Master the Future [closed]

[Lucyfer]

A melody of a time long forgotten played in the background of the council room, where one woman in a long, black evening gown sat. One leg was crossed over the other, and one goblet was clasped in her pale fingers, red nails glinting in the light.

Come and share


This painting with me.​

All of the other bodies were slumped against the table, except one. That one looked terrified, a human to all eyes. The dead ones revealed the truth of its nature. All of the deceased, in their suits and dresses, had reverted to the form of a werewolf.

Unveiling of me


The magician that never failed
​

“Do you understand?” came the soft voice from painted red lips. Her green eyes were fixed steadily upon the panicking figure.


“How did you—how are you—we all drank from the same wine!”

This deep sigh coiled around my chest


Intoxicated by a major chord
​

“Yes, we did,” and she took another sip of the burgundy liquid to emphasize that fact, a long, slow sip. “The difference is that every other glass was laced with poison.” It was such an elementary trick, but so very effective.


The pupils of the wolf’s eyes narrowed. “Wh-what do you want?”


“You,” was the answer, “I’ve told you from the start,” her lips twisted into a smile, “I can enhance your claws so that you can cut through daleks, and I can provide you with armor and free shifting, if only you will convince the others to bend the knee and serve.”

I wonder


Do I love you,


Or the thought of you?
​

“You’ll kill me if I disagree?” There was a madness in the desperation. “Well go ahead! You already—”


“No, you misunderstand,” she shook her head and set the goblet down. Her arms crossed over the table. “You can do this of your own free will, or,” her hand moved to grasp at a pendant around her neck. It was taken from the arcteenian, another highly psionic race, “I will simply make you.” It was not, in fact, a power she had.

Slow, love, slow.

​

However, many believed it was true, “And what I make you say to your people will give them a much worse fate. Is that clear?”


It was very clear.

Only the weak are not lonely.

​

The werewolf representative, Abelard Truskin, was soon standing before cameras and announcing to the world, to his people, that the greatest threat was the threat of the daleks. Decked out with cybergear, he made a show of tearing through a captive dalek with his claws and demonstrated how the werewolf cycle could be controlled.


“It is Amara Calix that we must follow if we wish to master our own futures!”


Amara Calix had blatantly ripped off the slogan of the once-great Master, and she felt no shame whatsoever in that as the crowd roared to life in applause, and she did her best to look humbled.

 

[Darkair]

There was a quite loud noise that emitted from inside the halls, so loud that anyone inside of, what was in primitive days called the "White House," could hear it. It echoed quite a few times. VvvVvwooorp. VvvVvwooorp. VvvVvwooorp. VvvVvwooorp. KShhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. THUD. That was what these unknowing citizens would call for decades, "The First Return."


There was good security in the Master Building, it always made a generic, three loud alarms if anyone entered without authorization. This alarm was the odd one out from the normal one that everyone had gotten used to, due to the uncountable assassination attempts. This alarm was a quick four alarms. BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP. BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP. You'd heard about how the Master was plagued with Drums, and he always had heard a constant four-beat tempo in his head, but surely, this was coincidence, a flaw in the system.


Or, at least, that was what you'd thought, until the Master walked in the door, and shouted, "And who the bloody hell are you?!"

 

[Lucyfer]

The applause that had rung out started to pause and quiet itself when a strange sound entered the place. It was unfamiliar to all, save a few of those black humanoids, the xhinn. Amara let her gaze drift to one, and a message was relayed to her.


‘That sounds like a TARDIS.’


Queer. Amara arched an eyebrow. It was not impossible, of course. The Time Lords, ancient enemies of many species, could go through time. What was to stop one from coming here? Even so, it was unexpected. Unanticipated.


A new alarm sounded, and Amara made a gesture. The converted humans, and the werewolf, moved closer to the entrances, and the front of the stage.


A stranger walked in and demanded answers. From the strange looks he was getting, it was evident no one knew who he was, and Amara relished in that as she folded her arms over the wooden pedestal on the stage, and leaned forward, “I believe the better question is who are you, and why shouldn’t I have you executed to make a point?” There were enough cameras around to capture it for the universe, so they would know she didn’t abide by interruptions.


However, she’d let the stranger make his case for his life.

