CHAPTER 12
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TWO RANIS ARE DEFINITELY NOT BETTER THAN ONE!
The Rani noticed Rani and the others in the room with her at last as she said, "Just who are you supposed to be?"
"You don't recognize me?" Rani asked surprised.
"No, should I? Are you yet another renegade Time Lord come to plague my existence like the Doctor and the Master?" the Rani asked.
Rani couldn't speak for a minute as she tried to process what was going on. Neither the Doctor nor the Rani recognized her, but they both should. She knew them both when she was younger after all. What was going on here? Was this a result of the new powers that she was suddenly developing ever since Kali had left her mind?
"I'm not a renegade at all. My name's . . . ," Rani said as she thought fast to come up with any name but her own in order to keep from damaging the timestream anymore than she already was.
"The girl doesn't even know her own name. I grow tired of you already, whoever you are. Get out of my way, or I'll cut you down where you stand," the Rani threatened.
"Don't you speak to my daughter that way, you harpy!" Gita shouted.
"Mum, this isn't the time!" Rani said in a low voice.
"No, let her speak. I'd like to know why a human is calling you her daughter. Are you one of those human lovers like the Doctor? That's rich! I don't really care one way or the other though. All that matters to me is bringing my sister back. Take your human friends and go now before I change my mind," the Rani said.
Rani tried not to smile. That was that the part of her that was still Ushas speaking. She was offering them mercy. Rani decided that it would be best if she took her up on it.
"Let's go," Rani said.
"What about them?" Haresh asked.
"I'm sure it'll be okay. We're not supposed to be here anyway," Rani said.
"What if we are supposed to be here though to save them?" Henry asked.
"Let's just go," Rani said as she continued to direct them all back toward the TARDIS.
"She's trying to save us," Lady Jane whispered.
Rani silently nodded at her to show that this was true, and the others followed her into the TARDIS after they realized that she wasn't leaving yet. Once inside though, they all started to talk at once even as Rani watched what was going on outside on her TARDIS' monitor. So far the Doctor and Sarah Jane were still standing there talking to the Rani and hadn't left yet. She couldn't let them out of her sight.
"I think that we need to help them before it's too late, Mum," Henry said.
"Aren't you interfering in the past just by being here? Then again, he could be right. You're the expert on this, Rani," Haresh said.
"I think that you should go out there and help them now that we're all safe," Lady Jane suggested.
"We need to just leave before someone gets hurt. I'm sure that we're not supposed to even be here. Once we leave, things will play out like they should I'm sure," Gita said.
Rani was silent this entire time as she kept debating what she should do. Her every instinct told her to go back outside and help her two friends.
Rani raced to the console and began to put in coordinates at a mad pace. She had to calculate this just right.
As Rani's TARDIS started to dematerialize, the Rani said, "Good. I thought she'd never leave. She was certainly a timid little thing, wasn't she? She didn't even try to fight."
"Let's go, Doctor. You can leave the girl here. I have no use for her," the Rani said.
"What am I supposed to do to get home? I can't be trapped in the Renaissance forever," Sarah Jane said in an annoyed voice.
"I'm sure I don't care, dear. If you're very lucky though, I may be so happy to see my sister again that I'll set the Doctor free and send him back to you. I wouldn't count on it though," the Rani said with an evil laugh.
"Go back to the TARDIS, Sarah Jane. She'll take you home," the Doctor said as he began to follow the Rani out of Leonardo's Workshop.
"I'm not leaving here without you, Doctor," Sarah Jane said defiantly as she stood her ground.
"Then I'm afraid that I don't have any other choice. I won't let anything stop me now that I'm so close to bringing her back," the Rani said.
"No, leave her alone! Let's just go, Ushas," the Doctor said.
"I cannot allow her to interfere," the Rani said.
She started to take a small capsule out of one of the bracelets on her wrists and threw it toward Sarah Jane. Just before it would have reached her though, Rani's TARDIS materialized around her.
