fracturedrp | Capybaras were never designed for urban living

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Capybaras were never designed for urban living

When: During Wild Wild Life, after the problem has been solved and before it wears off
Where: New York
Who: Andrew, Märet, and whoever wants to join
What: Trying to figure out what to do until they turn humanoid again.

Andrew is having a little trouble. He's gone back to where he and the others first transformed into animals and tried to recover at least some of their clothes, but finally admitted defeat when it became clear that he would not be able to do much in the way of manipulating objects with his toes and his rodent mouth - and when he heard one of the nearby humans calling Animal Control. Now he's hiding in the shrubbery, the little blond mouse that is Märet perched on his head. He's fairly sure, at least, that there wasn't anything of particular value in either of their pockets. Now the problem is figuring out where to go. He's guessing the others went back to the HUB, but he lost track of them in all the hullabaloo, and isn't sure he'll be able to operate any of the HUB entrances even if he can make it to one without being captured by well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) humans on the way.

Though he doesn't really know where to go, he does start making his way away from the zoo as stealthiy as a capybara can - that is to say, not very stealthily at all. He is, after all, a hundred-pound aquatic rodent at the moment. Along the way, he keeps getting distracted by particularly nice patches of grass, so one may find him grazing in between efforts to hide.

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The Doctor was hiding from the very same people that Andrew was hiding from and he had a mad dash through the streets of New York to try to avoid them earlier. He's busy with a bit of garbage that he dug out from a dumpster this morning. The TARDIS isn't about to let him inside of her with that smelly bit of old Chinese food either.

"Now, I'd like to go inside before these people stick a dart in my clever behind." The Doctor 'whines' to the TARDIS in question and then there's the sound of animal control and he darts past the Capybara in question for some cover. "Oh! Will you lot stop this already!" He barks out and he goes to look for some cover in the bushes.

Andrew gives a start as something red zips by him and into the bushes. It's lucky for him, really, that the Doctor happened by, as he was more than a little absorbed in his grass-eating. Staring after the fox for a second, he perks his ears up, hears the humans coming, and darts after the smaller animal at an awkward trot. He squirms into the middle of the hedge, crossing his eyes for a moment to make sure Märet is still perched on his face.

"Who are you?" he asks. He knows it's someone, or the fox wouldn't have talked. "And what is that smell?"

The Master has been attempting the same thing, but sadly a snake has even less ability to manipulate objects. He's currently trying to carry his hoodie around by hooking his fang through a buttonhole, but due to the shape of his fangs that means he has to slither backwards. And it turns out snakes can't actually do that.

"Psst! Master!"

Andrew pokes his head out of the shrubbery to chitter at the Master. "Forget the hoodie! One of the humans called Animal Control a minute ago."

"Than I'll just have to hide inside it, won't I?"

And he does so.

He peers over at the talking Capybara oh right he's a talking fox. Still a capybara with a mouse on it's head. "The Doctor. Oh, that's just garbage it's either that, starve or well the mouse on your head. I wasn't about to eat a mouse so garbage it is."

The fox stops to listen and he hears the sounds of animal control roaming the park. "I also think you're laying in something."

The comment about eating Märet gets an involuntary warning bark out of Andrew - he sounds something like a hoarse, medium-sized dog - before he remembers that they're hiding and quiets down, glancing furtively out through the greenery. Then he glances down, nearly dislodging the mouse, and quickly stands up. "Bollocks," he curses, moving a few steps away as quietly as he can.

"Which one are you, then? And the mouse is one of us, so don't even think about it."

Andrew glances at the piles of clothing he and Märet left behind, wondering if he can't drag at least some of the things into the bushes with him. Then, of course, there's the Master hiding in a hoodie - and here come the humans. He shuffles backward until he's fairly sure he's hidden again.

"Don't bite them," he warns the Master softly. "There'll be more where they came from." And he hopes that none of them trample on the hoodie and the snake within.

He's been trying to dodge these guys for the past day and he's about had it with Animal Control. "I'm starting to think there needs to be human control sometimes." He's going to take well to the warning to not eat the mouse, it's not something that he's interested in doing.

"Bow ties and a fez." The Doctor simply tells the him and he quirks an eyebrow. "No, I wouldn't eat a mouse even if it wasn't one of us."

"I think that's called the police," replies Andrew. He settles down again a little ways from what he lay down in before, surreptitiously trying to wipe himself clean on the grass without making too much noise and attracting the attention of the humans. At least the Doctor is a more or less native animal, even if he was a bit conspicuously colored--no one would ever mistake a capybara for something that ought to be loose in the city.

"Good," he says. "I'm sure you wouldn't enjoy it anyway. And what do you mean, fez? Don't tell me you're serious."

It's a wonder that the noise these two are making isn't drawing attention to themselves. "Yes, but I think they should chase after humans with nets and tranquilizer darts."

