A/N - I don't own Doctor Who, but I'd love to write for it. Wouldn't you? Please read and review my story. By the way, hope you like my Christmas present! Please love it and let me know.

New Gallifrey.

A Year later... New Gallifrey...

New Gallifrey was a beautiful planet, located behind a dark matter nebula with a temporal rift running through it. The rift was similar to the Cardiff rift, and it was used by the Time Lords in very much the same way to what the Doctor had used it for since the destruction of Gallifrey and the Eye of Harmony, only the Time lords had erected a crude transduction barrier out of the rift, and used it to protect the planet which was still developing. The city was smaller than the Capitol had been, and more open than the domed citadel of the Time lords but there were already plans to make the city even bigger. The Doctor had insisted that instead of locking themselves away like they had done before inside a mighty glass dome and dig burrows underground like giant rabbits, the Time Lords should walk proudly across the surface of their new home, something the other races did and took for granted. Romana herself enjoyed the feel of fresh air on her skin instead of the scented metallic air the citadel had been filled with, she loved the tranquility of the planet, she enjoyed walking through the forests near the city and smell the fresh air and hear the early morning bird song. It was nothing like the decadence of the Old Gallifrey, where they lived in closed off Cities and machines did all the dirty work. Everyone was doing their part to rebuild the Time Lords.

Romana heaved a deep breath, it wasn't all good news unfortunately. Only 5000 Time Lords out of 7 billion had been found that had survived the war, found in the first month of searching, some of them in watches or in temporal stasis because their chameleon arches had been damaged, or they simply put barriers around their mind which stopped their voices from being heard by races that understandably hated and feared the Time Lords for actions during or before the Time War. When they'd heard their fellows, they'd removed the blocks and journeyed to New Gallifrey. Now they were helping with the rebuilding program.

Some Time Lords held onto the hope that others still existed, but Romana doubted it. The telepathic scanners were now a feature of every TARDIS, and with the work of two temporal rifts acting like an amplifier, would've reactivated every Time Lord no matter where they were. 5000 wasn't a big number compared to 7 billion, but at least it was a start to rebuilding an entire new species. Any number was better than 1, or even 5. The best find had been the carrier TARDIS containing 700 of the 5000 figure, and containing a thousand TARDISes, all in perfect working order. With more and more examples of their science restored to them, the New Time Lords were undertaking the task of restoring their race. It was far from easy; the Doctor especially wanted the Time Lords to work for themselves instead of relying on machines, but even he had to concede that some of the city was better off being built by robots.

Romana's brow furrowed, there'd been no sign of the Priest, or even the Master since the two had left Earth a year ago. Romana hadn't thought much of the Priest, but he was still a Time Lord, a member of - Romana hated to admit it but she had to be rational - an endangered species, and the last thing the Time Lords needed right now was a Time Lord dying. All Time Lords not on New Gallifrey were told to keep their eyes open for any trace of the Master and the Priest, but Romana was more worried about what would happen to the Priest. The Priest was one of those pompous Time Lords that didn't understand the way the universe worked, no matter how many exploratory missions he took. She feared for his life. It didn't take much imagination that the fool would find himself in front of a firing squad of one of the many races who held a grudge against the Time Lords. Even his body in death would be ruined; Time Lord bodies were miracles, with races and empires gunning for one cell. A Time Lord cell on it's own could literally rewind time, stop death. It was a sentient perversion of Chinese medicine, with a humanoid's body parts being used for less than benevolent purposes. Romana curled her lip, the Doctor had told her about the time he'd hidden from the Family of Blood. If there was any proof that a species would use a Time Lord without a thought, it was this one. Romana was certain something was going to happen to the Priest.

