in the
IX.
The Rani and the Master were growing ever wearier of each other’s company the longer they were together, but their unspoken mutual distrust prevented them from parting ways. The Zarn, nearly made ill by the negative emotions the twosome regularly emitted, seldom lingered very long within the Rani’s TARDIS, and his absence generally never bothered them whenever he ventured back to his starship for rest or maintenance. This time, however, it seemed to them that something was off, but they weren’t sure what. They pushed the thought from their minds and made a rather weak attempt at conversation.
“Rani,” the Master asked. “Tell me again how you first began to manipulate the mind of the Marshall girl.”
The Rani told him how she had persuaded certain Sleestaks to use her once blonde image to mentally confuse not only Holly, but also Will, into believing she was a spectral incarnation of their mother. Rick Marshall had nearly blown the entire operation with his strong will when he realized she looked nothing like his late wife, but once the Rani had placed a mental image into someone’s psyche, it was practically impossible for her subjects to shake it, and this was especially true of Holly.
With Holly, the Rani not only implanted a mental image of her mother, she placed a very particular thought in her young mind - that her secret name should be Rani, and when she encountered Holly a second time, she boldly revealed her true physical form, and completely convinced the gullible child to believe she was the future Holly Marshall come back in time to inspire her to rescue her father and brother. Not only that, but she gave Holly Marshall three Gallifreyan implements that looked like jeweled necklaces, but were actually spying devices that both surveyed things for the wearers and broadcast to the Rani the information she’d need to carefully plant more suggestive thoughts into Holly’s easily persuaded head.
The Rani made many more covert visits with Holly over the decades, and with uncountable other easily influenced young girls throughout the known worlds that she convinced were also members of her Rani horde, and one day she would gather them all together and rule all galaxies like a futuristic legion of super-intelligent Amazons. She would be their queen. “Rani,” of course, meant “queen.” This plan, of course, she kept from the Master. She regarded him as a complete idiot, and enjoyed manipulating him. He served useful in other ways at times, but he was quickly growing more and more annoying with each passing moment.
The Master kept his emotions in check at all times, but he had an infatuation with the Rani that almost equaled his intense hatred of the Doctor and all of his incarnations. He wasn’t certain how the Doctor had regenerated into his present Gothic form, and he didn’t really care. All he knew was that he wanted to steal the Time Lord’s physical form and claim it as his own. His body was in a constant state of stasis as the result of his last misadventure, and he was more ectoplasmic at times than fleshly. Occasionally, the Master’s skin oozed from him into pools, but he was able to reformulate himself and hold his form together by scientific means, and with the help of his robotic creation, XR-6, which he’d designed as a mockery and evil version of the Doctor’s K-9.
The Master’s primary mental concern, however, was that he would get to a point where he would be unable to stabilize himself for once and for all, so he needed the Doctor’s body, and by hook or by crook he would obtain it. But he did have a few back-up plans up his sleeve, just in case, the chief one being overtaking the Zarn’s alien form if he could simply figure out how it was structured and organized on the molecular level. He cast the thought aside and spied around the Rani’s TARDIS control room. The first time he’d seen it, she had T-Rex embryos on pedestals, but they had since been replaced by skulls she’d obtained from the Lost City’s Library of Skulls.
The Rani disposed of all of her spoiled T-Rex embryos after the Sixth Doctor sped up time in her TARDIS, which resulted in the creation of the first “Grumpy.” They eventually relocated it to the land of the lost, and it was then that he hit upon the idea of figuring out how the Rani could come and go from her little hideaway with no one ever being the wiser. Oh, yes, she had an untold number of tricks up her pretty little sleeves, and that was another reason she fascinated him so. She also had, despite her seeming immoral nature, a reverence for some things that was simply beyond his ken.
The Rani left the Skull of Primacy alone when she spirited the other skulls away, for example, because she revered it as a relic from the earliest days of the Time Lords. This was a tactical measure on her part, he was certain, since it allowed her replacement skulls to be regarded as authentic while allowing her to spy on all that transpired within that most sacred chamber of the Silurians - no, the Sleestaks. He had great difficulty calling them “Sleestaks,” since he knew they were nothing more than genetically altered mutations of the Silurians, created by the Rani herself in her Academy days when she, he, and the Doctor were oh, so very young.
