ACROSSover, by horatia1984
Disclaimer:
"I, Koushi Rikudou, do not give my permission for Excel Saga to be made into a Doctor Who crossover!"
NOTES on CONTINUITY: This story takes place between (Doctor Who) Destiny of the Daleks and City of Death, and (Excel Saga) immediately after the introduction of Ropponmatsu II.
Doctor: #4
Romana: #2
K-9: #2
Master: #1 (Or #13, depending on how you look at it...) in other words, the Delgado-Master.
Ropponmatsu: #2
Hyatt: #???
Part Two: "The Master, Your Servant"
One of the advantages of having two hearts instead of one is that certain things--the sudden revivification of a body that has been dead for several minutes, for example--while still delivering quite a shock to the cardiovascular system, are not likely to overload the whole lot. So it was that the Master reacted with only a slight start when the dead girl on the sidewalk sat up and began talking to her companion as if she'd merely tripped and fallen instead of suffering a myocardial infarction.
It wasn't as if the Master had never seen someone die only to revive moments later. As a Time Lord, he'd done it himself the full dozen times. He also knew that some silicon-based life-forms were capable of reconstituting themselves with massive doses of radiation. This regeneration had come as a particular surprise because as far as he knew--as far as anyone knew, for that matter--regardless of what species was concerned, regeneration was invariably coupled with a significant change in appearance. And yet, somehow, not so much as a wavy blue hair was altered on the former cadaver.
Fascinating.
The Master turned to the second girl, who was in the process of hauling her undead companion to her feet.
"You say she does this often?" he inquired sharply. "How often?"
"Oh, all the time," said the maintenance girl. "It's kind of a pain in the ass, really. You never know when she's just going to keel over on you."
"I'm sorry, Senior," murmured her companion.
"Oh, it's all right, Hachan," said the maintenance girl, rather too magnanimously to be convincing.
"How many times?" the Master persisted. This was quickly developing a deep personal interest for him. On his thirteenth incarnation, he was out of regenerations. The Time Lord he had most recently been chasing across time and space, on the other hand, was only on his fourth. It would, therefore, be in the Master's best interest to have the proverbial ace up his sleeve when he finally caught up with his arch-nemesis. The Master had not been willing to break off his pursuit of the Doctor for a random dead body, but if this girl held some secret that would allow him even one more regeneration, that would be time well-spent.
"Twelve times?" he prompted when he did not get an immediate response. "More than twelve?"
He hoped it was the latter. It was always possible--disappointing, but possible--that girl might be another Time Lord. Some possessed enough control to tailor their new bodies to their liking, and if she'd become attached to that particular form... it was unorthodox, but who knew? Perhaps it had never been done only because it had never been tried. Perhaps taking on a completely new appearance was mere tradition, not necessity. One of the things that annoyed him most about his own race was that they could never distinguish between the two.
As he was weighing the possibilities, the maintenance girl was staring at him blankly. "Huh?" she said.
"I said, how many times?" the Master snapped. "I realize it may be difficult for you to count to twelve without taking off your shoes, but please make an effort!"
"I think I might have just been insulted," the maintenance girl noted aloud. "And why do I feel compelled to answer his questions? Oh, well." She looked up at something in the sky which the Master suspected only she could see. "Oh Lord Il Palazzo, your Excel is coming to you! I just have to finish talking to the strange man who is now fixing me with a murderous stare!"
She then spouted a series of equations including several abstract formulae that could not possibly aid have aided her in calculating the number of times this "Hachan" had spontaneously expired and revived. (Einstein's theory of relativity was not applicable in even the most roundabout and trans-dimensional of ways, to say nothing of the formula for deriving the square root of an isocoles triangle.) All the while she ticked through the fingers of her left hand over and over. Finally, somehow, she arrived at the number twenty-six.
"That's all the way, of course," she added. "It's more like forty if you count the times when she's just gone into respiratory arrest. Since I've known her, anyway."
As if on cue, "Hachan" wobbled and started to tip sideways. The Master decided to take the opportunity to see for himself whether this girl was a Time Lord or not. He didn't trust the loud maintenance girl's powers of perception and recollection, much less arithmetic. He caught "Hachan" by the wrist and set her upright again. She didn't have the peculiar pulse of someone with two hearts, and from what he could tell the one she had was still having difficulty getting over her most recent "fit."
So she did have some extraordinary secret, then. In that case it was best to let them go and follow from a distance. No further information could be gained from total hypnosis in the maintenance girl's case; he got the distinct feeling that she was the type who frequently re-wrote her memory, and hypnotising people like that was usually more trouble than it was worth. As for "Hachan," he wasn't sure of her psychic fortitude, and he didn't want to risk damaging a potential asset by messing about with her mind so soon after she had regenerated. He knew from experience that regeneration tended to scramble one's brain a bit at first. Jumping in there now would just give him a headache.
