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Chapter Text

My name is Rania. I was born under the name of Aznavorian to my people, the Deltans, on the planet of Gallifrey. As a child, I experienced an event that changed me...turned me into a Time Lord and gifted me with the superior intelligence to invent unimaginable machines, including TARDISes that can travel beyond space, time, and reality itself. It earned me the title of "Tinkerer," but it also made me an outcast...from Deltans and Time Lords alike. I have no place to call home, except for the Infinite DC. My only friends are a wonderful 10-year-old boy named Craig Williams, the irresistibly handsome Tyler Thorne, and the flirty yet reliable Captain Jennifer Leeka. Together, we explore worlds that are familiar and foreign, making new friends and overcoming terrifying threats. And, one day, we hope to find the true protector of the Infinite DC: my child - Neas, the Gladiator of Gallifrey!

Chapter Text

Part One

            I know who the Archivist really is.

            Those were the words that was going through everyone’s minds, ever since Rania made that claim. They were just recovering from the overwhelmingly exciting adventure in 1860 Mississippi, having met Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. ‘Mark Twain’) and solving a heart-wrenching murder mystery.

            Rania was personally relieved to have been out of that antebellum dress she wore for the journey, specifically the corset that ridiculously constricted her torso. She never felt more comfortable to be back in her cropped black turtleneck, olive-green skinny jeans, and brown hiking shoes.

            And yet, the whole situation with the Archivist nagged at her mind.

            She couldn’t even remember what she was supposed to be doing at the control console, having stood at it for several minutes.

            The only thing that snapped her out of it was the enticing aroma of a McDonald’s meal that tickled her nose. That’s right – Tyler left to grab some grub for us. They landed in an unspecified Earth realm that had one; nothing particularly special about the realm itself but, from the smell of the food, they had an extra special sauce in their Big Mac.

            “I have returned!” Tyler boasted playfully, speaking as if he were a medieval knight that had just accomplished an epic quest. He kept the playacting going as he handed Rania her order and said, “The Big of Macs and a medium of fries for milady.”

            Rania smiled, giving a good-natured curtsy. “You have my most humbled gratitude, Lord Thorne.”

            Tyler then turned to Craig, who had waited anxiously to try his first-ever McDonald’s meal. “And, for our favorite little prince, the Happiest of Meals.” He handed the red Happy Meal box to Craig, who regarded it with intrigue. Not missing a beat, Tyler proceeded, “And last, but certainly not least, for our immortal captain…” He stopped when he realized that Leeka was not there in the console room with Rania and Craig. “Hey, where’s Jen?” he asked, returning to his normal voice.

            Rania had just taken her first bite of her Big Mac when he asked. Not wanting to speak with her mouth full, she nodded towards one of the intersecting doorways that led further into the TARDIS. Once she was able to swallow her bite, she told her boyfriend, “She’s changing in her room. I think she was just as anxious to get out of her getup from the 19th century as I was.”

            “Gotcha,” Tyler said, and then, returning to his medieval voice, he declared, “I shall return!” Rania giggled at him. He was certainly in quite the jovial mood, presumably to keep the morale up aboard the TARDIS.

            Watching him leave the console room, Rania suddenly heard the sound of a box being torn apart near her. She turned to see Craig ripping open the Happy Meal box like he would a Christmas present. “Oh, honey, no!” Rania cried out, refraining from laughing. “You have to pop those little flaps beneath the golden arches first.”

            Tyler whistled on his way to the room where Captain Jennifer Leeka – the newest member of their crew – had settled in. He wasn’t sure where all this positive energy was coming from or how he was able to manage it. The bombshell that Rania dropped on them about knowing who the Archivist really was had been on his mind as of late, and he imagined it was on everyone else’s, especially Rania.

            Perhaps it was the delicious smell of this McDonald’s food he carried, the last remaining items to be claimed for himself and Leeka. He remembered when his mother used to take him to the restaurant as a kid – how much fun he would have in the PlayPlace while she would sit and watch him, smiling every minute.

