CHAPTER 36

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WHO KNEW THEY COULD DO THAT?

"Hurry up! They're about to catch up to us!" Penny Harkness, the wife of Jack and a companion of Rose Tyler's, shouted to her grandmother, Emma, who was also a frequent companion of Rose's.

Emma Miller was actually a couple of years younger than Penny, who was in her mid 20s, so all of this running wasn't bothering her as much you might imagine. Emma had been brought forward in time after Rose had saved her from dying at the hands of an alien madman like she was originally supposed to. Now she lived in the present day and frequently shared these trips through time and space with her granddaughter and Rose.

This was one of those days that she sometimes wished that Rose had just left her in the past.

"What are you worried about? You're just as immortal as Jack. You can't die anyway," Emma said as she struggled to catch up to Penny.

"That's the problem. They'll only kill you once. They'll just keep killing me over and over again just for the fun of it," Penny said as she ran for her life.

"Why don't you just leave me here for them so that you can escape then since you're so worried about it?" Emma said sarcastically.

"Oh, be quiet. You know I'd rather die a thousand times than to lose you. It would be just my luck for that to actually happen too," Penny said.

Then they both had to come to a complete stop as they ran into a dead end. They were trapped in a back alley and now had to finally face their pursuers head on at last whether they wanted to or not.

"This is it. Get behind me," Penny said as she stood protectively in front of Emma.

"YOU WILL TELL US WHERE TO FIND THE ONE KNOWN AS JENNY TYLER OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!" One of the four Daleks that had been chasing them shouted.

"I have no idea. I barely know her. Right now I'd just settle for finding Rose Tyler. In fact, I'd really, really like to find her right about now," Penny said in a loud voice.

"Are you hoping that if you yell loud enough that she'll hear you and come rescue us?" Emma asked knowingly.

Penny gave her a small smile as she said, "It doesn't hurt to try. Does it?"

"No, it certainly doesn't," the voice of Rose Tyler said.

"ALERT! ALERT! VORTEX ENERGY DETECTED IN THE IMMEDIATE AREA. IT COULD BE THE TARGET," One of the Daleks shouted.

Penny turned to see Rose standing there waving at her and sighed with relief as she said in a fake tone of agitation, "I knew it! You really are watching me all the time, aren't you?"

"No, of course not. I was actually tracking down these very Daleks. I have been ever since the TARDIS detected them coming to Earth. Wasn't I, Doctor?" Rose said.

"We both were actually. Well, us and a few of our friends," the Doctor said as he suddenly appeared behind the Daleks pointing his sonic screwdriver straight at them.

He was quickly joined by Clara, Shareen, Mikaela, and Ace. Ace had a huge smile on her face as she was suddenly feeling very nostalgic. She hadn't blown any Daleks up since Oswin Oswald had become their absolute ruler.

She had to admit that she had really missed the smell of burning Dalek casings. There was nothing else in the universe quite like it.

"I see you're finally sitting at the adults' table now, Shareen. Do you think that the Doctor will care if we join you?" Penny joked in a nervous voice.

"I don't think so. I'm sure he'll be more than eager to have more people around who can tell him embarrassing stories about Rose," Shareen said.

"Oh, good. I've definitely got plenty of those then," Penny said.

"You'll keep your lip zipped if you know what's good for you, Pen, unless you want to find yourself suddenly stuck wearing bow ties and tweed suits for the rest of your life," Rose said with an evil grin covering her entire face.

"YOU ARE THE DOCTOR. YOU AND YOUR COMPANIONS WILL BE EXTERMINATED," One of the Daleks proclaimed as he ignored this exchange.

"Well, you can try but I have a feeling that you're just a little bit outnumbered here. There are only four of you after all," the Doctor said smugly.

"EVEN ONE DALEK CAN CONQUER AN ENTIRE PLANET," Another Dalek said arrogantly.

"Oh, true, true. Conquering an entire planet is child's play though compared to facing my wife when she's angry about something. Believe me I know," the Doctor said grinning.

"WIFE?" One Dalek asked another in a confused voice.

"ACCORDING TO THE WAR LORDS, THE DOCTOR'S ORIGINAL WIFE HAS RETURNED. THE TARGET IS THEIR DAUGHTER," The second Dalek responded.

