Fictions Mentioned:
Episode 2 - A Lord of Time's Perspective on the Imagine Breaker
OP Song:
YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World – Opening Theme
Insert Song: Start
This Is Gallifrey: Our Childhood. Our Home
It was in the darkness of the night, which could be described quite well from the full moon and the twinkling stars that were shown in vast vaults of the night sky, in the midst of a city of science that is the home to that of espers, special individuals who uses seemingly scientifically based supernatural powers and emits An Involuntary Movement (AIM), the phenomena where an esper involuntarily emits an invisible energy field from their body, known as an AIM Diffusion Field, closely connected to the source of their ability which is Personal Reality which is an esper's unconscious interference with reality itself.
This city of science is known as Academy City, a city that is seemingly more than twenty to thirty years ahead of everyone else that was in the world, and it was a city that to had quite many of the "normal" students and all of its inhabitants were fast sound asleep except for mostly certain individuals that belonged to a dark side, or other circumstances too long to list out.
And in this city, two individuals were quite wide awake, located inside everyone's favorite blue police box — TARDIS — that was parked inside a simple apartment to no one's immediate notice and blissful ignorance, one that even eludes that of the sight of the Board Chairman himself.
And somewhere in the TARDIS, there was located in one of many bedrooms, a very young Touma Kamijou, somewhere in the age of his elementary years of Academy City, was in his bed, all tucked in with a blanket and a pillow in tow, with a simple smile on his face, and he is being watched over by the brown eyes of the Doctor, specifically in his tenth incarnation (official and yet not accurate due to complications) who was also quite awake at this very point in time.
"Good night, Touma," he said in a whispered, clear tone, with a very kind smile, patting his head in paternal affection, beginning to silently take his leave and make way towards the door.
But before the Doctor could leave, Touma immediately called out to him, saying. "Doctor?"
The Doctor stopped, with fatherly old eyes turn towards him and spoke with a paternal, concerned voice. "Yes, Touma?"
"Do you think that magic exists?," Touma asked him, sporting a very curious expression that was on his face, posing a certain question that has been on his mind for quite sometime.
There was silence, one that lasted for about a moment, and in that moment, the Doctor was blinking in turn, sporting a very concerned expression on his face, with scrunched eyebrows to accompany it, slowly walking towards Touma, putting both of his hands into his pockets, saying. "Why would you ask that question, Touma?"
Touma answered in a low, clear voice. "...Well its just, knowing how my life has been going on all this time... and with everything that had happened... one that had things like aliens and stuff... then there's my misfortune being right there as always... I don't know... I just had this thought that it might have something to do with it, and that when I thought about it a lot, it wouldn't really surprise me if it were the cause of it. But then, the people in this city really don't believe in magic to begin with, saying that its all just some random superstition that rots the brain and halts progress, they said... at least, that's what I heard whenever I ask the students or the teachers who lived in this city."
The Doctor sported a simple smile, with a caring and understanding face considering everything that had happen with regards to Touma, and it was then that he began to say with good-natured humor and with gentle, paternal care that was on his voice. "Now that's a very brilliant, frighteningly mature amount of thought coming from someone of your age, but I can definitely assure you on one thing, Touma; that MAGICK had nothing to with your misfortune whatsoever."
Touma couldn't helped but noticed the cautionary and deliberate tone, with the good-natured humor that comes along with it, when the Doctor began to say the word, MAGICK, not magic, as if it were a very completely different thing that is distinguished between the two, as if it were a very forbidden and dangerous word to use, and it is because of this that he couldn't helped but feel a strange sense of unease and curiosity because of the strange sensation of wonder and dread that he felt when the word MAGICK began to be said, and with each passing moment of time, he would gradually begin to realize that this MAGICK that the Doctor was referring too felt far too different and totally alien from that of the magic that he and many others are somewhat familiar with, like all of those magical girl shows and anime he tends to see on television on the weekends whenever he isn't too busy dealing with homework, or if possible, maybe even magic itself, if it really did exist in the first place.
Little did the young lad knew that this story behind all of that had a very rich ancient history, one that is very quite well known. Known among the ancient dragon gods who were locked inside his right hand — Imagine Breaker — knew about that story quite well, and in consequence of that, couldn't help but wince and shudder at the mention of the word of long ago that came from a time before time. Known quite well by everyone of the Higher Races, Multiple Pantheons, Temporal Powers. Known quite well among the Ancient Civilizations that lived through such an era of wonder and mystery. For all have knowledge of it since the Ancient Days, and all have known of what untold power and ability that it has been and could have been wielded were it to fall on the right hands and the wrong hands, to which resulted in both prosperous blessings and devastating curses of perpetuity.
Touma Kamijou, sporting a look of sheer curiosity and wonder, with a growing amount of desire to know and understand, began to ask with strange uneasiness. "What do you mean by MAGICK? Is there something different about it than regular magic?"
The Doctor smiled proudly and paternally due to the fact that the boy had noticed that little slip-up that he had made purposefully in order to set the stage for a history lesson in the form of a bedtime story. That and in order to help Touma understand that the term "magic" is quite relative when spoken in different sets of context, perspective, time, and the cultures that came with it. Always the discrete planner who plans within plans. Still got it, he though happily with an inward smile. And it was right then and there that he would begin to tell him the story of Ages Past concerning the very relative beginnings of his own multiverse setting, speaking in a tone of a teacher that would want to impart to knowledge on his student. "Alright, Touma, Let me tell you a story."
And as the Doctor said this, he began to look for a chair, found one from somewhere in the corner, and began to immediately sit down as he placed the chair at the right side of the white mattress, with the young elementary student still in his bed, tucked in to his blanket, with his head resting in a white fluffy, adequate set of two pillows, with his attentive ears on the ready in order to listen with care as the Doctor, one that was by all intents and purposes at this point, his second father and a guardian that was entrusted by his parents in order to keep him safe and to help him prepare for his eventual path to walk and pave through with a willful determination with not a single shred of regret, begins to tell his bedtime story which also serves as a history lesson, one that concerns the likes of which no one that has, can, and ever will know, for it was more than just a simple story, for it was the story, the Beginning of All of Creation in relative respect and perspective to the multiverse setting of the Whoniverse, an era that was known and gone through many names such as the Dark Time(s), Dark Ages, the time before time, Protoverse, Dvapara Yuga, Old Time, Time of Chaos, Age of the Pythias, and many other coined terms of ancient significance. And this story would be told all because of the fact that the Touma Kamijou had only asked a simple question that sounded childish, ignorant, and foolish in hindsight, but it could not said to be so in memory of personal experiences that comes about through the plague of misfortune and through the discovery of wonders untold that lay beyond the borders of his very own universe, so he can be simply excused about these ridiculous thoughts and just had to know on what was egging on the back of his very own mind.
"Once upon a time… that's a good way to start the story. Once upon a time, Long before your time, before any time that you could measure, before any time that anyone can measure, before your universe or any other universe or multiverse that may have come to be in the past, present, and future, there was an "era" that is known as the Old Dark Times, one where there were unicorns and bread-and-butterflies, planets like giant apples and suns like red balloons. A place of endless miracles, non? No harsh sciences here, no mundane little laws of physics, no guiding principles that dictate one's conscience, in a word: NO RULES. There was just possibility. An infinity of possibility. But since no sentient life had yet to evolved, there was no one to take notice on whether or not they were impossible or not, so no one really minded one bit and went about with it in ways that made the modern days of your world and the espers of Academy City quite tame in comparison, for espers could manipulate reality through sheer mathematical calculations, but in the Old Dark Times, one could simply think of something and then it would be quite possible to achieve, giving birth to practically everything that relates to one such wishes, to prosperous and devastating consequences."
Then The Doctor begins to utter the name of his species of old that was born in this Time of Chaos.
"And after quite a while, then came along my very own people, the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey — the Shining World of the Seven Systems."
Touma begins to listen more attentively, partly as a result of a feeling of intimidation and intrigue at the very mention of the Doctor's species, feeling as if you must need to pay absolute attention to them at all times, and partly because of the unknown power and divinity that was somehow felt when their name and their homeworld was mentioned in a tone of divine reminiscence. And the ancient beings who were locked inside the Imagine Breaker would begin to tremble and cower in justified fear at the very mention of their name and homeworld, for who in their right ancient mind has not heard of them and their wonderful accomplishments that had come forth from their clockwork-like hands, for they and many countless others have heard and have seen their myths and legends first hand through one hidden way upon another.
There is an unspoken rule that was written in the hearts of many throughout the Known and Unknown Multiverse when it comes to a first encounter with the Time Lords.
Whenever one has a close encounter or is in the presence of The Time Lords:
Show the proper respect that is due.
Show the proper courtesy that is due.
Show the proper politeness that is due.
Show the proper attitude that is due.
Do not antagonize lest you will be dealt with swiftly.
Do not antagonize lest you will be dealt with harshly.
Do not antagonize lest you will be dealt with effectively.
Do not antagonize lest you will be dealt with efficiently.
For many countless gods, monsters, and demons have seen their very last physical and metaphysical breath when they even contemplate or attempt to fight against the Time Lords, the effective and efficient Dungeon Masters of the Whoniverse, with only beings such as the Guardians of Time, the Grace, and the Glory among other natives of the Whoniverse multiverse setting outranking them on the cosmic hierarchy.
The Doctor begins to describe his race to him in a divine tone that sets the mood of the rest of the story.
"Back in the Old Dark Times, before we we're known as Time Lords, we were known by another name, the Watchmakers, and we were effectively one of the First Great Races in all of existence when it comes to the multiverse that I came from. We were beings of extraordinary power, perhaps more power than we could ever truly realized. We were grim-faced men in robes of grey, with our hands busy at the machines, turning handles and pressing switches. In a word, we looked quite ordinary and drab. We were quite the logical, masculine creatures. We rejected the possibility, and denied the world of wonders. It scared us, not because we were powerless against it, far from it, but because we knew to our minds and hearts through clear foresight of the dangerous chaotic potential that was found within MAGICK, that it could be wielded by anyone and anything without a sense of morality, ethics, or responsibility. For this was a "time", if you could call it that as time as you or anyone else in existence who knew or understand it or it's concept didn't exist yet, when you couldn't breathe for gods and super races. Back when Monday was the Great Old Ones devouring a civilization or two; when Tuesday was The Time Lords fighting the Great Vampires of Old (Yssgaroth) for the total control of physics and for the safety of all sentient life; when Wednesday was when the war between the Carrionites and the Hervoken was nearly blowing up the universe until the Eternals locked them down into the Deep Darkness; when Thursday was when the Kotturuh was bringing their Gift of Death to so many species and civilizations, making them follow a certain time table that is measured in the cycle of life and death; when Friday was a serious bust up when entire galaxies and universes went bye bye for one reason or another; and the less that was said about Saturday and Sunday the better because those days were just downright awful for everybody."
After the last part, the Doctor and Touma both had a good-hearted laugh, due to former making a subtle joke example about relative weeks in order to not make the story quite boring and in order to lighten the mood with a little good humor while also treating the subject with simplicity for the sake of the child as he continues on with the story with the same solemn tone.
"Now were was I, oh yes, that's right, my people wanted all of existence to be precise, to be mechanical, so that they could live their very own lives to a solemn timetable. They wanted to understand the universe in the same way you might understand a piece of clockwork. As a cold machine. No room for cities of brass or dragonfly-gods. We invented the rules, and we tied all of creation down to these rules. We were in a sense, the very first Lawmakers and Scientists, to put it simply."
The young boy's eyes widened at that statement as he realize little by little on what was being told to him. The Doctor took noticed of his expression immediately as he affirmed what the young boy was beginning to understand.
"Yes. That's right, Touma. We considered ourselves Beings of Reason. We proved that horses couldn't fly, so horses didn't fly. We proved that cities couldn't dream, so cities didn't dream. My people took away the glamours and the mysteries, then built machines in their places. We became the Kings of Reason — the Masters of Space — the Lords of Time. We were one of the first to evolve in our proto-universe before the rational universe, when back then, we were known as the Shadow People, caught between the warm dark of MAGICK and the cold light of SCIENCE. MAGICK itself predominated for a very long, long time. How long ago is anyone's guesswork at this point considering the fact that time itself has yet to be known by such a term that you could understand, back when the past, present, and future were not things that were separate in a sense but more one in unity, and it was due to all of these reasons that the Ancient Time Wars, the First War in Heaven, began."
Touma would begin to pay even more attention at the very mention of the Ancient Time Wars, for he gradually felt within his mind and heart that this was no ordinary conflict that could be describe perfectly in the language and terminology of humanity or any of the other younger races that exist, and the dragons who reside in the Prison Domain of the Imagine Breaker felt extreme fear and extreme dread at the mention of these wars that was fought among gods.
The Doctor describes to young Touma Kamijou about this ancient conflict.