Romana met Flavia in the New academy building. It was much more than the old Academy but it was still unfinished, and it wasn't up to full capacity yet due to the lack of students, and Romana smiled when she met the younglings that the Doctor and Drax had picked up when their watches had broken the spell. Flavia had had enough influence to have one thousand two hundred children sent to random planets with their essences removed when Romana had gone missing, taken prisoner by Rassilon. Flavia wished she'd gotten more away, but she had to be realistic. She knew rationally that she couldn't have saved everyone from being killed when Gallifrey had been destroyed. Among the children were Allia's eldest.

Romana couldn't wait when the next generation was born, it would take time but it would be done.

" Have you heard anything about the Priest?" Romana asked her friend.

Flavia was slightly surprised by the question, but she answered, " No, why?"

Romana sighed, " I wish he was here. We need all the help we can get, and he's a Time Lord. His duty's here."

Flavia regarded Romana with some hesitation, " You don't know the Priest that well, do you?"

Romana shook her head, wondering where this was going. Flavia sighed, " The Priest is a traveller that doesn't learn anything new, unlike yourself and other travellers. He's a coward, I saw him crawl under a table during a Dalek assault that lasted 10 minutes. You heard him during the meeting on Earth, he'd advised the council to basically surrender to the Daleks. Negotiate he said, but I call it surrender. He never picked up a weapon and see for himself that surrendering to the Daleks was in itself a death warrant."

Flavia looked down at her small and delicate hands, " Mana, I know you want to think the best of the man, but I know him. You don't. He didn't answer the summons to return home and fight like the others did, we had to drag him into the war when we realised he wasn't there. The council had hoped he would be a great as asset as Time Lords like K'anpo and Pandora. Instead he advised us to do the opposite to what we'd been doing. He told us in that arrogant way of his that we shouldn't be listening to renegades, or scum, as he called us." Flavia gritted her teeth at the name before she carried on.

" That attitude, and his complacency won him many points from the council, only you and Rassilon stopped them from following such a stupid course of action."

Flavia walked away from Romana, leaving the other Time Lady to her thoughts.


The Rani was sitting in her lab, looking over at the artificial wombs where an embryo was bathed in with a temperature controlled fluid mix. Rani had spent her time doing three important tasks at once, 1, Creating new Time Lord embryos using the race banks from her TARDIS, 2, Create new Time Lords from raw Human DNA, and create a larger genetic diversity using the DNA from the Time Lords already alive. Luckily with 5000 people as donations, she'd had a lot of luck.

And lastly 3, creating the new Time Lord races. The Rani knew this one was a lot more difficult than it looked. She'd decided to create, at first, 7 races, but she honestly didn't know how long it would take for them to develop. The Rani knew that with a certain amount of guidance, and their own ingenuity, then they would do great things.

Rani looked at a gold bottle on a nearby shelf, contained inside a forcefield, nothing save a Dalek gun blast would break that field. This contained the pinnacle of her survival research, the genetic code of K'anpo himself. Rani had always been interested in vortex leaping but until she'd gotten her hands on K'anpo's DNA, she'd never had the chance to examine it for herself.

Rani would be lying to herself if she said she hadn't just examined it, no, her scientific curiosity knew no bounds. She'd worked on it, improved on it by a hundred per cent. She planned to give at least 3 of the races she created this miracle of Time Lord bioengineering, and program them to change over the course of their development.

The Rani smiled as she daydreamed the possibilities of the new races she was planning to build. She imaged the Human Time Lords, no different from their ape descended ancestors, aggressive and indomitable. Human aggressiveness, and TIme Lord technology, the thought made her shudder in delight; this was what she lived for.

The addition of Chula and Monan Host, Arcadian and Silurian DNA - the latter because time itself had denied the true potential of the Silurians. Rani thought about mixing a bit of human DNA into that mix, and decided to create a different race with those traits. The results were intriguing, like the implications.

Planets had been found, planets that were suitable for her purpose. But Rani decided to review the plans she had for the new races.

The Human - Time Lord race would be a perfect hybrid of Human and Time Lord. Time Lord knowledge and science mixed with Human aggressiveness, aided by a number of Human time machines and a Time Ring used by one of the children. Rani decided to give them a galaxy all to themselves, if what she thought would happen then it would be necessary. She imagined, rightly enough, that the Human aggressiveness would make them become an interstellar empire.

