I'm almost done drafting The Lazarus Experiment, after which I'll edit it. Then comes 42. I'm not sure what to do with that one, since the large cast of characters and small space means the story doesn't have much room to mutate. What would you all think if I skipped it? If I don't, I might be able to combine a plot point I've been saving to make it interesting, but the story might get repetitive. Please let me know your opinion!

Disclaimer: E-thay octor-day o-whay niverse-uay s-iay ot-nay ine-may. Iay ose-chay o-tay ut-pay e-thay ends-blay ogether-tay, ut-bay Ig-pay atin-Lay s-iay ot-nay lways-aay at-thay ay-way!

Chapter 23: Destiny of the Storm

"April," Harriet said. "Now that you've had your eureka moment, what's the reset button."

"Nineteen thirty. Nineteen thirty. Did they have…never mind. Construction sites." April smiled. "Harriet? Martha? We can save the world. But first, we're going to need a truck."

Harriet stared at April in shock. "What?"

"A truck," April said. "The first RTD reset button."

"Oh, you're kidding me," Harriet said.

"No, I'm not," April told her. "Except this time, we're going to reset time, because who knows what happens if we try to bring the Doctor back to life. He might not be able to regenerate. Or might end up like Jack. And also there's a chance that I'm breaking the universe by talking about this in front of Martha, sorry Martha."

"There's no way you're doing that," Harriet said. "You'll die!"

"Not if I make sure this all never happened in the first place."

"I knew you two knew something!" Martha said triumphantly. "Now, what's RTD and why do we need a truck. And who's Jack?"

"Spoilers," Harriet said.

"Hopefully not," April responded. If they could avoid Jack, they'd never go to Utopia. "Alright, basically, we're going to open up the TARDIS and look into its heart. This will give us godlike powers that we use to reset time."

"Have we done that before?" Martha asked. "If you're the only one that remembers—don't look at me like that, I'm not stupid, you said it had to be you—then you're the only one who knows how many times we've looped around."

"I don't…remember, exactly," April said. "More like a feeling of déjà vu and parts of me warning myself not to do stupid things. Also froze me up when I tried to climb the ladder; I probably caused another problem if I wasn't safely out of the way. But I think we've reset it more than once in the past."

Martha stared at her for a moment. "Why do we need a truck?"

"To pull open the TARDIS," Harriet said. "It's rather difficult. Now, how're we going to get a construction truck to the TARDIS? And are there even construction trucks in 1930?"

"I don't know; I hadn't gotten that far," April said.

"We could…take the TARDIS to the truck?" Martha said. "I mean, putting aside how difficult it will be to steal one of those, we're never going to be able to drive the truck through the streets at this time of night without alerting the Daleks."

"Sorry, I got a bit ahead of myself. I…I'm not the history person," April said.

"Who is, then?" Harriet asked.

"Don't look at me. I'm a doctor, not a historian. Well, almost a doctor, in any case," Martha amended.

"Solomon would know, right?" April said. She looked around the camp, but couldn't see anyone except Frank. Quickly, the group walked over to him. His left arm was bandaged up.

"Frank," Harriet said. "You've done construction work before. What have they got in the way of vehicles? Trucks?"

"Trucks?" Frank asked. "You mean, like the Ford ones?"

"Umm, how big are those?" April asked.

"What d'you mean?" Frank questioned, confused. "A truck. Ford. Everyone knows what Ford is."

"We're…not from around here," Harriet said. "We fight monsters like the Daleks and pig slaves."

Frank shrugged. "Well, any of the ones you'd find around here are 'bout the size of an automobile, you know? Maybe a bit bigger."

"Construction trucks?" Martha asked. "Do you have those in this—here?"

"Construction trucks?"

April frowned. "I guess…not. I suppose we'll just have to work something out. Maybe we can string up multiple cars together?" She wondered.

"Right, and how are we getting these 'multiple cars'?" Harriet asked.

"Um…do you happen to know how to hot-wire a car?" April asked. "No? Great. Just great. They never teach you the useful skills at school, do they? Vehicle uses during the Great Depression, the art of hot-wiring cars, and how to resurrect a dead Time Lord."

