Chapter 1

"You're quite right to. And I suppose… this is my last chance to say it. Rose Tyler-"

Without warning, the fragile thread of communication between the Doctor and his former companion snapped, leaving the last Time Lord standing alone in the expansive TARDIS.

The Doctor blinked, jarred by the sudden closing of the small window between universes. Finally, he wiped the tears he hadn't noticed streaming down his face and strolled over to the controls, more out of habit than to set a course to any particular destination. It took him a moment to notice the flashing red light on one panel. Staring at the monitor, it took him still longer to snap out of his lonely, love-addled state and actually process what the TARDIS was trying to tell him.

"Still picking up readings of void energy… but that would mean that the barrier between universes only closed in Pete's world, not this one."

He paused, waiting for Rose to respond in her usual, not-quite-understanding way. Then he of course remembered that Rose was trapped in Pete's world, and it wasn't likely that she would answer from there. Shaking his head at his own foolishness, the Doctor continued, more out of habit than anything else.

"But it's more than that… readings are coming through from the other side of the hole. But if that's true, it means that the Daleks could conceivably get through, released into an unsuspecting universe."

The Doctor stopped talking, weighing his options. He was under no particular obligation to follow his most hated foe. The war was long over. The Daleks in this universe were finally dead and gone. If he wanted, he could stop fighting the fight that had haunted him for so long. For a moment, he considered what his previous life would have done. Back then, he probably would have dived head first into such a "fantastic" opportunity to rid all of creation from the stink of the Daleks. And he almost certainly would have been grinning ear to ear while doing it. But that was then. The Doctor saw himself as a different man now. At the very least, he had the new teeth; he couldn't grin and bellow "fantastic" nearly as well as he used to. But more than that, his time with Rose had calmed him. He wasn't against blowing up buildings, but he wasn't quite as prone to it as he had been. Something about Rose's charming, simple, human manner had reined him in.

Rose… if the Daleks had escaped, it was all for nothing. She would still be trapped, but the single greatest threat to all life would still run rampant. That decided it. Rapidly calculating how to best to navigate the TARDIS through the gap between worlds, the Doctor ran around the controls, pulling levers and punching buttons. As the familiar roaring sound of the engines started up, he grinned despite himself. Sure, he was endangering the boundaries of the universe by plowing headlong towards places that he was not meant to go. But he was going to see something new! After centuries of traveling, the Doctor found no greater pleasure than arriving somewhere that he had never been. As the roaring of the engines reached its peak, the Doctor yanked one final lever.

"Allons-y!"

It was as quiet as it ever got in the Daily Planet news room, and for that, Clark Kent was extremely grateful. After his exhausting battle against Vyndktvx, the mad imp from the fifth dimension, he still felt like his brain was tied in knots. No doubt all that he had seen would make more sense in the future, as he crossed paths with the vengeful magician again, but trying to piece together what parts of his life had been, or would be, changed in the demon's obsessive quest for vengeance was too much to deal with right now. While he would love to fly up to the stratosphere and bathe in sunlight for three or four hours, typing out an article at a slow, human pace was relaxing in its own way.

"Hey Smallville. Still obsessing over your name-making story?"

Smiling without looking up, Clark kept typing. "Why yes, Lois. I am still writing a piece about Glenmorgan."

"Dude, why? You got him! You pulled up enough dirt that he decided to come clean. Well, that and being trapped in a bottle with the rest of us in an alien spaceship. And Superman jumping off a fifty story building while carrying him. But you still played a part."

At the sound of the second voice, Clark did look up. Jimmy was leaning against his desk, idly pushing his bright red hair out of his eyes. His camera was hanging around his neck, partially covering the graphic on a tee-shirt of some movie Clark had probably never seen. Lois, on the other hand, had decided to sit in the empty desk across from Clark's, wearing a loose sweatshirt and draining the remains of what was most likely her third latte of the day. Sighing, Clark leaned back in his chair.

"Alright, what is it? Don't you guys have work to do?"

Lois laughed. "I finished my piece on the bridge being rebuilt half an hour ago. And I doubt Jimmy is going to find any good shots in the news room. A least not when it's as slow as it is today."

Jimmy nodded. "Yeah, it's not like you're giving me anything good to shoot. Not exactly an action packed story you've got."

"So? I guess you two are going to get lunch?"

"Wow, that's a real superpower you've got there, being able to read minds like that, Smallville."

"Alright, I guess this is good enough to send to the editor." Closing the computer, Clark got up, grabbed his bag, and followed his friends to the elevator.

The walk to the diner was, as always, full of distractions. Even keeping his super-hearing limited to just the goings-on of Metropolis, there was still a city-worth of noise to process. The cars and machinery he had learned to disregard soon after moving from the country. That just left the sounds of several million voices to piece through. It was no wonder that Lois gave him such a hard time for seeming absent minded. Even with the ability to think faster than any human could even dream of, it was a lot to listen to.

"Hey, Clark, you're still coming to see 'The Vampire of Venus' tonight, right?" The sound of his friend's voice yanked Clark back down to earth. He smiled, pretending that he had just been lost in thought.

"Jim, I already told you, I'm not seeing any more movies that have a monster and a planet in the title. Not that 'Killer Women from Pluto' wasn't great, but I'm not going through that again."

Lois shot him a friendly glare. "Oh, so women are monsters now?"

"I, well, that's not what I said, Lois. What I meant-"

"No, I heard, you clearly said no monsters in the title, and then you said women. Of all the misogynistic things that you could say-"

Before Lois could launch into her rant, a massive shriek of strained metal rang out, cutting through the din of the busy city. Like a nightmarish transformer, one of the 18 wheelers down the street had reared up, turning into a vaguely humanoid killing machine. A great robotic voice screamed the all-too-familiar cry.

"BOW! BEFORE! METALEK!" Even as it gave the command, it started firing its converted weapons into the crowd.

Lois snapped into action reporter mode.

"Jimmy, pictures! Try to get as close as you can, and keep an eye out for the authorities! Clark, you… Clark?"

Before she had even finished telling Jimmy what to do, Clark had joined the fleeing crowd. The indestructible Kryptonian finery that he now wore had many advantages over his old tee-shirt and jeans costume, but he still needed a place to get out of his human clothes. Looking around, he quickly found one. There was what looked like a blue phone box about halfway down an alley. It looked like a skinny man in a long brown coat had just left. Not perfect, but hopefully he wouldn't get a good look at Clark's face as he ran by to change. And there certainly wasn't time to find a better spot. After all, this was a job for Superman!