Hello everyone, and welcome back! I've been looking forward to this one for a long, long time. A certain piece of the dialogue in this chapter is taken with respect from the wonderful novel At Childhood's End by Sophie Aldred, slightly adapted since it's coming from the 10th rather than 13th Doctor. Speaking of whom...
Guest: Thanks as always for the review! Yes, well, Barry is a Trekkie at heart, after all.
With a thump and a groan, the TARDIS settled down, and the Doctor bounded out, swinging open the doors to reveal a rocky vista that reminded Barry of Mordor, complete with giant black metal castle looming over the landscape.
At least there's no Orodruin. And God, please no more giant spiders.
Wind whistled between the mountains, and the occasional fall of pebbles was the only sign of motion amidst the desolate landscape.
"This is where the distress signal came from!" the Doctor announced.
"Uh-oh," Donna noted as she exited the TARDIS, closing the door gently behind her. "Doesn't exactly look like a picnic spot, does it?"
"Well, no one's gonna send a distress call from a picnic, are they?" Barry riposted, sticking his hands in his pockets as he scanned the landscape.
"Oh, help, my salmon sandwiches are trying to take over the world! Save us!" Donna laughed, and he nudged her with his shoulder.
"I dunno," the Doctor said from where he was kneeling in front, letting a trickle of dust run through his fingers. "I've come across some pretty bad sandwiches in my time."
He frowned. "Hello, look at this. Suspended chronon decay. This planet is disintegrating…"
"So what does that mean?" Donna asked as they set off across the rocky landscape. "Salmon sandwiches I understand. Chronon decay I'm not so good with."
"This is no ordinary world. Something's wrong with the local time stream. Very wrong. Extremely wrong…in fact, on a wrongness scale of one to ten, this is definitely a twenty-five."
"Uh, Doctor?" Donna called. "I'm not feeling too well…"
"Do…oh, no," Barry groaned, clutching at his stomach. Every cell in his body seemed to be convulsing. His muscles spasmed and weakened as he dropped to one knee.
Donna had it worse, though. Before his eyes, his friend bent double. As if watching a time-lapse video, she seemed to age decades in just a few seconds, going from a woman in the prime of her life to a white-haired, hoary old lady in moments.
"All of a sudden I feel really tired…"
"Here, hold on to me," the Doctor offered, slinging one of her arms around his shoulders and leading her towards the castle.
"All right there, Barry?"
"No," he groaned, holding up a hand to see that it resembled his dad's. His voice had deepened, too. "Not really. How come we've been aged?"
"And how come I'm the only one who's old?" Donna complained.
"I'm a Time Lord," the Doctor answered cheerfully. "Different rules. And Barry's a speedster, he'll age more slowly than you will. We should be able to find some answers in here. Come on, grandma, it's only a few more steps."
"Oi! Less of the cheek, you young whippersnapper!"
They staggered up a staircase, through an open door, and into a futuristic control room. Looking around at the technology, the Doctor quickly identified the planet as being called Methuselah, the site of a massive warp in time. The castle's technology, he explained, was a Time Force Barrier intended to protect the rest of the universe from the rift.
"But something's gone wrong-those time blocks are cracking. And…ooh, look. We're not alone."
He pointed upwards through the still-open doorway towards a green streak of light, just entering the atmosphere.
"Spaceship?" wondered Donna.
"Nope," the Doctor grinned. "That's a Green Lantern. Interstellar police. They protect this galaxy, use power rings for flight and defense. Chosen for their integrity and strength of will. I've worked with them on and off for, ooh, centuries now."
"Wait, like Alan?" Barry asked. The Doctor made a face, waggling his head.
"Kind of, yeah, though he was a bit of a special case, I think. Most of 'em travel planet to planet rather than staying in one place. Let me think, who's the Lantern for this sector at this point. Not Abin Sur, not anymore…"
In a blaze of green light, a woman descended from the skies to land in front of them. She wore an emerald uniform, tight-fitting without being constrictive, and over that a black leather jacket covered in buttons, pins, and labels. Blond hair was tied back from her face in a no-nonsense ponytail, and Barry thought that, if she were human, she'd be maybe five or ten years older than Martha. The Doctor's grin split his face in half.
"Ace!"
"Sorry," the woman frowned. "Do I know you?"
"It's me! The Doctor. New body, same person. Ooh, much better hair."
Barry, thinking of his last Doctor's minimal haircut, sniggered to himself. The woman didn't quite fold her arms, but looked like she was thinking about it.
"You're the Professor? Prove it."
"Come on! Regeneration! When a Time Lord's body gets old or damaged…no?"
The woman looked like she was just barely holding back tears. "Prove it. If you're the Professor, prove it."
"All right," the Doctor shrugged. "You support Charlton Athletic cos your favorite uncle lived in Plumstead. You love motorbikes. I never let you ride one, though. You taught yourself to speak proper cos you wanted to sound like a Blue Peter presenter. You can't see a Dalek without feeling a twitch in your baseball-bat hand, you learned to love jazz, and you think being tall is overrated. Oh, and you hate clowns."
"She sounds pretty awesome," Barry raised his eyebrows.
"Oh, she is," the Doctor agreed, drinking in the sight of his long-lost friend. "It's good to see you again, Ace."
Slowly, looking as if she still couldn't quite believe it, the woman strode forward and embraced the Doctor, who gripped the back of her jacket in both fists.
"Blimey, Professor. It really is you."
"So you used to travel with him?" Donna asked as the Doctor led them inside.
