Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

What has been will be again.
What has been done will be done again.

There is nothing new under the sun.

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“In the years leading up to the War, House Military strategists recognized the need for preparation against a horde so terrible, it could challenge even their supremacy over time and space. Their isolationism and mystique had long been the greatest shield they carried; a shield that would only break as their efforts to thwart their enemy’s rise only alerted said enemy to their existence. They needed a new shield. A greater mystique that would be so perfect, as to fool even themselves.

It’s a common bit of knowledge that Time Lords originate from the planet Gallifrey.

This is incorrect.

There is no such thing as ‘Gallifrey.’ There is ‘a Gallifrey’ or ‘Gallifreys,’ plural. Created via quantum de-superposition, cryptoforming, or bottle growth. There is, and always was, infinite Gallifreys. None of them knowing which was Original, but all having equal claimant to the title.

All of them burned. Used as projectiles, sacrificial lambs, or lost in pocket existences. The Gallifreys burned, and the Time Lords with them.

One wonders, if the masters died, what became of that wonderful, horrific technology they held control over.”

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The Doctor was not having a very good day. No, not a very good day at all. In fact, if one had the time, it was a day that was wet and rainy, blistering hot, filled with gunshots and screams in the air, with a Dalek or two to neatly cap things off.

What was the cause of his latest sour mood, one might wonder? Well, it was a scavenger hunt. An impossible scavenger hunt. Where the targets of said scavenging/hunting were women. Well, one very particular woman. And it might best be not classified as a scavenger hunt, but something of a grand puzzle.

He’d encountered her twice before. She died, both times, leaving him with one hell of a mystery. Now, spatial-genetic multiplicity (that is, the tendency for DNA to ‘echo’ across time and space and leave totally unrelated people looking quite similar to one another) was a proven, well-respected, and headache-inducing phenomena. But it went beyond that.

Indeed, the Doctor – the Last of the Time Lords, that solitary traveler in time and space, him in the bow tie – was getting desperate. Like having to play through a section of a video game over, and over, and over, because you kept on dying.

“Oh, this is getting ridiculous!” The Doctor cried, half-torn between exasperation, fury, and a feeling that might be described as constipation of the mental kind. He’d thrown on his old clothes – the outfit he hadn’t worn since he lost his Ponds. His family. He’d thought that the old ensemble would make him feel ‘him’ again, enough to work past the thought-clog and make progress on his search.

But no.

“We’ve been up and down the universe – from Earth to Exxilon. Year zero to year one-hundred-trillion!” He frustratedly punched the keys on the keypad of the TARDIS console, watching as the images of her flickered by.

(Some might say he was developing an obsession. No, it wasn’t an obsession. Just a perfectly healthy interest in a lady who kept showing up at unexpected times, after dying. Perfectly, totally, completely fine.)

All the faces were identical. Across the boundaries of species, age, or dimension.

“Clara Oswin Oswald!” The Doctor exclaimed, pacing – stomping – in front of the monitor. “Clara Oswin Oswald! Clara, Clara, Clara!”

The ancient renegade Time Lord leaned on the section of hexagonal console, glowering at the portrait of a Victorian-era barmaid-by-night, governess-by-day, who seemed to be so infuriatingly smug. That smile was looking back at him. Taunting him.

It reminded him too much of his first wife. Or his seventh. It was always the smug ones who managed to get a rise out of him, for better or worse.

“She’s everywhere,” The Doctor threw up a hand, and he didn’t know whether to call the emotion he felt amazement or horror. “Gallifrey,” He gestured at an image of ‘Clara’ pulled out of the TARDIS’s local memory, taken that day he stole his precious ship. “Skaro!” He rattled off, gnashing his teeth in frustration at the sight of a blonde, blue-eyed Clara standing amongst the Thals. “An Egyptian monarch; a Mondasian doctor; a PC Oswald filled out the missing persons report when I took Ian and Barbara!” The Doctor’s shouting reached the apex as he leaned on the console. He leaned into his hand, staring at the assorted files rushing by at lightspeed.

He’d raided so many databases. The Library (so big it doesn’t need a name), the New Earth Genealogy Project (using time travel to map out the entirety of humankind’s shared family tree), the Dalek Prime Record (genocidal maniacs they may be, but they kept damn good records)…

Not one, single, clue. There were plenty of Claras, and Oswins, and Oswalds, and Winnies. Too many. Now, one might be tempted to think: ‘no problem! Just go drop in on one of them!’ Except, yes, problem. Big, sad problem: When he ran into them, that usually coincided with one of their deaths. Okay, so, it was only twice, but still-

The Doctor didn’t believe in curses, or much superstition at all. But it was very fairytale – the immortal, and a reincarnation of the same woman meeting over and over again. There must have been something behind the scenes, working. Killing the Claras as he met them. But what for? The Doctor loved his mysteries, that much was true. But a mystery that couldn’t be solved was no good. In any event, tracking down Clara wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was finding the original.

He had a hypothesis: her deaths would stop once he found the original. But there was nothing either which way to let him know that was the case… or which one of them was the original.

For all he knew, ‘Clara Oswin Oswald’ could’ve been some… higher-dimensional lifeform not even the Time Lords catalogued, whose infinitude of limbs manifested in their reality as the same woman in countless different lives. That’d be a nice change of pace. Finding out a flirty lady was really some big, infinitely-repeating fractal of dimensions sharp enough to kill a man by contact… who was just as nice as her disguise.

Finally, the Doctor sighed, and pushed the monitor to the side as the TARDIS let out a low warble.

“Yes, I need fresh eyes!” The Doctor agreed. “No, I can’t get them off the street! ‘Hello, I’m the Doctor, I’m stalking- well, not stalking, but trying to track down a woman who keeps dying to get away from me, please help!’ I wouldn’t be able to pay them. Not that all private eyes have a time machine… or, strictly-speaking, the concept of money.” He scrunched his nose. “Which you wouldn’t think is a problem, until they try to accept payment for services rendered by sucking out your spleen. Which is why I prefer to do the investigation work myself. One too many bad trips to Florrin.” He frowned. “I ought to have learned after the seventh, but-“ He suddenly hit himself in the face. “No! No, I’m doing it again! I’m talking to myself again!”

The stressed-out Time Lord rubbed his face in consternation.

He needed a rest.

He needed to take a step back from the situation for a moment.

He needed to solve it.

He needed closure.

He only needed one hour of sleep every two-and-a-quarter weeks. So, just going to bed and waking up refreshed was out.

They kept meeting for a reason. Like… Donna. A complex space-time event pulled people together like magnetism. He’d run into the original eventually, knowing the way these things worked, if only he could expedite the process. Figure out when her timeline was supposed to intersect his again. If he did that, then he’d be less likely to drop in on the wrong Clara and get her killed. If only…

…

Wait a moment – he could do that.

“Oh, stupid Doctor!” The Time Lord exclaimed, pushing the monitor away with such vigorous force it spun around. He bolted to the other side of the console – to the panel with slits cut in. In every gap was semi-organic matter. Contact-conductive adaptive neurons – a touch telepath’s machine interface. “Telepathic circuits! Just need to engage the limiters,” The Doctor said to the TARDIS as he flipped a toggle switch made of translucent plastic, causing it to light up red. He did not want to turn up on the doorstep of a Doctor that was already traveling with the woman. “And…”

The Doctor stuck his hands into the flesh embedded in the console, causing a wet squelch to echo through the Console Room. A pinch in the back of his mind, then he felt the full breadth of the TARDIS’s being on the edge of his consciousness.

‘Where is Clara?’ The Doctor posed to the TARDIS. ‘Find me Clara…’

A dull thump filled the console room, followed by vibrations through the floor, as the engine release engaged.

The undulating rod in the middle of the console, surrounded by neon tubes, began to move up and down as the TARDIS’s engines – tucked deep in the bowels of the ship, out of sight – caused the entire ship to quake as they ran. The slow pistoning up and down synchronized with the scraping, tearing sound caused by the engines ripping through reality, the sound distorted from its usual cadence as the ship attempted to navigate the infinite web of time itself without a solid clue of even where it itself was going.

Things were calm, for a moment.

Then, all hell broke loose. An alert klaxon began to sound, as the lights on the rim of the console room began to flash mauve. Then, a mighty crash as the TARDIS began to shake like it had physically struck an object, followed by sparks raining down from the ceiling as the dangerous energies of the Time Vortex surged and entered the ship before being converted into a semi-safe form of energy by the materials the TARDIS was grown from.

“No, no, no, what’s that about!?” The Doctor hollered over the alarms, the sparking, and the screaming of the engines. “Why are you doing that!?” He yanked his hands out of the telepathic circuits and dashed back over to the flight controls.

As if of its own volition, the monitor on the console swung to accompany him, flashing dangerously to get his attention.

The Doctor paled as he observed the readouts.

So many system errors were flashing by, to the extent that even he couldn’t read all of the events before they were wiped away by the appearance of the next set of errors. The only thing he could catch was something about a bottle universe, incompatible time-flow errors, and a burnout in the navcom relativity buffer.

“Okay, time for emergency landing!” The Doctor declared as he slammed down a lever.

The Time Rotor stopped, the engines’ locking-down mechanisms engaging with the dull thud of a giant drumbeat.

The metal superstructure creaked and popped as it settled, steam rising from the floor vents, as the power wound down to a stop.

“Sorry, old girl,” The Doctor whispered, pressing a hand to the glass tube of the Time Rotor. He wiped his face of the sweat that had gathered from the harrowing sequence. “Did we make it? Is she out there?”

The console let out a simple beep. No way or another.

The Doctor sighed. He knew the TARDIS probably couldn’t tell him, but still, disappointing.

Then, energy poured back into his posture, and he perked up, clapping his hands. “Right, well, better take a look-see for myself!” He strode over to the doors, and without a second thought, stepped out.

As the Doctor shut the doors of the Police Box shell, he spun around, suddenly finding himself a little-bit off-kilter, like the ground wasn’t all that steady. The light bit at his skin, and shone bright in his eyelids, reflecting off a sea of peculiar gray water extending far into the horizon.

The Doctor looked around, finding himself to be standing on the deck of a peculiar, wooden, vaguely-pyramidal structure.

“Okay,” The Doctor murmured to himself, taking a quick, experimental jump. “Gravity – Earth normal. Air,” He gave a quick taste of the air. “…also Earth-mix – a lot fewer greenhouse gases.” He spun around, frowning to himself. “Everything feels a bit… wibbly. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was on a ship, but the motion-“ He looked up, seeing a gigantic, whale-like, gasbag lifeform floating high above, supporting the structure with ropes attached to it. “Oh. That’s rather pretty! Big ship like this would need a lot of ballast underneath – but attach it from above, you don’t need to waste a whole bunch of materials just for the floats underneath. But, if it’s a ship, who built it?”

