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[nitro_is_ace]

Ace hums as she works, off-key as always, but that's alright. There's no one here to be tortured by it. Even Magic is at the farm just now, since this is only a quick jaunt to straighten out a few bugs with the temporal brake. Now she knows why the Doctor was always rooting around in the innards of his TARDIS - the amount of upkeep these machines need is somewhat ridiculous.

With this calm, peaceful atmosphere, she should be grateful she doesn't actually crack her skull open when the cloister bell rings, deep and sonorous and not at all conducive to said peaceful atmosphere.

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[just_the_doctor]

The Doctor, on the other hand, does bang his head on the underside of the console.

The bell rings. And rings. And rings.

And then the console lights up. Mauve. Highest priority. The center column engages without preamble.

The emergency recall was engaged. Gallifrey was pulling him home.

And that damned bell was still ringing.

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

Y'know what?

Ace has decided, that when choosing between not being able to go home and at least telling folk what's going on, and that bell?

The bell is infinitely more annoying.

She can't do anything about the course, or the timing of it all, but when her TARDIS rematerializes in rank with the rest of her class, she can be two steps away from disabling the damn thing.

This may be the reason she looks a tad bit crisped when she steps out. Not that anyone seems inclined to notice, now that the full force of Gallifreyan organizational skills are focused on the threat they all knew, on some level, was coming.

As she, and the rest of her class, receives orders, she wishes for the nth time that she wasn't so short. Then maybe she could see if he was here. He would be here, right? Somewhere?

[just_the_doctor]

He's here. Farther down the line with the Type 40s and other outdated models. His police box looks very out of place among the smooth, featureless exteriors of the others -- the TARDIS in its natural state.

She was hard to see on the dais above the assembled ranks, but the voice was unmistakable. Romanadvoratrelundar -- or Fred to those close to her -- was again in the headdress of the Lady President. The Doctor had heard something a couple of years ago about her having been removed from the position, but apparently she'd finagled her way back. She was good at that.

Honestly, the Doctor wasn't paying much attention to the speech once she'd outlined the general nature of the threat. Daleks. All of them, apparently, and set on an invasion course. It was a bold move for Davros, who prepared to move in the shadows. The Doctor wondered what had pushed him to such a commitment of force.

He checked back in with the speech long enough to confirm it was little more than "we few, we happy few" posturing, and then went back to his ruminations.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_romana_/]

She shouldn't have to give this speech.

She prepared it a decade ago, when she first heard of the possible threat of Davros and his creations. It has been in a file ever since, the file she has never opened again until today, her luck charm against the inevitable.

Two regenerations and nearly half a lifetime ago her place would have been in the crowd, waiting for orders, not up here giving them. Perhaps up here, she can do more good.

She only hopes, with all her hearts, that she will be able to tell Ray all about it later.

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

She's getting twitchy, sitting here so long. She's forgotten how long-winded Gallifreyans can be, even during a crisis. And she's forgotten snacks. Bugger.

She's in the middle of a very nice daydream about fudge from a certain Yorkshire kitchen (being accompanied by a certain Yorkshire werewolf), when they get down to the important bits. Sadly, she puts away thoughts of chocolate cherry fudge and sharpens up a bit.

It's about what she expected. Holding positions, throughout time and space, a 'with your shield or on it' policy that leaves a bad taste in her mouth. This? Is going to be bloody ugly. She knows most of the names that are called for her position, though the truly Gallifreyan ones go right over her head. Too many syllables.

[just_the_doctor]

Preparations for war. It makes him sick to his stomach, even when the enemy is the Daleks. There was always a better way, always another option to avoid this level of bloodshed.

The Doctor is put in charge of a rather sizable portion of the fleet. Romana probably thought she was being helpful. True enough, the Doctor was more comfortable giving orders than following them, but in the ranks, he could have slipped away and worked the problem from another angle.

The plans are set. Flanking an army in five dimensions was difficult, but not impossible. If they could break the Dalek ranks, disperse the army, and engage them in multiple battlegrounds simultaneously, they could neutralize the sheer numerical advantage that the Daleks had over them. Or so it was hoped.

There's no room left for discussion. It's time to go to war.

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

Her TARDIS must have caught on to the general mood, because for the first time Ace can remember, she's running without a single hitch. The assembly had broken up in the most distressingly quiet fashion she's ever witnessed. No one wanted to talk about what was about to happen. It was as if, by keeping quiet, they could all deny it for just that little bit longer.

She runs systems checks by rote and, in the spare moments between tasks, writes a message.

It's only when they're about to set off and she still hasn't sent it that she realizes she's dithering. She, Dorothy 'Ace' Witherspoon, nee McShane, is dithering over whether or not to send a message. That is entirely Not On, and decides her.

Time for a little high-stakes poker. Still true to the name. ~A

She just hopes she remembered the code to the Doctor's TARDIS correctly as she starts the dematerialization process.

[just_the_doctor]

The note is waiting for him when he gets back into his TARDIS.

His hearts drop into his feet when he reads it. In all the confusion and rush, he'd forgotten that she'd be here. That he put her here.

He took a moment to pull himself together. Ace was a survivor. She was before he'd met her, and she'd only become a more ferocious one since. He didn't have to worry about her.

It was just everybody else that was in trouble.

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

She only has a few minutes, relative time, to fret about not getting a reply, and if she should try again after looking up the code.

Then they drop out of the Vortex and straight into hell. One of the TARDISes disappears again in a haze of blue fire, breaking apart under the strain.

That had been one of her classmates, she realizes distantly as she scrambles for her own shields and for some way to block out the audio the Daleks are projecting on all frequencies.

She doesn't need to hear it. She's heard it too many times already.

She wants to be on the beach, she decides, bringing her weapons online with one hand while maintaining a death grip on the console with the other. The one on the planet with the fruit. That'd be nice.

The resulting explosion wipes out five Daleks and sends her careening five minutes backwards.