Lost Companions Chapter 4

The TARDIS, sure enough, had finished cleaning itself and looked good as new. Everything had been put back in its place and the mysterious squelching noise could no longer be heard.
"Ah, good girl," the Doctor said proudly, patting the soft blue wood over the threshold. "Beautiful machine."
Donna and Martha exchanged a glance, both of them grinning.
The Doctor grandly ushered everyone in and entered last, giving the outside world a dark glance before shutting the door. "Right then," he turned to face the group, clapping his hands together and smiling broadly. "The Shadow Proclamation."
He leapt down the stairs and across the room, flying to the other side of the console and gripping a lever at random to steady himself. He flicked three different dials to the right, pressed a red button, and typed frantically into an alien keyboard before throwing forward a huge, TARDIS blue switch in front of him.
The familiar grind of the TARDIS' breaks started up and he looked over the middle of the console to the five companions in the room. "Right, we're o-"
He was cut off as chaos ensued.
The TARDIS rejected the Doctor's commands and turned suddenly, spinning wildly through time and space and sending the passengers into a frenzy.
Donna, holding onto the railing to stay upright, glared at the Doctor and yelled, "Now I know this one's your fault!"
"No really, this time it's the TARDIS!" He called as he pressed several different buttons and pulled a few levers dangling above him. The TARDIS resisted all his attempts to get it under control.
They whizzed through space, a blur in the sky, rocketing past planets and through holes in space. All of a sudden the TARDIS found its goal and stopped suddenly, causing everyone inside to fall over.
"Oof," Martha grunted, getting up. "What was that?"
The Doctor leaned on the console as he stood up, barely missing the button that would have teleported them to the middle of a Dalek army five trillion miles away by inches. "Apparently the TARDIS doesn't want to go to the Shadow Proclamation today."
They all looked at the door.
"Doctor," Amy said softly. "Remember what Idris said?"
"'I always take you where you need to be'," Rory quoted quietly.
The Doctor looked around the room, wild eyed. "Then we better see what's outside."
Everyone got outside, the Doctor last, a red fez on his head.
Rose blinked. "Where did you-"
"Don't ask," Amy grumbled. The Doctor smiled.
Outside, three feet from the TARDIS doors, was the beginning of a forest. The trees looked like Earth ones, but thicker and lusher, roots sprawling and intermingling on the ground, branches twisted in wild shapes high above their heads. It looked like fall – the remaining leaves were only barely gripping the trees, and most were dead and crinkled on the ground. Behind the TARDIS lay an empty clay wasteland.
The Doctor sniffed. "Normal air," He pulled out his screwdriver and scanned the sky above him. "I think this is a moon." He scanned the clay earth beneath them. "Yes, definitely a moon. Can't say where though."
"Why did the TARDIS send us to a moon?" Donna muttered.
"Cool moon though," Amy commented. "It has its own forest."
The Doctor subconsciously adjusted his fez. "Well I'd say the best way to figure things out would be to explore. Come on."
They entered the forest, which turned out to be thicker and more exotic than they'd first thought. They had to stick close together to avoid getting split up in the tightly packed trees. Rory managed to lose them more than once, and had to run to catch up, dead-afraid of getting forgotten and left behind in the maze of trees.
Eventually they stopped. "Funny," the Doctor said. "By now we should have ran into something. So why did the TARDIS-"
He was cut off as a gunshot rang out through the trees.
The Doctor's fez fell from his head, a steaming, blackened hole burning in its center. Everyone looked up in shock.
River Song studied the group from behind the smoking barrel of her gun. "I thought I told you not to wear that thing, Sweetie."