Hey everyone! This is my first fanfiction so I'm sorry if it's a little sketchy. Hopefully my writing will get better with experience. So, without further ado, let's begin the story!

My life is like constantly trying to convince yourself that you can watch a 45-minute tv show in 20 minutes.

You desperately want to believe that it's possible, that as if you wish it hard enough, you'd be able to defy the laws of time and everything would just fall into place.

But unfortunately, it's called reality for a reason.

That's why I'm stuck under a car with a horde of mind-controlled animalistic humans trying to tear me apart. Reality, right? What a joke. But it was hard to find any humour in my situation at the time with the zombie-like creatures clawing at my body. I had been lying on my back uncomfortably for minutes and could feel the panic that was beginning to rise in my throat as it was starting to threaten any chance of staying alive that I had. But knowing from experience that I mustn't allow that to happen, I took a few deep breaths of the dirty air, my head slowly clearing and immediately changing tasks to finding a way out of my current predicament.

From what I could see, there were only two options. One: Grab something that would be functional as a weapon, crawl my way out from under the car, and hit anything that moves. Although I must admit that this one is kind of a death wish. Two: Find some way to get rid of all the bloodthirsty humans trying to claw my eyes out first and then escape.

Deciding to put my escape plan for later on hold and focus on not being scratched to death right then and there, I began searching for something to keep my attackers at bay, figuring that having something which could be used to whack people with would be a good idea anyways. Unfortunately, with my attention being zeroed in on finding an object that wasn't on top of me, I didn't notice the woman that had begun to crawl under the car until she was digging her fingernails so deep into my arm that I thought she'd cut right through it.

Even if the pain didn't make me gag, the image almost did.

I did yelp, though, and immediately elbowed her right in the face, making her fall unconscious. I tore my arm away from her and surveyed her fallen body. Luckily, it was blocking the other peoples' access to me, ceasing the majority of their scratch attack. Unluckily, it was blocking my access to an exit. So much for option number one.

That left me with - you guessed it - option number two. But how, exactly, was I going to make about a hundred people just disappear like smoke?

And then it hit me. Fuel! I was under a car, for crying out loud. How the hell did I not think of it earlier?

I used the little light that I had, focusing my eyes until my head hurt, to make out shapes and find the exhaust pipe. I ignored the pain from my bleeding left arm as I grabbed and tugged at the pipe. It had stubbornly stayed in place, but I refused to let go and pulled at it with all of my strength. Eventually, the pipe tore loose and the smell of fuel hit my sinuses like a truck. But not even a second later I was feeling the fluid drip onto my clothes and form a puddle beneath me, which was unfortunate because now if I set the fuel aflame, I'd be a roasted marshmallow. Plus there was also the problem of how I was even going to get so much as a spark into the fuel in the first place.

"C'mon, think!" I muttered to myself, tapping my head softly like a drum.

But it was hard for me to hear anything except for the sound of scraping, although I think I had heard someone's jaw dislocating somewhere along the line. That's where I remembered the box of matches that I kept inside my right combat boot. I always keep a box of matches somewhere on me in case of emergencies. You never know when you're going to get stranded somewhere when you lead a life like mine. Pulling the box out, I recalled the being-burned-alive problem. But I had already thought of a solution for that.

Keeping the box of matches firmly gripped in my hand like the lifeline they were, I grabbed hold of the underside of the car, using it as leverage to pull myself underneath the next car, and then the next. The wild humans followed me like a pack of wolves and I thanked my lucky stars that the spaces between the cars were too tight for them to go through.

I pulled out a match from the box and struck it across the top twice before it lit. Angling myself the best I could in my restricted area, I carefully tossed the match back down to where I just was. For a moment, I thought that it wouldn't reach the pool of fluid, and was caught off guard when chaos erupted right into my sight. The sound was deafening, but the visual was just plain disturbing. I could see the burning face of the man whose jaw I had heard dislocating as he tried to climb under the car, but mainly it was all white. A few seconds later the car in front of me exploded as well, and I knew that it was now or never. I rolled out from under the car and lashed out in every direction, sprinting for dear life. One of them had managed to grab my injured arm as I heard the car I had just been taking shelter under explode, but I swiftly punched her square in the face and kept running. I was unable to taste anything other than smoke and I hadn't even noticed that my jeans and boots were on fire until I was half a block away from the ferals, but once I did I thrashed my legs out wildly trying to put it out.

