London's Central Square was nearly deserted as the TARDIS vworrped into existence. The Doctor, Jack, and Torrent stepped out. Jack looked around, a sad expression on his face.

"What's wrong?" Torrent nudged Jack.

"Nothing... Just contemplating mortality." Jack sighed. "The worst burden of a long life is outliving everything you love... I learned that the hard way."

"Long life?"

"I'm roughly 750 years old. I've watched eras pass and civilizations fall."

The Doctor looked at Jack. "750? You don't look a day over 16."

"Magic," Jack reminded.

The three found a patch of garden in the middle of the circle. A pickup truck with a small crane sat by the soil, unattended. A sapling sat on the truck bed. The Doctor walked up to the crane controls, mounted on the back of the truck, and sonicked them. The crane planted the tree, and the truck drove off. The Doctor put his Screwdriver away, and turned around.

A number of various blue portals opened up, displaying terminal space similar to the stretch that tore apart the Starclimber. Out of the portals trundled Daleks, blindly firing their weapons into the street. The few pedestrians in the area ran, some of them screaming. Jack and Torrent drew their swords, and The Doctor removed from his coat the only thing he could think of to use as a weapon... A spoon.

"It looks like the Daleks have picked up a few timey wimey tricks of their own," he whispered. "We'll have to fight." He looked at the group of Daleks gathered before the time travellers. "I am The Doctor," he proclaimed at the advancing Daleks, "and this is my spoon! En Garde!"

The three time travellers charged the Daleks, Jack raising a reflective shield he found in the TARDIS Armoury. He'd neglected to grab his own before getting sucked into interuniversal adventures, so this one would have to do. Torrent switched his sword to long-range mode, and peered down the pair of lenses that passed for a scope. He'd have to aim precisely, as his explosive ammunition couldn't penetrate this kind of armour.

Dalek death rays rained like a river of painful electric death. Some of the rays reflected off of Jack's shield, returning to - and exploding - their senders. Torrent managed to blind a few Daleks, while the Doctor managed to destroy each and every Dalek he fought with one tap with the spoon, without getting hit himself.

When the wave of miniature tanks was over, more portals opened up, releasing more Daleks. The Doctor called the TARDIS over with his sonic screwdriver, and opened the doors. Jack and Torrent ducked inside, for safety from the approaching Daleks, and The Doctor looked at the crowd and smiled.

"Well, fellas, I'd love to stay and reminisce, but you know how it is... Things to do, planets to save..." The Doctor closed the TARDIS doors, and the blue box vworrped away, going back to the future.

The city of London still burned when the TARDIS returned, but the first sight Torrent and the Doctor saw when they stepped out was a brand-new tree, standing tall over the bus. Torrent climbed onto the bus' roof right behind The Doctor, as a Dalek saucer obliterated the roof bit by bit, right behind their feet. The Time Lord and his companion jumped off, landing in front of a house. There was a pair of cars in front, lying useless. A brick archway stood to its right, next to a T-junction on the road.

The Doctor looked around. "Ever since I arrived in this universe, I've known one good thing about anything you can find," he said.

"What's that?" The Doctor tapped the cars with his spoon. They fell apart , revealing a bunch of parts that shifted around on the ground every so often.

"You can find help in just about any corner you look in, if the corner you look in is a corner that gives help." "What?" "When in doubt, try to destroy everything." The Doctor turned to the piles of bricks sitting before him. "Let's see... What can we build with this..." Within a few minutes, the pile of bricks was assembled into a decent-sized scissorlift. Torrent climbed up onto it at The Doctor's orders, and stepped on a pressure pad built onto the surface. The scissorlift rose up, and Torrent spotted a Dalek control panel in one of the apartments in the building. Torrent jumped off of the scissorlift, and in through the apartment's broken window, and took out his sonic screwdriver. He sonicked the control panel, and the wiring inside sparked and fizzed. The Doctor watched from the scissorlift, keeping an eye on a ruin to the left of the house. Torrent finished his work, and turned back to The Doctor.

The Time Lord looked to his left, and back at Torrent. "Is there a door there?"

"No."

"Also, how did you get the shielding down on the generator?"

"That was a shield generator?"

"Yes. How did you do it? You're still alive, so it's not tearing the wires out."

"I have a sonic screwdriver." Torrent removed the device from his pocket and showed it to The Doctor.

"It looks like mine... Is it a replica?"

"I don't know. It does the job, but I don't know whether it was designed to look like yours."

"Curious... This window here is the only one broken." The Doctor scanned the window's perimeter with his sonic.

"It was also the first one installed. If we meddle with time a bit..."

"Then we can reach the generator!"

"And in this universe, not everything is affected by time travel!"

"How do you know that?"

"I locked onto my friend Wyldstyle's scanner when I met her past. In my past, then her future, I sonicked it to make sure it couldn't be locked onto. The scanner's timeline mandated it be locked onto at least once."

