Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

Rise of the Cybermen / Age Of Steel

Chapter 20 – Dark Rider

It was a good likeness. Too good.

Not only was the face, hair, and body identical to his Seventh self's, but the clothing was a near perfect recreation of that particular incarnation's sartorial style from the matched paisley hatband, tie, and scarf down to the question marked knit pullover – 'Why did he ever think that was a good idea,' the Doctor had thought to himself about himself at so many different times – and the co-respondent shoes. The Panama hat and brolly were merely window dressing by that point, but even on their own they would have been enough resemblance to be troubling.

Altogether, the effect was quietly terrifying because the Doctor knew better than anyone else exactly what he'd been capable of in that incarnation.

As if picking up on the Doctor's discomfort, the man smiled at the Time Lord. It was one of his Seventh's favored smiles, the politely engaging one that said 'I know something that you don't that you won't like but that doesn't necessarily make me your enemy just yet'.

It was a warning and a reassurance in the same gesture.

The Doctor didn't feel particularly reassured.

'Seven.'

'I didn't do it,' his past self replied quickly. There was a sour flavor to his aura, like the presence of a doppelganger was somehow an insult directed specifically at him. 'If I forced a split timeline or duplicated myself, I would have made note of it and the circumstances behind it. And I recall doing neither.'

The Doctor admitted that, out of all of his incarnations, Seven was generally the one best at keeping track of that sort of thing.

'He might be a counterpart of ours for this universe,' Three mused.

'No Time Vortex, no Time Lords,' Four countered.

'True, but I wouldn't accuse this fellow of being human either.'

"All too right."

The Doctor's attention snapped back to the subject of his internal debate, whose polite smile had taken a sharp turn towards Cheshire grin.

"You were thinking very loudly, Doctor," he explained.

'Telepath,' Seven hissed.

'Among other things,' an identical voice replied in the Doctor's head, wearing the same cloak of secretive smugness as the man sitting across from him. The man himself had merely tilted his head, allowing the angle and the dull light from the ceiling lights to change the nature of his expression for him. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the little detail of actual stars hiding deep in the depths of his eyes that brought the impact to the table.

Definitely not human and definitely not a Time Lord either. Was that better or worse? Considering his track record with those sort of things… worse.

"I don't believe we've been properly introduced. I am Ezeqeel," the telepath said. "Professor Ezekiel Septimus Sterling. Zeke to my friends."

The Doctor pushed past his immediate reaction to 'Professor' and the barely hidden 'Seven' to focus on a less obvious slip.

Ezeqeel. If the Doctor recalled his human theology correctly, that was the name of a fallen angel and 'Watcher' whose territory was prophecy through meteorology or falling stars depending on one's preferred translation. A portentous and wholly appropriate name for an unsettling and unnatural being that, with only a slight change in emphasis, could be camouflaged as something harmless.

'Not entirely unlike Seven, then.'

'Stop it.'

The Doctor ignored the quibbling of his past incarnations as he focused on 'Zeke'. "I'd return the favor, but you already seem to know who I am," he said coolly.

"Oh yes. It'd be rather silly of me not to, don't you think?"

Yes, very much like Seven. Too much for the Doctor to even think about relaxing around him.

Before he could fall too far into trying to dissect the other's motives - though he could feel Seven picking up the slack there –, the doors to the back of the van opened and the cyborg twisted their way inside, the fingers of their hands and 'feet' tangling themselves in the webbing someone saw fit to tack to the ceiling before their owner saw fit to drop themselves down to the floor.

Now this was a puzzle the Doctor didn't mind focusing on.

The design of the entire system was clearly organic based, the cords of artificial muscle following the flow of human design, but there were touches that gave away that tendency as mere convenience. The feet in particular were a swerve from the standard, having a set-up that could switch from foot to clearly serviceable hand – a feature to assist climbing? – and back again without a moment of hesitation. The labels gave it away as human design – or at least, human-intended – but the technological curve was decades ahead of anything the Cybermen of this world would be able to produce at their preferred speed, even of they'd bothered tailoring their upgrades to their victims.

The singing sword at the cyborg's side was another curiosity – perhaps the same idea as a harmonic scalpel applied to a larger blade? Clever and, in its own way, beautiful, even if it was turned towards violent purposes rather than anything worthwhile –, but the gun on its back was just the mark of a soldier… no, not even that. A sniper. Soldiers at least were willing to take the chance that their intended victims could kill them back.

"We don't have any pursuers to worry about at the moment, especially with our third party bringing up the rear," 'Zeke' said after sharing a glance with the cyborg. "So Tsela figured he might as well come in from the cold."

Tsela. So there was a thread of familiarity there. How far ahead had Seven's doppelganger planned? How many other 'allies' could pop out of the woodwork? And where – and how – had he come by their acquaintance?

'Run this scenario with our own 'Professor' and you'll have the answer toquestion one,' Six muttered. 'As to the rest…'

The cyborg spoke in a language the Doctor didn't understand – and wasn't that an aggravating twist, considering that he was usually more than capable of translating anything he came across –, hands twisting through a similarly impenetrable sign language.

At least one of them made sense to 'Zeke' because as soon as the cyborg was finished speaking, he translated for the rest of the group. "He says that the road is clear until we hit the city. No road blocks and no ambushes that he can detect."

