Chapter 19

Farewell to Arms

Raven activated her powers and cast a wall of darkness that spread across the width of the room, and with a blast from her mind forced the Cyberman and the mass of Cyber-nanos back down the corridor, slamming them into the nearest wall and held them there.

With the threat gone Raven looked down the hole the Cyber-nanos had created. She could still sense the void signature of the TARDIS, but she could also sense it was under attack by the Cyber-nanos.

"We can't do anything about it now." The Doctor told her. "Oh, the poor old girl. I just hope its quick for her." He sounded like it was the end for his beloved TARDIS. "I take it you couldn't get the gold from it?"

"We were a little busy, Doctor." Raven said, the stress of the situation showing clear in her voice. She shared as much information as she could about what had happened since he went quiet.

"Are you wearing my coat?" The Doctor asked.

Not the time!" Raven fired at him.

"No, no, no." The Doctor said, "Look for a book called 'The Eye Spy book for Intergalactic Vessel spotters.'"

Raven rummaged around in the coat pockets until she pulled a book out and held it up so she could see it. As could the Doctor.

"Ask your friend here." The Doctor said, referring to Armstrong.

He's called Armstrong. She corrected. And Wipe that look off your face.

"You can't see my face."

I said 'wipe it off'!

"Ask Armstrong what model and class this ship is, and turn to the correct page in the book."

Raven asked and Armstrong said it was a "model 3 Olympic class star vessel. It used to be a cruise vessel before it was bought up and converted into a hospital ship." Quickly she spun through the pages. She told the Doctor to be silent, because he was trying to help her navigate the book, but he was more of a hindrance than a help.

She opened the book and focused on both pages. Raven could sense the Doctors brain scanning the book through her eyes faster than she ever could.

Suddenly there was a loud bang, followed by a crack as the floor buckled. Ravens attention was ripped from the book as the floor began to collapse. Quickly she grabbed Armstrong by the collar and levitated off the floor carrying him with her as more Cybermen punched their way through the floor.

Her concentration divided and she had to drop the Cyberman and the Nanos she was holding to the wall.

She carried Armstrong further down the corridor and set him down as an army of Cybermen pulled themselves from the floor.

"Wait, stop. I want to test a hypothesis." The Doctor said.

"What? WHAT?!" Raven screamed rising panic in her voice.

"Can you pull atoms free from bonded metal?" The Doctor asked.

"I can try. What do you want me to do?" Raven asked.

"Basic chemistry. What do you do to prevent rust?"

"NOW'S NOT THE TIME FOR A CHEMISTRY LESSON!" Raven shouted as more Cybermen popped up from the floor and began advancing towards them. "Tell me what to do or I turn around and run up the stairs."

"Zinc." The Doctor continued and the Cybermen and Cyber-nanos got close and closer. "You bond Zinc to metal to stop it rusting, and what is Zinc? Its in the same block of elements as Gold, but its also non-corrodable like gold and forms a fine powder. Maybe it'll have a similar effect to the Cybermen as gold does. So..."

His words were interrupted as Armstrong pointed the canister of sealant he'd picked up earlier and sprayed it at the floor at the feet of an advancing Cyberman. The sealant gunked up its legs, and as Armstrong rose the hose higher up to point it at the Cybermans chest unit Raven could sense it began to suffocate as foam covered it.

"Or you could do that." The Doctor said. Had he been so fixated on coming up with a clever solution he didn't spot the simple one at his feet?! "It'll slow them down, not stop them." The Doctor said, trying to regain some composure. "Get to the stairs, get inside, and use your powers to send a blast of energy down the walls of this corridor. Olympic class Space vessels used Zinc paint to prevent rust. Lets see what Zinc dust does to the Cybermen."

Raven did as instructed, turning and running down the corridor, to the stairs and slamming the door behind her.

"And we need to be in here, why, exactly?" Raven asked.

"Because Zinc is toxic to you too." the Doctor said.

"Its difficult to follow a conversation when you can only hear one side of it." Armstrong said.

Raven stood back from the door, reached out both physically and mentally. She splayed her fingers and activated her powers. She could see through the door window that the walls all around the corridor were being covered in her dark energy.