            Those memories would bring tears to his eyes, now and then. He knew those were the times when his mother didn’t feel so alone. Sure, she had her husband – Tyler’s father – who was ever the loving and supportive patriarch; but he was also a businessman, having been kept away from home most of the time on business trips. Up until the day Tyler moved out, it’d be just him and his mom, having the time of their lives. No busy dad and no annoying brothers. He thought of how lonely she had to be back home right now.

            With all these fond old memories flooding back, he felt like calling her, which would’ve certainly flipped the script on her daily calls. Heck, maybe I just might, once I’ve delivered this food to our lovely—

            “Whoa!” He yelped as he entered Leeka’s room.

            Standing there before him was Captain Jennifer Leeka, looking a lot different than when he previously saw her. Out of her 19th century antebellum dress, and her long raven hair down, the immortal captain was donned in a long gray trenchcoat…and nothing else but lingerie. She had some clothes sprawled out over her bed – a blue blouse and a pair of black jeans from what Tyler could gather.

            “Well now,” Leeka addressed him, without an ounce of embarrassment from being caught in the near buff. “Is that some good ol’ Mickey D’s that I’m smellin’? Why, Mr. Thorne, you are quite the gentleman.”

            Tyler snickered at the irony, as he nervously tried to keep his gaze towards the sleek, polished white marbled floor. “Um, yeah,” he muttered, reaching into the McDonald’s bag and leaving Leeka’s meal on the antique chestnut desk at the nearest corner. “I, uh, wasn’t sure what to get ya, so I…erm…got you the same as Rania.”

            Leeka curiously walked to the desk, making Tyler that much more nervous, being in close proximity of him. He couldn’t help but to catch a whiff of whatever alluring perfume she wore – a vanilla fragrance. “Ooh, a Big Mac,” she giddily cheered. “Excellent choice, Mr. Thorne. I go for anything that has ‘Big’ in its name.” She gave him a seductive wink, although Tyler didn’t dare to look up to see it.

            “R-Right,” he stammered. “Well, I’ll see ya in the console room. Cool?” He was just about to leave before his curiosity got the best of him. “Erm, if you don’t mind me asking, h-how are you planning on getting your clothes on with your coat on?”

            Rania smirked teasingly. “Wanna find out?”

            “Nope,” Tyler immediately answered, knowing that he walked right into that one.

            Jennifer watched him walk stiffly out of her room, like he had something stuck up his butt. She had to cup her hand over her mouth just to keep from bursting with laughter. Oh, Tyler…you poor thing…I am gonna have fun with you.

            Rania had never seen a Happy Meal make a child so unhappy, as it had Craig. She was halfway finished with her Big Mac and fries when she noticed Craig analyzing the toy that came with his meal, visibly (and miserably) confused. It wasn’t long before Tyler returned, looking rather distraught himself. “You O.K., babe?” Rania asked him.

            Tyler almost didn’t even realize she was talking to him. “Huh? Oh, I’m cool. All good, babe.” He surprised her with a kiss on the lips that lasted for a whole minute. Grateful as she was for it, Rania couldn’t help but wonder what prompted it – it did feel rather spur-of-the-moment.

            After the kiss, Leeka strode in, donned in her choice clothing.

            “Gurrrl, look at you!” Rania approved with applause.

            The immortal captain twirled – the coattails of her trenchcoat fluttering along. “It’s just like the threads I wear back home,” she said with satisfaction. “That wardrobe of yours is better than any JCPenney’s or GAP.”

            “Well, you look fantastic, Captain,” Rania said before turning to Tyler and Craig and asking, “Doesn’t she, fellas?”

            “Mmm-hmm.” Tyler barely looked Jennifer’s way, taking a bite from his salad.

            “Yeah, sure,” Craig grumbled, still analyzing his Happy Meal toy.

            Leeka took the gentlemen’s morose responses in stride. “Well, shucks…I’m touched,” she said in sarcasm. She then zeroed in on Craig and his toy. “How you likin’ yer first Happy Meal, Craigy?”