The capsule burst open, and a thin mist came out that quickly dissipated. The Doctor growled at the Rani as he said, "What was in that capsule, Rani? What were you going to do to her?"
"It was only a sleeping gas. I only acted like I was going to kill her in order to get her to leave. I'm not the Master, Doctor. She's safe now. Let the timid girl have her. Let's go," the Rani said.
The Doctor hesitated as he wasn't sure of just who this other Time Lady was. Was Sarah Jane safe with her or not?
"You and your precious humans! Let's go, Doctor! Now!" the Rani said as she suddenly blew a handful of dust in his face.
The Doctor's eyes went blank, and he began to mindlessly follow her back to her TARDIS. After Sarah Jane watched him go on the monitor in Rani's TARDIS, she spun around to stare at Rani in anger.
"Why couldn't you have come just a little sooner? Now she's got the Doctor! We have to get him back!" Sarah Jane shouted at her with worry.
"We will. Don't worry," Rani said in a soothing voice.
She quickly located the Rani's TARDIS using the instruments on her console and quickly dematerialized her own TARDIS. She was going to try an old trick that she hadn't performed since the Academy.
"Where are we going? She's leaving with the Doctor any minute now," Sarah Jane said.
"Have a little faith in me, Sarah Jane. Just watch," Rani said with a wicked smile.
Sarah Jane looked at her with suspicion as she wondered how she knew her name. Then she remembered that the Doctor had mentioned it earlier. Somehow she didn't think that was how she had learned it though. This strange young woman seemed to already know her somehow. She was beginning to wonder if she might be from her own future. Stranger things had happened to her since she had started traveling with the Doctor after all.
Rani landed her TARDIS directly inside the Rani's TARDIS, and the two TARDISes soon dematerialized together as the Rani took off. The Rani materialized on the planet that she ruled called Miasimia Goria, and she ordered the Doctor to follow her into her laboratory.
Rani, Sarah Jane, and the others watched on the monitor as the Rani hooked the Doctor up to some kind of machine. In the center of the machine, they could see a huge brain.
"I can't believe it! She's using the old Time Manipulator plan. She finally found a way to get it to work. She used to talk about that all of the time back at the Academy. She drove us all nuts speculating about what she could do to the history of the universe if she could build one. It seemed to fascinate her," Rani said.
"Now I know you know the Doctor. You're rambling on just like he always does," Sarah Jane said with a smile.
"I am, aren't I? I think I was around him too much growing up. He must have corrupted my fragile young mind," Rani said with a chuckle.
Rani looked at the upset look on her mother's face and realized that it must be hitting home to her at last that Rani really was an alien who had another life before she adopted her. She quickly walked over to Gita and hugged her as she said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you, Mum."
Gita smiled back at her as she said, "It's okay. I just never quite believed it until I started hearing you talk about knowing that other Rani just now. There's this whole other side of you that I know nothing about, and it really upsets me. I know it's not your fault though. I'm not blaming you, sweetheart."
"I can tell you all about it sometime if that will help," Rani said.
"Yeah, I'd like that," Gita said.
"Rani, something's happening. Hurry!" Sarah Jane said as she continued to watch the monitor.
"She knows my name now. This is just going great," Rani said in a low voice.
"Did you ever consider that maybe she was supposed to meet you, Rani? She took to you very quickly when you first met her almost as if she already knew you. I always wondered about that. Why did she take you under her wing so soon after you arrived in her neighborhood?" Haresh said.
Rani looked at her father in surprise. She had never even considered that. Could it be true? Could Sarah Jane have known for most of her life that someday she would meet her?
"Rani, do something. I think she might be killing the Doctor!" Sarah Jane said.
Rani raced to the monitor to see the headset on the Doctor's head shaking and she said, "No, she's not killing him. She's trying to add his knowledge to her Time Brain. That's what the giant brain is. She probably has some other geniuses hooked up to it too somewhere. She's going to use it to control her Time Manipulator once she gets it finished."
