Making his way to the production line first, the Doctor slowly skulked along, crouched down, as Daleks patrolled the room.
Empty crimson casings, the new standard for the Daleks in the New Paradigm, were carried along by arms on rails overhead, periodically stopping to have components added.
Darting into a room just off the line, the Doctor climbed over some storage crates, through a gap that the incomplete casings moved through. Jumping down into the next room, the Doctor found scrap casings from some of the ancient Dalek models simply sitting there.
"Looks like the Daleks are a bit behind on the recycling…" The Doctor remarked, as he reached into one of the casings, pulling out a small crystal only the size of his fingernail. Kontron crystals, in the most simplest of terms, were crystalized artron energy, found only in some parts of the time vortex. They maintained a constant link to the time vortex, drawing energy, and were what the Daleks used to power themselves around the period of the Time War.
The crystal's properties would be useful in the chronon blocker, but that still left another component.
"Now, a Dalekanium coil…"
Moving back into the production line, the Doctor followed it to the end of the closed loop-shaped room, entering through the door at the end.
Coming to a similar junction to the one near the TARDIS, the Doctor entered to an almost identical storeroom, looking around inside.
The Doctor examined the contents of the place, before finding a small, ring shaped piece of metal.
"Ah, I knew I'd find one in here. Daleks are so easily predictable." The Doctor shook his head. "Now, to get the chronon blocker assembled…"
It wasn't anything too complex to do, just take a length of wire, wrapping it around the crystal, before connecting the wire to the coil. The Dalekanium's properties would naturally amplify the field generated by the crystal, creating a field strong enough to shield a full-size human from temporal changes, never mind a child.
With the device assembled, the Doctor hurried back to El.
"There." The Doctor gently put the chronon blocker onto El's wrist like a bracelet. "How's that?"
"Better." El stated. "Don't feel sick anymore."
"Well, Doctors do tend to do that." The Doctor smiled satisfactorily. "Now, whatever the Daleks are using to alter history is likely to be in this city, but where… Searching the entire place on foot would take too long, and using the TARDIS to scan would tip them off immediately…" The Time Lord suddenly snapped his fingers. "The Daleks have a visualizer room; it should be just down the way. Come on, El."
The girl nodded and let the Doctor take the lead out of the room. Taking a right, the two proceeded through the door into the next room. An orange scientist Dalek was currently running experiments in the place, missing the Doctor and El only because there were screens blocking them.
The Doctor waited for the Dalek to turn to the other experiment, before he dashed across, pulling El along, into the room off to the side.
"Here we are, the visualizer room." The Doctor stood up as the door closed behind them.
The room was rather large, filled with databanks that hummed with activity, and on the main wall was a massive, spherical Dalek eye, doing a sweep of the room itself.
"The Daleks use this place to catalogue Dalek activity from all across the universe." The Doctor explained. "Think of it as a records office, invasions, stratagems, anything and everything the Daleks have done over the years. It's why they almost never try the same plan twice."
"So, what are we looking for?" El asked.
"That." He pointed to a console by the giant eye. "But the visualizer eye will alert the Daleks as soon as we get in sight…" The Doctor frowned, as he thought. "There're security consoles around here that I might be able to use to deactivate the eye." He pointed. "Those databanks should be good enough cover, let's move."
El nodded, and let the Doctor take the lead again.
Throughout the room, there were three consoles that needed to be shut down. Moving to the closest first, the Doctor shut it down first. The beam from the visualizer eye narrowed in response and sped up. Sneaking to the other side of the room, the Doctor reconfigured the next console, and the eye sped up once more.
Finally, the two snuck down to the console at the very base of the visualizer eye. Reconfiguring the console, the eye ceased its movements, becoming just another screen set into the wall.
"Right-o… let's see what we can see…" The Doctor tapped a few series of commands into the console, the screen on the visualizer eye changing to show a massive, multi-level room, filled with Daleks. "That's the Daleks' Supreme Council chambers, and look…" He pointed to the unique construct sat on a platform.
It looked like someone had taken a Dalek dome and attached a tank to the bottom, allowing the mutant to float around inside, while three massive shields with sensor globes on them were attached to the tank with hydraulic arms.
"The Dalek Eternal." The Doctor recognized the gold plating. "With the Emperor dead and the Supreme off world, he's the next highest authority on the planet. Looks like he's had a bit of an upgrade too."
The view changed, showing a four-pronged structure in the council chamber, projecting a green energy field around something.
"That," The Doctor pointed, "Is what I am more interested in."
