Episode 1- Rebirth, Part 3
The fear that filled that room could have fueled a nuclear reactor, as the dull, echoing footsteps of the Ergon got closer and closer to the Professor’s hiding spot. 4 racks were now nothing more but debris and scraps, and the room looked like a warzone, the burning embers getting onto the shelves and burning holes into them, causing more damage and smoke which filled the room with an even more overwhelming sense of dread and despair that fueled the Professor’s mental state.
Meanwhile, The Professor was fighting back a flash that was building more and more in his mind, the echoing laughter of the War General replaying over and over in his head as it almost drove him mad, the shaking pain, the overwhelming burning…
What was this sensation to him?
What was happening to him?
He held his head in agony, as he heard the footsteps get closer and closer with every second passing by. The fear building and building in his head, as he clutched and tightened up to hide behind the barricades, trying to hang on with all that he could, until the flash could no longer be held back, and he fell through the floor a second time, leaving behind him an angry scream from the Ergon, pissed that the hunt was not over.
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“You are to be my prototype experiment for a most useful tool against the Daleks.” The War General’s voice was full of glee as he spoke, moving and twisting each knob and lever of the Forced Regeneration apparatus that had been the end for so many a Timelord’s faces who had either double-crossed or turned against the higher ups of Gallifreyan Society.
Now, hanging on the four rings of the containment device, stood the next victim in a long line of innocent timelords and timeladies who had faced the Forced Regeneration punishment with equal parts fear and panic that raced through their hearts.
The War General took another look at the small creature, almost a teenager within the rings of the device, a man far too young to even think about regenerating yet, a very long life was ahead of him, if only he had learned sooner the error of his ways, of hiding information about other worlds and universal travel, traveling the void between universes that could be instrumental in stopping or even outright destroying one of their most hated enemies.
What was even stopping them at just the Daleks? With that type of information, all was within their hands, but the boy never gave up his scientific journal which contained all of the information they required, and even through multiple searches and multiple interrogations they never could find the one piece that could have saved him from this agony.
Well, saved him in theory, anyway. His metal lips smirked at the prospect, being handed the journal and then to hide its true location shoving the boy into the Timelord Matrix or E-Space to forever be nothing more than a footnote in the future of his race.
“You…don’t scare me…”
The boy’s defiant words rang out through the chamber, as the War General peeked up at the young timelord, who had only ever regenerated once previously.
A wake-up call was necessary.
“You will serve the High Council till the end of the war, for your arrogance and your defiance against your own people.” The War General spoke, making sure that if anyone was recording this or archiving it for future reference, it gave off the aura of official business, turning a dial or two on the console.
The rings began to spin around the young timelord, electrical sparks flew off of them, hitting against him again and again, causing him to scream out in agony, but there was no mercy to be had from the obviously demented metal timelord at the controls, as he turned the dial higher and higher.
“You will serve your people, Serve us, against the Daleks, and anyone else that dares get in the way of the Timelords’ Mission!” The War General yelled in response to the young one’s pleas, working the console as the rings spun faster, and faster, lightning flying every which way inside the container, as the young Timelord yelled louder and louder, the tell-tale glow beginning to emanate from within his very form.
—---------------
And then the memory went white.
As it always did.
As the Professor sat on his knees, within the room containing the Eye of Harmony burning brightly above him, as he kneeled before it on the sand and dirt crafted floor, like the Akhaten Temple’s altar to their Grandfather sun god, this Timelord looked just as weak and uneasy as another who faced this situation.
“I never could remember what they did…” He finally spoke, looking down at the floor. “I never could…My memory, My memory always started back just after I regained my senses…that planet, that burning planet on the monitor that I saw…” His eyes looked up at the burning Eye.
“The pain, the anger, that they made me feel and caused to others, and yet I lay here now and I still can’t remember the truth about who I was…” He shivered a bit, holding himself up by just his knees and legs as he stared into the Eye, letting the heat and the warmth flow through him, washing away the feelings as he felt his mind try to stitch itself back together, the gap in his mind causing problems even now, like an open barn door.
“They took a life away from me…Half a life’s worth of memories and turned me into a puppet for their purposes, all because I stood up to them and told them I wouldn’t let them harm the beauty and the majesty of the void that they hid from us…” His hands slowly balled up into fists, feeling the slight anger bubbling in his hearts as he felt the Eye flicker above him.
