DISCLAIMER: Anything you recognise- the Doctor, the Brigadier, the TARDIS-
belongs to the BBC. Anything you don't recognise- Time Scales, the Stranger-
belongs to me. Nina, Chris, Matteo and Natalie belong to themselves, and I
use their names here with their permission. Enjoy.
FEEDBACK: Feel free to give it.
Chapter Three
Time Scales
"Well, that went rather well, I think," the Doctor said, as he dumped his shopping bag onto a nearby chair in the TARDIS. "Everything picked up in a matter of minutes, and nobody tried to shoot me."
Indeed, everything appeared to be going well so far. The Doctor had arrived on twenty-fourth century Earth, and picked up the parts he needed at an electronics shop near his landing location. The man in the shop had been helpful enough giving the Doctor all the parts he'd asked for, and even giving him some advice on how to piece together some other parts with what was in the shop.
"You know, I always liked those shopkeepers," the Doctor said to the TARDIS as he began unpacking the bag onto the nearby table. "The Earth Government itself may have a couple of problems, but his kind of people will always help out the little guy..." The Doctor stopped talking as he looked over the stuff he'd taken out of the bag. Most of it was there- the fold inhibitor, the main emitter, and so on- but the Doctor had forgotten one thing- the sonic emitter central power source.
"Well, soon settle that, eh, old thing?" the Doctor said, smiling at the console. Getting out of his chair and heading over to the console, he pushed the fast return switch once. He could just set the coordinates, but the switch made everything so much easier and timesaving, since his third self had fixed it.
"Here we go again," the Doctor smiled, looking around the TARDIS. The TARDIS console blinked a few lights at him. Suddenly, the TARDIS jolted to the side, knocking the Doctor against the console!
"What in the name of Rassilon...?" the Doctor said, checking the instruments on the console. To his surprise, nothing appeared to be wrong.
Deciding it probably wasn't worth bothering about, the Doctor picked up his umbrella just before the familiar groaning, wheezing noise sounded throughout the room. The Doctor opened the door, stepped out of the TARDIS...
And stared in horror at the site in front of him.
It was completely different from the sight he'd seen only recently. That sight had been a relatively peaceful one, with several buildings stretched all around and several shops lying about. This new scene, however, was completely different. It reminded him strongly of the scene on Excelis before his visit, except for the fact that there were large quantities of rubble lying about the place that hadn't been on Excelis. However, apart from that, the scene was very Excelis- like, the buildings being made completely of concrete and smog filling the air. Generally, the entire city gave the general impression of being a prison, or at the very least a kind of place that you'd only ever go to if you had nowhere else to go. Even the ground was terrible, being covered in mud and debris.
"What in the universe...?" the Doctor asked, looking around himself. Looking up, the Doctor saw that the smoke was even blocking off the sky from view, but thought he glimpsed a ship of some kind up there. However, he couldn't make out any more details about it, so he decided he'd ignore it for the moment. Evidently, the bump had been the TARDIS shifting into a history of Earth that had been altered somehow. The question was, what had happened?
Thinking that a look around couldn't hurt, the Doctor walked out of the alleyway in which the TARDIS had materialised and began to walk along the streets. The people he saw around him were even worse than the city was, their clothes being so thin and ragged in some cases that it appeared a miracle to the Doctor that they were able to walk without freezing.
"What happened here...?" he asked himself, horrified. Looking ahead of him, he noticed another horrifying sight- two men were punching a young woman all over, even kicking her at times!
"Help..." she groaned, reaching her hand out to a passer- by. However, he just looked at her, and then walked by.
"Shut up, bitch!" the older man cried, hitting her in the face. He looked like he'd been a wrestler in a previous life and a soldier in another, and had resulted in a body that looked like both of those combined. "You don't talk to me like that! You don't talk to me like that EVER again! You're DEAD!"
At that moment, the man was distracted by the Doctor's umbrella hitting him over the head.
"Leave her alone!" the Doctor said, looking at the two men with an angry look in his eyes.
"What's the big idea, jackass? She said I was an idiot!" the other man cried. He just looked like a large boxer who'd taken a lot of hits, and was so mad about it he'd hit anybody who got him annoyed.
"That doesn't give you the right to hit her senseless!" the Doctor said, glaring at the men. "I've seen things on other worlds that would make you shake in fear, but what you're doing is one of the most barbaric things I've ever seen. You'll be stopped, now."
"Hah!" laughed the first man, looking at the Doctor. "You stop us? What you going to do, make us laugh to death?"
"No," the Doctor said, picking up his umbrella and facing his opponents with a harsh glare in his eyes. "With this."
With that, before anyone could stop him, the Doctor hooked his umbrella around the first man's neck and yanked him towards him. No sooner had the man reached the Doctor then the Doctor stuck him arm round the man's back and pinched the nerve endings in his neck. The man collapsed to the ground at once.
"What the hell...?" the man asked, looking down at his friend.
"Don't worry, he's just knocked out," the Doctor said, smiling a little. He faced the man, and his face took on a harder expression. "I don't kill, like you two seem to. Now, do I have to do the same to you, or will you leave this young woman alone?"
The man for a moment looked like he'd fight the Doctor himself, and hang any consequences. But, looking down at his friend, knocked out in a matter of seconds, he appeared to reach the smart decision. Glaring at the Doctor, he picked up his friend's body and ran away.
"And don't come back!" the Doctor yelled after them. "Some people..." he said to himself, as he looked over at the girl. "Are you all right?"
The girl looked up at him. The Doctor noted that, beneath the dirt and grim that covered her hair and face, streaked with the lines her tears had caused, she was actually rather attractive, if having taken a few cuts and bruises here and there.
"W...why...?" she croaked weakly, looking up at him. She tried to get up, but collapsed to the ground- evidently her leg was injured. Even with his brief glance at it, the Doctor was certain that there were a few broken bones involved there, and possible damage to a few veins as well.
"Easy there," the Doctor said, crouching down beside her. The mud stained his umbrella, but that could be cleaned. "That leg doesn't look too good. I'm sure I have a medical kit here somewhere..." he said to himself, fumbling through his pockets. Eventually, he pulled out a white box with a red cross on it.
"Not much, I'm afraid, Miss..." the Doctor said, faltering a little as he looked at her. I'm sorry, but I didn't get your name."
"Jill..." she gaped, looking at him with a puzzled expression. The Doctor wondered at that- it was always natural for someone to help someone else in trouble, but she seemed to act like it wasn't- but decided he'd ask about that later.
"Ah, good," he smiled, looking at her with a little grin on his face. "Now, understand that I haven't got a great deal of medical resources on hand at present, but with what I've got, I can attend to some of your injuries- like that, for instance," he said, indicating a large cut on her forehead. "You really should have gotten that seeing to a long time ago. Why not go to a doctor?"
"Doctor...?" Jill asked. Looking at her, the Doctor saw she looked puzzled again, but this time it was also with a touch of confusion. It was as though 'doctor' was a completely alien word to her.
"Wait a minute..." the Doctor said, putting the medical kit back in his pocket as he looked at Jill. "Are you telling me you don't know what a doctor is?"