"The Ancient Time Wars were an ancient contradictory era of history that was marked by numerous conflicts wherein my people ensured their full supremacy, eradicating all other lifeforms with the potential for time travel or were deemed a complete threat to their civilization as a whole. This conflict, according some accounts, would have estimated to have lasted for at least 30,000 meta-years on over 1000 planets in total, becoming a nightmare of contradiction, paradox, and death that came within its wake. Campaigns and theatres of the Ancient Time Wars period included three particular conflicts within them such as the Black Sun War, The Eternal War, and the Racnoss Wars. The Black Sun War was a campaign fought between my people and the Order of the Black Sun, based thirty thousand meta-years in Gallifrey's personal relative future. The Eternal War, also known as the Vampire Wars, or the Great War, was a protracted and bloody campaign that my people fought against the Great Vampires (Yssgaroth) of Old early on in our own meta-history. The Racnoss Wars were a campaign that fought between my people and the Fledgling Empires, against the Empire of the Racnoss, a species of cannibals that wanted to consume everything in their path. I would personally described this last conflict as a long and bloody affair that went the way of nightmares among the younger races caught in the crossfire of it. And these conflicts were three of many conflicts in general when in concerns the Ancient Time Wars. Ultimately, after a very long while, the Ancient Time Wars ended in Time Lord victory. These conflicts had helped to lay the foundations for what was to become of the creation of my multiverse. For when finally, when all of this inconsistency and contradiction was said and done with, Rassilon, Omega, and the Other, three of the Great Triumvirate Founding Fathers of Time Lord Society, made their ultimate and final decision that decide the fate of all creation."
Then the Doctor said with a tone of reverence and a tone of divine fear that was present in both of his hearts.
"The Creation of the Eye of Harmony, and with this "Invention" which would eventually murder untold countless trillions upon trillions of lives and was such a devastating blow that it actually affected our universe's multiverse cluster, spreading like an impossible wave of imperious temporality that eventually spread throughout the entirety of my own given multiverse, with nothing left truly untouched. With its creation that came with the process that was known as the Anchoring of the Thread, a process of rationalizing the multiverse which was a reflection of the contributions of the Golden Age Era of Intuitive Revelation. With this process came forth two other important works. One of great work of antiquity was the Web of Time (Spiral Politic) which was the orderly structure of the history of my multiverse, built and maintained by my very own people, well considered as very consubstantial with Gallifrey's noosphere. Another great work of antiquity that eventually held us very highly among all of the denizens of the Known and Unknown Multiverse was the creation, building, and imposition of the Time Vortex, which was an infinite multiverse in and of itself, serving as the penultimate connector of my own given multiverse, while also serving as, to give a simple comparison, simple train stations and airports for the use of easily accessible transportation for the Known and Unknown Multiverse, and this realm of our own making exists outside of any normal frame of reference. Within it, light, darkness, matter and energy all blend, divide, shift and change. It underlies the whole of creation, touching the normal universes and multiverses only slightly. Its pathways are twisted, unstable and hard to follow. A journey through these strange dimensions might take a moment and carry a traveller a million years and a billion light years from his, her, or its origin. Alternatively, a journey of months in the Vortex might end in a shift of six feet and ten days in conventional space. Without being able to calculate the pathways, there was simply no telling. Naturally, training and experience would need to be undergone in order to navigate these admittedly dangerous pathways to which of course, my people and several others would eventually teach others to do so as a way of professional courtesy and political interests. And with that, the world that my people and several others had all lived in solidified all around them, like water turning to ice. Squeezing out the MAGICK. Everything strange and magical dropped out of the multiverse. My people held all of creation in a hard grey fist and squeezed it dry. We sucked all of the glamour and the strangeness from its bones. The monsters and angels and impossible things, retreating into the darkness, vanishing into the whirlpools of our eyes.. The shadeling gods, the children of the Pythia... one by one, they all died, pushed out of a cosmos that was too rational to let them live. But oh, yes, there were those of the Old Dark Time who escaped. A handful of baby godlings and 'great intelligences'... but they were very unimaginative creatures and were all to ready to obey my people's order. Too ready to give themselves up to Reason. And everything of course was not that smooth sailing of a "long" process, for like an ice cube, there were little cracks and bubbles here and there such as Psi for example. Psi was the last known MAGICK to survive, perhaps because it was the least impossible, the closest to SCIENCE, ergo, it could be rationalized and made fit into order. The residue of psi would eventually become a network of ley lines, stretching through the multiverse in improbable directions. My people were well and truly aware of the ley lines even before the Ancient Time Wars began. We'd chosen to make the multiverse rational. Its irrational citizens objected. So we turned the psi lines into weapons. A distant early warning line that stretched throughout multiple galaxies from multiple universes, studded with receivers the size of mountains or even small moons, parabolic dishes disguised as craters. Listening for eruptions of psi power beyond Gallifrey. And with that come the very end of the story... for now anyway."
"...Wow," said Touma, sporting an expression of amazement that comes from a young lad of elementary age who had just been told a very good story.
After said story comes a profound, contemplative silence, with Touma sporting an expression of contemplative wonder and awe, trying his very best to process the ancient story of antiquity that was told to him.
An amazement and wonder for the time before time and all the things that have happened within that "time" along with all the various beings and pantheons and gods that have existed way back then that are basically myths and legends come to life in actual historical facts. Ones that could not really be found within the literature and entertainment of his very own world, one that usually had the things of mere fantasy that dictate only a "once upon a time" and a "happily ever after".
For the story that his second father had told to him was far too different in nature and intricate design.
For it spoke of a time before his time. A time before anyone and everyone's time. A time before his universe and countless others. A time when magic and science was but an afterthought and MAGICK reigned supreme and unchallenged. A time with many unlimited numbers of horrors of shapes and sizes that were created and spawned with letters and numbers of contradiction as if by mere afterthoughts from gods and mortals. A time that spoke of the various gods, monsters, and demons of myths and legends that were less of the realm of mere fiction and more of the realistic historical facts that spoke of their own ancient power and divinity that are known and recorded for all to see and ponder for the deep ages of the past. A time that spoke of the accomplishments, wonders, and contribution throughout the Known and Unknown Multiverse that comes about through the sheer awesome will powered determination and effort of the Lords of Time.
After the next few minutes that have passed by, he would begin to ask a question. "Doctor, are there any of these ley lines on my Earth?"
"Yes, Touma, as a matter of fact they are, although they are far too different when compared to my multiverses' ley lines. They are, to give you a comparison for your world, a pipeline for the distribution of mana, which is a form of energy that exists in all forms of life throughout your universe, this type of energy is being used by the various magicians of this world to carry out certain big national projects in accordance with their goals and many of these ley lines are actually located in many famous historical places such as Avignon in France and The Vatican in Rome." the Doctor explained with a smile.
Touma, looking thoughtful, looks towards his right hand and begins to ask another question. "Doctor, does my Imagine Breaker negate these ley lines?"
The Doctor answers immediately in the negative, shaking his head. "No, Touma, it does not."
Touma looks towards the Doctor with a surprised look on his face, with the latter eventually explaining in a tone of care.
"Ley lines in general fall under one of the natural laws of your own universe and like what I once indicated, there are many different types of ley lines in the Known and Unknown Multiverse which serve similar or different purposes for the regulation of mana, depending on what type of mana that could be is another discussion entirely. To explain what I mean, think of a ley line as like the electrical wiring around your own home which is your universe. Each home or universe in this case typically have several different kinds of home wiring of the ley lines, including the wiring for the mana distribution, permanently installed in each strategic point around the universe to which is found among the many various and diverse historical structures and prominent landmarks that seem to be centered around the given planets of origin. Safety regulations for the wiring installation of the ley lines vary widely around the multiverse, with the given rules of each local universe that depends upon the rules that were set up by the locals in what amounts to it's cause and it's effect. Some places in the local universe allow the homeowner who is the magician or the scientist in question to install some or all of the wiring in the given home universe while other jurisdictions of the local authority of said universe require the wiring of the ley lines to be installed by licensed professionals only to which my people were one of them. In the case of my multiverse and other multiverses in general, they are one of the many natural given laws that my people could control, operate, and regulate, no matter what universe or multiverse it originated from, except for instances when said ley lines from some multiverse is controlled by someone of equal power and rank to us or to someone of higher power and rank to us. My people, along with several others, have built in specific safety protocols in the event of the ley lines becoming corrupted by inside or outside forces no matter what universe or multiverse the threat originated from."
At that point, the Doctor would begin to explain in serious tone.
"Let me tell you this much, Touma. Your Imagine Breaker can negate countless things in the Known and Unknown Multiverse that relate to the supernatural, but you must always have to keep in mind that there are certain things and powers that you cannot and will not be able to negate, whether actively or passively. For aside from natural laws and the laws of my very own people, there would also be the laws of several other civilizations, and there are also individuals of great power who carry the simple law of Transcendence and Hegemony, with the latter for one thoroughly outranking even the nature and laws of my very own people and several others as one specific example of your ability to never truly work, therefore it would be wise for you to not always rely on Imagine Breaker all of the time, for there will come a time when you are going to have to eventually use your mind and your heart instead of your own two hands, a time when you would not be able to simply punch your way out of and would need to be contemplated with care for yourself and for everyone else that surrounds you."
After the explanation, Touma begins to take a minute or two in order to reflect and process on what he had just been given.
His Imagine Breaker does not negate literally everything around him. There are certain things and powers which he would not be able to truly negate. What those were, he could not truly tell, only feeling a very ominous foreboding and foreshadowing of his own unknown future that seemed to be glimpsed at from the hints surrounding the metaphorical horizon. And while he was thinking all of these deep thoughts of reflection, the Doctor would eventually begin to stand up from his chair and speak to him in a reminding, cheerful tone.
"Alrighty then! That's enough storytelling and history lessons for tonight, young man, since you need to be getting some good night's rest considering that you have school tomorrow, don't you remember?"
Touma would begin to sport a surprised expression, saying. "...Oh, right, of course," to which he would eventually say the following words. "...Good night, Doctor."
The Doctor would simply smile, saying. "Good night, Touma," after which, he would begin to take his leave and exit from the door, leaving Touma to eventually tuck in for the night in order to make himself ready for the next day.
And as he lay asleep, he began to seemingly dream of things of myths and legends, of the many dragons that seemingly swim by the endless void of the sea that lived from within himself, and in memories of things that were of very long ago.
One dream of importance that was shown from the mind of Touma Kamijou, a simple elementary student, was of the following account of long ago, one that dealt with one of the few last steps towards the goal of rationality and enlightenment.
They had turned their backs on one hundred billion stars.
The Gallifreyan fleet had left its home galaxy and was deep in intergalactic space. Now the ships slowed down as they approached their destination, dropping out of vworp drive and proceeding at near-light speed towards the target co-ordinates. Omega had no need to look back. The galaxy behind him was a vast spiral, a hundred thousand light years from one side to the other. It was too far away now to make out any but the crudest of features. Within that mass was Gallifrey's sun, along with every star that could be seen in the night's sky of his homeworld.
There were two generations of stars. The spiral arms were filled with the youngest suns, which scientists designated Population I. Gallifrey's sun was a typical example, hot, rich in elements heavier than helium and hydrogen, surrounded by a planetary system. Towards the galactic core were clusters of older, larger, redder stars, those of Population II. They had formed before the heavy elements, indeed they were the nuclear factories in which the heavy elements had been forged. As Population II stars died they exploded, seeding the galaxy with heavier elements, the process that had brought the Population I stars into being many billions of years ago.
But even the Population II stars contained traces of metals and other complex molecules that could only have been created in the hearts of stars. Long ago, long before even the first galaxy had formed, there must have been another type of star. These Population III stars were supermassive, far brighter and hotter than their modem equivalents. Gallifrey's sun had been shining for around three billion years, and-even without the assistance of a solar engineer – would do so for twice as long again. The processes within a Population III star were so intense that they would have burned out three or four hundred times faster. The typical Population III star lived for ten million years before going supernova. In the early days of the universe these short-lived, vast stars had been the fuel for the newborn galaxies, filling them with riches. All the Population III stars were long dead, either vanished altogether or become vast black holes.
All but one.
Qqaba was the last in the universe, of that Omega was certain. It had barely survived this long, sustained by a drip feed of interstellar matter from the intergalactic nebula that partially obscured it. Even so, it had been teetering on the brink of death for aeons when Omega had found it. He had reconfigured the star, kept it alive. If he had discovered the star a week later, it would have been too late. Qqaba would have died, and so would have Gallifrey.
Now they had returned to Qqaba to destroy it.
A dying star.
No doubt there were writers capable of capturing the waning majesty of such a thing, or its sheer scale. A poet might be able to sum up a man's feelings as he saw such a spectacle, find words for the new emotions that welled up in its presence. Perhaps he would fall back on physical description of the mundane surroundings of the observation bay, and note that everything was transformed by the evening starlight, becoming either harsh crimson light or sharp black shadows. There might be room for philosophical or moral instruction in that imagery, Omega thought. He didn't know. He was an engineer, not a poet, and he was here to do a job.
He ran his gloved hand over each casket in turn. Their clasps and buckles rattled with expectation and impatience. He could feel them in there, radiant. They were so beautiful, so intricate. They were children in a womb, twins, with many possible futures. Omega had brought them into existence, built boxes that were larger on the inside than the outside, filled them with basic programming and operational parameters and opportunities, let them feed on energy and data. Unobserved, the Hands had slipped the bonds of technology. Even Omega didn't know what they were any longer, he couldn't know without collapsing their potential. Whatever was in the boxes might be infinite, it could be anything.
Their thoughts touched his, the link of parents, children and lovers through the ages. They had always felt cold, they told him in unison, they had always known their destiny.
'Today was a day to live in history,' Omega thought.
'What about tomorrow?' they asked. 'This wasn't an ending, this was a beginning.'
'Who knows where it will all end?' Omega asked out loud, the words echoing around the room.
They knew. Should they tell?
'It is time.'
