Roughly at the same age Time Lords escorted their most gifted children from the Academy to the rift through which one could see the time vortex, Donna Noble of Chiswick Public Elementary School, London, the Earth, in the Solar System, a small and unimportant set of planets lost somewhere in the lower right quadrant of the Milky Way, Donna Noble of Chiswick dreamed of meeting a knight.
But not any knight.
One from the dark and ancient times of the Middle-Ages, one who would have known of King Arthur's court and fought dragons on his path to Camelot. A brave knight with a shining armor from head to toe and a slightly dented sword, proof if necessary of his fiery participation in many victorious battles.
By night or by day, Donna had fantasized about her knight and by all means, a dumbfounded smile should be illuminating her face with joy at this precise instant for indeed, the one standing in front of her was her dream come true, with his armor, and his helmet with a white panache on top.
If it had stopped to this, it would have been perfect indeed.
"So this is what they meant by Augmented Reality", Donna thought, feeling the bitter taste of ash in her mouth already.
Three cruel but inarguable details made the dream train derail: one, both knight and destrier surprisingly did not smell of Colgate Fresh toothpaste; two, even though she had to admit that some of her adult fantasies could have implied some sort of bonding, the knight of her dream had never ever tied her to a stake in the middle of the village square surrounded by a looking-angry-scared crowd, and three:
"I swear that I won't transform into a dragon," she moaned, "there's no need to point all your arrows and swords to me, really!"
"Seelent,!" the knight shouted while the others in the assembly discussed what more proof did they need to condemn her to a long and painful agony.
"There's enough straw, don't bother to bring more," she said to a woman that threw the ballot at Donna's tied feet before running back into the crowd that had gathered at the center of the village to witness this perfect example of swift man justice and divine retribution.
"You must be kidding me..." Donna moaned in her teeth, closing her eyes and holding her breath as one man came close to her, touched her hair and, taking a strand in his hand raised it to show the assembly, gargling at all speed a long suite of words Donna did not need the Tardis to translate to understand the general message: she was doomed.
"If you want to know, that is not my natural color. I'm more sort of brown in fact. This is just hair dye. Not true ginger. Pigments, that's all," she said, trying anything to escape the stake. Who wouldn't lie in such circumstances?
"Seelent! Thee witch!" the knight shouted again, pressing the tip of his sword on her throat before moving back to snatch a torch from the hands of a young lad.
Doctor! Damn you! Donna pleaded and cursed in her mind, her wide-open eyes staring at the sky in a terror that she had never thought possible to feel. If the Doctor was telepathic, surely he would be able to pick up her distress call? Now would be the time... the only time she had left.
"Burn her! Burn her alive!" The crowd started to shout in unison.
"I'm not a witch! DOCTOR! DOCTOR!" she screamed to make her voice heard above the vindictive cries, tears running down her eyes as the knight of her dreams threw the torch at her feet.
Donna screamed as the flames burst around her tied ankles. She screamed as the sparkling flames quickly surrounded her. She screamed as the village and the sky disappeared behind a wall of yellowish sparkling flames. She screamed as, for a moment, she thought she saw stars or maybe some northern lights. She screamed as the world turned all white around her. She screamed as she collapsed on a cold, solid, white floor.
Bewildered to be alive, Donna touched the clean marble surface, moving on all fours in confusion, until her eyes, still blurry with tears, met with leather-clad boots with thick rubber soles. Slowly, she raised her head and frowned in confusion at the massive knight in armor in front of her.
"Oh! you've put on some weight..."
"STO-VO-KO-THO-CLO-VO-KOH!" The massive knight barked, suddenly aiming a rifle at her head.
"I AM NOT A WITCH!" Donna cried out.
As she raised her hands above her head out of protection, she noticed in doing so that her hands were free of ties and so were her feet. But her relief was short-lived as the weird, like in alien-weird, knight swiftly put magnetic restraints on her wrists.
"What?!" she exclaimed as the weird, alien knight removed his helmet.
"STO-VO-KO-THO-CLO-VO-KOH!"
"Wow! A talking and standing rhinoceros? No way!"
"Is that a problem?"
Donna jumped and pivoted fast on her knees to face a woman with a very white, like in ghostly white, face and white buckled hair. Almost human-like, if it was not for the red, devilish eyes.
"No way! A female-albino-demon and a syllabo-rhino as a guard-dog!" Donna said, not believing her eyes and suddenly considering the possibility that she had died in the fire and this was the afterlife. After all the despair she had caused to her mother, some other friends, and even more not-so-friends like Neris that she had been too glad to stab in the back, figuratively, of course, it was to be expected. In front of her was her divine retribution. "Am I in Hell?"