"No," Jill said, looking at him. "You're very odd, you know that?"
"Odd? Me?" the Doctor said. "I'll confess that I was thought of as being a bit eccentric in earlier lives, but I always thought of this me as being relatively normal..." he said, suddenly looking at Jill and noting that she was now looking a bit worried. "I'm not convincing you of that, am I?"
Jill shook her head. Right now she was giving every impression that she wanted to get away from the Doctor as soon as possible. "You're odd. You say things that don't exist, you help me-"
"What?!" the Doctor cried, looking extremely shocked now. "Helping people isn't normal?"
"No," Jill said, looking at him. "Didn't you know that? The Dictator has taught us that helping others is a sign of weakness. We shouldn't help those who-"
"As Ace would have said, back up a bit there," the Doctor said, as he got back onto his feet. "'Dictator'? What Dictator?"
"The Dictator, of course," Jill said, staring at him. "Where have you been for all your life?"
"Wandering, mainly," the Doctor said to himself, before he assumed a determined expression on his face. "Jill, tell me about this 'Dictator'."
"Why?" Jill asked, puzzled.
"It's complicated," the Doctor said, crouching down again to talk to her better. "I am a traveller in time and space, you see."
"Right..." Jill said, her eyes flicking past to the Doctor the exit of the alley.
"If you're thinking of running away, I wouldn't if I were you," the Doctor said. "Your leg isn't in the slightest condition to even hobble slightly, never mind run. Besides, I'm not mad, I can assure you. I won't hurt you."
"OK..." Jill said, looking at him. She still didn't look happy, but seemed to be prepared to accept the Doctor, mainly because he hadn't tried to attack her yet.
"Good," the Doctor smiled. "Now, Jill, first things first- that 'Dictator' you mentioned, I've never heard of him at all. Could you tell me about him?"
"He's the ruler of all Earth," Jill said, looking up at the Doctor. The cut on her head was bleeding, so the Doctor passed her a tissue, but she rejected it. "He became ruler in the early twenty-first century, to protect us from an alien assault. He bred us to be as strong as we could be, and, ever since then, he has ruled us with a grip of iron..." here she stopped, gasping a little. The Doctor hoped none of her ribs had been damaged in the beating she'd just taken; he wasn't sure he could help her if that was the case.
"That's putting it mildly..." the Doctor said to himself, as he looked around him at the ruined streets. "Sorry, go on," he said to Jill.
"Well, that's about it," Jill said, gasping weakly as she tried to stand up. The Doctor handed her his umbrella, and she gratefully hauled herself up onto her feet while leaning on it. She looked up at the Doctor and smiled at him. "You're nice, you know that?"
"Well, I'm not from here, am I?" the Doctor grinned back at her. He offered her his arm. "Anyway, why are you suddenly so trusting?"
"We may believe that the strong crush the weak, but we're still nice to some people," Jill replied, grinning a little. "It's just we're forbidden to help people who're losing a fight."
"Ah, excellent!" the Doctor said. "Well, after-" he began, when suddenly bright lights blared up into their faces!
"FREEZE!" a loud voice cried. "Nobody move!"
Holding his hand up in front of the light, the Doctor saw what was going on- somehow, in the brief period since he stepped into this alley, several military vehicles had managed to surround the alley entrance. He could identify several troop carriers, a few tanks, and he glimpsed what might be a prison van.
"What the...?" Jill said, looking around her, blinking in the light. "What's up?" "You're under arrest, miss!" one man said, pointing his gun at her. "You AND your friend."
"Ah, good," the Doctor smiled, looking around himself at the soldiers.
"Good?!" Jill whispered to him as the soldiers began to close in around her. "Are you insane?"
"I thought we'd already gone through this?" asked the Doctor, as the two of them were herded towards the prison van. "Besides, I'm doing this for the best of reasons."
"What would they be?" Jill asked, as they were forced into the van, Jill trying to hobble as fast as she could.
As the doors to the van shut, the Doctor could be heard saying one thing; "I have to see the Dictator."
*****
After a long and boring drive, the van stopped, and the doors of the van were torn open.
"On your feet, scumbags," a soldier said, pointing his gun at the Doctor and Jill. "You're at the Dictator's palace. You should be honoured that he will decide your fate."
"Hardly," the Doctor thought to himself, as the soldier shoved him out of the van, Jill being pulled out by another. "So, that's the Dictator's base..." he commented, looking at the sight in front of him, with a certain reluctant impression in his eyes. This was mainly because the tower in front of him was incredibly tall, resembling a fortress with some battlements around it, but there was a large tower standing right in the centre of those battlements- in fact, in all appearances, it resembled the Dark Tower where the Doctor's first, second, third and fifth selves had met once, and which he had returned to earlier in his present life to deal with some new adversaries.
Groaning, the Doctor bowed his head, as though in prayer. "This isn't good..." he muttered to himself, a fretful expression on his face. Only one of the few beings to visit Gallifrey could know about that structure, and if any alien had managed to set up any sort of structure that looked like that, he almost certainly had a huge superiority complex.
"Keep moving!" the soldier cried, ramming his gun into the Doctor's back.
"You know, you could just ask me nicely," the Doctor said, looking back at the guard. "Would it kill you to be polite to a prisoner for once?"
"You don't deserve good manners!" the soldier shouted, placing his gun into the Doctor's back again. "Now, get moving."
"Fine," the Doctor muttered to himself as he began to walk forward. Still, my friend, you'll soon have your own little problems to deal with, if I can help it...he thought to himself.
As the Doctor and Jill were forced through the corridors, the Doctor couldn't help but notice the fine collection of artwork arrayed around him. The walls weren't much- simply black, without a spot of colour on them- but the paintings took away the attention to the walls. Evidently, the Dictator, whoever, or whatever he was, had a great deal of money available to him and a passion for fine artwork that was virtually limitless- Claude Oscar Monet's Lilies was standing in pride of place on one wall, along with the Mona Lisa right beside it, and the Venus de Milo was standing in a corner. Vincent Van Gough's Irises was near that, as was Paul Cézanne's Apples and Oranges. Towards the end of the corridor, and around a large door, the Doctor noticed another Monet, Poplars, and Picasso's Guernica.
"He's certainly done well for himself," the Doctor commented to Jill, as the soldiers steered them towards the large door between Poplars and Guernica. "I'm looking forward to finding out a bit more about this character."
"Are you insane?" Jill asked, staring at the Doctor.
"Please, don't start that again..." the Doctor groaned, as the door was opened, to reveal a large dark loom. There were little lights in it, but at the far end of the room, the Doctor could make out a large throne on top of several steps, with someone sitting on it.
As he and Jill were shoved in that direction by two of the soldiers, the others leaving them alone, more details about the man became apparent. He was very tall and looked rather like everyone else the Doctor had seen in that timeline so far- he had a general air of being capable of taking several knocks before he would finally be knocked down, and reminded the Doctor vaguely of a wrestler. He was dressed in a black suit and black cloak with a red inner lining, and had black hair.
