CHAPTER 79

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THE DAY THE ZYGONS CHANGED FOREVER?

Ever since Jenny completely trashed Rassilon once and for all after a long life and death struggle across time and space and wound up fully accepting her new role as the President of Gallifrey (How's that for a quick recap of what happened after I passed out? Quick, concise, and to the point, huh?), I slept for an entire day to recover from the injuries that I received in the fight. Even after that, I still wasn't in too great a shape though. I was very weak and felt like nodding off to sleep again for about a hundred years.

Don't laugh. I actually did do that once. I never felt so rested in all my lives. I had one mother of a crick in my neck for weeks afterwards though.

This time, however, I didn't want to sleep for another hundred years because I had plenty of reasons to stay awake. My new upcoming grandchild was one of them and the people who visited me just after I woke up were yet another one.

I had my TARDIS still parked at the House of Lupinesglen (I kept the old house maintained because I couldn't bear to give it up) on Gallifrey, when I received a knock on the door. I was surprised since I wasn't expecting anyone and then opened the door to discover Holly standing there with a man and a young boy that I'd never seen before.

I immediately raced to embrace Holly as I said, "How are you? I haven't seen you in ages. In fact, you left just as we found Freya so you haven't gotten to know her yet have you? You're going to love her, sweetie. Who is this with you by the way and where's Skaren?"

The man with Holly suddenly looked at her with an anxious, almost embarrassed expression on his face, and she put a comforting hand on his shoulder. That one gesture told me exactly who he must be, but I was going to wait for Holly to tell me more about that in her own time.

Holly laughed as she said, "You're rambling, Lily. You only do that when you're nervous or extremely happy so I'm betting that rumor about your new granddaughter being on the way that I heard about is true."

"Where did you hear that? Who's been gossiping about me behind my back?" I asked with a grin.

"You mean it's not true?" Holly asked.

"Oh, it's true alright but I wanted to be the one to tell you about it. Who blabbed before I got a chance to?" I said.

"Strax. He told me all about it. I wasn't sure if I believed him or not so I just had to come here and see for myself," Holly said.

"That Sontaran always was a horrible old gossip. That's not the only reason that you're here though is it?" I said as I continued to eye the man with her closely.

"No, it's not. How did you know?" Holly said in surprise.

"Well, I know that Skaren's in some sort of trouble if he's stuck in that human body which apparently he is since he hasn't changed back to his true form yet, and he's looking at you anxiously as if he expected you to explain it to me because he's too embarrassed to himself. I still don't know for sure who the child is but I can guess. So you came here to ask for my help for Skaren? I'm sure that whatever he's done to himself I can fix it or one of my friends can," I said.

Holly smiled as she said, "Good old Lily. You've already figured most of it out before I had a chance to say a word. You should be a detective instead of a teacher. Yes, Skaren is stuck in human form, and this wonderful little boy is our new adopted son. Say hello, Richard. This is your Aunt Lily. She's an old friend of mine."

Richard looked at me nervously and said in a shaky voice, "Hello. It's nice to meet you."

"Hello, Richard. You don't have to be nervous around me. I'm very friendly. All children love me. Don't they, Freya?" I asked Freya as she suddenly came into the Console Room.

I received no answer so I turned to see Freya staring at Richard. Then I looked back to see that Richard was staring at her too. I smiled as I realized that they both liked one another when they suddenly turned away with an embarrassed look on each other's faces. I couldn't help but feel happy for Freya especially after the crushed look on her face after she found out about Jack being married.

Holly obviously saw this too because she winked at me as she said, "Richard's going to love you, Lily. I'm sure that he'll love all of your family. Maybe some of them more than others."

Both Richard and Freya turned an even darker shade of red as she said this, and I had to stifle a laugh.

As the two children looked away from each other in embarrassment yet again, I got to the point of Holly and Skaren's visit as I asked, "What stuck you in human form, Skaren?"

"That's just the problem. I don't know. None of us knows," Skaren said.

"Us?" I asked in confusion.

"That's the one part that you haven't guessed yet, but I bet that you would have figured that one out too given enough time. You see it isn't just Skaren that's been stuck in his current form. It's happened to all the Zygons. As far as we can tell, every Zygon throughout the universe has suddenly lost the ability to change their form. They've become stuck as whoever or whatever they were imitating when whatever happened to the Zygons to make them become stuck happened. Now you have a whole planet full of Zygons where half of them no longer look like Zygons. It's creating a lot of problems believe me. It doesn't matter to me because I'd love Skaren no matter what he looked like or I wouldn't have married him. To the other Zygons though, it seems to be a big deal. They act like the stuck Zygons are somehow no longer pure or something. It's ridiculous if you ask me," Holly said.