Rani wasn't concerned about them becoming hostile to their ancestors; she intended to weave a genetic program into their matrix that would stop them from wanting to kill any other being with Time Lord DNA. The Rani merely wanted them to fight with themselves and other races to release their innermost potential, and with Time Lord and alien science and technology at their disposal, then they would become a force to be reckoned with. All the Time Lord races would, like the people on Earth in the 20th and 21st centuries, debate about the existence of alien life. The alien technology inside the arks transporting them would send telepathic messages into the minds of the Time Lord hybrids, telling them to do this and that with alien hardware. It wouldn't be until later that they'd discover the truth of their existence.

The Chula - Time Lord race were the same as Humans, but Rani knew she would make them the same way as she did the Human Time Lords, in fact she decided to give them a galaxy all to themselves as well. Hopefully, the two races would meet, exchange information and join together. Just as hopefully, the two races would achieve a potential not seen in either the original races.

Rani wasn't taking anything out of either the Human or the Time lord and Chula, rather she was putting in and mixing up the differences.

The Monan Host had been closer to the Time Lords in terms of technology, even though they hadn't achieved dimensional transcendence. Their time travel technology had been so good even the Time Lords had stolen pieces of the technology and principles and integrated them into their own time travel designs. That was where devices like the Time ring came from, a stolen idea from the Monan Host. The Time Lords had never been original, even when they researched and pioneered time travel, they'd stolen principles from other races. The Time Ring's original theories had been a lot more...bulky, resembling a chunky thick bracelet rather than the sleek Time lord concept.

Rani smiled as she thought of the possibilities of genetically encoded Time Lord knowledge, combined with the existence of a Monan Host ship, would present in the future.

The Silurians, the Rani had met them during a trip to Earth during their reign, the height of their powers. It was fortunate humans hadn't evolved at that point, otherwise she'd have been killed, or worse. Luckily the Silurian culture had postulated the existence of other worlds, so when she'd arrived in the middle of one of their cities, they'd accepted she was an alien. If she'd materialised her TARDIS on a city in the 20th century, then it would be a different story, but the Silurians had welcomed her, asking her questions. Unfortunately, when Rani nipped forward to the 70s - the third Doctor wasn't the only Time Lord other than the Master to visit Earth during those times - it had been a different story. Rani had witnessed the Silurian plague unleashed in the 70s, and even the Rani had been reviled by the disgusting way the Humans had died. The SIlurians had acted out of fear of the Humans, held back by long held views of the ape pests that had darkened their world during their reign. The Rani wasn't about to let that happen with the Silurian - Time Lord race. The Doctor had been shocked by the idea of mixing this particular race, but then he'd seen the possibilities. The Silurians had once had a highly advanced bio engineered civilisation at the height of their power, that could have some use for the Time Lords.

All Rani had to do was bio program the DNA of both the Silurian - Time Lords and the Human - Time Lords, and stop them going for each others throats.

Whilst they hadn't had time travel technology, the Arcadians had been a remarkable race of engineers, explorers and starship builders with ingenuity matched only by the Humans and the Monan Host. Even the Rani had trouble imagining what a mix between Time Lord and Arcadian would do, but she was patient. She would see what developed. If she was right, the Arcadian - Time Lord race would become a force to be reckoned with. The whole thing was an experiment to the Rani, but it was mostly to prove a point.

Back home, long before the Time War, the Time Lords had believed that they were the height of evolution; technologically wise and so on. It was a sad fact, but it wasn't true. The Time Lords had stopped creating new sciences and technologies and new ideas in culture and philosophical matters, they'd lost their way. The Time Lords had once had a thirst for knowledge, that was why they'd created the TARDISes to begin with; to explore, to seek and answer questions, and to learn. TARDIS crews of over a thousand or so Time Lords would be sent across the whole of time and space, meeting new cultures where the researchers would encounter new ideas and technologies. That was how the Time Lords had made that blunder with the Minyans, resulting in their destruction because the more radical of their people had started to see the Time Lords not as gods, but as invaders. Minyos had been blown to bits after the people drove the Time Lords off. That was what curbed the Time Lords from interfering in other races affairs.

