Xadium-Hazel Road Trip Saga of 2018

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On January 25th, 2018, Doctor Xadium decided to walk the Earth for a time to do good and help balance his karmic scales. Bored and curious, Hazel Ninegate, newly revived and with absolutely shit-all to do, decided to tag along and assist. Of course when Time Lords roadtrip, their highway is vast~

This is a cheap capsule summary of those epic adventures.


Arkula Arc

1. Planet Expel

Thinking back to all the friends he has lost over the course of his long life, Doctor Xadium travels to the planet Expel, trying to find Shaldra Nightfall in the hopes of making sure all is well with her and to perhaps re-establish some form of friendship, or the very least clear up any bad blood that might remain from the past.

When he makes it to her old homestead, however, what greets him is not her, but someone looking like a younger version of Shaldra Darkness minus the tail and ears, wearing a blindfold. Bloodied up, she looks as if she was in a horrible accident.

Moving closer to check on her, Xadium is suddenly blindsided by a badly wounded Noriko, who reveals that this being isn't her mother Shaldra, but rather some kind of assassin sent to kill Noriko and her family, using that appearance as a trick to get in closer.


Unfortunately, Noriko's interference is too late, and Xadium is wounded as well, by the being who calls herself Adrestia.


She wields a blade strong enough to shatter Noriko's Validium blade, Invictus Vindicator.

Adrestia claims she is "that which cannot be escaped" and was forged in fire to put an end to Noriko and her line. She remarks that it is just as well that Xadium is here too, as her creators would be pleased with his termination.

Before she can land a killing blow, she is blasted back by a massive explosion which tears her in half. Xadium and Noriko turn to see Vermellia standing there, holding a smoking Crescent Claw.

Noriko wonders how Vermellia knew to get there on time all the way from Earth, and she steps aside to reveal she had a lift-- from Hazel Ninegate.

Before Xadium and Noriko can ponder this, however, Adrestia reappears, seemingly undamaged, grabbing Vermellia and vanishing in a blast of light.

Noriko tries to give chase, but is too wounded. Hazel waves her off, tossing her a stimpack, and grabs Xadium, saying they'll go after this "most interesting creature." She plots the time-track of Adresita and deduces that she couldn't have gone far-- planet EN II.

2. Planet EN-II

Appearing in the center of Fun City on Planet EN-II, Hazel gives Xadium a Senzu bean to help him recover. When he angrily asks why Hazel didn't give that to Noriko, who was more heavily wounded, Hazel laughs and simply replies "She would have gotten in the way, and besides, I don't like her."

Xadium starts to argue, and Hazel cuts him off curtly asking if he isn't at all curious why some kind of assassin has a weapon that can shatter Validium like it's nothing. Xadium blurts angrily that of course he's curious, but his grandaughter's life is st stake. Hazel points out that unless they understand the nature of their foe and her capacities they will "hardly be able to save the little kitty-kat."

As they try to track Adrestia / Vermellia's whereabouts, Hazel remarks that she is impressed with the technological advancement of the planet and muses that she remembers when the Nedeans ruled the universe by dint of their sheer technological might. She shakes her head with dismay at how that once-mighty empire is now confined to a few small colony worlds where weapons are virtually forbidden. She remarks on how similar their history is to Galllifrey's-- going from a vast power feared by all to hiding behind energy shields cut off from most of the rest of the universe.

Xadium asks if Hazel is still obsessed with Gallifrey's re-ascension to power, and Hazel just flatly replies, "The humans won that fight. I've moved on."

In the distance, they see a huge explosion. It is coming from the battle arena, where it is revealed that Vermellia had led Adrestia after escaping her grasp. Rushing there, they see that the other combatants who had signed up for a day's practice in the arena have all been stretchered out, casualties of a tremendous battle going on between Vermellia and Adrestia. Vermellia is too ridiculously fast for Adrestia to catch, frustrating the assassin, who is resorting to chopping up huge swaths of the Arena to slow her down. A stay shot from the fight damages, but does not destroy, Hazel's Time Ring.

Xadium is keen to jump in and help Vermellia, but Hazel holds him back, trying to study the assassin's movements. She deduces Adrestia can only move so fast, and is limited by reaction time, and does not seem to have energy based or ranged attacks. Xadium points out she's not getting tired either, while Vermellia is.

