The sun rose above the jagged horizon and slowly Maddy reverted back to her human self. She towered over the world beneath her, the tip of the mountain at her feet and wind blowing strongly at her face, hair wild. While Maddy missed the easiness of tech, letting lose in the wild like this felt amazing. Free.
'Rhydian would love this,' she thought. 'Mam and Da would have loved it too, if they were here. Shannon would scream, though. And Tom…let's not think about how Tom would react.'
Her laugh changed into a scream as she tripped a hundred miles in one go, before her reaching hands finally grasped a branch and she clung on for her life, wincing when it creaked under her weight. She shifted and swung herself until she was finally on relatively safe ground – a small cave in the mountain side.
As she stared at the ground beneath her, hundreds of miles down, she realized that perhaps being this high wasn't good for her. It seemed balance was a trait her wolf-self had and her human self didn't.
With a sigh she changed back to a wolf and clambered down the mountain side, howling as she went.
And as the hours passed, she smelt it. At first it was faint, and she had shrugged it off as pollen, but after a while it grew stronger until it wasn't something Maddy could ignore. And since there wasn't much for her to do, other than to somehow magic herself to Stoneybridge and cross an entire ocean, she followed it. It took her past a large lake and a small fern field and in and out of forests and between tall trees and through long green grass and then it reached to the edge of a large city, where it stopped.
Completely stopped. The scent didn't linger, it didn't merge with another - it just disappeared all at once. Maddy couldn't even trace it back. Whatever caused it just…vanished out of existence.
The youngest Smith shook her head as she transformed to human. Hoping her ragged jeans, dirty button-up shirt and muddy, ripped backpack wouldn't seem too out of place in this city. A café would be nice to visit and, seeing as she was already at a city, she could stay at hotel for the night.
She still had a couple thousand in her Mam's debit card, since she rarely spent any of it, so a day or two with actual people wouldn't take much off of the grand total and some new clothes would definitely be a good birthday present.
Today, Maddy was going to be eighteen.
The Doctor had been spending the last two days in Ottawa. It was a nice place, if a little boring (though the Doctor was not someone to ask about holiday recommendations) and even with its' many hotels and restaurants and shopping malls and arcades, the Doctor preferred the TARDIS. Unfortunately, there wasn't much he could do because they'd been in an argument and she'd left promptly after – which wasn't something she had done before, but she was growing up, he guessed.
Anyhow, he had booked a hotel room (the presidential suite; they gave these funny little umbrellas in the drinks that he was sure was sent to Earth by tiny Asapartians – who needed umbrellas that small? - ) but since he had no money he ended up using his psychic paper he was sure he was slowly growing to love. At least, more than the TARDIS, because unlike the TARDIS, his psychic paper had never let him down. Except for the past three times, but hey, who was counting?
He was just leaving his hotel room when something inside his pocket began to buzz. He stuck his entire arm in and felt around – sonic hammer, diary, sonic diary (you never know when that might come in handy), a sewing kit, a hot water-bottle, a sonic hot water-bottle, a water bottle – how ordinary – and….there!
With a tug he pulled it out his pocket; a large metal detector like object that was buzzing and beeping loudly. A large pair of headphones were shoved over his ears and he ran haphazardly through the halls of the hotel, pulling down a couple of paintings as he rounded a corner and shoved a few caretakers and their trolleys down (ignoring their splutters of indignation) in his rush to get to the source of this energy.
It was a bit awkward in the elevator though, since the calming music really clashed with the Doctor's screeching to "HURRY UP ALREADY" and the faces the other people on the lift were making as they cowered in the corner of the small box.
When the doors finally opened the Doctor sprinted out barging into another hundred people before making it to the main hall, where he yelled, "MOVE IT FOLKS" and "GET OUTA MA WAY", causing the receptionist to call for the guards. He was leaving anyway, so it was just a waste of time.
And then when he was finally outside with broken glass doors behind him and a receptionist crying about losing her job, he paused and looked down at the small black and green radar on the device in his arms and realized that it had stopped.
And then he turned to the angry faces of two guards in black suits and sirens ringing in the distance.
And then he laughed nervously as he realized all the damage he had just caused.
And then the receptionist glared at him with blood shot red eyes.
"I'll, uh, be off then."
And then he ran.