"Now, send a pulse of energy down those walls, enough to liberate the paint and zinc from the walls. Just enough, we don't want to actually damage the walls." The Doctor instructed.

Doctor, I'm trying to concentrate, shut up!

"Alright."

Raven focused again, the Doctors coat and her cloak bellowed out as power escaped her, and she sent just enough of a pulse down the walls that the paint and zinc coating were ejected off them, creating a dusty cloud in the corridor.

A Cyberman appeared at the door and was about to punch his way through. But he stopped. He began clawing at a grill in his chest unit. It sounded like it had trouble breathing. Raven could sense the Cybermen up and down the corridor. They were choking, and a lot of their effective menace was now gone. But they weren't dying, just coughing, and without clear oxygen to their brains their minds weren't functioning effectively.

"Not as effective as gold." The Doctor said. "But it slows them down."

"Yeah, the only problem being 'we' can't breathe in that mist either." Raven said.

"Did the Doctor come up with that?" Armstrong asked.

"Maybe," Raven said, she subtly smiled as she heard the Doctor indignantly say. "What do you mean' maybe'?"

Raven sensed that the area above them was swarming with Cybermen, and they were coming down the stairs after them. So they retreated down to the lower levels. Raven decided against teleporting for a simple reason. She couldn't sense these Cyber-nano's, at all, they were invisible to her. If she tried to teleport and she landed them in a place where the nanos were, then they were done for. So she decided to save her teleportation ability as a last resort and instead resorted to moving around the ship the old fashioned way.

Armstrong called in to the Captain about what they had discovered. About the Cybermen, the Cyber-nanos and how dangerous they were. By the sound of it, it seemed that the nano bots had already gotten to almost a quarter of the ship already.

For safety reasons all emergency blast doors were closed to isolate the nano-machines. But that didn't seem to stop them. They just burrowed through until the door collapsed, making more of themselves as they ate. The blast doors would be no worry for Raven since she could pass through the doors as easily as if they were air.

All guards were now armed with canisters of sealant to slow the Cybermen and the Cyber-nanos down, but it was a slowly losing battle. The Cybermen were still winning. Whats more they were fighting dirty by shutting off the heating system allowing the ship to gradually get colder. This was an act of psychological warfare. The Cybermen may not be ruled by emotion, but everyone else was, and physical extremes could drastically effect performance.

Raven and Armstrong emerged into the bowels of the ship and planned to walk across it to the Starboard side, and climb back up. They were both wary and on the lookout for Cybermen, or any moving, silver liquid.

"So if you're not a Time Lord, what exactly are you?" Armstrong asked.

"A human, mostly." Raven replied, not giving him the true answer of being half demon.

"How did you learn these nifty powers?" Armstrong asked.

"I was born with them?" Raven said simply. She was putting an inflection in her voice to tell him she wasn't interested in talking about it.

"Are you unique, or do all humans have powers where you come from?"

"I'm a... special case." she said. Armstrong opened his mouth to ask another question but Raven decided to verbally bite him. "Look, I'm not interested in talking about myself, okay." she said to him, "And I'm not interested in you! Please stop it, just stop it!" Armstrong looked hurt and he turned away from her.

"Rather harsh wasn't that?" The Doctor asked.

Don't you get involved! I'm stressed enough as it is! She wanted to end it there, but her mind kept chattering. I keep telling you, I'm not a people person, I'm a danger to him and everyone I get close to. I am a monster, its better if I remain alone.

"Are you telling me that to convince me, or yourself?"

I said 'shut it'! She fired back.

Armstrong screamed suddenly as his foot disappeared into the grating of the floor, and silver liquid began pouring up from the hole.

Raven leapt into the air, and levitated. She grabbed onto Armstrongs arm and pulled him free. They flew down the corridor and landed a little ways away from the silver puddle of Nano-bots that was gathering strength again to come after them. Raven felt Armstrong getting heavier and heavier and eventually she had to drop to the floor.

Landing, she tried to pull Armstrong to his feet, but his feet weren't his own anymore. They were clad in a metallic material and his joints were reforming into metal pistons.

