CHAPTER 34

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THE FURY OF RASSILON

The Doctor and The Master had now both been driven to their knees in pain before Rassilon who was smiling at them with malicious glee as he continued to ruthlessly attack them. Just when it seemed as if they were both about to die though, the completely helpless Time Lords were surrounded by a force field that suddenly kept the power of Rassilon's gauntlet from even reaching them.

As soon as the beam from the gauntlet stopped hitting them, the two of them instantly fell to the ground unconscious despite their mysterious benefactor's protection. A moment longer and they would have both been completely disintegrated just as so many other Time Lords who had defied Rassilon had been before them.

Rassilon's face now immediately twisted with fury as he bombarded the force field with one blast after another, but couldn't even make a scratch in it. A howl of rage instantly escaped from his throat at the thought of his vengeance being stolen from him right as he had been on the cusp of victory.

He now glared at the crew of the TARDIS as he said in a voice dripping with venom, "One of you is protecting them. Don't think that you can hide from me. I will find you sooner or later, and when I do I will turn you to dust right before I crush these two traitors like the vermin that they are."

"Who's hiding? I just wanted to see your reaction first before I took the credit. I have to admit that it's been very satisfying so far. You really are a complete loon aren't you?" Christina said with a huge grin of amusement as she suddenly stepped forward with a white glow surrounding her entire body.

Rassilon looked her up and down with an appraising eye before he smiled and said, "Interesting. So you're what passes for a Guardian of Time these days? You may have all of the power of a Guardian but not their wisdom or judgment. At your core, you're still an insignificant human and just as worthless as all of your race. You should have at least tried hiding from me. You may have lived longer that way. Soon you will die and the two renegades that you're trying to protect will quickly join you despite your efforts to save them."

"Oh, I don't think so. I think that you're going to find that I'm full of surprises. No one's seen what I can really do yet after all not even my closest friends. You're going to be the first one to find out. Doesn't that just make you feel oh so special? By the way, quit staring at me like that. I usually enjoy a good bit of flirting, but nowadays I'm in a serious relationship. Even if I wasn't, I still wouldn't want someone like you slobbering all over me. I'm simply not interested at all in insane psychopaths with delusions of godhood no matter how handsome that they are. I leave that sort of thing to Jenny. Sorry, Jen. I just couldn't resist," Christina said with a smug grin.

"Do you think that this is a game, human, because I can definitely assure you that it is not? Let me show you exactly how serious that I really am," Rassilon said as he aimed his glove at Christina with a smile of anticipation on his face and fired a massive burst of energy at her with it.

Enough energy to destroy even a Time Lord instantly coursed through Christina's body all at once as she struggled to stay alive against this merciless onslaught. She quickly began to grit her teeth together as massive pain tore through her insides and made her feel as if they were being completely shredded. For all that she knew they were and the thought of that was already threatening to make her panic and lose control of herself.

She had to ignore that feeling though and overcome it or she and her friends were all going to wind up dead.

"Not so filled with arrogance now are you?" Rassilon said with mocking laughter as Christina finally cried out in pain despite trying her hardest not to show it to her tormentor.

"Oh, I – I'm arrogant, huh? T - Takes one to know one, Rassy," Christina said as she slowly moved forward despite feeling as though she were going to pass out.

"Why are all of you just standing around? Someone needs to help her. She's starting to look transparent. I can see right through her. Mum, please!" Jenny said in an emotional tone as she watched this in despair.

The others all looked to Clara now for a response because she had silently told several of them to stay out of the fight as soon as Rassilon had attacked Christina. They all trusted her judgment which was why they had let Christina handle Rassilon alone, but now Clara could see that they were clearly starting to regret those actions and wanted to help just as badly as Jenny did.