 

[Darkair]

The stranger looked at Amara as if she had just fallen down 10 flights of stairs. "I must have underestimated." He looked around, and looked back down the hallway he came from. "Ah, yes. Many of my, shall I say, Masterpieces have been relocated from these hallways." He looked at the crowd below, and shouted, "Loyal Citizens of the United States of The Master. Look upon my face." He looked directly into a camera was broadcasting on a big screen above us.


"Look upon my face, and tell me truthfully... am I not YOUR MASTER?!" Some crowd gasped, as he did look like The Master. but surely he died 50 some years ago... Right?

 

[Lucyfer]

'You have severely underestimated me.' The man sought to aggrandize himself and claim that he was the Master. Even if he were, he was a few years too late. The universe was now in many different hands, and the woman standing at the podium knew how to kill a Time Lord.


Finish them off when they’re regenerating. “It is nice plastic surgery,” the woman cooed, and she motioned towards the wolf on staff. “It isn’t that difficult to change a face nowadays. You can change anything,” the wolf was the prime example of that, “Observe,” a motion to a xhinn. They were shapeshifters by nature, blending in before conquering.


The form shifted to mimic the Master’s, and her grin broadened, “So you know—you’re speaking to much more than the United States. You should address your audience properly.”


The people who had some doubt about the man’s identity chuckled at her tone, for she was clearly not taking the man seriously. Others were a bit more nervous, uncertain. No matter what, this man meant trouble, and that meant being anywhere near could spell their death, just because they’d be in the blast zone when Amara stopped toying with him. “You’re going to have to be more convincing than that, Sir, but I’m afraid we haven’t the time. My people, I bid you adieu.”


The live feed would be shut off.


If this was the Master, she knew better than to give him the floor.

 

[Darkair]

"You bid me adieu?" He said, looking at Amara. "Adieu." He shook his head. "Never a sentence I thought I would hear in my fifteen hundred years of life." He sighed. "What do I need to do, Oh great and powerful leader of Earth, to prove to you that I am indeed the rightful leader, hmm? Do I need to take a little quiz? Show you that RETCHED Doctor's hand? Perhaps disabling the security, or making this whole platform drop like a fly?" He teetered back and forth on his feet.


"If you don't accept me, it doesn't matter anyway. I can go back to any. Single. Point in time. When I was the leader, of course, and tell the masses, 'I will be back in the year 2553'. So you can all forcefully have memories implanted in your heads, which is quite painful, actually, if you don't simply listen."

 

[Lucyfer]

Amara stepped from the platform as the cameras went off. “I was not bidding you adieu, sir, I was speaking to everyone in tvland.” She supposed it was easy to mistake that, though.


She had stepped down to his level, and she offered a hand, “There are many ways you can prove you’re a Time Lord, at least,” he could go about it and replace memories, but really, anyone could deny it still. People were good at denying things.


Amara would make sure of that, if nothing else. “Step one is to come along with me.”


Humans weren’t naturally psychic. Amara knew she was an exception. Like the Time Lords, she’d become something of a touch-telepath so long as she wore the pendant of the Arcteenians. She was hopeful that would be enough to get inside the man’s head, and discern his actual identity.

 

[Darkair]

"And why should I come with you," The man who called himself the Master placed two fingers on her forehead, "Amara?" He closed his eyes momentarily, tutting his tongue. "No, I don't trust you at all. But that makes it so much more fun!" He looked up your sleeves before taking your hand, and pretending to skip. "We're off to see the wizard~"

 

[Lucyfer]

Amara scowled at the touch, and might have tilted her head up to bite off his fingers, if he didn’t remove them so quickly. He was smart not to trust her, and she let him take her hand. As soon as the contact was made, she pulled to indicate the direction they were to go, and he skipped along.


She wasn’t focused much on that. She sought out the truth in his mind, and felt a pull, almost as if she were being guided.


The memories she was pulled towards, however, weren’t false. They played out in her head from his perspective. The takeover with the toclafane appeared in her mind, the failure of the Doctor, the regeneration to his current form, and the decision to head to the future.


She knew it all before they entered her office, but she didn’t say a word until they were within. “You can stay out,” she spoke to her guards, and would let the Master’s hand go once they were within the office, decorated lavishly in burgundy and gold hues.

