Stranger Twists

by TimeTraveller-1900

The disappearance of Will Byers is just the start of a number of strange and weird and horrifying events in Hawkins, changing the town forever. When the newly regenerated Third Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive, not only is she dealing with a new body, her old friends have problems with her new body; she's scared of her people, dealing with the mystery telekinetic girl, and a dark evil.

Stranger Twists.

By TimeTraveller-1900..

-8-

The Trial, Life, Death, and Life of the Second Doctor.

-8-

"You have heard the charge against you, that you have repeatedly broken our most important law of non-interference in the affairs of other planets. What have you to say? Do you admit these actions?" Goth, the leading Time Lord presiding over the trial, said while he and his colleagues speared the small, impish man in front of them.

The impish man - the Doctor - was one of their own people, a Time Lord.

Unlike the more regal, composed Time Lords who wore robes of white and black, the Doctor was a small, untidy man wearing a large battered frock coat, and threadbare check trousers. The Doctor had fled his homeworld of Gallifrey a long time ago, for many different reasons, and over those years he had started meddling with the affairs of the universe.

He had travelled the universe for years before he stumbled across a plan orchestrated by a race who called themselves War Lords, who had formed a plan to kidnap human soldiers from periods of history, placing them on a planet to fight and kill one another to create an army of super-soldiers, and the scheme was helped by another renegade Time Lord, who had provided the technology and knowledge to kidnap the soldiers.

The scheme had been falling apart long before the Doctor, and his human companions, Jamie and Zoe even arrived. When they'd stumbled upon the planet, they had merely assumed they had arrived on Earth before they found signs and evidence that showed something was really wrong before they discovered the truth; the soldiers were kidnapped and brainwashed to fight, but many showed signs the conditioning was failing, and that was enough to build a resistance movement.

And it succeeded!

The Doctor and his friends managed to win by stopping the games, but they couldn't get the soldiers home to Earth, and the technology they had available was breaking down; out of options, the Doctor had no alternative but to summon the Time Lords. They would have the knowledge, the resources and the power to not only disassemble the War Games, they could return the soldiers home and repair the damage they'd taken.

But the Doctor had been captured by them when he'd tried to escape, and now he was here.

The Doctor spoke defiantly - he knew it was a risk, but he hoped to provide them with a good enough case. "I not only admit them, I am proud of them. While you have been content merely to observe the evil in the galaxy, I have been fighting against it," he said to them.
"It is not we who is on trial here, Doctor, it is you," the third Time Lord pointed out.
"No, no, of course, you're above criticism, aren't you?"
"Do you admit that these actions were justified?" Goth asked in astonishment.
That was all the Doctor needed.

He needed a good, practical way to present his case to the Time Lords. He knew they would punish him, but he wanted to give them a case to just think. "Yes, of course, I do," he sputtered indignantly before he walked towards a monitor screen. "Give me a thought channel and I'll show you some of the evils I've been fighting against."
The Time Lords nodded to each other, and the Doctor felt the mental connection.
On the screen, the Doctor projected the image of a squat robot with a round spherical head. "The Quarks, deadly robot servants of the cruel Dominators, they tried to enslave a peace-loving race," the Doctor explained. "Then there were the Yeti, more robot killers," the large shaggy, robot he had encountered in Tibet and later on in London appeared, "instruments of an alien intelligence trying to take over the planet Earth."
"All this is entirely irrelevant," one of the Time Lords pointed out.
The Doctor turned back to them. "You asked me to justify my actions, I am doing so," he said indignantly before he decided to up the ante. "Let me show you the Ice Warriors," he projected an image of the green-helmeted cyborg warriors from Mars, "cruel Martian invaders, they tried to conquer the Earth too."

The Doctor took a deep breath as he projected something else on the screen - he had just planned on moving on, moving to show the Cybermen, and then the Daleks, but he decided to show them what he had seen of the timelines. "Here is what would have happened had the Ice Warriors won, and if I hadn't interfered…," the Doctor trailed off, showing them the timelines he had seen; one where the fungus the Ice Warriors led by Slaar had scattered into Earth's atmosphere to deplete the atmosphere had worked, and the Ice Warriors had conquered and enslaved humanity, irrevocably changing history.