Raven dropped his hand and stepped back in horror from him. He reached out, pleading in his eyes as Raven watched his form begin to change. One of his eyes sunk in and became a dark disk into his skull. Tubes began sprouting from his body. His shoulders became broader. A handlebar was growing from one side of his head and his clothes were vanishing to slowly turn into the chest units that allow a Cyberman to breathe. He was also in pain, great, great, pain because half of his organs were halfway to being turned into Cyberman parts.

Raven began to shake, Armstrong was dying, those tiny terrors were ripping him apart and... and... and...

She felt angry, very, very angry. A surge of power erupt from her core. Armstrong was encased in dark energy and manipulating it with her hands Raven inverted the power, catching all the nano-machines she could from his body inside a now forming orb of dark energy before she flung them off into the distance.

Her rage taking control of her she stepped past Armstrong, projected more dark energy onto the floor. She waited for the Nano-bots to gather inside the darkness before she wrapped them up in it like a cloth and she flung them into the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Up, down and all around as she tried to destroy them. She wanted to crush them, but that wasn't possible for some reason. So she did something she didn't realise she was even capable of. She manipulated the electrons in their tiny metallic bodies and gave them enough energy to spark and break free, causing a lightning storm within that fried all the Nano-machines.

She continued at it, long after she was convinced the Nano's were destroyed just to vent the energy and her emotions. She then let the smouldering heap drop to the floor and the ball fell apart like dust.

Raven spun on her heel and returned to Armstrong. He was half man, half Cyberman and Raven could sense he was in pain, terrible pain. He moaned, his one human eye crying rivers. Half of his organs and body parts had been turned into plastics and metals and his body was going into shock. He was in so much pain, and it rang and echoed within her own mind.

"Doctor!" Raven cried, "This can be reversed right? We can change him back?" The Doctor was silent. "Doctor, talk to me!" She commanded. "Tell me what I have to do to save him? Please!"

"I'm sorry." The Doctor said, and that's all he said.

"What do you mean, 'sorry'? Tell me to do something!" But again silence. "Doctor, please. Save him. Tell me how I can save him!" Silence. She reached up to her head and groaned in frustration with the Time Lord.

"Kill me." It was Armstrong, his voice was weak and had the bubbling metallic tones of a Cyberman echoing from down his throat. "Please, kill me."

Raven looked down at him, he was shaking, his eyes were scared. She just shook her head, that she couldn't do. Tears welled in her eyes, but she wouldn't cry.

"I will not become like them!" Armstrong said defiantly, "I will not be forced to become a soulless machine in their society." He was reaching up to her now. "Please, kill me."

But she couldn't do it. She'd always said she'd never be responsible for anyone's death, unless it was her fathers.

"That's what I was born to do." Raven admitted. "To kill people. To kill everyone. My father is a monster. He wants to use me to destroy the universe, and every living creature in it. Even you."

After admitting this Raven wanted to turn around, to run away, to leave Armstrong to die alone and save herself the emotional grief. But her limbs refused to move. She just stared at him.

A laugh escaped Armstrong "My mother was a nasty piece of work too. Or she became one." Armstrong said struggling to speak, "Controlling, manipulative, xenophobic, she hated aliens. My father died in the war you see. She wanted me to join the army just to avenge my fathers death. But I refused. I side stepped into the guard profession to get away from what my mother wanted me to become. She died alone, with nothing but bitterness in her heart."

Raven knelt beside him. Despite her brain yelling at her to, Stop being soft. Her heart and body told her otherwise. She gathered the poor boy up in her arms. He wasn't long for this world now.

"Ever visited the beach on Orbia?" he asked, Raven shook her head, not knowing what to say. "It's a beautiful place. Our family used to holiday there, when I was a kid, back when we were a family. We were happier then. I wish I could go back to how things were."

A lump formed in Ravens throat. She didn't know why Armstrong was telling her this. It was meaningless to her. But he was dying, so she let him speak. These were his last words and she wanted to respect them. She swallowed and decided to do something. It was a pointless something, a meaningless something in the grand scheme of things, but it would be a nice something.

