Hello, everyone! Sorry I'm a little late. I start grad school next week, so I've been terribly busy with stuff and shenanigans. Wonderful word...shenanigans. Anyway! I will do my best to continue to post weekly, but please do be patient with me if I'm not able to update as quickly as I would like. Fortunately, we now have a chapter that doesn't have "runaway" in it-I considered "The Runaway Martian," but decided against it. :P

I've also tweaked the Martians' history a little in this one, to make it fit with both Supergirl and Doctor Who. The Oralumenot are entirely my own invention.

Enjoy!

"Beautiful, isn't it?" the Doctor asked, leaning back on his elbows.

"Sure is," Barry nodded. The stony surface of the asteroid was digging into his hip through the blanket, but he wouldn't have missed the view for anything. Above, stars wheeled in the infinite sky, but below that…

"The dance of the Oralumenot," the Doctor said softly, gazing up in wonder. Multicolored creatures of light soared across the sky. Bright cores of white light were surrounded by anywhere from one or two to more than a dozen tentacles, the number changing even as they watched, as more branched off or they withdrew some. Nor were they all the same color, either—sometimes they would become all one shade, before flowing into another, or a combination, each one becoming a dazzling rainbow palette that shifted and changed as they watched. Often, two or more of the creatures would brush their tentacles together, intertwining them.

"They drift across the universe, observing, watching, learning. Then they come together here, once a year, from all over the universe. Like salmon."

"What are they doing?"

"Sharing experiences. See how they change colors? Their language is an incredibly complex color code. You and me, we use phonemes to communicate—they use shades of color, number and length of tentacles… When they brush those tentacles together, they share memories."

"Wow."

They sat in a comfortable silence for a while, before Barry sat up. "Hey, by the way, I was meaning to ask, what happened after, you know, I…"

"Disappeared into an alternate dimension?"

"Well, yeah."

"Kara and Clark saved a lot of lives that day," the Doctor smiled. "Punched out Cybermen, rescued people…Someone caught them on YouTube, actually. No faces, fortunately, but they started calling them the "super girl" and "super boy.""

He seemed to find this hilarious for some reason. "I called UNIT, and they arrested Yvonne and her senior staff, took all the alien tech to be stored safely. Well, except for a few of the more dangerous things…I, uh, took care of them."

"Good."

There was another comfortable silence for a while, until Barry spoke up again. "Look at those stars. That one looks close enough to touch."

"Yeah, it does," the Doctor agreed, then frowned. "Hang on, no, wait a minute. That's no star…"

A point of white light in the sky above grew larger and larger, until it looked like an asteroid coming straight at them. Barry threw a glance to one side, but the Doctor wasn't worried—in fact, he'd jumped to his feet, hands outstretched. A white cube tumbled, spun, and fell into his open palms.

"Come here, you scrumptious beauty!"

"What is it?"

"I've got mail!"

"Hypercube," the Doctor exclaimed as he danced around the TARDIS console. "Time Lords used them. Well, mostly. Plus a few other psychic species."

"So there's another Time Lord out there?"

"No," the Doctor said, and became very still for a moment. "Someone else. Old friend of mine."

"Oh yeah?" Barry asked as he pulled down the dematerialization lever at the Doctor's nod. "What's his name?"

"J'onn J'onzz."

The flight only took a couple of minutes, just long enough for them to withdraw a couple of spacesuits from the wardrobe. The Doctor's was the same one he'd used on the Sanctuary Base, while Barry wore a sleeker version of the ones he was used to seeing on Earth in his time.

"The Red Planet!" the Doctor announced, cheerfully leading the way out. "Mind out, gravity's only 38% of what it is on Earth."

"Right…whoa!" Barry shouted as he stepped out and found his feet leaving the surface. Without looking around, the Doctor's hand snagged his elbow and pulled him back down.

"I did warn you."

"Yeah. So who's this friend of yours?"

"J'onn and I go way back," the Doctor told him. "Long time ago, see, back before you lot had anything resembling proper civilizations, there were three classes of Martians. Ice Warriors, like the ones we met not that long ago. Ice Lords, who were chosen for their leadership abilities. Well, mostly martial leadership. And another class, above them. The Yarokim. They had great powers—they believed from their gods—that practically made them gods themselves. Physical abilities nearly on par with your average Kryptonian under a yellow sun, psychic powers, shape-changing, intangibility…the works. They ruled Mars pretty well overall, by all accounts, for thousands of years. Oh, you should've seen it, Barry. We'll have to go back there sometime. Not a perfect society, but a pretty good one."

"And how'd you meet…J'onn?"

"It was during the War," the Doctor said, looking off into the distance. Barry didn't have to ask which one. "The Daleks had sent a fleet to destroy Earth. Lure me out. By the time we heard about it, it was nearly too late. I had to scramble a squad, and we flew to Earth's solar system, fully expecting to be slaughtered."

"Clearly, you weren't," Barry offered with a small smile. The Doctor snorted out a laugh.

"No. The Martians had detected the Dalek fleet moving through the asteroid belt, and ambushed them in turn. J'onn was the one who led the attack. When we arrived, the only things left were a bunch of broken Dalek ships and fractured casings."

