One Sunday morning as London was sipping their tea and reading the morning paper, three twelve-year old girls were chasing a skinny man in a suit and Converse down Downing Street, onto the train station onto 47th street, onto the train, off the train into Chiswick, onto Lodge Road, around the corner into an alley… and into a blue box.
"Eh. Ma. Gawd! It's more ah-mazing in real life!" Katie Coleman gushed, examining the inside of the TARDIS.
"No, no, no, no, no! Out! NO! Oy! Don't touch that! Who're you lot anyway? You're apparently not British," the skinny man called the Doctor remarked, looking them up and down.
Sabrina Mynes waltzed over to the arm rail and lifted up a denim jacket. "Is this Rose's?" she asked, timidly.
The Doctor ran over and snatched it out of her hands. "That, see, that, is my friend's," he growled, protectively. Sabrina winced, apparently not expecting that response from her hero.
Suddenly, the TARDIS began rocking back and forth, swaying this way and that like a wrecked sail boat in a wind-whipping hurricane.
"W-What'd you do?" the Doctor exclaimed, exasperated.
"Ehmagawd, Ember! The Time Vortex!" Katie's shriek caused the Doctor to turn around to see Ember Ah looking into the TARDIS's Time Vortex.
It was almost as a dream. Yellow, glimmering light was streaming through Ember's dark eyes, her dark hair flowing freely in an invisible wind.
"Ember!" Sabrina shrieked.
The Doctor knew that these girls knew about the Time Vortex, and the TARDIS, and Rose. They knew more than he could ever imagine. Suddenly, Ember started crying out the Doctor's name, his real name. And that's when he knew that they knew everything.
Suddenly, the TARDIS stopped to a halt, the momentum causing everyone to fall. Ember broke free of the Time Vortex.
The Doctor rushed over to her. "Ember, are you all right?"
Ember grinned. "Hell-ah, Doct-ah! Ehmagawd, Katie, Bree, talking like a Brit is sssooo much fun!!! Ehmagawd, do you realize Brit sounds like brilliant? Cool!" Ember rambled.
"No no no!!! Not another Time Lord mega-crisis! Quick, Ember… what's the square root of err… pi?" the Doctor asked, intensely.
"1.7720045!" Ember excitedly answered.
The Doctor yelped and ran his fingers through his hair.
Katie then said, "Doctor? We did the square root of pi on our calculators not too long ago. Plus, she'd still be rambling if it was a Time Lord mega-crisis." Sabrina nodded in agreement.
The Doctor, exasperated said, "Do you girls drive me crazy for the fun of it?"
The girls exchanged sly glances then chorused, "Yes!"
The Doctor rolled his eyes and stepped outside. Ember, Katie, and Sabrina joined him. They gasped at the scenery. Around them wherever they were was coated in diamonds and the streets paved with glimmering solid gold that seemed to stretch on for miles and miles.
"No no no no no!" the Doctor cried. "Ember, Katie, Sabrina get back inside!"
Sabrina, ignoring him said, "Wow, you've been saying 'no' a lot lately."
Ember nodded in agreement. "Three different times already."
The Doctor gave them the Look. "You Americans are an impossible lot, you know that?" he said.
"Yup!" they sang.
The Doctor glared at them. "Go back inside the TARDIS and wait. I'll be back. Oh, and one more thing. Don't. Go. Anywhere. You hear me? If you girlies want to play dress-up, the closet is in that door, on the left, a right, up the staircase, round the corner, take the lift to Level 5, and voila! Ta! And don't move!" the Doctor sternly ordered, then left.
Once he was out of sight, the three girls stepped outside, and went to explore.
The Doctor shoved his hands inside his pockets (bigger on the inside) and strutted around what he believed to be Utopia. Rose would've loved this. A city made out of diamonds and gold and a TARDIS full of twelve year olds? Oh yeah. She would've loved it. He shook the memory from his head and waltzed into the doors of a small bookstore that's sign read: Monty's Mad House of Books. He approached a short, balding, man with one blue eye and one green, and tattoos covering his body standing at the counter.
"And you must be Mad Monty," the Doctor proclaimed.
Mad Monty grunted and said, "Who're you?"
"I'm the Doctor. Now, um, what is this planet we are on? Refresh my—"
"Ex-ter-min-ate. He—is—the—Doctor," a robotic voice came from behind the counter.
Mad Monty pulled out a gun. "I'm sorry," Monty said. But the Doctor didn't hear him, because by then he had taken off running, red Converse skidding out the door.
"It's beautiful," Sabrina gushed.
"It's like, Disney World on steroids," Ember agreed. They cracked up laughing.
"What planet's this?" Katie wondered.
They shrugged. "Let's ask." They approached an elderly woman pushing a stroller.
"Ma'am, what planet is this? I forgot. I have al-timers," Katie said.
"You girls are a bit young to be alone. Who are you with?" she asked.
"The Doctor," Sabrina replied.
"Ex-ter-min-ate. They—are—with—the—Doc-tor. Ex-ter
-min-ate!" a raspy voice came from the stroller.
"Daleks!" they chorused, and ran, Converse hitting the pavement.
The Doctor, even with a Time Lord's metabolism, grew red-faced and tired, ducking behind trash bins and jumping here and there from crazy Dalek-possessed humans. Thank Goodness Ember, Katie, and Sabrina are safe in the TARDIS, he thought. He'd be in big trouble with the Shadow Proclamation if something nightmarish happened. Then, the Doctor skidded into an old office building, throwing open the door to discover three twelve-year old girls struggling to keep the door they had entered form, shut.
The girls stood face-to-face with the Doctor. "You again?" Katie cried.
Anger bubbled inside the Doctor. "I thought I told you to stay inside the TARDIS!" he yelled.
