I wasn't upset at all. K9 was just a machine anyways. I just stared at the stranger in amazement. "That was cruel, but effective. How are you at destroying Daleks?"

"Oh?" the man said with obvious false humility. "I do an adequate job."

"You killed K-9!" Luke shouted.

"Boy, calm down. That's a machine. Put in a few replacement parts and it'll be like nothing happened."

Luke sighed. "Then fix him already! Hurry!"

"Boy..." The Master fixed a stern expression on him. "Do you know where the TARDIS is headed?"

"No?"

I shook my head.

"Then we have no time to waste on your little dog machine. Not until we can track that TARDIS down."

Luke sighed. "Can't we, I don't know, go back in time before the TARDIS leaves or something?"

"No, because if we did that, it's likely the Transmat beam would go even further awry on account of the change of coordinates."

"That might not be so bad," I said. "Maybe Luke could have the bird parts this time."

Luke rolled his eyes. "You're implying that I don't."

I eyed him with suspicion. "Is this a joke?"

"No. I'm finding it really difficult to walk."

I hadn't noticed it before, but he did sort of walk with a limp.

I sighed. "Anyways, the guy's got a point. Let's go."

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Luke hissed to me as I marched to the door. "I got a really bad feeling about this."

"He's a Time Lord, and he has a TARDIS. That automatically makes him more competent than all of us in this matter."

"That's not what I'm worried about," he whispered.

"And what are you worried about?" the Master asked in a mirthful tone.

That ended the conversation.

As previously stated, the other TARDIS lay a fair amount of blocks away, so Luke had to lead us limping up through a bunch of unfamiliar neighborhoods.

After the first block, he pulled up his pant legs, and yanked off his shoes, revealing a pair of awkward backwards bending bird legs and feet. He made a kind of satisfied squawking noise, continuing the journey `barefoot', so to speak.

We both got stared at, but I figured I had suffered enough embarrassment throughout my adventures to not care. Not so sure about him.

As we crossed a street, to Sarah's driveway, Luke turned to face our new acquaintance. "Mister Master, if we get your TARDIS working again, do you promise to go back in time and stop the Daleks from killing my mother and my friends?"

The Master stopped and put a hand on his shoulder. "My dear boy, I detest Daleks. I would gladly remove all of those hideous monstrosities from your life the moment I get my TARDIS back in order."

"So mom won't die?"

The Master coughed. "Well, I can't promise you that, but I can promise that I will stop the Daleks from killing her."

Luke almost looked outraged. "So, what, you'll kill her then?"

The Master chuckled and shook his head. "Child you can only run from fate so long before it catches up to you. Everyone dies eventually. If I save her from the Daleks, perhaps she will die from cancer. Or from something else she encounters in her fool adventures. That's all I meant."

He patted the boy's back. "Your mother..." His expression became wistful. "There was something about her..." He smirked. "Rest assured, killing her was always the furthest thing from my mind."

"But you tried, didn't you?"

He didn't disagree. "In all honesty, a lot of what I have done resulted from me not taking rejection very well."

Luke grimaced. His mouth moved, but he appeared to be too stunned to respond in words.

Inside the house, we climbed the stairs in a great hurry, rushing to the Transmat.

Mr. Smith seemed to know we were coming, for in the next moment, machinery came popping out of the chimney, the gun barrels sliding out.

"Mr. Smith, deactivate guns," the Master barked.

The machine groaned, retracting the weapons.

"How did you...?" Luke stammered.

"Your mother never told you, did she?"

Luke gawked at him. "Told me what?"

"That I helped build Mr. Smith!"

The boy's face looked a bit red, perhaps flushed with anger. "She said she built it on her own! The crystal told her what to do!"

"Always a humble one, your mother. Who do you think helped her put the machinery in the chimney? You have no idea what a pain all that wiring and coding was."

Luke looked crushed, staring at the floor. "She never told me."

Not skipping a beat, the Master quickly snatched up the Transmat darting down the stairs.

