Fictions Mentioned:

Short Story

OP Song:

Adele - Skyfall (Lyric Video)

Insert Song: Start

Ookami Kakushi -The Beginning of The End (w/ lyrics & translation)

"Doctor no more."

That was the very first word that the Man would utter as if it were the most solemn of the sacred vows.

A Man who would now presently reject the promise of his name. It was an echo that was haunting, almost like it reverberates throughout all of space-time. It almost looks like the universe itself stopped for a brief microsecond. This brief microsecond where it was uttered was a very long moment for the Man With No Name.

The contemplation started from the last few moments before losing consciousness. He remembers trying to save a young woman whose voice was joined to the cry of thousands of souls that were echoing in the billions. The mystery of suffering comes to the forefront of the mind that sees beyond the nature of three dimensions. The woman was the more fortunate one as she was the closest person that he can help.

At least, that was the plan.

But circumstances were rather unfortunate for the Man With No Name. The woman, discovering his identity as a Lord of Time, stubbornly refused his help, even taking pleasure in taking out one of the monsters that made the universe itself into a living hell.

But even then...this was but a mere fraction of what she was experiencing. She thinks that it was the universe itself that was now a living hell in light of the conflict between the Great Houses ("Time Lords") of the Homeworld ("Gallifrey") and the Enemy ("Daleks") of the Anti-Homeworld ("Skaro").

Individuals and people, both high and low, called this particular conflict by many countless names.

But there were whispers...

Some whispers...

Whispers that concerned him even as he tried to flee from his predetermined role...

This is the Last Great Time War, they said, on every planet in any universe that ever amounted to anything – for how could it be anything else?

Time is being used as the most basic weapon that can be found from any side. The laws of nature are now being twisted into something abominable and something utterly incomprehensible and unpredictable, giving birth to terrifying monstrosities that have many names or not at all and phantasms from the realm of neverwhere. Every moment of the continuum is being threatened; nowhere and nowhen was safe. Linearity is relative; it could mean over four hundred years for one individual, but for another may be over a thousand to one. From the very beginning up to the very end – permeated so far and so deep into the very structure of the universe that the conflict had - quite literally-been raging for eternity. There was no epoch that remained unscathed, uncontested, no history that had not been rewritten.

But this was merely one fraction of Hell. For Hell itself has many infinite layers upon layers with various forms of punishments depending upon the degree and what the woman is describing was merely the lowest level that can be comprehended by most mortals. The War stretches even to every single permutation of reality and from the realm of the sixfold manifold dimensions of the gods, and even what lay beyond the border into other otherwards, and even what lay even beyond that.

He stares at his face in the mirror. His eyes reflect something of deep sadness and profound respect. It was the face of someone that he was greatly familiar with in the past. That someone who was long dead, having perished with dignity and honor. And he was also his very old friend that was from another universe.

Professor Trevor Bruttenholm.

Born in the year 1916, in England. He graduated from Oxford University in 1943. A British academic well-versed in the supernatural, Trevor Bruttenholm was a member of the British Paranormal Society. He was an adviser to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt when the Allies realized that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was racing to use the occult to turn the tide of World War II. For some time, he had met him quite randomly and on occasion when visiting his world which he had done in his very last face – the face of the Eighth Man Bound, helping him with his problems from time to time which concerned the darker world of the occult and of the supernatural, even getting involved in an incident that would change that man's life forever, adopting a demon that he considered to be a son and wanting to raise him into being a man in spite of his nature.

He was a true father to the boy who he would raise quite well, a man who taught the value of choice and the need to make it. He was the man who had taught the value of faith and how powerful it can truly be.

And when the Man With No Name uttered "Doctor no more," it was more of a whisper of interior contradiction especially when it surrounded the face that he wears today – a permanent mark grafted into his features that made him into a mere question and an enigma.

He can try to deny his name all he truly wants. At the end of the day, whispers will be heard of the name. He cannot escape the name since using it, with the foundation of that name being molded from his very first trip to the Anti-Homeworld ("Skaro") alongside his granddaughter whom he loved dearly and two of his first official companions – brilliant teachers and people of integrity.

Oh...how he missed those old days of peace before the War...

Oh how he wished for the days when he would simply just have simple adventures and take companions to see all of the bright stars that he had grown amazed at since he was a child...

But alas...now was the time for war...

Now was the time for action...

People can call him what they like...but he will never call himself truly the Doctor...

But even then...he felt that the name would still be uttered within his lips...

Doctor...

He holds the bandoleer across his chest where his twin hearts were beating within a new chest that was on fire with resolve and determination, still wearing the worn-out clothing of his past self. His outfit no longer mattered to him, but it was the bandoleer that had once been the woman's whom he had failed to save and whose body was present a few meters away. Now, he wears it out as a sign of respect that stood out. There were none that were added now, but eventually, he will add more complex weapons and explosives into it once he officially enters into the conflict, but on his own terms.

