The Blood Death

[The 11th Doctor]

It is the time of the Blood Plague, a sickness that nearly decimated the human race in the year 21st century. Spread by touch, by air, the disease was everywhere.

Blood red patches dotted your skin, the spread till your skin was red. And then it became harder and harder for you to breath. And then you died. But in the year 2023, a miracle cure appeared. A gift from the heavens, a blessing. A mysterious company developed a cure to save the human race, a last ditch effort to save us all. A company named Skaro Industries.

London, England, Skaro Industries, 2023

Elliot Mayes panted, his feet racing as fast as they would let him. His boots thumped against the pavement. He came to a stop before the fence. He began to climb, his hands racing awkwardly.

"No, no, no, NO!!!!!!!!"

A blue beam of light arced through the air. The young man leaped off of the fence, narrowly avoiding the beam. "Wh-what are you?"
He asked the thing hovering above him. The thing from hell was silent.

"I-I've seen your labs, what you do to people-but I won't repeat it. I know you're creating something. Not a cure..something bad. But I-I..I'm a reporter. It's my duty to report the news. I won't tell anyone."

"EX-TER-MIN-ATE!!!" wailed a loud, shrill voice. A blue beam of light struck the young reporter, who crumpled to the ground.

The Dalek lowered itself to the ground. "You were a re-port-er. You would have told. It was your du-ty!!"

Another Dalek came up to him, two others in tow. "Dalek Gik, I have arrived. I see the ex-ter-min-ation team was not nee-ded."

"A-fir-mat-ive, Dalek Jan. How is the distribution process going?"

"Per-fect. Soon the Blood Cri-sis will de-stroy those hu-man pests, and we will live in the paradise that is New Skaro!!!"


(OOC Tell me where you guys wanna take this one.)

[Sarah Jane]

It had been easy enough to figure out what was going on. To learn it all. The only thing she did not understand was why the Doctor had not come. Why was he not here when the Human Race was on the verge of extinction? She'd done her best through the plague and the riots, and the invaders who had tried to exploit Earth's weakness as Humanity stumbled toward the abyss.

The old Bannerman Road Gang was split up in the four corners of the Earth, each doing what they did best. Luke, the Doctor Extraordinar. Clyde, who lead whole Rescue teams. Rani, off finding the lost pockets of civilization and bringing them the temporary Clear Mist Immunity Inhalers.

And Tessa. Dear Tessa. How much she missed her right this moment, and how glad she was that her daughter was not here beside her in the dark.

Owen. Jack. Susan. River. Rose. Maria. Oh, Doctor.
So many in the 82 years of her life. Yes, the calendar said 77 years, but she'd lived many years at odd angles to time. There had been such love for her. How she had loved and been loved. It had all been worth it.

All in black leather, black knit cap covering all but a few wisps of her abundant shock of white hair, she stood tall and calm, working her way though the coded sequence with the gadget Adrian had made her. It interfaced with the main computer at this plant. This place where the signals from all of Earth were squelched, and a false signal of "Business as Usual on Earth' was broadcast instead.

Sarah was going to blow it up. She'd gotten in all the way to the heart of the place, a silent shadow. In all these years, she'd learned to be very, very, sneaky. First she would add a message, then she would set the timer and run.

"Doctor, Earth needs you." she recorded, tacking it on to the beginning of the destroy sequence, time stamp included, they would go out together, one a split second before the other when the timer went off. That way she'd have time to escape undetected before her mischief began.

She tapped the last code and Mr.Smith's program engaged.

It turned out Mr.Smith had been wrong about something. The programing, for the meat and metal hardware of the plant, was in Earth style programing, not Dalek as they had thought. In the translation, a decimal point went the wrong way. Instead of 20 minutes, she had 2 seconds, just enough time for the corner of her expressive mouth to quirk into a wry smile.

Everything went away in a white, painless blaze.

