Epilogue: The Beginning of the End

            The T.A.R.D.I.S.es of the four Gladiators and the Doctor’s Type-40 model piggybacked each other once again. They all barreled down the swirling multicolored time-space energy that was the infinite dimensional corridor, until it metamorphosed into blue and red, fast-moving energy. This was indication of their arrival through the time vortex associated with the Doctor’s T.A.R.D.I.S.

            Within one of their conjoined console rooms, Gen and the Mystery Inc. gang thanked Tuck Pendleton, reverted back to average size, for succeeding in his mission inside of Alexis.

            “What was it like to traverse the inside of a human body?” Velma probed.

            Her question prompted a heavy sigh out of Pendleton. “Something I won’t ever forget…no matter how hard I try.”

            Close by them were Alexis and Jeff, who still remained in his Meteor Man outfit.

            “So…how does it feel to be a superhero?” she asked him.

            Jeff swelled with a sense of buoyancy Alexis had never seen in him before. “It felt…exuberating…like I’m a whole new man.” His enthusiasm then dwindled. “Of course, the Doctor says that it’s only temporary. The more I use my powers, the more I exhaust them.”

            “Well,” Alexis said, “we’ll just work on you using them sparingly.”

            “Does that mean we’re still…you know…together?”

            Alexis knew what incited him to question their future; she did herself, soon after she regained her Time Lord physiology. “Jeff, I’m sorry you had to find out the truth about me this way.”

            “You mean the truth that my girlfriend of four months is actually an alien from another dimension?” Jeff’s tone insinuated some humility over the fact, which was surprising to Alexis. “After being hit by a meteor and blessed with superpowers, you’d better believe I’m willing to go the next level.”

            Alexis was moved by his response. “You are such a wonderful man, Jefferson Reed.” She locked her lips with his and, for a brief moment, there was a literal spark between them – a discharge of meteorite energy.

            Further across from their kissing session, Bradlee waltzed his way into the Doctor’s portion of the console room. There he was, secluded from everyone, fiddling with the controls. As much as Bradlee appreciated the coral design of the room, it was rather dim, illuminated by the glow of green light from the time rotor column in the center and the lights in the hexagons on the walls.

            Bradlee took this moment alone with him to bring up a secret he and Neas hadn’t the courage to tell him: “The Time Lords ordered me to bring you back to Gallifrey.”

            “Did they now?” The Doctor didn’t sound the least bit concerned.

            “You’re not surprised that they’re even back?” the troubled Bradlee inquired.

            “You come from a point in time far beyond mine, whether it’d be the past, present, or future. To you, the Time Lords still exist. To me, they’re still gone. So, it wouldn’t matter if you bring me to them or not.”

            Bradlee accepted this logic with a subtle nod. “Fair enough. I mean, it wasn’t you they were after anyway – that is, not this version of you.”

            “I suppose I’ll have something to look forward to then.”

            Through this entire exchange, Bradlee sensed antagonism in the Doctor, and he had a feeling it wasn’t due to the Time Lords’ bounty. “What’ve you been hiding?”

            No matter the regeneration, Neas was a sharp-minded individual.

            They knew the Doctor better than most.

            “I have been hiding…and running…quite a bit lately,” he finally confessed.

            “From what?” Bradlee pressed, hoping to learn more.

            The Doctor stepped away from the control console, hands in his pants pockets, exhaling heavily. “My song is ending – at least, that’s what the message is across the universe. No matter where I go, it’s always there, reminding me that I have to die. I’ve been to Mars, met a man who I believed was my next self, and even married Queen Elizabeth the First!”

            Bradlee chuckled at that last one. “Seriously?!”

            “Yes,” the Doctor laughed. His mood turned somber again as he continued: “I don’t know what to do next. I’m scared…scared of the inevitability.”

            Bradlee saw that he was, and it was rare when he did.

            “Go on a long, quiet vacation,” he advised. “Maybe to Hawaii.”

