"Arrgghh!" Turlogh cried out, wincing as he clutched his head. "No, no, I don't want to do this! Please, leave me alone!"
Why, out of all the people in the universe, did he have to be chosen for this task? Why, when it didn't even matter to him one bit whether or not he succeeded in his task, except for the fact that he would rather live than die because of these mind-numbing, skull-cracking headaches? He had nothing to gain here when he barely had anything to lose, except his life.
And from what little he could tell, with the stories that Nyssa and Tegan had told him and having traveled with the Doctor for only a little while, just a little while and already he knew, about half of the known universe held a grudge of some kind against the Doctor. So why pick him, a lost boy at best, a witless foot soldier at worst, to do this monumental task when there were so many other worthier adversaries out there?
Ah, now there was the rub, he had nothing to gain here and no grudge against the Doctor, except for the fact that he was forced to kill the man, the Time Lord. So he was the most unsuspecting villain possible, someone who could slip past the Doctor's defenses and lower his guard to kill him in a moment of weakness. But there had to be some other sort of reason here, why Turlough specifically, though Turlough couldn't figure it out when half of his time was spent dealing with these headaches and the annoying, uncontrollable, monstrous, bird-brain Black Guardian.
Of course, he couldn't call the Black Guardian a bird-brain to his face. And the Doctor wouldn't suspect him of being capable of such a deed when he had taken Turlough under his wing and trusted him well enough, despite not knowing him at all, to become a part of his crew. Why did the Doctor have to be so nice and gullible? Turlough felt guilty about that most of all, although Nyssa and Tegan, at least, had the good sense not to overly trust him, especially Tegan. Tegan, Turlough sort of hated Tegan and she hated him, naturally enough when they had no true reason to trust one another. But now there was his new assignment, which he had just received, and which his mind rebelled against.
"Begging and pleading won't get you anywhere! Play attention to me, you foolish boy." The Black Guardian's voice whispered from the crystal resting on Turlogh's nightstand, causing him to wince again. "You will have only one chance, mark my words, one chance to do this."
"I don't understand this!" Turlough groaned. "Is it not enough that I'm supposed to kill the Doctor for you?" He asked. "Can't I just do that and not harm some poor old innocent woman? She is not that important, is she? Just some foolish old Earthling we'll leave behind in a little while after a short visit?"
"Foolish and innocent she might be, but she still has some hold over the Doctor from the old days, ancient times when he was young." The Black Guardian said. "You must take care of her and dispose of her before she has the chance to influence him again."
"Influence him into doing what?" Turlough asked, curious in spite of himself. What could the Black Guardian fear so much from this helpless human and the witless Doctor?
"Never mind that!" The Black Guardian cried and Turlough nearly screamed. "You won't have to worry about that if you do the job right and take care of the problem. Now do it. Good-bye." The Black Guardian's presence vanished, the shimmering crystal inert again, and Turlough gasped as he collapsed, released from the Black Guardian's stranglehold. He really needed an aspirin or ibuprofen, maybe both at this point. Why couldn't he fight back against the Black Guardian's mind control? There had to be a way of doing that without getting himself killed.
"Turlough?" He heard a knock and a familiar voice at his door. "Are you all right in there? I thought I heard some noise."
"Nothing, Nyssa, it was nothing. Just some rock music on the radio." Turlough managed to say, wondering if there was a radio somewhere in this room or onboard the TARDIS. Could they get any sort of reception in the middle of the time vortex?
"All right, if you say so." Nyssa remarked, though she sounded skeptical. "We are about to materialize. Come on if you want to go. I think Tegan is staying behind." She added, departing soon after.
Tegan is staying behind? He sat up a little straighter at the thought that he wouldn't have to worry about Tegan interfering with his plans, or the Black Guardian's plans, he would have to say. There was just Nyssa to worry about, and then he could handle the Doctor and this other woman they were visiting.
He quickly got up, without managing to fall over, and hurried to brush his teeth, get dressed in the only set of real clothes he had, (stupid school uniform, why didn't he get picked up wearing some other kind of outfit) and get ready to face the day. He had a couple of assassinations to take care of, after all, and even though he was being forced into doing this abhorrent, dishonorable act, he still wanted to look presentable and respectable to his victims. He would be the last thing they ever saw, after all, and he wanted it to look…right, even when it was so horribly wrong.
"Well, I think Turlough is coming, but Tegan isn't feeling very well." Nyssa said as she strode into the console room, facing the Doctor fiddling with the console controls. "She doesn't want to go at all."
"Really? Shame, I was going to show…oh." The Fifth Doctor said, stopping to think for a moment. "I know just why she isn't feeling very well. It sometimes happens, unless you're a Time Lord like me, that you get that feeling just before you are about to encounter yourself or would encounter yourself, as the case may be."
"Like with the Brigadier and the Blinovitch Limitation Effect?" Nyssa asked. "Except it's not an after-effect, but a pre-effect? Like a premonition?"