Her words carried out into the Universe right before a huge ball of flame. For a moment in the layered signals of every kind, the only sound from all of Earth was Sarah Jane's voice and the coded date underneath.

"Doctor, Earth needs you."

[The 11th Doctor]

Space, The F'lain cluster


The Doctor flipped a switch on his TARDIS and sighed deeply as the TARDIS hurtled towards Earth, 2023. Sarah Jane Smith...was dead. There was no mistaking the sound of an explosion. A big one. He doubted even the infamous Jack Harkness couldn't survive one like that. And there was no mistaking her voice.

Sarah Jane Smith.

A rare tear trickled down his cheek. His, fez, stolen from an Egyptian ferryman somewhere during the reign of Cleopatra, slumped dejectedly on his head. The words echoed through his mind.

"Doctor, Earth needs you."
2023. The one year he'd sworn to avoid. Because he knew if he saw even a mere smidgeon of the pain and suffering humanity experienced, his heart would break. And nothing would mend it. But he would not go against one of his greatest friends dying wish.

More than a friend really. So much more. Like all the others. So many, over the long years, here one day and gone the next. He glanced towards the room where Amy still slept. And someday, she'd be gone too.

And he would be alone again, a lonely god wandering the stars.


Wandering, till the end of time.

[The Second Doctor]

The Dark Lord flew his Tardis through dead space, grieving his past losses and mourning his future victories. His 'hate the worlds and everything in it' mentality had landed him with only a few friends. He listed them on his fingers. The Meddler, Blue, the Phantom, and...Susan? Did she still consider him a friend? Probably not. Even then, the Meddler regarded him as barely-tolerable, Blue litterally thought of him as a master...and not exactly his favorite.

Alec was a loner, and that was how he liked it. He didn't need a bunch of fools to slow him down. Where had friends like Ellie gotten him? A regeneration from his favorite incarnation, that's where.

So, in many ways, the Dark Lord could only trust himself. Why bother with anyone else? They only slowed him down! He would just watch them die out anyways. These thoughts would always haunt him. Always.

Scanning through the blackness, he picked up and faint signal. It was hardly audible, but obviously the voice of a woman. A familiar woman. But what was it saying? He couldn't tell.

"Tardis, crank it up a notch." he ordered.

The sound became incredibly loud, and he could now just make out the voice.

"Doctor, Earth needs you."

"Sarah Jane Smith." he recognized.

He smirked, adjusting the controls to where the signal origin. He didn't teleport yet, he would...prepare first. Meeting Sarah again might be trouble, he knew. A gun, a knife, and maybe a taser. He could protect himself.

[Amy's understudy! Not Amy now.]

When she woke up, the TARDIS was chilly. She had noticed that the TARDIS seemed to reflect the Doctor's mood in lighting and temperature. She puffed out air and saw the slightest hint of frost.

The Doctor. What was happening?

Not bothering to change out of her long white cotton nightdress, she threw on a heavy overcoat pilfered from Rory on top and hurried out to the control room, her hair a wild exclamation of a good sleep.

First, she heard it. Amy didn't know it, but when Sarah Jane Smith had disabled the planet wide signal jammer on Earth, all those once silenced transmissions could be heard, and they followed on the heels of her message.

Amy did not know it was Earth, but the over layered signals did not sound good. People crying out for help. Dismal reports in monotone. News reports that sounded more the the rules being read at a strict boarding house.

The Doctor was fiercely a glower.

"Doctor? Whats happening? What is that?" She asked carefully. His face was terrible with a darkness.

[Blue]

Doctor, Earth needs you.

Blue sat up, quirking his head gently. The voice was small and slightly garbled, but it was there nonetheless. He stood, looking at his surroundings groggily. The Djinn seemed to have crawled into a closet and gone to sleep under a pile of coats. He brushed the lint off his clothes, hoping Alec hadn’t noticed his absence. It seemed that he and his master had never really clicked. It was upsetting to say the least, but all he had to do was wait until the Time Lord either died or released him out of anger.

