CHAPTER 25

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This story takes place before the recent events in War of the Guardians involving Rose.

The Spider Queen began to instantly attack the minds of all of the Bad Wolves with her mental powers. She invaded each of their minds in an attempt to enslave them.

"You will yield to me. You will all be my servants!" the Queen said.

"Not likely, Bug Gal!" called the voice of Donna from the doorway of Kara's house.

She stood there holding the psychic disruptor that she and K'anpo had finally finished. She turned it on immediately, and it started to attack the Spider Queen right away. She screamed as her mental powers started being immediately cancelled out. She was also finding it harder and harder to concentrate and to think as the disruptor threatened to undo the advanced intelligence that she had gained from her lifelong exposure to the crystals of Metabelis Three.

"No! No! No!" the Queen screamed in frustration.

"I'm afraid that your time has come, Queen. Your reach has exceeded your grasp. The Earth is not yours to rule. You have sealed your own fate by attempting to do so," K'anpo said as he came up behind Donna.

"I . . . will . . . not . . . be . . . stopped!" the Queen shouted.

She began to pour all of her willpower into an immense mental attack against Donna. She was trying to invade her mind.

"Switch off the device. You will obey," the Queen ordered.

"I don't think so. Give it up, Queenie!" Donna said as she put up a brave front.

On the inside though, her mind was feeling like it was about to collapse at any minute. It was taking all of her willpower not to give in and switch off the device.

"Your will is strong but not strong enough. You are no match for me, Two Leg," the Queen said in a triumphant voice.

Donna started to give in, and her hand started to reach for the controls to turn the device off when K'anpo grabbed it from her. He held it out in front of him as he challenged, "Try that with me, and see how far you get. You won't be able to get into my mind. It's too powerful for you."

"I don't need to. I already have control of the woman," the Queen said as Donna started to move threateningly toward K'anpo in an attempt to grab the disruptor.

"Let her go!" Dorothy commanded as she started to attack the Queen now with her Vortex powers.

Ileana and Katherine began to punch the Queen with all of their considerable strength in an attempt to cause her enough pain to break her hold on Donna while Victoria started to bite and claw at the spider. Abraham stabbed the spider in the abdomen with a sword and caused her to grab him in one of her legs and to start to wrap him up in her webbing.

"Oh, no you don't. No one gets to push him around but me," Ileana said.

She rushed forward and broke the webbing with her bare hands, freeing her husband from it. He quickly stabbed the Queen in the abdomen again with his sword.

"You will not kill me. I will not fall to an inferior species," the Queen said obstinately.

She began to pour webbing throughout the entire area in an attempt to ensnare them in it. She was definitely not going down without a fight.

As the Queen fought physically with the others, Donna was grappling with K'anpo as she tried to grab the disruptor away from him. K'anpo was easily a match for her though because he was well versed in Venusian Aikido. He used these kinds of defensive tactics only as he had no wish to do any real harm to Donna.

He threw her over his shoulder and against a wall as he said, "I'm sorry for this, Donna. I can't let you turn this device off."

Do whatever you have to, Wise Man. I'm not exactly in the driver's seat right now! Donna said in his mind.

You have to try and fight back now while she's wounded and distracted. Between the device and the pounding that she's getting from the others, I don't think that the Queen can last much longer! K'anpo thought back to Donna.

Donna concentrated and was able to make herself stop moving as she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She was not going to let yet another giant spider lady push her around. This time she was going to fight back.

"You will do as I say and turn off the device," the Queen commanded her.

"I don't think so. I'm tired of your being in my head. It's time for me to permanently evict you from the premises," Donna said.

She completely overthrew the Queen's control then and breathed a sigh of relief. She knew now that the Queen's mind was weakening at last.

Dorothy had decided that she had had enough of messing around with the giant spider and finally moved to finish her off. She wasn't sure how the others would react to this display of her power, but she knew that now was the time to strike. She held out her hand towards the Queen, and then an enormous explosion went off as the air around the arachnid's head exploded!

The Queen screamed in agony as the air around her head exploded again. She pitched forward and finally fell to the ground unconscious at long last.

"Good work, Dorothy. I love your style already," Donna said with a big smile.

"You're not even a little bit freaked out?" Dorothy asked.

