Again, I am an evil author. (:C

The Red Lady wondered briefly if the Doctor was in a similar position with the Master in the parallel room. Then she remembered that Clara was standing right in front of her, holding her hand, wanting to…to…to…

"Clara, I'm…flattered, but we have got to get out of here." Red tried to get out of Clara's grasp.

"Oh, but there's no harm," Clara insisted, cupping the back of Red's neck with her hand, stroking the soft, sensitive skin where her long red hair grew. Red squirmed – but as much as she wasn't supposed to, she liked it. "We're totally fine here. Just you, and me…and this big comfy bed."

"Clara, what about your boyfriend?" Red gasped.

"Danny never has to know a thing," Clara said, staring into Red's eyes with her own, deep, brown, heavy-lidded ones. Her pupils were enlarged and Red could see her own nervous reflection in them. "Come on, Red Lady. Just one kiss?"

Red tried to put space between them, as Clara leaned forward to kiss her. Red gulped. "Clara, I'm really sorry about this – but." She slapped Clara's face.

Clara immediately snapped out of it. She looked at Red with furious brown eyes. "What the hell?!" She punctuated the last word with a return slap of her own.

"Sorry," said Red, touching her smarting cheek. "You were under some kind of influence. You were trying to…to…to…"

"To what?" Clara said.

Red's eyes flicked over to the bed pointedly.

Clara raised an eyebrow, followed her gaze, then blushed, understanding. "Oh. Sorry."

"Uh, it's…fine. It's all fine," Red said, her face flushed crimson. "Clara, you were basically dead. I saw the Abzorbaloff eat you!"

"I remember that," said Clara. "I remember it grabbing my ankle, me telling you to run, and then the next I knew, you were slapping my face." She kind of gave Red a glare.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Would you have preferred we molest each other?" Red sniped back.

Clara sighed. "No."

"Didn't think so. Besides, you slapped me way harder than I did you." Red suddenly gasped. "Wait! If you're here, then the Master must be alive too! Do you know where he is?"

"No idea. Like I said, I don't remember anything."

Red noticed that a door had appeared in the middle of the bisecting wall. "Come on. They're in here."

"Er, you really wanna walk in on that?" Clara said incredulously.

Red grimaced. "It's happened more times than I care to think about."

Sure enough, when Red entered the room, the Master indeed had the Doctor pinned to the bed and was kissing the life out of him. Apparently, the Doctor had decided to go with it.

"Oh God." Clara mimed barfing.

Red sighed. "Desperate times call for desperate measures." She pointed her fingers at them. Two sparks of static electricity flew through the air and hit the amorous Time Lords.

They yelped simultaneously and leapt up. The Master looked livid. "What the hell was that?!" Then he blinked and looked around. "Where am I? And why are my pants unzipped?"

The Doctor turned red.

"Never mind that now, Master. You're safe," Red said.

"Yeah, but what about my eyes?" Clara groused.

Red rolled her eyes at her. "Come on. Let's finish the last level and get the hell out of here." She led the way toward the exit.

Once they all had gone through the door, it shut behind them.

The Master looked up at the ceiling expectantly. "Well?" he said. "No snarky narration?"

But he was only met with silence.

The four looked at each other, mystified and a little spooked.

"I remembered what the last deadly sin is," Red piped up quietly.

"What's that?" the Doctor whispered.

Red swallowed. "Envy."

"So what are we facing?" the Doctor wondered aloud. "A green eyed monster?"

"Guess we're about to find out," Red said.

The door opened before the four of them.

The Red Lady, the Doctor, the Master, and Clara all looked at each other, nodded, and proceeded into darkness.

Bright spotlights came on in the dark room. The four travelers squinted at first, then their eyes adjusted. "We're back where we started," said the Master, looking around.

They were standing on the dirt-strewn floors of the arena they'd awoken in.

"My sonic's working again," said the Doctor, pulling out his screwdriver. He took a quick scan of the area. "Artificial gravity – we're in space…and nothing's being broadcast."

"But I thought this was a live reality show," said Clara. "Or least, that's what the Ringmaster made it sound like."

Suddenly, there was a mechanized noise, and around the room, the wall was open to reveal a picture window that formed a ring all around them, giving them a view of the outside - space.

"We're on a satellite," said the Master.

Red looked out. There was a burnt-out planet below them. "That's Earth," she recognized, with a twinge in her stomach. "Earth in the far future. After all the people have gone."

"I knew this place was familiar," the Doctor hissed, studying the stars. "This is Satellite Five. I was here before, with Rose Tyler. Last I saw, the Daleks had taken it over. But Rose destroyed them."

"That explains how the Ringmaster abducted us," the Master said.

The Doctor shook his head. "No. I've done work on it since then. It's everything-proof. The only thing could break into the TARDIS is me."

"Then how did we get taken?" Red questioned.

"I don't know," said the Doctor, again scanning with his screwdriver. "But this station is dead. We're floating over a lifeless Earth, broadcasting nothing. The only lifeforms in this whole place are us…and one other."

"The Ringmaster," Clara supplied.

"But where is he? And where's the challenge?" said Red, looking around.

Clara Oswald, came the Ringmaster's ringing voice from up above. You are exempt from the final ring. Please proceed inside the TARDIS. A floodlight came up on the comfortingly familiar blue box.

"Quick, everyone!" said the Master. "Inside!"

