CHAPTER 9

THE FIFTH PIECE OF THE EYE OF RASSILON: CHARMED PART ONE

I do not own Doctor Who, Charmed, Star Wars, Quantum Leap, Indiana Jones, or Doctor Doom; and I am making no profit off of this.

This story uses Doctor Who characters from my War of the Guardians universe, and it takes place in between my stories War of the Guardians and It's Better With Two for them. For the Charmed characters in this chapter, this story takes place not long after the final episode of Charmed for them.

The TARDIS suddenly appeared inside of the old abandoned building that the gem had been in, and Rose rushed out to find Lilith still lying on the floor unconscious. The Charmed Ones and Barbas were long gone and so was Eris.

"Lilith, wake up. Lilith? What happened here?" Rose asked.

Lilith would not wake though so Rose used her powers to see the recent past of this place. She almost screamed in anger as she saw that Eris had gotten the gem. She finally had one at last.

Lilith woke up then and had a look of complete devastation on her face. She had remembered instantly that she had failed.

"I'm sorry, Rose. You trusted me, and I failed. I really did try though. I really did," Lilith said in an upset voice.

"I know, Lilith. I'm not blaming you. I should have gotten here sooner so I could have helped you. There was no way that you could have taken on a demon like Barbas all by yourself," Rose said.

"Is that who that was? I'll remember that name," Lilith said in anger.

"I wouldn't try going up against him again by yourself, Lilith. He's much more powerful than you," Rose warned.

"We'll see about that. He caught me by surprise before. This time I know what I'm up against though. You of all people know how dangerous I can be, especially when I'm angry," Lilith said.

"I'm glad that you're on my side this time. I pity that poor fear demon when he crosses paths with you again," Rose said with an evil grin.

"Pity is for lesser men. It is not a worthy emotion for a being of your power. You are above such things as am I," a voice said from behind them.

Rose and Lilith turned to see a man clad from head to toe in metal armor and wearing a green hood and cape coming toward them. Rose could feel the evil of his soul radiating off of him in waves.

"I am Doom. I have come far and wide to gather the gems, and I will have them. I will not let the multiverse be ruled by an insane alien nor will I let their power be wasted by someone such as you who will not even use it. Power such as the gems possess must be wielded for the greater good," the man who called himself Doctor Doom said.

"I assume then that when you say 'for the greater good' that you mean whatever you deem as good and necessary then," Rose said.

"Obviously, my dear. I am the greatest intellect in any universe. I above all others know what is best for the common masses who do not possess the intelligence to understand the complexities and inner workings of reality that I do," Doom said.

"Someone has a very high opinion of themselves," the Doctor said as he finally emerged from the TARDIS at last.

"I merely state the truth. To do otherwise would be to lie. I have many positive attributes to my personality, but I'm afraid a sense of false modesty isn't one of them," Doom said.

"Neither is a sense of humility apparently," the Doctor said.

"Do not anger me, little man. I have crushed mightier beings than you before and lived to tell the tale," Doom said in an arrogant voice.

"So have I so you're going to have to come up with something better than that if you're going to try and scare me because I don't scare easily," the Doctor said in a cold voice.

"Such arrogance is beyond belief that any could think themselves the equal of Doom," Doom said.

"Yeah, I'm the one who's arrogant. Right. You know you'd really get along well with a fellow by the name of Koschei. I should bring you two together sometime. I bet you'd be coming up with some insane scheme to blow up the universe together in no time," the Doctor said with a grin.

"Doctor," Rose warned him.

"Of course, Koschei doesn't do those things anymore. Of course he doesn't," the Doctor said in a loud voice.

"You test my patience, Time Lord, and that is not a thing to do lightly," Doom said.

"Yeah, yeah. I've heard it all before. You know you really need to get a new villain's manual. Yours is really out of date," the Doctor said.

"I will not be mocked any longer," Doom said in anger as his gauntlets began to glow with energy.

"Blimey! It's Testosterone City in here isn't it, Lilith?" Rose commented.

At that moment, Piper's husband, Leo, orbed into the room and interrupted the tense standoff as he shouted, "Where are the Charmed Ones? What have you people done to them?"