His mind linked with the captains of the other ships in the fleet. They were on the control decks of their own starbreakers, they would follow him in. There was no room for hesitation or hubris. There was no doubt. There was only the Plan, and that began with a single word.
'Open,' he said.
The caskets cracked open, the merest chinks of light filling the room.
'Go.'
And they were gone, spiralling round each other, singing like dolphins.
Others could track them, others could monitor their progress. Omega was content to watch through the dark windows and the shaded visor of his helmet. Two points of light, brilliant even against the surface of a star. Then they were gone, plunging into the photosphere, the convection zone, the vast radiation zone, onwards to the core.
There was a burst of static in his earpiece. 'The computer indicates that the star has reached the point of collapse.'
'Activate the stasis halo,' Omega responded automatically.
He could feel the halo activating, the protective field granting the ship temporal grace, swathing it from the rest of time and space.
When new, Qqaba had been twenty times more massive than Gallifrey's sun. The huge weight of the star had pressed down on the centre, and it should have collapsed – except that the sheer pressure squeezed energy from the hydrogen in the core, energy that pushed outwards, holding the star up. In its heyday, this star shone fifty thousand times brighter than Gallifrey's sun. But it burned so fiercely that within ten million years it had converted all the hydrogen fuel into helium. It cooled, lost energy, and the inner parts began to shrink. This only intensified the pressures once more, helium burned, the star swelled and darkened. Helium burning took place for a million years, and once the helium at the core had gone, the star ran through increasingly desperate alternatives. Converting its carbon into neon, magnesium and oxygen sustained it for ten thousand years, and then burning the neon had kept the star alive for a dozen years. The oxygen lasted for four. There was only one fuel source left – the traces of silicon. Qqaba had been creating energy using nuclear fusion of silicon for just a week when Omega had discovered it, and it had already run dry. Since then, the nuclear processes were only kept going by Gallifreyan technology. By the Hands of Omega…
Omega had already sensed it. Was that intuition, or was it the Hands telling him? He could hear the spacedrive of his ship powering up.
All was going to plan.
For the whole of its life, the energy radiating outwards from the core had balanced out the gravitational force pulling inwards. There had been equilibrium, stability. Now there was nothing left in the core that the star could use as fuel. The only elements left were iron, cobalt, nickel – all too stable to break down with any ease. As the last molecules of silicon were converted into iron, the star died. Over a million years, the core had burned away most of its mass, and it was now a vestige of its former self, only around one and a half million kilometres across.
Three tenths of a second later, the core was ten kilometres in diameter.
The energy involved in the compression was incomprehensible. Most of it was shed as heat and light, enough of it to disintegrate atomic nuclei. The chains locking protons, electrons and neutrons together as atoms and molecules were shattered. These fundamental building blocks of the universe began behaving differently in their strange new environment. Tiny electrons were pressed together to form neutrons by sheer force of gravity. Neutrons normally formed the nucleus of atoms. Here, as the core reached a new equilibrium, all that was left of the core was a sphere of densely packed neutrons, a hundred kilometres across but with twice the mass of the Sun.
The haloes are malfunctioning.
The news came from all around. He heard it via the telepathic link to the others, the shouts of his crew over the intercom, his instincts.
The pressures at the heart of the star were so intense that the neutron material was squeezed harder than it could bear. It sprang out, sending a shock wave out into the rest of the star.
He would not be denied this moment, he would watch. He would survive, he knew this from the Fragment. The others would find a way to restore the shields.
With no energy radiating from the core, there was nothing supporting the outer layers of the star. Although Qqaba was a mere shadow of its former self, there was still enough material there to build a dozen Gallifreyan suns. All of that matter, weighing down on the core. The outer shell began falling down the gravity well to the core, at a quarter of the speed of light.
'Neutrino flood detected,' the helmsman called.
It was half a minute since the star had died.
The haloes had not been restored.
Omega knew that he would die. That glorious dying star was suddenly a maw that he was staring into. He knew his destiny. He heard the first sparks and muffled explosions as radiation began to blast apart his ship.
A shock wave had formed in the core. Even now it surged outwards. It was immensely powerful, easily enough to reverse the infall of the outer layers. Suddenly there were fifteen solar masses heading outwards, an expanding spherical shock front. The instruments were registering the neutrinos now because neutrinos have no mass, and they were so small that they were passing through all but the densest matter at the speed of light. They were created after the shock front, but they outran it. The shock front was already on its way, it had already happened.
But the Fragment…
He heard one of their voices, then the other.
'No!'
'The Fragment's a forgery. Rassilon's work.'
'No!'
'You deny it even now?'
'I thought you had forged it.'
Omega wasn't listening to their squabbling any longer. He stood, hands behind his back, facing the shock front. Around him his crew betrayed their animal instincts, they flinched, they cowered, they tried to run or shield themselves. The Gallifreyan fleet was right in the path of the destruction, facing towards it, unprotected. Omega's ship was the closest. It had about ten seconds. The other ships had a quarter of a minute more.
Every piece of matter in the star was becoming compressed and energetic. Very heavy elements rapidly formed from this neutron soup. The core was now a neutron star, barely twenty kilometres across.
There was a great deal of material in the shock front. Two-with-twenty-eight-noughts tonnes. It took energy to force that amount of matter outwards and even the death-throes of the heart of a star can't generate enough.
The shock wave slowed, almost to a halt. It was still a hundred kilometres from Omega's ship. There must have been members of his crew that thought they had been saved, that there had been a miracle.
There was a tear in Omega's eye.
Remember the neutrinos? Remember how they travel at the speed of light? Remember how they can travel through all but the densest matter?
As the shockwave slowed, the layers of stellar material started piling into one another, jamming, solidifying. The outer layers of the star formed a shell, compressed to a density of three hundred trillion neutrons in every cubic centimetre.
Thick enough to stop just a few of the neutrinos.
Remember the neutrinos? Remember how they travel at the speed of light?
They hit the outer layers with literally infinite force. The dense material absorbed the energy, ablated it, spread it out. But it was too much.
The neutrino impacts blasted the shock front outwards again, away from the core, faster than ever. The shock front was now travelling at two percent light speed.
Omega's crew saw it coming.
Hard radiation evaporated the outer skin of the hull. The ship popped, burst and blistered like a fruit on a fire. Below him, Omega heard the screams of his crew, but he couldn't see them through the thick black smoke and the red pall of the emergency lighting. Emergency lighting here, when the light outside was melting the hull! He could smell his own flesh, he stared at the shock front as it swamped his ship, annihilating it.
The shock front passed through him.
If the Fragment was a forgery, then why was he still alive?
'This is my destiny,' Omega objected over the terrible noise of the deckplates and bulkheads obliterating. He had fulfilled that destiny. 'Feel the Energy around us!' Gravitational forces, raw matter, the stuff that universes are made of. Space and time and matter are linked. 'These are the reins, seize them! 'Why wasn't he dead? He could hear the other two in his mind, talking to each other, but not to him. Their voices were fading.
'We can power the stasis haloes with our minds. The ships will be saved.'
'Not Omega's, the machinery has gone.'
'We can't save his ship or his crew.'
'We can save him.'
Their minds had gone, his ship had gone, but Omega was still there, truly immortal in his stasis halo. Gravity had taken a hold, he plunged towards the dawning neutron star at the heart of the destruction at a third the speed of light. Time began to slow around him. This wasn't just his imagination: the intense gravity had dilated space and time, rendered them plastic. He could feel Time washing through him, altering him, even through his protective shield.
The surviving starbreakers would be bathed in the Time Energy within the next few seconds. They would collect a fraction of that power, siphon it, store it in vast batteries. That was the Plan – that would be the fuel for the timeships. But what Rassilon hadn't foreseen was that the crews themselves would be exposed, they would be anointed in the energies. Omega saw it all now, he saw Time laid out in front of him as plain as the stars in the night's sky. He could feel the harmonies there.
He saw the future, he felt the time winds at his back.
There was one last process taking place at the heart of the star.
If any object is squeezed small enough – the exact size depends on the mass of the object, but is easy to calculate – then space closes up around it. The object drops out of spacetime. All that remained was a perfect matte black sphere, a hole in the universe. But the object would have a gravitational pull, it could still draw matter and energy towards it. The very centre of the hole would have infinite density in an infinitely small radius. None of the laws of physics would apply there, space and time would be uncoupled. Anything might exist there, a man might be a god.
Omega smiled, opened his arms, ready to embrace the singularity.
He could hear their voices again, infinitesimally faint, over the roar of the dying star.
They could see the effect the singularity was having on space and time. It was like a hammer smashing against thick glass, or a block of ice. Cracks developing, growing together into a network of lines. The universe was a block of stone before, now it was being chipped away to reveal the sculpture that had always lain within it. Spacetime is shattering, the laws of physics have been repealed.
Rassilon was panicking. Rassilon would not let it happen.
Omega could feel Rassilon's mind once again. He lifted his head, strained to hear the voice far above him.
But the mind wasn't speaking to him, it was speaking to the black hole, encompassing it, manipulating it. By sheer force of will, Rassilon passed a new law of physics. He struck up equilibrium, established beautifully elaborate equations. A surface appeared upon the darkness, a surface from which the escape velocity was exactly the speed of light. The naked singularity was covered, the hole in the universe was sealed over, and outside the storm was subsiding.
The universe was safe. Nothing can ever be allowed to escape from the darkness.
The crewmen of the surviving ships were the Lords of Time.
Omega stared up. He couldn't see anything, but he heard the event horizon slamming shut far above him.
There was no force in the universe that could reach him now; no form of contact. There was only him, immortal in his stasis halo, protected from his infernal surroundings.
He fell, an impossible, anomalous streak of light against the darkness.
Omega fell forever.
Insert Song: End
Insert Song: Start
THIS ILLUSION · LiSA
The Lord of Time, upon his tenth (official and yet not accurate due to complications) life, reflects upon the choice that he had truly made. Such is the fact that his own choice boils down to the derailing of the script (timeline) of Touma Kamijou - the Imagine Breaker.
Reflecting upon the choice that he had made when he intervened on that very faithful day, on the day when he rushed in to save the child who had been deemed as misfortune incarnate.
Always hated. Always ignored. Always blamed for certain things beyond the child's control.
The Lord of Time had been travelling through the timeline, from the different points in his life, seeing through it all, sifting through it all. In each moment of encounter, he sees something that forms his displeasure as he watches it from his own brown narrowed eyes.
"What? That thing? He isn't even a proper person."
"Stay away from that kid."
"He is nothing but a bad omen that will bring you pain and suffering."
"It is okay to be mean to him. He brings harm to all those around him. It is justice to harm him."
"That god of pestilence should just disappear and go to the mountains where he would never harm an innocent again."
"He should do the world a favor and die."
The Lord of Time, recalling upon his eighth life, sees the father of the child, deemed as misfortune incarnate, sporting a grimaced expression, looking away from his son for one moment of relativity, one that spoked volumes of a suffering that is suffered by a parent, to which both hearts emanate in profound empathy, with his own ice blue eyes narrowed in empathy.
He could tell that the father only wanted something sugary to drink to help brighten his day. He could tell that the father was sick of his own sons smile, one that was filled with the desire of reassurance amidst such deep sadness that is due to such violent and vehement dejection. It was a smile that was hollow and empty. He, and the father of course, he thought, knew that smile was only being put on for show amidst such god forsaken plight, in view of the bleak neighborhood that the child is raised in that is to be blamed for every type of misfortune, no different from that of Pagan Rome in which whenever such natural disasters happened, they would shout out "Away with the Christians to the lions!". It would not be different this time when feelings of prejudice and fear come to the fore. No matter who you turned to, no matter what you say, they would all say the same thing. The same common thing that he had seen in many countless endeavors, in many countless instances that he had stepped upon in his travels across the wider ocean of the multiverse.
He knew that children were not the same, he knew that some could be mean and drive others to do horrible things to themselves, much to the shaking sadness and grim resignation of the man who had seen it all. Not just the children either for they have influences upon the adults, especially those who can be spiteful and hurt young people without remorse due to reasons of a false sense of priorities, beliefs that are warped by circumstance, things which fall in nothing but the unfortunate universal point of pointing any fingers upon a single object or person in order to solidify something or someone who could or would be responsible for his plight.
The child doesn't deserve such a fate, he thought to himself as he witness from afar. A child who had barely turn to the age of seven, and yet is embroiled in the midst of such suffering, the likes of which would have been the unfortunate start for many who would tread upon the dark road towards no point of return. And yet, by some form of miracle that is formed and created on the part of the child, he didn't sway down upon such an insignificant path. For he knew as well some that the child's destiny lies ahead into the not too distant future.
A child who would grow up to be a wonderful young man who always tries very hard to save others and yet would consider himself as any less saving as long as genuine smiles are formed and rendered upon such freedom of choice.
Events surrounding him were recorded through the endless fables of fiction, rendered fiction amidst such truth upon the history of the cosmoses. Such is the all seeing perspective upon the Lord of Time who could see from the higher and lower dimensions as a part of his paradoxical nature.
The Lord of Time, during the moments of observation surrounding the child, would look upon the father with approval and admiration, seeing the resolve to never stoop down to the level of those who surround him from all sides, spewing words of unjustified hatred upon a child who was less than seven of age.
That was a time, his tenth self could recall, was a moment of deep observation, being the observer who blends in the mysterious, surrounding himself in camouflage via blending in the normality, always the hidden one who forever watches from afar. It was a moment that was more than several if not entire meta-epochs ago, before the Time War ripped through the scripts (timelines) like bread and butter.
