Special thanks to the lovely and brilliant Karama9 for both coming up with the idea for the Fearless Master and letting me steal him occasionally.
"Thirty Two Years earlier, linear time"
"Six months earlier, Time Lord time"
Sparks were still flying from the control panel he'd slammed one of the robot-things through. The robot still was twitching intermittently, but that was only because of the electricity still running through it; the lights in the eyes had died.
Tomisaburo Arashikage, better known as the Fearless Master, and even better known as the Insane Master of the Arashikage, or sometimes simply as "Oh god, he's here, he's here, run where is he for the love of god run shoot him shoot him shoot him faster oh god so much blood oh god oh god they're all dead they're all dead I'm sorry I shouldn't have sold those arms to the Soviets, AAAAHHHHHGGgggghgkkkk…" was having one of the strangest days of his life.
For one thing, he was pretty certain that he was currently on an alien spaceship, and that he'd just killed several alien robots. At least, if the view of the planet Earth through the window he was currently standing in front of was any indication. It was a beautiful view; he was appreciating it accordingly.
(Behind him, the dead robot-thing was giving off the distinct aroma of hot metal and burning flesh, still twitching in the nest of electrical wiring he'd kicked it into. Bruised his foot doing it, too. He had a pivot side kick that he could go through cinderblock walls with, and he'd left a sizeable dent in the robot's chest. If not for twenty five years of iron body training, he probably would have broken his foot and ankle. As it was, he'd wound up wincing and massaging his heel, and calling the robot some very impolite things.)
He eyed the planet above/below/whatever them, and sighed. He'd known it was a bad idea to jump into that machine and press that button, but then he'd had twelve of the giant robot-alien-monsters chasing him. (Apparently, killing that first one down on Earth had irritated the rest, and he was now scheduled for 'maximum deletion'.) He'd already seen one of them apparently teleport using the thing and hell, it had seemed like the best way to lead those things away from the city where his wife and child were.
If he got out of this alive, they were going to move back to Japan. In the thirty years he'd been alive, he'd never once seen alien robots trying to invade Japan. The compound up in the northern mountains was a much safer place for his son to grow up than San Francisco, particularly considering that there would be about forty highly trained ninja agents in the compound at all times. He'd yet to see the enemy that could take on the entire Arashikage clan and walk away in one piece.
But that was if he managed to survive his current predicament. The robots had followed him, but he'd gotten enough of a breather to set up for a fight. During the ensuing violence, an electricity-shooting robot arm had gotten knocked right into the machinery that operated the teleport, frying it.
That had, in all probability, been his only way home. But the man known as the Insane Master had not earned his nickname without reason; he was starting to smile.
"No more of you down there, are there?" He muttered. "Good. Ayame and Tommy are safe, then. I suppose I'll just have to give them a good reason not to come back, won't I?"
He cocked his head suddenly. While his ears weren't as sharp as those of his elder brother, he did have exceptional hearing. And right now he was hearing someone running in his direction, followed by the heavy, regular thud thud thud thud of robot feet. Someone wearing…sneakers?
There was a buzzing noise. The door he knew he'd just bolted shut across the room (it appeared to be a control bridge of sorts) flew open, and a man shot through, slammed the door again, and pointed an odd little contraption at it. The tip glowed blue, and there was the buzzing noise again. The stranger whirled around, just in time to yelp and struggle as the Fearless Master pounced, easily disarming him and wrapping him up into a chokehold with one hand while rolling the odd blue-tipped cylinder around with the other, examining it curiously.
"MNNGGGGG!" The stranger made an indignant noise. He was a lot stronger than that tall, skinny build should allow; Tomisaburo was having to work to keep him under control.
"Who are you?" The Fearless Master was still eyeing the odd cylinder. "And what's this thing? And why are you still conscious? This is a sleeper hold; you should have passed out twenty seconds ago." He paused, the odd pulsing of the arteries under his grip finally registering. "And do you have two heartbeats?"