As the destruction continues, a strange kind energy shield rises up around the battle Arena, which seems intended to protect the rest of Fun City from the destruction.

Xadium becomes frustrated because now he's cut off from the fight and Vermellia is on her own. He can't breach the barrier at all-- it doesn't seem to be made of matter or energy. Scans from his sonic phone stubbonly insist the barrier isn't even there, but the blasts from Cresecent Claw that harmlessly bounce off of it insist that something is there.

While Hazel is impressed with its nature and muses that its technology would have to be even more advanced that that of Energy Nede's, Xadium wonders it it might just be magical.

At that he is interrupted by a sharp "Magic! Hmph!" from a girl behind them carrying a ridiculously large golden staff with a hand on its end. "It's one-hundred per cent my invention!" She looks at the two of them mischeviously and adds "Time Lords. Always ascribing to magic things they don't understand."

As Xadium and Hazel both turn to look at her incredulously, the girl grins and claps, asking if he's "Sakura's dad, X." Xadium is taken aback but quickly deduces this is a friend of Sakura's he hasn't met yet. The girl grins, anticipating his reasoning and says, "Oh, we've never met, Mister Xadium. Not ever."

As Xadium snaps "that's Doctor Xadium!", Hazel looks the girl over and remarks that she's not Nedean, given her appearance, dress and manner of speaking.

"Same goes for you two, obviously," the girl playfully retorts, introducing herself as "Welch Vineyard."

Hazel asks the girl if she can collapse the forcefield in to crush both Vermellia and Adrestia, calculating that given a fixed rate of implosion there's only a 30% chance Vermellia will be crushed before the assassin. Xadium retorts that there are also civilians in the stands and either way that would be reprehensible. The blonde girl looks between them as they argue, and just blurts "yeah, there's lots of angry sex potential here" leading Xadium to accuse her of being a cohort of Paisley Peinforte's.

The girl replies "now there's someone I need to get around to meeting." At that moment, there is a massive explosion as Adrestia manages to cleave through Crescent Claw's staff, and her points her blade at Vermellia's neck.

"Oh well, too late~" Hazel coos. "We have to help her!" Xadium exclaims.

"Well why don't we put a pause on this scenario~" Welsh asks, pointing the pointer finger of her "handy stick" at the forcefield, stopping all action in the Battle Arena at that moment.

Xadium and Hazel look at the stoppage aghast. Time hasn't stopped. Everything in the field is frozen. Reality itself has been stopped. int he battle arena.

"Ugh, I think I overdid it," Welsh mutters. "I was just trying to slow down time in the arena for you." She walks over to the field and taps it with the finger on her handy stick. "This is gonna take some time to adjust."

Pressing her hand to the forcefield, a box falls out. "Oh great," she complains. "The Omnicron is busted."

"Omniwhat?" Hazel asks in confusion.

"Omnicron," Welch replies like it's obvious what she's talking about. "you two are gonna have to fetch one from me if you want to get Vermellia out of there,"

"Forget it," Hazel snaps at the same time Xadium replies "Of course." They glare at each other.

"Great!" Welch grins. "Assistants one and two, go forth!". Pulling a red object out seemingly out of thin air, she summons a black portal surrounded by a maelstrom of purple erngy and shoves the duo in, slapping some tracker-patches on their back as she does so.

Hazel and Xadium find themselves dumped in a pitch-black environment, feeling as if they're suffocating.

3. Dimension Four

Hazel and Xadium barely manage to stand. They can see each other, but nothing else around them. They feel like they're underwater and unable to breathe, though it does not actually seem like their bodies need air in this realm.

"There no time here," Xadium declares, to which Hazel adds "or space." They're in a realm that seems to transcend reality.

"Do you know what we're supposed to be looking for?" Hazel demands. "Just what is an 'omnicron'?" The moment she asks, they both know, as if the answer was downloaded to their brains.

"What the hell was that?" Xadium asks in shock, as a slow grin creeps across Hazel's face.

"Omniscience," Hazel replies almost ecstatically. "All-knowledge, on demand." She closes her eyes and intones, "Where are we?" And she knows.

"We're one level 'above' our reality," Xadium says to himself, doing the same thing. "What some people called 'The Fourth Dimension' before that came ot be synonymous witrh Time."

"Who sent Adrestia?" Hazel thinks, but gets no intuition. She frowns. "How odd," she remarks.

