit the 60s through to the 70s were fun, in a sort of hazy kind of way. “i got to meet janis,” she says. “a pity she was passed out on my sofa at the time. i still have a bottle of her vomit, you know.”
hatboy looks impressed.
she didn’t like the eighties. “that spielberg movie. with the alien and his plastic telephone toy. irritating. i mean, here he is, a being more intelligent than all of you put together, and he needs the help of a child and doesn’t manage to learn anything more of the language than a few gutter syllables picked up via childrens television. such an alienist movie. he should be ashamed of himself, presenting us as nothing more than offworld children searching for something so revolting as the humanisation of our otherwise superior minds. what that little prune-faced alien thing should have done was use his battlecruiser to blow rather large and firey holes into the surrounding area after he left, leaving behind a message. a message that humankind is not worth the toilet paper they seem to spend most of their time wiping their mouths with.”
i nod. “the glowy finger thing was good, though.”
“yes. well, apart from that, it was a dreadful film.”
hatboy stupidly interrupts our discussion of the worst film in cinematic history, with exception of forest gump, with a badly-timed, “so, what brought you here?”
which is when romana remembers exactly why she destroyed our door in the first place.
“i want my tardis back. and i want it now.”

hatboy a-no-no

hatboy has the laser gun out and aimed in the blink of an eye.
“i’m sorry, miss romana, but what you request is impossible.”
he begins switching switches and turning dials, the gun aimed at us both.
i realise that i can take him, wrestle the gun from his hands, then use my secret-agent-type wristwatch to set the explosives around his project.
blow it up with the rest of his bad guy-type crew of muscleheads.
i glance at romana, who looks more annoyed than threatened by the unwavering aim of hatboy’s laser.
“don’t worry,” i tell her. “i’ve got it all under control.”
“i’m afraid not, mister creepy, for i fear your meddling days are over.” he aims the laser at me, cranks another lever, and grins. “say farewell to your miserable life!”

creepy bond

i get ready to fling myself into action.
“hang on,” i say, frowning. “i’m not the enemy. or rather, i am the enemy. i’m on your side, you fool!”
he blinks at me. “oh. oh yeah. super-sidekicks and all, yes? right. sorry. i got carried away. well, take her and tie her to the couch while i complete the calculations necessary for our further dependance on the holodeck of doom.”
“aye aye, doctor hatboy.”
and i strap her in nice and snug.
romana glares at me as i do so. “you’re insane,” she shouts. “both of you! stark raving, lunaticky bat-eating insane!”
“insults won’t get you invited to rebus prime,” i say.
“what the hell is a rebus prime?” she struggles in her ropes, but i’ve always had this thing for knots.
“just this place we like to visit.”
“creepy!” hatboy tosses me the laser. “no divulging of secret info. now keep her covered, while i attempt the cross-over.”
“cross-over?”
“just do it!”
i nod, and point the dangerous end at our guest-made-captive. “you are our prisoner. there will be no escaping while i’m on watch. so sit still, or you will be exterminated.”
“don’t you know what he’s trying to do?” she stutters. “can’t you see? if he gets it wrong, we could all be blown to smithereens!”
“really?” i turn to look at my super-sidekick who’s rewiring like crazy, giggling to himself, and pausing only to take a sip of his drink. i licked my lips. he should have made me one, too.
“really, you fool. now, quickly, before he does so, shoot him in the back and untie me!”

choices choices

hatboy remained with his back to me, twisting wire to wire, and pulling out plugs and putting them back again. he gave a spark plug a quick lick and patted another on the hot part, which burnt his finger and made me giggle.
romana kept fighting her rope, but i knew it wouldn’t help her any.
“damn you,” she hissed. “let me go!”
“i’d really like to, but i can’t.”
“why not?”
i pointed the gun at my super-sidekick’s back. “he’s in charge. he’s the boss. i’m just the muscle. the muscle can’t shoot the boss.”
“that’s stupid!”
“it’s in the rules on how to be a goon.”
“what rules?”
“oh, i read them somewhere. you can’t go against rules, you know. that’s why they’re made. to prevent accidents, misunderstandings, and the like.”
but i shot him anyway.
i mean, while he had his back to me, why not?

