Episode 12:1- Faction Paradox

A small cardboard box landed in a desolate wasteland. It was most definitely no place for a cardboard box. It was no place for anything at all.

Five minutes earlier, there had been no sign of life. Not even insects buzzing over the charred carcasses of various animals on the ground. If you had bravely taken a microscope and went to examine the dust, there probably wouldn't have been any bacteria living.

This was Earth.

It looked like a futuristic post-apocalyptic warzone. Perhaps the result of zombies attacking in the year 49000.

But no. This was Earth, September the 16th, 2006. Not in a parallel universe. The very same Earth that Rose Tyler had been born and raised in.

A toxic breeze swept its deadly chemicals across the landscape, causing the burnt wreck of a large bulldozer to creak and fall over. A plume of smoke drifted up lazily. If anyone had been there to choke, they would. As it happened, no one did. The sun above had long since turned yellow and acidic, and it was much hotter than it should have been.

The ruins of houses and apartment buildings were covered in dust and occasionally a festering splotch of blood.

The cardboard box, which had, up until this moment, been silent, opened up. A girl sprang out, her hair blonde and done up in a high ponytail. She landed on the uneven ground, and stumbled, not expecting it to be so rough.

"Calvin!" she shouted down, annoyed. "You got it wrong again!"

"I didn't!" protested a boy's voice. "Let me see!"

He sprang out of the box, followed by a tiger and a handsome man, who all landed next to her. The tiger pressed all four of his paws to the ground and growled. "This doesn't feel right," he said, standing up on his hind legs.

"I just wanted to go home for a bit," the blonde girl complained. "What is so horribly wrong with your driving skills that you can't do that?"

The spiky-haired boy tapped his wristwatch, and frowned. "Sentience? Can you tell us anything?"

"Sure thing," said a chirpy American voice from the watch. "Your current location is where the Powell Estates should be. It's 2006 right now. I don't have visual, though, so I can't get anything else!"

The blonde girl blanched. The handsome man patted her arm, and looked at Calvin. "Are you sure?" he directed to the watch.

"Absolutely and positively!" the watch cheered. "Why do you ask?"

"Because we're in the middle of what looks like a nuclear testing ground," the tiger replied.

The watch crackled with static for a moment.

The tiger and the boy looked at each other.

"Okay," the watch's voice was a lot more subdued now, and lacked its enthusiastic peppiness from before. "I'm double checking the readings, and I'm also extending an oxygen shield, just in case."

"Thanks," the tiger nodded.

The watch crackled again.

The blonde sat down on a charred rock and buried her face in her hands. The tiger and handsome man perched themselves next to her, and the tiger hugged her carefully. She seemed to accept the gesture as it came.

"It's going to be okay, Rose," said the tiger. "We can sort this out. Sentience might be wrong."

"Might," Rose snapped. "She might be wrong. What if she isn't?"

The watch beeped.

"Okay," said the watch. "We've got massive temporal flux around this area. Some sort of paradox. I can probably trace it back to its beginning."

"What about the warzone?" Rose demanded.

The watch was silent. "I'm sorry, Rose," it said. "It looks like it's been this way for at least a hundred years."

Her expression dropped. "...Mum."

From the distance, the only other living being on Earth watched as the small human girl broke down in tears. And laughed.

In the console room, Calvin marched straight up to the monitor, and swiveled it around so everyone could see. Sentience unfolded from the wall, dressed in a tight brown trench coat.

"Don't worry," Hobbes told Rose. "We can fix this. It's what we do."

Calvin looked at the data. "Maybe not."

Jack snorted. "Oh, way to be positive! If we can't fix it, what can we do?"

"How do we stop time itself?" Calvin asked rhetorically.

Sentience tapped Calvin on the shoulder. "Do you need a data map?"

He nodded quickly. Sentience looked up at the ceiling, and spread her arms out wide. She didn't need to actually do it, but it made her look more dramatic. The lights turned off, and a matrix of holograms turned on all around the room. It was a vast, interlocking web of threads that stretched from silver dots placed at points where more than one collided. It was mindboggling. It was gorgeous. Rose would have been freaking out over it if the situation hadn't been serious. Saving the world was all well and good, but when your mother was involved (even indirectly) it got personal.