            He got the Doctor started with a straw hat, sunglasses, and flower lei that he kept stored in the T.A.R.D.I.S. wardrobe room.

            Wearing them, the Doctor felt his spirits lift a little.

            “Thank you, Bradlee.”

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            After saying farewell to the Doctor and returning Pendleton back to his home dimension, the Gladiators dispersed one-by-one back to their respective points in their timeline with their companions.

            Alexis departed with Jeff.

            And Bradlee set off with Steven Universe and the Crystal Gems.

            Neas and Gen were the last two left, their T.A.R.D.I.S.es still piggybacking over each other back down the dimensional corridor. Gen, on the other hand, didn’t want to leave. She appreciated the company of her successor, who was as great of a man as she figured (when not under the influence of Regen-8).

            She prolonged her stay with casual conversation.

            “Scooby and the gang agreed this’ll be our last adventure together,” she told Neas, only realizing after that he probably already knew that, since her travels with Mystery Inc. were essentially in the past for him.

            That much was obvious when he replied, “Yeah…they’ve journeyed with us in earlier regenerations. But, hey, you got Craig and Willie to look forward to.”

            Gen’s gaze widened at that spoiler. “Really? Huh.”

            “Don’t worry. You’ll grow to love ‘em.”

            “Oh, I already do. They’re great fellas. Craig always has my back – even if he is a little headstrong, and I’ve grown pretty fond of Willie’s barbecue. Can you believe he fed it to me, thinking it’d awaken my ‘inner brotha’?”

            Neas frowned at the term. “Inner brotha?”

            “That means you.”

            As ludicrous as it sounded, Neas sincerely deliberated on the idea. “I dunno. In some circumstances, regeneration can be strongly influenced by the subconscious mind.”

            “Well, whatever the case, I’m glad that I’ll one day be you.”

            “And I’m grateful for the time that I got to be you.”

            Gen couldn’t help but to discern a hint of solemnity in his voice when returning his gratitude. “Why do you sound so sad?”

            Neas naively shrugged. “Feelin’ nostalgic, I guess.”

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            Gen’s T.A.R.D.I.S. detached from Neas’s, dematerializing away successively.

            Neas was left with the companionship of Jane, Suzanne, Al-Lee, and newcomer Fawn. Everett and Chanley stayed on briefly to say their goodbyes. While they did so, Suzanne took Neas aside to give him a hug and a kiss.

            “What’s that for?” he asked.

            “For coming to Themyscira and saving my butt, silly,” she said. “If it weren’t for you and your friends, we would all be dead right now.”

            “But I almost helped cause it!”

            “Oh, nonsense. You were just as much a victim as I was.”

            In talking to this new regeneration of his father’s, Neas took notice in how she stood at near-perfect eye level with him. “I suppose congratulations are in order, Pop. You’re now the second tallest member of the crew. You got Al-Lee beat by a few inches.”

            Suzanne giggled just as Chanley and Everett approached them.

            “Welp, it’s our turn to go,” Everett said.

            “Need a lift back?” Neas offered.

            “Nah,” Chanley declined. “We’ll just use my vortex manipulator.”

            Seeing the device on her wrist helped Neas come to a realization: “So that’s how you got aboard my T.A.R.D.I.S., you lil’ sneak!”

            Chanley teasingly batted her eyes to him.

            Neas could only smile, admiring her ingenuity.

            “Bro,” Everett addressed him. “I got somethin’ for ya.” He presented Neas with a vial of a glowing gold liquid – the same type of vial LeMarier once bestowed upon him. “I know what you’re thinking. Why am I giving you the very thing that caused us all so much misery in the past hours? That’s ‘cause this is an even more concentrated, stabilized version of the formula…and I think you know what you have to do with it.”

            Neas looked on the vial in Everett’s proffered hand for a long minute.

            He readily took it from his twin brother and somberly agreed, “I do know.”