The Time Lord spun around, watching the lifeforms moving about. He recognized them immediately – humans, of course. Humans were everywhere, the beautiful, indomitable lot of them. But there were also-

“Ah!” The Doctor felt delight rush through him as he spotted the diminutive, bird-dog-cat… thingy form of an alien species he hadn’t seen in a while. “It’s a Nopon! Hello Nopon!”

“Hm?” The pink-furred Nopon bounced around, flapping her wings. “Oh my! Friend’s chin very big! Mimimimi eyes almost poked out! Mimimimi charge for emotional damage! Fifty G!”

“Ha!” The Doctor huffed with a grin, rubbing his hands together. “You’re going to have to come up with a better excuse to get my money out of me.”

“Eh. Mimimimi had to try.” The Nopon shrugged. “Now, shoo! Mimimimi very busy, yes!”

“Actually, hold on,” The Doctor interjected, looking around. “Are we on Mira, Mimimimi? This doesn’t look very much like any area of Mira I’ve seen…” He’d been there before, a few times. The Nopon may have been money-grubbing to a fault, but they sure did know how to party.

“Friend in funny tie want answer, he pay fifty gold!”

“Oh,” The Doctor’s face twisted as he realized the trap he set for himself, then walked right into. “Fine.” He reached into his pockets, and started pulling things out at random. The filing system was an utter mess. First, out came a yo-yo. Then a cricket ball. Then pieces of a motorcycle engine. The Doctor had started throwing them off to the side, before Mimimimi jumped down.

“Wait! This junk – friend is salvager, yes?” Mimimimi assumed.

The Doctor manufactured a smile, and flashed the psychic paper. “You got me!”

“Ah, Mimimimi understand! In that case, Mimimimi take salvage!” Mimimimi pulled over the disassembled combustion engine, examining it closely. “Yes, good money… Anyway, you not at ‘Mira.’ You at Argentum Trade Guild! Silly salvager friend, not knowing where he is!”

“Yes, but…” The Doctor frowned in confusion, slapping his hands together. “You’re a Nopon. You’re a long way from home.”

“Mimimimi born on Urayan titan. So… not too far. Now, silly friend go! Mimimimi sell salvage and make cozy profit!” She dragged the chunks of engine away, leaving the Doctor standing there, befuddled.

Had he been having two different conversations?

Apparently so.

Curious, the Doctor turned the psychic paper around, looking at what it showed Mimimimi.

A ‘Class A Salvager.’

“Salvagers are a well-off lot around here, apparently.” The Doctor commented to himself, stowing the wallet back in his pocket. “But where…?” He looked around, curious, before spotting the giant, big, obvious thing he’d missed on his way out of the TARDIS.

An enormous tree – and the sea they were floating in was made of clouds.

The Doctor’s face twisted in delighted surprise, as he rushed over to the railing.

“Blimey!” The Doctor gasped. “Now… that is a big tree!” His curiosity gave way for suspicion, as he leaned on the railing. He pulled Amy’s glasses out of his pockets, and placed them on his face, trying to get a better look. “Are you a tree?” There was nothing to imply to him that it wasn’t a tree, other than the giant needle sticking off high into the sky. Had the people of this world built an antenna on the top of it? And for that matter, how had it grown so tall?

The Time Lord looked down, at the sea extending into the horizon. “And growing from a sea of clouds?” Fair enough – clouds were just a less-dense form of water. But as the Doctor crouched down, and scanned the sea with his sonic screwdriver, he was hit with an explanation that surprised him.

He flicked the screwdriver into the extended position, examining the readouts. “Not clouds – nanoparticles. Well, yes, clouds – clouds of nanoparticles.” A further probing by the screwdriver let the Doctor get a peek at the nanomachines’ programming. They looked programmed to analyze inorganic materials and objects, and preserve and replicate them. There was no reasoning as to why in the programming, only the table of all the objects the machine collective had analyzed. And the templates were stored in a format he didn’t recognize.

The Doctor felt the cogs beginning to turn, and he looked to the TARDIS with a smile. “Oh, you… clever old girl.” She knew exactly what he needed to refresh him.

It wasn’t the strangest thing he’d ever seen, but it was up there. A ship sailing on a sea of nanoparticulate clouds, carried from underneath by a flying whale.

It was also cool.

Deciding to take a further look around, the Doctor walked forward, further examining his surroundings. On this weird… airship-seaship hybrid thingy, there were smaller ships docked. The TARDIS had landed on one of said docks, and had made herself as inconspicuous as possible by landing next to a stack of crates and barrels.

The smaller ships looked like miniature versions of that odd flying creature above, with the exception of houseshells built upon their backs. He’d considered living like that on a whale, once. Until he remembered that the TARDIS was terribly jealous.

A larger ship caught the Doctor’s eye, one that looked like a great big wedge, supported from above by another sky-whale.

He’d really have to find another, better thing to call them than ‘sky whale things.’

One, however, didn’t appear to have any boaty implements attached. And, it looked rather more dragon-like than the rest. There was a structure on its back, but it was a rather small shack riding on a simple saddle, as opposed to the nearly-wholly-encompassing shells of the rest.

“Hello…” The Doctor curiously muttered, surveying the creatures. “Never seen anything quite like you…” He frowned for a moment. “Clouds, fishy-things swimming in them instead of water… is this Ember?” He scrunched his nose. “Oh, that’d be rubbish.” He groaned to himself, before smacking himself in the head. “No, Ember’s clouds were ice particles bound into clouds by electricity and sonic resonance. Not nanobots. Where am I?” The Doctor wondered, before shrugging to himself.

That dragon-like sky whale looked the Doctor’s way, narrowing its eyes. The Doctor spun around, checking to see if anyone was behind him, before turning back around, and pointing at himself silently. The dragon continued to look at him. The Doctor waved, coughed, and straightened his bow tie.

“Don’t stare – why are you staring? You know sentient lifeforms don’t like staring,” The Doctor grumbled to himself, before deciding to get a shove on. “Who’s staring? I’m not.” The Doctor moved along, before something slammed into him.

“Ah!” The Time Lord gasped out. “Whoever it was, it wasn’t me!”

“Oh, Titan’s foot!” A voice on the younger side swore. “So sorry, sir! Wasn’t looking where I was going!”

“Oh, it’s fine,” The Doctor waved away, staring up at the sky. “Actually,” He chuckled, pointing up. “It’s funny you say that. Cause I’m here cause I wasn’t looking where I was going either. Actually, it was more of a conceited effort to get lost…”

The young man – and he was young, a human child by the Doctor’s reckoning, no more than sixteen at the very most – looked down at the Time Lord.

“You all right?” The young man tilted his head in concern. He offered a hand to help the Time Lord up, which was mostly ignored as the Doctor was at least twice the size of the scrawny teenager.

“Yes, I’m fine,” The Doctor responded as he pulled himself up. “You don’t live to be my age without getting a few knocks. Actually, while I’ve got your ear, can you refresh my memory? Where exactly are we?”

“What?” The teenager spluttered in disbelief. “Did ya hit your head on the way down, mate?”

“I told you, I’m lost.” The Doctor simply shrugged.

“Oh, uh… you’re at goldmouth!” The teenager answered.

“Goldmouth, yes, I knew that.” The Doctor snapped his fingers, pointing confidently at the boy. He had no clue what that was. So there was a trade guild, and if he had to guess, ‘Goldmouth’ was the name of the actual headquarters.

“…you don’t actually know where you are, do you?”

“Of course I know where I am!” The Doctor denied, tugging on his jacket. “It’s a big wooden-and-metal pyramid ship thing with trading and salvagers and whatnot.”

“…right,” The teenager, although he was young, wasn’t fooled by the Doctor’s tricks. “Well, if you’re needing help finding anything, just give us a shout. I might look young, but I know this place like the back of my hand! Name’s Rex, in case you decide to take me up.”

“Hello, Rex, I’m the Doctor.” The Time Lord smiled in response, clapping his hands. “That’s very nice offer, but don’t worry about me – just passing through.”

“If you say so,” Rex shrugged in return, before he jumped as an idea crossed his head. “Oh! I’ve got to get to the exchange! See you around, Doc!” He sprinted off up the ramp, leaving the Doctor in his dust.

“Actually, it’s…” The Doctor slumped somewhat. “Kids. I didn’t have that much energy when I was his age…”

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The Doctor hadn’t been able to piece much together beyond what he’d initially learned – but Goldmouth was a trade outpost, as he suspected. He always liked places like that. Big markets, where a bit of everything and everyone passed through, the living, beating heart of a civilization. They were a bit like Epcot, except actually authentic. No better way to throw one’s self into a culture.

The Doctor did so as he usually did – clumsily, without care, and completely enjoying himself all the while.

He could have gotten the lay of the land by finding a bookstore and flipping through a history book, but that was boring. YAWN.

And so it was that the Doctor was standing in a corner, sipping at a drink of dubious origin the Nopon trader called ‘fizzy juice.’ It was indeed juice, and it was, indeed, fizzy. Fresh-squeezed, too. The minerals of the fruit it originated from reacted when exposed to the open air in such a way as to add natural, harmless carbonation. A soft drink that never lost its fizz. He loved the little things.

Whilst the Time Lord ruminated at what fruit the juice came from (it had to be some relative of a pear, with a hint of lime and coconutty undertones), he noticed two people in diving suits conversing. Loudly.

“It’s bad luck!” One insisted to the other. “They want us going into uncharted territory, and now Bertron’s liver chooses to act up on the day of! You don’t ignore things like that!”

“We’re down a man, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s a salvage op.” The other audibly rolled their eyes. “You want to stay here, that’s fine, but you’ll miss out on your cut.”

“Well… fine. But I’m telling ya, I warned you!”

The Doctor sipped his drink, grinning to himself.

A ship going into uncharted wat- clouds was definitely something interesting. That the TARDIS landed here could mean that the departing ship on a mysterious mission right as he arrived was his path to Clara.

He could make a passable salvager.

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The guy in the big, brass and cloth diving suit did not seem to agree that the Doctor was a passable salvager. For one-

“You don’t even have a diving suit!”

To which the Doctor held up his fingers, dashed back to the TARDIS, and stepped back out in his Sanctuary Base Spacesuit. He spread his arms, expectantly looking at the guy. “Better?”

“Well… it looks awful thin,” The guy audibly frowned behind the helmet. “Still, I can’t just let any old bloke aboard.”

“Oh, but I’m not just any old bloke – I’m your replacement salvager, didn’t you hear?” The Doctor flashed the psychic paper, and the guy sucked in a surprised gasp.