"You are on the Excelsior."
"Oh, right. And is the Excelsior the name of a special place in hell, a circle maybe?"
"A circle? I guess that depends on your definition of the word."
"STO-VO-KO-TO-CLO-VO-KO!"
"Remove her restraints. I will take her from here," the female-demon said to the syllabo-rhino.
With a strange curiosity, Donna watched the guard-dog obey and felt the cold, white, clean floor vibrating under the pace of his huge boots as he left.
"So I am dead," she muttered, looking at the white walls. Everything was white here. "That's weird... I'd thought hell would be a little darker than that."
"You are perfectly alive and on the Excelsior. However, if you tell me where Hell is, I will make the necessary arrangements to have you send there once we have cleared your situation."
"I am alive, really? Wait... what situation?"
"We wish to know how did you manage to create a rift in Time and Space in the Medusa Cascade."
"I have no idea what you're talking about. The medu-what?"
"The Medusa Cascade is a protected area. It is a level one crime to trespass on this part of space. And to say the least, tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time in it is an outrage, an incredibly terrible felony," the female-demon said as she moved toward the center of the wide open place where they were standing.
The clean floor opened and a white pole rose with a dark display the size of a palm. The female-demon touched it and straight away, a large panel in the wall open like two curtains moving apart to reveal the biggest cinema screen Donna had ever seen. But that was not what made her gasp. What made her gasp was the sight of space filled with lights, dancing lights, dark purple to light pink and emerald green to yellow.
"It's beautiful. What is it? Is it the Me-"
"The Medusa Cascade, yes. And no, it is not beautiful anymore. It is injured, bleeding particles and energy from this dimension into others, condemning this whole region of space to exotic radiations and a slow death. All by your fault."
"But I didn't do anything! I was just... I was just being burnt alive in the middle-ages and suddenly I was there. I haven't got the slightest idea of how I escaped, I swear!"
"You reached telepathically to us and yet, your species is too primitive to be. Unauthorized use of a telepathic genetic transfer device is a second-degree offense punishable by fifty cycles of imprisonment. But this is the least of your problems."
"Fifty cycles?! I did nothing except no dying and I don't even know how or why, so how could I break your laws? Oh! Wait a second... are you part of this Shadow Police Proclamation?"
"If you've heard of us, then you confess you know there are rules. Rules that you just broke. STO-KO-VO-KLO!" The female-demon-officer said with too polite a smile to be honest.
With dread, Donna heard the steps of the syllabo-guard-rhino coming back her way.
"Oh! Great! Did you just set me up? Don't say no because your big friend was just around the corner waiting for your orders!"
"Take her to cell number four-seven-zeta-nine-two-dot-three while she awaits her trial."
"Trial? At least I get a fair trial with a lawyer?" Donna protested when the rhino grabbed her arm.
Suddenly, the white room and the female-demon vanished.
The next moment, she looked around to a two-by-three meter, strictly bare cell. A door slid open and the guard-rhino stepped out.
"You must be kidding me!" Donna shouted out in anger. "I demand to talk to my lawyer! Right now!"
The rhino-guard stopped and turned to face her.
"No lawyer is required when the culprit is caught in the act. Justice is swift."
"Oh great! Wonderful! The rhino-guard knows how to talk English! WAIT! What is the punishment for breaking the Medusa thing? I'm entitled to know!"
"The punishment is death," the rhino-guard replied.
"Death?! Don't tell me you still burn people..."
"Death by disintegration."
"Oh, that seems so much better indeed..." Donna muttered as the door closed.
At least, she was alive. And that meant the Doctor could still rescue her. How long was she going to stay here?
A minute had not passed that a small slot in the door opened and the rhino's gloved hand appeared, pushing a small plate inside her cell.
Perplexed, Donna frowned at the little red and white pill in the middle of the plate.
"What is this?"
"Humanoid-life form standard dietary requirement."
Donna looked at the tiny pill, hesitating between awe and disgust. No. Really? Her last meal was going to be a pill?!
"Could I have a glass of water, please?" she asked, but the slot had already closed.
"I guess not..." she muttered, feeling hungry.
After staring at her miserable meal for about ten minutes, not able to determine if the lack of pleasure to eat the pill was going to be more hurtful than an empty stomach on the scaffold, Donna slowly opened her mouth, and with a certain amount of disgust on her face, put the pill on her tongue and swallowed when a familiar buzzing sounded.
"Did they give you a pill too? Whatever you do, do not eat that pill!" an even more familiar voice said.