- Chapter 5: The Time Lord -
=| Assassins' universe: St. Luke's University |=
The Doctor was sitting in his office, having completed his shift in guarding the vault that imprisoned Missy, a renegade Time Lord. This night, it would be his assistant Nardole's shift. And having finished another lecture on Poetry, when it was supposed to be on Quantum Physics, which, again to him, both subjects had no difference.
He picked up his electric guitar, put on and connected his sonic sunglasses, and started to play a tune, a sad tune, reminiscing the loss of Clara, despite being unable to remember anything about her. As he turned around, he looked out the window, staring at the crescent moon, one made permanent by a disastrous experiment on antimatter last year, yet he knew the moon wouldn't stay like that forever.
He then turned back to his desk, to the pictures of his wife, River Song, and his granddaughter, Susan Foreman, as he occasionally looked at them, imagining them talking to him, for companionship.
And yet, even with playing his guitar and looking at the pictures, he was still bored. Having stayed there for 70 years, he had been suppressing his desire for adventures through space and time, so as to fulfil his oath of guarding the vault for a thousand years. However, not this day, all that urge was bubbling up, he hadn't had a great time for a while.
He wanted some adventure, so he looked at the blue police phone box that was at the corner of his office, and spoke to himself, "It's just one trip, I can just come back as soon as I just left, shouldn't be a problem for just one adventure."
And just like that, he fished into his coat pocket and took out a key, unlocked the door on the blue box, removed the "out of order" sign hanging on it and entered the box. Once inside, the TARDIS began to wake up as the lights started turning on, just as the Doctor took a look at a screen to see if the TARDIS sensors had picked up anything.
And yes they did, the TARDIS had managed to detect a space-time distortion in a location somewhere on the planet, the Doctor turned a few switches and the screen displayed a series of coordinates. He then input those coordinates into the control console, and pulled a lever for takeoff, with the engine making its iconic sound.
VWORP VWORP VWORP
A few seconds later, the TARDIS rematerialised somewhere else. The Doctor turned the lever back and turned on the handbrake, and left the box.
Outside, it was day and he was in a clearing surrounded by trees and bushes and it was day, and being able to feel time travel, he knew that he didn't travel in time, but had just gone to a place that was daytime, and judging by the smell in the air, Japan. He put on his sonic sunglasses and started looking around for anything out of the ordinary.
=| Class 3-E building |=
"I can't believe it's been almost two days since Nagisa disappeared! I'm beginning to think something horrible happened to him!" Kayano voiced her worries as she and the rest of Class 3-E all gathered in their classroom. It was just 7:30 am and school wouldn't start until 8.
The others either sighed or shifted uncomfortably. Sugino was pacing back and forth, uneasiness written on his face. Then there was Karma, who despite looking indifferent as always, couldn't shake the anxiety in his chest.
They all have no idea what else they could do, Karasuma-sensei, Bitch-sensei and Ritsu had been searching through government documents and databases for several hours a day, while Korosensei had been searching nonstop for a portal just like the one that opened the other day, and still, they can't find anything.
Knowing that staying depressed like this won't help anything, Isogai, the male class representative stood up and suggested, "Maybe we should head back to the clearing and look around one more time, we still have some time before school starts."
"Yeah, except we would need a miracle to make that possible!" Okajima shouted frustratedly. Terasaka, being the class brawn, then blasted, "Then let's make a miracle ourselves! We can't just do nothing!"
Aware of how low their chances were, but seeing the two boys still holding on, the rest of the class regained some morale, and decided to follow on the plan.
And just like that, Class 3-E headed down the stairway that led to the school building, back towards the place where it all started.
Just as they were a minute away from the clearing, a strong gust of wind started to pick up, causing leaves to fly at the students. Then they heard a weird sound, "VWORP! VWORP! VWORP!" which lasted a few moments and then stopped, along with the wind.
They noticed the wind and sound were coming from the clearing, so they rushed there as quickly as possible. After running through the bushes and trees for a short while, they hid behind some of the trees and bushes that outlined the clearing.
Peeking out of the bushes and from behind the trees, they saw a blue box standing on one side, with a tall, old-looking man standing next to where the hole that sucked Nagisa in was. The man had bushy, silvery-grey hair, a thin face and most importantly, very expressive eyebrows. He was wearing a white shirt, a blue waistcoat, a dark green hoodie and a black velvet frock coat, plus a pair of sunglasses and a pair of black leather shoes.
