The Professor was thrown back by the force of the blast from the gem, hitting the floor harder than he would have liked. He looked around, checking to see that Tessa and David were alright first; Madam Shada was made of stronger stuff than normal humans, and would be okay so long as nothing had done any serious damage to her, which seemed unlikely as he hadn't been injured more than a sore backside.
"Everyone alright," asked the Time Lord, standing up. His companions grumbled, both standing fully up.
"Damn it," said a voice from across the room. The Professor's first thought was that the voice didn't belong to Madam Shada. An instant later he realized who the voice did belong to. Standing in the older woman's place and looking ruffled and annoyed, was Sam. The original Sam, from before her regeneration. "Where am I," she said, in a cool voice, looking around
"That," said the Professor. "Is hard to explain. But basically, the way it looks is that you've been shifted around on your time line."
"What does that mean," said Sam, watching the Time Lord carefully.
"Professor," said Tessa, staring at Sam. "You know this girl?" The Time Lord smiled.
"Yeah, of course. Right; Tessa, David, This is Sara McNeil, better known as Sam back in the day."
"You know me," said Sam, blank faced. "How do you know me?"
The Professor's brow furrowed, looking at his former companion. "Right," he said. "I guess I did regenerate since you saw me last. In any case, I'm the Professor. The seventh one so far."
"Professor," said Sam, her eyes showing just the slightest hint of confusion. "A professor of what exactly?" This did catch the Time Lord off guard; he hadn't been expecting the girl to be this far back in her timeline. The Professor smiled, trying to look confident.
"Not a professor, the Professor. The genuine article, one might say."
"Right," said Sam. "You don't just have a degree in cheese making or something, do you?"
"No," said the Professor quickly. "Well, yes, but no."
"Right," said the girl, stepping around the table toward the door. "Well I'm just gonna go home now and try to figure out how to never get teleported out of there again." The Professor couldn't help but chuckle, thinking about the circumstances of their first meeting.
"I'd suggest against that," said the Time Lord. "It's 1870 out there. And Germany."
"Brussels to be exact," said Tessa, smiling at Sam. "You know, the place where they make those sprouts?" Sam stared.
"How can it be 1870," she said, rounding on the Professor again. "You said that I was shuffled around in my own timeline. I wasn't around in 1870."
"Spoilers," said the Professor, smiling slightly. "I'm afraid it's something that has to be lived."
"But," said David. "We can get you back to your own time easily. We just have to get you back to the TARDIS and"
"No," said the Professor, cutting off his companion. "It won't be that easy. Like I said, we can't leave this shop or the flicker will kick back up. Which is bad. Temporal instabilities are already spreading. We'll be lucky if reapers don't start showing up soon."
"Reapers," said Sam, puzzled. "Like skeletons in cloaks?"
"Worse," said the Time Lord. "Pandimensional beings that swarm the site of unstable paradoxes. They feast on the rift energy released by temporal instability."
There was a sound like electricity sparking off of metal pipes, and another person appeared in the room, shaking out her long hair. She looked around the room for a second before rounding on the Professor.
"You," said Sylvia, stepping over to the Time Lord. "Stood me up for our date."
"The world's ending, I got a little distracted," said the Professor. "Sorry."
Sylvia smiled slightly. "The world's always ending. If I didn't love you, I wouldn't put up with it." She turned to look out the glass of the front door. "But I do, so how do we save the world?" The Professor smiled.
"Wait a second," said the woman, turning again to look at Sam. "You can't be here." She looked back to the Time Lord. "Why is she here? She can't be here."
"She has a name," muttered Sam, slightly annoyed.
The Professor sighed. "Right," he said. "In a nutshell, paradox, Fortean flicker, and I'm not really sure…how to save the world." The Time Lord smiled sheepishly.
"Well," said Sylvia. "If we just get her back to her own time, the problem should fix itself, right?"
"Well, first, we'd have to stabilize the Fortean gem so the flicker wouldn't kick back up, but yes, if you used the vortex manipulator to take her home, it would probably work."
"Gotcha," said the time traveler.
"Tessa, David, we're going to need some tools from Madam Shada's back room if you don't mind," said the Professor as they sat to work.
The Professor –the second Professor – was in his TARDIS, alone. It took him a long minute to figure out what had happened; several scans of the TARDIS later and he was certain that he'd been sent back in his own time stream.
Though he wasn't exactly certain how far back, he knew it was at the very least after the end of the time war. He looked around, unsure of what to do exactly. He had no way of directly contacting his own past, much less any idea what had happened to shift him backward in time.