romana is noisy

she shouts for me to untie her as my super-sidekick falls to the ground, writhing on the floor.
“why should i untie you?” i ask. “i didn’t say i would just because i happened to shoot him in the back.”
“you stupid idiot! if you don’t untie me, that contraption he’s created out of my tardis will no doubt explode, reducing us, and the rubble which was your house, to nothing but atoms.”
“atoms, huh?”
“now let me go!”
“i like the sound of atoms.” and i say it again, because of the way it rolls off my tongue. “now, say it with me. come on. atoms. what about molecules? are molecules involved? never knew the difference between the two, actually. could you explain it to me? the difference, i mean.”
hatboy groans. he’s bleeding an awful lot.
romana’s eyes are almost bulging from her face. she’s still crispy from her explosive entrance, but under all those woundy bits, she’s quite pretty. i begin to tell her so, when she interrupts me again.
“you’ve got less than five minutes to turn that thing off,” she nods toward one of the little keg-looking things which seems to be whining a bit more loudly than usual. some of its wires are hanging out. they’re all neatly colour-coded. “or we’ll be disintegrated. are you listening to me? are you?”
i find myself thinking about pizza delivery drivers.
it’s been so long since last i had some of that melted cheese goodness.
home-delivered.
i smile.

five minutes alone

hatboy rolls over, and looks up at me, seated as i am on our couch, my feet up, toying with the laser gun, which is in about fifteen seperate pieces in my lap. i’d been trying to clean it, but now couldn’t seem to find the elastic band which held it together.
i glanced among the salty treats which decorated the couch.
it had to be here somewhere.
“you shot me!”
i tell him i really admire the way he manages, as always, to cut right to the core of the problem.
“but i’m bleeding!” he holds his hand out.
it is indeed covered in blood.
“you’re probably bleeding because i shot you with this rather efficient little laser thingy. now that i’ve finished shooting you with it, i’m sure you’ll be okay.”
i tell him he really should think about getting up. “apparently we’ve only got a few more seconds until we get turned into atoms.” i smile at him. “that’s going to be fun, don’t you think?”
he checks the keg-thing, and squeals. “my coke god, creepy! what have you done?”
i hold up a can of spray paint, and point it at where i’ve coloured all the wires the same colour. “i just thought i’d make it more interesting for you.”

have laser have silence

“so, what are you trying to do?”
“i’m trying to rewire this thing. damn you, now i don’t know what i’m doing. for all i know, i could be turning the holosuite into a milkshake maker.”
“think you can make it do mango?”
“maybe, if you hadn’t gone and coloured in all the wires.”
“oh. sorry.”
“sorry’s not going to make us a tardis.”
“you’re trying to make us a tardis?”
“of course i was! we needed some way to get rid of that meddling timelord. by the way, where is she? don’t tell me you let her go…”
“no, i didn’t let her go.”
“you’ve untied the ropes.”
“i wanted my seat back.”
“where’d you put her then?”
“behind the couch.”
“oh.”
“she didn’t want to go. she talks a lot for someone who should have a small amount of patience. timelords have many lives, you know.”
“yep.”
“apparently, when they die, they regenerate into a different body. sometimes they have a completely different personality altogether.”
“yep.”
“i knew this one timelord, when he died, he came back as a jazz musician. that was pretty horrible. but another one i knew came back as a space pirate, and he was pretty funky.”
“donald, wasn’t it?”
“i think so. i wonder what romana will come back as.”
“you didn’t…”

