CHAPTER 37
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"She's coming. I can feel it. This time it will be her doom. I've helped you a lot so far, but you haven't seen anything yet. Soon, I will make sure of your victory by killing Persephone. Once she falls, you'll be able to crush the Zygons with impunity," the Monk said to the Racnoss around him on the command ship of the new Racnoss fleet.
"We are, of course, grateful to you for your help in our recent victories; but we will not be used as your puppets to settle your old scores," the new Empress of the Racnoss said. She had taken the old one's place because this Racnoss colony had no idea what had happened to her.
"Believe me, she's going to soon be your enemy too. She's been asked to come here and prevent you from going any further by the son of the Zygons' leader. You'll want me on your side when she gets here," the Monk said.
"We will crush her like we have all of our other enemies, Time Lord. She will be no match for us," The Empress said.
"This one is far more than an ordinary Time Lord. She's much more dangerous than that. She is a legend among my people, Empress. She is the one known as The Other," The Monk said.
The Empress spat at that name and cursed as she said, "Sekhmet! She is the ancient enemy of the Racnoss. She helped to almost destroy us back in the Dark Times."
"Yes, so you see just how dangerous that she is now, don't you? You cannot let her live. You must wipe her out as quickly as possible!" the Monk warned her.
"The legends of our people describe her as being immortal. How do we kill an immortal being?" the Empress asked.
"I've already tried to kill her and failed. She is just as immortal as your legends say that she is. So while it's true that you can't kill her, you can trap her somewhere forever and keep her from ever bothering you again. That's what I'm going to help you to do," the Monk said ominously.
"What do you have in mind?" The Empress asked.
"You just do what you usually do and leave that to me. Trust me, Empress, I have something very good planned for our Miss Lily. She'll rue the day that she ever crossed paths with me!" the Monk said with pure joy in his voice at the thought of getting rid of Lily once and for all.
The Empress nodded at this and smiled back at him. She would greatly enjoy being the one to go down in history as having helped to kill the mighty Sekhmet. What an honor that would be!
The Racnoss then started to attack the Zygon colony world of Skarix. They blasted the surface of the world and started to reduce the buildings to rubble. Then the real destruction began as the Racnoss transmatted themselves down to the surface, and they began to web up and/or eat every Zygon that they came across.
Countless Zygons fell to the teeth and sharp claws of the fearsome Racnoss on this world just as they had on several others. There were countless screams and cries for help that did no good. The only answers that they received were from Zygon ships that arrived and were soon blown to atoms by the superior skills of the Racnoss.
It seemed that this world was destined to fall just like all of the other ones had before them. The Zygon civilians on this planet cried out in fear just like their predecessors had on all of the colony worlds before them and just like them no help ever came for them.
At least not at first, it didn't. Then just when it seemed as if the unfortunate inhabitants of this world had run out of places to hide or to retreat to, help arrived for them at long last. Lily's TARDIS materialized in the middle of the worst concentrations of the Racnoss, and Lily came out glowing with regenerative energy.
She released a massive burst of energy from herself in a huge concentric wave and knocked dozens of the Racnoss out with one attack. The Racnoss backed away from her in fear, not knowing that it would take her time to build all of her energy back up before she could attack them again.
In order to give Lily time to recharge, her friends and family came out and started to attack the Racnoss in her place. Lily had given them all stasers, and they used them on their stun settings to help them cut down several of the Racnoss at once all around them. Robin started to shoot special explosive arrows at them that Lily had made for him that even pierced through the Racnoss' tough hides and sent them running in pain and terror.
Ivy pulled out a sword that she had picked up from the Sycorax and started using it to hack and slash her way through the Racnoss surrounding her. She had trained under the finest sword masters in the universe, and now she was a deadly force of nature once she had a sword in her hand. Very few people could best her in a straight out sword fight. She quickly began hacking off Racnoss legs left and right, much to Lily's dismay.
Lily just shook her head at her. Cleo/Ivy had always had a certain amount of blood thirst come upon her once she was on the battlefield in the past, and now it was starting to show itself again here at last.
It seemed that the battle was almost finished as several wounded and frightened Racnoss ran for their lives in terror from Lily's group of fighters. The surviving Zygons began to cheer as the Racnoss retreated and headed for their ships.
It was then that the Monk appeared and held out a portable device in his hand that he quickly aimed at several of the cheering Zygons. They all vanished in the blink of an eye.
The Zygons began to run and hide once again as now the Racnoss started to cheer. They could sense that the battle was about to swing back in their direction again thanks to their new ally.
"What did you do to them?" Lily demanded of the Monk.
"I used this osmic projector to send them backwards in time. It's quite primitive and based on Sontaran technology, but it'll do the job quite well regardless. Those Zygons are never coming back. I've sent them back to a random time and place in the past. They could literally be anywhere and anytime. Now I'm about to do the same thing to you, Persephone. It doesn't matter if you're immortal or not if I trap you in the far future. Say in the time of the Toclafane? You'll never be able to find your way back here to be able to stop me from there, and you'll finally be able to see if you can survive the destruction of the universe itself. I'm betting that even you won't last long there," the Monk said with a harsh laugh.
"Why do you want to kill me so badly, Mortimus?" Lily asked him.
"You know why! You reported my experiments with alternate timelines and divergent histories to the High Council and got my time travel privileges revoked for decades because of them. I only finally gained myself the right to use a TARDIS again when I ran across that meddlesome Doctor, and he sabotaged it the second time that we met so badly that I was stranded in a TARDIS that I couldn't control for decades more! I only arrived back on Gallifrey again by accident. You started a chain of events that robbed me of a great chunk of my life and gave me a bad reputation throughout the universe. It's only right that I take your life and ruin it in return," the Monk said with his voice full of hate and venom.