            “The meal is fine, but this toy stinks!” Craig criticized.

            “Lemme have a look,” Leeka requested, and Craig surrendered the figure to her. Holding the tiny toy in the palm of her hand, Leeka looked on it with amusement. “Oh, Craig, don’t you know who this lil’ fella is?”

            Craig shook his head. “No clue.”

            Jennifer held the small figure up to Craig’s face and spoke in a stereotypical Italian accent, “It’s a-me, Mario!” She saw that Craig wasn’t amused, neither by her answer or her impersonation. “From the Super Mario Bros.?” Again, no reaction from the 10-year-old, outside of utter confusion.

            “We haven’t visited that world yet,” Rania told Leeka.

            “You can have it, if you want,” he offered to the captain.

            Leeka graciously accepted. “Well, I sure do appreciate it, hon. I collect lil’ knick-knacks like this. A personal hobby of mine.”

            Everyone seemed to be enjoying their meals just as there was a beeping sound from the TARDIS console. Setting aside her empty food cartons, Rania rushed up to the console to investigate the source of the disturbance. “The ship’s detected heavy trace amounts of nuage energy from a nearby realm,” she divulged to her companions.

            Before she knew it, the console controls took on a life of their own, forcing the Type-Z TARDIS to undergo an emergency dematerialization. Thankfully, the others finished eating when they came out of the Infinite DC and right aboard a star freighter of some type.

            The sector that they arrived in was empty.

            Good, Rania thought in relief. We don’t want to spook the residents.

            “Let me step out first,” Leeka recommended. Being the only member of their TARDIS team incapable of dying, she took the responsibility of ensuring whether the climate was safe to venture out into – although the TARDIS indicators already took care of that upon landing.

            Once she gave the O.K., Rania and the boys disembarked.

            Craig was the last one out of the ship. When he took one step past the barrier that divided the dimensions between the inside and outside of the TARDIS, he was overcome by a sudden jolt, as if someone shook him.

            But there was no one near him, except for…

            Wait. Where were his friends?!?!

            Rania, Tyler, Leeka, and even the Type-Z TARDIS were gone.

            Craig suddenly found himself alone aboard the alien freighter. “Uh…hello?” he whimpered, starting to panic. “Rania? Tyler? Captain Leeka? If you guys can still hear me…?” He wasn’t sure if they could, wherever they were, and the thought of being separated from them made him very scared.

            But then he heard voices – not those of his friends of the present but those of the past…

            “I’m just saying, Neas, I could use a break after what we went through with the Jaegers and the Kaiju. I’d rather we not go gallivanting on our next adventure, without a little bit of break time.”

            “That was a distress beacon that came through, Pop. It’s probably nothing, but I just wanna make sure, alright?”

            It was the second voice that sparked a surge of excitement. “Neas!”

            Following the voices, he looked around a corner to see two tall individuals roaming down another corridor – a young white woman with long, curly bright red hair and a black man in a black hoodie and striped blue necktie. With absolute certainty, Craig recognized these travelers as Scarlet (the Fifth Tinkerer) and Thomas (the Eleventh Gladiator).

Chapter Text

Part Two

            The star freighter was dark, damp, and massive.

            Rania felt as if she had seen it somewhere before – a sensation she quite often felt whilst traveling between worlds in the Infinite DC. Many of them were sentient manifestations of fictional universes, and this realm certainly seemed like one of them to her.

            She permitted Jennifer to take lead on their trek through the freighter…

            …until she looked back towards Tyler and made an unsettling discovery.

            “Where’s Craig?!” she bellowed, regretting her volume levels after the fact, as they were supposed to be silent. However, the sudden vanishing of their 10-year-old team member set aside the art of stealth. “Ugh,” Rania groaned. “Why can’t that lil’ fella just stay with the group?”

            “I coulda sworn I saw him walkin’ out of the ship just after you two,” Leeka gestured to Rania and Tyler. She was just as surprised (and worried) as they were over Craig’s disappearance. “We better find him.”

