Warning: Contains icky nasty stuff. LOOK WHO'S TALKING: SIGHTS FOR SORE EYES by BKWillis "Sit! Sit! Good girl. Now stay... stay... I said SIT! Sit! Now hold still... Don't you bite me! No! Bad girl! Sit! Now just... OWW! No biting!" The Supervisor just shook his head and sighed at the sound of Izzy's shouting. Putting on a stern and reproving expression, he pushed open the office door to chastise his erring employee. "Izzy, you know we don't allow dogs in..." He wound down as he caught sight of what was taking place in the creche's staff office. Izzy had one of the toddlers, a pretty little girl with curly brown hair, up on the table and was trying to hold her in place with one hand while wielding a small eyedropper in the other. Both girls were in a state of rather serious disarray, as was the office, while tiny toothmarks were clearly visible on both of Izzy's hands. "Should I even ask?" the Supervisor mused. The toddler, distracted by his entrance, stopped her frantic squirming for a split-second as she turned to look at him. "An opening!" Izzy cried in triumph, grabbing the youngster by the head. Before the child could wriggle away, she brought down the dropper and squirted a bit of liquid into her eyes. As the little girl began to scream and kick, Izzy swept her off the table and set her on the floor. Still bawling her head off, the rugrat crawled on out the door and into the playroom, accidentally ramming her head into the Supervisor's legs, the doorframe, and the door before clearing the room. Izzy flopped down into the nearest chair, wiping sweat and baby slobber off her face. "I need a drink," she muttered, looking at the ceiling. The Supervisor cleared his throat. "Dare I ask what all that was in aid of?" "Baby Psycho Nyssa has an eye infection," Izzy explained. "She has to have eyedrops put in twice a day. And in case you didn't notice, the infection makes her just a wee bit cranky. Blurs her vision, too." "I see... unlike Miss Nyssa." "Ha bloody ha ha." Izzy let herself hang bonelessly in the comfy chair. "At least I can relax a bit now." "I'm afraid not, my dear." The Supervisor pulled a small piece of paper from his coat pocket and passed it to her. "We have some new charges coming in who will require your strict supervision. The information is on that sheet." "Supervision," Izzy repeated in a gallows-tone. "Isn't that _your_ job, Mr. _Supervisor_?" "Perhaps," he agreed, ignoring the insubordination in her voice, "but I lack your savoir-faire with the youngsters. I must assign the proper talents to the proper tasks, correct?" "You must sit in your office and read the newspaper, you mean." "A mean-spirited fabrication, unworthy of such a noble young woman as yourself," he sniffed, offended. He wasn't going to sit in his office and read the paper; he was going to sit in his office and read Sir Walter Scott. "At any rate, our new arrivals will be here any minute now, so do your best to make them feel at home and try to keep the property damage supeficial, if you can." ---- "Why do we have to be the engines?" "'Cause you're _boys_, dummy!" Izzy just stared at the septet of children that were making their way to the creche's front door. Five little girls were riding in a red 'Radio Flyer' wagon while two groaning little boys pushed. In the front of the wagon sat two little girls holding hands, a redhead wearing a '49% Angel' t-shirt and a curly-haired brunette with the world's ugliest teddy bear in her lap. Behind them was an older girl of about four wearing a Winnie the Pooh eyepatch, while sitting in the back were a toddler who looked just like Jo Grant, but with cat ears and a tail, and a girl who looked uncannily like Adric, wearing glasses and clutching a Marvin Martian lunchbox. Pushing on the right was a little boy with a fancy silk shirt on over his nappy and a look of world-weary annoyance on his face, while on the left was a faceless cyborg baby in black footy pajamas. "So what if we're boys?" Silk-shirt demanded. "Boys hafta be the engine, 'cause girls are too delicate," answered Eyepatch-girl. "Heh. 