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Barbara was thrust into the small space by rough hands, and turned just in time to have the door slammed shut in her face. She huffed. She screamed profanities in her head. She folded her arms crossly, shifting a little to take pressure off a bruise forming on her wrist.

The rest of the room was taken up by a complicated looking thing, with bits that jutted out at odd angles, like bend pipes from an organ and buttons clustered here and there. Barbara took half a step toward the Doctor, for that was all she needed before she was standing almost on top of him. He looked deep in thought and might have let him do as he liked, were they no in a prison.

"So how are we going to get out of this fine mess?" she asked, eyes casually scoping the Doctor and the machine. Who knew which would provide the most coherent answer; the alien who couldn't get her home, or a foreign machine with an unknown purpose.

He turned to her with a look of mild exasperation, hands on his hips.

"My dear Barbara, complaining about it won't help! This stabilizer requires a great deal of work. Once we've completed it, they will undoubtedly let us go."

Probably, he added, mentally.

"I wasn't complaining," she muttered dubiously and uncrossed her arms so that they dangled by her sides. A few feet above their heads, one of the pipes let go of a puff of steam. Barbara tried not to see that as an ominous sign. "Well, is there anything I can do to help?"

"Hmm?" He said, turning back to her, already distracted again by the machine.

"Well, look around for, uh, a bit of green wire. It should be rather thick, under one of the back panels."

He, for his part, began to push buttons. The machine made ominous noises. He lifted his cane and hit the machine squarely.

"Don't you try that on me!" he told the machine. "No meltdown mode for you."

At the clanking and chugging of the machine, Barbara jumped back. Well, as back as she could get in such a small room. But the Doctor calmed it down well enough, and it quietly hummed. She walked right around it, peering in to see between pipes and things that twisted and knotted together, making up the guts of the thing.

"Doctor? I think I've found it," Barbara called, poking her head around the side of it enough to see just a wisp of his now wild white hair. She pointed to the inner workings of the machine, where part of a bright green wire wrapped around a whatsit, connected to a thingamajig.

Lei's actually looking for that arm... Hey how'd you get into her apartment. "Okay, shoul' I even ask what you're doin' here miste'. Cause ah don' remember you bein' on the visitor's list." She has a hand gun in one hand, and well okay her other hand happens to be in his.

"Coul' ya kin'ly 'and me back mah arm?"

"Excellent! Pull it out, my dear. And be quick about it, there may be some acid."

He paused for a moment, looking around the machine.

"So do move quickly. Let's not have that face of yours scorched, shall we? I've gotten rather used to it."

"Ah, I thought you were de-activated. A cyborg, I see. How very interesting."

Then he looked down at the gun, and frowned.

"Oh, put that away before someone gets hurt."

Acid?! Barbara did indeed move quickly, and tugged at the blue wire. And tugged. And tugged.

"It won't budge!" she cried, panicking a little at the possibility of having acid spill on her face. "Do you have something I could use as a kind of clamp?"

She watches him a moment, he hasn't really done anything and she's pretty sure if he does become a threat she could take him down one armed.

The gun slips away into the holster at her hip, side draw. "Fine but it comes out again if'n you don' answer questions. 'Ow you git in here an' would ya han' me back mah arm?"

"I said the green wire," he said, stepping around the machine.

"You were trying to pull out the transduction power wire! Goodness me, we'd be in a pickle, then. The green one should come out easily."

He shook his head at her, stepping back to where he was.

"Do pay attention, Barbara!"

He looked very unimpressed with the threat, letting go of her arm.

"Oh, very well. Going around threatening harmless old men with firearms. A bit like a Cyberman."

That last was not a compliment.

"I suppose you go around doing that to people all the time? Does it make you feel better, young lady?"

Conveniently, his indignation meant he didn't have to answer her question.

"You said the blue wire!" Not that there was any point in arguing. As far as the Doctor was concerned, he was always right.

Barbara went back to looking for a green wire in amongst the maze of parts, just as another puff of steam was released, raising the temperature of the tiny room a little more. The green wire lay hidden in an almost unreachable spot. Barbara had to curl her arm between two pipes to get at it, and even then she could only reach it with the tips of her fingers. It kept slipping out of her grasp. She had to get closer. Barbara repositioned herself on the tips of her toes, leaning in toward the machine so much that it was practically swallowing her whole.

"Old men who break into top secret government facilities, yes, par' o' the job. An' ain' a Cyberman. They haven' been aroun' for five years." She sighed. "Tech ain' dere's." She winced a moment as she snapped the arm back in place. "It be older tech, mah sister and brother built it after an acciden' back home." She only knew of the aliens because she had seen it on the news.

"Broke in? Broke in? Goodness gracious! I landed here! If anything, you lot got in the way! Hmph!"

Certainty you can bend steel around, really.

"Well then, if you have nothing to do with such technology, perhaps you can stop waving guns around at people. You'll never solve anything that way."

Well, naturally, he would say, were he asked.

For his part, he continued to poke and prod and rewire, moving with speed that belied his apparent age.

"Such an old unit. I wonder how they're at all functional."

"Landed? Den we would have record on de landing pad o' you being here."

She can, but what's the fun in that unless you're showing off to guys who love showing off their muscles?

"Usually most people ten' to drop what de be doin' seein' a weapon."

Barbara grunted with the effort of reaching the wire. "There," she sighed as she extricated herself from the machine, the wire trapped firmly in her grasp. "I've got it, Doctor."

Edited 2012-08-28 02:34 (UTC)

He snorted derisively.

"Oh, I very much doubt that! And as for seeing a weapon - I rather take insult. Any fool can go about waving a weapon - perhaps you could demonstrate intelligence instead, hmm?"

"Ah, good, excellent."

He nodded, trying a few other combinations of the machine's many buttons. The thrum of the machine took on a distinctly different tone.

"Well, that takes care of that problem. It won't be detonating on us as we work. Now, let me see..."

Barbara stood about, waiting to be useful some more, but the Doctor had disappeared into his own bubble again. He'd probably forget that she was even there if she didn't say anything.

"Doctor?"