As time had passed, and knowledge was gained over the centuries, the Time Lords lost their desire to learn and simply retracted their learners, and went through a cultural decay. It was sad, really, but it was the truth of the matter.

It was the complacency and the desire to stay still that had been one of the reasons why there had been so many Time Lords leaving Gallifrey and travelling the universe in the first place, but Rani wanted her new creations to explore, there was still so much to be learnt. The Rani wondered if those same races she was creating would be able to unlock more secrets than the Time Lords had ever had, and she was sure they would. That was one of the primary sequences of their genetic programming; to explore. The Rani had seen the decline of the Time Lords, and the last thing she wanted was to see the same thing happen to races she created.

She'd programmed the hybrid races, and the other races, with the basic, but not complete, knowledge of the Time Lords and, in the hybrid races cases, their gene ancestors knowledge in whatever technology, but Rani had had Time Lords returned to them after the war to go out into the universe, go to inhabited worlds both primitive and advanced, and gather their knowledge. She'd genetically program snippets of that collective knowledge, along with the desire to expand on it, to take it into new directions and heights.

The races genetic matrices program was simple, 1, they would explore, their world, the cosmos, the mysteries of the universe. They would ask questions. Rani wasn't going to genetically program the collective knowledge of the Time Lords into their matrices, that would be cheating, but she would program the basics of temporal and vortex engineering and physics. It was Rani's hope that they would use their imagination and do things with the sciences her own people hadn't managed.

Simply, survive. The original Time Lords had become decadent and indolent, Rani wasn't going to let that happen a second time. If one of the races felt their best interests lay in expansion, empire, then Rani wasn't going to stop them. Rani would be lying if she felt that the basic idea of the Master's Time lord empire wasn't attractive, but the Master's version wouldn't be an empire, it would be a slave camp.

The Rani was programming the genetic memories of what happened to the Time Lords, taken from the Doctor, Romana and Susan, and herself. She wanted the races she was creating to learn what to do and what not to do.

The Rani broke off from her thoughts and focused on the list of races she was creating. One race would be a blend of Time Lord, Human, Arcadian, Chula and Monan Host, combining the best of the various races.

The Next race was a strain of Pure Time Lord, but Rani was including the knowledge of the various races and the Time Lords, and adding her own contributions for perfecting the Time lords.

The eighth Time Lord race would be where the leaper gene taken from K'anpo would be found. Rani knew that locking their planet away wouldn't stop them leaving, but she hoped that they would go further until their powers matched, and exceeded, K'anpo's own.

The Rani went to the eight gene containers and checked them over for any impurities, it wouldn't be long now before she launched them.

The next day, the Rani announced in a meeting that the rockets for carrying the new Time Lords were prepared. Flavia listened as the Rani took them through the evolution of the Time Lords new subspecies. Flavia and Rani with Romana had gone over the requisitions for the rockets and what the Time Lord races would need.

" The rockets will have a vortex engine to take them back in time over 2 million years into the past," Rani was saying. " Their genetic programming will include the basics of our knowledge, and in the hybrid races cases, their ancestry knowledge and the basic knowledge of thousands of other worlds in various fields. The rockets will contain holobooks on various sciences, literature, music and so on, but the rockets will also have a dimensional chamber containing a starship, a TARDIS collected from the carrier TARDIS, a Dalek time corridor generator, a Time agents vortex manipulator, an alpha meson cannon, a TARDIS manual, a Monan Host ship, a wormhole generating starship, a Time ring and a Jathaa sunglider." Rani finished, looking at her fellows.

" Pretty big toys," Flavia commented when she heard the list.

