-Wedding Crashers-

Evil Mastermind

"'Geiger counter – cellar'," read Clara, turning an old and crumpled piece of paper over in her hand, "This is all the information we get? Come back to the wedding in fifty years and make sure you bring a Geiger counter, then go to the cellar?" A lightbulb flickered overhead in the hotel cellar as the Doctor knelt on the floor to rifle through her bag. Clara would find it harder to read the note if she hadn't had it in her possession for decades. "What are Geigers, anyway?" The Doctor pulled out the large, yellow object, which began to crackle.

"Excuse me?"

"Geigers. It's counting Geigers."

"It-? No, Coo…" the Doctor stood back up and slung her bag over her shoulder, lifting the heavy device. "It's named after Hans Geiger; he invented the Geiger tube. It uses gas to measure levels of ionizing radiation and then tells you how much there is in counts. Counts per minute. It's at fifty."

"What does that mean? Is that bad?" Clara asked.

"That's all relative. If we were in the middle of space, for instance, I'd say this is a worryingly low level of radiation."

"Right, but we're not in space. We're at a wedding in rural England."

"Then… it'll take a while to add up to a fatal dose, but it does mean there's a pretty gnarly source of radiation somewhere down here. But we've got the proper equipment, this should be a cakewalk." Clara didn't say anything; she didn't want to speak too soon. "It's crazy, isn't it? Half a century later and we might finally know what was going on at this wedding the whole time."

"Well, you'd hope. This could be anything. Could be just more aliens. More Daleks, more Cybermen, more Slitheen," said Clara, "There's no guarantee we'll get answers."

"You're being a pessimist."

"I just don't want you to be let down."

"Maybe it's your French girlfriend," the Doctor remarked, holding out the Geiger counter and following its crackles through the gloom. Clara scrunched the note back up again and stayed close at her shoulder, keeping an eye out for monsters in the dark.

"She's Austrian, which you know," corrected Clara, "And she's not my girlfriend." The Doctor said nothing. "I don't like the idea of Matilda being subjected to all this radiation."

"We didn't bring her with us."

"I mean the embryo, upstairs. Maybe that's why she has that squint."

"Radiation doesn't cause squints," said the Doctor dismissively, "It's more likely to cause a miscarriage or neurological disorders. And cancer. None of that will happen – or did happen – to Mattie. Besides, exposure to temporal radiation has already warped her plenty, and garden variety gamma rays don't bother me. Except for the taste."

"What about me? Will I be okay?"

"You'll be fine. If you get dosed too high, we can take a trip to the future and pick up an over-the-counter detoxicant," said the Doctor, indifferent. They stopped speculating about the radiation as they advanced through the cellar, which didn't hold anything of note so far. It was just spare linen, spare bedding, spare crockery, spare toiletries; the hotel's primary storage space. Clara didn't take her lighter out, fearing having an open flame near so much soft fabric.

The Geiger counter began to climb. What could the source of radiation be, down there in the dark? And, most importantly, why hadn't Rose or the other Doctors worked out something was afoot downstairs, especially with most of the wedding party being especially vigilant? That was the greatest mystery of the wedding, she thought; how Rose had never seen any of the alien invaders coming.

They rounded a corner past a big trolley of dirty linen waiting for a go in the washing machines lined up against the wall and descended a few small, stone steps to a slightly lower level. It was down there that the storage ended, and they found the electrical hub of the whole building. The fuse box was on the far wall while to their left most of the space was occupied by a large, industrial generator. The generator was silent; it must be the back-up in case of a power cut. Clara was sceptical about whether it would work though – it looked ancient.

"Wait a second…" the Doctor whispered, squinting at the Geiger counter. She held it up towards the generator and it spiked, surpassing four-hundred counters-per-minute. Over the crackling of the machine, Clara could hear voices coming from above, which she recognised as the wedding reception. Pete Tyler was giving his speech, but it was hard to make out the words when she wasn't trying.

"Why would an electrical generator be pumping out radiation?" Clara asked quietly. The Doctor didn't answer her, too absorbed in her own thoughts, undoubtedly wondering the same thing.

"Can you taste that?"

"Sorry?"

"Metallic. Like chewing on tinfoil."

"I can't taste anything," said Clara.

"…Hold this," the Doctor pushed the heavy, yellow Geiger counter into Clara's hands and quickly drew out her sonic screwdriver. "There's a glamour."

"A what?"

"An illusion."

"You mean like a perception filter?"

