bigapplesauce | Event: Flu Season

Current Music: October 2nd, 2013 (forward-dated)

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Event: Flu Season

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Ah, October. A time of crisp weather, beautiful foliage, pumpkin spice lattes—and the flu. Make sure you get vaccinated!

Of course, vaccinations can't keep you safe from everything. Especially not a capricious, omnipresent entity that has, quite recently, been treated to the highly entertaining sight of someone struggling with illness for the first time in their life. Oh, dear. Someone's been giving the Rift ideas.

On the morning of October 2nd, those rifties who would never consider getting vaccinated against paltry human illnesses--because why would they need to?--will find themselves awake to a new level of personal hell: the flu. It will instantaneously infect any entities who are generally immune to such things, leaving them snotty, achy, miserable, and completely powerless to stop what is happening to them. What is this?! Are they dying? Oh god, the pathos.

Symptoms will persist until October 4th. Get plenty of rest, stay hydrated, and maybe investigate the wonders of chicken soup. Probably don't go see a doctor. Clinic doctors will be very confused and unhelpful about your weird anatomy, and The Doctor will probably be really gross and contagious.

Definitely don't consult WebMD. No good can come of that.

[OOC: Post here for initial reactions or start your own threads using the tag Event: Flu Season. Characters who can be affected are: the Doctor, the TARDIS, Zagreus, Aziraphale, Crowley, Desire, Ascended Daniel, Gabriel, Lucifer, and Rashad. You could probably also make a case for various other non-human/not-quite-human folks. No one's gonna tell you you can't have the flu, okay. Go nuts.]

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Like many others on this fine and flu-filled day, the Doctor wakes up, with no real memory or understanding of how he came to be asleep, silly antiquated nightgown and all. It's so rare that he makes a dedicated effort to sleep, in a bed, in sleeping clothes. Maybe age really will catch up to him. It certainly feels like it has, replete with all the trappings of an angry mob long denied their justice--his head feels full of pitchforks and his blood full of torches. Which is a really weird thing to think, so add that to the list, along with the odd roughness in his throat, what, did he spend yesterday shouting? Not implausible. Well, whatever this is is no step to a high stepper. No reason not to keep at it, whatever 'it' is--in his currently wired yet strangely exhausted state, 'it' could be anything. For right now, despite the lethargy in his limbs, 'it' will be some equations he's been batting about in his head, now to be chalked out on the walls in monochromatic glory. Then perhaps he'll feverishly rearrange some furniture, the better to stand on it, reach more walls.

...

There, that should do it. Now for some breakfast. Maybe some tea will ease the scratch in his throat. Or, you know what, he could just. Take a nap. Right in this doorway. That's fine.

Now that she's moved to the apartments, Daine doesn't really need to use the TARDIS as a convenient changing spot anymore - at least not while the weather holds. All she has to do is prop her window a bit, and she can come and go from her own apartment. She still tends to visit, though, even if only in the form of a fly-by; it's become something of a habit, and besides, she doesn't want the TARDIS to think her only reason for stopping by at all was because of the convenience.

It's early in her rounds, and she only intends to make a brief pass this time, saving a proper stop for later. But then she sees the TARDIS's door is ajar, and her wooden exterior looks strange. It's sort of... slick, as if the ship had been the focus of a very small, isolated rain shower. That's unusual enough to be worth a stop, and Daine lands on the leaf-strewn grass in front of the ship, takes wolf shape, and pokes her nose inside.

The interior looks awful. The light's all wrong, and the air feels heavy and thick. Ears pricked in alarm, Daine steps inside and lets out a low whine. Even the floor doesn't feel right, and she lifts a paw uneasily as the unnatural warmth registers. Something is very wrong, and there's no sign of the ship's two-legger shape, so Daine can't even ask what and expect a response she'd understand.

The Doctor might know. He might even be working on it, whatever it is. Daine lifts her nose to the air, resisting the urge to sneeze at the humidity, then sets off at a trot.

