"I shouldn't even let you fly her!" Violet laughed as the Doctor tried to exit the TARDIS but found himself trapped by a bright blue container. They dematerialised and appeared in facing the right way.
"Ah!" He grinned, stepping out. Violet and Rose followed, the latter noticing a Shayne Ward poster while looking around.
"So, near future, yeah?" She asked.
"I had a passing fancy. Only it didn't pass, it stopped." He replied, heading off down the street.
"30th Olympia." Violet announced, pointing at a huge banner at the mouth of the road.
"No way! Why didn't I think of this, that's great! Ah!" Rose linked her arm through the Doctor's, excited, making him beam.
"Only seems like yesterday a few naked Greek blokes were tossing a discus about... wrestling each other in the sand with crowds stood about, begging... no, wait a minute... that was Club Med." The Doctor started rambling, but Rose saw a man stick a missing poster onto a lamp post, right above another, and went over to investigate.
"Just in time for the opening doo dah - ceremony... tonight, I thought you'd like that. Last one they had in London was dynamite. Wembley, 1948. I loved it so much, I went back and watched it all over again. Fella carrying the torch... lovely chap, what was his name? Mark...? John..? Mark...? Legs like pipe cleaners, but strong as a whippet."
"Doctor-" Rose called him over, but he kept on going.
"And in those days, everybody had a tea party to go to."
"Doctor?" She tried again.
"Did you ever have one of those little cakes with the crunchy ball bearings on top-"
"Oh, come on, you." Violet pulled him over to Rose, grinning at her. "He can't help it, it's in his DNA to talk this much. Only some people have this thing called self-control."
"I have self-control!" He defended.
"Then stop talking about edible ball bearings and look at this." She pointed to the posters.
He sobered up, "What's taking them, do you think? Snatching children from a thoroughly ordinary street like this."
"Is it just me, or is it unnaturally chilly here? Something must be reducing the temperature..." Violet thought out loud.
Rose said, "It says they all went missing this week. Why would a person do something like this?"
"What makes you think it's a person?" The Docotr countered. A door opened, revealing a woman that dumped a bin bag on the street and scurried back inside, looking around superstitiously.
"Whatever it is, it's got the whole street scared to death. Doctor, what-?" She turned around but found the Doctor and Violet already at the other end of the road.
They crouched down by a mini football goal, both having felt the strange residue over a patch of grass. The Doctor held out his hand, giggling like a school girl murmuring, 'Tickles!' as he did. He motioned for Violet to try as well, and she laughed at the weird sensation of whatever was there.
Out of nowhere, a man appeared, hands in his pockets.
"What's your game?" He asked, not looking pleased at finding two strangers on his lawn after his son had gone missing.
"Uhm...Snakes and Ladders?" They faced him. "Quite good at... Squash." The Doctor paused. "Reasonable."
"You're being facetious." Violet tried to stifle her laugh.
"What are you doing in my front garden?" The man shouted. "Did you take my Tommy?"
They backed away from him.
"I'm- I'm a police officer! I've got a badge - and- and a police car... you don't have to get- I can- I can prove it! Just hold on-" The Doctor fished in his long, brown coat, searching for his psychic paper.
"We've had plenty of coppers poking around here, and you don't look - or sound - like any of them." He said roughly.
"See, look! I've got a colleague! Stewart." He pointed at Violet, who was desperately trying to hold back laughter at the Doctor's fright.
"Well, what about her?" He pointed at Rose, who had met up with them on the middle of the road.
"Training. New recruit. It was either that or hairdressing, so..." He finally found his psychic paper and shoved it into the man's face. "Voila!"
"What are you going to do?" A dark-skinned woman asked, having come out of her house.
"The police have knocked on every door - no clues, no leads, nothing." The elderly lady Rose had been talking to, said.
"Look, kids run off sometimes, all right? That's what they do-" Tom's dad said.
"I saw it with me own eyes. Dale Hixon, in your garden, playing with your Tommy, and then...!" She mimicked something disappearing. "Right in front of me, like he was never there! There's no need to look any further than this street. It's right here amongst us."
"Why don't we-" The Doctor, or Officer Smith, as his psychic paper read, tried.