"And how much can he detect?" a blond man asked, holding onto his machine gun like it would actually serve some defense against the cyborg. "I don't see any eyes on that outfit."

The cyborg gave a distinctly annoyed roll of the head before the silvery plate obscuring its face slid apart, not as two, three, or even four separate pieces, but in a great shuffle that could have been twenty or more pieces – and how did that work? Magnets? Nano-machines? – that revealed the worn and clearly unimpressed face of an American Indian. The blue eye on the right side of his face was a bit unexpected, but the glint of a red lens hiding inside gave it explanation enough; it was another cybernetic addition. Why that one piece was designed to imitate a human's eye structure without actually matching the man's natural dark brown was a bit beyond him, along with the question of why that one part of the set-up was made in imitation of the live product, but the Doctor wouldn't question it aloud. Not when he had more pressing concerns.

"Bite my shiny metal ass," the cyborg said in English, the enunciation of each word clear and precise. The voice was still distinctly robotic and gave the Doctor an idea of how much of the man was still organic – likely only the head and enough of the spine for the technology to interface with properly, given how streamlined the overall design was. "My eyes work well enough to see how you were handling that machine gun earlier. Who gave you lessons, Tony Montana? You're supposed to do more than just spray and pray, and that doesn't involve doing the jitterbug on a mountain of cocaine."

The boy embraced said gun defensively at that.

The Professor, for his part, looked inordinately amused by the interaction. "Your old man ways are showing, Tsela."

The cyborg shot Zeke a flat and distinctly unimpressed look before his hands flashed through a short series of vaguely obscene sign language.

The grin was just a little too much like Four's to look right on Seven's face as he responded to the unknown jibe. "Anatomically impossible, temporally irresponsible, and not even remotely within my realm of interest, thank you very much."

The next signing was a crystal clear 'piss off'.

"Why do you keep signing if you can talk?" Mickey asked.

The old man rolled his eyes. "Spend a few decades doing something and see if you can drop the habit. Besides, it keeps my hands from getting rusty."

Ha.

"While I'm sure this is an ideal time for socializing, I'm rather more concerned with the killer cyborgs that we just escaped from," Pete Tyler said tightly before glancing at the killer cyborg in the vehicle. "No offense."

Tsela gave a shrug, clearly unbothered by the label.

"So what do these Cybermen want?" The boy with the gun asked.

"To assimilate the living, strengthen the collective, and destroy anything that doesn't fit in with their image," the Doctor recited. It was old hat, even by the third time he'd encountered them. Cybermen didn't change; they only perfected the same old pattern.

Pete gave the Time Lord a sideways glance. "You've encountered them before?"

"Yes." "Yes."

The Doctor and the 'Professor' exchanged glances before looking towards Ricky. "Let's just say that Lumic wasn't the first person to come up with the idea," the Doctor said.

"Or the last," 'Zeke' finished.

Somewhere in that exchange, Tsela had found a reason to roll his eyes. Considering the condition of the man, it wasn't hard to guess what that reason was.

"How do you know so much?" Pete asked.

The Doctor leaned back in his seat. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"I've seen cyborgs my former employer created storm my wife's birthday party for the express purpose of killing the President and held a conversation with what might have been an angel or a demon masquerading as a member of my serving staff in the last half-hour," the man replied dryly. "I think I'm fairly open to the possibilities."

Demon? "I'm a time-travelling alien."

There was a moment of awkward silence as half of the people – thankfully not the driver, though there was a sharp glance towards the rearview mirror – in the vehicle turned to stare. Neither the 'Professor' nor the cyborg were in that group.

"I told you that you wouldn't believe me," the Doctor said. "Now, what was that you said about a demon?"

"I said I wasn't clear on what she was, just that she wasn't human." Pete's eyes slid to the open doors as the sound of a roaring engine quickly caught up to the van. "And you could probably ask her yourself once we stop."

Against his better judgement, the Doctor looked out the back of the van.

There was a motorcycle, wreathed in flames and billowing black oil smoke to the point where he instinctively expected it to crash at any moment. Yet it still chased the van in an unerring straight line, the rider apparently unconcerned with the condition of its vehicle. The Time Lord was fairly sure it was the same black clad figure he'd caught glimpses of at the Tyler's mansion, though none of those glimpses had ever given him the impression of femininity. Maybe that was because Pete had seen what was under the helmet.

'But that wouldn't account for accusations of divinity…' one of his past selves muttered.

No, it likely wouldn't. And the view behind them was distinctly hellish.

"Ah, yes. The Rider," 'Zeke' said mildly, as if the sight of a motorcyclist out of hell was no more remarkable than the Sunday newspaper. There was a distinct emphasis on the word 'rider' that made it register as a definitive article. "A spirit of vengeance and justice. It's not an unfair accusation, thinking of it as a demon or an angel. One might even say that it's the truth."

Again with the touch of the esoteric mysticism. Whether it was a reflection of Seven's own cagey nature or a way of teasing the nature of this universe, the Doctor couldn't say for certain. He could, however, confirm that he wasn't pleased with it. Magic, much like the idea of ghosts, wasn't something he subscribed to. Anything he'd ever encountered that had claimed the title had either fallen under quackery, casual deception, or a massive misunderstanding of scientifically explainable phenomena.

Rose, for her part, was staring at the presumed 'demon'. Not in horror – not quite – but with a sort of wary curiosity.

