Lightning crackled around me and then, I fell hard onto a patch of grass.

My vision was a little blurry for a second and my head had already started aching. I sat up, moaning about the ache in my bones, and nearly had a heart attack when a person ran over to me and knelt at my side. It was a woman with dark black skin, a semi shaved head, and a leather jacket. She had big, dark brown eyes and incredibly long lashes.

"Diana," she breathed. "Are you alright?"

I nodded once, cautiously eyeing the woman who was much too close for comfort. "Who are you?" I asked.

My words obviously hurt her because she visibly flinched and looked away for a moment. "It's- It's me. The Doctor." She met my eyes again and smiled unconvincingly. "I take it you're still new here, then?"

Of course, I thought, mentally smacking myself in the head. Leather jacket, Northern accent? Of course it's the Doctor. "Yeah. Um, sorry, I just didn't recognize you," I said.

"That's alright, love," she laughed. It wasn't a real laugh. She jumped to her feet and extended her hand to me, helping me up. "Now, I want you to go back to the TARDIS."

I held the journal to my chest, shivering a little when a cold breeze drifted between us. "Why? Where is it?"

"It's just over there," she said, pointing behind her to where the ship was parked under a tree. It was standing at the edge of a lake where, far on the opposite shore, a city with sparkling white skyscrapers stood. "I want you to go inside and stay there until I come back."

"Why?" I repeated. "Is something wrong?"

The Doctor shook her head and smiled again, the turn of her lips a little more genuine than before. "No, but there's going to be an attack on this city any second now and I don't want you getting hurt. Please, just go inside. I'll come back for you."

"Okay," I answered. "I will."

"Thank you." She leaned closer to me, kissed the crown of my head, and then ran off, shouting over her shoulder, "I'll be back!"

I watched as the Time Lady practically sprinted across the grass, gradually making her way to the city. There was a small crowd of people gathered there, some of them sitting under trees or on flat ground, but they were so far away that I couldn't see very much. I turned back to the TARDIS and looked at her for a moment. How was I going to get in without the Doctor or a key? I looked at the opposite shore of the lake and I thought I could see the Doctor closing in on the group, but I couldn't be sure.

Something in my back pocket dinged and I started, looking around frantically for the source of the sound. Then I realized that the sound was coming from the phone in my pocket. Stupid. I pulled the phone out and pressed the button at the bottom of the screen. A swipe of my finger unlocked the screen and showed me a home page with several apps, one of them being the message app with a little number one at the top.

The app opened up to show me that I had received a new text message from a contact labeled 'Idris'. The message read: 'Try snapping.' I looked back at the TARDIS, recognizing the name as that of the human woman whose body she had possessed many years ago. I walked over to the ship and stared up at her, studying the dark blue doors and white lettering. Readjusting the phone and journal in my left hand, I raised my other and snapped at her. The doors swung open immediately and for a second, I forgot to breathe.

A chill ran down my spine as I stepped, still barefoot, from grass to metal grating. The ship whirred and hummed the moment I entered, the lights brightening to better illuminate the orange coral braces along the walls. The console itself was enormous, stretching up to a ceiling that arched much higher than the other Doctor's had.

My phone dinged again and this time I noticed that it vibrated too. 'You dropped your map.' I whirled around, searching the floor for the map the Doctor had made for me. It was outside, fluttering gently in the breeze and starting to unfold. I scrambled outside and swept it up before the wind could blow it away, quickly refolding it and placing it between a few pages in my journal.

Just then, a scream echoed across the lake and I nearly dropped my things. I started forward a few paces, stepping out from under the tree. On the opposite shore, standing amongst the skyscrapers, were two enormous, shadowy figures. They looked like two men made only out of wind and clouds as leaves and dust blew wildly around them. Their faces were almost terrifying to look: both of them completely identical and both sporting a blank, empty expression. One of them suddenly bent over and picked something up. He looked at the thing in his hand, his expression still void of any feeling or emotion. Something shone brightly in his eyes, but he didn't look away.

Then the two men shouted something incoherent. The light in the one man's hand shone brighter, bright enough that I had to shade my eyes, and then they were both sucked into a tornado that literally appeared out of nowhere. The giant men shouted again and then everything went silent. The tornado evaporated into thin air and then a blast of wind and sound shot across the sky.

The wind knocked me in the chest and threw me to the ground, my phone and journal tumbling down with me. I sat up with a groan, balancing my weight on my elbows, and saw what looked like silver rain falling on the far end of the lake. I gathered my things, checking to make sure the map hadn't flown away when I dropped it, and struggled to my feet.