"Like we were going to listen!" Ember shot back.
The Doctor quickly locked both doors. "That will give us a good, oh, five, ten minutes? If there's one thing I've learned in my past lives is that neither humans nor Daleks can open doors!" he said.
He looked around for a secret door.
"Found one!" Sabrina called out. Indeed, smack-dab in the middle of the floor was what looked like a door leading to a cellar.
"Brilliant!" the Doctor shouted, enthusiastically. He fumbled with the door, trying to yank it open.
"Use your screwdriver," Katie suggested.
"Left in the TARDIS," the Doctor groaned, searching his pockets. "Clock, banana, Babe Ruth's baseball, rubber ducky, ooh! A glow stick from Bonnie Tyler's concert in NYC!" the Doctor started belting out Total Eclipse of the Heart.
Ember and Sabrina started singing along, until Katie slapped all three of them.
The Doctor held out a white paper bag to Katie. "Jelly baby?" he asked.
"Ooh!" Katie said, grabbing one. She popped it in her mouth, and then slapped the bag away. "Concentrate!"
The pounding on the doors grew louder and more abrupt. Katie and Ember began screaming at the Doctor, while Sabrina just sat in the corner, rubbing her temples.
"How could you have forgotten your screwdriver?" Ember shrieked.
"Oy! Not my fault! You were the one that brought us here!" the Doctor screamed back.
"Both of you are to blame!" Katie cried.
Ember put her hands on her hips. "Well, you were the one who saw the Doctor! We wouldn't be here if you—"BOOM!
The cellar door had been kicked open. By Sabrina.
"Sabrina? Nicknamed 'Muscle-less Mynes'? Eh. Ma. Gawd!" Ember muttered.
The Doctor was taken aback. "S-Sabrina! That was an iron, goldish door! How?" he asked.
Sabrina grinned. "Well with you lot fighting; it was giving me a headache. Now come on then!" she said. Then she hopped down the cellar.
The cellar didn't turn out to be a cellar after all. It was a cold, dark, mold-smelling sewer, the smell of dead animals hung in the air. Footsteps were head behind them.
"Run!" the Doctor ordered, Converse soaking wet. The three girls followed his instructions.
"And I always wondered how Rose, Martha, and Donna stayed so slim!" Ember said, between gasps. And that was when Katie tripped, and fell to the ground, right in front of the Lord of Daleks himself.
"They—can—not—touch—the—Lord—of—all—Daleks! Ex-ter-min-ate!" the raspy, robotic voice of the Lord of Daleks said, shooting his beam at Katie.
"No!" Ember, Sabrina, and the Doctor cried. A shriek came from Katie's lips as she fell to the ground. It was almost in slow-motion. Katie's caramel colored hair flew out as she tried covering her eyes form the beam, falling.
"Take—the—others—to—the—prison cell," the Lord Dalek ordered. As the Daleks escorted Ember, Sabrina, and the Doctor to the prison cell, Ember thought she saw the tiniest hint of a smile flash across Katie's ice-cold lips.
The Doctor sat on the rock-hard bench in the cell, giving his serious, cold stare to Ember and Sabrina. "I swear on my lives as the Last of the Time Lords that I will get you two out of here alive. No more mistakes."
Ember tried joking. "No more parallel worlds and erased minds?" she said.
The Doctor stared at her and nodded like a robot. "How do you girls know so much about me, the TARDIS, and my err… friends?"
Ember and Sabrina exchanged looks. "Well, you know when there were planets in the sky just a bit ago? Well, Sarah Jane Smith, your former 'friend', her son, Luke, is friends with my cousin, and I was just poking about when K-9 came out, this was a while ago when my family was vacationing in London. Then Ember and Katie told me more. Mainly, Ember though," Sabrina explained.
The Doctor looked at Ember. "And you?"
"Well, um… you know when this was a while ago… Romana? She, um… in your fourth regeneration, when you dropped off Romana in E-Space? Well, Romana is my aunt. My mom is half-Time Lord, so I'm a fourth," Ember explained.
"Ember!" Sabrina cried. "You told me that you saw the blue box!"
Ember gave her friend an apologetic look.
The Doctor just sat there, shocked. "S-so, what part of a Time Lord do you have?" he asked.
Ember shrugged. "Nothing but blood. Pure Gallifreyan blood," she replied.
"T-that means… can you regenerate?" the Doctor asked.
"Kind of," Ember admitted. "I don't change faces, but I do have twelve lives." Ember grinned at the Doctor. "YANA. You are not alone."
"Romana, your mum…" the Doctor started, his voice seemed like it was failing.
Ember shook her head, sadly. "See, my mom had her own TARDIS, and one day just packed up and left. My dad didn't know, so he just assumed that she got angry and left. She went to fight in the Time War. Romana, I don't know," she said. "Probably stuck in E-Space."
The Doctor shook his head in disbelief. "Un. Be. Lievable. What about Katie? Is she related to Martha?" he asked sarcastically.
"Daughter of Captain Jack Harkness. He left to go space-hopping back to his own time in the 51st Century. He developed Torchwood after that, and never came back. Sent letters, but words meant nothing to my mother. Then we learned he was a con, a jerk, and a liar." Katie stood behind them, dramatically, fumbling with keys.
"Katie!" they cried, in unison.
"Thank you Captain Jack," Ember said, making the sign of the cross.
The Doctor just stared at the girls.
"We are one group of 'friends' you're never getting rid of," Katie informed him.
The Doctor grinned. "Not my first choice of 'friends', but it'll do! Come on now! Daleks await! You've got to face Time Lord, Strong Girl, and Never-Dead Woman! The names might stink, but may I say oddly… good luck."
