Part 37 - Mysteries

I lie here floating in my Zero Room literally a new man. Regenerated. I think. Not a regeneration in the traditional sense. Let me explain...

Oolon, Terry, and Solis were in my sitting room for a now all-too-rare social call (NO Inner Council business this time). The timing couldn't have been accidental that David Abbot's TTC chose that moment to reach out to me. We received a distress call. Not the mechanical one, but the TTC itself called out to me. It – and its pilot – were in danger. David has been missing for some time, so we instantly went into action.

We traveled to a small desert planet after picking up one of Solis' most trusted guards – Captain Burns. There was David's TTC among some ruins, it's main door hanging open for all to enter. Before entering, Lady Todriya and Lord Avedon arrived. Presumably David's TTC distress call was set to send to his House. I'll be sure to address that in the next Mark refit with the TTC's...

We stepped into the console room, to be “greeted” by three Paradigm Daleks. Instead of gunning us down as we fully expected, they simply trundled away. We figured that they wished to preserve us to help lead them to David. Why he is a valuable enough target to pass up shooting the entire Inner Council I certainly intend to investigate. I quickly used the internal scanners to locate David in his Zero chamber, and initiated a lock down procedure once we reached him.

We found him, after dodging a few exploring Daleks. Upon reaching him, we decided upon a plan. David and a small group would return to the console room, after we lead the Daleks to the ballroom. Upon reaching the ballroom and luring the Daleks in, we would flee and David would eject the room, frying the Daleks into oblivion.

All went relatively according to plan. We lured in the Daleks. Lady Todriya took a hit, and then her and Lord Avedon used their Time Rings to escape. At the time, none of us knew if she was ok. Solis got out of the room, while Captain Burns and I held off the Daleks. We turned to run out of the room..... and blackness.

It felt familiar, and yet somehow different. I was without a body, suspended in the main computer of David's TTC. I wasn't sure what had happened, but I knew this was not the TTC I should be in. So I somehow ordered his TTC to land inside the SASTAP Eye of Harmony. A risky move, for sure. Upon materializing, the SASTAP instantly knew what had happened and pulled my consciousness into its own computer Matrix.

What happened next is what is most interesting. I awoke in the zero room... in a new body. I never felt the regeneration. My body was presumably destroyed when David ejected the room. I don't blame him, the signal was given at the correct time, I just didn't get out fast enough. Is this a real Timelord body? Did I regenerate? Or is this just a SASTAP construct – another fail safe system I didn't know about? I do not have answers to these questions as of yet.

I slept. A lot. Nearly a week. I got up from time to time and left the confines of the Zero Room to test this new body. It's a physical specimen, for sure. Tall, agile, strong, young. I can feel the personality change typical of a regeneration. I feel powerful, confident. Gone is the trepidation of being a comparatively young organic Timelord unsure of my role in New Gallifrey.

In the strangeness that is TTC interior time – David, Oolon, Terry, and Solis stepped out of their TTC nearly seven days after my own body... appeared. I was not fully recovered, still resting in the Zero Room. I felt good enough, however, to reassure them that I was ok, and landed my newly regenerated console room in the Panopticon. A fascinating process with the new modified Type 60 telepathic controls. Obviously, this body is very well suited to telepathic control – exactly what I was hoping for.

We stepped out to the arrival of Lord Avedon's TTC. We were very relieved to find Lady Todriya just recovering from a successful regeneration. Her body, much like mine, was nearing the end of its life cycle, so both of us seem better for the incident. Her and I will both need some time to explore our new selves, but we should be fine in a relatively short time.

Captain Burns, however, was not so lucky. With no miracle SASTAP rescue from the ejected TTC room, he is lost. Our first casualty of what appears to be the SL-Space Time War. A good man. Recruited from the SL-Space furry community by Cardinal Dix into his House Guard, he rose to the Castellan's Guard purely for being good at what he did. He was one of the first living beings not from N-Space to step foot inside our newly built Panopticon all those years ago. He will be missed – and may NO Timelord say that he was less of a part of our world because he couldn't regenerate or pilot a TTC.

For myself, I plan to utilize the self assured confidence of this new incarnation. I am the Lord President of the High Council of the Timelords. Today, I died. Today, we lost one of our own. Today, Daleks invaded the home of one of our officers, and attempted to assassinate the entire Inner Council. How or why they did this, I don't know. Frankly, I don't care at this point. They are done. No more Time War. We're doing this the old fashioned way. We are going to exterminate every stinky, lousy Dalek in existence, if we have to do it with a baseball bat one at a time.