They had absolutely no idea just how dangerous Rassilon was now though. His gauntlet had been forged in the Time War to make him the equal of the Dalek Emperor himself and therefore by definition was one of the most powerful objects in the universe. It may have even been on par with the Key to Time itself in terms of space-time manipulation. Even Rose wouldn't stand a chance against him since she still hadn't even come close to mastering her full power yet. Clara wasn't even sure that she could stop him or not at least not without risking altering the timeline far too much.

Christina as a Guardian was the only one of them who really stood a chance of surviving against him despite how things seemed at the moment.

"Christina's a lot tougher than she looks, Jen. Trust me," Clara said even as the others looked at her as if she were mad.

Rassilon now noticed her for the first time as he said with a sickened look on his face, "A TARDIS-human hybrid? You are an abomination and so is that child that you're holding. As far as I am concerned, the offspring of a Time Lord and a TARDIS is strictly forbidden because your kind cannot and should not be allowed to pollute the gene pool of Gallifrey. You are our servants not our equals despite the high status that later Lord Presidents have given to you. I will not allow your child to further contaminate the society that I have worked so long and hard to build. As soon as I finish with this miserable excuse for a Guardian, then both he and you will be destroyed along with your precious Doctor."

As Rassilon threatened her son, Clara instantly felt a murderous near uncontrollable rage come over her and might have attacked Rassilon herself in the very next moment despite how dangerous that it was if Christina suddenly hadn't seemed to gain a second wind out of nowhere. She instantly started to drive Rassilon's blast back with one outstretched hand as the pure unbridled rage on her face spoke volumes.

"You're not going to harm one hair on that child's head! Do you understand me? YOU. STAY. AWAY. FROM. HIM!" Christina screamed as she deflected Rassilon's attack right back at him.

Clara smiled because this was the other reason that she had wanted Christina to tackle Rassilon alone. She had known for some time now that today was supposed to be a pivotal turning point in her friend's life. The day that she finally stopped holding back because she was afraid of how the others would react to her power and achieved her full potential at last.

Now that she had finally done so, Clara's fears of unnecessarily altering the timeline were completely gone at last. She finally felt free to allow herself or the others to jump in to help Christina at any time now.

Although judging from the screams that Rassilon was currently giving off, it didn't seem as if she really needed it.

Rassilon was now the one to be driven to his knees by Christina as she used his own power against him. For the first time now, Rassilon could see that Christina was more than worthy of the power that had been given to her, and he knew with an overwhelming feeling of dread that he had just made a huge and potentially fatal mistake in underestimating her.

"It's all over now, Rassilon. I can see now that you're far too dangerous for me to just imprison you somewhere. I don't want to kill you but I – I really don't have any other choice," Christina said in an upset voice.

That was when Rassilon started to smile and said in a weak voice, "Oh, but there's always another choice, Guardian. Surely the Doctor taught you that since he believes in it so firmly. In this case, the other choice is for you to die instead of me."

He suddenly shut the power to his gauntlet off and pulled a segment of the Key to Time out of his pocket instead. Before Christina could even make a move to defend herself, she was instantly knocked out cold by a blast of energy from the segment that took her completely by surprise.

Rassilon laughed in triumph as he noticed that the force field surrounding the Doctor and the Master also disappeared at the very same time.

Now in the blink of an eye, Rassilon quickly stood over the unconscious Christina with a smug smile on his face as he said, "You're still not a true Guardian, human, no matter how powerful that you are, and so I was able to use the Guardians' own technology in order to stop you. It's finally over with now at last. You fought a noble battle but you were always destined to lose in the end to the true master of space and time. I am Rassilon and not even the Guardians can dare to defy me with impunity!"

Rassilon lowered his gauntlet towards the defenseless Christina now with a malicious chuckle while it started to glow with power once more. Clara knew that he was just moments away from completely wiping her out now.

That was when she knew that she couldn't stay on the sidelines any longer no matter how dangerous it might be.

Clara handed David to Oswin then as she said in an emotional voice, "Oswin, if – if I don't make it, I want you to . . ."