When she finds him some short time later, he's not half-buried in the ship and hard at work as she'd expected. He doesn't even appear to be awake. He's just sprawled in a doorway in what appears to be his nightclothes. Odd's bobs, him too? Daine steps closer with a grumble of mingled disapproval and worry and sniffs at his face. When that doesn't garner a response, she leans forward, delicately takes the sleeve of his shirt in her teeth, and gives his arm a light tug.

The Doctor grumbles back, and with surprising spirit. Did Ianto get a dog? Well he'd better be responsible for walking it, is all. The Doctor makes a sternly disapproving sound, snuggling stubbornly up to a doorjamb. This doesn't rate actual awakeness, which feels rather less attainable at the moment anyway. The tickle in his throat has solidified into a raw pain, and his head feels like it's been stuffed with syrup-logged cotton. Talking is so much effort, he barely manages it. "Go 'way. 'M trying to concentrate."

Well, at least his personality is as sweet as ever it was. For a moment there, she was really worried. Daine drops his arm abruptly, letting it thud back to the floor, and reshapes her mouth. "Concentrate on what? What's wrong with you and the TARDIS?"

He'd better not be falling asleep or fainting or whatever this is. Daine paws at his shoulder, making a bit less effort this time to be gentle. "Come on. Wake up."

The grumbling increases greatly in volume and in anguish content, the dog is talking, that's the worst, please, no. "C'mon, Lassie. Ten more minutes, I'll get out of the well. Put the kettle on, why don't you." Not that his nap had been at all satisfactory, in fact he has the distinct impression that he hadn't really slept at all, just...stopped, for a time. Even whatever had been in front of his eyelids seemed frozen, or stuck in a repeating loop, it had been most frustrating and not at all restful. Possibly there's something amiss with time, he had been writing on the walls, oops. Well, easy mistake. He sneezes violently and unapologetically.

He's speaking nonsense, which is bad, and then he sneezes right into her face, which is worse. Daine reels back with a reactive sneeze of her own, gives her fur a settling shake, and then huffs in annoyance. Is he ill? She can't remember the other versions of him ever getting sick, but if he's as old and widely-traveled as he claims to be, surely he's familiar with the idea of it, at least. What is he doing flopping about in the hall like this? If he's too sick to tend to the TARDIS, at least he could get himself into bed.

Clearly, wolf shape isn't going to cut it, and she can't shift back to human. Her clothes are elsewhere, and she's not about to ask the TARDIS for any favors given what a state she's in. The ship has enough to worry about. So she takes the closest thing to human shape that she has, and a moment later, there's a gorilla sticking her giant, leathery hands beneath the Doctor's arms and attempting to haul him into a sit.

With an alarmed snuffle, the Doctor does his best to assume liquid form and escape back to the floor. He doesn't really grasp why a large primate is attempting to haul him around, but he can only assume this ends on the Empire State Building with the intervention of military helicopters. At least he's dressed appropriately for it. "Why are you doing this," he wails. What kind of monster, etc. Everything was fine until she got here.

Daine stares in consternation as the Doctor writhes in her arms like a lanky, fussy baby. For an uncharitable moment, she almost considers putting him down and leaving him to his own devices, if he's going to be this ridiculous about receiving help. But she wasn't raised to just leave ill folk lying in a heap, no matter how unpleasant they are. And given how distracted the TARDIS must be, Daine figures they can't expect much help from that quarter. Ianto and Callie might be willing, if she could find them, but neither are as strong as she is, which makes her the best-suited to hauling an oversized toddler back to bed.

"Odd's bobs," she grumbles, shifting her grip on him. "It's Daine. You're ill. I found you swooning in a doorway, and I'm not just leaving you there." Propping him semi-upright against the wall seems like a good compromise between holding him up and setting him down, so she does that, keeping one hand on his shoulder so he doesn't list. "Now, can you walk yourself, or shall I carry you?" she asks briskly, sounding rather like her own mother.