"Hey! Wait a damn minute!" I leapt after him, with Luke close at my heels.

"Do try to keep up!" The Master called from the front door.

"She lied to me," Luke panted as we caught up with the man on the driveway.

"You mustn't be harsh on her," the Master said. "She loved the Doctor. She thought I was the most evil time lord in the universe. Which I am."

I swallowed. "Shouldn't that be `you were'?"

The man gave an indifferent shrug, hurrying down the street. "I do not intentionally set out to do evil, things. I only act on a plan that seems good to me at the time, and others construe the act as evil."

We turned a corner, past one of those weird red mailboxes popular in that country.

"Can you give me an example?" I asked.

He sighed. "I may have unleashed an army of killer plastic...aliens to kill some Londoners, so I could conqer the world. I admit the plan was poorly conceived, but the Doctor called it evil."

That shocked me into silence for a moment, but then, as we neared the TARDIS, "And...how did you do that?"

He laughed, seeming flattered. "It's rather involved. I'll tell you later."

The Master opened the door to his machine.

"Let's say you conquer the world. What then?"

"Why, I rule, of course!"

"But how would you rule?" I persisted. How would you run the economy? The healthcare system? Taxes? Civil law? Would you keep the United States constitution if you conquered the country?"

"Ah..." He frowned. "You know, I'm really not sure! I never got that far in the planning. I mean, I've had plans for how to maintain dominance, but..." He shook his head, stepping into the TARDIS. "Let's catch this Type 40 and talk about that later. I fear it may already be too late."

The man opened a seat on one of the chairs, whipping out a sonic screwdriver.

He took apart the Transmat, picking capacitor-like things out of it.

"This may seem like a stupid question, but how am I going to get rid of my beak?"

The Master dashed to the time console, throwing a panel off. "Once we fix time, that little problem should iron itself out right away."

He climbed inside the machinery, banging around on something.

I sat on the floor next to him, waiting for him to finish.

"You know," a muffled voice said from within the machine. "I once considered bringing back the Velociraptor as a weapon to destroy my enemies. But after what you did, well..."

He came sliding out on a mechanic's creeper, giving me a thoughtful look. "I've come to realize how profound a responsibility one has as a time lord, and what a fool I had been attempting to tinker with historical events. There is nothing like being at the receiving end of another madman's meddling to show one the error of his own ways."

I shut up and took it, because I deserved it.

The man slid back into the machine.

Hoping he wasn't as evil as he sounded, I told him about the situation with my wife and child, everything that happened. "Sir, I got used to Eve the way she is, but it's wrong. The Daleks shouldn't have mutilated her like that. And my son, well, he's just the icing on a bad cake."

The man popped back out, scowling at me. "Rather cold of you to be describing your son that way. What kind of man are you?"

Despite coming from such a notorious evil mastermind, his comment actually hurt. "I don't need parenting lessons. Especially not from the commander of plastic army toys."

The Master rolled his eyes. "They're Autons!" He shook his head. "Never mind. You don't need to worry. I'll take care of those pesky Daleks for you. I could never stomach their superiority complex anyway."

"Because you already have your own," Luke muttered.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that! At any rate, I find it horribly distasteful to attempt to exterminate your own allies just to fulfil some lofty Arayan-esque ideal." He stepped around the console, dismantling a panel on the upper portion of the machine. "Young man, you remind me of myself when I was your age. So many mistakes! But, unlike you, I always had someone coming behind me, undoing all that I've done."

He fell silent, looking somber as he pulled out wires and plugs and stuck them in places.

The expression seemed to have a lot of deep, conflicted emotion behind it.

After a long silence, The Master said, "You must be in dire straits to come to the most evil mastermind in the universe for assistance."

"I don't see people in black and white stereotypes. The way I see it, you're kind of cool. What, were you planning to take over the universe or something?"

The man laughed. "Possibly?"

I rolled my eyes. "And what would it entail, exactly?"

He looked excited. "I suppose this will spoil the surprise, but I intended to turn everyone on the planet into a copy of me!"

