Well, it's complete at last, four or five years since I started it. Sad
really...



Chapter 5

Evil Adric stormed into his underground lair, still adjusting the collar of
his leather pyjama costume. The Outlers paused in their rehearsal (Wesley
was doing his best to fill in for Denzil, but the new Gillian creature was
no replacement for Tasha) when they saw the scowl on his face.

With a shaking finger, Adric pointed at one of the
viewscreens, displaying the street outside Fingals. The Trakenite could
clearly be seen lounging against the wall of the pool hall opposite,
swinging her rucksack from one hand.

"Why isn't she dead?" demanded the crime lord. Wesley looked
sheepish.

"It's possible there was a problem with the warrior," he
admitted, reluctantly. "The nanites just aren't as effective as we'd hoped.
They keep bunking off and hiding in beer cans."

Adric sighed. He pointed at the remaining Outlers. "Look,
just go and capture her, OK? The Doctors are going to be arriving any minute
and I've got to finish getting that satellite set up. Bog off back to your
Academy, Crusher, you've probably got some dull as shit rite-of-passage
facing your fear to do."

* * *



Dwayne, Angie and Sharon stood in the entrance to Fingals.
Nyssa was in clear view on the other side of the street. She seemed to be
deep in conversation with a man in black. They shrugged: Adric would
probably want him too, if he was an ally of the Psycho. They spread out
slightly, and drew stun pistols.

They were just about to fire when a bus pulled up in front
of the arcade, blocking their shots. They cursed and waited for it to move
on.

* * *



"Nyssa!" Turlough called in greeting as he descended from
the bus, casting nervous glances around him as he did so. Tegan was even
more enthusiastic, flinging her arms round the little killer. Nyssa pulled a
puzzled face at Turlough through her friend's embrace. He just rolled his
eyes and mimed drinking motions.

"Don't worry, he's safe," Nyssa said when Tegan and Turlough
began to throw suspicious glances at the stranger. Then she noticed their
rucksacks. Tegan had opted for one in the shape of a huge red and black
tattooed face, while Turlough's had a little green figure poking from the
top. "Oh, how could you? They're so... commercial!" Nyssa complained,
prodding Yoda disdainfully.

"Commercial you think I am?" snorted Yoda with contempt.
"When eight hundred years old you are, see how many rôles you can choose."

The stranger cast a nervous glance towards Darth Maul's
head, but it seemed to be inert. Yoda noticed his gaze.

"Worry not. Crude facsimile he is," then he stared hard at
him. "Hmmm, a Jedi do you wish to be, little boy?"

The bus finally moved away, muffling the stranger's answer.
The friends were still deep in conversation, but Yoda was looking around
from the top of Turlough's rucksack, and suddenly began bouncing up and down
in a state of agitation.

"Mmph! Evil approaches! Spank them we must!" Turlough rolled
his eyes again as the little green gnome leapt to the ground and activated a
lightsabre twice his size. Tegan pulled the nozzle of a flamethrower from
her rucksack. Nyssa produced a couple of handguns while the Australian was
trying to get the pilot light working.

An energy beam lanced across the road and struck Turlough,
knocking him flat. The stranger, Nyssa and Tegan all dived for what little
cover there was in the arcade's entrance. Yoda opted to charge across the
road, grunting obscene oaths as he went.

"Rabbits!" cursed Tegan, as the entrance filled with dancing
stun beams. Nyssa was taking the occasional pot shot from behind an old
pinball machine, but without any apparent success.

The stranger was looking around helplessly. After a few
seconds, he seemed to come to a decision.

"No!" shouted Nyssa as he leapt into the street and was lost
from view. Tegan was surprised to see a certain ambivalence in her friend's
expression, however, which jarred with her sincere cry of anguish.

It was almost half a minute before they realised the barrage
had ceased. The two women crept from the arcade carefully.

The stranger was helping Yoda cover three dejected-looking
teenagers. They had all been disarmed somehow, and Yoda was chuckling to
himself.

"Mmph! Strong in the Force you are, little boy!" he nodded
to the stranger. "Trained as a Jedi you must be!"

"This whole place is a block transfer computation!" the
stranger exclaimed excitedly to Nyssa. "It's the only way he could have
afforded to set up any underground lair!"

Nyssa would have replied, but at that point there was some
kind of explosion, and the ground rushed up to meet them all.

* * *



Nyssa woke in a huge underground chamber. Yoda, Adric, Turlough, Tegan and
herself had been tied up and dumped unceremoniously in barrel chairs. She
tried to blot out the insistent trilling of Irish folk music from the
speakers as she finally fixed her bleary eyes on her nemesis. Evil Adric.

