A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed, followed and favorited! This chapter centers around the episode "The End of the World", naturally. Hope you enjoy, please review. I want feedback.
Chapter 2: The Last Day of Earth
~In which the Master is mean and brings Rose to see her planet get destroyed~
~DW~
Sometimes, the Master just wanted to sit down and sulk. This was one of those days. Really. What had he been thinking? He was the most dangerous and infamous renegade Time Lord in the entire Universe (judging by the empty feeling in his head, he was also the last Time Lord in the Universe, but he decided to save the sulking over that for later), so what in the name of Rassilon had possessed him to take that human girl with him? Maybe some part of Professor Yana's conscience had stayed with him and convinced him that it was horribly rude to not keep promises. However, now they were standing in his enemy's old TARDIS, the evil Time Lord and the young human, glancing at each other awkwardly.
"So... Where are you taking me?" Miss Tyler asked, sounding a bit worried but also excited. The Master pondered on it for a moment. Where was he taking her? He didn't have a clue. Ideas flashed through his mind. The French Revolution? World War II? The sinking of the Titanic? Chernobyl? There were too many options in Earth history. Maybe he should just dump her at Skaro and get it over with. He thought about all the options, and decided that he shouldn't get her killed just yet. She might turn out to be useful. Then he had an idea. It wasn't going to get her killed (probably) but make her see things from a different perspective.
"Wrong question." He smiled wickedly and set the coordinates for Platform One in the year five point five slash apple slash twenty six. Seeing her planet burn would surely be a shocking sight for Miss Tyler -and her reaction would be an interesting sight for the Master.
"Okay, when are you taking me?" she asked, and the Master smiled. She was learning. Good.
"Five billions of years ahead of your time." he said, trying to make it sound as casual as possible as the TARDIS landed and he headed towards the doors.
"And what happens five billions of years ahead of my time?" she asked swiftly. As he turned around to face her, she grinned. "I'm travelling with a bloke who claims to be a criminal. Naturally I'm a bit concerned about what you're planning."
"You'll see for yourself." The Master smirked and opened the doors. Rose stepped out, looking a bit suspicious but very curious. They descended a flight of steps together, and a large shutter in the wall descended to reveal the Earth, scorched and abandoned just as it should be.
"That's a planet." Rose stated. "So we're on a spaceship, then?"
"Not really. This is Platform One. It's more like an observation deck." the Master told her. "Also, that's not just any planet."
"Wait... Don't tell me..." Rose's eyes widened. "Is that Earth? Five billion years into the future?" The Master smirked. She was more clever than he had thought.
"Yes, Miss Tyler. Welcome to the last day of Earth. The day the sun expands and swallows the entire planet." he told her. Rose just stared wordlessly at the planet down below, clearly in shock.
~DW~
"You took me to see my planet get destroyed?" Rose glared at the Master as they walked down a corridor, apparently headed somewhere. "You know, that's actually quite rude of you..."
"I'm not interested in your opinion, Miss Tyler." the Master told her coolly.
"Fine." Rose frowned. "Where are we going now?" A mechanic voice suddenly echoed down the corridor.
"Shuttles five and six now docking. Guests are reminded that Platform One forbids the use of weapons, teleportation and religion. Earth Death is scheduled for fifteen thirty nine, followed by drinks in the Manchester Suite."
"Guests?" Rose asked. "What do they mean, guests? Are there other people aboard this ship?"
"Of course there is! Did you think they were just keeping an empty spaceship above a dying planet just for fun? Also, and that depends entirely on what you classify as people."
"Well, people! What else? What would you mean?" Rose asked, sounding bewildered.
"Aliens." the Master told her, smirking. "They've gathered here to watch the planet burn. And before you ask what for, I'm going to tell you. For fun."
"For fun? That's just... alien." Rose sighed. "When will it happen? When will the sun destroy it?" They entered a large area with a few display cases and a view of space to the front and above.
"In about half an hour." the Master said, suddenly turning his head to the side. "Oh, here comes the Steward!" Rose followed his gaze, only to see a blue-skinned person striding towards them. A... wait, what?
"What the hell are you doing here?" the Steward asked angrily. "This is maximum hospitality zone! The guests have disembarked! They're on their way any second now!"
