Disclaimer - I own neither Doctor Who or the Demon Headmaster.
AN: The Doctor in this is the alternate version of the Doctor from the Big Finish audio story 'Full Fathom Five,' where in a parallel universe the Doctor was someone who believed the ends justified the means and even resorted to murder from time to time. Also, I've taken a few liberties with the Demon Headmaster and his general origin. This one-shot is set in the second season of 'The Demon Headmaster' where the Headmaster was trying to alter evolution.
Please let me know what you think.
The Purge.
As she stared at the figure that had been laid on the ground of the Demon Headmaster's laboratory gently because she was too weak to stand upright anymore, looking like all of her years had gone by in in a flash, Dinah couldn't help but think about an old childhood wish she'd had since she was a little girl growing up in the children's home.
Dinah had often wondered what it would have been like if she'd had a twin sister or some other blood sibling with her at the children's home where she had been raised since her mum and dad had died in that car accident so she wouldn't have felt so alone, isolated because of her intellect. It would have been nice to get through the whole horrible event that was her childhood where she was without her parents to inspire her to do great on her tests at school with someone else before the Hunters had come to the home to find a child. Dinah was still not entirely sure why they had done that, and she hadn't asked; all she was happy with was that she now had a family.
And yet she'd still had those old thoughts about wishing that she'd had a twin sister who could have been a best friend but, since she was a realist by nature, she had known that it wasn't going to happen; while she had come to love Lloyd and Harvey, they were essentially foster siblings, not blood siblings and Dinah had no idea if there was someone out there who was a distant relative who hadn't known about her, but she had learnt to accept it was not going to happen.
But here she was, face to face with a girl who not only looked so much like her but also sounded like her except for the patch of green-grey scales on the side of the girl's face and the scaly clawed hand and the sudden acceleration of age highlighted the differences between them; Dinah had been worried for some time about that mysterious cheek smear that had been taken from her only a few days ago, her suspicions that the whole mess that was growing around her while the rest of her friends and even her younger brother Harvey turned on her was caused by the cold-faced thing just behind her, but she had never imagined he would use her DNA for this…
Seeing the inhuman scales and the scaly hand of the girl who looked like her told Dinah what the Headmaster had been doing which went beyond any of his other sick experiments, but she had never imagined that he could grow a hybrid clone of herself so quickly.
Dinah had distantly overheard the Headmaster say something about her being genetically programmed to die, but her mind was on other things even as she felt fear at the way he had said the girl who was lying on the ground dying was expendable as she and her friends were. But again her mind was on other things as she tried to work out what the Headmaster was planning. She remembered what he had said to her when she had protested about the existence of the giant wasp that she'd later encountered but had only guessed at what had been responsible for Lloyd's injury.
She had underestimated his powers, but he had surprised her by how he had taken everything so far. But what was going on? What was the point of taking her DNA and mixing it with that of a lizard and then growing it so quickly? What was he trying to do?
"Eve," the other-her whispered, and Dinah knelt down to where the other-her was lying on the ground with the lanky form of Rose who was already kneeling by her head, muttering reassurances even though Dinah and Rose were smart enough to know the girl was not going to last long.
"Eve," the other-her whispered again, and Dinah realised with a pang the girl who shared her appearance was speaking her own name, looking around the laboratory with droopy eyes as if she was on the verge of falling asleep, her voice so quiet it was barely audible before she uttered it again in a much lower tone as she became visibly weaker before she turned her head, closing her eyes and let out one final breath before her chest stilled in a repose of death.
Dinah turned around and glared at the Headmaster, feeling more hatred for him than she had ever had before; she had never felt such hatred for him though she had begun to as much as she had feared him when she had been a student at St. Champions before that mess in Saladin Tower.
"Help her!" she spat at him maliciously, but even as she stood to her full height she knew it wouldn't do any good since the girl, the other-her, Eve, was already dead. "You help her!"
She knew already in her mind it was hopeless to save the girl lying on the ground. Dinah had found at last a worthy target for all the anger and the resentment she had been feeling ever since Rose had been hypnotised to drive a wedge between her and the people she cared about, that she did what the Headmaster had ironically always chided her for; she lost control of her emotions, giving into them instead of using her intellect.
But at that moment she didn't care. She didn't care about his arrogance, his cold attitude, his clinical efficiency. She didn't care if she was proving his points about human beings being too overly emotional.