"What do you mean by 'the target'?" the Doctor asked suddenly concerned.

"They're after your daughter, Jenny, for some reason. They burst in and suddenly attacked us at Emma's house and started chasing us. They just kept asking us over and over again about Jenny like we knew where to find her. I kept telling them that I didn't, but they didn't believe me," Penny said.

"Where are you from? You're not any of Oswin's Daleks so who are you? Why are you after my daughter?" the Doctor demanded.

"WE ARE THE EMPEROR'S FIST, THE ONLY PURE DALEKS LEFT IN THE UNIVERSE. WE WOULD NEVER FOLLOW THE FALSE EMPRESS. WITH THE HELP OF THE WAR LORDS, WE WILL SOON OVERTHROW HER. FIRST WE MUST FIND AND FREE THEIR LEADER FROM THE TARDIS OF THIS JENNY TYLER WHO IS HOLDING HER PRISONER. WE WERE TOLD THAT IF WE THREATENED THESE TWO THAT ARKYTIOR WOULD COME TO PROTECT THEM. ARKYTIOR WILL KNOW WHERE TO FIND THE DAUGHTER. GIVE US ARKYTIOR OR WE WILL EXTERMINATE ALL OF YOU!" The leader of this group of Daleks demanded.

The Doctor now began to realize something as he said, "You don't know what Arkytior or Jenny even look like do you?"

"IT DOES NOT MATTER. WE WILL FIND THEM EVEN IF WE HAVE TO EXTERMINATE EVERYONE HERE IN ORDER TO DRAW THEM OUT," Another of the Daleks said.

The Doctor just kept looking at the four Daleks in front of him with a look of recognition until he suddenly slapped himself in the forehead and said, "The Emperor's Fist! Of course! You're the Emperor's personal bodyguards. You disappeared during the Time War. Everyone thought you were destroyed by the Nightmare Child."

"They called themselves the Emperor's Fist? Really? Daleks don't even have fists," Rose said disdainfully.

"They were trying to compete with Davros. He had a group protecting him called the Hand of Davros. The Emperor got jealous and he had to have a special group of bodyguards too," the Doctor said grinning.

"The Daleks always were a petty lot, weren't they?" Rose said laughing.

"WE WERE NOT DESTROYED. WE WILL NEVER BE DESTROYED. WE SURVIVED THE NIGHTMARE CHILD'S ASSAULT ON US BY GOING INTO HIBERNATION SLEEP DEEP INSIDE OF THE DALEK BASE ON ABRAXAS MINOR. WE WERE RECENTLY AWAKENED BY A HUGE WAR ON ITS SURFACE AND FOUND THAT THE UNIVERSE HAD GREATLY CHANGED IN OUR ABSENCE," The Dalek leader said.

"Yes, it certainly did. How did that make you feel I wonder? The great and mighty Daleks with their constant spiel about Dalek superiority are now being led by a human. I bet that left a bad taste in your non-existent mouths didn't it?" the Doctor said mocking them.

"WE WILL UNDO ALL OF THIS. WE WILL RETURN THE DALEKS BACK TO THEIR NATURAL STATE. THEN WE WILL USE THE WAR LORDS TO HELP US FINALLY CONQUER ALL OF TIME AND SPACE FOREVER. FIRST WE WILL RETRIEVE THEIR LEADER FOR THEM. BRING US ARKYTIOR," The Dalek leader demanded.

"What do you say, Doctor? Should we give them Arkytior or not?" Rose asked with an evil grin.

"Oh, I really think that we should, Rose. Let them see exactly who they came here for," the Doctor said.

"Oh, boy," Penny said as she read between the lines of what they were really saying and slowly moved herself and Emma out of the line of fire.

Ace began to smile as she whispered to Mikaela, "They're toast."

Mikaela just nodded but was unsure. There was something about the name The Emperor's Fist that was nagging at her memory, but she wasn't sure what it was just yet.

"What is it?" Clara whispered to her.

Mikaela smiled at how well Clara already knew her as she said, "The name of these Daleks is familiar to me for some reason but I can't quite place it."

"Maybe one of us told you about what happened here when you were growing up," Clara suggested.

"I guess," Mikaela said unconvinced.

Rose had been listening to this entire conversation despite it being a whisper since all of her senses were naturally enhanced by her power, and it had made her hesitate. What was so special about these particular Daleks?