The next timeline showed the humans managing to mobilise, but they panicked and they launched missiles at the Ice Warriors - nuclear weapons - and the Ice Warriors lashed out, only for them to devastate Earth, and cause damage to the fixed points in future history.

The Doctor turned back towards the Time Lords, more than aware they were seeing it as well; they saw the damage to future history.

"The Ice Warriors were not the only ones to target Earth, nor were they the ones who threatened history," the Doctor told them. "So did the Cybermen," a picture of a Cyberman appeared on the Thought Channel, "half creature, half machine…."

The Doctor showed more timelines; one of them where General Cutler had succeeded in launching the Z-bomb, and it devastated Mondas…only for the blast and the radiation to devastate Earth…but the Cybermen had already begun converting humans on Earth, and the fight continued so Cutler's mad scheme hadn't worked.

In another timeline, the Cybermen managed to use the Z-bomb on Earth, saving their planet, kidnapping hundreds of humans and converting them into Cybermen; this combined Cyber-race, which would eventually leave the Sol System, and go out into the galaxy…

The Doctor showed them more Cybermen timelines; one where they succeeded on the moonbase to use the gravitron to devastate Earth; where Klieg's stupid actions resulted in a new race of Cybermen, and his own stupid plan to give the so-called Brotherhood of Logicians had not worked.

The Doctor moved on, showing them a timeline where the Cybermen's attack on the Wheel where he met Zoe had succeeded, and the Cybermen successfully conquered the Earth, and with the resources of the Sol system behind them, their empire grew, expanded….

The Doctor moved away from the Cybermen, showing them the timelines where WOTAN had changed the future, before his predecessor had stopped it at its creation, to the Monoids blowing up the Ark and preventing humanity from reaching Refusis 2.

Finally, the Doctor reached the climax, knowing the Time Lords were not going to like a lot of what he was going to show them. "But worst of all were the Daleks, a pitiless race of conquerors exterminating all who came up against them, but here are the things the Daleks would do…," the Doctor concentrated on the various timelines he had perceived when he had fought against the Daleks…

He showed them a timeline where the Dalek Supreme on Skaro, succeeding in wiping out the Thals, had kidnapped Susan successfully and recovered the TARDIS, forcing his first incarnation to give them the power of time and space travel, resulting in fleets of Dalek time ship, time corridors opening up into the pasts and futures of various worlds, spreading a transtemporal intergalactic Dalek empire through the multiverse. The Doctor knew the Time Lords would not like that; one of their primary laws was to not allow lesser species to get hold of any form of Time Lord technology, but he was quick to show them how he had prevented the timeline from coming about.

The Doctor showed them timelines which showed alternative prospects of their invasion of Earth; one where the Daleks succeeded, Operation De-Gravitate worked, and the Daleks transformed the Earth into a giant spaceship. With access to Dalek hyperspace technology, the Earth became a giant warship which devastated dozens of worlds, unleashing armies and bioweapons on worlds, destroying galactic empires, and federations.

And all the time, the Dalek Empire was growing larger and larger.

In another timeline, the Daleks were repelled by the humans and his first incarnation, their project ended…went to war with Earth, and they eventually succeeded in destroying the planet.

The Doctor showed them how the Daleks had found a way of copying the basics of TARDIS technology, knowing it would surprise the Time Lords even more than ever, and win their interest. He showed them a timeline showing that they succeeded in killing him, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki, eventually stealing the TARDIS and taking it back to Gallifrey, and getting hold not just of Time Lord technology, but also Time Lord biology once they found out the many miracles a Time Lord body provided.

Thanks to the acquisition of his TARDIS, the Daleks improved their time travel technology, and they also became powerful enough to crack open the secrets for regeneration, and they used it for themselves. This super Dalek race then became powerful enough to rival not only the Time Lords, the Monan Host, the Nekkistani, and the Warpsmiths of Phaidon, but all the temporal powers.