The Alzarian was standing before the table, laughing
manically at the Doctors, who were being held at gunpoint by a ring of TV
Comic Second Doctors.

"Can we assume you're not actually intending to use this
satellite scheme of yours?" asked the third Doctor.

"No," guffawed the bald mathematical prodigy. "That was just
a bluff to get you here, Doctors. Some friends of mine are very anxious to
meet you."

There was a brief silence, eventually broken by the ninth
Doctor sniggering.

"So, you don't actually have Daleks in your reality, then?"

Evil Adric blinked. "Not that I'm aware of. Why?"

The ninth Doctor nudged his predecessor, who had crammed his
whole fist in his mouth and was shaking with silent mirth, then looked back
up at Evil Adric. "Oh, no reason." The Doctors then turned their attention
away from the Alzarian and started muttering among themselves.

"Fifty quid says they'll blast him down within a minute of
getting here."

"No question! But will he crumple soundlessly, or will he
writhe and scream for a bit?"

Feeling a little awkward at being ignored in this way, Evil
Adric was pleased to see that Nyssa had woken up. As he turned towards her,
she noticed he was now wearing both Adric's star for mathematical excellence
and her own Traken tiara.

"The Daleks won't be getting here just yet in any case," he
told her smugly, "I want to have plenty of time to rant at you, loony."

"About what?" snorted Nyssa. Her nostrils were already
beginning to twitch in a fashion that had Tegan squirming as far away as her
bonds would allow - despite being unconscious.

"About this universe's Adric. The wuss. About the way you
prevented him from realising his full potential as a crazed criminal
mastermind. First by eclipsing his mathematical skills in the TARDIS, then
by killing him several hundred times. That kind of treatment can really
damage a guy's development."

Nyssa was about to say something utterly cutting and witty
when Yoda butted in instead, having spent the last minute staring hard at
both Adrics.

"Lying you are. Adric you are not."

There was a deafening silence, broken only by the gentle
squeaking of Evil Adric's leather pyjama suit as he shifted uneasily under
the sudden scrutiny.

"Yes, I, er, am actually," he countered, but his whine was
almost drowned out by several minds racing very quickly indeed.

The silence was broken again by an excited boom from the
sixth Doctor. "No, you're NOT! You're one of those obnoxious little shits
that was doing the sums for the mad slug! Admit it!"

"Silence!" 'Evil Adric' roared. "The world will fear the
computational wrath of Remus! And now Adric has learned not to be a
spineless pussy, he will join my band of universally ignored, mathematically
excellent criminal geniuses!"

"Foolish you are," grunted Yoda. "Wise your brother was to
learn the ways of the Force. More pert he is."

"Romulus was weak," roared Remus. "A lifetime of abstract
calculation interrupted by just a few days with a curiously attentive
elderly gentleman. He had no taste for the glory of geeko-terrorism. The
Alzarian's arrogance has been tempered by torment and ridicule, it his
destiny to join me."

More clone Doctors had arrived now, and were circling the
bound captives. Even they looked surprised when Adric raised his head.

"But why doesn't anyone LIKE me?" he squealed.

Everyone in Fingals opened their mouths to deliver a mental
list at this point, but Remus cut them all off.

"Because you're a gobshite! But once you've joined me, it
won't matter, Adric!" Remus jabbed at the ceiling with an emphatic finger.
"Don't you understand? We're going to build the planet where Maths is fun!"

In her seat, Nyssa had simply been glowering at people at
random and rubbing her hand. Now, however, something had snapped within her.
"Enough exposition," she snarled. "This party's over."

In one fluid movement, she leaped to her feet and waved her
arm at Remus. His retort was cut off as a curved Swiss Army Knife lodged in
his windpipe.

As Remus clutched at his throat, eyes bugging as he fought
for breath, he staggered forward and bashed his shin on a barrel chair. The
tiara flew from his head and soared across the room...

Nyssa caught it without even looking, and flipped it on to
her noble Trakenite brow. All the Doctors, Tegan and Turlough flung
themselves to the ground as she took in the ranks of robotic Doctors
bristling with heavy duty hand artillery. As she smiled.

"You are SO dead."

With a flick of her wrist, a pistol slid from her sleeve and
erupted into noisy action.



* * *



Once again, it was five minutes later. The real Second
Doctor was hiding behind one of the barrels, a little upset after seeing
Nyssa pick one of his droids up by the feet and swing it in a vicious arc
that decaptitated several more of the doubles, before ramming its laser
rifle through its teeth and vapourising the back of its head. His other
incarnations were comforting him as best they could.

