Tardis - 2018 (Displaced)
L's foot hovered over the button in such a way that Donna could swear it had a brain of it's own hidden under the flesh. After all the things she had seen, the unexpected was always a possibility. It paused still, almost in thought, weighing up the possibilities. She looked at L, calm, then back to the foot which was uneasy as it began hovering again.
"Do you have a coin Donna?"
"A COIN!" Donna shouted. "You're asking me for a bloody coin to what? Flip it?"
L sighed. "Fifty percent success. Fifty percent failure," he stated, bluntly.
Donna shuffled in her pockets but there was only a yellow jelly baby in it. She held it out, smiling, to L who, in an instant, picked it up and swallowed it without a second thought.
"A jelly baby has two sides! We could have used that! I don't have anything else!"
"Oh. Well," he muttered pressing his foot down hard on the button. He looked up at Donna and smiled. "It is a good thing I know my own stomach."
"That's impossible!" Then she remembered that hardly anything seemed impossible. "At the least! It's not normal is it?"
L smiled, jumping down from the console. "Whoever said I was normal, Donna Noble?"
She opened her mouth to answer but couldn't as the Tardis console started to dissolve. In horror she thought to scream, thinking there was a wrong choice made, as a large blinding light engulfed the pair.
Japan – 2018
"What are you waiting for? If you're going to bring your Master race forth get on with it. I'll take them all on!"
The Doctor, even in chains and severely hurt, still could put up a fight.
The Master let out a laugh. "I know you would. But all in good time Doctor. Certain conditions must be met."
"Conditions? What you really mean is you're waiting for something," he searched for the word. "The catalyst for all this."
The Doctor was onto something.
"Correct, Doctor. Keep going." The Master was amused at his foe, knowing full well how alike they were that he would know. But even so, they were vastly different.
"The catalyst has to be something that that is temporal based. Right?" The Master nodded at him. "Good. Let me guess!" The Doctor paused, as the Master raised an eyebrow. That was quick. Without even a quip.
"A flux capacitor!" shouted the Doctor.
There it was.
"You're waiting for a Delorean to show up in 2018 aren't you? Brilliant!"
The Master sighed, turning away to leave. "Such childishness"
"You need my Tardis to escape don't you? To survive." The Master stopped and turned back, intrigued once more. "Which means you can't use it otherwise you'd blow it up and escape in your own Tardis and you, in your time frame, you had a Tardis but where is it. Where is your Tardis?"
The Doctor's mind raced with the various possibilities. There were other forms of Time Travel, other races had different devices but it didn't explain why the Master was missing a Tardis. If he was missing one it was sloppy.
He was never sloppy.
"You're quite correct Doctor. I'll be using the energy from my Tardis to act as part of the catalyst. It's already in place, ready to be destroyed at the flick of a switch."
"Part of the catalyst?" added the Doctor, confused. One should have been enough. It could only mean that the Master's was damaged but he couldn't remember it. Time can be rewritten echoed throughout his mind, and while it could, he should have been able to remember it.
What would the other part be? The only energy capable of it was a Tardis but that would mean…
"That's impossible."
"Nothing is impossible."
"But I'm the only Timelord alive."
"Yes you are," added the Master with a grin.
"What have you done? What did you do?"
"I told you I've been working on this for a very long time. Do you remember L, Doctor. ?"
"What Elle?" He had met a few different women called Elle over his many cycles of life but none that seemed relevant.
"You met him during your last regeneration."
"Him?" He couldn't recall meeting a man called Elle, nevermind during his last regeneration. And he would remember. Memories didn't vanish.
"It's an Earth man called L. That would be the letter L Doctor and nothing else."
There was only one person documented that used that letter. A detective during the 21st century but even the Doctor didn't know that much about him. He only learned about, briefly, him during his ninth regeneration while looking for a detective to solve a murder on Earth. But he chose someone else.
"I never met him," he said, confused.
"I didn't say you did," laughed the Master.
It niggled at the Doctor. The laugh. The mocking nature of that laugh, a laugh he had heard before. It was shouting at him he had, in some form, probably as the Master said, during his last regeneration. But every part of his being told him he didn't.
"But when you came here, you told me very assuredly that you weren't going to let me harm L or anyone else, didn't you?
It niggled more. He couldn't remember saying it and even when he tried to think about it he only seen a gap. Even when thinking back to his last regeneration there was nothing but a gap. The Master must have hit him harder than he though.
Only one thing was certain. The Master was being truthful. He had known him that long, every incarnation, that he knew when he, this one, was lying.
"Ever been to Japan in this year, 2018, before?"
"No," mumbled the Doctor, knowing he was being mocked. Knowing that something had happened to him, even if he didn't know what. He had to think it out logically.
He arrived, said all of that, then he was bested by the Master, in physical combat. There were two others in the Tardis, Amy and Rory, and it didn't seem right. They were hardly fighters but they would have helped. It didn't fit together. The Master was skilled in that timeframe but the Doctor felt he had the upper hand.
No.
He knew he would have.
His eyes widened as he examined everything in front of him, all of the data. And only one thing, one piece of information stood out.
The Master needed two Tardis'.
"You stopped me with your Tardis, somehow. I don't know how but you did. It took out some of the energy that won't do for your bubble." He didn't understand yet, but his mind raced to find the answer.
"I didn't expect you to be so capable with a sword," he spat, unbuttoning his jacket to reveal a gash on his chest, crudely stitched. "I'm glad you worked it out though. Since the other detective should be arriving soon. Hopefully."
Other detective? L.
"Why? Why is he coming here, I don't understand!" he shouted, hating that part of him (his memory at least) had been taken.
"You remember the Weeping Angels?"
The Doctor nodded.
"Good. You remember making a recording warning your companion about them?"
He nodded again, looking over the Master, wondering where this was going.
"Let's just say I acquired that footage and gave it to someone who had no idea of the reality of time travel."
"L."
"That's right. L. The boy who never knew it was all possible but became enamoured with it. Enamoured by you and the blue box."
"How did you get the recording. I destroyed it, I'm certain." At least he hoped he was certain.
"Ah! That's my little secret Doctor. But I will let you know that you did indeed destroy it. I just got it back. The point is it's all been planned. He'll come here but he won't be alone. You'll be with him, your previous regeneration. He'll arrive with his Tardis too of course and there we have it Doctor. One Tardis for me to escape in, yours, and the other two to bring about your end at my many hands."
Then it hit him.
"Tell me one thing Master. Did your Tardis have full energy when I arrived?"
The Master smiled. "Of course it did. You understand then?"
"You used it on me, you took something from me."
"Very warm Doctor," the Master taunted, eager to see the Doctor finally work it out but his attention was called to his communicator. He had received a message.
"I have a gap whenever I think of my recent past. Of our encounter here, and my regeneration. I can't remember anything." There was only one answer. "You used your Tardis to fracture me. Me!"
He rattled the chains as much as he could, disturbed. "You took away my self, my past."
"I also planted a false message in your Tardis, telling you some alien, can't remember which, had captured L and he needed your help. For the sake of the galaxy and all that nonsense you adhere to," he groaned, nodding at his communicator and uttering the words thank you.
"Then you sent him away. Fracturing me, my time, created two of us. And two Tardis'. You can't blow them up because it would create a temporal paradox," said the Doctor, almost in awe and shock at once. "That would destroy the universe. Taking one of them reverses that."
"Destroying the universe is number two on my list. You're number one and you won't have long to wait. You've just arrived," laughed the Master walking out the door and slamming it shut, not bothering to lock it.
The Doctor lay motionless.
The end was near.