            “This place is massive!” Tyler indicated. “He could be anywhere!”

            Rania gave a heavyhearted sigh. “You’re right, Ty. And we’ve yet to ascertain the dangers of this freighter, which is all the more reason we need to find Craig.”

            “So, what’s the play, Coach?” Leeka asked.

            “Ty and I will go one way, while you go the other,” Rania directed.

            “Splitting up? In a dark, spooky, and seemingly abandoned space freighter?” Tyler said uneasily. “Yeah, that’s always been a no-no in the history of horror films.”

            “If we’re where I think we are, then we’re pretty much in one right now,” Rania told him. “But, I have a good feeling we’ll be alright.”

            “Sure we will,” Leeka confidently concurred. “I can’t die, remember?”

            Tyler wasn’t very convinced. “But we still can!”

            “Well, I’ll just regenerate, which feels a lot like dying,” Rania said glibly.

            “Neither of you are helping me feel any better!!!” Tyler griped.

            Being immortal had many advantages, but the biggest disadvantage was being the only immortal one. Much as Jennifer appreciated her usefulness to the TARDIS team in the event of deadly encounters, keeping her friends (particularly little Craig) safe, she still had to endure some gruesome deaths now and then.

            Suck it up, Leeka! You’ve been through worse over the last 100 years!

            She could always count on her rational mind to give her that kick in the ass when she needed it. Craig was somewhere aboard that freighter, alone and scared, waiting on her, Rania, and Tyler to find him. There was no time to have the luxury of—

            “The hell…?!” The immortal captain suddenly blurted out; her attention brought to a nearby window that offered a view of the endless field of stars.

            And within that starfield was a yellow-skinned boy with a brown bowl cut in a spacesuit. He clung to the window, staring straight at Leeka with big, bucktoothed smile as if he were a plush suction cup. He said something to Jennifer that she couldn’t hear, due to being out in the vacuum of space where there was no sound. She assumed that he wanted to come inside.

            The nearest airlock was just a few feet to the right of the window.

            Jennifer gestured for the astro-boy to hang tight as she went to the airlock controls and allowed him and one other astronaut – a little old lady with the same yellow skin tone as the boy – to float right in. Once the anti-gravity had taken hold of them, they walked out of the airlock chamber and retracted their helmets with the press of a button, breathing in the air inside the star freighter.

            “Well, we’re deep in it now, boy,” the old lady said to her young companion, speaking with a country accent that was even thicker than Jennifer’s. “This don’t look like any ‘Space Hotel’ to me. And where the heck are Bill and Tilly?!”

            “I’m, uh, sure they got in somewheres else, Grandma,” the boy spoke with a shaky air of confidence. “Maybe this lady can help us.” He then turned to Jennifer and said, “Howdy there, stranger. My name’s Cricket…Cricket Green…and this is my grandma.”

            “You both look and sound like you’re a long ways from home,” Leeka noted.

            “We are,” Cricket said. “We were right in the middle of our Spacecation – that’s a vacation in space – when we were sucked into this big ol’ black hole and ended up here. You haven’t seen a big round-shaped guy with a missing finger or a girl with black hair and freckles, have ya?”

            Jennifer shook her head. “Sorry, I haven’t. But I can check with my team and see if they’ve run into anyone like that.” She proceeded to reach beneath the long locks of her raven-colored hair and tap the earpiece tucked gently into her right ear. “Hey, ya’ll,” she contacted Rania and Tyler.

            “Jenn?” Rania responded from her end. “Did you find Craig?”

            “No luck yet,” Leeka huffed. “But I did come across this boy and his grandmother, who just popped up outta nowhere right outside the freighter.”

            “Freighter?!” Grandma cried out in surprise. “Since when they got a freighter up in space?! Those dang big brains in Big Tech think of everything!”

            “A boy and his grandmother?” Rania repeated Leeka’s description, following it with a couple of her own: “They wouldn’t happen to have yellow skin, would they? And their names wouldn’t happen to be Cricket and Alice, would they?”