That man was looking around, with his back turned to the students, seemingly unaware of their presence. They remained hidden and began spying on that mysterious man and the blue box that was not there before.
Kayano whispered, "Who's that?"
Karma whispered back, "Don't know, but he might know something about Nagisa's disappearance."
"But what is that?" Yada asked quietly, pointing at the blue box. To which, Nakamura who was right next to her, answered, "That's a police phone box, they were used in Great Britain back in the 1960s, but why would one be here?"
They continued spying silently until Mimura suddenly sneezed, causing the man to turn towards their direction as they all hide out of sight.
With his sunglasses, the Doctor scanned them, knowing they were there, but he decided to ignore them and turn back around.
Two more minutes passed by, the male class representative told Kimura to head back to the school building to fetch the teachers, stepped out and made contact with the Doctor, "Um...Excuse me, sir?"
The Doctor turned around and took off his sunglasses, revealing his intense blue eyes, coming face to face with the young male class representative. "Oh, hello!" The Doctor replied in Japanese, but with a very obvious Scottish accent.
"You can speak Japanese?" Isogai said with a surprised face.
"Yes, I picked it up during a previous vacation here," the grey-haired timelord answered, which was a lie as it was because of the TARDIS translator.
"Well then, nice to meeting you, uh..."
Realizing he didn't introduce himself, the Doctor fished into his coat pocket and took out his psychic paper, showing it to the young man, and said with a smile, "Doctor John Disco, St. Luke's University."
In Isogai's perspective, the psychic paper showed a work pass of St. Luke's University with the Doctor's photo and name on it. He bought the Doctor's ruse, said, "Well then, nice to meet you, Doctor Disco sir."
"Just call me Doctor(In Japanese - Hakase, but I'll just stick with Doctor)."
"Sure," the black-haired teen nodded.
The grey-haired man pointed to the trees, "Also your friends can come out, I know they are over there."
And with that, Isogai turned around and gestured the others to come out.
The other 24 students (Nagisa is missing, Ritsu is an AI and Kimura ran back to the school) came out of the trees and bushes, and into view. The Doctor then spoke, "Ah, you all must be students of Kunugigaoka Junior High, and judging by this place, class 3-E!" but also thinking to himself, 'Class 3-E, why does that ring a bell?'
That surprised everyone, leading to Sugino asking, "How do you know that?"
"Well, from your uniforms, and the fact that this place is a hill a kilometre away from the main building, Sugino."
"Wait, how do you know my name."
The Doctor just shrugged, "I know many things, including all of your names," And he proceeded to identify every student correctly, including Ritsu as he noticed her in Takebayashi's phone, which was jutting out of the spectacled boy's coat pocket.
Seeing that the mysterious man knew about them all, Karma suspected that this person is not so simple, and glanced at the police box. He pointed at it and asked, "But what is that?"
The Doctor responded sarcastically, "It's a police box, what else do you think it is?"
At that moment, three people arrived. A tall man with cool eyes, a black toupee, wearing a white shirt, a black tie, black trousers and shoes, a blond, fair-skinned woman with large light blue eyes, wearing a grey turtleneck and blue trousers, and a pair of heeled sandals, as well as a boy with spiky dark brownish-green hair and wearing the standard Kunugigaoka uniform.
The Doctor greeted Karasuma-sensei and Bitch-sensei, "I guess you two must be their teachers."
The black-haired teacher replied cooly, "Yes, my name is Karasuma Tadaomi and this is Irina Jelavić, and who might you be?"
Again, the Doctor took out his psychic paper, showing it to him and Bitch-sensei, said, "Doctor John Disco, St. Luke's University."
Irina saw what Isogai saw earlier, but Karasuma, all he saw was a blank paper, mostly due to mental training from his time in the JSDF (Japan Self-Defense Forces).
Therefore he said, "That paper is blank.", causing the Serbian hit-woman to argue with him, "What do you mean? It clearly shows a work pass!"
The Doctor took a look at his psychic paper and put it back in his pocket, said, "Well that didn't work, guess you have some basic psychic training."
