Fic: There Was a Master in a Game (2/25)
Title: There Was a Master in a Game
Author: azriona
Characters: The Master, Sally Sparrow, Lynda Moss, assorted others to be named later
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: Everything. The majority takes place after The End of Time, but there are references to events through the end of Season Five.
Betas: runriggers and earlgreytea68
Summary: Gallifrey wasn’t entirely lost when it went back into the Time Lock; it just got stuck. The Master wants out. Isn’t he lucky that the Doctor left him a way?
Chapter One
Chapter Two: Diagonal Right
“Trying again?”
The Master glared at the Time Lords, still playing Parcheesi. “At least I’m trying to be productive.”
“Mm,” said the Time Lords, and ignored him. Which was just as well, since he wasn’t there any longer anyway.
*
Lynda Moss crouched below the desk, her arms wrapped around her knees. This was her first assignment, and she was not having fun.
Now, Lynda was a bright girl. She knew perfectly well that expecting to have fun on each and every assignment was just silly. But all the same, she’d been recruited with the promise of fun, and so far, the only fun part of her new job was…well…okay, there hadn’t been anything fun so far.
Lynda began reconsidering her career options. It was an extremely short list.
There was a crashing buzzing sound from one of the computers across the room - a signal of alien movement over London. That was her signal, such as it was. Lynda immediately jumped out from under the desk. She made a beeline for the door leading to the rooftop. It was only two levels up, but there wasn’t any time to waste - the Sycorax ship had begun to turn around in preparation for its departure from Earth orbit. Lynda had perhaps four minutes at the most to disable the ray guns, or the consequences would be disastrous.
But this was the assignment for which Lynda had been trained from the moment she’d woken aboard the sleek, silvery ship after having been blasted out of the Game Station by the Daleks. Lynda was never sure how she’d survived the vacuum of space, and no one aboard the ship had been able to assuage her curiosity.
The problem was, she was dead. Well, officially, anyway, and really, Lynda thought it just as well. She was tired of being “sweet”. “Sweet” got her blown up by mutant aliens, and probably would have gotten her tossed out of the Big Brother house, too, if she hadn’t been daft enough to follow the Doctor in the first place, which led to her being blown up by mutant aliens.
And all of that led to Lynda waking up to an offer from the Time Agency, to go back and right a few wrongs in the 21st century. It was an interesting prospect. Lynda, being otherwise dead and somewhat tired of being sweet, figured she’d give international and transdimensional spying a try.
Running up two flights of stairs was easy. Running up two flights of stairs while trying to pull out her emergency kit was a bit trickier, but Lynda had graduated from the top of her class. Running up two flights of stairs and then running over the man standing in her way at the top of them…well, now, that was something Lynda hadn’t quite trained to anticipate.
They tumbled over each other into a heap on the landing; Lynda landed face up, but the man landed on his feet, and he leaned over to look her in the face.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he groaned. “What the bleeding hell are you doing here?”
For a man in a sweatshirt and raggedy jeans - not to mention having just tripped her up on her way to saving the planet - Lynda thought him exceedingly rude. “Do I know you?”
“I’m the Master, and you’re in the wrong place.” He stomped over and kicked the wall. “Which means so-“ kick “-am-“ kick “I!” Kick.
“I could have told you that,” snapped Lynda, and pushed herself to her feet. “If you don’t mind, I’m trying to save the planet now.”
“Who died and made you Doctor?” grumbled the Master, and Lynda’s mouth dropped open. She quickly shook away her surprise, however - time was ticking away.
“Don’t move,” she ordered him. “I’ll be right back.”
She hit the door leading to the roof as hard as she could; the bang it made against the wall was highly satisfactory. Or would have been, if she had heard it close again. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that the Master had followed her onto the roof, after a brief pause at the door, which he gave a cautionary glare before stepping through.
“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully, looking back at the doorway. He shrugged and walked nonchalantly toward Lynda, as if he was doing nothing more curious than taking a stroll through Regent’s Park.
“Oo, now there’s a lovely bit of machinery,” he said admiringly, looking at the ray guns. “Are we going to fire them at something?”
“No, we’re - I’m actually going to stop them from firing,” said Lynda.
“Well, that’s boring,” said the Master with a sniff, and he sat on the edge of the rooftop to examine his nails. Lynda ignored him, and opened the control panel on the nearest ray gun. “Of course, these ray guns are a bit sad. Won’t make hardly a good explosion at all. Now, if you’d like, I could help to combine the firepower to alter the wavelength-“
“I don’t think so,” said Lynda.