When I was finally safely hidden around the corner of an alleyway, I couldn't help but peek around. What I saw then made me feel a pang of remorse.

The people were screaming from the flames surrounding their bodies, running around madly in circles. I frowned. These were people. Innocent people that had been brainwashed by some freak who I didn't even know the name of. They probably had families somewhere if they weren't also being burned alive in front of me. They didn't deserve to be burnt to ashes, that wasn't what I was meant to do. I'm supposed to save people, not kill them. The only thing that helped me to put my mind at ease even the tiniest bit was that they would never know the savagery of their deaths.

I pulled away from the scene, deciding that torturing myself wouldn't do any good, masked my face with a neutral expression. Not that it would really matter anyways. I had realized before that everybody besides me was brainwashed at this point. Which brings up a pressing question: why am I not running around as a psycho like everybody else?

I had been so distracted by my thoughts that I was only knocked out of my trance when I knocked into somebody else. My eyes wide, I gasped and looked up, ready to see a snarling mess with crazed eyes. Except I found perhaps the exact opposite. He was about 6' tall, wearing a clean brown leather jacket over a white t-shirt of the band Queen. He had your everyday blue bootcut jeans on and his laced-up brown boots were nothing if not worn. What caught my attention the most was his piercing eyes. They were a shade of blue even lighter than the sky and seemed to be much older than the mid-thirties years of age that his face showed. The brunette man was looking down at me with one eyebrow raised and a glint of impishness glowing in his eyes. He sure didn't look like a feral. He was much too composed; a feral would have been grabbing at my throat the moment it saw me.

"You should be more careful around these parts, little girl." And he definitely wasn't from around here either. Not with that British accent.

That last piece of info was swept away from my attention, however, when those last two words slipped out of his mouth. "Look, I may only be 14, but I am perfectly capable of looking out for myself." I retorted, poking him in the chest on the enunciated word.

He smiled at me fondly and replied with, "I wouldn't doubt it."

His friendliness had caught me off guard, and I couldn't help but be suspicious as I narrowed my eyes. "Do I know you?"

"Oh, no. No, you don't. The other way around, really."

Very suspicious. But I had a theory.

"Time traveler?"

I know what you're probably thinking right now. It might be somewhere along the lines of, "isn't it a bad idea to just ask random people if they're time travelers?" Well, it's only bad if you're not a time traveler and if you actually give a rat's ass as to what people think of you. Neither of those things apply to me.

"Caught on quick, just like always."

I knew that if I continued to keep skirting around the point, we could be in that alleyway for minutes. And as far as I knew, we didn't have minutes, so I leaped right for the million dollar question.

"Right, who the hell are you?"

A smirk wormed it's way across the aggravating man's face. "There she is. The blunt, straight-to-the-point, feisty Emma that I know."

I was expecting him to know my name, but hearing it come out of this stranger's mouth still caught me off guard somehow. To me, my name was more than just a label of what to this mess of a human. It was more like a promise, a reminder. Of what? Maybe you'll find out someday. Only level 14 friends get to know my tragic backstory.

Despite my discomfort, I replied practically immediately with my voice of steel. Nobody got past that one. "Answer the goddamn question."

He sounded exasperated when he finally answered. "Oh, all right Emmy," I wanted to punch him in the face, but the target suddenly turned serious, "I'm the Doctor."

God fucking damn it.

And the winner for the universe's most bad luck goes to Emma. The Doctor is the last person I ever wanted to meet. I've always feared that running into him would entail a lot of awkwardness, anger, and jumping through hoops that could really be avoided. And from what I could tell so far, I was right. Heck, I didn't even know it was him and I was irritated by him.

For a few moments, all I could do was stare at him blankly. If any savages showed up at that moment, I would have willingly jumped right into their arms. The small alleyway we were in seemed like the most intimidating thing in the world; I wanted out. The last of my worst dreams had finally come true and I knew that this was either going to end with me being either terribly confused or miserable. Or perhaps dead.

Like those people you just burnt to a crisp.

I shoved that thought to the back of my mind. There were more important matters at hand, like the one standing in front of me that's waiting for a response.

I eventually was able to get my voice back, saying, "What are you doing here?"