El looked to the Time Lord. "Is that what the Daleks used to change time?"
"I'm not a betting man, but I'd wager every last penny I have." The Doctor replied. The thing on the screen looked... well, the Doctor couldn't see it clearly, but it felt powerful… and familiar. The sonic screwdriver bleeped, and the Doctor flicked it open. Whatever the Daleks had obtained, it was trying to communicate. "Temporal coordinates, interesting."
"How do we get in there with all those Daleks?"
The Doctor smiled. "Knock politely."
El frowned. "What?"
"Come on," The Doctor took her hand once more, leading her out the door. Sneaking past the same Scientist still running its experiments, the two entered the nearby lift, and the Doctor pressed the button to send it up.
"Where are we going?" El inquired.
"To the Supreme Council chambers." The Doctor told her seriously. "The heart of the Dalek Empire. Now, no matter what happens, keep calm. I'll be right there with you."
El nodded, as the lift stopped, and the doors slid open.
Two Dalek Drones were already there, waiting for them. "HALT!" One of the drones ordered. "YOU WILL BE TAKEN TO THE DALEK ETERNAL!"
"Well, what a stroke of luck." The Doctor clasped his hands together. "Take me to your leader."
The Dalek Drones led El and the Doctor into the Supreme Council chambers, up the massive ramp to the titanic Dalek sitting on a platform. In the center of the room, above the glowing green field being generated by the four pylons, a capsule, Dalek in design it appeared, floated, radiating cosmic power only whispered about in legend.
"DOCTOR…" The Dalek Eternal addressed as El and the Doctor came to a stop on its platform.
"Ah, you remember me." The Doctor replied. "Good. It's been quite some time since World War Two era London. And speaking of London… Have you got the first idea of what you're messing with!?"
"I, DOCTOR, AM THE DALEK ETERNAL!" It proclaimed. "MY PURPOSE IS TO ENSURE THE DESTINY OF THE DALEKS!"
"No, you have to stop this, now!" The Doctor insisted furiously. "The laws of time can only bend so much! You have no idea what you'll unleash!"
"THE LAWS OF TIME ARE NOW THE DALEKS' TO CONTROL." The Dalek Eternal proclaimed.
"You can't control the laws of time!" The Doctor retorted. "They're the ultimate rule in the universe, they're too powerful, the Time Lords made sure of that!"
"POWER, DOCTOR?" The Eternal retorted. "BEHOLD, DOCTOR, TRUE POWER! BEHOLD THE MIGHT OF THE DALEKS!"
A mechanical whirring activated behind them, and the Doctor and El turned around, to see the container hovering in the air opening up.
"No…" The Doctor breathed in horror, as he felt the power spilling out. "No. No!"
"Dad… what is it?" El asked as the container opened fully.
There, suspended on its own in the air, haloed in light, was a glowing glass cube, that had looked like it had once been split into six segments, with a platinum rod protruding from the top.
"El…" The Doctor gulped. "This… is the Key to Time. More powerful than the heart of the TARDIS. More powerful than any Time Lord. More powerful than any Celestial… more powerful than anything. With that key in your possession… you don't need a time machine to change time. You just think it, and it becomes so… I thought it was lost. We all did."
"Lost?" El turned to the Doctor.
"The Time War was destructive, so destructive that even the beings above the Time Lords, the Celestials, were consumed by it." The Doctor explained. "But before they died, the Black Guardian and the White Guardian put aside their eternal rivalry and hid the Key so that neither the Daleks nor Time Lords could use it as a weapon."
"THE DALEKS FOUND IT." The Eternal stated. "IT IS OURS TO COMMAND NOW… ALONG WITH THE TOTAL MASTERY OF TIME AND SPACE! THIS, DOCTOR, IS THE NEW DESTINY OF THE DALEKS! AN ETERNAL EMPIRE, INFINITE, UNENDING!"
"Ah, so that's why you're called the Eternal." The Doctor finally worked out. "That's been bugging me for a while now. It's just a fancy way of saying. 'Dalek Time Strategist.'"
"SOON, DOCTOR, THE DALEKS SHALL BECOME THE NEW LORDS OF TIME… AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP IT!"
"Over my dead body." The Doctor hissed. He quickly produced the sonic screwdriver, and pressed the button, a power conduit on the Eternal's body beginning to glow as it overloaded.
"EXTERMINATE!" The Eternal ordered.
"Come along, El!" He grabbed the girl, pulling her along.
The Daleks scrambled to fire upon the Doctor, as the Time Lord took a running jump off the platform.