Great, now there are unsuited colloquialisms--are they really colloquialisms if you don't actually feel a sense of comfy homeyness to them, if you only recognise them for having the general tone of a colloquialism? If they are in fact unfamiliar, are they not then something else, anti-loquialisms perhaps? Someone else's loquialism, not his. What's a Daine? He makes a face. "The smarmy marmot?" he says, either incredulously or just sickly, completely ignoring both the gorilla's question and businesslike demeanor. All these rude young animals. "How did you get in here?"

Calliope has had a bit of a strange morning as well. She awoke to a dreadfully cold room downright unbearable in her cherub shape and still quite uncomfortable to her troll biology, so much so that the first thing she did upon getting out of bed was to put on a fluffy blue bathrobe and socks over her pajamas before making her bed and brushing her hair. Then she'd heard a ghostly sad sound out in the hallway, prompting her to investigate. But all she'd found was a bathroom very gently overflowing with ice cold water, a few doors mounted on the corridor ceiling, and a confused seeming animal with bouncy white fur wandering along. It ran off when she tried to offer her assistance.

It's around the time when she starts floating for a bit and gets her horns quite painfully tangled in some pipes that she realizes this isn't the sort of delightful quirkiness that comes with living in this magnificent place. Something isn't right. Which is an impression that gains all manner of credibility when she finally comes upon the Doctor wearing a strange kind of dress and being accosted by a very large, very fierce looking creature. Oh dear.

She lets out a soft gasp in surprise and stops in her tracks. "Um. Doctor?" she ventures, caught between concern and nervousness. "Am I... interrupting?"

"I walked in," Daine deadpans. Honestly. Even if the TARDIS wasn't under the weather, it's not as if she's ever shut her doors in Daine's face before. They, at least, are on good terms. She might be willing to entertain the notion of the Doctor forgetting this because he's all sickly, but she's guessing he really forgot on purpose.

The little gasp surprises her, but Daine relaxes when she sees who it is. Oh, good. Backup. Maybe the Doctor will listen to sense if it's coming from Callie. "Hullo, Callie. It's me, Daine," she says, lifting her free hand in what she hopes is a reassuring wave. "The Doctor's ill, I think. I found him on the floor." She turns back to the Doctor, her face well-suited to the unimpressed glower she sends his way. "I've been trying to get him off the floor, but he's been fussy."

The Doctor may not have the best grasp on current happenings, but he has to set one thing straight. "I am not fussy," he says, completely uncowed by any gorilla-glowering. Recalcitrant, uncooperative, mulish, but fussy? This bunch of animals who talks like someone's tornado-fearing grandma is disrespecting him in his own house. Of course, the important thing is to reassure Callie, who is looking somewhat alarmed. Can't have that. "Callie! Tell her I'm not."

Oh, Daine! That's a relief, and a bit amazing; she hadn't seen her change her entire appearance like this before. Though the reassurance is rather damped by her claiming the Doctor to be ill. Calliope isn't terribly familiar with illnesses herself; cherubs get injured plenty, but apparently not ill. From what she understands, however, the two concepts are fairly similar and equal in nastiness. Poor Doctor!

She returns Daine's wave and walks the rest of the way up to them, now concentrating the full force of her concern and remaining confusion on the Doctor. "I'm sure it is only a misunderstanding," she tries diplomatically, glancing between the two of them. "But... you are on the floor." And looking awfully pallid, and his voice is sounding not right at all. What does one do with an ill friend? Daine doesn't seem too concerned, but Calliope wrings her hands a bit anyway, looking to her other friend for help. "Will he be ill for long?"

The Doctor gets a pointed look - at least Callie agrees that being on the floor is a problem - then she turns her attention back to the more sensible of the two. "It depends on what he's got," she says with a broad-shouldered shrug. "If it's just some sort of rift mischief, it might only last a few days." Otherwise, who knows? Maybe he and the TARDIS have the same sort of bug, and one will only get better if the other does. She doubts it's a coincidence that they're both falling apart at the same time.

Callie looks healthy enough, so that's some comfort. All of the TARDIS's residents aren't falling ill. But she is looking a bit fretful, so Daine reaches out to give her arm a gentle, reassuring pat. "I'm sure he'll get better. He ought to be in bed, is all." Goddess knows if they'll be able to brew him a cup of tea or anything - she's a little afraid of the state the kitchens might be in - but surely his bed will be a safe enough place to deposit him for the time being.