"I hear you had a run in with the Rider back at the mansion," Zeke said before the Doctor could ask her what was wrong.

The girl swallowed, reaching up to touch the side of her face. "Yeah. It… they saved me from a Cyberman."

Had his other companion been lucky enough to receive the same sort of rescue? The Doctor hoped so, even if he knew that 'no' was just as likely an answer.

Seven's doppelganger gave a little smile, like he knew alone was aware of some secret facet to the situation. "Is it such a surprise that a stranger in leather might spring from the shadows to save your life?"

"What's leather have to do with anything?" Ricky asked from the front of the van as Rose redirected her stare at 'Zeke'.

"Don't do that," the Doctor warned.

"Do what?"

"You know what," he hissed back as the van began to slow. They were back in London, though nowhere near the primary thoroughfares. Those were more than likely blocked off, either by panicking civilians or deliberate blockade. Whether those would be placed by the government or the Cybermen didn't make much of a difference – in the end, the van was no longer an asset.

The other's expression might have passed for innocent if not for that spark of mischief glimmering in those blue eyes. "Do I?" he asked as he stepped out of the car with a jaunty little bounce, peering around the street with interest.

"You do," Tsela confirmed from where he sat inside the vehicle.

'Cheeky little bastard, isn't he?' Four asked.

'Shush.'

The street was small, empty, and poorly maintained, with cracks running through the asphalt at regular intervals. A few cars were parked along the sides and half the streetlights seemed to be significantly dimmer than the others. The chill wind that was running down the length of it, carrying plastic bags and bits of loose paper, didn't help with the tense atmosphere the night carried with it, though the relative silence spoke of temporary safety.

Hopefully.

As the rest of the group joined Seven's doppelganger on the street, the Rider joined them, stepping off of its bike with a fluidity that didn't quite mesh with the armored look, moving slow enough for the Doctor to evaluate it.

The Rider was shorter than the Doctor – though, he was quick to add to the thought as it stood up straight, not by much –, but that did little to diminish its sheer presence. Maybe it was the armored cyclist's suit or the absolute silence it moved with, but the fact that it moved like a predator, focus fixed entirely on what was in front of it to the point of ignoring everything else, was casually terrifying in its own way. A tiger in human shape.

Part of the Time Lord was screaming at him to run. Another was paradoxically heartened by the creature's presence. Why? He didn't believe in 'spirits' or 'ghosts'. And even if he did, why would he put stock in a spirit of vengeance?

'Justice.'

'What?'

'That Ezeqeel called it a spirit of justice and vengeance,' the Warrior said again. The words were measured and calm, but there was a low fervency buried there that the Doctor didn't quite like. 'Regardless of if we place its nature as magical or mundane, it still exists. Whether that is as an actual avenging angel, a tulpa generated by those who need such a creature to exist, or a sufficiently motivated human with supernatural abilities, we may not know, but we know exactly why it is here.'

If Seven's doppelganger wasn't lying about that. He honestly wouldn't put it past the little 'Professor'.

"Hell–" the Doctor jumped back as the knife materialized in the Rider's palm. Deft fingers twisted the blade back and threw it in the same motion, the Doctor turning to watch it sink into a Cyberman's chest. "Oh."

The Time Lord swallowed the last part of his attempted greeting. He hadn't even noticed it hiding in that alley behind them. Had it been watching them long enough to transmit their location back to its coordinator? How many others were in the area? And where had that knife come from?

No answers on any of those points were coming from the Rider, who had walked over to the felled cyborg to retrieve its weapon.

"Clean up go well?" 'Zeke' asked the Rider mildly, as if the other wasn't in the process of swiping artificial blood that had come from its most recent kill onto the pavement.

"Well enough. More alive than dead, a few heads unaccounted for." The voice was multi-layered, the two or three components to it making it difficult to track the tone of its owner, though there was something close to human hiding between the far lines of furnace and gravel pit. The helmet turned towards Pete Tyler. "I couldn't find your wife anywhere."

Pete nodded stiffly. "But you did look."

A low incline of the head. An odd sort of gesture, but with the lack of facial features to supply the most common form expression, it made sense. "Yes. Best guess is that Lumic piloted anyone who was wearing earpods to a collection point and had the Cybermen corral the rest." The Rider gestured at the approximate area on their head where a human's ear would be. "Jackie was wearing those diamond studded Earpods, wasn't she?"

"Yes. Mister – Lumic sent them as a birthday present." Pete grimaced. "More than likely for that express purpose."

It lowered its head. "I'm sorry."

The Doctor added that to the list of things he knew about the Rider. Sympathy indicated the ability to at least understand other's emotions, which in turn indicated a mentality that at least mirrored the human baseline.

It turned away, walking back to its bike. Every step, the Doctor noted, was a hair away from being perfectly noiseless. Not even its suit creaked, though the slightly molten look to its surface – impossible, leather didn't melt, much less bubble like boiling tar – accounted for that in its own way; it wasn't solid enough to creak.

"Wait," Rose said. The Rider stopped short of its bike. "Why did you help me earlier?"

Its head turned to the side slightly, like it was looking at the girl through the corner of its concealed eyes. "You were hurt."

"I don't know you," Rose pointed out. "There was no reason–"

"That's right, blondie," it said, its tone dropping the ambient air temperature by several degrees to something almost glacial. An odd contrast, considering its many associations with fire. "You don't."

