CHAPTER 81

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WHO IS REALLY BEHIND THE ZYGON WAR?

After dropping Kovarian and the Silents off at Tasha Lem's church and getting the now fully recovered Robin away from Miss Not So Holy as quickly as I could, I decided to go to the Zygon home world anyway despite the warning of Skaren's father. I wasn't about to let the Zygons tear themselves apart over something as stupid as who was left in their original form or not if I could help it.

I was long past tired of seeing needless war after needless war occurring throughout the universe. I'd seen more than enough of them in my time, and I was sick of them. I was never going to let another one start again. Not on my watch.

Once I finally arrived on the planetISd , I found that there was all-out war everywhere. There were massive explosions going off all over the area and Zygons of all appearances, shapes, and sizes were running for their lives.

That wasn't what stood out to me the most though amidst all of this chaos. No, what stuck out to me first and foremost were the banks of video monitors everywhere that were filled with all kinds of slanderous accusations about both sides of Zygons. Amazingly enough, none of these monitors had even been touched despite the massive bombardment going on around them.

Some of the monitors had messages saying that the Zygons who had remained in their original forms were only pretending to not be able to change and had caused the others to become stuck on purpose. The so-called reason for this was so that they would be easier to kill in a weaker non-Zygon form. They supposedly wanted them out of the way so that the richest group of Zygons would have more resources and wealth available for themselves.

Other monitors had messages saying that the reason that everyone had become stuck was because some Zygons were not pure enough and that these so-called 'unpure' Zygons were the ones who were stuck in non-Zygon forms. If these 'unpure' Zygons were all killed then the other Zygons would be magically cured somehow.

One monitor even said that a Zygon living on Earth named Sophia had done this to everyone and that she was working with the enemies of the Zygons in order to destroy them.

It was all just insane!

What was even more insane was that both sides of Zygons even in the middle of fighting one another would periodically pause and look at these monitors as if in a trance. Then they would go right back to what they were doing once again as if they hadn't seen anything.

Obviously someone was using the monitors to brainwash the Zygons and to cause the war. Who though? Madame Kovarian, the Silence, or someone entirely unconnected to them?

That's what I had to find out so that I could put a stop to all of this.

First though, I had to destroy the monitors and hope that maybe the destruction of all of these hate-filled messages would help things to settle down somewhat. I left the TARDIS first and headed straight toward the nearest set of monitors with my body glowing with regenerative energy. As soon as I tried to attack them though, I had a very rude surprise coming my way.

My attack was deflected away from them and right back at me!

I wasn't hurt since it was my own energy, but I was knocked right into my TARDIS by the impact of the rebound blow. I was almost knocked silly just by that.

"Well, at least now I know why nothing's happened to the monitors. It wasn't that the others were purposely missing them because of being brainwashed like I had thought. It was because whoever made them didn't want anyone to be able to destroy them," I said out loud with a sigh.

"What monitors?" Skaren said as he and the others emerged from inside of the TARDIS.

"What do you mean what monitors? They're all over the place," Holly said in surprise.

As Skaren looked at her with confusion, I said in a knowing voice, "You don't see them, do you? Someone designed them that way it seems so that the Zygons wouldn't consciously remember seeing them. It's a brilliant piece of engineering."

"No, I don't see anything. It must be some kind of trick by the Zygons who kept their original forms. They'll liable to do anything in order to kill the rest of us. We won't be safe from them until we kill every last one of them. They must all be . . . !" Skaren said and then suddenly stopped as his eyes widened in horror.

"This isn't me. I couldn't hurt anyone. What am I saying?" Skaren said in disbelief.

"It's the monitors. They're giving all of you some kind of subliminal messages to kill the other side. They're what's causing all of this," Allison said as she scanned them looking for more information on them.

"It's some kind of secret psychological warfare. Whoever did this must be some kind of sadistic monster," Ron said as he watched the chaos around us with a sickened look on his face.

"We should try to tell them the truth. Skaren believes us now that we have. Once we spread the word about what's really going on maybe they'll all stop," Isabella suggested.