i did

“i had a few spare lasers,” i tell him.
which is when hatboy goes berserk. “what are you doing, shooting our guest?”
“you were going to!”
“yes, but when i was going to, i didn’t!”
“that doesn’t make sense.”
“now what are we going to do?”
“have you rewired the holosuite?”
“yep.”
“is it a tardis now?”
he taps his foot against the keg. “i don’t know. you tell me.”
i look at the keg, which has all its wires twisted together nicely. “what the hell, let’s just say it is. you know what we need now?”
“some coke?”
“that, too. no, we need one of those console things all tardises have. we need one which goes up and down, but looks like a lavalamp.”
hatboy groans, but he makes one anyway using the holosuite remote.
“can we get rid of the foil carpet of much eye-hurty?”
that disappears, to be replaced by a tasteful collection of persian-type rugs.
“pretty.”
“thanks. now, what are we going to do with our dead timelord?”
i drag her out from behind the couch, promising hatboy i’d clean the blood from the carpet. “i think we should just put her out of the way somewhere and wait until she hatches. she’s bound to be a little nicer this time around.”
“well, you’re explaining it to her.”
“no problem. timelords are very forgetful when they get regenerated.”
“you’d better hope she is, or she might decide to shoot you with her timelord eyes of much-laser-zappy.”
“they don’t have such funky eyes!”
“well, they should,” he growls and stomps off to find some unstained clothes and a washroom.

the basement of space and time

“where to?”
“somewhere nice. tropical hawaii?”
“no can do. it’s winter there, and the cyclones are rampaging across the beaches.”
“no way we can save the world from the prevailing winds of doom?”
“not in this lifetime.”
“bermuda?”
“the martians are using it this year.”
“stealing more planes?”
“collecting, creepy. they call it collecting, remember?”
“whatever. i wonder what xol’s going to get.”
“probably something useless. i hear she likes bi-planes. red ones.”
“really? i would’ve taken her for a passenger liner girl, myself.”
“you’re getting her mixed up with xil.”
“maybe.”
“i’m always right, creepy. now, where shall we go?”
“how about the moon? i want to try some moon cheese.”
“there’s no such thing as moon cheese. the americans destroyed that dream many decades ago.”
“damn those americans. we can always search for more evidence. they weren’t there for very long. maybe they missed the moon cows.”
“will you forget the moon cheese for a minute? we now have access to the most incredible machine to ever grace our super-sidekick hands. true, you managed to kill the only person who knows we have it, and for that she’ll probably kill us, but for now, we can go anywhere. see anything. meet anyone, any time, any how. we are most powerful masters of space-timey! now, stretch your imagination, creepy. get used to the fact that you’re almost a god, with godly powers of go-anywhere, and come up with a place for us to go, because i’m all out of ideas.”
“very well.”
“come on.”
“i’m thinking. leave me alone.”
“hurry up!”
“okay, okay!”
“will you get on with it!”
“alright, alright. the cronulla mermaids’ locker rooms.”
“what?”
“i said, the cronulla mermai-”
“i heard what you said, but are you insane?”
“why? what’s wrong with the mermaids cheerleaders? they cheer for the sharks, you know.”
“nothing at all, but do you really think they’ll let us in?”
“no. but with this thing, who could stop us?”
“my god, you’re right! very well, twist that dial! press those buttons in any damned order you like! pull that lever, turn that knob, and put on a happy face, because we, my super-sidekick pal, are going to those locker rooms to steal underpants!”