But suddenly cages sprang up out of the ground around the Doctor, the Master, and the Red Lady. Only Clara remained freed.

You've made it so far. Do you really want to give up now? asked the Ringmaster.

"Yes! We know we're not on television!" Red shouted. "The game is over!"

You're right. But the trial has only just begun.

Red lights shone down on the Doctor, the Master, and the Red Lady. Blown up projections of capital letter Ms on all three of them.

"What is this?" the Master demanded.

"It's a scarlet letter," said Red suddenly, in a flat tone of voice.

"What?"

"There's an Earth book, called The Scarlet Letter, by Nathanial Hawthorne. It's about a Puritan society that forces the impious to wear scarlet letters to display their sins to the world."

"So what's the M stand for?" Clara asked.

Red swallowed. "…'murderer'."

The room got very quiet.

Red looked upward. "So we're on trial, is that it?" she asked the disembodied voice. "We've paid for our sins, believe me. We are still paying for our sins. And I'm not letting some person hiding behind a curtain pass judgment on me when he won't even show me his face."

"I don't understand," said the Master. "Obviously the Doctor and I are guilty, and Miss Oswald is exempt because she's never killed a person. But Red Lady, why are you…"

Red looked at him in shame.

The Master's eyebrows knit in realization. "Oh," he said quietly.

"It was an accident," said Red bleakly. "I was…upset. And I lost control of my powers for a second. Wiped out a Dalek battalion…my fellow soldiers…and an entire village of innocent Gallifreyans."

"I remember hearing of that," said the Master, still in awe. "The Massacre of Westmorland, they called it. Two hundred killed in the Time War by raw archon energy. The High Council believed it was some kind of bomb the radicals had developed during the war effort. That was you?"

Red nodded silently.

"I didn't even know you were in the Time War," said the Doctor, his tone accusing. "You said you weren't allowed there."

Red swallowed. "It was an accident."

"You said you couldn't interfere."

"I didn't!" Red shouted. "I got stuck! I never wanted to hurt anyone!"

"You lied to me! You slaughtered those people!"

"Oh, you act like you're so high and mighty!" Red snapped tearfully. "You killed the entire Time Lord race!"

"I locked them away! What you did was reckless, mindless-!"

"You let him burn up on Sarn!" Red exclaimed, pointing at the Master. "And you let Adric die when you could have easily gone back and saved him from that exploding ship! I'm the one who saved their lives! And what about Adelaide Brooke? Or Astrid from the Titanic? People die because your mistakes all the time, so don't you dare get self-righteous with me when we both have committed atrocities beyond mentioning!"

"That is enough, stop it!" Clara shouted at the both of them. "Don't you see what the Ringmaster's doing to us? He's turning us against each other! We need to stay united against him."

I'm not the villain here, Miss Oswald, said the Ringmaster from on high. As you can see, these three are the ones who are the real monsters. The Doctor and the Red Lady, career meddlers with affairs they have no business being involved with, which usually gets innocents killed. And the Master has gleefully murdered countless for his purposes.

"It's true, I have," said the Master, uncaringly.

"You know what I think?" said the Red Lady. "I think this Ringmaster is just a man. A man who's somehow envious of us. He's set up these sadistic games to torture us and take the TARDIS for himself. But he didn't realize that while we were distracting him with our arguing, the Doctor's been comprising the metal of his cage the entire time."

"And now I'm free!" said the Doctor, kicking his door open.

What? No!

"You think you're so slick," said the Red Lady, as the Doctor let her out of her cage. "But the truth is, we're smarter than you. We're stronger than you. And we're probably better looking too. Whoever, whatever you are – you can never win." Red came out of her cage and took Clara's hand. "Come on, Clara. Let's get out of here."

The Ringmaster growled. Well, Doctor. It seems you've bested me again. But I can take one last thing from you.

Suddenly, the ground split under the Master's feet, and the fissure it left emitted a bright white light.

The Doctor gasped. "No!"

The tendrils of light grabbed on to the Master. "Doctor!" the Time Lord cried. He was sucked into the crack and vanished.

"NO!"

"What the hell was that?" said Red, aghast.

"Get to the TARDIS, quickly!" the Doctor shouted.

The three of them raced inside. The Doctor locked the doors behind them and began madly flipping switches on the console. The TARDIS was sent in the Vortex. "What was that glowy thing?!" Red exclaimed.

"Cracks in the universe!" the Doctor yelled. "They were supposed to be closed, but the Ringmaster must've found a way to open them again! Now the Master's been erased from existence!"

"Who's the Master?" asked Clara, her head cocking to the side.

"Clara, no! It's starting!" The Doctor rushed over to her and shook her by the shoulders. "Think hard!" he ordered. "You can't let yourself forget him. THINK!"

"Think about what?" the Red Lady said in confusion.

"Red, not you too! You can't forget. Please, try to remember…" The Doctor hesitated, not quite sure what he was talking about. "Remember…"

"Remember what, Doctor?" Clara prompted.

"Ko…" The Doctor trailed off. It was on the tip of his tongue, but the memory faded quickly. "Huh. I don't know." The Doctor shrugged. "Hm! Oh well. Come on, girls. Let's get some ice cream. I know the best parlor in the universe."

"Yes please!" Red and Clara said in unison, grinning.

The Doctor smiled, setting the coordinates.