The Ones Left Over

by Shin-Chan the Katana

Gallifreyan teen siblings Exi and Ked escape their planet's destruction by an old TARDIS that self-destructs after much damage from explosions. Three years later, the Doctor finds them on the streets and lets them into his TARDIS. They reveal that they need to find a new TARDIS and his help to rescue their family and as many as possible from the time lock in the War.

"Half the world has already burned, Ked. We must leave now!" Exi said, desperately pulling Ked and the supplies into the old, rickety TARDIS. Ked just simply stood there, outside of the cylindrical shape, watching as their mother and father burned before their very eyes. With a quick, painful slap, Exi managed to finally get Ked's attention and they shut the curved doors just in time to be protected by an explosion, but the windows broke by the force.

Exi had started to pull the lever that started up the TARDIS, and then flipped a series of switches to turn on the shields and oxygen barrier. She took to a touchscreen and dragged her finger across the screen, then typing in a series of coordinates. Ked simply ran away from the doors and hung on tight to the guard rail surrounding the control panel. Exi released the brakes, and the TARDIS silently slipped away from the world into the Time Vortex. Flashes of white broke from the swirls of purple, blue, orange, and yellow, throwing the outdated machine around violently.

Then the movement came to a sudden stop. Exi raised her head from her crouched position underneath the control panel, and Ked opened a brown eye, still holding tightly onto a rail. Exi brushed her thick, dark brown hair aside and behind her ear, and looked out the broken windows. There was light. From a bulb.

"Are we safe?" Ked asked, letting go of the rail.

"I'll check," Exi said, and pushed her glasses higher up her nose.

Exi hastily put on her brown anorak and tied her boots tighter and proceeded to the door. To her surprise, the button that opened the door was not working. Exi sighed with aggravation and kicked the doors. They slid open by her response, and her eyes were met with the orange photons of a street light. She stuck her head out, and looked down the road. There was no one there, but a line of houses on both sides. There was a sign at the corner of the road, but it was far too rusted to make out the letters. "Where are we?" Ked asked, impatient for an answer. "Safe? Yes. Our location? Unavailable," Exi snapped. She dug into her anorak's pocket and whipped out her version of a sonic screwdriver, a telescopic steel tube lined with copper and a tip of a blue stone shaped to look like a multi-faceted diamond. She pressed the index finger sensor and waved it around in the air as the tip lit up an buzzed. The screen in between the tip and the handle displayed the data, just as Exi finished the movement.

"At least that's what I thought. We're safe. We are on Earth in 2010," she read.

"Wait… if the Doctor was up to his... 8th incarnation when Gallifrey was destroyed… how many years have passed… and just exactly how old are we?" asked Ked.

"188 years after the Time War. We were 45 in Earth years when we escaped the explosion, and still are, but technically we are 233 years old," she said, and salvaged a pouch for the sonic screwdriver from the backpack she brought into the TARDIS. An alarm sounded, and the screen lit up, but dim: WARNING: DAMAGE BEYOND REPAIR. COMMENCING SELF-DESTRUCT IN 15 SECONDS…

"What? Self-destruct? What do we do?" Ked said, picking up his bag and the supplies.

Exi looked to the side at the doorway. "We run," she said, and the two scrambled with their bags out of the doors. Seconds later, the TARDIS blew up in a ball of light, leaving a crater in the ground behind them, but disintegrating every part of it before the ball sized down quickly and disappearing. Exi and Ked looked over their shoulders, and their hearts stopped for a moment. They would be stuck on a planet only some Time Lords have been on, and have no form of money.