fracturedrp | The Call

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The Call

As the 'day' of the appointment arrives, relative to the council on Gallifrey's time, the Time Lords make good on the unspoken threats in their invitations. Those who do not arrive are hunted, tracked through the universe by the very machines they flee in.

Ripples and disturbances in time, abominations and paradoxes, fixed points and impossibilities, these are the easiest to find and to track, but the truly clever and resourceful--and sometimes the lucky--might just avoid the sweeping hands of Gallifrey and its hounds.

Yet, those with metacrises born of this December's crisis will find the further they try to run away from Gallifrey, the more difficult it becomes. As if the rift itself is acting up, every step in the wrong direction brings increasing agony upon the metacrises, and even upon their counterparts the strain is that of walking further than their mental leashes allow.

You may run, but how long can you hide from the call of the Time Lords?

[OoC: The time has come to face the music. Another post will be made for the actual Council meeting, but threading out attempted or successful escapes, captures, or even willing arrivals will be made here. Thread-jumping will be allowed only within reason, considering the differing time and space between the threads.

Remember: If you didn't participate in All Hands plot and land yourself with a metacrisis, you can choose to escape with some cleverness on the part of your character. If you do have a metacrisis, however, capture and arriving on Gallifrey is inevitable.]

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"Relax? I can't relax. We're trapped here with no idea of when these people are from or what they want, and you want me to relax?" Andrew's voice rose unsteadily in pitch as he spoke, until he was practically squeaking in outrage. "I always knew you had a few screws loose, Master, but now is not the time to relax."

The Master stared at him, a bit amazed and decidedly amused. He shook his head.

"My dear Andrew, calm yourself! Keep a cool head and we will make use of the opportunities presented to us. Becoming agitated will only interfere with your ability to reason!"

Calming himself was really sort of out of the question for Andrew at the moment. He shook a finger at the Master, still agitated. "You're the one who wanted a fight!"

"Oh, more an argument, in the form of intellectual debate," the Master assured him, smiling. "Honestly, we should find someway to focus our minds and steady our nerves. Displaying any weakness to the Time Lords is a very bad idea. You do remember, when the Doctor was on trial?"

"Because debating amongst ourselves is really going to help," spat Handy, still tense and unwilling or unable to wind down and calm himself as he'd been advised to do. He knew the Master was right about displaying weakness, but the situation was rapidly spiraling out of any illusion of control he'd ever had.

"Forgive me. I should have realized that the human part of your mind would find rationality at at time like this almost impossible," the Master symapthized, sardonically.

The words were harsh, but he thought that anger might cut through some of what the Master perceived as nervousness, leaving Andrew able to think more clearly and gain some sort of control.

"I am perfectly rational!" That particular sore spot of Andrew's was a large one, and probably terribly obvious. He seethed for a few seconds, at least some of his nervousness burned away, just as the Master had intended. "You," he said, "Don't know anything about it."

"I know that anger will serve you better than fear," the Master told him, calmly, with a slight, smug smile.

Too much anger, though, could be a bad thing. Just possibly.

"Oh, so now it's some sort of brilliant master plan of yours? Don't you dare pick a fight with me and act like you're doing me a favor!"

Quite probably, but the Master was too amused to care. Sadly, being bored was not something he handled well, especially when trying to give an appearance of being reasonable.

"I dare what I like," the Master countered, grinning. "In any case, I prefer this mood of yours to your brooding."

This was something Andrew should probably work on. In the meantime, though, he found himself wholly incapable of calming down, even if his anger only served to amuse the Master.

"Oh, as long as the Master prefers it!" he snapped. "You've trapped yourself in a universe you don't know the first thing about, and you've delivered yourself right into the hands of a council that'll probably have us all put out of their misery on general principles, but so long as you're amused I suppose everything's bloody hunky-dory!"

"Stop being melodramatic, Andrew," the Master instructed disdainfully. "First, you helped trap me in this universe. Second, no one is going to execute me. Do you really think the Doctor is simply going to submit? You're supposed to have his intelligence. Use it."

"I did not!" objected Andrew. "You chose to send that pulse! Anyway, it was Märetskaldenon who suggested it, not me."

He glowered at the Master. "And now you trust the Doctor to save us? Tell me, how often has he saved you in the past?"

The Master shrugged.

"He's saved me often enough. He saved me from Chronos, after we fled Atlantas. Recently, he helped rescue me from the Cheetah planet. I didn't, however, mean to imply that I was relying on him. I'm saying none of us are helpless in this situation. The Time Lords may or may not want to execute us. Nothing says we have to allow them to do so."

So much for that - Handy really had forgotten a lot of the times when the Doctor had saved the Master, it seemed. He just remembered failing at that, or neglecting to do it.

"If you say so," he said gruffly, finally calm again but no less grumpy.

"I do say so, as a matter of fact," the Master agreed, calmly.

"And just what do you suggest we do, when the time comes?" asked Andrew, still annoyed.

"That depends on them," the Master replied, shrugging. "Ideally, it would be good to bargain. If that is not possible, I will do whatever is necessary to free myself and my TARDIS. We do have one advantage: the element of surprise. They are underestimating us. These Time Lords have never heard of the Doctor and the Master. I think they're in for a surprise."

"Strange how they haven't. Makes you wonder what their universe is like without us." And there he went again, forgetting he wasn't the Doctor. Andrew sighed.

"Bargain with what?"

"Calmer, no doubt," the Master answered, chuckling. "Though, it does make me wonder what their Earth is like, without the Doctor's constant vigilance!"

The Master took a moment to consider all the dangers Earth had escaped through the Doctor's intervention, then returned to the matter at hand.

"Again, what we bargain with will depend on them and their true purpose for conducting this trial. We're renegades, Andrew, with experience and expertise that they can only imagine. We can find ways to make ourselves useful, even invaluable, once we know more about what is happening."

Andrew frowned. Unless the Earth's early interactions with extraterrestrials were considerably different in these Time Lords' home universe, that Earth had probably been destroyed in the absence of the Doctor several times over by now. "I'd be afraid to find out," he said out loud, cringing at the thought.

"If they'll tell us anything," he pointed out. "Hard to bargain when you don't know what the other side needs."

"Difficult," the Master agreed, "but not impossible. They aren't all knowing or all powerful, you know that. They'll make a mistake or let something slip that they don't mean to. It's simply a matter of paying attention."

"Cooperation, then, to start," said Andrew glumly. He didn't enjoy cooperating with officials in general, much less with ones that had kidnapped him and put him on trial. "I don't like it," he said aloud, though it hardly needed saying.

The Master chuckled, amused at his expression.

"Naturally, you inherited the Doctor's hatred of authority. Yes, Andrew, for now, cooperation is wisest," the Master agreed, "whether we like it or not."

The Master didn't like it either. He hated it and was feeling rather vengeful. Still, there was a time and place for everything and now was the time to seem to comply.

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The Call

XD Okay, but I'm off to bed after this tag.

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