"Oh, that's very nice of you." the Master stated and rolled his eyes. He faced the Steward and glared at him with surprising authority for an old man. "I am Professor Yana, and this is Miss Tyler. We're guests." The Steward blinked, and then frowned.
"Show me your invitation." he stated. The Master looked unpleasantly surprised, but quickly flashed the Steward a smile and pulled out a piece of blank paper from a pocket.
"Here! Professor Yana plus one! She's the plus one." He gestured towards Rose. "Is everything all right now?" The Steward blinked, looking confused.
"Oh! Yes! My apologies! If you're on board, we'd better start! Enjoy!" He headed towards a lectum. Rose turned to the Master.
"What was that all about?" she asked in confusion. "That paper is blank." She pointed at it. "And the Steward is blue."
"I tried to hypnotize him into believing we were guests, but it seems like my hypnotic powers have been weakened after being a human for twenty years." the Master explained, looking sour. "When that wouldn't work, I had to use this paper. It's a psychic paper. Shows people what I want them to see. And yes, he's blue."
"...Okay." Rose stated, trying to process all the sudden information. "And why are you suddenly calling yourself Professor Yana again?"
"If I introduce myself as the Master, he'll just start asking questions. Look, now the guests are arriving." the Master said, nudging her. Rose looked up, and saw three bark-skinned people coming into the room, followed by a blue alien, some black-robed people, a giant humanoid head in glass case and various other strange creatures that Rose would never have imagined to meet.
"What are those?" she whispered, pointing at the bark-skinned people.
"Trees." the Master stated simply. "From the Forest of Cheam." Rose just sighed. This was just too weird.
"There will be an exchange of gifts representing peace. If you could keep the room circulating, thank you." the Steward's voice echoed through the room.
"Gifts? But we don't have any gifts!" Rose whispered to the Master as the trees started approaching them. "What are we going to do now?" The three trees all glared at them, clearly not pleased with them.
"You're wrong, Miss Tyler. I knew of this. Of course I brought gifts." the Master told her calmly. "But maybe we shall let our new friends give us their gift first?"
"The Gift of Peace." the one woman of the three said and gave the Master a rooted twig in a small pot. "I bring you a cutting of my grandfather."
"Thank you." the Master said politely and quickly gave Rose the plant. "In return..." He pulled something out of his pocket. A stick of... celery? Rose just couldn't help staring at it. "...I give you celery, an old Earth delicacy."
"How... interesting." the tree-woman said and took the celery, although she didn't seem all that pleased, just confused. The Master just smirked.
"Really? Celery? Why?" Rose asked as she watched the Master handing over the sticks of celery to each and every alien in the room. He grinned at her.
"There's a huge supply of celery in the TARDIS."
"Why would there be a huge supply of celery in the TARDIS?"
"There isn't anymore." the Master chuckled as he handed away a piece of celery to the strange blue alien who had introduced himself as the Moxx of Balhoon. "I picked it all away."
"Why are you giving it all away?"
"You wouldn't understand if I tried to explain."
"Why would you even have one in the first place?" Rose asked, a bit confused to why a criminal would keep celery in the TARDIS just to get rid of it. The Master gave her a glare.
"I wasn't the one who put it there!" he snarled, but the Moxx of Balhoon interrupted him by coughing loudly. The Master swung back to him. "Yes?"
"My felicitations on this historical happenstance. I give you the gift of bodily salivas." he said, and then proceeded to spit the Master in the face.
"Thank you very much." the Master said, polite as ever even if he was looking very disgusted and displeased, as the blue alien turned around and left them. Rose started laughing loudly at his expression.
"Y-you just looked so silly, I c-couldn't help but laugh!" she said between breaths as the Master glared at her.
"Ugh." The Master pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face with it. "I say, Miss Tyler, if you had been the one to get spit at, you wouldn't have laughed." He was quickly interrupted from his bad mood by the now-approaching black-robed group of aliens. "Oh! The Adherents of the Repeated Meme! I bring you an Earth delicacy!" He waved the celery in front of them, and the one standing closest took it.
"A gift of peace in all good faith." it said and held out a metal ball. The Master took it and examined it curiously.