'Delicate' she says..." Silk-shirt confided to his partner. Eyepatch-girl crawled over the kittengirl and swatted Silk-shirt on the head. "Are you saying I ain't delicate, Paul?! Are you? Huh?" She swatted him again. "I didn't say that," Paul said calmly. "You, Sargie, are as delicate and lovely as any other female... Female warthog, I mean." "How dare you say I ain't ladylike?!" Sargie snarled, swatting him even harder. "You no-good diaper-sniffin' boogereater! I am too a lady!" "Quit beatin' on my starboard engine, Sargie," the redhead complained. "You're makin' us lose speed. Now push, you two! And don't forget to make the engine noise!" The two little boys dutifully began to push again as Sargie subsided, both making 'BRRRRMMBRRRMMBRRRMM' noises as they did so. Finally, the little procession made its way to the door, where Izzy stood waiting. As the wagon halted, the six toddlers who had facial features all offered her big, sunny, hopelessly insincere smiles. "Well," Izzy began, "you must be these pirate children I was told to expect." "Pirates? Us?" demanded Teddy-bear-girl with forced innocence. "No, no. We're just, uh, tourists. That's it. We're innocent tourists looking to take pictures of your lovely... cathedral." Izzy made her eyes as wide and innocent as the children's. "Gosh, we don't have a cathedral, I'm afraid. Would you innocent and completely harmless tourists like to take pictures of our nursery instead? It's very quaint and has interesting local color." "That sounds lovely, good lady," Teddy-bear-girl answered. "Lead on, then." The kittengirl leaned forward to giggle into Teddy-bear-girl's ear. "She's really falling for it, Nyssie!" Nyssie pushed the kittengirl back, shushing her. "Watch it, JoJo, you'll blow our cover!" "Sorry sorry sorry!" Izzy rolled her eyes a bit and took up the wagon's handle, pulling the girls into the building, much to the two boys' relief. "Now," she said when they were safely inside, "perhaps you'd like to start your tour with--" She cut off abruptly as she found herself staring down the barrels of a half-dozen squirtguns. "Ha ha! The joke's on you, sweetie-pie!" the little redhead cackled. "We aren't tourists at all! We're vicious pirates, come to plunder and pillage!" "Corsairs, even!" Sargie added. "Desperadoes, I suppose," offered Paul. "Yeah! Death-potatoes! Death-potatoes! JoJo likes that word!" "Not 'potatoes', JoJo..." sighed Glasses-girl. "Hmmph. JoJo says 'potato', you say 'perado'," the kittengirl sniffed. Izzy remained perfectly straightfaced, somehow. "Oh dear. What are your demands, fearsome... death-potatoes?" "Our demands are..." Nyssie stopped, confused. "Say, Emmy, what _are_ our demands?" "Don't be silly, dearest," the redhead scoffed. "Our demands are... uh... umm..." She looked around, chewing thoughtfully on her fist. "Umm..." Izzy smiled indulgently at them. "Tell you what, while you think over your demands for plunder, why don't you watch this?" She held up a videotape case. "Whassat?" Sargie asked suspiciously. "It's not Teletubbies, is it?" She fingered her Super-Soaker 4000. "No. It's 'Queen Emeraldas'..." Nyssie and Sargie squealed in delight, while Emmy stood up in the wagon, pointing forwards. "Full speed ahead to the TV, you scurvy pups! Telly awaits!" ---- Izzy stood between the seven raucous toddlers and the TV set, a list in her hand. "All right, kids. Before we watch the movie, we have to call roll." The kittengirl began jumping up and down. "Call roll! Call roll! Yay! JoJo doesn't know what that means, but it sounds cool!" "It's like callin' muster," Sargie explained. "Yay! JoJo likes mustard! Especially on fish!" Izzy ran her finger down the list of names. "Nyssie von Drakken?" The little curly-haired girl waved her hand. "That's me! And here's Caliban!" She held up her teddy bear, which resembled nothing so much as a teddy bear Frankenstein's monster. A misshapen brown head had been rather badly stitched onto a too-small blue body, along with a truly mismatched assortment of limbs. "Uh, yeah. Hi, Caliban. Emmy Ashford?" "Over here, cutie." This was the redhead, who was sitting next to Nyssie, gnawing on her squirtgun. "Kaytie Donegan?" "Call me Sargie," replied the older toddler with the eyepatch. "JoJo Grant?" The kittengirl bounded over and started tugging at Izzy's pantsleg. "JoJo is here! What do you want? Huh? Huh? Tell JoJo! What is it? Huh?" "Adrie d'Alzaire?" The little girl who looked like Adric raised her hand. "Present, Miss Izzy." "Fade?" "Reporting as ordered," the cyborg toddler said as he materialized beside her leg. Izzy turned to the silk-shirted boy. "So, you must be Little Paul of Antioch, right?" He smiled as charmingly as he could with the teeth he had. "You can call me 'Little Duke' if you want," he said. "I think I'll just call you Little Paul, instead." His face fell slightly. "Crud. Everybody says that..." ---- Meanwhile, in the playroom, the other children were going about their 'normal' business... "You've actually built a fully-functional telecommunications satellite? You're not just pulling my leg?" "I sure did, Lizzie! Am I a genius with Legos, or what...?" "...lemme just check the current interest rates on my new laptop..." "That's an Etch-a-Sketch, Anji." "Oh. No wonder it was such a bargain..." "Gimme back my nappy, Fitz, or I'm telling!" "But you look so _cute_ that way, Benny!" "Coyote, you ate _my_ jelly sammitch! Burn!" WHOOSH! "Nyah nyah nyah! Youw aim sucks, Embew! You