The TARDIS whirred nervously at me and the light on top flashed twice. I cast the city a final glance before hurrying inside the ship. The doors slammed shut behind me and then the ship wheezed. I fell against the railing, my feet scraping against the grating as she dematerialized. I stumbled over to the jumpseat and dropped my things on one end before sitting down.

With a final groan, the TARDIS let out what almost sounded like a sigh. On the opposite side of the room, somebody coughed and I shot to my feet. "Who's there?" I demanded.

"Diana, it's me," the Doctor said.

I raced around the console to see the Time Lady braced on her hands and knees, coughing and looking slightly charred. "What happened?" I asked.

"Castor and Pollux."

"Who?" The Doctor cleared her throat and struggled to her feet, her legs wobbling slightly. I rushed to her side and grabbed onto her arm to steady her. "Are you okay?"

She smiled and nodded as she gently patted my hands. "I'll live," she teased. She then looked up at the time rotor and frowned. "What happened, old girl? You took your sweet time!"

"What are you talking about?"

"She was supposed to come after me once the orb destroyed Castor and Pollux, but she took her sweet bloody time. I nearly died!"

The TARDIS seemed to laugh at her pilot. I smiled, looking from the console to the Doctor. "Something tells me you might be exaggerating," I chuckled.

The Doctor rolled her eyes as she stepped past me and collapsed on the jumpseat. "Of course you two gang up on me."

"What happened?" I asked again, leaning against the railing that encircled the platform. "Those things, what were they?"

"I thought I told you to wait for me inside?"

"I left my map outside and I had to go get it! Then those things appeared and… exploded? It happened in, like, seconds. It was so fast."

The Doctor ran a hand over her head and exhaled heavily, tilting her head back and stretching out her long legs. She scratched a bit just behind her ear and then jumped up. "I'll explain everything," she said as she started working at the console, "but first I have to find that orb."

I sat down in the Doctor's spot. "What orb?"

"Come here and hold this down for me, will you?"

Heaving myself out of the seat with an annoyed groan, I grabbed hold of the lever the Doctor had pointed out and held it down. She gestured to a flashing button about a foot to my right and I moved to hold it down as well. The TARDIS shuddered and moaned as she dematerialized and then rematerialized a few seconds later. The Doctor was already halfway out the door before I had even taken my hands off the console.

My fingers lingered on the lever for a moment and the device sparked. Something shot up my arm and into my brain, electricity or a current of some other kind, and I yelped. I yanked my hand away and backed up until I hit the railing. My arm and hand felt tingly, so I gently tried to rub some feeling back into my muscles whilst suspiciously side-eyeing the console.

The Doctor came back inside a minute later, her brows furrowed and her mouth pulled into a frown. She walked up to the scanner and typed something out on the keyboard. Some kind of video footage appeared on the screen and started playing, showing a closer view of what had happened during the attack.

The people I had seen from my end of the lake weren't people at all, but aliens of all different kinds. There were humanoids in every color possible, little fuzzy creatures that looked more like large rodents or raccoons, and strange humanoid-crustacean creatures in shades of red, orange, and pink. Through all the aliens, I saw one humanoid that looked incredibly human. It was the Doctor, running across the grass and yelling soundlessly at something in the sky. She pulled something bright and shiny from her pocket and waved it in the air, moments before an enormous hand reached down and grabbed hold of her. A few seconds later, silver rain fell from the sky and dissolved upon touching the ground. But several yards back, under a tree with a picnic half spread out, one of the humanoid-crustacean creatures reached down and picked up a silver orb with its claw.

"That's it," the Doctor said. "She has it."

"She?" I echoed.

"That girl, she found the orb." The Doctor typed something out on the keyboard again and the creature's face was surrounded by a little square. Her face expanded into a minutely grainy image and beside it, a few rows of writing appeared. "There, that's where she lives. There's a little lake by her home. We'll go there and look for her."

"We?"

"Yeah, it's safe this time. Now come back here and help me, love." She pointed at the same lever that had shocked me only a minute ago. "Hold this down for me again. And that switch right next to it, flip it."

Something happened the instant my hands touched the console. Time seemed to slow down and when I looked down at the lever, I somehow knew exactly what it was and what it did. The same with the switch beside it, the flashing button I'd held down before, and all of the other controls on the panel. I pulled my hands away and stared agape at the console, my mind whirring.