The Doctor sniffs around and he finds a fried chicken bucket in the brush to stick his head into. "Yes, a fez. I don't exactly think this makes a good impersonation of said fez."

"I dunno; you're sort of fez-colored." Andrew is trying to remember if he's seen a Doctor around in a bow tie and fez. He knew a meta-crisis who wore a bow tie, but no fez.

"I take it you're from my future?" he asks, assuming that the Doctor already knows who he is. Unbeknownst to him, the humans do suspect that there might be something in the bushes, and are starting to encircle them now.

The circling humans are ignored now in favor of 'talking' oh, Doctor you're not good at keeping quiet when you should now. "That depends on who you are."

He shakes the bucket from his head and he would like get back to lounging out in front of his TARDIS until he's got two legs again.

"I'm you. Sort of. My name is Andrew." He gives a small upward nod. "This is Märet."

He's being a bit unhelpful on purpose, but he's sure the Doctor can guess what he means anyway. He's still a bit grossed out by the garbage thing, and he doesn't forget a threat to Märet's safety, even if it comes with a promise that the person in question will not follow through on it.

The humans are unsure what sort of animal is in the bushes, or if there might be more than one. One of them readies a net; another, a tranquilizer gun.

The voice is a familiar voice, it's his own voice from his previous regeneration. "Well, hello sorta me and Maret." His urges to eat Maret have vanished and he's gotten better control of his own mind than he previously had.

He hears something coming in from behind the bushes and he hushes Andrew. He quiets down and he waits to see if the humans will just 'go away'. If he needs to make a run for it he'll make a run for it.

Andrew's rounded little ears perk up a moment before the Doctor hushes him, and he simply gives a curt nod and keeps silent, trying not to move or even breathe too loudly. He's not sure how fast he can run, though his instincts are yammering at him to go find a pond and dive into it to get away from the humans.

One of the Animal Control officers has a catch pole, and he starts using it to poke at the bushes, hitting the branches with it and generally rattling things around and making a bunch of noise to scare them out of hiding. Andrew flinches, rising halfway to his feet, but manages to maintain his composure enough not to bolt out of hiding.

The Doctor tries to remain as still as possible, he wants to run simply because it's what not only a fox would do but The Doctor.

He watches the pole come into the bushes and he really wants to run, bite the guy in the leg but his brain tells him to stay still. The humans might pass this bush by and leave him be.

Being a prey species on top of being someone with most of the Doctor's personality is really making it difficult for Andrew not to run. He stays rooted to the ground where he is with great effort, though his jaw works nervously as he watches the pole bang around close by.

Unfortunately for Andrew, after a minute or two of no response, the man on the other end of the pole decides to try again in a different spot. This time, when he jabs the pole in their general direction, he ends up jabbing it right into Andrew's side. The meta-crisis involuntarily lets out a pained bark before freezing again. He has only a moment to realize that he's just completely given away his position before he has to do something about it - and a split second later he's off, dashing away even as the humans try to ready their nets. The movement dislodges Märet, who scrambles to catch on to one of the branches of the bush as he falls past it.

This is a most unusual thing to just sit there and when Andrew barks, runs and then there's the people. The Doctor's nature is to run into the face of danger and not from it.

"Andrew!" The cry comes out as a bark as he scrambles out from the bushes after his new friend. "Oi! Now the lot of you please find something more intimidating to go and capture!" He could try to grab onto clothing but that would end badly for this fox.

Still he's got to try something and the pant leg of a control officer he shall try to grab. "Look here you big brute with a net! There's no possible way that he's going to.." To the humans the language barrier comes off as a bunch of growls and snarls. Oh, poor Doctor who's going to wind up with a catch pole around his neck or a dart in his arse.

"Don't bite them!" Andrew warns the Time Lord as he sees the fox erupt from the bushes and make a beeline for one of the humans. "They'll think you're rabid!"

They really should have been more quiet - there are several humans waiting for them with nets, catch poles, and tranqs at the ready. They seem more than a little surprised to see both a capybara and a fox come out of the same bush, and the one whose pant leg is under attack stumbles back a few steps before one of his buddies moves to help him.

Andrew, meanwhile, dodges around the first human only to come to a halt when he sees another angling for him - and when he realizes that the meta-mouse is no longer on his head. "Märet!" he calls, turning back toward the bushes. A human moves toward him and he whirls and sprints again, too preoccupied with his current troubles to be offended that the Doctor keeps implying that he's unintimidating and harmless.

The first human he ran past has moved up closer behind him while he was distracted, and this one deftly drops the loop of a catch pole in front of the capybara as he turns and starts to run. It slips over Andrew's head and tightens around his neck before he even realizes what's happening and has a chance to avoid it. He nearly pulls the man off balance when he tries to pull away, but then there's another there, helping to hold on, and all Andrew manages to do is half-strangle himself.

