A/N I don't own BBC or DW.

Book of the Update: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Chapter 6: Planet of the Dead

"No, Rose. I've told you; you're not getting any of this. This is my special Easter chocolate."

"Oh, shut it you two!" Donna said with a laugh, smacking the Doctor on the chest. "Now, I'm starving and I know that beepy thing a' yours isn't gonna wait twenty minutes for me to pop in at a restaurant and get somethin' to go, so you two go on ahead. I'll meet you back at the TARDIS in an hour and if I don't hear from you by then, I'll come find you. Deal?"

"Yeah….yeah, okay," the Doctor mumbled, swinging around in circles, following the little metal device in his right hand. His left hand held the gold foil wrapper full of chocolate, which he was taking bites of periodically.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Here," she said, giving Donna what looked like a cell phone, "That's Torchwood technology. 's locked onto the Doctor's biological signature, so it shouldn't be too hard to find us if there's trouble. Just press this little red button to find 'im."

The Doctor didn't even turn away from his gadget, but said teasingly, "And why did you have that, Rose?"

She mock glared at him. "Alright, so maybe I did come back to this universe specifically to find you, and that thing there helped me do it. Happy?"

He grabbed her waist and swung her around, planting a kiss on her cheek. "Very."

She waved bye to Donna over her shoulder as the Doctor grabbed her wrist and pulled her down the street, holding up his gadget to the sky. Rose yelled out apologies to lots of people who were shoved out of the way by the frantic Time Lord.

The gadget beeped and the Doctor let out a victorious "HAH!" and pulled Rose around a sharp corner and finally jerked to an abrupt stop in front of a big red double-decker bus. He pulled her up the steps and inside the bus, only stopping and releasing her hand to flash his psychic paper to pay the bus driver, which Rose wholeheartedly disapproved of. Mostly.

He sat them down in seats behind a girl a bit older than Rose with dark brown hair and a backpack held tightly in her lap.

"See Rose? The signal is heading this way, so it's easier just to follow it on a bus," he said with a trademark Doctor Laugh at the end and she grinned.

"Yeah, can I have some 'a that chocolate now?"

He looked at her for a good while before relenting. "Oh all right." He broke her off a decent sized piece and then leaned forward to the girl with the dark hair. "Would you like some? Seeing as how I'm practically giving it all away anyhow," he asked her and she gave him a funny look. "I'm the Doctor, by the way, and this is Rose. Happy Easter." After his introductions were complete, he smiled and shoved a bit of chocolate into his mouth.

"Funny thing is though," he explained, to Rose or the girl, maybe both, "I hardly ever do Easter. I can never find it! I was there for the original, though," he said and Rose had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing. This girl, whoever she was, probably thought he was mad! "Between just us three, what really happened was-" his gadget began to beep again, and he began digging around in his pockets for the thing. "Oh! Sorry, here hold onto that for me," and he shoved the chocolate into Rose's hands. "You know what? Go on, have it. Too much sugar anyways; I'm determined to keep these teeth that you like so much," he added with a wink at her.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, pulling the thing out and jiggling it around. "Ooh, we've got excitation! Now I'm picking up something….very strange." He held the thing up to his ear and began to spin a dial on the back of it, bobbing his head up and down.

"I know the feeling," the girl said, speaking for the first time. She kept looking out the window behind them, Rose noted, like she was looking for something. Or running from someone.

"Rondium particles. 's what I'm looking for," The Doctor announced, extending the antenna on the gadget and flicking a little dish on the top of it. "This thing detects them. That little dish should go around, Rose. Why isn't the little dish going around?" he asked, showing her. She shrugged and patted his arm consolingly as he frowned and fiddled with the little dish.

"Right now a way out would come in pretty handy," said the girl, "Can you detect me one of those?"

"What are you running from?" Rose asked and the girl jumped a little, as though she had forgotten she was there.

"None of your business," she snapped and Rose leaned back in her seat, watching as the girl began to anxiously tap her foot and looked out the window every few seconds.

"Ahh, the little dish is going around."

"Fascinating."

"That's great, Doctor. So what exactly does the little dish do?"

He ignored her. "Oh wow. Ooooh," he jumped up as the gadget began to spark and smoke.

"Scuse me. Do ya' mind?" asked a woman across the aisle.

"Sorry," Rose apologized for him.

"Can't you turn that thing off?" there goes the girl again. Rose ignored her this time. Teach you right for snappin at me, she thought.

"Sorry. What was your name?"

"Christina," the girl answered, a bit too enthusiastically for Rose's taste.

"Right. Well then, Christina, hold on tight," warned the Doctor before coming to stand by Rose. He wrapped one arm around her and the other around the pole in the aisle of the bus. "Rose hold on tight to something."

"Everyone, HOLD ON!" He yelled, just as the bus jerked forward at warp speed and the lights flickered off. Everyone screamed as they were tossed forward and every which way in the bus's wild movements. Suddnly, a bright light shone through the windows, nearly blinding everyone. Rose buried her head in the Doctor's side to shield her eyes.

When the light faded and the movements stopped, she pulled away her face to see smoke everywhere. The Doctor moved his arm from her waist, but reached down to grab her hand instead and they walked to the door of the bus together.

"End of the line," he said, looking out over the sand. Because that's all there was, whichever way you looked: sand.