She was furious and she felt that she had the right to be. She felt so violated by what the Headmaster had done, but she wasn't entirely sure what she could do; most of the time she and the other members of SPLAT! had been able to stop him because he had arrogantly overlooked some detail which eventually tripped him up, but what could she do now?
She wanted him to pay for what he had done!
She had to admit to herself that being used by him to do his dirty work was one thing, but using her DNA to create another being and then letting it die was pushing it, even for him.
Intellectually she knew she was being irrational, but she stamped that thought out of her mind completely, not wanting her mind to be contaminated by the Headmaster's cold-blooded philosophy. Not only had he violated her by using her DNA for whatever plan he'd come up with, but he was also indirectly responsible for what had happened to Lloyd. She had known the Headmaster was insane and evil, but this was the sickest thing he had ever done!
"Her life expectancy is already genetically programmed," the Headmaster replied, minutely shaking his head in exasperation at the emotions on display before him, but Dinah was beyond caring about the bastard's thoughts on the matter. "Rather shorter than I had intended," the Headmaster carried on coldly, gazing down at the dead body of Dinah's 'twin' as though disappointed though he quickly brushed it off as a minor problem that was meaningless in the long run while the real Dinah glared at him with pure hatred and outrage, "a small error in my calculations. Next time, I shall not fail."
Dinah clenched her fists as she recalled the memory of how she and Lloyd had taken control of the Super Saladin all those months ago. Back then she'd had the chance to crash the mini-helicopter the Headmaster had planned to use to take him to Downing Street, but she hadn't taken it because she couldn't kill a man in cold blood.
But now…
Now Dinah wished she had the means of going back in time and using the same anger she was feeling as the fuel needed to shove her morals aside so she could kill this bastard. This cold-hearted monster was talking about calculations and the long-term plans he had in his warped mind when someone had just died.
"NO!" Dinah's shout echoed throughout the laboratory. "Because we'll go to the police, and we'll tell-."
Deep down Dinah knew it would do no good. Even if either she or one of the others made it to the phone in time and got word out, the Headmaster would get in the way and all he would need to do was either hypnotise either herself, Rose, and presumably Simon, whom she was sure was susceptible to hypnotism while Harvey and Ingrid were immune.
With three willing brainwashed acolytes to help him, the Headmaster would put paid to any plan they had.
And even if the police came through, all the Headmaster would need was a few minutes to hypnotise them and send them back out on their merry way. But Dinah was so angry by everything that had happened she wanted someone else to bring the Headmaster down because she was out of ideas because she still didn't know what it was the Headmaster was doing beyond tinkering with genetics.
The Headmaster's otherwise expressionless face became subtly mocking as he asked with the same mocking smugness, "And tell them what?" he asked, gesturing for them to gaze down at the body of 'Eve.'
Dinah's eyes widened in horror as she watched as the body crumbled into dust. The spectacle was enough to make even Rose stand up in horror as she gazed down in shock at the crumbling body.
Everyone was so busy watching the crumbling body they all jumped in surprise when they heard the Headmasters' voice as he moved over to a console next to the door in front of a booth with a platform built into it; now that she was paying more attention to it though she was looking down at her 'twin's' crumbled corpse, Dinah couldn't help but be reminded of that transporters off of Star Trek, but when she had arrived in the laboratory she had been more focused on the Headmaster and on Simon than she had been about everything else the Headmaster had in the room.
"This is my evolution accelerator," the Headmaster explained, his hands taking hold of the console while Dinah looked up from Eve's crumbled corpse to take in what he was saying.
Evolution accelerator?
"I can speed up or slow down evolution as I wish," the Headmaster went on, his voice losing its usual cold manner in that way Dinah and the other members of SPLAT! were familiar with whenever he spoke about the glories of his plans in that reverent tone that made him sound like a ranting religious fanatic.
But Dinah wasn't thinking about that. Her mind was on what the Headmaster had just said about speeding up or slowing down evolution, but the implications were unbelievable.
"Just like the creeper," Harvey said in disbelief, but when he said it Dinah realised that the giant wasp and the creeper were just small fry experiments compared to what he probably wanted to use it for.
"Precisely," the Headmaster turned around, his face smiling smugly before he turned his gaze to rest solely on Dinah, who merely glared back at him with loathing. "And the wasp. You were so clever, I'm surprised you didn't realise earlier."
