„Arcadia is down, we have to leave. Now!" the Guardian all but screamed at his charge, the Oracle. All around them, the great Library of their beloved city shook and crumbled down under the attack of the Darleks.
But the Oracle seemed to be unfazed and unnervingly calm in the eye of their dooming extinction. Maybe because his head was crammed full of all there was to know in the universe,in Time and Space, and by miracle upon miracle, he had not gone insanely mad. Not yet anyway.
"I told them this would happen," he said, absently dusting off one sleeve of his Timelordtunic.
"Yes, and they didn't listen. You told me before, remember?" the Guardian replied, worried and stressed about their current situation. He grabbed the sleeve of his friends tunic, urging him to move along with him, out of the Library. They had to find a transportation off-planet, to somewhere save,if such a place still existed. If by miracle anyone of his kind would survive this day, they would never forgive him for not saving the Oracle, beside the fact that he himself would never forgive himself, for letting his best friend die.
While they were on their way, the Guardian briefly considered to go looking for a Tardis. He had no doubt about it that the Oracle could fly one, if need be, but these special ships had a reputation of having a mind of their own, sometimes at the worst timing. And it currently wouldn't do them any good if they found one and it decided it wouldn't want to fly with them.
When they turned a corner to enter one of Arcardias spaceports, the Oracle stopped so abruptly, that the Guardian nearly fell backwards from the unexpected pull.
"What?!", he huffed irritated at his friend.
"We can't go in there," the Oracle stated simply, as if it was the most obvious thing in the whole universe.
The Guardian just wanted to throw back an angry reply, when they heard the battle-cry from their enemy from within the spaceport.
"Exterminate, exterminate!"
Cold dread gripped the Guardian as he tried to decide where to go. There weren't many options left and they got fewer by the minute.
"Don't worry, there's still a way out," his friends irritating calmness finally made the Guardian blow up.
"Don't worry?!" he screamed angrily. " I'm sorry, but if you don't stop speaking in riddles, I'm afraid we're going to die! And that very soon!"
In this exact moment a Tardis suddenly materialized next to them in the walkway.
The Oracle arched up an eyebrow as if to say: I told you so, and the Guardian had to suppress the urge to punch his friend in the face.
The door opened and a female Timelord stuck her head out, waving them in.
"Come on,time to leave. We're in a hurry."
"Who are you and how did you find us?" the Guardian asked, puzzled by their sudden rescue, when they entered the Tardis.
"I'm the Phoenix," the woman at the door answered and than pointed at another female Timelord at the control panels. "And this is my friend the Traveler."
"She pestered me to land here," the Traveler replied to the second part of the question, while starting the spaceship again and vanishing from the walkway. "said it was important"
"The Oracle is important," the Phoenix tried to defend herself. "and he said to come here in case a day like today was ever about to happen, the last time I official was allowed to visit him."
The Guardian looked disbelievingly at his friend.
"You knew all along we were going to be saved? Why didn't you tell me?"
The Oracle just shrugged his shoulders, while walking up to the control panels and studying them curiously.
"You're not coming out very much, are you?" the Traveler asked him casually. She, like every other Galifrayan, knew the stories about the Oracle and although she disliked how he was treated by the High Council, she also thought he didn't want her pity.
"No," the Oracle replied absentmindedly, seemingly deep in thought.
"He does that a lot. Answering like that, I mean," the Guardian apologized on his friends behalf.
The Phoenix was about to respond, when the Tardis, all of a sudden, dropped out of the time vortex and rematerialized somewhere in space, refusing to travel on.
"What the hell happened?" the Phoenix wanted to know. Her friend studied the readings on her consoles.
"She says there's something dangerous inside here with us." she stated, puzzled by the answer of her spaceship.
"Oh, she's a very clever Tardis, this one," the Oracle remarked out of the blue.
The other three turned to look at him bewildered. The Oracle still stood next to the control panels, but now he held a pulsating orb in his right hand.
"Releasing the power of the rebirth orb while in the time vortex, would have caused an explosion that would have killed us before the essence of the orb could have taken effect."
"Are you insane? There's no telling how many people this orb is going to effect once its open" the Traveler exclaimed, while the Guardian tried to get closer to his friend and the Phoenix tried it from an other angle.
"Why did you steal it out of the time vault?" she asked tense.
The Oracle turned the orb in his hand.
"Do you think, with a chance like this to escape, I would willingly go back into their prison for me, to be poked and prodded and asked all this stupid, useless questions?"
"Please don't do it," the Guardian begged his friend. "There has to be another way."
The Oracle sadly shook his head.
"You all know our kind well enough to know they'll never change. I'm so sorry you all got involved, believe me I really am, but this is going to happen, right here, right now."
Then he let the orb fall.
A flash, blinding light filled the Tardis who screeched loudly in dismay and all four of them were erased from their current existence to be reborn into a new one.