He was a free agent of his own accord.

He was on the sign of innocents, of the collateral, of those who cannot be able to defend themselves.

No longer was he the Eight Man Bound.

He was someone else.

The Man With No Name.

He was the definitive and fixed Ninth Man, separating himself from every alternate and potential ninth incarnation that was and had been born from all of time. Multiple contradictory accounts of what and who was truly the ninth incarnation of the Time Lord known as the Doctor. It is to be expected of the Man who is known for having approximately seventeen timelines, all of them both true and contradictory.

But the Man With No Name had the advantage that all of the ninth incarnations did not. He was to be the secret incarnation, the X-Factor incarnation, the incarnation with no traceable timeline at all. Since becoming the Man With No Name, having officially relinquished the title of Doctor and yet still subconsciously keeping it hidden beneath the darkness and still made him one, he allowed himself to remain anonymous from the very beginning. No one can know who he is unless he wants him to.

If knowledge is power, knowing what you don't know is wisdom. Use your ignorance to your advantage. The Greek philosopher Socrates famously observed, "I know one thing, that I know nothing." He also said, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

He is Anonymity.

He is Nothing.

And with the concept of nothing, he will start and build the foundation of his mission of war for the sake of peace and sanity.

But first...

He turns his green-brown eyes back to the woman that became the major contributing factor behind his new face. He needed to pay his respects to the dead.

The time for burying the woman who in another life might have been his companion. But because of the War, such a potential tapestry would have been cut-offed before it saw the light of fruition.

He will remember this woman forever.

He will remember her name.

Cass Fermazzi.

The woman – Cass Fermazzi was clever and brave and doomed.

She had grown up on one of the farm planets of the Gazrond Belt, and had stowed away on a star freighter at the age of fourteen to see the wonders of the universe and unfortunately found out to her despair that there were no wonders left. Instead, there was a war that threatened all reality.

At first, she ran, but one day, helping an old soldier die in a crater full of mud snakes under a burning moon, she realized there was nowhere left to hide. The following morning, the kindly medtech who closed the soldier's eyes unclipped the bandolier from around the dead man's chest and gave it to Cass, perhaps mistaking her for a friend or relative. Cass took the bandolier, tightened it around herself, and decided to start running in the opposite direction.

Three months later, she was crewing a gunship. Four years later, she had survived the Nightmare Child, wept at the massacre of Skull Moon, and fought in the ruins of the Ulterium. On the last day of her life, she and her crew successfully repelled a Dalek fleet from the feeding hives of the Vantross, but then, as they flew to safety, found themselves under attack from one of the Time Lord battle cruisers, now as indiscriminate in their slaughter as the Daleks themselves. They were blasted from the stars for no better reason, Cass realized, than that they were blocking the view of the retreating Daleks.

She'd been the only one who didn't panic. She'd teleported the crew to the safety of the nearest planet and, with no one left to teleport her, and realizing that a safe crash landing was now an impossibility, she'd finally asked for help.

And that help came from a man that called himself the Doctor.

But that Doctor is gone.

Now there was the Man With No Name.

And he had found out about this information as he pieced it together, either through the available data that he managed to find from the ship or other trustworthy sources such as when he would eventually ask for the Sisterhood to uncover the remains of the woman and give them back to her family after the coast was clear enough.

It was the least that he could do.

He can feel the cruel laughter of the universe as it burned. He had foreseen in flashes of apocryphal canonicity a time when Cass Fermazzi was another companion of his past face. There was no war on the horizon. They were both free to travel the universe, and eventually, show her the Multiverse. Uncover ancient tombs, help others that they found in need, meeting new faces and cultures. It was the same old routine that he had hoped would last forever even if he were to leave her behind.

But that timeline is gone, cut off by the War before it could see the light of day.

He attended a simple funeral. It was a simple kind that was similar to the ones found on Earth. The simple ceremonies and last rites of the Sisterhood were commendable and solemn at the very least, just as he would prefer it. Ohila – the High Priestess of the Sisterhood presided over the ceremony with a hint of authority and solemnity. He simply stood from afar and watched and remained absolutely silent from the very beginning up to the very end of the ceremony.

But even at this time...

He can feel it...

The weight of full temporal simultaneity. All time happening at once. All time, all seasons, all days.

And he can sense the familiar approaching darkness heading straight toward Karn.

"Ohila."

He called out to the High Priestess who was now present by his side just as the Sisterhood were just finished burying the woman. The High Priestess understood immediately based on the look in his green-brown eyes.

There was no more need for words.