Two beings stood atop a red plateau. Two ancient psychics of remarkable power, living legends to their own kind and terrifying nightmares to their enemies.

"Thank you, J'onn," the man who had once called himself the Doctor said. "For your help against the Daleks, and for letting me stay the night with you and your family. This was the most pleasant night I've had in…a long time."

"You are very welcome, my friend. I'm glad I got to meet you at last."

The Time Lord quirked a smile. "Do I live up to the legends?"

"More than."

They stood together, the Time Lord and the Martian, looking out at the dawn. "Here," the warrior said, plunging a hand into his coat pocket and withdrawing half a dozen blank white cards. "If you ever need me, assemble this telekinetically and send it to me. I'll be there."

"Thank you," said the Martian Manhunter. "May the gods keep you safe."

"I'll take all the help I can get. Farewell."

"So J'onn needs your help now?" Barry asked, breaking the Doctor free of his thoughts.

"Yep."

"Did he say with what?"

"Nope!"

"Okay then," Barry nodded, going to stick his hands in his pockets before he remembered that he didn't have pockets at the moment.

"Any idea where he is?"

"TARDIS should've landed us somewhere close by. Shouldn't be too hard to find him."

A movement nearby drew Barry's eye, and he turned to see a white-skinned, bipedal being clambering atop a nearby plateau. It looked down on him, and without any warning, a spear of raw pain pierced his mind. He fell to his knees, vaguely aware that he was screaming. Before his mind's eye, a cacophony of images and sensations filled his mind, just as real and vivid as the first time around.

Watching his mom die, twice. Feeling the Man in Yellow's knife slid through his ribs and into his heart. Standing with his back against the door in Max Lorrd's vault, with a Dalek gunstick pointed at his chest. Clockwork robots, Slitheen, Grodans, Cybermen, the werewolf, the Jagrafess looming over him

Unconsciousness, when it came, was a relief.

Hearing was the first to return, like his dad's old TV set, then his vision swam fuzzily back into focus. Above was a rocky cave ceiling the color of rust. He'd been with the Doctor on the asteroid…they'd gotten a distress call…they'd arrived on Mars…

"Whoa!"

He sat up quickly, and nearly brained himself on a rocky ceiling the color of iron oxide.

"Easy there," the Doctor soothed him. "It's okay, Barry. You're safe."

Looking around, Barry realized that he was in a cave maybe half again the width of the TARDIS console room. A lantern of some kind glowed in the middle of the space, and it was furnished with several hanging curtains and other Martian objects. Two doorways led out into further tunnels, and from one of them, a tall green figure emerged.

Barry had not spent as long as he had at the Doctor's side without learning to recognize a dangerous being when he saw one, and his instincts whispered that this man was dangerous for reasons going far beyond his powers. They shared a long look, and the Martian inclined his head.

"Greetings, Barry Allen. I am relieved that you are well."

"Hi," he sat up. "J'onn J'onzz, I guess?"

"I am he. Welcome to my world. I wish that it were under better circumstances."

"Thanks. What happened to that thing?"

"Gone," J'onn said, with just the hint of a smirk.

Barry cautiously rose to his feet and crossed over to the lantern, settling down again. His headache had gone from debilitating to slightly annoying. "How come the gravity's normal? I mean, uh, Earth normal?"

J'onn nodded to one corner, where a squat, boxy device rested. "Artificial gravity generator. I took it out of my spaceship and tuned it to Earth gravity, at the Doctor's request."

"Figured we had enough to deal with without zero gravity," the Doctor told him.

"Yeah, what was that?"

"A psychic assault," the Doctor told him, face drawn in harsh lines.

"A White Martian," J'onn answered at the same time.

"I didn't know there were White Martians," the Doctor frowned.

"There weren't."

J'onn turned to the Doctor. "After you left, the Daleks slipped a bio-virus into our drinking water. Two thirds of our people were mutated in a matter of weeks, before we could isolate the source and freeze it solid."

The Doctor sucked in a breath through his teeth. "And the virus? What did it…"

"It changed my people," J'onn told them. "Mutated them. Their psychic abilities became stronger, but more erratic as their discipline faded. Their senses, too, became stronger. Their memories remained intact, but…"

"How do you turn someone into a Dalek?" the Doctor growled, and underneath his words Barry saw a hint of the Oncoming Storm. "Subtract love, add anger."

"They did…terrible things. Locked my people in cages, experimented on them, and…murdered them. Wiped them out."

J'onn trailed off, bowing his head. "My wife, my daughters, my friends and family…all gone. I am the last."

"I'm so sorry," the Doctor murmured. "My people are gone too, and my world."

Barry thought of the sun exploding, and turning his planet to dust and ashes. He thought of the distant looks Kara and Clark got sometimes, the pain that came over them at the smallest things. He thought of the look in the Doctor's eyes when he spoke of Gallifrey and the Time Lords.

