A/N - Who's been good at updating? (The answer is meeeee!) Yeah - well anyway, read and review and whatever! Enjooooy!


The Time Lord and the three teenagers followed Cassie at full speed across the city until they reached a scrapyard full of cars.

"Okay, we should be safe here," Cassie said. "Right, identify yourselves and stuff, the usual mumbo-jumbo."

"I'm the Doctor, and these are my friends Callum, Keith and Laura."

"Friends? Aren't they a bit young?" Cassie said, raising an eyebrow.

"Young? You don't look too old yourself," scoffed Keith.

"Yeah, well, different people, kiddo," the girl replied. "So you got my signal then? I'm pretty surprised – I thought my wristband had packed in."

"That would explain why it was so difficult to pinpoint," the Doctor said, looking at the brown leather wriststrap on the girl's arm. "That's a Time Agent's vortex manipulator."

"And that would be because I'm a Time Agent," Cassie sighed.

"The Time Agency was disbanded ages ago," the Doctor frowned.

"Really? Well, I haven't got the memo yet," the girl said. "What a shame. I'll miss this job."

"Yes, anyway, your job. Your mission here is something to do with Daleks?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm a Dalek Hunter," said Cassie, proudly. "Best the Time Agency's got."

"A Dalek Hunter?" the Doctor cried, incredulously. "And how many Daleks have you... hunted?"

"Oh, well over two hundred," Cassie said, with a mischievous grin. "I brought down a Dalek saucer in the southern ice deserts of Raxacorricofallapatorius last year. Now, that was a wild night!"

"She's crazy," Laura whispered, to Keith, who was gazing at the girl with the same expression of admiration as Callum. Keith wasn't sure what a Dalek was, but the Doctor had heard of them, so it was safe to assume they were probably dangerous.

"Alright," the Doctor said, looking a little irritated. "So what's your exact mission here?"

"A group of five Daleks have been located here. Reports indicate their ship was wiped out midflight in a time jump, and they fell straight through the time barrier, wound up here. As you may have noticed, I already got one."

At this, she reached behind her back, under the aviator's jacket, and withdrew a Dalek eyestalk that had been ripped out the top of the dome.

"Nearly cost me my life getting it off," she explained. "I thought it was dead – then it decided to do an emergency self-destruct. That all happened just there!"

"Well, that's one down, yes," the Doctor said. "Any idea where the other four could be?"

"Not a clue – but they're damaged, so they'll be weak," Cassie said. "I really only called back-up so I could be guaranteed a lift home, on account of my vortex manipulator going all funny. It says something about radiation surges, but nobody else seems aware of them."

"How long have you been here?" Laura asked.

"Oh, just under a week. The Daleks have been in hiding, y'see, and I've had to do most of my investigating at night, on account of the town always being really busy. But now that I have this," she brandished the eyestalk, "I can find the rest."

"Well, isn't that great?" the Doctor clapped. "Is your vortex manipulator functioning as a scanner?"

"It was..." Cassie said, suddenly a little embarrassed.

"Looks like we're going back to the TARDIS," the Doctor said, immediately turning and walking off in the direction they'd came from.

"But I thought the scanner wasn't working," Callum pointed out.

"Oh, I don't need the scanner for this. Not when I can make something else to scan it. Come on!"

And with that, the four of them followed after the Time Lord.


Returning to the TARDIS only took about five minutes, on account of the scrapyard being near the forest path that led to the glade they'd arrived in. The console room gave a brief groan as they walked in.

"Like what you've done with the place," commented Cassie as she shut the door behind her.

"Thank you," the Doctor yelled from over on the other side of the console, down in the little cupboard room. He ran up to the main level a moment later, before placing a silver box down on one of the seats that surrounded the console.

The others joined him and watched on as he opened the box and pulled out an assortment of springs, buttons and small levers, plus a whisk, a pulley rope and what appeared to be a Nintendo DS console.

