The Tinkerer Chronicles: Steven's First Regeneration

Steven's First Regeneration

It was supposed to be a good day.

Candace was finishing high school, the sun was shining, the skies were clear and blue, the peaches were growing out on the tree...

Everything was perfect.

And then he came...

Of all the days to come, he picked this one. But, from the way he described it, this visit was preplanned. The Doctor had already met Candace during three of his previous lives, and only recently in this one. By his account, Candace had regenerated into many forms, including an Asian woman, an English brunette, and an African-American man.

My daughter was going to be a Time Lord one way or another. But she's going to continue being a regular human teenager, as long as she's with the Doctor.

Kristin and I stood near his TARDIS as it dematerialized out of sight from our property. Shortly thereafter, we heard the roars of more TARDIS engines deafen the tranquil rural atmosphere. Before my wife and I knew it, we were surrounded by dozens of TARDISes – newer, sleeker, and more efficient models from the outdated Type-40 that the Doctor was still rocking in. In their default mode, they were grey, featureless capsules (kind of like the pills I take).

Platoons of Time Lord soldiers marched out of the TARDISes and onto our land, surrounding Kristin and me and pointing their guns at us. "What the hell...?!" my wife blurted out in anger. She rose up her hands instinctively, though I was quick to make her lower them, seeing as we weren't being arrested.

Something much worse was happening.

The last two men to have disembarked from a TARDIS capsule were men I recognized. One was the general of this Time Lord platoon on my property; the other was Rassilon himself, under the rarest of circumstances the Time Lord President had ever stepped foot on Earth.

Rassilon pointed to me with his gauntlet-clad fist and boorishly demanded, "Give me the child!" It was clear who he was talking about.

"Excuse me," Kristin stepped up to him. "But who do you think you're...?"

I pulled her back and kept her behind me, shielding her from all the guns trained on us. "It's too late," I told Rassilon. "She's somewhere beyond even your reach!"

But Rassilon wasn't stupid. "She's with the Doctor, isn't she?" he deduced with a devilish smirk. "I will eventually find him, Tinkerer...and the Hybrid will become my greatest weapon against the Daleks in the impending Time War!"

"Over my dead body!" I cursed. And, yes, I realized much later that this was a poor choice of words, in front of a group of men that had guns aimed at me.

Playing off my words, Rassilon turned to the General and smugly stated, "Grant the man what he wishes."

"NO!" Kristin cried, knowing what was about to happen next.

After much hesitation, the General carried out the order for his men to fire.

Kristin tried to get out in front of me...save me from the barrage of laser fire that was meant for me. I pushed her as far away from me as possible before the fingers of every one of those soldiers squeezed the triggers of their rifles.

I'd be lying if I said getting shot with thousands of lasers didn't sting.

No...it hurt like hell.

It was like getting shocked by ten-thousand volts of electricity. Every single one striking at my body from all angles. Parts of my nice, pressed clothes were singed off, exposing burnt flesh.

By all means, I should have been dead...deader than Rassilon wanted me to be.

After what felt like minutes of being shot at, Rassilon and his soldiers left me lying on the ground in a smoldering mess. I faintly heard the engines of their TARDISes roar on their departure.

I laid on that ground, staring into that clear, sunny blue sky, until Kristin's hysterical weeping face came into view. I heard her saying something to me along the lines of "You're going to be O.K., Steven" or "Please don't leave me, Steven!" My eardrums were burning, possibly due to some of the lasers that managed to strike my ears (easy targets, considering their size).

As wracked with pain as my body was, there came an odd tingling sensation that I felt. It started from the tips of my fingers and made its way throughout the rest of my body in seconds. Where I felt pain mere moments ago, I now felt only tingling. I detected some kind of golden hue glowing between me and Kristin. When she looked down at my body, her eyes and face lit from both the glow and a look of awe.

There was only one explanation for what was happening: regeneration.

That fool Rassilon and his dogs should've spent a little extra time making sure I was dead, because they didn't give nearly their all to put this old Tinkerer down!

This was my first regeneration...and it scared me.

I enjoyed being the man I was and the human I dedicated myself into becoming, after the Sisterhood of Karn's elixir nullified some of my Time Lord D.N.A. for the remainder of this original body of mine.

If this was to be the start of a new journey for me, I could only hope that the new man I'd become was just as great.

Once the process was over, I sat upright.

The first thing I noticed was how tight my scorched clothes felt on me, new expanded flesh ripping open new holes. I looked to Kristin, whose countenance was washed with stupefaction (I forgot that this experience was as new for her as it was for me).

"How do I look?" I spoke with my new voice – a strong baritone that was a stark contrast to my prior tenor.

I felt a breeze come over my scalp. My long silver locks were gone. I was entirely bald now. That's gonna take some adjustment.

"Steven, I..." Kristin gasped, still in shock. "You're...You're..."

I couldn't take much more of the suspense, and Kristin was too daunted to utter more than a couple of syllables. So I raced back into the house and went to the nearest mirror I could find. When I finally got a look at my new face, I smiled.

Staring back at me was a burly, bald black man...and my second incarnation!