"Wow."

"Yep. Shall we call the TARDIS?" Torrent nodded, and The Doctor drew his sonic screwdriver. The light buzzed, and the TARDIS vworrped into existence around them. Jack looked up from one of the chairs, looking less bad-memories-breakdown and more just-plain-bored.

"Hey, guys. Got anything new about the future?"

"Just a plan to shut down another generator. Have you ever wanted to visit the Industrial Revolution?"

"Why not? Sounds like a huge improvement from this place..." Jack nodded to the doors. The Doctor stepped up to the controls of the TARDIS. He pulled a few levers and twisted a few knobs, and the Time Rotor bobbed, signifying a dematerialization. The Doctor raced around the console, and the TARDIS eventually landed. Nothing could be heard from outside. The doors of the Police Box opened into the same red brick archway, except covered in snow. Thick snowflakes were falling lightly onto the ground, forming a white blanket stretching to both sides of the cobbled road. A few snowmen could be seen on the other sidewalk, top hats and scarves decorating their packed whiteness. Jack's breath frosted into a cloud right in front of his eyes. He wrapped his arms around him, put his hands in his armpits, and shivered. It was COLD here, and Jack wished he had his old green parka from before the Purge.

"Here we are..." The Doctor said, "Victorian London... The Gelth... Weng-Chiang... a T-Rex in the Thames... I've got a tale or two to tell from my time here."

Torrent led Jack to a scaffold, made unclimbable by an ice-coated ladder. It sat in front of a building in progress, with four window slots in the front wall in a 2x2 grid. A wooden crane held one window sill premade, sitting in the top right of the wall. A set of closed, wrought-iron gates sat to the right of the building. The Doctor followed the dimensional copies slowly, tasting a fingertip of snow from the ground.

"It's strange how quiet it is... and there's a sinister look to this snow."

Torrent drew his sword to try and destroy something, but The Doctor stopped him.

"You've had your fun. Let Jack try this one." The Doctor turned to Jack. "We don't have what we need to progress, which is a source of heat. Where do you think we can get one?"

Jack looked left and right. A few people in long coats and bowler hats were walking around, enough to call the street populated. He decided against his go-to plan, and looked around at his surroundings. A few wooden crates lay here and there, and a small metal brazier sat on the ground. Jack walked up to the crates, and peeled off a few bricks. He stacked them underneath the ladder, close enough to be a major source of heat should it burn, but far enough to prevent a fire hazard. He repeated this until a decent-sized pile of wood lay beneath the ladder. He walked over to the brazier, and felt how much heat it emitted. Satisfied, he pushed it over. The embers from the fire fell into the pile of wood, and a small fire was going after a bit. The fire grew, burning its supply of wood, and the ice on the ladder had soon thawed.

"Well, it's not what I would do," The Doctor said, "But it works."

The Doctor climbed up the ladder, and reached the crane controls. It was a pair of cranks, controlling the horizontal and vertical position of the object lifted - in this case, a window frame. The Doctor expertly operated the crane, maneuvering the window frame into position in the top left of the building. He made a few tiny adjustments to the position of the frame, then climbed down.

"That's all we need to do. Either this works, or we've wasted a lot of time." The trio walked into the TARDIS again, and The Doctor took them back to 2025.

The ruins burned, and the smoke choked Torrent, burning his lungs, which were fresh from the relatively clean, cold air of 1895. The scissorlift stood where it had before they left, which was a good sign. Torrent didn't want to get lost in time. He climbed up onto the scissorlift, which The Doctor raised to the level of the windowsill he had placed the first window in. To their surprise and relief, it was blasted open, the same way as the first time. Torrent climbed into the window, and spotted a hole in the wall, just big enough to walk through. He crossed the barrier, and found a generator like the one in the square, all Daleky with a few spinning bits. Torrent sonicked the generator open, and he saw the crystal resonator, sitting undefended. He scanned the crystal, identifying it as quartz, and set the frequency to quartz's resonance. The resonator shook and cracked, and eventually shattered, leaving the generator broken and useless. Torrent and The Doctor lowered the scissorlift, and walked up to the TARDIS to fly it back to the energy shield. The TARDIS key was nearly in the slot when the brick archway exploded.

"EXTERMINATE!" Five Daleks trundled out, three of them glinting in the firelight. The Doctor threw his spoon at one of the shiny ones, and it bounced off, not even leaving a dent on the armour.

"EXTERMINATE! DESTROY THE TARDIS!"

The Doctor and Torrent backed up into the Police Box doors, which remained closed to the outside world. The silver Daleks advanced, shouting a harsh, raspy battle cry.

"EXTERMINATE!"

Torrent gulped. He was backed against a wall with nowhere to run. The Daleks surrounded the time travellers, keeping their ray guns aimed at them.

"EXTERMINATE!"

Torrent closed his eyes.

So this is how I die.