She turns back to the Doctor, stern and assessing. "Can you stand? Elsewise, I'll have to carry you." Well, half-carry, half-drag, in this shape. He's too gangly for her to lift completely, and Callie's a bit too short to help hold him steady if Daine tried for something larger, like horse shape.

The Doctor doesn't like the sound of being carried by any sassful talking animals, no matter how exotic a shape they choose to take. He returns Daine's assessing look disagreeably, then waves a hand her direction, incomprehensible and irritable. She may be a rude chatty beast but bed does sound rather nice at the moment, so despite herself she may have a point. "Help me up. I'll go quietly," he says, not entirely convincingly. He waves the hand with feverish yet unconcerned vigor. Have to put on a brave face for this handwringing troll child. "It's fine, Callie. I'm sure I won't be ill long at all," he says, still not convincingly.

It's so fortunate that Daine is here and knows just what to do to help the Doctor. She'd be quite useless on her own, Calliope fancies, though of course she will do her best for him now, whatever it is one can do to ease an ill person's discomfort. Getting into bed is apparently the first step in this mysterious process.

She smiles gratefully and nods at his reassurance and Daine's, but it's hardly her they ought to be fussing about. "Off to bed you pop then," she chirps with a dash of bravado hiding her worry, moving to check the room behind him for any such things while Daine helps him to his feet.

Well, there certainly is a perfectly cozy looking bed. And a handful of chairs and a desk all scooted up to the walls. And while fancifully arranged furniture is nothing unusual in the TARDIS, the sticky goo barely recognizable as his familiar chalk scribbles slowly dripping from the walls does strike her as quite odd. The same sort of vaguely foreboding oddness as the ghostly bell and the ceiling doors, in fact. "Um," she starts hesitantly, not sure if the Doctor ought to even be bothered with any queerness in his delicate state. Though he's likely to encounter it sooner or later, so better to prepare him. "I do not mean to alarm you, but..." She trails off, unable for the moment to describe just what she's seeing.

Daine, indeed, does not look entirely convinced. At least he's willing to get moving, though; that's the most progress they've made since she found him senseless on the floor.

She helps him to his feet and does her best to keep him from toppling as they head back into his bedroom-slash-study. The bed seems unchanged despite the weirdness spreading through the TARDIS, but the walls haven't been so spared. "I think the TARDIS might be ill, too," she guesses, watching as the floor turns a rather ghastly shade of yellow.

The Doctor agrees heartily with Daine's assessment, by yelling loudly and attempting to climb the gorilla, just a little. It really is just so yellow. Just, so yellow. That doesn't belong on the floor. He does his level best to shake the gorilla; it's not super effective. "We've got, we've got to fix this," he remembers to whisper as he goes on. Don't want to scare Callie, right. Daine is several animals, maybe one of them is competent. This is regeneration fever all over again, where did he put the chalk? "We have to do something."

If his goal was not to scare any children, he's forfeited any chance of that by his startled yelling. Calliope jumps and turns back to stare at him. The sight of the Doctor frantically shaking Daine in dismay and... fear? is truly shocking, and she blanches. She hadn't realized the queer anomalies in the TARDIS were so serious, oh no!

"What's the matter?", she squeaks, back to wringing her hands. "What can we do?"

Well, that's woken the Doctor up a bit. Daine could do without all the jostling, though. For a tense moment or two, she thinks the Doctor actually intends to clamber atop her as if she was a convenient piece of furniture and he was a lady of the court who'd just spied a mouse. Honestly. The floor might be unsightly, but it doesn't seem dangerous.

"I'm open to suggestions," she says with deliberate calm. As if she knows the first thing about how to treat an ailing time ship, let alone an ailing time lord. Her magic only works on animals, and the healing she learned from Ma was only for humans. Goddess knows if any of it would work on an alien.