"We didn't realise because it's impossible," Dinah replied, glaring firmly back at the Headmaster.
The Headmaster's smile became more scornful. "Nothing is impossible, as you will see. I developed that creature," he gestured down at the crumbled remains of 'Eve', "and I can reproduce her in her thousands, millions!" The Headmasters' eyes became wide with the same madness of a fanatic as he walked around the pile that had once been his 'creature,' seemingly ignoring the kids in his laboratory, deeming them unimportant as his mind as he pictured his long-term goal of world domination become a reality. "I merely need to adjust my timing."
Dinah's eyes followed the Headmaster as he walked around his laboratory, her own mind picturing the Headmaster's scheme coming into fruition, but she was still confused by what the Headmaster gained out of creating clones of her because she had been forced to spend all of her time focusing on the wasp and on the creeper to really get an idea of what the Headmaster wanted though she had an idea already of what he was doing.
The Headmaster turned around and gazed smugly at Dinah, "She outwitted you, Dinah Hunter."
And just like that the final piece of the puzzle was out and slotted in nicely into place, though Dinah had already guessed what the Headmaster's plans with the evolution accelerator were gradually and what they had to do with 'Eve.' She had to hand it to the Headmaster this time around; instead of caring about hypnotising the human race and dealing with the minority who, like the majority of the SPLAT! gang were immune to hypnotism, all the Headmaster needed to do was flood the world with clones of her, willing to do what he wanted them to do.
Dinah didn't know what was worse; the fact the Headmaster had stolen her DNA to create a new race of people to populate the Earth, people who looked and sounded like her, people who would do everything he wanted them all to do without bothering to take off those glasses of his to put people into a hypnotic trance, or that he was dangerously close to finalising his plans while she and the others stood here. But one of the sickest things about this whole thing was that he had named the other-her Eve after the woman in Creation.
The Headmaster must have considered it a sick irony, she felt, but when she pictured what the other 'Eve's' would do she shuddered to herself as her mind conjured up a picture of cities like New York, Paris, Moscow, Sydney overrun with copies of her, whitewashing away all the variations of humanity along the way… bleaching the world completely as the clones went about their tasks like an army of zombies, or robots.
"She had Di's face!" Harvey said, struggling to understand; part of Dinah was actually pleased to hear him sound as confused as she had been. After days of him and the others believing all the lies spouted by Rose, making him think that despite everything the Hunters' had done for her, deep down Dinah was ungrateful and wasn't really a sister or a friend.
"Of course. She had her intelligence; what she did not have," the Headmaster walked around his desk, "which made her immeasurably superior, is feelings. She was as cold as… a lizard," the Headmaster gestured to a lizard staring back placidly at them from behind a glass screen set into the wall.
Harvey turned to Dinah desperately. "He's mad," he whispered, though Dinah wondered why he was saying something she already knew, she guessed that he was only saying it because the full scale of the Headmaster's plan was starting to dawn on them.
The Headmaster went on - whether he had heard what Harvey had said, he didn't let on but Dinah didn't care - with talking about his plans. "And she was programmed, of course, to obey my orders."
"Like me," Rose whispered, her tone making it very clear whatever hold the Headmaster had once had over her was gone. But the Headmaster ignored her, deeming her no longer essential to his plans as he walked over to the console of the evolution accelerator, speaking as he went, "I have no further time to waste," he was saying before pausing in surprise when they suddenly heard a strange, wheezing groaning noise that rose in pitch before dying down with a clunk.
"No! It cannot be…. it cannot be him!" the Headmaster whispered, shocking everyone in the room who wasn't hypnotised like those 'assistants' who followed the Headmaster everywhere who were trying to find the source of the noise.
Dinah stared at the Headmaster in astonishment; she had never seen him like this before. Usually, he was emotionless, but he could be smug at times, while she could act like a religious fanatic. She had never seen him…. terrified before.
But the sudden shift of mood changed and now the Headmaster became frantic as he worked on the console. "I have no time to lose," he was saying, "I must activate the evolution accelerator; what has happened to Eve is just a question of timing. A few small adjustments and I can replicate Eve in her hundreds, and I can finally be rid of him."
"Who?" Dinah asked, but then a voice came from the doorway.
"That would be me," the voice of an unfamiliar man said.