"Raguel," Seven's doppelganger said. There was a hint of a warning hiding in his tone, like he knew where the Rider was apt to go if he didn't intercept it in time. That Tsela was giving the Rider a look of similar intent only reinforced the notion and the Doctor's suspicion that they all knew each other personally.

'Angel of justice, vengeance, harmony, and redemption,' the Doctor's Third noted. It fit with what the Professor had teased at, even if there wasn't anything remotely angelic about the figure in front of them. 'Also the archangel of speech, depending on the tradition, though I suspect that might not be the case here.'

"Zeke."

The 'Professor' flashed a small smile that the Doctor could almost call 'winning'. It carried none of the earlier danger along with it, apparently throwing it away the moment it was no longer needed. "Care to stay with the group?"

The Rider's head tilted to the side as it stared at Seven's doppelganger, who threw up his hands in the classical gesture of 'nothing up my sleeve'. That was apparently enough for the Rider to relent, posture relaxing slightly from the cold stiffness Rose's comment had brought to it, though the option of a more involved telepathic conversation wasn't out of the question either.

Either way, there was more there than just mundane familiarity at work here. Not friendship – if the Doctor was strictly going off of Seven's example as the means to divine Zeke's motivations, there was very little chance of that –, but the three were friendly enough that the Professor's word alone was enough to placate the Rider's concerns and that insulting, occasionally obscene banter could be traded as freely as some people would trade comments about the weather.

That, the Doctor decided, was plenty of reason to keep an eye on all of them.

Mickey had a bad feeling about this.

Even without the knowledge of Cybermen prowling around, the fact that the streets were currently dead empty – not a good word, dead, but it fit – and without any sign of life beyond the occasional flicker of movement on the far side of a window or street in a city that probably hadn't been empty since someone had decided that there was going to be a town there was more than enough to unnerve anyone. For someone who had lived in London for his entire life, it was an experience straight out of the uncanny valley.

Mickey glanced down a side road that, earlier that day, had been home to a military barricade. While the barricade was still there, the men guarding it were long gone, leaving an ominous absence behind them.

He was half-tempted to go back to his grandmother's house and check on her. He'd seen a pair of those Earpods on a table in her place, been told that without him – Ricky, without Ricky – she was all alone. The Cybermen might have picked her up already, done whatever it took to 'assimilate' her into their army – and the Doctor's vagueness on what that meant raised the hair on the back of Mickey's neck. If something could scare a near immortal alien that'd been banging around history longer than some countries had a civilization, getting into trouble the whole way, how bad was it?

"Find your gran?" Rose asked, softly touching Mickey on the arm. The unexpected contact, though harmless, was still enough to make him jump.

"Oh, yeah. She's doing well," he replied before looking down at the pavement. "Didn't get a chance to fix the carpet, but I was happy to see her. Well, after she slapped me upside the head and called me a tit."

The blonde gave a small giggle at that. "Yeah, that was her way. A good scold and then a cup of tea."

"I've got a question myself," the Doctor said, catching up with them before Mickey could fully ease into the largely harmless conversation. "Specifically about who you picked up along the way."

"The Professor?" Mickey asked, casting a glance at the man in question. He was slightly ahead of the group, conversing quietly with the Rider while Tsela seemed content to listen as he observed the area around him, umbrella spinning all the while. It was impossible to know what they were talking about, but Mickey figured that Zeke was giving Delaine – nobody else fit for the part of masked mystery person by his reckoning, even if how she managed to pick up four inch lifts.

The Time Lord nodded.

Mickey considered the question, did a quick count of his feelings towards all the individuals involved… and decided to lie, just a little bit. "Just started following me, I suppose. You know him from somewhere?"

The Doctor's expression turned a few shades darker. "Let's say that I knew a certain someone who was almost exactly like your friend more than a few regenerations ago."

"'Friend' is pushing it a bit," he replied. "But I trust him."

The Doctor made a face like he thought that was a mistake, but Mickey pushed on anyway. "So… what? Is he another Time Lord? Figure he's at least a little bit psychic."

"Psychic, yes, Time Lord…" There was another grimace. "…more than likely not, considering the physics of this universe, but that doesn't exclude outside interference and he's a little too much like the person I'm thinking of for it to be mere coincidence."

"Might just be this universe's version of –" Mickey couldn't quite account for why his first impulse was to say 'you' – he'd already figured out the Professor of one of Delaine's circle, whatever that was, so there was no reason to bring the Doctor into that thought –, but he caught it quickly enough say something else. "– whoever that person you were talking about was. Considering all the other doubles present."

"It's possible, if improbable," the Doctor admitted as the group went to turn a corner. "Still, I think you should be careful –"

The sudden presence of Cybermen, at least twenty of them, cut the conversation short. If luck was on their side, they could sneak away before the cyborgs noticed them –

"Halt!" a metallic voice called out almost immediately.

Well, so much for luck.

There was a moment where they actually obeyed the command, but really, it was just all the time it took for everyone to reverse direction and start running.

Mickey was going on instinct, tracing the pathways that would take him around to an old automotive garage that was almost always empty – if nothing else, it would be a decent place to hide and catch his breath before figuring out what to do next –, so it took a moment for him to realize that he'd managed to separate from the rest of the group.

'That's what you get for not paying attention,' he thought before throwing the immediate wave of anxiety into the background. So he'd have to recalculate his plan to include catching up with everyone again.