"Di, what's wrong?"

I blinked rapidly, shook my head, and looked at the panel again. The knowledge was still there, waiting for me. I glanced at the panel beside it and felt the wheels in my mind start to turn. I stepped to my left and spread my fingers out across the controls.

"Where are you trying to go?" I asked.

The Doctor stammered for a second. "Er, th-the lake. Why-?"

I looked up at the scanner and saw the coordinates typed out in a string of simple black numbers and letters. Below the keyboard were several other boards, each with a block of buttons in different colors. I quickly typed out a number onto the green pad, twisted the dial of the locking-down mechanism through one full rotation, and then pulled on the lever that had originally shocked me, the phase controller.

Once the ship started to dematerialize, I went to the panel on the opposite side of the console and grabbed hold of the helmic regulator, which the Doctor had obviously repaired by turning it into a bike pump. I pushed down slowly and then pulled out, listening to the ship as she took off and trying to feel for any bumps in the ride. The wheezing paused and I raced back to the phase controller and pulled the lever up so the ship would rematerialize.

"How did you-? I thought you couldn't fly her yet?"

"She showed me," I said, stepping back so I could look up at the time rotor. "I mean, she electrocuted my hand to do it, but she showed me how to fly her."

The Doctor laughed. "That was- That was incredible! She hasn't flown this smoothly in years!"

I smiled proudly and held my chin up a little higher than usual. The TARDIS whirred happily and for the first time in a long time, I felt proud of something I'd done. Grabbing my hand, the Doctor pulled me down the ramp and through the doors outside.

It was nighttime, if the multiple moons in the darkened sky were anything to go by. The TARDIS had materialized beneath a large tree, several branches hanging low enough to cover the ship almost entirely. Along the banks of the lake were patches of reeds and tall trees with drooping branches. Little slivers of moonlight trickled through the leaves and danced across the lake surface and when I turned to look at the Doctor, I saw a beam of light illuminating her face. The moonlight shimmered in her eyes and I forgot to breathe.

"I think you might have gotten the timing a bit off, though," she said softly.

"Oh." It was the only thing I could think to say.

The Doctor smiled. "That's alright. We're still on schedule." Her eyes darted across the lake's surface and then narrowed. "There she is. That girl who took the orb."

Several yards away was the humanoid-crustacean that had appeared on the scanner. She was at least a foot taller than the Doctor with four claw-like legs and two arms, one ending in a large claw and another a human-ish hand. A hard, crab-like shell stretched across the lower half of her body, which looked more like the main part of a beetle, whilst her upper half looked more like a human torso. Her face looked mostly human, except for the eight feelers around her very large mouth. Two long antennae sprung out from her shoulder blades, arching forward over her shoulders and then curling up to rest in a curlicue by her eyes. All four of her black, beady little eyes.

"What is she?" I whispered.

The Doctor frowned at me, nudging me in the ribs with her elbow. "Don't be so rude," she scolded. "She's a Karkinian. This is her planet. Now when we go over there, don't stare."

"O-Okay."

We stepped quietly around the lake, my feet starting to tingle as the coolness of the ground soaked through my skin. I kept my gaze on the strange girl, watching her eyes blink in unison as she stared almost longingly at the water. She didn't look sad, but she obviously wasn't happy.

She picked up a pebble with her human hand, running her fingers over the stone before tossing it into the water. The Doctor and I came up behind her then, and I wondered how she hadn't heard us approaching or the TARDIS landing. The Doctor loosened her grip on my hand and moved to stand behind the girl, her other hand resting in her coat pocket.

"I want it back."

The girl didn't move. "What?" she asked.

"You know what."

"How can you be so sure I've got it?" she said, and I noticed that she had a slightly Northern accent like the Doctor's.

The Doctor hummed and lightly nudged a few pebbles around with the toe of her shoe. "You know, when I first saw you I said to myself, here's someone special."

The girl froze and then turned to face us, her eyes flickering between the Doctor and I. The skin above her topmost eyes furrowed together as if she had eyebrows. Perhaps she did. "This thing you're looking for. What is it?" she questioned. "Why should I give it back to you?"

"I can't tell you that. But let's just say that the fate of a planet - an insignificant little planet, but a planet I'm rather fond of - is in your power." Earth? I wondered. "Besides, it's not yours. I lost it in a fight."