"Pass me the mallet, will you?" the Doctor asked Keith, pointing at the rubber mallet sticking out of the toolbox under the console. Keith fetched it and handed it to the Doctor and with a grateful smile he began to repeatedly smack two objects together.

Several minutes later, with some more hammering and some make-shift sonicing with the screwdriver from Callum, the Doctor's invention was finally done and he held it high, triumphantly.

"So, what's that?" Callum asked.

"It's a Dalek detector," the Doctor said. "Well, it's an anything detector, really, but 'Dalek detector' has alliteration so I prefer that!"

"And how does it work?" Cassie asked.

"Simple. Gimme the eyestalk?" the Doctor requested. Cassie stood for a moment, unsure, before finally surrendering the eyestalk to him. He gave it a smack with the mallet, then held it up against the Dalek detector he now held. There was a few moments of silence where nothing happened, until finally:

"You forgot to switch it on," Laura said, quietly.

"Oh, yes, sorry," the Doctor said, absent-mindedly, yanking on the pulley rope as Cassie glared daggers at him.

"That was meant to be a trophy!" she shrieked.

"You can still have it," the Doctor frowned. "It's just got a dent in it. Much better condition than it would have been if you hadn't have stolen it in time."

"That's not the point! It's less valuable now!"

"Ah, so that's what you do," the Doctor said, nodding, knowingly. "You collect the bounty."

"Hey, a job's a job," Cassie said. "I get 500,000 credits for every eyestalk."

"That doesn't sound too bad at all," Keith murmured.

"It's not," the Doctor said. "500,000 credits is equal to one million pounds."

"Blimey," Keith spluttered. "Can we have an eyestalk when we find these things?"

"It's not that simple, Keith," Callum said. "The Doctor's told me about the Daleks before. These things are pure evil."

"How d'you mean?"

"They wiped out entire species and planets," the Doctor explained. "I've fought them so many times."

"Oh, a professional?" Cassie said, her mischievous grin making a reappearance.

"More like a veteran," the Doctor said, shaking his head. He was adjusting several of the switches and buttons on the device in his hands and after a few seconds, he swivelled on the spot and smacked it off the console.

"It needed a bump," he explained, seeing the quizzical looks on the others' faces.

"What I don't get is, if these Daleks are so dangerous," Laura said, "why are we getting involved?"

"Because these things need to be stopped," the Doctor said. "If we don't stop them now, they could go on to kill every living thing on this planet!"

"But wait, surely not, because we weren't born til 1996, so the world couldn't exactly end ten years before that, could it?" Keith asked. The Doctor facepalmed and looked to Callum, as if begging him to explain it to his friends.

"Wibbly wobbly timey wimey," Callum said, rolling his eyes. "Time is constantly in a state of flux which means it can be changed. Only if our births were fixed points in time would it be a certainty. So basically, yeah, the entire future of the human race is at stake!"

"Oh, that's so reassuring," Keith said, sarcastically.

"I actually understood that," Laura said, blinking with surprise. Callum smiled.

"I've got it!" the Doctor yelled, suddenly. "Come out, come out, wherever you are, Daleks!"

Sure enough, the little screen on the device suddenly lit up and flashed, displaying what appeared to be a map of the area. A single dot was flashing not too far away from where the TARDIS had landed.

"Whereabouts is that?" Keith asked.

"Looks like it's out in Worm Wood Forest," Cassie said, leaning over to inspect the screen. "We're on the outskirts of it already."

"Alright," the Doctor said, rubbing his chin. "We need a battle-plan."

"A battle-plan?" Callum asked. "That's a bit new for us, isn't it?" The Doctor nodded, gravely.

"I'm afraid so, but this is serious business," he said. "Remember just how big a risk they're posing just by being here. This could end terribly."

"Uh, Doctor," Laura said, suddenly, "there's another blip now."

"Oh, that's good – two's always better than one. Where's that one?"