He stepped aside so that he was no longer blocking their path. "Have a nice day," he said aloud. "Forget you ever saw me," he added psychically to the maintenance girl.
The two girls walked past him. "He sure was weird," said the maintenance girl. "When we conquer the city, he should probably go into a re-education camp, just to be on the safe side." She stopped for a moment, and scratched her head. "Hachan, who was I just talking about?"
"Senior?" Hachan responded, tone broadcasting "I know nothing, but I'm good-natured enough to smile anyway."
The maintenance girl sighed and continued walking. "Never mind, Hachan. Let's just get to HQ."
The Master followed the two girls at a distance of twenty feet. "Re-education camp"? "Conquer the city"? The Master smiled, intrigued. Yes, the Doctor could wait. This was definitely worth looking into.
Meanwhile, in a crappy apartment building on the other side of the city, an overstressed, underpaid city employee by the name of Watanabe was cursing his fate, his personality, and his coworker, in that order. Why did he have to live in this building? Where all of his coworkers lived? Where Iwata lived, where Iwata could break into his apartment and eat all his food without asking, paying, or even leaving a note? Where that crazy girl lived, who screamed insane things at her Italian boyfriend in the middle of the night?
Where Miss Ayasugi lived, in the same apartment as the madwoman...
Why couldn't he be the sort of guy who can talk to girls? Why did he have to go all red in the face every time he so much as looked at Miss Ayasugi? Why did all his attempts at courtship end with him wanting to crawl into a hole and die? Why, after so many months in the same building, had he still not managed to even ask her first name? He was madly in love with the woman, and thanks to his phenomenal social skills, he still only knew her as Miss Ayasugi!
Why did a jackass like Iwata and even that psychotic older brother of his have such easy confidence with women? Sure, half the time the women beat the hell out of them for the jackass things they said, but at least their conversations got that far! Watanabe would have gladly stood in a long line, for two months, in the rain, in nothing but his shorts for the chance to be slapped by Miss Ayasugi.
It occurred to Watanabe, not for the first time, that he had some serious Issues. With a capital "I."
The doorknob jiggled. Someone was trying to get in. It was probably Iwata, returning to the scene of the crime. Watanabe's hands balled into angry fists.
"There's no more food, asshole!" he yelled across the room, not moving from where he sat in the window. "You ate it all, understand?! All of it! All gone! No more!"
"Watanabe-kun, it's me!" a female voice shouted back. "And I'm alone, so open the damn door!"
Watanabe sighed in relief and climbed down from his perch. (He always sat in the window to brood.) He crossed the room, turned the lock on the doorknob and undid the three chain-locks he'd installed hoping to keep Iwata away from his supply of perishables. Now he wondered why he'd bothered. Trying to keep the younger Iwata brother from mooching was like trying to keep the older one from feeling up his female patients--it could only be accomplished with a five-iron to the noggin.
He opened the door. "Hi, Matsuya," he said to the tall redhead on the other side of the door jamb. "Sorry, I thought you were that jackass Iwa--"
"I kind of figured that," Misaki Matsuya cut him off dryly. "Let me guess: he raided your fridge again. Look, why don't you just kick his ass once or twice? It works for me. I can't remember the last time I caught him in my kitchen--except when he's peeping through the window."
Watanabe shook his head. "He's got a crush on you, not me. No matter how many times I hit him, he comes back and does it again. If I didn't have such a strong sense of decency, believe me when I say I'd knock him out cold and turn him over to a certain psychotic medical professional he's related to."
Matsuya gave him a sardonic half-grin. "Well, prepare to have your sense of decency strained even further. Doctor Kabapu just called us in. Iwata and Sumiyoshi have already left. I tried to call you, but I kept getting a busy signal, so I figured you'd taken your phone off the hook and were brooding in the window again. You'd better grab your uniform and come with me."
"Of all the..." Watanabe turned and went to fetch the ridiculous Security uniform he was compelled to wear at work, swearing all the way there and back. He closed the door behind him as he left the apartment. "I don't know why I bother locking it," he muttered, turning the key. "If an idiot like Iwata can break in, it'd be a piece of cake for a professional. Cheap low-grade P.O.S."
Matsuya nodded. "Yeah, but what else can you expect? You get what you pay for."
"I guess that's true," Watanabe said as they entered the parking lot. "By the way, Matsuya, where's your uniform?"
"Underneath this," she replied, contemptuously flicking the sleeve of the jogging suit she wore. "I'm not going to be caught dead in that ridiculous blue-spandex fashion nightmare unless I'm on the clock. And I'm not on the clock yet."