            Jennifer was taken aback by the Tinkerer’s accuracy. “Uh, yeah…how did you…?”

            She heard Rania huff in exasperation over the comm. “We’re with Bill and Tilly now. Let Cricket and his grandmother know that their family is just fine, and we’ll bring them to your location shortly.” By her despondent tone, Jennifer could plainly tell that this derailment was not what they needed in their desperate search for Craig. Regardless, reuniting the Green family – victims of an apparent rift between realms – was just as important.

            “See ya’ll soon then,” Jennifer verified.

            As she switched off her comm, she suddenly heard Cricket call their attention to something around the corner. “Hey, take a look at this,” he said, sticking his head through a doorway leading into a large, spacious area. “Look at all these big funny eggs they got here.”

            Leeka joined Cricket and Alice in looking over the dozens of eggs in the room. They stood around two and a half feet tall and were brown-black and leathery in appearance. A network of vines ran across the floor, connected between them. Jennifer had seen these eggs before. Immediate fear registered on her face as she made a disturbing realization. “Oh, god! I know which dimension we’re in!”

            “What you say, girl?” Alice asked her.

            “Ya’ll step back,” she ordered them urgently. “It’s not safe.”

            “Not safe?” Cricket frowned. “They’re just eggs. Ain’t like one of them’s been—”

            Before Cricket could finish his thought, something shot up and clung right onto Jennifer’s face. She shrieked as she collapsed to the floor. Her cries were soon silenced as she felt herself becoming weak to the point of unconsciousness.

            Craig couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

            Thomas and Scarlet, there aboard the alien spacecraft, looking just the way Craig remembered them…before Thomas left…before Scarlet regenerated into Rania…before his adventures in the Infinite DC ever began.

            He wondered if Rania, Tyler, and Captain Leeka were still someplace else aboard the massive ship – someplace where Thomas and Scarlet might run into them. He imagined how weird it would be for Rania to see this past version of herself and her son, neither of them knowing who she was.

            He also wondered what it’d be like for himself to run into them.

            From their perspective, he was still back in his dimension, having just another fun day at the Creek with J.P. and Kelsey.

            If they saw him there, it would undoubtedly get his own past self in trouble.

            Proceeding onward from that logic, Craig kept himself hidden in the shadows as he tailed Thomas and Scarlet, who investigated different areas of the spaceship. He discovered their purpose for being there when he heard Scarlet ask Thomas, “So what’s our play when we do find the Xenomorph? If that beacon came from who we think it came from, that means it’s here, too!” She sounded very precautious to Craig – more precautious than he often heard her successor sound.

            He then saw Thomas pull an awesome-looking alien rifle from out of his hoodie (how he managed to conceal it in there was a total mystery to Craig), showing it off to Scarlet. “You know I always come packin’, Pop,” he said.

            Scarlet scoffed at him. “Could ya have at least given me one?!”

            “Who the hell are you?!?!”

            Thomas, Scarlet, and even Craig jumped when they heard a woman speak tensely from further down the corridor in which they headed. Looking past his two friends, Craig saw that it was someone with hair as long as curly as Scarlet’s, dressed in a dirty beige jumpsuit. She was wielding a flamethrower that was, at the time, pointed at Thomas and Scarlet. Keeping their hands up – and, in Thomas’s case, his rifle up – the two interdimensional travelers showed that they came in peace.

            “We heard your distress beacon,” Scarlet told the tensed woman.

            “You’re Ellen Ripley, right?” Thomas inquired; although, from the obvious tone in his voice, he already knew the answer.

            Ripley’s grip on her flamethrower tightened. “How do you know who I am?!”

            “You mentioned it in your distress call,” Thomas said. “You can relax, Lieutenant. We mean you no harm.”

            It took a long moment for Ripley to comply.

            She lowered her flamethrower, though her body remained heavily tense. “I set the Nostromo to self-destruct – blow everything, including that thing straight to Hell – but someone sabotaged Mother and the emergency destruct system, rendering my whole plan to utter shit. I thought it could’ve been Ash, acting on behalf of the Company, but this was done after we destroyed him.” Her voice became shaky, tears flowing from her eyes, as she recounted, “I’ve spent the last few months playing cat-and-mouse with that goddamned thing, hoping to Christ someone would answer that beacon.”