"What will this Time Manipulator do?" Sarah Jane asked.
"She could use it to alter any event in the history of the universe and remake it to her design," Rani said.
"What is it that she wants to alter?" Sarah Jane asked.
"Her sister Kali's death. She must be going to try to rescue her from the dispersal chamber right before she was executed. It's a fixed point in time so she can only do that by creating a Time Manipulator to change history with. Only she doesn't realize something. Kali's mind survived her death because she jumped into someone else's body. Even if she brought Kali's body back from that point in time, she would only get an empty shell," Rani explained.
"Why don't you tell her that?" Sarah Jane asked.
"She isn't supposed to know that yet. She doesn't find out until far in the future," Rani explained.
"Just like I'm not supposed to know who you are," Sarah Jane guessed.
"Yes. You aren't supposed to meet me until far into your own future. At least that's what I always thought until now anyway. I guess I was wrong," Rani said.
"Don't worry. I won't say anything about it when I do meet you until I'm sure that you already know about it," Sarah Jane promised.
"Thank you. You have no idea how even something as minor as the two of us meeting out of order could create havoc across the timestream if we don't handle it very carefully. When you meet me, Sarah Jane, you have to promise never to tell me anything about this day. I won't understand you even if you do. I'm just going to be an ordinary human girl with no knowledge of Time Lords or time travel at all," Rani said.
"I don't understand, but I'll do as you say. Shouldn't we do something to stop that woman though before she starts up this Time Manipulator of hers?" Sarah Jane said.
"That won't happen for a while yet. She still needs to use the knowledge of the completed Time Brain to come up with a substitute for strange matter. You see she has to create a strange matter explosion over this planet in order to create helium 2 which will then fuse with the atmosphere of the planet and create a shell of chronons or time particles around it. Then the Time Brain will grow and fill up the gap between the planet and the chronons. This entire planet will then become her Time Manipulator with the Time Brain controlling it. She needs to find a ready supply of strange matter floating somewhere in space first though, and then somehow cause it to collide with her strange matter substitute whatever it is first. Until she does that, the Time Manipulator is useless," Rani said confidently.
"Yes, just like the Doctor. I didn't understand most of what you said. What I did understand is that she has to create some kind of explosion over this planet in order to cause the planet itself to become her means of controlling time. Am I right?" Sarah Jane asked.
"That's it in a nutshell. She'll have to be off of the planet before this happens though or she'll be killed. She'll have to make a fast getaway in her TARDIS first. Like I said though, I'm sure she isn't anywhere close to finishing things yet. What we need to do is sneak out there and rescue the Doctor from her before she finds out that we're here. Then we can destroy the Time Brain before she ever gets a chance to use it," Rani said.
"Sounds like a plan. Let's go," Sarah Jane said.
"Let me take us out of here first though," Rani said.
Rani dematerialized her TARDIS from inside the Rani's TARDIS, and then quickly materialized it once again outside on stealth mode so that it made no noise and was invisible. Rani and Sarah Jane then silently left it and slowly made their way behind the Rani.
She appeared to be completely oblivious to their presence as she worked at the controls of the machine that she was using to create her Time Brain. Rani quickly came up with a plan that she hoped would work.
Sarah Jane, create a distraction so that I can hit her from behind. Rani said in Sarah Jane's mind surprising her.
So you're telepathic too like the Doctor. I imagine all of his people must be though. Alright. If you want a distraction, I'll give it to you. Sarah Jane said with a wink.
Sarah Jane quickly ran into the Rani's line of sight and stuck her tongue out at her as she said, "It looks like I made it here after all. Nyah! Nyah!"
"What? This time I will kill you, girl!" the Rani said.
Sarah Jane started to run from her, and the Rani was so intent on capturing her that she never noticed Rani coming up behind her. Rani punched her in the back of the head stunning her, and then she sent her crashing to the ground by flipping her over her head with a Venusian Aikido move that she had once learned from her friend Selene. The Rani was knocked out cold in a matter of seconds.