The girl grinned and I couldn't help my mouth falling open upon seeing the rows and rows of sharp teeth in her skull. "I saw that," she said. "It didn't look like much of a fight to me. More of a massacre, really. You weren't exactly winning."

The Time lady shrugged. "I had a plan," she mumbled. "It sort of worked."

"And the plan involved the thing you're looking for? Which I'm not going to give to you until you tell me exactly what it is, by the way."

"Then I'll have to make you, won't I?" the Doctor said seriously.

I stared incredulously at the Time Lady, hardly believing she'd resort to threatening an innocent, if not curious, alien girl. The girl smiled at me and her eyes flitted back to rest on the Doctor's face. "Who are you fooling?" she said. The Doctor looked away with another halfhearted shrug, mumbling something incoherent under her breath. "I may not know that much about humanoids, but I can tell that you're not, like, one of the violent ones."

The Doctor grimaced, then attempted a smile. "You're right. I'm not. I'm the Doctor, by the way, and this is my- my friend, Diana."

The girl waved her claw at us. "I'm Ali."

"Pleased to meet you, Ali," said the Doctor.

"Hi," I added.

Ali looked at the Doctor, her four eyes narrowed with her head titled to one side. "You're a trickster, Doctor, not a warrior."

"Right again," the Time Lady laughed. "And something tells me I can't trick you."

She sounded odd, like she felt defeated or worn out. She hadn't sounded like a minute ago.

"No, you can't."

"So it's a stalemate?"

Ali put her hand to a brown pouch that rested at the bottom of her torso. "Let's trade," she suggested.

The Doctor released my hand so she could sit down on a boulder just across from Ali. She propped one foot up on her opposite knee and started pulling her shoes and socks off. A swim? Right now?

"I've got the - what do you call it? Our little silver ball that weighs nearly as much as that boulder you're sitting on?"

The Doctor chuckled as she rolled up the legs of her trousers. "Let's call it an orb, shall we?"

Ali nodded, readjusting herself so she was settled on the ground with her legs braced on either side of her. "Alright, I've got the orb,' said Ali. "What can you offer me?"

"What do you want?" the Doctor asked, resting her elbows on her knees.

"Information."

"Go on, then. I'll answer any question you like."

Ali's fingers tapped rhythmically against her claw. "What was that thing?" she said. "That giant thing? Those two giant things?"

I nodded, looking from Ali to the Doctor with my brows raised, saying nothing but obviously as curious as the alien to know what was going on. The Doctor avoided both of us and simply stared at a point on the ground between her bare feet. She stayed quiet for a minute or two as the wheels in her mind began to turn.

"He- … It," she said, sighing as she tried to find the proper words, "is a Starman. A star eater. He can travel through space and time, fueled by the energy he drains from stars. He's pretty much a star himself, in every sense of the word."

"Then the orb is some kind of weapon?" Ali said, scratching her chin with the tip of her claw.

The Doctor paused as she approached the lake, dipping her toe into the water and shivering slightly. She waded in up to her ankles and then glanced over her shoulder. "What makes you say that?" she wondered.

Ali frowned. "You were holding it. The orb. I saw a flash in the sky. Why else would you want it back so badly? And why couldn't you tell me what it was? I'm thinking it's because you're not supposed to have it. It's not yours." She paused to stand and stretch her legs while the Doctor waded in further, the water coming up to her knees and soaking the bottom of her jeans. "I think you stole it."

Humming softly as she stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets again. In the shimmering moonlight, I could see her lips quirk up into a smile that was more genuine than any of the others she'd tried in the last few minutes. "You're very clever, aren't you, Ali?"

"So I'm told," she said cheekily.

The smile dropped and the Time Lady's voice hardened. "Where's the orb?"

"Doctor!" I interjected, stepping forward a bit in protest.

Her gaze flicked to me and I saw the determined glint in her eyes. She set her jaw. "You don't know what's at stake," she told me. "I need that orb. To save your planet, Diana."

My face heated up as if it were on fire and I turned away, a tiny spark of anger flaring up inside me after being so clearly chastised like a petulant child. I focused my eyes on the grass and grabbed onto a few blades between my toes. It wasn't as cold as I'd first thought.

"That's a spaceship, isn't it?" Ali said after a few moments.

I could hear the Doctor moving through the water. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Well you're a traveller, aren't you?"

"You could say that," the Doctor replied, a hint of a smile in her voice.

Ali sighed and scraped her pointed legs across the ground. "I'd kill to travel. This planet- we get travelers from everywhere."

