Chapter One: The Gladiator Returns Home

            For the longest time now, Neas teased himself with the notion of returning to his second home: Gallifrey.

            The Shining World of Seven Systems.

            Once located in the constellation of Kasterborous, at galactic coordinates 10-0-11-00:02 from Galactic Zero Centre, it was believed to have been destroyed, following the Last Great Time War.

            But, in truth, it was frozen in time in a pocket universe for its own protection by thirteen incarnations of the Doctor.

            Neas only knew this as fact because the Doctor himself told him…

            …or Neas’s original self, that is.

            It was a conversation the Doctor never expected her to remember, not under the circumstances in which they had it.

            At the time, Candace had crossed with over a dozen of her future regenerations, including her ninth – the one that would take on her Gallifreyan birth name. As such, certain facets of occurrences were erased from memory, once the Time Lady’s personal timeline was back in order.

            But the Doctor must have desperately wanted Candace to remember this one conversation; it reverberated in her subconscious through ten of her lives, with the tenth now deciding to take action.

            Following new coordinates inputted in his subconscious, he reached Gallifrey at the extreme end of the time continuum, give or take a star system.

            He never would’ve imagined to be staring out of his Type-Z T.A.R.D.I.S. towards the rust-colored planet with his father – at least, the second regeneration of him, self-named “Lauren Louise” – standing at his side.

            Another had the honor as well, having the rare opportunity of seeing the alien planet from a human perspective. Her name was Jane Doe, or so it was the one given to her by the F.B.I., back in her home dimension. She first encountered Neas and Lauren while on assignment; and, ever since, her life had been turned upside-down more than it already had.

            “This is your home?” she inquired to her Time Lord associates.

            “This is our childhood,” Lauren elaborated with the happiest smile.

            After exchanging celebratory hugs with her, Neas brought his T.A.R.D.I.S. down to the planet, specifically the Citadel.

            There, they received harsh welcome from a platoon of armed guards.

            Their guns were fixed on each of their heads.

            “Yeah, this is just the reception I’d expected,” Lauren mocked.

            A dark-skinned woman with a shaven head soon approached them; she was donned in regalia that Neas and Lauren distinguished to that of the Time Lord military commander during the Time War, referred solely as “The General.”

            “State your purpose here,” she demanded of the three visitors.

            “My name’s Neas. We came here following some coordinates left to us by—”

            “Neas?!” The woman exclaimed, shock registered on her face. “You’re the Gladiator of Gallifrey?!”

            Neas shrugged. “So I am. Who’re you?”

            “The General,” she confirmed. “I’ve regenerated since we last met…and, apparently, so have you.”

            “Yeah,” Neas snickered. “Traded my tight white shorts for a necktie.”

            “Your first as a man, I presume,” the General surmised, which Neas verified with a casual nod. “Can’t say that I envy you, having been one myself. All I can advise you is to keep that ego in check.”

            “Believe me, I am,” he acknowledged.

            The General directed her attention towards Lauren and Jane. “It seems you’ve picked up on a habit of the Doctor’s – companionship,” she observed.

            Neas motioned to Lauren. “I wasn’t the only one that’s regenerated since we last met. This woman is my father, the Tinkerer, in his second regeneration.”

            “Aznavorian,” the General hissed disdainfully.

            The guns of the armed guards were now aimed only on Lauren’s head.

            “Permission to fire on the traitor, ma’am,” one of them requested, much to Neas’s disbelief and disgust.

            “Whoa, whoa,” he protested. “There’s no need for this.”

            “I beg to differ, Gladiator,” the General argued. “Your father must answer for crimes committed in the Time War, specifically the creation of a Dalek with interdimensional travel capabilities and giving the Dalek Empire access to interdimensional technology.”

            “It’s not like she did it willingly,” Neas defended. “She was a prisoner of war!”

            “Neas,” Lauren softly told him. “It’s alright. I’ll accept whatever punishment they give me.”

            “But I won’t,” Neas defied. “General, the war made us all do things we’re not proud of. There has to be some way of making things right…some way of clearing my father’s name.”

            The General regarded his proposal for a long moment.

            To her, it was only fair to agree to the appeal of a man who as much a hero and a legend of the Time War as the Doctor…which was precisely the reason for why she took Neas up on his proposition.

            “Come with me to the council room,” she invited him. “My men will keep an eye on your father and the human.”

            “If one of them even thinks of shooting either of them, they’ll answer to me,” Neas tensely asserted.

            The General made no argument to his proclamation as she led him away.

            Neas took one last look towards Lauren, who gave a reassuring smile.

            He wondered how she could remain so calm with so many guns pointed at her; then again, after all they had been through together (in both her current regeneration and the previous one), there should have been no question as to how much braver she had become.

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            In learning that she saved the Gladiator of Gallifrey from a temporal storm that could have possibly been the reason for a past adolescent version brought to a post-Time War Gallifrey, Al-Lee took it upon herself to bring Zoe to the Capitol, as soon as the storm passed.

            It was essential for Zoe to be taken to the Time Lords; they were the only ones who could help in her situation, especially with all the time-travel technology they possessed.

