"Apalapucia," the Doctor smiles.
"Say it again," Amy requests.
"Apalapucia," he pulls a lever on the console.
"Apalapu..." Peyton struggles.
"Cia!"
"Apalapucia," Rory echoes.
"Apalapucia!"
"Apalapucia," Amy laughs. "What a beautiful word."
"Beautiful word, beautiful world," the Doctor spins a dial, sending the TARDIS on an angle, Peyton luckily grips the railings just in time. "Apalapucia, voted number two planet in the top ten greatest destinations for the discerning intergalactic traveller."
The TARDIS lands.
"Why couldn't we go to number one?" Rory asks, walking up to the Doctor who wears a new long coat. Peyton asked him about it when she came down for breakfast, his usual tweed blazer nowhere to be seen. He said he was shaking things up and pointed finger guns at her, she rolled her eyes.
He had then asked if she wanted to take up his offer, be the Doctor for the day. Peyton declined, more in the mood for a relaxing vacation today, that's when he suggested Apalapucia.
"It's hideous!" The Doctor exclaims. They all jump down the stairs to the doors. "Everyone goes to number one. Planet of the coffee shops. Apalapucia! I give you sunsets, spires, soaring silver colonnades! I give you..."
He unlocks the door and throws it open, revealing the underwhelming sight of a white room with a single white door.
"Doors?" Peyton asks sarcastically.
"Doors, yes, I give you doors," he sticks his head beside hers out the door before brushing past her, his brown trench coat flapping behind him. "But on the other side of those doors, I give you sunsets, spires, soaring silver colonnades."
Peyton steps out of the TARDIS and shoves her hands in the pockets of her black bomber jacket she had purchased when the Doctor took her to the 2316 Olympics with its colourful logo embroidered on the back.
The room seems to go on forever, like some sort of endless lobby. Peyton follows the Doctor to the door.
"Have you seen my phone?" Amy asks. Peyton turns to see that she's still in the doorway of the TARDIS.
"Your phone?" The Doctor sighs.
"Yeah."
"Your mobile telephone? I bring you to a paradise planet, two billion light years from Earth and you want to update Twitter?"
"Sunsets. Spires. Soaring silver colonnades. It's a camera phone," she rolls her eyes.
"On the counter, by the DVDs," the Doctor answers begrudgingly.
"Thank you."
Peyton looks back to the door and then to Rory beside her. "How do we get in?"
"I don't know," the Doctor appears behind them. "Push a button."
On the side of the door, Peyton spies a mirror panel with two buttons, GREEN ANCHOR and RED WATERFALL. The buttons reflect their descriptions.
Rory leans over and presses the top button, the green anchor.
The door buzzes before opening with a hiss. Before them, another white room is revealed, this one with a glass table in the middle, an oversized magnifying glass erect on top of it and two white chairs, both on the same side of it. There's another identical door on the other side.
YOU ARE READING
The Time Lord's Apprentice
Fanfiction"But, you're impossible!" "Yeah, and the world is ending, I don't think now is the time." Peyton is an orphan, taken from her mother as an infant by the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. She is raised separately from other children because she is spec...