"Geronimo!"
The Doctor's hand made contact with the Key to Time, and in a flash of light, he and El were gone.
In a flash of light, two screaming figures appeared in the Supreme Council chamber of the Daleks, falling to the floor.
"Ow…" The Doctor stood up, rubbing his head. "El, are you alright?"
"Fine." The girl shook her head, hair somehow staying tidy, as she got up as well. "Where are we?" She asked.
The Doctor looked around the room, the council chambers destroyed and long abandoned. "Those temporal coordinates… The Key itself sent them to me." The Doctor guessed. "This is Kalaann, before the Daleks came back."
El frowned. "Why didn't it just stop the Daleks itself, then?"
"The Key is only semi-sapient." The Doctor explained. "It can send coordinates, but to change time or send things through it, it needs a living being." The Doctor glanced around, before walking over to the field projector that, in the future, had been holding the key.
The Doctor popped open the panel and began fiddling around inside.
"What are you doing?" El inquired.
"Setting a trap." The Doctor answered. "The Eternal isn't likely going to let us go that easily." He activated the field generator, watching and waiting before a squadron of Daleks materialized right in the field.
The alien creatures screamed as they exploded.
The Doctor smiled. "See, not so-" He turned to El.
The girl was flickering again.
"D-Dad, I don't…"
"Shh," The Doctor tried to put his arms around her. "We've jumped time again so the field strength is weakened. Don't worry, El, I can fix this. We just need to stop the Daleks. Let's head back to the visualizer room."
Walking back to the lift, the Doctor and El narrowly dodged the sting of a Varga plant, before entering the next section of the corridor.
The Doctor hit the button to send for the lift, and as they waited, El looked out to the destroyed city.
The girl tilted her head, at the massive words etched into the ground, buildings reduced to rubble all around them. "'No More…'" She read. "What does that mean?"
The Doctor glanced over to her. "It was a message. To the Daleks and the Time Lords at the end of the war."
El nodded slowly. "Who put it there?"
"…I did." The Doctor reluctantly admitted, as the lift finally arrived. He took the lead in, waiting for El, before sending it down.
"RESTORE KALAANN! PREPARE TO ACTIVATE THE KEY TO TIME!" The Platinum-colored Dalek, surrounded by its maroon underlings, ordered as they flew in formation, the Key to Time being carried with them.
"The Supreme Dalek…" The Doctor shook his head as he watched the feed from the visualizer eye. "Who else would it be?"
"What do we do?" El fearfully asked, looking to the Doctor.
"Well, get the Key to Time from the Daleks, disperse it before they can use it to steamroll Earth, time gets put back in its proper place, and my daughter gets born." The Doctor outlined.
"Okay…" El looked to the screen. "How are we going to get past them?"
"What?" The Doctor shrugged theatrically. "Like I don't have a plan?" The Time Lord soniced the screen, the visualizer eye exploding, and a mechanical component fell out. "This is linked to the eye of every Dalek." He explained, picking up the small sphere. "Constantly receiving feeds from Daleks all over the universe. Now, I can reverse-engineer it so it'll blind them, but…"
"But what?" El asked.
The Doctor sighed. "I need more parts. And I need to work as fast as possible, given we don't know how much time we have to work with."
"…oh." El sighed. "I see."
"I know, it's dangerous." The Doctor told her. "But you're more capable than any other human child in existence. Besides, the only things you're liable to encounter in there are Varga plants. Easy to dodge."
"Right." El nodded. "What do you need?"
"A Dalek gun, and a Dalek eyestalk." The Doctor told her, as she walked over to the door. "Needless to say, don't try going after live ones. Good luck!" He wished as the door opened. "I know you can do it!"
El nodded as the door shut behind her, and the Doctor set to work, sighing.
El walked through the corridors, flickering unsteadily as she walked. Moving through a door, she spotted a bit of movement out of the corner of her eye, and looked, jumping into the air.
A Varga plant was right there, and she would've had been bitten the second she got close, only…
El looked down at her hand, as it returned solid, and she moved past the plant.
"Hmm…" She looked to the alien flora. "Couldn't see me."
She could use that. Flickering between solid color and being completely see-through, El moved as fast as she could, past the Varga plants, and past the Daleks, stopping out of sight whenever she returned to color.
Spotting a dome on the ruined floor, El pulled the eyestalk out of it, and proceeded forth.
Dodging more Daleks and Varga plants, El came to the end of the ruined production line, where there was a half-completed Dalek case lying on the floor.
