CHAPTER 58

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THE OPENING GAMBIT

As Amanda waited in the TARDIS and worried about her mother and the others in Masada, she received the surprise of her life when she suddenly realized that she wasn't alone. A strange woman had just appeared in the Console Room right next to her out of nowhere.

Amanda backed away from her in fear even as she prepared to fight for her life against what she assumed was a vampire. This new arrival immediately held her hands up though as she smiled at her kindly.

"Don't be afraid. My name is Toranga. I'm completely harmless I promise. Well, I am to children anyway," The woman said as she lightly patted Amanda on the head.

Amanda smiled at her and began to instantly relax. There was just something about this woman that put her at ease immediately. It was a positive, gentle quality that seemed to ooze out of her pores. Yet for all of that there was also something off about her. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but something was wrong about her.

"I came here to meet Donna Noble. Is she around?" Toranga asked.

"She went into this place called Masada that's just outside. It's being attacked by hundreds of vampires now, and Donna, my Mum, and the rest of the Bad Wolves are all caught up in the middle of it," Amanda said in an upset voice.

Toranga put her arms around her and held her for a minute to comfort her as she said in a comforting voice, "It'll be okay. I'll go and help them. Your mother will be alright. I promise."

"No offense but what can you possibly do against a whole horde of vampires?" Amanda asked.

Toranga began to smile wickedly and then suddenly left without speaking. She simply teleported away in a burst of energy just like Rose, but yet somehow this burst of energy made Amanda feel warm all over just like she'd been out in the sun too long.

Then she remembered exactly who Toranga was supposed to be and began to laugh. Those vampires would never know what hit them!

Meanwhile back inside of Masada, the Wolves were being attacked left and right by an army of Saturnynians who were determined to have them for their next meal. The fish vampires were being led by the woman who Rose knew as Rosanna Calvierri from the last time that she and the Doctor had met her back in World War II. She couldn't help but wonder how she had returned since the last time Rose had seen her she had been trapped back somewhere in the distant past.

"Hello again, Miss Tyler. I'm going to really enjoy turning you and sending you back to the Doctor as one of my Sisters of the Water," Rosanna said.

"That's Mrs. Doctor to you, and that's never going to happen. Your little rampage is over with. You're not getting Masada. Not this time," Rose said.

"'Not this time'?" Donna asked.

"Did you think I was kidding, Donna? I told you that all of this is a fixed point in time. Luckily for everyone here today though Amanda convinced me to try to change one of those just this once," Rose said.

"Just this once?! You're always trying to change them," Donna said as she gave her an incredulous look.

"Yeah, but I'm not always successful," Rose said thinking about Trenzalore.

"Way to cheer us all up, Flower Girl," Donna said with a sigh.

"Don't worry, Donna. I'm pretty sure that the deaths of the Bad Wolves here today aren't a fixed point in time," Rose said.

"Now you're really making me feel oh so much better, Wolf Lady," Donna said.

Rose smiled despite the seriousness of the situation as she said, "Wolf Lady. I like that. It's definitely better than Flower Girl."

"That's good to know, Flower Girl," Donna said grinning evilly at her.

"You really enjoy annoying people with your cutesy little nicknames, don't you?" Rose asked with a frown.

"Oh, yeah. I've got to get my enjoyment somehow during this fight. It's certainly not fun in any other way," Donna said with a serious look on her face now.

"What are you talking about? This is great!" Ileana said as she suddenly tore through all of the fish vampires around her like they were standing still.

"You would think so," Donna said rolling her eyes at her.

Ileana looked at Rose as she asked, "Hey, do you think I could feed off of these guys? I am getting kind of hungry and that usually doesn't happen unless . . ."

Rose looked at her in surprise as she said, "You know I never even thought about that. I honestly don't know. I suppose they would still count as vampires technically even though they don't drink blood. Why don't you give it a try?"

"Don't mind if I do," Ileana said as she bit one of the fish vampires on the neck.

She drained it dry of its blood in a matter of moments and then let it drop to the floor in a near comatose state. She then moved onto another fish vampire as she said, "Yep, it works alright. I don't think I'll kill them though. They're not undead so it wouldn't feel right."