"The Warriors fought back, though," J'onn told them, and the hint of a smile hovered around his mouth. "They trained themselves in psychic discipline, and built armor that could put them on a level with the Whites. They built sonic cannons, to take advantage of their enhanced hearing. The war raged back and forth across this world. I fought to free my people, but very few of them had survived, and of those who did…most were killed in the war, along with the Whites. Even our world was devastated. The majority of the Ice Warriors have either gone into hibernation or fled into space."

"What can we do?" Barry asked quietly.

"We can't go back in time and save your people," the Doctor told J'onn.

"I know. But…can you find me a new world? One where I can live in peace?" He shrugged at the Doctor. "Perhaps find an adventure from time to time?"

The Time Lord smiled at the Martian. "Oh, I think we can find you somewhere. My favorite planet, actually. Home away from home."

And just then, the cave wall burst inwards, and a pair of White Martians burst inside.

"Run!" J'onn bellowed, and threw himself forward. One of the Whites collided with him in mid-air, and they flew upwards, smashing through the cave roof. The second lunged at Barry, a fist that could've made a dent in a decent-sized mountain drawn back.

"No!" the Doctor yelled.

But the blow never landed. Barry lunged to his feet, and watched as the fist moved towards him at the speed of molasses.

"My friend Jay calls it bullet time," Max had told him. "Essentially, you accelerate your perception to such an extent that it seems things are standing still. It's an invaluable technique for when you're under attack."

"Brains always beats brawn," the Doctor's voice echoed in his mind. "I've taken on armies and won with nothin' but a screwdriver and a cheerful grin, 'cause I used my head."

Barry slipped aside from the punch, grabbed the arm at the wrist and elbow, allowed his perception of time to return to normal, and spun his body as Steve, Max, and the Venusian aikido masters had shown him, sending the Martian flying past, into the wall of the cave. It landed with a crash and a snarl, leaping to its feet and coming back at Barry. It threw a series of looping punches, any one of which could've pulverized him, but none of them ever landed. He slipped and dodged and ducked and parried, never meeting force with force but instead redirecting or simply avoiding his enemy's strikes, letting it expend its strength and wear itself out on the walls.

The master of defense, Steve had said to him, is someone who's never in the place that's being attacked.

Barry leapt back from a flurry of strikes, ending up halfway across the cavern. The Martian growled and lunged, raising a fist above its head, bringing every bit of its power to bear in a strike that would've turned him into Barry jelly. Barry ran forwards, straight towards the blow, listening to Max's voice in his mind.

"Listen to me, Barry. Breathe. Breathe. Feel the ground beneath your feet, lifting you up, pushing you forward. Feel the air. Feel that wind on your face. And the lightning. Feel it traveling through every nerve in your body, like a shock you never want to end. You're no longer you now. You're part of something greater. Part of the Speed Force."

Barry closed his eyes, vibrated, and let the fist travel straight through his temporarily intangible form.

"Yes!"

As another old friend of the Doctor's had famously said, though, an object in motion would remain in motion, and the White Martian's inertia drove it into the cave wall. It climbed halfway to its feet, stumbled, but shook its head and rose again.

"Kill…you…" it growled.

"Cool off," Barry told him. Planting his feet, he spun his arms at super-speed, creating twin whirlwinds that sent the Martian flying once more. Still, it rose groggily, clenching a fist.

"Fine," Barry muttered. He ran in a circle around the cave, whipping around its circumference over and over and over again, and then, with a yell, he brushed past the Doctor, leapt into the air, and delivered a punch to the jaw at roughly the speed of sound. The Martian flew backwards, crashed through the wall, and lay still.

"Ow. Think I broke my wrist."

"Nicely done," the Doctor told him, clapping a hand on his shoulder, and Barry flashed him a weary grin.

"Thanks. What about J'onn?"

"Oh, I think he's on top of things."

On cue, a second White Martian hurtled through the roof and crashed through the floor. J'onn floated down and looked at the crater.

"Shall we go?"

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor set the coordinates for Earth.

"Doctor?" Barry asked. "J'onn?"

"Mmm?"

"We've been up against a lot of telepaths." Barry thought back to the Face of Boe, being possessed by Cassandra, the Cynrogs, the Beast, the White Martian…

"I'd really like to be able to stop them from getting in my mind. Is there any way…"

The Doctor quirked a smile. "I can understand that."

He nodded to J'onn, who nodded back. "We'll teach you to shield your mind."

"Yeah, that'd…that'd be great, actually."

"Sit down, Barry. Breathe deep. Take a deep breath in…clear your mind…imagine a castle, a mighty fortress…"

Finally, with a thump, the TARDIS landed.

"Here you are!" the Doctor announced. "Earth. Sol 3. Currently…hmm. 1710 by their local calendar. March 1st, 5:02 in the afternoon. Country called Brazil. Good luck to you, J'onn."

"Thank you, Doctor. And you, Barry. Perhaps we will meet again someday."

"I'm sure we will," Barry shook his hand. "I'm sure we will."

So, yeah. J'onn is now off to wander around Earth for a few centuries. He'll be around, doing his own thing, being a hero, but we probably won't hear from him until Book 2. Maybe. After all, you never know with a shape-changer...

Not sure how well this chapter turned out, so reviews would (as always) be greatly appreciated. Next week: Smith, Jones, and Allen!