'Or,' another thought said as it snuck in. 'You could just… forget about that part entirely. Go protect your gran. Not have to worry about the Doctor or Rose Tyler ever again. It's not like they'll ever worry about you.'

It was tempting. It wasn't like he was really part of their group, really, they had made it clear from the beginning that he was a temporary addition at best – not Delaine, no, but one person out of three wasn't much of anything, even if 'two out of three' wasn't supposed to be bad – and he'd already planned on staying behind, if not here, somewhere else… but just running away from them without explanation or even a decent goodbye didn't feel right.

There was also the fact that if the Cybermen had somehow left his grandmother alone to this point, he might end up leading them straight to her if he went to her home.

So, that left this. Running for his life in the dark all alone in a city full of killer cyborgs.

Well, at least the city was one that he knew like the back of his hand, because that meant that he at least had a decent chance of getting out of the situation if Lady Luck hadn't set her face against him.

Shoes skidding on a bit of loose gravel, Mickey took a hard turn. There was an alley this way, one that split off into two directions. To go straight would be to end up at one of the Tube stations, but he was thinking of the garage from earlier, so he veered right instead.

About three meters down that way, he realized his mistake in assuming everything about this London's geography would be the same as that in his native universe.

An unexpected fence blocked the way to the street that might have brought Mickey to a place of relative safety, leaving him to swear softly as he calculated his options. Turning back wasn't one of them; the Cybermen had already closed off that end of the alley and were steadily making their way towards him. There was a ladder going up the side of a building a few meters back that went all the way up to the roof – and from there, Mickey could use what little parkour he had mastered to get the distance he desired – but getting to that required running a good distance back towards the killer cyborgs, so that wasn't much of an option either.

The fence in front of him… well, the gate might have been locked, but the chain-link metal was climbable, even if the bits of razor wire at the top and the fact that the whole thing was made of electrically conductive steel was a bit of a turn off. Still, it was his best shot and if – that was a very big word, if – he could get over it, it could buy him a minute or two. If he couldn't… well, there was no point in going into detail there, even if it was the most likely end to this situation.

Well, he didn't have a whole lot to lose compared to what he'd gain if he managed to pull it off.

Mickey started climbing, trying not to react to the sound of metal boots clanging on the asphalt behind him or panic when his boots slipped out of what he'd hoped was a sure foothold. A few more feet and he'd be clear –

"Delete!"

The electrical shock brought Mickey short as it stopped his heart and sent him falling back towards the ground. Still, there was enough time for him to go through a series of reactions. Surprise, indignation, frustration, and sadness followed by one question that he was so glad to have as a private thought.

Who was going to fix his gran's carpet now?

Abruptly, his fall was cut off by a pair of strong arms snatching him out of the air. As Mickey's rescuer landed, they immediately lashed out with a spinning kick, snapping the Cyberman that had electrocuted him in half like it was a piece of balsawood. Another impossible fast movement saw another losing its head to a well-placed rifle shot, which should have been impossible, given that the automatic rifles Ricky's lot had brought with them hadn't done any good in the same situation back at the Tyler mansion.

Fading out of consciousness as he was, Mickey Smith wouldn't hesitate to admit that he was impressed.

The world faded to black…

"-ickey? Mickey!"

And then came back with the sense that more than just a moment had passed. It didn't help that Mickey was laying on the ground with half of his body protesting in some way or another, but the presence of another non-cyborg person was heartening, especially seeing as that person was wearing a familiar face.

"Whashappenin?"

"Good, I was worried I hadn't gotten to you in time," Delaine said, leaning back on her heels. Instead of the casual zip-waistcoat and half-formal coat she'd been wearing that morning, she was dressed from feet to neck in a metal-plated black leather motorcyclist suit – the same one that the Rider from earlier had been wearing, if Mickey wasn't misremembering the details. Right down to the helmet sitting next to her. "You were almost dead there for a minute."

Mickey laughed and the noise came out as a cough. That neatly explained why he felt like dirt. "I hear there's a pretty big difference between almost dead and all dead."

She cracked a smile. "Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead… well, there's pretty much only one thing left you can do."

"Go through his pockets and look for loose change," Mickey finished.

They both fell into laughter for a moment.

"Gotta say Mickey, I figured you'd be a little more awed at the grand reveal of the mysterious black knight's identity," Delaine said, gesturing at towards her face.

He would have shrugged, but his body wasn't quite up for the gesture at the moment. "I kind of figured out it was you under that helmet. Don't know anyone else that calls Rose 'Blondie', already confirmed that you sent the Professor after me… and even without that, I've seen you decide when it's time to get down to business; you cut a pretty distinct figure between the walk and the talk – well, the fighting. Like watching a crazy alley cat going at it."

Delaine gave him one of her lopsided smiles. "I can't even begin to understand how everyone manages to underestimate you, Mickey Smith."

"Well, I'm not that smart–"

"Don't talk yourself down. You're a smart kid; just because that smarts isn't from books doesn't mean that it ain't there." She smiled. "I'll tell you a secret; when I was growing up, everyone called me stupid. I failed so many classes it wasn't funny. Math, mostly, but I wasn't so hot at science either. Failed Chemistry at least once, managed to weasel out of Bio when I heard about the cat dissection thing, couldn't wrap my head around the different equations in Physics... Really, the only subjects I was good at were Literature and Art, and everyone knows that Art is almost always a free pass anyway."

