Waiting On A Rival

Chapter 30

The pain was excruciatingly worse than my other regenerations. Even when the light died down and my breath came back, the dull pain resided in my chest. Donna, Jack, and Rose looked at me incredulously, but the Doctor looked as if time had indeed ran out.

"Now then," I tested my new voice, "Where were we?" Still British, tiny bit rougher than my old voice.

He finally spoke in a cheerful manner, "No. Absolutely not fair."

"What?"

"It suits her," Donna argued.

"What suits me?" I asked. Not being able to wait for one of them to say, I checked the essentials. Perfectly normal. Two arms, two legs, all of my fingers. I felt my face. Lips, nose, eyes. It didn't feel abnormal.

It wasn't until a strand of my hair fell into my face that I realized. It was dark red, almost like the kind that the Doctor had wanted when he regenerated. "Oh," I smiled at him, "Of course." I ran my hands through my hair. It fell a little past my shoulders and in messy ringlets.

My skin almost glowed in the semi darkness of the TARDIS. It was so pale. I turned to Rose, "What are my eyes like?"

"Bluey green," she replied, "Suits the hair." It looked like she was trying to not laugh at the Doctor. My gaze hovered over her and how she looked at the Doctor before I understood.

Rose looked at him with complete adoration like most of his companions, but she added something. That something that made her break dimension walls to come to the Doctor again.

So I hugged the Doctor quickly and stepped away when I saw Rose looked down. She was the first companion that I became friends with.

He looked at me, asking for a reason, but Jack beat me. "Celeste, beautiful as always."

"Jack," I retorted, "Cocky as usual."

"I make it work," he insisted which made me roll my eyes. Before I could reply, the TARDIS power shut off. The Doctor checked, "They've got us. Power's gone. Some kind of chronon loop." It tilted forcefully and threw all of us around.

"There's a massive Dalek ship at the centre of the planets," Jack informed, "They're calling it the Crucible. Guess that's our destination."

"You said these planets were like an engine. But what for?" Donna asked.

"Rose, you've been in a parallel world," he ignored the question, "That world's running ahead of this universe. You've seen the future. What was it?"

"It's the darkness."

I muttered, "The stars were going out."

"One by one. We looked up at the sky and they were just dying," her face flushed, "Basically, we've been building this, er, this travel machine, this, this er, dimension cannon, so I could. Well, so I could-"

"What?"

"So I could come back. Shut up. Anyway, suddenly, it started to work and the dimensions started to collapse," she continued, "Not just in our world, not just in yours, but the whole of reality. Even the Void was dead. Something is destroying everything."

Donn recalled, "In that parallel world, you said something about me."

"The dimension cannon could measure timelines, and it's, it's weird, Donna, but they all seemed to converge on you."

"But why me?" She demanded, "I mean, what have I ever done? I'm a temp from Chiswick."

The scanner beeped and I read the readings. "The Dalek Crucible. All aboard. We'll have to go out. Because if we don't, they'll get in."