"Lord Dictator, this is the man," the soldier said, indicating the Doctor.
"Ah, I see," the Dictator said, leaning over to look at the Doctor. "You're a strange fellow, my friend."
"Why? Because I help people out?" the Doctor replied. "By my point of view, you're the strange person here. Why do you do this?"
"The human race was weak," the Dictator smiled, looking down at the Doctor with a satisfied look on his face. "Ineffective, powerless. I took them down a new path. The path of power, and now, their Empire shall be eternal."
"Empire?" the Doctor said, with an angry look in his eyes. "What Empire? Earth's Empire was doing far better than this at this point in original history, Dictator! By this point humanity had space stations all over the sky! They could control the weather! They had fought back the Daleks and the Cybermen themselves! How can your future compare to that?!"
"It shall improve," the Dictator said simply. "It is only a matter of time."
"Really?" the Doctor said. Suddenly, and with no apparently effort, he grabbed the gun that was pressing into his back, whirled it round so the guard carrying it was thrown into the guard behind Jill, knocking them both out. Then, as Jill stared at the Doctor, he walked over to the Dictator's chair, and glared at him.
"Well," he said, placing his hands on his hips, "now that your guards are out the way, and may I say you keep the worst guards I've ever encountered in all my lives, would you care to tell me how you've lived this long, or how you've even managed to alter history?"
At this comment, the Dictator appeared to snap out of a trance and he glanced down at the Doctor.
"You want to know how I altered history?" he said, looking down at the Doctor. "I'll show you... Doctor."
Before the Doctor could fully take in the fact that the Dictator actually knew him, the Dictator had reached down underneath one of the arms of his seat and turned a small black dial. Suddenly, the lights in the room grew a lot brighter, and the Doctor recognised where he was. He was in a massive black-walled chamber that stretched upwards, apparently in an oval shape. White roundels were in the walls all around him, with simple blackness where doors were. In the centre of the room, behind the Dictator's seat, was a large ornate stone sculpture of a closed eye, about the size of a man while lying down. That, more than anything, confirmed where the Doctor was- a TARDIS. The eye was the Eye of Harmony, the power source of the Time Lord technology. Looking up, he saw something else to worry him- right above him was a large, three-dimensional image of the Seal of Rassilon, but modified, this one having a large sign in the centre that looked like a swastika.
"The Stranger's symbol..." the Doctor gasped, looking up at the Dictator. "You're the Stranger?"
"Correct," the Dictator smiled. "Well, actually, it would be more accurate to say that I was the Stranger. That was in my last life, and even then it was only a brief identity assumed for those robberies."
"'Last life'?" Jill asked. "What's he on about?"
"He's a Time Lord like me, Jill," the Doctor said, sighing a little. "As such, he has the ability to regenerate and grow himself a new body at the moment of death. I fought him several lives ago." At this, he turned around and faced the Dictator again. "Actually, I though I'd gotten rid of you back then."
"You almost did," the Dictator smiled. "However, I managed to get away from the spiral's edge thanks to a little gadget I'd thought up in my spare time. I regenerated shortly after I took over, and I've kept this body ever since; the old one was getting a little annoying. Still, you haven't seen the best part of my operation, Doctor."
"What's that?" the Doctor asked.
"It's in that room over there," the Dictator said, indicating one of the many doors. As the Doctor and Jill looked over at it, the Dictator operated another switch on his chair, and the door opened. Behind it was a large machine, mostly black, apart from three or four various multicoloured buttons, a long glowing rob, and a couple of blinking red lights. There were two pan-like devices sticking out of the sides, giving the entire device the vague impression of being an extremely high-tech pair of kitchen scales.
Jill stared at it with a slightly bemused look on her face. "What's that?" she asked the Doctor.
The Doctor was staring at the device with an expression of pure horror on his face. "Time Scales..." he breathed, spinning around and looking at the Dictator. "You'd planned on me showing up, hadn't you?"
"Naturally," the Dictator smiled, sitting back in his chair and placing his fingers together. "You wander through Time a great deal, and your TARDIS has a habit of drawing you to where you're most needed, eventually. I thought that this would add a certain touch of irony, if you yourself were prevented from changing things back."
"Wait a minute," Jill said, holding up her hand. "Time Scales? What the heck are Time Scales?"
"The principle's quite simple, my dear," the Dictator said, leaning over and looking at Jill. "Think of two timelines- in this case, the timeline from before I meddled with your planet's history and became your ruler, and this one- as the weights in a scale. The lower timeline, here the original one, is the proper timeline, being firmer stuck in the fabric of reality, and the higher one, right now this one, isn't, being too light to be firmly placed in reality. However, if someone who is at the very least aware of how history should have turned out originally, like your friend here-" here he pointed at the Doctor, "shows up in the higher, or new, timeline, whichever you prefer, a Time Scale being activated means that, if he doesn't depart this timeline after a certain length of time, it will become the fixed real timeline, and any interference in the past will have no effect on history."
"How long have I got?" the Doctor asked.
"There's a timer," the Dictator replied, indicating it on the Time Scales. The Doctor checked, a grim expression on his face.
"Fifteen minutes..." he groaned, looking up.
"Exactly," the Dictator smiled, looking at the Doctor. "Too little time for you to get to your TARDIS and get into the Time Vortex."
"On foot, that would be true," the Doctor said, looking at the Dictator. "But not in your TARDIS."
"Hah!" laughed the Dictator, smiling at him. "You think you can use this TARDIS? Not a chance! I've set the controls to an isomorphic configuration! You can't even work the food machine, never mind pilot it to your ship!"
"Really?" the Doctor commented, reaching over and picking up a gun. "Well, we'll just see about that."
"You're going to SHOOT me? Oh, please!" laughed the Dictator. "You and I both know that TARDISes exist in states of temporal grace! Weapons are absolutely useless in here!"
The Doctor fired twice. Both bullets each hit one of the Dictator's hearts.
"I tore yours out when I threw you away all those years ago," the Doctor said, as the Dictator collapsed onto the floor. Diving towards the body, the Doctor pulled the Dictator's sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, removed the sonic emitter central power source, and then turned back to Jill.
"You...KILLED the Dictator?!" Jill asked, amazed, as she hobbled along on his umbrella.
"No, not really," the Doctor said, as he grabbed Jill's arm and ran out the door. "As he mentioned, he's a Time Lord, and he has about nine or so lives left. Since I shot him, he will regenerate, but due to the fact that he's been hit in BOTH hearts, and after that length of time in one body, this TARDIS will have to dematerialise so it can help him through without having to worry about maintaining its real-universe link."
"I see," Jill said, without really seeing at all. "And the practical upshot of all that happening is...?"
"Since we've already dematerialised, and the Dictator's biodata has been thrown into chaos, his isomorphic configuration system will have no effect due to his biodata being highly unstable- the TARDIS can't do anything to him but try to help him through this regeneration, and that takes time," the Doctor explained. "If his TARDIS is the same as mine, I should be able to locate his control room in time to take control and steer it to my TARDIS before he recovers."
