The Doctor Of War ³

The Witch's Familiar

Clara is hanging upside down with a rope around her ankles, spinning. Missy is sharpening a stick with a knife.

"Consider the Seer and the Doctor. The Seer and the Doctor, trapped. The Seer and the Doctor, alone. You all right there, dear?" Missy asks.

"Where are we? How did we?"

"Shh, now. Mummy's talking. Ok, I'm going to tell you a story of the Seer and the Doctor. It's classic. On the run, no TARDIS. No friends, no help. In other words, the Seer and the Doctor, happy. It was a long time ago. Doesn't matter which face they were wearing, they're all the Seer and the Doctor to me. So, let's give it to the eyebrows."

"But the Daleks..."

"Yes, I'm coming to that."

"Shouldn't we be, um? I don't want to say dead."

"Hush! They're travelling by teleporters. Unfortunately, their teleporters are out of power. Also, unfortunate, their being stalked by, oh, say about fifty android assassins? I may be rounding up" she checks her sharpened stick "ow. Fifty invisible, indestructible android assassins, all exclusively programmed to kill them."

"Why are you sharpening that stick?"

"Well, I've no idea how long we're going to be stuck out here. Might have to go hunting."

"So why am I tied up?"

"In case there's nothing to hunt. Alex and the Doctor, then. Surrounded. Outnumbered. Outgunned. And freeze. Nanoseconds to live. Four, I'd say, being generous. Now, my question is this. How did they survive?" she prods Clara "oh, come on, Clara! You know them. Consider the Seer and the Doctor."

"Where did they get that teleport thingy's?"

"Oh, good, good. They stole two from some androids."

"So, I'm guessing they use the same energy as the android weapons, right?"

"Excellent! Not seeing you as sandwiches now."

"Ok, then. They use the energy wave from the android weapons to recharge the teleport bracelets and at the exact moment they're supposed to disintegrate, they actually teleport. Hang on, that's how you did it. That's how we escaped the Daleks."

"I modified the same principle for our vortex manipulators, yes. Blew them off, I'm afraid. But the Seer and the Doctor, the, they, improvised it. They must have got through several thousand calculations in the time it takes to fire up a disintegrator. Seriously, what swots!"

"So, the androids think their dead and they escape."

"No, it's the Seer and the Doctor. They fell into a nest of vampire monkeys. But that's another story!" she lets Clara down very suddenly.

"Oh!"

"Why does the Seer and the Doctor always survive?"

"Because they're clever."

"Yes, but there's lots of clever dead people. I love killing clever clogs, they make the best faces."

"Because they always assume they're going to win. They always know there's a way to survive. They just have to go and find it."

"Yes, except this time, they made a will and threw themselves a goodbye party. Now, if the Seer and the Doctor assume they're going to die, what happens then?

"We do."

"They're trapped at the heart of the Dalek empire. Their prisoners of the creatures who hate them most in the universe. Between us and them is everything the deadliest race in all of history can throw at us. We, on the other hand, have a pointy stick. How do we start?"