“Another Class A? Bana’s really putting his all in this job, isn’t he?”

The Doctor shrugged. “You know him. Can’t let a good opportunity go to waste.” He pointed up the ramp. “Can I…?”

“Oh, sure,” The guy waved him off. “Go on up and find a bunk. We’re still waiting for the last man to turn up.”

“Really?” The Doctor curiously crossed his arms. “Isn’t this normally a ‘get a shove on, or miss out’ sort of deal?”

“Normally,” The salvager nodded. “But this one’s important, apparently. They need a Leftherian salvager or the whole operation’s moot. Architect knows why, but I’m not getting paid to ask them kinds of questions.”

“Really?” The Doctor probed further. “And what kind of questions do you get paid to ask, mister…?”

“Spraine,” The salvager nodded quickly. “And for me, it’s usually ‘what’s your name,’ ‘why you here,’ and ‘the Maelstrom doesn’t have to worry about you feeding her Titan a bunch of red pollen, right?’”

“Well, it sounds like you’ve got an easy job then,” The Doctor remarked, and the smile that rose to his face did so without regard for him. “Nothing that could cause any sprains.”

Spraine looked at him with a tired, droll expression… behind his diving helmet. “Oh. Har har. Truly you’re an inventive and innovative comedian.”

“…right.”

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It wasn’t long after the Doctor boarded that the Maelstrom set off. Before it did, a few final people came aboard.

There was a white-haired man in a long coat with a mask on, and a big giant sword. There was a man in black armor with spiky hair, also with a giant sword, who looked seriously sour (the alarm bells in the Doctor’s head started going off at the sight of that one – he looked like he was just waiting for an excuse.).

There was a girl in a yellow jumpsuit with cat ears, and a talking tiger!

And whilst the Doctor was snooping around, poking at the engines of the ship to see what made it tick, he got introduced to the last one.

“Hey – it’s you!” A voice loudly exclaimed, causing the Doctor to jump up and bang his head.

“Ow!”

“Sorry, sorry!” Rex frantically apologized as the Doctor turned around. “I’m not trying to make it a habit of hurtin’ ya when we run into one another.”

“Yeah, well… it’s called running into one another for a reason, I expect…” The Doctor sorely muttered, rubbing the back of his head.

“Oi, what are you doing over here kid?” Cat-ears chided Rex. “You best not be screwing things up by trying to take a peek at what other people are doing.”

“What?” Rex spluttered. “I just gave him a fright is all.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up. She looked just as young as Rex, really. Maybe a year or two older, at most.

“Wait…” She looked at the Doctor, narrowing her eyes. “Who are you?”

“Nia, this is… well, he just told me he was the Doctor.” Rex introduced. “Doctor, this is Nia.”

“You don’t look like the rest of the salvagers around this place.” Nia commented with a frown.

“That’s right, never met another like me!” The Doctor boasted. “I’m a great salvager- a salvager extraordinaire! All your salvage-y operations will turn out a-okay, with me here.” He winked, leaning on the engine. A sizzle interrupted him, notifying him to the fact that it was trying to burn through one of his gloves, and he yanked it away.

“Right.” Nia rolled her eyes. “Look, this was fun, but I’ve got to go talk to Jin and Malos about a few things. You just do what it is the crew told you… and try not to mess anything up.” She turned around, the white tiger following into step behind her.

“Short-tempered, isn’t she?” Rex commented.

“Nah, I’ve met short-tempered,” The Doctor turned around. “She just seems… high-strung.” The Doctor cleared his throat. “So, Jin and Malos – I take it they’re the two frowny people who came on board with you.”

“With me? Nah,” Rex shook his head. “Way I understand it, they’re the ones actually funding this gig. Why, you not meet them?”

“No,” The Doctor readily admitted.

“Huh.” Rex frowned. “That’s odd… they wanted to meet me.”

“Why?”

“Huh?”

“You said they wanted to meet you,” The Doctor elaborated. “Why do you think that was?”

“I don’t know,” Rex shrugged. “I thought they wanted to examine everyone. Make sure they were up to the task. At least, they did that with me.”

“Did they?” The Doctor leaned forward. “And did you pass their examination?”

Rex awkwardly chuckled, leaning back nervously. “Well, I’d say, else I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

The Doctor hummed, looking back down at the engine. “You wouldn’t happen to be Leftherian, would you?”

“Say… how’d you know?”

“Just now,” The Doctor’s lips twitched. “When you said it.”

“Oh… damn it.”

“When I was coming aboard, the nice fella outside said this whole operation was dependent on a Leftherian salvager.” The Doctor discreetly produced his sonic screwdriver, analyzing the emissions. It was a bog-standard engine, but there was something else, all around. In the air. Lone quarks of the six types, just… floating around, independently. Kind of impossible, really. What planet was he on?

“And the thing about people needing you, is they tend not to care if you fit the rest of their expectations, as long as you make sure to cross off the big one.” The Doctor continued. He looked over, seeing Rex standing there, confused. “Relax,” The Time Lord disarmingly smiled. “All that means is you don’t need to care about what other people think, as long as you take care of the big part.”

“Right, I see,” Rex nodded. “Speaking of expectations, I wasn’t expecting you to be a salvager.”

“Well, I dabble.”

“A salvager who ended up in Goldmouth, on the Maelstrom, with no clue what the Argentum Trade Guild is?”

“I dabble – I never said I was any good at it,” The Doctor retorted.

“But you’re here, aren’t you?”

“Did I say I was no good? I meant to say I’m good, but I don’t really… care for the political side of it all?” The Time Lord ventured. “You know, all that’s the boring stuff – I much more care for the exciting bit! Let’s dig up some old junk and see what we can find! I love that part.” He gestured noncommittally.

“Right!” Rex nodded. “’Open a chest, it might turn out great! Until then, it’s just a crate!’”

“Oh, I like that. I’m having that – I’m writing it down,” The Doctor moved to reach into a pocket, before realizing he was in his spacesuit. “Maybe later.”

“I’ve never seen a salvaging suit like that,” Rex curiously leaned forward.

“You like it?” The Doctor looked down with a smile. “Rated for absolute vacuum, and – it’s comfy.” He wasn’t absolutely certain the suit would hold up under the Cloud Sea’s pressures if it came down to it, but the salvagers’ suits seemed underbuilt compared to his, so he’d ought to be fine.

“Yeah, mine’s not exactly the pinnacle of comfort, but it gets the job done, I suppose.”

The Doctor frowned. “Young fella like you, working a job like this, you must have a good idea of what you’re doing – how to profit.”

“Fair enough, I guess.” Rex shrugged. “But I send most of it back home. They need it more than I do.”

The Doctor’s frown deepened. “And your parents are fine with that? They just sent you out here to work?”

“Nah, no parents – just Auntie Corrine and my Gramps.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Ah, it’s fine. Gramps does his best, looking out for- Oh!” He suddenly cut himself off, looking like a fire had been lit underneath him. “I’m on watch duty tonight! I almost forgot – I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta run!”

“Ah, don’t worry, I’ll just stay here and scope out the general… engine-y-ness. Yes, that’s it.” The Doctor nodded.

“Right, yeah – it was good talking to you again!” Rex quickly moved, running away from the Time Lord, and up the internal structure of the ship.

And there the Doctor lingered for a little while, just pacing around. They were heading into uncharted territory, sure, but… well, that didn’t mean anything to him, seeing as the whole planet was uncharted by he, himself, personally.

He wondered why the TARDIS had saw fit to bring him here, ruminating on the matter for a few hours. Finally, the sun began to set outside, and the Doctor decided that now would be a good time to figure out where in the universe he was. So, he put down what he was doing, and began to move. As he did, he couldn’t help but hear muffled voices. At a low whisper for a human, certainly, but well within his range of hearing.

“I don’t like it.” One of them said to the other. “The Chairman says he approved no replacement, and we’d gone through the effort of vetting all the crew, just for that one to turn up.”

“What does it matter?” The other voice impatiently retorted. “They’re all going the same place anyhow.”

The Doctor stopped in front of the door, peering in through the keyhole. Inside were those two gentlemen – Jin and Malos (that wasn’t a very good name at all, it practically screamed ‘look at me, I’m doing a bad thing over here!’)

Jin’s brow furrowed in concentration, his eyes flickering with ideas and possibilities. “It’s too convenient. One of the salvagers gets knocked out with food poisoning right before a man who doesn’t exist turns up on board? It reeks of a setup.”

“Good point… what do we think? Indol?” Malos boredly asked in response, spinning around in a swivel chair.

“How could they know?” Jin stopped, visibly thinking about something else. “How could he know?”

“Spies everywhere,” Malos let out a suffering sigh. “I told you – this is what you get for dealing with hired help.”

“If it is him, it’s not very subtle.” Jin frowned. “What kind of cover is ‘the Doctor?’”

Malos began to nod in agreement. “A bad one. Doctor… Doctor…”

Jin regarded Malos curiously. “Problem?”

“…no. It’s nothing.”

And the Doctor was torn between listening further, and moving on. After a few moments, it seemed that the two wouldn’t keep up their secretive discussion of him, switching tracks to what it was they were looking for out there.

Wisely, they kept to vague language, just in case anybody (anybody like him) was listening in. They kept calling it an ‘object,’ but the Doctor couldn’t tell if it was a lockbox or something, or a ship.

Finally, he decided to head to the upper deck, feeling that he’d gotten everything useful out of them.

When the open sky greeted his eyes, the Doctor stopped, and his eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “Impossible…” He breathed out. “That’s impossible!” He ran a little ways away from the door, towards a clearer area away from the underside of the Titan tugging the ship along, and his face twisted in disbelief.

He could see the stars, clearly – the constellations, their luminosity, all of it gained from centuries of looking at the night sky of his favorite planet. He could see the constellations in the sky above, and the stars that made them up.

His eyes were naturally drawn to Polaris, Arcturus, all the big ones…

He was on Earth. Somewhere around the 41^st century, if the positions were right. But that was wrong. No great big plant tree things were on the planet during that time.

The Time Lord’s eyes drew closer to the glowing tree.

“What are you?” The Doctor wondered. A piece of foliage that large was impossible on Earth, glowing with strange lights? It had to be alien. Responsible.

“Hey down there!” Rex called down from the lookout, waving at the Doctor and breaking the Time Lord’s concentration. “Did you follow me up here or something?”

“Ah, well, you know, the rest of them down there, they’re not all that… talkative.” The Doctor moved around, walking up the steps, keeping his eyes on the tree. “And the drinking – I don’t do drinking games, I’m rubbish at them.”

“Well, that’s no good,” Rex puffed out his chest. “You know salvagers - ‘swim like a fish, and drink like one too?’”