“They made me nothing more than a personal toy to be used and abused and ordered around, a toy soldier to capture and return those who fled, who never wanted anything in the war…and yet I still can’t remember…”
“Memories are important to a life’s goal, but so is the soul and the healing one must undergo.”
The Professor’s eyes snapped open as he heard the unfamiliar, chipper like tone of the voice that had responded back, looking around the darkened room, trying to spot any movement of anyone that could be with him.
“Who’s there?” The Professor called out. “Who spoke?”
The chipper voice echoed again. “Who spoke, indeed? A Change in the guard, a change in life, over the many centuries changed again and again.” A shimmer, like moving windchimes in the breeze, echoed in the room. “A bell leading those to sanctuary in the night on a cold winter’s day.” Then, came another, loud yelling in a battlefield, the mere noises alone caused the Professor to cover his ears as he heard them echo the massive room. “The yell for a Medic.” The sounds went silent, as quick as they appeared. “The heart is a fickle construct. The Soul of what is good, and what leaks evil and destruction.” The Professor slowly looked up, as he heard crunching footsteps in the dirt, not the dull echoing thud of his alien pursuer, but more like faint, sandal like crunches, as he saw before him a being in a white coat…a being, in the literal sense, because besides the coat, all that he could tell of the being’s telltale appearance was a solid glowing light, morphed and formed into humanoid form before him.
The Professor’s eyes grew in size, looking at this elegant creature as it loomed over him, flickering in the light. “The White Guardian…”
“I have had many names in my many expansive lifes, child. Good. Hope. Charity. I have seen the expanse and the cracks, the depths of darkness in which a hero burns through and survives the trials and tribulations that had been set before them.” The being took a step closer, the light almost engulfing around the pitiful Timelord, almost surrounding him as to give them the peace and serenity of a one to one conversation. “Heroics are not gifted by birth, although they may seem to be given by who one is related or born to in some of the many stories. It is the heart. It comes from the heart.”
“I have seen that many times in my travels, the stories of those that the universes do not cover, the individual within the very stories we hold dear, that show more heroics surviving in their day to day lives and trying to make their own names for themselves.” The Professor looked up to the being before him. “...What does my travels have to do with my memory?”
“For half a dozen lives, you have lived with the trauma of what the Time War had done to you, and tried to better yourself. After attempting to become nothing more than a singular entity, you realized the importance of how much better you could achieve the healing of your hearts by helping others.”
The Professor’s mind began to flow with memories, of the people he traveled with, everyone he cared about, and met, after the Ginger-haired man’s experiences and the ways that man tried to bury his past. It felt like a flowing river of emotion, his hearts beating slower and slower, the adrenaline from running wearing off and finally allowing him to have a moment of pure peace in his attempts to flee the hunter.
“You just needed a cushion, to soften the blow. The strengthened heart to move forward, even when you face the true horror of what they had done to you.”
The Professor’s mind began to run again, running backwards this time, to when the Ginger-haired man was thrown through multiple walls by a villain, his “Heroic” adventures cut short by the actions he had caused which had led him to that point, leading him further back, to the crazed woman whose mind was in shambled after she was unable to recall anything about the war and what they did to her, long before he began to piece together the events of the war through second-hand accounts and victims of what he was later told as “The Right Hand of Omega”, and as his mind raced further and further back, the light emanating from the being became brighter and brighter still as the White Guardian’s form began to face from the Professor’s view. “You must evolve again, my child. Now, with help of the full story to tell.”
The fifth flash hit his mind. This time, with no pain.
—----------------------
As the discs began to slow their spin, The War General couldn’t help but show his complete and utter over-enjoyment of the situation. It had succeeded. His experiment had succeeded well and truly beyond anything that he could possibly imagine. Standing in the center of the rings, instead of that weak and young scientist whose research he still craved over, now stood a man who loomed over him like a Golem in comparison. Six feet Nine inches tall. Short, blond hair that was so pale that it looked like ghost hair, and that was so meticulously combed and perfect it looked like a fake piece put on his head. Not to mention the eyes. The cold, unobserved, icy amber eyes that burned out of the soul and hid any recognition of the man he previously was.
The War General gave a smirk as he stepped up to the man, watching as the clothing of the young man ripped and tore around the new form that it had clung too, far too small for the man they now contained within, as the new man stood at attention, looking ahead without any form or spoken utterance since the process had ceased.