The mind of a Lord of Time is quite a complicated thing. The boundaries between sheer intuition, a strategic and practical mind, and outright precognition of potential probabilities can only be stretched quite thin as it were.

The Man had foreseen the coming calamities (both potential and unreal). He sees Karn burning in the wreckage of over a thousand ships, both ally and enemy. Karn was one of the planets that were the designated potential targets and he knew the value of this planet that could be exploited with several possibilities.

He would see the devastation in the form of a thousand worlds as if an off-stage gunfight had taken place. Cracks from the planet were seen and elements from other worlds were present. He would even see a possible timeline where he left the Sisterhood to their fate. And he would even see himself with different types of reactions that may play over the cause and effect of an event as if it were stories that they could be told in any medium. The overlaying complexity of the timelines for the average foresighter is harder than it is since the War had started. But not for him.

This cannot be allowed to come to pass, the Man thought.

Thousands of bronze, saucer-shaped motherships were now seen from outside the void of space, having dematerialized from the Time Vortex. And now, they were all in attack formation, ready to begin their primary objective.

They planned to take control of Karn – Legacy of the Time Lord Morbius, seeing the potential benefits that can be gained from the War, ripe for the taking as there was no sign of the Great Houses or of their allies. Meaning that there was no one to interfere.

First: Karn can provide a potential (but appeared to be highly improbable) rumored backdoor to Gallifrey's timeline and once the former is taken, it may perhaps be easier to take the latter by a surprise counteroffensive that the Time Lords would not have anticipated.

Second: Karn houses the Sacred Flame – a powerful heat source fueled by an underground natural gas pocket that escaped through a fissure in the rock, acting like a natural gas nozzle. They must have it even if they were to tear the planet apart to its subatomic origins.

If the goals prove to be impossible, then it is not a major issue for the war effort. They were more than prepared to die for their GOD-EMPEROR.

"KARN HAS NOW BEEN LOCATED WITHIN OUR PRIMARY SENSORS. COMMENCED THE INVASION AS PLANNED. WE SHALL NOW TAKE THIS PLANET BY STORM AND USE IT FOR THE PURPOSE OF POTENTIALLY SUBVERTING THROUGH GALLIFREY'S DEFENSES AND FOR THE CAPTURE OF THE SACRED FLAME," the Supreme Dalek commanded in a shrill voice.

"WE OBEY!" all of the Daleks complied.

And yet...

Those same ships, powerful beyond the mortal imagination, were suddenly swiftly defeated.

Explosions followed. Fires spread out as multiple Daleks screamed in their shrill mechanical agonized voices. No enemy in their line of sight which can explain the strange phenomenon.

Only a few seconds seem to pass when this happened.

One of the warships however nearly survived the explosion. It was the one that houses the Dalek Supreme.

"EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! CONTROL SYSTEMS COMPROMISED BY UNKNOWN SOURCE! CRASHING THROUGH THE PLANET IN EXACTLY 5 RELS IMMINENT!" the Dalek Supreme said. The last word it ever said before he and his entire crew perished in the crash.

The warships have been taken care of for now, thought the Man With No Name.

He was now inside his TARDIS, already repaired and fully functional. Standing on the main console, he now activated the emergency protocols and managed to perform a quick-paced time lock around the entire war fleet and managed to disorient the local area, forcing the saucers to crash on each other from the same spatial-temporal coordinates. All he had to do was press a few buttons and the rest would follow suit. His TARDIS over the years has always been underestimated as the simple broken down Type 40 that never amounted to anything, having been found in the equivalent of a junkyard that was already passed its expiration date.

Why use it, many Time Lords would have and still thought.

Simple. Precisely because it was a Type 40 that it would be underestimated. It was a very old model, but he and the old girl had been through so very much, having been involved in several crisis events that tend to mangle and complicate the timelines of both him and the ship. It was no longer just an ordinary Type 40 as the Man had innovated and updated his beloved ship over the years since his very first incarnation.

Now...

It was him and the old girl against the War.

Of course, he would be a fool to underestimate the Daleks. This fleet was merely just a scouting force. Possible reinforcements would arrive and not a moment too soon. Karn needed to remain hidden at all costs and needed to be moved to a better location as this position has become compromised. And he might as well need to make a house call.

Battle TARDISes all gathered in what appeared to be the wreckage of various temporal ships. Many of these ships once belonged to races such as the Monan Host and the Warpsmiths of Phaidon. A great temporal battle had once erupted on Karn a very long time ago between the Temporal Powers and the Enemy. It was called the Thousand Year Battles of Karn.

There were many Time Lords, armed and ready, all gathered at the sight of the crashed Dalek saucer with different levels of interest, the only one left remaining that houses the recently dead extinguished Daleks, currently being checked by the Time Lord militia on the ground.