Dinah and the others turned around. The strange man was somewhere between middle age and old age, though he appeared slightly younger than the Headmaster by only a few years. He had a head full of brown hair that had a definite shade of red in it, flecked with grey, a lined face with brown eyes that held a hard glint in them that she had never seen in another's face before. He was wearing a long red velvet coat over a dark blue shirt sporting a large bow tie, and dark trousers over dark shoes.
Dinah's eyes widened when she took in the Headmaster's expression which held emotion that he didn't even try to hide like he usually did with the 'wasteful' emotions. The Headmaster was looking more terrified now than ever.
"You. I had thought I had seen the last of you, Doctor," the Headmaster stated, by his tone, Dinah guessed he was trying to regain his usual composure, though it wasn't working very well.
The man, this 'Doctor,' looked almost amused by the Headmaster's statement. "You will never see the last of me," the stranger said, casting a brief look around the laboratory. "I have to commend you on your ingenuity this time around; far more sophisticated than what you were doing the last time we met before you ended up in that school, ten years later."
The Headmaster's expression darkened visibly at the reminder of a clearly unpleasant memory. "Have you not done enough, Doctor?' the Headmaster spat angrily, his expression angrier than Dinah or the others had ever seen it. The kids in the room were forgotten as the two old looking men quarrelled with one another, their mutual natural authority rendering the children silent. "After what you did to my race, my planet-!"
Dinah's eyes widened.
The Headmaster's… planet?
Was the Headmaster…. an alien?
Granted, none of the SPLAT! gang knew anything about the Headmaster's origins, they didn't even know his real name, but Dinah had sometimes imagined him to be an ordinary human that had some strange mental powers, but hearing he was an alien made some degree of sense. The evolution accelerator was probably of a brand of technology far ahead of anything humanity had, so it definitely lent some credence to the growing evidence the Headmaster was in fact from outer space.
"I didn't destroy your planet; I merely gave your races' enemies the means they needed to shake off the mental hold you and your people held over them," the Doctor stated, sounding more like a man telling a librarian why he was returning an overdue library book than someone partly responsible for the loss of a whole civilisation. "Your people had gone too far-."
"We were bringing order to the universe-!"
"How, and replacing it with what?" the Doctor argued, glaring at the Headmaster with an intensity backed up by an almost insurmountable age Dinah couldn't believe. "Brainwashing everyone whom your people encountered until you were merely removing the substance which made them who they were. You weren't bringing order to the universe, nor were you making anyone or anything efficient, you were just conquering it without firing a shot. All I did was provide the means to stop your people, and destroy your planet."
The Headmaster's voice became a tight whisper. "So you admit you did destroy my race."
"Hardly," the Doctor replied with a nonchalant shrug as though the destruction of an entire race meant nothing to him which made Dinah wonder just who the real monsters were in this context, "and you can hardly say your own people were innocent; you were preparing to launch an all-out invasion by mass-hypnotising various races to obey you, and that wave would have included Earth. I had no choice, but my morals are irrelevant right now; I'm here to make sure you don't carry out your plans."
"I have the future of Mankind in my grasp, Doctor," the Headmaster said, suddenly gazing at his accelerator while regaining some of his lost reverence for the plan he had come up with, though there was not a great deal there.
Dinah turned to the Doctor. "You know what he plans to do?"
The Doctor turned his head to address Dinah. "I do, Miss Hunter," he replied solemnly before he looked up at the Headmaster again with a grimness Dinah did not like because there was something there that spoke of an inevitable danger in store for the Headmaster though she didn't disagree with it either. "Meddling with human evolution, isn't that a bit desperate, even for your kind?"
Dinah was becoming increasingly curious about the Doctor's insinuations the Headmaster was an alien, but before she could say anything to satisfy the questions on the tip of her tongue even though she wasn't sure if the Doctor would even answer her, the Headmaster spat, "You did not have to live on Earth for a century, Doctor. If it was not for my outward appearance I would never have fit in. I have had to endure the never-ending lack of order on this planet. What I am doing-."
"I don't care how long you were on Earth for," the Doctor's interruption was both harsh and brutal at the same time as he glared at the Headmaster, "I already know how long you've been here. I have stopped three of your plans already, and now I am here to prevent a travesty."
Dinah thought she saw the Doctor's eyes flicker towards the open door of the laboratory which led down to the still smoky tunnels that formed a maze with the wasp nest inside it, but it was so brief she thought she'd imagined it.