The next two Dalek timelines showed the vile mutants succeeding with their master plan, and using their Time Destructor to increase the growth of their empire, later becoming a tremendous threat…even to the Time Lords.

Last but by no means least, was their use of the Dalek Factor.

In this timeline, the Daleks found a way of despatching the Dalek factor throughout Earth's history, transforming them into human Daleks.

The three presiding Time Lords were silent.

They had been watching all of the sequences, these timelines, seeing them becoming reality, but seeing they were not right. They were not meant to be. Thousands of years of Time Lord science and philosophy taught them what was meant to be, and what was not to be, and what they were seeing was not what was meant to happen.

The Doctor was tempted to show them more, but he decided they had seen enough. "All these evils I have fought while you have done nothing but observe. True, I am guilty of interference, just as you are guilty of failing to use your great powers to help those in need!" The Doctor finished righteously, glaring at the Time Lords.
Goth exchanged looks with his fellows. "Is that all you have to say?"
"Well, isn't it enough?" The Doctor shouted in disbelief.

Here he was giving them evidence of potential histories, and they say that!?
"Your defence has been heard and will be carefully considered, but you have raised difficult issues," Goth finished, nodding thoughtfully. "We require time to think about them. You will be recalled when we have made our decision."

The Doctor sighed.

-8-

"Let us out!" Jamie pounded on the forcefield.
"We want to see the Doctor," Zoe shouted before she saw one of the Time Lords appear, "Let us out of here!"
The force field was turned off; Zoe wondered why how the Time Lords did it, whether it was some kind of timing system or telepathic, but she quickly stopped caring.
"Follow me," the Time Lord instructed coldly.
"Where are we going?" Zoe asked, she was really not liking any of this.
"We're going to send you home. Back to your own world and your own time."

Zoe's eyes widened. They were just going to send them off, just like that. She might not have any real idea of why the Time Lords were doing this to the Doctor, but she was really starting not to like them.
Jamie was just as horrified, "Oh no, not without the Doctor."
"This is his world. He must stay here."
Zoe could understand that point of view, but she didn't like the idea of the Time Lords just…staying here, while some like the Doctor just wanted to explore. She could well understand the desire to explore, considering her own time, but had the Time Lords done it all they frowned at those who wanted to explore themselves?

"Well, what's going to happen to him?" She asked quietly.
"He is awaiting the result of his trial," the Time Lord said.

Zoe bit her lip, exchanging a look with Jamie, the Scot was just as concerned as she felt. What the hell had gone on during the Doctor's trial? What had been said? What would the Time Lords do?

She remembered the way the War Chief had shouted the Time Lords would show no mercy, and she remembered what the Doctor had said in the TARDIS after they'd finally gotten away from the War Games planet, how the Time Lords saw what he did as an excuse. What kind of punishments did they have?

And then Zoe shuddered, a picture of the War Lord and those guards who'd come to the planet of the Time Lords to save him. They had faded away, dematerialised. The Time Lords said it would be as if the War Lords had never existed, and if they had the power of throwing up forcefields on a planet, travel in time and space, and trap a planet in a forcefield from afar…. There was little they could not do. She shivered, trying to hide the fear she felt in her soul at what the Time Lords might consider doing to her friend.

The Doctor had done so much for so many, for her, for Jamie, for Victoria, Ben, Polly…the thought of him being dematerialised filled her with utter horror and terror.
"Aye, well, I'm not going till I see him," Jamie stubbornly protested, he hadn't picked up on what she had just realised, but she would tell him.
Zoe nodded in agreement with her friend, "Oh, please, can't we see the Doctor?" She pleaded.
The Time Lord looked awkward, "You have become attached to him?" He said softly, but not without any sympathy.

Zoe perked up, hoping this would give them an in.
"Aye, we've been through a lot, you know," Jamie said.
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes at Jamie's statement, Zoe kept haggling with the Time Lord. "Please let us see him."
The Time Lord looked deeply into her frightened, terrified eyes, "Come with me," he said, and he turned to leave.
"Aye," Jamie said, and they followed him.