"'If' seems to be the relative word..." Jill commented, looking at the corridor she and the Doctor were running down. It was stretching down almost as far as the eye could see, and there were several other corridors leading off around them.
"Don't worry," the Doctor grinned. "It's this way, I think."
With that, he grabbed Jill's arm and charged down the corridor that they'd recently been forced along by the guards.
"How do you know where to go?" Jill asked, as they left the wooden corridor and began to run down a black one with white roundels in the walls. "And how can all this fit inside that one tower?"
"I have an inbuilt instinct for TARDIS architecture, like all Time Lords, to answer your first question," the Doctor said, turning rapidly to the left. "And to answer your second question, it's not all in this tower. The tower is simply a real-universe interface, as I mentioned, for an entirely new dimension that is only accessible via that TARDIS's door. This isn't even in your reality."
"I see," Jill said, mainly to shut the Doctor up.
"Here we are!" the Doctor smiled, as he opened a door right in front of him. In front of him was a large black room, with chairs lying around here and there. The console in the centre was like his old one before his recent reconfiguration, a simple white mushroom-like structure with a glass cylinder in the centre. A television, a table with a cup of coffee on it, and a desk covered with test tubes and other scientific equipment could be seen in the corner.
"Wow..." Jill said, looking around her at the control room. "This place is... incredible."
"Yes, well, this isn't all that much," the Doctor said, as he ran over to the console and began to work the coordinates. "I used to have this style of console room, except that it was green, but I discarded it on the grounds that the colour scheme wasn't the new me."
"Ah," Jill said simply. Looking around at the Doctor, she asked, "Has your idea worked?"
"Hmm? Oh, the isomorphic configuration being inoperative? That worked out just fine," the Doctor smiled, looking back at her. "In fact, we should be materialising right about...now."
Just as he said that, a groaning, wheezing sound filled the room.
"Ah, we're there," the Doctor grinned. Reaching over, he operated the door control. As the doors opened, he noticed the TARDIS, standing just a metre or so away form the exit of this TARDIS. "Coming?" he asked Jill.
"YOU'RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!!" a loud voice suddenly boomed. Spinning round, the Doctor and Jill saw several soldiers standing behind a man who the Doctor instantly identified as the Dictator, mainly because of the clothes. However, now he looked a lot different, being taller and thinner, and with flaming red hair rather than the dark hair of his earlier self, and generally looked less of a fighter and more of an intellectual.
"Is that...?" Jill asked, indicating the Dictator.
"Yes, it is," the Doctor replied, before he turned back to the Dictator. "So, you made it through that regeneration?"
"Yes, my TARDIS helped me out," the Dictator said, as he pulled out a large gun and pointed it at him. "Oh, and you're almost out of time. You'll soon be powerless to stop me."
"Really?" the Doctor said. "As I recall, the timer said I had fifteen minutes until this timeline became genuine, and I've spent a lot of the time since then in the Time Vortex."
"You really don't know what that does to Time Scales, huh?" the Dictator smiled. "If you exist out of Time with the Scales, you simply accelerate the process. Right now you have only, oh, two minutes," he smiled, checking a watch-like device on his wrist.
"Two?!" the Doctor cried, horrified. "I have to get out!"
"I don't think so," the Dictator smiled, as his soldiers all pointed their guns at the Doctor. "One step, and you'll be vaporised into each and every one of your various atoms. They'll still be here, so the Time Scales will still eventually shift the balance of power."
"You won't win..." the Doctor growled, as he stared at the Dictator.
"Get used to it, Doctor," the Dictator smiled. "I've won. At last, after all your wanderings, you've lost. How does it feel?"
The Doctor bent his head, sadly. Suddenly, before he realised what was happening, Jill shoved him out the door, hooking his umbrella onto his pocket as she did so.
"RUN!!" she yelled at him, just as the soldier's lasers struck her body. As the Doctor watched, she instantly vanished, vaporised into thin air.
"JILL!!!" the Doctor yelled.
"Well, that was nice," the Dictator smiled, looking up at his opponent. "I love it when people sacrifice themselves in a pointless, meaningless gesture. Now, it's your turn to die."
As the Doctor stared at the guns, already aiming towards him, he suddenly was overcome with a sensation of deja vu...
Katarina. A serving girl to the Trojan prophetess, Cassandra. She had barely begun travelling with him before she'd given her life to save him and his other companion, Steven.
He'd justified her sacrifice.
He'd to the same thing for Jill's.
"NEVER!!" the Doctor yelled. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a few cricket balls and firecrackers.
"What the..?" the Dictator yelled.
"As Ace might say, 'Eat this, suckers'!" the Doctor yelled, throwing the objects at the Dictator's soldiers. The cricket balls bounced into the soldiers, too fast for them to be targeted. The firecrackers struck the Dictator himself, burning him in some places and setting his cloak on fire from all the sparks.
"AARRGGHH!!" he screamed, as an energy field began to form around him. The burns were too much for him, especially with his recent vulnerability due to the regeneration, and it was destroying the body before it had even stabilised.
"I hope you didn't like that incarnation that much, because it's going to die now! Goodbye!" the Doctor yelled, as he dived towards the TARDIS, pulling his door key out of his pocket as he ran. Even in his haste, he noted that the Dictator's TARDIS had assumed the form of a Police Box when it appeared in the alley, very like his own.
"YOU... WON'T...ESCAAAAPPPPEEEE...!!!" the Dictator yelled, his voice slurring.
"I just did!" the Doctor yelled back as he opened the TARDIS doors and charge into his ship. Almost in one movement, he shut the doors and set the TARDIS to dematerialise.
Sighing, he collapsed into his armchair. He was out, and in the nick of time too. By his estimate, he'd have run out of time if he'd remained in that Universe for any longer, and the TARDIS instruments confirmed that history was still the way it had always been.
For the moment, the Doctor thought to himself. If Jill was accurate, unless he intervened in history at the point of the Dictator's take-over and alteration and put it to rights, he'd more likely that not travel to a time after 2003 at some point and history would be forever altered. He had to track the Dictator down and stop him before that happened.
And I went there looking for a break from the dangerous life, the Doctor groaned to himself. He really needed to sort himself out and take that holiday soon, but this wasn't the time for that right now.
Heading over to the console, the Doctor began to activate the time- alteration scanner. He didn't use this that much, preferring research in the timelines since this was extremely unstable and highly draining on the TARDIS's link to the Eye of Harmony, but he didn't have much options.
As he turned it on, the Doctor reached up and pulled the viewer down to a height where he could see it. On the screen was a long dateline, currently focused on 2381, the year he'd just left. As the Doctor watched, a long green line formed, stretching back along the dateline. The line was already on the twenty-third century, the twenty-second, the twenty-first... it stopped, blinking on and off, on the twelfth day of April, 2003. Although history had been altered before that date, it was nothing extremely serious.
Better aim for a little earlier than that, the Doctor thought to himself, as he began to enter the coordinates into the TARDIS. After a brief contemplation, he set the temporal coordinates for 25th February, and, after a brief moment of contemplation, set the spatial coordinates for the Brigadier's home. He was going to need some help with this one.