... The TARDIS does have that two-legger shape, though. Maybe that part of her is too close to alien, too, but at least they could talk to it, and that'd be a step up from where they are, now. "If we found the TARDIS's human shape and treated that, would it help the rest of her?" she asks, looking up at the Doctor.

The Doctor takes a break from gorilla-jostling to criticise Daine's suggestion, though he manages to do so with a surprising degree of neutrality, like a pragmatic but pessimistic construction site foreman inexplicably wearing a nightgown. "That'd never work, you'd be," he makes a huffy sound of calculation, gives up, "orders of magnitude out of your depths. Wrong direction to start from." The TARDIS's human form is a kind of non-load-bearing afterthought, as he understands it. Still, it's not entirely worthless as an idea, possibly. Well, it basically is, but it's got the gears turning, nonetheless. A bit more sluggishly than usual, but he's reasonably certain some of the thoughts he's having are precursors to actual ideas. At least until he sneezes again.

Bed forgotten, he sidles for the door with only a little wobbling. "I'll sort it. Callie, you just give me a good shake, if I fall asleep. Especially if it looks like I might be obstructing anything vital."

So... not quite that serious, then? Calliope looks back and forth between her friends in fretful bewilderment, not understanding why Daine isn't more concerned, or why even the Doctor is talking all reasonably all of a sudden. On second thought, perhaps his illness is simply making him startle easily? A bit of an odd effect, if so, but what does she know about illnesses, anyhow.

Either way, he seems slightly more put together now than when he was on the floor, and apparently they are going to help the TARDIS before sending him off to bed. "Um, will do," she agrees hesitantly, "but I'm afraid there is rather a lot to sort. I came across several eerie oddities just on my way here." She glances to Daine again, somewhat doubtful that they ought to be letting him wander off like this, but unsure what precisely to do about it. And someone probably should set the TARDIS to rights.

Given that the Doctor seems to have his work cut out for him just in staying upright and walking straight, Daine's not convinced he's capable of sorting anything. Trouble is, neither she nor Callie know the first thing about fixing an ill ship. At least the Doctor has a chance there, so long as he stays awake and manages to think straight.

Besides, what's the alternative? Haul him into bed and hold him there? She could manage that easily enough, but nobody would enjoy it, and it wouldn't help the TARDIS.

Daine sighs, then lapses into wolf shape. It seems she might be here a while, and wolf shape is easier to hold. She doesn't much want to ask the TARDIS for clothes, given the state the ship is in. "What's your plan?" she asks, somewhat dubiously. Does he even have one?

Bless her heart, Callie's not had a chance to see the Doctor in this mode of existence, where he can go from gorilla-scaling to calm calculation on a dime. And can Daine just. Pick a shape. He flaps a hand at her, "Please, you're making me dizzy, don't be a zoo." This is what he has to work with, okay, well then. A naive but plucky alien child and a roulette wheel of wildlife. The Doctor claps his hands together in determination. He'll make do. Though it is a bit chilly in here, isn't it? The hand-chafing is now more for warmth's sake, and the Doctor looks a bit unnerved. "It's not like just putting the place to rights after a party, no real point in sorting any of this mess until we can get at the root of the problem." He says this with great authority, as he hauls the duvet off the bed and drapes it around his shoulders with a cape-y flourish. No, he doesn't have a real plan, just the intention to shoot down whatever they suggest.

Calliope is rather a bit more impressed by Daine's change of shape and stares for a moment, enraptured, until she remembers staring is probably rude. It's just so fascinating! Meanwhile, the Doctor is sounding reassuringly focused and claps his let's-get-started clap. And... he has a cape now. Admittedly, that's quite odd, but perhaps not odder than the rest of this morning overall.

So they have to puzzle out what the root of the problem could be. What, indeed, could affect such a large and complicated living place as the TARDIS, in a chaotic and disruptive manner? She frowns pensively for a moment, and suddenly looks up at the Doctor in dismay as a truly terrible thought occurs to her. "You don't think it might be a sort of cancer, do you?" She's come to understand the TARDIS as a kind of living universe in itself, a rather small one perhaps, or at least a benevolent planet much like Skaia. And that's the first thing she knows to harm a being like that.

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