A/N: This is the first chapter of the story, so its kinda short, but I am typing up the next one as we speak. This is set in an AU where Doomsday never happened, so its after all their season two adventures. Hope you like it!

It had started as a normal day (as normal as it gets for them). Then again, doesn't it always? One never wakes up knowing that disaster is on its way.

Earlier that day they had landed on Meladrakia, a sort of space-age Camelot. It had great jutting turrets (communications towers) and even a moat (for the genetically engineered soldierfish). The TARDIS parked in a great open space in the middle of the city. It was a giant courtyard, complete with a sparkling fountain in the middle. But as everything here, the fountain was no ordinary fountain – it defied gravity with the twisting and turning water, more a fluid sculpture than a fountain.

"It's held in place by an electric field," explained the Doctor before Rose could ask, "It's like when you charge a comb and hold it near a running tap – the water move." He was clarifying, so she knew he actually wanted her to understand as opposed to his usual technobabble.

"So why are we here?" asked Rose, as was her duty to whenever they visited a new place.

"Oh, I just wanted to show you alien Camelot!" He replied in his usual evasive fashion. They always did this little charade whenever they went somewhere, and she wasn't stopping now.

"Liar! We never go places just 'cause. What disaster are we here to stop now?" She tried her best to look serious and he tried to look offended, but neither lasted long and they were soon both laughing. Their hands found each others' and they stared up at the fountain until they heard the inevitable scream that they knew was coming. They grinned at each other…

"That's our cue!"

"Allons-y!"

…and ran towards the sound. They sprinted through a narrow doorway in to a stony alley that wouldn't have been out of place in medieval Camelot. At the end of the alleyway a horrifying sight greeted them. A body –its gender you could no longer tell- was lying there, broken, no, destroyed beyond repair. But not dead. Nothing as merciful as that. It's stomach was sliced open and its insides were spilled out onto the pavement. They looked chewed on. Blood spilled out with every beat of the visible heart, which was left untouched to prolong the suffering. This thing that had once been a person whimpered, lacking the energy and conscious thought required to scream.

"What could do this?" whispered Rose, horrified. More blood had spilled out of the person than seemed at all possible, and still it would not stop. The Doctor leaned over and sonic-ed a bit near the heart of the person. The resonations that would not even have affected a normal heart stopped this one. The person left the world with a sigh. Rose tried to stop staring at it, but her gaze remained, transfixed. The Doctor stepped back beside her and she instinctively buried her face into him. The two people standing here now seemed so different from the two grinning maniacs that had rushed here mere minutes ago.

"Whatever did this was rabid," said the Doctor as they walked back towards the TARDIS. "This was not the work of anything conscious. The only thing in the universe that might have intentionally done this was destroyed long ago by the Shadow Proclamation. Now, normally I disapprove of genocide, but there is no place anywhere for a creature that feeds off of pain. But it can't be one of those! They're dead! Gone! This was something else, something that is horribly mad and sick and rabid. Even human psychopaths aren't usually this cruel, and that's saying something!"

"Oi, rude!" replied Rose instantly, "Though you have a point. Are you sure one of those pain creature things couldn't have survived?"

"Of course it couldn't have! They were the Shadow Proclamations main targets for centuries! They died! They all died! Their survival was completely impossible…"

"Which means that's exactly what we're facing here" finished Rose without missing a beat. She knew full well that the more impossible something was, the more likely it was to happen to them. And the TARDIS never let them go places for no reason. That was confirmed by the Doctor's grim nod.

"We've got to find it and destroy it. It feeds off of pain. All pain. The pain of the victims, the pain of those around them. It won't stop until this city is a miserable mess, and it will leave no family untouched. It will find us soon…" He faded out. They both knew exactly who on this planet was the best food for a pain creature.

"Well!" said Rose, imitating the Doctor's cheerful tone when he encouraged her. "Then we'll just have to get to it first!"

"Allons-y!" he agreed, his face a grinning mask once more. And off they went.