"It wasn't any of us, Leo," Rose quickly said.

"How do you know who I am?" Leo asked suspiciously.

"She is the Bad Wolf. Surely a being such as yourself cannot have failed to have heard of her," Doom said.

"The Bad Wolf," Leo said reverently.

"Why does everyone keep doing that? It seems that I've got quite a reputation, Doctor. Who knew?" Rose said.

"Yeah. Good for you," the Doctor said sulking.

"Are you jealous?" Rose asked.

"No. Of course not. It doesn't matter one bit to me," the Doctor said as he sulked even more.

"You are. You're jealous," Rose said giggling.

"I am not," the Doctor said as he pouted.

Rose kissed him, and he began to smile again. She began to wonder if he had done that on purpose just to get a kiss.

That's for me to know, and you to find out. The Doctor said in her mind with an amused tone.

Rose groaned. He really was such a child sometimes in this incarnation.

"I know that you didn't take the sisters then. The Bad Wolf is known far and wide as a good and noble being. You, however, I'm not so sure about. You remind me a lot of one of Phoebe's old boyfriends. You're just as evil and arrogant as he was," Leo said as he aimed his last remarks to Doom.

"I am not evil. I merely work on a higher morality than such as you can comprehend. You see the world in such simple terms. I, being a superior intellect, understand that such things as what you call good and evil are much more complicated than someone with a lesser mentality such as yours would ever imagine, however. Only I possess the intellect to see them clearly," Doom said.

"You remind me a lot of Cole now that I think of it except that he wasn't as eloquent as you are. He had the same arrogance and condescension in his voice that you do now though," Leo said.

"I had nothing to do with the witches' disappearance. That was arranged by an enemy of yours who calls himself Barbas," Doom said.

"Barbas. This is bad. I'm not able to take him on by myself. It took the combined power of the Charmed Ones to take him down before," Leo said in a worried voice.

"Will we do? I mean we don't have the Power of Three, but we're pretty powerful in our right," said a voice that Leo instantly recognized as that of his son from the future, Chris.

All of them turned to see the future versions of Piper and Leo's sons, Chris and Wyatt, standing there. Leo could tell that Chris was just waiting to charge into action to save his mother and aunts regardless of the danger to himself and his brother. He was going to butt heads with his son over this he just knew it.

Why should this encounter with Chris be any different from all of the rest of them after all?

"It's too dangerous for you and your brother to take him on by yourselves. Wait until I can find some more Whitelighters to help us, or maybe I can at least get Billie to come and help," Leo said.

"I already thought of that," Chris said with a grin.

Billie Jenkins, the Charmed Ones' friend and fellow witch, suddenly appeared next to Chris and waved at Leo as she said, "Hi, Leo. Happy now?"

"Not really, no. I'd rather wait until we have some more back-up before we go after someone as powerful as Barbas," Leo said.

"How much more back-up do we need? We have you, me, Chris, Wyatt, the freaking Bad Wolf, the Doctor, some other witch whose name I don't know, and Metal Face here. Isn't that enough?" Billie asked.

"You know me?" the Doctor asked happily.

"Everybody knows you that travels in higher circles even in other universes. You're a legend," Leo explained.

The Doctor looked smug, and a big smile came over his face as he said, "Yeah. I am pretty cool."

"You just made his day," Rose said with a chuckle.

"Why are we wasting time with this prattle? We must find Barbas and destroy him. Only he knows where the gem is now," Doom said.

"How do you even know about Barbas anyway not to mention that he was the one behind all of this unless you were helping him?" Chris asked suspiciously.

"I saw what happened that is how. I used my time platform to send myself back in time so that I could watch what had happened in the past after I arrived here and found the witch lying unconscious and the gem missing. I saw the demon attack the witches and give the gem to the madwoman named Eris, and he called himself Barbas," Doom explained.

"Why didn't you try to stop it if you went back in time?" Chris asked.

"I could not alter the past. Those events were already fixed in time," Doom said.

"So you know about time travel and the Laws of Time behind it then?" the Doctor asked in surprise.