He - The Doctor seemed troubled at this, knitting his eyebrows together in confusion before speaking in his usual eccentric persona. "I was planning on heading for Mesopotamia. But then there was the unexpected spike of artron energy in the middle of a small town in the US of A and, well, how could I resist? Landed a bit late, although, I could ask you the same question."

I sighed. Of course he messed up the destination. That would never change. "I was also planning on going somewhere different but my vortex manipulator malfunctioned."

The Time Lord scrunched up his nose at the mention of my vortex manipulator. "Why don't you just pop over to your intended destination, then?"

"It short-circuited. No idea why, though."

He bit his lip and I tensed. If the Doctor was nervous about something then it was definitely cause for alarm. "I might. Follow me."

I cautiously crept around the corner at which he disappeared, and I lit up as a wide grin was plastered across my face. Right there, in front of me, was that lovely, beautiful, shining police box with the bluest blue you could imagine. She even seemed to glow, which would make sense, seeing as she was…. alive.

That's when it hit me. That's when I understood why my vortex manipulator short-circuited. The energies didn't mix, of course they didn't. The TARDIS was alive, right in front of me, and it all added up. At first, I had thought that it was the Doctor who was out of place. But the TARDIS was alive and healthy, and that could only mean one thing. It wasn't the Doctor who was in the wrong universe: it was me.

At least that explained why the air tasted like Yovolian pineapples.

But that led to the revelation of another problem. If I was able to travel between universes, then the walls of reality were breaking down. Again.

"Ah, shit."

"Language."

"Can it, Lassie. We've got a real problem on our hands. Two of them, actually."

"Yeah, well, let's deal with the one in our faces first. What do you know about the psycho humans already?"

I told him everything I knew, which wasn't much. "I'm pretty sure that they're being mind-controlled, or something similar. They attack as soon as you're in their line of sight and they seem willing to do anything to tear us apart; I saw one dislocate his own jaw." I said as I recalled the disturbing sight.

The Doctor nodded at my proclamation, obviously adding pieces together in his head, before stating the exact thing that had been bothering me as well. "The question is, why are they only going crazy for us instead of just attacking each other?"

"Well, what's different about us?"

The answer was, of course, obvious.

"We're time travelers." We declared simultaneously.

"And time travelers," I continued, "absorb artron energy as background radiation, which can be used as a power source."

"Exactly. So whoever or whatever is controlling these people regulated them so that they would only go after artron energy-"

"which is troubling because unless you're a time traveler yourself, you'd have to get artron energy from someone else-"

"meaning that the person in charge knew that we would come here."

I'll admit I was getting kind of freaked out at how we were already finishing each other's sentences in rapid fire. I mean I've known him for what- about five minutes?

"So that leaves the matter of who is controlling them, how they're doing it, and what they want to do with all that artron energy." I continued.

"Well, the mind-controlling part might have something to do with that small chip in their neck."

"The what?"

"You mean haven't noticed it yet? That's slow, especially for you."

I'd like to say I was getting used to him spitting out random information about me, but really, I wasn't. Just how much did he know about me? How close were we? Friends? Good friends? Best friends? Biggest enemies? Probably not that last one. I had about a thousand questions running through my head that were driving me nuts. But I currently had a bigger problem on my hands than my almost non-existent social life.

"Well, perhaps I've been too busy running for my life to notice any damn chips! Just tell me about them."

"They're silver; shaped like a thin, four-pointed star. From what I've seen, they're in every mind-controlled person on the back of their neck. Must hack into their neural centers. Make them go haywire."

I bit back a remark about something having hacked into his neural center with the way his hands were moving all about and instead asked him if he had any idea where the controller was.

"Not a horse's head." Was his reply, to which my face scrunched up. Who the hell says that? "But we can check in the TARDIS."

"Great idea. Let's go before any more of those ferals show-" But alas, my luck never goes quite that far, because I had found myself face to face with one while walking to the TARDIS. And ridiculously, my first thought wasn't to run, it was more along the lines of how the hell I didn't notice it before. "-Up."

I couldn't get another word in before I felt a hand grabbing mine and pulling me away from the snarling human. After straightening myself out, I saw with relief that already distinct brown leather jacket. He was leading me towards the parking lot where I had just been, but I had a better idea.