"Skaren is unique among Zygons though. He's peaceful and tolerant of humans and other species. Not all Zygons feel that way," Ivy observed.

"You're being just a bit prejudiced there I think, Aunt Ivy. We should at least try to tell them," Aishwana said.

I loved how even Aishwana, who hadn't known her that long, now thought of Ivy as her aunt already. All of my kids loved her just as much as I did and considered her a part of the family and just as much my sister as Violet is.

"I never said that we shouldn't try. I'm just saying that it probably won't work," Ivy said.

"You were always the pessimist, Ivy. I'm with Aishy. Let's give it the good old college try, eh?" Violet said with a mad grin on her face that I knew all too well.

"Aishy?" Aishwana said while the others laughed.

"I hate to say it but I agree with Ivy. They're too brainwashed to believe the truth. I saw something like this once back in Sherwood. The Sheriff of Nottingham used hypnotism to turn some of his men into mindless servants who would do whatever he asked without question. He even had them believing that they couldn't feel any pain just by telling them that they couldn't. This kind of thing reminds me a lot of something from his manipulative bag of tricks," Robin said to me in a low voice.

"It may be that we're dealing with someone just as manipulative and sneaky as your Sheriff. We'll have to find out more somehow. Right now it won't hurt to try Isabella and Aishy's plan while we're trying to gather more information," I said.

"Will everyone please stop calling me Aishy?!" Aishwana said in an annoyed voice.

"Yeah, good luck with that. I never could get them to stop calling me Ally. The only reason I'm not being called Freya anymore is because the original Freya's here now, and it would be too confusing," Allison said with a wry grin.

"I'd rather you be Freya than me. I want another name. A cool name like the one that Sekh has," Freya said as she poked her head out of the TARDIS.

"Freya, get back in here. You'll be hurt," Richard said with concern.

"He's right! Go! It's too dangerous out here!" I hissed as bombs continued to go off nearby.

They hadn't really come near us yet but that could always change. I just had to hope that Richard could convince her to go back inside soon.

"Why do you care? I'm just an annoying girl anyway, right?" Freya said to Richard as she completely ignored me.

Richard winced as he looked at her apologetically and said, "I didn't mean that. I'm sorry."

Suddenly an explosion went off nearby and scared Freya. She screamed in fear even as Richard instinctively put himself in front of her protectively.

Freya smiled at him as she suddenly saw him in a new light and took his hand as she said, "Yeah, maybe you're right, Rick. Let's go back inside."

"Rick?" Richard said with a dumbfounded look on his face as he stared at her hand holding his while the two of them went back inside.

That kid really had it bad for my sister.

"Yeah, good idea," I said with a frown as I tried to calm my shaking nerves while they shut the TARDIS doors.

That had been way too close. So much for my renewed dedication to protecting my loved ones. I was messing that up right off the bat.

"That wasn't your fault. You told them to stay inside," Robin said knowing exactly what I was thinking.

"It was my fault for actually believing that they would. I won't make that mistake again though. Isabella, you should go back in there with them. You're pregnant and it's way too dangerous out here," I said as I pulled out a remote control for the TARDIS.

"You're going to do something to keep the three of us safe aren't you? I feel terrible for not facing the danger with the rest of you," Isabella said as she hesitated.

"Don't feel that way, Izzy. I want you and the baby safe. If anything happened to you . . ." Ron said in a frightened voice before he trailed off.

"You do know that I'm not afraid and that I can fight as well as any of you, don't you? I don't want anything to happen to the baby either though," Isabella said.

"I'm not saying that you're not my equal in every way, Izzy. I know that you're more than my equal in some ways as a matter of fact. I'm just worried about the baby," Ron said.

"Fine. You win this time. If anything happens to you though, I'll kill you. Remember that!" Isabella said as she gave him a tender kiss before going inside the TARDIS.

I knew that she hated to do it but it was where she needed to be right now.

I then sent the TARDIS a second out of sync with the rest of the planet and sighed in relief. I had just cut off our only means of escape but at least the kids and Isabella were safe now.

