CHAPTER 7

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Neither Rani nor Clyde had mentioned their kiss during the whole mess with the Silence at all since it happened. Clyde was too embarrassed to mention it and was hoping that Rani would just let things go back to normal. Rani meanwhile wasn't sure if he had really meant it or not, or if it was just done in the heat of the moment. She was waiting to see if he would follow up on it or not before she mentioned it.

Sarah Jane meanwhile just wanted to shake her head at both of them. Especially Rani. Rani was hundreds of years old but was just as bad as Clyde. It had been obvious to Sarah and everyone else for a long time that the two of them liked each other, and yet neither of them could admit it to one another. Not even after their first kiss.

Even now Rani had gone off to who knew where by herself in her TARDIS. She hadn't told any of them where she was going, and Clyde had been moping about it for hours now according to Luke. He had told her over the computer that Clyde was about to drive him nuts, and that she shouldn't be too surprised if he knocked Clyde out sometime soon if he kept it up for much longer.

After discouraging Luke from knocking out Clyde, she told him to take Clyde somewhere fun and take his mind off of Rani for a while. That was how Luke and Clyde wound up at a history museum of all places. Well, it was Luke's idea of fun anyway if not Clyde's.

Suddenly Luke got very excited as he looked at an exhibit about Lady Jane Grey. She was the unfortunate sixteen year old girl who was only the Queen of England for nine days before she was arrested after Queen Mary claimed the throne for herself. She was then proclaimed a traitor and executed.

Rani had been sent back to her time to get an object for the mysterious being called the Shopkeeper that he needed to save the world with. While she was trying to find it, she had gotten to know the young girl very well and told her that she would be remembered for centuries to come in order to comfort her in her final moments.

Luke knew that Rani had always hated having to leave her to die when she took the object, which turned out to be a dagger, and went back to the present with it. It had never set well with her because she had liked the young Queen and had wanted to save her.

Now it seemed that she had gone back to see her again at least according to one of the paintings in the exhibit. He saw a painting of Lady Jane Grey being led to her execution, and there was a woman who looked just like Rani in the background watching her. Luke had been here before, and he knew that he hadn't remembered seeing this painting here then. Was Rani changing the past?

"What is it that you keep staring at in such fascination? I swear that you are such a nerd, Luke. All of this stuff just excites you, doesn't it? All it does for me is bore me to tears," Clyde said.

"This one won't. Look at it," Luke said as he pointed at the painting with Rani in it.

"No! I can't believe it. Is that where she went? I knew that she felt terrible about leaving her there, but she can't change that, can she?" Clyde asked in disbelief.

"She's not supposed to," Luke said.

"We still remember that she died though so she didn't change it, right?" Clyde asked as he looked at the exhibit to see what it said.

"I wouldn't think that she changed anything, but why else would she go back? I know it wasn't to watch her die. Rani would get too upset watching that because she knew her personally," Luke said.

"The exhibit says that she still died, but that a strange woman who sounds like Rani was with her in her final moments. What's going on here? What is she up to?" Clyde asked.

"Why don't you ask me yourself?" Rani said from behind them and made them both jump.

"What have you been up to?" Clyde asked as soon as he recovered his wits.

"Oh, that painting makes me look terrible. I don't look like that, do I? I'm much better looking than that," Rani said as she ignored Clyde's question.

"You're definitely much prettier than that," Henry said as he appeared out of nowhere.

"Thanks. I should go back and give that painter a piece of my mind," Rani said.

"Rani, what did you do?" Clyde asked.

"What are you, my dad? What's with the third degree all of a sudden?" Rani asked in a huff.

"Why are you acting like a little kid when you're hundreds of years old?" Clyde shouted.

"Why don't you shout it a little louder so everyone can hear you and have me hauled off to be experimented on somewhere?" Rani asked in an angry whisper.

"I'm sorry," Clyde said as he looked around him with a worried look on his face.

"You should be," Henry said.

"Now I'm getting lectures from your kid," Clyde said.

"He's not my kid. He's my friend," Rani said.

Henry looked hurt for a moment Luke noticed but said nothing. Apparently Henry thought differently about their relationship than Rani did.

"What have you done? I thought that Time Lords weren't supposed to change history," Clyde said.