"Are you kidding me? I've traveled with the Doctor. After that, nothing strikes me as strange. The Doctor is strange enough all by himself. Pile on all of the monsters on top of that, and then nothing can make you freak out anymore," Donna said with a laugh.

"Donna, Alina's up to something!" Michelle suddenly screamed.

She could see Glitz's spider leave his back and attach itself to one of the Shadow Cheetahs. Then Alina was running toward the newly controlled Shadow Cheetah. Michelle knew that the vampire was trying to make her escape.

"I'm making a hole into the mirror verse now. Aim the disruptor towards it," Michelle said.

K'anpo aimed the device towards the small glowing portal that opened up, and Michelle could see it immediately going to work as all of the spiders dropped off of the backs of the people there. She then started moving all of the people out and back to Earth immediately before the Shadow Cheetahs could attack them.

It was already too late though. She had seen Alina reach the mind controlled Cheetah before its spider could drop off, and the two of them teleported away. She knew that Alina had gone to the Planet of the Cheetah People. She had escaped at last.

"She's gone, Donna. She moved too quickly. She gained control of one of the spiders and used it to command a Cheetah to take her out of there," Michelle said with her head hung down in shame.

"It's okay. I know that it isn't your fault. You did the best you could," Donna said in a soothing voice.

"That's not good enough. I should have known that she might try something like that. It didn't seem like that she had gotten control of anything though. She just kept fighting the whole time that I was watching her. She tricked me," Michelle said depressed.

"Don't worry about it. The other kitties said that they didn't want the Shadow Kitties there anymore. As soon as this one shows up, they'll attack it and her too. She just signed her own death warrant. They'll make short work of her," Donna said confidently.

"Alina's smart though and tough. I don't think that she'll go down so easily," Michelle said.

"Even if she doesn't, we'll be ready for her if she ever tries to come back. What's really bothering you, Michelle? I don't think it's just that she escaped," Donna asked.

"I failed. I thought I could change her, and I failed. I should have just let you stake her. Now she'll do something to someone else, and it will all be my fault," Michelle said in a pained voice.

Donna put a comforting arm around her as she continued to worry about what Alina might do now. Donna had no easy answers for her about what might happen next. She wished that she did.

The people of Pease Pottage at least didn't have to worry at all anymore. They were finally free from the control of the spiders at last and most of them had no memories at all of the incident. Those that did were quickly convinced by the others that it had all been their imagination.

All of them believed this except for Anna and Kara that is. They still had plenty of evidence including Kara's busted up house to convince them otherwise. Both of them were just glad that they had survived this nightmare alive and in one piece.

"Humans! It never ceases to amaze me how gullible they are," K'anpo said as he observed this unconscious cover up of the truth in action.

"Oi! I resent that remark, Wise Man. Not all humans are that bad you know. Some of us are pretty bright given the opportunity," Donna said with a smile.

"You still think of yourself as human then?" K'anpo asked curiously.

"Yeah and I always will. I don't want to ever lose that part of myself," Donna said with determination.

"Good for you," K'anpo said.

"Wait a minute. I thought that you were just downing us humans just a few seconds ago," Donna asked confused.

"I suppose I was, but I really do like humanity. I just get disappointed when they don't live up to their potential that's all. Humanity could be so much more if they would just allow themselves to step into a wider world. They shouldn't let their fear of the unknown keep them from learning about it. Besides that, some of my best friends are humans," K'anpo said.

"Talking about me again I see," Mel said as she emerged with the others from the bedroom.

"I was only saying good things," K'anpo said.

"You'd better be," Mel said as she gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder.

Glitz finally woke up then from the effects of the spider's control and started screaming. He remembered what had been happening to him, and he wanted to leave right now.

"This is not what I signed up for. I never asked to be possessed by an overgrown bug and to spend the next couple of hours trapped in some weirdo place with a bunch of lunatics for company. I want to go home," Glitz said.

"Home?" Dorothy asked hopefully.

"Ace, is that you?" Glitz said with a wide grin.

"That's right. I'm a lot older than the last time you saw me, but it's still me more or less. The name's Dorothy now, by the way," Dorothy said.

"That's a switch. You used to get almost violent when anyone called you that. Yes, home, Dorothy. The Nosferatu II," Glitz said with a fond look on his face.

"Iceworld! You brought Iceworld here?" Dorothy asked in excitement.

