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Chapter 3: Paradoxes Are Fun
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Finally back to about their own lifetime, from the Gallifreyan perspective anyway, "About damned time." Donna grumbled, "Only five hundred and three years, not a bad run without a single death or regeneration."
"Tempt fate, why don't you?" the Doctor muttered.
Donna simply grinned infuriatingly, and led the way out into the Citadel. Time had been kind to this place and it looked very much as it had done in Rassilon's era, although that was mostly because the Eye of Harmony allowed it to become truly timeless in that literal sense where it actually does not age.
Donna wandered down the clean hallways, which while they were theoretically white had a golden tinge from the filtering of light through the orange sky.
The Doctor really did try to look like he was leading the way, but failed quite miserably as Donna knew as well as he did exactly where to go. It did not take long before they found themselves in the high council chamber, where important matters were usually decided.
"I think I'm already here." the Doctor noted.
Donna's eyes were drawn to the man standing off to one side, staring at them like he'd seen a ghost. He was shorter than the Doctor standing next to Donna, his hair was longer and kind of wavy but the same shade of brown. His eyes were grey, not the brown she was used to, and he looked distinctly younger than his tenth incarnation, though Donna rightly guessed that was more due to the five hundred years fighting in the Time War which had made her Doctor look like, if he was human she'd have guessed in his mid-to-late forties (funnily enough, she had failed to age yet, perhaps the Doctor had been running around for a few centuries in-between times before she had taken on the Master's memories). Still, she could tell with only the slightest glance that this younger man was also the Doctor. Something about the way time itself rippled around him, a unique aura she could perceive, though she was certain she would never had seen it had she still been human.
"Which one?"
"Eighth, I think." her Doctor muttered.
"You!" the younger Doctor snapped, pointing at Donna, clearly recognising the Master's presence and probably very confused by this as, at this point in their shared history the Master had already used up all thirteen lives and was supposed to actually stay dead. "How?" he asked, his tone turning from anger to horror as he tried to think of a way it was possible and came up blank. He apparently did not know that the Time Lord council had already resurrected the Master, who had then promptly chickened off to the end of the universe about three days ago (Gallifreyan relative time).
Her accent took on the Master's tone as she grinned at him and said, "Not what it looks like, I assure you."
Her Doctor spared the briefest glance for the council, then decided to deal with himself first, make sure he didn't do anything stupid. He walked over to his younger incarnation and started talking very fast, in a low voice, finally finishing his sentence audibly, "So you see she's mostly harmless."
"Unless you're a Dalek, I've harmed a lot of those recently." she noted cheerfully, examining her fingernails as if this conversation didn't really warrant her full attention.
"Funny thing is, I don't remember talking to myself when I was here last time." her Doctor noted.
"Time-locked, your memory and past isn't affected by what we're doing here now, until we start to change the final result." Donna answered.
The sound of someone clearing their throat for attention caused them all to look up at the leader of the council, "Fascinating though I am sure this reunion is, we have a more pressing issue to deal with."
"If memory serves, this is the big day." the Doctor said. His eighth incarnation frowned, folding his arms defensively.
"I assume you have a plan." the younger Doctor asked.
"Always." Donna replied with a grin.
Her Doctor nodded in agreement, "Wouldn't have come to a party like this without one."
"Citadel shields breached, intruder alert." a soothing yet still electronic voice informed them over the internal communication system. Why such a calm tone was applied to intruder alerts, Donna could not fathom.
The Daleks themselves were temporally resistant, that is to say; time-bending abilities could not affect or penetrate their metal shells. Donna had figured her way around that quickly and easily, and now put it to good use, using the technique she had happily dubbed 'friendly fire' to make them shoot themselves as five of them attempted to breach the citadel.
This time even the Doctor- both Doctors- took her cue and used her cheat to defend themselves.
Overhead, the mothership coordinating the invasion suddenly found itself surrounded by twelve TARDIS ships, all of which had chosen a form strongly reminiscent, in Donna's mind at least, of a Romulan warbird straight out of Star Trek... except these were silvery-blue in color.
Unfortunately for these TARDISes, the Daleks seemed to have anticipated such a move, and succeeded in shooting them all down, except for one, which managed to vanish just in time, only to reappear as the perfectly plain silver block of metal that was their default appearance, right in the middle of the council chamber.
A woman literally fell out of it, apparently stumbling over her own feet, her hair was short and blond and she had an authoritative air about her. Something in Donna's mind recognised her, but could not place her clearly. "They were expecting us." the woman said, as if trying to explain her failure to shoot down the Dalek ship.
"They travelled back to this point to eliminate us before we attack them." the tenth incarnation of the Doctor said, glancing at Donna, a silent communication, he wanted them to split up, for her to keep an eye on his younger self. She knew without the words even needing to be thought let alone said.
"Our non-interference laws-" the council leader began, but Donna interrupted.
"So you don't want us to interfere with their interference with our own history, is that it?" it was her own accent, not the Master's.
Without even looking up she held up her hand, and a laser bolt that had been aimed for the back of her head froze in midair. "That's just rude." the Master's tone said coldly, before she turned around and pressed the metaphysical rewind button, returning the laser bolt to its sender.
"I remember that..." the tenth Doctor murmured. The time-line must be changing drastically for him to recall something that happened after the time-lock from his perspective.
"How else would I have known to do it, you showed me." Donna said, grinning.
"Gotta love self-fulfilling time-loops." the blond woman said, making a deliberate effort to stand up straight, before taking the older Doctor's hand and leading him into her TARDIS.
"This way." Donna said, leading the younger Doctor back to her own Doctor's TARDIS out in the hallway, "You never allowed me to fix the chameleon circuit. I tried, you know." she told him as they prepared for takeoff.
He laughed at that, but then asked the important question, "Where are we going?"
Her voice was cheerful, as if they were playing a game and she was enjoying it, when she answered him, "The Dalek mothership. Where else would we go if we want to explode some Daleks?"
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