Omega grinned as he finalised the work on the new Black Hole power source, and he growled in satisfaction as he saw that the energy antenna was taking the full load of the temporal energy, just as he'd predicted.

Xxxxx

… He had seen Rassilon, Tecteun, and Pandak's treachery in the last few minutes, and he had engaged the emergency teleportation shift which opened a small-scale wormhole, just in time before his ship exploded and collapsed into the new black hole…

Xxxxxx

Rassilon had done a great job in making plans for the black hole. He could see that, but while some of the things they'd already learnt weren't quite true, given how Rassilon had cheated, relying on temporal projections of the future, although it would merely give him mere glimpses of the future, and only gave him enough knowledge and information to rely on for his work, it was good enough for Rassilon.

Well, at least until the Time Vortex was built.

Xx

...teleporting Rassilon into space after teleporting behind him, snatching off his sash, which he had needed to protect himself was truly satisfying….

Xx

Omega reflected before he turned to his ally.

Xx

"Omega, don't trust them; look at this…!" In silence, Omega had watched the transmission of his old friend and student/mentor, who had taught him so much about the nature of space and time that without them and their help, especially after he had first regenerated despite not wanting to, believing that he'd be no better than Rassilon, or Tecteun, who'd stolen regeneration from his friend. It wasn't until his friend had told him to regenerate, that he was getting older and slower, and he'd die if he didn't change, that he regenerated….once he did, he was exposed to his first taste of time. But looking at this transmission, which showed a copy of something seen in a temporal projection, showed Rassilon conspiring with some of the other Founders. "How could they do this?" Omega demanded.

"I don't know, but they must be stopped. Many of Rassilon's ideas and ideals are not something that should rule Gallifrey, and if he gets control over the Vortex we're building, he could cause terrible damage. Just think; Rassilon's an egomaniac. He always has been. He's as arrogant and disgusting as Tecteun, and if he rules Gallifrey and the vortex, he could try taking control of the universe. It would be just his style," his friend and ally shook his head; he was a brown-skinned man in this incarnation, and Omega's hearts twisted. Having two hearts in his chest was an odd experience; Tecteun had been unable to purge the changes to the Gallifreyan biology caused by the climax of regeneration, which meant with each regeneration, their DNA became a copy of the Timeless Child's.

"What do you propose?" Omega asked.

His friend smiled, and Omega knew his friend, who had no love for Tecteun or Rassilon, had been planning this….

Xxxxxx

Most people referred to him as the Other, mostly at the encouragement of Tecteun and Rassilon, who had spent years harvesting genetic material and the power of regeneration. Tecteun and Rassilon had become obsessed with the power of immortality. Omega had promised his people the power of time travel for years which would make it easier to traverse the entire cosmos, and in their drive to become immortal they had harmed the child whom Tecteun, Omega, and the other Founders of Gallifrey had taken with them after discovering her on a planet; Omega had never even suspected Tecteun had maternal instincts.

Sadly, he knew now she didn't. What they'd seen underneath that wormhole was nothing more than a blip. And the moment they'd returned to Gallifrey after years spent travelling the universe before returning with what they had, were more questions.

The Child they'd found, while accepted by the greater Gallifreyan populace, possessed a knowledge beyond their understanding, until now.

When they had travelled the universe in their tawdry and primitive spaceship, surfing space warps and passing through inter-dimensional rifts, passing through that wormhole on that planet where they found the child and coming back with a knowledge of trillions of worlds and the secrets of many civilisations, the Child had an instinctive understanding of time and space.

Omega and the girl had worked for years together, and for every single theory and idea he'd had about the nature of time and space, the Child proved it wrong as if all of his notions were silly to her. And they were. For the child, what Omega believed was if an individual from a medieval period was asking questions about the cosmos from an astrophysicist.

At first, the other Founders treated the girl well, Tecteun (at first) had adopted the girl as her own flesh and blood, Artron adored her and spent a lot of time playing, and Omega became a tutor at first before she began teaching him and challenged him on his theories and he'd come to love every minute of it.

Rassilon, though…

Rassilon had never hidden the fact when they'd encountered life on other worlds, and whenever they jumped through time when they travelled those galaxies through the wormhole reefs after they'd gone through that wormhole leading to that other reality Tecteun and the others suspected the child came from, where they encountered many thousands of new races which they learnt from, and allowed them access to knowledge of how to reach many other worlds in the multiverse, and to explore many strange dimensions, that even after finding other worlds with rich cultures and ideas, he firmly believed Gallifrey was instantly superior.

Omega could understand his point of view, of course, they all could, but even after they'd been cursed with mortality, the Gallifreyans were not better. Far from it.

Gallifreyans had their strengths and weaknesses, like everyone else. Rassilon merely focused on the strengths rather than addressing the weaknesses, one of which, sadly, was pure arrogance.

Xxxxxx

His friend had made sure his ship had an emergency teleportation device, and that he had a spare on hand in case the others discovered what was going on. When Omega's ship first experienced trouble, while he was detonating the star known as Qqaba, the shields designed and built by himself and Rassilon to stop the worst of the gamma rays and the massive gravitational pull of the blast were not enough to completely stop the backwash of temporal energy from saturating his body; the shields stopped them from ageing him to death or transforming him back into a baby again.

But as the time energies washed all over him, it seemed to light his brain up. Omega had already had many of his perceptions changed when he regenerated for the very first time, and looking back on his earlier thoughts, perceptions, beliefs and ideas of the nature of time, it was like he'd woken up from a dream.

