The Doctor had only just stepped outside his big blue box when he knew he had made a grave mistake.

Before leaving the safety of the TARDIS, he had been sitting alone in the library, floating through the vortex. His companions had left him again once more, lost to the lonely assassins. Now he was the lonely creature; again. He decided that he was going to finally get out of his box today. And he did.

The Doctor swung open the doors to the TARDIS – all he could hear was gunfire. Not regular, Earth gunfire – deadly, alien gunfire. And the Doctor was in the middle of it. He peered around, realizing he'd landed in the middle of a battlefield. "I never was good at the parking," the Doctor mumbled. He could hear voices yelling all around him, shouting alien slurs at each other. The old Timelord simply sighed, knowing what he would have to do in order to save some lives; something he did on all of his adventures.

"Alright, you lot. Listen up because I-" He turned to one side of the field, only to take the impact of a laser to his chest. The Doctor gasped, more out of surprise than pain. Then pain overcame him and he fell to the ground. The Doctor stayed there for a moment, trying and failing to catch his breath. "Oh no, oh no, this is very, very bad," he rasped, barely able to get the words out. He dragged himself back into the TARDIS, stumbling up the steps to the console.

He groaned in agony as an all-too familiar feeling washed over him – regeneration. The Doctor closed his eyes, letting the power take over his entire being. Like it had eleven times before, his arms shot out from his sides and everything went white. A flash went through his mind; the flash that signaled a new beginning.

The Doctor opened his eyes, panting a little from the process. He looked over himself; he was tall and skinny, but fit. He furrowed his eyebrows – this wasn't the first time he'd had a body like this. Running his fingers through his hair, he found a mop of brown with bits of my hair sticking out everywhere. This worried him more and more with each passing moment. Everything about him this time around seemed... familiar. With sudden realization, he ran through the TARDIS to the nearest bathroom. The Doctor stared at himself in the mirror, mouth gaping and eyes wide.

"Degeneration?!"