"Needless to say" one of the fox boys said "but they've found us"

"Thanks Lenny" the Doctor said, looking out at the totally unfair amount of armed soldiers that stood in the desert, backed by possibly a tank or two. Samuel cracked his knuckles, Juli glared at them. Alice grimaced, and Samantha looked at them with a look in her eyes that no eight year old should have.

Samantha looked over at Samuel, who turned to look at her. He bit his lip, looked back out at the approaching army, and then at Samantha. Slowly, he nodded.

"Get back" Samuel called, pushing everyone except Samantha behind him. He backed up a few paces also.

Samantha closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Storm clouds roiled in the distance, and a fierce wind picked up, blowing sand everywhere.

"What's she doing?" the Doctor asked

"Time to see a Storm Child in action" was Samuel's response.

The Doctor looked down at him in shock. "You can't let her do that! She's only a kid!"

Samuel shook his head.

The winds had gotten stronger, and more storm clouds had appeared. Rain began falling, but not a single drop affected Samantha. She was the only one at the moment unaffected by the elements.

The soldiers had stopped their advance, and covered their eyes.

Lightning was forming now, and the storm clouds grew ever darker. The rain was pouring harder now, soaking the soldiers. The crowd behind Samantha was getting wet, but not enough to be considered soaked. Samantha was the only one that remained dry.

A lightning bolt struck out, but never hit its mark, for Samantha knocked it away. A torrent of lightning bolts then lashed out, on her command, at hit a drastic amount of the soldiers, probably killing all that were caught in the blast.

Everyone watched, some in awe, some in horror. More lightning was thrown out, getting rid of even more of the soldiers. Everything seemed to be going perfectly (despite the Doctor's horror) but then it all started going wrong.

The wind started picking up way more than needed, and Samantha was starting to get wet. The lightning seemed to be striking freely. Samantha's eyes flew open, a look of horror on her face. "RUN!" she shouted, and the crowd behind her scattered.

"What happened?" Alice asked, once everyone had reached safety. Everyone was unsettled, and quite a few seemed close to tears. Rachel just shook her head, and Alice knew. She closed her eyes.

"Too much" she said quietly to the Doctor, who she knew was going to ask. "It was too much for her to handle. She burnt herself out."

"Do you mean she's…?"

Alice nodded solemnly.

"She died" the Doctor said quietly "she died, to save my life"

"She did more than that" Samuel said "she saved all of our lives. We would have been slaughtered if it wasn't for her! She's hopefully gotten rid of all of that army, maybe leaving a few to come find us."

"I wasn't complaining!" the Doctor said tersely "it's just a bit shocking"

"Yeah, well we better get moving, or all this will be wasted when they call up reinforcements before we actually get anywhere. I know we're all shocked, moved, sad, or whatever about our loss, but sitting here mourning will do us no good. Let's not let dear Samantha's death go in vain." This last part was directed at everyone.

So it became a unanimous decision to keep moving forward, despite what losses would occur. And so the small group of ragtag kids and two adults trudged deeper into the forest, hoping that they weren't being followed.

"Mark, Matt, go see if you can find what we're looking for. You two know this forest better than anyone else" Samuel said.

The two elves nodded, saluted, and were off.

"Hey Alice!" someone called, and then two girls ran up behind her.

Alice did her best to remember who they were, but pegged them down as Amy and Kate pretty quickly. Amy's wings were kind of a dead giveaway though.

"Yeah?" Alice asked

"Well," Amy said "we were wondering"

"That's a lot of w's" Kate interrupted

"Shut up," Amy spat, glaring daggers in Kate's direction, "why you decided to start traveling with the Doctor."

"That's a random question" Alice said, and took a moment to consider it. She had thought about this quite a bit herself during her travels, and had come up with a suitable explanation for herself, but now that she was considering telling that explanation to someone else made her think twice about it. "I don't know" she said finally, even though that was a pretty lame explanation.

Then she noticed the look on Amy's face, which had gone from happy and curious, to slightly sad and downtrodden. "It's kind of complicated, why do you want to know?" Alice added, while internally smacking herself for taking this conversation any farther.

"Just wondering" Kate said

"Well, I guess, it was because… well…" Alice bit her tongue, like she did when she really started concentrating "I wanted something different in my life. I was sick and tired of being the princess of Hyrule."

Amy and Kate exchanged shocked looks upon hearing this, causing Alice to groan.

"Yeah, I'm the princess, get over it"

"I would never have thought" Amy said

"Does this have anything to do with why you wanted to travel with the Doctor?" Kate asked.

"Well, I guess, kind of, yeah…" Alice sighed "he saw me for who I really was, and not just as the princess, like nearly everyone else. Even when he found out I was the princess, he still treated me like I was Alice. Kindest thing anyone's ever done for me. I guess that might have been the reason why…"

"And what do you think of him?" Amy asked "I mean, considering his past and all."

"He's nice" Alice replied "really nice. He's like a hero, just not the way you would usually think of one. He's also really funny, and…" she paused, and then turned slowly to look at Jeremy, who had randomly shown up and was now currently feeling her pulse.

"What the heck are you doing?" she asked him

"Uhh… nothing…" Jeremy said quickly, letting go of her wrist. He looked at Amy and Kate and grinned. Kate smiled back, and Amy giggled a bit, and then the three of them just walked off, leaving Alice as confused as ever.