-8-

The Time Lord led them back to the trial room, and Zoe shook her head when she saw the Doctor lying sprawled on the floor, playing patience with his deck of playing cards. At the sound of their footsteps, the Doctor turned, and he leapt to his feet.

"Jamie! Zoe!" The Doctor smiled.
"Doctor!" Zoe said, and she and Jamie both tried to get close…only to find a forcefield in their way. The two humans both ran into it.
"I've brought your friends to say goodbye," the Time Lord said blandly as if he was escorting a group of kids to a zoo. Was that how the Time Lords saw them?
"Oh, switch this thing off," Jamie held his face in protest.
"We can't say goodbye through a forcefield!" Zoe protested.
The Time Lord was deeply touched by the tears in Zoe's eyes. "Very well," he conceded at last, "I shall leave you together, for a little while," he added.
Truly resisting the urge to roll his eyes since the Time Lords were being generous, the Doctor smiled in thanks at him, "Oh, thank you."
Once the Time Lord had gone and the forcefield shut off, Jamie and Zoe rushed to hug the Doctor.
"Jamie! Zoe!" The Doctor laughed happily. It was good to know they were still here on Gallifrey, instead of anywhere else. But they were on borrowed time.
"Doctor!"
"What are they going to do to you?" Jamie asked, worried.
The Doctor sighed. He had been worried about that for some time; he only hoped what he had revealed at the trial had given the Time Lords just enough pause for thought. "Oh, nothing much. I expect they'll make me listen to a long boring speech about being a good boy. They like making speeches," he added dryly while trying to keep his inner fears to himself.
"Well, I think it's time you left them again," Zoe said spiritedly.
"Well, that's easier said than done."
Jamie didn't see the problem. "Oh come on, we've been in tighter situations than this."
"Well, you don't know the Time Lords, Jamie. I do," the Doctor said, "You saw what they did to the War Lord, heard about the forcefield thrown around their homeworld. If they can do all that, there's little they can't do, and escaping from here is going to be hard."
Zoe didn't like the way the Doctor was just going to give up when his very life, his existence was in danger. "Oh, you're not just going to give up, are you, Doctor?"

In truth, the Doctor had been thinking of little else but escape for a while now. The biggest problem would be getting away from Gallifrey, it would have to be a quick escape. One idea was to find a way of passing through the Untempered Schism, as the Time Lords would detect materialisations and dematerialisations on Gallifrey easily.

One thing for sure; he had no intention of making the same mistake he had made back in the days when he had been in his first incarnation, and just wandering off to the TARDIS workshops, stealing a TARDIS and hoping for the best.

No, if he was going to escape again, then he would need to think of a better way of doing it.
Jamie drew him out of his thoughts, trying to not sound worried about what he had just said about the power of the Time Lords. "Of course, he's not. Are you, Doctor, eh?" He asked.
"Well," the Doctor said, trailing off as he considered his options. "Oh, all right, but we may find it a bit difficult getting out of here."
Jamie looked around. There was no sign of the forcefield. "Hey, they've forgotten to switch that thing back on again."
The Doctor frowned, puzzled. "Forgotten?" He repeated with concern.

Had the Time Lord left him and his companions here so that they could catch them in the act of escaping? The very thought nearly had him forgetting the whole idea of escaping, of getting away from Gallifrey again.
But Zoe didn't see the problem. "Well, that's all we need, isn't it?" She grinned infectiously. "Now we can get away."
The Doctor considered it, nodding to himself slowly, and he began looking for alternative ideas. A part of him hoped he could just return to the old Type 40 TARDIS left in the TARDIS landing bay.

"Yes, yes, of course," he said, ushering them out of the courtroom. With luck, he would not see it again, ever.
"Come on!" Jamie urged them on.
"Wait a minute, Jamie; we need to be smarter here," the Doctor said, leading them off.

