"So…"
The beautiful girl turned her head to look at the voice. "So, what?", she asked, as though she was entirely entertained by just standing in awkward silence.
"Well-"
"Oh my gosh, guys! I forgot how many balloons they have at homecoming!" Jonathon quickly picked one up off of the ground, hit both Mikey and Stephanie on the head with it, making odd sound effects, and strutted away. Mikey and Stephanie just stood there and laughed at his charming awkwardness, not knowing how they could ever live without him. Mikey turned to Stephanie, with the freshly thinned air, and decided to ask her to dance. As she said yes, they caught a glimpse of Jonathon running around bopping everyone that he knew on the head.
"How long have we been dating now? What, like, two months?" asked Mikey.
"That sounds about right. Though, honestly, I'm not feeling much growing in our relationship. In fact, I've wanted to talk to you lately about that."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I just don't feel as though our relationship is moving forward as I wish that it was."
Mikey suddenly slowed down his dancing, and started moving off of the dance floor. "I suppose that I can respect that," he said, trying hard not to look as though he was deeply hurt, in attempt to spare Stephanie. "I mean, if one of us isn't pleased with the relationship, then that's not really much of a relationship, is it?"
"You don't know how happy it makes me to know that you actually understand it from my perspective." she grinned. "However, I don't want this to in any way tamper with our friendship at all, because you are still a great guy."
"No, of course not. What do you think, I'm gonna hold a grudge against you from this day forward? As if!" Mikey chuckled, in an attempt to cover his true feelings.
"Well, either way, I'm still happy that I don't have to force this. Thank you so much." She paused and turned to look around. "Well, I'm going to go talk to Hannah. Bye!"
"See ya' later" Mikey said as she turned to walk away. He just stood still and watched her as she strutted away, her gorgeously curled hair bouncing off of the back of her charcoal black dress with every step.
Mikey looked down at the ground, and to his surprise, saw five balloons roll under his legs. He looked back to see Jonathon up to his usual antics. He was just standing there holding a bundle of balloons, trying to look completely innocent with his big cheesy grin. Mikey couldn't help but to smile at him.
"Dude… I got as many balloons as I could carry. Here, hold these while I go get some more." Jonathon shoved an armful of balloons toward Mikey and ran off.
Mikey dropped all the balloons and walked off to find somebody to talk to. He quickly came across a close friend of his over in the corner. "Hey Mariah", said Mikey.
"Oh, hey. How're you doing?" Mariah asked.
"Fine I guess. You know, apart from just getting dumped…"
Mariah's eyes widened in slight surprise. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know."
"No it's okay, I didn't really expect it either. I mean, yeah I'm upset, but I'm not going to let it bother me that much."
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine, I just need to let it sink in."
Suddenly, Jonathon stormed over in a comical fit of rage. "Man, I thought that I told you to hold my balloons!" Even he couldn't keep from smiling. "I mean, how hard is that? 'Hold. These. Balloons.' That's not a hard concept!" Still smiling he shoved the balloons he was carrying into Mikey's arms, and then bent down to pick up the ones that he dropped to give to Mariah.
While he gathered all the balloons that Mariah refused to hold and kept dropping, Hannah found her way over to them. "Are you okay, Mikey?" she asked.
"Yes I'm fine."
"Well from what Stephanie told me, you took it very well. I mean, at least you didn't go psychotic and plan to murder her or anything." She let out a shrill laugh that quickly died out due to awkwardness. None of them seemed to be too weirded out by it, being completely accustom to her odd humor.
"Yeah, at least I didn't do that…"
They all just stood there for a few seconds, while Hannah tried to break the silence by saying how awkward the silence was.
As Jonathon began listing off reasons that Hannah's tactics were completely pointless, Mikey just started looking around. Mariah zoned out completely to avoid listening to another one of Jonathon's rants, and Hannah tried arguing with Jonathon without giving any valid points to support her side of the argument.