couldn't buwn bwead in a toastew!" The babble of voices shook Baby Nyssa out of her nap again. She sat up and rubbed at her eyes, but everything was still blurry and they stung a little. She considered crying, but decided against it. The adults weren't close by at the moment and crying was only helpful when there were grown-ups to annoy. Still, she needed some way to express to one and all just how rotten she felt. She grabbed a corner of her Tom and Jerry blanket and tried to tear it, but the cloth was too sturdy. There were some blocks stacked next to her and she tried kicking those over. Mmm, destruction. That made her feel a little better. What she really needed, though, was someone she could make feel really awful, worse than she did. Logically, that would mean that she would feel better, since someone else would feel worse. Baby Nyssa swore by logic, after all. And she had just the right person in mind, too. If she could only find him... Blinking at the fuzzy world around her, Nyssa crawled off in search of her favorite prey. ---- She'd tried to watch the movie, but Nyssie and Emmy shouting "Pirate chicks rule!" every time Emeraldas blew up a bunch of Arfressians (about every three minutes or so) had kind of put her off. Instead, Adrie had crawled over to a more private corner of the playroom, where she could examine the contents of her lunchbox in peace. She was just undoing the latch when she felt a presence behind her. But before she could turn to look, someone grabbed her diaper and yanked it upwards with all their might. "Yeeeeaaaaiigh!" Adrie shrieked as the nappy stretched tight on her. She fell over, pawing at the diaper and trying to tug it free. As she did so, she caught sight of a familiar-looking curly-haired baby crawling away, giggling. ---- "Yeah! Pow! Kerplooie!! Eat on that, Arfressian scum!" "Yay! JoJo likes explosions!" "Blow 'em up good, Emeraldas!" The toddler buccaneers were cheering on the mayhem as Emeraldas the Pirate Queen slaughtered her way through the horde of Arfressian ships on the TV screen when they were distracted from the carnage by the sounds of a familiar voice crying. Nyssie crawled over and hit the 'Pause' button as they all turned to see little Adrie creeping over, dragging her lunchbox and bawling at the top of her lungs. "Whassamatter kiddo?" Sargie demanded. "You screamin' like you got a rupture." "And why is your nappy pulled up so high?" Nyssie wondered. Adrie stopped squalling for a moment and thrust an accusatory finger at Nyssie. "You should know!" she spat. "You did it!" She plucked at the diaper, trying to work it back into place. "And I didn't do anything to you. (sniffle sniffle) Why'd you have to go and wedgie me?" "_I_ gave you a wedgie? I think not. I'd remember something like that. And besides, I never wedgie my own crew members." "You wedgied Rubinstein that one time," Emmy reminded. "Did I?" "Yeah. Pulled his nappy all the way over his head." "Oh yes. But that's the exception that proves the rule, you see." "Wedgied Olvir, too," Emmy went on. "And Kahri. Twice. And..." "Okay, okay!" Nyssie waved her hands, annoyed. "So maybe I do wedgie the crew sometimes. But I didn't wedgie Adrie." Paul leaned over, examining Adrie's distress. "Why do you say Nyssie did it, anyway?" he asked. "I saw her when she crawled away," Adrie sulked. "And I heard her giggling. There's no mistaking her." "But I didn't do it," Nyssie said firmly. "Besides, giving someone a wedgie from behind isn't my style. I do them like this..." She crawled over to Adrie and grabbed her by the hair, then yanked her face in close and planted a slobbery kiss on her cheek. Then, before the stunned child could react, she grabbed the top of her nappy and hauled upwards on it. "Yeeaaiiaaiiaaigh!" screamed Adrie as she began tugging at her diaper. Emmy nodded sagely. "That's true. That's exactly how she gives wedgies. Now me, I'll do one from the back, but with an extra flourish." To demonstrate, she crawled over to where Adrie was still struggling with her nappy, took hold of the back of it, and pulled it up even further. "Yaaahhaaioww!" As Adrie fell over again, Emmy reached out and grabbed her foot, then started tickling. "Hahaowheeheeowchow!" Sargie tapped her chin, considering. "Maybe Fade did it with his Mad Baby Techno-Ninja Skillz..." "Hey, that's right," agreed JoJo. "Maybe he made himself look like Nyssie so nobody would know it was him! That's just too too too clever!" "Such tricks _are_ in my repertoire, but the wedgie given was clearly not in the manner of my ninja clan." Fade suddenly appeared beside Adrie. "Allow me to demonstrate. If you will notice, the victim's nappy was pulled up to _this_ point by forcible seizure of the material here and here. This is the method of a