As a parent once himself, he grew to respect the man who would withstand such subtle tenacity, for being the parent of this supposedly accursed being, one that the Lord of Time could only narrow in subtle anger and rejection upon such an insignificant notion of the inner workings of probability, the ones to whom would hurl curses with subtlety would act in a subtle innocent fashion when the man and his child were around. They would behave as though they did not hate the child with a burning passion. Some would even suggest to them that they should just abandon him at the side of a road in seemingly innocent form of concern. Such was the strife that the father had been rendered with as his lot. For in his work or in his own home, he would always encounter upon such people of superstition, those to whom the bile forms of hatred were rendered due to the child who had no amount of fault.
But no. He was their son, the father would thought constantly. He was his child and he would never abandon him. Never! A bold declaration of the father. Same could be said of the mother who would encounter the same inner turmoil as her husband, being subjected through the constant rings of gossips and hearsays just as the father.
In all the time, resentment would exist in shape or form. The kids who would bully and torment him just for existing. The adults who turned a blind eye to the violence and even enjoyed it.
Such is the common lot of those who bear the name of Kamijou (上条).
Academy City.
Where to start with such a place. Only those that could be found to be common of such a grand city that is located in the west side of Tokyo, being its own state and nation that is ruled over through the governing Board Chairman.
A place where science reigned supreme and dominant, with superstition being nothing but an afterthought, not worth any form of consideration and reflection, deemed a hindrance towards true progress and effort to uplift the modern world to such lofty heights of the utopian ideal of the future. One dominated through the progress of science, less to do with any form of superstition that would deem to be a hindrance, as its students become part of a program that would develop the powers of psychic potential, the potential to be espers, from the ranks of 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1, with 0 becoming the bottom rung of misfortune for those who could not unfortunately develop their own power.
A place that seemed light on the outside, but darker on the inside. The inner workings of the state were as twisted upon design as for the benefit of the world at large. Faction stem, ideals of nefarious belief and intent thrive upon the lurking dark waters of the city, with anyone deemed to be nothing more than experiments, less human, less of a person, less to do with morals and ethics so long as the progress of science could be achieved.
Bodies lie dead, never to return. Shadows engulf the city, and yet, it seem as spotless as light. Plans that span across such pursuits of hidden agendas amidst such a background of degrees that were taken in from the world of professionalism.
A place that forever shakes the head of the Lord of Time, recalling his seventh life, visiting upon the city in the cover of a certain journalist by the common favored name and alias of John Smith, investigating through wit and guile, stumbling upon vital pieces of information as he inquired upon the right people and circumstantial evidence.
In his seventh life, he would stumble from time to time the boy who had finally grown up. A random encounter here, a moment of coincidence there. In all that time, the young man did not notice him, always forever afar and apart from each other. From one encounter upon another, only he would take notes of immediate precedence as he sees the events of his life that goes on from the shadows.
People, places, and events were sketched into the background of his complex mind that runs upon tachyons worth of information, those that could see through alternate timelines and dimensions, even to the likes of fictional universes.
For moment upon moment were deemed too worthwhile amidst such interior grasp of the events in question, as the man became the hidden spanner in the works, never seen, never intervening, taking every note down through theory and experience as he makes his penultimate plans from the background of his favorite ship, from which he were to analyze the given and current information to date, even those deemed spin-off and fanfiction.
And thus comes the moment of the first circle, for the first batch of the plan that had become entangled in complications that comes in the form of higher and lower concerns.
For on the very same moment that the Lord of Time, the man known as the Doctor, at the present stage and face of his tenth incarnation, swoop in with such dashing speed and tenacity, unseen through the naked eyes of the crowd, sending the disheveled assaulter, a businessman by profession, down upon his knees, hurling towards the ground in a thump, with little to no effort.
It pays for the countless years of practice, he thought to himself with a smile.
The police was immediately called in afterwards, all due to the effort of one of the bystanders who had witnessed such an event that had taken place upon the once peaceful park. The assaulter would eventually be arrested, charge for attempted murder and assault, probably to be sentence for a minimum of fifteen years if one is lucky enough, he could guess.
He watches, he observes in deep ponderment upon the choice that he had made, all the while watching the assaulter step in to the police car. Crossed arms and narrowed eyes were etched unto his face.
Right beside him would be the two parents of the young child that would be known as Touma Kamijou. Touya Kamijou and Shiina Kamijou were their names. A first time meeting at last, although he had already met them in his many different faces. Little Touma Kamijou was simply located towards his right, one who was now in the protective arms of his mother.
A moment of recalling. A moment of deep pondering.
As the police car takes away the assaulter, the two parents would continue to thank him, with eternal gratitude that was made present from their tone of voice, with the proposition of giving him something in return for such an act of kindness that seemed long overdue. He would simply just take this in stride, ever hearing of the same tone of eternal gratitude that never truly tired him despite his given old and weary age amidst such a natural young body, only reinvigorating him to do better to uphold the promise of his Name that has well earned the reputation of both admiration for friends and dread for foes alike.
He would simply turn down such an offer of good intentions, simply explaining the fact that he was a simple traveller of long and short distances, who had only simply manage to stumble upon the unfortunate and unexpected situation, and the response was only a given natural outcome given the circumstances, believing that anyone with any resemblance of a good heart would do so in his stead. That and he was a parent just like them and the rest, although only speaking of the word "once" in a such a low but sad tone, one that took the notice of both the parents and the young child that seemed to intelligent and bright for his age due to a bout of experiences.
Once. That was the word that was taken to heart for the two parents, seeming to look upon him with eyes of sympathy and empathy, with admiration that was subtle but was no less present, seeming to form a instant bond with this man that seemed to have slipped from out of nowhere. That was a word that made the parents double their efforts of gratitude, asking him to at least stay for the rest of the day and help himself with a traditional Japanese meal, cooked by the mother of the family no less, being an expert cook of many varieties as befits such a high class ojou-sama.
The Doctor, as always, sporting an exasperated look, knowing to himself that they would not give up in the slightest in their concern for him. That wasn't all, for even the young child would insist on him staying for at least a day. That wasn't even all as the TARDIS, his very own ship, one that was at least a few meters afar from his position, would make her presence ever so felt clearly from his mind, urging him to stay as well. Ones that made both of his hearts warm on the inside as he could only breathe in a reluctant tone, "Alright, I suppose that's fine.", to which the boy rejoices with a smile, punching through the air in a sweet sense of victory, with the parents sporting a grateful smile.
Happiness filled the ever present void and mood of the surrounding area. He suppose that were to be the case. Always getting dragged in to a family meal or another bout of positivity. A cause and effect was felt and reverberated across the ever shifting timelines of the universe, spreading across a multitude of directions from both inside and out. And as happiness comes through, questions would arise upon those who witnessed upon such an event.
"Who is that man?"
"A gaijin, saving that brat?"
"He just swooped out of nowhere. Never seen him comin."
"Maybe he doesn't know who that boy is? And if that's the case, I could honestly feel sorry for him."
The Doctor glared. Glaring through the crowds of people as he hears each of their voices one by one, telling them through the silent gesture of a glare to keep their private tongues for themselves, looking through each culprit, seeing them eye to eye, to which the culprits could only look and cower in fear as they immediately turn away from such a simple burning gaze.
As the action comes, so do the witnesses ponder even more, for even the likes of the parents and the child would see with widened eyes as they saw him rendering everyone silent with just a simple glare, as if it were saying enough is enough. A mystery forms upon them all. An enigma that could not simply be solve.
Who was this man?
That was the question that was present to all. A man that was more than silent, and yet could speak a few words and express hidden gestures that could bring everything toppling down like a couple of dominoes.
The Doctor would eventually propose to the family that is right beside him that they should simply leave this park as it was getting to salty for his liking, to which the family agreed as they would now exit the park, with them leading the Doctor towards their current destination which is back in their humble abode amongst the neighborhood.
Established events became more probable, more temperamental in nature, becoming an unknown even amongst the likes of him who could see through the ever shifting timelines of probability, only getting the hints and pieces as it were. Timelines splintered. Timelines changed. Timelines rearranged. Such is the life of a Time Lord, he supposed to himself, who could see this all from the hidden blink of an eye.
Japanese culture. Such a thing intrigues him just like any other culture on Earth. Such history that lead to this island nation turning out into the way it is. Its society. Its politics. Its structures. Its traditions. Perhaps another way to at least spend his side vacation that he had been doing ever since the aftermath of the reality bomb, barring a few side trips here and there where it required his help and expertise, the rest would seem relax as always.
Even in his moments of grief and downtrodden time periods, he would always be needed as the almighty janitor shall we say.
After a few moments of relative walking, they finally managed to come towards the house, to which the Doctor would recognize on immediate sight, having seen it back in his different faces down the line when they were simply in the role of observers. Quite the large house, indeed, he thought with amusement.
Touya would show the Doctor each part of the house and lot while Shiina get's on to the kitchen in order to cook something, with Touma accompanying her from the side, still concerned of his safety despite being seemingly safe inside the house, but one could never truly be careful when it comes to the lot of misfortune that was bestowed upon them.
From the simple shed were the tools were kept to the bathhouse that accommodates the guests, from the simple walkways of the house to the attic that was located above the house. As the tour drags on for relative moments, the Doctor would begin to take immediate notice of a certain picture that was located on the desk of an office room.
He moves forward, with brown eyes narrowed in curiosity, drawing near as each lightened step brings him much closer to the picture in question.
He sees the picture. One that portrays the Kamijou parents, with the mother holding the young Touma Kamijou, still an infant that is a lightweight to carry.
He takes the picture, carrying it gently and diligently with his left hand, examining it like a precious object and treasure that is worth far more than all the currency of more than a billion worlds and universes. He sees the love of a family by blood, something that was lacking despite the hundreds of families and friends that he encountered and made with over the passing years of his ever present age.
Glimmering tear drops, as little as they are the sparkles which symbolize the ever present memories of precious validity, pour out in a simple pattern as it flows naturally upon his cheeks.
Recall. Reminiscence.
A time when he was father. A time when he was a grandfather. Once upon a time, before all that had came to be. He once had a father. He once had a mother. He once had a brother. He once had a dozen sisters. He once had a grandfather. He once had a dozen grandmothers. He once had a granddaughter. All of them would forever belong to the House of Lungbarrow, the senior Prydonian Houses formed in wake of the Intuitive Revelation, once a noble house of wealth and privilege but in later relative centuries it became stagnant and only produced petty servants and clerks, before eventually being restored to prestige and prominence once more through a little help from his old friend and companion, Romana, who was President of Gallifrey during that time.
Yes, he could remember with such happiness and sadness. Recalling of his own family home that was located in a mountain range on Gallifrey, south of the Time Lord Capitol, perched on the west side of Mount Lung overlooking the Cadonflood River.
All those childhood memories grew upon him in an instant, as memory upon memory resurface in deep ponderment.
A sadness occurs despite such fond memories of long ago, for the bitter truth of the Time War still hung through in spite of himself.
The Last of the Original Time Lords. Walking all alone in the midst of such a lonely journey, likened to that of a Lonely God who had seen far too much to last more than a hundred lifetimes. Even his true age seemed to escape him, with him neither wanting nor choosing to recall it as numbers seemed completely random and arbitrary at best, being more than a thousand, less than nine hundred years of age.
A deep yearning and longing was encroaching him as the silence would seem to pass, to which he begins to take the picture frame back to where he found it, wipe his face of any lingering tears and carry on, ever moving forward as his hearts start to beat with an ever present renewed resolve, all just in time for Touya to call for him when he noticed that he had somehow lagged behind without him truly noticing it.
Old habits die hard, he supposed.
As evening draws near, as the sun begins to set upon the horizon, the Kamijou's and the Doctor were now taking their meal with satisfaction and delight, with the Doctor in particular praising Shiina for this marvelous cooking.
As the traditional words before "Itadakimasu" and after "Gochisousama" were said out of respect, all would decide to tuck in for the night after more than a fair share of drama that had lasted for this single day. Touya would begin to show the Doctor his extra room, one that was very large, with a proper white colored bed, with two organized pillows and one tucked in blanket, along with a large rectangle shape table that has a lampshade and an alarm clock on it, all of which were located to the side.
The Doctor was grateful, saying "Arigatou", with a smile that accompanies such gratefulness, wishing him a pleasant evening. Although truth be told, he didn't really need one considering the fact that he had the TARDIS, but couldn't refuse due to his ever present curiosity for something new, due to polite etiquette, and due to the proper respect that is due, feeling touched by the hospitality that was given to him.
Touya would nod with a smile, beginning to head outside the door and make his way towards his room where his wife was no doubt waiting for him, all in order to get a good night's rest.
As Touya's figure begins to be fleeting from the Doctor's sight, after one careful check upon his surroundings, begins to walk ahead outside in a quiet manner so as not to disturb those who were to fall completely asleep. He raises his sonic screwdriver, pointing it from the north, calling forth the TARDIS as the wheezing sound was rendered silent upon the inhabitants, but known only through the ears of the Doctor.
Vworp Vworp Vworp
A blue box begins to appear. His ever constant companion despite how many faces that he wore over the years. One that would never leave him, always being associated with him wherever and whenever he goes.
POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX
The Doctor smiled. He begins to walk towards the door, opening it silently with his key as he steps inside, seeing the main console once again.
