"NO! Nonononono!" The Doctor shouted "IT WAS RIGHT HERE! Where the heck did I go!"

"You've lost the TARDIS?" Alice asked

"No! I haven't lost it! It just disappeared!"

"That's just great, isn't it?"

They both sighed.

"Maybe it's deeper in," Alice suggested "this does look like a pretty big forest."

"Yeah, maybe."

They trudged deeper into the forest in search of the lost Time Machine.

"I don't even know what planet we're on!" the Doctor said

"And you think I do?" Alice asked "it looks like, uhh, Earth. But, how should I know?"

The Doctor glared at her.

"What? I was just saying."

They walked on in silence for a minute. The Doctor pulled out a device and started scanning the area. "Maybe, if I use this thing to scan the radio activity I could figure out exactly what the…" he muttered a bunch of unintelligible scientific stuff after this.

Alice sighed, and realized that they had walked right out of the forest. She looked around and gasped.

"Doctor," she said. He shushed her.

"No, but, LOOK!" she nudged him in the shoulder.

Still muttering, he looked up, and then his jaw dropped.

"Okay… definitely not earth then…"

The sky was a mixture of night and day, Light and Darkness. It looked as if there was a war going on above their heads.

"That's… special" Alice said

"WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING!" a voice called. Two teens, both of them probably about fifteen or sixteen, maybe seventeen, came running up to them.

"Get out of the shadows!" the second one said. She glared at them. Reluctantly, but only because they were really confused, the Doctor and Alice stepped out of the shadow they had been standing in.

"What are they thinking?" the boy, who had first shouted at them, was saying. "Just standing around like that in the shadows! You would think they want to die!"

"Karl, calm down" the girl said.

The boy, whose name was Karl, completely ignored her and continued his rant about them being idiots. "I mean honestly! Do they want to be consumed by Darkness!" The girl looked at her friend, shook her head, and then turned to Alice and the Doctor.

"What's wrong with the shadows?" Alice asked

"What's wrong with the shadows! EVERYTHING is wrong with the shadows!" Karl said

"Do you honestly not know?" the girl asked.

"No," the Doctor said, "we're not from here."

"NOT FROM HERE!" Karl shouted "how the heck can you not be from here!"

"Actually," the girl said "I don't think they're lying."

"How are they not lying!" Karl asked, continuing his rant.

"KARL!" the girl shouted "look at their eyes!"

The Doctor and Alice looked at each other, and then back to the teens. Karl paused long enough to look at the two of them.

"Yeah, so what! There's no Darkness in their eyes! Good for them! What does that have to do with anything!"

"No, but, Karl! There's no Light in their eyes either."

That stopped Karl. "What?" he asked.

"Okay" Alice whispered, "I am thoroughly confused."

"Yeah," the Doctor said, "me too."

"How can they not have Light in their eyes?" Karl was asking his friend. "Everyone was cleaned after the first attack."

"Why don't you ask them?" the girl said.

Karl muttered something unintelligible and turned to Alice and the Doctor. "What's up?" he asked.

"I told you, we're not from here" the Doctor said calmly. "Now can you please tell us what is going on?"

The girl sighed. "Well, first off, my name is Belle; loud mouth over there is Karl."

"Hey!" Karl said

"I'm Alice"

"I'm the Doctor"

"Oh! A doctor!" Belle said happily. "We could be using one of those."

"So what's with the shadows?" Alice asked.

Belle cast her glance up at the sky, and so did everyone else.

"You see that?" she said, "we've been able to keep the darkness at bay for a while now. But when you throw light and darkness at each other, your usual result is a shadow, or twilight. Everyone knows that going into any kind of darkness is suicide, even the shadows. Of course, you can survive in the shadows for a few seconds, but eventually the Darkness will consume you."

"That doesn't sound like fun" Alice said

"Ya think?"

There was a bit of silence.

"Well," Belle said "we should probably take you guys back to the house, there's no way out of here now."

"There you two are!" another girl said, answering the door. "Oh, and you brought people!" She shoved her friends aside and held out her hand. "Hi! I'm Jem."

The Doctor shook her hand. "I'm the Doctor."

Alice waved. "I'm Alice."

"Nice to meet you two!" Jem said happily.

"No time for chat now" Belle said, pushing her way into the house. Alice and the Doctor followed. "Where's Tim?"

"Where do you think?" Jem asked, shutting the door.

Belle groaned. "Honestly, the world is ending and he's off writing!"

"He's always writing" Jem said, "besides, the last two times we thought the world was going to end he was writing, and we came alright. Maybe it's a good thing he's out there."

There was more silence.

"So uhh, is there anything I can do to help?" the Doctor asked.

"Not if you plan on getting rid of the darkness, no" Jem said.

"Yeah" Belle said "there's only one person who's supposed to be able to stop the Darkness and it's been seven years since this entire thing started apparently, so…"

Alice did her best not to laugh at the irony.

"But" Karl said, for the first time they had arrived at the house. "I do think there might be another problem you could help with."

"So you're telling me that there are these creatures roaming around the city here, making life miserable for everyone" the Doctor asked.

Karl nodded. "Yup"

"Do they have a name?" Alice asked

"No, they don't, not really. They're just referred to as 'Them'. They're basically everyone's childhood nightmares come to life."

The Doctor took a deep breath. "Well, I guess I can help. You want me to just get rid of them, right?"

"Get them out of the city and our lives," Karl said.

"Okay," the Doctor stood up. "Come on Alice! We've got some nightmares to fight!"

Grinning, Alice stood up too, and they headed for the city to take care of these pests.