As soon as the TARDIS went out of sync, Isabella said to the children, "Just stay here and don't touch any of the controls. I'm going to make us all something to eat."

"We won't have to stay here forever, will we?" Richard asked with a worried look on his face.

"No, of course not, Rick. Sekh will bring us back as soon as she performs the smackdown on whoever's behind all of this. I think I'm saying that right. Sekh has taught me so many new words from this time," Freya said as she smiled at Richard sweetly.

"Yes, I think that Lily corrupts us all a little too much with her fondness for twenty-first century slang. She even has Holly talking like her now," Isabella said as she ruffled Freya's hair fondly.

Then she looked at the two children as they stared at one another and grinned. She decided that she would give them a little nudge in the right direction.

"Richard, why don't you tell Freya a little something about yourself while I'm busy, and then you can tell him something about yourself, Freya," Isabella said.

"Why would we want to do that for?" Richard said nervously.

"I guess to help pass the time if nothing else I suppose. It's better than sitting here in silence, isn't it? Now, go ahead you two. Start talking. Why don't you start by telling Freya how you met your adopted parents, Richard?" Isabella said.

"Oh, I'd love to hear that. No one ever told me. I'm sure that they both loved you as soon as they saw you. I mean it's easy to do," Freya said even as her face turned red with embarrassment as soon as she said it.

Richard looked at her with a smile as he now began to feel more relaxed around her and started to tell her the whole story. As he did so, Freya slowly took his hand and smiled at him eagerly. Isabella grinned and went into the kitchen as she felt proud of herself for creating what she hoped would someday prove to be a perfect match.

Take that, Lily! You're not the only matchmaker around here. She thought to herself with a smile.

Meanwhile back on the Zygon home world, the rest of us were in a slightly less optimistic mood.

"Well, it looks like we're committed now, huh? Let's try out Plan A then," Allison said in a less than optimistic voice.

She obviously didn't think that it would work either.

I grabbed a Zygon who was still in their original form as they ran by us and said, "This is all a trick. Someone has planted subliminal messages in your heads in order to get you to attack each other. You've got to stop and find out who your real enemy is."

The Zygon looked at Skaren and growled in anger as he said to him, "You lying filth! Now you've even brought aliens here to help you in your extermination of us. Is there no depth that you won't sink to in order to wipe us all out?"

"Me? It's you that's behind all of this. You and all of those like you," Skaren said as he lapsed back into hate-filled rhetoric once more despite knowing the truth.

They began immediately pounding on each other as Holly ran in-between them and shouted, "Hey! That's enough!"

Then to everyone's surprise she suddenly changed form and became a huge bear. Skaren and the other Zygon immediately stopped fighting as they both stared at her in disbelief.

"Holly?" Skaren said in fear.

"Skaren! I – I can't change back!" Holly said in a guttural voice.

"I thought she had full control now," Allison said in surprise.

"She does but not when she gets too emotional. Holly, calm down and concentrate. Think about your original form," I said.

"I was thinking about how I need to be strong like a bear in order to stop both of them, and then I became this! Now I can't change back! I can't change back!" Holly screamed as she began to panic.

"We must kill it!" The Zygon said as he pulled out a gun.

"No! That's my wife!" Skaren shouted as he knocked the gun out of the other Zygon's hand.

The fight between them started all over again in spades now as Holly fell to the ground and started sobbing violently as she said, "I can't change back!"

"Yes, you can. Just calm down and you'll be able to," I reassured her in a gentle voice.

Robin meanwhile separated the two Zygons the old fashioned way: by knocking them both out!

"You always did prefer the direct approach, didn't you?" I said with a grin.

Everyone else looked at him in shock as Holly said, "Did you just knock out my husband?!"

Well, at least it got her mind off of not being able to change back.

"It was the only way to stop them from fighting. Skaren was becoming just as brainwashed as the other Zygons," Robin said.

"So you have to bash his skull in?" Holly said in a furious voice.

"Mum," Allison said as she pointed at Holly who was beginning to change back to normal even as she fumed.