“I do drink like a fish,” The Doctor blankly stared back at Rex. “Every time. There’s only one way to drink things. Well, two,” The Doctor held up his fingers, looking up thoughtfully. “But doing it through the nose, I’ve been told, is a bit of a faux pas.” He suddenly sniffed. “Not sure what fake paws have to do with it.”

Rex quieted for a second, before breaking out into a grin. “Hey, that’s a good one!”

The Doctor’s lips twitched as he clapped his hands. “That’s nothing. Did you hear about the kidnapping? They found him in his bed after an hour.”

Rex blinked, and he sharply shook his head with a sheepish smile. “Nah.”

The Doctor petulantly turned away, with a childish huff. “Well, not everyone can have a refined sense of humor like mine.” He leaned on the railing, staring at the thing touching the sky.

Rex followed the Time Lord’s eyes to the giant plant. “World Tree’s looking nice tonight.”

The Doctor glanced at the young salvager, tilting his head curiously. “Eh. A bit too bright for my liking. How’s anybody supposed to sleep with it being so bright out?” He rhetorically asked.

“In a bed, I guess.” Rex frankly answered, and the Doctor responded with an over-the-top roll of his eyes. “So, I’ve gotta ask… are you following me?”

“You?” The Doctor snorted. “Why on earth would I follow you?” He leaned forward, searching the teenager’s eyes. “Did you do anything to warrant being followed…?”

Rex rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. But that bunch of Drivers wanted to hire a Leftherian – specifically. Then I bump into you, twice, and then you come out here.”

“Yes, well, there’s also the big thing of the sky being out here too.” The Doctor deflected, pointing up. “Besides, I thought we could keep on our nice talk that the job you were hired to do so rudely interrupted. Unless you mind.”

“Nah, that’s fine,” The boy shook his head. “I’m kind of used to people being a bit curious about me, especially on these big jobs.”

“Oh?” The Doctor sat down across from him. “Why?”

“Well, look at me.”

The Doctor stared cluelessly. “I am looking at you – why?”

Rex snorted with a grin. “Well, I’m not exactly ‘old,’ am I?”

“I’m ancient, and I’m here,” The Doctor shrugged. “Although… strictly speaking, those two may not necessarily be contributing to each other.” The Time Lord cleared his throat “So, what, people give you funny looks for being experienced?”

“Used to, a while back,” Rex nodded. “But I’ve been salvaging for a while now; been on my share of big jobs like this one, so it’s usually not the other salvagers I need to worry about anymore.”

Experienced? What did that mean? “Rex, when you say experienced, how long have you been doing this?”

“Oh, years now.” The teenager answered readily.

The Doctor straightened up. “You’ve been out here, salvaging on your own for years, sending what you get back to your home, with only your grandfather to take care of you?”

“Yeah,” Rex nodded. “I’m not gonna pretend like it’s easy all the time, but I like it. Fonsett – little village out there – took me in, gave me a home. There’s not much to trade with the other countries, but money helps. Buying supplies in case something happens, replacing old beat-up stoves and such, hiring help for folks that’re too old or too sick to take care of themselves, that sort of thing. Auntie Corrine absolutely did not want me to go, but Gramps must’ve figured I’d leave and try it anyway, so he went with to keep an eye on me. Most of what we make, we send back to the village. This job’s paying out a lot – enough to take care of them for a while.”

The Doctor couldn’t help but feel a sense of admiration/pity for the young man. No one should have to feel obligated to do such a thing, but Rex was doing it of his own volition. Quite talented at doing it, too, seeing as he’d apparently been doing so for a while.

“You know, Rex, I think that’s wonderful,” The Doctor softly smiled. “Not a whole lot of folks your age would do the same.”

“I know,” Rex nodded. “I guess that’s what pushes my buttons when people call me a kid. I earn my living – earn enough to send back home at that.”

“Do people normally do that?”

“When I first started? Oh yeah. Now most of the salvagers know better.” Rex answered. “The only person who’s given me trouble recently is Nia.” Rex frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t get it. She looks just as young as I do! What, does she think Driver experience converts differently to salvager experience or something?”

“Driver?” The Doctor repeated, furrowing his eyebrow.

“Yeah, a Driver. Didn’t you see her Blade, Dromarch?”

“Oh, yeah,” The Doctor nodded, pointing, before shiftily looking around. “But what does driving have to do with anything?”

Rex threw his head back in uproarious laughter, that went on for a long moment, before it died as he caught the Doctor’s confused look. “You know, drivers! Drivers and blades?”

The Doctor stared at Rex.

“You… really don’t know, do you?” Rex blinked. “Well, you know… You get someone who bonds with a Core Crystal, and they wake up the blade, and… yeah.”

The Doctor continued to stare.

“Come on,” Rex tilted his head. “Even I know what Drivers and Blades are! You’re just screwing around, aren’t you?”

The Doctor shook his head, almost-imperceptibly.

“Architect – you’re serious, aren’t you?” Rex scratched his head.

“I’m never serious – except, of course, for when I am.”

“All right, you’ve seen Nia, right? And the big white talking tiger that follows her around is Dromarch. He’s her blade. They’re linked, I guess. She woke him up from his core crystal so he can exist and move around and stuff, and in return she can use his powers in fights.”

“Sentient beings as… weapons?” The Doctor probed slowly. Disbelievingly. Almost harshly, and Rex winced.

“Uh… I guess? Though I guess they’re more like people. I hadn’t met any blades before today – but Dromarch is pretty lifelike.” Rex frowned. “And… I don’t think they’re just weapons. Cause Blades have weapons too, you know?”

The Doctor frowned to himself. It was far from the blades’ fault – but humans were always doing that, making people to handle the tough bits they didn’t want to. But imbuing weapons with sentience? Were the Blades like the Ood – sentient creatures taken and made to serve a function? Or were they just weapons given consciousness? The Doctor wasn’t such a big fan of either option. Giving weapons a conscience could be the final step in ensuring they weren’t used by some big warmongering would-be god-king, because they could refuse to be used, but that could also be flipped on its head, creating a weapon who really, really wanted to be used at any opportunity.

It was also giving sapience, personality, existence, to a line of tools. The TARDIS was alive, but she and the Doctor had come to a mutual understanding (read: theft) of each other. And, inevitably, there were those who saw a line of tools, even with personalities, as tools. Did the Blades choose? Did they get to?

“Who came up with that, then?” The Doctor probed.

“Uh… the Architect, I suppose?”

“And who’s that?” The Doctor flatly questioned. “Where is he? How can I talk to him?”

At that, Rex let out a nervous chuckle. “Well… he’s the Architect, you know? Lives in Elysium, top of the World Tree…”

The Doctor continued to blankly look at the teenager.

“Come on, we were just talking about it! What kind of salvager did you say you were?”

“Oh, a very sheltered one – just a great, big, ignoramus, that’s me! Won’t even focus on my dinner unless it’s shouting at me.” The Doctor chuckled, clapping his hands. “So, the World Tree, that’s the big plant over there, yes?”

“Right.” Rex nodded. “You don’t… You don’t know the story, do you?”

“Story? What story?”

Rex blinked. “You must have come from really far away.”

“Oh, whole worlds, I’d say.” The Doctor chuckled, leaning on the railing. “You seem to know – why don’t you fill me in?”

“Oh. Oh, right, I guess I can do that.” Rex looked put out by the notion of having to explain a story that everybody knew to someone else, but he went on. “So you’ve got the Cloud Sea, and the World Tree, you know what those are, right?”

“Well, I thought those were obvious.”

“Okay,” Rex nodded. “See, story goes that a long time ago, when the world was young, humankind lived up there. At the top of the World Tree.”

Yggdrasil. The Great Ash Tree, that held up the world, constantly attacked by two serpents. Or, at least, this World Tree shared a similar name. It was surrounded by an aqua-green glow, lighting up the night sky like an aurora, around the tree in the vague pattern of a wheel with four spikes. It was beautiful.

It also set the Doctor’s senses on edge. Just looking at it felt… wrong. A great, big, towering totem of wrongness that was not supposed to be there.

In either case, it made the Capitol on Gallifrey look like a rubber ball next to a redwood tree.

“What’s that line coming off the top of it?” The Doctor pointed. “Stretching up into space?”

“They call that the Architect’s Way.” Rex answered. “They say it’s the path into the heavens. We lived up there with our divine creator,” Rex continued, oblivious to the Doctor’s thoughts. “A being called the Architect, in a bountiful, holy land called Elysium.”

The Doctor’s lips twitched into a frown. Now, the mythologies were getting mixed up. But he didn’t let it show on his face. Religions and the like got corrupted over centuries, let alone millennia.

“And it was good!” Rex shrugged. “Until… one day, we were cast out. No one knows why. Maybe the Architect just got sick of us. Or we did something to anger Him. But he threw us out of Elysium, into the Cloud Sea. And then, when it looked like we would all perish, He took pity on us. He sent his servants, the Titans, to pull us out of the Cloud Sea. The ones that survived settled on the Titans’ backs, buildings whole towns, and cities, and nations. Then he sent the blades to help us survive even better. And… well, that’s how Alrest came to be.”

The Doctor nodded. “Good story.” He turned to the World Tree. “So, that big old tree right over there – your creator’s at the top of that?” He glanced at Rex. “Why don’t you climb up it and give him a piece of your mind, eh?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on – whatever you lot did, it must’ve been ages ago! Now, I mean, I can hold a grudge, don’t get me wrong, but I doubt the man could stop you from marching up there and saying ‘oi! We’re a totally different group of people, you can’t keep us out based on what the others did!’”

Rex nodded in agreement. “Right. I mean… I don’t know if Elysium’s really up there, but… it has to be, right? Cause the World Tree’s right there. There’s no Elysium without the World Tree.”

“You know what Rex, I think you’re exactly right!” The Doctor grinned, before tilting his head. “But there’s something more, isn’t there?”

“How do you mean?”

“I could tell as you were telling the story,” The Doctor explained. “You don’t just believe it. You want to believe it.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Believing something and wanting to believe are two totally different things.” The Doctor answered. “If you believe something, it’s already there, set in stone. If you want to believe something… you’re willing to move heaven and earth to make it reality.”

Rex chuckled quietly. “When you put it like that, it makes sense.” He turned back to the World Tree. “Titans are dying.” He swallowed. “Land becomes rarer by the day. Soon… we’re gonna run out of living space.” He once again looked at the Doctor properly. “That wasn’t a problem, five-hundred years ago. People could fight each other, and destroy everything in their way, and they didn’t have to worry about where they were going to go next. But now…”

“It’s winding up again, isn’t it?” The Doctor softly probed, before sighing. “Oh, it’s always the same old story… You find a tiny little square of land that you really want, so you take people to grab it. Then you bomb it, and scorch it, until you win, and what do you have? A little pit of ash. Congratulations on getting that land; don’t worry about watering it, you did it already with the blood you spilt.”