            “And here we are,” Scarlet said, wiping sympathetic tears from her eyes.

            “We have a ship – it’s a rather unorthodox ship, but it’s a ship nonetheless,” Thomas said.

            “I could give two shits what kind of ship it is, so long as it gets my ass away from here,” Ripley told him. Gathering herself, she added, “There’s one more thing: I have a cat aboard. His name’s Jones, and he’s been the only companion I’ve had left after losing every member of my crew. He’s a ginger American Shorthair.”

            “We’ll find him,” Thomas assured.

            “I’ll prep the ship,” Scarlet volunteered, heading in the opposite direction of Thomas and Ripley.

            She rushed past the spot where Craig kept himself secluded. He caught a whiff of her familiar sweet scent in the updraft – the scent of honey and coconut. It was a welcome to the damp, smelly odor of the colossal spacecraft – the name of which he learned to be ‘Nostromo’.

            Believing he should be aboard Thomas’s TARDIS when they took off with Ripley and her cat, Craig followed Scarlet into the ship. He was careful to do so as quietly as he possibly could; that was a bit of a challenge when the door was open for just a quick second, prompting his feet to move faster and noisier than he intended.

            He watched Scarlet move around the hexagonal console with the same fluidity as Rania – a woman she had yet to become.

            Craig smiled. Being friends with a Time Lord was so weird sometimes.

            AH-CHOO!!!

            “Bless you,” Scarlet said.

            “Thanks,” Craig returned.

            It was only after Craig’s unexpected sneeze (and Scarlet’s natural civility) that they both had a double take, alerted of each other’s presence in the console room. Craig froze, staring directly at the stunned face of the Fifth Tinkerer.

            “Craig? What’re you doing here?!”

Chapter Text

Part Three

            Slowly and groggily, Jennifer woke up. Her mouth tasted funny and her throat ached like something had forced its way down. She sat right up and, through her hazed vision, she saw Cricket and his grandma looking at her suspiciously. “What the hell happened?” she asked them, her memory a total blur.

            “Ya got jumped by that thing that came out one of them egg-thingies,” Cricket recounted.

            “Palmed your face like it was a pie or somethin’,” Alice added.

            “What ‘thing’?” Leeka asked, subsequently seeing Cricket point to something past her. Jennifer turned her head to the right and saw a Facehugger lying belly up on the grated floor. Her eyes dreadfully enlarged as her memory began to resurface. “That thing was on my face?!”

            Cricket and Alice both nodded casually. “Yep,” the former said. “Sure was.”

            Panicked, Jennifer quickly got back on her feet, searching through all the pockets on her coat. “Alright, I’m gonna need y’all to run, right now. Go on, find yer family.”

            “Run?” Cricket parroted her instruction. “Run from what?”

            Before Leeka could answer, she felt an incredible pain suddenly shoot from her chest, as if something was trying to burst through her ribcage. She could sense a living creature shifting in and out between her lungs and heart and thudding against her spinal column. “Dammit!” she groaned; the discomfort was unbearable.

            “Ohhh, I knew it!” Alice exclaimed in fear. “I knew that dang crab impregnated somethin’ in you!”

            “You figured right, Miss Green!” Jennifer verified. “Now git on outta here!”

            Alice grabbed Cricket’s hand. “C’mon, boy! This is ‘bout to get nasty!”

            Cricket hesitated for a moment but ultimately had no choice in the matter, yanked off his feet by his grandmother. Once they were gone, Leeka successfully found the item she had desperately searched for: a switchblade. She used it to make a five-inch incision in her abdomen and stuff a live grenade (which she took out from another pocket) into her own torso.

            “You done picked the wrong bitch to knock up!”