Pulling my hand from his grasp, I yelled for him to follow me. Instead of heading forwards, I headed to the side. I started scaling the building, getting about five feet up before hearing an "are you crazy" from down below.

"Probably," I yelled back, "but it's our best shot. Those people are incredibly uncoordinated."

The Doctor looked like he wanted to argue but nevertheless started climbing. Admittedly, it was harder for him seeing as he didn't have years of experience of scaling buildings and parkour, so I helped him some; telling him to put his foot here or grab a handhold there. Within about ten minutes we had climbed the small building, leaving our attackers stranded on the ground and clawing at the sides of the shop. Some even managed to lift themselves half a foot off of the ground, only to have gravity pull them back down.

"I'm guessing the TARDIS is out of the question."

"Yup." The Doctor replied, popping the p. "Now, the person controlling this town must be in a place where they'll be able to transmit the signal."

"Someplace big with something round, right?"

"Exactly. And we're not going to find it here." I looked at him curiously and found to my surprise the exact same expression looking back at me. It was only for a second, however, before he switched to his thinking face. "We need to get to higher ground."

Nodding, I averted my attention to finding a taller building. It didn't take long at all for me to find one of the most perfect spots: the towering church, about six or seven buildings down. I pointed it out to the Doctor, running to the edge of the flat rooftop. Below me, the ferals could be heard as clear as day.

"Okay," I grinned, "now we jump."

Giving myself a running start, I pushed off of the building. The familiar feeling of the wind in my face washed over me with a whistle as my feet left the surface. Seconds went by and the sensation of being weightless along with the perception of my heart plummeting to my feet only incited my love for the rush of danger that these situations gave me. What felt like an eternity ended as my feet hit the ground. I splayed my left hand out to balance myself and before I got up, I looked over my shoulder and simply said to the man with his eyebrows raised to his hairline, "your go."

"Right." He breathed.

Following my example, he, rather well might I add, successfully leaped over the gap between the two buildings.

We continued on with our jumping from rooftop to rooftop and I noticed, with much annoyance, that the ferals were following us from down on the streets. But before we knew it, the Doctor and I had found our attention snatched away from the growling humans to instead focus on each other.

"I must admit, that body is quite agile."

"Could clobber you in a race." He boasted.

"Hey now, don't get ahead of yourself. These compliments won't be happening very often."

"I beg to diffe- don't roll your eyes like that, it's rude!"

"This coming from you."

"Oi! What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're the King of Rude!"

"I prefer sass, thank you very much."

"Oh, please. Whatever 'sass' you have is from your companions."

"You don't give me enough credit."

"I'd rather not inflate your ego, thanks. It's already the size of the distance it would take to get to Gallifrey and back."

He pouted and I couldn't help but laugh. The face he was making was hilarious to see on a righteous being that was thousands of years old.

"You need some ice for that burn?"

"Oh, shut up!"

The corner of my lips tugged up, deciding that I had annoyed him enough for now.

Soon enough, we had jumped our way to the building before the church. I didn't even hesitate before hurtling myself once more into the air, grabbing onto the window head and hoisting myself up to the roof. Looking back in time to see the Doctor ready to get a running start for his jump, I laid down on the roof of the church, thankful that it was level enough for me to do so without sliding off, and put my hands out. We both knew that it'd take more than beginner's luck to grab onto that window.

"Ready?" He asked.

"As soon as you are."

Grabbing onto his arm with both hands was the easy part. The second part, which was keeping my grip on his arm without falling off of the building myself, was not so easy. The strain of his weight tugging on my arms was tremendous and I felt like they were going to break any second.

"Dear Lord, what are you putting into that body?!" I exclaimed.

Ignoring my comment, the Doctor reached up with his free arm to grab hold of the roof's edge and pull himself up. Both breathing heavily, we stood and looked up to the steeple of the church.

Cracking my knuckles and stretching my arms, I told the Doctor, "You stay here. I'm about to pull an Assassin's Creed."

"A what?"

I didn't answer, only ran to the steeple and immediately started climbing. Upon reaching the top, balancing myself atop the cross with one foot, I could just barely hear the Doctor from down below. "That is nuts. You are nuts."