“But if Elysium’s up there,” Rex continued. “Then people wouldn’t need to worry about land ever again!”

“What about food?” The Doctor inquired with a frown. “Or water? Or beliefs – people have never needed an excuse to go to war over those.”

“Maybe…” Rex took an uncertain breath. “But trying and failing’s better than not trying at all.”

“Quite right!” The Doctor suddenly raised his voice in agreement.

“I dunno,” Another voice cut in. “You could just get everybody killed over a fairytale. Think about that?” Nia asked with a smarmily-tilted head as she walked up the steps. “Elysium, the Architect – all that’s kid stuff. I figured he’d still believe it, but you?”

Rex looked down slightly, almost like a kicked puppy.

The Doctor fixed her with his own somewhat-smug, challenging smile. “There’s no point being a grown-up if you can’t be childish sometimes.” And just like that, Rex’s attitude picked up.

“Sometimes?” Nia retorted. “You look like you make a habit of doing that all the time.”

“Oi – what’s that supposed to mean!?” The Doctor indignantly squawked.

“Forgive my lady,” Dromarch intoned with a smooth, buttery rumble. “I do believe she means you don’t look all that much younger than master Rex.”

“I don’t- but I-“ The Doctor spluttered indignantly, pointing at Nia who was struggling to hold back laughter. “I just have a good skincare routine is all!”

“Oh? You worry a lot about the way you look, is that it? Is that what happened to your eyebrows?”

The Doctor defensively touched the brows in question. “That’s just… pigment.” The Doctor coughed, frowning at the girl before him. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude,” Maybe, just a little bit, given that she went for the proverbial throat on the eyebrows. “But are those real?”

Nia’s face twisted into a scowl. “What the hell did you just say to me?”

“Your ears!” The Doctor moved over quickly, “I thought they were a headband, but you don’t have ears on the side of-“ He got a little bit ahead of himself, about to reach out to touch, and Nia slapped his hand away. “Ow!”

“Yes,” She hissed at him. “They’re real. What’s the matter? Never seen a Gormotti before?”

“Well, since you asked, no!” The Doctor sourly rubbed his hand. There were claws in that slap. A lot of the cat-kind races tended to be more on the cat side than the human side. It was unusual to see one who’s morphology was so close to human, with the exception of the ears. “Well, I’m not exactly from here.”

“They had Gormotti on Argentum.” Nia rolled her eyes.

“Actually, that was Goldmouth-“ Rex began to correct, silenced by a droll look from Nia.

“Well, I’m not from there, either.” The Doctor flippantly shrugged, turning around.

“Oh?” Nia blinked. “Then where are you from?”

“Oh, you know… around.” The Doctor vaguely gestured, looking out onto the cloud sea. Motion picked out by his highly-refined eyes alerted him to a dark speck on the horizon, following the ship at a distance. “Rex, did you happen to hear of any other salvaging teams coming out this way?”

“No, why?” Rex frowned.

“Oi, don’t go trying to change the subject,” Nia attempted to chide. “Should I start taking guesses? Mor Ardain? Uraya? Maybe… Indol?”

The Doctor ignored her questions. “So if there’s no one else coming out here… why are we being followed?”

“Followed?” Rex startled, jumping to his feet and snapping back to business. A pair of binoculars were put up to his face, as he peered through. After a few moments, during which the mysterious pursuer got closer, he spoke up. “I saw that ship back at Goldmouth, before we set off! But why’s it following us- Hey!”

The Doctor snatched the binoculars out of Rex’s hands, and looked through them. The ship pursuing them was very big. Very spiky. Very menacing-looking and very menacingly-following. It didn’t look like the rest of the ships he’d seen in this place so far, with the lack of a Titan pulling it – but that could have just been because the creature was stuck deep inside the machine’s innards.

“Very big, very scary looking…” The Doctor began. “Rex – be a dear and go tell the captain, yeah?”

Rex frowned. “Why’ve I got to go?”

The Doctor turned to him with a smile, plopping the binoculars back in the teenager’s hands. “You’re the watchman on-duty!”

“Oh,” Nia scoffed with a roll of her eyes. “What a load of- It’s probably just our backup.”

“Backup?” Rex turned to her, questioning.

“What, you think we sunk all this money into this job just so one salvager ship can haul up what they get and run off with it?” Nia challenged somewhat tersely.

Rex, his honor impugned, recoiled. “What? Why’d we do that?”

“You’ve got to cover all your bases!”

Dromarch cleared his throat. “My lady and her associates have invested a lot in this mission – it’s natural to want to ensure that investment doesn’t meet any unfortunate accidents.”

The Doctor frowned thoughtfully to himself. What could be so important that it demanded hiring a salvager ship, the associated crew, and a second ship to make sure the first didn’t run off with the goods, even though the people who did the hiring to begin with were on board anyway?

The Doctor’s brain – the most powerful organic supercomputer that had ever evolved – went into overdrive, thinking about the possibilities. He put a stop to all of them. He didn’t know enough about the altered time-zone to make any assumptions. The most likely possibility was that the people who put together the job were just paranoid.

Actually… really paranoid, given how Nia had been acting.

Once that line of thought went through him, the Doctor felt a ‘click’ inside his head, as he lowered the binoculars and turned to Nia with a slight smile. He introduced himself to her, she happened to run off on some ‘urgent business,’ then that Jin and Malos started discussing him not-so-covertly? They had mentioned an ‘Indol’ then, too.

“That’s an awful lot of precautions to take,” The Doctor said aloud. “What is it that we’re going to get?”

Nia snorted. “We’re paying you to salvage, not ask questions.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to live with your disappointment, because when you get me, you get my brain, and it likes asking all those troublesome little pesky questions.” The Doctor’s facial expression hadn’t changed. His muscles did not twitch or shift. Yet his smile got only even more smug, if possible.

Nia recoiled like he’d just scarfed down that mysterious, meaty paste that came as wet dog food, right in front of her. “What the hell are you on about?”

“Oh, nothing.” The Doctor tugged his spacesuit, turning around.

“Now that’s a load of-“

“My lady,” Dromarch coughed. “Perhaps we should retire. It’s getting quite late.”

“Right, yeah,” Nia readily agreed. “Have fun with Dr. ‘No Sense of Personal Space.’” Then, before anyone could say anything, she’d turned around, and marched down the steps.

“What was that about?” Rex questioned the Doctor as soon as Nia was out of earshot.

“I’ll put it to you simply,” The Doctor turned back to Rex. “Either she knows what we’re looking for and doesn’t want to say – or has been ordered not to say – or even she doesn’t know. In either case, you know what that means?”

“What?”

The Doctor tossed the binoculars back to him. “It means something shady’s going on.” Just as suddenly, he grinned. “Which means whatever it is we’re pulling up is going to be really good.” Or really dangerous. Or something really personal.

“You sure?”

“Nope!” The Doctor admitted. “Only one way to find out when we get there!”

He did love a treasure hunt.

------------

Rex had turned in for the night, and eventually it came down to the Doctor to take over the watch post. Not much else had happened, aside from the ship still following. He did see that Malos not-so-slyly snooping around, glaring at the Doctor from the distance, but aside from that, not much happened.

Frankly, it was boring. If he was human, he would’ve fallen asleep.

But the morning came, and with it, the announcement that the ship was getting close to its destination.

The Doctor had fumbled around for a moment, trying to figure out an uplink for the locals’ oxygen cylinders to his suit’s air supply, but he’d gotten it sorted out quickly. And with that blaze-yellow sealed to the collar, the Doctor attached himself to a cable, and took the plunge with the salvagers into the Cloud Sea.

Only a few feet in, the fog-like substance turned more into a traditional liquid, but his suit held up under the pressure. The Sanctuary Base 6 space-suit was incredibly well-built, designed for high-pressure, low pressure, extreme temperatures – well, any hostile planetary environment, actually.

So the Doctor held onto the cable, falling through the depths of the Cloud Sea, while the salvagers chattered and gestured to each other. Then, it came into view.

A vessel, just… floating. They were nowhere near the seabed.

“What’s this thing floating on?” The Doctor posed to the others over the radio. “I don’t see any ground!”

“It’s another layer of the Cloud Sea.” Rex supplied helpfully to the Time Lord. “It’s too dense for the ship to sink through. There’s a whole bunch of lines and stuff – that’s what the Titans walk on.”

“Really?” The Doctor hummed to himself. So, that had to be a programmed-in feature, rather than a result of simple physics. The Time Lord looked up, and around. “Where are you?”

“Uh, near the back of the ship, I think. I think that’s the propulsion mechanism I’m looking at. But it doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen. Where are you?”

The Doctor swam over to the side of the ship. “Near the bow, I think. This ship’s definitely a big one.”

“Which is weird, right? People try to salvage old ships all the time, but I’ve never heard of this much secrecy. Think this is an important one?”

“Never assume anything about anything,” Advised the Doctor, who assumed anything about everything all the time, including another bout of assuming he was just about to do. “But it’s definitely something those up there want.” Or it could be illegal to haul up a ship, but judging from Rex’s reaction, it didn’t seem that unusual for shups to be salvaged.

The Salvager in charge waved, and the others began to move towards the hull. Following their lead, the Doctor grabbed the attachable, inflatable ballast he’d been handed, and attached it to the ship in-line with the others.

Lights moved in the darkness, as the Salvagers pushed away from the ship, and the Doctor followed. A moment later, the muffled sounds of an explosion rumbled the Doctor’s body, as the ballasts inflated, and began to lift the ship up.

The Doctor swam over with the others, and grabbed on, riding the ship all the way up.

-------------

The pressure-seal of the Doctor’s spacesuit hissed as he removed his helmet. He looked with no small amount of envy at the other salvagers who had all manner of hinges to hold their helmets for them. He had no such hinges or carrying straps, which made him frown.

The 43^rd century’s finest workmanship, and they couldn’t be bothered to make a carrying strap. It didn’t have to be a complicated strap, just… a strap. Otherwise, he was forced to cradle it under the crook of his arm.

While the last of the salvagers came aboard, the Doctor spotted Rex trying to climb over the wall, and moved over to help.

“There you go, Rex!” The Doctor encouraged with a grunt as he helped the teenager over. “Up you get!”

“Thanks,” Rex nodded as he released the seal on his helmet as well. “How’d you get up here so quick?”