"Glad to hear it," Rose said.

"That's not going to work for me I'm afraid since I can only feed on Vortex energy. I guess I'll just have to settle for beating them unconscious instead," Alina said.

"It's more fun that way, isn't it?" Emmy asked laughing.

Mina Harker looked at them all as if they were mad as she asked, "In what way is this fun? This is a fight for our very survival."

"They're not trying to make light of that believe me even if it does look that way at first. If we didn't care about saving lives, we wouldn't even be here," Rose said.

Victoria looked at this scene for a moment with a sudden sense of déjà vu. Queen Victoria had once taken Rose and the Doctor to task once for their similarly flippant tone.

She realized now though that they had no more meant any disrespect then than the Bad Wolves did now. This was their way of coping with a difficult and potential deadly situation. If you could laugh at your fears, you could master them after all. It had been over a hundred years since that day, and she had only just now gotten that.

Then again she always had been a bit slow, hadn't she? She had also been a bit slow to realize something else. Something that Ileana's attack had just brought to her mind.

"I know that look," Michelle said to Victoria as she created mirror universe duplicates of the fish vampires to fight them with.

"What look?" Victoria asked.

"You know what look. That's the look that you get when you've just figured something out. So what is it this time, huh?" Michelle asked.

"I may be wrong but I think I've just figured out a way of helping us win this fight. The fish vampires aren't the only ones who can convert people after all," Victoria said.

Michelle became alarmed as she said, "No, don't even think about it! You know you can barely control your wolf form, Victoria. You might start attacking us instead."

"There are too many of them, Michelle. Our only chance is if I can convert them into werewolves by biting them. Then we might have a chance of winning with some of them on our side. I just hope that this works," Victoria said.

"Victoria, wait!" Michelle said with a worried look on her face.

It was already too late though. Victoria had already changed into her wolf form and had begun attacking several fish vampires at once. Even if she just gave each of them a nip, she could still infect several of them at once.

"No!" Rosanna screamed as she saw several of her people already beginning to change.

"It happens much quicker when I turn them since I'm their queen. Pretty soon now there are going to be a lot more of us than there are of you," Victoria said to Rosanna in the guttural voice of the wolf.

"Kill her first. She's the most dangerous one," Rosanna ordered the other Sisters (and Brothers) of the Water.

Even as several of them began surrounding Victoria at once, they were quickly sent hurtling away from her by a massive wind that was conjured up by Lilith with just a few well-placed words. Victoria gave Lilith a nod as she continued to attack more and more of the fish vampires.

"I resent that. I'm much deadlier. I can destroy you with just a few rhymes after all. All I have to do is find your real name. It isn't Rosanna after all. That was just a false name. It's actually something quite different, isn't it? Yes, you're in for quite a fall now that I know that your actual name is . . ." Lilith said.

She was quickly interrupted by a quick punch to the jaw by a large Haemovore that seemingly appeared out of nowhere along with several others of its species. These vampires lived in the ocean and were from a possible apocalyptic future where the human race evolved into vampires thanks to toxic waste.

"Thank you! See if you can keep that annoying little chatterbox's mouth shut if you don't mind," Rosanna said to the Haemovore.

The Haemovores were now flooding into Masada along with the regular more common vampires on Earth who were descended from the Great Vampires now that the stronghold had finally been breached at last and its wards systematically destroyed or removed by the fish vampires. Rose realized to her horror that despite her and the Wolves' interference that everything was still happening just as she had been told by her future kids that it would.

That meant that soon the new leader of all of the vampires on Earth would soon make an appearance as they came to finally claim Masada. She couldn't let that happen. They would slaughter everyone inside of it according to what she had been told.

No one had escaped once that had occurred. No one living that is anyway.

Victoria's wolf side must have sensed how desperate things were getting too as she suddenly began to lose control of herself. She lost all distinction between who was friend or foe as she began attacking her own newly created werewolves now, and Michelle had to knock her out using a mirror duplicate of herself in order to stop her from coming after the Wolves themselves next.