"This is where we're parked right now," Calvin said, stepping into the web that was Time and pointing at a cluster of grey lines looped around a large gold point. "Time's gone crazy just about here. If we trace the lines out, we can see where the trouble started."

Everyone's eyes followed the thickest grey line across the room. It was like one of those puzzles where you have to find out which kite belongs to who. The grey thread twisted and spun about the room, until it met the center of a huge silver dot that was the size of a basketball.

Thousands of other grey lines met it, turning the dot nearly black. A dark stormy purple hung about the silver, like a malevolent wraith.

"I'm almost afraid to ask," Jack said finally. "But where is that point?"

Sentience tapped it with a finger. It wasn't a hologram to her. It was completely real. "It's the beginning of the universe. You know the Big Bang? It wasn't just a theory. It was the truth."

"And the purple mist?" Rose asked tentatively.

"Paradoxes," Hobbes answered.

Everyone gulped.

Sentience waved her hand again, and little character avatars appeared, floating around the dots. "This is us, and anyone closely related to us, in our current timeline."

Calvin's avatar was at the dot Calvin had pointed out earlier, along with Sentience, Rose, Calvin, and Jack. Surprisingly, Charles wasn't there, but no one took any notice of it. Calvin's family, along with Susie, weren't there. Neither was Charles Dickens (not surprisingly), Adam, or Harriet Jones. It looked almost like they were alone in the universe. Like everyone they knew had been destroyed.

Rose pointed to the place that was the beginning of the universe. "Look. It's Ace."

Everyone looked. It was indeed an avatar that looked exactly like Ace McShane, complete with black bomber jacket. And there was another image that looked almost exactly like a Dementor.

"Who's that?" Jack frowned at the image.

Sentience scrunched up her nose. "Accessing... accessing information... OW, GOOD LORD, that hurts!" she screamed suddenly, clutching her head. "No, sorry, can't get it, and my body image seems to be fading!" She flickered. "Sorry, guys. Got to go!"

She blinked out quickly, and the Time Map disappeared with her.

"That was ominous," Calvin said quietly.

Hobbes elbowed him. "No duh. Shut up now."

He shut up.

"I wonder why Ace is at the beginning of the universe," Hobbes said suddenly.

"I don't actually care," Rose snapped. "All I care about is the fact that my mum and everyone I've ever met are dead. Mickey is dead. Oh god. Mickey..."

Jack circled over to her, and looked her directly in the eyes. "That's why you need to focus. Any little thing could be important. You're no use to us if you're crying over everything. Get a grip on yourself."

"Well said," nodded Calvin. He began to flick switches and turn dials at a rate that Rose had never seen before. "Hold on tight, this will be bumpy. I've never gone this far back before."

"We should probably yell a battle cry or something," Hobbes mused.

"Geronimo?" Jack suggested.

"No. Something else. Like..."

"For the glory of the Time Empire!" Calvin declared loudly. And that was that.

Somewhere else... at the beginning of time, trouble was brewing. And not a nice sort of trouble, either.

Ace sat up woozily, attempting to get her thoughts back into order. Something had happened. Something important. She couldn't remember what it was, though; she hadn't quite got to that level of thinking.

Oh.

Oh.

That's right.

She was checking out the reports of a world ending organization that had just recently set themselves up. A fairly routine job. She had got to the place (which looked like a war zone) and got off her motorbike.

Then something heavy and blunt had hit her over the head. And she was now... here. Which appeared to be a prison cell, making it her third cell in as many weeks.

She got up to her feet, noting that she was still a bit shaky, and rattled the door. It was firm, and she didn't have an ounce of Nitro on her. That was bad. Ace walked along the walls, pressing her hands over every nook and cranny. It was freshly done; almost as if it had been prepared for her. So was the floor. The ceiling was too high to reach.

"Hello, Ace," a quiet voice drifted from the door. She turned. There was a short figure in a Grim Reaper-type outfit standing there. The hood covered his face, making it impossible to tell who he was. He had entered without a sound. How odd.

She decided to take the offensive. "Why did you bring me here?" she demanded, curling her hands into fists.

He gave off the impression of having raised his eyebrows. "Now, if I told you why, well, it would ruin all the fun!"