Rani nodded, " Yes, but if we want other Time Lord races to appear, then they must work on sciences in all their forms. The TARDIS and the Dalek time corridor generator and the Monan Host ships themselves would advance a race considerably. The rocket will open their cargoes to the new races as they make new discoveries."

" Hold one," Romana interjected, " I must've heard you wrong, it sounded like you were talking about handing out knowledge like a dog given scraps."

Rani took a deep breath, " I want them to advance slowly, learning the basics of civilisation and technology. I'm not making it easy for them. Their genetic conditioning is to make every new generation learn from the older generations and advance on their own. I believe in many philosophies, and one of them includes strength from conflict. I want them to fight amongst themselves, but being careful about it. I want a Time Lord race thats not afraid of getting their hands dirty. One of our races biggest issues, one which meant us losing Gallifrey in the first place, was that we were united by telepathy. What one Time Lord knew, the others knew. The Hybrid races'll have the same, but it's going to develop. I don't want them to create power plants early, I want them to learn like the races of the universe have. As time passes and they master electricity, nuclear fission and fusion, then the cargoes will give out their cargo and holdings, releasing their knowledge slowly as their knowledge increases and helping to shape the societies. The holobooks will provide them with the principles of hyperspace, space flight, astrophysics and the innermost points of temporal theory to add to their own knowledge that they gleaned from before. The technology will be shown to them, and they'll think nothing of it until their race develops that they reach at that point. They'll think it's a gift from the fates. When they've created their first ship, then the sunglider will be opened up and give their science a boost, meaning that they will spend years examining the ship and adding to their knowledge, but they'll also debate about the existence of other worlds, hopefully starting to see that the universe isn't a barren place. Scrapping their older spacecraft, the new Time Lords will then start travelling in space, unlocking the more advanced starship with the hyperdrive and giving them a new toy to play with." The Rani finished in a passionate breath.

" The Time corridor generator will be opened up after the new races start exploring the galaxy around them after a few centuries, providing them with the principles of temporal engineering. I believe that with these principles the new races will start creating their own time travel technology based on that employed by the Daleks. You have to admit," Rani pointed out, " That the Daleks own time technology was in many ways more superior than our own."

Romana and Flavia looked at each other, thinking Rani had a point, but they didn't want to admit it The Daleks had used time corridors created via static electricity, a crude and dangerous form of travel. As time passed, their machines became more and more similar to the Time Lord brand, and the new Time corridors used by the Daleks were more safer and less crude, especially when they were powered by the vortex themselves.

" One question," Flavia asked, " Where did you get your hands on Dalek time corridor generators?" Romana looked at Rani thoughtfully, wondering if she would actually answer. If there was one thing about Rani, it was that she was mysterious, and kept important things to herself.

Rani smirked, remembering full well the time she'd been stuck on a planet with a Dalek ship as a neighbour. " I was on a mission in the war once when I got stranded on a planet with a Dalek ship as a neighbour. The ship had 70 corridor generators, and I took them."

Rani didn't go into details, and the Time Ladies didn't ask. The Rani carried on, " After they've created their form of time travel technology, the wormhole ship and the Monan Host ship'll be released. As you know the Monan Host's technology was so good even we pinched pieces of it for our own use, which is where the Time ring comes in. The TARDIS and the Time ring will be the last additions to this menagerie of technology."

Flavia looked at the Time Lady scientist curiously, " It seems you're making it moderately challenging for them," the Time Lady looked at the asian scientist curiously, " but you're also making it harder for them. Why's that?"

Rani sighed, she'd thought she'd already explained, " Alright, I want our hybrid races to develop on their own, without finding too many answers. I've just explained, they'll make experiments and take their science in new directions. As they do that, then the holobooks'll be released. My plans complicated, I admit that."

Romana and Flavia conferred, and spent the next hour or so debating on the suggestions made by the Rani. They found nothing wrong with her plans, and decided to go for it. The Rani's plan was put into effect a year later when all the pieces had been gathered - the ships, the holobooks and so on. The new population of New Gallifrey watched as the eight huge rockets left the atmosphere, propelled by antigrav engines and went into warp drive to their new locations.

