The alien took aim, and pulled the trigger. The nanosecond before, I ripped my screwdriver from my coat pocket, pointed it at the gun, and pressed the little button. Both machines lit up, and both made a strange noise. The Doctor yelped when he got hit by the gun's charge, and I kept my screwdriver pointed at it. The green light of the gun and the purple light of my screwdriver kept fighting until they finally exploded, destroying the court room and disintegrating the Mroskians. I was thrown back against the wall, hitting a few broken chairs along the way; the Doctor, too, was thrown back, only into the podium and then into the wall behind it.
It took a few minutes for me to reevaluate the situation at hand, get up from the apparent crater that I had made, and shake off the damages. "Doctor?" I called out, starting a bout of coughing. "Do-Doctor? Are you alright?"
"I'm over here." I heard a small voice say through the crackling of the fires that had begun.
"Where?" I asked, tripping over debris as I stumbled toward the voice.
"Right here." I ran after the voice and started throwing pieces of wood off of the ground, searching for that strange man. After I had thrown a few large chunks of wood, I saw his hand and began smiling with joy.
"Doctor!" I began uncovering him, and froze when I saw him. "Oh, my word." He lifted his hand, I grabbed it, and pulled him up from the ground.
"What?" He asked when he saw my reaction. "What's the matter?"
"Uh," I was in shock and I couldn't really put my finger on how to tell him. "Come on, we've to go." I grabbed his hand and practically dragged him through the building.
I stopped by the desk in the corner area of where the cells are, the other prisoners hooting and howling at the capture of the other guards, and rummaged through drawers until I found the Doctor's screwdriver, and we ran out, dodging and sneaking past the crowd that had begun to gather. We kept at a dead run, trying to outrun those that had decided to follow us. One skinnier Mroskian had left his house and had caught up to us.
"If you want to get out of here keeping going forward until I say so." He said our way, and then slowed down so as to fall behind us. I looked at the Doctor, and he only shrugged so we kept running. We had passed two alleys before we heard, "Left!" So we shot down an alley to the left. We kept running straight, and then, "Right!" We followed the path between the buildings right. "Left in three…two…one!" We took a sharp turn left and ran into a building, the Mroskian behind us. Once he was inside, he slammed the open door closed and barricaded it with a chair.
The Doctor and I were panting as we looked around the room we were in: It seemed like a normal living room with a few chairs and a sofa, but there were so many light bulbs that coated the walls, and all of them were on, making it extremely hard to keep my eyes open.
"Alright!" I pulled out the Doctor's screwdriver and began swinging it accusingly about. "Who are you and what do you want with us?" All the while keeping my eyes shut.
"Procul." Someone said, and the lights dimmed enough for me to see. "You two are lucky I saw you coming into the city. If I hadn't, you wouldn't have made it out." I watched the Mroskian move from the door to the Doctor. He gave him a quick overview, his eyes getting a bit wider when he stared the Doctor in the eye. "I've never seen someone this old before, even after that ray."
"What exactly happened in there? Why is he like this?" I questioned.
"Like what?" The Doctor asked, extremely worried. "What the hell happened to me?"
"You have been de-aged." The Mroskian backed off of the Doctor and left the room.
He turned to me. "What does he mean 'de-aged'?"
"Well," I tried to break the news gently to him, going into it slowly. "You're still the same height, and you still generally look the same, but…" I trailed off, really not wanting to tell him like this.
"But what?"
"You look like you're fourteen." I spurted out, preparing to be hit or yelled at.
His face fell and his eyes widened. "What?"
"She means that you look very young. According to your eyes though," The Mroskian came back into the room with another sort of gun in his hand. "You should have been a shriveled up old man." He pointed it at the Doctor, and I stepped in front of him.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! There's no need to be pointing weapons! We followed your orders remember?"
"Step aside." The Mroskian lowered his weapon. "I will not hurt your husband."
"He's not my-"
The Doctor pushed me aside. "It's okay, Dear. Just do as he says." He let the alien shoot at him with a yellow beam. The beam had changed the Doctor's entire appearance, altering his natural face and body into one that resembled a Mroskian.
"Don't worry." The Mroskian said, aiming at me. "It will wear off in a few hours." He changed me as well, and then turned back to the Doctor. "You're a human, right?"
"No, well, maybe, well, sort of…a little bit."
The Mroskain gave him a skeptical look and said, "If you are a human, you will age normally."
"Okay," I started. "So, the big 'punishment' was him being turned into a teenager? How is that really a punishment?"
"Not everyone turns young." The alien spat. "One of you tampered with it, and it changed what he would've been, in this case a baby." The Mroskian seemed almost sad when he said that.
"Are you okay?" I asked him, approaching him carefully.
He nodded. "Yes." Liar. "Come, we must get you out of here." He led us through the house to a trapdoor in an otherwise empty closet. "Follow the path and it will lead just outside of the city. Leave and do not return." He ordered.
"Why are you helping us?" I inquired as I made my way down into the hole.
"I do not share the same prejudices that the rest of my race does. I do not believe it is fair to imprison every foreign being that comes upon our city. So, I built this tunnel and have smuggled quite a few out of here." Be smirked proudly.
"Thank you," The Doctor shook the Mroskian's hand. "What's your name?"
He shrugged. "I don't have one."
"Don't have a name?" I asked.
The alien shook his head. "No. No one in this city does. We're all the same."
"Except you." The Doctor clapped him on the shoulder. "Good luck to you." He climbed down the hole and we began our journey back. The tunnel was quite large, being about six feet by eight feet, and it had a lamp on both sides every few yards.
It was only a few minutes before we reached the other end. We ascended out, and stared back at the city that we left behind. It was still beautiful, but now I knew why it had felt so eerie, and I no longer wanted to adventure.
"You ready to go home?" The Doctor asked me.
I nodded and grabbed his hand. "Yes. Let's go home." We turned away and started walking back to the TARDIS, leaving the city, the inhabitants, and the culture behind.