She got into her car and slammed the door. Watanabe followed suit.
Given that the girls were wearing scrubs, the Master had been expecting "HQ" to be a hospital or laboratory, or at the very least some sort of government-run scientific institution. When the two wandered into a construction site and climbed down an open manhole, he realized that he was going to have to adjust his expectations somewhat. And take note of the location of the nearest dry cleaners.
He waited several minutes before climbing down the manhole himself. Happily, it was no trouble to locate the girls again once inside the underground tunnels. The maintenance girl was singing at the top of her voice, a largely unintelligible, atonal melody which seemed to be composed mainly of the words "Il Palazzo," "love," "conquest," and "across." None of which made any sense to the Master. Still, she was singing so loudly that he no longer needed to be concerned about the sound his boots made in the concrete tunnel. Her voice was more than enough to drown out his footsteps.
It was difficult to remember when or even if he'd had such an easy time following someone in secret.
The Master followed Hachan and the maintenance girl round several corners, and finally through what seemed to be a hidden sliding door. On the other side was not another stretch of sewer main but instead what appeared to be an enormous audience chamber. At the opposite end of the room, a white-haired, caped figure sat on an elaborate throne. The presence of another entity made the Master cautious once more, and he kept to the shadows as he entered the room, which was not too difficult since most of the light seemed to be focused on the throne.
The maintenance girl skipped across the room, Hachan wobbling along after her, to come to a stop in front of the throne. She clapped one hand to her chest and sent the other stabbing into the air in a salute that would have been sinister, particularly on this planet, if carried out by a severe-looking individual in dark military garb--but since it was her, it mostly reminded one of a kindergartener desperate for permission to go to the bathroom.
"Hail, Il Palazzo!" crowed the maintenance girl. Hachan echoed her words in a feeble, unsteady voice.
"Excel," said the figure seated on the throne. It was a distinctly male voice. Judging from the armor--particularly the enormous spiked shoulder guards--the robes, and the curious chevron headpiece, it was entirely possible that this gradiose being was an alien. From what planet, it was impossible to tell; a surprising number of planets featured humanoid life-forms. "You are five minutes late. Would you care to explain your tardiness?"
"Well, Lord Il Palazzo, we were on our way when Hyatt died again. And... I have this feeling there was something else, but I can't remember--"
Lord Il Palazzo looked beyond the maintenance girl at the Master. "Would I be wrong to conclude that it has something to do with the man in black who is keeping so conscientiously out of the light?"
The maintenance girl cocked her head to one side. "Man in black...? Oh! Men in black! Common conspiracy theory among the ignorant masses! Posits that men dressed in black suits are employed to enforce the secret will of the government for nefarious or at least top-secret purposes! Rumors unsubstantiated by ACROSS personnel--namely Hyatt and myself--although entirely possible if you think about all the attempts at sabotage we've encount---"
"Excel." Lord Il Palazzo gestured with an index finger in the Master's general direction. "Turn around."
"Excel"--apparently it was the maintenance girl's name, not a greeting or a command, though it seemed to the Master something of a misnomer--whipped around, let out a squawk of surprise, then recovered and said:
"Oh, that man in black! He's, er--he's--um--"
The girl looked from the Master to Lord Il Palazzo and back in obvious distress. Once, in a moment of supreme panic, she even glanced over at Hachan, but received only a smile of clueless encouragement from her partner.
"He's--um--" Excel sputtered again, still trying to put something together.
The Master, meanwhile, was once more weighing his options. The fact that Lord Il Palazzo had seen him--or, rather, was aware that he had seen him--supported his suspicion that this was an alien; it suggested the presence of some degree of telepathy, or at least a much stronger mind and will than the Master commonly encountered. The bottom line was that, despite an impressive array of might-be conclusions forming in his mind, he had no real idea of this Lord Il Palazzo's capabilities.
So, the Master stepped into the light, and said what he always said when he was unsure of his position:
"I am called the Master--and I am your obedient servant."
Some level of hesitancy on the part of whomever he addressed this statement to was to be expected. The Master was used to demands for proof of his loyalty being made more or less immediately after the statement was issued. Such demands were usually easily met, and without significant risk on his part, so the Master was not worried at the prospect. Lord Il Palazzo, however, showed no hesitation and made no demands.
He simply started laughing.
End of Part Two.
Author's Note: Thanks to Russell1, who reminded me I needed the disclaimer. There was some brief panic on this end over the continuity while I was writing this segment--as I found myself in New Braunfels on holiday without my notes--but now that I have returned home to the Land of the Internet, we're all checked out and everybody is in their proper incarnations for their respective timelines. If all continues to go well, Part Three will be up in short order.