He was a weapon. That’s all this man was now, for the War General. A Weapon to be used and abused until he could no longer be trusted, then tossed away like trash and try again with someone new. Perhaps that blue-coated interloper that had long bothered the two of them with her spying activities…
But for now. He has his weapon.
“ATTENTION!” The War General shouted, and the man did as such without any hesitation to the contrary, his eyes showing that the brainwashing had taken its mark and took hold upon the Timelord.
“How dare you enter my presence with such a disrespectful look about yourself…” The War General spat, a smirk formed across his lips. “Do you know no DECENCY, SAVAGE!?”
He doesn’t respond to the insult. The War General smirked wider and wider. Near-Total Control then. It had truly worked then. One could brainwash a timelord via Forced Regeneration, it was possible. They could have an army, HE could have an army that answered only to him. He could overthrow that tinpot that had long since driven him mad with his lust and control for power, HE could lead Gallifrey the way HE wanted, and surely that scientist woman and her secret toys would side with him with some…persuading.
But for now. He had his weapon.
“Go get yourself ready, Soldier.” The War General ordered. “I have a mission for you when you return.”
Without a word, the new man walked out of the rings and out of the room, leaving a laughing War General, almost overcome with joy at his new creation. He now had his own puppet. Soon, he shall have his own army. Soon, HE, not that damn Rassilon, shall lead Gallifrey to glory against the Daleks, and prove that Rassilon’s glory was nothing more but his own puppetry and mimicry.
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The loud, dull thud of the footsteps that echoed and followed the Professor on his chases had finally caught up with him once again, as The Ergon slowly walked into the Eye of Harmony room. There was nowhere to hide inside this room, just a dirt and sand covered floor, opened to the burning Eye above them all. The last stand, in which The Ergon foolishly believed as it walked onto the crunchy floor with intent, malevolent intent, that it held every card to finally eliminate one of its Master’s many failed experiments. However, as it looked around the room, expecting to see the Professor, it saw nothing. Nothing? How could that be, its eyes were implanted with a heat sensor, it could sense body heat in this room, even added to the Eye of Harmony which cracked and glowed above it. How? Where could it be?
Underneath the floor, in an alcove, would prove its answer and its undoing. As it walked closer and closer to the center of the room, The Professor held tight onto any breath that could give himself away and endanger the only chance he had to stop the horrific hunter in its tracks. Holding tight onto the spring loaded door in the floor, he laid in wait, waiting for the pressure to hit upon it.
Silence echoed in the room for just a few seconds.
No cries.
No breaths.
Just those loud, dull footsteps.
The Professor slowly put one of his hands against the swinging hatch, as the steps got closer and closer to their target. One shot. He had one shot at this. His face, and his hearts, full of determination as he heard the steps get closer and closer to the hatch. Like a ticking clock, and the cuckoo bird about to release itself.
So the wait continued, and the silence was deafening as the Professor waited in his hiding spot. Slowly, the first step on the hatch readied the mechanism within, so the Professor, to compensate, raised his second hand to help hold the door, and for extra pushing power when the full weight of The Ergon came upon it. However, as the seconds, the moments of waiting grew more and more impatient, there was no movement.
Had The Ergon figured out the plan, The Professor wondered? Was it testing him, baiting him out to claim this life, just as it most likely did for the previous? The Professor was a ball of pure emotion as each moment passed by, either possibility up in the air and each outcome a possibility, as the moments ticked by.
The sigh of relief was swallowed quickly, as he felt the second foot be placed on the hatch. Showtime. At that moment, with all of his might, picturing in his mind the friends he had made since that awful time in his life, now being able to visualize and contextualize, and fully despise, what the Timelords, his own people, had done to him, he pushed on the hatch. The hatch cracked up, and the astonished cry of The Ergon echoed, as the TARDIS took the kinetic energy of the Professor’s efforts and amplified them, unlocking the spring and sending the hatch flying open, pushing The Ergon up towards the Eye.
All that the Professor had now, was hope. Had he sent it hard enough, had he had enough strength to help with the hatch? The Ergon was flying backwards at a trajectory that frightened him slightly, backwards and upward, that at any moment it looked like it could fall from the pull of the Eye and finally complete its mission for the horrid War General, even after so long after the final days of the War cost them everything, even their home planet, and then their secrets cost them again.