At least six panels with the Time Rotor in the center. The interior was fresh with new ideas. Hexaginal shapes were present upon the walls. There was a multi-level structure to the console room. The colours were more golden brown with bright cyan highlights on the console.
Coral, just the way he liked it as a desktop feature.
He would begin to take in stride towards the wonderful ship, making way toward the main console, with both hands being stretched, with a confident smile that was ever dashing and filled with manic excitement.
"Alright then, let's get to work shall we."
In between such encounters, things were not so very cut clear and dry as it should have been. The same can be said of this ever present meeting that is about to take place.
The Doctor finds himself on an empty blank space, one that was devoid of anyone and anything in sight.
He had just finish doing the cause and effect of reversing the polarity of the probability equation, sifting through it like bread and butter as the concepts of misfortune turned to mush and putty, to be clay that is molded. One through the ever brilliant power of mathematics. One that didn't need the likes of supernatural power. Just a simple natural cornerstone that is in full use for everyday living.
Ah, mathematics, how I love you, he thought like a giddy schoolgirl. All this while in this strange and seemingly bizarre situation that would have most people react in confusion, surprise, and panic, making a blunder of endless questions that range from where they were and how did they ended up here.
But the Doctor knew better of course, for he was anything but ordinary and normal.
Truthfully, he wasn't surprised all things considered. For one, he had a lot of experience in these sorts of things by now, dabbling a lot in the field of the psychic, dream realms and all sorts of realms of an alien nature, all that he had stumbled upon for so many centuries by now. For two, he already knew what this was. For how could he not?
He was inside a dimension of a sort, one that houses the likes of ancient and mysterious beings that are a complete unknown. A mystery if you will.
He could only shake his head, seemingly recalling of the lore behind such a thing, for he and his people were well deeply informed of such trivial things of the cosmic order, being the experts and professionals as it were who would usually handle the vast paperwork in stride. All of that vital information, kept as a well guarded secret. Not many would really know of it and it didn't really help the individuals and peoples who tried their best to attempt to search for it, being considering an almost impossible task as they sift through the various interpretations that were to be presented as it were.
So many theories. Whether right or wrong, almost nobody really knows. A deep mystery, worth pondering and yet becomes ever so elusive in its nature.
The Doctor shakes his head. He begins to at least walk back and forth as he waited for the guest of arrival that would not doubt be coming soon. A million plans were created and bread from his complex interior, with countless thoughts forever flying, always the constant when it comes to his nature.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
Then, he begins to hear it. That familiar voice that resounded throughout the blank void.
"You should not be here."
And right on time, he thought to himself, timing the encounter of the voice from his interior clock.
He turns his back, immediately seeing what would be describe as something that came out from a realm of myth, legend, and fantasy.
A creature that was quite large, light blue green in color, with yellow colors accompanying it. Wings were slightly spread out. Sharp claws were seen. Its ever piercing sharp blue green eyes would stare deeply into the brown eyes of the Doctor. Those eyes seem to be like those found in snakes.
The Doctor sighed in relief, sporting a jolly old smile. "Finally! Its about time you'd turn up! I was getting a bit bored waiting here for what amounts to a couple of hours relatively speaking! What in Omega's name did you took for so long?! A bit stuck in the late night traffic I suppose?!"
The dragon was quiet, then spoke once again after a few moments of silence, ignoring the question of humor and pressing forward with its own question of inquiry. "You should not be here. Why are you here, Lord of Time?"
It was a genuine question. One that made the dragon become deeply intrigued to no end. For it was such a rarity for a Lord of Time, beings of divine stature, to come here upon this insignificant universe to put it as mildly as it can. Even more so was such a rarity when the Lord of Time just happens to be Time and Life's Champion himself, always the incessant meddler of affairs that he truly was no matter what face that he wore.
The Doctor could only raise an eyebrow, speaking in a tone of stride. "That's what I like to know, honestly, considering the predicament that you put me in."
The dragon became silent once again. After which, came a voice of concern, both in tone and in its denoting features and expressions upon the face. "Do you know what you have done, Lord of Time?"
"Enlightened me," said the Doctor, with narrowed eyes and with crossed arms, all of which were done with a serious expression.
"You have interfered in established events. A ripple has occurred. The flow of original events are now swerving in a multitude of directions. The direct action that you have now taken has rendered many prescribed circumstances undone. A vast number of infinite possibilities, many countless that remained unknown, have occurred and stretched both near and far. I have no doubt that outside forces have now taken notice upon such an event, with the shaking of the river being divided upon a multitude of endless streams. You and I both know that there will be consequences for such an action of this magnitude," said the dragon, all in a tone of seriousness.
Attentive as he was, the Doctor could only sport a grimace and understanding expression.
Oh he knew of this, no doubt about that. He could feel it in his bones. The domino effect coming to fruition. One that had become far too easy to topple down ever since the Time War had struck upon the shores of this universe. As a matter of fact, many debris and fallout is present in a way. One that was invisible to those deemed lesser, and yet was no doubt seen and felt from those deemed higher.
"Well, you would not be wrong in a way. But in my point of defense, this type of thing has become pretty simple to do as of late as more than a countless number of multiverses are currently undergoing it as we speak," said the Doctor.
The dragon blinked its eyes, concern was etched unto its features. "What do you mean, Lord of Time?"
At that point, the Doctor's brown eyes became downcast as the shadows begin to be seen from his face, one that was tinge in sorrow and regret. "A lot has changed, old friend. Things are not the same as it once was. For the Time War had dealt a severe blow upon reality. Nothing was left untouched. Nothing was left unturned. Everything has change for better or for worse. Timelines can be change so easily now. Things could be overturned. Things could be stopped. Many would no doubt try to take advantage of this."
The dragon became concerned. Alarm at such a prospect of change that was a seeming constant. "And what of the Temporal Powers Alliance (TPA)?"
"Oh they're still around, still standing as always. Not to worry about that one as it is rather obvious considering the nigh-omnipotent members, however it has been undergoing heavy duty overtime as of late, politics of all sorts, cleaning up a bunch of fallen debris as it were here and there. All the good stuff, as it were," explained the Doctor.
"And what of the Lords of Time?," asked the dragon.
There it was, the Doctor thought to himself with a grimace, was wondering when that question would be asked. After a deep breath of resignation amidst the silence that had gone for a moment's pondering, the Doctor spoke with a deep regret that was present and made apparent to the eyes and ears of the dragon. "Gone."
One simple word to say it all. One that the dragon expected as much. Concern. Attentiveness. Emotions that filled the ever living fire of dragon as it pondered on such implications.
No, the dragon thought to itself. This should not be surprising to say the least. For it felt the Final Days of the War even back then, with the effects reverberating in endless retro-causal fashion.
No more. No more. No more.
A declaration was heard. In whispers and in loud voices. Ones that the dragon would hear from time to time.
"I am sorry for your lost," said the dragon, speaking in a tone of empathy and understanding.
The Doctor could only nod silently, sporting a sad smile that speaks volumes of a long battered history.
There were no survivors. He was the only one who survived. The only Original Time Lord left. The Master wouldn't count at this point, forever dead this time due to being shot by his very own wife. An incident that would forever shake his head upon such remembrance of foul memories that lasted in the Year That Never Was.
He felt it even now. The endless void. The price of being alone. Consequences forever abound across the reverberating ages. The meta-time scale of the plates were penetrated and changed. Modifications were made present as things were made apparent that denotes how truly different this period of the meta-epoch turned out to be in theory and experience.
Power vacuums were present. Chaos ever rampant in subtle and blatant ways. Cracks begin to appear from one side to another. Countless factions and species sprout up here and there. Past, present, and future was becoming far too easy to change and rewrite when no one else was looking in turn.
Many, oh so many, try to take advantage of this, trying to move to the level where his people used to be, but it was ultimately futile in practice, for not just anyone could become Lords of Time.
Scattered weapons of all sorts, being sold to the black markets. Faction Paradox doing shady business from the side as ever, much to his profound annoyance of the lot that screams inconsistency and rebellion.
Multiverse travel became difficult in his own multiverse setting, being the Ground Zero, the Origin Point where all of this madness had started and finished. No one was really keeping a close eye upon the train tracks and highways, with the stations being completely devoid of any competent personal, all except him and a few others apparently enough. Luckily enough for himself, he managed to bypass that particular problem, having couple of safeguards established here and there, along with a little assistance here and there.
The Known and Unknown Multiverse is still in need of healing. That he could tell. That he could feel.
He honestly hoped that there were more of his kind out there, searching in vain to find any of them. As far he was concerned however, one Time Lord (The Master) was dead, the others such as his family (Susan Foreman, Irving Braxiatel, etc...) and friends (Romana, Corsair, etc...) are gone. Even alterward, paraward, and otherward versions of his own people were gone. Although, he knows a few that are technically alive. Iris Wildthyme springs to mind. Always the copy cat admirer of him, he shakes his head in exasperation, all due to events in her timeline being seemingly the same as his very own. All in a life's work for the contradictory lot such as the Time Lords.
"Lord of Time, if it does not bother you so, I would like to make a certain request of you," said the dragon, speaking in a tone of concern.
The Doctor could only look back to the dragon, looking it straight in the eye, speaking in a tone of confidence. "Name it."
Day by day, week by week, year by year followed ever so seemingly in perfect order.
In all that time, the Doctor only spent time with the Kamijou family, becoming an automatic part of their lives. The Doctor on his part was simply settling down as it were, having a short break amidst such travels that he had been doing for so very long. I could definitely use a break here and there, he thought to himself. The Known and Unknown Multiverse would be just fine without him for a while. Wouldn't really be the first time he would spend long years of being stuck in one place. Besides, this was all part of the plan when it comes to this universe in particular. A plan that had stretched since his seventh incarnation.
Time passes by in the blink of an eye. The lot and life of the Kamijou family had improved little by little, alleviated and improved somewhat due to the general factor of the Doctor, a general factor that should not have been and yet was seemingly here to stay anyway.
And now, with the simple request that the dragon, IT he was called, the Doctor would begin to do his work in short order.
The burdens were alleviated at the very least when it comes to the parents. The father was of course too busy from time to time, a consequence of being an international travelling businessman, setting off to different countries from time to time as his work demanded it. The mother was also busy, having a constant work of her own that came in the form of paragliding, being infamous around the neighborhood and town for it. The Doctor in the meantime would tend to play the babysitter from time to time, being the one who would always be around the young Touma Kamijou, being there as he sees him grew up as the years went on.
The Doctor could only smile at the young boy, being reminded a little too much of himself, seeing such spark for life, such strive for the happiness of others, such profound insights of learning for someone his age, such potential that was yet untapped and ripped for the harvest. He could only look on with joy as he was there in the years of his growing up to eventually become the man who would one day be the hand of salvation to everyone and all.
From the side, the Doctor would be in the TARDIS, checking in for any available and current information that was happening across the world, not liking to be ignorant of whatever is about to happened, with his intellect of multi-dimensional length sharpen to a wit, taking note of the various players of the chessboard.
Of course, the Doctor thought to himself with a grimace expression during that one time when he was looking at the chessboard. For it would appear that his enemies have already been scouting this world for quite sometime. Enemies that he had dealt with since the very early days before he wore his current face.
Oh well, the Doctor thought, I'd never said it would be easy.
In the meantime, he would also look for any available information across the wider multiverse. News networks. Political diatribes. News about his second sons. Everything that pertains the grand scheme of things. All the little things that stumble in seeming random coincidences.
Honestly, he thought that one time, he was getting too sentimental.
Normalcy, peace, and quiet were the seeming lot of the Kamijou family this time around. Things would appear to be finally settling down as it seemed.
However, in case of the Doctor, one should always be expecting the unexpected; with the concepts of normalcy, peace, and quiet being thrown right out of the window of reality. For how could it be anything else at this point?
This would be a short record or summary as it were of the following years that have taken place throughout the timeline.
One time, when the Doctor, along with the Kamijou parents, once visited Touma Kamijou's Kindergarden School due to the "Bring Your Parent to School" event. The Doctor introduce himself as Dr. John Smith to the staff and to the students, telling them all that he was a family friend to the Kamijou's, to which at this point is all to true, and made a bunch of simple and complicated plans that eventually resulted in a prank war, with the disheveled parents being caught in the crossfire, and had gotten to the point were the teachers had to hold the children down to prevent them from escaping through the nooks and crannies. The Doctor, with his 3-D glasses on, holding and eating popcorn from the side, simply enjoying the chaotic situation that had ensued. Both Touya, Shiina, and Touma were just tearfully laughing to no end at this point, siting on their respective chairs in the sidelines as they watch and enjoy the scene of chaos that was right in front of them.
That's one down, the Doctor thought with approval, a million more to go.
One of the many plans that he had concocted had succeeded. The dispelling of the notion and utterance of the word "God of Pestilence" and other such nonsense among the children, the parents, and the teachers was beginning to sprout to fruition.
Another time, the Doctor brought another secret surprise for Touma, his family, the neighborhood, and by extension all of Japan, by stashing in a couple of special fireworks that he personally crafted in the TARDIS, all for the upcoming New Years that was coming up on the very short notice, with the clock ticking as it were, to which on the plus side to surprise plan, the effects of the specially crafted fireworks dispels the unknown probability waves (Touma Kamijou's Misfortunate Luck) that would ensure the positive energy and input, replacing the given and correct values here and there, increasing it wholesale, while decreasing the negative vibrational frequencies.
