And in where the Doctor sees that the rules of the game has changed…

“Great Jumping Jehosaphat!!" the Doctor finally manages, after staring at the blue Haired young woman (with color coordinated wings) for a gob smacked moment. “His last regeneration?”

Scritch! Scritch! Rub.

“Yes, something that Betty and Ragan would have told you if everyone had not been in such a damnable rush back at the VLA but such as life,” Lilith mugged from the side. “Ah, but as for the Master sidestepping his imminent demise due to approaching the end of his Last Regeneration doing with your last question you had for him?

“Well, it had a bit to this and that: something along the lines of ‘we clones have to stick together in solidarity’ and being something of a stand up kind of chap for his valued employer and such.”

“I believe that could come under the heading of ‘value added service’,” Yukiko added, trying to be helpful.

If nothing else it caused the Doctor to draw up and stare at her for that the non sequitor.

“Or at least that is what the Master says,” Rei put in, clucking her tongue and shaking her head slightly as she still concentrates on her drawing. “The Master being the Master, while perhaps much more lucid . . .is still a rather evil chap is he not?

“But that said, is it not fascinating how he’s pulled yet another hat trick against the universe at large?”

Sighing, the clone makes a few more shading marks at looks again at the Doctor as he blinks, nodding slightly himself in agreement.

“Yes, and that is why he invested a bit of time and effort--as well as sacrificing some of his dignity--in watching what up until actually meeting someone from the Sailor Moon anime/manga. . .,” Rei smiles thinly, gesturing with her drawing pencil towards the Master, who’s smug look is still on his time frozen face, before turning back to her drawing pad of paper. “Yes, until meeting a person from what up until that time he considered an overly sentimental and tooth searing sweet show pitched for young Japanese girls.

“He did it to get his hands upon some rather cutting edge biotechnology with his old Timelord biodata which he combined into a means of cloning himself in a manner . . .not quite unlike the process that produced me and my sisters.”

Rub. Rub. Scritch! Scratch!

That had come out during the part earlier in which the Master had made a simple request before Rei and the others had turned to briefing the others, one on one instead of trying to do it all at once (and dealing with everyone interrupting everyone else and making the process SO much longer).

“Hurmph, leave it to the Master to find a way around expiring after using his last Regeneration,” the Doctor mutters, shaking his head in consternation., putting aside every other rather somewhat overwhelming issue he’d been facing and been forced to confront today.

“Yes, he is rather good at escaping certain death is he not?” Reika adds to conversation as the Doctor pauses and begin to really wonder just what in the blazes Rei happened to have been sketching throughout this briefing. “But then again it gives him something of a conditional immortality which he could end on his own terms, thus the whole new take on his name: Master, as in ‘master of his own fate’ instead of trying to be ‘master of all matter’. Said it was taking up too much of his time, old hobbies, from his real passion: destruction of the Daleks.”

“Uh . . .I suppose,” the Doctor finally allowed, opting out of pursuing this latest rather odd and unexpected tangent of conversation he’d had with the cloned women he’d just rather met of recent (and had pretty much turned the world on it’s ear in as many minutes for the Timelord). Frankly, the Doctor had the distinct feeling that delving further into these girls’ affairs would be flirting with madness.

That and they seemed to have made some solid plans well before he could make the scene. Plans that he really couldn’t overturn with anything really good from his corner, much less improve upon.

How? He and his entire TARDIS was actually made up of a temporarily “flipped” mass of antimatter. If he tried to stay around too long to help? Disaster once all of it “unflipped”.

Besides, the Doctor had the distinct impression that he’d end up with nothing to show for any such efforts anyway but frustration and foot prints all over his body as they would run roughshod all over him for trying to take the reigns away from them.

It had been quiet a while having met “girls” like this for the Doctor and the poor chap wasn’t sure still how to feel on the matter…

Later….

After the Master admires and chuckles evilly at seeing the likeness Rei had drawn of the Doctor’s gob smacked expression, most satisfied at the results of his “commission” he’d given the blue haired female mage with a panache for art. . .

After all the remaining “issues” had been settled as much as possible considering the time constraints upon our heroes with everyone being left behind in Sunnyvale, the Doctor’s TARDIS lifts off and soon reappears back over the VLA, underneath the “dome” shield that the Master had concocted to keep out would be meddlers.

Quckly closing the TARDIS’ doors after the Champions (with one super villain and one VLA computer technician in tow) blast out of their with their air vehicle, the Timelord then dematerializes the time pod and sighs. Like before, he finds that the TARDIS stuck “orbiting” the VLA in a temporal orbit, unable to leave. AT least until the Champions go and either fix things, or he gets exposed to a rather lethal level of energy that even being dematerialized would not protect him from as the VLA exploded.

It was in the hand of those rather odd folks now, and not his.

Sighing still, the Doctor instead of moping about it goes and turns on the main viewing screen so as to at least be able to watch (if not participate) in the proceeding desperate gamble that Rei’s group had in the works.

Moments later the Doctor’s jaw drops open in shock as he watchs what looks to be some kind of giant crystalline starfish shaped. . .thingstart to shoot some kind of blinding white energy beams. The first beam shoots out from the monster, and sweeps the landscape above in a full circle (and destroyes a BUNCH of incoming missiles that had been in flight to destroy it).

That seemed to merely have been a decoy, for another mighty beam from somewhere concealed flashes out and seems to pierce the monster’s red core fatally. Only for the monster to scream psychically in pain and anger before retaliating.

Another beam blasts out again from the monster, back at the genral direction where it’s assassin had fired from. Only to miss!

Instead? It’s energy blast goes . . .off to the side, through that “dome” the Master had set up (shattering it in the process) and somewhat still focused, manage to melt down a mountain or two that are MILES away from the VLA!

Needless to say the Doctor can understand just why the air bike that Rei’s group had been traveling upon had taken a nose dive before all that, to AVOID such energy flying about!!

1. “Holy SH*T!!” Betty swore to herself, feeling her heart race in her chest as she looks back, pale as a sheet at the direction that energy had gone. “You guys fought things like THIS on a regular basis?!”

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