"Yes, it is but then you were always much more broad minded than most of either of our two species. I'm just glad that my father likes you so much. I was so afraid that he would forbid me to marry you because you're not one of us. If that had happened, I don't know what I would have done. I do know that I never would have left you no matter what it cost me," Skaren said.

"Yes, well I for one am glad that it didn't cost you your dad, Skaren. I know just how close that the two of you are to each other. Luckily for me, he's an old softy just like his son," Holly said as she smiled at him and kissed him even as something that she had said a minute ago still rattled around in my brain.

"Wait a minute! You and Skaren are married now?" I said with a huge grin on my face.

Holly showed off a huge wedding ring to me as she nodded.

"Congratulations. You two have been up to a lot lately. You've gotten married, adopted a son, gained a possible future daughter-in-law, and stumbled into a universal crisis all within a couple of months. That's pretty good even by my standards," I said with a chuckle.

Freya looked at me with a mortified look on her face as she realized exactly who I was talking about, and it only made me laugh harder. I knew that if looks could kill that I would definitely have been regenerating again at that very moment.

"Sorry, sweetie. I just couldn't resist," I said as I put my arm around her.

Then Freya punched me in the stomach as she said with an evil smile, "Sorry, I just couldn't resist."

"I deserve that," I said with a pained expression on my face.

"You certainly do," Freya said as she nodded at me with a smirk on her face.

"She's definitely your sister alright," Holly said as she started laughing at me.

Freya immediately hugged me apologetically though as she said, "I'm sorry."

Freya was too sweet to stay angry at me for long.

"It's okay. I shouldn't have done that," I said to her as I resolved to keep my mouth shut in the future.

One good thing came out of it though because Richard was smiling at Freya. Obviously he was beginning to like her more and more even if the two of them hadn't even had a single conversation yet.

"So no one has come up with a cause for the Zygons being stuck yet? There are no clues whatsoever?" I asked as I changed the subject.

"None at all except for one. Unfortunately Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax have all disappeared after I asked them to look into that for me. Now I have no idea what they found out. That's why I came to you," Holly admitted.

I looked at her in alarm as I said, "They're missing? Why didn't you come to me first? What is this clue anyway?"

"I didn't come to you because you were off saving your home planet apparently . . . again. Not that I'm complaining or anything. It just seems to happen to you a lot that you're always off saving Gallifrey or the Earth from somebody somewhere. It's what you do I know, but it also makes it very hard to get ahold of you a lot of times. So I went to Vastra instead. The one clue that we have as to what happened to the Zygons is that their planet was bathed in some kind of strange ray that came from the Earth in my and Vastra's time just a few days before the Zygons all became stuck. The Zygons narrowed the location of the ray down to somewhere in 19th century London, but they couldn't find it anywhere even after sending several human looking Zygons to investigate. We had all hoped that maybe Vastra could find it where none of us could, but now she's disappeared and hasn't been seen in days. You've got to help find out what's going on, Lily. Otherwise the hatreds being stirred up between the unchanged Zygons and the stuck ones might lead into an all-out civil war between them," Holly pleaded.

"That's stupid. They're all still Zygons no matter what they look like at the moment," Freya said.

"People tend to only focus on appearances instead of what's inside someone though, sweetie. It's sad but true that not everyone looks past the outside of a person like many of us Time Lords do. I guess being able to regenerate gives us a unique perspective on things that most beings just don't have," I said.

"Apparently, it doesn't make you any less violent though. The aches and pains all over my body from fighting with Rassilon are evidence of that. Having been both human and a Time Lord I think I can say with some authority that there isn't any difference between them in the ruthlessness department if Rassilon's anything to go by. In fact, Time Lords might be worse," Allison said with a groan as she came into the room.

"Rassilon is an exception. Most Time Lords are nowhere near as bad as him," I protested.

"Tell that to the rest of the family who he laid out all over the landscape," Allison said.