"If this is a realm where thought and reality are fungible..." Xadium considers, and then imagines the "omnicron" in his hands. One appears. "We need to careful!" He admonishes. "Control your thoughts!"

Hazel looks at him oddly. Xadium replies "have you never seen the movie 'Forbidden Planet?' 'Creatures from the Id' and all that?"

"Creatures from the id..." Hazel ponders-- and just like that, it's too late.

The blacknees around the duo vanishes, replaced with a view of ancient Gallifrey. Hazel is suddenly a small child, sitting at a desk in a classroom. In front of her, some kind of holographic projection simulating a destructive nanoparticle. In front of that, a mass of students looking terrified, their teacher aghast at what she has created.

"They never understood," Child-Hazel remarks, glaring at the other children. "Just because I could see further ahead than they could. Imagine more than they could."

The scene shifts to a universe filled with chaos and destruction, and Hazel's terror at it all. The desire to control it, to order it. To stop the madness.

Xadium frowns. "Your father, The Corruptor. He believed in advancement through struggle and adversity. That the universe should constantly be filled with conflict so that only the cleverest and strongest would rise."

The scene shifts to riots in the streets of Gallifrey as there is an uprising against the Pythia, led by Rassilon, and Omega, and men of science, with The Corruptor behind them in the shadows. Hazel, as a young woman, following at her father's side, aghast at the treatment those-who-would-become-the-Sisters-of-Karn endured. One of her friends, now a political exile, doomed to spend the rest of her days on that wretched rock.

The temperature drops along with Hazel's feelings growing cold. Suddenly the simulation shifts and clearly something ahistorical occurs. The girl-- her friend, comes running at Hazel, begging for help.

"Staser," Hazel thinks to herself and creates one in her hand. As Xadium watches aghast, she shoots her friend to death and the memory shatters.

"How did you know that would end the memory replay?" Xadium asked. Hazel coldly replies, "the past is dead, let it die. All it does is chain you to people and events that have no bearing on your present concerns." She snickers at Xadium, spinning the staser in her hand. "Travelling all the way to the Arkulan sector to see someone who cut you from their existence like a troublesome wart. What good would that meeting have accomplished? All it nets you is pain."

"Maybe because the ties that bind aren't so weak," Xadium snaps back. "People and circumstances change, but friendship is--"

"--a convenient fiction," Hazel spits in reply. "There are no ties any longer. If these people you lost in the past were your friends, they would seek you out. The technology exists. But they have not. That is the proof the bonds are broken. You waste your energy grieving for those who don't spare you an erg of energy."

Before Xadium can reply, Hazel waves her hand in the air and creates a portal similar to the one Welch had made, kicking Xadium through it. "Get out of my sight."

When she is sure Xadium can't see her, Hazel allows tears to fall from her eyes and she creates a flamethrower, summoning the illusion once more and burning everything she sees-- including a version of her younger self--all the while howling with rage.

Finally, spent, she lets everything fade to black, and sinks to her knees, panting, taking a few moments before standing again with a cold, passionless expression.

"I need no past to make my own future," she declares coldly, opening another portal and vanishing through it.

In the blackness of void, someone remarks "What interesting creatures these Time Lords be. "

"Not so different than us."

"Not so different indeed."

"Did you change their destination?"

"Of course. Their game is just beginning."

Kasterborous Arc

4. Planet Karn

Xadium and Hazel suddenly appear on the blackened plains of Karn. Xadium, who immediately recognizes the place, becomes upset, demanding to know if Hazel diverted them here, worried to death about his granddaughter Vermellia,who is still in mortal danger on Energy Nede 2.

Hazel testily replies that she had intended the destination to be Energy Nede II, and tries to make another portal, but discovers that she has forgotten how it was done.

Xadium, worried that maybe nothing was retained from the four-dimensional realm which even he is fast forgetting, quickly checks that the Omnicron they collected still exists, and it does.

The duo is frozen in place by the collective mind-power of an enraged Sisterhood of Karn, who want to shred Hazel to pieces for the ancient crimes of her father-- The Corruptor--who was responsible for poisoning Rassilon's mind in the distant history of Gallifrey, causing him to unite with Omega and various others to cast out the Pythia, who at the time was ruler of the planet. Because of this, she perished and her followers, the Sisterhood, had been forced to flee to Karn in the first place.

Xadium telepathically argues they should be given a chance to plead their case, and the Sisterhood release their grip on the duo, but leave them no corner to escape.