"We're not supposed to change the big things, especially fixed points in time. I found a way around that though. I hope," Rani said with a grimace.

"You hope?" Clyde asked.

Just then a woman that looked just like the one in the painting of Lady Jane Grey came walking up to them in modern clothing. She looked very uncomfortable and kept looking around her suspiciously as if she was afraid that she would be taken away at any moment.

"Lady Rani, I'm not sure if I like this future of yours. Everything is just so different here. It's quite shocking. I think that I preferred it better when I thought that you were an angel," Lady Jane said.

"At least no one is trying to kill you here. You're safe now," Rani said.

"I don't feel safe. I feel like that I'm going to wake up at any moment to find that this is all a dream and that the executioner's axe is being aimed at my head just like in that painting. Are you sure that everyone was fooled?" Lady Jane asked.

"Yes, perfectly. No one is going to look too closely at the body; and even if they do, they won't understand that it's not really you. Maybe they'll think that you're a witch or something when they discover that it doesn't bleed, but what do you care? You're here now," Rani said.

"What happened?" Luke asked.

"I had an android made to look like Lady Jane, and it was the one beheaded instead of her. I switched it for her at the last moment. Then I stuck around to make sure that no one studied the android too closely so that it didn't change Earth's history. To do that, I stayed with Lady Jane's maids who prepared the 'body' for burial and made sure that they didn't tell anyone that it wasn't human. Then I ensured that it was buried as quickly as possible before anyone could examine it while I watched over it the whole time," Rani explained.

"Please stop talking about such things, Lady Rani. It makes me very uneasy," Lady Jane said.

"I'm sorry. I just wanted to calm my friends here down. They think that I've somehow done something wrong by saving you," Rani said.

"Are you sure that you should have? You told me that I would be remembered for hundreds of years before. Will this not change things?" Lady Jane said.

"No. You're still dead as far as history's concerned. I just pulled a fast one on history is all," Rani said as she looked proud of herself.

"I still don't like it. It's not like I want to take her back and let her die, but it just seems like something that you're not supposed to do. It's changing history whether you want to call it that or not. I think that you might cause something bad to happen by saving her," Clyde said unconvinced.

"I won't let her die. I had no choice before but to leave, and it broke my heart. Now though that I'm a Time Lord, I had the power to change it in my hands so I did. I saved this innocent girl's life, and I don't see anything wrong with that. I'd do it again in a heartsbeat," Rani said in a passionate voice.

"I'm on your side, Rani. I promise that I am. I just don't want anything to happen to you for doing this," Clyde said.

"Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. It was worth the risk to save her," Rani said as she kissed Clyde on the cheek.

Clyde blushed and Luke laughed. That shut him up.

"Ladies are definitely more forward in this time than in mine," Lady Jane said as she looked embarrassed as well.

"You'll see a lot of changes for women in this time, Lady Jane. I think that you'll like them," Rani said.

"Are you certain that this won't land you into any trouble with the rest of your people? I would not wish for any calamity to befall you on my account. I also don't wish to die either, however so I was very pleased when you came back to take me to safety in your incredible machine. I just want to say thank you, Lady Rani, and I hope that this doesn't come back to harm you in some way," Lady Jane said.

"Why does everyone keep saying that? Everything's fine. I don't see anything wrong with what I did. I still didn't technically change anything," Rani said.

"Well, just in case we won't tell anyone else about it," Luke said.

"Yeah, I promise that no one will hear about it from me either," Clyde said.

"Thanks. I appreciate that," Rani said.

Then she turned her mind to more pressing matters as she turned to Lady Jane and asked, "We're going to have to start calling you something else, Lady Jane. We can't keep calling you by your old name or keep addressing you as a Lady either. Is there another name that you'd like to be called?"

"What about Anne? Anne Brown," Lady Jane said.

"I like that. Hello, Anne. It's very nice to meet you," Rani said as she shook Lady Jane's hand.

"Thank you, Rani. I suppose that I should drop the Lady from your name as well while I'm in this time," Lady Jane said.

"That sounds like a good idea, Anne," Rani said.

"Where will I stay, and what will I do in this time?" Lady Jane asked.

"You'll stay with me and Henry in my TARDIS. You can go with us wherever we go throughout time and space. Trust me it'll be exciting. You'll get to see alien worlds and other times and places. Isn't that better than having your head chopped off?" Rani asked.

