“EWWWWWW,” he declares, nose wrinkled, but face transported with an unholy grin.
“Oi, you gonna help ‘er then?” she says, amused to see him down on the ground like that.
“Noooooo,” he retorts, twisting his neck so he can flash that leer at her. “This is ecology in progress! A food chain’s pecking order vividly displayed for our fortunate gaze! I’ll not interrupt at ALL!”
The Master glances with his best effort at imperiousness at his beloved buffoon. He rounds on the Doctor as he has the TEMERITY to RUN AWAY from the feisty foreplay he himself instigated!
“Oi, OHO. Cat and mouse time, you little SHIT!”
He draws the nanotech tracker he had been engrossed with, a pinhead-sized bug that hovers after the Doctor and adheres to the skin of his neck. Then the Master spins round, grinning maniacally, and returns to his testing screen. Excellent. The tracker is activated, and the Doctor is now a bright blinking blue dot on the digital grid.
For the most pregnant interval, the Master stares at his interviewer with wicked disdain. It seems inevitable that he should send the presumptuous interloper off empty-handed.
Then he draws a regal breath.
“Black. Sleek. Horn, no wings. Tattoo would be a red sword with machine gears adorning its hilt piercing a white skull to signify my conquest over mortality using my intellect. I would always have a TARDIS. And Rassilon isn’t cool enough to be a Pony.”
He clicks his tongue, and makes finger guns, to end the interview.
The Master arches an eyebrow at this unsolicited onslaught of sanctimony clad in the guise of “tough love.”
For an uncomfortably long interval, he stares. Not a muscle moves from his precise and frostily detached place of examination. What a fascinating protozoan this person is.
After thirty seconds which feel like thirty years, he glides aside and gestures at the Doctor, puckish and blond, short and fine-boned and elf-faced and thoroughly female.
“As a matter of fact,” he drawls, swallowing a guffaw, “have you met my wife?”
Icarus 