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.
-----------------
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.
-----------------
“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.