"Why don't we start with him?" Another lady pointed at a black council worker. "There's been all sorts like him in this street, day and night."
"Fixing things up for the Olympics!" He defended himself indignantly.
"Yeah, and taking an awful long time about it."
"I'm of the opinion that all we've gotta do is just-" Violet tried, too.
"You don't- what you just said, that's slander!" Kel, the council worker, accused.
"I don't care what it is!"
"I think we need to just-" No response.
"I want an apology off her!"
"Stop picking on him."
"Yeah, stop picking on me!"
"And stop pretending to be blind! It's evil!"
"I don't believe in evil."
"Oh no, you just believe in tarmackers with sack loads of kidnapped kiddies in their van-"
"Ay, ay, ay, that's not what she's saying."
"Would you stop ganging up on me?!"
"Feeling guilty, are we?"
"Fingers on lips!" Violet shouted over the mindless bickering. She put a finger on her lip and dared them not to obey with her eyes, the Doctor following suit. After a moment of complete bewilderment, Kel, Tom's dad and the others did so, too. A look at Rose and she also put a finger on her lips.
"In the last six days, three of your children have been stolen. Snatched out of thin air, right?" Violet asked calmly.
"Er... can I...?" The elerly lady, Maeve, gestured at her finger, and she nodded. "Look around you... this was a safe street 'til it came. It's not a person. I'll say it if no one else will. "Maybe you're coppers - maybe you're not. I don't care who you are. Can you please help us?"
Rose and Violet spotted Chloe watching them through the second story window of one of the homes. Trish noticed them staring at her and hurried back inside, making Violet frown.
The Doctor was in a front garden, sniffing the grass like a dog. Rose watched for a moment before joking,
"Want a hanky?"
"Can you smell it?" He ignored her jibe. "What does it remind you of?"
"Sort of... metal?" She guessed.
He nodded, "Mm-hm!"
"Oooh!" She grinned, happy she got it right. Violet smiled at the two of them.
The Doctor and Rose walked down a narrow alleyway while Violet waited at the entrance of it.
"Danny Edwards cycled in one end but never came out the other." He felt something, "Whoa, there it goes again!" He help up his hand, "Look at the hairs on the back of my manly hairy hand." Violet, listening to them intently, giggled quietly.
"And there's that smell... it's like a um... a burnt fuse plug or something." Rose detected.
"There's a residual energy in the spots where the kids vanished. Whatever it was, it used an awful lot of power to do this."
Out of the alley again, Rose was walking a few paces behind the Doctor
"Aren't you a beautiful boy?" She cooed.
"Thanks! I'm experimenting with back-combing." The Doctor beamed, before he noticed that Rose was talking to a ginger, fluffy cat. "Oh." He sad, dissapointed, making Violet smile.
"I used to have one like you." Rose told the cat. The Doctor was watching uncomfortably, with a look of slight disgust on his face.
"What?" Rose noticed.
"No, I'm not really a cat person. Once you've been threatened by one in a nun's wimple, it kind of takes the joy out of it." He told her.
Violet nudged him, "Are you sure that's the only thing?" She laughed as he looked at her, a slight blush in his cheeks. "She's good, she keeps your ego down."
The cat wandered over to a cardboard box and climbed inside.
"What do you wanna go in there for?" Rose asked it. There was a wooshing sound and when Rose peered into the box, it was empty.
"Doctor!" She called. He went over but backed off once he smelt what must have come from the box. "Whoa! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" He waved the smell away and picked up the box.
"Iron residue. Blimey! That takes some doing! Just to snatch a living organism out of space/time. This baby is just like," He put on a Texan accent, "'I'm 'avin' some of that' - I'm impressed."
"So the cat's been transported?" Rose questioned.
"It can harness huge reserves of ionic power. We need to find the source of that power."
"Yeah. You do that, I'm just gonna be... somewhere else. Just try to do some actual searching- not too much of the other stuff." Violet excused herself, smiling.
"What other stuff?" The Doctor exclaimed.
She grinned even wider, "Oh, I don't know... Whatever it is you two do when you're alone." She went to walk off, but turned back. "Just... not on the open road, please. There could be children watching." She winked and left the two blushing.
