Author's Note: Hey everyone. Sorry about lack of update, yesterday. The hotel has reached complete meltdown. We've had to shut all the rooms down completely. A coworker's drinking problem has gotten completely out of hand, which has led to some serious issues at work. The internet is patchy and barely functional. And I seem to have come down with a mild chest infection or something. So I'm off to the hospital tomorrow to get seen. Hopefully, I'll get some antibiotics so it'll stop hurting every time I breathe.

Enjoy.

Seo tries to go back in time, to when Dawn disappeared from history and 'died'.

But fails.

There's something very powerful happening at the moment when Dawn disappeared from history. Seo has been barred from entering the timestream.

Seo takes out the vengeance demons' crystal. Turns it over in her hands.

"What now?" Seo asks herself. "Use it?"

She grips it, tightly.

Then… determinedly… puts it back in her pocket. Shaking her head.

"No," Seo says. "No wishes."

Better idea — if time's been screwed up, then Seo knows another species who specialize in fixing temporal mess-ups. And Seo, herself, has an in with them… through Jenny!

Seo sets Oliver into motion.

Time to slip through universes, and visit her sister!

"Time to get some help fixing this," Seo says, "from the Time Lords."

Seo arrives on Gallifrey, and immediately runs into Romana. Seo mentions Dawn, and Romana doesn't know who 'Dawn' is or what Seo is talking about — but Romana does seems very shaken and disturbed by Seo's story.

"I'm starting to think..." Romana begins. Then stops herself. "Oh, dear." Grabs Seo's hand and starts running. "Come on!"

They're immediately arrested by a group of black-ops Time Lord troops, whom Romana has never seen. They're bundled off, and the Time Lords attempt to seal them in a stasis chamber in the anomaly vault.

Jenny, who's been warned by Braxiatel, comes to save them.

With Braxiatel's help, Jenny manages to save Seo and Romana, and get them out of the anomaly vault. But it isn't easy, and involves a gun battle or two. Brax steps into the middle of it, to help Jenny get Romana out of there.

While crouching under cover, shooting, Romana and Braxiatel start yelling at one another.

"I know you've been helping Rassilon with some secret plan of his," Romana accuses. "This was the plan all along, wasn't it? This… 'aunt' of Seo's, who disappeared… that's all your fault!"

"I think everyone agrees that things didn't turn out quite as we imagined," Brax replies. "Although, if it helps, I did attempt to save her."

"Braxiatel!" Romana shouts.

When Jenny and Seo finally get clear, they find themselves separated from Romana and Braxiatel. It's clear that Braxiatel's finally gone against Rassilon, and the price he's paying is Romana's continued safety.

However, at this point… it's obvious to Seo who really killed Dawn.

Who would have the ability to create a mind-wipe that powerful, to make sure no one remembered that Dawn should exist.

And who would be able to shut Seo out of the time-stream, if she chose to return.

Seo tells Jenny — "It's the Time Lords. They scooped my aunt out of time and killed her."

Jenny can't deny it, after hearing Romana and Braxiatel.

But even though Jenny can't remember Dawn, either, Jenny connects the dots in the story, and starts to figure out what must have happened in the time she can't remember. The time that the Time Lords attempted to erase.

Jenny tells Seo about the Victor, and his cult of Time Lords who believe that they should have blown up the universe and ascended. That was their right.

How else could they hope to destroy the Daleks, forever?

How else could they ensure that this never happened again?

"Thing is, lately," Jenny explains to Seo, "the Victor has gotten even more insane than usual. He learned about something Romana had done in the Axis before the War ever even started, and it spooked him. He started talking about the destruction — not just of this universe, but of every universe. To erase the Daleks from the multiverse!"

"What?!" Seo screams.

Jenny tries to explain it better.

"Romana had been to the Axis, just before the Time War," Jenny says. "She found Daleks, there. Invading the Axis to eliminate and destroy any alternate timeline that featured Gallifrey. By the end of the war… the Axis was abandoned, empty, and forgotten. But the Victor hadn't forgotten. He told his followers… the Daleks had gotten into the Axis, once, and they'd do it, again. The only way to defeat the Daleks… was to crush every alternate timeline into one single timeline. Then blow it up."

So that was what the Victor wanted to do. Tear down the gateways and crunch them into a single mess of a universe, using that power to ascend themselves into the gods of gods.

Seo shudders.

