When it was finally time to get off the boat, they'd arrived at a large set of ruins in the distance. The male pilot, whom by now they'd learned was named Epzo, began to brag about his cigar. If the twins had not been with the Doctor, they may have grabbed the cigar and tossed it into the wastes around them just to make him stop talking.
Ash nearly did it regardless, but the fact they had guns and were more than willing to use them had been enough to push the Doctor at this moment.
"Big set of ruins," the Doctor said, frowning at the crumbling structures. "Wonder who those were built for?"
Epzo frowned at her. "Why do you even care?"
"Everyone is ruins to someone else," Ash said.
Charity tapped a nearby rock with the tip of her boot. Her shoes were high heeled which, though not entirely practical, particularly while walking through this much sand, was one of the few elements of her mamaidh's fashion that Charity had grown quite attached to. "And we all become ruins in the end."
"You two are cheerful," Yasmin raised her eyebrows.
Epzo shook his head and moved away from them. "Bye, ha."
Angstrom turned to walk backward, waving at them. "Good luck."
"You've already lost, Angstrom!" Epzo called back. The two walked in different directions towards the ruins, abandoning the humans and the Time Lords.
"Watch out for infrared beams!" Charity called after Epzo, though the man didn't turn.
"What, we're just letting them go, are we?" Graham asked. "How do we know what to do, where to go?"
"First thing we have to do is make it through those ruins safely." The Doctor soniced the space in front of them. "Because these readings are all over the place, and I don't know why."
Charity tapped the side of her head. "Follow me." The humans looked at her in confusion. "I have a very good sense of direction."
"She can see the future," Ash added.
Ryan gasped. "Oh, sick. Can you all do that?"
"Just her." Ash poked Charity's arm. "And not very well."
"Good enough for this." Charity began walking, the rest following her. It was a bit difficult to climb the hill of sand up to the ruins, but the twins had never been people who backed down from a challenge. They stopped once they reached a flat surface again, turning back to look at the state of the suns.
"Those suns are starting to set," the Doctor said, putting her hands on her hips. "They're moving way faster than I realized."
"Well, back in the tent, that bloke Ilin said do not travel by night."
The Doctor nodded. "We need to move, fast."
The group turned and immediately found several figures in vague camouflage, wearing hoods and holding guns. On instinct, Charity raised her sunglasses, diving in to see who these things were, but found nothing.
'Robots.'
Both twins drew their own weapons.
"Whoa!" Graham said, holding up his hands. "They weren't there when we came in."
"Where did they come from?"
"I don't know." The Doctor scanned them.
Graham shook his head. "So much for no life forms on this planet."
"They're not alive," the Doctor said. "They're robot guards." She frowned. "Why would you need robot guards on a deserted planet? Good news is, they're not fully active. So, what we need to do is very slowly, totally unthreateningly," she waved a hand at the twins then, gesturing for them to lower their weapons, "back out of here."
She had barely finished speaking when all of the robots began to move, clearly readying their weapons. The twins aimed their own again, though they did not yet fire since they very quickly had to run. Their mamaidh was very much 'shoot first ask questions later', but the twins blamed their uncle's influence for the 'run first, shoot if they're being annoying, ask questions the entire time'.
"They've been activated! Run!" the Doctor led the charge, rushing up a staircase as the robots started firing.
"Move! Move, everyone! Come on!"
Charity darted forward. She was suddenly very thankful mamaidh had made her train using her prophetic abilities to avoid being shot at. "Follow my path! And if you can't, swerve!"
The Doctor ducked to the side, finding a circular opening inside the building. "In here!" she guided the rest of them inside.
"Well done, all of you, nice running." The Doctor took a step forward, but there was a loud click as several shapes popped up from the ground. "Ah! Oh! Okay, come on." She ran towards a body in the near distance, finding another fallen robot in the sand. "What have we here?" she soniced it.
"Got anything there, Doctor?" Yasmin asked.
"Information." The Doctor's eyes widened. "Oh, that's bad. They're SniperBots. We just walked into the middle of the shooting range. Everything within the perimeter is target practice."
"Which would explain all the targets in here." Graham gestured around the room. "And looking on the negative side, they're human-shaped targets."
"If that's the way it is, time to stop messing about." Ryan picked up the fallen robot's weapon.
"What are you doing?" The Doctor's voice went tense.
"Fighting back."
"No. Guns, never use 'em."
"They're shooting at us." Ryan gestured at the twins. "And they have them."
"We know how to use them," Ash said. "And we don't shoot first."
"They're going to kill us with their guns!"
Graham shrugged. "He's got a point, Doc."
"Notice how we didn't actually shoot any of them," Charity said. "What do you think they'll do if someone attacks back?"
"What's your better idea?"
The Doctor glanced at the twins. "Out-think them."
"You can't out-think bullets."
She shrugged. "Been doing it all my life."
Ryan shook his head. "Uh-uh. Sorry. Call of Duty, man. I've trained for this." He looked to the twins. "You going to come?"
"No, go ahead and get yourself killed," Charity gestured back outside.
Ryan rushed outside. They vaguely heard him screaming and shooting before, in a few seconds, running back inside. Still screaming.
"Made it worse?" the Doctor asked him.
"Just a little bit, yeah."
"Now do you see why I don't like guns?"
Ryan dropped the gun. "Don't go on about it."
"I will go on about it. A lot!"
Charity saw robots appear from the corner of her eye. "Company!" They started firing. "Pillars, now!" The group rushed behind the pillars, though the Doctor dragged the broken robot with her.