"Of course I do. I mastered the secrets of time and space long ago and used them to invent my own time machine. Nothing is beyond my genius," Doom said.

"I really don't like this guy. I say that we leave him here," Billie said.

"I agree. I don't trust him for a minute," Chris said.

"Your opinions do not matter. I will go whether you agree to my being there or not. Ultimate power will be mine," Doom said.

"We don't have time for this. We need to get to the Charmed Ones right away before Barbas kills them," Chris said impatiently.

"We don't even know where they are yet," Leo said.

"I know exactly where they are. I already went scrying for them with my computer when they didn't come back after a couple of hours. I decided to get Chris and Wyatt, and then I came to find you. It looks like I hit the jackpot and found two living legends too. Lucky me," Billie said happily.

"So this is all your idea?" Leo asked.

"Why do I get the feeling that you're not pleased with me?" Billie asked as her face fell.

"I'm not. We can't just go running into this without a plan and with no idea of what's waiting for us. Barbas is planning on us coming to rescue them. He has some kind of trap waiting for us you can be sure of that," Leo said.

"I say we go. All of us together can handle this. We'll just be wasting time that we don't have if we sit here and try to guess at what Barbas may or may not do," Chris said.

"Maybe we should listen to him. He has a lot more experience with Barbas then we do," Wyatt said.

"Why am I not surprised that you're siding with him?" Chris said with a sigh.

"Just because you don't like what he has to say doesn't mean that he's not right," Wyatt said.

At the moment, the final members of the Doctor and Rose's crew arrived at last as Jenny's TARDIS materialized. Jenny came out followed by River Song and Indiana Jones.

Sam Beckett remained inside of the TARDIS, however. He seemed to be lost in his own mind now as he babbled on about how the completed Eye could save him and send him home. Al stayed by his side and continued to talk to him as he tried to snap him out of it.

"Sam isn't any better?" Rose asked worried.

"No. He seems to be worse. I can't find anything wrong with him with either my powers or the TARDIS' medical lab," Jenny said.

"Maybe he'll snap out of it once we're done putting the Eye back together," Rose said hopefully.

"The Eye has taken control of him just as it has the madwoman Eris," Doom said.

"What? Why are you saying that? You act as if the Eye is alive," Rose said.

"It is. You obviously did no research on it. The Eye is only the outer shell for the real power that lies within it. The Eye is the container for a powerful entity that can manipulate reality on an unimaginable scale. Nothing seems to be beyond this entity's ability to accomplish. It can even change the established laws of the universe with no apparent difficulty. The entity was almost all powerful. It could only be contained but never completely defeated. The Time Lord, Rassilon, found out that a certain rare mineral found in the mountains of Gallifrey could be used to trap and bind the entity. Even bound this way though the entity was still able to control the minds of whoever used the gems and the minds of those who have been under either dramatic or stressful events," Doom explained.

"Stressful events like leaping through time and space into other peoples' bodies on a regular basis perhaps," Jenny said suddenly understanding.

"Or having your daughter die and never having recovered from it," the Doctor said sadly.

"Precisely. This is why Sam Beckett and Eris are now under its control. Dr. Beckett has already fallen to its influence and soon Eris will be completely under its thrall as well. Once the Eye is complete, the entity inside of it will try to use one or both of them to free it and maybe even make them its new vessel. The only way to safely control the Eye is to put it inside of a machine like Rassilon did. Whoever knows the secret to building such a machine can control the universe with it. I know that secret, and I intend to use it," Doom said.

"How do you know all of this, and how do you know about Sam and Eris?" Jenny asked.

"Doom knows many things. I am the master of both science and sorcery since my mother was a witch so I have many sources of information that I can use to find out that which I need to know. I have been following your quest for the gems almost from the start as soon as I learned of their existence, and I have gotten to know all about you and the members of your party, Jenny Tyler. Doom does not go into a battle without knowledge of his opponents, and neither should you," Doom said.

"I hate it that he's the one who's actually agreeing with me. He's not the one that I wanted on my side," Leo said as he winced.

"For the record, I'm on your side. I want to find out what we could be walking into first before I go charging in. Where is Barbas anyway?" Rose asked Billie.