That his ideas were those of a primitive living in a cave.

But this…

This was different.

Omega could see so much of time and space, he was able to see dozens of futures and possibilities, and he was able to see the possibilities within the possibilities. This was something none of them had ever experienced before, not once. Oh, they knew it was possible to change history and to create new timelines, but it was another to see them forming and changing within his mind.

His understanding of time had spiked.

For a long moment, which seemed endless and timeless within his mind, although he was aware only a few seconds had passed, he saw dozens of possibilities, past and present.

Xxxxxx

The Doctor, now openly using his title, smiled and nodded as the 37 Hands of Time (Omega had wished to name them after himself, but he'd been talked out of it; apparently 'Time' was more descriptive), although their scientific names were remote stellar manipulators and wormhole refractors, and quantum foam transformers, worked and reformed the pure energy output of the Singularity grail, and created the massive collection of wormholes which were linking up together, not too dissimilarly from the wormhole reefs they'd seen on their travels.

"It's working, Omega," the Doctor said in his soft voice.

"It is, Doctor," Omega clapped his friend with a paw. The Doctor's shoulders shuddered at the impact slightly. "Have you considered how we're going to traverse the vortex?"

The Doctor nodded with a thoughtful look on his face.

"Well, we've acquired the Block Transfer Mathematics and the secrets for making them into solid objects, composed of non-atomic matter; we could use it to create ships with that work of micro-universes inside them, but we could also create time corridors and teleportation devices," the Doctor said. "That way we don't become too dependent on them."

Omega and the Doctor had worked together with that, especially after discovering several pocket universes out in the universe.

"I like that idea, Doctor. We'll begin work soon enough," Omega replied before he gazed at his friend solemnly. "Have you heard from Tecteun?"

A scowl crawled over the Doctor's face before he became neutral. "No, and I don't want to. I suspect I'll see her again when the vortex project is over, but right now I don't want to know her."

Omega gave him a considering look.

Xx

"What-? STOP! This isn't right!" Omega bellowed as he stormed forwards and threw the medical scanners and injectors away from the screaming child who was gasping, choking on the bed, but it was too late; regeneration had set in.

Omega punched Rassilon right in the face when the other 'man' tried to stop him as the young girl regenerated into a gasping boy, who appeared to be a few years physically younger than the girl. Seeing the look of fear on the child's face only made Omega more furious. He had known Rassilon and Tecteun could become obsessive, he had never imagined they could become this cruel-!

"Stop it, you fool!" Tecteun screamed, "You're ruining everything!" the sudden shout made the still dazed and confused child more scared, but Omega quickly saw the child's confusion slip when a look of realisation appeared. His heart broke. He loved children a great deal, and he knew whatever bonds had existed between Tecteun and the child they'd found in the universe, on that distant world underneath that wormhole, had shattered completely.

The child was scared they were going to be experimented on again.

"I'm ruining everything?!" When Omega's booming voice changed to a low growl, it was truly a frightening sound. He possessed a wickedly mean and quick temper, you would be better advised to never touch. "You're torturing your own child, Tecteun. How many more experiments do you need? We've mastered genetics long ago. We took the genetic work of dozens of races, in different galaxies, in different universes, in multiverses. Surely you've got enough material to work with without needing to go this far? Surely you've collected enough, seen enough, of the new frontier you're trying to break to know how regeneration works?"

Tecteun said nothing.

"You have, haven't you?" Omega pressed, wanting a straight answer before he realised the truth. "You haven't, have you? You still want to know how to make it work, regardless of the cost. You disgust me. You really do."

"I'm doing this for us!" Tecteun protested while Rassilon looked smugly on. "I'm giving our people a gift."

"What, and if a child pays for it, so what?"

"If necessary," Tecteun's voice was cold, while the small boy lying on the bed looked on, their expression clearer now the regeneration had marginally settled down a little bit.

The next day, Omega was forced to be reassigned to work on the new Sun Swarm project. He tried to stop it, but he lacked the political capital to actually do anything worthwhile. When he returned, 34 years later when the swarm of mirrors surrounding the star was finished, he was horrified to discover his old friend, the child, had been tortured many more times and was forced to regenerate over 67 times before Tecteun finished with her disgusting experiments.

It would be years before he could forgive himself.

And it would be an even longer time before he would accept the injection; in the end, the child had forced him to take it, forgiving him for not being there, knowing why it had happened.

Xxxxxx

Decades after the Time Vortex had been created, and the foundation of the Time Lords had been completed, Omega would learn that following the way their attempts to nurture the Minyans, and several other races had failed, Tecteun had secretly ensured their collapse and had given them weapons and technology, the Doctor had learnt of her plans to create an organisation, so she could take her manipulations and her desire to see the cosmos as a giant scientific experiment to a whole new level.

Omega and the Doctor both ensured she was exiled to some remote planet, where she would never be a problem again. But the Doctor and Omega set up the Time Lords to send agents to various worlds and times and help them along. They wouldn't make the same mistakes with the Minyans, they would just guide them slowly and gently. At the same time, if there were wars, they would not step in unless they had to, and if there were threats to the timelines, then they would send operatives to ensure a desired outcome. The Doctor became one of Gallifrey's top agents; under their involvement, throughout their indefinite lives, many timelines were saved and many worlds were kept safe.

The universe under the Time Lords flourished. One of the things Omega and Artron both agreed on was the truth of the Time Lords. They wanted everyone to know if it were not for the Doctor and their origins, they would never be where they were then.