"I'm so sorry, Victoria. I told you not to do it," Michelle said sadly.

"Hello, you must be Rose," an unfamiliar voice said behind Rose as she watched this with a sad look on her face.

Rose turned around to see what she automatically knew was an Auton and yet not an Auton as she said, "Toranga, right?"

"That's me. I see you're having a bit of a vampire problem. I think I can help with that," Toranga said.

"Oh, yes. I'm sure you can. Why don't you introduce yourself to your new team members, Tori?" Rose said.

"Tori?" Toranga asked with a bit of an insulted undertone to her voice.

"Trust me. This lot loves to give people nicknames. You might as well pick that one or they'll give you one that's even worse. They call me Flower Girl after all," Rose said laughing.

The newly renamed Tori shuddered as she said, "I think Tori sounds good in comparison to that. Let me show my new team what I can do then."

"I'll tell you the best way that you can do that and save you a bunch of trouble," Rose said as she whispered in Tori's ear.

Rose had a plan. A plan that she hoped would wind up saving the day after all and still preserve what was to come as a fixed point in time.

Tori nodded after receiving her orders and then walked out right into the middle of the fighting and said in a loud booming voice, "Hey! I'm the newest member of the Bad Wolves, and I've come here to kill every last one of you rotten vampires! If you think that you can stop me, then come and get me!"

"Blimey! You certainly don't believe in subtlety, do you?" Rose asked as she shook her head at her.

She hadn't told her to do that after all, but she couldn't argue with the results that soon followed.

Several vampires began to surround Tori as she smiled and said, "Hello, boys. You're very assertive for the first date, aren't you? I think you'd better stay away from me though or you might just get burned."

Then Tori's Auton hand opened, and she shot several beams of pure concentrated plasma from it at every vampire around her. They all began to turn to dust instantly as soon as the beams hit them.

"Oh, did I forget to mention that I'm a living star living in a specially created Auton body? How careless of me!" Tori said laughing.

"Stop her now before she kills all of us!" Rosanna shouted in what for the first time that day sounded like a tone of fear.

"Oh, it's far too late for that now. I hate to do this because I'm usually not violent, but after all of the destruction that you've caused here today I know that I have to," Tori said as she began to glow with power.

"What's she doing?" Donna asked Rose as Tori began to glow brighter and brighter.

"Everyone get behind me. Now!" Rose shouted.

The Wolves and all of the vampire hunters in Masada gathered together near Rose as the vampires all started to concentrate their attacks on Tori as they now rightfully saw her as the greatest threat there. Rose placed a protective force field around everyone near her as Tori prepared to cut loose.

"Destroy her now before it's too late!" Rosanna said in alarm.

She already knew that it was too late though. She was already making her way out of Masada even as the other vampires prepared to die. She was not dying here today if she could help it.

"Now, Tori! Do it!" Rose said.

Tori looked on sadly as she said, "Burn with me!"

A massive wave of heat generated out from her in all directions that completely incinerated Masada and everyone in it that wasn't protected by Rose's force field. A gigantic mushroom shaped explosion filled up the entire area that could be seen for miles around.

Rose smiled as she saw the timeline reforming itself already. The fixed point in time had been preserved because Masada had been destroyed, but no one had died in that destruction. The fixed point had been its complete destruction not the deaths of everyone in it, and that had left her some leeway. She had found a loophole and had exploited it to the hilt by having Tori destroy everything for her before the vampires could do it first.

"I did it," Rose said with a sigh of relief.

"No, it seems more like she did it to me. She's the star girl we were supposed to get as a new member I assume," Donna said.

"How'd you guess?" Rose asked grinning.

"Mum! Mum!" Amanda screamed in a terrified voice nearby.

"Oh, no! She must think we're all dead," Katherine said in alarm.

"Go show her otherwise," Rose said as she dropped her force field.

Katherine immediately ran to Amanda who stood outside the TARDIS with tears in her eyes. She had been convinced that everyone had been killed when Masada exploded.