skilled amateur. On the other hand, we who are trained from birth in the arts of wedgification grasp front and back, thus..." He grabbed a double-fistful of Adrie's diaper. "...and pull forcefully, in this manner, with a single motion." So saying, he jerked poor Adrie's diaper up with such force that she was lifted clean off the floor and her nappy stretched almost out of shape. "Aaaiiieeeeaaagh!!" The other pirate babies applauded, deeply impressed. "That's lovely, Fade," Little Paul drawled, "but aren't we all overlooking something? Namely, the fact that we know that none of us did it, because we were all right here filling our little heads with anime space-opera." The kittengirl looked completely confused. "But JoJo thought we were all here watching telly?" "That's what I just said." "Oh." "But she specifically said she saw and heard Nyssie," Sargie protested. "Maybe she was mistaken," Emmy shrugged. Fade had turned to look at something across the playroom. He subtly pointed in that direction and muttered, "Or maybe she wasn't." Sargie's eye widened. "Holy poop! She looks just like Nyssie!" "But not as cute," the brunette sniffed, shaking Caliban's paw threateningly at them. A look of enraptured wonder spread across Emmy's features. "Mmm... _Two_ Nyssies..." Nyssie socked her upside the head with the teddy bear. "Please, dear," she said with icy sweetness. "You can hardly handle the one you already have. At any rate, this would appear to solve the mystery of the phantom wedgier, wouldn't you say?" "That's so," Emmy replied, grinning apologetically. "But what to do about it?" "Revenge, of course, dearest. No one wedgies one of our crew and gets away with it." Adrie glared at Nyssie, Emmy, and Fade, but said nothing. "But what sort of revenge?" the redhead wondered. "Somehow, simply giving her a wedgie in return doesn't quite seem enough." "We could make her eat one of Nyssie's cupcakes," Sargie muttered. Fortunately, Nyssie didn't hear and Emmy pretended not to. "I have a notion," said Fade, "but we need a few things to do it." They all looked at him, silently inviting him to continue. "First, a wet diaper..." Sargie shrugged and toddled over to where a little red-haired boy was crawling past. She grabbed him by the front of his 'I <heart> Trion!' t-shirt and shoved him up against the wall. "You're dead meat, kid..." she snarled in his face. There was a sudden distinct aroma in the air and she looked down to see his now-drooping and slightly yellow nappy. "...unless you give me your diaper right now!" "Next, something slimy and nasty..." "How about Sargie?" offered Little Paul. "She's all that and more." "Er, that's not really what I had in mind." "But I notice you aren't disputing my point, either." Emmy held up a bowl of lukewarm tapioca. "How about this stuff Izzy gave us to eat? It's nasty enough." Fade nodded. "That's perfect. And lastly, we need something to distract Izzy..." "Leave that to JoJo! JoJo knows just what to do!" The kittengirl leaped up and bounded over toward the aquarium, wailing "Fishies! Fishies!" at the top of her little lungs. A moment later there came a terrible jangle of breaking glass, followed by the fast tramping of grown-up feet and an outraged grown-up cry of "What have you done?! Quick, someone get a bowl of water!" Sargie came toddling back over just then, a drippy diaper held out at arm's length. "Excellent," hissed Fade evilly. "Now, let's be about our revenge for poor, wedgied Adrie..." ---- Baby Nyssa was passing the time by methodically tearing the pages out of a coloring book and ripping them into tiny drool- soaked pieces. Ordinarily, she had much more respect for books than to perform such wanton vandalism, but the thrill of giving Adric an atomic wedgie had worn off more quickly than she'd anticipated. Besides, if she couldn't see well enough to be able to make use of a book, why should anyone else get to? Fortunately, it was a _Doctor Who: Time Rift_ coloring book, so nobody really cared. A shadow fell across her and she looked up to see a blurry shape that looked somewhat like a little red-haired girl. She frowned in irritation, both at the interruption and at the stupid eye infection that was making everything so fuzzy-muzzy. "Yes?" she snapped. "I hear tell you like giving wedgies," the girl drawled. "And what of it?" Nyssa demanded haughtily, rising to her feet. "What's that to you?" "Just this, cutie-pie. NOW!" At that moment, someone grabbed Nyssa from behind and held her arms tightly behind her back. Before she could cry out, her nappy was pulled open and something sticky and slimy and all-around gross-feeling was poured down the back. A dark shape appeared on her left and grabbed her diaper front and back, yanking it upwards hard enough to pick her up