"I'm not! Trust me I gave some thought into that. I was going to tug on pant legs." The Doctor calls out and he's going to hold on tight for dear life. The Doctor finds himself in the grasp of one of those catch poles. "Oi! No, please watch the neck!"

He begins to try fight it but it's not helping when he finds himself gasping for air. "Humane?! I hardly call these things anything but that!" He barks and he hears Andrew cry out for his mouse friend.

He was lucky earlier with Jack in trying to avoid these guys but they got him now. "I really hope they just take me as one frightened fox. It'd be horrible to regenerate again in this state."

Andrew coughs and barks in dismay. The human who caught him is trying to be soothing, going "easy, easy" at him, but he's having none of it.

"Märet! Where is he; do you see him?!" He's afraid that the meta-meta got knocked off his head after he left the bushes, and might have been stepped on in all the excitement. He didn't see it when the little mouse darted out of the bushes and hitched a ride on one of the Animal Control officers, smart enough to guess that his Doctor-thing would be caught and sticking with the humans would get him taken to the same place.

The Doctor's just one more urban pest so his handler isn't exactly gentle. "Hey! Now, if you don't mind I would like to avoid choking." His ears perk up at Maret and he tries to get the smell of the mouse, if he smells any he smells many. "Nope, I don't see him. I'm sure he's plenty clever."

No doubt Andrew would be considered a not-so-urban pest were they in South America, but here the Animal Control officers seem a little bit at a loss. The humans talk amongst themselves, come to the agreement that these particular bushes are unlikely to yield more animals despite the current mysterious explosion in New York's wild population, and decide to take these two back to their van. When the humans on the other end of his catch pole begin to try to tug him along, though, Andrew sits his round, furry butt down and digs his feet in. One hundred pounds of rodent is quite a lot of animal to move, though he won't be able to hold out long against multiple humans.

"Have to get loose," he says to the Doctor, his speech somewhat impaired by the leash around his neck. "Dunno what they'll do with us."

And, of course, there's still Märet to worry about.

The Doctor's legs squirm and he looks at the crate that they're going to dump him in. "I don't know, but I suspect I've got a date with many sharp pointy things."

He tries to wiggle himself free of the catch pole and he tries to bite at it. "I'd really hate for them to run tests on me. We both know what just one drop of a Time Lord's blood can do."

"Oh, bloody hell." Whether that's in response to the Doctor's comment or in response to a third officer coming over and forcefully lifting his rear end and shifting him off-balance is unclear. Andrew's forced to walk along in order to avoid being pulled off his feet and dragged, and it's not long before they're forcing him into a crate, too.

[OOC: Mousey rescue after they're locked in the crates, or after they're brought in, or what? I am good with whatever.]

The Doctor tries to make it very hard to drop him in the crate by using those extra limbs to make it hard. "No, no we're not going in there. I hate cramped spaces!"

The officer finally gets The Doctor in the crate and he's going to make it hard for him to get the damn catch pole off.

[OOC: I'm game for either one myself. After, they're in crates is fine with me.]

Andrew turns around willingly enough to let them get the catch pole off, but uses the opportunity to try to squirm back out of the crate and run away. He's pushed back in, though, with a hand on top of his nose that he's not quick enough to bite, and then he's shut in and can no longer see any of what's going on.

"Please tell me you got free of them!" he calls. Then, suddenly, there's a flash of yellow-brown at a crack in the corner of the crate. "Märet!"

The mouse squeaks a hello and comes over to climb back onto Andrew. "Märet's here!" calls the capybara.

Eventually they get The Doctor into the crate and he sighs. "I tried. That's what matters right?" He then hears the name of the little mouse. "Oh, good he's okay!" He tries to paw his way free but that's not going to help any so he sits there.

"We need a bit of a plan to get out before they take us to where ever we're going. I'm hoping they don't plan to separate us because there's a feeling they will. They'll take me somewhere unforgiving and you'll end up back in the zoo."

"Probably," agrees Andrew unhappily. "I don't think I'd much care for turning back into myself sans clothes in the capybara enclosure - and we need to get you out of there before they take you somewhere you'll regret."

He gazes thoughtfully at the door of the crate they've put him in. "Can you see the latch on your cage?" he asks. Given that they're not dealing with creatures with opposable thumbs, chances are the Animal Control officers have put them in crates with simple latches. He's about to tell Märet to go back out and have a look at it when a shadow falls over his crate and the humans start to move it.

[OOC: Thought - they could take them back to the van and leave them there to go looking for more animals since the zoo is full of random critters on the loose? I'm just thinking so they have a chance to get the crates open without being caught again right after.]