            “I don’t know anything about the Time Lords…I barely know anything about Gallifrey,” a scared Zoe said. “All I want is to go back home – my real home on Earth!”

            “But you have a destiny to follow,” Al-Lee told her. “My tribe always lived by the conduct that you cannot live in fear of fate.”

            “Easy for you to say,” Zoe refuted.

            Knowing the Citadel to be well-guarded and restricted to outsiders, Al-Lee led Zoe to the ducts that interconnected underneath the Capitol. She had never ventured through them, nor had she ever gotten this close. She only knew what she learned from those in her tribe that had dared to reach as far as the Vaults.

            “Why’re we going this way anyway?” Zoe asked. “Are we trespassing?”

            “I don’t know what that means,” Al-Lee said, although Zoe wasn’t certain if she was joking or being serious. “The Time Lords have always looked down on us as barbarians, like we never mattered to the universe. But my people have found ways around their ideology. They’ve been to areas inside the Capitol that the rest of us can only dream of living in.”

            Coming upon the grating of one duct entrance, Al-Lee pried off the grate to permit them access.

            As they snuck in, Zoe made a revolting observation: “Smells like a sewer in here!”

            “Some parts of it are,” Al-Lee informed to Zoe’s abhorrence.

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            “General, you have to understand how much excellent service my father has done for the multiverse. Not very long ago, he summoned most of his past and future regenerations, in addition to my own, to bring down the Davros and his Dalek Empire.”

            Neas paced throughout the council room, making the case of the Tinkerer to the audience of the General, who sat by idly at the conference table.

            “His crimes are not as much of a concern as those of the Doctor,” she told Neas.

            “What did he do that was so wrong?”

            “On top of interfering with the stream of time to save a human friend, he’s committed murder.”

            Neas almost laughed at the charge. “Murder? The Doctor? Please.”

            “It’s true.”

            “Who is so important on this planet that the Doctor killed?”

            “My predecessor.”

            He could no longer sustain his laughter, bellowing for the entire Capitol to hear. “You,” he uttered in his amusement. “He caused your regeneration, and you’re charging him for it as ‘murder’?”

            “As egotistic as my previous form was, it still had no right to end the way it had,” the General claimed. “Gladiator…”

            “My name is Neas.”

            “Very well. Neas, I wish for you to go and find the Doctor. Use the endless capabilities of your unauthorized Type-Z T.A.R.D.I.S. to scour all of time and space for him, and you will be handsomely rewarded for your endeavor.”

            “Trade the Doctor’s freedom for my father’s, you mean.”

            “As far as I’m concerned, you made it obvious your father’s already cleared his – or her – own name. I speak of a greater reward.”

            “It’s still not worth becoming your personal bounty hunter.”

            “My what?”

            Neas irritably moaned; he hated when terminology that was layman on Earth tended to be ever so convoluted on Gallifrey.

            “Somebody who catches fugitives to get paid in return,” he clarified for the General. “But there’s no reward worth betraying the Doctor for, in this case.”

            “Not even an extra regeneration cycle?”

            He was stopped by her words…or more like entrapped by them, using his male ego to her advantage. This woman got you good, he thought in his moment of self-loathing.

            “I know you’re nearing the end of your cycle, just as I am,” the General said. “However, if the Doctor has proven anything to us, it’s that he has beaten the odds many times, even with his own regeneration. His only true weakness is you. I won’t grant you a new cycle of regenerations, as we did for him, unless you bring him in.”

            Now it was Neas’s turn to deliberate with this proposal from the General.

            Of course, he didn’t have as much time for it as she did, when their conversation was interrupted by a call over the intercom.

            “Ma’am, are you there?” It was the Time Lord solider Neas knew as Gastron.

            “What is it?” the General edgily answered, clearly irritated to have her strategy on Neas disrupted.

            “Sorry, ma’am,” Gastron picked up on it as well. “There’s been an attack in this sector, right where you left the guards with the Gladiator’s companions.”

            It was an update worth intruding on their exchange.

            They rushed out of the council room immediately.

            Returning to the setting they were previously, they found a few slain guards and a couple in the process of regenerating, along with a battered Jane. “He came at us fast, real fast,” she told Neas.

            “Who did?” He asked her.

            “A guy wearing a hood…I didn’t get an exact look of his face,” Jane depicted, before her tone turned grave. “Neas, he took Lauren. I’m so sorry. I…I tried to save her, but this man…he was…”

            As unsettled as he was to hear this news, he couldn’t fault Jane for what happened.

            Unfortunately, he didn’t have a chance to let her know that, not with the General barking commands into her wrist communicator: “Attention, all personnel! The Capitol is to be placed on immediate lockdown!”

            “Ma’am,” Gastron approached. “We found these two trespassers at the time that the attack occurred.”

            Neas watched two other guards haul in the trespassers:

            A woman dressed in cheeky black leather attire that exposed eighty percent of her well-toned physique, and a teenage girl that…

            No…it can’t be!

            Staring back at Neas was a teenage girl that also happened to be his original incarnation.