Hazel smugly replies that the Sisterhood wouldn't have half the power they do now had they not "sharpened their blades" in the crucible of Karn and that her father did them a favor, and that they should bow down in gratitude for the present her family bestowed upon them.

Xadium is taken aback, watching Hazel dash her only chance. In shock at her sheer unrepentance, the Sisterhood declare she must be immediately executed, but Xadium should be spared. They do not tell him why, but it is because they can see down his timelime and know that he will have some important connection with one of their number in the future after he dies at the correct time.

Hazel becomes immediately suspicious when Xadium is granted clememcy, wondering if he has struck a deal with them. To her surprise, and heis own he argues for her release, stating that the sins of the father should not be visited upon the child, and while she is very, very guilty of a great many horrible things, she was made to pay for her crimes and she is changing, if slowly, from the person who she was.

The Sisterhood takes the argument under consideration but agains declare her too dangerous to live in either event. Before they can kill her, however, they are distracted by an event about to happen, using their formidable will to redirect their power towards containing an explosion they feel to be imminent on the Souther Plateau, in the Purgatus Mountains.

Diverting their strength thus, they have to release Hazel, who grabs Xadium by the arm and declares she still has her Time Ring and will use it to get out of here--he can come along if he wants.

Before Xadium can answer one of the other sisters declares they sense another massive explosion. And another. And another. Worse still there is a bomb in the old offices of the Celestial Intervention Agency's old Co-ordinator, and they don't have the mental resources to stop it.

Xadium demands Hazel wait and help him disarm this bomb, because it will kill everyone on this hemisphere of the planet.

Hazel points out they could just run and she and Xadium would survive. Xadium hisses that "they [the sisterhood] need our help" and again repeats his demand they assist.

Hazel balks, but as Xadium goes to work on the bomb, clearly leaving her to her own devices. He is having trouble though, as the technology is beyond him. She shakes her head in frustration and joins him. Together, they achieve the impossible and stop the strange bomb, which had exotic matter-shredding particles in it, unlike the conventional explosives in the other bombs.

It is quickly discovered that someone had fomented a rebellion amongst the males of Karn, (who are treated as a lower class, kept out of sight, forced to do domestic chores and blocked from most higher learning and "Assist" in the propagation of population) but even the most intense mind-probing cant' reveal who the perpetrator was-- except that it was a female and they apparently wanted to cast the blame on Gallifrey.

Xadium brokers a peace between the two factions, arguing that whatever crime the men of Gallifrey did to the Sisterhood in the ancient past, a stratified society like this will never flourish. The sisters consider that they had heard much the same from Sister Pythia when she had been training with them, and she had warned, in a trance, that there would be a day of reckoning for them as a society if they did not change course.

The Sisterhood agree to hold talks and elect to banish Hazel from Karn immediately, commuting her death sentence since she did help save them. Tehy warn her never to return without their permission, or the sentence of death would be immediately carried out.

As they prepare to leave, Hazel points out the irony that that bomb was placed in Noriko's old office on Karn. Xadium counters with the irony that Hazel just seemed to know which codes to use to disarm it. Hazel glibly replies that Gallifreyan technology, no matter how advanced from their time, is still basically playing catch up to what her family created in the Dark Times.

Before Xadium can fully parse what she means, Hazel's damaged time ring sparks and activates on its own, pulling the two of them forward in time and space... to the plains of outer Gallifrey.

5. Planet Gallifrey

Xadium and Hazel appear at the edge of the Wastelands, near Death Zone on Gallifrey, somewhere Xadium identifies as being able to see the Mountains of Solace and Solitude in the east.

Surveying their location, Hazel looks distinctly uncomfortable and remarks "300 kilometers west of the ocean of Salmizi Ba". She looks towards a non-descript spot in the distance.

Xadium wonders how they got past the Transduction Barriers without being detected, and why they are suddenly again not back at Energy Nede II. He again accuses Hazel of altering their destination, which she angrily denies, pointing out her Time Ring seems to be damaged.

Xadium testily retorts that at least they are on Gallifrey and can now find more reliable transport, but hey'll need to fin an aircar to make it to the Citadel of the Time Lords.

Hazel replies there is no need to do this, as she knows a place nearby where they can find whatever they need. She points to the wastelands and says it's "less than an hour's walk."

"To what?" Xadium asks.

