A/N: [sweeps away dust] Hello, my friends. It's been a while! Anyway, I've decided to start another series, and I plan to make this one actually go on. Hooray! I came up with this idea thanks to a prompt generator. I didn't think it all up! Enjoy~!
"We'll be fine, Clara. Earth in 4218, your home planet..." The Doctor thought for second, "...2204 years in the future, it'll be brilliant! Lovely people, lovely cuisine...oooooh, make that the year 4220. I owe Madonna's distant granddaughter an expensive set of jewelry I'm yet to collect from somewhere in a room in the TARDIS. Anyway, what do you say?" the Time Lord clapped his hands together, turning to his companion, Clara Oswald. She had been pestering him about seeing a future Earth for ages, yet when he presented the opportunity to her, she was worried about how safe she'd be. Humans, so picky!
Clara sighed. "Fine. But seriously, if the future people don't like us, you're the one that's going to be explaining. I'll nod and shake my head where you need me to, but...I'm doing no explanations."
The Doctor grinned. "I'm usually arrested before I get the chance to explain myself. You should've learned that by now," he pulled a lever, the TARDIS launching into flight. Clara clung onto the railing surrounding the console, as the Doctor jumped around the a hyped up child, hitting buttons, flipping buttons, and turning valves. The floor beneath them shook, the ship's pilot just laughing and flipping up the same lever as before. The TARDIS stopped suddenly, the materialisation sound echoing through the console room.
"And out there's Earth, 4220?" Clara asked, stepping towards the TARDIS doors.
The Doctor nodded, looking at the monitor, or trying to. He hit the small screen, only getting static. "Oh, come on..." he muttered, hitting the screen a few more times, before sighing. "Alright. Lets go." He turned away from the console, joining Clara, before he pushed the doors open.
The Doctor stared at the landscape he was greeted with. "Wait, wait, wait..." He checked his watch quickly. 'This definitely isn't 4220...' He thought to himself.
"Erm...Doctor...this isn't actually Earth in 2000 years is it?" Clara asked, her eyes roaming over the landscape. The sky seemed to have a murky yellow tint to it, buildings lay in toppled heaps of rubble on the cracked and destroyed pavement. The road was covered in potholes, and cars were crashed into the rubble of buildings and bent and broken...lamposts? It was hard to tell what they had been previously. Clara stepped out into the street, looking around the shattered remains of, going by the distant remnants of what might have been an updated Big Ben or London Eye, what had previously been London. What had happened? She had been travelling with the Doctor for a while now, but on all of their adventures so far, she had never seen destruction like this.
The Doctor walked up beside her, sighing as he looked up to the sky. He had taken off his coat – the air around them was extremely hot, burning their lungs slightly. (The Doctor's at a very minimal level, his biology was superior, after all!) They started walking again, the Doctor's eyes falling to the ground. He didn't want to look up, for fear of seeing the deceased among the tattered remains of a once thriving city. They passed through many empty streets. Not a sound besides their footsteps on the uneven road could be heard, and they echoed like drumbeats through the leftover shell of London. The Doctor couldn't help but think...was this his doing? Did he in the future, somehow cause the disaster that had led to London, and perhaps the rest of the world, being utterly devastated? He closed his eyes. He didn't want to think about that. About the millions of lives he would destroyed if this really was him.
"Doctor..." Clara asked, breaking the heavy silence between herself and the Doctor, "If this isn't 4220, then what is it? And what's happened here?"
The Doctor didn't answer her immediately, swallowing and taking a deep breath before he stopped walking and looked at her. "I got the piloting off again. This is 3110. And, truth be told, Clara...I don't know what's happened to this place. But ...it feels like I'm connected to it somehow."
Clara shook her head. "Doctor, no. This definitely wasn't you. Or...not this you. This you would never, ever do this. Not ever," she sighed, biting her lip. "How about we just...go back twenty or so years? Find out what happened to this place. Then we can prove that this was nothing to do to you."
The Doctor looked at his companion, a smiling starting to bloom on his lips. Clara Oswald, his impossible girl, trying to make him feel better when he showed his big, sad eyes. He nodded. "Yes. Lets do that." His smile grew into his big toothy grin as he grabbed Clara's hand and ran, pulling her back in the general direction of the TARDIS. It took a while for them to find it again, but they did.
The Doctor bounced up to the console, Clara slamming the doors shut and joining him, hanging on tightly to the console as the box took off, demateriliasing with its familiar 'VWOOOORP, VWOOOOORP, VWOOOOOOORP!' noise.
They hadn't noticed the two figures behind the TARDIS, working on some device, shouting at each other as they attempted to get whatever they had between them working. There was a beep, and a triumphant whoop from the male of the two. "Command: Save Earth!" He yelled at the device.
The TARDIS landed with a jolt, and the Doctor and Clara stepped out of the blue box, facing a huge crowd of millions of people. They were all staring, but then, they burst into applause, cheering and whooping at the two people that had just appeared out of the magically materialising box, the box they'd heard of in the stories of their ancestors. "The gods of TARDIS, they have finally arrived!" Some people cheered, "Our saviours, our saviours!"
Clara looked up at the Doctor. "What have we just gotten ourselves into?" She asked him quietly, awkwardly smiling and waving at the crowd.
"I think this generation of humans have been told the stories of me...and they need help," The Doctor said back, also grinning and waving, but with much more enthusiasm, two hands on flailing arms flapping back and forth, "Obviously something bad is happening and...we're the gods to save them."
Clara's eyes widened, "...Gods?" She let out a yelp of surprise as some of the people lifted her and the Doctor up, still cheering for their supposed saviours, taking them to something that was obviously meant to be a palace for them. It was an abandoned two-storey building with some walls knocked down.
They were placed on makeshift thrones, old office chairs with ornaments on the backs, "We are at your command, oh great gods of TARDIS!" An older-looking man said, bowing to Clara and the Doctor.
"Err..." The Doctor thought of something to say, "Leave me, um...Lord Doctor and...the Great Clara, to uh, talk about our leadership."
"Yes, Lord Doctor, Great Clara," the man nodded, turning back to the crowd, "Did you hear them? Let them discuss what they will do to save Earth from the Threat!"
"You, Mr..." The Doctor pointed at the man, unsure of his name, "Stay here, tell us about this 'Threat'."
The crowd disappeared, leaving the Doctor, Clara, and the man. "So...your name?" The Doctor asked.
"Oh, I'm Wayne. Wayne Pelt," he introduced himself, "Now, let me tell you about the Threat..."
A/N: If you spot the reference to The Mentalist in this chapter you are beautiful. I really want to make sure this series takes off as much as Swimming Pools did, but as a much better written, much longer piece. And hopefully, a finished piece. I hope you guys enjoyed this prologue. Please review, fave, follow, anything. I'm hoping to update it weekly, as I do have school right now. See you in the next chapter! -Berry