“I climb over walls for a living. Well, a hobby.” The Doctor amended. “And really it’s not something I seek out, it just kind of happens, but-“ He pointed at the young salvager. “It means I have really good upper body strength. So!” He clapped his hands, and began to stomp on the metal deck, as a gangplank was lowered from the Maelstrom. “What do we think, eh? A ship. A very shippy ship. But, here’s the curious thing!” The Doctor pointed. “This whole thing’s in one big piece. No damage on the outside, so,” He turned to Rex. “What sunk it?”

“Huh,” Rex hummed thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Sometimes you see ships that go down because their Titans break loose or get released. But this ship’s engine… I don’t think it had a Titan.”

“It all depends on why it was sunk,” The Doctor murmured. “Because, I’ll tell you what, if there’s no battle damage and it didn’t have a Titan, then that means it was either sabotage or…”

Rex looked inquisitively at the Doctor. “Or what?”

“There was something on board the crew didn’t want out in the world.” The Doctor finished, casting suspicious glances to the ‘employers’ on the Maelstrom. “Something that they’d rather sink the ship to hide than just dump in the Cloud Sea…”

“Like what?”

The Doctor suddenly shifted his mood, clapping his hands. “I don’t know! Probably nothing, just me rambling on to fight the tedium. Make things interesting. Things are always more interesting if there’s a mystery.” He began to walk towards the gangplank, which Nia, Jin, and Malos, along with their respective blades (in the case of Nia and Malos, as Jin didn’t seem to have one) were descending.

“Hang on – you can’t just say all that and walk away!” Rex huffed. “You’re working me up over here!”

“It’s probably just a case of mechanical failure,” The Doctor shrugged. Without a look, he couldn’t be sure. But they were definitely in a suspicious situation. Mysterious backers with loads of money, going out to haul up a ship with no damage, and they won’t tell the crew what it is they’re salvaging until they get out to it?

Secrets just meant someone wanted you to be operating without all the knowledge of something. And if they wanted you without all the knowledge, it meant that knowledge was going to be something that was potentially troublesome to them. The Doctor knew that – he kept more secrets than anybody else in the universe.

“Big ship like this,” The Time Lord continued. “Without one of those Titans, it probably had a lot of mechanical thingy-ma-jigs just to keep it floating. Those go out, you get a sunken ship with no battle damage.” The cloud sea was somewhat like water, in the sense that it was a liquid, but the observed characteristics of it were at total odds with water. It was possible, if not likely, that objects could just lose buoyancy like that. He didn’t know; he’d have to run tests to be sure.

Their ‘benefactors’ reached the end of the ramp, and Nia approached first with her blade.

“Excellent work!” The Gormotti complimented. “You’re not half bad, you know that?”

Rex looked uncertainly between her and the Doctor. He very clearly wanted to continue the line of discussion, but he’d been visibly unsettled by the Time Lord’s words.

“Hey, you okay?” Nia probed with a frown.

“Yeah, just – was that an actual compliment?” Rex tried to play it off. “Or am I running a fever?”

“Oh, get your head out of your arse,” Nia rolled her eyes, and the Doctor coughed, turning his head away. The TARDIS’s profanity filter must’ve shorted out during the crash. “I can give people credit where it’s due, you know.”

“Why don’t you save that until the end?” Malos sternly addressed Nia, making it sound like he was pissed off. Or, that could have just been his personality. “After we get the job done?”

Nia shot the man a look, and turned away crossing her arms.

“All teams!” The leader of the little operation rose his voice. “Proceed inside when ready!”

“Speak of the devil,” Malos chuckled. “Come on. You too.” He ordered of Rex.

Rex blinked in surprise, but took it with a shrug, and moved to follow.

The Doctor took a moment, and began to follow as well, not wanting to miss out on whatever big thing it was that got everyone so worked up.

Before he could, Jin’s arm shot out, and moved to block his path.

“Not you.” The white-haired man stated with the finality of a thunderbolt.

“Why not?” Nia scoffed. “You’re taking the kid along.”

“Someone will have to remain out here, on watch.” Jin turned to her slowly.

Nia opened her mouth to retort, but the Doctor beat her to the punch.

“And kids are good to get into all those tight little spots a grown-up can’t, right?” The Doctor leaned forward, staring into Jin’s eyes. “And that’s fine – you’ve got your pick of salvagers on hand. But you don’t want any salvager. You want me.”

He wished he could say he was just being paranoid. He’d love it if he was just being paranoid. But he didn’t like it – how shady everything was. His gut told him that Jin and the like weren’t to be trusted. Nia… maybe, maybe not, he hadn’t decided.

The Doctor suddenly grinned. “You know, that’s really a nice mask. I had a friend with a mask like that once – blown porcelain!” He reached up, moving to grab the mask, and as predicted, Jin’s arm snapped up to try and stop the Time Lord. The Doctor, making use of Jin’s sudden distraction, underwent a sudden burst of speed, and with deft hands and swift maneuvering, wriggled out of the man’s grasp, standing back near Nia and Rex.

Jin’s hand went up to his face, finding that the mask was still on, but that didn’t stop his face from twitching in rage. “You don’t. Touch. The mask.” His arm went up to his back, his hand motioning open, then closing in confusion, as it tried to grip around a weapon that wasn’t there.

The Doctor held up the sword, still in its scabbard and all, as Jin’s eyes popped open in surprise.

“How…?” The white-haired man demanded.

“Venusian aikido!” The Doctor proudly smiled. “My favorite martial art, because, as it turns out, it has no attacking moves! Plus a two-week pickpocketing course, and a hot summer with Harry Houdini. I can replace a pistol with a banana, and the owner wouldn’t notice.”

Jin glowered at the Doctor, whereas Malos burst out into mocking laughter.

“Come on, let the guy come along.” Malos told his partner. “Things won’t be boring, that’s for damned sure.”

Jin continued to glare at the Doctor, before nodding once.

The Time Lord’s grin turned slightly smug, and he tossed the sword back to Jin.

The white-haired man glowered at the Doctor, and they began to move towards the door deeper into the ship. As they approached, they could hear banging, before the metal plates burst open, and a giant crustacean came running out. Like a giant, mutated shrimp, with four eyes, and spindly, spider-like legs. The giant, tentacular arms wriggled and snapped furiously, as the salvagers assembled jumped back.

“Oh, looks like somebody’s not happy to see us!” The Doctor remarked, as the danger sent a rush of adrenaline through him. The antennae atop the creature were arranged like a mohawk, giving the Time Lord an idea.

He reached for the Sonic Screwdriver, stored in the outer pocket of his spacesuit.

“Stand back,” Nia pushed Rex back, as she drew two rings of light, buzzing with heat and energy. “Let’s show you how drivers get things done.”

“Don’t anybody do anything!” The Doctor said to them. “I can stun it!” He pointed the Screwdriver up, earning a look of ire from Malos.

“What the hell is that supposed to be? A toy wand?”

The Doctor ignored him, switching settings and frequencies until he found the one he was looking for. “I don’t know what frequency this thing hears on, so cover your ears, kids!” That was all the warning he gave, before he pressed the activator.

The emitter lit up, letting out a low buzz near the lower end of the frequency spectrum, before it heightened in volume and frequency. As the sound passed the point where humans could hear, the creature began to freak out, as even the Doctor could feel his vision begin to go wibbly.

Finally, it stumbled to the floor, resting there in a daze.

“Huh,” Malos’s lips twitched. “I guess you salvagers do have some fun tricks.”

“I’m all tricks,” The Doctor declared, putting his screwdriver away as Malos approached the crustacean. “Let’s put it ba-“

Before the Doctor could finish, in a surge of motion, Malos had run his sword through the animal’s brain, silencing it with a final cry, as it went totally limp. The Doctor stared in shock as the man callously yanked his weapon out, and the sea creature dissolved in a green glow, leaving nothing left of its body but a few chunks of scales.

“It was scared,” The Doctor gasped out in horror, looking at where the slain creature had lay.

“Sorry, what’d you say?” Malos turned around. “Oh.” He processed the Doctor’s words, and shrugged. “I’m sure it was.”

“You didn’t have to do that!” The Doctor raised his voice. “It was down!”

“It was attacking us.” Malos rolled his eyes.

“It was scared!” The Doctor indignantly glared at the man, fire burning behind his eyes. “We moved its home without warning, and tried to break in! It was scared!”

“It was an animal,” Malos scoffed.

“Don’t say that like it makes it any better,” The Doctor seethed. “It was a living creature, and that means it deserved to be treated with respect!”

“Respect, huh?” Malos challengingly looked at the Doctor. “Oh… you’re one of those vegan types, aren’t you?”

“I’m not.” The Doctor lowered his voice. “But I don’t go around killing when I’ve already solved a problem without doing so.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Malos scoffed. “In case you forgot, we’re the ones paying you, so,” Malos shoved the Doctor on the chest. “Shut up. Fall in line. And do your job. Come on.” He spun around, and began to march inside the ship.

Rex and Nia approached the Doctor.

“I’ve never seen anybody get up in his face like that,” Nia whispered to the Doctor. “Most are too scared of him.”

“Attitudes like that…” The Doctor shook his head. “They come from not being told ‘no’ enough during their lives.”

“You okay?” Rex asked of the Time Lord. “It’s a hazard of the job. Sometimes you salvage things, and a crustip or whatever will be brought up too. And you’ve got to kill it before it kills you.”

“That’s different,” The Doctor sharply turned to the teenage salvager. “But that animal he just killed was already down. We could’ve thrown it into the water where it would’ve been fine. And he just didn’t want to. Because he was lazy. Or because he enjoyed it.”

“Yeah… that’s Malos for you,” Nia sighed.

The Doctor looked at her sideways. “Does he do this sort of thing often?”

“Not this specifically. But… he is a bit of a cock.”

The Doctor looked ahead, glaring at Malos’s back. “You two – be on your guard. I don’t like this.” If Malos could kill a defenseless animal that hadn’t hurt anyone while it was down, what else was he capable of?

“Come on!” The man barked from up ahead.

The Doctor sighed, and they followed Malos’s trail.

---------------

Deeper into the abandoned ship, and it was clear that the Doctor’s words did not get through to Malos. On the contrary, it seemed the dark-armored man was now going out of his way to murder every last creature in the place, despite some of them not even being in the way. He was doing it just to get on the Doctor’s nerves, most certainly.

It was working. The Doctor felt his ire rising with every mocking glance from Malos. He wasn’t going to do anything drastic, not at all – but the sooner he got away from the sad excuse for a human being, the better.

The deeper into the ship they got, the Doctor began to notice some more curiosities. There were cargo crates neatly stacked about, strapped to the floor.

“Funny,” The Doctor commented. “No signs of battle damage, all the cargo in place, yet the ship sunk. Even the chests are all in place. Why would the crew abandon ship… and leave all their things?”

