A brand-new adventure of the Tenth Doctor, never released to the general public until now... Allow me to present...
Trees of Mertraca
Chapter One: Landing
A boy, looking no older than twelve years old, sprinted across the swamps. They wouldn't catch him. They couldn't catch him. He was the fastest runner, the best hunter; He would show them. He looked behind him, at the straggly, thin furry monsters that were chasing him. He laughed out loud at the exhilaration of it all…
Then he stopped. A loud, wheezing, groaning noise was emanating from the swampy forest ahead of him. He looked behind him. The beasts were large, and dangerous, but they were stupid. He lifted his arms.
The sentient tree plucked him from the ground with two spindly branches and pulled him up its trunk. He crawled among the thickest of them, patting it gratefully. He had always got along with the sentient trees of Mertraca.
A creaking noise caught his attention, and he crawled to get a better view of the thing that he had heard. It was... A large blue box. How strange. And now a door was opening, in the side, and out came…
A man with odd hair all whipped up and spiky, with strips in front of his ears. A tall man, wearing full clothing, in an odd pattern. A coat, also. He had heard of coats, seen pictures of them, but never actually seen one. The weird man stepped fully out of the box, and clicked his fingers at it, and the door swung shut. He said something that the boy couldn't hear. The boy looked at his own tattered clothing, a shirt buckled at the waist by a strip of skin. He felt… jealous. Yes, that was it. Jealous of the man. He settled down in the tree to watch, and the tree curled its branches around him, shielding him from the cold.
The Doctor dashed around the central console of the TARDIS, with alarms going off and red lights flashing.
"No, no, no, no!" He whirled a lever, cranked a cranky thing, and dashed back to look at the scanner.
He was then thrown to the floor as the TARDIS landed, hitting his head on the console. "Ouch."
He got up slowly, and checked his head. It hurt, predictably, but nothing was seriously damaged. He picked up a rubber mallet and whacked the TARDIS console. "That's for being naughty. Now where did you land me..?"
He peered at the scanner. The landscape outside was swampy, with a lot of trees obscuring the picture.
"Mertraca," he read from the line of scrolling Gallifreyan text. "A planet of swamps, with large forests of lush trees. Lovely."
He strolled towards the door, clicking his finger at the right wavelength to open it. It opened. "I love doing that," He said to himself, as he strolled through the door and out into the cold. Lucky he was wearing his coat, really.
A rustle in a nearby tree alerted him, but he didn't turn round. He had had too many bad experiences to turn round now. Instead, he clicked his fingers at the TARDIS again, closing the door. Just to be sure, he took out his key and locked it. He wasn't really confident with this finger-clicking lark yet.
The rustle came again, but he deliberately ignored it, instead turning his attention to the trees.
"Ohoho… That's really interesting…" He crouched down, whipping his glasses out of his pocket and putting them on. "Some kind of marks on this tree…"
He stood and sighed. "Wish I had someone to talk to, someone to impart my wisdom upon…" He shook his head. "Nah. I'm going solo, remember?"
The boy looked down at the strange man. The boy knew that he had noticed him, but the man was ignoring him… He did not like to be ignored. He reached for his belt, where he had stored his best weapon – his blowpipe. He had made this blowpipe from the wood of a dead sentient tree, and it had never failed him, not ever…
The Doctor crouched back down. There was something very interesting on the roots of this tree. Like some kind of abnormal growth spurt had caused the tree to grow prematurely. He looked a little closer...
The dart whistled out from behind him and thudded into the tree, exactly where his neck had been moments earlier. The effect on the tree was electric; it began to wave its branches and, if it had a mouth, it would probably have been screaming.
The Doctor whipped round, pulling out his sonic and pointing it at a tree opposite, the one he had heard the rustling from earlier. He could see a shape in he branches, now. It looked just like a little boy.
"OK. You have my full attention. What do you want?"
The boy jumped down from the tree. He was horrified that he had hit one of his friends with a paralysis dart; that was the utmost dishonour, hurting a Sentient Tree.
"Who are you, sir?"
The Doctor looked closely at the boy. He looked about eleven or twelve years old, but looks could be deceiving; He knew that from experience. The boy was wearing a long shirt, belted around the waist like a tunic, and no shoes. This was probably because his feet were elagonated flippers. This came as no surprise to the Doctor, because the humanoids populating the planet had most likely adapted to their swampy environment.
"I'm the Doctor, and this is..." The Doctor remembered that he currently had no companion, "No-one."
The boy grinned. "If it is no-one, sir, then why do you introduce them?"
The Doctor was impressed. This boy was sharp. "Sometimes I travel with people. Then, I feel the need to introduce them." The kid didn't look like a threat, so the Doctor flipped the sonic and stowed it in his sleeve. "Who are you?"
The boy grinned again. He liked this 'Doctor'. "My name is Symond Dhu Obsidian, sir. Excuse my asking, but why are you here? We do not get strangers here."
The Doctor gestured to the bulky blue shape of the TARDIS behind him. "My spaceship brought me here. Usually, when she takes me somewhere, she thinks it's important, so I'm just having a look around."
The boy - Symond - looked at the TARDIS incredulously. "That does not look like it can fly through space, sir."
The Doctor clicked his fingers at the TARDIS and the doors opened. He blew on them like a sharpshooter and grinned. "She flies in time, too, actually. But don't tell anybody."
Symond slowly, disbelievingly walked into the small blue box, gasping. "It is bigger on the inside! How do you do that, sir?" He turned back to the Doctor, with a look of utmost astonishment on his face.
"The technology was lost," said the Doctor shortly. "Even I don't really know how it works. Anyway, Symond Dhu Obsidian - Brilliant name, that. What does the Dhu stand for?"
Symond's look of wonder evaporated. "But, everyone knows that! Dhu means first son, Khu means other son, Dha means first daughter, and Kha means other daughter. I am Dhu, so I am the first son of my mother."
"Ah, I see." The Doctor grinned. "Well, Symond – Take me to your leader!"
Symond raised an eyebrow. "What is so funny?"
"I've always wanted to say that."
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