Here goes nothing... the Doctor said. He activated the TARDIS.
The time rotor began to move up and down again, as the TARDIS hurtled backwards through Time, heading for the source of the crisis.
FEEDBACK: Feel free to give it.
Chapter Three
Time Scales
"Well, that went rather well, I think," the Doctor said, as he dumped his shopping bag onto a nearby chair in the TARDIS. "Everything picked up in a matter of minutes, and nobody tried to shoot me."
Indeed, everything appeared to be going well so far. The Doctor had arrived on twenty-fourth century Earth, and picked up the parts he needed at an electronics shop near his landing location. The man in the shop had been helpful enough giving the Doctor all the parts he'd asked for, and even giving him some advice on how to piece together some other parts with what was in the shop.
"You know, I always liked those shopkeepers," the Doctor said to the TARDIS as he began unpacking the bag onto the nearby table. "The Earth Government itself may have a couple of problems, but his kind of people will always help out the little guy..." The Doctor stopped talking as he looked over the stuff he'd taken out of the bag. Most of it was there- the fold inhibitor, the main emitter, and so on- but the Doctor had forgotten one thing- the sonic emitter central power source.
"Well, soon settle that, eh, old thing?" the Doctor said, smiling at the console. Getting out of his chair and heading over to the console, he pushed the fast return switch once. He could just set the coordinates, but the switch made everything so much easier and timesaving, since his third self had fixed it.
"Here we go again," the Doctor smiled, looking around the TARDIS. The TARDIS console blinked a few lights at him. Suddenly, the TARDIS jolted to the side, knocking the Doctor against the console!
"What in the name of Rassilon...?" the Doctor said, checking the instruments on the console. To his surprise, nothing appeared to be wrong.
Deciding it probably wasn't worth bothering about, the Doctor picked up his umbrella just before the familiar groaning, wheezing noise sounded throughout the room. The Doctor opened the door, stepped out of the TARDIS...
And stared in horror at the site in front of him.
It was completely different from the sight he'd seen only recently. That sight had been a relatively peaceful one, with several buildings stretched all around and several shops lying about. This new scene, however, was completely different. It reminded him strongly of the scene on Excelis before his visit, except for the fact that there were large quantities of rubble lying about the place that hadn't been on Excelis. However, apart from that, the scene was very Excelis- like, the buildings being made completely of concrete and smog filling the air. Generally, the entire city gave the general impression of being a prison, or at the very least a kind of place that you'd only ever go to if you had nowhere else to go. Even the ground was terrible, being covered in mud and debris.
"What in the universe...?" the Doctor asked, looking around himself. Looking up, the Doctor saw that the smoke was even blocking off the sky from view, but thought he glimpsed a ship of some kind up there. However, he couldn't make out any more details about it, so he decided he'd ignore it for the moment. Evidently, the bump had been the TARDIS shifting into a history of Earth that had been altered somehow. The question was, what had happened?
Thinking that a look around couldn't hurt, the Doctor walked out of the alleyway in which the TARDIS had materialised and began to walk along the streets. The people he saw around him were even worse than the city was, their clothes being so thin and ragged in some cases that it appeared a miracle to the Doctor that they were able to walk without freezing.
"What happened here...?" he asked himself, horrified. Looking ahead of him, he noticed another horrifying sight- two men were punching a young woman all over, even kicking her at times!
"Help..." she groaned, reaching her hand out to a passer- by. However, he just looked at her, and then walked by.
"Shut up, bitch!" the older man cried, hitting her in the face. He looked like he'd been a wrestler in a previous life and a soldier in another, and had resulted in a body that looked like both of those combined. "You don't talk to me like that! You don't talk to me like that EVER again! You're DEAD!"
At that moment, the man was distracted by the Doctor's umbrella hitting him over the head.
"Leave her alone!" the Doctor said, looking at the two men with an angry look in his eyes.
"What's the big idea, jackass? She said I was an idiot!" the other man cried. He just looked like a large boxer who'd taken a lot of hits, and was so mad about it he'd hit anybody who got him annoyed.
"That doesn't give you the right to hit her senseless!" the Doctor said, glaring at the men. "I've seen things on other worlds that would make you shake in fear, but what you're doing is one of the most barbaric things I've ever seen. You'll be stopped, now."
"Hah!" laughed the first man, looking at the Doctor. "You stop us? What you going to do, make us laugh to death?"
"No," the Doctor said, picking up his umbrella and facing his opponents with a harsh glare in his eyes. "With this."
With that, before anyone could stop him, the Doctor hooked his umbrella around the first man's neck and yanked him towards him. No sooner had the man reached the Doctor then the Doctor stuck him arm round the man's back and pinched the nerve endings in his neck. The man collapsed to the ground at once.
"What the hell...?" the man asked, looking down at his friend.
"Don't worry, he's just knocked out," the Doctor said, smiling a little. He faced the man, and his face took on a harder expression. "I don't kill, like you two seem to. Now, do I have to do the same to you, or will you leave this young woman alone?"
The man for a moment looked like he'd fight the Doctor himself, and hang any consequences. But, looking down at his friend, knocked out in a matter of seconds, he appeared to reach the smart decision. Glaring at the Doctor, he picked up his friend's body and ran away.
"And don't come back!" the Doctor yelled after them. "Some people..." he said to himself, as he looked over at the girl. "Are you all right?"
The girl looked up at him. The Doctor noted that, beneath the dirt and grim that covered her hair and face, streaked with the lines her tears had caused, she was actually rather attractive, if having taken a few cuts and bruises here and there.
"W...why...?" she croaked weakly, looking up at him. She tried to get up, but collapsed to the ground- evidently her leg was injured. Even with his brief glance at it, the Doctor was certain that there were a few broken bones involved there, and possible damage to a few veins as well.
"Easy there," the Doctor said, crouching down beside her. The mud stained his umbrella, but that could be cleaned. "That leg doesn't look too good. I'm sure I have a medical kit here somewhere..." he said to himself, fumbling through his pockets. Eventually, he pulled out a white box with a red cross on it.
"Not much, I'm afraid, Miss..." the Doctor said, faltering a little as he looked at her. I'm sorry, but I didn't get your name."
"Jill..." she gaped, looking at him with a puzzled expression. The Doctor wondered at that- it was always natural for someone to help someone else in trouble, but she seemed to act like it wasn't- but decided he'd ask about that later.
"Ah, good," he smiled, looking at her with a little grin on his face. "Now, understand that I haven't got a great deal of medical resources on hand at present, but with what I've got, I can attend to some of your injuries- like that, for instance," he said, indicating a large cut on her forehead. "You really should have gotten that seeing to a long time ago. Why not go to a doctor?"
"Doctor...?" Jill asked. Looking at her, the Doctor saw she looked puzzled again, but this time it was also with a touch of confusion. It was as though 'doctor' was a completely alien word to her.
"Wait a minute..." the Doctor said, putting the medical kit back in his pocket as he looked at Jill. "Are you telling me you don't know what a doctor is?"
"No," Jill said, looking at him. "You're very odd, you know that?"