"It's in a terminus galaxy. It's a jumping off point for a lot of places."

"Exactly. That's why the Starman came here, isn't it?" I smiled despite my frustration. Ali was smart and she was persistent, much more persistent than I usually was. "He was on his way somewhere else, and you followed him here. You said so. Halfway across the universe. So you must have got here somehow. And I don't think you came on a Virgo craft; a slow, unreliable space bus, not if you were chasing something. So you must have your own ship."

The Doctor laughed. "You're a regular Sherlock Holmes, aren't you?"

"A Sherlock what?"

"Never mind. Just someone from that other planet I'm trying to save. Now if you're done showing off, give me the orb and I'll be out of your life."

I heard Ali's legs scramble over the pebbles. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw that the Doctor had come out of the lake and approached the other alien. But Ali had backed away from her, looking somewhat alarmed. I didn't like the way the Doctor was behaving, trying to intimidate a girl into giving her what she wanted.

"You're always in such a hurry, aren't you?" Ali said, all four eyes blinking nervously. "And you're in a real big hurry to get away now, so you wouldn't want to be far from your ship. That box wasn't here before and it's very much not from round here, like the two of you. So it stands to reason that it must be your ship." She cast the TARDIS a thoughtful glance. "It doesn't look nearly big enough to travel through space, though, so it must be some kind of an illusion, bigger than it looks. Or maybe it exists partly outside of space and time." No way. She figured it out on her own? "That makes it bigger on the inside-."

Ali's eyes widened and her mouth fell open. "Oh, my days," she breathed. "It's a TARDIS. You've got a TARDIS."

The Doctor scratched the back of her neck and tried to look casual. "I really, really don't know what you're talking about," she said.

Ali scurried over to the ship with wide, excited eyes and it was only mildly terrifying. "Yes, you do," she countered. "We learned about them in school! In science, you know, theoretically, that they could exist. I never believed they were real, though. I wanted to. I so wanted to. But I never did" She flashed the Doctor and I a toothy grin. "Until now. This is so cool!"

The Doctor had gathered her shoes and socks, and trailed after Ali. "On the other hand, it could just be a big blue box," she suggested, leaning up against the ship with her arms folded over her chest.

But Ali was having none of it. She looked excitedly between the Doctor and I. "You must both be Time Lords! I mean, you fit the part perfectly. Well, the Doctor does, at least. You look like a human, but you're not human. You're pretty smug and you think you're the carp's whiskers-"

"Is there anything you don't know, Ali?"

She beamed and shook her head. "Not really. We also learned about Time Lords at school. In history, ancient history. We were told the Time Lords had all died out a long time ago. But here you are!"

The semi smug expression on the Doctor's face had melted away by then and she reached out to touch Ali's claw. Her eyes were pleading. "Ali," she whispered, "please. I need that orb. Time is running out."

"So take me with you."

The Doctor drew back her hand. "I can't do that."

"I'll give you the orb if you take me with you?"

"No."

"Doctor, why not?" I asked, finally joining the pair by the TARDIS. "She wants to travel and she'll give you the orb thing, whatever it is."

"No. It's way too dangerous where we're going. I don't even want to bring you along, not when you're still so early. But I can't just leave you here."

I furrowed my brows. "Gee, thanks," I muttered.

Ali tugged on the Time Lady's jacket with her claw. "Oh, come on, Doctor! You're going to save your favorite planet. You're going to rescue a whole race! What does my one life matter compared to all theirs?"

"Low blow," I tsked.

The Doctor shot me a glare. "Ali, you can't ask this of me. I'm already putting Diana's life in danger, I can't-"

"You'll need some help, won't you? I could help while Diana stays in the TARDIS, if that's what you want. Please?"

The Time Lady sighed, leaning up against the TARDIS as she thought in silence. Finally, she looked up and smiled. "I can't get rid of you, can I? Alright." She pulled a key out from her jacket and pushed open the doors. "Ladies first, Ali."

The alien grinned and rushed inside the TARDIS, her legs clattering against the grating. I shot the Doctor a confused look as I followed her inside. "Um, aren't you a lady?" I asked.

"Nonbinary, love," she said, patting me on the shoulder and then stepping past me.

I stood on the ramp for a second. "Okay, but-." The Doctor had already gone up to the console and started typing away at the keyboard. "Pronouns?" I muttered under my breath.

Ali's mouth was agape as she stared up at the time rotor. She turned in a full circle, eyes alight with wonder, and then looked back at the Doctor. "Where are we going?"

