The Doctor was pressed up against a grungy alley wall, hands held up in a near-universal symbol of surrender as he stared wide-eyed at a creature that made even his brain hurt. The being was tall, well over six feet – more like seven. It was plated with what looked like a steel exoskeleton, rugged spikes layering over one another to protect what had to be more vulnerable flesh underneath. The glimpses he got of that flesh were hard to look at. What looked like galaxies swirled, ebbed and flowed through the flesh, giving the illusion that the creature was some hole in reality itself, a window to vast places unknown. Trying to look past the effect was impossible and gazing into what had to be the being's eyes gave the Doctor a feeling of being swallowed into the universe itself, a feeling he hadn't come across since he was forced to look into the untempered schism as a child.
He finally had an idea of what it was he had been chasing, and he knew now that it had been a very, very bad idea to leave the safety of the TARDIS. The creature looming over him was dangerous, and not just in the regular old lock-you-up-and-take-over-the-world way either. This kind of danger went beyond Slitheen or werewolves or even Daleks. This creature was a force of nature, one of the immutable elements of the universe. Like the reapers it existed for a purpose, and that was to fix something that had been fundamentally broken.
The creature studied him, tilting its big, spiked head before slowly retreating, its stunted muzzle scanning the alley for a particular scent or trace. The Doctor let out a slow sigh of relief, but didn't dare move until the creature had retreated further down the alley, and even then moving slowly and carefully so as not to grab its attention. The part of him that had actually listened to his lessons as a child about the Nameless told him to find Rose and get the hell away from the city before they could be ripped apart and completely unmade by the creature he had encountered. The part of him that remembered that he was the only Time Lord left reminded him that whatever the creature was looking for was something he was duty-bound to investigate, no matter the cost. Flinging open the back door to the club he debated with himself, ruffling his already-mussed hair before the stubborn curiosity-driven, duty-bound part of him won out. With a groan he pushed back into the building, determined to at least find Rose before setting off to figure out just what kind of horror could possibly draw a Nameless down onto 21st century Earth.