Yoda was busily scampering around Adric and Denzil, making
grunting noises and propositioning them with special Jedi training in his
swamp.

Tegan had found the bar, and was trying to convince Tasha to
join the air stewardess profession. As far as anyone could tell, this
persuasion seemed to consist entirely of compliments about the girl's legs,
but as the Australian was waving a broken bottle of Newcastle Brown at
anyone who came near and shouting, "My bitch!" no one was rushing to
judgement.

Remus was still staggering around trying to remove the blade
from his windpipe and bleeding on people.

Finally he collapsed on the ground. In a very gurgling tone
of voice, he spluttered. "My allies... will kill... you all."

He was still then, but his words hit home. All eyes turned
to Nyssa, who was standing on top of a pile of dead droids brandishing a
broadsword she had found somewhere. She stopped posing, reluctantly.

"Oh, come on," she flounced. "I've never met a Dalek
canonically. You guys are on your own."

"Shove 'em out of a window!" Tegan hollered from a distance
of six feet.

"We're in a cellar," replied the seventh Doctor morosely.
"Good place to trap things, cellars."

Just as everyone digested this unwelcome news, the
futuristic entrance door began to open with a hydraulic hiss.

"Well, I'm terribly disappointed in you for letting things
come to this, Adric," the fourth Doctor observed. "You've really let the
side down."

Before a shocked Adric could protest, the third Doctor
chipped in. "Yes, you, young man, you sir, are a wanker!" The door was now
open high enough to reveal the familiar gold bearings of an imperial Dalek.
It seemed to be in a hurry to get inside.

Adric could see Tegan opening her mouth to join in the
abuse. He beat her to it, determined to salvage some dignity.

"Don't you start, you pissed bitch! At least I've never
spent whole adventures complaining about giant snake penis envy dreams, for
God's sake!"

This provoked a cheer and a backslap from the fourth and
fifth Doctors. Turlough battled to keep a straight face as Tegan's mouth
worked soundlessly in shock.

The sixth Doctor beamed broadly, impressed by the sudden
rudeness. "You've force-evolved some balls at last, you Alzarian scamp!"

Flushed with new-found popularity as he was, Adric pressed
the advantage home. "Can we do something about getting out of this while
I've still got them attached?" he demanded, pointing towards the door.

The door had continued its inexorable progress upwards, and
everyone still breathing scrambled to find cover before the Dalek's deadly
gunstick was in a position to smash their cells with hard radiation.

And so it was that no one could ever report on the First
Doctor's expression as he wheeled himself into the lair, still making 'Brmm,
Brmm' noises.

"Goodness me, hmm, what a lot of people. Good job, too, I
peel like a farty."

* * *



It was much later, and Tegan, Turlough, Nyssa, Adric, the
Doctors and Yoda were all sitting comfortably in This Time Round. The Rani
and Mel were halfway through a Lambrini-fuelled rendition of 'Dead Ringer
For Love', and getting closer with every chorus.

"So, weasel," Nyssa was saying as she decorously wiped away
her Fox's Nob moustache. "There's still one thing I don't understand. Were
you really a criminal mastermind on Alzarius?"

Adric shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but managed to
retain a faintly enigmatic smile. Nyssa scowled, and, if she had moved
slightly closer towards him on the sofa, all the Time Lords were far too
detached and enigmatic to comment. And Tegan and Turlough were too busy
staring at the karaeoke stage and rubbing their thighs.

As with so many beautiful scenes, however, Wesley Crusher
ruined the moment by appearing.

"What did you guys do down at Fingals?" he demanded. "The
nanites have abandoned the Doctor template in favour of a more efficient
fighting model."

All eyes turned to a certain young lady, who did her best to
blush. The eighth Doctor raised his eyebrows. "You mean - ?"

"Yes!" yelled Crusher. "Fifty gunslingling Adric clones are
marching on this pub even as we speak!"

For a moment, everyone was silent. Then, Nyssa held out her
scarred hand, Adric pressed the Sean the Sheep rucksack into it. "Go get em,
tiger," he whispered softly.

Nyssa, to everyone's astonishment, yanked the boy to his
feet and into a tight bearhug before bounding out the door waving her
rucksack and whooping.

"Your luck, changed it has," Yoda observed, sagely.

Adric nodded, once, than coughed up some blood and pitched
forward on to the floor of the bar, a breadknife jutting from his back.

The fifth Doctor sighed. "Ooh, she's a little madam, that
one."


Prologue - Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four

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