'Any ideas?' Charity asked Ash.
'Vaporizing always works. Though that does counteract the Doctor's message.'
Even as they were being fired on by alien robots and hiding behind very thin pillars, the twins exchanged grins. This had been their life when traveling with their mamaidh and, even if it had been barely a year on earth, they had truly missed this rush. Life with their mother as children had been fun, but there was a distinct glee they could not shake at being trapped in a situation neither twin yet understood.
"You know we're completely surrounded?" Yasmin called.
"Yep!"
"With no way out whatsoever."
The Doctor pulled out some technology from the robots. "Here's the lesson. The answer was on the floor. You just reached for the wrong thing."
"What are you talking about?"
"The best thing about robots is, they're powerful. Literally packed with power. Super-powered." The Doctor triggered something on the robot, sending out a pulse through the ruins that incapacitated the robots. The twins straightened, emerging from the pillars.
"Wow!"
Graham nodded. "Okay. Now that was impressive."
The Doctor spread her arms. "Thank you. I aim to please."
"What exactly did you just do?"
"Electromagnetic pulse. Basically fried their systems." The Doctor eyed the robots. "I reckon we've got about five minutes before they reboot and recover. See? Brains beat bullets. Come on." She led the way out of the room, looking at the ruined corridors. "Let's try through here."
They found Epzo and Angstrom, with Epzo leaning against a wall holding tightly to his chest. "What just happened?"
"What do you care? You don't care about anything." The Doctor plucked a device from Angstrom's hand. "Ooo, tracker, thanks." The twins came up on either side of her, studying the device themselves.
"How did you even do that?" Angstrom asked.
"Did I not mention? I am really smart."
"Thank you."
"You are very welcome." The Doctor plugged her sonic into the device. "Amazing what you can learn from a SniperBot. Like where their control commands emanate from." Charity reached over and hit a button on the device. "Also, maps. Which leads us...here." They turned a corner and found a large sealed hatch with a wheel to open. The Doctor soniced the hatch open. "I want answers to this planet and I think they're down there."
"You sure about that?"
"Nope. Come on." The Doctor jumped into the hatch. The twins followed immediately, dropping down into the tunnel system below the ruins. There were still lights on but they didn't have much power, making the space dark, but technically lit.
They had to wait for Ryan, but the Doctor took the time to examine the map on the device.
Ash eyed Epzo. "You got hit?" The man nodded. "Was that before, or after you shot at and activated the robots?"
"How did you..."
"We are really smart," Ash said, giving him a grin as Ryan reached them.
The Doctor started walking, leading the way with Charity at her side. "These tunnels run under half of the planet. Think of the technology, the civilization required to build all that. And then ask yourselves, where are they?" Epzo groaned, making the Doctor look to him. "How's the injury?"
"It's painful."
"Hope it's made you reconsider your entire philosophy."
"Nope."
"Doctor?" Graham said, making them all stop to look back at him. "Scorch marks all along the walls."
"Not exactly encouraging, is it?"
Graham shook his head. "No."
The Doctor rolled her shoulders. "Still, best feet forward." They kept walking, but the next time it was the Doctor who stopped, turning to face the wall and the large door there. "Oh, big locked door. I love a big locked door" It clicked open. "Ominous."
Inside, they found what was probably once a laboratory, but had clearly been destroyed and abandoned a long time ago. Ash tapped a nail on one of the jars full of mold, while Charity bent to pick up a small piece of glass, running a finger along the edge.
"What happened in here?" the Doctor breathed.
"There's another room next door," Yasmin said. "We'll take a look?"
"Yeah." Ryan joined her.
Angstrom stepped closer to the Doctor. "I don't want to be here. We're off route. We need to move on."
The Doctor frowned at her. "You went into the ruins without knowing what was there. You want to keep going without knowing why it's bad to travel at night?"
"Whatever happened here, it's in the past," Epzo said. "What does it matter to you?"
"This was a living, breathing planet once, with an ecosystem, organic life, and a population. There was a catastrophic event here." The Doctor gestured at the destruction around them, while Ash took out one of those jars of mold to show to Charity. "And as hard as it is for you to understand, you are not the only life form in this universe. Some of us feel a duty to others who might be in trouble. So fix your wound, take one of your heroic naps, and we'll wake you when we leave, if you're lucky."
The twins were fairly certain the Doctor was just speaking to Epzo at that moment, but it reminded them a bit too much of some speeches they remembered from the Doctor when they were much younger. One of the last things their uncle had tried to teach them was about being kind, a lesson that their mamaidh had staunchly tried to direct them away from.
They'd been raised to protect themselves, to take their place at the head of the universe, and not care who they left behind in the process.
There was something comforting in knowing that they at least cared to find out what happened to this planet and weren't entirely like Epzo, even though the reason they wanted to learn what happened was to fulfill a rather selfish curiosity and not because they wanted to help anyone.
Still, it was better than nothing.
A/N: Even more of an indication of exactly how tricky the twins' moral placement is - the Doctor and the Master definitely would have very different opinions on some of these issues!
Notes on reviews:
Purplestan: Yes, Charity believes their mother is in the TARDIS, and Ash thinks she's dead. The Master was aware that the Singer had given the twins to him, but the twins were very careful about what they did and didn't share with him about the circumstances surrounding them being left with him (since he does remember landing on that ship and leaving it, he knows where they were, just not what went on). One thing he definitely remembered though was the fact the Singer told him to keep looking for her to give the twins back, so he never would have forgotten that ;)