"Precisely correct, a preventive effort by the time-stream to prevent such an effect from occurring when it might damage the time-stream." The Doctor said, nodding. "It's more than likely that Tegan could encounter herself out there as we have materialized in 2008, in London, the U.K., Earth, and I believe there could be another Tegan somewhere out there, possibly 20 years or so older than her."
"Twenty years?" Nyssa gasped. "But that's…incredible." She remarked. "I've never thought much about meeting someone in the future that I used to know, but you must encounter people like that all the time, don't you?"
"Well, time and the universe itself is pretty big, so the chances of randomly meeting someone else again, unless deliberately so with the right coordinates…" The Doctor hesitated and said, "Well, the chances themselves are very, very slim."
"And the Brigadier was a chance meeting, one of the very few?" Nyssa said and nodded. "Yes, I can see that. You must have very little contact with the people that you once knew. Doesn't that get lonely, Doctor? Never meeting people again, but losing them forever?"
"Yes, it can get a little lonely, but there are so many other people in the universe so that, one way or another, I am never very alone for long." The Doctor sighed. "I am always meeting people, you know, like you, Tegan, and Turlough."
"Turlough…" Nyssa frowned. "Doctor, I'm not sure if something is wrong with Turlough. He does act awfully funny and strange at times. He keeps to himself." She said, as the Doctor stared at her. "Admittedly, he is new to the TARDIS and the whole traveling through time and space. Perhaps he needs some time to adjust to it and some space as well, but still, Tegan feels uneasy about having him around and I must say that it feels odd as well. I can't really explain why, it's not logical at all, just a feeling we have, but something is wrong."
"Perhaps, perhaps not." The Doctor shrugged. "Perhaps we're just not used to him or…well, we'll just have to wait and see what Turlough does."
"Doctor, do you know anything about him that you're not telling us?" Nyssa asked.
"I know nothing more about him other than the fact that he feels lost and alone." The Doctor said. "Perhaps we should make him feel more welcome here and then he might be able to adjust."
Nyssa slowly nodded. "I'll try, Doctor, though it might be very hard if he doesn't respond." She heard footsteps approaching, and Turlough joined them. "Hello." She said.
"Hello." Turlough said, nodding at her, before he asked, "Tegan isn't coming?"
"No, she is staying behind, possibly due to premonition of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, if she might meet her future self." The Doctor told Turlough. "And we don't want a repeat of that Blinovitch Limitation Effect, do we?"
"No, I already had enough trouble keeping the Brigadiers separated." Turlough remarked. "I don't want to go through that mess again with two Tegans." He made a face.
The Doctor laughed. "Right, Tegan can sit this one out. We probably won't be gone for long." He frowned. "Unless we do encounter some trouble…but I doubt it." He said, trying to remain cheerful. "We're just going to a little coffee shop near the turn of the 21st century, it shouldn't be too exciting or eventful, just ordinary, you know."
"What's ordinary anymore?" Nyssa asked herself, staring at the time rotor.
Barbara was sitting in the coffee shop, turning a few pages of a noir book she had picked up at the library, when she heard a voice call out, "Barbara! So good to meet you again!" She paused and looked up at a strange, tall, blond man who appeared to be in his late twenties, dressed in a strange cricketer's outfit with a sprig of celery attached to his lapel. He was accompanied by two other people, a ginger boy in a school uniform and a brown-haired young woman dressed in modest, but fashionable attire. The other two weren't familiar, but the blond man was…
"Doctor, is that you?" Barbara asked, smiling as she closed her noir book. "Which one are you?"
"The Fifth one," He replied, nodding. "I didn't get the chance to speak with you last time I was here. I joined the party rather late then, and it was so hectic and busy, but I was hoping that I might get the chance this time around to really visit."
"I've got plenty of time, especially for you." Barbara smiled before she asked, "Who are your friends?"
"Nyssa and Turlough," The Doctor introduced his companions, "This is Barbara." She shook hands with all of them and hugged the Doctor as Turlough studied her intently, realizing this was his second target. An old, sweet woman, what did the Black Guardian have against her, beside her connection with the Doctor?
"You've met him before?" Nyssa asked, glancing at Barbara. "A previous version of him?" Turlough frowned to himself, wondering what they were going on about.
"I've actually met several different versions of him," Barbara said. "Truthfully, I met the first Doctor many years ago with my future husband and we traveled with him for a year or two before we left him. But more recently, I got roped into an adventure involving all eleven Doctors."
"Eleven Doctors?" Turlough gasped, the concept of which boggled his mind. Two Brigadiers had been a nightmare, for who could not detest the concept of having your worst teacher multiplied? But eleven Doctors…no wonder the Black Guardian had wanted the Doctor destroyed if he did not want all eleven Doctors turning against him. And now Barbara was involved in this mess as well. Poor Barbara, and poor him for having to deal with this mess as well.