I couldn't say anything to that because I had been very lucky that none of my family had been seriously hurt during that fight. I was really glad that I had left Isabella and Freya behind back in the TARDIS and that they had the good sense to stay inside of it. I think that the only reason that Isabella did though was because she was worried about Freya following her if she left.

"I didn't realize that it was that bad," Holly said with a surprised look on her face.

"Oh, yeah. He really worked us all over good. I'll be sore for weeks I bet," Allison said.

"Maybe I should find someone else to help," Holly said.

"No, I didn't mean to make you leave. Of course we'll help," Allison said.

"We?" I asked since as far as I knew Allison and I were the only ones who were in any shape to fight at the moment and we weren't doing too good ourselves.

"Well, you and me anyway since everyone else is sleeping or unconscious," Allison said with a grin.

"I really shouldn't have come," Holly said with a guilty expression on her face.

"No, you definitely should have. I'm going to help you whether you think that I should or not, Holly. After all, I don't want to be blamed for not stopping a Zygon civil war do I? Some small-minded people, I won't name names, already have a low enough opinion of me as it is so I don't want to give them any more ammunition to use against me if I can help it," I said with a grin.

"Oh, come off it, Mum. Calliope's your friend now and you know it," Allison said.

"Oh, she says that she is but she'll be the first one to say something about it if I make even the slightest little mistake. She always does," I said as I tried to lighten the mood by joking around.

"I appreciate that, Lily. I really do. You can still back out if you're not able to do this though. I'll understand," Skaren said.

"I wouldn't. I never leave my friends in the lurch. I'm going," I said in a serious voice.

"I am too," Allison said.

"Oh, no you aren't. I've already put you in enough danger lately," I said.

"They're my friends too and I'm going. I don't leave friends hanging either when they're in trouble. I learned that from you," Allison said with a smug grin on her face.

"She's got you there," Freya said as she smiled at Allison.

I couldn't help but laugh despite not wanting Allison to go because this was just yet more evidence that Freya and Allison had become as thick as thieves especially when it came to working against me. I was both glad of and aggravated by that at the same time.

"Fine. You can go too. What about Richard, Holly? Do you want to leave him in the TARDIS or can I drop him off somewhere?" I asked.

"Mum, can't I stay here?" Richard asked suddenly.

"Why would you want to do that for?" Holly asked.

As if she didn't know.

"Just because. I'd just like to stay here. That's all," Richard said as he tried unsuccessfully not to look at Freya who looked away with a silly grin on her face.

"Alright then. You can stay here with Freya and Isabella. That'll be alright with you won't it?" Holly asked.

"Sure. I mean I guess I can put up with being around a girl for a while as long as she doesn't annoy me too much," Richard said as he tried not to let on that he liked Freya.

I winced at that as I realized that he had just stuck his foot in his mouth up to his ankle. I could tell from the expression on his face that he realized it too.

"Oh, really. So you think that I'm annoying, huh?" Freya said in anger.

"N-n-no. I didn't mean that," Richard stuttered.

"What did you mean then?" Freya asked.

"Nothing. I didn't mean anything," Richard said.

"If you didn't mean it, then you shouldn't have said it," Freya said with a hurt look on her face.

The two children suddenly became silent as Freya sulked and Richard looked horrified.

I looked at Holly and Skaren apologetically and made a mental note to myself to have a talk with Freya in the future as I said, "Well, let's go see what we can find out about what's happened to the Zygons."

I set the coordinates for the day after Holly said that she visited Vastra's home to find it empty and found no traces of them anywhere. As soon as we arrived back in the past, I immediately began to search all throughout the area for anything that seemed out of the ordinary along with any clues as to the whereabouts of Vastra and the others.

I turned up with nothing no matter how much I searched, and I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to go back and get some help from someone in my family with Vortex abilities when I suddenly found my first real lead at last. I discovered a very faint trace of the kind of energy emissions typically given off by Sontaran technology which I then followed with the TARDIS' sensors until I came upon a building that was being so thoroughly shielded from detection that I never would have found it if I hadn't been specifically looking for it.

The reason for this was because the entire building was being protected by a perception filter.

"Mum, I'm still new at all of this Time Lord stuff, but aren't the sensor readings that that building gives off a lot like the energy emissions from your TARDIS?" Allison asked.

I smiled at her as I said, "You're learning, Ally. That's because that building is a TARDIS."

"What? Whose?" Allison asked in surprise.