Rose's eyes glowed with power as she began to read all four Daleks' timelines at once. She gasped in horror at what she saw there.

"Rose? What is it?" the Doctor asked with concern.

"THE TIME LADY IS THE SOURCE OF THE VORTEX ENERGY THAT WE DETECTED EARLIER. WHO ARE YOU? ANSWER! ANSWER!" One of the Daleks shouted.

"You took the potion, didn't you? The one that can change anyone into a Time Lord. It was given to you by the War Lords. That's just wonderful. Now they're giving it to everyone now," Rose said in anger.

"It's not your fault, Rose," the Doctor said.

"Yes, it is. This is all my fault. I should have only kept enough for you and Jenny, but I just had to keep more. I'm going to have to go after the War Lords now to take the potion back from them before they give it to anyone else. I think that it may already be too late though. I'm sure the Weeping Angels already have it too. The other Angels with the Vortex did that attacked Jenny," Rose said.

"WHO ARE YOU? ANSWER NOW OR WE WILL EXTERMINATE YOU!" The Dalek leader asked again.

Rose sighed as she said, "Haven't you figured it out yet? I mean you lot are really thick even for Daleks, aren't you?"

The Doctor smiled as he said, "Yeah, I have to admit that this group was definitely missing the day that Davros handed out the brains."

"EXTERMINATE HER!" The Dalek leader finally said as he finally grew tired of waiting for Rose to answer him.

As all four Daleks fired on Rose at once, she held out a single hand and stopped all of their beams in mid-air at once. Then before they could move out of the way, she quickly redirected their own attacks right back at them blowing all four of them up at once!

"Wicked!" Ace said with a huge grin on her face.

Rose looked at the Doctor grimly and he nodded. They both realized unlike Ace that this was far from over.

"REGENERATE!" All four Daleks shouted at once as they started to glow with energy.

"That's not fair! You had them! You had those scumbags!" Ace protested.

"Now I remember. Mum told me about the Emperor's Fist once. They can regenerate just like Time Lords," Mikaela said.

"Now you tell us, Pipsqueak!" Ace said with a sigh.

Rose began to glow with Vortex energy as she gestured at the four Daleks and began to grit her teeth together in concentration. She could already see what they were going to become, and she had to stop them now before it was too late.

The Doctor looked at her in disbelief as he realized that she was actually trying to stop four regenerations from happening at once. He wondered if even Rose was capable of such a thing.

All four of the Daleks and Rose screamed in agony at once as Rose tried to stop them from regenerating even as the energy inside of them started to explode outwards. Rose knew that she was fighting an uphill battle here but she had to try. She couldn't let this happen. She couldn't let these Daleks change!

The glow around the Daleks now faded, and three of them emerged from it alive but unchanged. The fourth Dalek, their leader, however was greatly changed. He now reminded the Doctor of Dalek Sec after he had made himself half-human.

Only this Dalek wasn't half-human, he was half-Time Lord. The Doctor realized now that this was what Rose had been trying to prevent, but she had only been able to stop three of them.

"Your power is beyond belief. You've managed to cause them to be stuck in their original Dalek forms forever no matter how many times that they regenerate in the future, but you've still ultimately failed in the end though because you've failed to change me. I am now half-Time Lord and half-Dalek in this incarnation, and I will be only the first of an all-new breed of Dalek. A breed that will finally make the Daleks the new masters of time and space," The Dalek leader now said in a normal voice.

"Not if I stop you here first," Rose said.

"You are the one that we seek. You are Arkytior. You will tell us where the girl, Jenny, is now or we will still exterminate you," The Dalek leader said as he used his newly acquired Time Lord abilities to read Rose's timeline.

"Oh, yeah? You and what army?" Ace said as she began to glow with the power of the Vortex now as well.

"We don't need an army. If one Dalek can conquer an entire world, then four Daleks with the power of the Time Lords can crush all of you with no trouble at all. Show them what we can do now," the Dalek leader said.

The other three Daleks' casings now began to regenerate back around them just as the Dalek that Rose had met in Van Statten's Vault had when she had touched it and it had extrapolated her DNA. Only this time they were using their own leftover regenerative energy somehow to reform them.