Malos scoffed from up ahead. “Trinkets, all of it.”

“You’re more than welcome to these baubles,” Jin gestured about at the ancient cargo. “The real item of value is deeper in the ship.”

“And they didn’t take that either?” The Doctor mumbled. “This is all a bit Mary Celeste.”

Malos stopped up ahead, going rail-stiff. “What?”

The Doctor continued looking at the cargo boxes, peering in by the light of the Sonic Screwdriver set to torch mode. “The Mary Celeste. A merchant ship discovered derelict in the middle of the sea. The crew provisions were still relatively well-stocked, there was a moderate but not severe amount of damage, and the one lifeboat on board was gone. Like the entire crew just up and left. Well actually they did leave. Well, actually, they were taken. Actually, taken implies it was intentional by another party. Really, it was-“

“I’ve not heard of that one,” Rex spoke up. “Was it recent?”

“…no.” The Doctor shook his head. “It was a… long time ago.”

Malos huffed. “A whole bunch of ancient sailors vanishing is important to this how?”

“It’s not, strictly speaking, but something similar might have happened-“

“Then shut up.” Malos cut the Time Lord off. “I’m starting to regret bringing you along.”

“…” The Doctor glowered at Malos’s back. “I’m beginning not to like you very much.”

“I am trembling for forgiveness.” The man drawled.

Jin at least had the courtesy to shoot the Doctor an apologetic look. “Malos is an acquired taste.”

“Well I’m not acquiring him…” The Doctor mumbled under his breath.

“Oh look,” Malos sneered. “Something we can agree on.”

As they reached the aft of the ship, arriving at a control room with a door locked down on one end, Rex spoke up.

“What is it we’re looking for?”

“You’ll find out,” Malos deflected, looking at Jin. “Is this-“

“No,” The masked man replied. “It’s not got a mark on it.”

“Then why,” Malos kicked the plate. “Isn’t it opening!?”

“Well, if you used your brain rather than your sword,” The Doctor glared as he scanned the door with the Sonic Screwdriver. “You’d realize that it doesn’t have power!” He moved around Malos, as the Screwdriver scanned the power conduits running to the door. “If I had to guess, the main generator is back here, somewhere?”

“That means it’s missing an ether cell,” Jin harumphed. “Could take a while to find one… if they even left one here.”

“They left everything else,” The Doctor shrugged. “But that shouldn’t be necessary,” He removed the Screwdriver from the wall, flicking it open to check the readouts. “There’s a manual release right below us.”

Malos scoffed. “How do you-?”

The Doctor popped off the deck plate, revealing the lever underneath, concealed completely thanks to the wear-and-tear of ages presumably scrubbing away the markings. The Doctor gestured down to it smugly, and pulled it, causing the door to pop open slightly – enough for a person to jam their hands in and push it the rest of the way. Which Malos did with a huff and a pout.

“That’s a useful tool,” Jin remarked.

“Oh, you have no idea.” The Doctor followed Malos through, to be met with a sight that’d have any sapient being with a fear instinct quaking in their boots. “Ah… ah! That’s a…”

It looked like a giant shark, slimy and colored black. It wouldn’t be all that much of a problem… aside from the two enormous arms that allowed the thing to walk.

“Shark with legs.” The Doctor giggled as the thing roared. “It’s a shark with legs and it’s very, very angry!” Just what kind of fancy-free new hell had he discovered? The Doctor was a highly-evolved complex space-time event – but even his brain’s most primal parts wanted to get the hell out of the way of a giant shark with hands and claws.

“Not letting us past, huh?” Malos smarmily leered at the disturbed creature. “Fine then, I’ll take that challenge!” He and the others drew their weapons, including Rex.

The Doctor could only sigh, forced to stand back and watch as they drove their weapons into the creature. Rex fought using a sword that was so large compared to his body, it was almost comical. Nia fought using twin rings projected into her hands by some mechanism by Dromarch – curiously, and it was a fact that made the Doctor feel a little bit better, the rings could heal minor injuries by projecting some form of energetic aura.

The Doctor watched, taking in the fight as Rex moved like a spinning top, slicing into the walking shark’s thick hide. As the animal let out a furious screech, trying to swipe at Rex, Jin ran over and jumped, landing on the shark’s head and putting his sword through its brain.

Like all the other animals in the ship, it collapsed and dissolved in a colored glow – this one a pale blue. The Doctor wondered if it was just the way lifeforms were here, or if it was a result of the weapons themselves.

No one else lingered on the remains. Jin and Malos led the way forward, stopping at a door with a peculiar sigil on it – a symbol that looked between a cross of a teardrop and a flame.

“There it is,” Malos drawled, with a greedy tremble in his voice that suggested he’d been waiting for this moment for a long, long time. “Addam’s Crest.”

The Doctor didn’t like it. He didn’t like a lot of things about Malos.

“Addam’s Crest?” Rex blinked. “What’s that mean?”

“Well, it’s a crest,” The Doctor looked at Rex. “And if I had to guess, it belongs to a man called Addam.”

“You,” Jin barked at Rex. “Open this door.”

“Me?” Rex spluttered with wide eyes.

“This door will only open to one of you people,” Jin rolled his eyes.

“One of ‘you people?’” Rex scowled in confusion. “What are you-?”

“We’re not paying you to ask questions!” Malos’s face twisted in rage as he got over to Rex, grabbed the teenager by the shoulder, and shoved him towards the door. “Now open it!”

The Doctor moved in front of Malos, with such fluidity it must have seemed like he had just appeared there. He didn’t like bullies, and he did not tolerate people who mistreated children.

“Don’t do that again, don’t you dare,” The Doctor growled.

“You couldn’t stop me if you wanted to.”

“Yes I can.” The Doctor snapped. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

Malos said nothing, offering only a dead-eyed stare at the Time Lord in response. “Look at that. The salvager thinks he’s got guts.”

“I don’t think it – I know it,” The Doctor stated, stepping back. “You’ve been nothing but a bully this entire trip. I think it’s been too long since meeting someone who’s said ‘no’ to you.” He turned away, helping Rex up.

“It doesn’t matter.” Jin shook his head. “We get what’s inside this room, and we all go our separate ways.”

“Maybe we should take it slow,” Nia began to suggest.

“Nia, shut up!” Malos roared. “I’m getting tired of that door not opening!”

“You can’t treat people like that,” Rex spat. “Not even the hired help.” In any case, he turned to the door, but not before looking to the Doctor for advice. “Is it safe?”

The Doctor gave a quick scan with the Sonic. “It’s biometrically sealed.” And Malos’s expression only grew more wrathful, which the Doctor filed away to the back of his mind. “It’s looking for a particular set of genetic markers. If I had to guess, the markers that are in your genetics.” The Doctor nodded at Rex. “It’s safe.”

Rex nodded, and carefully approached the door. Excruciatingly slowly, he reached out to touch the emblem, causing it to light up, before the door opened, revealing a fog-filled room on the other side. One that was almost pristine compared to the rest of the ship.

“That door too.” Jin commanded, pointing to the door at the end.

Rex shook his head, but obeyed, walking the distance to the other door. The Doctor followed.

“Remember how I said this all felt a bit shady?” The Doctor whispered to Rex. “Well, if I wasn’t sure before, I am now.”

“What was the first clue?” Rex whispered back.

“Good guys aren’t usually handsy, or quick to kill things for the fun of it,” The Doctor glanced back. Nia, Jin, and Malos were the only ones back there. Which meant if things turned nasty, it’d get very nasty. “Are you good at running?”

“I’m… all right, I guess? Why?”

“Because there’s a non-zero chance we’ll be running out of here.” The Doctor whispered as Rex reached out to touch the door.

Rex gulped, as the door opened. Together, he and the Doctor walked through. What they found wasn’t anything that had crossed the Doctor’s mind.

It was a large chamber, but that wasn’t the big thing. There, in the middle of the room, was a pedestal. Stabbed into that plinth was a red sword, with mechanical portions that looked folded down to make flaps for no other purpose than to seemingly look cool. A green, cross-shaped gem was set into the hilt.

And behind the sword was a pod – a stasis chamber, of some type – in which rested a red-haired woman with a similar cross-gem on her sternum.

“It’s… a girl.” Rex breathed out in awe.

“No,” The Doctor’s eyes flicked between the sword and the woman. Her outfit was quite strange – some rubbery, skin-tight material, with portions that were clearly metal. It looked like it had grown over her, and it was the same coloration as the sword. “She’s a Blade.” The Doctor wasn’t an expert, but he felt confident enough stating that.

The crystal began to light up, bathing the area in a cool green glow, pulsating rhythmically like a beating heart. Curious, the Doctor took the Sonic Screwdriver out, and moved it towards the sword.

“Hey, asshole! Don’t even think about touching that!”

Before the Doctor could react, he heard a noise which could best be described as ‘distorted shimmering’ before a spike of pain tore through him, and he felt something becoming lodged in his sternum.

The Doctor looked down, to see the long, polished blade sticking out of his chest, faintly splattered with orange-red blood.

“DOCTOR!” Rex screamed, grabbing the sword that the Doctor had been scanning, and he yanked it out of the pedestal.

“Rex, don’t!” The Doctor gasped, but it was already too late.

Jin yanked his sword out of the Doctor’s back, and with a new target, he went to focus on Rex. Jin took a swing, but for all his youth, Rex was not inexperienced, using the ‘wings’ on the other side of the sword to catch Jin’s blade, before pushing back.

“Jin, what the hell are you doing!?” Nia screamed as she watched him fighting Rex.

The Doctor hit the floor, as he took a quick mental tally. The blade had gone between his hearts, but missed the organs themselves. If he’d been human, he probably would have died.

Rex let out a bloody, wrath-filled scream, as he swung wildly at Jin.

“Don’t make things more difficult than they have to be,” Jin glared at Rex, whilst Malos just stood by and watched with an amused smile.

“You killed him you… bastard!”

“Look at it this way; he won’t be alive to see what’s coming.”

“Oh…” The Doctor wheezed, pushing himself up. He took a distinct satisfaction upon noticing that Malos had the supreme look of ‘what the hell?’ plastered on his face. “I’m not dead. Fun fact about me; supremely hard to kill!” He could feel the clotting beginning to occur, accompanied by the low-level cellular regeneration that would stop him from bleeding out.

“Impossible!” Jin stared in disbelief.

“Doctor!” Rex turned around with a smile, and Jin took that opportunity to draw up for another strike.

“Rex, look out!” The Doctor snapped, causing the boy to jump back.

“Jin!” Nia screamed. “Look, just… put down the sword! I don’t know what they did, but you don’t have to kill them!”