"Where are we going?" Jamie asked as they hurried through the corridors, going up.…or down to various levels while avoiding different Time Lords as they went about their business; Zoe noticed that the Time Lords all had robes of varying colours, but many of them wore weird skullcaps that did not do them justice. The corridors of the futuristic, sterile Time Lord….city was a maze, and his patience was exhausting.

"One moment, Jamie," the Doctor said until at last they came to a room. Inside they found boxes of what looked like overlarge futuristic watches with leather straps. "Eureka!"

"What are these, Doctor?" Jamie poked at them but winced when the Doctor slapped his wrist.

"No, Jamie, leave it alone!" The Doctor snapped as he picked up some of the straps and shoved them into his pocket. "These are vortex manipulators," he went on, collecting more of them and shoving them away inside the copious pockets of his jacket; Zoe had often wondered if the Doctor had somehow made them bigger on the inside.

"What are they, Doctor?"

"They're crude and nasty time machines, Zoe, but they are a popular form of time travel," the Doctor was saying as he gathered more of them, although why he was collecting so many, Zoe and Jamie couldn't work out. "Simpler than a TARDIS, the vortex manipulators will make our escape easier."

"How do you mean?" Jamie asked excitedly, delighted they'd have a chance of escaping Gallifrey after all, but the Doctor tried his best not to get too excited since they still had a long way to go.

"If my plan works," the Doctor said as he went over the plan that had been slowly but steadily forming inside his mind for the last hour since their escape from the courtroom, "we can go back in time, but only for a few minutes; we can use the time to get the TARDIS, and another TARDIS since we'll need one, and then we can put the rest of the plan in action."

"What is the rest of your plan, Doctor?"

"And why are you taking so many of these vortex manipulators?" Zoe added.

The Doctor was silent while he picked up a final vortex manipulator. Only this time he didn't bother shoving it into his pocket, he strapped it around his wrist. "I want to go back in time, to the moment when we arrived on Gallifrey, Jamie-."

"Gallifrey?"

"The name of this planet."

"Oh."

"And when we do that, we find another, more functional TARDIS, and use that to materialise around my more conventional TARDIS, and then we travel to the Untempered Schism," the Doctor said.

"What's that?"

The Doctor sighed as he finished the programming - the vortex manipulator was easy enough to program, but he hadn't used one for a very long time and it took him a while to remember how their programming worked; he remembered fondly the days he had used one to jump around 40 times a day back in his youth at the Prydonian Academy; ooh, had the tutors been annoyed. "It's a gap in the fabric of reality, through that you could see the whole of the vortex," the Doctor said briefly, not wanting to talk about what it was used for, "Right, let's go."

-8-

"Och, that was awful!" Jamie complained when he and the Doctor and Zoe reappeared in what looked like a vast cavern, and he shivered a little bit as he looked around. There were braziers blazing with fire, the flames flickering madly in the wind, but the fires did not go out. "Where are we, what's this place?"

"Jamie, Zoe, welcome to the Untempered Schism," the Doctor said in a tone that somehow mixed reverence, fear, and distaste.

Zoe's first thought when she saw the Untempered Schism was of the Stargate she had seen in that old TV series, depicting the wormhole network, seeded in several galaxies by the Ancients, or the Time-Space Visualiser the Doctor kept in the TARDIS. It was huge, made of a bronze metal or something like that.

In the centre was the familiar Time Vortex. The wind was coming from that.

"Don't look too closely at it," the Doctor snapped.

Zoe looked away. "Sorry, but what's it for?"

The Doctor sighed. It was time to own up. "When I was 8 years old, I was taken from my family, and I was brought here before my admittance into the Academy. The Time Lords make us stand on that platform," he jabbed a finger at the circular platform in front of the Schism, "making us stare into the vortex, and we will either go mad, become inspired, or make us run away. They do it to make us see the vortex and our responsibilities as the guardians of time and space."

Zoe and Jamie were taken aback by this. "What were you?" Jamie whispered.