As he sat in the seat attached to the console, the monitor sprang to life, a rapid beeping issuing from it. The Time Lord sprang up, pressing a button and looking to the monitor. There was a message scrolling across the screen from a time agent named Sylvia Barrow. The Professor scanned the message, a grin spreading across his face.
It was with a bit of a thud that Sam landed on the floor. She looked around, shocked. Though she had definitely been on the TARDIS only an instant before, she was definitely back in her old bedroom.
She looked around, opening the door to peer down the stairs, a keen ear open to any sounds of activity from below. There were none. Unsurprising really; she had been alone quite often in this house in recent years. She closed the door and sat at her computer. As usual, the city's traffic cameras were pulled up on the monitor. It looked exactly as it should. Indeed, had it not been for two things, she'd believe she had simply been whisked back to the moment she'd left this room the last time.
The first was that the date stamp on the camera images read almost a full month earlier than they should; the second was that she knew such things shouldn't be possible. She'd studied the TARDIS and knew that teleports couldn't function to extract the occupants from the ship, and certainly not so easily. Obviously this was something different, but she wasn't quite certain what just yet. But she knew how to find out.
Smirking, Sam proceeded to calculate.
In 1870, the Professor was attaching long cables to a small metal box containing the Fortean gem.
"Okay," he called as he finished attaching the last cable to a port in the top of the box. "Hit the power." He heard Tessa in the control room flip a switch and the box gave off a low humming sound.
"Right," said Sylvia. "Now we wait for the energy oscillations to hit the high point, right?" The Time Lord nodded. They waited for a long second before the humming grew louder, not by much but just enough that they knew. "I'll be back," said the time agent. And with an electrical discharge, both she and Sam were gone.
When she returned several minutes later, she was not alone. However, the Sam she had brought with her was neither the original nor the version calling herself Madam Shada; it was the girl's second form, the form she'd taken on after being wounded by the Emperor of Mankind in the battle at Terra.
"You regenerated," said Sam, smirking at the Professor.
"Funny," said the Time Lord. "How little you've changed over the years."
Sam's fourth regeneration was far more adept at steering the TARDIS than the younger Professor, Rosie found. Of course, the Time Lord had improved to such a degree that the girl had almost forgotten the way the ship used to jump and toss in the vortex.
Luckily, Sam ad taken over the controls of the ship and had stabilized the travel in a matter of seconds.
"So," said Rosie. "Where exactly are we going?"
"Germany in 1870," said Sam, looking at the monitor. "That's where I was before this and I'm willing to bet that's where the other versions of me and the Doc will be."
"Kindly refrain from calling me 'Doc'," said the Professor from across the console. He had been sulking ever since Sam had taken over the controls of the ship.
"Right," said Sam. "In any case, if I can get back to the future version of Grumpy, I think we can figure this out. I have the stuff I need to settle the temporal instability, but finding out how messed up our timelines have gotten is another matter entirely."
"You can fix them though, right?" The Time Lady chuckled. "Of course I can fix them. Ten minutes and this whole thing might as well have never happened."
David stood on the street corner, stiff from the cold as the familiar sound of the TARDIS resounded in the fall air. He saw it materializing; a tall, pale wardrobe standing out of place next to a building a hundred feet from where he stood. He watched as a single occupant emerged; a tall blonde man in a trench coat.
The younger Professor looked around before heading in the direction of Madam Shada's shop. David turned and began walking in the same direction, stepping in the door while the Professor's younger self was still several dozen feet away.
"He's coming," said the young man, smiling at Tessa. The current Professor exchanged a look with Sylvia before nodding to David.
"Well, let him in. Or let me in; whatever," said the Time Lord, smiling slightly.
The Professor seemed less pleased than before when the TARDIS landed after only a few minutes of flight. Sam smiled at Rosie, who knew that the Time Lord was only sulking because Sam was so much better at navigating than he was.
In the end, setting the timelines straight had been relatively simple; the first Professor went back to his TARDIS with the assurance that this was a simple abnormality that he wouldn't have to deal with again for a very long time.
"So," said the blonde Professor, smiling at his future self. "I see we still keep odd company."
"Always," said the older Professor.
"Listen," said Sylvia, smiling at the younger Time Lord. "Do me a favor and don't let the universe explode or anything until you're him;" she gestured to the older Professor.
"I'll do my best," replied the blonde, chuckling slightly. "I suppose we'd better get going though." The older Professor nodded.
"Might be best," he said as the younger version turned to leave. The younger Professor turned to see Madam Shada whispering something the ear of her younger self. Sam nodded, looking solemn.
As the Professor, Rosie and Sam left to their TARDIS, the older Time Lord turned to Shada.
"What did you just tell her," he asked, incredulous.
"Spoilers," said Sam, smirking deviously.