"What?" Frank said.

"We've got a way to defeat the Daleks," Martha told him. "Do you want to help us?"

"Of course! Not sure how much use I'll be like this, but if there's anything I can do…"

"Great," April said. "Now let's get a move on before the Daleks figure out what's going on."

They had, after some difficulty, managed to steal two cars. Harriet was sitting behind the wheel of one of them, and April was sitting behind the other. So far, none of the police had noticed them—they were probably more worried about forming a group to arrest whoever had caused the explosions in Hooverville.

After a bit of messing around with the sonic screwdriver, April had managed to get the cars to work. How the sonic screwdriver had a setting for hot-wiring cars from the 1930's, April didn't know. And she wasn't sure she wanted to either.

"Alright!" Frank called. "Go!" April pressed her foot on the gas pedal and drove forward. The chain connecting the back of the car to the panel on the TARDIS strained under the force. This was the same chain that they had unlocked in order to steal the automobiles.

"It's no use," Harriet called, stopping her car. "Also, this is really dangerous. Like, we could die, dangerous."

"Harriet," Martha said. "There are Daleks taking over the Earth."

"Good point. We could…steal another one?" April said. "You know, if this wasn't an alien invasion, I'd be freaking out about how many laws we're breaking. No. I am freaking out about that, there's just so many other worries drowning it out. Let's try again?"

"Okay," Harriet said. Martha and Frank backed away.

"Three, two, one, go!" April slammed her foot on the gas pedal again, yanking the chain on the car taut. Suddenly, there was a snapping noise, and April burst forwards at full speed, stopping just in time to avoid crashing into anything. With these terrible safety measures…well, it wouldn't have been good.

"It-shay!" Harriet yelled.

"Did it work?" April asked.

"What's that?" Frank wondered.

"Pig Latin," Harriet and April chorused. April had made the mistake of teaching her friends Pig Latin when they were fourteen. Instead of using it as a cool code, they had felt the need to begin secretly cursing in front of the teachers. And then it had stuck.

"No," Martha said. April peered behind her, squinting at the TARDIS. Her glasses were all smudged again; wiping them on her shirt could only do so much good. "It didn't."

"What do we try now?" Harriet asked.

"Asking it nicely?" Frank suggested. "What? You said it has a heart. And those…those Daleks also look like machines. It might work?"

April rolled her eyes, but went up to the TARDIS console. She leaned down and knocked lightly on the panel. "Hello, TARDIS. Or Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Or…you know what? I'm not going to say that. You were called Idris, though, weren't you?" It didn't answer her. "Well, that's the future, but you're notoriously bad at telling that and the past and the present apart. We're trying to save the Universe. And possibly time itself, because you know Daleks—they might do anything. Remember the Time War, Idris?"

"Time was weaponized," Harriet said, kneeling beside the console. "It was destroyed, and broken, and rewritten. There's a reason the whole mess was time locked. If the Daleks are allowed to rule the universe…Look, we're really sorry for trying to pull you apart, but we're trying to save the world."

"You're trying to talk…to the spaceship?" Martha said in disbelief.

"Yes," April said. "Yes, I am. She's sentient." The lights coming from the hexagons pulsed in agreement. "Oh. Just thought of something," she said, after they died down. "Pulse three times if you can hear me."

The group of four watched in awe as the blue light emanating from underneath the console pulsed once, twice, three times.

"The Doctor is dead," April told her. She breathed in shakily. "The Doctor is dead, and there's nothing we can do except make sure it didn't happen. Can you pulse once if you can't think of any other solution, twice if you can?"

The light grew, then diminished.

"Can you open?" April asked. "Once for yes, two for no."

"We're talking to a spaceship. We really are. Oh, god, I wish I could remember this," Martha said in awe.

The TARDIS lights blinked twice in response.

"You said that thing of yours could open anything," Frank said. "The sonic nail, was it? That thing you used on the chains?"

"Sonic screwdriver," April said. "It won't work."

"No harm in trying," Harriet said. April pointed the sonic screwdriver at the TARDIS panel, thinking as hard as she could. Open. Please, please just open. Open, open, open, open, open! There was a clicking noise, and the sonic screwdriver turned off.