"Oh, no you don't! You're coming back from this, Clara Oswald, and you're raising that child yourself. Do I make myself perfectly clear, TARDIS Girl?" Oswin said in a defiant tone.

Clara smiled and said, "Crystal. I'll be back for my son, Oswin. That's a promise. Try not to spoil him too much in the meantime."

Oswin grinned with undisguised relief at Clara's display of confidence as she said, "I can promise nothing. I am the fun aunt after all or at least I will be anyway. It's what I do."

Clara smiled at her one last time and then turned to face Rassilon with a determined look on her face. Rassilon seemed to be far from worried about her however as he casually stood there and waited for her to approach him as if he didn't have a care in the world.

"Do you want your own turn against me now, TARDIS? Is that it? I can sense great power in you but not even you are a match for the greatest Time Lord who ever lived. Face me and you'll die right along with your friend here," Rassilon warned as his gauntlet grew brighter and brighter by the moment.

"Why is Mr. Big Mouth there hesitating? Why isn't he attacking yet if he's powerful as he claims?" Donna wondered out loud as she watched Rassilon and Clara confronting one another with a look of clear confusion on her face.

"I'm not sure. It was almost as if Christina did something to his gauntlet by forcing his own blast back at him," Jenny noted.

"Yeah, it's like she overloaded it or something, and it's taking this long to recover from it," Donna said.

"Then Mum should attack now while she still can," Jenny said as she started to yell to Clara to do exactly that.

Clara had already realized this by herself however and had just started to assault Rassilon with a massive burst of Vortex energy. Rassilon was far from finished however because he immediately used the segment of the Key that he had to form a protective force field around himself that kept him completely safe from her attacks.

No matter what Clara did she couldn't break through that shield which instantly caused Rassilon to start laughing at her in triumph as he said, "Your friend thought that she was being so clever in deflecting the power of the gauntlet back at it, didn't she? What she didn't know was that the gauntlet can't be affected by its own energy that way because the energy that I use to power it is the very same energy that it gives out: the raw, unfettered energy of the life force of another living being. Specifically my life force because it is eternal due to the fact that I have unlimited regenerations. All she did was manage to temporarily overload the gauntlet nothing more. Luckily I always bring a back-up weapon with me to every battle, and in this case it was the segment. You can't win, TARDIS. The segment will continue to hold you at bay until the gauntlet is back to normal once more, and then you will all die. There's nothing that you can do to stop that now. Absolutely nothing."

"Maybe she can't do anything by herself, but with a little help she may just be able to pull it off, yeah?" Rose said as she rushed to Clara's side.

The two women now used their incredible power, the power of the TARDIS and the Bad Wolf, in unison to hammer away at the force field created by the segment with such force that even it started to shatter and crack now. Rassilon suddenly started looking completely terrified as he began to realize that his gauntlet might not finish repairing itself in time before his shield finally gave out.

He would have been even more terrified if he had known what Yvonne was up to at that moment. She had just come up with what she hoped was a foolproof way of stopping him.

All she had to do now was wait for the right moment to use it.

As Rassilon's shield finally started to shatter, she knew that that moment had finally come at last. That was when she aimed the gun that had previously fired the same type of energy that Torchwood had once used to force open a crack in reality at Rassilon's gauntlet and opened fire on it. Yvonne was then able to fire the beam right through one of the growing cracks in the shield with perfect accuracy.

The gauntlet instantly stopped glowing once again and this time it even started to smoke as Yvonne suddenly slumped forward. John instantly caught her before she could hit the floor face first as she stared up at him with a weak smile.

"No!" Rassilon shouted in fury as he desperately tried to fix his gauntlet before his shield went down completely.

John meanwhile looked at the extremely weak Yvonne in surprise as he said, "What did you do?"

"Hopefully I just returned the huge debt that I owed you and Rose, John," Yvonne said in a steadily weakening voice.

"That's not an answer, Yvonne. Tell me what's happening so that I can help you. Hurry before it's too late," John said anxiously as he felt her pulse rapidly weakening.

