A\N This one took me a while because I wanted to make it a good one. I did a load of research on the gold rush. Thanks you to my lovely reviewers spesh Paula545 and WeepingAngel123 who have reviewed most of the rules! Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: Don't own it, k? So don't go thinking I do, cos I DON'T! *wail*

Rule 10: You should always be prepared for trouble. Because trouble is what you'll find, no matter where you are!

I have always wanted to go to California. Right since I saw in it on T.V when I was little. All sunny and gorgeous, not like England.

"Doctor..."

"What?"

"Pleeeease can we go to California...please, please, pretty please?"

"California? Donna Noble, we've got the whole wide universe, the whole of space and time and you want to go to California? We could go and see the meteor showers on Vlex! Visit the Kles Nebula! Still want to go to California?"

"Yes! Please! Just for a little while. Go on, you know you want to go too, Doctor!"

"Well...go on then. Alright, but don't blame me if it turns out it's the day the Vlexans have decided to tour Earth the day we get there! Stuff like that always happens to me!"

"Yeah, I think we've established that by now. Yesss! I've always wanted to go to California!"

In my head, I beg the TARDIS to go to California. Sometimes I don't know why I ask the Doctor when really I should be asking the TARDIS. I tell her she can shake us as much as she likes, just please, please land in California!

The TARDIS seemed to take me up on my kind offer and proceeded to throw us around the room. The Doctor was so surprised he fell right over and banged his head on the console. Cue 10 minutes of alien cussing directed at the TARDIS, who made a weird laughing noise through the walls.

I eventually step out of the TARDIS into...a street lined with tents. There's people everywhere of all races and nationalities- Spanish, English, Chinese , French... The living conditions look very makeshift and I can tell this certainly isn't the modern day, and I'm not even sure it's California. Where's the beach? Or the sea, at the very least.

The Doctor steps out from behind me. "Ooh, this must be San Francisco, 1849. Which puts us right in the middle of the California gold rush."

When I thought about going to California, I didn't imagine it quite like this. When someone says San Francisco, you think of tall buildings, a massive harbour, Charmed (maybe that's just me) and definitely, definitely the Golden Gate Bridge.

Which hasn't even been built yet.

"San Francisco was a boom town. The population sharply increased when people heard about the gold. They came to make a living here. One clever guy actually bought up all the gold hunting tools and sold them for a massive profit. Everyone was desperate to strike gold."

The Doctor gives me a spontaneous history lesson as we roam the streets of San Francisco.

"This isn't when that earthquake happens, is it? The big one that brought down half the city? I swear, if we're caught in the middle of an earthquake space man..."

"No, Donna. That's not due for another 50 years or so yet. So we can relax..."

"Doctor? Do you think maybe we could have a go?" I ask, smiling.

"Have a go? Have a go at what?" he looks at me questioningly.

"Looking for gold! Duh! Gold rush, California, 1849!"

The Doctor's brown eyes light up. We are so hunting for gold!

2 hours later, and all we've found is mud. Turns out that finding gold is more difficult than it sounds. You have to put lots of mud and water from the river into a pan. The rubbish floats to the top and is drained off so you are left with heavy rocks that may or may not contain gold. Mostly not, actually.

There are several other groups of people doing the same thing as us. There are men, women and children. Each person wears a hopeful look on their faces. They are all desperate to find treasure-gold is worth a lot. It could change their lives.

The Doctor has been caught by the gold fever- he sifts through the dirty water excitedly, jabbering in his Doctor way about some guy who made his fortune mining for gold.

"God, I'm bored of this," I mumbled. The Doctor either didn't hear or ignored me and carried on.

His ramblings are thoughtlessly interrupted by someone screaming

"Gold! Gold!"

There's a rush of people heading in the direction of the cries. If someone's found gold, they'll be wanting to get in on the action. I thought this gold hunting might be fun, like an Easter egg hunt, but it's hard and often fruitless. 99% of the time you are hunting for something that does not exist in where you are hunting, making it boring and frustrating.

My thoughts are thoughtlessly interrupted by someone screaming. Followed by an alarmed cry of:

"Poisoned gold! Poisoned gold!"

The Doctor splutters. "How can you have poisoned gold?" he half asks himself and half asks me. I just look at him. We both grin and then dash off to find out.

There's a huddle of frightened people. Some are running away, but some look like they're trying to work out what's happening.

"I'm a doctor!" yells the Doctor, dragging me into the mass of people. "What happened?"

"Dunno. The gold just...he was touching it and..." a young man speaks.

I shove the Doctor who is standing in front of me and blocking my view. He grunts irritably. I can see...what used to be a man. Now he is...now he is gold plated. The gold covers him head to toe, his skin, his clothes, everything.

"Impossible," breathes the Doctor.

"Everything is possible with you," I remind him, but I'm still shocked by what I see.

The Doctor starts taking charge.

"O.K, everyone," he raises his voice. "Listen up! Nobody touch anywhere there might be gold! It could be dangerous! Everybody just go home and don't come back here!"

People grumble and groan. They don't want to give up, they want to continue hunting for gold.

"Hoax!" someone yells. "They just want all the gold for themselves!"

The crowd seem to agree and get back to their gold hunting. But not before we've had some rocks and mud thrown at us for our troubles.

"Humans! You lot can be ungrateful creatures sometimes!" growls the Doctor.

I look at the gold plated gold hunter. The Doctor crouches beside him and knocks on the gold. His fingers make a dull thudding sound.

"Solid," he says sadly. "I'm sorry Donna, but he'll have suffocated by now."

I hate this feeling of hopelessness when there's nothing we can do.

"Ah..." the Doctor says suddenly alert and whips out his stethoscope and presses it to the gold man.

"You said he was dead!" I pointed out.