"NNNNGGGG!"
The Fearless Master loosened his grip.
"Ouch. Thank you. I'm the Doctor." The Doctor massaged his throat. "Who're you? And do you always say 'hello' by inflicting soft tissue damage?"
"Most of the time, yes." The Fearless Master shrugged. "But then, a lot of the time when I meet new people they try to kill me. Count yourself lucky; that was usually the part where I break their neck, but you didn't look like too much of a threat."
"Thanks." A pause. "I think. That can ruin a day." The Doctor sighed. "Every time I try to go on a nice vacation, ten minutes later it's 'oh, let's blow up the universe, oh dear, the Doctor's here, best shoot him while we're at it."
The Fearless Master let the stranger go, intrigued. "See, those kind of situations can usually be solved by inflicting soft tissue damage, in my experience. So, you're here trying to stop these things?"
"Cybermen." The Doctor brushed himself off, straightening his coat. "They're called cybermen. They have human brains in a robot bodies, which is why they were here; buying new stock to 'upgrade.' Yes, yes I am. Could I have my Sonic Screwdriver back?"
"Sonic screwdriver?" The Fearless Master eyed the metal cylinder. "What's it do?"
"It doesn't kill people." The Doctor's voice was flat.
The Fearless Master sighed and handed the item back, disappointed. "So…" He eyed the wild-haired stranger. "Two heartbeats…are you an alien?"
"Yep."
"Thought so. Do you not need to breathe? Or pump blood to your brain? Because that sleeper hold I was using on you should put a man out cold in ten seconds."
"Respiratory bypass system. Almost impossible to asphyxiate a Time Lord. And I have a binary vascular system; two extra carotid arteries, set further back than the primary ones. Sleeper holds won't work."
"Ahhh." The Fearless Master nodded, satisfied. "I knew I wasn't slipping. How far back, exactly, and what angle would be best…"
The stranger eyed the Fearless Master. "I am not telling you how to knock out a Time Lord. So…who the bloody hell are you, and what are you doing on a cyberman ship?"
"Most people call me the Insane Master." Tomisaburo extended a hand. "My proper title is the Fearless Master, and my real name is Tomisaburo, but I like Insane Master. I was conducting a hit on a target, but it turns out he was an alien running a slave ring. So I beheaded him, and then I was getting chased by those cybermen things, so I teleported out, lured them after me, and wound up here. Then the teleport got fried, so now I'm going to blow this ship up."
The Doctor mulled that over for a moment, and then gingerly shook the offered hand. "Okay. Ninja?"
"Yes."
"Thought so. The sword, you know. Kind of a give-away. Well, that and the trying to strangle me. Anyway, we'd best start running."
There was a crash of metal against metal from the door the Doctor had entered through. The metal bowed inwards.
The Fearless Master resettled the weapon on his back and eyed the door. He cracked his knuckles. "Why?"
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Ahh…because there are six cybermen on the other side of that door. If they catch us, they'll kill us. Now, if we go this way, we should be able to get to the main engine room, and if we're lucky there'll be a backup teleportation system. If we lock all the doors between here and there we should be able to buy ourselves at least a few minutes…what are you doing?"
The Fearless Master calmly unsheathed his sword. "I'd advise hiding behind that control panel over there, if I were you."
The look of incredulous disbelief on the Doctor's face was priceless. The Fearless Master always enjoyed it when he elicited that sort of look. "You can't fight them! They'll kill you!"
The Fearless Master grinned under his mask, a look that would have sent most sane people fleeing in terror. "Oh, but I can. And the last twelve couldn't."
"…..twelve?"
The Fearless Master slid back into the shadows along the wall, vanishing from view so effectively that the Doctor found himself blinking. The door shuddered under another hit; the next one punched a hole through the steel plating.
"You're mad!" The Doctor dove behind the control panel. "Mad!"
