The Other Side of the Story (Part 1)

Another world. Another life.

In the England of his native Earth, the Doctor had possessed an old and distinguished house in Kent in which he had sometimes rested between his journeys and which had also served as a base for the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce in the time not so long ago when the Doctor was its scientific advisor. It was not his home, of course. His home was his TARDIS, which took him to battle evil throughout history and now across parallel worlds. But he especially enjoyed visiting Earth and had come to enjoy visiting the many parallel Earths as well once he had become an Eternal Champion.

Terra Prime, his current home, was an especially fascinating place for him. A world which had recently suffered a terrible catastrophe but was rebuilding itself stronger than ever. A world that had weathered internal conflicts, multiversal wars, and the schemes of demons to take its place in the wider multiverse. It was also the place where he'd first met the woman who would become his wife, Inquirer, an AI soldier who had come from an alternate earth to fight the enemy which had devastated Terra. After his first set of adventures as an Eternal Champion, he'd decided to spend ten years here helping it recover from the Enemy/Alliance war and getting to know Inquirer better.

At first, the two had lived in the Castle D'Honaire, but the Doctor had been somewhat annoyed by the servants constantly underfoot and decided that he'd prefer living in a more solitary place. During a relatively minor dimensional crisis that had occurred during the ten years he'd explored Terra, however, an English manor not dissimilar from his house in Kent had materlalized on Terra (along with some less desirable things that the Doctor had taken care of). When it was decided by the Offices that it wouldn't be worth sending the house back to its home dimension, it became the place the Doctor rested in on Terra when he wanted to be apart from the bustle of major Terran cities like Themiscyra and Quaz'hawad.

It was here that he was standing at this very moment, along with his group of companions. They had bidden goodbye the Doctor's former companions Gilmuriel and Ey'esha, who had gone to Themiscyra to raise their child, and had expected to meet Jarlath and his group here once they had completed their mission. Then, presumably, they would have dealt with the issue of the two pairs of Dark Elves who'd been rescued from the Office of Evil and appeared mysteriously on their TARDIS. Jarlath and his group, however, weren't there. Instead, he had found an Agent of Chaos sitting in his drawing room.

The form the Agent wore was that of a tall, lanky man with dark, weathered skin, wearing a black leather jacket and pitch-black sunglasses. There was something weirdly adolescent about him. He was disconcerting to look at. He was full of violent energy and you could swear his features changed slightly as you looked at him. His smile was the worst though--it was full of a violent contempt, as opposed to the more dignified, bland contempt of the Rules who served Order. You might think upon first looking at him that he hated you, but the Doctor knew by now that the servants of Chaos, like the servants of Order, were as indisposed toward hatred as they were toward love. It was beings like him who the Doctor answered to now in his new role. As an Eternal Champion, he was sent throughout the Multiverse to maintain the balance of cosmic forces and keep the ever-vigilant Office of Evil from gaining power. He had been given power to escape death even greater than that which he had held as a Time Lord. He would never age and would recover from any injury in enough time, however serious. His superiors in the Offices were a thousand times more powerful than the Time Lords had ever been, and a thousand times more infuriating as well at times. On the other hand, they realized that their power gave them a responsibility to aid those less powerful, as the Time Lords he'd rebelled against had never done. Nonetheless, the servants of Order and Chaos could often let little human things get lost in the vast tapestry of cosmic forces which they oversaw.

Along with the Agent, there were two elven couples who were also Eternal Champions, Hathar'ruil and A'etia and Grailing and T'imma. The Doctor was familiar with Hathar'ruil, A'etia, and T'imma. They were elves who had originally hailed from a parallel world known as the World of Two Moons, and been reincarnated on Terra when their world was destroyed by the mad elf Rayek. The Doctor had been one of their teachers during his stay on Terra. Hathar'ruil, he knew, was a good and realiable person, though not the most brilliant of his students by any means. A'etia was a different matter entirely. Her spirit was altogether too wild and uncontrollable. The Doctor knew that Hathar'ruil's love for her must be true, because elven souls knew how to see true love for what it was better than those of other beings, but he didn't envy Hathar'ruil by any means. T'imma, by contrast, had been one of the Doctor's best students and had grown to be one of his close friends. T'imma had and intelligence equal to his and had lived possibly even longer, having been one of the ancient High Ones who became the mother of the elves of the World of Two Moons. It wasn't often that the Doctor met someone who was on his intellectual level and had lived a life as long and interesting as his. Whatever supreme power or powers the Offices ultimately answered to only knew how much he loved Inquirer, but they didn't have very much in common in terms of their backgrounds and interests. Nonetheless, she had the kind of courage, inner strength, and hunger and thirst for justice that he saw in all too few people of any world or background. He was proud to have her as his traveling companion and as his wife.

1. It was her who spoke first. "Well, what is it this time?" she said, irritated.

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