"No, no," said the Doctor, scanning the air around the generator, "More like a hologram to hide something. Not technology that belongs here, but once you know one's there they can be easy to dispel… just have to do a little tweaking…" The entire generator flickered much like a glitched hologram might, and the Doctor finally triumphed when the 'glamour' disappeared completely.

Unfortunately, it had been disguising an enormous bomb that made Clara feel sick to her stomach when she saw it. It was huge, almost twice their height and three times as long, nestled neatly in an alcove underneath the reception. They were overcome by the sight of it, the Doctor dropping her arms to her sides and Clara forgetting all about the Geiger counter as her heart sank.

A woman cleared her throat theatrically behind them.

"Would you like some tea?"

They both span around in alarm and found themselves staring at the Master, sitting in a shadowy corner on the opposite side of the room with a small table at her side, umbrella in one hand and an ornate teacup in the other. She took a sip. Clara thought she looked a little fuzzy around the edges and had to squint; a perception filter at work, that was why they hadn't immediately noticed her when they came in. Clara didn't say a word, only looked at the Doctor, who was evidently struggling to come up with something to say herself.

"It's not often that you're lost for words," said Missy. The Doctor made a frustrated noise and gestured in the direction of the bomb. Missy shrugged. "What about it?"

"I – it – you – but – it's – that's the Tsar Bomba!" she finally exclaimed, utterly distraught. "You can't have the Tsar Bomba at a hotel in England! That's crazy!"

"You're probably right. It would have been less crazy if I dropped it out of a plane, I suppose. And it's not, by the way."

"Not what?"

"It's not the Tsar Bomba."

"Uh, are you sure?" the Doctor patronised her, "Because it sure looks like it from here."

"Um, what's the Tsar Bomba?" Clara interrupted, feeling out of the loop.

"The biggest nuclear bomb you humans ever detonated during the Cold War. An explosion over two-thousand times more powerful than the one in Nagasaki. And it looks exactly like that."

Missy laughed, "I love it when you don't know something. There were two of them. This is, I don't know, the Tsarina Bomba. Something like that. Built to the same specifications, but it's a bit… well, they're not meant to give off radiation until you detonate them."

"Oh, great," said the Doctor, ranting, "So not only have you brought a nuclear bomb to a wedding, you've brought a faulty nuclear bomb to a wedding."

"It's a gift!" Missy argued.

"Did you keep the receipt?"

"Typical. I come all the way out here to this wedding, even when you so rudely didn't invite me-"

"It isn't my wedding."

"-and I bring this nice gift-"

"A nuke."

"-and you don't even thank me."

"Thank you," said the Doctor with as much sarcasm as she could muster.

"How did you know to bring it here?" Clara asked, trying to ignore the noise of the Geiger counter. "We tried to keep the location of this wedding a secret. How did you get a bomb here without anyone, especially Rose, ever noticing?"

"I'm very glad you asked. At least one of you has manners," said Missy, setting down her teacup. "I merely took advantage of Rose's natural shortcomings; she's not very good with parallel universes. Since I'm a product of two universes getting especially nasty with each other, things can be a little… foggy, shall we say? She can't see what I'm doing with those powers of hers. All I had to do was find the parallel universe versions of all the aliens you've annoyed during your lives, which is most of them, and the same blind spot worked to my advantage."

"So it was you? All this time, it was all you?" asked the Doctor.

"Who else would it have been? Marie Antoinette?"

"It wouldn't surprise me…" the Doctor grumbled. But yes, when Clara thought about it, Missy did have a point. Who else would it ever have been?

"And you put Oswin and I into that coma, then? Tailored it specifically for us?" Clara asked.

"A burlesque club full of naked women? It's not very hard to deduce your weaknesses," said Missy. Clara was a little embarrassed – she remembered that the burlesque club had worked quite well as a distraction. "I only needed to keep you occupied long enough for me to sneak in here. Oswin would have detected the teleporter otherwise."

"But you still didn't answer me," Clara persisted, "How did you know where we were? This whole thing is a closely guarded secret."

"Oh, Clara. Clara, Clara, Clara," she shook her head, "What will I ever do with you?" Clara clenched her jaw. "I used a tracking device. Did you really think my plan was to build a theme park for you populated by ghastly, robot skeletons?" Clara felt like she'd been punched in the face. All this was connected to the 'Missy Land' fiasco? Well, she supposed it had only been yesterday to the wedding guests upstairs. The Tenth Doctor was speaking now, making his messy toast.

"A tracking device where? We left that ridiculous hamper behind," said Clara.