Either would happen eventually.

Doctor, Earth needs you.

The voice repeated again after a few moments, only much louder. Blue wrinkled his eyebrows and covered his ears tightly.

The Djinn had changed since Alec found his Lamp. He'd never been one to display his emotions, but now he was completely against it. His nervousness only seemed to anger his master, so he'd taken careful, subtle measures to hide when he was irrevocably anxious.

None of his methods worked – the man got irritated when he submitted and tried to appease his master, but yet any opposing method also earned him a harsh word.

He’d merely accepted that there wasn’t anything he could do to get in the man’s good graces. A pity, but he’d had masters like that before. He’d had humans beat him, and – so far, at least – the Dark Lord hadn’t done anything like that.

He stepped into the console room and examined the smirk on the man’s face. He almost commented on it, but, deciding against it, took the friendly greeting instead. “Hello,” he said affably, smiling warmly at Alec. “Who’s the woman?” he asked.

[The Second Doctor]

Blue walked in, smiling happily. Light bounced off the Djinn's face and obvious there no real was no real warmth. Not that Alec cared.

"Finally." he said under his breath.

The Timelord looked at Blue and then his watch, subtly making it plain how he wasn't quite on time. He then looked back to the Tardis console and pulled a lever, which clicked as it came down.
"Hello,"

"Hi," He answered.

"Who is the woman?" asked the Djinn, who had obviously heard the message.

Sarah Jane Smith ran through the Dark Lord's mind. Younger, older, with three kids, with the Doctor... That was about all he knew of her. Oh, and that time he had teleported her to a distant moon. Should've had Blue there.
"No one you should know."

Alec thought about meeting the Human again, then turned to Blue.
"Theoretically, can you make it so that she doesn't recognize me?" he asked.

[The Master]

Saflan kal-Thra Dingum was in a foul mood.

This in and of itself would not have been any surprise whatsoever to the people that knew him. He had been described before as four meters of bad mood in a meter and a half package. But this was far, far worse than normal.

The Captain had inserted him a month ago, with instructions to find out about this "Skaro Corporation", and then make contact for pickup. At the time he'd protested - carefully - that he was a poor choice for covert operations on 21st Century Earth. The Captain had responded by pointing out that he was the most human-like of the crew (what with being descended from Terran stock and all), and then by shouting "Obey! Obey!" in that "I will kill you if you argue the point any further" tone of voice that Saflan knew far too well.

And so here he was, stuck on a pre-starflight world experiencing a plague that could have been prevented by the most basic of retroviral therapy. A world that was also somehow screened to prevent fifth-order communications beams from making it out of the magnetosphere.

All of this went quite some way towards explaining why Saflan was methodically beating a man to death in a back alley in London.

Casually lifting the man with one hand, he slammed him into the brick wall of the alley. "One week," he said, conversationally. "That's what you told me. I get you the money, and you'll have the badge for me. In a week."

It was hard to read facial expressions on the man, given that his face was a distorted mass of bruises and blood, but his tone of voice was pleading. "I... I tried. I really..."

Saflan tossed him three meters down the alley and watched him bounce on the cobblestones before crashing into a dumpster. Slowly, he paced after him, stomping hard on the man's hand as he tried to climb to his feet. The man screamed.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that," Saflan said, conversationally. "But it didn't sound at all like I've got the badge on me, Mr Dingum, now please let me give it to you like I promised.." He kicked the man in the stomach, slamming him back into the dumpster. "In fact, it sounded like you were about to say I took the money and tried to stiff you while I ran for my life."

The man gurgled and vomited a slurry of blood and bile as he slumped forward. Saflan grabbed him by the hair and yanked him to his feet. "Now, I want you to know that-"

What Saflan wanted him to know was lost to the ages. From the end of the alley, a grating mechanical voice screeched "You will halt!"