"Some old abandoned storage sheds," Cassie said, thinking back to the schematics of the town she had memorized prior to her mission.

"So, what's the plan? We're gonna need weapons, aren't we?" Callum frowned.

"I'm fully armed, already, thanks," Cassie said, opening her jacket to show the gun holsters strapped across her body. She then leaned down and pulled a knife out of one of her boots, then a small pistol out of the other. Finally, she reached behind her back and produced another rather fancy-looking gun.

"Blimey," Keith said, impressed.

"If you think that's good," Cassie smirked, "I have three poison darts in my wristband, a knife concealed in each of my boots, shuriken in the pack strapped to my leg, and several small detonators on my belt."

"You're a walking armoury," the Doctor commented, not sounding as particularly impressed as Keith had.

"Weapons aren't really our thing," Callum explained, staring at Cassie with a dumbstruck expression.

"What a pity," Cassie replied. "You'd look cute with a sword." Callum turned a brilliant shade of red and Keith snorted with laughter, while Laura stifled a giggle of her own.

"Well," the Doctor said, "now that that little moment is over, let's make a plan."

"Y-yeah," squeaked Callum, making a mental note to himself to smack his head off a wall.

"We have about two hours and forty minutes left to find these four Daleks and get back here before the reactor is destroyed," the Doctor said.

"Oh, so I don't need to get you up to speed on the reactor disaster then?" Cassie said, brightly.

"Nope, Callum, Keith and Laura are all from this planet's future, so they already have a basic understanding of what's going to happen here," the Doctor explained.

"Well, that saves some time," she replied, coolly. "And I'm assuming you've told them not to go trying to change time or anything stupid like that?"

"Yeah, but if time is in flux," Keith said, "surely we could stop it from even happening?"

"Nice thought, kid," Cassie smirked, "but time's actually fixed here. Probably a paperwork error, but yeah, it's irrelevant to the mission anyway, so we can't really get involved."

"Surely we could though, Doctor?" Laura asked. "We arrived a-"

"No, I'm afraid not," the Doctor said, shaking his head sadly. "Like she said, time is fixed here."

"Oh," Laura sighed. "It's not fair. All those people out there are going to die today and we can't do anything to help!"

"I know, and that's the sort of burden we have as time travellers," the Doctor explained. "Sometimes we can intervene and save people, but then there are times like now where we have to stay out of it, or we could risk damaging the whole of history!"

"Okay," Laura said, sadly. "I get it."

"Anyway," Cassie cried, "we have Daleks to hunt! Priorities!"

"Yeah, you're right," Laura nodded. "I need to stay focused."

The Doctor smiled proudly at Laura's bravery.

"Right, well, how are we going to go about this?" Keith asked.

"I think our only real option is to split up, I'm afraid," the Doctor sighed. "I don't like it at all, but with these two Daleks both so close to the town, it's our only real chance at stopping them getting in."

"So we're gonna save their lives, just for them to get radiated?" Keith asked. "Doesn't that seem a little ironic?"

"If that's how you want to look at it," Cassie shrugged. "I have a mission to be getting on with though, Doctor, so if you want to divide us up, feel free. You seem to know what you're doing at least."

"All right, all right," the Doctor said. "Right, Callum, you with me, and you two with Cassie."

"You're certainly trusting me a lot considering we only just met," Cassie commented.

"Yes, well you're a Time Agent on a mission, and the Daleks are your target, so I don't see you being of any threat to us. Plus you were the one who asked us for help in the first place, so it's only logical that I put some trust in you."

"I like your thinking, Doc," Keith nodded. "I figure we're a team for now."

"Alright then, Team Cassie," the girl laughed. "Oh, I have a team, that's fun!"

"Yes, but you have to make sure they're both okay," the Doctor said, pointing a finger at her.

"You have my word, Doctor," the Time Agent replied.

"Excellent," the Doctor said, smiling brightly. "Let's go find some Daleks!"