As the old-looking Scotsman responded, the students and teachers took out their weapons and pointed at the Doctor, after realizing they have been tricked and suspected that the man might be another assassin. The Doctor raised both hands, grimaced then smiled, "Seriously? The guns and knives? Put them down."
"Not until you tell us the truth! Who are you? Are you an assassin?" Karasuma warned with a serious face.
The Doctor frowned as a question mark popped above his head, 'What do you mean assassin?' And then his eyes widened as he remembered why the word 'Class 3-E' was so familiar.
So he just answered, "I have asked myself many times who I am, and the answer? I'm just an idiot old man with a box, passing through, helping out, learning. An assassin? No. I am just a teacher from St. Luke's University. And you wouldn't attack an unarmed man, would you?" And he flipped out his pockets.
A silence set upon this confrontation, and both sides stared at each other for a few moments. Then Class 3-E lowered their weapons, and Isogai asked, "So what are you doing here, Doctor?"
The old-looking Scotsman replied, "Oh, I detected a space-time distortion here and came to investigate, and what about all of you, shouldn't you all be back at school?"
The students looked at each other and went gloom, Kataoka then said, "One of our pupils, Shiota Nagisa, went missing here two days ago. We came here to search for clues to search for him."
That grabbed the Doctor's attention, "Went missing? What exactly happened?"
Kayano answered with a sad face, "He went here and found a hole in the air right there," She pointed a the area where the wormhole was, "Karma and I followed him and tried to stop him, but it was no use. He then got sucked into it." The tall redhead then added, "We tried pulling him back, but we got pushed back when a wave of energy blasted out of that hole. And as it closed, we heard a sentence, 'This will be the end of all heroes.'"
The Doctor's eyes widened at the sentence, Karma continued, "What do you think that means?" To which, the Doctor just shrugged, "No idea, but I don't like the sound of that."
Just then, a shadow came into the clearing. It was a giant yellow octopus-like entity that was wearing a black academic dress, a small black academic cap and a black tie with a yellow crescent moon on it. He said, "Students, I think it's time you come back to-"
The students then ranted, "Korosensei, what are you doing here!? You are not supposed to be seen by outsiders!" And they chased him with their anti-Korosensei knives and guns
The Doctor then said, "Oh, it's you!"
Everyone stopped and was surprised to hear that from the old-looking Scotsman, and thought to themselves, 'Korosensei was supposed to be a national secret, how does he know about him?'
Korosensei then asked, "Do I know you?" To which the Doctor responded, "No, but I know who you are. You are the former assassin known as 'The Reaper', and the one who claimed responsibility for the destruction of the moon, even though it was not."
Karasuma then asked the Doctor, "How do you know this?" He just replied, "I have my sources, mostly from my colleagues in the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, or UNIT as you might call it."
Kayano asked out of curiosity, "What's UNIT?" To which, Karasuma explained, "It's an international military organization under the United Nations that investigates and combat paranormal and extraterrestrial threats. I learned about them during my JSDF times."
The Scotsman added, "You are correct, and it's not just the Japanese government that is monitoring you all, UNIT has also been keeping an eye on you to make sure you don't act out of bounds."
"So you are a teacher and a secret agent?" Maehara asked the Doctor.
"Yes and no, not a secret agent, more of a scientific advisor, I mean what makes you think that I would do fieldwork undercover?" he replied, the playboy said, "I don't know, maybe you were a secret agent in your younger days."
The old man was about to debate about that, but can't think of an argument, pointed out his finger and said, "Fair enough, now back to where we were! One of your students got sucked into a hole in the air, and now you are trying to find him, right?"
The students nodded. The man reached into his inner coat pocket, "Let's see what I can do to help."
The Doctor took out a metal cylinder that had a blue, mechanical-looking handle and a blue tip, pointed it at the area where the wormhole used to be, and pressed a trigger on its side, causing it to emit a strange sound and a blinking green light.
Itona, being the mechanic and curious about the device, asked in his usual monotone voice, "What is that device?"
The Doctor answered as he was scanning, "This is a sonic screwdriver, it can scan everything, retrieve data and do other things. I also have my sunglasses, that's how I know about all of you." Then, he finished scanning and looked at the analysis, he was shocked to see the results, "This shouldn't be possible..."