"The planet's called Earth," the Doctor said. "Where humans first came from. Long way back."

"I've heard of it."

The Doctor grinned. "That doesn't surprise me, Little Miss A-Star." She called me over and gesturing vaguely to the console. "I've already set the coordinates in. Could you-"

"I know."

I quickly scanned the console, knowing immediately what specific buttons and levers to handle since we were planet jumping, galaxy jumping, and time jumping. The Doctor took the half of the console by the scanner while I took the other half, moving from one panel to the next as certain dials had to be adjusted.

A few moments later, the light turbulence evened out and the Doctor and I could relax while the TARDIS did the rest of the work.

She leaned against the console, arms crossed over her chest as I sat down on the jumpseat. She raised her eyebrows at Ali, then at me. "I suppose you'll want an explain, then?" Ali and I both nodded. "I was on Earth, trying to save the old place again. And there was this thing, this creature. Call it what you want- Well, actually it's usually called a Nestene Consciousness. Just another bully, another demigod like the Starman wanting to feed off the planet and drain it dry. I was trying to find it and put a sock in it, and I was helped by a girl. She was probably about your age. A lot like you in many ways."

Ali settled down, her legs splayed out around her again. "What was her name?"

"Rose. Rose Tyler." The Doctor smiled and I sat up a little straighter, eager to hear more about the shop girl I had always admired.

"A human girl?" Ali asked.

"Yeah. The only type they had on the planet back then," she laughed. "You see, in that time and in that corner of the universe, space travel hadn't really taken off just yet. So there were only native creatures on the planet and the humans were the only halfway sentient ones. Them and meerkats."

"Hey!" I interjected. "I'm human too, stupid."

"You're human?" Ali asked.

"Um, yeah."

She tilted her head to the side as she looked at me. "You seem different from the other humans I've met."

I half smiled. "Thank you?"

Ali glanced at the Doctor then and rested against the railing. "Tell me about Rose Tyler."

The Doctor checked something on the scanner, grinned, and then pushed off of the console. "Rose Tyler," she said softly. "She was funny and tough and clever and resourceful. She saved me, and she saved her boyfriend Mickey, and she saved the whole damned planet."

"Oh, you're in love," Ali teased.

I leaned back against the jumpseat with smirk, watching the Doctor try to explain herself. Her smile faltered. "No, don't make that mistake, Ali. Let's just say she was good company. And I-… I like company."

"It must be difficult for you, then. Living as long as you do."

The Doctor shrugged. "I've had many companions in my life. They come and, inevitably, they go." She spared me a glance. "But without them?" She trailed off, her chin falling to her chest as the ghost of her smile faded away completely.

"You're the last lonely Time Lord," Ali guessed.

"What is it with teenage girls, anyway?" said the Doctor, a too lighthearted tone to her voice. "Always digging. When I met Rose, I'd only recently regenerated. I'm sure you know all about regeneration. You've probably got a diploma in it," she joked. "I was feeling a bit like a soft-shell crab, waiting for my new shell to harden, if you'll pardon the analogy. I was still finding my feet. I thought: new body, new start, new companion."

"So what happened?" Ali wondered. "Did you ask her?"

"I did. And she turned me down." The Time Lady shrugged. "I'd come on too strong, I guess, played my cards too soon. As I say, I was still adjusting to the regeneration. Not quite calibrated. She just looked at me.

"She's got a big heart," she continued. "And that's why she couldn't come. Because she cared more about what she'd have to leave behind than what I could offer her. Her family, her boyfriend, her life. I couldn't argue with that. I couldn't expect her to drop everything and go gallivanting off with a perfect stranger in search of adventure."

"Don't you normally expect that?" I asked, almost exactly as Ali said, "Are you saying I don't have a big heart?"

The Doctor looked quickly between us. "Not at all, Ali." Then her impossibly big eyes settled on me and she sighed. "I suppose I do. But not this time."

Ali stood then, drawing mine and the Doctor's attention. "You think I don't care, don't you?" she snapped.

"No, I didn't say that. And I didn't mean that, either," the Doctor explained. "I can land you right back on Karkinos a second after we left. Nobody will ever know. I didn't have time to tell Rose that."

"I know you didn't really want me to come with you, though," Ali countered.

"Well, I didn't have much of a choice, did I? But you're here now, aren't you? So stop your whingeing."