time is slow

we’ve learned that it takes time to travel through time.
it’s been nineteen days and fourteen hours, and in that time the only thing to change is the colour of romana’s corpse.
hatboy’s been doing inventory of the holodeck, noting our bajillions of foodstuffs, and making sure that the coke machine still dispenses many types of coke. bottled in glass, or plastic for those bumpy occaisions. like the time we got stuck in ‘nam during a napalm storm. if the coke had been in glass, the glass would have shattered, and our cokey goodness would have been lost.
we thanked the coke god many times for his forethought and consideration in providing us with many suitable modes of ingesting coca cola goodness.
i’ve had to drag romana into another room. i hope she regenerates soon. she’s getting a bit whiffy.
suddenly the door is flung open and he’s standing there, wearing one of those flourescent yellow kilts of his and waving the remote. he looks a little distressed. “my god! it’s awful!”
i nod at his kilt. “yes, i agree.”
he looks down, and touches his kilt. his sporran is flourescent green, with orange polka dots. “what? there’s nothing wrong with this kilt. it’s all the rage in scotland.”
“not in this alternate universe.”
“hey! this is my clan kilt!”
“what? you have a clan? since when?”
“well, it’s not much of a clan.”
“can’t be if they let you into it.”
“it’s more a bunch of drinking buddies.”
“yes, you’d have to drink to wear that.”
“and what about your shirts?”
“what about my shirts? they’re certified one hundred percent pure mambo!”
“i rest my case.”
i curse his powers of case-resty.
“but i didn’t come bursting in here to burst your bubble, no matter the enjoyment factor,” he says, holding out his remote. “read that.”
i take it. there’s nothing written in the little digital display. “read what?”
“exactly!”
“your kilt’s getting to your brain.”
“will you forget my kilt, and just look at that entry!”
“there’s no entry here. it’s blank.”
“see? do you see?”
“see what? there’s nothing to see, you be-kilted moron! it’s just an empty slot! it’s nothing. nada. dada, even. whatever was here, is now bejuncted! funklesteined, even. gone! kaput! it’s a no-entry. blank. nothing. not even a byte of data. switcheroonie, mickey roonies. and, to sum my previous argument, it’s blank. oh. i see what you mean.”
he smirks at me. “what? so soon?”

gumbo of mystery

“i’ve narrowed it down to one of two things,” he says. “it’s either lassie the wonderdog, or a mysterious gumbo.”
“lassie?”
“then it’s the gumbo.”
i shudder. “you put lassie into this?”
“no. which is why i thought there was a blank bit here. i thought maybe i did, then realised what i’d done and in an effort to save the future of humankind, i deleted the little critter of evil incarnate.”
i am deeply disappointed in him, and i let him know with a patented creepy pity-stare.
“stop that,” he says, using his patented hatboy powers of pity-stare-dismissy. “we have to figure out where the gumbo got to, and figure it out fast.”
“can’t we do it after lunch?”
“this is dreadfully important.”
“so you’ve said.”
“we should do it now.”
“extra cheesy pizza?”
“meaty-eaty?”
“you can have meaty-eaty. you know how i feel about eating unwashed animal products.”
“you eat cheese.”
“that’s different.”
“how so?”
“cheese doesn’t need to wash its bottom with its tongue.”
“well, i’ll have a big-o-beefy, with extra doublemeat. and then we’ll track down the evil mastermind who stole our gumbo.”
“deal.”

in the spaces between words

after lunch we sat down to watch tj hooker.
we discussed our super-spooky sidekick battle tactics during tj’s sentences, between words.
within syllables.
we narrowed the suspects down to two. either hatboy had done it himself, or his alternate counterpart from an evil dimension had slipped into this one, stole the gumbo, and disappeared with it for good.
“i’m for the counterpart idea,” he said.
“i don’t know,” i told him. “maybe we should torture you for a bit. you know, to see if you’re telling the truth about your whereabouts.”
he offers to turn the channel to buffy reruns.
i sip my cokey goodness and tell him i’ve decided that his evil counterpart should be severely punished.

time eddies are green

hatboy used the external viewer to get a look at the eddies which were causing turbulence off our port bow.
not that either of us knew what a port bow was, but it sounded about right.
the eddies were ripples of green mist whipping about our tardis as though we were tasty and it hungry. hatboy wanted to collect a sample of them for analysis, but decided against it when i refused to don the space time suit he quickly made out of a spare roll of aluminium foil and an old wetsuit.
i knew we’d had that foil lying around from when we first lined the holodeck, but i didn’t want to ask about the wetsuit.
i wasn’t going to wear it in a million years. i mean, black wetsuits are okay, and yellow ones are slippy, but pink and orange polka dot ones are just plain silly.
the eddies clung to the edge of the tardis for a few more hours, or however time travels in a place where, conveniently, there really isn’t much time to begin with, before they melted away into the swirling black ink of time, or whatever was out there. something nasty, no doubt.
hatboy said it was probably a void, and was a bit disappointed that romana wasn’t alive yet to tell him what it was and whether it could or could not be ingested. preferrably without a complimentary side salad and italian dressing.
i tell him not to think about gaining an addiction to eating void, because weaning him off the roaches was bad enough.
i tell him i don’t think they make jelly voids, and if they did, i certainly wouldn’t be buying more packets than i need to just because he prefers the red ones to the green ones.
he growls at me. “fascist.”