The café, which was built beneath a dance studio from what the posters outside said, was a pleasant place and Maddy had met a nice blonde haired girl who called herself Michelle (she even ignored her clothes, if that wasn't a good sign, what was?). They enjoyed a fruit smoothie and talked about worldly affairs – that Maddy hadn't been up to date on – until a girl with brown hair in the pony tail said she needed her, so she left.
It got boring pretty quick without someone to talk to, so Maddy left once her smoothie was done and jumped into the nearest clothing department.
Maddy tried to ignore the stares and casually attempted to pick some new clean clothes from the many racks that littered the shopping mall in a somehow organized fashion. She wanted her Mam's money to last, so she decided she'd stick with the dirt cheap stuff.
Unfortunately, this shop didn't understand the meaning of gender neutral clothing. The female section was filled with dresses and pink skirts and tank tops, which was anything but Maddy's style (where the hell were the jeans?!). And, after some hesitation, she entered the male aisle and found that none of that would possibly fit her.
Plus, everything was at least thirty dollars or more – and if she wanted to save her money, which she did, her clothes were not going to be from here.
So she rushed her way out of the overly expensive shop into the busy high street, where yet another hundred people whispered and giggled at her clothing – it wasn't her fault she was surviving in the woods for practically two months! People weren't like this in Stoneybridge, were they?
Anyhow, after a few minutes of scouring the streets and attempting (and failing) to not catch people's eye and be caught by social services, Maddy found a nice thrift store with some good quality second hand clothing.
She had just finished paying twenty dollars for her new – well, mostly new – clothes (a blue t-shirt with button-up sleeves, a red hoodie that was slightly too big and two pairs of denim jeans, one blue and the other a dark green) and had just stuffed them into her backpack when her senses flared and she smelt it again, five hours after it had disappeared.
Perhaps it was excitement, or boredom or just plain carelessness, but Maddy sat up on the park bench outside and grinned as the familiar smell she had spent a whole night trying to track filled her nostrils and her eyes grew golden as she rose to follow it.
She pushed past a load of people who yelled after her but they couldn't hope to keep up. She was way too fast. Maddy was barely breaking a sweat as she turned the corner –
The golden glow in her eyes disappeared and she bumped into someone and at the same time they both yelled,
"Hey!"
The Doctor had been running for some time when he finally decided to stop, since the guards had probably given up and the police were never going to find a Mr. Albus Percival Wulfric Dumbledore anywhere (honestly, the person who thought that up must have been very imaginative).
He turned a corner and watched curiously as a teenager began doing back flips and spins inside a café in front of some other teenager and when the Doctor walked away, he learned something new; teenagers are insane. Possibly more than he was.
Anyhow, the sun was still high in the sky and the Doctor was starting to get worried because a) he hadn't found the TARDIS, b) he didn't have anywhere to sleep and c) he hadn't found the source of the energy spike. He thought the boredom was finally over!
He missed the TARDIS. He was sorry for calling her useless, but even when he yelled it out to the sky in the park (ignoring all the weird faces) she hadn't come back. She was pulling a really big temper tantrum this time, something she'd never really done before.
The sun beat done on the Doctor as he sat on the bench dejectedly, hoping desperately for the TARDIS to forgive him because while he loved the human race, a few days of their shenanigans got incredibly boring – what the Doctor wanted was adventure. A real adventure, with real-life lasers and possible a reunion with Sarah, who he knew was out there still with her belly-button-less son Luke. Or maybe he would meet up with Amy. Or Rory. He really didn't care, he just needed something interesting to happen, and for it to happen soon!
As if to answer his prayers, his pocket began to buzz and he lurched from his seat and grinned; he knew exactly what it was. He pulled the radar out of his pocket and began to run, continuing his rampage through the city, laughing and screaming all the way until –
Until he barged into another person, and they both yelled at each other at the exact same moment,
"Hey!"
The Doctor and Maddy inspected each other for a moment – one taking in the others clothes (dirty and clean) the other taking in the others belongings (a backpack and a giant metal detector). For a moment they forgot about the strange scent and the strange energy.
Suddenly they both turned their heads to the right in the same instance as the energy doubled over suddenly.
"That way!" they said, at the same time.
They shot a look at each other before nodding, and they ran together up to the mysterious energy source.
AL's A/N: This story is being written by me, AL, and my friend HP! I'll write one chapter, and HP will write the next and so on. Thanks for reading! Please vote/comment/review/favorite/follow on your way out.