"To House Nine," Hazel replies, mentioning the name of her family house.

Xadium is suspicious of the fact they landed this close to her ancestral home, and reveals he had assumed it had been destroyed.

Hazel replies that what the Time Lords could find, they sacked and took as their own, but when she had briefly become "The hero of Gallifrey" she had used her fame to gain access to all the records of what was taken, and realized there were still some secrets left.

Wary, Xadium agrees to go with her there, however before they can set off, agents of the Celestial Intervention Agency lead by Dead-Eyes appear and detain them both, their unauthorized appearance in fact not having gone undetected.

The agents quickly detain them, but Xadium, however, is quickly freed while Hazel is taken into custody. As she is taken away, Hazel remarks dryly that this keeps happening to her whereas Xadium seems to lead a "charmed life," her tone indicating she suspects him.

Dead-Eyes stays with Xadium and irritatedly chastises Xadium, remarking that there "are better ways to hitch a ride back home for your granddaughter's wedding than with one of the most infamous criminals in Gallifreyan History."

Shocked, Xadium realizes they must have come forward in time.

Hazel, for her part, is taken to an interrogation chamber and threatened with the mind-probe if she doesn't reveal all her secrets. It turns out the CIA doesn't even care about her past crimes-- they just want all the knowledge and secrets of her family from the Dark Time. "Oh, no, not the mind probe," she deadpans, daring them to use it on her. They do so, and activate the device. She screams in agony for a brief moment, and then smiles darkly-using a secret mental command to reverse the polarity of the probe and rip whatever useful knowledge the agents might have from their minds.

To her surprise, she discovers that the agents are acting under the compulsion of a third party, who intends to unleash a matter-eater weapon stolen from the Omega Arsenal-- nicknamed "Death-Eater Particles" in the citadel-- just where a wedding happens to be happening.

Taking a uniform and a biodata access key from one of the agents, she incapacitates the others and decides she needs to break into the Omega Arsenal to try and determine who they are working against. As she prepares to leave, another prisoner asks her for aid in escapting-- the almost skeletal Master, who is a badly degraded version of his "Harold Saxon" incarnation.

He tells her he was left there after wounding the Lord President Rassilon and leaving him in a regenerative coma. He starts to promise Hazenine power and influence, but she just lets him out because she has no time to waste and his antics might be a useful distraction for her.

As she turns to leave, the Master attempts to kill her with one of the guard's stasers, declaring he needs neither witnesses nor competition, nor does he want to be in debt to a woman. Hazel, anticipating treachery, was able to dodge in time and press her palms to his stomach, forming an alchemical circle on his abdomen, blowing away part of his torso and leaving him spasming ont he ground. Rather than leave him to die, however, she takes a quick count of the disabled CIA operatives and sees they number 13. She smirks, and alchemically reduces them down to goop, fusing them with the Master and stabilizing his condition. She leans down over him, her lips almost to his and whispers. "Haven't you heard, it's all about girl power now. Who knows, you might wake up in your next life as a woman. I hope you can figure out eye liner~"

Leaving him, she continues making her way to the Omega Arsenal. After infiltrating it she checks the data cores and discovers plans for a "Cold 2.0 x Validium Hybrid N-form Body" that looks like Adrestia whose intellect was force-distilled from an inhabitant of Yau-Calabi space. She dryly notes this sounds like something that came out of a "bad weapons engineering students' fan fiction."

She determines that someone with a very high level of clearance deployed this weapon, which is also "relatively desynchronous" with the Gallfreyan timeline-- meaning it came from Gallifrey's future.

"They're breaking all kinds of laws," Hazel remarks to herself, also seeing that the first place Adrestia went after activation was Shada, the Time Lord Prison Planet.

At the Citadel, Xadium and Dead-Eyes discover they have missed the wedding, but there is a mass panic as parts of the Panopticon tower start to rain down, their components being consumed by Death-Eater particles.


Elsewhere, Cressida and Intern are speeding off in an air car after the wedding. Intern holds Cressida's hand, remarking on how grateful she is for this day, regretting how hectic the morning had been. Cressida remarks it's fine, as they now have all the time in the world. At that moment, another aircar pulls up alongside theirs.

A shot rings out, and Intern is struck in the side by the Death Eater particles. Thanks to her Observation Haki, however, Cressida was able to somewhat anticipate this and was able to punch Intern in the side with a "Plasma Punch", burning out the particles and getting her out of the line of fire, but also heavily wounding Intern, who begins to regenerate because of the shock.