She leaned back against the wall. "Didn't have many friends either. A few, but they were the sort that you pick up because you happen to be geographically close with vaguely similar interests. Weird kid without any talent or perks isn't exactly high in demand, you know? And even the few friends I managed to get didn't stick around. Soon as they got something better, they'd just pick up and move on without so much as a 'see you later'." A mirthless laugh escaped her mouth. "I remember the day when my best friend, Sarah – platinum blond hair, all natural by everything I could tell – turned around and looked me in the face just to tell me that she was moving on. That she'd 'grown up' and I hadn't. We were eleven years old and the only difference between us was that I was still reading comic books when she wasn't."

Delaine's head fell, along with her smile. "She never spoke to me again."

"I'm sorry."

She looked up, her lopsided smile making its return. "Heh. Don't worry about it. It is ancient history in the most literal sense of the term. I'm just saying that I am intimately familiar with what it's like being the butt monkey."

"…butt monkey?"

"American turn of phrase. Replace it with 'tin dog' for coherency purposes."

"Ah. Can't really see it."

She shrugged. "We all change with time. That's the way of life. It's just that some people have more time than others."

"And some people can change completely overnight."

"Time Lords are an… extreme example, Mickey, and you're thinking of the most unorthodox one to ever escape Gallifrey," Delaine replied as she stood up. "And, if I'm going to be honest with you, it's something of a stretch to say that he's playing by the same rules. I mean, just compare Zeke to the versions of the Doctor you've met."

And there was another sneaking suspicion confirmed, though the exact mechanics of how that worked – if the Doctor recognized the Professor, did that mean that he was a past self and if that was the case, how did everything else work in after that? Or was the answer clones? – were a complete mystery. "How's that even happen?"

"You know how some people start a story by saying they lost a bet?" she asked, reaching a hand down to help Mickey up.

"Yes?"

"It's not one of those stories."

Fair enough. Mickey looked around, noting the destruction littering the alley. While there was little damage to the buildings themselves, the cyborgs that had followed him were barely recognizable as Cybermen, instead looking like particularly shiny bits of junkyard cast off, though the occasional puddle of white liquid draining from them was harder to dismiss. "You don't do things by halves, do you?" he asked, toeing a heavily dented Cyberman head to the side.

"Not when I have the luxury of action, no."

Mickey started sliding around his collection of facts. "…that you didn't do this to the robots back on the Madame De Pompadour means that there's some condition to it. An off-switch or something." He snapped his fingers as it came to him. "That bracelet thing. Whenever you don't have it on, you have… I don't know, superpowers."

It sounded stupid now that he said it aloud, but Mickey was certain he was right. She had switched between wearing the bracelet and not during the Deffry Vale incident – which always coincided with her doing something strange, well, stranger than what Mickey had long sense accepted as hanging-around-the-Doctor normal – and had been stuck with it during the whole adventure on the S.S. Madame De Pompadour thanks to the Doctor's handcuffs, which had seen her use no remarkable abilities beyond what was already humanly possible. Today, she hadn't bothered wearing it at all and the end result was something that the mysterious Professor implied was on par with stuff straight out of an action comic book. Ghost Rider, most likely.

Delaine grinned as she opened the gate in the fence with a quick turn of the wrist. A turn, Mickey noted, that didn't involve a key or any sort of lock-picking equipment. "And here you were saying you were stupid just a minute ago. I didn't even have to tell you anything and you figured out one of my best held secrets using nothing but what you've seen and your own sense."

It was a quick walk to the street – again, empty, but the absence of Cybermen was reassuring at least. The fact that he had a superhuman being on his side was a bit of comfort against the idea of running into them at least.

"Last question – what are you?"

Maybe it was rude and more than likely he'd get a non-answer that wouldn't actually say anything, but Mickey was curious as to what Delaine's response would be.

"Ridiculously complicated." With that, the helmet descended, concealing her face. Delaine snapped her fingers and, as if it had been waiting just down the street for the signal, the black motorcycle she'd been riding earlier pulled up. "Get on – we've got a gate to crash."

The group had separated. That was inevitable, what with the lack of familiarity and instinctual trust, even if it was such an avoidable problem on paper. With Mickey and his double, the Doctor was finding it difficult to consider it anything beyond an annoyance – not that he was feeling over much concern for the rest of the group, mind –, but he was worried about Rose. She'd already had one close call that evening and there was no telling if his other companion was still alive at this point, which made the one that he still had with him a priority.

The disappearance of the Professor, on the other hand, was unsettling.

The Doctor had been following him, had made a purposeful choice in making sure Seven's doppelganger remained in sight at all times, and all it had taken was a sharp corner and all of two seconds for the man to vanish completely.

'Have I ever mentioned how much I hate you?' he asked Seven with no attempt at hiding his frustration.

'Often enough, but I fail to see how this is my fault.'

'It isn't,' the Doctor admitted as he scanned the street. There was a Cyberman somewhere, the noise was unmistakable, but there was an infernal echo that was making it impossible to pin down where it was coming from. 'But you're the closest thing I have to the actual focus of my frustration at the moment, so it's mostly a matter of convenience.'

He almost made the mistake of resting his hand on the side of a metal truck, but pulled back immediately. Just in time too – the electricity that had coursed through it had been enough to burst the headlight bulbs on the other end of it.