 

[Darkair]

"Are we quite done? Because, to be honest, I like the new office, perhaps replace the gold with a bit of black or something." The Master looked around, feeling the walls. "Oho, The Doctor's Sonic?! I was sure they would find that ages ago." I broke through the wall, though it might've been a bit flimsy, and retrieved 9/10's Sonic.


"And, if we're not done, what is there to be talked about in these times? I'm a king- no, a GOD, albeit one you know how to kill." He shrugged, and sat down in your chair-- no, HIS chair.

 

[Lucyfer]

That was her chair.


She expected blatant disrespect from the man who first conquered the universe, but knowing something and experiencing something are often two different things.


Amara approached him where he sat and placed a hand on the cushion of the chair besides his head as she lowered herself a bit so she was almost eye level. Not quite, of course. She wanted the higher ground. “You’re as mortal as me,” she reminded him, “You just have a time machine,” but he wouldn’t be going anywhere if she killed him. “Don’t you have your own time to rule, Master?” Had things gone wrong for him?


No, that wasn’t possible. She would know, because it would have effected this time. "You know that no one here is just going to let you rule again, don't you?"

 

[Darkair]

"Oh, sure, I have my own time to rule, and sure, no one is going to let me rule again." He stood up, pacing around. "The problem is, no matter how mortal I am, I can still do things that you, sadly, cannot." He shrugged, and stopped walking around. "The question is, do you like to do things the boring way, or the fun way?" He sighed these last words, and looked for something along the bookshelves. He found the first edition of "Harry Potter"-- A relic!-- and read it in under 3 seconds. "Bah, never saw why he liked those infernal books."

 

[Lucyfer]

The Master pushed right by her, but Amara took it as an opportunity to reclaim her rightful throne. Her eyes followed him. “Depends,” she said to his question, watched him read the book ridiculously fast. “What do you consider to be fun?” From his history, Amara imagined she might find some humor in it.


There was just that small little detail of Lucy’s history. Amara didn’t want to end up in her unenviable position.

 

[Darkair]

"Well, each of them have their own special perks, one of them involves you co-operating, one of them involves, well, I'm sure you know about my wonderful ex-wife, Lucy." He sighed. "I don't really have time for another Lucy, and I also don't have time to be making a cover story for your dead body, so I'm sure you'd choose the fun option." He had a point; even though it was a bad choice for Amara and almost everyone else, it was a point. But then again; isn't that what Amara was...? Bad. Either way, for Amara, it would feel fun, at least somewhat, but she probably wanted to, say, not have no free will.

 

[Lucyfer]

Everyone knew about Lucy, the foolish human that hadn’t understood the depths of evil to the Master. Hell, knowing about Lucy had saved Amara’s own life. After all, she wasn’t foolish enough to target Fjonn until he was asleep, and then it was with fire, the known weakness of the xhinn.


Such an easy weakness to exploit. If it weren’t for their psionic capabilities, they never would have lasted as long as they did. “You didn’t answer the question,” Amara pointed out, but suspected he wouldn’t. She had a choice, and she knew which was the better one. She could twist this to her advantage.


The Master could have gone to any other place, but he had chosen here. She could twist it to suggest he had chosen to support her claim, even if it would look like he was taking over.


Besides, she knew how to kill people if they bothered her. She’d played the game of patience before, of letting someone rise while plotting their downfall, “But I’ll play,” she smiled, “the cooperating version, at least. I’d rather not be Lucy, either.”

 

[Darkair]

"Ah, yes. I had assumed you would do that. From here on out, as they used to say, I'm back in business." He sighed, and popped a piece of gum into his mouth. "You realize I'm not stupid. If I tried to take direct control, you'd kill me in an instant. No, you will be my Master-in-training. Of course, I'm still the main leader, but you can help make the calls. Even important ones." He grinned, and laughed, though this was a very serious matter. "If I decide I trust you, or even like you well enough, we can both lead. It'll take a while, though, you know."


Even with the fact that Amara knew how to kill The Master, he was not any kind of man to be messed with. One line of history books say that once, a man tried to give him headache medicine, and he had him killed on the spot. There was no clear reason; possibly because he thought it was poison of sorts, possibly he just didn't like the man.