"Klono's titanium tendons," Saflan swore, watching the thing glide into the alley. The travel machine was styled differently from the ones he knew, but it was still clearly a Dalek.

"Cease move-ment! You will obey! Or you will be ex-ter-min-ated!"

Mouthing profanities, Saflan glanced up and down the alley. Just one of them. He had a chance.

With a grunt he threw the man at the Dalek, and used the spin to crouch and spring. As the Dalek's gunstick discharged, wreathing the man in negative light, Saflan's fingers closed on the edge of the roof, two stories above the alleyway.

As second discharge from the gunstick blew a man-sized chunk of brick and mortar into dust and plasma as he threw himself over and away from the edge. Rolling to his feet, he sprinted as fast as his heavy-grav physique could carry him.

The Dalek's gravatics brought it even with the lip of the roof. "Halt! Halt or you will be ex-ter-min-ated!" it shrieked. Another gunstick discharge - a warning shot - blew a meters-wide hole in the roof.

Of all the stupid days not to have my DeLameter, Saflan lamented.

"Halt! You will obey!"

Trusting himself to the somewhat questionable mercies of Klono, the spacefarer's god, he hurled himself blindly across the next alley and through a window on the far side.

(OOC: I'll leave it up to someone else to decide who he bursts in on.)

[The 11th Doctor]

"Doctor? Whats happening? What is that?"

The Doctor glanced up at Amy. "What? Oh, nothing." The Doctor stood up straight and adjusted his fez. "Amy. We're going to the 21'st century. but not the one you know. There's a...plague, of sorts. An old, old friend of mine asked for my help."

The Doctor pulled a lever, flicked a switch, and pushed down a button. The TARDIS hummed slightly, and then shook. The Doctor grabbed the TARDIS console to keep from falling as the TARDIS shook. There was a loud rumbling sound, and the TARDIS came to a stop. Slowly, the Doctor staggered to the door.

The Doctor poked his head outside. He darted back in a second, later, surprise flashing across his face. Slowly, slowly, he pushed open the doors.

"Halt! You will obey!"

There was a scuffle, and someone burst past the Doctor, rolling into the TARDIS.

[Amy's understudy! Not Amy now.]

The vulnerable pain on the Doctor's face disappeared in two heartbeats. Now he had his game face on, though tears still wet his cheeks. She knew he would not appreciate this if she pointed it out. There was something closed in his eyes right now.

"I'm in." She said simply, wondering who this very very old friend was, then she ran off. Amy had spent too many adventures with the Doctor in her nightie. Not again. Certainly not through a plague. Not when the Doctor's face looked so serious.

Riding the TARDIS was a little like being at a rave. If you listened to her music, you could dance to it and stay on your feet. Mostly anyhow. She danced hard into a white shirt, skinny jeans, and her brown leather boots and coat. On her way out of her room, she snatched up the thin, fine, bright red woolen neck scarf. Last stop was the . . .things . . room. One Martha Jones had left a basic med kit there in a shoulder bag. Amy slung this over her shoulder just as the TARDIS came to a stop. She had sat down for it just in time, and was feeling rather smug as she surged back up to her feet, hearing the TARDIS door open already.

"Halt! You will obey!" came a terrible (DALEK! its a DALEK!) voice through the open door from which the Doctor was now retreating. Someone crashed through and rolled onto the floor.

For an instant she was torn between running for the door lever on the control column, wanting more than anything to keep the DALEK out of the TARDIS, or keeping herself hidden, being yet unseen and more likely of use that way. If the Doctor needed help at all. She faded back in the doorway where they couldn't see her, but she couldn't see them. She could hear though, Amy was listening hard and ready for anything.

She did sort of like it when her heart pounded this hard and her blood sang, but it was a bit spoiled by her worry for the Doctor.