“Fine, be that way. I’m just saying, since you’re not supposed to be here anyway, you might as well make a statement of it.”
“I’m making a statement just fine by disabling these, ta.”
“It’s just very annoying,” continued the Master, and Lynda groaned and tried to ignore him. “I keep trying to get out of this Time Lock. Positive: I’m out of the Time Lock. Negative: I’m not in Reality.”
“Very real from where I’m standing,” said Lynda.
“Oh, you’re out of your own time frame, what would you know about reality?” snorted the Master. “The only connection so far is that in both places I’ve found some ignorant chit out of time who knows the Doctor, even if she won’t admit to it.” The Master whistled, and looked around them. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Canary Wharf, London,” said Lynda, working as quickly as she could. The panels were a bit different from those she’d trained on, but they weren’t so far off that she couldn’t tell what switch would do which operation. It was only making sure she did everything in order…
“Earth? Typical. He couldn’t put me anywhere interesting, could he?” snorted the Master.
“Hey, I’m from Earth!”
“Not this one,” said the Master disdainfully. “Aren’t you done with that panel yet?”
“They’re complicated!”
“Isn’t everything.”
Lynda slammed the first control panel shut, and headed for the next one. “You could help.”
“Why?” asked the man, and he sounded surprised to even be asked.
“Well, if you’re going to bother and distract me, you could at least disable one of these things.”
“That’s not much of a reason. Maybe I’d rather their target be blown out of the sky.”
“Not like the Sycorax don’t deserve it, but better for Torchwood if they aren’t turned into ash,” explained Lynda. “Only Torchwood doesn’t know what’s good for them, so here I am.”
“Torchwood?” said the Master, a bit surprised. “Well, that’s a trick. I knew a man who worked with Torchwood. Once. Well, he worked with them more than once, I only knew him the one time.”
“I’m not with Torchwood,” said Lynda shortly.
“Well, obviously not, if you’re disabling their ray guns. Name Jack Harkness mean anything to you?”
Lynda blinked, and her hand slipped as she closed the control panel. She quickly turned to the next one.
“No.”
“Liar,” said the Master easily. “You’re wearing his Vortex manipulator. Did you steal it from him?”
“Quit distracting me!”
“That’s a yes, then.”
“No, it’s not! I was issued this manipulator fair and square.”
“Time Agent, then,” said the Master. “A Time Agent who knows the Doctor and is sitting on top of Torchwood Tower, disabling the ray guns that are meant to shoot the Sycorax ship out of the sky in - ooo, 90 seconds. And you’ve got three ray guns left. Better hurry now.”
Lynda looked up, ready to snap a witty response - but the man in the sweatshirt was gone.
*
“You know,” the Master remarked to the Time Lords playing Parcheesi. “There’s something strange going on here.”
“Yes,” replied one. “She’s cheating.”
“I am not!”
“No, not that, you imbecile,” said the Master irritably. “I’m talking about what happens when we leave the Time Lock.”
The Time Lords looked at him.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t tried.” The Master threw his hands up. “What a worthless bunch of - you spent all that time and effort into putting drumbeats in my head, and sending out a white-star diamond, and then sticking me into a human, mortal body, in order that I could come back and save you bunch from the Time Lock, and you’re telling me that you didn’t at least check to see if just leaving the Time Lock would work?”
“That was Plan B.”
“So when were you going to implement it?!?!”
The Time Lords looked at each other. The one who might have been in charge shrugged.
“I’m still playing Parcheesi.”
“Every last one of you is a worthless sack of bones,” snapped the Master, and stormed out of the room. He poked his head back in the door half a minute later. “And I want a change of clothing!”
“There’s robes in the closet.”
The Master didn’t dignify that with a response. He stormed down the hallway and into…
Well, that was the trouble. There wasn’t really anywhere to storm to, because that was the nature of a Time Lock. You either were, or you weren’t, and you didn’t really move around much from where you were when you started. When the Time Lock had been implemented, the Master had been theoretically in the Council Room with Rassillon and the rest. That’s where he’d been stuck for the past 4,333 days (but who was counting?).
Not being in the Council Room (because there was only so much of those stuck-up big-wigs that the Master could stand - he supposed it was one thing he and the Doctor held in common), the Master wasn’t really anywhere. He was just sort of…there. And not there. It was weird. He didn’t like it.
The only good thing about the Nothingness was that it gave him space to think.
Two attempts to break out of the Time Lock - and two different outcomes, with one thing in common. Both women he’d encountered had some history with the Doctor. Both were out of their respective timelines.
The Master wondered what it meant. And more so, he wondered what would happen when he tried again.
