Alex's Beginning

Chapter 9

The three of them gathered near the stairs of the second floor, to overlook everything going on at the main floor. She spat a few times to get the plant away from her mouth and made a ridiculous face at the taste. "Ew."

"Shhh!"

"You shhh!"

They stopped before they could start bickering again when the leader of the Judoon took off his helmet. "Oh yeah!" Alex whispered. "That's right, the Judoon are the outer-space Rhino people! Yeah, I remember!" The Doctor turned to look at her, and she blinked. "What? You can use that term if you want - outer-space rhinos. It's a really nice term."

"I..." He paused. "I just might, actually." She giggled. Chief Rhino spoke a bunch of phrases - or that's what it seemed like to her. It seemed to mean something to the other rhino people as they put their guns up and pointed towards the people. There was a tense moment, before she realized that Morgenstern was walking up to the Chief Rhino guy. She made a face, I'm not so sure you should do that! Too late, he was already talking to the big guy. "We are citizens of planet Earth. We welcome you in peace."

"Such a cliché line." She couldn't help but muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Just like she predicated, talking to the Chief Rhino was not a good idea, judging from the fact that the alien turned and shoved Morgenstern against the wall. She saw him grab some sort of flashlight thing, and point the blue light at the human's mouth. Chief Rhino guy was completely unconcerned by Morgenstern's pleas. After a few tense minutes, the alien pulled the flashlight away and pressed a button.

It seemed to be a recording of some sort of Morgenstern's words. Once Chief Rhino seemed to have what he desired, he hooked up the flashlight to a port on his suit. In a guttural voice, he finally spoke their language. "Language assimilated. Designation Earth English." Well duh, she thought, he did say we were citizens of Earth. "You will be catalogued." He shined that same blue light on Morgenstern - this time pointed towards his forehead. Whatever beep the device indicated caused Chief Rhino to place a big 'X' on the back of the human's hand. "Category: human. Catalogue all suspects."

The rhinos then started going around, making sure to be very through in their investigation. They shined that same light on every person down there, but didn't seem to come up with what they were looking for as they put an 'X' on every person. However, none of this seemed to matter to the Doctor. "Oh, look down there, you've got a little shop. I like a little shop." The Doctor just sounded so pleased.

"I always liked those little teddy bears that you could get for someone who was sick. I always thought they were so cute." The Doctor and her nodded towards each other, both agreeing.

"Never mind that," Martha came in, the focused one of the group. "What are Judoon?"

"Oh oh oh!" She raised her hands this time. "I know! Can I do it? Please?" The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her, but then smiled and nodded. "They're policemen - Well, that's not entirely true. They're really more like police for hire. You need a problem - like something gets lost or something, and if you have enough money I figure, then you can call them and they'll help out - although they might 'cause a bit of trouble along the way to getting it back." She turned towards the Doctor. "Did I get that right?" The Doctor nodded and she gave herself a little round of applause.

"So why bring us to the moon?" Martha asked.

"Neutral territory." The Doctor answered. "According to galactic law, they've got no jurisdiction over the Earth, and they isolated us. That rain? Lightening? That was them, using an H2O scoop."