Matching Forces By Ardin

Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC and the Twilight saga belongs to Stephanie Meyer and her publishers.

Spoilers: All Nu-Who episodes from series 1-2 are fair game. Serious story spoilers for the Twilight series, but you don't have to have read them to get the story.

"So where are we headed this time?" Rose asked, yelling across the counsel room to be heard over the sound of the TARDIS engines.

"Well, I thought that it was about time to do a bit of exploring of your Earth." The Doctor shouted back, glancing up only momentarily from the main view screen. "I mean really, Rose, you're 20 years old and you've never been outside of the UK. At least not in your time period. It's about time that we fixed that, yeah?"

Rose barely had time to give a brief nod of agreement before the deck plating below her feet shook hard at their landing. She managed to stay standing only by virtue of clinging tightly to the pillar beside her. The Doctor, on the other hand, had landed on his backside with a rather unceremonious thump. A large grin broke across his features as he hauled himself back to his feet.

"Here we are then. Earth, 2006." He beamed at her brightly as he moved across the room, sweeping up his coat and putting it on as he stepped to the doors.

Rose was slightly more hesitant. "Yeah, Earth, great, but where exactly. It is kind of a big planet you know."

"Not really. Loads of planets bigger than Earth. Reezany IV, for instance, is 15 times the size of your little blue-green planetoid. The twin planets of the Arabeth system are even bigger, though I'm not sure how much you can count those since they were artificially made. I had a hand in that you know, their gravity wells never would've held up if I hadn't…" He'd been staring at the ceiling during the ccourse of his recitation, but a glance at Rose and her rather annoyed expression brought him back to the original question. "I'm not exactly sure where we are. Wanted it to be an adventure didn't I? So I told the old girl to get the year right and land us on, well, land and left the rest up to her."

"So you don't know where we are?" She looked overjoyed at finally catching him admitting that he didn't know something. He scowled at her triumphant grin.

"I could if I wanted to." His voice was petulant as he responded. "All I'd have to do is take a look at that screen there and I'd know exactly where we are, but, come on Rose, where's the fun in that?" He moved once more towards the door. "Much better to just take a look outside and-"

The Doctor's words were drowned out by a loud alarm that filled the room, eminating from no particular spot and echoing off every surface.

"What is that?" Rose had to shout to be heard, her hands rasied protectively against her ears to hold out the horrible racket.

The Doctor seeemed to be almost instantly at the TARDIS counsel screen, reading data as it streamed quickly past. With a rapidly tapped out command the alarm bell cut out as suddenly as it had begun.

"We've been followed out of the vortex by a Cravor hunting party." His voice was a mixture of shock and concern as he continued to read off of the screen.

"A what?" Rose had rarely seen such worry in his eyes before and couldn't help the tinge of panic that sounded in her voice in response.

"Cravor. They're a race of hunters. From the moment they're born they are taught that nothing is more glorius than a sporting victory over a foe. Hunting those with technology better than theirs is the ultimate game for them. They must have spotted the TARDIS in the vortex and given chase." He ran his hands distractedly through his hair and his mind tried to work through the situation they had found themselves in. Why can't we ever go somewhere for fun? His subconscious wondered momentariily.

"Can we fight them? I mean we do have the TARDIS and you are a Time Lord." Rose was beginning to calm slightly as she got a better grasp on what was happening. The unknown was always so much more frightening than known and exxplained. Panicing would not help she reminded herself before focusing in on the Doctor's next words.

"Not likely. Average hunting party is about 40 strong. Even if they're a young and inexperienced group the TARDIS doesn't have the sort of systems necessary to handle that many." He turned away from he screen finally to look at her properly. "very hard to kill, Cravor are. At least by human standards. Almost nothing can pierce their skins and they're quite fast, though not over any sort of long distance – only short sprints and what not."

"So we run." Rose's tone was matter-of-fact, speaking as though she were saying something he should already have thought of. "Surely the TARDIS, which can travel through time, can lose them in the vortex somehow." There was a brief brightening of the interior lights as the TARDIS gave a quick thanks to Rose for her confidence in the machine, though the Doctor's next words instantly squelched any hope the young woman had felt from the blue box's response.

"We can't risk it. Yes, we'd probably be able to get away from them, but they may decide that, rather than waste the trip, they should practice their skills on Earth's population. And short of a nuclear bomb, there isn't much that any human could do to stop them." His expression was serious, worry creasing his brow even his brow even as his brain continued to work to find a solution.

Rose was finding it hard to fight back the hopelessness that threatened to engulf her, and her words were only silghtly more than a whisper. "So what are we going to do?"

The Doctor met Rose's gaze for a few silent, tense moments before his eyes suddenly lit up and he turned back to the screen. "Well, there may actually be a way. There's not much a human could do against a Cravor, but…" He read information from the screen for a moment in a low mutter that Rose couldn't quite hear before turning his attention back to her. "We've landed in North America, a couple of hundred miles below the US-Canadian border, just outside of the small town of Forks. The Cravorian ship is almost 100 miles East and they'll continue on foot from there. Should take them at least two days to reach the TARDIS." His words came ever more rapidly as he moved to the jump seat, grabbed her jacket and tossed it to her. "We'll have to go by foot as well, the TARDIS is too easy for them to track."

"To do what?"

"We're going to go see some old friends of mine. I just hope they haven't moved." He walked to the door, Rose just behind him, and they stepped out into a dense green forest. "We're not far from their home, shouldn't take us too long to reach them." He started off into the trees at a mild jog, apparently following some kind of path, though Rose could see none. One last sentence reached her ears before he sped up and made it impossible to concentrate on anything other than her footing.

"The Doctor is making a house call on the Cullens."

TBC