I have compacted some time between this and the previous story. Six months have gone by and Marion is nicely settled at Hope University when trouble strikes.

This is the first really dramatic story in the series. And it is one story that the regular readers of Theta Sigma were waiting for. Li Tuo’s version of these events was told in the Theta Sigma story ‘Cassie’s Baby’. But only in very vaguest detail. This was an opportunity to flesh out the story and tell it first hand from all three of the people involved.

“He issued the Oldblood Challenge. Single combat to the death. Any pretence that he was a professor of literature was blown away as we fought. First with swords – we both bled orange blood and our wounds mended before Marion’s frightened eyes. And when we had fought each other to a physical impasse we fought with our minds. Chrístõ has never witnessed that. Two Time Lords fighting with the power of their psyche, trying to burn each other’s brains out. And I discovered then that my friend was a greater Time Lord than I am, because he almost succeeded in destroying my mind. The only thing that saved me was regeneration. He watched my body regenerate, into my very last life. My thirteenth, and he prepared to kill me as soon as I opened my eyes and looked upon him. But Marion begged him to spare me. That good, sweet woman. She prevailed upon him – for both our sakes. She would not have my blood on his hands. She would not see me die. And she realised that above all we WERE friends. And we both realised that she was right.”

Marion’s relationship with Lee, as he was then known, during the time when she was his prisoner, is the key to it all, of course. She very clearly comes to like him and to respect him. By the time Lee and Kristoph come to fight their duel she doesn’t want either of them to die. That is the key to it all. It defines much that comes after, particularly Marion’s friendship with Li and later, of course, Chrístõ’s friendship with him.

Why did Lee choose to be Chinese when he came to Earth? A lot of people have asked me that. There is no special reason, really. He is slightly inspired by the Tibetan Time Lord from Planet of the Spiders, but only very loosely. I don’t even have any personal connection with Chinese culture other than regularly patronising a rather good Chinese buffet restaurant near where I live. But the discipline of the Shaolin Way seems to me very like the more mystic aspects of Gallifreyan life. The pre-communist Chinese culture seemed one that would appeal to a Time Lord. And setting several stories in the Chinatown of Liverpool has proved popular both in the Theta Sigma series and Marion and Kristoph.

http://www.pearsecom.co.uk/thetasigma/34cassiesbaby.htm