"Odd? Me?" the Doctor said. "I'll confess that I was thought of as being a bit eccentric in earlier lives, but I always thought of this me as being relatively normal..." he said, suddenly looking at Jill and noting that she was now looking a bit worried. "I'm not convincing you of that, am I?"
Jill shook her head. Right now she was giving every impression that she wanted to get away from the Doctor as soon as possible. "You're odd. You say things that don't exist, you help me-"
"What?!" the Doctor cried, looking extremely shocked now. "Helping people isn't normal?"
"No," Jill said, looking at him. "Didn't you know that? The Dictator has taught us that helping others is a sign of weakness. We shouldn't help those who-"
"As Ace would have said, back up a bit there," the Doctor said, as he got back onto his feet. "'Dictator'? What Dictator?"
"The Dictator, of course," Jill said, staring at him. "Where have you been for all your life?"
"Wandering, mainly," the Doctor said to himself, before he assumed a determined expression on his face. "Jill, tell me about this 'Dictator'."
"Why?" Jill asked, puzzled.
"It's complicated," the Doctor said, crouching down again to talk to her better. "I am a traveller in time and space, you see."
"Right..." Jill said, her eyes flicking past to the Doctor the exit of the alley.
"If you're thinking of running away, I wouldn't if I were you," the Doctor said. "Your leg isn't in the slightest condition to even hobble slightly, never mind run. Besides, I'm not mad, I can assure you. I won't hurt you."
"OK..." Jill said, looking at him. She still didn't look happy, but seemed to be prepared to accept the Doctor, mainly because he hadn't tried to attack her yet.
"Good," the Doctor smiled. "Now, Jill, first things first- that 'Dictator' you mentioned, I've never heard of him at all. Could you tell me about him?"
"He's the ruler of all Earth," Jill said, looking up at the Doctor. The cut on her head was bleeding, so the Doctor passed her a tissue, but she rejected it. "He became ruler in the early twenty-first century, to protect us from an alien assault. He bred us to be as strong as we could be, and, ever since then, he has ruled us with a grip of iron..." here she stopped, gasping a little. The Doctor hoped none of her ribs had been damaged in the beating she'd just taken; he wasn't sure he could help her if that was the case.
"That's putting it mildly..." the Doctor said to himself, as he looked around him at the ruined streets. "Sorry, go on," he said to Jill.
"Well, that's about it," Jill said, gasping weakly as she tried to stand up. The Doctor handed her his umbrella, and she gratefully hauled herself up onto her feet while leaning on it. She looked up at the Doctor and smiled at him. "You're nice, you know that?"
"Well, I'm not from here, am I?" the Doctor grinned back at her. He offered her his arm. "Anyway, why are you suddenly so trusting?"
"We may believe that the strong crush the weak, but we're still nice to some people," Jill replied, grinning a little. "It's just we're forbidden to help people who're losing a fight."
"Ah, excellent!" the Doctor said. "Well, after-" he began, when suddenly bright lights blared up into their faces!
"FREEZE!" a loud voice cried. "Nobody move!"
Holding his hand up in front of the light, the Doctor saw what was going on- somehow, in the brief period since he stepped into this alley, several military vehicles had managed to surround the alley entrance. He could identify several troop carriers, a few tanks, and he glimpsed what might be a prison van.
"What the...?" Jill said, looking around her, blinking in the light. "What's up?" "You're under arrest, miss!" one man said, pointing his gun at her. "You AND your friend."
"Ah, good," the Doctor smiled, looking around himself at the soldiers.
"Good?!" Jill whispered to him as the soldiers began to close in around her. "Are you insane?"
"I thought we'd already gone through this?" asked the Doctor, as the two of them were herded towards the prison van. "Besides, I'm doing this for the best of reasons."
"What would they be?" Jill asked, as they were forced into the van, Jill trying to hobble as fast as she could.
As the doors to the van shut, the Doctor could be heard saying one thing; "I have to see the Dictator."
*****
After a long and boring drive, the van stopped, and the doors of the van were torn open.
"On your feet, scumbags," a soldier said, pointing his gun at the Doctor and Jill. "You're at the Dictator's palace. You should be honoured that he will decide your fate."
"Hardly," the Doctor thought to himself, as the soldier shoved him out of the van, Jill being pulled out by another. "So, that's the Dictator's base..." he commented, looking at the sight in front of him, with a certain reluctant impression in his eyes. This was mainly because the tower in front of him was incredibly tall, resembling a fortress with some battlements around it, but there was a large tower standing right in the centre of those battlements- in fact, in all appearances, it resembled the Dark Tower where the Doctor's first, second, third and fifth selves had met once, and which he had returned to earlier in his present life to deal with some new adversaries.
Groaning, the Doctor bowed his head, as though in prayer. "This isn't good..." he muttered to himself, a fretful expression on his face. Only one of the few beings to visit Gallifrey could know about that structure, and if any alien had managed to set up any sort of structure that looked like that, he almost certainly had a huge superiority complex.
"Keep moving!" the soldier cried, ramming his gun into the Doctor's back.
"You know, you could just ask me nicely," the Doctor said, looking back at the guard. "Would it kill you to be polite to a prisoner for once?"
"You don't deserve good manners!" the soldier shouted, placing his gun into the Doctor's back again. "Now, get moving."
"Fine," the Doctor muttered to himself as he began to walk forward. Still, my friend, you'll soon have your own little problems to deal with, if I can help it...he thought to himself.
As the Doctor and Jill were forced through the corridors, the Doctor couldn't help but notice the fine collection of artwork arrayed around him. The walls weren't much- simply black, without a spot of colour on them- but the paintings took away the attention to the walls. Evidently, the Dictator, whoever, or whatever he was, had a great deal of money available to him and a passion for fine artwork that was virtually limitless- Claude Oscar Monet's Lilies was standing in pride of place on one wall, along with the Mona Lisa right beside it, and the Venus de Milo was standing in a corner. Vincent Van Gough's Irises was near that, as was Paul Cézanne's Apples and Oranges. Towards the end of the corridor, and around a large door, the Doctor noticed another Monet, Poplars, and Picasso's Guernica.
"He's certainly done well for himself," the Doctor commented to Jill, as the soldiers steered them towards the large door between Poplars and Guernica. "I'm looking forward to finding out a bit more about this character."
"Are you insane?" Jill asked, staring at the Doctor.
"Please, don't start that again..." the Doctor groaned, as the door was opened, to reveal a large dark loom. There were little lights in it, but at the far end of the room, the Doctor could make out a large throne on top of several steps, with someone sitting on it.
As he and Jill were shoved in that direction by two of the soldiers, the others leaving them alone, more details about the man became apparent. He was very tall and looked rather like everyone else the Doctor had seen in that timeline so far- he had a general air of being capable of taking several knocks before he would finally be knocked down, and reminded the Doctor vaguely of a wrestler. He was dressed in a black suit and black cloak with a red inner lining, and had black hair.
"Lord Dictator, this is the man," the soldier said, indicating the Doctor.
"Ah, I see," the Dictator said, leaning over to look at the Doctor. "You're a strange fellow, my friend."