The Rani and the Master discovered the land of the lost by accident in those days. They were very young students then, and they often stole away in private to investigate the secret laboratories of the Gallifreyan elders. Back then they often flirted with one another, even shared a stolen kiss on several occasions, but those times were long, long past. Ultimately, the Rani learned of the first time travel experiments of the ancient elders, and when she found out that they had figured out how to merge the uncountable holes they’d accidentally torn in the fabric of time into one bubble universe that, theoretically, had “in” doors but no “out” doors, she determined that she’d outsmart the elders by discovering how to travel back and forth through this plane of the damned. That would be her claim to fame, but when she actually made her discovery, she instead opted to make the land of the lost her own personal play land, where no one in the known galaxies would ever even think to look for her.
It was in the land of the lost that the Rani first began dabbling with genetically altering what she regarded as lower life forms. Discovering that beings capable of communicating with her on a somewhat intellectual level only proved to be a perk to her since it helped preserve her sanity during periods of isolation, and since the time portals in the land of the lost literally sucked multiple life-forms from different times and places from all over the universes into its bubble universe, she was never at a loss for company, or victims. Either was always a matter of opinion, depending on how one looked at it. Sometimes her occasional company ended up her victims, but all was fair in love and war to the Rani.
A loud racket was heard clanging and banging in the back of the Rani’s TARDIS, and the Master and the Rani darted to the source of the noise. Within an electrically enclosed cell appeared Will Marshall, shaken and shocked to have been transported into such an unfamiliar situation.
“Ah,” said the Rani, smirking. “I see you were just ‘eaten’ by one of my pets. It’s been many years, Will, but I’ve been waiting for this day.”
The Rani walked over to a console on a side wall and pulled out a laser gun. She modified its setting, took aim, and shot Will Marshall directly in the chest. He passed out immediately, and slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“Your games never cease to fascinate me,” the Master grinned. “To what end have you sedated this young man, and for whatever reason did you create a faux dinosaur?”
“I created the faux Grumpy as the result of, for lack of a better term, a bet,” she beamed.
“With whom?” the Master asked, extremely curious.
“With our friend the Zarn, of course,” She laughed. “He created a bio-skeleton of a dinosaur at one point, and he named it ‘Fred,’ but young Will here, with the assistance of his father, saw to it that it was defeated. I told the Zarn I could produce a better and more practical dinosaur creation, and one with false flesh and a teleportation device within its maw, and now you see that my operation was a complete success.”
“And what of Will Marshall?” the Master asked.
“I intend to place him in a cell by his father, and keep him under control in the very same fashion. I have a use for both of them, and very soon the Zarn will be turning the beloved ‘Uncle Jack’ over to me as well.”
An alien voice quietly entered the minds of the Doctor and the Rani. It was the Zarn. “And what of Holly Marshall?” he asked.
The Rani glared at him, and his form took on the color of her emotional state. “She shall be - and already is - one of the Rani. All else is none of your concern. If you want to return home, you will continue to do as I command. Despite what you may think, I always keep my promises, one way or another. My word is my bond.”
The Zarn spun on his heel and exited the craft.
“Well,” the Rani whispered to the Master. “Good riddance to bad rubbish - for now. Our time here is almost at an end. Please excuse me while I retire to my chamber to dress more appropriately for the celebration we will both revel in this day: the death of the Doctor.” She adjusted the setting of her laser rifle, and carefully placed it upon the main console of her ship.
The Master and the Rani laughed, and when she left the room, the Master sent out an encoded command to XR-6, who was in position at his TARDIS. It took several minutes for him to compose the proper wording, and by the time the message had been sent, the Rani returned, dressed in her favorite uniform, her hair coiffed in the style she knew he liked best.
“Off we go, Master,” she grinned. He nodded silently, smiling knowingly.
And they walked off together in search of the Doctor’s TARDIS. The laser rifle was in the crook of the Rani’s arm, and she fully intended to use it, and soon.
TO BE CONCLUDED…
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