Iceworld was a huge ship that had been her home when she was a teenager, and it was where she had first met the Doctor. She had been dropped off there by one of the evil Elder God Fenric's time storms as a part of a plot of his against the Doctor although she hadn't known that at the time.

"Yeah, it's being hidden by a cloaking field and in orbit around this planet as we speak. It's full of Time Lord technology now thanks to K'anpo, and it can even travel through time like the Doctor's ship. Where do you think I've been living since you left to go gallivanting across the universe with the Doctor? I've been there for a long time now with Mel and K'anpo. K'anpo even made me put this special kind of shielding on the whole ship so that he couldn't be found by the Time Lords for some reason. He never did explain why. I always wondered if Mr. Squeaky Clean wasn't as honest as he always made out," Glitz said with an evil grin.

"You hid from them there by installing telepathic shielding all over the ship. It was to keep yourself out of the Time War, wasn't it?" Donna guessed.

"Yes. It may sound cowardly, but I did it because I could see the madness and futility of that war. I knew that it would lead to nothing but mutual destruction of both sides. As it turned out, I was only half right. The Time Lords were destroyed but not the Daleks. I hid from the Doctor even after the war because I felt ashamed that I had not been there at the end. Maybe I could have kept Gallifrey from being destroyed somehow. I'm a man of peace, however, and I didn't believe that the Time Lords were right in breaking our vow of non-interference. Now for some reason, the Time Lords have returned. It's all being attributed to someone named Rose Tyler. That's an odd name for a Time Lady," K'anpo said.

"Where have you been getting all of your information? You seem remarkably well informed for someone that's been in hiding all of these years," Donna asked.

"All sorts of types come to Glitz's ship. Some of them are honest and others not so much. They have all sorts of information about what's going on out in the universe if you know how to ask them," K'anpo said.

"He bribes them. A lot. Also, he likes to drink them under the table," Mel admitted with a grin.

"I find that wine helps loosen their tongues. Alcohol takes much longer to affect me because I'm a Time Lord. I can always stay relatively sober while I get what I want out of them," K'anpo said.

"You're quite a character, aren't you?" Donna said chuckling.

"That he is," Mel said with a fond smile.

"I'll fill in the blank for you as to who Rose is. Her name on Gallifrey was Arkytior," Donna said.

"Susan?" K'anpo asked in surprise.

"No, her grandmother," Donna said grinning.

"How? She was reported dead," K'anpo said in amazement.

"She wasn't. She was living as a human with no memory of her past self," Donna said.

"A human named Rose Tyler. Now I understand. Apparently she has clung to her humanity as much as you do then. I would like to see her again. She was always one of my best students. She often came with the Doctor to see me when they were both young," K'anpo said.

"I believe I can arrange that," Donna said.

K'anpo became very excited and eagerly awaited her arrival as Donna called her and told her to come and meet him. She left out the details of who he was because she wanted to surprise her. She just told her that he was an old friend from Gallifrey.

UNIT, meanwhile, was taking away the still unconscious Metabelis spiders and Queen along with the Shadow Cheetahs that had been in the mirror verse up until now. They would find a place to store them all safely. Michelle had asked Martha to help her clean out the mirror verse once and for all so that nothing like what Alina did could happen again. She didn't want anything else escaping on her watch.

"You'll excuse me and Kara if we want to just get this over with and say goodbye, won't you? I think that I can speak for Kara too when I say I just want to go back to my normal ordinary boring old life. I'll never complain about it again. Thank you for your help though," Anna said to Donna.

"No problem. I'm always glad to tell giant spiders what for. I'm not particularly fond of them since one of them helped break up my wedding," Donna said.

"I don't even want to know," Anna said.

"No, you probably don't. Don't be afraid to call us though if you have any more problems of a weird nature," Donna said.

"I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want to ever have to call you again," Anna said.

Donna just laughed at her. She knew exactly what she meant, and she didn't blame her one bit.

K'anpo, Mel, and Glitz had decided to go back with the Wolves to Donna's TARDIS and wait for Rose to appear. They were all very relieved that this particular case was over with. Or was it?

After all, Alina was still out there loose somewhere in the universe. The Bad Wolves now had to constantly look over their shoulders for her because they never knew when she might strike!

Next: Rose comes to reunite with K'anpo and to catch up on old times. Plus Alina strikes! (You knew it was coming!)