As soon as she saw her mother approaching her though she began to smile and then laugh with relief as Katherine picked her up and hugged her tightly. Katherine kissed Amanda's forehead as she said, "Don't worry, sweetie. We're all okay. I'm sorry for scaring you."

"That's fine as long as everyone's alright. What happened?" Amanda asked.

As Katherine explained everything to her, Tori smiled while watching the scene play out before her. She was so glad to have been able to keep her promise. She wasn't particularly fond of having killed so many vampires though. Even if they were trying to kill others and many of them were already dead it still wasn't something that she liked doing. Being violent wasn't in her nature. It repelled her greatly.

"I'm sorry for asking that of you," Rose said as she guessed her feelings from her expression.

"It's alright. It was necessary. I couldn't let that little girl lose her mother after all. I made a promise to her," Tori said.

"I'm still sorry. Despite what you may have heard about disintegrations and all of that I'm not a violent person either, and I don't take death and destruction lightly," Rose said.

Tori nodded as she said, "I know. Why else would you have purposely rewrote a fixed point in time?"

"You knew about that?" Rose asked in surprise.

"I'm a star. I know many secrets about the universe. Or did you Time Lords really think that you were the only ones who knew about the mysteries of time and space?" Tori said smiling at her.

"Hello, Star Girl. I'm Donna and these are the Bad Wolves. Welcome to the group. You've just passed the initiation test. You're not really a Bad Wolf until you blow something up first after all," Donna said laughing.

"Please don't call me that. I think I prefer what Captain Tyler called me earlier. Tori," Tori said.

"Captain Tyler?" Donna asked as she looked at Rose with raised eyebrows.

"Yeah, I was going to tell you about that later," Rose said looking embarrassed.

She really wasn't one for titles after all.

"Oh, I didn't know, Captain. I spoke out of turn then. I'm sorry," Tori said.

"Okay, what's going on here?" Donna asked.

"I was drafted into UNIT. I'm the new commanding officer of this team until Martha's back from maternity leave. I got an honorary title of Captain out of the deal," Rose said.

"Well, Captain Flower Power, I'm glad that you finally got around to telling me. You didn't tell us before because you didn't want to make us feel as if you were ordering us to go into Masada, did you?" Donna asked.

"Yeah," Rose said softly.

Mina looked at them thoughtfully as she said, "I'm sorry. I was wrong about you it seems. You don't take any of this lightly do you?"

"No, I'm always painfully aware of all of the terrible things that could happen at any moment in time. I always try my best to avoid all of them," Rose said.

"Yes, I can see that now. Thank you for saving all of us, Rose. We can always rebuild Masada," Mina said.

"How about this time you make it so that you have defenses against aliens too? Earth is becoming a part of a much larger universe more and more every day now, and the vampires almost used that against you," Rose warned.

"I know and we'll definitely take every type of danger to us into account in the future. I just wish I knew who was behind all of this. Whose idea was it to bring those alien vampires here?" Mina wondered.

Rose wished that she knew the answer to that herself. Her future kids hadn't told her. She knew why they didn't, but she really wished that they had broken the rules just this once.

"I don't know but my team and I are going to find out. They could have killed all of us if not for Tori. I'm not about to let that go lightly," Donna answered her.

"I'm afraid that you'll have to do it without me. I . . . can't be here anymore. What if I had attacked one of you when I snapped earlier?" Victoria asked in a frightened voice.

"No, you can't go just because you changed to your wolf form and lost control. As long as you stay in your human form, you should be just fine," Donna said.

"You don't know that though. I think that maybe I should go to my own people and lead them after all. They can teach me how to control myself better, and I can help keep them out of trouble," Victoria said.

"We are your own people," Donna said forgetting for a moment that she was a Time Lord now.

"Yes, and you always will be, but I need help in controlling my feral side that even you can't provide, Donna. I need to go to the others and learn from them. Maybe once I have complete control over myself I'll be able to come back someday," Victoria said.

"I certainly hope so. Goodbye, Vicky," Donna said as she hugged her.

"Goodbye. Come back to us soon. You wouldn't want me to get bored, would you? Who else am I going to have to talk to about what a tyrant Donna is now?" Michelle joked.