Karma asked, "What is it?" The Doctor answered, "It says here the wormhole your classmate got sucked into was created using an astronomical amount of energy, capable of sending him across the void and into a parallel universe!"
Okuda asked shyly, "W-what's the void?"
The Doctor explained, "The space between dimensions. There are all sorts of realities around us, different dimensions, billions of parallel universes all stacked up against each other," The Doctor's hands mimicked multiple layers stacked up, "and the void is the space in between, containing absolutely nothing. Imagine that nothing, no light, no dark, no up, no down, no life, no time, without ending to it."
Everyone's faces froze in shock and horror as they tried to comprehend what the old man said, then Kayano asked, as her eyes started to fill with tears, "So...does that mean we won't see him again?"
The Scotsman looked at the other students, their faces were filled with despair, "Oh come on, don't be like that! Really don't know how you people can turn your face like that. There's still hope!"
They all turned to him, with a glimmer of hope back on their faces, "How?"
"Everytime a wormhole opens, it creates a tear in space-time, and when it closes, the space-time fabric will be in a weakened state for a while. Since the tear was opened just a few days ago, the space-time here is still weakened, and lucky for us, I got the wormhole's frequency in here," the Doctor shakes his screwdriver in his hand, "I can reopen the wormhole with that and some power, then we can go to that parallel universe and rescue your classmate," the Doctor explained.
With that, everyone's faces lit back up (except Karasuma who just smiled), Takebayashi, the class science whiz, adjusted his glasses and asked the Doctor, "But how are we going to provide the power?"
The Time Lord smiled and pointed at his box, "With that."
Everyone then looked at the blue box in disbelief, with question marks popping up all over their heads, "Huh?"
Sugaya, who was standing right next to the box, knocked on it and said, "But it's made of wood, how is it going to do that?"
The Doctor then walked to the box, snapped his fingers to open the doors, and walked right in.
The students and teachers were hesitant at first, then slowly followed in, only to see that there was a huge room. It had metal walls with round things on the upper half, and a honeycomb pattern on the lower half. In the middle of the room was a hexagonal console with all sorts of buttons, levers and switches on it, as well as three screens. In the middle of the console was a vertical glass tube that was glowing an orange light and was connected to what looked like three gears that had circular markings on each side at the ceiling. Around the console platform were railings with two other consoles on them and stairs that led to an elevated balcony with bookshelves, a chair, candles and chalkboards.
They looked around the room in astonishment, a few of the students and Korosensei with their mouths opened, and the Doctor, who was standing right next to the main console and had changed his frock coat and green hoodie for a ancient linen frock coat, introduced, "Time And Relative Dimension in Space," they all turned their eyes at the Timelord, who continued with a wide grin, "TARDIS for short."
Kayano, surprised, muttered out, "But, it's just a wooden box..." Karma and Nakamura took out their phones and started taking pictures, and everyone else just walked around the main console and the balcony.
Then, Chiba, who was usually very stoic and had a keen eye on dimensional sizing, said, "It's bigger on the inside!" The Doctor chuckled at that, "Is it!? I never noticed!"
"How is this possible?" Takebayashi asked in amazement. The Time Lord, just simply answered, "Dimensional engineering."
The stoic male then asked, "What do you mean by dimensional engineering? It's not like you can just engineer dimensions!"
Irina asked the Doctor after noticing the students' questions, "Just who are you really?" Everyone then turned to the latter.
After a pause, he replied, "I'm known by many names throughout the years, but most people call me the Doctor. I'm a time traveller, but I am also a teacher and scientist, and this is the TARDIS, my space and time machine."
Everyone was silently astonished to hear all that, leading to a long silence. After a moment, Kataoka asked, "We're not imagining this, are we?"
The Doctor smiled, "Unfortunately I don't think so."
At the same time, Itona was curious about the control console, and was about to press one of the buttons. Causing the Doctor to rush towards him and slap his hand, "Don't touch that!"
The Doctor then plugged his sonic screwdriver into a socket on the console, and input the wormhole frequency, "Alright, it's all set, I will come back with your classmate in a jiffy."
Korosensei said, "No." The Time Lord raised an eyebrow, "Pardon?"