Even though she only left the two so they could spend some time alone together- they were always bumping into each other despite the unlimited size of the TARDIS- she had a clue of where to go, and her feet took her to Trish's, the dark-skinned woman's, house from earlier.
She considered knocking on the door, but decided against it and let herself in with her sonic device silently. After checking to see that Trish was taking a nap, she crept upstairs and slowly opened the door to the girl's room.
There were pictures- a child's drawings- on the walls, all on different coloured pieces of paper. She saw one that matched Tom's description and the ginger cat. Definetely at the right place, she thought.
"I've given you friends and you still moan. Moan, moan, moan. You're lucky. You're all together." The girl seemingly talked to herself, but she looked at the drawings on her walls. "You don't know what it is to be alone. If you did, you'd be thanking me." She started drawing something but made a mistake, causing her to scribble over it in annoyance. "No!" She exclaimed, angry.
Violet cleared her throat.
"I'm busy, mum." The girl sat at her desk, pencil in hand.
"I'm not mum, love." Violet moved closer to the girl with braided hair. She turned around, but instead of screaming like a normal little girl would have, she said,
"Lonely. So lonely. Can you help me please?"
Violet smiled softly, "Yeah, I can. Just you watch." She pressed her hands to her temples, making the girl fall unconcious.
"Who are you?" She demanded.
The voice that spoke next wasn't Chloe's, "I want Chloe Webber."
"What are you?" She rephrased.
"I want Chloe Webber." The voice repeated.
"If you let me help you, you won't need Chloe anymore. Just tell me who you are."
"I am one of many. I travel with my brothers and sisters. We take an endless journey. A thousand of your lifetimes. But now I am alone. It's not fair and I hate it!" It cried.
"I'm sorry. Really, I am, but I need you to tell me who you are."
"Isolus." It said simply.
Then Violet got it. The Isolus were empathic beings of intense emotion, and when they're cast off from their mother, they depend on eachother. They literally couldn't be alone. They travelled for a long time, billions of years, inside of a pod, riding on the heat and energy of solar tides. They used their ionic power to create make-believe worlds in which they played, which explained Chloe's drawings. And why she was stealing the children. Problem was, the Isolus were families of billions. Just a few kids wouldn't be enough.
"Where is your pod?" She felt an intense sympathy for the Isolus. She knew what it was like to be alone.
"It was drawn to heat." Chloe's hand picked up a pen and began drawing.
"You were scattered by a solar flare." Violet saw the image.
"Only I fell to Earth. My brothers and sisters are left up there, and I cannot reach them. So alone. I was drawn to Chloe Webber. She like me. Alone. She needed me. And I her."
They were interrupted by her wardrobe doors rattling and Chloe shaking. Violet opened it slowly, wind blowing through clothes, red light flooding the room. A huge picture of a bearded man with menacing eyes was drawn on the back wall- the red light was coming from it's glowing red eyes.
Chloe's mother suddenly came bounding through the door, screaming.
"What have you done? Who are you?!"
"Okay, now's not the time! She's having nightmares! What do you do when she has nightmares?" Violet yelled over the noise of the whirling paper, the wind and the shouts of the man in the wardrobe.
"Uhm... I sing!" She said.
"Do it, then!" Trish rushed to her daughter and started singing a nursery rhyme. The shouting slowly died down, leaving a mess in it's place. Violet sighed. She needed to to find that pod- the Isolus wouldn't stop. Four billion siblings. That was two thirds of the human race, but who didn't like extras?
"Take care of her. Whatever you do, don't let her draw. I'm serious, Trish. Your daughter could end the world right now. Do you hear me?" She pressed. The woman nodded.
As she walked downstairs to find the Doctor, she heard a TV presenter talk about the Olympics. The flame would pass the road soon. She walked faster, looking for her companions. She ran outside and went down the street. She guessed that they might have gone back to the TARDIS for some private time, so she looked there, only to see it gone. They wouldn't have left me, she thought. After thinking for a moment, she sprinted back to Trish's house, barging in and shouting on her way upstairs.
"Trish! I told you to keep her away from the pencils!"
The woman in question emerged from the room next to Chloe's. She wasn't even with her. "I did, honestly. All of them."