"The hamper was a red herring. It was in the chicken nuggets."

"It was…?"

"She ate it," said Missy. "Threw it up this morning, of course, but not before I found out the location."

"Those bloody chicken nuggets…"

"So you tricked Rose into eating a tracking device, and then summoned all these aliens to her wedding – why? To kill her? To kill me?" the Doctor questioned.

"Because I wasn't invited. I love weddings."

"No, you don't."

"Alright, fine, maybe I don't – but I'm deeply wounded," she pouted in a tactic that neither of them was convinced by.

"Where, exactly, did you find a Dalek assassin for hire?" the Doctor changed the subject.

"Oh, that? I just took out an advertisement, it wasn't that hard."

"And the Slitheen?"

"They'll do anything for money."

"The Angels?"

"I only had to point them in Rose's direction, and they came running. They couldn't help themselves around so much temporal energy."

"Cybermen?"

"Desperate to meet the so-called 'Lightning Girl.'"

"And how did you get a Sontaran warship under your thumb?"

"I sent them a declaration of war and signed your name on it."

"And was it worth it?" the Doctor crossed her arms. Ten was wrapping up. "Because I hate to tell you this, but the only reason we knew to come down here is because I give my past self a letter telling him to come back and investigate the cellar with a Geiger counter. Which means, obviously, that your plan will fail. Not to mention the fact that if you succeeded, you'd be changing your own timeline." Missy shrugged.

"The bomb is in flux."

"It's not in flux," said the Doctor firmly.

"It is," she insisted. The Doctor looked over her shoulder at the bomb looming behind them again and seemed confused.

"It's not," she said, though Clara could hear a note of unsureness in her voice.

"It's armed," said Missy, "I've armed it."

"How long until it detonates!?" the Doctor asked, shocked.

"I suppose that's a decision for the people upstairs," she pointed upwards. They could hear chatter; Donna was going to start speaking at any minute. "As soon as they turn the microphone off, we're all as good as dead. It's some very unstable technology though, it could be set off by something as small as a personal sonic device in its vicinity." Which meant it wasn't worth the risk of trying to disarm the bomb with the screwdriver.

"Well – get rid of it!" the Doctor protested, "Get it out of here!"

"But I don't want to," said Missy.

"You can't – it – you're messing with history!"

"Oh, it's fine. Nothing a paradox machine here and there can't fix. It's interesting what kind of devices you can find when the higher-ups in Soviet Russia owe you a favour. Giant bombs, time machines…"

"The Soviets don't have a time machine," the Doctor scoffed.

"Not anymore they don't. That's still in your future, though. At least, it is if you can stop me."

"Hang on, hang on," the Doctor said as silence fell in the room above and Donna Noble began her best man speech, "You're telling me that the reason you have this stupid bomb at all is because something I'm going to do? In my future?"

"I think you missed the part about the paradox machine," Missy snapped at her, frustrated, "Honestly, I expected better from you. You're not even trying to convince me to get rid of it."

"I'm telling you to get rid of it!" the Doctor continued to protest, "What if I invite you to our next wedding?"

"Excuse me?" Clara made a start.

"Well – Coo, if you've gotta pick between having her at our wedding or all of our friends and ourselves dying-"

"Too little too late," Missy cut her off, "I don't want any sympathy invitations."

"Then – what do you want? Tell me, please, because-"

"Because you admit the bomb is in flux?"

"Yes, fine! The bomb is in flux!"

"The bomb is in flux!?" Clara exclaimed.

"Just a little bit in flux," the Doctor spoke softly when she turned to address Clara, "It's really nothing to worry about."

"I think you should be very worried about it," said Missy, "Is this how you talk someone out of blowing up a bomb? You shout at them? No wonder you're terrible at negotiations."

"I'm excellent at negotiations," the Doctor snapped.

"Then prove it!"

"How did you get your hands on this bomb and a paradox machine?"

"The Soviets owed you a favour and you said you didn't want any favours from… what was it you said, now? A group of 'authoritarian despots who give communism a bad name.'"

"That does sound like you, in fairness," said Clara, growing more and more panicked about the giant, armed nuke behind them. The Doctor shushed her.

"I overstated my role in things, and they offered to give me a tour of their laboratories. I just had to slap on a few portable teleporters – it was very easy."

"And what 'things' were these?"

"How should I know? Something to do with the last Queen of France buddying up with the SS," she said.

"Something – what? Marie Antoinette?"

"If that is her real name."