"Rassilon said that his own life force powered the gauntlet, but Christina deflecting too much of that life force at it at once overloaded it. So I reasoned that if a person's entire life force was directed at it at once then it might be enough to disable or destroy it completely. So I quickly modified my gun to use my own life force as an energy source. Luckily the Cybermen had studied that type of technology before after capturing plans of it from the Time Lords, and I still had their knowledge of it," Yvonne said with a triumphant smile.

John now looked at her with clear regret as he said, "We never wanted you to die in order to settle some kind of imaginary debt with us, Yvonne. That was never what either of us wanted. Rose wanted you to live and have a new life. She never wanted this."

Yvonne smiled weakly as she whispered, "I know. I didn't want Clara or her son to die at the hands of that madman though. I'd say that they were worth my life, John. You tell them that afterwards. Tell them that I died trying to do the right thing for once."

"I will. I am so sorry, Yvonne," John said in a sad voice.

Yvonne gave him one last smile and then she closed her eyes and immediately sank into a deep coma. John held her hand now as he felt her pulse growing steadily weaker and weaker by the moment.

Rassilon meanwhile remained stubbornly defiant despite the segment's force field being about to give way at any moment and the gauntlet starting to burn out from within. He still refused to give in as he desperately tinkered away on the gauntlet in the slim hope of somehow repairing it in time.

Even as the shield finally buckled and gave way at last before Clara and Rose's combined assault, Rassilon suddenly gave out a cry of triumph as the gauntlet started working once again. It was still smoking even as it started to glow once more, but Clara and Rose both hesitated to go against it because they knew that even with it obviously damaged that it was still as dangerous as ever.

"Now it's time for both of you to die. You played the odds and still came up short I'm afraid. This is the game of Rassilon you see. It always was and you have lost. Say good bye, humans," Rassilon said as he pointed his gauntlet at the two woman with a look of pure joy on his face.

Suddenly the Doctor's voice shouted, "Oi, Rassilon! If a human's life force almost destroyed your little toy, then what about the life force of a Time Lord?"

"Or better yet the life forces of two Time Lords?" The Master added.

That was when both Time Lords started to regenerate at the same time and poured the entire life force of one of their lives into the gauntlet at the exact same time. The gauntlet immediately exploded in Rassilon's face as a result killing him instantly!

He had died so quickly that there wasn't even time for him to regenerate.

The Doctor and The Master however did both regenerate. As both men screamed in agony, their forms instantly shimmered and changed while they became someone new.

"Doctor, are you okay?" Clara asked as the glow surrounding the Doctor faded and a white-haired old man now stood there with an angry look on his face.

"What sort of a stupid question is that? I just regenerated because I was killed by Rassilon. Of course I'm not okay. Really, Clara! Sometimes humans ask the most ridiculous questions," The new Doctor said with a frown.

Clara smiled and kissed him as she said, "Yeah, you're okay. You're ranting away already."

Jenny meanwhile was still waiting to see if the Master was alright or not because he was lying motionless on the ground with his face completely hidden away from her. She wasn't sure if the regeneration had been successful or not, and it was already starting to terrify her.

"Koschei? Koschei, say something!" Jenny demanded as she gently shook the unmoving Time Lord.

"I can't say anything nice that's for sure so I thought I wouldn't say anything at all. I feel like I was just run over by one of the humans' trains," The Master said as he finally got back on his feet and groaned.

Jenny smiled as she saw that the new Master was a younger man around her own age and a foot taller than her with short spiky looking brown hair whose eyes were filled with kindness. In effect, he had made himself look exactly like the description that she had once given him of her ideal man.

"When I told you about my dream man, I didn't mean for you to actually become him," Jenny said with a chuckle as she kissed him.

"I was dying and I couldn't think of anything else. It just sort of popped in there," The Master admitted.

"Really? You mean you didn't make yourself look like this so that you'd appeal more to me?" Jenny said with a knowing smile.