Oh mathematics, how I love you, the Doctor thought with a pleased expression.
Well that and the Doctor always wanted to go out with a big bang for every single New Years Eve, especially in consideration of the fact that no one is going to ruin it this time due to constant alien invasions and other monster of the week cliché trends that would tend to happen to him from time to time.
On the very calm evening of the night of about 12:00 A.M., when the official countdown went down to exactly 0, in an accurate tone of assessing when and where at the precise coordinates at certain specific times and places that were ready set up to a tea, let loose a bunch of the special fireworks, with a little help and assistance from the TARDIS, seemingly enjoying herself just as always. As the clocks strikes at 12:00 A.M., the special fireworks were launch towards the night sky, reaching through the assigned and programmed coordinates, set to explode in a multitude of beautiful and diversified rainbow colors of all shapes and sizes, spanning through a multitude of directions across all of the island nation of Japan. The populace, awakened at the sudden arrival of the fireworks, sport expressions of excitement and awe, with the children of all ages jumping up and down with joy, and with the adults remain at awe at this rather remarkable and elegant display of the fireworks that is now being displayed and performed to a tea. It was one that would eventually make the talk of the news by the rest of the month of January.
Another time, during Touma's birthday party, somewhere between the dates of January 20th and February 18th, the Doctor made and prepared various plans for the various foods, games, entertainment, etc... for the special event that only happens once every year, as well as made the various specialized gadgets in the TARDIS such as a multi-colored disco ball that hovers in the air while setting up the dance floor, and needless to say, it ended with having the whole neighborhood dancing to the tune of the music.
When asked once on how he had managed all of this, the Doctor could speak in a mysterious cool tone, with a right index finger placed into his mouth in a shush. "A magician never reveals his secrets."
Another time, the Doctor was simply minding his own business as usual. reading a certain infamous book, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with his glasses on while walking with Touma on the sidewalk as he was holding him with his right hand.
Really, the Doctor thought to himself with a nostalgic smile. He should really make a mental note to visit Arthur Philip Dent from time to time.
All of a sudden, the Doctor and Touma both heard some random bystander shouting about a random fire in some random part of the suburban area, with people there who were trapped in the midst of the flames and could not escape due to the size of said flames. This causes the both of them to look at each other in a second of bewilderment, noting on how so coincidental this was in retrospective hindsight.
After that second of bewilderment, all without wasting a single second, the Doctor begins to tucked in his book into his bigger on the inside pocket, took off his glasses and place it on his bigger on the inside pocket, and then carried Touma with his hands behind in his back as he ran with full speeds and sprung into action towards the location where there was a building in flames. The Doctor and Touma manages to dispel the large flames faster without any casualties and fatalities with two sonic water guns that the Doctor pulled from one of his bigger on the inside pockets, managing to save the people who were trapped from the burning building.
While this was happening, the populace was utterly dumbfounded and speechless with bewilderment and amazement because many of them recognize one of the two random saviors as "The God of Pestilence", and within the next few seconds, when the flames die out completely, they all shouted with praises and thanks at their two saviors who literally came out of nowhere at the right place at the right time (to their perspective anyway).
Another time, the Doctor was invited to a game of soccer by Touya and a certain few people from the neighborhood and well, the results were certainly expected (The Doctor winning the match by his lonesome while Touma and Shiina was cheering him and Touya on) and unexpected (Touya accidentally falls towards another woman, with the result of his head being hit by the soccer ball that was caused by a fellow team member and lands towards the random woman's breast, with the woman herself in question blushing furiously in embarrassment, while Touya, who begins to be aware of where he landed, was now also blushing and was now apologizing to her sincerely out of embarrassment, to which the random woman accepted with a smile, still blushing, saying not to worry about it, and Shiina who was watching all of this was now glaring at him with a thick mark appearing on her head and with a scary voice, with closed eyes, and with a scary and nasty aura that began to leaked through her began to ask Touya if he was cheating on her and whether or not he was at it again, to which Touya sweats and trembles in fear as he turns towards her with an apologetic expression and also began to apologize to her as well, with the Doctor giving him a sympathetic and understanding look while Touma, who was just sitting in the sidelines of the match, tilts his head in confusion and ask the Doctor on what is happening and why is his mother angry at his father, to which the Doctor responded with a sweatdropped expression and tells Touma that he would understand when he was older).
And other plans and counter plans, with the hijinks associated with them, along with expected and unexpected situations ensued within the following months to years that it would be far too impossible to count, that cause most people (children, teenagers, and adults) of the suburban neighborhoods in the different parts of Tokyo to loosen up a bit and have with time, changed and rendered them to have a rather positive view in regards to Touma (especially) and his family, and of course one could not forget, the Doctor himself, who by now has become rather popular among the suburban neighborhoods, especially with the ladies.
"Touma-san?"
"Touma?!"
In that lonely playground, a cold voice filled the air, all emotion having left it as a woman and a man looking towards the boy that was lying on the ground. Kamijou did not get up, only turning his eyes as he always did without moving his head towards the entrance of the playground and seeing the pale face of his mother and the Doctor standing still there.
"Mu…m.…. D...oc...tor..."
Kamijou let out those weak words as they seemed to drag Kamijou Shiina and The Doctor to their senses as they immediately made their way over towards Kamijou, with Shiina lifting him up and looking him over.
"Wh-what did they do to you? Touma-san, what did they do to you? Are you alright? You're hurt…Why are you always hurt? Why…"
Shiina let out those words as she looked at the boy in the eyes as she tried to make him smile however the pure anxiety on her face was at odds with what she wanted from her son.
"I'm sorry."
And those two words stabbed into her exposed heart, the grown woman trembling and trying to stop it by biting onto her lip however that was not enough to hold back the emotion that she was feeling for the safety of her own son.
"Touma, you don't have to be sorry."
Shiina instantly wrapped Kamijou into a tight embrace that caused her hair and face to be covered with the blood that was on the side of her son's face as the emotions and pure sorrow that filled her spilled out in the form of the tears that came from her face.
"You never, ever have to be sorry Touma."
"…I'm sorry."
Kamijou Touma rose his small hand and rubbed his hand through his mother's hair as she let loose those tears that she cried for the both of them while the Doctor watches them, standing tall, looking at them both with ancient eyes of sympathy and empathy, recognizing the immediate plight as he had seen before, likened to that of a devil of many shapes and forms. The man of ancient dignity, a man full of mercy and compassion, yet a man of justice and righteousness, gently lays his hand in the boy's shoulder, and with his ancient eyes, full of the same mercy and compassion, he said.
"Your mother's right Touma. You do not have to feel sorry for anything. You've done nothing wrong. You would never hurt anyone. Ever. Be proud of that."
And in that lonely playground, the only thing that those two members of the same family and one Time Lord had was each other when the world had turned against them.
And as this scene of comfort of long overdue happens, the Doctor was sporting a subtle expression, having inner contemplative thoughts of anger, fury, and sadness of divine nature, contemplating as to how much misfortune, full of the pain and suffering that accompanies it, would the boy truly needed to take before it finally stops.
Ever since he intervened on the life of the Imagine Breaker, triggering what would eventually be known as the Imagine Point Event, the script has now been overturned on its head. The Last Great Time War had dealt heavy damage on many countless multiverses, destroying and rewriting the scripts (timelines and worldlines) of many. This multiverse was no exception. Things have changed. Things are no longer the same.
He knew. He knew of the fate and destiny of the boy. A fate and destiny that is now rewritten. He wonders. He honestly wondered. The warning that IT gave to him was still very much present to his mind. He knew that it was only a matter of relative time before the boy would have to face his destiny. A destiny that is now an unknown. He had been planning carefully for several years now, from the time when he saved the boy from the superstitious assailant, up to the present moment of now when he is now in his elementary days. And even before he met the boy, he has since been planning on intervening on the very script of Toaru Majutsu no Index for so many countless relative millennia, making various contingency plans during his seventh incarnation just for that particular purpose. Only now would he execute such contingencies in his present tenth incarnation.
He could see it. The hidden potential of Kamijou Touma. A young boy who would eventually grow into a young man who carries the right hand of negation to dispel the supernatural, with the illusions that comes with it.
The One Who Purifies God and Slays Demons.
No doubt the Imagine Point Event had triggered unforeseeable dominoes. Something was brewing on the horizon. The Time Lord could feel it in all probability from his very bones. No doubt that the Imagine Point Event had gotten the attention of many among the Higher Sphere. He would not doubt it for a second if what IT had said to him in their private conversations was anything to go by.
As he comforts the boy, gently rubbing his spiky hair while his mother carries him in comfort, he begins to immediately sense something from his multi-dimensional senses. His eyes slightly widened as he begins to look from afar, to where the collapsing branch was seen from the grass. He sees something. No. He is seeing someone very familiar.
A woman with long, steel-blue hair and emotionless purple eyes, eyes that seemed as ancient as he was. A black and white Gothic Lolita dress with a blue ribbon, white socks and black Mary Jane shoes. A black cat tail with a blue ribbon tied on it.
The Doctor could only begin to grimace at this, sporting a thoughtful expression.
Why was she here? Did she do what he thought she did? Why? Why intervene for the boy?
Many questions, many thoughts passed by his ancient mind. He was always noticing her since the day he intervened on the attempt of the boy's life. Of course, he knew that she could remain hidden from him if she even thought she wanted too. But why let him sense her in the first place? Is it perhaps a warning?
An ominous premonition comes to his twofold hearts.
Why would a Witch such as her be here?
Usually, the Doctor could guess that she was just bored as usual and was simply strolling the Known and Unknown Multiverse in order to pass the time, very similar to him in this case as he too get's bored from time to time, also strolling the Known and Unknown Multiverse as part of his main reasons for adventure and misadventure. But this feels different for some strange, and yet no less grave reason.
For one thing, he notices her expression. It was a smile. It was a smile that seemed to be subtle, full of many hidden enigmas. The Time Lord could only sweat from his brow in concern. He knows who and what she is. He knows how dangerous of an opponent she can be to those who would dare cross her path. He would thank the One Above All Others that she was his ally in the grand scheme of things, being his fellow comrade whom he had fought along with side by side even in the Darkest Years of the War. He'd rather not become her enemy if he could help it. Fighting her is a foolish endeavor, an instant death for those foolish enough to entertain such a thought. That and he empathized greatly with his fellow comrade's own past which was shrouded in deep mystery, known only to him and a few others. He understands what its truly like on not liking to talk about their very own past. It was something of a mutual agreement between the Time Lord and the Witch.
Why would a Witch such as her be here?
The Doctor knew that the Imagine Point Event would be noticed by many, but to think that a Witch of the Senate of high rank, dignity, and stature such as her would take complete interest on the boy who was now being comforted by him and the boy's own mother for yet another bout of misfortune.
Judging by the branch that fell from the wayside, he could take a guess that she intervened so subtly at the boy's misfortunate plight.
Why? What possible reason would that be?
In all of his life, the Doctor knew that his fellow comrade barely cared about anyone in her long millennia old life. Him being strangely one of the very few exceptions, always pulling his TARDIS to her domain in order to bring him for tea time when he wasn't usually busy with his usual schedule of saving worlds and adventuring across the stars. That was always a routine that he had with her. It was one that he find to be quite enjoyable in his long trotting journey as the Lonely God, no matter what face he wore.
For her to always stand by, observing in complete obscurity, the boy who would one day be known as the Imagine Breaker, was a very concerning thought for the old Time Lord.
Perhaps...
The Doctor pondered very carefully, weighing the connections, the probabilities, the endless maze of his thoughts on the matter, slightly looking back and forth towards the woman and the boy, before suddenly sporting a look of epiphany.
Of course, he thought very gravely.
He looks back and forth in subtlety towards the boy, still being gently cradled in his mother's arms, and towards his fellow comrade, still sporting that subtle smile that seemed vague, and yet was now known to him in some form of knowledge after much deep pondering.
No wonder.
This was related to his fellow comrade's own past. In a time when she was known by another name.
The Doctor could only sport a look of bewilderment, melancholy, and nostalgia, accompanied with raised eyebrows.
It would appear that, just like with his second son, Ren Fuji - Tenma Yato - Setsuna - Also Sprach Zarathustra, it would appear that higher beings have now taken an interest in the script of Toaru Majutsu no Index.
Lady Frederica Bernkastel. Her past life. Rika Furude.
Kamijou Touma. Rika Furude.
Two souls with great similarities. Two souls with the potential to connect to one another. Two souls with the possibility to become something far more than what fate and destiny had laid out to them. Two souls with the possibility of deep friendship, companionship, and perhaps something more.
The Doctor couldn't help but shake his head and heavily sigh in resignation.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.
Another cliche script. And yet… Its actors are of the finest fold; beyond exquisite. Thus, one would definitely find it enthralling.
"Doctor?," Shiina asked, sporting a concerned expression while cradling her son, with the latter also looking towards the Time Lord with concern as he notices the heavy sigh. "What's wrong?"
"No, its nothing, Shiina-san. Nothing at all," said the Doctor, assuring them, still looking towards the Witch, who was now smiling in amusement.
It would appear that the Time Lord would need to bring out his inner seven once again for this particular situation. For once again, just like before with Ren, the Doctor could not be allowed to intervene directly. And yet, just like back then, that doesn't mean he isn't allowed to intervene indirectly in accordance with the rules of the gameboard.