"Exterminate them!" the Dalek leader ordered even as he touched the smoking remains of his own casing.

It quickly reformed around him now as it became more like a suit of armor than a casing. This new armor had a large gunstick that looked more like a cannon now coming out of one hand and a large eye stalk coming out of its helmet. The Dalek leader now looked truly bizarre as he began to fire on Rose with his newly remade weapon.

The Doctor immediately moved to Rose's side as he began to attack the casing of the leader with his sonic screwdriver and was relieved when he was able to get it to temporarily seize up on him. The two Time Lords now attacked the Dalek leader with everything that they had while he was still helpless even as the rest of their friends attacked the other three Daleks.

"YOU WILL NOT KEEP US FROM FINDING THE WAR LORD. YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!" The three regular Daleks shouted in unison as they bombarded the Doctor and Rose's companions with multiple attacks in rapid succession.

These new and improved Daleks had much faster reactions and far greater accuracy than the old ones did. They were coming very close now to hitting their targets and the Time Lords knew that at any moment now that they would soon score a fatal bull's-eye on one or more of their friends if they weren't stopped soon.

"Clara, protect the others!" the Doctor called out.

Rose looked at him in surprise as she wondered what the two of them had in mind. Suddenly she found out to her regret exactly just what that was.

As she swiftly dodged rapid incoming Dalek fire that was coming at her from three directions at once as though it was moving in slow motion, Clara started to use her sonic necklace on the closest Dalek to her to cause its gunstick to jam at first and then to actually blow up! As the Dalek screamed in frustration, the other two Daleks both fired on her, but she was already gone before either of them could hit her.

Rose continued to watch Clara in shock as she somersaulted in and out of the Daleks' attacks just like Jenny would have if she had been there. Watching Clara fight like that really brought home to her just how much that she had changed since Trenzalore. It made her realize more than anything else that had happened lately just how much of the Doctor's life that she had just missed . . . again.

Clara grinned at the Dalek whose gunstick she had exploded as she said, "You shouldn't mess around with someone with both nine hundred years' worth of fighting experience and expert knowledge of how a Dalek gunstick works including of how to overload it. Thank you for that, Oswin!"

The Doctor smiled at Clara proudly as he watched her out of the corner of his eye even as he continued to use his sonic screwdriver to keep the Dalek leader immobilized while Rose attacked him relentlessly with blasts of Vortex energy. Normally this would have been enough to have stopped him for good, but the fifteen hour window for regeneration wasn't over with yet so he just kept regenerating no matter what Rose did to try to destroy him.

The Doctor soon noticed a devastating look of pain and loss on Rose's face and said, "I'm sorry, Rose. I know that just reminds you even more of what happened, but Clara's become the best not to mention the coolest fighter in the universe now since Trenzalore. I need her to protect the others because these Daleks are potentially more deadly than any that we've ever faced before."

"Dorothy is no slouch either," Rose said refusing to talk about her feelings as she watched Ace trying to disintegrate one of the Daleks nearby only to have it quickly heal itself as well.

"This isn't working. We can't stand here fighting with them for fifteen hours," the Doctor said in frustration both at not being able to defeat the Daleks and at the pain that Rose was going through.

"I guess I'll just have to step up my game then. Stand back, Doctor," Rose said as she shifted to her energy form.

"Are you sure that this is such a good idea? You know how you start to lose yourself every time that you do that," the Doctor said warily as he moved back from her.

"I think I'll be okay as long as I stop them fast," Rose said in an unearthly voice.

"I hope so," the Doctor said in a worried tone.

"Believe me, Doctor, I'm not going to risk anymore lost time between us. I've had more than enough of that lately," Rose said.

Rose knew that losing control of herself was the least of her worries right now. She was going to have to try something that she had never done before in order to stop these Daleks. She wasn't about to tell the Doctor just how dangerous it was though or he'd stop her. She just had to do it and hope for the best.

Rose glowed brighter and brighter as she said, "Dorothy, lend me your energy for a minute, okay?"

"What about the other Daleks? I know Clara's like an amazon or something now, but I bet she's still not able to handle all three of them by herself," Ace asked as she hesitated.

"I guess we're all just window dressing then, huh?" Shareen said in irritation as she did her best to distract the Daleks by presenting herself as a moving target so that Clara could attack them without as much risk to herself.