"Wow. That actually worked," April said. "Thanks, Frank. Okay, stand back." April started trying to remove the heavy panel. It took time, getting her nails into the gaps and pulling it slowly out. "Is it going to be like dying?" She wondered.

"What d'you mean?" Frank asked.

"We're being erased. Do you remember Amy's Choice?" April said. Harriet nodded. "She thought it meant she would die. Maybe she's right. I mean, if you think there's somewhere we go after we're dead, it's worse, isn't it? We'll be obliterated. If there's nowhere, then it's exactly the same thing. We won't exist anymore."

"But we never will have," Martha said. "We can't be dying if we've never existed. This offshoot simply won't have happened. We won't have made these decisions."

"And yet I'll remember some of it," April said. "Our choices have had an effect on the prime timeline. But we'll just stop being. And everyone here? They'll also stop being. We're killing off the entire universe by doing this. Honestly, this might be another case of 'do we have the right?' because I'm not a Time Lord. I'm not even from this universe, I can't be pruning their timelines. Right. Probably not the best time to have yet another existential crisis."

"You don't have to be a Time Lord," Martha said. "This is our world, same as his."

"Except it's not," April said. "I'm not even supposed to be here."

"Another universe?" Martha asked skeptically. "Well, wherever you're from, you're here now. And this is also your world. Our world. We don't need pompous titles to save it. Yeah?"

"Yeah," Frank said. "Sorry, I don't have a big speech. But those Dalek folk, they're monsters. We gotta do whatever it takes to defeat them."

April looked to Harriet, who said two words. "Reality bomb." April nodded, and continued to prize the panel away with a grunt.

"Okay," she said. "I got it. Goodbye. Harriet. Martha. Frank. Thank you, and I wish I could have cooler last words." April heaved the panel off of the console, and then looked into the shining light within. It seemed as if it was singing. She was staring into a thousand million times, all smashed together in a multi-dimensional ball of light far beyond comprehension. And she was comprehending it.

The energy poured into her, and April felt her whole body burning, her cells withering away all at once. But she could see. Oh, she could see so clearly now, despite the blinding light. Through the light. She could see what had been and what was and what would come, and they were all the same thing, pouring into her brain along with all of the energy.

And she could feel time swirling around her, streams of golden light flitting through the air. There was a scar in time, and it was deep, just barely healed. Much more, and it would tear open, sucking the entire universe away. "Time is dying," April found herself saying. Harriet was edging away, eyes wide with shock. Frank still had his eyes turned away from the glow, while Martha watched her intently. "Time is dying, because we have been breaking it."

"Breaking…time?" Harriet asked.

"We have been cutting into the fabric of reality, warping it. Time after time after time. So many tears, and we have forgotten." April could feel herself dying, the power surging through her like a storm about to break. "One more time. One final time; that is all we have. And then it is sealed. Time takes time to heal. This will be impossible for very, very long. Perhaps even forever."

"But what if it takes more than that?" Martha wondered. "What if we fail again?"

"We must not fail," April said. How can I stop that? How can I keep us from failing again?

I have to remember.

"I must remember."

"If that would solve everything," Harriet said, "why haven't you done it before?"

"It would be dangerous; time itself could collapse. But this is our final chance. Our final chance to save reality, else all of reality will be eradicated." So little time. But April had all of it. She was dying, but it was beautiful. Time energy flowed through her, infusing her with all of the power in the universe. April wasn't a hero—she was a god.

And she was dying.

So little time. Yet so much of it.

"We have held back too long, kept the storm reigned in for the safety of everything. But this is the only way left to us."

She pictured the attack on Hooverville in her mind. The fires lit the dark night as people screamed in terror. There was death and chaos, and it was the final moments before everything went wrong. April imagined Solomon stepping forth, imagined him beginning to speak. Then, she closed her eyes.

Remember. Remember, remember, remember.

Oh, and about those cool last words?

April pushed, pouring all of her power into time, warping it, rewriting it. It was a tree, and she cut a branch so that it might grow again. Only this time instead of a sickly one, it would be strong. Remember, April.

"The storm will break."

And then nothing happened. Forever.