She feinted left, then ran for the door. He stepped aside to allow her access, not even trying to block her path. She didn't notice.

The cell opened into a vast, colorful auditorium. There were pedestals in the center. Four of them, to be precise.

"What is this?" she hissed. The small figure stepped out from the cell behind her.

"Yes, quite nice, isn't it?" He surveyed the area. "This is a game I like to play! It's called 'solitaire'. Ever heard of it?"

"Give me back my bike and let me go," she seethed. "or I swear, you will regret it."

He laughed, and threw back his hood. Underneath was a mask, of a skull. It looked almost too real, eerily so. "Don't you know how to play it? In solitaire," he clicked his fingers, and a pack of black dogs stalked in from the sides. "The Ace goes up first."

She scrambled to the side of the room, attempting to get away from the dogs, which were closing in on her. "What are you doing?"

The figure in the mask laughed slightly. "Oh, I do love playing games."

Ace screamed as loudly as she could, not because she was scared, but so she could attract attention.

It didn't work.

Anyone around was in no condition to help, and even if they were, they simply didn't care.

The Time Machine landed with a bump, which was surprising in itself. At the beginning of the universe, there shouldn't have been anywhere to land on. Jack was the first to exit.

"Looks like a school cafeteria," he called back, tapping a foot on the ground.

"So, it's safe, then?" Rose asked, coming out.

"Yeah, perfectly safe- HEY!"

The 'hey' was due to the person with a skull mask on that had just grabbed him from behind and shoved a chloroform-covered rag over his mouth. He struggled for a few seconds before passing out.

"Calvin!" Rose yelled. "There's someone out here-!"

Another skull-masked person covered her nose and mouth with a cloth as well.

"Yeah?" Hobbes asked, still inside the Time Machine. "What is it?"

Rose didn't respond, on account of her being unconscious.

"You'd better not be getting kidnapped and dragged away," Calvin complained. Up in the cafeteria, the two people in masks stuffed Jack and Rose into bags and dragged them out of the room.

Hobbes sprang up from the box and landed elegantly on the linoleum floor. "Rose? Jack?"

Calvin brushed himself off, having landed rather ignobly on his rear end. "Where are they?"

"Not here, it looks like," Hobbes replied. "Do you think they were captured somehow?"

Calvin snorted. "Rose? Most definitely. She's a trouble magnet."

"Which way did they go, though?"

They searched the room. It was a cafeteria in every detail, even down to the food steaming in the trays in front of the kitchen. It was cafeteria food, which is to say... meatloaf.

It was almost as if all the kids at Calvin's school had suddenly decided to get up from their meal and go somewhere else in the middle of lunchtime. The plates were set out, and the drinks were poured.

The only thing missing was the humans. But the big question was, why would there be a cafeteria at the beginning of the universe? And how did it get there?
Hobbes's keen eyes picked out a tiny gleaming sphere that had rolled under a table. He scrambled over to it, and held it up. "This is from Rose's necklace!"

Calvin viewed the bead, and nodded. Rose had been wearing a fairly cheap-looking necklace that morning. "Maybe it split," he suggested. "We could follow the beads."

In Calvin's school, the door on the far west end usually led to the hallway where his classroom was. Here, at the beginning of the universe, it opened up into a massive amphitheater with at least a hundred doors place around the room.

Calvin took one look at it, and groaned.

Hobbes simply tilted his head slightly.

"Well," he said finally. "At least we aren't starved for decision."

Rose and Jack regained consciousness on a giant chessboard. They were on opposite ends, and seated in the places the black and white king would be.

Rose was on the white side.

Jack was on the black side.

Around them were massive chess pieces, fifty times the size of normal ones.

"Hello," said a smooth voice. "So nice of you to join us."

Rose jerked her head up towards the voice. A hooded figure was lounging in a comfortable seat that was suspended high above the board. It was wearing a mask, just like the people who had captured them.

"What is this place?" she demanded, attempting to step off her square. Electricity crackled, and she fell back, shocked.

The figure chuckled quietly. "I wouldn't advise that. Oh, it is a bit late for that, isn't it?" It shrugged. "Anyhow, I think you remember the chess scene from Harry Potter?"