"Oh, great," said Clara, "I can't wait for that to happen. Maybe we should let her detonate the bomb just so we can avoid whatever she's talking about."

"Come on, chop-chop," Missy said, "You're not even trying to talk me down. Too busy asking 'questions' hoping to get 'answers,'" she did quotation marks with her free hand.

"You're insane," said the Doctor coldly.

"Are you just getting that now? After all this time?"

"Why would you go to all this trouble? I don't believe it's just because you were bored. You must have a grand plan. A grand-er plan."

"You're wasting your time! You have less than ten minutes!" Missy said.

"Yeah, she does sort of have a point," said Clara.

"You're making me wish I detonated it hours ago during the 'does anyone know of any reason why these two should not be wed' bit," said Missy.

"Why didn't you?" Clara asked.

"I didn't want to be a cliché."

"Pretty please would you get rid of the damn bomb and get out of here?" the Doctor began to plead, "If all you wanted was my attention, well, you've got it. I even crossed into my timeline to show up here."

"You see, you're just not being very persuasive. What's in it for me?"

"I don't know – not blowing yourself up as well?" the Doctor said sarcastically.

"I thought you'd at least have some sort of plan."

"I – well – I don't! I don't have a clue. You've beaten me, alright? Are you happy now?" the Doctor continued. Clara didn't know what she was witnessing – the Doctor was giving up? Without even taking a closer look at the thing? She hadn't heard Donna end her speech, but Jack talked the loudest and it was his voice that came crystal clear from above.

"While trying to sell them some stolen goods – a mistake, in retrospect, because neither of them has any money or even a job…" Jack was saying.

"Excuse me?" the Master was taken aback.

"You win! You brought a giant, unstable nuke to a wedding and now I've only got minutes to get rid of it, and my sonic won't help. You've thought everything."

"…No, that's not how this works."

"You said it yourself, the bomb is in flux," she lamented, "And if you've got a paradox machine, well, I don't see what you expect me to do."

"You're not giving up."

"I know when I'm beaten."

"But, you don't. You're so blindly optimistic it hurts, that's why this was supposed to be fun. You were supposed to try to defuse it and fail," Missy argued, standing up from her small table, leaving her teapot and cup where they were. She kept a tight grip on her umbrella, the same one Clara recognised as possessing technology designed by Oswin; she'd had it at 'Missy Land', and it had a teleporter in it.

"In this state? I'd do more harm than good."

"But what have you got to lose?"

"The last five minutes with the love of my life, I suppose," said the Doctor, indicating Clara, who hadn't a clue what was going on. Missy wasn't right, was she? The Doctor couldn't be right? This couldn't actually be happening? "I once had a nightmare about the entire TARDIS crew being killed by a nuclear bomb, years ago now, so this… seems like destiny, in a way."

"No!" Missy objected, "You can't do this. You're spoiling it, you're spoiling everything!"

"I can only hope that I look half as good as Rose when I marry my fiancé," Jack continued his speech.

"You're upset because your plan worked? Because I don't see a solution? Because I want to spend my last minute or so of existence with Clara rather than waste it on something futile?"

"It's not futile! It can't be. This must be a trick," Missy paced in front of them, "You're tricking me."

"I'm tricking you? You who set this whole thing up?"

"Yes!"

"Didn't you cover all your bases?"

"Of course I did!"

"So, it stands to reason that there's no way out. This is it for me. I've had a good run, I guess."

"Do something!" Missy demanded.

"It's hopeless!" the Doctor said, throwing her arms up. Clara's heart began to pump faster and faster. True panic was rising. How long was there left of Jack's speech? Of course, they hadn't died, she remembered Jack wrapping up, she remembered the disco that night, she remembered the last fifty years of her life – but paradox machines were powerful things, and if the Master had built one-

"A toast," said Jack, "To new lives, new beginnings, new journeys, and to the future." The Master stared at the Doctor as applause rang out upstairs.

"That's all, folks," she said. Furious and frightened, the Master pressed one of the many buttons lining the handle of her umbrella and disappeared in a blue shimmer of light – of course she had a way out, not that that helped then. Even if they did teleport themselves away, the people upstairs would still be killed, and they'd be erased from existence. "Okay!" the Doctor clapped her hands.

"What are you doing!?" Clara demanded, "What the fu-"

"Relax, I have a plan," she said, "Or, I will have a plan. I've resolved to have a plan."

"I've actually got some stuff I wanted to say," Rose began. So they had an extra minute while she gave her tiny toast before the bomb detonated; the microphone was still going.