"I know. Very ingenious of your father to provide Holly with a distraction like that in order to get her to stop worrying about being stuck long enough to change back naturally wasn't it?" I said.

"Do you really think that's what he had in mind?" Allison asked in a skeptical tone.

"No, but I like to bolster his ego whenever I can," I said with a grin.

"Thanks," Robin said with a frown that quickly turned to a smile when I kissed him.

"So is the plan to knock everybody on the planet out first and then sort them all out later then?" Ivy asked with a smirk.

"Believe me when I say that I'd certainly like to try that if it was possible but no, that's not it. The real plan is to find out who is behind all of this and see if we can 'convince' them to shut down those monitors," I said.

"I love the way she says convince," Ivy said.

"They definitely won't love what she means by it when we find them," Aishwana said with a mischievous grin.

She was so right.

"How are we going to find them though? Other than these monitors that are giving me absolutely zero information on the scanning device they haven't exactly left a mountain of clues to trace them by so far," Allison said.

I was about to answer her when Violet interrupted me as she said, "That's where you're wrong though, Ally. The monitors are the only clue that we need and a very important one. They've provided us with one very important piece of information as to the exact identity of who is behind this. Maybe it's because I've been around for so long, but I actually recognize that technology just by looking at it. It's Sontaran," Violet said proudly.

I scowled at her and cleared my throat loudly as I said, "Excuse me but I was just about to say all of that. Stop stealing my lines."

"Sorry, force of habit. I still think of myself as you from time to time," Violet admitted.

"It's okay. I'll give you this one just don't make a habit out of it," I said with a warm smile to let her know that I really didn't care.

"You're all hearts, Lily," Violet said smiling back at me.

"Why, thank you. You're not so bad yourself," I said.

"Please stop with all of the self love. It's a bit disturbing," Allison said with a sigh.

"Only a bit? It's very disturbing. It takes narcissism to a whole new level," Ron said.

"What? So I don't fight with my other selves like a child like a certain other Time Lord with a penchant for bad taste in clothing that I could mention? I'd say that being polite to myself was a point in my favor if you ask me," I said.

"You're absolutely right, Lily," Violet said.

"Why thank you, Vi," I said with a mad grin.

"Stop that! It's annoying and kinda creepy," Ron said.

"Are we going to keep wasting time or go after the Sontarans who left this here? We need to stop this right now!" Holly said in an irritated voice.

"I'm not wasting time. I was studying the monitors even as I talked to Vi. I can do two things at once you know. In fact, I can do dozens of things in my brain at the same time," I said proudly.

"You certainly can," Violet agreed.

"Please just stop," Allison said as both of us burst out into laughter.

"Is this funny to you, Lily, because it certainly isn't to me?!" Holly said as she erupted into a rage.

Suddenly a new voice from nearby said, "If you are expecting anything but madness from this Time Lady then you are very much mistaken, human. She is incapable of clear, logical thought from what we have observed of her in the last few moments and has far too much ego."

They all turned to see a Sontaran strike force led by an infamous general named Stryfe the Magnificent. I recognized him immediately as soon as I saw him. About two minutes earlier.

Allison as usual caught on right away as she said in a low voice, "So all of that crazy Lily stuff was an act to make the Sontarans that you knew were watching us think that you were a complete idiot."

"I knew that if their technology were here that they wouldn't be very far behind. This is all just some kind of sick experiment to them and they just had to be here to watch it play itself out," I said with disdain.

"Well, I hope your plan works in making them underestimate you," Allison said.

"It should. I mean it's not like she had to exaggerate that much. It was all pretty truthful," Violet said.

"Shut up, Vi," I said with a frown.

"You will not interrupt the experiment, Time Lady. It is far too important to the ultimate success of Sontar in the war. We will follow it to its conclusion just to make sure of its maximum effectiveness before we implement it against the accursed Rutan Host," Stryfe said.