As Mikey began looking around for nothing in particular, his eyes landed outside. It was dark outside, but he thought that he saw something shift in the darkness. He took a step toward the glass door to get a better look. He kept moving forward until his nose was nearly touching the glass, just trying to make out a small, black rectangle blotch in the distance.
Next thing that he knew, the door opened, and a long-haired man came in from outside and started making his way past Mikey. "What year is this?" he asked.
"What?" Mikey said
"What, are you deaf?" He reached forward to tap Mikey on the forehead. "What year is this?"
Mikey felt as though he knew the strange man. "Um, 2013."
"Ah, wow, pretty early on, then." He raised his eyebrows, gave Mikey a charming smile, and ran off, giving his suspenders a snap as he went.
The realization of who the man was hit Mikey like a sack of flour. He quickly ran back to his small cluster of friends in a slight daze of disbelief. Jonathon was still trying to tell Hannah off for her invalid arguments.
"Guys, I think that I just saw-"
Suddenly a giant flash of light came through the glass dome above. Mikey looked over to see Jonathon's face light up with glee. Mikey couldn't help but get a bit excited too, especially knowing that the Doctor was nearby, who knew what kind of adventure was coming?
"Don't worry guys, I've got this", said Jonathon. He reached into his brown jacket to pull out his eleventh doctor sonic screwdriver, though made of plastic, he loved it dearly.
"Wow, you brought your screwdriver?" asked Mikey.
"Did you not?"
"No, don't get me wrong, I did." Mikey reached into his pocket to pull out his tenth doctor sonic screwdriver, and flourished it a bit. "Why would I not?"
"Everybody, please stay calm, I can't work with too much noise! But just to be safe, please try to stay out of the light!" The Doctor was standing on what seemed to be the DJ's table in the center of the room, yelling commands at all the frazzled teens.
Everyone just stood still, and some stared at the light in awe. Others were asking why they should trust this random stranger.
Having too many of these types of questions to address each one individually, he just shouted out, "Okay, fine, so long as you don't mind the radiation poisoning!" With this, he smiled a bit at his own manipulative lie.
As everyone scampered out of the light as fast as possible, the Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and began taking readings from the light source above.
Jonathon ran forward with eyes as big as billiard's balls in joy of seeing his fictional hero come to life. Mikey reached forward to try to stop him, but he was too fast. Mikey ran after him in fear of him getting in trouble. When they reached the Doctor, Mikey looked back to see that Mariah and Hannah had the same idea, and had followed them too.
"So, what's wrong? How can I help?" asked Jonathon.
The Doctor looked down and saw Jonathon staring at him in pure glee. The Doctor rolled his eyes and said, "Great! I should have known that I'd have a fan club in this blasted school. It's getting to where this dimension isn't worth saving."
"What do you mean?" asked Jonathon. "I just want to help, and it doesn't look like you have an assistant right now, so how about it?"
The Doctor looked at him in disbelief and said, "Yeah, you and the rest of humanity. I mean, what's up with that, I say, 'Stay back', and you all are like, 'How can I help?' How about by staying back?" He continued tampering with the settings on his sonic screwdriver until it turned bright yellow. "Yeah! There's that red setting!"
To this, Mariah jumped in and asked, "Aren't red settings supposed to be, well, red?"
"Yeah, weird, right? Apparently in this dimension the red setting is yellow, don't really know why, but 'yellow setting' isn't nearly as catchy, don't you think?" He turned to accept our view on the matter, then suddenly snapped, "Didn't I tell you to get somewhere safe?"
"Well," said Hannah, "from prior events, it seems like the safest place to be is as close to you as possible."
The Doctor looked blankly at us while still tampering with his screwdriver. "Look, I understand that humans here have a strange amount of information about me, and I appreciate all the attempts to help, but I really don't need it." His screwdriver let off a high pitch buzzing and began flashing. "Ah! There we go!" He reached into his jacket to pull out what looked like a blender the size of a light bulb, and set it on the ground. He pointed his screwdriver at it and it began to spark a flurry of colors.