"He's in an apartment building a couple of blocks away from here in a penthouse suite on the top floor," Billie said.

"No. That doesn't sound like a trap at all," Leo said.

"Well, we have to do something. The longer that we wait, the more time that he has to kill them with their own fears," Chris said with worry.

"Calm down. They're all very strong. I'm sure that they'll make it until we get there," Leo said as he tried unsuccessfully to hide the worry and concern in his own voice.

"I'd like to know if Eris is even still here. She could have already skipped on to the next gem for all that we know," the Doctor said.

"She's still here," Rose said.

"You can feel her?" the Doctor asked.

"Yes. She's still somewhere nearby. I think that she's waiting for us. She wants to stop us all here and now before she goes on to get the rest of the gems," Rose guessed.

"She wants to take our gems and finally get us all out of the way, and this is where she's making her stand," the Doctor said as he nodded in understanding.

"She's probably in the penthouse too then. It's a huge trap set for all of us," River said.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Indiana said.

"You say that all of the time. You always say that," River said.

"I'm usually right too," Indiana said.

"Okay. I'll give you that, but it's always fun though regardless, isn't it?" River asked with a grin.

"Yes, especially whenever you're around. You seem to attract trouble, Professor Song," Indiana said.

"There's the pot calling the kettle black," River said with a chuckle.

"I attract trouble? I don't see how. I'm such a harmless, peaceful person," Indiana said with a wry smile on his face.

"I hate to say it, but I have to agree with Chris. Sometimes the best way to handle a trap is just to go ahead and walk right into it. We should just walk right into the front door of that penthouse. That won't be expecting that. We'll catch them completely by surprise," the Doctor said.

"You mean that they won't be expecting us to be that stupid?" Rose asked with a giggle.

"Exactly. They won't know how to handle that. Always keep your enemy off balance I say," the Doctor said with a grin.

"Remind me of exactly how many regenerations that you've used now?" Rose asked.

"I don't know what you're trying to infer, but my loss of regenerations has nothing to do with my approach to handling traps," the Doctor said pouting.

"I'm sure that it didn't help any either," Rose said laughing.

"Alright. Let's take a vote. Do we go ahead or come up with a plan first?" Chris asked impatiently.

Leo, Doom, Rose, River, and Wyatt all voted for coming up with a plan while the Doctor, Billie, Chris, Lilith, and Indiana wanted to just go ahead and attack by going in through the front door. That left Jenny as the one to cast the deciding vote as Sam was in no shape to do anything at the moment.

Jenny looked between her parents and felt enormous pressure to side with one or the other of them. She didn't want to disappoint either of them after all. Part of her wanted to use caution, and the other part of her knew that her dad was usually right when he went with his gut instincts like this. Finally she came to her decision after several seconds of agonizing over it.

"I vote with Dad," Jenny said with a mad grin.

"That's my girl," the Doctor said proudly.

"Why, Jenny?" Rose asked with a warm smile that held no trace of anger.

She didn't want to make Jenny feel bad for siding against her. After all, the odds were in the Doctor's favor. He'd been doing this sort of a thing a lot longer than she had. He was probably right even though she hated to admit that.

"I guess I'm just too much like Dad for my own good sometimes. I sometimes can't help but want to rush in where angels fear to tread," Jenny admitted.

"I will not rush in hastily no matter what the rest of you have agreed upon. Doom goes his own way," Doom said.

He touched a hidden button on one of his gauntlets, and the time platform suddenly appeared under his feet. It was a glowing rectangular object that quickly passed through Doom as he disappeared into thin air.

"Amateurs," the Doctor said disdainfully.

"I have to admit that it's certainly a unique way to travel in time," Rose said.

"It's an absolutely boring way to travel in time you mean. I'd rather have a TARDIS any day. Nothing beats my old girl," the Doctor said.

"I'll agree with you there," Rose said as she gave him a quick peck on the lips.

The Doctor smiled for a minute and then he said, "Okay, everyone into our two TARDISes. We are going in through the front door just not the way that they expect us to," the Doctor said.