"Now what's this?" he muttered to himself. "I'll have to examine thi-" He was interrupted and apparently startled as the Steward started talking again, and dropped the ball to the ground.
"And last but not least, our very special guest. Ladies and gentlemen, and trees and multiforms, consider the Earth below. In memory of this dying world, we call forth the last Human. The Lady Cassandra O'Brien Dot Delta Seventeen!"
"Oh no." the Master groaned from beside her. Rose didn't know what she expected to come into the room after those words, but what came into the room was definitely not what she had expected. A face in a piece of thin skin stretched in a rectangular frame was wheeled in by two men hidden in top-to-toe hospital whites. Rose couldn't help but stare.
"Oh, now, don't stare. I know, I know it's shocking, isn't it? I've had my chin completely taken away and look at the difference. Look how thin I am. Thin and dainty. I don't look a day over two thousand." Cassandra said. "Moisturise me, moisturise me!" One of her attendants used a pump spray on the skin.
"Not her..." the Master muttered, sounding very annoyed and displeased. Rose just kept staring at Cassandra in horror. The "last Human" kept talking about her childhood and something else, Rose couldn't really bother listening anymore. This was like all those celebrities who tried everything to make themselves younger, only taken to the very extreme. She turned to the Master, to ask him if they could leave, only to find him in a conversation with the tree-woman from earlier.
"That's enough." she mumbled to herself and walked right past everyone, out of the room. She just... had to be alone for a while.
~DW~
The Master really wasn't interesting in having a conversation with this tree. The Forest of Cheam was, in his opinion, not a very interesting place. Not a place he was interested in ruling. In other words, he just didn't care. However, the tree had seemed very eager to have a conversation with him.
"Excuse me, Professor Yana." she suddenly asked him. "That was your name, wasn't it?"
"Oh yes, that's me." he said, flashing her a charismatic smile. "What's your name, Miss?"
"Jabe." she told him. "But..." The Master quickly interrupted her.
"Well then, Miss Jabe, what was it you wanted?" he asked her.
"I tried scanning you earlier." she said, holding out a metal device, very similar to a camera. "I wanted to find out what species you were. But it wouldn't identify you, and when it finally did..." The Master's eyes darted around the room and he noticed that Miss Tyler was nowhere to be seen. What a perfect excuse.
"I'm sorry, Miss Jabe, but my... acquaintance seems to have wandered off." he excused himself. "I believe I should go and find her." He quickly dashed off, not bothering to listen to her reply. Damn. If she had succeeded in finding out his race, he could be in trouble. He just had to hope she had never heard of the notorious renegade Time Lord who called himself the Master...
It took him about five minutes to find Miss Tyler. She was back in the gallery where she had first found out where they had gone. She was sitting on the small staircase, Jabe's twig in her lap. He was just about to ask her why she had left the observation gallery, when she suddenly blurted out:
"My mum's dead. In five billion years, my mum's dead. And Mickey, and all my mates back home."
"How sharp of you to realize that." the Master said sarcastically. Rose just glared at him for a moment, but then she asked:
"Where are you from?"
"What?" the Master asked, glaring at her. "Me?"
"Yeah." she said, looking up at him from where she was sitting. "I mean, what planet? What species are you? You look so... human. Is that a disguise or something?"
"No, this is my natural form, and there are lots of differences between our species." the Master said as he sat down beside her, wincing at how little awareness humans in her time period had of the Universe's other inhabitants. "Also, my planet hardly matters. You wouldn't have heard of it anyway."
"Differences. What differences?" she wondered.
"That's none of your business." the Master muttered. "What are you doing here all on your own, Miss Tyler?"
"You could just call me Rose, you know." she told him. "It's just... All this... It's so alien. It's too much. I had to get away. I had a chat with an alien plumber named Raffalo. Hey, why are all the aliens speaking English?"
"It's the TARDIS's telepathic field. It goes inside your brain and translates everything for you." the Master said, hiding his amusement at the girl's reaction.
"What? Your machine changes my mind and you didn't even bother telling me?!" she bellowed, actually sounding angry this time.
"Why would I? Also, blame my dear arch-nemesis, he was the one to program the TARDIS to do it in the first place! It used to be his, after all!" the Master hissed. "You're lucky, you know. Not many humans get to do this."