"I didn't say that. I just don't like leaving all of you defenseless," Ace said.

That wasn't the real reason though. She was afraid that she would hurt Rose by doing this. She wasn't sure that even Rose could handle so much power at once. She didn't want to be responsible for doing anything to her. She'd never forgive herself if she hurt her mum.

"It's going to be okay, Dorothy. Give me your power. Transfer it all to me right now," Rose said realizing what she was really afraid of.

Ace nodded and then began to slowly add her power to Rose's as it started to flow out of her body and into hers. Rose began to start feeling overwhelmed almost immediately as she wasn't used to handling so much energy at once, but she was determined to stay in control until she had stopped the Daleks for good.

She stifled the screams that now tried to escape from her mouth as the pain became worse and worse by the moment, and then when she couldn't stand to receive any more of Ace's power she suddenly let it all go. She annihilated the Dalek leader in a massive blast of power that even his regenerative energy couldn't handle, and then the other three Daleks soon followed him into oblivion as the blast reached them as well.

As soon as the four Daleks were completely destroyed, Rose returned to her normal form and instantly slumped to the ground unconscious. The Doctor quickly caught her before she was halfway there so that she wouldn't hit her head and held her to him protectively as he gently stroked her hair.

Mikaela looked at the Daleks' destruction with surprise. This wasn't how she remembered her mother telling her that things had happened. She didn't remember Rose killing the four Daleks like this in her story about them. Had Rose just altered history somehow? Or had she altered it herself somehow just by being here?

"I'm so sorry, Rose. I should have ended this quicker somehow so that you wouldn't have had to go through that," the Doctor said in a sad voice.

"Is she going to be alright?" Ace said in an upset voice.

The Doctor put a comforting arm around Ace as he scanned Rose with his sonic screwdriver. He let out a breath that he didn't even know that he was holding as he finished.

"She's okay, Ace. Don't worry. It was just too much for her. That's all. She's going to be fine," the Doctor said.

"I didn't want to do it. I was so afraid that I was going to hurt her. Why did she make me do that?" Ace said in tears.

"She didn't know any other way to stop them. It's my fault for not being able to come up with another way to do it sooner," the Doctor said.

"Oh, shut up! Both of you!" Shareen said.

Both of them looked at her in shock as she continued, "She did what she did because she wanted to do it, and it wasn't either of your faults. She simply did what she always does and found a way to win what would have been an impossible situation for anyone else. That's what Rose Tyler does. She always finds a way to pull off the impossible no matter what it costs her personally because she loves all of her family and friends more than she does herself. She's willing to take any risk in order to keep us all safe. She knew what she was doing. Believe me about that, Ace. Even if it all had gone wrong, she never would have wanted you or the Doctor to blame yourselves for it. With all of that being said though, I know I'd personally appreciate it if in the future that you would please try to keep her from sacrificing herself needlessly with those big hearts of hers."

"You've got a deal," Ace said smiling.

The Doctor nodded his agreement as well as Rose slowly came to. She looked up at the Doctor with a sweet smile on her face as she said, "Hey."

"Hey, yourself," the Doctor said as he gave her a tender kiss while he continued to hold her.

"So what happened while I was out?" Rose asked.

"Oh, nothing much. Shareen was just becoming a part of the family. She just told me and Ace both off without blinking an eye," the Doctor said laughing.

"Yeah, she does that. She's always telling me off too," Rose said with a grin.

"It's just too bad you're too stubborn to listen to me," Shareen said.

Rose groaned and said, "Don't start on me now, Shareen. I have a headache."

"Well, whose fault is that?" Shareen asked making the Doctor laugh.

Penny smiled at Emma as they both watched all of this going on and said, "I guess we don't have to worry about things being different on the Doctor's crew after all. Rose just did something absolutely foolhardy and completely stupid, and Shareen is letting her have it about it. Everything's just like it usually is."

"Oh, shut up!" Rose said to her making everyone laugh.

Next: The High Council finds out about the potion and calls upon Rose to answer for it having fallen into the hands of the War Lords and their allies. What will the Council decide to do to Rose because of this and how will all of this lead to an all new and completely shocking President of Gallifrey as a result? Who will it be? I really hope that you're never going to see this one coming.