"No, of course not. That had nothing to do with it whatsoever," The Master protested.

"Right," Jenny said with a warm smile as she gave him a long passionate kiss.

This time the Master didn't protest quite so much . . . about anything period.

A smiling and extremely relieved Oswin meanwhile had started to give David back to Clara before she was stopped by the Doctor. He took the baby instead as Clara looked at him in surprise. She was sure from what she had seen of his future that this new Doctor was going to be far too cold and aloof to ever want to hold the baby.

"What is it? Why do you keep staring at me like that with those extra wide eyes of yours?" The Doctor practically barked at her even as he slowly stroked the top of the baby's head.

"Nothing. Nothing at all," Clara said happily as she watched this seemingly unconscious display of affection.

This new Doctor might be entirely different from the old one, but somewhere deep down he remembered the fear of his previous self. He remembered being afraid of becoming unable to love his son. Luckily he had just proven himself to be totally and absolutely wrong on that score whether he realized it or not.

This happy moment was soon brought to an end though by John suddenly saying, "Yvonne's dead."

"That may be so but she won't be for long. I can promise you that," A newly conscious Christina said as she joined John in looking down at Yvonne.

"You can actually do that?" Donna asked in disbelief as Christina's hands started to glow while she laid them on top of Yvonne's body.

Christina smiled as she said, "Yeah, if a person hasn't been dead for too long and bringing them back won't undo a fixed moment in time. Luckily Yvonne wasn't supposed to die this way."

"Why didn't you just leave me alone? Why couldn't my life have finally had some kind of meaning?" Yvonne said as she suddenly returned to life with a sad look on her face.

Clara frowned at her as she said, "It does have meaning, Yvonne. You're making up for what you did by helping people. You definitely helped us defeat Rassilon by what you noticed about him. If it hadn't been for you, we might all be dead right now. I can't think of a better way to live your life than that: as a hero."

"I'm no hero. I'm the farthest thing there is from a hero," Yvonne protested.

"Maybe not yet but you will be," Clara promised with a warm smile.

"Well, I suppose now that I've had to die after defeating Rassilon again that I can finally go back to the TARDIS. Now that Gallifrey's back again, I suddenly remember why I didn't want to be here in the first place," The Doctor said as he looked down at the dead body of Rassilon with disdain while containing to softly stroke David's head.

"Not so fast, Doctor. There's still the matter of the Presidency to deal with," A member of the High Council of the Time Lords said as she came up to him with an expectant look on her face.

"And what is the problem exactly, Chancellor Flavia? Rassilon's dead so just vote for another Lord President. Even you lot can't possibly screw that up. It is fairly simple after all. Then again you are the High Council so . . ." The Doctor said with a condescending look.

"Actually we already have a solution, Doctor," Flavia said as she interrupted him.

"Yes? And that is?" The Doctor asked with a noticeable lack of interest.

"The High Council has unanimously made you the new Lord President because of your role in finding and saving Gallifrey. This time we won't take no for an answer either, Doctor. You won't be allowed to escape in your TARDIS this time as you did from your Presidential duties once before," Flavia said in a stern voice.

The Doctor practically looked like he was going to literally bite her head off as he let loose such a string of Gallifreyan curse words that Flavia instantly went pale upon hearing them. She had never heard such language in her life before!

"Doctor, language! Good thing for you the baby can't understand you yet!" Clara shouted at him with a disapproving look.

The Doctor instantly looked ashamed which made Clara immediately smile at him and kiss him. This new Doctor was definitely going to be a handful, but she knew that when it came to his son at least that his hearts were still in the right places.

As for this whole Presidency thing, Flavia and the others might just find out the hard way whether they could prevent the Doctor from escaping in his TARDIS or not Clara thought to herself with a mischievous smile.

Next: Will the Doctor actually have to become Lord President or will he find a way out of it? If it's not going to be the Doctor, then who will take his place? The answers to these questions will all be revealed next time as Gallifrey heads into a brand new future.