Rose did, almost subconsciously. "Wait, you want us to play chess?"

The mask-person scoffed. "Not just any chess. Wizard chess."

Jack raised a hand. "I'm sorry, how do you do that?"

"Like this." The figure raised a hand. "Knight to B3!"

One of the white knights sprang to life, tossing its head back and jumping to the third row, where it became marble again.

"You know how to play chess," the figure added. "So it shouldn't be too hard for you."

"Why do you want us to play chess, though?" Jack asked. The figure cackled.

"Entertainment! I do like playing games, don't you?"

Rose looked at the rows of pieces. "Usually when we're not being threatened by electric shocks, yeah."

The figure clapped its hands together. "But that's half the fun!"

Rose and Jack looked at each other, and then stared up at the figure. "What happens if we don't play?" Jack wondered.

"Zap!" the person in the mask giggled. "But at a higher setting!"

Rose gulped. "Pawn to G4."

The massive piece moved forwards, and the person sitting high up in the chair twitched with excitement.

Jack looked at the board. "Knight to C6. If we're going to be playing this, what's your name? Who are you?"

The figure behind the mask clasped its fingers together. "You may call me... Grandfather."

The knight leapt forwards and landed with a clunk.

Hobbes had decided to try the age-old tradition of standing in the middle of the amphitheatre, spinning around with your eyes shut, and pointing.

His paw landed on a small, sapphire blue door that looked like something from out of fairyland. Coincidentally, there was a pile of small beads in front of it.

"I don't like coincidences," Calvin announced with a frown. "It usually means someone's playing with me."

Nevertheless, he walked over to the door, and entered through it with Hobbes trailing behind. His foot slipped, and he landed on his butt for the second time that day. Instead of staying there, though, he began to slip forwards.

It was a slide.

Calvin brightened instantly. He liked slides. The slide seemed simple enough. It was a bit longer and steeper than usual. He turned halfway to glance behind him. "Hobbes?"

"EEEK," came the response.

Calvin nodded in agreement, and turned back, just in time to see the dizzying drop in front of them.

"EEEK!" Calvin agreed, slightly more loudly, and plunged downwards. The slide continued for a few metres, before slewing wildly to the side, then going up. "WHEE!" he decided when the tunnel began to spin around in a corkscrew motion, and then- "MOTHER!" when it appeared to end completely in front of him.

Fortunately, there was a swimming pool for him to land in. Unfortunately, he bellyflopped.

Hobbes splashed into the pool, too. He emerged, sputtering, onto the poolside area, and shook himself vigorously.

"I thought cats were supposed to like water," Calvin commented. Hobbes groaned.

"We do? Well, I've suddenly gone off it. Imagine that."

They looked around. Calvin was still soaking wet, and flicked a bit of water off his head. They were in a swimming pool. But not just any swimming pool. It was an exact replica of the community swimming pool that had been near their house. Hobbes frowned, puzzled.

"It looks like we have a fan club."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, these rooms all look like places we've been to."

He thought for a moment. The tiger was absolutely right.

"Pawn takes bishop at F5," Rose stated calmly, viewing the board, and weighing up her options. The pawn sprang into life, and viciously smashed the bishop to pieces, tearing it up, sending a billowing cloud of white dust all over the board.

It kicked the shattered marble off to the side, and stood perfectly still again.

Rose's calm facade crumpled like rice paper, and she stared, horrified. It was the first piece that had been taken all game.

Above, 'Grandfather' leaned back. "Well, this makes it interesting, doesn't it?"

To win a game of chess, you had to take the other side's king. And both Jack and Rose were placed as the kings. So, to win the game... they'd have to kill the other.

Jack looked at Rose. "What should we do?"

Grandfather wagged a finger. "Uh-uh. No talking. Just play. Or... zap!"

Jack gulped, and prepared to make his move.

(A/N-

*jumps up and down because the finale has started!*

Right, to anyone who watched the Season Eight Finale- OH MY GOD OSGOOD NO.

That is all.

Can I just say, I actually squealed when I saw that I had hit 50 reviews. It's like, my lifelong dream to get that many. And I managed it in 23 chapters! ^_^

If you enjoyed, please drop a review!

~Kitty)