The Masterful Saxon

The stage was clear. The lights were bright. The audience had bated breath.

Lyra made her way to centre stage. She bowed and was just about to flick her wrist with the luminous material on, therefore causing a misdirection allowing the magician to be lowered behind a secret panel, when the sounds of a whirring engine exploded into life. She stepped back and suddenly flew across the stage as a blue box appeared. It let out rippling white energy that started to activate different pieces of machinery. She heard a clicking and turned around as she saw the bullet shooter activating for the bullet catching illusion later on. She hurried out of the way and watched in awe as a man stepped from the large blue box. 

He was dressed in eccentric clothing, a large red hooded robe, and had seemed to be confused. He stepped out of the box just as the shooting machine activated. A little pellet of lead shot across the stage and broke through the clothing of the man spraying pink blood across the stage.

The audience were screaming by this point, except from a young boy in a yellow tabard who knew what was about to happen. The boy then flickered away as the projector turned off and the beam displaying him died.

The man from the box looked at Lyra then at the audience then closed his eyes. His skin started to ripple as heat spread across it. As he spread out his arms so he resembled a cross, his whole body erupted into flames. The orange light enveloped his body and suddenly he was no longer there. A form of blue light stayed inside the flame until it regrew into a new body that was too small for those funny clothes. The flames died and the man spoke two words as the Masterful Saxon, the magician who worked at the theatre in question and was called Harry, walked on.

"The mast.." He spoke and then he blacked out.

The man opened his eyes. They were blue and he couldn't see anything because it was the first bright light he had seen in his life. Although he wasn't sure why that was as the mirror at the end of his bed showed the reflection of a young man. It also showed the reflection of young woman but she was sat to the side of the bed and didn't have any wires hanging out of her. He remembered seeing her face before he fell asleep.

Now he was in an empty corridor, with one bed, a visitors chair and table and a couple of life support units. He looked towards the door and saw the weapons of two guarding soldiers outside.

"How did you do that trick?" Asked the girl.

"I'm sorry?" Replied the man.

"I've seen magicians do transformations before. I've seen them doing teleportation's before. But I have never seen anyone appear out of nowhere on a stage that is not rigged, survive an actually lethal shot and then transform themselves from one person to another whilst being on fire."

"I don't remember any of that."

"Surely you remember don't you?"

"No?"

"You said something before you blacked out."

"Yes. Am I allowed to get out of bed?"

"Sure."

"Thanks." The man climbed out of the bed and started to walk around the room touching different bits and pieces.

"So what did you mean by those two words?"

"I don't know." He said as he unscrewed a tiny bulb from an LED sign.

"What did you say?"

"The Mast. I remember thinking that when I saw that man in the cape, Those words arose in my mind."

"Interesting."

"Yes very isn't it." The man was pulling some wires from out of a plug socket.

"What are you doing?"

"I don't know."

"That reminds me. Harry had taken your blue box."

"Whose Harry? Which blue box?" The man was taking Lyras IPod whilst he spoke to her.

"Harry is my boss. He's the man who came on stage as you said, 'the mast'. He's a magician and I'm his assistant. The blue box was  your teleportation cabinet."

"Right." The man was wiring the little things together without looking when he said, "when you brought me in, did I have anything on me?"

"Your clothes were taken by the soldiers and your effects were put in a bag for you."

"Can I have them?"

"Here you go." She handed him the bag which he opened. Inside the bag was a key, a Rubik's cube with weird symbols on and a bag of jelly babies. He started to eat the jelly babies whilst he finished off the weird contraption he had been working on. He went across to a window and attempted to open it. "Stuck tight." 

"What?"

"The window it's shut." Without thinking he pointed his new contraption at it and pressed one of the buttons. The device glowed red then green and the window opened. He looked back at Lyra and said, "Coming?"

"Where?"

"Back to the theatre."

"Sure."

"Lets go."

The man jumped from the window to the floor, it was only about six foot above the ground and he was wearing slippers. He grabbed a doctors jacket from the back of a bench and threw it over his back. His hair was pulled back so he could see and allowed his face to be observed by everyone with Lyra walking behind him in a gothic Egyptian dress, she didn't have time to change before she got taken to the hospital.

They walked over to a taxi and the man put his contraption over the passenger door lock. The contraption was a metal ring with a glass lens in it attached to the palm of his hand. It was held on by a leather glove with a metal ring on the outside. The leather glove was connected also to a metal band around his wrist. On it was an IPod with strange symbols on it and wires coming out connecting to the glove. 

The man climbed in and turned to the driver. "Take us to the theatre".

