Success

The plan was complicated, nay convoluted, but worked. Sen is safe, well, and alive. More importantly, so are we. An audible sigh of relief can be heard through the very fabric of this fragile world. I am so very proud of my friends here, who stood with Terry and I wielding bows and arrows against the lightning.

As you know, dear diary, Sen was possessed by the energies of an ancient evil from our reality. A Star Vampire. This presumably happened in the dark times when she and her creator fought them long ago. So far she had kept this in check but was weakened during my regeneration and it had taken hold, notably when she is in corporeal form.

To purge this from her system we need to force ‘her’ to regenerate, as our species can. When she did, because of the bond she shares with her TARDIS, more accurately the SASTAP, I knew her TARDIS would regenerate too. ALL the poison must be purged. This was the only way.

To ‘kill’ her, we needed to get her here, to the ETC, as she is untouchable in her own ship. She also needed to be corporial, which she hasn’t been for the last month having abandoned her body and stayed within the walls of the SASTAP. For this I had a plan that I skipped over with the others but worked a treat. I melded my consciousness with that of the ETC, a simple task since my regeneration, then gave myself a round in the leg to simulate the TARDIS in pain. Sen could not resist and had to come. We needed to get Sen over here where I knew the lack of energy to sustain her while outside the SASTAP ‘should’ force her to take her corporial form. Until then she was our friend. As soon as she changes she was most assuredly not. We could not attack her till she did.

Her TARDIS arrived, in the pool room, and as it did I landed the ETC in hers. This caused a healthy recursion loop which, because of the bond she has with her ship, put her off balance and made the inside the outside as well as the inside. This meant she was vulnerable to our forthcoming efforts. Being away from the SESTAP meant she had to revert to a flesh form. We’d have stand no chance otherwise.

She had Solis with her. I remember thinking that, even in this stressful time, it calmed my being just to see another Timelord.

We were very much, should there be even seconds of delay, relying on Alfonso and Roy to keep her occupied. Vi was there to document proceedings (she provides the images enc.) but was to be seen as ‘non-combative’. This had never been done before and we knew that when we followed her back we would get to see the regeneration of an entire TARDIS. Nobody had ever witnessed this and it was something entirely unique.

I kept Kira, all be her bouncing and keen to assist, well out of the way. I have no intention of explaining to her sister how she was ‘mauled to death by a Star Vampire’. One insane woman after me was quite enough thank you.

Darklings blessing and magics I knew would be invaluable. As well as any healing she could offer I had set up a bio-stasis chamber in the zero room and given everyone a TRANSMAT bracelet and set these to teleport the humans back to their homes (if their medical readouts fell below a certain level). I have come to respect Ms. Elytis greatly.

Part of the plan was also to remotely detonate the small explosive device I placed in her ship while we were there last. Sen is well protected so we needed to ‘get-her-on-the-back-foot’. We knew she would have shielding, and until we could get her to drop that Terry won’t stand a chance of getting a shot in.

I was pretty sure that when I detonated the device the damage to her ship would weakened her enough and she would drop her shields. With the recursion loop, and the damage, and the ETC screaming down her ear, she simply couldn’t concentrate enough to maintain any kind of barrier for long. Due to the bond I made with the ETC during my regeneration this did put me off guard as well, but, we managed to maintain a psycic link with Terry during all this as we needed to match her ‘biorhythms’ with that of a Timelord so that she could use the bow. The bow is our only weapon against Sen that can effectively kill her. Everything else was just an important distraction. It needs to be pure Validium that kills her. Terry needed to put a bolt of Validium, the living metal, through each of Sens hearts.

It was over quickly. We gave her little time to react and Terry had procured a TeleDash Belt from the boot cupboard which she had sensibly not even told me about. Good girl. Two arrows, two perfect shots, while Roy and Alfonso poured 50 calibre weapons fire into her shields and Darkling lit the very air around Sen with living fire.

Crippled, she ported back home. We followed her to make sure. It was beautiful, and amazing, and we will never see it’s like again. Sen is younger, red hair, far more ‘human’. Her first reaction was that she was hungry. Imperial news. A splendid result. Quite marvellous.

As I sit here, with my Chi Latte, I am so very aware of how wrongly this could have gone. Of how ‘lucky’ we were. Of how special my friends are to me. I find myself contemplating this as not the end of our troubles, but the beginning of a solution. It also reminds me, by this fearsome show of power in this fragile world, that we tip a balance here and very much need to find our way home...