Pulling the gun off, El looked to the two items, and hurried back to the Doctor.
"Ah, brilliant, there you are." The Doctor sighed, as El entered the room. "I was just starting to get worried."
The girl smiled proudly, holding out the two items for the Doctor to take.
"And you've got both of them, fantastic!" He complimented. "Now we can get this thing completed!"
After but a minute of hurriedly soldering together wires with the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor stood up, holding the completed device.
"There." The Time Lord stated satisfactorily. "Our very own Dalek Visual Disruptor. Hm… the range on it is limited. But, if we were to put it in something sufficiently big enough, something connected to enough Daleks like… the old Emperor's casing… why, that'd be enough to blind every Dalek in the city!"
"Easier said than done." The Doctor gulped, looking into the room filled with Daleks. "We're running out of time."
"PREPARE TO ACTIVATE THE KEY!" The Dalek Supreme ordered, as it began to hover above the generator.
"Dad," El turned to the Doctor, "Give it to me."
"What!?" The Doctor spluttered. "No!"
"They won't see me." She told him, flickering. "I can do this."
"…yes." The Doctor sighed, handing it over. "You can. El? Be safe."
The girl nodded, and holding onto the device tightly, she began the sprint across the council chambers. Passing by far too many Daleks for the Doctor's comfort, El ran up the ramp on the wall, up to the ancient Dalek Emperor's casing, the one that had been there before the Eternal had taken its place.
Climbing into the inactive shell, El connected the top of the visual disruptor to the visual systems of the Emperor's casing. With a pulse of light, all hell proceeded to break loose.
"MY VISION IS IMPAIRED I CANNOT SEE!" Every Dalek in the chamber screeched in unison, beginning to fire off wildly.
"Oh, great, I forgot the Daleks with ballistic with those things when they were blinded!" The Doctor berated himself. "Get a grip, Doctor, all you have to do is destroy the field generator holding the Key in place while the Daleks light up the place brighter than a drunk American on independence day, easy!" Taking a breath, the Time Lord launched himself into a sprint, ducking and weaving between the blasts.
"Dad!" El shouted down.
"Stay up there!" The Doctor ordered. "I'm about to blow this place sky-high!"
Sliding under a blast to the console, the Doctor applied the sonic screwdriver, and immediately, one of the pylons went up.
Alarms began to blare as the Doctor darted between more Dalek gunfire, running up the ramp.
"Dad!" El shouted in relief.
"El!" The Doctor hefted her onto his shoulders. "Let's go!"
Sprinting again towards the Key to Time, the Doctor leapt off the platform, and reached out with a hand.
"GERONIMO!"
With a flash of brilliant white light, the Doctor and El vanished from the Dalek Council Chambers, as the generator holding the Key to Time went up in flames, blowing the roof off the building.
In one last flash, the Doctor and El appeared, standing outside the TARDIS. The storeroom, which had been repaired when they arrived, was ruined again, the entire city in a state of disrepair.
"Ah, now that's what I call door-to-door." The Doctor chuckled at his own terrible joke, as he held the Key to Time in his hands. "Steady, steady," He recommended, as El hopped down from his shoulders.
"I'm fine." The girl looked to her solid form, before removing the chronon blocker. "We did it!"
"That we did!" The Doctor beamed as well. "Look, this is Kalaann as it should be." The Doctor gestured around. "Key to Time-free. The Daleks are probably going to come back again, but…" The Doctor examined the Key. "Something tells me the Eternal's probably not going to be a part of it anymore."
El nodded. "Good. What about Earth?"
The Doctor smiled knowingly, pushing the TARDIS door open with his foot.
"Mum, stop being such a square, will you?" Sylvia, on the TARDIS monitor, unaware that she was being observed, spoke into the phone of a telephone box. "It's only ten o'clock, I can look after myself you know. So what if I am late? It's not the end of the world."
The Doctor flicked the switch, the monitor turning off, before he turned to El. "See? All's well that ends well."
El smiled, hugging the Doctor.
The Time Lord blinked. "What's this for?"
"Nothing." The girl shrugged. "It just feels nice." She pulled back from the Doctor, looking to the glass cube in the seat. "What about that?"
"Oh, that?" The Doctor replied. "I would hide it somewhere out there, but in all likelihood, that would just mean someone with bad taste in how history should be is going to find it again… I can whip up a nice little room for it here in the TARDIS. At least, that way, the Key to Time is kept out of the wrong hands. Well, anybody's hands, really. Now," He suddenly smiled again. "Isn't there a Beatles show we're supposed to be attending?"