"Oi! Watch it, Mirror Girl!" Donna said smiling.

Ileana refused to say goodbye at first and turned her back on Victoria. Then Victoria walked in front of her and put her arms around her as she said in an apologetic voice, "I will come back, Lana. I promise."

Ileana finally looked at her as she gave her a faint smile and said, "You'd better or I'll hunt you down and drag you back here personally."

Victoria laughed as she said, "Well, we wouldn't want that now would we? I don't think that the werewolves out there would recover from a visit by you. Goodbye, Lana."

"Goodbye," Ileana said in a sad voice.

"Let me take you to the other werewolves the quick way," Rose said.

Rose waved her hand and sent Victoria to the others in an instant. She had already looked up the coordinates earlier. She could see this coming a mile away after Michelle had told her about Victoria wanting to leave earlier.

"I'm sorry to say this, but I think that Stefania and I should leave too. Ever since I've found her, I've felt a need to try to live as normal a life as I possibly could with her to make up for being apart from her for so long. Unfortunately one thing after another just kept delaying that because all of you seemed to need us here. Now though since Vicky's just left I really think that we should take this opportunity to go too. I'm sorry but it just seems to be time," Alina said.

"Everybody's leaving me," Ileana said sadly even though she knew for a while now that this was coming.

"Not everybody. Amanda and I have decided to stay. You don't get rid of us that easily," Katherine said.

Ileana hugged both mother and daughter while Alina smiled. At least she could leave on a happy note then.

"Goodbye, Lina. I'll miss you," Amanda said as she hugged her tightly.

"I'll miss you too. Take care of them all for me, okay? You know how they always get into so much trouble," Alina said grinning.

"I know, I know. I spend all my time just trying to keep them all in one piece," Amanda joked.

"You do a good job of it too. Thank you, Amanda. You believed in me when no one else would. If it wasn't for you, I never would have made it long enough to meet my sister again. Goodbye," Alina said as she kissed the little girl's forehead.

"If you insist on going, I'll just have to give you something to eat at home since you need Vortex energy to survive now and you won't have the TARDIS around anymore. Here," Rose said as she handed Alina a small box.

"What's this?" Alina asked curiously.

"It contains a very tiny part of the Vortex. It should be enough for you to feed off of for years if you use it wisely," Rose said.

"Thanks for everything, Rose. Thank Jenny for me too. If it wasn't for her, I'd probably have wound up as dead as those other vampires that got atomized today. I promise I'll return someday too. Goodbye, everyone," Alina said.

Then Rose sent her and Stefania to the family that had kept Stefania safe for so long. They had already missed her and were more than glad to take her and her newly found sister in with them.

Ileana looked deeply depressed as she said, "If anyone else leaves, just shoot me in the heart with a crossbow and get it over with."

"You silly girl! You can't be killed that way," Michelle said shaking her head at her.

"I know but at least it'll distract me from the pain for a while," Ileana said sadly.

"Don't worry. The rest of us are here to stay, and now we have Tori so it's not a total loss. Maybe they'll come back sometime. Just be glad that we kept Katherine and Amanda," Donna said.

"I am. If they had left too, I'd have gladly let Rose dust me," Ileana said.

"I would have refused too," Rose said firmly.

"You'll see, Lana. Everything will be fine, and I bet those three will be back before you know it," Amanda said as she embraced Ileana.

"I hope so, sweetie," Ileana said as she returned her embrace.

As the Wolves went back to Donna's TARDIS and prepared to leave, Rose said to Mina, "Don't worry about rebuilding. You just worry about adding in new defenses against aliens."

Mina looked at her oddly as she said, "We'll have to rebuild it first before we can do that."

"Apparently Ileana didn't tell you enough about me," Rose said smiling.

"She told me plenty of things, but even I didn't believe half of it. It's just too fantastic to be true even for a partial vampire like me," Mina said.

Rose smiled at the word fantastic as she said, "Watch."

She began to glow with power as Masada quickly reformed and returned to its former glory atom by atom. Within a matter of minutes, it had returned exactly as it was just as if it had never been gone.