"What, do your people, whatever they're called, often take humans on travels?" she questioned.
"Not usually. The Doctor liked to do it, though. He always took humans on his travels. He was one of the only to do that, though." The Master sighed. It just wouldn't sink in, that the Doctor wasn't going to show up and thwart any plan of his anymore. "I never would."
"You took me along." she pointed out, and the Master was just about to shout at her that that wasn't the case at all and he'd just taken her on one trip to thank her for giving him his memories back, but he was interrupted by a huge tremble, probably the entire space station shaking, and the Steward's voice echoing through microphones immediately after:
"Honoured guests may be reassured that gravity pockets may cause slight turbulence, thanking you."
The Master's eyes narrowed. That couldn't be. There was something strange going on.
~DW~
Rose suddenly found herself pulled down the corridor by the Master. The old man suddenly seemed very stressed and even a bit... worried? She wondered why that was.
"That wasn't a gravity pocket." the Master mumbled, half to himself. "We're going back to the TARDIS, right now..." They reached the TARDIS, and the Master opened the doors. Or rather, he tried to open the doors. He pushed and pushed at them, but they wouldn't budge. "Oh no... What do you think you're doing?!" he yelled at the ship.
"What's wrong?" Rose wondered, now also beginning to get worried.
"The ship won't let me in." the Master spat, glaring at the door. "It's as if she doesn't want us to leave. Stupid ship! Let me in!" He gave the door a hard kick, but the only result was a flash of electricity, and with a scream of pain, the Master was knocked to the floor.
"Are you all right?" Rose leant down to help the Master to his feet.
"She electrocuted me! I can't believe this!" he shouted in frustration and got to his feet on his own, ignoring Rose's helping hand. Then, realization seemed to dawn upon him, and he groaned. "Of course... She's still the Doctor's, through and through. She knows something's going on, and now she's decided that I'm not leaving unless I fix this mess, whatever it is..."
"So what will we do now?" Rose asked him.
"We'll just have to go and ask the other guests if they know anything." the Master said with a sigh, took Rose's hand and began leading them back to the room where all the aliens were.
"Hey, that Lady Cassandra-whatever-her-name-was, do you know her? You seemed so annoyed when you saw her." she questioned him. "Although I can understand why you are annoyed. She seems like the annoying type..."
"We've met once." the Master explained. "It was a long time ago for me, though. I was a different man back then. Literally." He smirked, and Rose wondered if that had been an attempt to joke and she had missed the point. The Master's smirk quickly faded. "It must have been quite recently for her, though."
"What happened?" Rose wondered curiously.
"Let's just say she and I had a little... disagreement." the Master said slyly. When Rose glared at him further, however, he sighed and told her: "I was attending a feast she was at. For some reason, she was smitten with me and decided that we were to get married. Naturally, I didn't agree. That caused quite a ruckus."
"What? Really?" Rose had to laugh as they entered the room. "How come she doesn't recognize you now?"
"As I said, I'm a different man now." the Master chuckled darkly. When they entered, the tree-woman approached them. "Oh, hello Miss Jabe. I guess you've noticed that the tremor was no ordinary gravity-pocket." She seemed surprised.
"Oh, well, yes, I did." she answered eventually. "It's so strange..."
"Where's the engine room? Do you have any idea?" the Master asked.
"I'm not sure, but the maintenance duct is just behind our guest suite." she replied, still eyeing the Master suspiciously.
"Could you show us?" the Master asked. She seemed surprised by his question, but when he glared at her, she quickly nodded. "Miss Tyler, come on."
"What? But I wanted to go ask Cassandra about you." Rose grinned cheekily, but the Master simply glared at her, took her hand and pulled her with him as he followed Jabe towards the maintenance duct as a computer voice echoed:
"Earth Death in fifteen minutes. Earth Death in fifteen minutes."
~DW~
As the Master followed Jabe into the maintenance duct, he couldn't help but feel irony for his current situation. This reminded him far too much of the Doctor's adventures where he always ended up having to save everyone. Not to mention the fact that Miss Tyler was currently playing the role of the 'companion', like the Doctor had insisted to call his human pets.
"Who's in charge of Platform One?" he asked Jabe, trying to hide his discomfort with the situation. "Is there a Captain?"