The next blow sent the door crashing down. The first cyberman came clumping stolidly through, arm raising to fire at anything that moved….
…the shadows blurred, and the air hissed as a very sharp blade moved through it very, very quickly…
The next few seconds, in the eyes of a Time Lord, seemed to stretch out as if mired in treacle. The head rolled off the first cyberman, the metal body, one leg still raised in the air, toppled...
…and before either head or body hit the floor, the shadows were moving, and the strange, crazed man was in amongst the cybermen, not seeming to care that each of them could kill him with a touch, his grin visible right through the mask, looking like he was having the time of his life.
But to kill him, they'd have to touch him, and that didn't seem likely to happen. The man moved like only a truly gifted ninja could; a cyberman reached, only to grasp empty air, and then its head was falling to one side and its body to the other, and the body was crashing into another cyberman, and the strange man was using it as a springboard to launch himself up to where he could get a grip on the piping in the ceiling. In the few moments it took the cybermen to reorient, knives took the eyes out of two of the robots, who started screeching "Compromised! Compromised!" and bumping into each other and the walls.
A white blur launched itself from the ceiling, and landed knife-first on one of the last two cyborgs. He was gone before the creature started to fall, leaving the hilt of a very large knife protruding from an eye; too late, electricity crackled over the cyberman's skin, only to fade fitfully as the thing died.
The last cyberman reached for the ninja, the deadly electrical pulse crackling over the steel of its body…
…and the crazy man sidestepped and drove his sword point-first through the eye socket of the metal head. Electricity crackled along the blade, but the ninja didn't seem affected. He just tugged his weapon free.
Of course! The Doctor almost slapped himself in the forehead. Japanese swords traditionally have wood hilts over the tang, wrapped with rayskin and silk cord…he's insulated from the metal of the sword. Oh, and he must have known it. Clever man…
Across the room, the Fearless Master casually beheaded the last two blinded cybermen, then examined the edge of his sword as the metal corpses crashed to the floor.
"You see that!" He said happily to the room in general. "Onashi steelsmithing, right there. An Onashi sword'll split a bullet fired at the edge. Barely nicked it." He polished the blade of the weapon lovingly with his sleeve and sheathed it. "Now, about the blowing this place up…you said something about a backup teleportation system? Because I'm not afraid of dying, but I would like to see my wife and son again if possible."
The Doctor was staring at him. "Did you just kill six cybermen with a bloody sword?"
"And a knife, but they don't really seem to have blood." The Fearless Master bent to retrieve his knife, and said a word that would have made even the most seasoned prostitute in Bangkok blush. "It's melted!"
"You just killed six cybermen with a bloody sword."
"Is that a problem?" The Fearless Master folded his arms.
"They subjugated entire systems! They're incredibly difficult to kill! They're relentless, they never stop, they can kill with a touch…I've seen entire armies destroyed by six cybermen!"
The Fearless Master nudged a metal head with the toe of one tabi. "I find that most things die if you behead them or at least destroy their brain."
"With eighteenth century military technology?"
The Fearless Master just smiled.
"Blimey." The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, managing to make it stick up even more. "You really are the Insane Master."
"I earned that name." The Fearless Master grinned. "I'm rather fond of it. Now, if you don't mind…I've never killed an enemy spaceship before, and it'd be one hell of a thing to put on my resume. Where's the button to make this thing explode?"
"You know, most humans transported to a cyberman ship would spend considerably more time on the 'oh my, I'm on an alien spacecraft, bloody hell aliens are real, how do I get home?' And the usual response to cybermen soldiers includes a lot more screaming and running." The Doctor pointed towards a corridor. "That way, and it's not really a button, I'm going to rewire the main engine core to feed excess energy into the weapons systems until they overload and go critical."
"Whatever. And I'm a ninja." The Fearless Master took off at a lope. "I make other people scream and run. Besides, I've got a wife and a son on that planet, and if any aliens want to attack it, they're going through me first."