"Why? Because I help people out?" the Doctor replied. "By my point of view, you're the strange person here. Why do you do this?"
"The human race was weak," the Dictator smiled, looking down at the Doctor with a satisfied look on his face. "Ineffective, powerless. I took them down a new path. The path of power, and now, their Empire shall be eternal."
"Empire?" the Doctor said, with an angry look in his eyes. "What Empire? Earth's Empire was doing far better than this at this point in original history, Dictator! By this point humanity had space stations all over the sky! They could control the weather! They had fought back the Daleks and the Cybermen themselves! How can your future compare to that?!"
"It shall improve," the Dictator said simply. "It is only a matter of time."
"Really?" the Doctor said. Suddenly, and with no apparently effort, he grabbed the gun that was pressing into his back, whirled it round so the guard carrying it was thrown into the guard behind Jill, knocking them both out. Then, as Jill stared at the Doctor, he walked over to the Dictator's chair, and glared at him.
"Well," he said, placing his hands on his hips, "now that your guards are out the way, and may I say you keep the worst guards I've ever encountered in all my lives, would you care to tell me how you've lived this long, or how you've even managed to alter history?"
At this comment, the Dictator appeared to snap out of a trance and he glanced down at the Doctor.
"You want to know how I altered history?" he said, looking down at the Doctor. "I'll show you... Doctor."
Before the Doctor could fully take in the fact that the Dictator actually knew him, the Dictator had reached down underneath one of the arms of his seat and turned a small black dial. Suddenly, the lights in the room grew a lot brighter, and the Doctor recognised where he was. He was in a massive black-walled chamber that stretched upwards, apparently in an oval shape. White roundels were in the walls all around him, with simple blackness where doors were. In the centre of the room, behind the Dictator's seat, was a large ornate stone sculpture of a closed eye, about the size of a man while lying down. That, more than anything, confirmed where the Doctor was- a TARDIS. The eye was the Eye of Harmony, the power source of the Time Lord technology. Looking up, he saw something else to worry him- right above him was a large, three-dimensional image of the Seal of Rassilon, but modified, this one having a large sign in the centre that looked like a swastika.
"The Stranger's symbol..." the Doctor gasped, looking up at the Dictator. "You're the Stranger?"
"Correct," the Dictator smiled. "Well, actually, it would be more accurate to say that I was the Stranger. That was in my last life, and even then it was only a brief identity assumed for those robberies."
"'Last life'?" Jill asked. "What's he on about?"
"He's a Time Lord like me, Jill," the Doctor said, sighing a little. "As such, he has the ability to regenerate and grow himself a new body at the moment of death. I fought him several lives ago." At this, he turned around and faced the Dictator again. "Actually, I though I'd gotten rid of you back then."
"You almost did," the Dictator smiled. "However, I managed to get away from the spiral's edge thanks to a little gadget I'd thought up in my spare time. I regenerated shortly after I took over, and I've kept this body ever since; the old one was getting a little annoying. Still, you haven't seen the best part of my operation, Doctor."
"What's that?" the Doctor asked.
"It's in that room over there," the Dictator said, indicating one of the many doors. As the Doctor and Jill looked over at it, the Dictator operated another switch on his chair, and the door opened. Behind it was a large machine, mostly black, apart from three or four various multicoloured buttons, a long glowing rob, and a couple of blinking red lights. There were two pan-like devices sticking out of the sides, giving the entire device the vague impression of being an extremely high-tech pair of kitchen scales.
Jill stared at it with a slightly bemused look on her face. "What's that?" she asked the Doctor.
The Doctor was staring at the device with an expression of pure horror on his face. "Time Scales..." he breathed, spinning around and looking at the Dictator. "You'd planned on me showing up, hadn't you?"
"Naturally," the Dictator smiled, sitting back in his chair and placing his fingers together. "You wander through Time a great deal, and your TARDIS has a habit of drawing you to where you're most needed, eventually. I thought that this would add a certain touch of irony, if you yourself were prevented from changing things back."
"Wait a minute," Jill said, holding up her hand. "Time Scales? What the heck are Time Scales?"
"The principle's quite simple, my dear," the Dictator said, leaning over and looking at Jill. "Think of two timelines- in this case, the timeline from before I meddled with your planet's history and became your ruler, and this one- as the weights in a scale. The lower timeline, here the original one, is the proper timeline, being firmer stuck in the fabric of reality, and the higher one, right now this one, isn't, being too light to be firmly placed in reality. However, if someone who is at the very least aware of how history should have turned out originally, like your friend here-" here he pointed at the Doctor, "shows up in the higher, or new, timeline, whichever you prefer, a Time Scale being activated means that, if he doesn't depart this timeline after a certain length of time, it will become the fixed real timeline, and any interference in the past will have no effect on history."
"How long have I got?" the Doctor asked.
"There's a timer," the Dictator replied, indicating it on the Time Scales. The Doctor checked, a grim expression on his face.
"Fifteen minutes..." he groaned, looking up.
"Exactly," the Dictator smiled, looking at the Doctor. "Too little time for you to get to your TARDIS and get into the Time Vortex."
"On foot, that would be true," the Doctor said, looking at the Dictator. "But not in your TARDIS."
"Hah!" laughed the Dictator, smiling at him. "You think you can use this TARDIS? Not a chance! I've set the controls to an isomorphic configuration! You can't even work the food machine, never mind pilot it to your ship!"
"Really?" the Doctor commented, reaching over and picking up a gun. "Well, we'll just see about that."
"You're going to SHOOT me? Oh, please!" laughed the Dictator. "You and I both know that TARDISes exist in states of temporal grace! Weapons are absolutely useless in here!"
The Doctor fired twice. Both bullets each hit one of the Dictator's hearts.
"I tore yours out when I threw you away all those years ago," the Doctor said, as the Dictator collapsed onto the floor. Diving towards the body, the Doctor pulled the Dictator's sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, removed the sonic emitter central power source, and then turned back to Jill.
"You...KILLED the Dictator?!" Jill asked, amazed, as she hobbled along on his umbrella.
"No, not really," the Doctor said, as he grabbed Jill's arm and ran out the door. "As he mentioned, he's a Time Lord, and he has about nine or so lives left. Since I shot him, he will regenerate, but due to the fact that he's been hit in BOTH hearts, and after that length of time in one body, this TARDIS will have to dematerialise so it can help him through without having to worry about maintaining its real-universe link."
"I see," Jill said, without really seeing at all. "And the practical upshot of all that happening is...?"
"Since we've already dematerialised, and the Dictator's biodata has been thrown into chaos, his isomorphic configuration system will have no effect due to his biodata being highly unstable- the TARDIS can't do anything to him but try to help him through this regeneration, and that takes time," the Doctor explained. "If his TARDIS is the same as mine, I should be able to locate his control room in time to take control and steer it to my TARDIS before he recovers."
"'If' seems to be the relative word..." Jill commented, looking at the corridor she and the Doctor were running down. It was stretching down almost as far as the eye could see, and there were several other corridors leading off around them.
"Don't worry," the Doctor grinned. "It's this way, I think."
