Halfway Out Of The Dark || The Doctor

Boom Town

"Into time!" Jack crowed, high-fiving Rose.

"And space!" the Doctor, Jack and Rose finished together, all high-fiving each other.

Mickey stared at them in disbelief. "My god, have you seen yourselves? You all think you're so clever, don't you?"

"Yeah!" the Doctor said smugly.

"Yeah!" Rose smirked.

"Yep!" Jack finished, giving Mickey a friendly slap on the cheek.

"Well, ya not." the Artist called up, finishing her work under the floor. "You all just sound like insufferable know-it-all's when ya do that."

The Doctor turned round to retort, only to loose his words as he watched the Artist climb out of the hole. As she wasn't wearing her jacket, the Doctor suddenly seemed to notice just how figure-flattering her tank top and jeans were.

Oblivious to the Doctor's gaze on her, the Artist replaced the flooring, slipped her jacket back on and let her hair down from the bun she'd pulled it into while working. "Right, that finishes that." she said, then noticed the Doctor staring at her. "What?" she asked.

"Nothing." the Doctor mumbled, quickly averting his gaze.

The Artist decided to leave it at that and went over to Mickey. "Ah, good to see ya again, Mickey." she said, "How's life treating ya?"

"Alright, thanks." Mickey replied, glad that someone had the decency to ask.

"Now that we're all here, how about we all do lunch?" the Artist suggested.

"Sounds good to me." Rose grinned.

So, the quintet all stepped outside the TARDIS. "Should take another 24 hours." the Doctor said, locking the door. "Which means we've got time to kill."

"That old lady's staring." Mickey said, looking around shiftily.

"Probably wandering what five people could do inside a wooden box." Jack remarked, patting the Doctor and the Artist's shoulders suggestively, causing both Time Lords to look uncomfortable.

"What're you captain of?" Mickey huffed, "The innuendo squad?" Jack just made a 'whatever' sign and walked off. "Wait, the TARDIS, we can't just leave it." Mickey pointed out, "Doesn't it get noticed?"

"Yeah, what's with the police box?" Jack asked, seeing that Mickey had a point. "Why does it look like that?"

"It's a cloaking device." Rose answered complacently.

"It's called a chameleon circuit." the Doctor explained, "The TARDIS is meant to disguise herself wherever she lands, like if this was Ancient Rome, she'd be a statue on a plinth or something. But I landed in the 1960's, she disguised herself as a phone box, and the circuit got stuck."

"So it copied a real thing?" Mickey asked, "There actually were police boxes?"

"Yeah, on street corners." the Doctor replied, "Phone for help before they had radios and mobiles. If they arrested somebody, they could shove 'em inside until help came. Like a little prison cell."

"Why don't ya just fix the circuit?" Jack asked.

"He did try to once." the Artist told him, "Still didn't work right from what I heard. And I checked the circuit when I started traveling with him. We can't fix it properly without replacing it completely, and we can't get TARDIS spares parts with our planet gone, so we've just had to leave it as it is."

"Besides, I like!" the Doctor grinned, "Don't you?"

"I love it!" Rose said, patting the box.

"Me too." the Artist said, "The police box grows on ya after a while."