The entire idea of waking up in a cage without clothing would be very disturbing but he can only imagine what would happen to Andrew in the end. "I lost my shirt in that heap back at the zoo along with my sonic." The Doctor hopes someone else managed to get hold of it before it got stolen or put into lost and found.

"I think, I see it, no it's not it. We might lack thumbs but they locked away two geniuses." The Doctor stopped trying to paw at the crate, it was pointless as she slid down into the crate.

ooc: Sounds like a plan.

He'd probably be arrested for it - not to mention Märet, if he ended up in there as well. Torchwood might be able to bail them out, but he'd never hear the end of it.

"Our clothes are somewhere out there, too - tried to grab them, but I don't have much in the way of thumbs."

He paced nervously as his crate was put up on a dolly and moved along. "Are you still with me?" he called. He could only hope that they wouldn't be separated so quickly.

The Doctor has seen enough handcuffs in his live times to not want to see them again. He's sure Torchwood would help but like Andrew, he'd have to deal with a very happy Jack!

"No, and dragging my jacket in my mouth was a bit daft. I just got it into a bush but I could use my sonic just about now." The Doctor misses his face, his hands and he waits for the crate is loaded into a van. "Still here for now let's get going before they do separate us."

"With any luck - I don't think they'll have bothered to lock anything. We're just animals after all, right?" Andrew was relieved that they'd both been loaded into the van together - and even more relieved that the humans soon left them again, talking amongst themselves about the freak explosion in the animal population of Central Park and how likely they were to find yet more animals that didn't belong.

Andrew settled down on the floor of his crate, touching his nose to the floor to encourage Märet to climb down off his face and sit between his front feet, where he could talk to the meta-meta.

"Right," he said quietly. "I need you to climb out undo the latches. Don't stick around when you've opened his. Can you do that for me?"

When the little mouse nodded, he did his best to smile with a face not designed for expression. "I'm sending Märet out to try to get the latches open," he explained more loudly, for the Doctor's benefit. "Try not to eat him, will you?"

Märet squirmed out between the bars of the door to his Doctor-thing's cage and climbed upward to investigate the latch. He was finding that he liked this body, at least a little bit - it was so easy to get in and out of places, and to climb, and to hide. He didn't like going back out, though; he was terribly afraid of all the huge things out there ready to get him.

He made it to the latch, which turned out to be a pretty simple design. Given how small he was, though, it took a lot for him to even start to get it to turn.

The Doctor walks closer to door of his cage and he sticks his nose to the bars. "No, I think they're more interested in the bear wandering around outside." The other animals are a nice distraction and he begins to paw at the door again. "I think it was following after an elephant, now that's got to be a sight to see."

He listens and watches the little mouse climb out. "I'm going to be the first vegetarian fox on planet Earth, so of course I won't eat him!" The Doctor lays down on the floor of the cage waiting for the sound of the door latch to click open.

"There's a bear?" asked Andrew incredulously. "Wonder if it's anyone we know."

The latch on his crate clicked, but he waited until he saw Märet scurry away before he nosed it open, not wanting to hit the mouse with the door. He padded over to the fox's crate, watching as Märet struggled with the second latch, then got it, too, to open.

"He's got it," he said, sticking his nose up against the door for a moment so Märet could climb back onto his head. "Come on, let's go."

"Yes, couldn't miss it, a bear, elephant, tiger and an ass." The Doctor waits patiently for the mouse to scurry over to the cage. "I didn't stick around long enough to ask, sorry."

His ears perk up when the latches are opened, and he has to just stretch himself out before he uses a paw to push the door open. The Doctor leaps out of his crate and he turns to look around at the van. "Now let's see about getting out of the bigger crate."

If the humans left the doors wide open this shouldn't be a problem for them to make an escape.

"I think we're in luck there, at least." Fortunately, the humans weren't careful about shutting the van doors. One's open a crack already, so Andrew nudges it farther open, watching to see that it won't swing back and hit them before he tries to carefully hop down out of the back of the van. He ends up slipping and falling on the concrete, letting out a short bark of pain before he climbs back to his feet and looks to see if the fox has joined him.

"We need somewhere to hide. If they catch us again, they'll be more careful the second time."

The Doctor waits and he just leaps down behind Andrew. "We should go our on own way to hide. I think they'll find us that way. I'd say deeper into the park is our best bet."

He then goes quiet and he keeps his ears and nose on the look out for the return of the humans. "I'll see you again sometime then. Keep an eye out for your little friend there."

Andrew considers that, then nods. "You might find a place out in the city blocks, but I'll be conspicuous anywhere," he points out. "I'll find somewhere with good foliage and stay out of sight. You...keep yourself safe."

He's already sidling toward the bushes, not liking being out in the open.

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Capybaras were never designed for urban living

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I AM SO SORRY FOR THE DELAY, UGH

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Re: It's okay!

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