"Yeah he is...but there's this signal..." he explains.

Of course. There's always a strange signal coming from somewhere, so we follow it and then we find that the owners of the signal are very, VERY bad blow- things- up types. And then we end up having to stop them blowing things up. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

The signal is apparently coming back from San Francisco. The bay, to be exact. So we tramp all the way back to the bay. The Doctor is muttering something about "living gold brought to life by a signal".

"I've seen something like this before," he frowns. "Only...well...before it was living plastic. Rose had to save me," he finishes sadly.

"Yeah, you're practically useless on your own," I tell him, but I'm teasing and I mean it fondly.

"It's just so embarrassing to be saved by a mere human," he says, outraged, but he's just teasing me back.

The bay is cluttered with too many ships. Most look wrecked, but some people have started using them as shops or hotels.

"Gold hunters took ships across the sea to here and then the ships' crew abandoned ship to try their luck as well. That's why there's all these abandoned ships," says the Doctor.

"They only look abandoned," I say slowly.

The Doctor nods.

"Yeah, there's plenty of room for a murderous gold controlling alien. They're definitely hiding here. They don't know we've traced the signal- all we have to do is keep following it..."

This is easier than it sounds. We actually have to leap about amongst the ships being careful not to plunge into the water. The ships are clustered close together so it's possible. Just.

We're also getting a whole lot of funny looks from the locals. I'm not really dressed in the current women's fashions and our boat jumping antics mean we look dead suspect.

The Doctor waves cheerfully, producing the psychic paper.

"Health and safety!" he yells, flashing the white paper.

"Did they have health and safety?" I whisper.

"Probably not. Never mind. I'd love to tell them we were saving their lives, but I don't fancy another trip to the insane asylum."

We continue to jump and climb from boat to boat. Eventually, the Doctor stops.

"Found it!" he says. Pause. "What do you think we do now?" he asks dumbly.

I roll my eyes impatiently and march into the cabin.

"OI! Anyone making gold come alive and kill people, get out now! You're caught by...um...by..."

"The Shadow Proclamation!" the Doctor yells triumphantly.

I have no idea what the Shadow Proclamation is and I don't have time to find out. Something on the lower deck roars. I gulp. I don't want to get eaten today, thanks very much.

"Come on," says the Doctor, flicking on the sonic screwdriver to use as a torch. The blue light is very small but better than nothing as we climb down to the lower deck. It gets dark and shadowy, the only light coming from tiny slits in the wooden planks.

In the bottom of the ship is a jelly person. A hideous lump of quivering, shiny goo greets us with a black toothed smile. Sharp black teeth.

"Hello," says the Doctor pleasantly, as if he was meeting an ordinary human being. "Who are you then?"

The...the thing doesn't answer but waves what looks like a racing car remote control at us.

"Maybe he just wants to play being Lewis Hamilton," I whisper to the Doctor.

"What? No," he whispers back. "That's the controller for the gold, isn't it?" he asks, raising his voice.

The thing just smiles back at us. It presses a button and suddenly a map hologram appears.

"The west coast of America," says the Doctor. "Why are you showing me this?"

A red line appears on the map.

"The San Andreas fault," the Doctor breathes. "What are you doing?"

The red line appears to crack open, splitting up some of the land.

"If he wants to cause maximum destruction why doesn't he rip more land off?" I ask, addressing the Doctor.

"No, Donna, he wants to split open the San Andreas Fault. That's what caused the earthquake that destroyed San Francisco, remember? Anyway, if he does that..."

"Earthquakes..." I mutter, working it out. "People lose their homes, everything falls apart..."

"That's not all, is it?" the Doctor asks the hideous thing. "You made this gold to lure people closer to the earthquake!"

"To kill them," I realise. "That's...that's disgusting!"

The mass laughs, awful brown slime shaking.

"You're a soldier," the Doctor spits. "Sent to conquer the planet alone, weren't you?"

It stays mute, but gives off a stink of evil that's hard to put into words.

"You get one chance. Leave. Are you going to take it?"

The thing does its weird silent laughing.

"Right," the Doctor says, eyes flashing with fury. "Right. By the looks of you you're made up of a mess of different substances, but they all have one thing in common. They dissolve in water. And look where we are. A ship. Lovely. San Francisco bay."

The thing doesn't react. I get the feeling it hasn't got a clue what the Doctor's on about and doesn't feel threatened at all. This, of course, is a sign of stupidity.

The Doctor drags me off, sealing the un-named alien into the lower deck of the ship.

"What are we going to do?" I ask him.

"Sink the ship," he says, looking at me like I'm unbelievably stupid.

"We're on the ship," I point out. "I don't really fancy a swim, Doctor."

"No. Neither do I, actually. Bit chilly. But what we're going to do is be bin men."

The Doctor's finally lost it. Great. Now I have to work out how we're going to stop more gold coming to life, and after that somehow drive myself home. Oh God, I'm going to have to earn us money by mining for gold because there's no way I'll drive the TARDIS.

Then the Doctor explains. And all becomes clear.

Later that evening, we watch as the ship sinks beneath the weight of a ton of rubbish. Collected from virtually everywhere by me and the Doctor. It was not the greatest job I've ever done, but we got paid , and I have some genuine Californian coins I can spend on a meal tonight, keep as mementos, or auction back home for a fortune. Could be difficult to explain how I got them, though. "Just popped back in time with my alien friend." Yeah, maybe not.

That's the thing about travelling the TARDIS. You will end up solving things in the most unpredictable ways. You really couldn't make it up. I've gone through ten different rules and ten different stories, but they're only a fraction of what really happens.

I hope you enjoy travelling in the TARDIS and I have been helpful, or a good laugh at the very least.

Take care,

Donna