"Back in the day, yeah. Before I got chosen by this thing…" Ace held up her hand. "Travel across the galaxy, protect the innocent, kick evil butt."
"Just like old times," the Doctor commented with a goofy grin.
"Met a lot of friends of yours over the years," Ace told him. "Dee and Adam Strange say hi. Saint Walker says you owe him dinner. And Sinestro…what did you do to get his mustache in a twist?"
The Doctor grinned again, then became serious as he looked around for the three robot sentinels that ought to have been guarding the machinery. The question of where they'd gone to was swiftly but only partially answered: Two of the three were standing in a corner, deactivated.
"If someone's nobbled the Sentinels, the Time Force Barrier holding the warp in check will collapse and chaos will be unleashed right across the galaxy," the Doctor frowned. "We have to find the other Sentinel and get this place running again. But first…"
He aimed the sonic at one of the banks of technology. "Let's get you two back to normal! If I reverse the polarity of the neutron flow on the localised time field it might help you shed a few years."
"Ohhh…" Barry gasped. He shivered, hot and cold at the same time, and patted his face, feeling creases fade away from his cheeks.
"If you could bottle that, you'd make a fortune back on Earth," he noted, looking up as a shadow fell across them. A golden, humanoid robot with a T-shaped visor loomed over the foursome.
"It's the third Sentinel!" the Doctor announced cheerfully. "Hello there!"
"ALIEN INTERLOPERS!" it bellowed, unleashing a bolt of virescent energy from one hand. "YOU MUST PERISH!"
"I'm Green Lantern Dorothy McShane," Ace started, drawing herself up, but whatever she was going to say was cut short by a second blast of energy, which she caught on a green energy shield of her own.
"Fine," she muttered. "Two can play at that game."
A projection of a baseball bat made of green light appeared in her hands, and she swung it at the robot's knees, a blow that should've swept it off its metallic feet and sent it crashing down to the ground. As it was, the blow barely fazed it.
"It's gone crazy!" the Doctor called. "Overcame by damage from Methuselah's time winds."
"I know how it feels," Donna grunted. Another energy blast sped towards them, but Ace was on the job, forming a TARDIS-shaped shield that encompassed the small group.
"Nice," Barry commented, and Ace winked at him. She staggered slightly as the Sentinel began to pound the barrier with its fists.
"It must have turned on its companions," the Doctor continued. "If we stop it from functioning, what will guard the Time Force Barrier?"
"Let's stop it first and then worry about that," Donna suggested. "Ace, you got anything else?"
"It doesn't seem to be all that bothered by my Ring," Ace frowned.
"What if you hit it with a lightning bolt at the same time?" the Doctor suggested.
"Where do I get lightning from?"
Donna and the Doctor both looked at Barry, who shrugged.
"Worth a try."
"Run, Barry. Run!"
With a shout, Barry launched himself into motion, running rings around the Sentinel, faster and faster, until with a yell he spun one last time and, just as Max had taught him, let his lightning across his body, down his arm, and into the robot, at the same moment that Ace leveled her fist like a gun and launched a bolt of green energy of her own. The two energy blasts struck the malfunctioning robot simultaneously, and with a satisfyingly large blast, it exploded.
"Here we are!" the Doctor announced later. Barry and Donna looked over from where they had been swapping stories of their adventures with Ace.
"Sentinel One and Two back up and running. They say three's a crowd, so these two will manage fine on their own. And I've engineered them to be more resistant to the time winds to stop the same thing from happening again."
"THANK YOU, DOCTOR," one ground out.
"Right then—back on duty! C'mon, you lot."
"Oh, you've redecorated," Ace breathed, looking around the console room. The Doctor looked up at her, grinning.
"I don't like it."
"What?"
"I'm teasing, Professor." She nudged him in the ribs, and after a second he rolled his eyes and smiled back.
"Missed you."
"You too."
"He is so easy to fool," she said to Barry, who laughed. The Doctor coughed.
"I've fixed the Force Barrier to extend beyond the planet itself, cutting it off from the rest of space and time forever. Once we leave, the galaxy will be safe again. You, uh, you won't be able to get off the planet with your ring. I could give you a lift somewhere?"
"Back to Earth," she nodded. "I'll check in on Samael—he's the guy I have running the day-to-day operations of A Charitable Earth."
"Righteo!" the Doctor announced. "England, Earth, early 21st century."
He glanced up at her and grinned. "The direct route, or the scenic route?"
She tilted her head and grinned right back. "Which do you think?"
I know some folks will be mad I made the Lanterns protectors of the Milky Way/Mutter's Spiral galaxy instead of the whole universe. My answer: The universe is, quite frankly, utterly ginormous. There are between one and four BILLION stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone. Say we have a conservative estimate of one billion stars, on average one inhabited planet per every 100 stars (which, in the Doctor Who universe, is again a VERY conservative estimate), and 72,000 Lanterns (the canon number from the comics), that still leaves you with almost 140 planets per Lantern. And there are at least 200 BILLION galaxies out there in the universe. Do the math.
Why didn't Barry just use the vibrating hand against the robot? Well, honestly, in the comics, Green Lanterns and Flashes have a long history of friendship, and I thought it'd be a nice symbolic gesture to have them work together to defeat a foe, even if it is a low-scale one.
As for Alan's Ring: again, this is the Doctor Who, not DC Universe, and operates by those laws. "Magic" is, with a few notable exceptions, just directed psychic energy. What exactly was the deal with Alan? Well, that will be explained...eventually. Probably.
Next time: The Sontaran Stratagem! There may be a bit of a delay, but I'll have it up as soon as possible, as usual.