"You were ruining peoples' lives yourself by tampering with the time streams for your own personal amusement. If I had allowed you to continue, you would have eventually wound up wiping out entire civilizations and planets with your callous and cruel experiments with time," Lily defended herself.
"You could never understand the greater good that could eventually come about from my experiments with time. All of the knowledge that we could gain would benefit Gallifrey and the Time Lords tremendously in the long run. Who cares if a few lesser beings have to fall by the wayside to gain that knowledge? Such is the way of the universe," the Monk rationalized.
He pointed his osmic projector at Lily and said, "Now, my dear, say good bye to your little friends here. This is the last time that any of them will ever see you again!"
Just as the Monk fired the projector at Lily, two things happened. In the blink of an eye, Ivy fired a staser at full power at the projector hitting it just as it fired, and Robin dove in front of Lily without thinking and pushed her to the ground and to safety before the beam could hit her.
The beam hit Robin instead, and he disappeared to some other time and place just as the osmic projector exploded and severely injured the Monk in the process! The Monk fell to the ground in an instant coma, and the Racnoss scattered and ran to their ships in terror. They fled the Zygon colony world and temporarily retreated from it.
Lily stayed frozen on the ground where she had fallen with her eyes never leaving the spot where Robin had vanished just moments ago. She had gone into shock and was just lying there, not even blinking, as she continued to stare blankly ahead into space.
"Mum?" Ron said as he waved his hand in front of her eyes. There was no reaction from her, and Ron knew that something was seriously wrong with her now.
"The Racnoss have only temporarily been defeated. They'll return soon to try and take this world again. We have to come up with a permanent plan to deal with them this time when they return. We will not let Robin's sacrifice be in vain!" Allison said with fury in her voice.
The others looked at her in surprise as it became clear that she was assuming Lily's place at the head of the group. Allison looked at them with slight hesitation now as she said, "I'm sorry if I'm stepping on anyone's toes. I just want to help these people."
"It's fine, Allison. You sounded like a natural leader there for a minute. Who knows maybe you'll make a great one someday?" Ivy said encouragingly.
"I think that she would make a great leader. I wouldn't doubt if that very thing winds up happening one day," Romana said.
She knew full well of course that Allison would become an important world leader someday as long as events proceeded as they should. She wasn't going to tell her that though and risk altering the future.
Holly put her arms around Lily and embraced her. She kept trying to talk to her, but she wouldn't respond to her at all. It took every ounce of her self-control to keep herself from breaking down at the sight of her friend in such a state. She kissed the top of her head and whispered to her, "It'll be alright. You'll see. He'll come back to you one day. He's not lost. I don't know how I know this but I do."
Skaren looked at the woman that he still couldn't admit that he loved and her friend in such pain and felt great guilt. All of this was his fault. He never should have asked Lily to come here! Robin would still be here, and Lily's mind would still be intact if he hadn't.
Isabella looked at Lily with true despair in her heart for the first time since she had met her. Lily didn't have a plan. There was no hope if even Lily was in despair. She began to shake all over, and Ron held her tightly and did his best to comfort her.
"We'll get him back. I don't know how, but we'll do it! I promise you all that," Allison said as she started sounding like a leader rallying the troops.
Meanwhile back in the distant past and not in the distant future thanks to Ivy's blast reversing the direction of the osmic projector, Robin appeared in front of a young woman covered head to foot in battle armor on a great battlefield in the middle of nowhere. The woman looked him up and down and said, "Who in the world are you? Just where did you come from?"
Something told Robin not to tell her his real name as he said, "My name is John. John Little. I was brought here by some kind of time travel device that was used on me by a renegade Time Lord. It's trapped me here, wherever here is."
"Time Lord? I've never heard of them. They must have highly advanced technology indeed to be able to time travel. We're still working on finding a source of energy powerful enough to power our own time travel experiments. We haven't done it yet, but some of us are working on finding a way to fix that soon. I'm sorry that you've been trapped here in a time and place that's not your own. You know I shouldn't believe your story but I do because I saw you pop up out of nowhere with my own eyes, and it's pretty obvious from the pain on your face that you're already missing someone who you left behind from wherever you came from. This is the planet Gallifrey by the way, and you're arrived right in the aftermath of a terrible battle between my people and some invaders called the Great Vampires. They actually tried to take this world, but we pushed them back," the woman said proudly.
Robin stared at the woman as he started to feel that something was very familiar about her. It was the way that she moved and looked at him. She reminded him of someone that he had met before, but he didn't know who.
"Are you okay?" the woman asked him with worry on her face.
"Yes, I just have an odd feeling that I know you from somewhere but that couldn't possibly be," Robin said.
"I'm sure that we've never met before, John Little. I'd remember someone as handsome as you," the woman flirted with him.
Robin knew then. It was her! It was Lily, the Lily from the past! He had been sent back to her somehow. He was still with his lady, but the wrong version of her.
"My name's Sekhmet by the way. It's very nice to meet you, John," the future Lily said with a warm smile.
"It's nice to meet you too," Robin said, still in shock.
This was Lily before Rassilon had turned her into a hardened warrior apparently and messed around with her mind. This was her as she was originally before all of the horrors of her life. She wasn't even immortal yet he realized. He smiled to himself as he realized just how young and innocent Lily was here and now. He swore to himself that he would stay by her past self's side and protect her as best as he could until he could get back to the proper her in the proper time and place. He would get back. He swore that to himself and to her in the distant future. One day he would come back!
Next: Allison takes over the team as they must work together to stop the Racnoss from slaughtering the Zygons. Meanwhile, Robin and Sekhmet get swept right up into the horrors of the war with the vampires as Robin tries desperately to find his way back home.