She placed her hands over his eyes, gently said her chimes, and she used her powers to numbed the pain and force Armstrong to go to sleep. But she felt that this wasn't enough, she wanted to do more for him. So she went a step further and forced his dying brain to forget the real world forever, and instead for its last few moments she dragged up a memory of his, a memory of him and his family on the beach on Orbia, and she wove that memory into a dream for him, a dream of a happier day. A dream he'll continue to live until darkness claims him.

He was dead, and Raven laid the body down on the ground. She was aware Cybermen were stomping around. Coming down the stairs, trying to get her, but she just didn't feel like moving.

She'd barely known Armstrong, but even in this short a time she had developed a connection with him, and now it was gone, and she felt empty. She should've been able to prevent that. She should be able to let go? What kind of Azarathian Monk was she if the death of a total stranger she'd known for only a few hours could affect her so badly?

Yeah, someone I thought liked me. Her mind said, she just let it chatter in her head, not caring to keep control of it. Someone I thought might have really been into me; and instead I pushed him away, I made him feel unwelcome, I was scared of what he might think of me and... I... I... I let him die. But at least I didn't leave him to die alone.

The Doctor was respectfully silent. She really didn't want to hear anyone right now, least of all the Doctor. But she appreciated his silence, even if he was still privy to her every thought.

Something telepathically screeched at her angrily and she jumped back up so fast it might have been an angry shout from her own mother.

In the dirt of dead Cyber-nanos. There was something sitting in it. It's windows and signs glowing brightly, the light flashing as if to attract her attention. It was the TARDIS!

Raven quickly crawled over to it and picked it up, and held the matchbox sized vessel in her hands. It had survived? Why hadn't the Nano's taken it apart like everything else?

"Good question." The Doctor said, breaking his silence.

BANG!

The door Raven and Armstrong had come through burst open and four Cybermen stomped through.

"Halt. You will become like us. You want to be come like us!" the leader said.

Anger bubbled in her mind and she used her power to rip a pipe from a nearby wall, spraying steam out as she held it in the air like a spear. "SCREW YOU!" she shouted and fired the pipe directly at the Cyberman's chest unit, and it skewered all four of them before jamming them into the stairway wall. Now, grabbing the wall plates with her powers, she reached out and with her splayed fingers she mimicked a crushing motion, and the dark energy warped the plates off the wall and wrapped them around the Cybermen and began squeezing them together, compacting them down like a trash compactor would.

But then a blob of silver liquid dropped down from the ceiling onto the mangled Cybermen and appeared to be breaking down the wall and reforming the crushed Cyborgs back into functioning Cybermen.

With the TARDIS in her hands Raven turned back to Armstrong. She didn't think Armstrong would want these Cyber-nanos to use any part of him to build more Cybermen, so she focused her powers on his body and with a heavy heart she felt his atoms fly apart as he crumbled to dust.

Now hugging the TARDIS to her, forgetting she had the Doctors coat on, she ran for the other side and ascended the stairs, practically flying up them using her powers.

"Raven, get back to my body. I have an idea. But you might need to be close to my brain for it to work."

"What? What scheme have you dreamt up now?" Raven asked verbally and angrily.

"The Nano's didn't attack the TARDIS, they couldn't. The atoms were too tightly crushed together for them to pull apart, that's why the TARDIS survived, because you shrank it."

"Wait, are you going to ask me to...?" But the Doctor interrupted her.

"Yes. With my help, hopefully you can... minus the nanos, shrink this whole ship and everyone inside it."

"You are nuts!"

To Be Continued...

Authors notes: And so everything starts to come together. ;)

Originally I wasn't going to let Armstrong die. But I feel Raven needs to experience death on a more personal level, and surviving Cyber-attack after Cyber-attack with someone who fancies you is one way to build a connection. Of course I had to rip it away from her, I kind of felt guilty for doing it, but Raven can't have nice things, not this early in her life, anyway.

If I had planned ahead to kill Armstrong I would've gotten him and Raven to connect together a lot more. But looking back at the past few chapters I think with the way Raven is she wouldn't have wanted to develop any connection. But I guess this is just a lesson to her that she isn't as emotionless nor as heartless as she likes to pretend to be.