A/N: Hello there! Who else is completely and utterly in love with Matt Smith? Who also thinks Amy Pond kicks everyone's arse? Well feel free to join the club ladies and gents, and because I can't possibly wait another six days for the next episode, I've decided to start a proper multi-chapter fic featuring 11 and Amy (but no romance, I don't feel it's right for them...just yet). I wanted to do this last week, but felt that maybe I should wait until I got a better idea of 11's character...and The Beast Below did just that. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, I'm certainly enjoying writing it and hopefully there'll be an update in the next few days or so. =]

Desert Storm.

by Flaignhan.

"So! Where to?" The Doctor bounded around the console, stopping mere inches from Amy, peering into her eyes as though the answer to his question was written all over them. "Where does Amy Pond want to go to next?"

Amy tilted her head as she considered her response, her lips pouting and skewing from side to side as she tried to narrow down her choices.

Future or past?

Past.

Earth, or another planet?

Earth, a nice exciting history lesson, but no Bubonic Plague this time please.

How far back?

Ages.

Where?

Somewhere hot.

Greece?

No, she'd been to Greece. She wanted somewhere new.

Kenya?

Knowing their luck they'd be eaten by lions – but a good way to go!, the Doctor would undoubtedly tell her.

Egypt?

Oh...

"What about Ancient Egypt?" she suggested finally.

The Doctor narrowed his eyes and peered further into her own. "Egypt?"

"Yeah! See the pyramids, the sphinxes, all that business. What d'you think?"

The Doctor grinned and leapt towards the control panel, pulling levers and pushing buttons, tapping the keys on the retro typewriter that was embedded into the console. He gestured at a dial near Amy and she twisted it until he held his hand up, ordering her to stop. A few moments later, after much shuddering and jolting about, the bulbous glass cone in the middle of the central column came to a halt, silence falling in the Tardis.

Amy bit her lip and glanced towards the door, before looking back at the Doctor.

She started towards the exit, but came to a sudden stop after two steps.

"What?" he asked.

"Won't I look a bit weird? Going round Ancient Egypt dressed like this?" she gestured to her denim miniskirt and leather jacket.

"Well you won't need the jacket, so I'd ditch that if I were you," the Doctor replied, before ducking out of sight and rummaging through one of the storage spaces under the floor panels.

"Yeah but, shouldn't we be wearing togas or something?"

His head popped up, his face twisted in disgust. "Togas? What exactly did they teach you at school?"

"You know what I mean though," Amy said with a sigh.

He ducked out of sight again, his voice echoing in the cavernous control room. "You won't catch me dead in a toga but be my guest if you want to wear one, I'm sure the Tardis wardrobe will have something for you."

Amy looked down at her outfit once again and shrugged off her leather jacket. If the Doctor could get away with wearing a bow tie in Ancient Egypt, then she could get away with a miniskirt. Her sandals seemed fitting at least, all dark leather straps and open toes.

"You might want some of this."

Amy glanced up just in time to see an orange bottle flying towards her face. She caught it and read the label.

"In my experience the gingers always get nice and crispy after a walk in the sunshine, so this is me, pre-empting any whining about how much it hurts, or how it's all peeling off or how it's all itchy. You put that on and I don't want to hear any complaints, all right?"

Amy frowned at the accusatory finger that was pointed in her direction. "You are definitely much worse than my aunt," she murmured, uncapping the bottle of sun lotion and spreading it all over her arms, face and legs.

The Doctor frowned, but said nothing.

"Is factor two hundred and fifty really necessary?" Amy asked, twisting her arm awkwardly so she could apply some of the cream to her back.

"Yes," the Doctor said implicitly, striding forward and waving her hand away from her back, rubbing the cream in large circles until it had been absorbed by her skin. "This is top of the range stuff you know." He lifted his hand to his nose and sniffed it gingerly, screwing up his face, his tongue stretching out of his mouth in disgust. "Doesn't smell it though," he frowned and wiped his hand on his jacket, nose still scrunched at the apparently unpleasant (though Amy didn't mind it at all) smell, before he trotted down the ramp towards the door.

"Here we are then, two thousand, five hundred and six BC, Giza. The Pyramid of Menkaure is in the final stages of construction and Cairo is already a bustling city, just on the other side of the river Nile."

Amy grinned.

"So, Amy Pond, are you ready for Ancient Egypt? Is Ancient Egypt ready for you, for that matter?"

"Just get the bloody door open!" Amy demanded excitedly, and pushed him towards the door. The pair of them fell out into the desert, landing face first in something sloppy and rough, almost like wet cement.

It wasn't wet cement however, it was wet sand, and one look at the sky was enough for Amy to realise why it was so wet. Rain was hammering down fiercely, pummelling her fair skin and soaking her to the bone in seconds. She turned to look at the Doctor, who appeared just as baffled as she was.

He looked around, whipping his head first to his left, and then his right. The pyramids were there, and there were workers still battling against the conditions to carry on building the final piece of the Giza landscape.

Amy waited with little patience for his diagnosis. So much for somewhere hot, and so much for not needing a jacket! So much for factor two hundred and sodding fifty!

"Well?" she demanded, hand resting on her hip.