"That's a no-brainer I'd say," Clyde agreed.

"Thank you again, Rani," Lady Jane said as she embraced her.

"You're more than welcome. I'm just glad to give you a second chance at life. You certainly deserve it," Rani said.

Suddenly Rani heard a beeping sound coming from inside of her TARDIS on her remote control which she quickly silenced. She left the museum to go to her TARDIS which was still outside in the shape of a tree in order to go answer it. The second that she went inside her TARDIS, it dematerialized while the others watched through a window inside the museum.

Clyde and Luke looked at each other in shock while Henry started to get upset. Lady Jane meanwhile looked at them all in confusion as if they had an answer as to why Rani had just left so abruptly.

"Where did she go, and why did she leave me here? She always takes me everywhere," Henry said in a scared voice.

"I'm sure she'll be back soon," Luke reassured him.

"Unless the Time Lords found out what she did," Clyde said without thinking.

"Do you think that they did? They wouldn't kill her, would they?" Henry asked as he started to get upset.

"No, I'm sure that it's not that. I'm sure she just had to go somewhere real quick, and she'll be back in no time," Luke said reassuringly as he scowled at Clyde for opening his mouth.

"Yeah, that's right, kid. She'll be back in no time," Clyde said as he joined in with Luke.

Lady Jane said nothing. She felt horrible though because she had a feeling that Rani was in trouble now because of her.

She was right.

Rani's TARDIS materialized inside of a darkened room in a secret part of the Capitol on Gallifrey, and another Time Lord entered her TARDIS with a master key that could open all TARDISes of that particular type. The Time Lord looked at Rani with a malevolent smile on his face.

"Hello, Annika. We know what you did. You deliberately altered history and broke the Laws of Time," the man said as he continued to smile at her.

"What are you going to do?" Rani asked in fear.

"Nothing. As long as you do what we want. We can make sure that no one knows about what you've done as long as you perform some simple missions for us," the man said.

"Who are you? You're not in the government, are you?" Rani asked suspiciously.

"You can call me Mr. Popplewick even though that is obviously not my real name. No, I'm not speaking on the behalf of the High Council or anyone else in the government. I'm speaking for a group above and beyond the government. We answer to no one but ourselves. That's one reason that we're approaching you. You think much the same way as we do it seems," Mr. Popplewick said.

"The Celestial Intervention Agency," Rani said in sudden understanding.

"Yes. We work to ensure that Gallifrey is safe, and that time proceeds in the correct way on our own without answering to anyone. That means that sometimes we may have to break a law or two, but the ends justify the means after all. We see that you too share this same view of time. Join us, Annika, and we will ensure that what you have done is never found out by anyone else. All you will have to do in return is to prevent certain things from happening that would endanger the timestream. They're the kind of things that you would probably stop anyway. Nothing bad or illegal," Mr. Popplewick assured her.

"And if I refuse?" Rani asked.

"Then we tell the High Council what you did, and you will likely be exiled to another planet for the rest of your lives at the bare minimum and that is if you're lucky," Mr. Popplewick said.

"I'll help you, but I won't kill anyone for you if that's what you think," Rani said reluctantly.

"Of course not. We would never think to ask you such a thing. I assure you that our missions are of a benevolent nature. Now go, Annika. Go back to your friends. We'll summon you when we're ready to give you our first mission," Mr. Popplewick said.

He left Rani's TARDIS, and she quickly dematerialized it as she went back to the Museum to get the others. She wasn't sure if she should tell them about this or not. She also wasn't sure if she should go along with it, but what else could she do? Mr. Popplewick, whoever he was, had her over a barrel, and he knew it.

After Rani left, Mr. Popplewick ripped off a mask to reveal the face of the Valeyard underneath. Soon he would have an inside agent right in the Doctor's main camp. Someone that his other self would never suspect was working against him. Rani would never know it herself until it was too late. Then Gallifrey would belong to him and Pandora. Soon Pandora would return, and he would be right there by her side all the way.

Next: Sarah Jane finds herself right in the middle of an invasion of the Earth by her old foes, the Slitheen. What do they want this time?

As for who Pandora is, all will be revealed in coming chapters, and the answer will send a chill through the hearts of all of the Time Lords.