Ali seemed lost in thought. She timidly approached the console, looking up at the time rotor and trailing her human hand over one of the panels. "You said you already saved the Earth. Why do you need to go back there?"

"After I said goodbye to Rose, I came in here and started up the engines. Next thing I knew, lights were flashing, alarms were blaring! It was all bells and buzzers. See, the TARDIS is uniquely tuned to sense any problems with the fabric of time, and just as it had alerted me to the presence of the Nestene Consciousness in a place called London back in Rose's time, now it was alerting me to a very similar problem somewhere else on the planet, a few thousand years earlier."

"The Starman?" Ali wondered.

The Doctor beamed. "Give the girl a big round of applause. They're dangerous entities, born when stars collapse, when they become black holes and white dwarfs and red dwarfs and wormholes, or whatever you call them in your neck of the intergalactic woods. When they collapse, they alter the shape of space and they alter the shape of time, and sometimes a Starman is created. A cosmic being with a primitive consciousness. And if you're not careful, they can escape from their own time and go trampling through the universe, wiping it clean and rewriting history, rewriting the laws of science itself. I suppose you could call them gods, if you wanted." She paused and rested a hand on the console. "It was always one of the duties of the Time Lords to police the universe and snap the cuffs on them when they popped up where they shouldn't. They're nasty things, you know. Gods. they don't much care for anyone other than themselves. Don't like any competition. So, off I went to try to head this Starman off at the pass."

Ali's claw rested against the pouch strapped across her torso. "Why did it look like there were two of them?"

"That's 'cause it was existing in several different dimensions at once. Now, that orb," she extended her hand in Ali's direction, waiting for her to hand it over. Ali took it out with her human hand and dropped it in the Doctor's open palm. "Thank you. The orb was created in a very similar way to the Starman. It has the power of a collapsed star in it. It was made by a very clever, and not very nice, character called the Exalted Holgoroth of All Tagkhanastria. And he was no better than the bloody Starman! He was only really interested in using the orb to build a space empire." The Doctor smirked as she tossed the orb in the air. "So I thought I'd kill two pterodactyls with one stone. I paid a visit to the Holgoroth, pretending to be an emissary from the Crab Nebula, and I stole his orb right out from under his nose. And then I went after the Starman and got to him before he reached Earth. In the process he nearly killed me."

I jolted forward in my seat. "Wait, what?"

"Remember how I told you the TARDIS was supposed to come after me after I took care of Castor and Pollux?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, the orb sent it back into space. And I happened to be stuck with it. So when the TARDIS took a few seconds longer than expected, I got very close to swelling up into a big Doctor balloon before my lungs exploded and I got a horrible sunburn."

"Wouldn't you just explode or something?" I asked.

The Doctor shook her head. "That's a common misconception, so no. But that's not important. What is important is that I had superior firepower!" She tossed the orb into the air again, watching as it seemed to freeze in the air for a split second before falling into her hand again. "And I knocked him for six! Well, into the twenty-sixth dimension anyway."

"Please don't make sports jokes," I groaned.

The Doctor grinned. "He's safe there for a while. Can't do much damage. Space and time's always been a right mess in there. Might even sort things out a bit. Who knows?"

"So if you flipped him into another dimension, why are we going back to Earth?" Ali asked.

"It seems that what happened on your planet with the Starman sent ripples spreading out across the universe. It's always the same. You push one problem under the carpet and another one pops out on the other side. Cause and effect, unforeseen consequences, the butterfly's wing."

"A what wing?"

The Doctor waved her hand dismissively. "Just an expression, Ali. In a nutshell, there's another Starman, a worse one and far more powerful one, heading for Earth and I need to stop it. It might already be there."

"Can't you just do what you did with the twins and grab it before it arrives?"

"No. That's the thing. Me and this new Starman exist in the same time stream. A side-effect of using the orb. Unforeseen consequences. Turns out the magic orb is not as special as the Holgoroth claimed. Should have read the small print. 'This item may not work as advertised!' So until I send this new Starman packing, the two of us have a time tag on us. We're linked."

The TARDIS jolted and nearly threw me out of my seat. I grabbed onto the railing to steady myself while the Doctor tried to smooth out the rest of the ride.

"So now, " she shouted over the turbulence, "we're landing on Earth two thousand years before the birth of Christ!"

Ali was holding onto the railing for dear life, her eyes wide and worried. "Who?"

The Doctor held onto the console and braced her legs against the floor as the turbulence began to lessen. "He was a bit like Sherlock Holmes. Knew the answers to everything. Very good at solving mysteries. Some humans use him to measure time."

