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This was, by far, the strangest staring contest that Dani had ever gotten into in her life. They had both (probably) been minding their own business. Dani had been leaving a bookstore, and the old man had been doing.... something... involving a weird laser pointer.
Now they were both staring each other down because a room had materialised around both of them. Or at least, it had shown up out of nowhere for her. The rando didn't seem as perturbed by the giant piston and the overly large collection of buttons and switches encircling it as she was.
The only reason Dani knew that the old man was holding a laser pointer instead of a pen was because he was currently aiming the light at her. Through her, really, because Dani had been intangible when the wheezing sound of the room had settled. A sad trio of chairs behind her collapsed into ashes behind her, and he switched the laser off.
"This was not my fault," Dani said immediately. And she was right, because being intangible in the middle of a street just meant not running into anyone. It shouldn't summon a building.
It especially shouldn't summon a building with a man leaking what felt like ectoplasm. It didn't look the same, it was bright orange with blue lightning running through it; Dani could only see it out of the corner of her eye.
"I can completely believe that the Doctor left safety protocols off, but this ship is deadlocked," the man frowned at her.
Dani frowned back at him, not sure what any of those words meant in that particular order.
"That's nice." Dani was very polite and made sure not to call him a moron. She had bigger fish to fry. "Is there a reason you're leaking?"
Dani still needed a lot of practice determining what facial expressions meant, but she did feel the emotional miasma filling the room shift from an annoyed hostile to a more general irritation. One that might still be aimed at her (which, rude) but might be aimed at the various equipment he kept pointing at her, then throwing away.
Dani didn't trust it. She especially didn't trust the scattering of amusement in the air that reminded her of Vlad. It was like the strange brunet that the room had kidnapped (or who had kidnapped her with his room?) had decided to do her a favor. Moods like that were not known for being safe to take at face value.
"What's regeneration energy?" Dani asked, instead of moving.
Leaving and getting on with her unlife sounded great, but there were enough gadgets in here to compete with the Fentons. Which really meant that an innocuous looking door would probably be anything but.
Also, very importantly, she was curious about why her stare off competitor felt like deathless death.
It was like meeting a cousin, except this cousin tried to kill her instead of the other way around.
"Are you not leaving? I always thought it was a character flaw of the Doctor's that drew you simians to him. Maybe it was his TARDIS."
Since that wasn't an answer, Dani crossed her arms and renewed her staring. He continued to mutter, circling the odd desk while flipping and twisting switches.
She made out something along the lines of 'Chantho held me back' and 'I will never understand what he sees in pets'.
Dani cleared her throat loudly.
"Look, I dunno how you got a room this big in the middle of a sidewalk without us having been run over by now, or anything you've said. But I'm not going out a door just because it says exit on only your say so. You tried to smite me."
The air and his very round face both were amused now.
"Don't worry, it's not an airlock. Right now, anyway. None of the answers matter if you're leaving. But if you insist, I guess I can keep you."
That was not what she'd said at all.
"The 'room' is the TARDIS, a space time machine. One that's currently been locked by it's very petty former pilot. Not much on Earth in this century can damage the outer shell of a TARDIS, certainly not one of those flimsy cars."
He pulled away from his button mashing with a too wide smile that belonged only in comics.
"I am The Master, now owner of this ship. Scurry out the door or sit like a good rabbit."
So he was a poet, Dani thought. No wonder he couldn't answer any question directly. She supposed it could be worse. He could be like Ghost Writer in a Mood.
"Tell me what regeneration energy is first," Dani said stubbornly, moving her arms out of their defensive position.
The amusement in the air was bitter now, but it was the least threatening he'd felt since they had met.
"My last assistant killed me, so instead of dying like a human or most other species would, I changed form to live again. That is regeneration. Rejoice in my majesty!"
He even posed, and Dani realized that yeah, this was a definite poet AND a theatre kid. Unfortunately for both of them, Dani was far too invested in his answer to play along.
She'd kept herself intangible but human looking throughout the standoff. But at his answer, Dani went fully ghost without even thinking about it.
"You can do it too? Am I leaking and I just don't notice it? Or is all the emotional excess because you were dying before switching? I never noticed it with my cousin, but I was a copy of his so maybe I can't tell?"
Dani flew up to him, chattering away as if she'd never been concerned. It wasn't that halfas couldn't be a danger - Vlad certainly was. It was just that halfas were so rare that Dani felt confident that could have one friendly conversation at least.
It even explained why his 'ship' was so weird and why he was so territorial of it. This TARDIS must be some kind of haunt, and while she didn't understand the shell bit at all, if this was actually a room in the ghost zone, then it would explain a lot. Honestly, Dani felt kind of stupid for not thinking of it before.
Once she was up in 'The Master's' face - it was as good of a name as any, even if it was a long the lines of Box Ghost - Dani noticed three things.
First, the sudden, complete absence of aggression.
Second, his left hand was clutching her chin, examining her as one might a melon for ripeness.