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            The lush purple planet of Bloverus was a place Neas once visited before, though he vaguely recalled it ever happening. As he dematerialized his Type-Z T.A.R.D.I.S. right beside another on a field of violet-colored flowers, it dawned on him why his memory of the planet was so hazy.

            Stepping out, he spotted a pigtailed Caucasian blonde wearing a black eyepatch across her left eye and a white, frizzled dress adorned with print of various fowls, quills, and birdcages. Atop her head was an actual birdcage. She sat there on the field with not a care in the world, plucking the pedals off a flower and humming a random tune.

            It was odd and a little depressing for Neas to see Gen in this state, having only crossed paths with her younger, more sensible self moments ago. A victim of the One Ring, it was a miracle she still knew how to fly her T.A.R.D.I.S. between dimensions.

            The second she noticed him there, she was overjoyed. “Return,” she muttered in her severely limited vocabulary – another casualty of the Ring’s influence.

            “Yeah, it’s me,” he told her. “This moment between us is something that’s haunted me every day since you regenerated into me. I can never tell if this is how it started or how it ended…I just know it’s something I have to do for either possibility.”

            From out of the left pocket of his hoodie, he pulled out a syringe.

            It was loaded with the last of the Regen-8 formula Everett gave him.

            He stuck the needle into Gen’s neck and injected the formula into her system, following a fleeting moment of hesitation. She passed out instantaneously thereafter, the flower dropping out of her hand as she hit the plum-colored dirt.

            Hours later, she awoke. Neas and his T.A.R.D.I.S. were long gone.

            Everything felt different to her. Her senses were sharper than ever, her normal brain functions restored or perhaps heightened. Beneath her eyepatch, she felt a brand new eye moving. She validated this by taking the patch off, seeing the world of Bloverus with excellent peripheral vision.

            She was whole again, despite the exact source of it being a mystery.

            This astonishing miracle would have been cherished for eternity…had she not looked down at her hands.

            To her horror, they irradiated with regenerative energy.

            What she perceived to be a miraculous recovery was in actuality the first stages of her regeneration.

            Or, as Gen gravely put it herself, “The beginning of the end.”

INFINITE DC: REGENERATION

Chapter Thirteen: Fight or Fate

            “We’re being overrun by costumed freaks! What is wrong with this picture?!”

            Neas, Chris, and Everett shielded Missy on their way to the sacred tower. The sudden invasion over Themyscira was a major setback in her master plan, and there was only one person to blame: the Doctor. Undoubtedly, he was leading the charge with the Gladiator’s other selves.

            Missy was relieved once she and her enthralled Time Lord bodyguards arrived at the sacred tower.

            Her respite, however, was short-lived.

            There, in the tower, they were met by a large group of colorful individuals, led by another one of the Gladiator’s regenerations – the defiant blonde who went by the name of “Gen.” The backup she chose to bring along included the amnesiac tattooed woman, the descendant of the Doctor’s old companion Leela, the boy Missy encountered at the Dave & Buster’s in Jurassic World and his crystal friends, and lastly…

            “Pee girl?” Missy identified as the last member of Gen’s troupe – the woman LeMarier had carry buckets of Barasinghan urine for the Regen-8 experiments.

            “My name is Diana, Princess of Themyscira,” the woman boldly pronounced.

            A closer examination by Missy helped her to realize her mistake. Indeed, this was a completely different woman. This woman had a look of ferocity in her eyes that the Diana she came to know, in her time on Themyscira, had lacked. This woman was prepared to kill her for all those months of humiliation and mental torture towards her younger self.

            “You’re leaving Themyscira today, Missy,” Gen declared.

            “That was my intention until you and your crew here blocked my only way out.” She motioned to Chris’s T.A.R.D.I.S., which Gen and her enforcers had in fact barred Missy’s path to.

            “But you’re first gonna fix the mess you caused here,” Gen demanded.

            “Yeeeeeeah, ‘bout that.”