"I hope that we're not going to regret this," Leo said.

"Relax. He's the Doctor. He knows what he's doing," Chris said.

"This place is so cool, Rose. Everybody knows me and appreciates me here. I could get used to this. Maybe I'll move here," the Doctor said cheerfully.

"No," Rose said firmly.

"No?" the Doctor asked unhappily.

"No," Rose said again just as firmly as before.

As the Doctor pouted, Jenny began to giggle. She liked it when her parents did that. Her Mum always had the final say no matter what, but that never stopped her Dad from protesting her decisions in a very vocal manner. Not that it did any good. She'd never seen him change her mind yet, and she doubted that he ever would in the future either no matter how much he grumbled.

All of them got into the Doctor's and Jenny's TARDISes, and they made their way to the penthouse. They quickly materialized right in the middle of the suite, and the Doctor was the first to emerge to see what lay in wait for them.

"Hello, Doctor. Eris told me that you would come; and as you can see, I've invited some old friends of yours to join us," Barbas said with an evil grin as he gestured behind him.

A huge army of Daleks stood behind him and seemed to fill the luxurious penthouse to the rafters. They all looked at the Doctor and shouted in unison, "EXTERMINATE!"

"I'm not even going to say it, Doctor," Rose said.

"Go ahead. You can say it," the Doctor said as he hit himself in the head.

"I told you so," Rose said with no trace of joy in her expression.

Leo looked on in horror as he could see that way in the back of the massive wall of Daleks that Piper, Phoebe, and Paige were standing there oblivious to their surroundings. They were screaming with their faces contorted in agony as they were being forced to live through some of their worst fears. Leo started to orb to them but quickly found that he couldn't. Somehow he couldn't orb!

I'm afraid that your powers don't work here, Whitelighter. My friend, Eris, has seen to that. With her gem, she has complete mastery over this universe now, and what she says goes. If she says that you can't orb, then you can't orb. It's fun, isn't it?" Barbas said with an evil chuckle.

Meanwhile inside of Jenny's TARDIS, things had gone from bad to worse as Sam suddenly snapped back to life. Only it wasn't Sam anymore.

"Surrender this ship to me and give me all of your gems, or I'll kill all of you," Darth Vader said.

He began to strangle Indiana Jones with the force, but he quickly found to his surprise that his powers didn't work on Jenny and River. You can't strangle a Time Lord after all.

"It hurts a lot I'll give you that, but you can't kill us that way," Jenny said in immense pain.

"It doesn't matter. I have many ways of dealing death to the enemies of the Empire. I'll just keep using every means at my disposal until I find one that works," Vader said darkly.

He began to pour Force Lightning out of his hands into Jenny and River, and they both screamed in agony at the tremendous amount of pain going through their bodies. Vader began to laugh as his enemies all fell to their knees around him now.

"All too easy," Vader said in triumph.

Eris watched the Doctor, Rose, and the now powerless Leo face off against the massive Dalek army as Chris, Wyatt, Billie, and Lilith prepared a quick plan to help them. They still hadn't emerged from the TARDIS yet so they still had their powers for the moment. They knew that as soon as Eris saw them though that they would lose their powers too. Therefore, they would have to make whatever amount of time left that they had their powers count.

Dr. Doom meanwhile was carrying out a plan that was all of his own making as he quietly appeared behind Eris using his time platform. He was determined to move quickly and steal the gem from Eris while his moment of surprise lasted. Once he had the gem, then he would become the master of this dimension and quickly wipe out all of the others so that he could take their gems as well.

Doom would rule supreme, and no one would stand between him and his destiny. Of course, the Charmed Ones had a way of changing destiny when they had to. Doom was about to find that out.

Next: It's war on multiple fronts next time. The Doctor, Rose, Leo, and their friends and family take on a huge army of Daleks that could annihilate a planet or do they? At the same time, Jenny and her crew do battle with the newly returned Darth Vader as they wonder just what happened to Sam. Also, Doom fights with Eris for control of the gem that will determine the balance of power in this battle while the Charmed Ones have to overcome their own fears in order to save everyone from Barbas.