"There's just the Steward and the staff." Jabe told him. "The rest is all controlled by the computer." The Master couldn't help but groan.
"Oh no. Computers always complicate things." Well, they couldn't exactly be hypnotized or tricked into obedience, so it was true.
"So this entire ship is automatic?" Miss Tyler asked as she watched the swags of wiring and piping all around them. "So if something goes wrong there's no one here to fix it?"
"Nothing can go wrong with this ship." Jabe simply said. "It's unsinkable."
"Sure, that's what they said about the Titanic." Miss Tyler grumbled. The Master couldn't help but smile.
"I fear we're facing a situation very similar to the Titanic indeed." the Master noted and gazed around the room. "There must be sabotage involved. I'm sure of it. Ah-ha!" He spotted something moving on the floor, and quickly lunged forward to catch it. It was a small robot, about the size of his hand, similar to a four-legged spider. The Master held it up and showed it to the two women.
"What's that?" Jabe questioned and gazed at it suspiciously.
"It's a robot, probably used for sabotage." the Master explained to her and examined the struggling little spider. "Someone on the ship must have brought it aboard." He started walking around, looking for more clues, thoroughly irritated at the person who had brought the spiders onboard and, consequently, ruined his day. Having to save people?! Any megalomaniac would count that as a bad day. When he swung around, he heard Jabe ask Miss Tyler:
"My device says you're human, pure human! But how can you be a human?" Jabe sounded like she was interrogating a prisoner. Miss Tyler looked very uncomfortable with the question, and kept throwing uncertain glances at the Master.
"I... Uh..."
"She's from the twenty-first century." the Master exclaimed irritatedly as he glared at Jabe. She was already aware that he was a Time Lord, so what was there to hide? "She came here with me." Jabe's eyes widened.
"So you really are a Time Lord!" Jabe exclaimed and shook his hand enthusiastically. "I thought the Time Lords were just a legend!" The Master rolled his eyes. Was that what the most powerful civilization in the Universe was now seen as? A legend? "And you travel with a human girl..." She gazed at Miss Tyler, and back at the Master again. "You must be the Doctor!"
"I assure you, Miss Jabe, I am most certainly not the Doctor." he replied, trying to keep polite despite the anger for being confused with his arch-nemesis (the Master couldn't quite bring himself to think of the Doctor as his late arch-nemesis). He approached a door, and opened it, in hope of cutting the discussion off. He didn't hope in vain. "Oh! Look, I seem to have found the engine room!"
~DW~
A Time Lord... Was that the Master's species? That sounded very regal, Rose couldn't help but think. She wondered who this Doctor really was. Professor Yana had referred to him as the Master's arch-nemesis, the one who stopped the Master from conquering the Universe. However, Rose couldn't help but wonder how the old man who had taken her along for a trip in time and space could be a criminal. Sure, he could be a bit grumpy and unpleasant at times, but he still seemed like a polite old man at heart. Why had Jabe mistaken him as the Doctor?
The engine room was enormous. The Master approached something that looked like a catwalk, that ran through a series of large fans. He looked very suspicious.
"There's definitely something wrong." he told her and Jabe. "Someone is doing sabotage with the help of these." He held out the small metal spider. "Now that we know where the engine room is, in case of emergency, shall we go find out who the culprit is?" Tucking the spider back into his vest pocket, he gave a wide grin, probably eager with the thought of ruining something, and headed out of the room. Jabe and Rose followed him, but the Master told them that he had to go report this to the Steward first, and told them to head back to the observation gallery, maybe to look for suspicious behaviour among the other guests.
"So... How did you end up travelling with a Time Lord?" Jabe asked as she and Rose were standing alone in the observation gallery. "I've heard that they usually go by titles. The Professor, is that his title?"
"Um... No. It was all by coincidence, actually." Rose and shifted her feet uncomfortably, not really knowing how much she could reveal, but she was interrupted by the computer's voice:
"Earth Death in ten minutes. Earth Death in ten minutes."
"The planet's end. Come gather, come gather." Cassandra drawled melodramatically, immediately getting everyone's attention. "Bid farewell to the cradle of civilisation. Let us mourn her with..." Exactly what they were supposed to mourn the planet below with, Rose never found out, because the Master chose that moment to step into the observation gallery, and exclaim:
"The Steward is dead."