Well that's one way of looking at it, I thought to myself.

"And whereabouts on Earth?" Ali asked after regaining her balance.

The Doctor yanked on the dematerialization lever and the ship shuddered to a stop. "A place called Babylon. Lovely little spot, but very hot in the summer."

"Doctor?" Ali called as the Time Lady bolted down the ramp. "One last thing?"

She halted by the door, hands poised by the handles. "Make it quick."

"This new Starman, what will it look like?"

The Doctor made a little sound in the back of her throat. "Huh. Good question."

"Will it look like the twins?"

"Probably not. It depends on what planets it's absorbed. It could look like anything – a lizard, a goat, a sea urchin, a giant amorphous blob. One thing I can tell you, though, is it probably won't look very nice."

When the Doctor opened the TARDIS doors with Ali and I starting after him, I realized then that I still hadn't put any shoes on. Why didn't I do that after my shower? I also realized that my phone and journal had slid across the floor, almost completely on the other end of the room. I quickly picked my things up, slipping the phone into my pocket, and tossed the journal onto the jumpseat.

I could just see the Doctor through the semi open doorway, with Ali hiding behind the closed half. I moved to the top of the ramp and shot Ali a confused look. She held a finger to her mouth and then went back to listening to the Doctor.

"I need to speak to someone in charge," she said as I stepped quietly down the ramp. "It's rather urgent."

"Who are you?" someone asked. "Are you a messenger from the gods?"

The Doctor paused for a moment. "You could say that. Let's say that I am a messenger from the gods." I could just make out the sound of feet pattering on hard ground and then the Doctor shouted, "No! Don't go in there!"

A person appeared in the doorway then, a man with dark skin and a bronze colored helmet. Ali's clawed arm shot out in front of me and then one of her antennae lashed out and whipped across the man's neck. The man started shaking like he was having a seizure and then he stumbled backwards, out of the doorway, and collapsed. His shield and spear clattered against each other when he dropped them.

"Stand back," Ali said to me, gently pushing me back with her claw.

"Diana! Ali!" the Doctor shouted. He sounded like he was struggling against something. I tried to push Ali's arm aside, but it was enormous and she was incredibly strong. "Don't move, both of you! Shut the door and wait for me. I'll be alright!"

I tried to reach around Ali's claw for the door. "Doctor!"

"I'll be alright!" she called.

Ali slammed the door shut with her human hand and then dropped her claw. I stumbled back in shock, my mind still reeling. When Ali started towards me, I instinctively backed away and cast her a wary glance.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "While you were searching for your things, the Doctor told me to protect you and the TARDIS."

My eyes shot to her two antennae, the one on her right shoulder still partially unfurled. "What is that?" I asked.

"It's an antenode. They lash out and attack enemies when we're in battle. It's a form of protection. I promise I won't hurt you."

I moved towards the jumpseat, never letting my eyes stray to anything other than Ali. "Did you kill him?"

"It was instinctual. And I was trying to keep us both safe."

I nodded. "Okay."

Ali claw snapped open and closed, her human fingers tapping nervously against her chin. "Is there a way for us to see what's happening to the Doctor?" she asked, looking between the doors and I.

I looked at the console. "Yes. I should be able to find her on the scanner."

Turning the external camera on was easily done with the press of a button. Adding sound and clarifying the image was just a button press and a dial turn away. The image on the screen showed the Doctor surrounded by men with helmets, spears, and shields. In front of the Doctor was a middle aged man with skin a few shades lighter than the Doctor's, wearing decorative robes and a very fancy looking staff.

"Liar!" he shouted. "You are not an emissary of the gods! You are a mortal, like the rest of us. You are a spy and the law of Hammurabi clearly states what must be done to spies!"

I felt my heart sink. "Oh, no."

The Doctor stepped forward to try and defend herself, but two soldiers grabbed onto her arms and restrained her. She tried proving that she was a messenger from the gods and then said that everyone was in serious danger, but no one would listen to her. The man ordered to have her taken away and the Doctor was quickly dragged out of sight.

"What will they do to her?" Ali asked.

I shook my head. "I-I don't know."

A/N: So I found an ebook with the Ninth Doctor several months ago and I really loved the story, so I thought it would be fun to put it in this story. So here it is! The original book was written by Charlie Higson and it's very, very good.

I hope you guys liked this chapter! Don't forget to leave a review and let me know what you think!