            Bill Green was one of the most reasonable – and perhaps most responsible – characters Rania had ever come across in the Infinite DC. He was also relatable, being a father himself who only cared about the safety of his son and mother. Rania understood the feeling – even though Craig wasn’t exactly her son, she wondered whether or not he was alright.

            Amid her concern, a strange feeling came over her, reassuring her that her 10-year-old companion was safe.

            Rounding a corner, something small and yellow bumped into Bill and bounced off his bulbous gut. “Cricket!” Bill cried out. Sure enough, it was a child with a bowl cut hairstyle. He was accompanied by an old woman who could only be Alice, Bill’s mother. “Are you two alright?”

            “We’re fine, Dad,” Cricket said. “But that lady we were with is in a heap of trouble.”

            Rania knew who he was talking about and grew concerned. “Where is she?”

            BOOM!!!

            They all heard and felt the loud explosion that erupted somewhere near their location. It was powerful enough to send a shockwave throughout most of the Nostromo. “What the hell was that?!” Tyler asked, though no one could give him a direct answer. Rania was pressed to run to the scene of the disaster, followed by Tyler and the Green family.

            As soon as they got there, they were horrified to find much of the space covered in blood splatter and shredded human organs. There was also a small creature resembling a large worm, lying charred near the body of Jennifer Leeka. The captain sat slumped against the wall, blood seeping from her nose and mouth, and a gaping hole in her abdomen with fragments of her guts spilling out. She was – by all intents and purposes – dead.

            “Oh, my goodness…” Bill gagged for a brief second before losing consciousness.

            Alice had a stronger constitution towards the gruesome display, as well as deep respect for Leeka. “Gotta give girlie props. She went out like a warrior.”

            It was only a second afterward when Jennifer suddenly awakened with a deep breath.

            Alice, Cricket, and Tilly all gasped. “WHAT THE DEVIL?!?!” Alice flinched.

            They watched in bewilderment as the hole in Leeka’s stomach closed.

            “Witchcraft,” Tilly uttered with an awed gaze.

            Rania didn’t have time to go into a lengthy explanation for the captain’s immortality. She rushed to help the bleary Jennifer to her feet. “You good?” she asked her.

            “Yeah, now that I got that damn thing outta me,” Jennifer nodded to the charred worm creature on the floor.

            “A chestburster,” Rania identified it. “We must be in one of the Xenomorph realms.”

            Leeka nodded. “Too bad they didn’t count on yer girl not bein’ able to die!”

            As she gloated over the dead chestburster, the creature’s remains began to recover some of its pre-charred cosmetic features, from shape and color to teeth and tail. Within a matter of seconds, it had regenerated entirely, reviving itself and crawling away into the ventilation system.

            “What the…?!” Jennifer bellowed, visibly stunned. “Since when the hell can they do that?!”

            Rania stiffened with unease. “They can’t…Xenomorphs only take on the physical characteristics and biological traits of its host…all of them.”

            Leeka stiffened herself, catching her Time Lord friend’s gist. “So…when one is born out of an immortal…?”

            “It itself becomes immortal.”

            “Craig Gregory Williams! I asked you what you’re doing here!”

            Out of the few incarnations of Aznavorian the Tinkerer that Craig personally met, Scarlet was the most motherly one of them all – even more so than Rania. His actual birth mother rarely used his full name the way she had that moment, when she caught him in Thomas’s TARDIS.

            “I…uh…” Craig struggled to give her some semblance of an explanation. But, logically, he could not. Telling Scarlet the truth would have affected or damaged the timeline – something that he learned from Neas and Aznavorian themselves. So, acting on that rationality, he lied to Scarlet, “I stowed away. I wanted so bad to go on a journey with you guys.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, of course. He did in fact long for such an opportunity, back when Thomas and Scarlet went on adventures in-between those in Craig’s world. He was restricted merely for being ‘too young.’

            Scarlet was not the least pleased with this response. Her arms crossed, she sternly inquired, “You’ve been aboard the entire time?! Thomas and I haven’t been to your world for quite a while. You’ve been here in the ship when you should’ve been home!” Craig had never seen her so irate; she usually exuded warmth and calmness in his presence. She could be very intimidating when she wanted to be.