With that, he grabbed Jill's arm and charged down the corridor that they'd recently been forced along by the guards.
"How do you know where to go?" Jill asked, as they left the wooden corridor and began to run down a black one with white roundels in the walls. "And how can all this fit inside that one tower?"
"I have an inbuilt instinct for TARDIS architecture, like all Time Lords, to answer your first question," the Doctor said, turning rapidly to the left. "And to answer your second question, it's not all in this tower. The tower is simply a real-universe interface, as I mentioned, for an entirely new dimension that is only accessible via that TARDIS's door. This isn't even in your reality."
"I see," Jill said, mainly to shut the Doctor up.
"Here we are!" the Doctor smiled, as he opened a door right in front of him. In front of him was a large black room, with chairs lying around here and there. The console in the centre was like his old one before his recent reconfiguration, a simple white mushroom-like structure with a glass cylinder in the centre. A television, a table with a cup of coffee on it, and a desk covered with test tubes and other scientific equipment could be seen in the corner.
"Wow..." Jill said, looking around her at the control room. "This place is... incredible."
"Yes, well, this isn't all that much," the Doctor said, as he ran over to the console and began to work the coordinates. "I used to have this style of console room, except that it was green, but I discarded it on the grounds that the colour scheme wasn't the new me."
"Ah," Jill said simply. Looking around at the Doctor, she asked, "Has your idea worked?"
"Hmm? Oh, the isomorphic configuration being inoperative? That worked out just fine," the Doctor smiled, looking back at her. "In fact, we should be materialising right about...now."
Just as he said that, a groaning, wheezing sound filled the room.
"Ah, we're there," the Doctor grinned. Reaching over, he operated the door control. As the doors opened, he noticed the TARDIS, standing just a metre or so away form the exit of this TARDIS. "Coming?" he asked Jill.
"YOU'RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!!" a loud voice suddenly boomed. Spinning round, the Doctor and Jill saw several soldiers standing behind a man who the Doctor instantly identified as the Dictator, mainly because of the clothes. However, now he looked a lot different, being taller and thinner, and with flaming red hair rather than the dark hair of his earlier self, and generally looked less of a fighter and more of an intellectual.
"Is that...?" Jill asked, indicating the Dictator.
"Yes, it is," the Doctor replied, before he turned back to the Dictator. "So, you made it through that regeneration?"
"Yes, my TARDIS helped me out," the Dictator said, as he pulled out a large gun and pointed it at him. "Oh, and you're almost out of time. You'll soon be powerless to stop me."
"Really?" the Doctor said. "As I recall, the timer said I had fifteen minutes until this timeline became genuine, and I've spent a lot of the time since then in the Time Vortex."
"You really don't know what that does to Time Scales, huh?" the Dictator smiled. "If you exist out of Time with the Scales, you simply accelerate the process. Right now you have only, oh, two minutes," he smiled, checking a watch-like device on his wrist.
"Two?!" the Doctor cried, horrified. "I have to get out!"
"I don't think so," the Dictator smiled, as his soldiers all pointed their guns at the Doctor. "One step, and you'll be vaporised into each and every one of your various atoms. They'll still be here, so the Time Scales will still eventually shift the balance of power."
"You won't win..." the Doctor growled, as he stared at the Dictator.
"Get used to it, Doctor," the Dictator smiled. "I've won. At last, after all your wanderings, you've lost. How does it feel?"
The Doctor bent his head, sadly. Suddenly, before he realised what was happening, Jill shoved him out the door, hooking his umbrella onto his pocket as she did so.
"RUN!!" she yelled at him, just as the soldier's lasers struck her body. As the Doctor watched, she instantly vanished, vaporised into thin air.
"JILL!!!" the Doctor yelled.
"Well, that was nice," the Dictator smiled, looking up at his opponent. "I love it when people sacrifice themselves in a pointless, meaningless gesture. Now, it's your turn to die."
As the Doctor stared at the guns, already aiming towards him, he suddenly was overcome with a sensation of deja vu...
Katarina. A serving girl to the Trojan prophetess, Cassandra. She had barely begun travelling with him before she'd given her life to save him and his other companion, Steven.
He'd justified her sacrifice.
He'd to the same thing for Jill's.
"NEVER!!" the Doctor yelled. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a few cricket balls and firecrackers.
"What the..?" the Dictator yelled.
"As Ace might say, 'Eat this, suckers'!" the Doctor yelled, throwing the objects at the Dictator's soldiers. The cricket balls bounced into the soldiers, too fast for them to be targeted. The firecrackers struck the Dictator himself, burning him in some places and setting his cloak on fire from all the sparks.
"AARRGGHH!!" he screamed, as an energy field began to form around him. The burns were too much for him, especially with his recent vulnerability due to the regeneration, and it was destroying the body before it had even stabilised.
"I hope you didn't like that incarnation that much, because it's going to die now! Goodbye!" the Doctor yelled, as he dived towards the TARDIS, pulling his door key out of his pocket as he ran. Even in his haste, he noted that the Dictator's TARDIS had assumed the form of a Police Box when it appeared in the alley, very like his own.
"YOU... WON'T...ESCAAAAPPPPEEEE...!!!" the Dictator yelled, his voice slurring.
"I just did!" the Doctor yelled back as he opened the TARDIS doors and charge into his ship. Almost in one movement, he shut the doors and set the TARDIS to dematerialise.
Sighing, he collapsed into his armchair. He was out, and in the nick of time too. By his estimate, he'd have run out of time if he'd remained in that Universe for any longer, and the TARDIS instruments confirmed that history was still the way it had always been.
For the moment, the Doctor thought to himself. If Jill was accurate, unless he intervened in history at the point of the Dictator's take-over and alteration and put it to rights, he'd more likely that not travel to a time after 2003 at some point and history would be forever altered. He had to track the Dictator down and stop him before that happened.
And I went there looking for a break from the dangerous life, the Doctor groaned to himself. He really needed to sort himself out and take that holiday soon, but this wasn't the time for that right now.
Heading over to the console, the Doctor began to activate the time- alteration scanner. He didn't use this that much, preferring research in the timelines since this was extremely unstable and highly draining on the TARDIS's link to the Eye of Harmony, but he didn't have much options.
As he turned it on, the Doctor reached up and pulled the viewer down to a height where he could see it. On the screen was a long dateline, currently focused on 2381, the year he'd just left. As the Doctor watched, a long green line formed, stretching back along the dateline. The line was already on the twenty-third century, the twenty-second, the twenty-first... it stopped, blinking on and off, on the twelfth day of April, 2003. Although history had been altered before that date, it was nothing extremely serious.
Better aim for a little earlier than that, the Doctor thought to himself, as he began to enter the coordinates into the TARDIS. After a brief contemplation, he set the temporal coordinates for 25th February, and, after a brief moment of contemplation, set the spatial coordinates for the Brigadier's home. He was going to need some help with this one.
Here goes nothing... the Doctor said. He activated the TARDIS.
The time rotor began to move up and down again, as the TARDIS hurtled backwards through Time, heading for the source of the crisis.