“We don’t need them alive either.” Jin simplistically retorted.

“A fight to the death? Come on, seriously?” The Doctor incredulously demanded. When it looked like Jin wouldn’t back down, the Time Lord sucked in a breath. “All right then! Rex! I’m going to need to borrow this for a mo’.” He reached over, pulling the sword made of junk off Rex’s back. He blinked in surprise, as he gave the sword a twirl. “Nice balance, very weighty. Oh, by the way, Jin?” He raised his Sonic Screwdriver, and pressed down the activator.

Near the red crystal embedded into the hilt, Jin’s sword suddenly sparked and began to smoke, causing the man to let out a gasp of pain, and drop the weapon.

“What I said to Malos goes for you too.”

Jin glowered at the Doctor, whilst Malos let out a mocking cackle.

“So there’s some bite to back up that bark!” Malos drew his own sword, leveling it at the Time Lord. “Good. I’ve been waiting for an excuse to shut you up!”

“Funny,” The Doctor’s lips twitched as he lifted the pilfered sword. “I’ve been thinking the same thing!”

Malos’s smile dropped, and he surged forward with a furious bellow, holding his sword out to the side. Gallifreyan reflexes paid for themselves, allowing the Doctor to react to the attack in a timely manner, sending up the sword to catch Malos’s strike.

“How are you going to fight me with a hole in your chest?” Malos sneered.

“Like this!” The Doctor brightly answered.

And so that’s where the Doctor found himself – clad in a thousand-year-old spacesuit from humanity’s future, in the depths of a mysterious ship, fighting for his life with a young teenager whilst wielding a sword made of junk.

The strength of a Time Lord and the strength of a Driver clashed, both men’s immense physical strength pushing each other back equally. But Malos was not like the Doctor. He was not attuned to the turn of the universe. He did not have senses that could map out his surroundings to such a degree that it was like having 360-degree vision.

Though the Blade’s approach was as silent – the lifeform didn’t scream like a bad guy rushing the hero in a movie – the Doctor could feel the vibrations through the floor that acted as a five-second-herald to Sever. The Doctor threw himself down and into a slide right as the Blade swiped at him, causing Malos to push against dead air and tip forward, right into the strike of his own comrade.

“Agh!” Malos grunted. “SEVER!” He barked furiously, tremoring with rage. He turned around, locking onto the Doctor and rolling his shoulders. As before, he ran up to the Doctor, and swung. The Doctor moved to parry the sword away, until Malos did something unexpected. “Spiral Savate!” He shouted as he jumped, kicking his leg and his sword out. As the Doctor had been expecting a normal-ish slash, he was unprepared for the foot to dig into the side of his face, knocking him off-balance and breaking his concentration. “Hammer Bash!” Then, with his sword extended in front of him, the weapon transformed into a large shield, or paddle. With a burst of motion provided by his Blade, Malos shot forward, head-on into the Doctor.

The Time Lord was toppled to the ground, onto his back.

“Come on, Doc!” Malos taunted. “Where’s all that fight you had just a second ago!?”

“Doctor!” Rex called from where he was still engaging Jin. “Get up!” Another strike from Jin caught Rex in the arm, and with a pained gasp, his empty hand shot over to clamp down in front of the wound. The crystal set into the hilt of the sword glowed ever brighter.

“All talk!” Malos growled, lifting his weapon. “Just like the rest of you people!”

“No!” A spinning disc went flying through the air, knocking Malos’s sword back, as Nia jumped in front of the Doctor, giving him vital time to haul himself back up.

“What are you doing, Nia!?” Malos screamed furiously, shaking angrily.

“I can’t let you kill them!” Nia spat, “Either of them! Rex! Get over here!”

“So you’re throwing your lot in with them?” The dark-armored man sneered. “You’re not like them, Nia – get out of my way!”

“Go to hell,” The Gormotti retorted.

“Then you can die with them!” Malos swung again, as the Doctor got back to some semblance of being upright, and Rex joined them.

Thus, it became Malos versus the three – though, really, it was Malos versus two of them. The black-armored man’s focus was now solely on Rex, and the sword he carried, with Nia being in his way. The Doctor, for as much as he was carrying a sword, was trying not to go for any killing maneuvers, instead trying to block and parry away his attacks, while going for Malos’s pressure points with his hands. Seeing as Malos was in armor, this was very difficult.

All three of them were missing the big, white, elephant in the room.

“Doctor!” Jin bellowed, causing the Time Lord and the others to stop. He was standing in front of the pod, sword held sharp-end towards it. “Put down your weapons.”

“Damn it,” Nia swore, as Malos looked over as well, and began to chuckle. “I was afraid he was going to do that…”

“What are you doing!?” Rex hollered at the top of his lungs. “You know you won’t win, so you’re resorting to threatening an innocent lady!?”

“She’s far from innocent,” Jin glared back at Rex, as his back became bathed in that same green glow as there was on the sword.

The Doctor glanced between the redhead and the sword. “…You know what, you’ve got us defeated! But instead of making us put our weapons on the ground, why don’t you do the infinitely more satisfying thing of coming over here and taking them?”

“I’m not a fool, Doctor,” Jin replied as the quiet sound of cracking echoed through the chamber.

“You know what? I think you are.” The Doctor grinned. “Because while you’ve had that sword held up all menacingly, you know what you forgot? You’re not looking at the most important thing in the room.”

Jin turned around, as the spiderweb of cracks reached the corners of the pod’s glass viewport, and the woman’s eyes popped open. Before Jin could react, a geyser of fire blasted through the viewport, instantly shattering the glass and sending Jin to the ground. The woman inside was propelled outward, soaring gracefully across the room and landing like an angel made of fire.

“Jin!” Malos hollered, running over to her. He began to swing at her, and she gracefully began flipping back, onto her hands, then feet again, then over and over until Malos was at range.

She looked over towards the group. “Rex!” She addressed. “With me!”

“What-!?” He gasped out in shock. “How do you-!?”

“No time for that,” She raised her voice. “We need to get out of here!”

“Oh, that’s normally me who decides that – all right!” The Doctor gently pushed Rex and Nia ahead, and took off after them.

Malos charged the strange lady yet again, taking a swing at her, only for a bubble of golden hexagons to momentarily surround her, causing his attack to bounce harmlessly off.

“No!” Rex snarled, as the sword he carried reconfigured, and began to spit out jets of flame. “I won’t let you hurt anyone else!”

“I’ve had enough of-“ Malos turned around, his eyes popping open as Rex swung, and a crest of flame went towards him. He threw his own defensive barrier up, the flame striking it and sending him sliding back by a foot.

“Good work!” The redhead complimented, causing Rex to go pink just a little bit in his face. “Now, come on! We’ve got to go!”

“On it!” The Doctor flicked the Sonic Screwdriver open, and pointed it at the door. With the push of a button, it was sliding closed, and sealing. “Go, go!” He directed quickly.

“What are you doing!?” Nia demanded.

“A closed door’s easier to lock!” The Doctor replied, sealing the second door after they were all through. “We need to get back above deck!” And get himself another helmet for his suit – but that’d have to come later.

Then, like he had so many times before, he was grabbing someone by the hand, and pulling them along.

-----------

The way back through the derelict ship was empty, easy to pass through. If there was one good thing that came from Malos’s psychopathic rage, it was that. In no time at all, they were running through the exit door, and the Doctor was wildly flapping his hands.

“Everybody, run!” The Doctor bellowed. “Get out of here, go! We’ve got to leave!” All the salvagers looked at him like he was crazy – until they were halfway across the deck, and the floor exploded.

A purple-black cyclone of power ripped its way through from the lower decks, before two figures jumped out of the resultant tear.

Jin and Malos, looking no worse for wear.

“You, brat!” Malos growled like a rabid dog as he pointed his sword at Rex. “I’m not done with you yet!”

“This guy’s not giving up,” The Doctor remarked.

“Give it a rest, Malos!” Nia called across the deck. “They’ve done nothing but defend themselves!”

“You don’t understand, do you!?” Malos bellowed. “That kid… has gone and made himself the Aegis’s Driver!”

“What!?”

“A… A Driver?” Rex repeated in disbelief, turning to the woman. “Is that…?”

She nodded, short and to the point. “It happened when you touched my sword. I’m Pyra.”

“Well, Malos,” The Doctor took a step forward with a smile and a gesture. “It looks like someone else beat you to the punch. Is that what all this is about? Angry that someone else got there first? I don’t see why – you’ve got a perfectly respectable blade right there. Why don’t we let bygones be bygones and go our separate ways, eh?”

Malos’s face twisted. “No deal.”

A deep rumbling tore through the night, as a silhouette moved across the starry horizon. Great blocks rose up from the hull, turning, and lighting up – revealing the tubes spaced evenly across their surface.

“Now that she’s awake, I don’t need any of you anymore,” Malos gestured, before the cannons lit up, and the ancient ship started being pelted with hellfire.

“Ah!” Rex ducked down, as Pyra grabbed onto him and helped him jump out of the way.

The Doctor sprinted across the deck, pulling Nia along as Dromarch ran behind them. There was no good way to drag along a tiger.

The gangplank of the Maelstrom fell away as the ship pushed away, and tried to get to a safe distance.

“This ship’s going up in flames!” Nia hollered. “Do something – use that glowing thing!”

“Sonic Screwdriver!” The Doctor instinctively corrected. “And it doesn’t work at this range, are you insane!?”

“We’re about to die!”

“Don’t worry, I have a plan!” The Doctor gave two thumbs up to her. If he had a theme song, that was right about when it would've started playing.

“Which is!?”

“Not doing that!”

The ancient ship began to ripple, and creak, and break apart under the force of the bombardment, as Malos and Jin jumped back over to the ship that could only belong to them. As a section of the hull snapped, and it looked like they were about to go back into the depths, one of the cannon units suddenly sparked, and exploded, as a projectile from above took it out.

“What the-!?” Rex turned his eyes skyward, to see the draconic form of a Titan soaring above. “Gramps!”

“Rex!” The Titan called out, as he descended toward the ship. “Get on!”

Rex didn’t need to be told twice, as he grabbed Pyra’s hand and made a run for the edge of the ship.

The Doctor shot back up to his feet, and mimicked the move with Nia. “See!? Told you I had a plan!”

“We’re not gonna jump!?”

“It’s either this or stay on a literally sinking ship!” The Doctor hollered back.

“You’re crazy!”

“I’m rather in agreement with the Doctor on this one, my lady!” Dromarch called over the thundering guns.

“Oh my god!” Nia cried as they got close to the edge.

The Doctor took a deep breath, and belted out at the top of his lungs. “GERONIMO!”

They leapt over the edge.