Returning to the task at hand, I looked all over for any round thing that could be used as a transmitter. I risked losing my balance by looking to the side, over my shoulder, anywhere and everywhere for what felt like hundreds of times. But to no avail. No big round thingy was to be seen. But there was something else. There was a yellow house. And whenever I tried to look past said yellow house, it was like some sort of force was pushing my eyesight down.

"Doctor?" I called down to him. The word felt strange on my tongue. Calling someone that… it left a bad feeling reverberating throughout me. In short: I didn't like it. I didn't like it one bit.

"You're stuck on the yellow house, aren't you?"

I let out a half-strangled "yeah".

Goddammit, these stupid timelines.

"Concentrate." The Doctor's voice broke through my thoughts. "Really concentrate."

Following his vague instructions, I blocked out everything else and focused solely on that yellow house. Slowly but surely, I managed to look past the yellow house and see… a fairground.

A fairground? You have got to be kidding me. Please tell me that's not where the controller is.

"See it? Whatever's past there must be where the controller is."

Damn it.

"Alright," I grumbled as I climbed down, "let's give this person a piece of our mind and get this town back to their canoodling."

"Love to," The Doctor expressed as I landed on the roof, "except there's one obvious problem."

We both looked out to the four streets and one river we had to cross, then to the ferals down below.

"Hmm…" The Doctor's head swiveled around before resting in the direction of my right arm. Following his gaze to my vortex manipulator, I took it off and handed it to him. Immediately, he took out his sonic screwdriver and started working with it. It was a bright violet this time with a silver casing that had multiple holes in it where more light shone through. I could make out plenty of circular Gallifreyan markings all over the device.

"What are you doing?"

"If I can just… rewire this correctly… I'll be able to have this generate a high-voltage electrical charge that when discharged with a blast from my sonic will-"

"-paralyze everyone down below. Nice thinking. I'll map out a route for us to take while you work on that."

Within a minute or two, we'd finished our tasks and were ready to put our plan into action. But first, we needed to gather all of the ferals into one area. That's where I came into play.

After some ridiculous time arguing with the Doctor, I finally managed to persuade him. Resulting in me swinging down to the street in front of the church. As soon as I knew that I had caught the ferals' attention, I dashed inside. Running past all the pews, I only looked back to make sure that all of them were inside. The transept was the turnaround point; the point where I had to face the rampaging horde that wanted to slice me to bits.

I took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing."

One glance at the snarling mass sent my pulse racing. I could feel my heart, and it felt like it was going to beat out of my chest, going: ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump. The welcoming feeling of adrenaline filled my body and I knew that I had to get to them before they got to me. Charging at them like a racecar, I weaved through, slid, and elbowed any ferals that got in my way.

But not enough of them.

Suddenly, I felt something tug me backward. Realizing that one of the crazies must have grabbed onto my shirt, I tried to break free. At that point, I didn't give a crap about whether or not my shirt got ripped. But before I could get out of the person's grip, more of the ferals had grabbed onto me and soon I was surrounded. I could roughly recognize the feeling of gravity taking hold and making me hit the floor, leaving my body aching. Leaving me vulnerable, the ferals scratched and tore everywhere without mercy. One did end up tearing off the short sleeve of my shirt. The shooting pain throughout my body overwhelmed me and soon enough I was writhing on the floor of the church, screaming. My shrieks of pain echoed throughout the area and my vision of the furious faces above my began to blur as I felt something wet roll down my cheeks.

I was going to die there. I fully knew in my heart and accepted that as a fact. There was no way out, no happy ending, no hand to hold. But of course, I never expected such for myself. And yet, I was afraid. I didn't expect fear. I couldn't understand why, of all times that I have faced certain death, it was now that hopelessness and terror hit me full force.

But then, just as I was beginning to give up, I heard the glorious sound of breaking glass. I had never loved that noise so much in my life as I saw a brown object flying to the center aisle, distracting the ferals. An even better whirring sound filled the air, followed by the not-so-better feeling of being stunned which came into effect. My entire body tensed, feeling like I had one giant cramp and my shoulders sharply hunched up against my own will. The only thing I could really focus on was the intense throbbing in the spot on my back between my shoulder blades when a strong sense of fatigue came over me. With another pain beginning to grow in my chest and leaving me gasping for breath, everything faded into black.

I hope you enjoyed chapter 1! I'll make sure to put up chapter 2 soon, and remember, reviews of any shape or form are always appreciated!