"And if you really want to know what I think fun is, it's probably the same as you. Blowing things up, killing people. A little bit of a regény if you're in the mood." He casually threw in a word that Amara'd never heard before, and for the simple reason of; after The Master took control, everyone spoke English. All languages that weren't English had been dead for over 500 years.

 

[Lucyfer]

Amara arched an eyebrow at the word regény. She didn’t know it at all, though her mind tried to translate it as ‘regency’. That, however, made no sense. She decided it probably didn’t matter right then, and wouldn’t admit her ignorance of the word right then.


Apparently, she was to be groomed for greatness. Amara knew better than to trust those words, but she would pretend to. Pretending was in her interest right now. “I understand completely. Respect and trust are earned, and neither of us really have any reason to trust the other.”


The Master had a reputation.


So did Amara.


“Where would you like to begin, Master?”

 

[Darkair]

"Hmm. First I need to--" He stopped mid sentence and facepalmed repeatedly. "Damn it all, if I've been gone 50 years, that means two things. One, I really need to catch up. Two, there's gotta be leaders in each sector now.." He sighed, and straightened his tie. He then looked at it for a moment, and took it off. "Bah, I'm going to suffocate myself in that."


"Anyway, as I was saying, first order of buisness is to learn about the past couple of years." He hit a button on the bottom of your former desk, and a minute or two later some rum came up in a large bottle. Dark rum, a full 80% Alcohol. He took a large swig as if it wasn't anything. "Second order of business is learning about our enemies. Third order of business is search and destroy." He cracked his knuckles and sat back down.

 

[Lucyfer]

At least the Master understood when he didn’t know something. There had been so many stories about his madness that Amara hadn’t been sure he had enough cognition to truly run things now that it all had changed.


Amara let him figure out the order of things, and shook her head in disapproval at the rum. She supposed she didn’t know if it actually got Time Lords drunk, but if it did, points were lost. One needed a clear head at all times for this business. “There were four main divisions in the universe. Now there are three, with the cybermen recently overthrown by myself,” she answered him, “Those holding out are the daleks,” that should be no surprise, “and what the superstitious are calling the demons.”


It was also what they were calling themselves. Amara had seen one, once, on the screen. It did resemble what some thought Satan should look like, tall and red, horned and terrifying, but she wouldn’t allow herself to believe it was anything more than another alien race to be overcome. "The daleks have no allies," they were daleks, after all. What they conquered became daleks. "And the demons have an army of other races they've enslaved or convinced to assist them."

 

[Darkair]

He glanced at the rum, after noting you looking at it. "Oh, no. My metabolism can keep up with this like it's nothing, unless I want to get drunk. I just like the flavor." He did set it down, though, co-operation was key, he assumed.


He listened to you talk about the Cybermen, the Daleks, and the "Demons". He frowned, and said, "Blasted Daleks. Cybermen weren't so bad, you should have gotten the Daleks first." He paced around, looking at the floor for a minute or two. "Have you came into contact with these Demons yet? And if you have, er, how strong are they, or how strong do they claim to be?" The problem was, that with him being as old as he was (Around 1550 at the moment, assuming he had lived all of the past years), he surely knew some aliens and some powers that none of you knew about, and so many that if any of them were around, at least some of them would be a danger.

 

[Lucyfer]

Amara chuckled when the Master seemed to recognize he was being judged, “Do as you will, Master.” Yes, there was a touch of mockery there. He was letting someone’s opinion guide his actions.


She’d make note of that. He could be influenced.


“The cybermen were the easier of the two,” Amara explained her rationale, “and from them, I’ve acquired the technology to bring down the daleks. Many in my army have been…as they say, upgraded,” a smirk played on her lips, before it faded at his questions about the demons. She could only shake her head, “They send their minions. I haven’t encountered one personally, nor has anyone in my army. We’ve just been dealing with those who have pledged themselves to the demons.”


She considered a moment, then added, “They scare the Vashta Nerada, though.” That had been strange. They were scavengers, so Amara hadn’t expected them to be involved at all. They had no real enemies, but the demons clearly frightened them. “I don’t anticipate they are great in numbers, but whatever power they do have is enough to scare the lessers. Did you not encounter them before?”