They walked out of the bus and looked around them again, but still saw just sand.

"Call it a guess, but I think we've gone a bit farther than Brixton," Rose said mildly, staring wide-eyed at the desert surrounding them.

"'s a lucky guess," he said. "Think you're right, sweetheart."

He put his brainy specs on and knelt down in the sand, running it through his fingers, bringing it up to his face for inspection.

"Ready for every emergency," said Christina as she walked over and showed off her sunglasses.

The Doctor took his brainy specs off and sonic'ed them, tinting the lenses for UV protection before putting them back on. "Me too."

"And what's your name?"

"I'm the Doctor."

"I said name, not rank," she said with her hands on her hips.

"The Doctor," he said again.

"Is that a name?"

"The Doctor."

"You're called 'the Doctor?'" she asked incredulously and Rose cut in, getting annoyed:

"Yeah. He is."

"That's not a name; that's a psychological condition."

"Oh no," Rose complained when she saw the Doctor stick his tongue out to the sand on his palm. "You're not going to lick it are you? Ooof course you are…" she said with a sigh when he did lick it, scrunching up his nose and tasting it again. "Better wash out your mouth before you expect me to-"

"Something's weird in this sand; there's a trace of something else," he made a noise and wiped off his tongue with the back of his hand and Rose laughed.

"Not good?"

"Well it wouldn't be; it's sand," Christina said snarkily in response to Rose's rhetorical question.

"No, it tastes like….." he faded off before sniffing loudly and standing up, brushing off his hands on his pants. "Never mind." And began to walk farther out in the desert.

Rose followed him. "Doctor, what did the sand taste like?"

He frowned. "Not good, Rose. Most definitely not good."

"Hold on a minute," said a dark-skinned man who had been sitting a few rows behind them on the bus. "You had that thing; did you make this happen?"

The Doctor groaned and ran a hand over his face. "Oh my – humans on buses; always blaming me for everything! Look, look, if you must know, we were tracking a hole in the fabric of reality."

"Call it a hobby," Rose said with her classic tongue-in-teeth smile. The Doctor grinned at her.

"But," he continued, "It was a tiny little hole – no danger to anyone! And then….it got bigger and we drove right through it," he finished in a small voice.

"But then where is it? Th-there's nothing; there's just sand." the bus driver asked and Rose rolled her eyes and walked towards the back end of the bus.

"Alright. You lot want proof?" she picked up a handful of sand. "We drove," she threw the sand into the air behind the bus and it wavered where the hole was. "through this."

"And that's….?" Christina trailed off, waiting for an answer.

"It's like a door," Rose tried to explain, "in space."

"Smart girl," the Doctor chimed, walking up to stand beside her.

"So what you're saying is on the other side of that is home? We can get to London through there?" asked the bus driver, all pointing fingers and enthusiasm.

The Doctor bobbed his head from side to side, like he was deciding how to answer. "Well, not exactly. The bus came through, but we can't." They all gave disbelieving noises and grumbles. The bus driver seemed to ignore the Doctor's last words because he excitedly asked what they were all waiting for and ran towards the worm hole, ignoring the Doctor and Rose shouting to stop.

As soon as his skin touched the wormhole, he screamed as it burnt the flesh straight off his bones and shot him through to the other side.

"He was a skeleton, man! Bones, just BONES!" the black man cried out, pointing at the hole.

"It was the bus," Rose said in a shaky voice. "The only thing that kept us from ending up like that was the bus."

"Rather like a Faraday cage," said Christina and another boy added on saying,

"Like in a thunderstorm, yeah? The safest place to be is a car because the metal conducts the lightning straight through."

Christina nodded at him and then looked back at the destroyed bus. "But if we can only travel back inside the bus, the Faraday cage needs to be closed; that thing's been ripped wide open."

"Slight damage from the wormhole. There's enough metal to make it work, I think," the Doctor said after quickly assessing the damage.

"Then we have to drive ten tons of bus, which is currently buried in the sand, through there using only our bare hands, correct?"

"You're a 'glass half empty' kind of person aren't you?" Rose grumbled at Christina, who stood there with her arms crossed in a bored stance.

"I'd say nine and a half tons," the Doctor pointed out. "But, the point still stands, yeah."

"Well then, we need to apply ourselves to the problem with discipline. Which starts with appointing a leader," Christina announced right before cutting off the Doctor and appointing herself as leader.

"Alright. Well everyone do exactly as I say; inside the bus, immediately."

"Is it safe in there?" asked the boy and she smiled grimly.

"I don't think anything's safe anymore, but if it's a choice between baking in there or roasting out here, I'd say baking is slower. Come on. All of you, right now. And you, 'The Doctor'."

He grit his teeth and grabbed Rose's hand. "Yes ma'am."

"It would be a sad day in history if a Time Lord were to regenerate simply out of annoyance," he whispered to Rose and she laughed as Christina had them all sit down facing her like school children while she began 'disciplinary problem solving' step one. There were five steps to go, and she planned on going through them all very thoroughly.

The Doctor groaned and slouched in his bus seat, leaning his head against Rose's shoulder. "Don't drool on me," she muttered.

"I'll try my best," he whispered back. "Bet you wish I had saved that chocolate now, huh?"

She flicked his forehead. "shut up."