            Snapping her fingers, Missy sent Neas, Chris, and Everett after Gen and her group.

            Gen figured this to be the way Missy wanted to do things, so she briefed Jane, Al-Lee, Diana, Steven, and the Crystal Gems in advance. Jane, Diana, Steven, and the Gems would work on subduing Chris and Everett, while she and Al-Lee focused on Neas. She made it clear to Al-Lee not to seriously harm the man who would be her succeeding regeneration.

            Missy used the fierce brawl as the distraction she needed to slip into Chris’s T.A.R.D.I.S. unnoticed. Regrettably, there was an obstruction in her escape ploy: Chris’s T.A.R.D.I.S. could only be accessed with her DNA signature on the hull. Without the proper identification, Missy had no other choice but to find another way out.

            Sneaking away from the sacred tower, she bumped into Draco Malfoy.

            “Where have you been?” she asked the wizard boy.

            “Where you sent me – to find her,” Malfoy indicated the unconscious body floating in midair directly behind him, its arms and legs dangling.

            It was a blond girl, dressed in a camo top with cutoff denim shorts.

            But, as Missy quickly discovered, she wasn’t just any girl…she was the teenaged version of the Gladiator’s original body. Missy completely forgot that she did send Draco to find her, knowing the girl would be there with her older selves when their incursion over Themyscira began.

            “Good boy,” she praised Malfoy.

            “I don’t need your praise,” Draco rejected. “I need you to return me to my home.”

            “I’ll do so, as promised, dearie. But, firstly, we have an important stop to make…and I’m gonna need your special little wand to get us there.”

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            Suzanne’s agonized screams echoed all through the Doctor’s T.A.R.D.I.S. Her body writhed on the floor of his console room, blinking like a light bulb with a surplus amount of regenerative energy, while Bradlee, Chanley, Fawn, and Mystery Inc. did their best to keep her pinned.

            Meanwhile, the Doctor was nearby, feverishly developing a remedy from a mobile chemistry lab that he carted into the console room. “Her body’s become a ticking time bomb,” he said while boiling chemicals over Bunsen burners and mixing them in several beakers. “Any second now, she’ll blow!”

            “All she has to do is regenerate,” Bradlee suggested. “That way, she can expel the formula from her system like radioactive material.”

            “Regenerating is what will kill her and every life form on this island,” the Doctor opposed. “It’ll be a dispersion of energy akin to a nuclear blast. Her current body is its way of trying to contain it – that tall, athletic form working like a hard, protective shell – only now the shell is starting to crack!”

            “If that’s your sick way of flattering me, it’s not workin’,” Suzanne bellowed through her suffering. “Now shut up and focus on saving me and everyone else!!”

            “I’m trying,” the Doctor argued. “But I don’t have all the ingredients to the counteractive formula!”

            “You said that you had the antidote,” Daphne reproached.

            “I do! It’s just…something’s missing! I need…I need…”

            “You need an assistant.” A voice with an air of exuberance and a bit of pretentiousness spoke from the entrance to his T.A.R.D.I.S.

            Looking to it, they saw a familiar face. “Professor Redding?” Velma classified.

            The grinning Alexis shook her head. “Not anymore.”

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            The battle royal in the sacred tower intensified.

            Much of the laboratory LeMarier established there was wrecked to pieces.

            Dealing with the Regen-8-powered Neas, Chris, and Everett proved to be an even greater challenge than imagined. Jane was the first to clock out of the battle, taken out by Chris, while Everett hit Garnet hard enough to split her back into Ruby and Sapphire. Gen and Al-Lee were also having difficulty subduing Neas, who was twice as powerful under the influence of Regen-8.

            Every now and then in their fight, Neas would try to mentally break Al-Lee with scathing remarks. “You have nothing to fight for, savage! Your husband…your son…the two things that mattered in your pathetic life burned away in a senseless war! Why continue to fight? Just die already, and you’ll be with them!”