Knowing that Intern will survive, Cressida hits the autopilot on the aircar setting it to land and leaps out of it, heading over to the next car to take out the assassin, but by the time she gets to them they have already used the Death Eater particles on themselves. As they are dissolving away, they declare, "it's always the ones close to you." There is a massive explosion as a temoral bomb goes off.

Cressida crashlands Air car next to Intern's and, injured, starts to investigate, but Intern's body is gone...

At the citadel, Hazel reappears with an improvised cancellation device that stops the Death-Eater particles and renders them inert.

Xadium questions how she was able to do this, and she reveals that she's been able to somewhat study the future Time Lord technology.

She sports a new Time Ring she stole from the Omega Arsenal and grabs his arm, stating that she's in control of the trip now and they are going to Shada to find out who sent out Adrestia and these particles. Xadium demands they go back to save Vermellia and Hazel declares that they need to understand who their enemy is or they're just going to end up walking into a death trap, coldly activating the device and causing them to vanish.

6. Prisonworld Shada

Arriving on Shada, Hazel proceeds to hack open an apparently empty prison cell, revealing that one fo the secrets her family built into the prisonworld was a secondary arsenal-- and something more- a Deep AlterTime Excavator. Xadium states he's never heard of anything like that. Hazel asks him if he knows of the "Time Scoop" in the Death Zone on Gallifrey, which was capable of transporting any person from any location in space and time to Gallifrey for use in the savage games. Xadium replies it is something he knows about. Hazel explains that device was a bastardization of the DATE, which allows a user to pull any event from any timeline and drop it into the universe, like a plant graft.

As they walk into the chamber where the DATE was, Hazel concludes her explanation with.. "and it's been stolen."

As she says that, alarms go off and the lighting on the station goes blood-red. From hidden speakers, a throaty, distorted voice booms "Soon all sins shall be cleansed."

All the prisoners who had been locked in their cells are released.

There are so many monsters from all over time and space that all they can do is run. X steals a datacube, and they get away behind a bulkhead, the plan being to destroy the cell chamber and take the criminalks out with it. Hazel trips a self-destruct timer, and then suddenly pins X to a wall, pressing to him.

"Time to rectify all that unresolved sexual tension between us," she cooes, as X is mortified, replying "WHAT sexual tension~?" Hazel quips, "Oh I'm sure someone ships it~" and reaches her hand down, whispering "I'm going to take your"... and then swipes the Datacube from his pocket. X shoves her away in irriation as she laughs, "so you like it rough, eh, well, too bad, the moment is over."

She proceeds to read the data off the Datacube, reporting that "whoever stole the DATE was a member of the Celestial Intervention Agency. They used their codes to get in, and then somehow found this hidden location."

Xadium implores Hazel to use the Time Ring to get them off the station before it blows, she replies sarcastically that that was never an option, since what idiot would allow easy transport off a Prison world. There are multiple Transduction Barriers up in place. When Xadium demands to know how she intended to get off the planet, she replies "the same way the thief did," and deduces they used the time scoop in reverse to make their way out.

The same Time Scoop that is on the other end of the prison between them and the prisoners.

With time running out, they crawl through the ventilation corridors and paly a cat-and mouse game of survival with a Rutan genocider before making it back to the Time Scoop, going to whereever it was set to last, escaping just as the Shada facility explodes.

Someone watches this from a monitor screen, and crosses off the names of the prisoners who were killed from a list. Crossed off is also "The Intern." We see some more names yet to be crossed off on the list... including Hazeine, Xadium, and The Actuary.

They repeat to themselves, in a heavily modulated voice. "Soon all Sins Shall be Cleansed."

Outerworlds Arc

7. Planet Mondas

Xadium and Hazel appear on Mondas before the Cyber-era, in the middle of a full scale French-Revolution style massacre of the political elite. The wealthy have spent decades loosening environmental regulations so they can make massive profits and live in luxury, and now the climate of the planet has been ruined. The 99% are out for blood, and the elites have constructed a rocket to escape the whole mess and start over somewhere in space. (The same rocket from "World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls", but with a much more massive first stage booster attached that is miles high)

The atmosphere is choking and toxic, and people are dying horribly everywhere. Xadium remarks this is the breaking point-- the last gasp-- literally and figuratively--of the Mondasian civilization.

