Natalie didn't know how long she'd been sat there before the door opened. She looked up at the opening door as she scrambled as far away from it as she could, expecting Rin and his friends to walk through it, so she was surprised when a tall man wearing a tweed jacket and bowtie became visible.
"Ah, there you are" he said as he spotted her on the floor by the bed. He held a hand out to her and she grabbed it, at which point she was pulled to her feet by the strange man.
"Listen to me Natalie, I'm the Doctor and you need to come with me before the shapeshifters get back" the Doctor told her. she frowned at him for a moment, but at the mention of the shapeshifters her eyes filled with fear. Natalie just nodded, releasing the Doctor's hand to grab her pencils and sketchpad that had been lying on the bed, before following him out of the small room.
"Doctor who?" Natalie asked as he tried to shut the door again. He turned to her with a smirk.
"Just The Doctor" he answered before he turned back to the door.
"Oh come on sonic, this isn't too primitive, just close it" the Doctor grumbled. The door to Natalie's prison closed and the Doctor turned to the artist with a triumphant grin.
"Right then, let's get you out of here" he told her. Natalie nodded and followed him down the corridor, running into him when he suddenly stopped.
"Who are you?" Rin asked the Doctor. Natalie hid in the shadows of the nearest pillar, staying out of the shapeshifter's sight, leaving the Doctor standing in the middle of the corridor.
"I'm here to fix your ship, I was just on my way out" he answered, turning warily as a few more shapeshifters walked up behind him. One of them pulled Natalie out of the shadows and started to drag her away.
The Doctor glanced between Rin's rather creepy grin and Natalie, making a quick decision. There was a short buzz from the sonic and the lights went out, in the confusion of which the Doctor pulled Natalie away from the shapeshifters and towards the teleport.
In an instant, they went from complete darkness to the bright light of the red sunset just visible through the ruins. Natalie shivered and blinked against the bright sunlight. By the time the Doctor had adjusted he couldn't warn Natalie, so their hands were ripped apart as Rin grabbed her. The shapeshifter moved faster than the Doctor could, injecting the contents of a small vial into Natalie's arm, causing the sketchbook and pencils to clatter to the flagstones as it rendered her unconscious. The Doctor managed to catch her before she fully hit the ground at Rin's feet.
"What did you do to her?" the Doctor hissed, looking up at the shapeshifter. Rin chuckled and lifted Natalie off the ground, leaving the Doctor kneeling by thin air.
"I've started the transformation process, now she has to turn, then she will accompany us to our home" Rin answered with a smirk as he was teleported back onto his ship. The Doctor used the sonic screwdriver to reactivate the teleport and he ran down the corridor towards the white room he'd walked past earlier, which was obviously the procedure room.
The Doctor peered around the open door to see Natalie strapped to a white chair, a long needle with a tube attached currently stuck into the back of her hand. He could see liquid moving through the tube, into Natalie, the Doctor guessed it was the stabilising agent to make sure the shapeshifter DNA didn't kill her.
The Doctor followed the path of the tube back to the machine, which he aimed the sonic screwdriver at, stopping it dead. While the shapeshifters tended to the halted machine, the Doctor snuck into the room and pulled the needle out of Natalie's hand before setting to work on the straps holding her in the chair.
By the time the machine was working again, the Doctor was lowering Natalie onto the seat in the TARDIS control room. The Doctor set the TARDIS the task of scanning the artist before he ran back out, locking the door behind him before swiftly unlocking it to run back in with the forgotten sketchbook and pencils.
Satisfied that the TARDIS was following instructions, he ran back out and into the teleporter, instantly taking him back to the shapeshifter's ship where he was surrounded. He lifted the sonic screwdriver above his head and connected it to the ship's engine, causing the light to turn red. The shapeshifters around him fell silent as they saw the red light.
"I can control the engine remotely and tell it to take you home because I was the one that fixed it, yes" the Doctor paused as Rin looked like he was about to speak, but the shapeshifter stayed silent and the Doctor continued. "Or I can destroy the engine, which would in turn destroy this ship and kill all of you. It's your choice"
"I didn't think you would kill in cold blood, not with the amount of blood already on your hands Doctor"
"There isn't actually that much blood on my hands, and I don't see why you should be the ones to change that. However, you are definitely going home, and if you cross me on the way I will blow the engine to pieces" As if to prove a point, the ship shuddered into life.
"Now I'm going to get you in the air and go back to my own ship, but I'll be back here before you have the chance to reach the atmosphere" The Doctor shouted over the rumbling of the ship's engines. The entire ship lurched as it pulled itself free of the forest shrubbery, causing most of the shapeshifters to lose their balance, and the Doctor had teleported again before they regained it.
The Doctor waited until the TARDIS has finished the scan on Natalie before he searched for her home on the computers. Once he found the location of her studio, he danced around the control panel as he usually did, only stopping once he'd started to land to look at the results.
He grimaced, glancing from the results to Natalie, then back to the results. He started running around the console after that, looking for a sheet of paper.
"I know there's one around here some-aha!" he shouted, holding up the paper with a victorious grin. He grabbed the pen that was hidden among the controls (a rare thing, it contained an endless ink supply and it had been very hard to find) and set it to the paper, writing a quick note of explanation.
Once the note was finished, he slid it into Natalie's sketchbook. A few seconds later, he opened the sketchbook fully to look at the drawings. He looked up sharply as Natalie stirred, setting the sketchbook aside and reaching over the controls to land the TARDIS gently.
The Doctor carried the stirring Natalie into her studio, placing her gently on the small sofa sat in amongst the easels, pulling the blanket over her before he left. He was about to get the TARDIS onto the shapeshifter ship when he noticed Natalie's notebook and pencils still sat on the control panel, so he ran back into the studio to place them on the clearest workbench before turning on his heel and running back out, maneuvering between the easels without knocking any of them over.
Natalie awoke at the sound of an odd whirring noise, looking out of the window in time to see a blue police box dematerialising into thin air. She didn't know how she got back to the studio she called home, but she did know that the owner of that blue box had saved her life and she needed to talk to him.
She needed answers.
Another mysterious chapter without a proper ending. Please don't kill me, but school is getting in the way of me finishing the next chapter, but I am working on it. I hope to have it finished sometime soon, but exams start next week, so no promises of a quick upload.