#coordinatrix

The protagonist just happened to be eerily similar to her, and was facing a predicament reminiscent of her own, with a failing universe and a planet full of daleks. Except in this narrative, Treundar hadn’t needed saving, on account of her quick thinking, intellectual prowess, and an unexplained power or two.  

Mana jumped at the sound of the door opening, trailing off mid-sentence. Her hearts sunk as she saw just who had walked in on her, and she ducked her head, embarrassed. The Romanas that Narvin usually dealt with had far better things to do with their time than tell stories. She stopped the recording, looking almost guilty. “Coordinator, I, ah, didn’t know you were coming today.” 

She’d have felt much better about it, had she known that K-9 could attest to the opposite and that Romana’s skill with storytelling hadn’t really grown much over the centuries. 

I did get the planet through a calamity the Matrix swore was unsurvivable, I think I rate a greeting, she told herself. 

Still numb from her disagreement with Tre, she wandered aimlessly until she’d regained enough perspective on things to remember she still had a rather important job to attend to, and disengaged from the Matrix. 

After a disorientating moment, Romana was back in her office. She blinked, realising she wasn’t alone even before she looked up to see someone sitting on the far side of the room.

“Don’t you ever knock, Coordinator?” 

She brushed her hair out of her face as she sat up. 

As a walking paradox herself, she took a special interest in such anomalies- there was always a risk it could be another Romana, one that could talk her way back into the panopticon, inciting revolts and threatening her existence with her very presence. 

She’d decided to deal with the incursion personally, so that any such problem could be nipped in the bud- it could even be fun, as long as she put them away in a box somewhere before they tried to destabilise her little paradise. No one had disagreed. Those that were prone to such reactions rarely held their employment long. 

She hadn’t had to spend long wandering the Outlands before she found the intruder- if she had, she’d have probably gone and left it to her Guard- and she felt vaguely familiar, but in the way of an almost stranger, not someone she’d known from birth. Pandora lowered her staser. Anyone who wasn’t challenging her right to exist with their every heartsbeat wasn’t an immediate threat.

“Narvin?” The name jumped into her head after a moment, the little revolutionary with the dubious honour of getting blown up twice in one war. "So you’re the anomaly.” She smiled, but there was a wrongness to it, like a wolf eyeing up a lamb, but it vanished after a moment, replaced by something brighter.  

Pandora honestly wasn’t sure if her act would work on someone from a different universe, someone who might not recognise her at all, but she had scraps of stolen memory, a face that Romana had never gotten to wear, and clearly Presidential robes. That would have to do. 

It was embarrassing, that she had to admit. Getting stunned by what should have been just another feckless CIA agent had not been part of the plan, but she was doing her best to pretend it was. Plans could change, she could adapt. 

Though they’d at least had the common sense to remove her time ring- perhaps the Sartia of this Universe had already pulled that trick- they didn’t know about her insurance. She didn’t trust Tre to act out of goodwill, naturally, but she needed entertainment, and that was hard to provide from the confines of a cell so much smaller than the Matrix partition. 

With the incivility of her capture, she’d yet to actually talk to anyone, having been rather rudely consigned to a plain room with white walls, a table and chairs-clearly an attempt at a faintly ominous aesthetic.

The chair she’d woken up on was impossible to get comfortable on, but she leant back as if it were luxurious and contemplated the building of Tre’s physical body; whether breaking into the Anomaly Vault of this Gallifrey would be worth it; and what she’d like for tea, to pass the time.

The door opened eventually, but she didn’t rush to get her mind back to the present, more let it return at a leisurely stroll.  

Mana had long since became attuned to the sound of the front-door opening. Though it was unlikely to be anyone but the owner of their rooms, she still peeked around from the corridor, just in case it was someone who wasn’t aware of the conspiracy. 

A glimpse of CIA robes wasn’t something that frightened her anymore, quite the opposite. She bounded out to greet Narvin with a speed and enthusiasm that would have ordinarily gotten her chastised- ladies didn’t run. Time Lords in general didn’t really run either, when it could be at all avoided, but especially not Heartshavens.

“Coordinator!” She bobbed her head in greeting. “Did you know there’s a Romana in the Matrix who watches us sometimes? She’s very nice. She introduced me to tea, I think.” The implications of the Matrix not being strictly real were still a bit tricky to get her head round. “But I haven’t been neglecting my studies either, of course.”  

46. Cringe, post Enemy Lines