Hazel takes one look at the rocket and asks Xadium if he sees what she's seeing. Xadium concurs. Someone has given the Mondasians Gallifreyan technology-- enough to build a pulse-boosted "footprint" engine, that will send a massive blast of power down to push the rocket up. They both rapidly calculate that given the size of the rocket, the footprint rebound effect will be so strong it will knock Mondas right out of orbit. Hazel admires the engine, calling it "brilliant", and Xadium calls it "monstrous."

The duo take advantage of the chaos to try and find out who provided the plans for the booster engine, heading to the other side of the planet, but all they can determine is this person was tall and wore a hood. They also used some form of strong mental compulsion. Xadium suspects the Master, but Hazel is not so sure, wondering what the benefit of all this would be for him.

Xadium wonders how they are supposed to follow the trail of this person now-- Hazel thinks the datacube may mave more clues, but before they can examine things any further, the massive rocket takes off, literally liquefying hundreds of thousands of people and starting a massive cataclysmic shift in the planet's orbit.

For the next months, it's all Hazel and Xadium can do to survive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, as Hazel has to take time to build a new reader for the data cube. Xadium discovers that Mondas was the furthest out remote colony of the Silver Millennium, their mutual history all but forgotten.

Hazel initially ignores the people struggling to survive, and mocks Xadium for helping them as he creates makeshift food and air purifiers, saying the weak should perish, but over time, she is impressed by their singular will to survive... a trait she shares. She is especially impressed with their Leader, who manages to get the society back on its feet and rebuilding, even as the planet start to drift further and further away from the sun. She discovers he is dying of lung cancer due to the pollutants in the toxic atmosphere, and he is not alone-- their society is doomed to extinction.

The data reader complete, Xadium discovers several other planets of interest to the enemy, and lets Hazel know they can go. She agrees, and sets the time ring to their next destination. The duo leaves... but Hazel left behind a "present" for the Leader-- a bulky but usable cybernetic air / food purifier box to replace his lungs and stomach, and a special handle-bar shaped helmet for the brain interface to tie it into his body, taken and repaired from a damaged experimental science lab.

As the leader goes under the knife to have these attached, he says slowly. "Thank you for your gift Lady Hazenine... with this... We Will Survive."

8. Planet X "Nibiru"

Encountering a long-lost world-ship of aggressive Annunaki who are heading back through the Sol System with the intent of wreaking havoc on the climate and seas of the Earth, devastating its population and decimating it to the point where they can be easily re-enslaved, Xadium and Hazel discover the secret behind a hidden era of Earth History between the fall of the Silver Millennium and the modern day, when various groups of space aliems preyed upon the weakened post-war human population. In the face of the Annunaki super science which rivals even the Osirans', the Time Lords find themselves outmatched both physically and intellectually.

When the Annunaki force the two Time Lords to fight to the death in a sadistic war game, it is Hazel who has the last laugh as she cruelly turns the tables, exploting the one weakness of the Annunaki, jury-rigging a psychotronic generator that brings out the pure savagery of the Annunaki to its maximum as they enjoy seeing the Time Lords harm on another, sending the populace into an almost orgasmic bloodlust that results in them exterminating each other in an orgy of murder and mayhem.

Disgusted, Xadium demands she never do that again, to which Hazel simply replies, "well your precious humans are safe now, aren't they?" To which he has no good retort.

Klaxons go off as the world-ship abruptly begins to change course to take it out of the Solar System, as if pulled by a massive force. The Time Lords quickly flee, again trying to head for Energy Nede 2, but fate has other plans...

9. Fortress Orion

This time appearing on a ship parked so close to the sun no observatory on Earth can see it, Hazel and Xadium encounter the Orions (not the same race as the other Orions from Star Trek) who are huge lizard-people capable of mimicking human form. Xadium recalls hearing about them on the Annunaki ship as one of the other races that had their way with humanity in the post Silver Millennium Past, and they discover that the Osirans had oriented their pyramids so as to send a homing signal to Orion so their colony ships would arrive on the planet. It took many years for the Orions to arrive, and by the time they did, the Osirans had long since left Earth and Mars.

