CHAPTER 2

I do not own Doctor Who and I am making no profit off of this.

"What do we do? Peri's guards are waiting outside to capture us. Do we go outside or just dematerialize?" Oswin asked.

"My TARDIS is being stubborn. She won't let us leave," Marissa said.

"Then either we stay here for all eternity, or we have to go out there and clear things up with this Peri," Oswin said.

"I tried to turn her into a tree," Marissa reminded her.

"I didn't say that it would be easy," Oswin said with a shrug of her shoulders.

"I'll go out there again and face up to this. You don't have to go, Oswin. This is my past not yours," Marissa said.

"You're my friend, Mari. I first met you when you were a scared little girl on Meridian, and I saved you from the Daleks. I saved you then, and I'm not about to let anything happen to you now," Oswin said with her hand on Marissa's shoulder.

"Thank you," Marissa said with a grateful look on her face.

"What about Molly? She doesn't need to be involved in this," Oswin asked.

"I could use Emergency Program One and send her back to Earth," Marissa said.

"We need to do that then. I promised myself that I would keep her safe if she came with me," Oswin said.

"You're not sending me anywhere. I'm coming with you. There's nothing left for me back on Earth now so there's no way that I'm going to let you send me back there," Molly said from behind them.

"What about your parents? You've still got them," Oswin protested.

"I'm going with you," Molly said defiantly.

"What if you get killed? How are your parents going to feel when you never come back? They'll never even know what happened to you," Oswin said as she desperately tried to convince Molly to go home.

"I know that you're trying to keep me safe, and I appreciate that. However, this is my choice. I want to go with you. I don't want to leave you two in the lurch and run like a coward at the first sign of trouble," Molly said stubbornly.

"Peri won't let anything happen to Molly. I'm the one that she's angry at not the two of you," Marissa reassured Oswin.

"All right then. Let's go out there," Oswin said with a deep breath.

The three of them left the TARDIS to be immediately surrounded by several guards with swords. The guards began to immediately herd them away and toward a nearby castle. After a few minutes of traveling, the three of them were ushered inside of the castle and swiftly brought to a throne room with two large thrones in the center of it.

A brunette woman emerged from another room and sat on the throne on the right hand side. One of the men surrounding her said, "All kneel before Queen Peri."

Everyone kneeled before Peri, and the three of them were forced to as well at sword point. Peri was immediately angered by this. This wasn't the way that she treated anybody even the Rani. Molly started to shake from fear even though she was trying her best not to show any of it.

Peri noticed this and immediately felt sorry for Molly. She stepped down from the throne and walked up to Molly with a concerned look on her face.

"Hey, there's no need to be afraid. No one's going to hurt you despite what my guards just did. I didn't tell them to force you to kneel," Peri said to Molly in a tender voice.

Peri turned to the Captain of the guards and said in a voice filled with anger, "I don't appreciate your men forcing these people to kneel to me at the point of a sword. That's not my way of doing things and never has been. Don't let me catch you ever doing that again."

"Yes, my Queen. I'll let the men know that this kind of behavior is not to be tolerated," The Captain said, although his face seemed to show that he disapproved of her attitude towards him and his men.

Peri knew that the Captain didn't like her. He never had because she was from Earth and not a native of Krontep. His attitude had just gotten worse when her husband, King Yrcanos, died and left her as the sole ruler of the planet. Many others did not approve of her being on the throne either because of her being an alien. The problem seemed to be growing worse lately as if someone was stirring things up. She was pretty sure that that someone was the Rani.

Peri studied the three woman before her and wondered which of them was the Rani. She knew that one of them had to be because she had recognized the Rani's TARDIS when it arrived. It was in the same form that it had taken when she last saw the Rani back on Earth during the Industrial Revolution. She was sure that it wasn't the youngest woman. She was so scared that it couldn't just be acting.

Peri turned to the other two women and said, "I'm addressing this to whichever one of you is the Rani. I don't know what you did to that poor girl or what you're doing to turn the people here against me, but it's going to stop right now."

"They didn't do anything to me. Oswin saved me from the Daleks, and Mari took me in when I had nowhere else to go," Molly defended them.

Peri could see that she believed in what she said by the look on her face. She decided to see if she could get the truth from her.

"Which of them is the Rani? I just want her and whoever's been helping her. I'll let you go and make the Rani send you back to Earth where you're obviously from," Peri asked her.

"I don't know. I've never heard of the Rani," Molly said truthfully.

Peri could tell that she wasn't lying. She honestly hadn't been told the whole truth about who she was traveling with so she would be of no further use to her in helping her find out who the Rani was.

"I'm the Rani, Peri. At least I used to be anyway. I'm Marissa now. I've changed. I'm not the same person that I used to be anymore. I know that that's hard to believe, but I have. Let Molly and Oswin go. They haven't done anything," Marissa pleaded.

Peri looked at her in curiosity. This woman seemed to genuinely care about the others. She was nothing like the Rani that she had known. This couldn't be her. It must be the other one. She turned to Oswin and looked at her closely to study her reaction to all of this. She saw that Oswin looked upset and worried for the woman who had just confessed to being the Rani. Oswin didn't act like the Rani either. Maybe none of these women were her.

"None of you are the Rani. Where is she?" Peri demanded.

"I was the Rani, Peri. I'm so sorry about what I did to your friend, Luke. Once I changed, I went back to Redfern Dell to the day after I turned Luke into a tree and had a friend of mine change him back. Luckily he had no memory of ever being a tree, and he went back home with no further damage from the whole thing," Marissa said.