"Obviously not." She growled and strode into Chloe's room. She saw her sitting in front of a picture of the TARDIS, Rose and the Doctor and sighed. This is not what she had meant by free time. "Let them go!" She pleaded.
The Isolus spoke through Chloe, "The share so much love."
"Yes, yes they do. And I sent them off to go spend some time with each other, and you trapped them in a picture!" She kneeled so she was at Chloe's eyes. "They love each other. I know you're lonely, but what about them? What about me? They're the only people in the entire universe I have." She choked up, "I have no one."
"But I want my brothers and sisters!" She begged.
"That's not them. But I will get you back to them. I promise." She turned to her scared mother. "Watch her. I mean it, this time. If you don't, I can only imagine the consequence. She could suck the universe right out of existence, she could create a big, gaping paradox." She trailed off and ran outside, again hearing the TV presenter, but this time, it was different. The entire stadium was empty. She was so caught up with the Doctor and Rose that she hadn't seen the picture next to that. The Olympic Stadium- and it wasn't done yet.
Outside, she looked around. It was drawn to heat. Heat. Heat, heat, heat, heat, heat. She stopped the council worker, who was passing her.
"Look at this finish. Smooth as a baby's bottom." He said.
"Has there been anything that gave off a lot of heat here recently?"
"Not a bump or a lump." He continued as if she hadn't spoken at all. "I mean, you can eat your dinner off this. Beautiful. So you tell me why the other one's got a lump in it when I gave it the same love and craftsmanship I did this one!"
"Okay, that's great! I'll keep you in my phone book for when I need someone to tarmack my road, but seriously. Think back six days." Violet said, exasperated.
"Six days..." He thought back. "When I was laying this the first time round!" He motioned at the road.
"Tar..." She breathed. "You mentioned there was a lump in the other one."
"Yeah, I really don't understand it. Did it just the same as I did this one, it's beautiful, don't you think?" He went on again, but Violet headed for the council van, grabbing a pickaxe from it.
"Oi! What do you think you're doing with that?" He shouted, enraged. "Whoa, wait, wait, wait, you just removed a council axe from a council van. Put it back. No don't, wait - put the axe back in the van, that's my van, gimme the axe."
She ignored him and crashed the axe into road, smashing through the freshly-laid tarmac.
"No! You- stop!" She hacked at the road as Kel yelled at her in bewilderment. "That's a council road!"
She dropped the axe as she saw a white, round object poking out. She picked it up and laughed, blowing dirt off of it.
"Not a council spaceship. Sorry. It was a beautiful road, though." She didn't wait for a reply, just headed for Chloe's house. For the second time that day, she burst into the home and saw Trish sitting in her living room.
"Oh, for the universe's sake! I told you not to leave her, how is that so difficult?" She shouted.
"I don't care if you've got Snow White and the Seven Dwarves buried under there, you don't go digging up-" Kel walked in on them, mad about her ruining the road.
"Look at that!" She pointed at the TV, still showing the empty Olympic Stadium. "Unless you want the world look like that, shut it!"
"The crowd has vanished! Er- um... they're gone. Everyone has gone. Thousands of people have just gone. Er... um... right in front of my eyes. Um... it's impossible! Bob, can we join you, um, in the box?" The commentator said while Violet bounded up the stairs again, hearing a familiar growling.
"Chloe!" She pushed at the barred door before taking the pickaxe out of Kel's hand and smashing open the door. "Oh, no you don't! You're going home!" Violet ripped the pencils away from Chloe, who was shaking in fear of her nightmare dad while the Isolus continued drawing.
"I'm coming to hurt you..." His voice sounded.
"Stay with her, and I swear I will rip you head off if you don't, this time!" She growled at Trish, who looked more than a little scared of the fiery young woman.
She ran out onto the road which was filled with people waiting for the torch to pass, just as she heard the commentator on TV.
"...The torch now represents love and hope and joy..." Exactly what the Isolus needed.
Violet grinned and pushed through the crowd, only to be stopped by a policeman.
Sorry, you'll have to watch from here." He held her back.
