CHAPTER 29
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It was a dark, rainy night. The streets of Chicago were silent for once. A trench coated detective in his lonely office began to wonder if he would ever get a new case after going all day and half the night without any clients showing up at his door. That's when he finally heard a knock on his door at last. He opened the door to find a beautiful blonde on the other side all decked out in a fancy dress and a huge feathered hat.
"Are you Mr. Frobisher, the private detective?" the blonde asked him.
"For you, I'll be anyone you like," He joked.
"It is you, isn't it? The Doctor told me about you. You're the wise cracking shape shifter who used to travel with him," the woman said.
"Who are you?" Frobisher asked her warily.
"My name is Romanadvoratrelundar. You can call me Romana though. Just don't call me Fred," Romana said with a giggle.
"Why would I call you Fred?" Frobisher wondered, confused.
"Sorry. It's a private joke between me and the Doctor. I thought maybe he might have told you about me. I should have known that he didn't though. He never talks about any of his old companions much after they're gone does he?" Romana said sadly.
"Wait a minute. I do remember he said something to me about you once. You're the Time Lady he traveled with, right?" Frobisher asked her.
"That's me. Now that we've established who we both are, why don't we get down to business? I've come here seeking a Time Lord artifact that was lost during the Time War. I have reason to believe that it's here in Chicago somewhere. I want to hire you to help me find it," Romana said.
"What is this artifact?" Frobisher asked her curiously.
"It's a living weapon created by Rassilon in the Dark Times. It was used by the Time Lords to help them in their war against the Great Vampires. That is until it rebelled against them and decided that it wanted to take over Gallifrey instead. It most likely would have destroyed the entire planet if it had not been shut down and rendered dormant by the Other, a legendary Time Lord warrior from the distant past. Once it was stopped, it was shrunken down and sealed up in dwarf star alloy in order to keep it from ever reactivating again. The alloy was then painted black and reshaped into a statue of a howling wolf. It was lost during the Daleks' attack on Gallifrey. It fell through a hole in space and time that was created when a Time Lord weapon blew up nearby it. We've been trying to hunt it down ever since. It must never be accidentally reactivated again. It would destroy this entire planet if it ever came back to life," Romana explained.
"It's never anything simple with you Time Lords is it? It's always the end of the world or the end of the universe, isn't it?" Frobisher said as he rolled his eyes.
"Noticed that, have you? Being a Time Lord is certainly never easy," Romana agreed with a smile.
Her life certainly hadn't been easy lately. She had given up the Presidency after the return of Dracula in favor of Rose who she believed would be a better match for him. Luckily, she had been right. Then she had helped Heldrin win the Presidency after a hard run campaign where she had had to use every resource and connection at her disposal. After all of that turmoil, searching for a lost statue seemed like a piece of cake and a welcome diversion.
She couldn't be more wrong.
The two of them wound up fleeing from gangsters with machine guns while she carried the Daciana, the wolf statue, in her hand. They had found it in the possession of a local crime lord, and they had had to break into his office and steal it. Unfortunately, they had been caught in the act and were sent running for their lives.
The two of them split up, and Romana had taken the statue with her and ran in one direction while Frobisher ran in another. He was running for his life when he heard the unmistakable sound of a TARDIS materializing nearby.
He saw a motley assortment of people come out of the TARDIS and step right in his path. These idiots didn't know what they were getting into! Frobisher thought to himself in a blind panic.
He tried to warn them to get back inside their ship and leave, but it was too late. The gangsters had finally caught up to them and were now holding all of them at gunpoint while they screamed at them about the statue.
Luckily for them, Romana had doubled back to see if Frobisher was alright or not. She was peeking out at them from a nearby alley and saw that they were moments away from possibly being shot down in the street.
Romana pulled a gas grenade out of her purse, which just happened to be bigger on the inside. She lobbed it at the gangsters, and they all passed out in seconds onto the sidewalk. Unfortunately, it affected all of the other humans there as well. Frobisher and another woman, who she immediately recognized as being a new incarnation of Lily, were unaffected by the gas because they were not human.
Romana stepped forward and walked toward Lily as she said, "Sorry that I knocked your friends out as well, but it's the best that I could come up with on short notice."
"They've suffered worse," Lily assured her with a smile.
Romana and Frobisher helped Lily move her companions into her TARDIS, and then Lily dematerialized it and moved them across town to Frobisher's office for safety. The gangsters had never found out who he was so hopefully they wouldn't be able to trail them there.
"Now you get to see what that was all about back there," Romana said as she pulled the Daciana statue from out of her purse to show it to Lily.
Lily went pale as she recognized the statue and said, "The Avatar."
"Yes, so you've heard that old legend about it then. How it almost destroyed Gallifrey once," Romana said.
"It's not just a legend, Romana. It really happened. I should know. I was there," Lily said as she eyed the statue carefully.
"What? That was millions of years ago!" Romana said in disbelief.
"So it was," Lily said with no expression on her face.
Suddenly she gasped in horror as she realized something about the statue in Romana's hands.
"That's a fake, Romana. Whoever you took that from fooled you. It's not the real one," Lily said with fear in her voice.
She was afraid that whoever had it might accidentally release what was inside of it once again. She didn't want to have to go through a fight with that thing again. She had only been able to stop it before by doing something that she had promised that she would never do again.
"Great. We have to go back there then and search for it again," Romana said with a groan.
"We have to find it. The Avatar could destroy all of reality if it's ever released. That's if it's feeling merciful. It might decide to simply rule over you instead. Trust me, you don't want that," Lily said with apprehension.
Next: Lily and the others help Romana break back into the gangster's offices. The shape shifting Frobisher is certainly going to come in handy for this one.