            “I’m sorry,” Craig told her. “I just wanted to see the Infinite DC with you and Thomas just once.”

            Scarlet’s brow furrowed sympathetically. “Oh, Craigy…I understand what you’re saying, but…the Infinite DC is not like the Creek. It’s a dangerous place for a 9-year-old boy. That’s the only reason we haven’t taken you anywhere with us. We’re just protecting you.”

            “I know,” Craig sighed, only to catch his slip-up and recover immediately by adding, “I know that you guys just want to keep me safe.”

            Suddenly, they heard the ship door opening – Thomas and Ripley were returning.

            Craig froze with anxiety. The very thought of facing his adopted big brother – a past version of him, at least – made him both excited and trepidatious. He wasn’t exactly sure what action to take until Scarlet instructed him, “Quick! Hide!”

            “Where?” Craig asked her.

            “There’s a secret compartment in the base of the control console,” she indicated the recommended hiding spot.

            Sure enough, as Scarlet crouched down to pop open a grate at one side of the console base, Craig saw the roomy secret compartment deep inside. “Huh,” he muttered amusingly. “I never noticed that there before.”

            Scarlet frowned. “How could you have?”

            Again, Craig nearly blew his cover, but there was no time to cover for it. He had to hide in the secret compartment before Thomas spotted him. He crawled into the space and Scarlet sealed it with the grate afterwards. Surrounded by the ‘guts’ of the console, Craig felt like he had been stuffed inside a computer. There were so many blinking lights, cooling units, and other foreign machinery.

            But his attention was more on what was happening outside.

            Through the grate, he saw Thomas and Ripley (with Jones cradled in her arms) enter. He had to shift around inside the secret compartment to get a better view, due to Scarlet’s legs (clad in her gray leggings) and big black boots in the way. He forgot how cool her boots were – not as cool as Rania’s brown hiking shoes though. They looked well-suited for a tall woman like her.

            “Who were you talking to?” Thomas asked her.

            “What do you mean?” Scarlet returned, playing dumb.

            “I thought I heard you talking to someone before we walked in.”

            “Oh! It’s nothing. Just thinkin’ aloud.”

            “This is unbelievable,” Ripley said, taking in the much larger interior of Thomas’s TARDIS. “The inner space transcends the ship’s outer dimensions in ways my brain can’t begin to process!”

            Scarlet snickered. “Now there’s a fancy way of saying ‘bigger on the inside’.”

            Jones wiggled out from Ripley’s care, wandering straight up to the console base, specifically Craig’s hiding spot. He scratched at the grate, popping one corner of it loose. Craig attempted to shoo the cat away, but he only managed to attract its curiosity further. Thankfully, Ripley picked him back up.

            “Now then,” said Thomas, whose legs and feet Craig saw moving in close to his spot. Craig held his hands over his nose and mouth, fighting the urge of gasp, while Thomas worked the controls of his ship. “Let’s get you and Jonesy back down to Earth, Lieutenant.”

            “Gladly,” Ripley said graciously.

            Craig heard the dematerialization engines kick in momentarily before there was a shuddering noise he had never heard before. It was followed with a brief but violent quake that jolted the entire ship. Craig’s head thudded against a piece of machinery. “Ouch!” he cried, hoping afterwards that Thomas hadn’t heard him.

            Luckily for Craig, his adopted brother was too occupied with the sudden impounding of his TARDIS. “This doesn’t make any damn sense,” Thomas griped.

            “Language,” Scarlet muttered, presumably for Craig’s own benefit.

            “What’s going on?!” Ripley demanded to know, her aggravation palpable. “Can’t your weird ship get us out of here or not?!”

            “It can!” Thomas retorted. “It’s just…stuck right now.”

            “Stuck?!” Both Scarlet and Ripley bellowed.

            Craig himself was as confused as them.

            He wondered if it was his presence there in the past that was keeping the TARDIS stuck aboard the Nostromo.