"Oh, yes I will." She gave him a smile and whispered to the pod, "Here you go. Love and hope and joy." And with that, she threw the pod into the flame, making the runner stagger but continue on nonetheless. "Yes!" She shouted at no one in particular.
The Isolus would leave when the pod reached the stadium and she guessed that the damage done would be reversed.
Violet smiled as she saw all the lost children return and hug their parents. All the happiness and love.
"But... all of the drawings came to life." She said to herself, seeing a butterfly that belonged into a rain forest. She ran to Trish's house, but the door was stuck. She could see mother and daughter through the letter box, sitting at the bottom of the stairs.
"Come on, Chloe! It's just a nightmare!" She tried to soothe her but was washed out by the growling. "Sing!" She yelled. The sound of heavy footsteps startled them, but they started singing as Violet requested. Her nightmare dad was just left-over energy, she could get rid of him if she tried.
"Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh.
Kookaburra, gay your life must be."
The footsteps, the growling and the red tint started to fade until they were gone completely, leaving Trish and Chloe Webber cowering at the bottom of the stairs, singing as if their life depended on it.
After Violet had giving Trish a crash-course on how to raise her child, since she obviously wasn't capable, the Doctor and Rose joined up with her. He was just telling them that he had been the one to light the flame at the Olympics.
"You're mad!" Violet laughed as the Doctor bit into his ball-bearing cupcake.
"Oh, the best of the best, I am!" He grinned. "Mm. I can't stress this enough. Ball bearings you can eat - masterpiece!"
"You nutter!" Rose grinned, but hugged him tightly. Once she let go, the Doctor adressed Violet.
"So, you saved the world once again! That's what? Twice in a week? Could become a habit."
"Oh, well, you know, I couldn't just let the Isolus pull Earth out of existence and create a paradox. Where would have you gotten your ball-bearing cupcakes?" She said mock-seriously.
"Very good point." He approved.
"So, what now?" Rose asked.
"Well, let's do what we came here for! Let's watch the games!"
"You gonna tell me what we do well in?" Rose asked. While the Doctor shoved the rest of his cupcake into his mouth, Violet answered for him.
"I will say this. Papua New Guinea suprises everyone in the shot put."
"... Really? You're joking, aren't you?" She giggled. "Doctor, is she serious?"
"Wait and see!" He laughed, swallowing his cupcake. Fireworks exploded over their heads and they both held hands with Violet walking alongside them, smiling.
"You know what; they keep to bring us down, but they never ever will." Rose sighed contently.
The Doctor came to a halt, "Never say never ever." He said seriously.
"Nah. We'll always be okay, you and me." Her words were confident, but she got no reply. "Don't you reckon, Doctor?"
Violet looked up at the sky, "Can you feel that?" She frowned. "Something's coming. I don't think it'll be good." Her companions looked up, too.
"A storm's approaching." The Doctor agreed.
Violet and the Doctor sat in the control room of the TARDIS while Rose slept.
"I feel really weird. Something bad is going to happen." Violet mused.
"I'm going to take Rose to see her mother tomorrow. You know, just in case."
"You really love her, don't you?" She said, no bad intention in her words at all. The Doctor blushed a little.
"Yeah." The Time Lord said sheepishly.
"Tell her, then." She urged him, playing with the thin, silver chain on her wrist, which she always wore. It looked familiar to the Doctor, but he wrote it off to the fact that there must be thousands of bracelets like that all over.
"But what if- when- I lose her?"
"You can lose anything, Theta. Everything good must come to an end, it just depends on how you spent the good times." Violet told him wisely. When he looked up, he could see so much pain and grief in her dark brown eyes that he dropped his gaze instantly. She felt even more pain that he did, and he had killed his own people.
"Why do you keep calling me that?" He whispered, afraid to speak any louder, scared that she might fall apart. That's how much pain he saw in her eyes.
"It's in the past, and the past is something I think we're both not proud of." She said, brokenly, before composing herself. "Promise me you'll tell her if we survive whatever is thrown at us next?"
"Oh, okay." He laughed at her as she pointed her elbow at him. It was a childish thing, like a pinky promise for humans. He touched her elbow with his, not being able to shake the feeling that something inevitabely bad was heading for them.
"I promise."