"That's the question, isn't it? What Time Lord are we dealing with, and why would they be after the Zygons?" I asked thoughtfully as I started toward the building and tried to find a way to get into it.

Luckily, I had a key that can open any TARDIS just like the ones that they have in the Capitol except far more advanced. No TARDIS, no matter how complicated the lock on it is, can ever keep me out for long. I did create them after all (at least the technological components of them anyway and the rest was grown) despite what Rassilon might have everyone thinking.

I had this other TARDIS open so fast that even Christina de Souza would have blushed in embarrassment, and I soon found Vastra, Jenny, and Strax tied up in its Console Room as Allison, Holly, and Skaren followed me inside of it. We untied our three friends, and Strax smiled with a look of triumph on his face as he held out a small emergency beacon for me to look at.

"I see that my signal worked. I normally would have used it to signal another Sontaran vessel to rescue us, but its range was too weak. I began to think that no one would ever detect it, but I should have known that the mighty Sekhmet would. No one can stop you when you get on the trail, Noble One. Now that we are united together, we will crush our enemy underneath our feet for the glory of the Sontaran Empire!" Strax said in a proud voice.

Everyone looked at him with a frown as he added, "And we'll do it for the Zygons too of course. They can't help being weak and inferior after all."

"Thanks," Skaren said sarcastically.

"You are most welcome, noble friend," Strax said not understanding the tone in his voice.

"Whose TARDIS is this? I don't recognize it. Do any of you know?" I asked as I looked around the strange looking Console Room that looked like nothing that I had ever seen before.

I was soon answered when several Silents suddenly came into the Console Room and surrounded us as their hands glowed with electricity. Now I remembered that the Doctor had told me that the Silence had created their own version of the TARDIS once.

"I thought you boys had gotten out of the bad guy business after so many of you were killed following Kovarian. What's your beef with the Zygons anyway? Why were you so interested in locking them into one form? How could that possibly benefit you?" I asked curiously.

"I don't remember them being here before," Strax said.

"Of course you wouldn't. That's the point of having them here so that no one who happened to find this ship even by accident would be able to remember finding it. The person who's really behind all of this thought of everything," Vastra said.

"I remember now, miss. I remember who tied us up and left us here after we discovered this place. I can remember it while I'm looking at the Silents," Jenny said.

"Who was it? Tell me quickly," I said.

"She doesn't have to. I'll tell you myself. It's not like it'll do you any good once I'm done with you," A voice said behind me.

I turned around to see Madame Kovarian standing there with an evil smile on her face.

"Not all of the Silents left my service you see. Some of them remained loyal to me even after death, and they finally found a way to bring me back to life. Now that I've returned, I just had to try out a new method that I came up with to destroy my worst enemy. You see I've found a way to permanently keep any being from changing their form no matter how ingrained it is in their genes. I used it against the Zygons purely as a test just to see if it would work. Now though that I know that it does, I'll test it against my real target: a Time Lord. You see I think that I've just come up with a way to keep a Time Lord from regenerating when they die and that means that they can't survive death by changing their form when their old body dies. My new weapon will make sure that the Doctor can never regenerate again so that when I finally do kill him he stays dead forever this time," Kovarian said.

Then she pointed a gun at me and said, "Just to make sure that it works though, I think that I'll test it out on you first. Once I finally suspend your power to regenerate, I'm afraid that I'll have to kill you just to make sure that it's permanent. It's the only way to know."

"You won't get away with this," I said defiantly as she smiled evilly at me.

"Oh, but I will. You'll have no choice but to stay still and let me shoot you whether you want to or not," Kovarian said.

"None of you are to move. You must stay still," the Silents began to chant in unison.

I could feel their power working on me already as they tried to hypnotize me into standing still. I used every bit of willpower that I had as I tried my best to resist them. Even I didn't know if Kovarian's gun would work on me or not, and I didn't fancy finding out.

"It's already too late I'm afraid, Sekhmet. Don't worry. I'll make your death quick," Kovarian said as she shot me.

My last thought as I watched the beam come out was that I really didn't want to die as a part of some mad scheme against the Doctor. I'd never live it down.

It's funny the things that go through your mind at the end, huh?

Next: Will Lily have her regenerative ability stolen? Is this really the end for her? Will the Zygons ever be the same again? Next time we'll find out whether Kovarian's plan will succeed or not along with the ultimate fate of the Zygons.