"And there we go, folks. It all boils down to that, doesn't it? It's always about you lot and your pathetic little war with the Rutans. That's what it's always about with you, isn't it? You took advantage of what Kovarian did to the Zygons to test your newest weapon against the Rutans on them to see if it would help you to turn them against one another if the same thing suddenly happened to them. Congratulations, Stryfe, you've succeeded in making yourself just as big a piece of scum as Kovarian in my book by making an already terrible situation about a thousand times worse. You should be so proud of yourself," I said in a voice dripping with venom.

"Oh, but I am because I will be the one to finally end this war. By studying the effects of Kovarian's ray on the Zygons, I already know how to remake her gun for myself so that I can use it against the Rutans. I will recreate what happened here on the Rutan home world and then place our subliminal monitors all over the planet. Our enemies will then stop the war for us by graciously killing themselves instead, and we will step in and easily destroy any who are left over afterwards! Finally, Sontar will triumph!" Stryfe said happily.

I exchanged glances with the others as I realized that if Stryfe could recreate the gun that maybe he might know a way of reversing its effects so that I could cure everyone. Of course it wasn't going to be easy to get that information from him since he was the one who was currently trying to commit genocide on a planetary scale.

"You do know that I'm not about to let you get away with this don't you?" I said.

"That's not much that you can do about it, Time Lady," Stryfe said with a smug smile.

"Oh, I think that I can take a few Sontarans no matter how well trained they are," I said.

"Perhaps that is so. Can you defeat an entire planet full of people who are out for your blood however? It seems that they may have just gotten a new message from our monitors about you," Stryfe said with an evil grin.

My eyes widened in horror as every Zygon in the area suddenly turned to look at us in absolute hatred. They all started to unite together with a common cause as they raced towards us with murderous looks on their faces.

"They're the ones who did this so that they could enslave us all. Kill them!" One of the Zygons screamed as he led the charge.

"Oh, boy," I said with a gulp.

"Bring back the TARDIS!" Allison shouted.

"It's too late to do that now. There's not enough time. Run!" I shouted as a massive army of Zygons came after us.

As we all raced away from the completely brainwashed Zygons, Stryfe began to laugh in triumph.

"So perishes all of the enemies of Sontar. I think that it's safe to say that our experiment is a complete success. Our new technology has them all under our complete control," Stryfe said.

"I'm so glad that it meets your approval. You took the plans for the subliminal device that I gave to you and recreated them perfectly, Stryfe. Now that I've helped you to come up with the perfect weapon to use to finally destroy the Rutans, I expect something in return," A female voice said behind Stryfe.

"Name it and if it is within my power I will grant it to you," Stryfe said.

"I want you and the rest of the Sontarans to help me in a new war once your old one is finished, Stryfe. I gave you the Rutan Host and I want you to give me Skaro. You and your massive army of cloned warriors will help me to destroy the Daleks," The woman said with a smug grin.

Stryfe's smile covered his entire face as he said, "Yes! The mighty Sontaran battle fleet against the Dalek Empire! We will crush these new kinder, gentler Daleks of Oswin Oswald's beneath our boots and finally become known as the masters of warfare that we truly are throughout the universe! Sontar-Ha! Sontar-Ha! Sontar-Ha!"

The mysterious woman known only as the Matriarch stood there smiling with approval at her new Sontaran playthings as she said to herself in a low voice, "It doesn't always take subliminal messages to get someone to do what you want it seems. Sometimes all you need to do is to appeal to their vanity. Soon Skaro will belong to the Thals, and I will have completely reset the cosmic chess board."

She had no idea that Holly, disguised as a large rock, was standing nearby with the still unconscious Skaren because she had refused to leave him and had heard the whole thing. She was now very curious as to who this woman was and what she was really up to. She desperately wanted to tell me all about if and when I ever got back there to see her again.

Of course I would have to get away from the bloodthirsty mob out to kill me first before I could do anything. Nothing was ever easy it seemed. Luckily for me the Sontarans still thought that I was an idiot and hadn't gone after me themselves. That would soon prove to be their undoing.

Next: Lily and her crew are on the run for their lives from an entire planet full of Zygons while the mysterious Matriarch plots to completely reshape the cosmos. Who is she and what is she really up to? How will Lily ever get out of this sticky situation in order to find out?