For in consideration of what he had done, the fate and destiny of the Imagine Breaker has now been rewritten. The future is now an unknown. What lies beneath the realm of possibilities would be a mystery that would need to be pondered and explored.
Yes, the Doctor thought as he sports a determined face.
He may not be able to totally eradicate the misfortunes of the Imagine Breaker, but that doesn't mean he could not be able to alleviate it.
For misfortune comes for everyone in many degrees, the Imagine Breaker most of all as he is at the center of probabilities. But as a Lord of Time, with the countless millennia and experience on his belt, the Doctor has been fighting his own misfortune all his life. He has battled gods, monsters, and demons of many shapes and sizes. He has saved worlds, universes, and multiverses, time and time again. He has fought the darkness, the hidden evils, and the epitome of madness. Misfortune, no matter what shape or form, would cower before him, kneeling down before him as an ant would relate to its god.
For he is a Lord of Time. Probability is his specialty after all.
"Its quite the sight, is it not old friend?"
That was a question that was asked by an old friend of the Doctor, one that was sitting right beside him as they both watch the young Touma having fun with the other children of the neighborhood, who by now have grown rather friendly towards him, no longer bullying him just as always.
That old friend was none other than Professor Paradox - the Time Walker. Simply stopping by in a flash as he and the Doctor were seated on a simple wooden bench. A lot of time to catch up with stories of their own to tell while they watch the young Touma from afar.
"Quite," said the Doctor, sporting a smile on his face.
The winds breeze in their direction, waving their hair, cooling their skins, waving their clothes as it sway towards the direction of the winds that seem as fair as the beautiful afternoon sunset.
The Doctor begins to sigh rather heavily, sporting a concerned expression on his face as he spoke in a low but clear tone. "First Frederica, now you Paradox. It would seem that my choice really did cause a ruckus across the wider multiverse to the point when people would take notice of me as the culprit behind it."
"Would you expect anything less at this point, old friend?," asked Paradox, all in good humor and concern.
"Not really," the Doctor only smiled simply with subtlety.
"In which case, I would advise that you take extreme caution of your surroundings if I were you, old friend," said Paradox, sporting a look of concern. "For I fear that a troublesome faction that is not native to this multiverse would be coming here on short notice, and they have begun to set their sights on young Touma Kamijou, having complete interest on the use of his Imagine Breaker and how they would like to use it for their own discrete purposes."
"I know," the Doctor said simply, sporting a grim and determined expression. "But let them try anyway. I'll be here waiting right for them."
"On that I have no doubt, old friend," said Paradox, sporting a knowing smile.
And with that, the two continued to watch over the young Touma Kamijou with a smile, with the Doctor taking note of the warning that his old friend had given him.
The Doctor was simply seated at the sofa, changing the channels of the TV screen for any sign of anything new and interesting. Sitting alongside him was Touma, simply sporting a simple smile on his face.
When going through one of main channels, he saw a trailer for a new and upcoming show that was being pushed. It seemed to be set this very town surprisingly enough. There were even a few shots of some familiar places and the school that Touma Kamijou goes to. It proceeded to show a video that was recorded by someone's camera, not a proper camera crew like it was a pedestrian. The playground was full of children, with Touma being far way from everyone. Then there was the fact that the camera seemed strangely focused on Touya Kamijou and Shiina Kamijou.
"What?!" the Doctor grew alarmed as he payed close attention to what he is now seeing.
Touma was seeing it as well, all with a trembling expression that was so subtle that is almost not seen, and yet was there if one to look hard enough.
The screen then went to a few local residents being interviewed. They appeared to be talking about some strange and supernatural evil.
"You haven't seen the corruption that kid brings with him. That kid is a bad omen who only brings pains everywhere he goes. You may be deceived by his injuries, but they always fade away with no scarring."
It proceeded to show another pedestrian video of a shop up in flames with his son in front of it. It then closed up on him.
"I lost my shop, house and belongings due to that plague. Yet he never pays the price."
It then went to another interview with a resident.
"The locals are scared of him and who wouldn't. Everywhere that kid goes, trouble always follows him side by side. Several places have straight up refused service to him in order to be safe. The only people who aren't afraid are his own parents who tell him that it wasn't his fault."
The shot switched to one that panned the entire town.
"You may think we are being unnecessarily cruel to this kid. But you haven't had to watch everything fall apart just due to his mere presence. Kamijou Touma only brings pain."
The screen began to display text with narration.
"The brand new supernatural show coming soon."
"A Certain God of Pestilence!"
"Wait?! Are they?!," the Doctor stood up from the sofa, turning towards Touma with concern as he take him by the hand. "Touma come with me!"
Touma made a nod of affirmation. "Alright, Doctor," Being led by the hand before eventually heading towards the dining room where both Shiina and Touya were at the current moment.
"Touya-san! Shiina-san!" the Doctor shouted in alarm, entering towards the dinning room in hurried fashion.
"Doctor?," Touya spoke with concern. "What is it?"
"Something has happened. It would appear that my worse fears have been realized. Someone is trying to use your son's misfortune and making a television show out of it."
"What?!" Both Touya and Shiina sported alarmed expressions as they stood from their chairs.
"In which case, all of you would need to come with me right this instant. This place is no longer safe," said the Doctor, all the while bringing out the sonic screwdriver, pointing it south in order to summon the TARDIS inside the dining room.
Vworp Vworp Vworp
Touma, Touya, and Shiina were sporting surprised expressions on their faces, seeing the TARDIS for the very first time as the winds begin to felt and the wheezing noises becoming heard as clear as day.
When the TARDIS completed its materialization, the Doctor begins to snap his fingers, automatically opening its doors and begins to speak in a tone of immediate concern, gesturing them in haste. "Everyone inside, now!"
With no time for any proper explanation, scrambled as they were, they all head inside towards the TARDIS in compliance, taking note of the Doctor's tone which takes immediate precedent, with the Doctor entering last as he closes the door behind him.
At that moment, the Doctor races towards the screen, activating it as he pressed a few buttons. Meanwhile, the Kamijou's were simply taking in the rather bigger on the inside room that they have manage to step inside into.
How could they describe it? Something that seemed to be impossible in hindsight. And yet, it was made present for all to see.
The Kamijou parents always had the feeling that the Doctor was strange, always the man who seem to have all these carefully invented gadgets on the fly. It would appear that there really was more to the Doctor than meets the eye. Touma was just staring with amazement and wonder at the seemingly large room, wondering as to how was any of this possible.
As this was happening, the Doctor was sporting a grim expression on his face, calling for Touya and Shiina, "Touya! Shiina!, you might want to look at this!"
The Kamijou parents could only comply in haste, jolted at the Doctor's grim tone that rang alarm bells on the both of them. They looked towards the screen and their eyes feel upon the unfortunate sight of a camera crew that is standing by on their own front home, with moving cameras on the ready in order to no doubt see their son recorded live for all to see.
"Those bastards!," said Touya, sporting an angered expression on his face.
"(Sigh). I was honestly afraid of this. Now that it had come to this, I might as well do some heavy lifting," said the Doctor, walking towards the main console, pressing through a few switches here and there.
At that moment, the Doctor would begin to activate a specific electromagnetic pulse (EMP) burst, rendering the equipment of the camera crew, along with canceling out all of the TV stations of Japan in order to keep the situation contained.
"Hey what gives?!"
"What happened to the camera?!"
"It seemed to have short circuited or something?!"
"Damn it! And just when I had this ready!"
Both the Kamijou parents were surprised at this sudden turn of events that is now being shown on screen, all the while being reassured that their son was safe for now.
The Doctor begins to get to work, immediately pressing a lever. "Everyone, hold on to something,"
Vworp Vworp Vworp
Somewhere in a hidden location...
"What is happening?!" spoke one alien creature, who's appearance was that of an American flamingo, sporting a shocked expression.
"It would appear that the cameras have been shut down, my liege." said one of the technicians, who's appearance was also that of an American flamingo, who was on stand-by from the control panel.
"How? How could this have happened so soon," spoke the alien creature, sporting a concerned expression as to why was the power suddenly cut off from the seams, rendering the plan defunct as all of the equipment was rendered immobile.
At that very moment, multiple flashes of light begin to occur, with multiple soldiers, all of them wearing advance combat uniforms and full body armor, with the shades of military grey and black colors, sporting a certain familiar logo on the shoulders, with FN SCAR staser rifles on the ready.
The aliens would recognize them anywhere. A formidable foe that strikes both fear and respect to all. An organization that is dedicated to the protection of the Known and Unknown Multiverse.
The SCP Foundation.
"Put your hands in the air, now!," barked one of the soldiers, probably the commander of the group, aiming his advance staser rifle unto the alien creature who was sporting a look of shock at the sight of the men that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
The flamingo like aliens would comply immediately as the weapons were all trained on them, when they suddenly hear something.
Vworp Vworp Vworp
At that moment, all of the flamingo like aliens were looking towards one direction, seeing a blue box, familiar to those inside the hidden location and to all, with the flamingo like aliens widening their eyes in complete dread while the soldiers would sport subtle gestures of respect as each second of the dematerialization seemed to pass by.
By the time the materialization of the blue box was completed, the doors opens to reveal a man with thick brown hair, dark brown eyes which stare deep within the soul, a light brown Duster-type overcoat, a dark brown suit with blue pinstripes, a plain white shirt, a plain dark red tie, and Converse All Stars red trainers. He was sporting a determined expression on his face, couple with a subtle smile as he slowly walks out the door with hands in his pockets.
"Sir," the commander spoke, turning towards him with respect, saluting him. "We managed to secure the perimeter and prevent any of the stations from transmitting the planned broadcast of the Imagine Breaker, all that's left is for us to sweep and confiscate any of the sensitive evidence that have yet to be taken into account."
"Excellent work, commander," the man spoke with a pleased nod, turning towards the flamingo like aliens who were all sporting expressions of dread, with the man speaking in a subtle, serious smile. "Hello there, I'm the Doctor, and we need to talk."
There was silence. And in that silence comes feelings of concern and realization on the part of the Kamijou parents.
A few days pass by after the incident. The Kamijou parents would recall of their discussions with the Doctor concerning his true nature. That he was not of this world. That he was not of their universe. That he was an actual alien who travels through time and space.
If they were to be completely honest, this was weird even for the likes of them. It was almost as if they stepped in to the realm of anime or something similar to the works of science fiction. But this wasn't fiction. This was reality. And they were living it.
One that had actual real life aliens that actually existed and that their only son was targeted by them due to a conspiracy plot about taking over the world, as cliche and unbelievable as it might sounds. One that spoke of the Doctor's true nature as a Lord of Time, piloting an advance ship known as the TARDIS which was quite bigger-on-the-inside due to the complex process of dimensional transcendentalism. One that had the important fact that their son was actually a part of a series of random sets of predetermined events which could determine and intersect with the fate of so many countless people, the world, and the entire universe as they know it.
Understandably, they were quite upset and saddened about all of this due to the major point of fact that eluded even them in particular. That even if they did send their son to Academy City, which they were planning to do anyway in order to protect their son, even if their bonds become severed, because it was a place where many gifted people could live free from superstition and that their son could be safe there and have an ordinary normal life. The Doctor however instantly shut down that idea and threw it out of the metaphorical window, simply explaining to them that one way or another, their son, Touma Kamijou, in most if not all timelines, will truly never have an ordinary normal life, even if it is only temporary, in this universe or others connected to this multiverse in general, and will sometime in the relative future become involved in so many dangerous incidents and crisis events that they cannot fully protect him from and that he is destined to save as many people as possible, even showing to them undeniable and concrete proof and evidence, not just from the present moment of this current unpredictable timeline, but from both the relative past and future of many given these possibilities and how it can go all along from the beginning, the middle, and the end.
The Doctor would also begin to show them the many, many, many countless atrocities and crimes against humanity that was committed in Academy City alone, all in the name of science, with Dark Side Organizations composed of hit assassination attack squads, mad scientists such as the Kihara Family, and other nefarious conspiracies such as the cloning of one young girl who would one day be known as the Railgun — Mikoto Misaka — in order to make an army of Level 5 espers who are technically a little more than a year old all the while being led to the slaughter to the Accelerator who was a teenager with major issues, which in itself was a major understatement, as his main objective for doing this was to try to reach the theoretical "Level 6" in order to not let anyone get hurt anymore because of the nature of his power and that no one would ever have to challenged him to a fight while hurting themselves ever again. The Doctor also showed to them of the secret shadow war that was happening all around the world at this point in time between the Magic Side and the Science Side which shocks and surprises both of the Kamijou parents since they have just been shown that magic actually exist in their world.
When the Doctor was explaining all these things to them with a clear tone of warning and seriousness, this causes both of the Kamijou parents to ultimately realize that they themselves and many, many, many parents like them were and have been duped into sending their own children to an experimental death trap that may or may not leave them alive or left unscathed which causes them immense grief as they begin to ask themselves on what they have just done, to which the Doctor tried to comfort and reassure them, saying that it was never their fault or anyone else's fault to begin with and that the people who run Academy City were just that good at fooling people into thinking that the city itself was rather harmless and a place of safe haven for espers but as it turns out, it's really not, and the worst part was that the Doctor pointed it out to them that Academy City, at this point in time, just so happens to be the safest place on Earth for their son despite all of the pain and suffering that entails for him in the not too distant future.
