Missy - Escapes from and manipulates Iarbus' power

Which is why Daphne didn’t think it at all peculiar when she walked into a cloud of sparkles hanging in the anteroom of Tivone of Enfis’s office, just between the adjutant’s Desk of Doom and the water dispenser, and found herself receiving a mind-message on behalf of someone called Iarbus, inviting her to a mysterious event on an unspecified planet.

Iarbus, Daphne thought, did sound slightly familiar. Her second-cousin-once-removed’s husband, perhaps? Or was it that manager from the Marketing and Mayhem Dept, the one with the pointy beard? No, it was that little man from Enfisian Resources; she was almost certain. So, not a birthday party (shame) or a consultation. It’d be one of those training days. But she wasn’t going to complain, it was always nice meeting new folks and having a bit of a nose around a different planet.

The telepathic invitation came with automatic RSVP, so Daphne carefully transmitted her acceptance.

***

Missy flung up her arms. ‘Will you listen to yourselves? You’re the fluke, Dib-Dab. I invited you here. Not Iarbus. Me. Yes, my life force got sucked into the power source when Iarbus spurned me, but I was stronger than anyone who’d come before – because I’d won. I was able to keep my identity. I found ways to manipulate the power from the inside. I picked five of the most gullible but nevertheless powerful and totally evil men in the galaxy, used the power I was trapped within to send them messages—’

‘Which you didn’t mind-secure,’ put in Daphne.

Missy did actually look slightly uncomfortable. ‘Well, I wasn’t working in ideal circumstances, was I?’ she said. ‘But never mind that. Four of the men did come. I disabled as many tests as I could and guided them through the ones that were left – as if they could have made it on their own! Didn’t it click how easy these ultimate games of certain death that no one has completed in centuries were? Of course, I only needed one to make it all the way. The life force of the others, as of so many failures before them, was drained into the power. Except … well, I am a clever cupcake and no mistake – I tweaked it oh-so-very slightly so that life force went straight into incorporeal me. So I could be me again. So I could manifest.’

***

I Am The Master: Legends of the Renegade Time Lord, Missy's Magical Mystery Mission