Inside the darkened control room of the Master's TARDIS, the Doctor and Glitz paused to get their breath back as the Master regarded them with amusement.
"Well I never thought I'd welcome the sight of you," said the Doctor at last.
"It will not happen again," promised the Master.
"What puzzles me is why it's happening now," continued the Doctor, regarding his old enemy with understandable suspicion, thinking back to all the times that the Master had attempted to eliminate him.
"The explanation's quite simple," said the Master in a noticeably more serious tone. "I want the Valeyard eliminated, and you're the most likely candidate to achieve that."
Now Glitz was really confused. "Hang on. You told me this fleshy fair-haired personage was the one you wanted to croak," he said to the Master, prompting a hurt expression from the Doctor.
"With the Doctor as my enemy, I always have the advantage," explained the Master, to which the Doctor gave a scoffing laugh. "But the Valeyard, the distillation of all that's evil in the Doctor himself, untainted by virtue, a composite of his every dark thought, is a different proposition."
The Master turned to look at the Doctor directly, his expression becoming colder and more menacing. "Additionally, he's infuriated me by threatening to deny me the pleasure of personally bringing about your destruction. And so he must pay the price."
The Doctor regarded his old foe wearily, not in the least surprised that wounded pride was the Master's prime motive in disrupting the Valeyard's carefully laid plans. However, the Doctor also had an uncanny feeling that there was something else the Master hoped to gain from all this, perhaps from exposing the High Council's part in the Ravalox conspiracy. But before the Doctor could inquire any further, the Master pressed a button on the control console and swiftly led Glitz out through a door leading to the rest of the TARDIS interior, as a high-pitched pulsing sound began to resonate in the control room.
"And you, Glitz, shall help me to collect," said the Master as he sealed the door, locking the Doctor in, as the pulsing sound in the the console room got louder and louder and a barrage of colourful lights began to flash dazzlingly around the Doctor. As the Doctor whirled around for the source of the blinding lights, he had to clamp his hands over his ears as the unrelenting noise became more unbearable by the second. He gave out a loud cry of pain, but it was drowned out by the pounding pulses assaulting his senses.
In the adjoining room, Glitz peered through the transparent porthole overlooking the console room and saw the Doctor abruptly drop his arms and stand absolutely rigid, his expression turning utterly blank.
"Would I be wrong in thinking that the Doctor will soon be needing a machonite overcoat?" inquired Glitz.
The Master gave yet another of his customary cold chuckles. "Nothing so crude. He's merely being reduced to a catatonic state."
"Cata what?" asked Glitz in perplexity.
The Master regarded Glitz like a school teacher whose star-pupil had said something phenomenally dim. "The violent assault on his senses will trip a mental defensive mechanism, and his brain will switch off," he explained patiently.
"Oh, so he'll become a zombie?"
"Temporarily. Long enough for my purposes," said the Master with a cunning expression accompanied by an evil smile.
The courtyard outside the Fantasy Factory was still shrouded in gloomy darkness when the Master's TARDIS materialised in the open street, this time taking the form of a large marble statue of Queen Victoria, due to the ship's functioning Chameleon Circuit choosing a form that would enable the craft to remain incognito. As soon as the time machine finished its landing, a pair of large doors set into the base of the statue quietly swung open and the Master stepped out into the deserted street, closely followed by Glitz and the Doctor, who walked like a sleepwalker, his eyes looking vacantly ahead.
"Stop!" commanded the Master. The Doctor immediately halted right in the middle of the courtyard, standing as straight and rigid as a marble statue, in full view of the Fantasy Factory's windows.
The Master smiled with wicked satisfaction. "This should prove an irresistible bait for the Valeyard."
However duplicitous and treacherous he was, Glitz could not help but be appalled by the Master's plan. "You Time Lords take the cake. Talk about devious. Compared to you lot, I'm as transparent as crystal!" He looked sympathetically at the Doctor. "Poor old Doc. All in all, he isn't a bad old codger. Honest, of course. Still, nobody's perfect."
But the Master was not listening as he was too busy taking cover in the shadows of a nearby alleyway, where he had a perfect view of the main balcony of the factory. "Stop slobbering and get over here," he commanded Glitz, who hastily darted into the shadows of the alleyway. As he did so, the Master's TARDIS dematerialised to a pre-set destination, safely out of sight.
The loud noise of the dematerialising TARDIS could be heard inside the factory and quickly caught the attention of the junior Mr Popplewick who had been busy inside writing some forms at his desk. Curiosity getting the better of him, he got up from his chair and walked out onto the balcony, where he could see the Doctor standing down below, right in the centre of the courtyard. As the Master and Glitz watched on from their vantage point, Popplewick stepped nervously back into the building to inform his superior. A few seconds later, the senior Mr Popplewick stepped out, his quill still neatly balanced on his ear. Upon seeing the Doctor, he gave a satisfied nod and he too moved back into the office. Finally, a few more seconds afterwards, the Valeyard emerged from the main entrance and walked onto the balcony, a white quill pen held firmly in his right hand.
Seizing his chance, the Master leapt from the shadows and fired his deadly Tissue Compression Eliminator at the black-robed figure on the balcony. But to the Master's frustration, instead of turning the Valeyard into a shrunken corpse, the fierce red beams of the Eliminator simply bounced harmlessly off the evil prosecutor and shot off into the sky. Again, the Master fired, but as before, the beams deflected away from the Valeyard, who gave the Master a condescending look.
"You really are a second rate adversary," sneered the Valeyard. "Did you imagine I'd be lured by such a transparent ploy?"
And with that, the Valeyard threw his quill into the courtyard, which suddenly exploded like a hand-grenade, just a few feet away from the Master and Glitz! Alarmed, the two unscrupulous partners in crime darted out of the alleyway and made a desperate dash across the courtyard, as the laughing Valeyard threw more quills after them, each of them exploding in a terrific display of sparks and flames.
"This is crazy!" shouted Glitz as another quill exploded close to them. "This has to be another illusion surely?"
"You're more than welcome to stay here and find out!" retorted the Master angrily as they hurriedly made their way back to the safety of the Master's TARDIS, which had placed itself in an adjoining street near to them.
From his vantage point on the balcony, the Valeyard watched with amusement as his would-be assassins ran out of sight like frightened rabbits. It amused him to make a fool out of the Doctor's so-called arch-enemy and in due course, the Master's interference would be brought to an end once and for all. With a final cackle of laughter, the Valeyard headed back into the factory, ready to implement the next stage of his plan to deal with the Doctor...