The purple skies of Shallacatop were bright with a thousand stars as people hiked across the nine mountains towards the Red Citadel. Everything about the planet was beautiful, and always had been beautiful, but the figure sat in the meadows of the second mountain couldn't appreciate the scenary before him. From here he couldn't see the mirrored waters which bordered the Citadel and led out to the sea, but he had a clear view as the tourists and locals walking in pairs or groups towards the scarlet towers and the distance, and suddenly he felt lonely. The Doctor wished he could have brought Clara with him to the Red Citadel, but the psychic paper had asked him to come alone and after recent events he knew Clara needed time to recover.
Before he had time to start making his way towards the towers, an agonising scream rang through the mountains, coming from the direction of the Citadel, and he was already running towards the source. The TARDIS was sitting behind some foliage on the borders of the third mountain, so he didn't have to worry about it being noticed. By the time he reached the ninth mountain he could see a small crowd had formed around a limp form on the ground.
"Everyone get back!" exclaimed a girl at the front of the crowd, probably no more than sixteen or seventeen years old by human standards, "can't you see that this person needs help?" Her skin was pale, and her hair fell down to her lower back in long strands of dark brown; her eyes were a similar colour and held the warmth and emotion of a human rather than a citizen of Shallacatop.
"Who put you in charge, Sophia?" asked an annoyed onlooker, clearly wanting to get a good look at the body on the floor rather than having to be held back by the girl in front of him.
"I'm not in charge! I'm just the only person who realises that someone's been hurt and that he should do something about it rather than gawp at them".
"Don't worry" the Doctor beamed from the sidelines; he admired the girl called Sophia for being far more understanding than the locals, "I'm a doctor, let me through". He made his way to the person on the floor and began to make the sort of checks that a doctor would make, "erm . . . you do realise this person is dead?"
The crowd gasped in horror and began to talk to each other in frantic whispers, some even ran towards the Citadel and others back across the mountains to inform everyone of what had happened.
"Of course I knew she was dead" Sophie replied indignantly, "I'm not stupid! These people were already on edge after some of them saw this person being attacked; I didn't want to give them more of a reason to start panicking".
"But this is Shallacatop, not exactly the intergalactic centre of zero crime rates, people get murdered here every day". As much as it pained him to say it this was true, despite its beauty and valour Shallacatop had one of the highest crime rates in this galaxy and by now locals had gotten used to finding people murdered in the most unlikely places.
"It's more than that" Sophie said.
"What do you mean?"
"I didn't see the attack, but those who did described the attacker for the rest of us. There are few creatures fouler than the angedes larmes"; her accent was English but she was clearly speaking French.
"That . . . that sounds like-"
"French. I'm human, I grew up in France in the fourty-ninth century-"
"When the two nations divided it's citizens and formed a secondary alliance in preparation for the Sixth Intergalactic War with the Sontarans" which explained why the TARDIS hadn't translated the words; she was from the future but speaking the language of the past.
"You're smart" Sophia sounded genuinely impressed.
"I'm a Doctor".
"But seeing as you didn't react to the name angedes larmes you either don't know the language or don't know the creatures".
"What does it mean" although the Doctor feared he already knew.
"It's ancient French, meaning angel of tears".
His hearts stopped at the words. If the weeping angels were in Shallacatop then everyone on the planet was in danger, but far worse than that was that the Doctor would stop at nothing to kill every last one of them. "So you know of them then?"
"I have enountered and destroyed them so many times now. The last time I saw them they took something from me that I will never see again no matter how much I want to, and for that I will hunt them down and destroy them". Sophia was suddenly scared at the Doctor's vengeful attitude towards the weeping angels, but the stories she had heard about them suggested that his attitude was entirely justified.
"That's strange".
"What is?"
"The woman in the Citadel said almost the exact same thing. What did you say your name was again?"
"The Doctor"
"Doctor Who?"
"Isn't that a question. Who is the woman in the Citadel?"
"She never told me her name. But she said she needed to contact the Doctor to help get rid of the angels, and that she had personal business with them after they took something from her that she was sad to lose".
"Wait, I thought you were the one who contacted me!"
"But I don't even know you!"
"But you found the vict-"
"She did say something else, a message she wanted me to pass on to The Doctor if I found him on the mountains, although I never really thought about it before".
"What was the message?"
"Hello Sweetie"; the Doctor was already halfway to the Citadel before Sophia realised he had gone. The Doctor ran across the ninth mountain and towards with tower with three things on his mind, one; the weeping angels would be destroyed once and for all even if it meant his life, two; he never thought he would see the woman in the Citadel ever again and so didn't need to think twice about why the tears were running down his cheeks and why there was a smile on his face, and three; Sophia seemed eerily familiar but he didn't know why and was afraid he would find out soon.