Strangely, the ship is mostly empty, except for a skeleton crew of Orions who are desperately trying to keep their vessel from crashing into the sun as its orbital motors are failing. Hazel tries to convince Xadium these Orions are no different than the Annunaki an should be destroyed. She points out that for all their talk of "just wanting to go home" they have been having fairly frequent long-range transports to Earth using a souped-up transmat beam. The Reason the orbital engines are failing is because they were damaged powering that beam powerful enough to send crew 1 AU across Space to Earth.

The crewmembers protest that their leaders had "their own plans" and created this situation but they wanted no part of it. Hazel doesn't buy it for a second, while Xadium helps them fix their engines, warning them to leave the planet alone.

Complicating matters is a Xenomorph on board ship that has been picking off the crew. Working together, they manage to kill it, but only three members of the Orion crew remain alive.

The repairs done, the ship gets ready to leave, but then one of the remaining crew members holds the others at gunpoint stating he wants to go to Earth to join "the others" who are already there. At that moment, there is a massive blast that sends massive space station hurtling out of its orbit. Hazel quickly makes a note of where it it most likely to end up, but there is no time to discuss as the blast provides the break needed for a massive gun battle to break out and all the Orions kill each other, with the Time Lords barely managing to escape via Transmat... the bean sending them down into a hidden Masonic Chamber... in a fortified bunker underneath Denver International Airport.

Homecoming Arc

10. Denver, USA

Arriving in the Bunker under Denver International Airport, Xadium and Hazel catch a group of elderly rich men in robes by surprise. The men were actually attempting to summon someone else-- the Orions, with whom they have made a pact. The men pull out advanced weaponry, apparently having planned to betray their Orion "partners" and gain teleport access to their ship and technology. Instead, they decide they are going to torture and dissect the Time Lords.. but at that moment everyone is killed in the opening moments of The Quinox Incident.

Two weeks pass, and the world is restored. In that instant, Xadium and Hazel manage to overcome the disorientation of coming to with two weeks of memory missing, and escape their would-be captors. Chased, they find themselves trapped in a hallway with only one door leading out.

(Next segment was written by YingGirl as a writing exercise. I changed it very slightly to fit the narrative.)

The door will always be closed.

The two Time Lords from Gallifrey-- one, the renegade suburban Time Lord famous for his Soda dispenser-shaped TARDIS and the other the "true heroine" of Gallifrey, Lady Hazenine, looked upon the door that now barred their path.

Their mischievous adventures across times and galaxies had all come down to this door, their route ending with confusion at this intergalactic roadblock.

They Both looked at each other, temperamental buddies from the same planet, and started to pitch escape ideas.

“So now what?” Hazenine asked, pointing out the obvious. “Door’s locked.”

Curiously, with his sonic screwdriver, Xadium prodded the door, peering at it and hoping that with the screwdriver's quick humming, the door could be opened.

But the door did not open, even in the face of the cries of the screwdriver.

“Well,” Xadium replied, “I’m stumped. Screwdriver’s out.”

Shaking her head, Hazenine rolled her eyes. “Men and their screwdrivers,” Hazenine replied contemptously. “Here, let me show you what true Gallifreyan powers can do.”

Xadium looked on, curious as to what arcane display a Time Lord of the Ancient Houses, born of the Dark Times could display.

With her bare fists, Hazenine smacked the door. Punch after punch, she howled, submerging herself into primal rage.

Still, the door did not open.

"Well, that's certainly something," Xadium intoned, as Hazenine spun around to look at him, flushed with fury. "Was that the 'Puglisitic Punch of Rassilon?"

Hazenine punched him in the crotch, smirking with satisfaction as the guards rushed up the corridor, swarming to capture them.

Mercilessly, she spin-kicked the staggered Xadium right into their pursuers, who were momentarily caught off-guard, one of them losing their grip on their laser rifle. Hazenine quickly snatched the rifle out of the air and in a deft, fluid motion, blew the brains out of every one of the people who had been following them. Xadium chided her, snapping that she didn't have to do that. Hazenine considered this and concurred, replying that she should have left one alive to torture for information.

As they make their way back to the transmat site in the airport's underhalls, Orion Soldiers from another vessel in the Solar system appear. The Time Lords manage to quickly duck out of sight and learn that the Orions plan to destroy a certain location in Cardiff England... the Time-Space Rift at the Center of the rebuilt Torchwood Hub.

TO BE CONTINUED

11. Cardiff City

12. Tokyo, Part I

13. Finale - Tokyo, Part II