Because for one, it lies under the domain of the Science Side and is its center of operations, and many magicians would not want to instigate a potential political fallout at this point in time or at the very least until a few years down the line especially considering the cities advancement in military technology to boot along with the possibility of an all-out global conflict that would be triggered in the not too distant future and two, the only reason Academy City even exists is not because of science which was actually a means to an end in and of itself, but it is because of their son, more specifically their son's right hand and the man who built the damn city was trying to draw him out on to the open so that he may use him for his hidden plans.
But then just as all hope seems to die out among the Kamijou parents, the Doctor would begin to propose a simple solution to their problem while also keeping the timeline mostly in tact. By playing the role of the editor of the script (timeline).
"Listen, the both of you. What if I told you both that if you were to decide to send the boy to Academy City, I promise you in my name that I would look after him, teach him everything that he needs to know on how to be safe, on how to survive, and on how to save people, all the while letting him have a break or two by travelling with me throughout the multiverse, as he gets to call you every now and then in order to ease your worries a bit and ensure that he was truly alright, because as of this very moment, Aleister Crowley, the chairman of Academy City, is looking for your son, and one way or another he will get what he wants, with or without you. Your son getting involve in his plans has stretched all the way back into the 20th Century. He has been planning all of this for a very long time now, with various contingency plans within contingency plans to boot. He was considered in history to be one of the few most dangerous humans to walk on this very earth. I've been aware of his plans for centuries now (aware since his seventh incarnation) and I have made my own counter-contingency plans within counter-contingency plans in the event when I would have to face this one day. They don't call me the Ultimate Chess Master for nothing back in the day."
The Doctor begins to look at them both with his ancient pleading brown eyes, speaking in a solemn tone of the divine.
"Please, I beg of you, let me take care of your son, and I promised you in my name that no harm will come to him or to anyone he loves or to anyone he saves and if that were to happen, they would have go through me first. I will handle Academy City and it's bleak and terrible darkness to offer, for I have fought so many monsters throughout the years that hid in that same darkness before and in the end, I always ended up having to drag them back out into the light, by force if necessary."
The Kamijou parents would recall of this with awe, wonder, and relief, recalling the face of the Doctor when he simply spoke with such authority and confidence just like back when they first met him, for they have always had a strange feeling from the back of their minds that the Doctor was not just some ordinary person who just happened to be passing by.
Now looking back at it, with the number of months to years that had followed, and seeing the Doctor with their very own eyes as he spoke with such authority that was almost that of a kami, they saw a man who has seen and been through so much horror, death, and destruction on a level and scale that they could barely comprehend, and yet at the same time was so kind and compassionate to everyone despite the many countless times when life hits him far too many times to the point of already breaking in accordance with the promise of his name, and he was especially very kind and compassionate towards children and that he would fight to his very last breath to keep their son and the rest of the children of Academy City safe whenever possible.
For little did the Kamijou parents would realize, as it is written in his relative future to come, demons run when a good man goes to war.
And they would recall it fondly as the day when all of their worries were immediately dispelled, entrusting their very own son to the man who would keep him safe for the light and dark days to come.
Insert Song: End
ED Song:
Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU NO Ending 1
Characters:
Tenth Doctor - A: David Tennant
Eighth Doctor - A: Paul McGann
Seventh Doctor - A: Sylvester McCoy
Touma Kamijou - VA: Atsushi Abe
Professor Paradox - A: David McCallum
Lady Frederica Bernkastel - VA: Yukari Tamura
Touya Kamijou - VA: Nomura Kenji
Shiina Kamijou - VA: Inoue Kikuko
Rassilon
Omega
Doctor Who Lore Trivia: The Dark Times
Regarding Doctor Who being pure science and not magic and supernatural, well that's not exactly true because back during the Old Dark Times when the Whoniverse was literally and basically the Suggsverse where and when nothing absolutely made sense, when Magick which was far too different from any form of magic in any anime and in any fiction in general as magic can be explained by Time Lord Science since it has rules such as ley lines which the Time Lords used as a magic detection system and as weapons during the Time Wars of the Old Dark Times, while Magick does not have any rules whatsoever which is the literal understatement of the millennia because to give a comparison is like the Warp from Warhammer 40k, and was very much a thing and the universe or the multiverse of the Whoniverse as we understood it didn't exist yet because there were no laws or physics or any science of any sort you could possibly think of. Just random possibility and impossibility all at the same time that you could possibly or impossibly think of while saying screw the rules I make my own and anyone and anything goes, along with the various gods, monsters, demons, angels, eldritch abominations, etc... of all shapes and sizes and strength and known and unknown description along with known and unknown powers and abilities that lived in those times and many of them were not really benevolent such as the Great Vampires/Yssgaroth.
Then the Time Lords being the first sentient beings who were known during those times as "The Watchmakers" came to be and then when they saw all this madness and chaos, dedicated themselves fully to the task of wiping the slate clean and to the task of founding and establishing the concepts of reason under the Leadership of the Founding Fathers of Gallifrey, with the Triumvirate being in the lead among the Founding Fathers: Rassilon, Omega, the Other, as they begin to utterly Retcon Magick because it was far too dangerous, not to the Time Lord's themselves, but because it was just downright messy and chaotic and can be exploited by anyone and anything with no morals or ethics or responsibility, while establishing the law and the order, the laws of physics, the laws of space and time, Science with all it's branches, subjects, and topics, rationalized bits of magic such as psychic powers, the Creation of the Eye of Harmony, to which as a consequence, made the Anchoring of the Thread and the Web of Time (The Spiral Politic), along with the Time Vortex, etc. and Retconned the Whoniverse into the one that we all know and love today.
At least that is how I understand it at the very least when I read Doctor Who Lore as described from the Whoniverse Experts here on Spacebattles.
Confirmation from SpaceBattle Experts:
Controller:
Yep, that's more or less how it went down. A lot of people misinterpret it as just the Time Lords having sticks up their butts and getting rid of magic because they hate fun, but really, Whoniverse Magick (of that specific kind, anyway) was pretty much the Warp from WH40K, I've made that comparison myself in the past. "Orderly" magic like in, say, Harry Potter, they wouldn't have an issue with.
The Quote From Christmas on a Rational Planet (novel)
There was a city, buildings carved into gigantic tusks of ivory that sprouted from the ground and formed arches a mile high, great arcs laced with crystalline clouds. The streets were made of cobweb, glittering pathways spun by mechanical spiders, and between them hung enchanted gardens tended by men of
stone. Down on the ground walked the skeletons of mammoths, their ribcages stuffed with steam-powered engines, scholars and philosophers riding on their backs.
Chris had seen enough in his travels to know that a great many unlikely things were possible. Aliens could look like pixies, bio-machines could be made to resemble dragons, cities could be built out of sound... but there were things in this place he couldn't even name, things he had no experience of, that seemed at odds with even the most exotic of alien technologies. Things that were impossible. Yeah. Impossible. Things even the Doctor couldn't have shown him.
He was seeing it all in the face of the Carnival Queen.
– Once upon a time, she said, this was your universe. Long before your time, before any time that you could measure. A place of endless miracles, non? No harsh sciences here, no mundane little laws of physics, no guiding principles. There was just possibility. An infinity of possibility. Now. Look.
Chris wasn't watching the city any more. There was a different world etched into the Carnival Queen's expression now, a world inhabited by people; people he could recognize as people, not monsters or automatons. The cities were just as large, but there were less of the impossible things. The planet looked... well, reasonable. Sort of.
– This was the world of the Watchmakers, Christopher. One of the first Great Races. Things of extraordinary power. Perhaps more power than they ever realized. See?
Chris concentrated on her smile, and focused on the Watchmakers in their cities; grim-faced men in robes of grey, their hands busy at machines, turning handles and pressing switches. They looked ordinary. They looked drab.
– The Watchmakers. Logical, masculine creatures. They rejected the possibility, and denied the world of wonders. Perhaps it scared them. They wanted existence to be precise, to be mechanical, so that they could live their lives to a solemn timetable. They wanted to understand the universe in the same way you might understand a piece of clockwork. As a cold machine. No room for cities of brass or dragonfly-gods. They invented rules, and tied creation down to those rules.
'Rational,' Chris heard himself say.
– Yes. They were beings of Reason. They proved that horses couldn't fly, so horses didn't fly. They proved that cities couldn't dream, so cities didn't dream. The shadeling gods, the children of the Pythia... one by one, they all died, pushed out of a cosmos that was too rational to let them live. The Watchmakers took away the glamours and the mysteries, then built machines in their places. They became kings of Reason. Masters of space, lords of time
And there they all were, in the folds of her face. The monsters and angels and impossible things, retreating into the darkness as Chris watched, vanishing into the whirlpools of her eyes. Everything strange and magical dropped out of the universe. The Watchmakers held creation in a hard grey fist and squeezed it dry.
The Watchmakers. Something clicked in Chris' head.
'Wait a minute,' he said. 'What did you call the Watchmakers? Masters of space and lords of -'
But then the Carnival Queen changed her expression, and Chris was looking into a vast hall, a throne-room painted in the dull grey of eternity. There was a man seated in the hall, a large, powerful man, his face wreathed by a great white beard and moustache, his head topped by a conical crown. His throne was made out of the crushed bones of things that looked suspiciously like gigantic bats.
Two other men sat at his side. One carried the tools of an engineer; the other's position was less obvious.
'I dreamed about this place,' breathed Chris. 'I was looking for Roz, and... I mean, how? How could you know about this?'
– Been there, done that.
'Now, See What We Have Created,' the bearded man said, and his voice was living thunder. 'We Have Built A World Of Reason Triumphant. And It Is Good.'
– The greatest of all the Watchmakers, said the Carnival Queen. The first King of the Majestic Clockwork. Watch.
So Chris watched. Watched as the man lifted an arm, placed a hand against his chest. Watched as he sank his hand deep into his own body, and pulled something out from his torso. Chris thought it might be his heart, but then he saw the thing, wriggling in the man's hand; it was shadow-coloured, slippery, its shape changing from second to second.
The other two men in the hall reached into themselves as well, and pulled out similar objects. Chris took a step back. Across the planet of the Watchmakers, grey people in grey robes were reaching into their bodies and pulling out their...
... their what?
– Nobody is entirely rational, Christopher. Not even the Watchmakers. They wanted a universe of Reason, but to get it, they had to give something up. Those little irrational parts of themselves. Those small corners of their souls that believed in the superstitions, that wanted the world of wonders back. The mutable parts. The changeable parts.
Across the Watchmaker world, the people were grasping their irrational shadows and hurling them away. The shadows shrieked into the sky, screaming, crying. Forsaken. They congregated in the upper atmosphere, becoming one great cloud of unreason.
'Go,' said the King.
And the cloud went. It shrieked across the skies, exiled from its homeworld. It screamed through galaxies, unwanted and alone, until the rational universe opened up and it vanished into the darkness on the other side of existence.
'There,' said the Watchmaker King. 'Now We Are Things of Reason Absolute. Our... Demons... Are Safely Confined, Beyond The Reach Of Man Or Machine. We Are Perfect. We Are Whole.'
Chris let his attention wander across the galaxies, briefly wondering how much of this was supposed to be real and how much of it was just a fairy-tale. He found the point where the great shadow had vanished. There. There, in a little corner of creation cut off from the rest of the universe, in the dark places on the other side of Reason. The shadow had been trapped there, in the prison-realm of the Watchmaker King, for... for how long, now? How long since the time of the Watchmakers?
– About three-and-a-half billion years, said the shadow. Chris jumped. He tried to focus, tried to pin his attention down, but all he could see was the Carnival Queen's face.
'It's you,' Chris said. 'It's you.'
– Who else? said the Carnival Queen.
It was hard to know what to say, really.
'You're the one the Watchmakers... I mean, you're the thing that...'
– That they couldn't live with. They don't remember me at all now, and don't even let themselves dream of me. On their homeworld, buried in the deepest archives, there are books that only the Highest of the High are ever allowed to read. The only books that describe the old time before the days of the clockwork universe, locked away from the eyes of the world.
There's one in particular...
The book opened up in front of Chris, and he wondered whether it was really there or just an illusion written across Marielle's face. The pages shone like glass, and one paragraph, penned in ink the colour of rust, had been underlined.
'For there was Time before this; and there was Being before this; and there was Space before this. And there were Things Damned in that place, and there were Things Remarkable.'
– The Watchmakers, being rational monsters, never understood that passage properly. They take it all very literally, these days. They think it means that there was
another universe before this one, and that it was destroyed in the Big Bang. Ask the Doctor, and that's what he'll tell you. Naturellement, it isn't true. The 'Space before this' was just this universe, before the Watchmakers sucked all of the glamour and the strangeness from its bones. Ohh, yes, there were those of the old time who escaped. A handful of baby godlings and 'great intelligences'... but they were such weak, unimaginative creatures. Too ready to obey the Watchmakers' order. Too ready to give themselves up to Reason.
– Not like me. Not like me at all.
Chris gawped. Tried to say something. Gawped some more. Then he looked around, at the desert, at the sky full of unlight.
'And this is your prison? This is where you've been trapped all this time?'
– My prison. My home. But not for much longer, Christopher.
And across her face, aeons of history played themselves out. On Minyos, the heliomancers were cast out of society, the machines of the Watchmakers replacing them and turning the planet to cinders. On the fringes of the Scrampus Federation, the Witches of Enderheid were tried, sentenced, and burned at the stake. On planets whose names had long been forgotten, whole races tried to master the sciences of the older races, turning themselves into sick things with sick ambitions... and the curse of the Watchmakers touched every corner of creation.