"I want to improve the human race, Doctor," the Headmaster went on with his monologue, "think of how chaotic everything is; peoples fighting over their lands, food and water while others do not care, instead of obsessing with image. As one uniform species who are both identical in appearance and highly intelligent-."
"We would lose everything that makes us human!" Dinah shouted, losing her temper at the reminder that it would be her appearance, her intelligence which would be the norm if the Headmaster's sick plan won out. "You can't cope here so you want to wipe the slate clean, is that what this wonderful plan is all about?"
The Doctor chuckled darkly as he stared at the Headmaster mockingly. "She has you there," he said.
The Headmaster dismissed Dinah without any effort, "She is emotional."
"No, I think she has a good point; I'm just surprised that it has taken you this long to try to manipulate human evolution, considering that your people stopped biological reproduction centuries ago."
"It was a question of efficiency-!"
While she was curious about the latest piece of information about the Headmaster, Dinah felt a hand tap her shoulder and pushed that curiosity aside, and she looked into Rose's face, the girl nodding in the direction of the door. Dinah followed the other girl's gaze, noticing that the others had also spotted the familiar snake-like form of the creeper slowly edging its way into the room.
Only the Doctor and the Headmaster hadn't noticed the creeper yet, the Doctor was silently watching the Headmaster and seemed to be more interested in what he was going to do next to focus on the doorway though Dinah could not be sure.
"I can adjust human evolution, Doctor," the Headmaster was speaking in a tone that Dinah took to be pleading, though she couldn't be sure since she had never actually heard him speak in such an emotional manner before now. "And neither you," the Headmaster paused to turn his face towards Dinah, "nor Miss Dinah Hunter can interfere."
"I wouldn't be too sure of that," the Doctor said calmly, and before anyone could do anything the Doctor suddenly lashed out with a massive kick to the Headmaster's face that reminded Dinah of one of those martial arts kicks she had seen over the years. The force the blow made the Headmaster who was unprepared for the attack stagger back before the Doctor grabbed him by the arm and the back of the neck and shoved him into the booth of the evolution accelerator before he slammed a massive switch on the right side upwards.
Dinah's eyes shot open when the booth suddenly glowed red around the Headmaster's body and he begun to disintegrate until the outline of the man who had terrorised St. Champions before going on to try to hypnotise the Prime Minister so he'd have access to all the governments around the world in order to achieve his goals was all that was left, but even that disappeared into nothingness.
"There," the Doctor said with grim satisfaction as he ran his hands over the controls of the accelerator for a moment, "now I just need to purge the gene core and he will never come back."
"You mean… he'll die?" Harvey asked, looking at the Doctor with confusion.
The Doctor turned and nodded. "Yes," he replied blandly as though he was discussing a book he and his friend were disagreeing on rather than the death of another man, "he's too dangerous to come back; the evolution accelerator could create a clone of him much in the same way it did your sister. Just because she," he pointed at the pile of dark blue coveralls mingling with dust which had been Eve, "looked like your sister, doesn't mean she shares her memories, though she did share personality traits with a bit of work."
Dinah felt she was getting the Doctor's point. "Are you saying if something happens, and the accelerator brings the Headmaster back-?"
"The 'Headmaster' who appears if the accelerator is reactivated won't possess the memories of the original," the Doctor confirmed, emphasising the Headmaster's title as though he hadn't deserved it which Dinah and the others understood, but Dinah couldn't tell what else the Doctor was thinking, "but he will have enough personality traits from the original to help him choose his direction."
"Who was he?" Rose asked her sudden inclusion to the conversation surprising everyone since she had barely spoken more than a few words the whole time. "Really?"
"The Headmaster came from a planet where the inhabitants wanted to control everything in order to promote efficiency," the Doctor answered Rose's question briefly, "they had relatively simple mental powers which allowed them to control others. Their favourite tactics were to infiltrate different worlds and hypnotise their way into power before they slowly worked to change the culture of the planet to reflect their desired outcomes. They sometimes hypnotised peoples and brainwashed them to becoming armies willing to serve their masters' cause. They resorted to the Long game; using bio-weapons to bring down their more dangerous enemies while at the same time changing their genetic structures to make them subservient. Eventually, they came up with a plan to conquer the entire Milky Way, including Earth. I had no choice, so I orchestrated their destruction. But one survived."
