Lasky's Nebula, 3847
"In the early twenty-first century," the Doctor explained to the assembled group of IPSA members, which now included Freddy and Marya and a large number of others, in a rather big room that he'd been led to, a little ways down the corridor from the teleport bay, "an immoral yet innovative group called 'the Initiative' created a monster — a cybernetic demonoid, with no conscience or sense of morality. Adam."
"What's this got to do with anything?" asked Wendy. "You said something about Earth being destroyed! What's going on with Earth?"
"I'm getting to that!" the Doctor insisted. "Now, this Adam was fought and then defeated, after which he was sealed up inside the ruins of the Initiative, and forgotten. Then the Sunnydale rift collapsed, leaving behind a few temporal blurps and bubbles. Adam's body must have fallen into one of these bubbles, preserving him perfectly through the ages and protecting his mechanical circuits from the electromagnetic storm."
"We don't care about this stuff!" shouted a Slayer from the crowd. "Just tell us what's happening on Earth!"
"What's happening on Earth is that you Slayers have been digging up Sunnydale," the Doctor replied. "Your archaeological team uncovered this self-same Adam, thought he'd help your war effort, and reanimated him. Adam killed Deborah Raykins and any other Slayers on Earth, reanimated them as conscience-less monsters to serve his own purposes, and is currently using them to help him slaughter the human race."
A hush fell across the Slayers, as they all processed what this meant. They all looked at one another, horror in their eyes, and a tremor in their hands.
"New Vankerfeld," said Laura. "You said it was... I mean, my parents... are they...?"
"I don't know," said the Doctor. "I'm sorry."
"What about New Boston?" shouted a Slayer from the crowd.
"And Haikopotrampo?" another shouted.
The Slayers all began shouting out at the Doctor, all at once, inquiring about friends, families, and loved ones left behind on Earth. Their every word was filled with guilt and heartache and concern, their voices flooding the air with a deluge of grief.
Marya banged her fist against the metal wall. "That's enough!" she shouted. "Yes, we're all worried about Earth. Yes, many of us came from there. But there's still a war going on out here! The moment our defensive line makes one mistake, every person on every planet in the Galactic Federation will be exterminated!"
"But... but if this Adam was dug up in Somelydaya," one of the girls from the crowd piped in, "that... that means... the Doctor's right. We did this. What happened to the Earth was our faults."
Another worried murmur spread through the crowd, as the girls became increasingly agitated and upset.
"We all knew this was a risk!" Marya shouted, her voice making the girls fall silent once more. "The Korjensky Officials were all aware that something like this might happen, but against an enemy like the Daleks—"
"Korjensky knew that this could happen?" Wendy cried.
Marya remained stone-faced and rigid. "We had to do it!" she insisted. "With the high number of casualties that have occurred in the last year—"
"Oh, God, we're losing, aren't we?" Jordan asked. "That's what Korjensky isn't telling us! That's why we've been doing these completely desperate—"
"We are not losing!" Marya shouted.
"Well, no, of course not. You're just running out of money," the Doctor said. "You Korjensky Officials have begun to realize that your war against the Daleks is going to last forever, and you're not sure you can afford it."
Marya faltered.
A murmur went up through the crowd.
"If you had the first idea," Marya said to the Doctor, her fists clenched by her sides and her eyes cold and biting, "just how difficult it is to fight against the Daleks — for a hundred and fifty years! — you'd know that we have to—"
"Oh, I know the Daleks all too well," said the Doctor. "Completely indestructible, completely ruthless, extraordinarily clever, and determined to wipe out every other creature in the cosmos. Problem is, Adam's exactly the same. Where you had one group of unstoppable bio-mechanoids to defeat, Officer June T. Marya, you now have two."
"We destroyed Earth," Ashley whispered. "All those people. All those deaths." She shook her head. "How could this have happened? How could we not have known?"
"That's enough!" shouted Marya, before the others could get started, again. "Yes, we've accidentally unleashed a force that's ravaged the Earth. And, no, none of us are happy about that. But IPSA is still strong! And while IPSA's strong, we can overcome anything!"
The girls in the room all stood to attention.
"We are...!" shouted Marya.
"The Chosen Ones!" the girls shouted back.
"And we fight...!"
"Against the forces of darkness!" the girls chorused, their voices proud, determined, brave.
"To bring...!"
"Peace, unity, and harmony!" the girls shouted.
"And to kick Dalek ass!" added a girl at the back.
Everyone else cheered their agreement.