Romana waved at the new children of the Time Lords, " Come on kids, back to class," she smiled when they groaned collectively. " Now!" She barked with all the authority of a former president of the Time Lords.


Altair 9.

The Priest stepped out of his TARDIS, sneering with distaste at the Human inhabitants. The year was 2456, and it was the age of the Commonwealth, a Human controlled interstellar government, with planets and other celestial bodies connected by wormholes. As the Priest stepped away from his, as yet unnoticed, TARDIS, his sneer grew bigger. This was what he was reduced to, was it? A Time Lord travelling the universe to witness primitive lifeforms. Unlike Time Lords who'd left Gallifrey before the war, the Priest wasn't interested in the people. He'd only left his world on a whim, going through the proper channels like a proper Time Lord, and travelling on an exploration mission set down to him by the Time Lords.

The Priest hadn't wanted to go, but as a self respected Time Lord, he did as he was told. Then the Time War. Recalled by the Time Lords but ignoring the summons, believing them to be unimportant, the Priest had travelled, uninterested in the wonders that he'd witnessed. When he'd returned home he found his people in a violent war, and he'd recommended that the Time Lords surrendered. It hadn't been a popular recommendation, either. People, renegade filth like the Rani and that pathetic little mechanic, Drax, and that traitor Flavia, had shot down his proposals, saying the Daleks would wipe them out if they surrendered. But the Priest hadn't believed it. The Priest had never met a Dalek, never knew how vicious they were, how unrelenting...but then the whole situation became academic in the end. Gallifrey was lost, the explosion sending the Priest through time, and making his TARDIS malfunction slightly, making him jump ahead in time. For Time Lords like Drax and the Doctor, the Priest had never been there, but for the Priest, the whole grisly experience had taken only a matter of seconds.

The thought of the Doctor, the infamous Prydonian renegade being the one to destroy his home planet, his president and hero, Rassilon, made the Time Lord's blood boil. If that wasn't bad enough, sensible Time Lords like Lady Romana - the Priest had never liked her reforms, but he'd respected her as a president and leader - would forgive galled him no end. To make matters worse, Romana was in a relationship with the Doctor. The thought of the Doctor made the Time Lord clench his fists, but he shook off his rage, and walked on.

The Priest wondered around, ignoring the primitives around him. He was thinking of what he should do next. Even now, he could feel the presence of other Time Lords, he could hear their questioning of the lack of voices, their sorrow and anger that Gallifrey had been destroyed. If that wasn't the ultimate insult, then the forgiveness of the Doctor was another.

In the Priest's mind, the Doctor was the proof that renegade Time Lords should be hunted down and vaporised. Renegades polluted the Time Lord's purity, infecting it with ideas that were unfit for the most powerful race in creation. It never occurred to the Priest when he thought that particular thought that if the Time Lords had been all powerful then they'd have won the war hands down, but it didn't. The Priest had always believed the propaganda spreaded around by the High Council over the centuries, it was inconceivable for the Priest to accept the fact the Council had been wrong about other races becoming a definite threat.

The Doctor wasn't the only Time Lord the Priest was thinking about with a stroke of contempt, Lady Romana was there as well. Lady Romana needed a proper Time Lord, someone fitting of her own stature, but he knew he himself wasn't going to get that honor. It just didn't seem right, that a Time Lady, a cultured and dignified Time Lady, would allow herself to become polluted by a renegade as notorious as the Doctor, and allow herself to become contaminated. The Priest was aware like other Time Lords that Lady Romana had joined the Doctor on a search for the Key to Time, and it was obvious the renegade scum had done something untowards the Time Lady to turn her away from the path of the Time Lords. The thought of the Doctor, not someone like himself, being dispatched to locate the fabled Key to Time was another slap in the face for the Priest.