Chapter Three
Author: azriona
Characters: The Master, Sally Sparrow, Lynda Moss, assorted others to be named later
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: Everything. The majority takes place after The End of Time, but there are references to events through the end of Season Five.
Betas: runriggers and earlgreytea68
Summary: Gallifrey wasn’t entirely lost when it went back into the Time Lock; it just got stuck. The Master wants out. Isn’t he lucky that the Doctor left him a way?
Chapter One
Chapter Two: Diagonal Right
“Trying again?”
The Master glared at the Time Lords, still playing Parcheesi. “At least I’m trying to be productive.”
“Mm,” said the Time Lords, and ignored him. Which was just as well, since he wasn’t there any longer anyway.
*
Lynda Moss crouched below the desk, her arms wrapped around her knees. This was her first assignment, and she was not having fun.
Now, Lynda was a bright girl. She knew perfectly well that expecting to have fun on each and every assignment was just silly. But all the same, she’d been recruited with the promise of fun, and so far, the only fun part of her new job was…well…okay, there hadn’t been anything fun so far.
Lynda began reconsidering her career options. It was an extremely short list.
There was a crashing buzzing sound from one of the computers across the room - a signal of alien movement over London. That was her signal, such as it was. Lynda immediately jumped out from under the desk. She made a beeline for the door leading to the rooftop. It was only two levels up, but there wasn’t any time to waste - the Sycorax ship had begun to turn around in preparation for its departure from Earth orbit. Lynda had perhaps four minutes at the most to disable the ray guns, or the consequences would be disastrous.
But this was the assignment for which Lynda had been trained from the moment she’d woken aboard the sleek, silvery ship after having been blasted out of the Game Station by the Daleks. Lynda was never sure how she’d survived the vacuum of space, and no one aboard the ship had been able to assuage her curiosity.
The problem was, she was dead. Well, officially, anyway, and really, Lynda thought it just as well. She was tired of being “sweet”. “Sweet” got her blown up by mutant aliens, and probably would have gotten her tossed out of the Big Brother house, too, if she hadn’t been daft enough to follow the Doctor in the first place, which led to her being blown up by mutant aliens.
And all of that led to Lynda waking up to an offer from the Time Agency, to go back and right a few wrongs in the 21st century. It was an interesting prospect. Lynda, being otherwise dead and somewhat tired of being sweet, figured she’d give international and transdimensional spying a try.
Running up two flights of stairs was easy. Running up two flights of stairs while trying to pull out her emergency kit was a bit trickier, but Lynda had graduated from the top of her class. Running up two flights of stairs and then running over the man standing in her way at the top of them…well, now, that was something Lynda hadn’t quite trained to anticipate.
They tumbled over each other into a heap on the landing; Lynda landed face up, but the man landed on his feet, and he leaned over to look her in the face.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he groaned. “What the bleeding hell are you doing here?”
For a man in a sweatshirt and raggedy jeans - not to mention having just tripped her up on her way to saving the planet - Lynda thought him exceedingly rude. “Do I know you?”
“I’m the Master, and you’re in the wrong place.” He stomped over and kicked the wall. “Which means so-“ kick “-am-“ kick “I!” Kick.
“I could have told you that,” snapped Lynda, and pushed herself to her feet. “If you don’t mind, I’m trying to save the planet now.”
“Who died and made you Doctor?” grumbled the Master, and Lynda’s mouth dropped open. She quickly shook away her surprise, however - time was ticking away.
“Don’t move,” she ordered him. “I’ll be right back.”
She hit the door leading to the roof as hard as she could; the bang it made against the wall was highly satisfactory. Or would have been, if she had heard it close again. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that the Master had followed her onto the roof, after a brief pause at the door, which he gave a cautionary glare before stepping through.
“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully, looking back at the doorway. He shrugged and walked nonchalantly toward Lynda, as if he was doing nothing more curious than taking a stroll through Regent’s Park.
“Oo, now there’s a lovely bit of machinery,” he said admiringly, looking at the ray guns. “Are we going to fire them at something?”
“No, we’re - I’m actually going to stop them from firing,” said Lynda.
“Well, that’s boring,” said the Master with a sniff, and he sat on the edge of the rooftop to examine his nails. Lynda ignored him, and opened the control panel on the nearest ray gun. “Of course, these ray guns are a bit sad. Won’t make hardly a good explosion at all. Now, if you’d like, I could help to combine the firepower to alter the wavelength-“
“I don’t think so,” said Lynda.
“Fine, be that way. I’m just saying, since you’re not supposed to be here anyway, you might as well make a statement of it.”