"Well what?" he asked absent mindedly, standing on his tip toes and shifting her aside so he could peer into the distance. He looked down with a frown as his toes began to disappear into the sand and fell back onto his heels, flicking a large splatter of sand at Amy's legs.

"Oh," he said simply, "whoops!"

Amy sighed, brushing the sand off of her leg. "Why's it raining in the desert?"

"Well this isn't actually a desert, not anymore, at least," he pulled a ruler out of his jacket pocket and squatted down, dipping it into the sand before whipping it out and bringing it close up to his eyes. "Yep! Definitely not a desert any more, that is definitely more than ten inches of rainfall in the last year, wouldn't you say?"

"I think it's more like ten inches a day!" Amy said, running a hand through her wet hair, pulling it away from her face.

"Well, exactly," the Doctor said, standing up and tucking the ruler back into his pocket. "Which means that all is not well in Ancient Egypt. Come on, let's head over to the city." He took her hand and began leading her over the sloppy, uneven sand, her sandals sinking an inch deep with every step she took.

"How far is it?" she asked, staring out into the horizon.

"Only a few miles! Just need to cross the river!"

"Won't it be flooded? I mean, surely with this much rain -" Amy looked up at the dark sky, large droplets of rain falling towards her and splashing on her face.

"We'll see when we get there, won't we?"

"Don't they have alligators in the Nile?" Amy's eyes were wide at thought of alligators running round a flooded Cairo, jaws snapping at anything meaty that it came across.

"Crocodiles, actually," the Doctor corrected.

"Oh good!" Amy called over the distant rumble of thunder, her false enthusiasm going unnoticed by the Doctor.

"Beautiful creatures, can be about eighteen feet long! Don't get too close though, rough little blighters they are!" he stumbled but managed to regain his balance quickly.

"Oh really? Shame, I was planning on asking one out to dinner..."

The Doctor gave Amy a look which she usually (and correctly) interpreted as 'honestly, you humans...' before he grinned and sped up, both of them sliding on the unstable ground.

"Is it safe?"

"Depends on what you qualify as safe..." the Doctor replied, rapping the side of the bridge with his knuckles and listening carefully to the resultant sound. He frowned and bent down, trying to get a good view of the support beams underneath, though the water was so high that he wasn't able to see much at all.

"Well, you know, safe is us getting across unharmed."

"Completely unharmed, relatively unharmed, or alive?"

"Completely, preferably," Amy said, backing away from the bridge.

"Then there may be an issue."

"What if we fall in and drown?"

"I can't possibly drown, so I can easily rescue you should it come to it. However, we are going to hold onto the sides, aren't we Amy Pond?" he brandished the Sonic Screwdriver at her, and she nodded.

"What if it breaks?"

"We'll just have to walk across it quickly. The longer we spend on it the more time there is for it to break."

"And how likely is it that it'll break?"

The Doctor paused, his mouth hanging open, words not quite ready to come out.

"Doctor?"

"...Not very!"

He hopped onto the bridge, holding out a hand for an unsure Amy to take and follow him across the wooden slats, her free hand gripping the side of the bridge tightly. She shuddered as a gush of water pushed its way through the sides of the bridge, leaving her feet submerged for a second or two before it drained away.

Halfway across the bridge and Amy was fed up. She was cold, wet and tired. It seemed that Ancient Egypt held none of the charm she had previously imagined it would, and now all she wanted was to be somewhere dry and warm. Somewhere she would not have sand stuck in her sandals, grinding against the soles of her feet.

"Can't we just go back to the Tardis?"

The Doctor whipped around, pinning her to the side of the bridge. "What?"

"This isn't what I thought would happen when we came to see the pyramids, I thought – "

"It's this or Leadworth, make your choice Amy Pond."

Amy thought for a moment, looking down at her reddened feet and her dripping top. "Right now? Leadworth."

The Doctor's shoulders sagged and Amy saw the disappointment flash in his eyes. "What because of a bit of rain?" The Doctor asked in disgust. "You live in England! You should be used to it!"

"This is miserable! Don't even begin to tell me you're having fun! This horrible and you know it!" she argued, her voice cracking.

"Listen to me," he said, grabbing her by the wrist, his face so close that their noses were almost touching. "Travelling with me is not always fun. There will be rain, but you can either be in the rain in Leadworth, or you can be in the rain in Ancient Egypt."

"I'm not dumb enough to stand out in the rain in Leadworth. I've got a house. It's kind of useful when it's cold and wet. And don't just throw the 'this or Leadworth' ultimatum at me any time I don't like something. You know damn well it's not this or Leadworth, it's this, Leadworth, or a million other places in the universe. And I can think of a million places I'd rather be than right here, right now."

"I'm disappointed, Amy Pond. Seems like the tough Scottish girl isn't so tough after all. She gets upset by a bit of rain..." he turned away and continued his way across the bridge.

Amy wiped at the dampness around her eyes. Amongst the rain she couldn't tell if she had shed a few tears of frustration or not, but her eyes felt sufficiently prickly for her to assume that it was certainly likely.

She didn't see the ten foot wave of water heading straight for her. All she knew was a blind panic before her head hit something hard and blackness descended.