He knew it was wrong to hope for what he was hoping for, for The Ergon to fall into the Eye, but he knew if it succeeded, who knows what next it could have gone on to hunt down, who else would be hurt if it weren’t stopped here. So he watched the situation with gasped breaths, each moment feeling like a century, each second ticking by, as The Ergon fought the pull to try and escape, Crying out in rage, trying to aim his laser, but the pull was too strong, too heavy upon its arms to get a clear shot.
Eventually, the fighting was for naught, as The Ergon’s struggles became fruitless, and the pull was so great that it began heading straight for the Eye. The Professor took one last look before he turned away, hearing the cry becoming more and more distorted as it got further and further away. It had tried to kill him. It had tried to destroy him, multiple times tonight, but yet it was still a living creature, a living being, and so it still made him sick to his stomach as the cry got more and more distorted, crying out not in fear but in absolute rage about its predicament, until finally the cry is cut short mid-call, and silence once again prevailed within the Eye of Harmony room. Silence, and tranquility, as the Eye flickered like the fire in a fireplace. Content.
The threat to her pilot, her friend, was no longer an issue as far as she was concerned, but as she watched The Professor head somberly out of the Eye of Harmony room, she knew it would hang heavily on him. Even though it tried to kill him, even though it hunted for him for some unknown individual, he still honored its life. That’s what she long grew fond of him for, one of his most redeeming traits for her. His respect for life.
So, now as The Professor began to walk down the corridor silently, his mind stitched back together fully, his memories now whole, he felt numb. All of the pain, all of the suffering that his people had inflicted upon him a very long time ago, still remained, even before he knew the specifics of what they had truly done. However, now, as he stared at his hands in silence, the rage and anger of what he had done in his mind, he wanted to swing punches, he wanted to let himself be pissed again, to let it all out, but he knew it wouldn’t help.
Especially as he looked at his hands, his hearts and mind brought him to where he had come now, how far he had come since the war, since finally moving forward and wanting to do more with what he had, and the people he met, who helped heal his fractured hearts, even the one he met so soon after escaping their grasp and trying all he could to stay away again, even as he heard the drumbeats of war driving him to fight on, to fight more, to live and die by the battlefield.
He slowly looked up at the TARDIS, her lights flickering, like they were eyes looking down at him, blinking, to show that she was still watching over him. Slowly, he patted the wooden wall closest to him, and gave the smallest smile to her. “Thank you, Old Girl.” He said, the only words that came to his mind as he tried to reason with himself over what had just occurred.
She answered back the best way she could, a low, accepting thrum.
—-------------------------
As he re-entered his old console room, the dust and the ash finally all settled down and finally the devastation all finally within view and what truly happened here shown, He can finally have a look as to what happened to himself, why, or rather how, he regenerated. At the doors into the TARDIS, there is a big black burn mark, about center mass, which means that the outside is probably a wash just like the inside, a new Wardrobe exterior after seeing it, but that is besides the point. From that burn spot, it is an almost straight shot to the console.
He let out a little sigh, pinching his nose as he looked at the trajectory. “One lucky shot and boom…I went down…No wonder a flashpoint, probably as a protection…” He slowly reached down, picking up a couple of the pieces from the console up from the floor, completely covered in ash and dust, before just letting them drop again and scatter the ash everywhere.
“I’m gonna need a new console, then…” The Professor spoke, looking around the destroyed console room. “Hell, we’re both due for a makeover now, aren’t we…It hurt us both, and here I was only worried about myself for the moment…”
The TARDIS simply thrummed in response.
“I know, I know I recently regenerated…” He spoke softly. “Still, I should..” The thrum echoed around him in the ruined remains of what was one his previous incarnation’s console room. “I know. I know. Thank you.”
At that moment, a hole opened up in the floor, swallowing up the bloomed console and pulling down with it not just the ruined remains of it, but the long time rotor, the rods themselves having been cracked when the lazer most likely impacted against the console, causing it to shatter and leading to the entire situation to begin with.
It did make him wonder though, as his eyes went to the door. In the event of a hostile action, or even worse, a hostile takeover, the TARDIS is programmed to emergency land at random coordinates as to protect the pilot and to allow him to find and seek help. Now, after the situation had ended, but it will take some time for the TARDIS to heal and to renovate, and he has learned on more than one occasion not to rush the Old Girl when she is making new console rooms, it did pique his interest.
Just where in all of the Multiverse did the TARDIS land, anyway?
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