"It is you. Take her away,' Peri ordered the guards.

"No! She's changed. She doesn't deserve this," Oswin shouted.

The guards grabbed Marissa and began to take her to a cell. Oswin was not going to let that happen though. She started powering up her gauntlets and walked threateningly towards the guards.

"Let her go now!" Oswin commanded them.

"Oswin, don't do this. You're just going to make things worse," Marissa warned her.

"Shut up, Mari. I'm not going to let them do this to you. You're not the same person anymore, and you don't deserve this," Oswin said.

"Don't I? I've done many horrible things, all in the name of science. Maybe judgment has finally come to me," Marissa said sadly.

"No. Not if I can help it. You've done so much good, and you could do so much more. Everyone on Earth would be vampires now if it wasn't for you and the cure that you came up with to save them. This isn't going to happen!" Oswin said enraged.

The guards who weren't holding onto Marissa or Molly started to attack Oswin but found that their swords couldn't get through to her. They kept hitting an invisible wall around her. This didn't stop them from trying though. They just kept slashing ineffectively against Oswin's force field.

Oswin began to tire of them and decided to get them all out of this once and for all. She stunned them all with the blasts from her gauntlets, and they all fell to the floor in a heap. Then she stunned the guards holding her friends.

The Captain started rushing towards her with his own sword outstretched. Oswin used her temporal shift abilities that she had taken from Dalek technology to shift herself forward two seconds into the future. He was still searching for her when she suddenly reappeared behind him and tapped him on the back. The Captain whirled around just in time to see her fist heading for his face. She quickly knocked him out with a single punch to the jaw.

Then as she found every guard in the place heading towards her, she decided to use her perception filter to end this once and for all. She made herself appear to be a Dalek and shouted to them, "MOVE BACK, OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"

The guards fled from her in terror, and soon it was just the three of them and Peri left in the throne room. Peri refused to leave. She just stared at them defiantly.

"I'm not afraid of Daleks or fancy tricks with perception filters. I traveled with the Doctor, lady. It's going to take a lot more than that to scare me," Peri said as she stood her ground defiantly.

"I'M TAKING MY FRIENDS OUT OF HERE, AND WE'RE LEAVING," Oswin said, still in the disguise of a Dalek.

"Why are you and the Rani trying to overthrow me?" Peri demanded.

Oswin changed her appearance back to normal and said, "We're not. We have nothing to do with it. We came here by accident. We have nothing to do with anything going on here," Oswin said.

Peri studied her face and the concern for her friends on it. She decided that she believed her that she didn't know anything about the current situation on Krontep. She still didn't believe that the Rani was innocent, but she was convinced that her two friends knew nothing about what she was doing.

"You're backing the wrong horse, Oswin. The Rani is pure evil. If you keep following her, she's going to get you in trouble. Why don't you take Molly with you and leave?" Peri said.

"Never. Not without her going with me," Oswin said.

"I'm not going to let the Rani get away with threatening my daughter, Janine. No one's going to hurt her while I'm around. Do you understand that, Rani?" Peri said furiously.

"I swear that I don't have anything to do with this, Peri," Marissa said with a pained look on her face.

"Yeah, sure, like I'm really supposed to believe you after you almost turned me into a tree!" Peri said with a smirk.

"I don't know what this is all about, but Mari has been nothing but nice to me. I know that she didn't do whatever it is that you're accusing her of," Molly spoke up.

"You've certainly brainwashed these two, haven't you?" Peri said.

A guard came running into the throne room and said, "My queen, your daughter is missing!"

Peri's face instantly changed into one of pure terror as she said, "What? When did this happen? How did it happen?"

"The Princess was playing right in front of the eyes of her nanny when she just vanished. She disappeared right in front of her and several guards. No one knows how it happened or who did it," the guard said.

Peri turned on Marissa and screamed at her, "Where is she? Tell me!"

"I have nothing to do with it. I swear. I'll help you find her though. I promise you that," Marissa said.

"That must be why the TARDIS brought us here: to help save Peri's daughter," Oswin said.

"Maybe it was because my old girl knew that I needed to make up for my past," Marissa said.

"I still don't believe you, Rani, but since you're pretending to be ready to help me, I'll go along with it. Hopefully you'll let something slip that will let me know where to find Janine," Peri said.

"Will you just admit that you're wrong already?" Oswin said as she rolled her eyes.

"I will when I find out that the Rani wasn't behind all of this. When I do, I'll apologize. I'll apologize then and only then. For now, I'm going to use you three to help me find my daughter," Peri said.

"Where should we start?" Oswin asked Marissa.

"I'll need to go back to my TARDIS and see if I can find a trace of alien activity or temporal distortion in the area," Marissa said with a thoughtful look on her face.

"Oh, right, and then you'll just escape in it. You're not going without me, Rani," Peri said.

"If you insist," Marissa said.

She pulled out her remote control and brought the TARDIS to the throne room.

"After you," Marissa said as she opened the door.

The four of them entered the TARDIS, and Marissa soon started trying to see if she could find out what was going on here. She idly wondered if she should call in some reinforcements or at least one in particular. She made a decision and activated a signal to summon help. She breathed a sigh of relief as she quickly got a response back. Koschei was on the way.

Next: The person behind Peri's troubles is revealed plus Koschei shows up to help. Or does he just make things worse as he immediately starts butting heads with Peri?