meltdown in the place of somewhere spooky

hatboy and i first met when we were young enough to speak in broken english. since then, we’ve managed to discover the use of sentences, and this has helped our conversations considerably.
our first knowledge of the correct structure of these mystic strings of words came when we were battling a feast of rogue cheesey crispies, when all of a sudden a thunderous literacy cloud hovered above our heads and ordered us to absorb its eager teaching.
“now, repeat after me,” it growled, “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.”
we put on our best zombie faces, and intoned, “the quick green frog jumped over the crazy log.”
not only was this the first time we managed to string together a sentence, but it was also the first time we encountered the dastardly force known as miss gornhelda, who instructed us in the fine art of sitting in one spot for many hours whilst staring at a single spot on the wall, or a fly buzzing about a window, or the other children building stuff out of sand and cat poop in the distance behind the glass walls.
sometimes, when a chill wind blows through the corridors of our holosuite-turned-tardis, i think i can hear her cold as ice voice whispering on its spine, “now, repeat after me…”

the crash appearing

“we’ve got no other choice, creepy. we’re going to have to crash.”
“okay.”
“no, don’t panic. i’m sure i can keep us alive.”
“alright.”
“calm down, creepy! we’ll be fine! i’ll get us out of this, i swear!”
“no problem.”
“really! you must believe me! don’t scream, don’t wail, don’t cry or anything! i’ll save us!”
“sure.”
“will you quit being so calm, you awful creature of no-panicking hitch-hikin’ madness!?”
“mellow out, hatboy. the couch will be with you. always.”

hatboy’s crash wasn’t so bad

once we’d managed to sew our limbs back on, everything went particularly well.
hatboy opened the door and we found ourselves pretty much where we started. in our basement, about ten minutes after we’d left it.
hatboy scratched his head with a wrench and frowned. “i don’t know what happened. we should be in the locker room right now! it’s supposed to be cheerleader half time! they should be showering and soaping each other and stuff! help me out, creepy! you’ve seen the movies!”
i certainly had, only in the movies their locker rooms seldom looked like our basement.
i told him so.
i also pointed out that, logically, we should very probably escape before romana woke up.
“excuse me,” a quiet little voice croaked. “i think i need a hand here…”
“oops,” i told him. “too late.”

the house

considering the amount of explosive xol used to reduce it to rubble, the house was still pretty much in one piece.
hatboy pulled out a tub of spackle and offered to get to work on it.
“it’ll be as good as new by morning,” he said.
romana, who looked a lot different than from when i killed her, giggled at him.
the giggle, i thought, was a vast improvement over her grumpy behaviour.
hatboy seemed to think so, too.
both of us grinned foolishly at her.
she looked down at her ruined clothing. “i think i need to find some new clothes. these are awful. i mean, who’d wear brown? it’s such a boring colour, wouldn’t you agree? i don’t suppose you have anything in my size? something nice and colourful. i’m thinking hot pink and lime.”
“i’ll take her shopping,” i told hatboy. “you get the house in order. and don’t forget to polish the kitchen.”
“polish? why me? why can’t you do some work? and why do you get to go shopping with romana?”
“because, my super-sidekick buddy, pal, and other assorted nametags, i’m off to find some ingredients. it’s time we made a curry.”
“a curry?” he looked pleased. “what are you waiting for? get out of here! i have polishing to do!”

Tags: creepy and hatboy, doctor who