Cardinal Ramus, a Lord Cardinal of the War Council, being heavily notified of this incident due to a secret transmission directed from his Battle TARDIS, set course as he and his fleet arrived on Karn as scheduled. Karn was now being guarded after being notified of a potential Dalek invasion that had been foiled most recently. And the Man behind it? He fled, never to be seen.

Cardinal Ramus became quite thoughtful, reflective, and disturbed. He turned towards Ohila who had been standing right next to him.

"And you say that he is now different somehow...?" he asked.

"He is and he isn't," Ohila simply said, turning towards him.

"What do you mean?" Cardinal Ramus asked in curiosity.

"The Man has rejected his own name. You are free to call him as you know him, but he has now decided to remain anonymous for the time being, a free agent," Ohila said.

"A free agent?" Cardinal Ramus became incredulous. He thought. "("He wasn't quite as cooperative since the last time I saw him, so much so that even Cardinal Ollistra herself had to drag the man kicking and screaming if she had to, even sending him to boot camp of all things..")"

"And there's one other thing that he had decided to give to me as a message to you personally before he left," Ohila smiled with shrewdness. One can tell that she was pleased as she eloquently carried out her instructions to the letter just as the Man predicated. "He said and I quote: "("You will leave Karn alone. You and the Daleks. I will handle the latter while you deal with providing the Sisterhood with everything that they need to ensure its continued safety in light of further benefits that could serve the interest of Gallifrey better than whatever it is you have in mind. Consider this my act of gratitude toward them and a warning toward you as I know that you have as much of an interest on this planet as anyone else worth their salt in this war. If my warning isn't heeded, I would know.")" That is all that he has to say."

Even if the Man wasn't here, the Cardinal can already feel the weight of these very words as if directed straight towards him, making him sweat beneath his brow and gulp for a moment.

He would listen.

He would not dare crossed this Man.

The evidence was already staring at him in the face. The Man left the only Dalek saucer crashing down to this temporal wreckage in order to provide a living testament to everyone who would stumble upon it.

The Man would now take part in this War.

But on his own terms.

The darker days of the War have now begun as there was only...

NO MORE

Written on the edges of the crashed Dalek saucer for all to see.

...At the same time, more than thousands of Dalek warships throughout several parts of the universe from several epochs appeared to have perished through unknown circumstances. A battle here, another there. The stalemate suddenly broke off as if something happened that let the opposing forces crush the opposition with ease.

The news was now spreading like wildfire. There was something odd that had been happening behind everyone's noses. Not even the Time Lords could take credit for such acts. It was as if they were mere acts of God that managed to pull off the most impossible of miracles.

Whatever the case, the Battle and War TARDIS Fleets took full advantage of the chaos and reinstated their territories, expunging the Dalek plague.

All around...there was the only word that was left in whatever medium or sign it had been carved and written.

NO MORE

At the end of it all, Karn was provided with a much more stable and secure time lock that allowed its entire history to remain protected from further incursion – either of the Daleks or of other potential enemies. Further sub-transduction barriers and quantum forcefields were provided as well. Thanks also to the powers of the Sisterhood, they managed to further make the planet disappear, securing the planet further. An additional Battle TARDIS Fleet would be provided between intervals as additional security.

One timeline nipped off the bud. An unnecessary adventure was put on hold, one that may have resulted in a few unnecessary deaths. The first major success of the Man and he didn't even need to wield a gun as all he truly needed was his TARDIS, the old girl whom he trusted more than anything, and yet he can still feel the growing sadness from the ship that he had always called home.

What happened to you, thought the TARDIS sadly.

"I've changed," he muttered softly, gently patting the main console table. "No more adventures this time, old girl. No more running. This time would be different. I needed to be different."

Even if you are no longer calling yourself the Doctor, the TARDIS silently asked as if begging that it was not to be so.

"I have already lost the right to call myself by that name since Cass had recently died...but you can call me that if it makes you feel a bit better," he simply said.

As for the Man, he would never be better, not until this War would finally end. But he had a good feeling that the War is about to last for a very long time. Long battlelines lay ahead in the coming days between yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And he needed to plan things accordingly, bringing out his inner seventh.

Yes, it was about time for the chessmaster to come again and play the game, putting the pieces into place for his usage and discretion.

It was now time to get to work.

Insert Song: End

ED Song:

Terminator Salvation - Break The Silence (Soundtrack)

Incarnation(s)/Regeneration(s) of the Doctor:

The War Doctor - A: John Hurt

New Characters:

Cass Fermazzi - A: Emma Campbell-Jones

Ohila - A: Clare Higgins

Cardinal Ramus - A: Chris Jarman

The Daleks - A: Nicholas Briggs