“I’m making a statement just fine by disabling these, ta.”
“It’s just very annoying,” continued the Master, and Lynda groaned and tried to ignore him. “I keep trying to get out of this Time Lock. Positive: I’m out of the Time Lock. Negative: I’m not in Reality.”
“Very real from where I’m standing,” said Lynda.
“Oh, you’re out of your own time frame, what would you know about reality?” snorted the Master. “The only connection so far is that in both places I’ve found some ignorant chit out of time who knows the Doctor, even if she won’t admit to it.” The Master whistled, and looked around them. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Canary Wharf, London,” said Lynda, working as quickly as she could. The panels were a bit different from those she’d trained on, but they weren’t so far off that she couldn’t tell what switch would do which operation. It was only making sure she did everything in order…
“Earth? Typical. He couldn’t put me anywhere interesting, could he?” snorted the Master.
“Hey, I’m from Earth!”
“Not this one,” said the Master disdainfully. “Aren’t you done with that panel yet?”
“They’re complicated!”
“Isn’t everything.”
Lynda slammed the first control panel shut, and headed for the next one. “You could help.”
“Why?” asked the man, and he sounded surprised to even be asked.
“Well, if you’re going to bother and distract me, you could at least disable one of these things.”
“That’s not much of a reason. Maybe I’d rather their target be blown out of the sky.”
“Not like the Sycorax don’t deserve it, but better for Torchwood if they aren’t turned into ash,” explained Lynda. “Only Torchwood doesn’t know what’s good for them, so here I am.”
“Torchwood?” said the Master, a bit surprised. “Well, that’s a trick. I knew a man who worked with Torchwood. Once. Well, he worked with them more than once, I only knew him the one time.”
“I’m not with Torchwood,” said Lynda shortly.
“Well, obviously not, if you’re disabling their ray guns. Name Jack Harkness mean anything to you?”
Lynda blinked, and her hand slipped as she closed the control panel. She quickly turned to the next one.
“No.”
“Liar,” said the Master easily. “You’re wearing his Vortex manipulator. Did you steal it from him?”
“Quit distracting me!”
“That’s a yes, then.”
“No, it’s not! I was issued this manipulator fair and square.”
“Time Agent, then,” said the Master. “A Time Agent who knows the Doctor and is sitting on top of Torchwood Tower, disabling the ray guns that are meant to shoot the Sycorax ship out of the sky in - ooo, 90 seconds. And you’ve got three ray guns left. Better hurry now.”
Lynda looked up, ready to snap a witty response - but the man in the sweatshirt was gone.
*
“You know,” the Master remarked to the Time Lords playing Parcheesi. “There’s something strange going on here.”
“Yes,” replied one. “She’s cheating.”
“I am not!”
“No, not that, you imbecile,” said the Master irritably. “I’m talking about what happens when we leave the Time Lock.”
The Time Lords looked at him.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t tried.” The Master threw his hands up. “What a worthless bunch of - you spent all that time and effort into putting drumbeats in my head, and sending out a white-star diamond, and then sticking me into a human, mortal body, in order that I could come back and save you bunch from the Time Lock, and you’re telling me that you didn’t at least check to see if just leaving the Time Lock would work?”
“That was Plan B.”
“So when were you going to implement it?!?!”
The Time Lords looked at each other. The one who might have been in charge shrugged.
“I’m still playing Parcheesi.”
“Every last one of you is a worthless sack of bones,” snapped the Master, and stormed out of the room. He poked his head back in the door half a minute later. “And I want a change of clothing!”
“There’s robes in the closet.”
The Master didn’t dignify that with a response. He stormed down the hallway and into…
Well, that was the trouble. There wasn’t really anywhere to storm to, because that was the nature of a Time Lock. You either were, or you weren’t, and you didn’t really move around much from where you were when you started. When the Time Lock had been implemented, the Master had been theoretically in the Council Room with Rassillon and the rest. That’s where he’d been stuck for the past 4,333 days (but who was counting?).
Not being in the Council Room (because there was only so much of those stuck-up big-wigs that the Master could stand - he supposed it was one thing he and the Doctor held in common), the Master wasn’t really anywhere. He was just sort of…there. And not there. It was weird. He didn’t like it.
The only good thing about the Nothingness was that it gave him space to think.
Two attempts to break out of the Time Lock - and two different outcomes, with one thing in common. Both women he’d encountered had some history with the Doctor. Both were out of their respective timelines.
The Master wondered what it meant. And more so, he wondered what would happen when he tried again.
Chapter Three