a first chance at a second impression

I sat and watched from the holographic monitor as Qlippothic lifted the neko to his feet.

"It is not your fault, Koen. I pushed you too hard. Unlike Ash and myself I should have allotted you time for food and sleep."

I savored the last spoonful of caviar and placed the glass back on the silver tray my Companion was holding beside me.

"She's right, you know..." I cast a glance at the brown-haired boy in the butler's outfit, who earnestly nodded in agreement.

 "And I wouldn't have taken it..." he grumbled as he wearily punched a line of holes with his can opener. "So we launched too early...did we prevent the chain reaction?"

I looked away while she removed her metallic shell and put on one of the Doc's lab uniforms from the cabinet I didn't rip open."We did absorb the initial shockwave. In fact...the chain reaction was much stronger than we had anticipated. Had we attempted to launch on schedule we may well have disintegrated."

"What about the rest of the blast?"

"Shunted forward in time to the same spot...in 1908. The authorities will have several years of preparation to evacuate the area."

"If we get back to warn them!"

"True."

I stood up and leaned down to address my young Companion.

"I don't expect too much trouble from these guests, Brian. But fetch my galvanic staff just in case."

"Yes Sir!" And off he scurried with the tray. I refocused my attention on the hologram.

"Why aren't you still in the power core, Qli?"

"Something is wrong. We seem to be...stuck."

"Stuck? Did we land somewhere?"

"Not quite...more accurately I would say we are contained inside another time machine."

"Oh crap...we hit a TARDIS?"

Brian passed my staff, and with it I rapped on the outside of large plate that had been hastily welded to their vehicle. "I'm afraid you did!" I shouted. "You've materialized in the middle of my library!"

"Oh Bast! We're sorry! Ummm I guess we need your help in getting unstuck?"

With a tap of my staff the welding dissolved and the plate fell with a crash on the carpet. I used the staff as leverage to hop over the jagged tear in their orb. I adjusted the ruffles in my collar as took a closer look at their machinery.

"Oh yes...classic Mason galvanic tesseraction principles. Unrefined yet functional. That's the advantage to something this simple, you see. Far less factors to what can go wrong... Unless you try something like jump-starting it with a geothermal explosion, of course..."

"Koen? Isn't that the same staff you used to close the Demon Wasp portal?"

"Astute as always, Qlippothic. Oh my apologies, I don't think we've been formally introduced. My name is also Koen. But you may call me the Regent."

"NO NO NO this isn't possible! You looked like an old ME! Now you look like a white tiger with green eyes in a pastel fop suit?"

I huffed in disapproval. "The strain of shifting my Earth into a dimension that wasn't collapsing was too much for that old body, so I regenerated. This shouldn't surprise you. And seriously, the whole chimney-sweep look you've got going now is just embarrassing!"

"NO! NO [expletive deleted] WAY! I'm not going to look like that! You dress dorkier than our DAD and I didn't think that was even POSSIBLE! Prove it! Prove you're the Regent I met in Seraph City!"

"You have seventeen stitches on your left ankle from Wren's bear-trap."

He slunk back to the floor in resignation. "Crap...crap..." He reached in his pocket for a small device and began typing furiously.

I called out into the library. "Brian? Two servings of catnip please..."

He glared back up at me. "YOU POSTED ON MY BLOG?"

"OUR BLOG, young man!"