"Who are you?" someone in the room asked in confusion.
"I am universally known as the Master, but that doesn't matter now. The Steward is dead." the Time Lord repeated. When everyone stared at him (especially Cassandra), not quite able to process the information, he added irritably: "The sun filter in his office descended, exposing him to the heat. Someone is sabotaging."
"Who did it?" the blue alien from earlier (the one who spat the Master in the face) asked, sounding frightened.
"This whole event was sponsored by the Face of Boe! Ask the Face!" Cassandra shouted, turning everyone's attention to the giant head in the glass case. "Oh! Moisturise me, moisturise me!"
"I say it's rather easy to find out who's behind it." The Master chuckled, pulling out the metal spider from his pocket. "Someone brought their pet onboard." He placed the spider on the floor. "There. Go to your owner." The little robot scuttled around the room, towards the black gowned group.
"The Adherents of the Repeated Meme! J'accuse!" Cassandra shouted dramatically. The Master, eyebrows raised in suspicion, approached the Adherents.
"Very well, but if you think about it..." Their leader made an attempt to hit the Master, but the Master raised his own hand, grabbed the arm and... pulled it off? "A Repeated Meme is just an idea. They're just an idea." He pulled a wire from the arm, which in turn caused all the Adherents to collapse. The guests all gasped. "Remote controlled droids. Nice cover. But the real culprit is..." He pushed the spider, urged it to go on. The spider did exactly that, and ran up to Cassandra.
"Oh, you're a clever one, aren't you, Master?" Cassandra gave him a smile that was probably meant to be flirty (but the fact that she was nothing more a piece of skin kind of ruined it). "Though you didn't look like that last time we met."
"Time Lord thing." the Master said with a smirk, however he clearly didn't appreciate the flirting. "What are you going to do now, then? Moisturise me?" he teased. "Sabotaging a ship while you're still inside it? That's a bit stupid, in my opinion."
"I had hoped to manufacture a hostage situation with myself as one of the victims. The compensation would've been enormous." Cassandra smirked. "Also, I'm sorry. I know that the use of teleportation is strictly forbidden, but I'm such a naughty thing. Spiders, activate." A series of explosions could be heard, followed by the computer's voice:
"Earth Death in three minutes. Earth Death in three minutes."
"Forcefields gone with the planet about to explode. At least it'll be quick. Just like my fifth husband. Oh, shame on me." Cassandra laughed. "Bye, darlings." With a last wink at the Master, she and her attendants beamed out, teleporting out of the ship.
"Safety systems failing." the computer voice exclaimed.
The Master swore.
"What do we do now?" Jabe asked as the panic began to rise among the guests. Rose was suddenly overcome with the fact that her chances of getting out of this alive were rapidly sinking. Next, she realized that she had never said a proper goodbye to her mum and Mickey. Filled with horror, Rose took a deep breath and tried to tell herself it would be all right.
"We'll have to find a way to reset the computer." the Master stated. "Miss Jabe, would you like to company me to the engine room?" Jabe was just about to reply when Rose broke in. The Master had taken her along for this trip, and he wasn't going to abandon her with some aliens and run off with a talking tree and save the day while she risked burning to death!
"I can do it. You brought me along, and I want to be of some use." she stated boldly. The Master looked her in surprise.
"Very well, then. Let's go, Miss Tyler. To the engine room." He took her hand and started leading the way.
~DW~
It was hot in the engine room now. Very hot. Hot enough for the Master to begin feeling sweaty, and he didn't usually get warm that easily as his body temperature was naturally low.
"Miss Jabe sure was lucky." he stated as Miss Tyler followed into the room. "The heat in here would probably have set her on fire. Congratulations, Miss Tyler."
"She can thank me later. Let's get this done." she stated, even though the Master couldn't help but notice that she was looking a bit smug under all worry.
"Earth Death in one minute. Earth Death in one minute. Heat levels critical. Heat levels critical. External temperature five thousand degrees." the computer voice echoed. The Master gazed around, trying to find the switch to reset everything, only to spot it on the other side of the enormous fans.