off the floor and making the sticky slimy gross stuff goosh all over her. Then, as she opened her mouth to let out a good squall, everything went dark and damp and STINKY as a nasty weewee diaper was pulled down over her head. "That'll teach her," she heard someone say as she was let go to lie crying in the stinky squishy ickiness. As she launched into a truly epic crying jag, the thought occurred to her that the voice sounded an awful lot like her own. ---- Izzy scooped the last of the flopping goldfish into the punchbowl with a sigh of relief. "There. That's all of... Wait a minute..." She quickly counted up the number of swimming fish. "There's one missing." She looked around on the floor, then at the little blonde kittengirl, who had her back to her. "Have you seen the other goldfish, JoJo?" JoJo's head shook, her back still to Izzy. Izzy started to look around on the floor again, when something occurred to her. Her mouth twisted as she looked back at JoJo. "JoJo, turn around, please." With great reluctance, the kittengirl did so. A madly-thrashing fish tail was sticking out of her mouth. "You spit that fish out right this instant!" Spit. Splash. "JoJo's sorry, Miss Izzy..." Izzy was about to launch into a lecture about how the nursery pets weren't for eating and how a certain kittengirl would have a lot of time to contemplate that in the corner with a sore bottom if it ever happened again, when she was distracted by a horrific and slightly muffled wailing from the other side of the creche. "What in the world is...?" Her eyes did an impersonation of dinner plates as she caught sight of the source of the commotion. "Oh, dear Lord..." ---- It was Nap Time by the time Izzy got Baby Nyssa completely cleaned up and mostly settled down. The children lay scattered about snoring on their blankies in the darkened playroom. With a tired groan, Izzy set Nyssa down on her Tom and Jerry blanket and tucked it around her. "There, there, Nyssa," Izzy cooed, sounding just a bit ragged. She'd almost completely exhausted her supply of soothing noises in the past two hours. "You just try and get some rest, okay?" She patted the still-cranky and itchy-eyed girl on the head. "You rest, and Auntie Izzy is going to do the same." With that, she staggered over to the Story-Telling Chair and flopped back into it, eyes closed. Nyssa just lay there for a while, quietly seething. She still hadn't quite puzzled out what exactly had happened or who had done it to her, since she couldn't see all that well, but she was pretty sure who was to blame. "Adrrrrric," she growled to herself. Of course, it _had_ to be Adric's fault. Logic, which she always swore by, dictated that Adric must definitely be the source of her troubles, on the grounds that: A) The people who'd been so mean to her had said it was because she'd wedgied someone and Adric was the only one she'd wedgied today; and B) Everything was always Adric's fault. She lay there, silently contemplating her disgrace until she heard the soft buzz of Izzy's snore from the Story-Telling Chair. With a grim and purposeful nod, she crawled quietly out of her blankie and began creeping among the sprawled rugrats on the floor. She crawled to each fuzzy shape, trying to get close enough to make out who was who and blinking rapidly in a useless attempt to bring her vision into better focus. One-by-one, she examined each snoozing figure, looking for the telltale signs of black bowl-cut hair and beady little eyes that marked her target. She found him on the ninth blankie she checked. "Revenge," she whispered as she grabbed his diaper and pulled it up with every bit of strength she could muster. The boy awoke, sitting bolt-upright, eyes wide and stifling a cry. He stared at her for a moment, then his features slid into a slow, cold grin. Baby Nyssa felt her heart sink a little as she was able to make out the blurred shape of an animal tail on his diaper. The boy laughed softly and smoothed down the long braid that hung down his back. "Oh, deaw me," she heard him whisper as some invisible force seized her by the nappy. "This is just _so_ not youw wucky day..." --BKWillis Copyright Notes: 'Doctor Who' is property of the BBC. 'Look Who's Talking' concept by Imran Inayat. Story and original characters by BKWillis. Archivist's Notes: Regular Characters: Izzy, Nyssa (and alternate Nyssaias von Drakken), Adric (as alternates Coyote and Adria d'Alzaire), Jo Grant (as alternate JoJo Grant), Fey Truscott-Sade (as alternate Fade), Turlough Other Recurring Characters: Ember Ashe (as alternate Embericles Ashford), the Supervisor Categories: 'Look Who's Talking' (TTR subset); humor Synopsis: Wedgies, wedgies everywhere when Baby Psycho Nyssa has an eye infection and the 'Space Vixens!' toddlers come to visit.