Freddy stepped forwards. "If thesse Sslayerss have losst family on Earth, we musst avenge them! I sshall call upon my clanssmen on Marss to aid uss. We musst fight for the honor of every Sslayer on Vanquisher 17!"
A far more excited cheer burst through the room.
The Doctor leaned back against the wall, crossing his legs in front of him. "Oh, you're in way over your heads," he said.
"We have spare forces we can summon back at Korjensky!" said Marya. "We will retaliate against this Adam, and—"
"You've been fighting the Daleks for 150 years," the Doctor cut in. "But you still have no idea what happens when Daleks feel desperate, do you?"
"We know everything there is to know about Daleks," Marya retorted. "IPSA's strategies and procedures are proven to ensure—"
"I'm a time traveler, Marya," said the Doctor. "And my first hint about the situation unfolding here in the 39th century was not from this time period. It was from the past. A good 1800 years ago, in the legendary lost town of Sunnydale, California. Wherein I encountered at least two different Dalek temporal teams."
A hush settled across the room.
"But..." said Ashley, "but... that's right around when... and where..."
The Doctor nodded at her to go on, but she didn't.
"Are the Dalekss aware that the Sslayer heritage ssprings from that time and place?" asked Freddy.
"Let's just say," the Doctor continued, "that I've had to rescue a certain One Girl In All The World from Dalek extermination at least once."
Silence lingered for several moments.
"The... the Daleks," Laura whispered. "They actually... tried to kill...?"
"Yes they did," the Doctor agreed. "The Daleks have invaded your past, IPSA, and if you're not careful, they'll wipe you out before you ever began."
Laura's face went pale.
"Oh, God, we totally screwed this up," muttered Jordan.
The rest of the Slayers all began murmuring to one another, as well, their voices showing — not just worry, but actual fear and panic, this time.
Even Marya, standing by the Ice Lord's side, seemed a little shaken. She quickly schooled her looks into the stern seriousness of a warrior determined to fight.
"I'll relay the information to Korjensky, but it's obvious what they'll say," Marya announced. "The Daleks have left us with no other option. We must find their time travel technology, and use it for ourselves. Bring the fight to the Daleks! Go back to Sunnydale, 2000, destroy the Dalek temporal teams, and..."
"No, no, no!" the Doctor shouted. "There should be no time travel in this situation whatsoever! And particularly not to the year 2000 — that's an unstable spot as is! The time-streams have already become polluted enough that temporal echoes from the 39th century are spilling into the year 2000. Psychedelic beer, monsters of suspicious shape and origin, all that sort! An attack on the scale you're proposing could have catastrophic side-effects!"
"We musst retaliate againsst the Dalekss," Freddy said. "It iss honorable."
"It'd be turning a minor spacial skirmish into a full-blown time war!" the Doctor told them. "Do you have the slightest idea what that means?"
"And what happens if we don't?" Jordan demanded of the Doctor. "Right now, the Daleks can just waltz right into our past, change anything they want, and we wouldn't have any idea!"
"They haven't—" the Doctor started.
"Jordan's right!" Trista said. "If we don't use time travel ourselves, we'll never be able to defend against these kinds of attacks! It's the only solution!"
"You can't—" the Doctor tried.
"Everyone keep calm!" Marya demanded. "We will discover some method of time travel, and we'll certainly invade the past to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. We simply need to find some way to get our hands on time travel technology..." She paused, then turned to the Doctor. "Hang on. Did you say you were a time traveler?"
The Doctor threw up his hands in frustration. "Are any of you listening to me? The Daleks have invaded your past, and, yes, you should be worried about that, but they haven't changed anything! What you're proposing, right now, would result in the complete destabilization of all of time and space, and the beginnings of another massive—"
Marya turned to the other Slayers, and snapped her fingers at them. A surge of women swarmed around the Doctor and restrained him, again.
The Doctor sighed. "I'm beginning to notice a reoccurring trend, here," he muttered.
Ashley shook her head, her amber strands of hair tumbling across her shoulders. "No, wait, wait, hang on," she said. "He's right. We can't do this."
"We must," Marya insisted. "This is war. If this Doctor has a time ship, then we will commandeer it and use it to construct others. We will destroy the Daleks from all of history — for the good of the Galactic Federation!"
"He's right, though!" Ashley insisted. "If we go back in time, we'd be starting a war across four dimensions, and we've got no idea how to fight that kind of battle! We've already completely screwed things up, just fighting in our normal three dimensions! If we add a fourth, and we could make things even worse!"
The Doctor gave Ashley a grin. "You're very clever; you know that?"