[The Master]

Saflan crashed through the window, using his forearms to shield his face from the razor-sharp shards of glass, then tucked his head down. Hitting the ground (which didn't sound like normal apartment flooring), he rolled with the impact and came to his feet, looking around wildly for the nearest exit.

He was... homely. Yes, that was a good word for him. Squat, barely taller than Amy, and broad. Built like a gorilla, with big hands and arms that gave the illusion of hanging down to his knees - mostly due to the half-crouched stance he was in. His long, oily-looking black hair was caught back in a pony tail, his face was scarred, and his nose had obviously been broken more than once.

His eyes darted from the Doctor to Amy, to the console and time rotor, back to Amy, to the twin staircases leading up to the doors into the rest of the TARDIS, back to Amy again (and no, he wasn't paying attention to her eyes), and then to the console again.

There was the sound of an explosion from outside, followed by the distinctive mechanical screech. "You will-!" The voice stopped, and Saflan caught a quick glimpse of the Dalek backing out of line of sight.

He turned back to the other two in the room. "So, uh, Red," he said, running his eyes up and down Amy with a leer. "Thanks for the save. Now what say we get this ship out of here?"

[The 11th Doctor]

The Doctor stood, stunned. And it took a lot to stun The Doctor. He spun, then marched up to Saflan.

"No, my TARDIS is going nowhere. I am the Doctor, this is my TARDIS, 'Red' is Amelia pond, and you are an intruder. Now tell me who you are."

[Amy's understudy! Not Amy now.]

Amy swallowed hard as she took in the stranger even as he looked her over. He looked enormously strong, and he was covered in blood and filth. Amy was ready to bolt down the corridor, knowing she could outrun him, gazelle to his ape, at least long enough for the Doctor to intervene if things took such a bad turn. There was so very much blood on him, and splattered back disturbingly from hands up his arms, though it was not blindingly apparent in the dark mood lighting brought on by the Doctor's aspect.

Then the Doctor had come striding over to confront the man, which allowed her be curious instead of just frightened. Angry was coming to mind as well. Now that she could breath again, she caught wiff of his blood and garbage smell.

[The Master]

Now Saflan looked startled. "The Doctor? What kind of name is..."

His voice trailed off, and a look of comprehension came into his eyes. "Wait," he said, holding up his hands. "Wait, wait, wait! The Doctor? The Doctor? The one the Cap'n calls Ka Faraq Gatri?"

He grabbed the Doctor's hand in his own, and shook vigorously. "It's a pleasure - a real pleasure - to meet you in person, so to speak. I mean, I'd have pulled your spine out back on New Tortuga, if the Cap'n hadn't called me off, but that was just business. Nothing personal, you understand?"

Releasing the Doctor's hand, he looked him up and down. "I thought you were taller, though. With messier hair." A shrug. "Bad lighting, I guess. Oh, and I had my knee in your kidney, so I probably wasn't seeing you at your best."

"And she's Amy, huh?" he looked her over as well, eyes lingering at any number of places of interest along the path. He elbowed the Doctor. "You've got some taste, Doc. Day-am!

And then he looked horrified, just for a moment, as he slapped his forehead. "I'm forgetting my bleedin' manners! Saflan. Saflan kal-Thra Dingum, and it's a pleasure -" and here he winked at Amy "- to meet the both of you, and even more of a pleasure to be rescued from what I think is an Imperial Dalek by the both of you." He clicked his heels together, and bowed formally. "And I am at your service."

The dignified final words were somewhat spoiled by yet another leer and wink at Amy.

[Amy's understudy! Not Amy now.]

He was getting blood on the Doctor. Contaminate. Surely if this intruder had been exposed to the Plague, blood would be one of the easiest ways to spread it. Amy retreated further, not liking Mr. Inadequate Pony Tail Man one bit. She was certain the Doctor had some plan to keep her from being instantly killed by the Plague, but no need to press her luck.

"Lets un-rescue him, Doctor" She said, glaring at the man who could only be a bloody murderer.