Third, there were drums in her head.
It wasn't a pleasant earworm, and whatever it was didn't feel like it came from The Master. It was a separate but small thing, tinier than Shadow and Johnny 13 but just as present.
The drumming noise was everywhere. Dani was ecto and the drums carried, carried like a racing heartbeat. She couldn't even worry about what the poet master man wanted, because there wasn't room for thought. Something about it drew Dani a half step closer, as if she could look to him for safety, because he could be trusted for all that the drums could not.
And then, blissfully, they left. After a brief pause, her face was released as well.
"You and your cousin, can both do this? Travel in time and access your watchers?"
Having a preferred term for ghost was literally the least strange thing about this man, so Dani nodded with wide eyes.
"How did - "
The question of how; died in infancy, as the emotional miasma swirled into something giddy, along with a familiar desire for chaos. He felt something like Amorpho, if Amorpho had extra layers of teeth in his ectosignature.
"Change of plans!" The Master preened, spinning on his heel and grabbing her hand to drag her after him.
Shock kept Dani tangible, and confusion had her floating after him like a tired kite.
"This will be so much better because the Doctor would never see it coming. Not with how he was going on about us being the only two left, as if that couldn't be his fault. Now."
His eyes held hers and the focus in them captured Dani more than curiousity alone ever could. The glee had smoothed into something steady, two hands supporting her shoulders.
"Sit. There's a good egg."
He had dragged her down halls of coral, stone, and mercury to a room much like the first. Dani had just enough wherewithal to affirm that this was, somehow, a haunt as that was the only thing that explained the infinite dimensions alongside Cardiff.
As contrary as Dani was - by nature of being a child, herself, and a clone of Daniel Fenton - she couldn't pull away from the Master's eyes.
"I was going to take over this planet a very different way, but you and the cousin you were loomed after, well.. the possibilities are just so much more fun!"
She still couldn't move. Perhaps, if ghosts wanting to take over the world was any less commonplace, Dani might have been able to break out of the hypnosis. Perhaps not. After all, Dani was barely two years old, and the Master had perfected his abilities long before he had started these games with the Doctor.
What Dani could not have known was that the man in front of her was an escapee from a (recent, although all could be called that from a certain point of view) time war. His most recent life had involved a great deal of experimentation and cultivation of potential resources. She could not have anticipated that the Master had experience using an Artron Matrix to grant regeneration cycles, nor that he could recognise species with the potential to become Time Lords with the slightest of nudges.
As it so happened, all Dani was missing was exposure to the Untempered Schism. The Master couldn't take her there directly, but what he could do was try something similar. Which was why he had dragged her to an old console room, one that he had long ago opened.
The Eye of Harmony wasn't a space-time rift, but here on top of a rift in space and time that wasn't discernible to the eye, it would serve their purposes.
Dani looked into the Eye after the Master spun her seat around to face it. Dani stared into a decaying singularity and suddenly she could s e e.
Time was a web, and she could dance along it like a spider. Dani could see the aborted ifalong stream in which Danny's own Watcher had consumed 'Plasmius'; to force a renewed life for himself with a new body and personality. She saw a blonde soldier, a Not Yet Was, so much like her. She saw the NearNows and what the Master's possible new play.
White hair became dirty blonde, green eyes became a hazel brown as she completed her first regeneration, imprinting on the Master as her rescuer.
(She would never need to worry about spontaneously destabilizing into soup again. Her new hearts raced at the idea.)
"Hey Dad, do you think my cousin could join us too?"
The Master, well aware that they had a method for time travel on Earth of their own, smiled indulgently.
"Why don't we go ask?"
Eighteen months later, the Doctor, Martha Jones, and Jack Harkness arrived. When they did, it was to the news that the Master - currently known as Harold Saxon - had been voted prime minister of Britain after the fall of Harriet Jones. (A fall that the Doctor was ultimately responsible for, so of course he'd taken advantage.)
The Master being prime minister was a shock, mostly in that he succeeded. But it was the kind of shock that was more flabbergasted awe at his audacity. The Master being married with children; knocked him senseless for a moment.
Because he could feel them, an impossible connection to more of their race. It couldn't be. Gallifrey was gone, and with it any stable, sane way for their species to live on. It shouldn't be, because Time Lords lived too long and produced too many psychopaths in the bargain.
Yet, still, it was.
The Master was staring at the camera, staring at the Doctor in particular he knew, because this was how the game worked, and taunting him.
"This country has been sick. This country needs healing. This country needs medicine."
The Master smiled brilliantly out of the broadcast with his hands ruffling the hair of two Time Tots at his wife's side.
"In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what this country really needs, right now, is a doctor."
The Doctor ran, half leading and half following Martha to her flat so they could research just how the Master managed to get elected, and hopefully to find out how to thwart whatever his plans might be. He had a TARDIS to find, a world to save, and so many answers to ask of an old best friend and worst enemy.