Doctor Who AU - Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Companion
Arthur left his flat the next morning to find Alfred loitering outside, leaning against a low wall and playing on a loud handheld gaming device. He was waving it around animatedly, fierce frown on his face as he focused completely on the game.
“Come on, you alien bastard! Stop moving while I shoot you!”
“Alfred?”
The self-proclaimed ‘alien’ jumped spectacularly, throwing his game console in the air and fumbling to catch it again.
“Oh, Arthur! Hey!” There was a moment’s pause as Arthur frowned suspiciously at the man on his doorstep, and Alfred’s smile faltered. His eyes widened suddenly. “Oh! Right! Aliens!”
Arthur took a step backwards towards his front door, clutching nervously at the strap of his satchel with both hands.
Alfred waved his hands enthusiastically, a hopeful smile on his face. “No, no! It’s okay, I’m not here to ask you weird questions! I’m here because there are aliens and I have to stop them.”
“None of that sounds ‘okay,’ Alfred.”
Alfred shrugged, a sheepish and very charming smile on his face that really would have made it easy to forgive him if the word “aliens” didn’t come to him so easy.
“You know what I mean.”
“Um…no. I don’t.”
“It’s my job. This won’t take long. You can even help me! Then you’ll have to believe in me, right?”
Arthur frowned and shrank even further back towards the wall. “I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, totally! If you saw an alien running around and then me stopping him and saving the day, you’ll have to believe I am who I say I am!”
“And that’s a…Time Lord, time and space travelling alien, correct?”
“Hey! You remember! That’s great!”
Arthur rolled his eyes again, brushing roughly past Alfred and storming down the steps of his building on the way to work.
“I have to go. Good morning.”
“No, wait!”
Once more, Arthur found himself being followed by this strange American. Though today, Alfred had dropped the formal black suit (which Arthur assumed had been an attempt to look serious and believable) and was dressed more casually in jeans and a vintage-looking bomber jacket. Which was, unfortunately, very fetching on him. Really, it should have been easy to run away from someone so obviously insane and potentially dangerous, but Alfred was just that charming that Arthur was finding it hard to drag himself out of the pull of the man’s charisma.
“Where are those aliens?” Alfred was mulling aloud behind him. Arthur glanced left and right and couldn’t see any signs of anything suspicious, either. He felt like hitting himself when he realised he actually was interested to see how Alfred was going to pull this off today.
“Nice try, Alfred. Did you get some college friends to dress up for you?”
“Nnnnnno…” It sounded very unsure, but Arthur didn’t have time to dwell on it before Alfred was catching up to walk beside him and saying loudly: “But yeah, where are those ALIENS? They were RIGHT HERE a minute ago. You’d think I’d be able to spot some ALIENS in 21st century London.”
Arthur was about to roll his eyes once again when a small grey alien stepped out of the alleyway ahead of them. It looked just like a movie depiction - large head and giant eyes, with no mouth to be seen.
“There! Look, Arthur! There! See?! An alien!”
“Yes, I see it, Alfred!” exclaimed Arthur, leaping backwards away from the alien. It was certainly far too small to be a college student in disguise. In fact, if that was a costume, it was a pretty high quality one - where Alfred might have gotten his hands on it, Arthur didn’t dare think. However, there was one glaring flaw in the picture. “It’ holding an ice-cream…”
“Oh my God!” cried Alfred, dramatically. “It’s…ah…its gun looks like an ice-cream! It must be to fool the humans!”
“Why wouldn’t it disguise itself, then?!” Arthur cried, jumping behind Alfred and peering round him as the alien walked towards them.
“Um…There’s no time for questions! Come on, Arthur! We have to stop him before he kills everyone!”
Arthur found himself being dragged away to safety by Alfred as the alien stood there, blinking at him and slowly licking his ice cream.
“I’m…I’m just not sure about this whole thing,” said Arthur calmly, as Alfred hid them in an alleyway and peered round the corner to check the alien’s whereabouts.
“What?! But it’s totally an alien!” Alfred whined at him.
“Well, it certainly looks like one. But it’s just…eating an ice cream.”
Alfred blinked at him, then sighed loudly. “You’re right. If I expect you to BELIEVE ME, you’ll have to SEE THE ALIEN DO SOME ALIEN STUFF. Like USE HIS RAY GUN TO SHRINK THAT STREETLIGHT.”
Arthur stared at Alfred in surprise, and no small amount of confusion whenever Alfred raised his voice to shout random phrases. Alfred didn’t seem to think anything of it, ignoring the look on Arthur’s face and peering around the corner of the wall to check on the alien again.
“There! Look! Just as I suspected!” he exclaimed, pushing Arthur forwards so he had a perfect view o the alien on the street.
Arthur saw the little grey thing walk slowly towards the nearest streetlight, munching languidly on his ice cream cone as he pulled out a little green gun from seemingly nowhere. Just as Alfred predicted, the alien-creature aimed at the streetlight and with a single beam of red light from the gun, the whole thing had shrunk to the size of a toddler.
“Oh, my God!” Arthur cried, jumping backwards behind the wall with Alfred. “He really did it! It shrank! An actual streetlight!”
“I know, right!” Alfred agreed, smiling so wide it was almost manic. “He’s going on a rampage! So you believe me now, right?”
Arthur thought about it for a few seconds, peeking round the corner to check the alien wasn’t after him (it was busy finishing its ice cream by the mini streetlight, so no worries there).
“Well…that could just be a trick. I mean, maybe that’s a fake streetlight.”
“That can shrink?! Come on, Arthur!” Alfred nagged, grabbing Arthur’s arm and tugging pleading on his sleeve.
“I’d have to be sure before I just blithely start believing in aliens and humanoid time travellers.”
“Ugh, fine!” Alfred groaned. “What if he shrank a building? I mean, you live on this road, right - you know these buildings are all real. They can’t be tricks or anything.”
Arthur nodded slowly, watching warily as Alfred once again leant near the edge of the wall and raised his voice. “Well, that would be useful to get you to believe me, but I sure hope the alien doesn’t SHRINK THIS BUILDING RIGHT HERE. That would suck.”
No sooner had he finished shouting than the building the two men were hiding behind had shrunk to almost nothing, leaving Alfred and Arthur in full view of the alien and the rest of the street.
“Woah! No way! This guy’s crafty!” Alfred exclaimed, turning a very poor imitation of a shocked face to Arthur.
“Alfred.”
“Hang on, Arthur! I’ll save you and return the building back to normal!”
Alfred jumped over the miniature coffee shop and leapt in front of the grey alien. They stared each other down for a few seconds, then both adopted fighting poses. A few fumbling karate chops later, Alfred had snatched the laser gun out of the alien’s grip and restored the streetlight and coffee shop to normal.
“Okay! Job well done! Arthur, come join me in my space ship and we can take this guy back to his planet. You know, so he can go to jail and stuff.”
The frown Arthur had been sporting for the past few minutes darkened intensely.
“Alfred, do you know this alien?”