"Of course..." he groaned and swung around, spotting another lever just beside his companion. "Miss Tyler, would you pull that lever?" She did as instructed, and as she pulled it, the fans slowed down enough to make it possible to walk past them. "All right..." He quickly spurted across the catwalk, dodging the enormous fans and making his way towards the switch.
"Planet explodes in ten, nine, eight..."
"It's getting a bit hot back here! Hurry!" Miss Tyler shouted at him.
"I'm hurrying all I can!" the Master shouted back and dodged the last fan, ran up to the switch, pulled it and screamed: "Raise shields!"
"Exoglass repair. Exoglass repair. Shields rising." The Master let out a sigh of relief. He really hadn't felt like dying in a shameful place like this one. He made his way back past the fans and approached Miss Tyler, who let go of the lever.
"Did we do it?" she asked in awe. "Did we really save a spaceship?"
"Indeed we did, Miss Tyler." the Master replied, doing his best to hide his annoyance at the fact. "Let's go back to the observation gallery and make sure everything's okay, and get out of here."
It turned out that most of the guests had survived, except the Moxx of Balhoon, who had gotten fried by the sun's rays. (The Master couldn't quite bring himself to feel sorry for the alien who had spit him in the face, though.) Jabe ran up to them immediately as they entered, holding out something that looked like an egg.
"Look at this!" She opened it, revealing a teleportation device. "Cassandra used this to escape!" The Master smirked. He was always up for a little revenge.
"Let's bring her back and gloat, then." He took the device, pressed a button and immediately causing Cassandra to appear before them once again.
"Oh, you should have seen their alien little faces!" she boasted, until she noticed the angry aliens staring at her. "Oh. So, you passed my little test. Bravo. This makes you eligible to join, er, the Human Club."
"I think I'm going to inform you, Cassandra, that if you attempt to trap some aliens on a spaceship to kill them, never let a Time Lord, especially a renegade one, be among them." the Master said, smirking with glee. "We tend to be experts at ruining peoples' plans."
"People have died, Cassandra. You murdered them." Jabe spat bitterly.
"It depends on your definition of people, and that's enough of a technicality to keep your lawyers dizzy for centuries. Take me to court, then, and watch me smile and cry and flutter..." Cassandra drawled dramatically.
"And creak?" Miss Tyler wondered.
"And what?" Cassandra questioned.
"Creak. You're creaking." Miss Tyler stated. And that she was. Cassandra's eyes widened with shock at the realization.
"What? Ah! I'm drying out! Oh, sweet heavens. Moisturise me, moisturise me! Where are my surgeons? My lovely boys! It's too hot!" she screamed. The Master chuckled.
"You raised the temperature." he accused.
"No! I'm too young to die!" Cassandra yelled, but too late. The piece of skin was ripped apart with a splat from the heat. Miss Tyler stared at Cassandra's remains with horror and disgust.
"Very well, I saved the day, now we're getting out of here!" the Master exclaimed loudly and took her by the hand, beginning to lead her back to the TARDIS. Miss Tyler seemed like she was about to protest, but she didn't say anything until they actually reached the TARDIS.
"Are we just going to leave? Just like that?"
"What else?" he countered, but before one of them had the chance to say anything more, the Master spotted Jabe approaching.
"Wait!" the tree shouted. "I just want to thank you! What you did was very brave! What are your names? Are you really the Master?" The Master was just about to snarl that they hadn't done it for unselfish reasons and that their names were none of her business, but Miss Tyler was too quick for him.
"I'm Rose Tyler, and yeah, this is the Master." she introduced them. Jabe's eyes widened in recognition, and the Master knew that he had to be quick.
"Farewell, Miss Jabe. I doubt we'll be seeing each other again." he snapped and pulled Miss Tyler into the TARDIS. She managed a quick: "Bye!" before the Master slammed the TARDIS doors shut.
"That was foolish." he stated as he began pressing the buttons on the console. Miss Tyler just smiled at him.
"We were almost inside the TARDIS anyway, and you saved their lives, so I thought they should know." she explained. Then, she gave him a grin. "That wasn't a very successful date, was it? I think we should go to that café at Westminster instead. What do you say?"
The Master sighed. At least he would be able to bring her home, then. "Whatever you say, Miss Tyler."
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. If I did, the Master would have much more appearances.