Mina looked at Rose with shock while Donna laughed at her as she said, "Yeah, that's the look that most of us have around Flower Girl too. She's always outdoing herself."

"Goodbye, Mina. Maybe we'll see you again sometime," Rose said.

"Goodbye, Rose, Donna. Thank you, all of you," Mina said in a grateful voice as she and the others immediately began to return to the safety of Masada's walls.

"Donna, I think it's time that we find Dorothy and drag her away from Alex for a while. I think he can stand to be without her for a little while, don't you? With three of us gone, we're going to need someone else to fill their shoes. I mean . . . if you agree that is. Sorry, I know it's your team not mine," Rose said as she and Donna walked into the TARDIS last.

Donna smiled while she dematerialized as she said, "That's okay, Rose. You were made the new temporary Martha not me."

"It should have been you though. The only reason it wasn't is because the high muckety mucks like you right where you are as the leader. I'll try to stay out of your hair as much as possible. I promise," Rose said.

"Don't worry about it, Flower Girl. I don't mind being ordered about as long as it's you or Martha. If it had been someone else though, I probably would have bitten their head off," Donna admitted.

"The big shots at UNIT knew that. That's why they drafted me. The rest of them were too afraid of you to dare to fill Martha's shoes," Rose admitted as she giggled.

Donna laughed as she said, "Oh, come on. It's not like I would have killed them or something. I'm not that bad."

The others all looked at her with disbelief as she said, "What?"

Everyone remained silent as Rose said, "Nothing, Donna. Absolutely nothing."

Even Rose Tyler would only push Donna Noble so far.

Meanwhile back on Earth, two pairs of malevolent eyes watched the nearly rebuilt Masada with resentment and anger. They had come so close to striking a major victory for every vampire on the planet only to be foiled at the last minute by some upstart who came out of nowhere.

"I still can't believe it. I'm the only one who survived out of thousands of vampires. They're all gone. I'm just glad that I didn't bring all of my people in there along with me or I would be the last of my kind now," Rosanna said shuddering.

"Now you see what I've had to put up with all of this time. Rose Tyler is always pulling something out of her bag of tricks to defeat me with. Masada should have fallen and taken all of those who hunt you along with it. She found some way to alter time yet again though in order to make sure that didn't happen. She's just like my sister. She was always keeping me from succeeding too in the old days," Alex Wilkes, the husband of Dorothy McShane, said.

"We'll just have to do something about that then, won't we? We can come up with another plan later though. You know that you're going to have to go back soon or Dorothy will get suspicious. They must never suspect what's happening. If we can keep them in the dark about who their true enemy is though, then they won't be able to defeat us in the long run. They'll never even see an attack by you coming until it's far too late to stop it. They would never expect an attack by one of their own after all," Rosanna said grinning maliciously.

"That's exactly why I chose this body, my dear. It's always best to strike from within if you want to cut out the heart of someone after all. You're right. I need to return now before the little brat becomes suspicious. Goodbye for now," Alex said as he kissed Rosanna.

Rosanna smiled at him and then waved goodbye as Alex returned her to the rest of her people. Once this was over with he planned on taking her as his new mate instead of that loathsome girl. He had always hated her after all long before he had taken over the body of her husband, and it disgusted him just having to be near her much less kissing her.

He hadn't done that since he had taken this body, and he never would. He had no love or affection at all in what passed for his black heart for her.

Soon she would pay for her part in his previous defeats just as Rose Tyler and the Doctor would. He would then lead all of the vampires of this world to complete and total domination over this planet. One way or another the future Earth that was ruled by vampires would come to pass, and humanity would be made completely extinct.

Fenric would make sure of it.

Next: As Rose, Donna, and the others arrive to pick up Dorothy, she tells them all about Alex's weird behavior lately. They won't be able to help but wonder what's going on with him. Will they even be able to guess what the real truth is or will Fenric continue to be able to plot against them in secret? Also there will be more on what's happening between Joan Redfern and John Smith and a new member joins the team that will be very familiar to you as the Bad Wolves keep things in the family.