The light above started getting dimmer and dimmer until it finally just went out all together. The Doctor gathered up his items and went around shaking each of our hands in turn. "Well," he said, "it has definitely been nice knowing you all, but I'm afraid that I must go now." He turned to leave when Jonathon grabbed his arm.
"You can't just leave." Jonathon said.
The Doctor pulled his arm away. "Yes, I can, and I can't see you convincing me to stay any time soon." He turned and continued to leave. Jonathon wasn't about to give up that fast. He followed the Doctor, causing the others to follow as well.
They ended up outside and followed him until they all reached his TARDIS. He spun around and looked at them, moving from one face to the other. "Okay, here's the deal, no you cannot be my assistant, no you cannot come into the TARDIS, no I will not say 'bowties are cool' for you, and yes my fez originally belonged to Albert Einstein."
"But we weren't going to ask you any of that." said Mariah.
"Well, I was…" said Jonathon, as Mikey nodded sadly in agreement.
"Anyway, Why and how are you here? And what was that back there?" asked Hannah.
"Why am I here? Well, I haven't been asked that one yet. In fact, why haven't I been asked that yet? That is a perfectly reasonable question."
"So?" asked Mariah, "Why are you here?"
"Well, it's an odd story, actually. You see, apparently in this dimension, you have a television program of all of my adventures, is that right?"
"I guess, yeah" said Mikey.
"Well, in that dimension, the one that you all view, I accomplished my over all goal of saving people from dire situations. I did this to the point of boring myself with lack of adventure. This didn't take long to bore me, you know, four to five minutes. Anyway, I got a message from somebody who claimed to be me in the future, in this dimension. It told me to leave my dimension and come here. Well, I came here and saw this beautiful, yet nearly doomed, race. I simply assume that my job here is the same back home, so I'm here to help."
"Well, that explains why you're here." said Mikey.
"Yes, I quickly found out that I am famous here, which is not fitting my fancy much."
"So, you just left everybody behind?" asked Jonathon.
"Well…" He choked out, "everybody I knew and cared for died, and it was all my fault."
"Everybody?" Hannah asked, "I'm so sorry…"
"It's okay, because now I have a whole new dimension to explore, and more people to meet." The Doctor grinned, though he could not hide the pain behind his eyes.
"So," asked Mariah, "what was that back there?"
"That" said the Doctor, "was a temporal rift. I located it, and was using it to give my TARDIS a fresh kick of power, but my meters told me that it was getting out of control, so I grabbed what I needed, and came to fix the problem."
"How'd you get here?" asked Jonathon. "I mean, I know the TARDIS can come here, but isn't it hard to do that and keep the TARDIS stable?"
"Yes, that is why I used this!" He held up his wrist. He was wearing a watch that looked like the one that belonged to Captain Jack. "If you rig this thing up right, it can jump you to any dimension that you can easily conceive. And, for me, that's virtually infinite, with my experience. Here, take a look." He tossed it to Jonathon.
Jonathon looked the watch over with envy. "You can actually have that." said the Doctor. "I made quite a few more before coming to this dimension, expecting some friends to join me, before something unexpected came up. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure that primitive human minds can't work it. No offense, of course."
"No," Jonathon stammered out, his eyes huge. "It's fine. I can really have this?"
"Well, yes. I wasn't joking." the Doctor smiled toward Jonathon's glee.
"Well, can we have one, if you apparently have plenty?" Mikey asked.
"Sure, I guess, as long as you all promise not to chase me anymore, or sell this technology on eBay, or whatever you use in this time." He went into his TARDIS to get them. When he came back, he opened the door and let a beautiful golden glow flow out, right before he closed the door. "Here ya' go." he said, passing the alien tech around like cheap merchandise.
"Well," the Doctor said, "I have to go now, don't get yourselves into too much trouble." He turned on the spot and went back inside his TARDIS.
Everyone just stood there and watched as the ancient, yet advanced, technologies slowly vanish. The calming noise gradually turned to whispers in the night.