"You will be deleted!" the Cyberman announced as it stepped out from behind the vehicle.

Tactical thinking. Never a good sign in Cybermen. Especially when they hadn't been using this level of environmental awareness an hour ago.

The Doctor stumbled back, tripping slightly over the heels of his shoes. He had enough moment to wish that he'd been able to wear his trainers – good sensible shoes – instead before he hit the ground.

Well, that was it. He could scramble to his feet, make a go at running away, but the odds of that were low. Lower than the chance of pulling off a regeneration in the face of an unfriendly foe.

Hah. And he'd only gotten a little over a month in this body. Might as well not have lived at all.

The Cyberman reached out, only a few feet from being close enough to kill –

And now it was being thrown to the side, crashing through a brick wall with enough force to see its chassis shatter.

The Doctor turned to see who – or more accurately, what – had saved him, only to find the Professor standing behind him, hand outstretched as darkness fell across him in shadows too deep and too dark to be the product of any natural light, his eyes once again sparking with pinpricks of haunting starlight.

Where the starlight hiding in those eyes before could have been dismissed as a trick of the light – not that the Doctor had done that, no –, now the excuse fell long short of providing even a shadow of an explanation. To look into those eyes was to catch a glimpse of deep space, where the only thing to see were distant stars and the darkness that filled the space in between. Despite being long used to such views, the Doctor found himself brought short.

As soon as it had appeared, the unearthly effect vanished, leaving nothing behind but the sight of a seemingly harmless middle-aged man adjusting his hat.

"What are you?"

It wasn't an accusation. Not quite. There was an edge of fear in there, accompanied by an edge of awe. The Doctor didn't like either of those things, especially coming from him.

The Professor glanced down at the Time Lord. "Are you sure that's a question you want me to be answering?"

He didn't have the patience required for Seven's games, doppelganger or not. "I want an answer," he said firmly.

The Professor's eyes flashed and the Doctor found himself, for the second time that day, feeling very, very small.

"I'm the one who walks on the edges of time and space, who crosses the void beyond the mind and wanders through the lands of dreaming," the man – no, not man, humans never felt like this – declared, voice taking on a sepulchral echo as his form began to fray at the edges, allowing him to pull himself up to a height Seven had never himself possessed. "I'm the darkness cast by the shadow of planets and the stars that shine inside of it."

The unnatural shadows were back, wrapping and warping until all that was left of the Professor was a figure cut out of blue-rimmed black velvet and a cacophony of impossible constellations spinning around inside. Wings – odd numbered and unidentifiable as belonging to either bat or bird – stretched out of that darkness, threatening to envelop the Doctor in a cold embrace. "I'm the uncaged night bird, blinded yet all-seeing, swiftly soaring on silent wings. My flight predicts the path of storms and cuts through the wildfire without singeing a single feather, my claws sunder and sear the hearts and souls of the wicked who deem themselves pure."

"I'm the king's demon, the child's guardian angel, and the nightmare of every monster lurking in the dark corners of the universe. I am –" At this, the impression of inherent alien danger faltered, vanishing in an instant to be replaced by something all too familiar and, for lack of a better word, human as the Professor's unassuming 'human' form returned, the darkness running back to whatever place he had called it from to leave them back on the London street where they had started. "Well, I suppose you already know the answer to that."

"Do I?" That was Seven's style of grand speech, apart from that end bit, designed to weave truth and artful deception into a tapestry designed to terrify and intimidate the likes of elder gods, but there was never a show of overt power attached. Nothing but well-chosen words and history had ever lent the Doctor's speeches weight. This had taken another element into the equation, one that the Time Lord couldn't properly name, and that inability to understand it frightened him.

Seven's double smiled – again, that strange, almost gentle expression that the incarnation had never quite managed on his own. It didn't fit with what the Doctor just experienced at all. "Why, I'm Zeke. Wouldn't really want to be anyone else." With that, he extended a hand to help the Doctor back up to his feet.

The smile said that the statement was a true one, but it was a truth viewed through multiple mirrors that, if one of those mirrors was moved to a slightly different angle, would show something else entirely. If that 'something' else was a hidden piece to that truth… well, it was just as easy enough to misconstrue the offered information into something that would have likely been an outright lie if spoken plainly.

A set of physical laws that actively hated his existence. A self-professed demon with the name of a fallen angel and a face out of a past the Doctor would rather forget. A 'spirit of vengeance' that could have raced off the cover of a comic book while being infinitely more dangerous than any papercut its source material could have given. A cyborg that was halfway between Cyberman and Raston Warrior robot with ten times the personality of either.

This universe was strange and in directions the Doctor didn't at all like.

Bonus Deleted Scene – What's Your Sign?

I really, really wanted to work this into the main piece because I stumbled across something interesting while researching sign language and it lined up perfectly with something the Doctor did in the classic series (see the Sixth Doctor's first lines after reading), but the van interaction was already too long and the conversation leading up to that was already kind of clunky, so it was surgically removed and placed here in the deleted scenes.

The Doctor stared at the cyborg sitting across from him in the back of the van.

It stared back. Probably. It was difficult to tell with the lack of facial features.

Its hand flashed through a series of hand signs that, once again, the Doctor found himself unable to understand. That Seven's doppelganger wasn't running into such a difficulty was just as irksome as his own lack of comprehension.