The homeroom teacher said, "No, I will be going as well."
The Doctor then said in a serious tone, "If that's the case, may I hear an argument for that?"
Korosensei then said, "We are one class, we do not leave any one of us behind in any danger, and I have promised to keep all of my students safe. It is my duty as Nagisa's teacher to keep him safe, or I am no worthy teacher."
Karasuma and Irina said together, "And so do I."
The students also voiced, "And we will go as well!"
The adults looked at them, Korosensei adviced, "Everyone please, this trip could be dangerous."
Kayano said, "We have already faced many dangers throughout this year, what makes this anymore different?"
Isogai added, "And I believe the more people there is, the higher our chances in finding Nagisa."
"Besides, we still need to assassinate you," Karma said with a smirk.
A silence set in as the teachers and students contemplate on their choice and Karma's weird choice of reasoning.
The Doctor then sighed, "Guess I can't stop anyone of you, then make your last contacts and pack all your stuff, also take Ritsu's mainframe in here, we could be in the other universe for some time and we can't make contact with here from there. And also I will have to put you all back on the day after the same amount of time that has passed in that parallel universe."
Yoshida remembered that the TARDIS can travel through time and space, asked, "But can't we just go back to the moment we left after we rescued Nagisa? Or heck even go back to two days ago and prevent Nagisa from going missing?"
"No, I can't do that," The Doctor replied, "not when you have a teacher who is basically a ticking time bomb with a fixed time of detonation," referring to Korosensei, "and I can't go back to two days ago or I will cross my own timeline and that can rip a hole in the fabric of the universe!"
As the motorcycle enthusiast processed all that information, the octopus-esque teacher asked the Time Lord, "Then how long do you think we will be there for?"
The Doctor shrugged, "Can't be sure, but since time passes at the same rate across all the universes, it shouldn't be too hard to calculate on what day we will be arriving back here."
Korosensei said, "You sounded like you have experienced going to parallel worlds before."
"Yes, a couple of times, and not all were pleasant." The Doctor said as he caught glimpses of bad memories from his 11th incarnation's (the 10th Doctor) experience back in Pete's World, but later found solace in the time when he saved Gallifrey from the last day of the Time War, when he, along with his previous incarnations sent the planet to one.
And with that, all the students contacted their families about their plans and that they wouldn't be able to contact them for several days, Korosensei flew to the main school building to inform Principal Asano about what they are planning and requested for a several-day leave for himself, the teachers and the students, to which they were allowed, and Terasaka's team moved Ritsu's mainframe into the TARDIS while they all packed up all their school bags, sports clothing and equipment.
And in less than 20 minutes, Class 3-E is ready for this quest. As the TARDIS' doors closed and locked, the Doctor looked in a screen, showing the outside of the TARDIS, he then flicked some of the switches and pressed some buttons, sending a beam of energy from the lamp that crowned the top of the TARDIS to the point where the wormhole was.
After firing the beam for a few moments, space-time began to distort, and then the wormhole was recreated.
The Time Lord then told everyone, "You all might want to hold on to something, this could get hectic!"
He pulled the main lever, the engine spooled and made its signature sound.
VWORP VWORP VWORP
All of Class 3-E hold onto the railings and the control room supports, and Kayano muttered to herself, "Nagisa, we're coming!"
As the TARDIS lifted off the ground and started to hover, the Doctor held onto the steering joystick and veered the space-time machine into the wormhole.
And in an instant, the blue box flew straight into the glowing hole in the air, leaving this universe for the other. However, as the TARDIS went out of view, the wormhole slowly shrank and disappeared into thin air.
A/N:
WOOOO! THE DOCTOR HAS LANDED! YEAH!
Most of the quotes are taken from both classic and modern series, with some changes of course, as quoted by the sixth doctor himself, "What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?". I also took inspiration from the Doctor Who series 7 episode 'In the Forest of the Night' to make the right tone and words the Doctor would speak with. And, yes I said 10th is the 11th incarnation because I count the War Doctor as one of them.
Also, the thing about time passing at the same rate in all parallel universes and a beam firing from the TARDIS lamp, I made those up for simplicity's sake.
Next time, we will go back to class 1-A with their fun in the shopping district. Stay tuned! ALLONS-Y and GERONIMO!
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