"Nyah! Nyah!?" Rani asked Sarah Jane.
"There's no point to being grown-up if you can't be a little childish sometimes," Sarah Jane quoted.
"I wonder who you got that from," Rani said with a sigh.
"A good friend who I hope is going to be okay," Sarah Jane said.
"Watch her while I disconnect him," Rani said before she quickly unhooked the Doctor from the machine.
After the Doctor came back to his senses, he looked at the large brain in front of him for a minute before he said, "Oh, it's the Time Manipulator plot again, is it? Well, I can't give her much credit for imagination. I wonder how many times she's going to try carrying out this plan before she realizes that it doesn't work."
"A lot I assume," Rani said.
"Excuse me, but you seem so familiar to me. I'm getting on in years you know so maybe I've simply forgotten you. I am 750 after all so I'm probably way past due a little memory loss. Do we know each other?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes, we do, and you shouldn't have forgotten me unless you've had major memory loss which I doubt. Something strange is going on here. Something I don't quite understand yet. I hope that someday I will though," Rani said.
"Wait a minute. Annika?" the Doctor asked as he studied her for a few minutes.
"You remember?" Rani asked.
"Yes, of course I do. I just didn't recognize you. It's as if you're somehow hiding your identity from me. I couldn't see you for who you really are until I really concentrated on it. It's just like a perception filter. You're just like a walking, talking perception filter!" the Doctor said happily.
"How could that happen? I've started developing these new powers lately, but I've never heard of any Time Lord with a power like that before," Rani said in a disturbed voice.
"I'm glad that you've finally come out of hiding wherever you went to all of those centuries ago, Annika. I suppose though from the way that you're acting that you're from my own future, and I'm not supposed to know about you yet. I hate having to suppress my memories. I have a feeling I've done a lot of it in my life because I simply get the most horrendous headaches from time to time," the Doctor said.
"Don't suppress them just yet. We still have to rescue any other people that the Rani captured like she did you and then destroy this oversized brain of hers," Rani said.
Once Rani and the Doctor found and disconnected all of the kidnapped geniuses from the Rani's machine, they destroyed the Time Brain and blew up the equipment that she used to make it. It seemed like everything was over with at last, but they were wrong.
"Doctor, Rani, she's gone!" Sarah Jane cried out just as they were finishing up their destruction of her equipment.
The two Time Lords raced back to where they had left the Rani to find that she had somehow escaped from the ropes that they had bound her in. Rani wasn't too surprised though. She didn't remember Marissa ever telling her that she had been caught at this point in her life. It was just time proceeding as it should apparently.
Rani took the Doctor and Sarah Jane back to where they came from in Leonardo's Workshop and then said her good byes. Even as the Doctor went into the TARDIS and blocked his memories of this day, Sarah Jane promised to tell no one about it as she waited to join him inside of it.
"I look forward to meeting you again, Rani. I bet we're going to have a lot of great fun together in the future. Good bye," Sarah Jane said as the two woman embraced.
"We will have fun. We're still having fun together. I . . . I love you, Sarah Jane. You're one of my best friends. Maybe I shouldn't have said that," Rani said.
Sarah Jane looked at her in shock for a moment and then she said with a warm smile, "No, you definitely should have said it. I'm glad that I make such an impact on you in the future. It's something to look forward to in my old age. Good bye, Rani."
"Good bye, Sarah Jane," Rani said as Sarah Jane got into the Doctor's TARDIS and shut the door behind her.
The Doctor's TARDIS dematerialized, and Rani returned to her TARDIS. She still didn't feel a sense of closure though. Something still felt wrong because the Rani had gotten away.
"Are we going back to get the others now?" Lady Jane asked.
"No, not yet. There's something that I have to check on first," Rani said as she went to the console.
"What's left to check on? You defeated the bad guy, and they're gone now. I'd say that's a job well done. I have such a cool mum!" Henry said proudly.