"Can you believe she fell for that?" said the Doctor, turning to go and examine the bomb close up.

"What do you mean you've 'resolved' to have a plan?"

"She said she got this bomb from something that's going to happen in our future, so I've merely decided that whenever that does happen, I'll attach a little teleport beacon of my own to this puppy somewhere she won't think to look," the Doctor explained, kneeling on the floor next to the enormous nuclear bomb. "She's not the only one who can mess around with fluctuating events like that."

"Well – hurry up! We've got seconds until Rose shuts up!"

"If I know myself, and I like to think I do," she said, reaching a hand underneath the nuke to blindly pat around for her teleport beacon, "I would've put it under here somewhere."

"And!?" Clara prompted. The Doctor frowned, stretched her arm out even further.

"Uh…"

"Doctor…"

"It should be right around here…"

"If that nuke blows up, I will kill you," Clara threatened.

"Just about…" she had to fully lay down on the floor.

"Since I'm not obligated to do a proper speech I won't hang around for long," said Rose. Clara's heart was in her throat, she felt like it was going to explode, perhaps even before the bomb did. "…I just want to end on one big thank you from-"

"Got it!" the Doctor shouted.

"-to everybody here." Rose finished at the exact moment the Doctor pushed herself away from the nuke and the thing disappeared in shimmering, blue light. She breathed a sigh of relief. Clara's hands were gripping the Geiger counter so tightly her knuckles had turned white. People applauded upstairs.

"That was… that was closer than I intended…" the Doctor got to her feet and dusted off her jeans, covered in dirt from the floor.

"How did you know she wouldn't look underneath the bomb?" Clara asked quietly.

"Because she's always wearing that dress. You can't crouch in a dress like that, it has no mobility. Are you okay?" the Doctor approached her and carefully took the Geiger counter then set it down on the floor.

"For a second there, I thought… you scared me."

"I'm sorry. I couldn't tell you my plan because, well, I came up with it on the spot. I had no idea she'd bring a bomb here."

"Where did you send it?"

"Beats me. Wherever I decide to program the beacon in the future, I guess. Probably just the middle of space somewhere, or the centre of a star," she shrugged, then took both of Clara's hands now that they were free. "Well? Are you satisfied with your answer about what was going on at this wedding all that time?"

"We should've guessed it was Missy pissing about sooner… but I only have more questions. What's all this about Marie Antoinette hanging around with Nazis?" said Clara.

"I suppose we'll find out eventually."

"And what's she going to do when she finds out you outsmarted her?"

"Try to kill me again, I guess. She'll never succeed, she doesn't want to kill me. We're like Batman and the Joker."

"Well, if you ever decide to swing by the Eastern Front, I suppose you'd better remember to take a teleporter," Clara said after a pause. "Now what?"

"Now I think we oughta find something to eat, I'm starving."

"How do we do that? The kitchen is full of dead bodies and nobody can see us until, you know, they're supposed to. And even then we're only seeing ourselves. And it's just you."

"I brought snacks. We can have a picnic."

"In this radioactive cellar?"

"No, the snacks are in the van. And I have to get changed anyway."

"But there are Cybermen in the woods, remember?" said Clara.

"Big whoop – they left us alone when we were hiding out there last night. We just have to lay low until this evening," she began to lead Clara out of the cellar.

"You forgot the thing," Clara indicated the Geiger counter. It had almost stopped crackling now the bomb had disappeared.

"Good call," the Doctor dropped her hands to retrieve it, "You never know when you might need a Geiger counter in a pinch."

"Maybe she'll try to nuke us for a second time…"

"No, she's more inventive than that," said the Doctor, shoving the Geiger counter back into her bag. "I'm surprised she even went for a bomb at all."

"Must have wasted too much time on the stupid theme park." The Doctor closed the bag and lifted it up, slinging it across her back.

"And speaking of time, there are only a few hours left now. We were on our own from tomorrow onwards. Well, apart from Adam and Oswin. And Nios sticks around. And Jenny's over every week. And now Rose lives in our spare room and Jack comes for dinner all the time. Not to mention Sally and Esther flying down from London, and Mattie, and Mattie's friends sneaking in through the windows…"

"I did tell Steph to just knock on the door next time."

"Now that I think about it, I don't think we've had a minute to ourselves since the Crash itself, even with everybody else moving on."

"Makes hanging out in the woods for a few hours that much more exciting," said Clara.

"I'm always excited to hang out with you. C'mon," she took Clara's hand, "Let's get out of here."