            Hurtful as his words were, they only made Al-Lee that much more determined.

            “I know this isn’t you, Neas,” she said. “You are my friend. And I will remove this evil from your soul!”

            “Take your shot,” Neas challenged.

            Al-Lee lunged for him, but she barely got a punch in before Neas delivered one to her throat, temporarily cutting off her air. He used this disruption to knock her down with a rear leg sweep.

            With Al-Lee out of the way, Gen was all that was left.

            She made it clear to him right off the bat that she wasn’t going down as easily as Al-Lee. She used years of combat experience, particularly those inherited from a past regeneration that was a Mortal Kombat tournament participant. Conversely, her opponent had the same advantage, using the same tactics.

            Fighting Neas was like fighting a mirror.

            When she went for a high kick, so had he.

            He unleashed a right cross, so did she.

            The one difference between them was that she wasn’t trying to kill him; he, on the other hand, had murder on his Regen-8-fueled mind.

            That much was certain the second he grabbed her throat.

            Gen tried to resist, but there was so much force in his grasp, she found herself fading fast.

            In a last ditch effort, she used her last breaths to reason with her future self.

            “This is what Missy wants…to kill yourself…don’t let her do this to us!”

            Neas was beyond reasoning. He applied more pressure to her throat, silencing her entirely. He watched as the life in her aquamarine eyes dissipated, unknowing of the fact that he himself began to feel faint.

            He would’ve assumed it to be the side-effect to literally killing his past had it not been for the sting he felt at the back of his neck – the same type of sting he felt back on Isla Nublar. Just as before, he slapped the area and plucked the same kind of tiny stinger like last time. He faltered back from Gen, who struggled for breath once released.

            She saw Neas on his knees, clasping his head in anguish.

            Chris and Everett did the same, ceasing in their confrontation with Steven and the remaining Crystal Gems.

            In the midst of it all stood Alexis, handling a blowgun.

            “No need to thank me for saving your butt,” she told Gen, her voice and attitude, as well as her health, dramatically different from the last time Gen saw her.

            Gen caught on quick to the circumstances of Alexis’s speedy recovery.

            “You’re back,” she cheered. “Lieutenant Pendleton must’ve killed the parasite!”

            “That he did,” Alexis confirmed. “Now, if you’d so kindly extract the little man from my body, soon after we’ve taken care of these poor souls.” She pointed to Neas, Chris, and Everett, who were mindlessly resting on their knees.

            “What did you hit them with?” Gen asked.

            “The antidote to the Regen-8 formula.” The answer didn’t come from Alexis, but instead from the Doctor, who entered the tower with Bradlee, Chanley, Mystery Inc., Craig, Willie, and a couple of new individuals – a female Barasinghan and a tall brunette to whom the Doctor alluded. “We gave it to Aznavorian, and she’s right as rain now.”

            Gen’s gaze fixated on the latest regeneration of her father. “Pop?”

            “I go by ‘Suzanne’ now,” she said with that warm smile common with all her regenerations.

            The collective groans of Neas, Chris, and Everett brought everyone’s attention on them. Their eyes refrained in glowing, as the Regen-8 was expelled from their bodies – the Doctor’s counteractive formula taking effect.

            Gen immediately went to Neas. “You O.K.?”

            “No,” he solemnly answered. “I nearly tried to kill you…kill myself!”

            “But you didn’t,” Gen clarified for him. “We’re okay now.”

            “Speak for yourself,” barked an infuriated Chris. “Where is Missy?! I’ll kill her for making me her slave like that!” In her vengeful swearing, she stormed over to her T.A.R.D.I.S. Before stepping into it, she evoked a final declaration to the regenerations of her twin sibling, those of her father and herself, and the Doctor: “Make no mistake. We’re not done yet.”

            And with that, she dematerialized away.

            “That girl needs her butt whipped,” Willie observed.

            “I forgot how much of a pain I was,” Chanley added to Willie’s observation.