"Why should I trust you? I don't know anything about you, your name, who made you, or even what sort of language you're 'speaking'. I really should just disable you right now," the Doctor decided. "Certainly safer that way."

If the cyborg was some sort of Cyberman forerunner – unlikely – that would put it out of commission. If it wasn't… well, it would stop the Cybermen from getting advanced technology that could see them jumping a few steps in mechanical evolution. Besides, he didn't like the look of that rifle. Or the sword.

The cyborg's hand flashed quickly through a series of signs that the Doctor did understand. The first is a simple repeat of a single letter – 'I-I-I' – and the last…

"Ego–Egotistical?" the Doctor sputtered. "I am not egotistical! And – and I am not dignifying the rest of that with a response!"

The sound of half-muffled laughter from his 'faithful' companions didn't help with the burning sensation of embarrassment in his ears, the Doctor found.

Author's Notes

*plays keatulie's supercut of out of context lines from Fury Of The Deep* Merry Weed, everybody! I give you a chapter after a small forever of silence!

Zeke plays mind games – no surprise for anyone familiar with the Seventh Doctor – while trolling everyone in range, Mickey gets the shock of his life – and finds out something he already sort of knew –, and the Doctor gets an idea of how far in over his head he really is – without really understanding how deep the waters really go. And we still have 1-2 chapters left in this 'arc'… I say 1-2 because I haven't written that part yet and I'm a little iffy on if I'm going to put some of the stuff in. I laid the groundwork but it's not so majorly woven in that I can't just leave it out if it comes out clunky…

Anyway, sorry about the long update time. I've been stressed out and busy and writer's block… the usual problems, I guess, considering how many times I've typed out something like this. There's also been a few recalculations on different jumps that aren't even close to being written because I keep getting rid of and adding Alters…

Oh, and editing earlier chapters. That's still slow going, but I hope to get everything updated and fixed before I finish the next arc (which shouldn't be nearly as long as this one, because this was based on a two parter episode and I'm shoving in a lot of character study).

Meh. Onto the explaining.

*also comments might be a little mixed up because I deleted my haitus warning chapter and... ffnet just doesn't get rid of the comments attached to the deleted chapter? and it keeps everything sorted by the original chapter numbers? IDK what to do about that but it should resolve itself in a way*

Mickey figures out Delaine's identity using a combination of good instinct and the information he has – and he lays most of it out in his explanation.

The Doctor's second section was almost cut because it didn't feel right, but Zeke's show-off session was a little too good to discard. I hope y'all liked it.

Seven is being blamed for all the things because the Seventh Doctor's thing is that he plans and plots and is 700% more scheme-y than any other incarnation of the Doctor, to the point that he's the only one incarnation that's sort of organized and most of the other Doctors have an extremely low regard for him and his questionable ethics. It's a trait that often sees him burning bridges with companions in a rather spectacular(ly awful) fashion. Oddly enough, one of the few lines that Seven isn't comfortable crossing is murder (like, if he has to do it himself, because he has no problem putting people in a deadly situation or getting someone or something else to do the job).

You might have also picked up that Zeke's speech – noted by the Doctor as being similar to Seven's – has a lot of similarities to the big grand speeches the Doctor's pulled off in NuWho, which is because the VNA's – Seven's books – are where the Doctor really got into the 'Oncoming Storm' business, to the point where one of the plots were directly adapted for Ten (Human Nature).

He does have redeeming features, being the Doctor, but I'm planning on Zeke having a lot of character development to separate him from Seven – though some of you have noted that there's already a distinct difference between the two.

Ezeqeel (also known as Chazaqiel) is a Watcher – the class of angel, nothing to do with Buffy – and Raguel is, as the Doctor pointed out, an Angel of Vengeance and Justice, among other things. They both have Wikipedia pages. I think I've said it before, but I like researching things like that.

If you want an idea of how Tsela looks beyond my description, his cyborg body is mostly based on those from Metal Gear Rising (one of the Jumps I'm 100% on doing), specifically Raiden and the Winds of Destruction. Not exactly, because a straight copy paste is cheap, but the vibe is intended to be similar.

Tsela's sign language is intended to be Navajo Family Sign, which, along with Navajo, aren't languages the Doctor knows (at least in the continuity of this fic) because everything I've found in my research spells out very plainly that the Navajo keep parts of their culture very close to the chest (completely fair, considering what white people do with the scraps of native culture they do get their hands on). It's also a fun way to frustrate the Doctor, who is a character who loves being ten steps ahead of everyone else intellectually.

The Doctor does understand when Tsela flips over to more mainstream sign language, though.

Ghost Riders in comic canon usually end up gaining about four inches in height (comic books are weird about proportions though), so that's a detail that registers to those that are paying attention. Other Ghost Rider abilities – hellfire manipulation/pyrokinesis, the ability to channel hellfire through items, increasing their damage potential/physical resistance/utility (seen with vehicles more prominently), the ability to summon their motorcycle at whim, general stat improvement (super strength, super durability, etc.), soul reading (can be used for identification purposes, but usually is just part of the Penance stare), and – at least in the movie continuity with the capstone booster, which is one of the Jumps taken – healing abilities strong enough to bring back the recently deceased (Chunky Salsa rule applies – if Mickey had exploded, it wouldn't have worked).

Anyway, thanks for reading and double thanks for leaving a comment. Unless its weird demands. Then it's just a single thanks for the reading.