I chuckled. "I don't want one copy of me, and you want five billion? Wouldn't that get kind of annoying? I guess you didn't see that Twilight Zone episode..."

The Master put his chin in his hand. "Perhaps I should merely do a test run on one person and see how it goes."

I smirked. "As long as it's not me, or my friends. But do me a favor. Leave the women alone. No offense, but I'd prefer if you didn't take all the sexy out of the world."

This got the Master laughing again.

"Maybe you could just have kids. It's kind of like cloning yourself."

"Hmmm." I don't think the comment registered in his brain. He examined a computer, then climbed back in the machine.

"How much longer will this take? I don't want them to get away."

"Patience!" he shouted. "Have no worries about that! That blue box is to my TARDIS as a police officer is to a shiny red Ferrari!"

It took me a minute to figure out what he meant. "Are...you saying you have a detector?"

"Bright boy," he muttered. I couldn't tell if it were a compliment or not.

The Master worked in silence for several minutes before speaking again. "Hypothetically, if you were to conquer a planet, how would you accomplish it?"

"Me? Really?" Presuming this to be idle conversation, I said, "I think the neutron bomb would be a good choice. Or that satellite dish thingy they had on this old movie called Quiet Earth. Wipes out all the people, leaves everything else standing."

"The only problem with that, is if you break your eyeglasses, or have a problem with your teeth, you're out of luck. Plus, what would you do with all the empty space?"

I grinned. "Damn."

"Yes, I do watch The Twilight Zone." He paused. "Mr. Wilson, do you know what it's like to constantly define yourself as being the polar opposite of someone else?"

Offhand, I could think of my brother, perhaps some other people. "Sometimes."

He popped out of the console. "Then maybe you will understand what I mean when I say that I truly feel unconfortably like that individual right now."

I wasn't sure what he was getting at. "You mean you keep a spit cup by the bed?"

The Master shuddered. "Good heavens, no! What on earth!" He shook his head violently. "Never mind. I don't want to know."

He stuck a few capacitors inside an open compartment, then clamped a panel over it. "There!" He flipped switches and hit buttons.

The entire room lurched sideways, and parts of the robot dog slid across the platform and tumbled off the edges.

"When will you fix K-9!" Luke cried as he made a desperate grab for the parts.

"Once we fix this bungler's mistakes!" the Master shouted back.

The entire room shook, and it felt like we bumped into something.

The Master opened the door, and I found myself staring into the console room of the blue TARDIS.

Eve was nowhere to be seen.

Losing no time, I hurried out, hollering to my son. Well, what I thought his name was supposed to be. "Krog!"

The tentacle headed boy in the space suit just stared at me from behind the console.

"Chukha?" I stammered.

"Don't talk to me!" he growled. "You just want me dead!"

I sighed. "Chuck. Look..."

"The name is Tharg!" he spat. "After the grandfather you killed!"

"Look, Tharg. I don't want you dead. I..."

"You just want me to cease existing. I know," he sighed.

He was right. I couldn't say anything to fix things between us.

"Ah!" said a voice behind me. "Is this your son?"

I nodded.

"And what a handsome boy he is." The Master stepped forward, petting him on the head. "A fine, intelligent boy."

Tharg frowned at him. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Master. I'm a time lord."

Tharg's eyes got really big. "Like the Doctor?"

He laughed. "Precisely."

The man knelt down to the boy's level. "Now, boy, we are going on a little trip. Can you guess where we're going to?"

"No!" he screamed, punching the Master in the face.

Seconds later, he had a Dalek gun pointing at the Master's forehead. "I want to live!" he growled in a voice like he were possessed. "I want to grow up like other children. I want to present a challenge to their survival by growing up and taking their jobs, their food, their resources. I want to empty my parents' pocket books and find ways to get them arrested for child endangerment. I want to see them starving and homeless. I want to smoke and drink and do all the things that shame them, just like other children.

"And if you stand in my way, I'll blow your brains out. I doubt you can regenerate from that!"

[0000]

To be continued