As she realizes why the Time Lords must have taken Dawn.

"I thought the Victor couldn't do anything about it, though," Jenny insisted. "Even if I did once know about another Key — I'd never have told him."

"They know I'm the Key," Seo argues. "They know I'm from the Axis. They could have worked out that there was another one, somewhere."

"Only a handful of people on the High Council knew the full truth about you," Jenny says. "Trust me, no one in the Victor's cult would ever have had enough information to work out..."

Then Jenny realizes.

Why it must have happened.

"Someone told the Victor," said Jenny. "Someone on the High Council."

Seo seethes. "Why?!"

"Why else?" Jenny replies. "To make me look bad."

Jenny can now see perfectly how it would have happened. One of Jenny's political enemies must have told the Victor all about Dawn, and also how to reach through time and grab Dawn out of history. Using a crude version of a time scoop, that had been altered to work across universes.

"If Dawn was with her husband, when she got scooped," said Jenny, "he'd have been killed instantly. The energies used to scoop Dawn and get her to Gallifrey would have been enormous. He never stood a chance."

Jenny is guessing that her political enemies planned to make the Victor nearly collapse every universe. But, at the last moment, the Time Lord High Council would intervene and stop him.

Jenny recalls that there was a raid on the Victor's cult HQ, a short time ago. Perhaps that was a lingering memory that survived past the mind wipe.

"Of course, it would have been easy to blame me for giving the Victor secrets," Jenny went on, "since I was the one of the only people who knew about trans-universal Keys and your aunt Dawn. They'd have thrown me under the bus, so they'd look like heroes while I'd resign from the Council in disgrace. No more Jenny. All the power in their hands. In short… Gallifreyan politics at their most typical." She shrugs. "A simple power play."

Seo is now ready to explode.

"They killed my aunt," Seo shouts, "and covered it up... because of a power play?!"

Jenny is still thinking this all through, though. If it was so thoroughly covered up... something must have gone wrong with her enemies' plans. Something they hadn't counted on. Since Romana was suddenly in the firing line, Jenny can only assume that Brax somehow got in the way. She wonders...

Then, Jenny notices that Seo is reaching into a pocket.

Seo brings out a large crystal, glittering beneath the Gallifreyan suns. She turns it over in her hands, and it glistens with power.

"Seo, what's that?" Jenny asks.

Seo thumbs it, trying to make up her mind. "Dawn shouldn't have died," Seo says. "She died for a stupid reason, on a planet that wasn't her own. It should never have happened — and because of your stupid Gallifreyan politics, no one will ever set it straight!" The stone begins to glow. "But I can."

Jenny suddenly panics. Doesn't know what that crystal does, but knows that Seo is too upset to think this through properly.

"Seo, stop!" Jenny tries. "You don't know what…!"

Seo ignores her.

Grips the crystal, tightly.

"I wish," Seo says, "that Dawn Summers was still alive."

Crash! Boom! Alacazam!

The next thing Seo knows, she's back on Earth. It looks a little different, but perhaps Seo is just in a bad part of town. It's run down, dingy and dark, and most of the people around her are running through the streets, afraid to be out for too long.

Dawn is standing beside her.

Alive.

Looking about 30-something. Which is about right for when she got scooped out of history.

"What am I doing here?" Dawn wants to know, looking around herself and feeling extremely confused. "How did I get...?"

Seo is so relieved, she swoops Dawn into a great big hug. Happy that she's managed to fix everything.

"I saved you," Seo says.

Dawn gets edgy. "You took me out of there at the last minute?"

Seo nods.

Dawn throws her away. "Seo, you've got to get me back to Gallifrey!" she insists. "You don't know what was going on, there! You've got no idea...!"

Then she notices the vengeance demons' crystal in Seo's hand.

And is horrified.

"Oh, Seo," says Dawn. "What have you done?"

That's when D'Hoffryn enters the scene. Followed by a circle of vengeance demons, surrounding Seo and Dawn on all sides.

"What she's done, Dawn Summers-Peters," says D'Hoffryn, "is hand this universe — and several others — over to us. The vengeance demons."

Seo and Dawn look around. And realize, in horror, that this isn't a bad part of town. This is the whole world. The whole universe. This is why the vengeance demons needed to construct such a gigantic crystal in order to grant Seo her wish.

By wishing Dawn alive... Seo has just doomed the universe.