Deep down, the Priest was jealous of the Doctor and his accomplishments, but he'd always believed that he would best serve the universe by serving as a Time Lord.

The Priest was so wrapped up in his own thoughts of inadequacy that he didn't notice the feel of another, not until it was too late.

" Another Time Lord? So Doctor, you've done it again. You've once more overshadowed me." A voice, a cold and malevolent voice of a man spoke near the startled Priest, speaking more or less to himself.

The Priest swung round, catching sight of the speaker. As soon as the Priest's dull grey eyes met the malicious brown of the speaker, their minds touched, and the Priest shied away from the other Time Lord.

" You're...your're the Master!" The Priest gasped in fear. The Master smirked, the gleam in his eyes glaring louder and striking the Priest's own with their power.

" Correct, Priest," The Master sneered, scoffing slightly at the name the other Time Lord had chosen for himself. At least Time Lords like the Rani, the Doctor and the Corsair had chosen their names with some style. This one was asking for trouble. " I see my reputation proceeds me," the Master added, noting the fear in the other traveller's eyes.

The Priest caught the derision in the Master's eyes, and ignoring his common sense, said, " Yes, the reputation of a filthy renegade."

The Master had recently left Earth after his latest defeat at the hands of the Doctor, the sound of drums had grown louder in pitch, and this pathetic weakling caused the anger that had built up inside the Master to explode. Moving quickly, the Master grabbed the other Time Lord and pulled him into the side alley where his own TARDIS was. The Master slammed the other Time Lord into the wall, making the Priest cry out in pain. There were very few Humans around so the Master wasn't concerned with discovery.

The Master tightened his grip around the Priest's neck. " Tell me, what is the Doctor planning?"

The Priest was too stunned to reply, and the Master tightened his grip around his victims's throat, " What's the Doctor planning?" He spat out again.

The Priest gasped, " No, don't hurt me. Please..."

" I'll do more than hurt you if you don't tell me what I want to know," The Master snarled, throwing the Priest away when he realised that holding the Time Lord like that was only going to slow him down. He had come to this planet hoping to do some thinking in private, he hadn't expected to meet another Time lord.

The Priest grabbed his throat but before he could speak again, the Master removed from his pocket a squat, oddly shaped gun. He pointed the weapon at a recycling bin next to the Priest's prone body. He pulled the trigger, and the bin shrank. The Priest watched in horror, hearing the metal crunching as the dimensional stabiliser inside the gun reduced some of the components and crushed the others in it's grip. The Priest had heard enough about the Master to know what this was. It was a tissue compression eliminator, one of the Master's most terrifying weapons.

Frozen with terror, the Priest watched as the Master turned the weapon on him. The Master's face was bright with sadistic, homicidal joy. " Tell me what I want to know. I'll spare your life when I'm finished."

The Priest told him everything he knew so far, what the Doctor had done, the Time lord's he could hear, the Rani's plans for Time lord - hybrid races and so on. When the Priest finished he looked at the Master, breathing quietly, hoping that the maniacal Time Lord would overlook him. The Master was deep in thought, and wondered how he could interfere and take control. He knew that he'd need a good method to take control, but it was more than likely that he would be unable too.

The Master looked down at the Priest, staring at the other Time Lord like he'd only just remembered he was there. The Priest cowered away when he saw the look in the Master's eyes.

" You said you would let me live," The Priest protested, tried to reason when the Master lifted the TCE to bear on him.

The Master said nothing, he triggered the device and the Priest cried as his bones cracked and his organs imploded as his body was crushed. There was no regeneration from this sort of damage.

When the Priest's body was crushed, leaving behind a tiny twisted corpse, the Master looked down with contempt as he left the alleyway in the direction where the Priest's TARDIS had materialised.

" I lied."

On New Gallifrey, the Priest's death cry had been heard by everyone. The Doctor held his head, not speaking, not even daring to breath. He looked at Flavia and the Rani, whose faces also showed their reactions to the Priest's death.