            Everett was the only other incarnation of Christopher left. Because of this, the group was wary of him, believing him to be just as vicious as his earlier predecessors. They were primed to defend themselves, should he make a move on any of them.

            As it soon turned out, there was no need for any more fighting.

            “Is everyone okay?” he asked in a soothing voice that was a stark contrast to his gruff exterior.

            It was as much of a surprise to Chanley as it was to everyone else.

            “You’re…not gonna hurt us?” she asked.

            Everett innocently shrugged. “Why would I? I’m no longer under Missy’s control. All I wanna do now is make things right.”

            Chanley moved in closer to him, studying his demeanor.

            “You’re not of any of my past regenerations. Which are you?”

            “The one that comes after you,” Everett coyly responded.

            Chanley nodded, finally understanding. She turned to the others and approved, “It’s O.K., everybody. He’s part of my better years to come.”

            Neas refused to let his guard down. “Let him prove it first,” he contested with Chanley’s assurance.

            Everett must’ve predicted such a lack of trust from his twin brother, because he went to work right away on undoing all the harm LeMarier caused over Themyscira. That included giving the Amazonians their freedom back, erasing their memories of LeMarier and Missy’s corruption to help preserve the Themysciran timeline.

            The war between them and the forces of the Justice League ended henceforth.

            As another means of righting the wrongs of his past, Everett conveyed some crucial information to the Gladiators and their companions: “Missy experimented on Regen-8 to perfect it for Rassilon. She intended to give it to him back on Gallifrey at the height of the Time War. The formula had to be designed for the purpose of converting a human into a Time Lord…much like Rassilon has already done to Zoe.”

            Everett’s usage of tense in reference to Zoe disconcerted Al-Lee.

            “What do you mean ‘already done’?!”

            “Missy had Draco Malfoy kidnap Zoe, while you guys were occupied with fighting the rest of us,” Everett informed. “By now, they’ve taken her to Gallifrey for the conversion.”

            “Then we must rescue her!”

            Al-Lee was about to head out of the tower before Neas held her back, having snatched her by one of her rock-hard biceps.

            She looked on him in baffling shock. “What’re you doing?! That’s you they have there on Gallifrey!”

            “I know,” Neas said, an eerie stillness in his voice.

            “Then aren’t we going to do something about it?!” Al-Lee manically questioned.

            “We already are,” Gen stated with the same serenity Neas articulated.

            Al-Lee gazed back and forth between them, her uncertainty deepening. “I don’t understand,” she professed.

            “I don’t either,” Steven stepped in. “What’re you guys not telling us?”

            “Missy and Draco abducting Zoe is part of a fixed point in time, Steven,” Bradlee explained to his companion. “That means we can’t interfere.”

            “Like, why not?” Shaggy asked.

            “Because it would disrupt the flow of time that led to us becoming the Gladiator of Gallifrey in the first place,” Alexis elaborated. “Say if we did go to Gallifrey and stop the conversion. All the good that we’ve done on this day would be expunged. The Amazonians would still be under Missy’s control, and the Multiverse would forever be jeopardized by the likes of Davros, the Daleks, and so many others that’ve threatened it.”

            “Gosh,” Steven considered. “When you put it that way…”

            Despite how much sense it made, Al-Lee despised the idea of allowing Zoe to be victimized by Rassilon. “Is becoming a Time Lord all that’ll happen to her?”

            “Not all,” Neas said. “Her memories of us and everything that has happened since you found her on Gallifrey will be gone, as a result of the conversion.”

            Al-Lee’s heart broke at the thought. “She’ll never remember the journeys we shared when we left Gallifrey together.”

            “It’s how it has to be,” Neas told her. “To preserve my timeline.”

            The intellectualism and logistics of the four Gladiators over this complex state of affairs brought a smile to the face of the Doctor. “Look at you lot. You’ve learned.”

            “We had a good teacher,” Bradlee smiled back.