Ashley crossed her arms. "Why don't we just blow up the Daleks' time tech, instead of using it ourselves?"
"We musst maintain honor," Freddy said. "The Dalekss have sstruck at uss in the passt. We musst strike back in the ssame fasshion."
"Then you'll have to wait a very, very long time," said the Doctor. "Because I'm not going to let you have my time machine, any more than I'll let Adam have it."
"Legally, you are required to surrender any and all vehicles in your possession to IPSA upon demand!" snapped Marya, stalking towards him, her eyes blazing.
Ashley stepped between them. "Legally, he's been vouched for by a Code 5, and we can't touch him."
"He could still be a Dalek Replicant, Ash," said Jordan.
"Does he sound like a Replicant?" Ashley asked. "Does he act like a Replicant? I know Dalek Replicants can imitate their human counterparts almost flawlessly, but the one thing they never do is lecture about moral responsibility!"
"You're just going to trust an unknown alien who won't even give us his name?" asked Trista. "'The Doctor'? Doctor who?"
"He's been vouched for by an unknown Slayee McSlayer, who's not even Korjensky!" Jordan added. "Even if he's not a Replicant, we've still got no idea who he is, or who his friend is! So why are you agreeing with him?"
"Can't you feel it?" Ashley asked Jordan and the Slayers around her. "Every time I contemplate the possibility of actually going through with this, going back in time and spreading this conflict through four dimensions, it's like..." She shuddered.
Across the room, the other Slayers looked at one another, a little uneasily.
"My whole life, I've been trained to follow my instincts," Ashley said. "And right now, all my instincts are screaming at me that this is a bad idea."
"Ultimately, the decision is out of our hands," said Marya. "We'll keep the Doctor incarcerated until I can contact Korjensky and let the Officials make a decision."
"You should listen to Ashley, Officer Marya," the Doctor said, his voice calm and low. "Your Officials, back on Korjensky — most of them aren't Slayers themselves. It's still traditional in this era of history to have the Korjensky Officials be comprised of at least one representative from every planet the Slayer Institute is sworn to protect, yes?"
The bob of nodding heads showed the Doctor that his assumption had been spot on.
"And, of course," the Doctor continued, "the Korjensky president isn't a Slayer. That's been traditional from the very beginning, hasn't it?"
Once again, the nodding of heads.
"The other races can't feel it," said the Doctor. "Nor can the normal humans. But you can. You Slayers. You Chosen Ones, fighting back against the forces of darkness. You can feel it in your instincts." He gazed out at the sea of women. "Do you think this is a good idea?"
The women restraining the Doctor looked at one another, then let him go. A murmur went up through the crowd.
Laura stepped forwards. "Can I just... ask a question, really quick?" She pointed at the Doctor. "To him?"
Marya sighed, throwing her hands up in despair. "Why not? Everyone else has completely dropped all sense of order and procedure!"
"If this Adam's so dangerous, and the Daleks are so afraid of him, why didn't they go even further back into the past to prevent Adam from ever being created in the first place?" asked Laura.
The Doctor frowned. "That," he said, pointing at Laura, "is a very good question."
"Time travelling into the past to get rid of someone you met in the future?" Ashley made a face. "Yeah, that's another one of those completely-against-my-instincts things."
"Wouldn't it create a super-bad paradox that could destroy the universe?" asked Wendy. "Like — remember — in that movie — 'Vixolonqnards of Passion'?"
"It would," said the Doctor. "But knowing the Daleks, I'm not sure they'd care about that. It's never stopped them before."
A screen popped up above the Doctor's head, showing a very worried-looking Vivian. "Freddy, we're getting a really bizarre transmission coming in. From some... really weird monster-looking guys."
Marya nodded. "Secure the Doctor," she told the Slayers. "I'll deal with him later."
The Slayers nearby glanced at each other, a little uneasily, but still twisted the Doctor's arms behind his back, snapping a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.
Not securing him nearly as well as they had when they thought he was a real threat, then. Seems the Doctor was making progress. His mind began racing through different escape options, but Marya must have noticed the mischievous gleam in his eye, because she snapped her fingers at Jordan.
"Maloparsh," Marya demanded. "Cover him."
Jordan pulled out a gun and pointed it at the Doctor's head.
"I thought you weren't allowed to execute me," the Doctor said.
Jordan rolled her eyes. "Safety's still on," she muttered to him, quietly enough that Marya wouldn't hear. "See?" She pulled the trigger three times, and nothing happened.
Marya, in the meantime, had turned back to Vivian. "Send the transmission through."