"Which theatre?" Asked the cab driver.

"The Reptuswan Theatre." Replied Lyra who had just climbed in.

As the taxi driver exclaimed about all the weird things that had happened there, the man realised everything

"And that was just last year," Finished the taxi driver as they pulled up to the back stage door.

"Thank you. Sorry we have no money." Announced the man.

"Hang on. You're not going anywhere!"

"Sorry about the locks." The man put his contraption to the door handle and the car door broke open.  He and Lyra walked to the stage door. "Lyra I need you to make your way to the stage. Any door that you can't open, just insert this key into it." He placed the key from his possessions bag into Lyras opened palm.

"Where are you going?" She asked nervously.

"To get help. Make your way to the stage. I will meet you there."

"Ok. Thank you."

The man ran away and Lyra turned to the stage door. She opened it and walked through. Making her way forward, she stepped onto wings. She was in a little room and the door behind her pulled shut. She couldn't open and so hurried to the door nearer to the stage and tried to open it. It wouldn't budge so, as a hydraulic pipe from one of the illusions burst, she tried the key she had been given in the door.

It opened and she stepped onto the stage. In the middle  of the stage was the blue box with wires coming off it and plugged into the stage lamps. Standing next to the box was Harry. 

"Hello Lyra." He exclaimed. He was wearing a black robe with red scarf wrapped around his neck.

"Hello Harry."

"Well you see that's where you're wrong. I'm not Harry anymore. I'm Harold. Harold Saxon. Or maybe even the Masterful Saxon. But that isn't my real name. Oh no. My real name is one of the words but not Saxon or Harold. My name is The Master."

"I don't understand."

"Humans never do!" He exclaimed the do louder than any of the other words.

"What's gong on?"

"Don't you remember the year that never was?"

"What?"

"The year when the toclanfane fell?"

"No?"

"Well in that year I won. The Doctor lost and I won. And with the Tardis I can make that year happen again. Now if I want. In fact I think it will!" He clicked his fingers and pulsing green energy came out of the blue box- or the Tardis- and exploded out of the lights. As the master watched the lights he didn't notice a black cloth lowering onto the back ground. He didn't notice the trapeze behind the material and more importantly he didn't notice the man hanging from the trapeze. 

The man hanging from the trapeze stepped behind the Tardis. He was in full view of Lyra but could not be seen by The Master. He was dressed in a stereo typical magician outfit, popularised by Jean Paul Robert Houdin. The man lifted his contraption hand up to the stage roof lights and the glass lamps started to shatter. The time energy pulsing out of them died and retracted flying back into the Tardis. "Who are you?" Cried the Master when he saw the man in the magician outfit step out. 

"I am The Doctor."

"But you can't be."

"Oh I am."

"How did you know I was here?"

"I was on Galifrey with Reptuswan. We were talking about your evil and trickery when Reptuswan decided to find out where you were. We saw you were here and I said I'd come and get you. You have crimes to pay for after all. I landed the Tardis there but I didn't count on regenerating."

"Well there was another thing you didn't count on."

"What's that Master?"

"Me stealing the Tardis." The Master opened the door and stepped through into the Tardis, the glow enveloping in.

"Master step away from that!"

"No. You always win Doctor not today." The doors smashed shut and the Doctor raced over, shooting the door with his hand contraption. Nothing happened. Slowly the Tardis started to dematerialise until the space it had stood in was empty.

"Care to explain?" Asked Lyra as the two soldiers from outside the hospital doors walked onto the stage.

"Ah. Hello Unit."

"Doctor. We received your message."

"Thank you for coming. Sadly my plan didn't work so I'll be staying on this planet for a bit."

"Ok." Replied the taller soldier.

"Bring me my equipment."

"I think the commander would prefer you to set a base at one of our buildings."

"No thanks. Now Lyra do you mind if I live here?"

"Without Harry there won't be any shows for a while so sure. We would be requiring money though."

"How much do you normally get in a week?"

"Well it's three hundred pounds on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we don't perform on Thursdays, on a Friday it's about six hundred pounds and same on a Saturday."

"Well I'll pay you two thousand, two hundred pounds on the days you are usually paid and two hundred pounds for each of the other days."

"That sounds ok."

"Oh and in addition, when I get the Tardis back- because I will- I shall take you anywhere you like in the whole of time."

"Is any of this true?"

"Yes!"

"Well then, I shall be considering that."

"Thank you."

"Just one question."

"Ask away!"

"Are you going to keep that outfit?"

The Doctor and Lyra will return in, 'Defence of the Silurian's.'