Dinah looked at the Doctor with a sudden disgust; it was one thing to stop another alien races' plans to conquer other worlds, but to manipulate the destruction of a whole race while leaving one as a survivor until dealing with them at a later date… But she had other things on her mind.
"If you were determined to stop the Headmaster so badly, why did you wait until now?" she asked. "You could have stopped him much earlier."
Harvey, Rose, and Ingrid, who knew the Headmaster better than Simon did, immediately caught on to what Dinah was saying.
"Yeah, why didn't you stop the Headmaster when he took over St. Champions, forcing all the kids into those lectures where they were brainwashed?" Ingrid snapped.
"I spent several years of my life being constantly hypnotised by the Headmaster during my time as a Prefect," Rose glared at the Doctor with the same glare which had made her one of the most feared prefects at the school though there was more emotion now. "My former fellow prefects don't even keep in touch with one another because we're trying to move on with our lives from what the Headmaster put us through, two of them went to a psychiatrist in order to deal with the guilt of what we did; just because we were hypnotised didn't mean we didn't know what we were doing, we just couldn't do anything about it, so where were you?"
"Where were you when the Headmaster tried to take over the Prime Minister's brain?" Harvey glared angrily at the Doctor as he remembered that nightmare where he'd been picked up by that automatic machine which had placed him on that high shelf before nearly being burnt to death.
The Doctor sighed, but truthfully he didn't seem to be really bothered by accusations as though he had expected them. "I wasn't there because I knew the Headmaster would be defeated; I knew that you would stop him, and you did. The Headmaster had tried to take over the Earth a few times forcing me to stop him, and he disappeared at the end of the last encounter I had with him, and I had a hard time looking for him before now. I had to stop him this time; if he had succeeded with the plan with the evolution accelerator you would not be here. I couldn't let him destroy the human race, so I had to deal with him."
"By killing him?"
"You once held that option in your grasp," the Doctor snapped back impatiently, "remember in the tower, you had control over his helicopter. You could have made sure he didn't come back, but you didn't take it."
"It wouldn't have been right-!"
"Nor would the destruction of your world, the loss of everything you are," the Doctor snapped. "I took the only realistic course of action."
"How can you be so heartless?" Ingrid whispered.
The Doctor looked like he was about to tear his hair out in frustration. "It's not a question of right and wrong, you don't understand. I have to face decisions like this all the time. I look at the long-term, the big picture. The Headmaster's people were a threat, and they needed to be stopped."
"That's not a good excuse," Simon protested.
"It will have to do," the Doctor's voice was cold before he sighed. "It doesn't matter now. Its time for you to go now; get that piece of wasp DNA out to save your brother."
With a start Dinah remembered what had brought her here in the first place, but before she could do anything there was a sudden humming in the air and the light seemed to darken in the laboratory before she and the others found themselves in a corridor a small but fair distance away from the laboratory the Headmaster had used.
Harvey was turning around in a circle while everyone else was looking around in confusion. "What's going on? How did we end up here?"
"The Doctor is likely an alien like the Headmaster," Rose replied, just as confused by the recent events but was taking them in stride; Dinah guessed that the poor teenager had been hypnotised so many times and forced to see and do things that would drive anyone else nuts though after what she had said about psychiatrists Dinah wondered if Rose would visit one after this, though God knew what she'd say… "He probably has something that we can't understand that can move us from place to place," Rose went on.
"You mean, he could beam us up like in Star Trek?" Ingrid asked.
"Yes."
Dinah shook her head. "It doesn't matter now," she said decisively, suddenly tired after everything that had happened. "Come on, let's get out of here. We need to get this piece of wasp wing to the hospital, help Lloyd get better."
Ingrid frowned, "Wait a second, what are we going to tell the others?"
"Would they believe us?" Simon asked, looking between the others with confusion.
Dinah shrugged. "Well, there's quite a few of us to confirm it," she said, but even as she spoke, she wondered if they should reveal what they'd witnessed take place in the Demon Headmaster's laboratory.
The only good thing was that the Doctor, whoever he was, had probably made sure the Headmaster would not return, and truthfully Dinah was welcoming the chance to be a real kid instead of someone waiting to see what the next megalomaniac plot was.
But then her mind turned to the Doctor, a man who went around like a vigilante. She couldn't help but think he would one day find himself in a situation where he would pay a price for his attitude….