"I ran away," the Doctor said shortly, already lifting the manipulator. "I'm going to leave you here for a short time. I need to head to a TARDIS repair bay, and go back even further."

"Oh no, not without us!"

But it was too late, the Doctor vanished in a flash.

"Och, why does he do that?" Jamie demanded in disgust.

"I don't know, but I hope he's quick; I don't want to be here for long," Zoe replied spiritedly. The longer she was on this planet, the more afraid she was becoming.

Fortunately, they didn't have to wait that long, because the familiar sound of a TARDIS materialising caught their attention. The two looked around for the familiar blue box, but it didn't appear; instead, a tall cylindrical column appeared. Once it faded slowly into existence before it stopped, the door opened and the Doctor stepped out with a smile.

"There, that didn't take too long, did it?" He said cheerfully.

"Doctor," Zoe grinned, looking curiously at the TARDIS. "When are we going to pick up the TARDIS - your TARDIS?"

"Already done, take a look inside," the Doctor said, "and, Zoe," he added gently while Jamie walked inside the new TARDIS and found the battered old police box in a corner of the otherwise bright, sterile console room, "this TARDIS is not a new one. It's my original TARDIS."

Zoe looked up at him in shock. "Your original?"

"Yes, my old Type 50."

"But why didn't you take it when you left the first time?"

The Doctor sighed wearily. "I had to leave in a hurry, and I didn't properly plan out my escape the first time; I had to take the first TARDIS I could find." The Doctor flinched and he stumbled, right into the astonished Zoe's arms.

"Doctor, what's wrong?" Zoe shouted.

"What's going on?" Jamie, alerted to the shout, came running out, just in time to see the Doctor recover slightly in Zoe's arms. As he pulled back slightly, the Doctor coughed, and his hand became visible. It was starting to glow with golden light. "Doctor, what's happening?"

"Jamie, did Ben and Polly tell you about how I…changed from an old man into what I look like now? And do you remember what I said before, about how Time Lords can live forever, barring accidents? Well, when a Time Lord dies, our bodies….change in a burst of time energy. Our bodies change. All organs are replaced, we change height, weight, and appearance. We call it regeneration. I knew if we just escaped from Gallifrey, the Time Lords would track us down easily, as I had given them a point of reference, and some of my DNA was left. All they need to do is track it, but if I regenerate, it should hide us from them for a bit," the Doctor sagged, wincing in pain as he tried to hold the regeneration off.

"Doctor-," Zoe whispered.

The Doctor smiled at her, patting her and Jamie on the arms soothingly. "I knew this would happen," he said to them. "I knew escaping the Time Lords would be hard, but this has to be done. Get inside the TARDIS, now; once you go inside, the doors will close and I can use the vortex manipulator to transport us away from here, without dematerialising and leaving a trace. Now, get inside; I can't hold it off much longer!"

Using the last of his strength, the Doctor shoved the two humans inside the TARDIS, much to their annoyance, but the doors closed on them. Once they were inside, the TARDIS, obeying preset instructions, changed shape and shrunk down to the shape of a wrist watch Sighing at the need, the Doctor bent down and picked it up, strapping it to his wrist, and he turned to the Untempered Schism, and readied the vortex manipulator.

The Doctor knew his friends well enough to know they would have turned on the scanner by now - the TARDIS was set to default, and the console was largely the same as that of the Type 40.

As he walked slowly towards the gap, remembering the images he had seen vividly when he had been just 8 years old, the Doctor reflected briefly on who he had become since those days, and wondered if the horrifying things he had seen would indeed come to pass, things that made him steal the Hand of Omega…

But as he walked closer to the schism, his hands began to glow as the regeneration took hold, and he set the controls to random - he had linked the manipulator to the Type 40 TARDIS, hoping the randomised course would shake the Time Lords off - before he jumped through the schism, although he didn't touch it.

As he was buffeted by the Time Winds, already feeling both that and the effects of the regeneration, the Doctor wondered where they were going, he only hoped it would be a place he could get some rest, and make a difference…