"Thanks! I just have a bad feeling though. I don't think she's done yet," Rani said.
"You think that she'll try something else?" Lady Jane asked.
"No, I think she'll try the exact same thing over and over again until she finally gets it right. That's the problem," Rani answered.
All of this should have been over with, but she could feel that it wasn't. She knew Ushas too well. She knew that she would just keep trying to carry out this plan of hers until she succeeded. She had to find out when that would be and be there when and if she rescued Kali's body.
She checked her TARDIS' memory banks and discovered that the Rani had actually gotten the Time Manipulator to almost work on the planet Lakertya only to be stopped by the Seventh Doctor. She continued to check the memory until she found out that the Rani had finally gotten her plan to work after all, but she finally gave up on it for some unknown reason. The computer didn't say why. It was on Miasimia Goria again right before the Time War.
"Before I take everyone back home, I just have to make one last quick trip," Rani told the others before heading forward in time to the date recorded in the Matrix and put into her TARDIS' memory.
As soon as Rani arrived, she exited her TARDIS to find the Rani crying over the unmoving body of her sister. She slowly walked up to her, and the Rani turned toward her with a devastated look on her face.
"Did you already know that this would happen back when I tried this the first time?" the Rani asked her.
"Yes, I couldn't tell you though. The Laws of Time and all of that," Rani said.
"Can you tell me now? Where is her mind? Why doesn't she have her mind?" the Rani asked in tears.
"I can't tell you, no. All I can say is that not everything was as it appeared to be on the day that she died," Rani said.
"She escaped! She put her mind inside of someone else's, didn't she? She's still alive!" the Rani cried out in joy.
"Yes. I'm afraid that I can't tell you any more than that though. I'll take her body with me now," Rani said in a soft voice.
"Will you make sure that she gets it? Please don't let everything that I did be for nothing. Promise me that you'll take it to her," the Rani said.
"I'll try," Rani said.
"Thank you. I don't know who you are but thank you!" the Rani said.
"I'm a friend or at least I will be," Rani said.
"Now that sounds a little hard to believe. Then again I suppose anything is possible," the Rani said as she gave her a small smile.
"You have no idea," Rani said as she dragged Kali's body into her own TARDIS and quickly dematerialized before the Rani changed her mind about letting her go.
"Is she dead?" Gita asked as Rani placed Kali's body in the corner of the Console Room.
"No. Physically she's perfectly fine. Her problem is that she's mindless. At least for now. I'm about to change that I hope," Rani said.
"Is that Kali's body?" Henry asked.
"Yes, it is. Now I just have to find Kali somehow and tell her about it. I'm not even sure that she'll want it back now that she has another body, but I'll have to try. She did say that she didn't want to work for the Black Guardian after all, and she won't have to if she no longer owes her anything. Besides, I made a promise," Rani said.
Rani materialized her TARDIS back on Iceworld to pick up the older Sarah Jane and the others that she had left there. As Sarah Jane looked at the body lying on the floor and saw Rani's parents in the TARDIS with her, she said, "Tell me, have you been to Leonardo's Workshop yet?"
"Yes, I have. You knew who I was all along, didn't you? From the first day you met me," Rani asked.
"Yes, I did. You don't know how many times I've wanted to tell you the whole story but I couldn't. I recognized you and your parents right away. I could never understand why you were human though until recently. It's so good to be able to talk to you about everything at last," Sarah Jane said as she embraced Rani.
Then the two of them turned as they heard a loud clearing of the throat behind them. Gita was giving Sarah Jane the evil eye, and Rani knew there was going to be trouble.
"Sarah Jane, we have to talk," Gita said.
Next: Sarah Jane and Rani's parents have a little 'discussion' about what she and Rani have been up to together all of these years. Also what is the deal with Rani's new powers? Meanwhile Luke and Maria start to reestablish their friendship even as the others start wondering if maybe that friendship has become something more. Plus Rani tries to contact Kali about taking her original body back. What will her response be?
