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The Master was forced to regenerate. It happened 10 years before The Doctor last regenerated and it wasn’t the best thing he could do. But it was the only thing he could do. It was either this or get caught and sold as a slave in the Eastern Borealis system and everyone knew what they did to their slaves. Especially to ex-dictators.
So he did what he knew best: surviving. He severely injured himself and controlled his regeneration as enough as to come back as a baby, quite conveniently and strategically placed on a hospital’s doorstep. The shock was considerable and he lost his memory almost completely, until he remembered.
And he was very angry.
The Doctor’s regeneration was almost like that. Almost. It happened relatively later and it was by mistake. The result was more or less the same. Only he didn’t remember, so he wasn’t angry. There was something odd, though, he always felt something missing, even if he could never put his finger on it.
When The Master remembered, suddenly everything made complete sense to him. Of course! He regenerated missing a Y and with an extra X in his genome, so his gender chromosomes, the gonosomes, were in the form of XXT, instead of XYT, T being the chromosome that bound Time Lords with Time and was always present in Time Lord DNA - which was, for that reason, triploid. Technically, then, that made his new body a female one. It was a very sturdy and healthy body, bit of alright, really and he wouldn’t have minded if:
a) he had indeed chosen that, and
b) he wasn’t that much of a control freak.
Neither of these conditions was true, so he felt the rightful urge to be rather spiteful about it and curse his bad luck. He was, once again, stuck on Earth - which was considerably better, rather than being stuck on some backwards Easter Borealis planet, like Niflgard or Cygarm, serving a master other than himself. No sign of his TARDIS, of course, why would anything be easy..?
So, he was forced to live a life in a body that didn’t exactly feel like home, on a planet that was far from home and far from being his home. A planet full of simpletons. As unpleasant as that fact was, he had no other choice as to continue living in hiding until he had a better plan. Some things were the same, too familiar, like his love for black clothing, the constant need for confrontation, the smugness and all the smirking. He was bored though, so so bored and utterly peeved by his current body’s… situation so much, that was almost considering snatching another one, but had to restrain himself. His body was stronger, even as a female. A stolen body wouldn’t ever be as strong as one of his actual bodies.
The only thing that made him relatively happy -even though a bit, a tiny dash nostalgic- was that The Doctor was nowhere near. He’d make fun of him, no doubt, so he was better off without him. He could always seek him out and stalk and bother him after he’d taken care of his little body predicament. That thought always made him want to smugly stroke his goatee and smirk, but, upon doing that he’d notice said goatee’s absence and he’d be very upset for the rest of the day. Which was a bit tragic, but funny; sometimes he’d admit that, frown and then smile a bit bitterly. Soon…