The TARDIS materialises right in-between two gates, one saying DANGER – KEEP OUT and the other saying NO PARKING IN FRONT OF THESE GATES. The Doctor and I open the door but the TARDIS has materialised the wrong way around. The gate is blocking the door completely. "Ah." I breathe before we both back away from the door before heading back to the console so that we can turn the TARDIS around slightly.
The TARDIS dematerialises and materialises again, this time, the right way around. The Doctor and I head over to the door and open it before I smile. "Ah!" the Doctor smiles whilst stepping out with me following and Rose following behind me before we look around and the Doctor and I stand behind Rose after she notices a Shayne Ward poster advertising his greatest hits album tacked onto a fence. "So, near future, yeah?" Rose asks us.
"We had a passing fancy. Only it didn't pass, it stopped." I tell Rose before we turn around and begin walking towards some houses in the distance.
**********
The Doctor, Rose and I walk down the road with the LONDON 2012 banner hanging up. "30th Olympia." the Doctor smiles.
"No way! Why didn't I think of this, that's great! Ah!" Rose says delighted whilst she links her arm through my spare arm whilst my right hand is in the Doctor's. "Only seems like yesterday a few naked Greek blokes were tossing a discuss ... wrestling each other in the sand with crowds stood about, begging... no, wait a minute... that was Club Med." the Doctor laughs whilst I giggle slightly and I nudge Rose. "Just in time for the opening doo dah, ceremony... tonight, I thought you'd like that. The last one they had in London was dynamite. Wembley, 1948. Nova and I loved it so much, we went back and watched it all over again. Fella carrying the torch... lovely chap, what was his name?" he asks me, looking down at me making me shrug my shoulders. "I don't know. What are you looking at me for?" I ask him. "Mark...? John...? Mark...?" he asks me as I shake my head. "Legs like pipe cleaners, but strong as a whippet."
"Doctor, Lexy..." Rose trails off as she unlinks her arm from mine.
"And in those days, everybody had a tea party to go to." I say, remembering the time.
"Doctor, Lexy?" I hear Rose asks, making me let go of the Doctor's hand and look back at Rose. "What is it?" I ask her as she points at a poster, making me turn to see a poster of a missing person hanging on a lamp post. "Did you ever have one of those little cakes with the crunchy ball bearings on the top..." the Doctor says.
"Kas. You should really look." I tell him.
"Do you know those, those things?" he asks before sauntering over to us. "Nobody else in this entire galaxy's ever even bothered to make edible ball bearings. Genius." he smiles before he reads the poster. "What's taking them, do you think?" he asks before scanning the street. "Snatching children from a thoroughly ordinary street like this. Why's it so cold...? Is something reducing the temperature...?" the Doctor asks.
"It says they all went missing this week. Why would a person do something like this?" Rose asks.
"What makes you think it's a person?" I ask Rose before Rose turns at the sound of a door opening, a woman dumps a recycling sack on the path outside of her house and hurries back inside, casting furtive looks around her all the while. "Whatever it is, it's got the whole street scared to death. Doctor, Lexy, what...?" Rose asks whilst turning back to us but the Doctor is already at the other end of the road with me.
**********
The Doctor and I quickly find the place where Tom disappeared by the mini football goal. He holds his hand out in front of his, as though feeling something invisible. He crouches, his hand hovering above what appears to be an ordinary area of grass. Suddenly, the Doctor giggles as he feels something as he's inspecting the grass. "Tickles!" the Doctor says before he grabs onto my hand. "Feel this." he tells me before I crouch down next to him and I put my hand out where the Doctor's hand is before moving it around before giggling from whatever sensation that I'm feeling from the grass. "What's your game?" someone suddenly asks from behind us making the Doctor and me spin around to see a man stood behind us so we stand up. "My... um... Snakes and Ladders? Quite good at... Squash. Reasonable." the Doctor stutters before we notice the look on the man's face. "I'm... being facetious, aren't I? There's no call for it."
**********
"We're... We're police officers! We've got a badge, and... and a police car... you don't have to get... we can... we can prove it! Just hold on." the Doctor says before we both finish out our psychic paper and show it to him. "We've had plenty of coppers poking around d here, and you don't look, or sound, like any of them." the man tells us roughly.
"See, look! We've got a colleague! Lewis!" the Doctor yells at Rose before she gives him a policeman-like wink. "Well, she looks less like a copper than you do." the man tells us and it gives me the impression that he's slightly fed up. "Training. New recruit. It was either that or hairdressing, so..." I tell the man before brandishing the psychic paper at him. "Voila!"
"What are you going to do?" a woman asks who has now come and joined us.
"The police have knocked on every door, no clues, no leads, nothing." someone else says that has also joined us. "Look, kids run off sometimes, all right? That's what they do..." the man says.
"Dale Hixon in your garden, playing with your Tommy, and then...!" the other woman says whilst she mimics something disappearing. "Right in front of me, like he was never there! There's no need to look any further than this street. It's right here amongst us."
"Why don't we..." the Doctor tries to cut in but fails.
"Why don't we start with him?" a neighbour says, pointing at another man. "There's been all sorts like him in this street, day and night."
"Fixing things up for the Olympics!" the other man says.
"Yeah, and taking an awfully long time about it." the man says.
"We're of the opinion that all we've gotta do is just..." I begin saying, pointing at both the Doctor and me. "You don't.... what you just said, that's slander!" the other man yells.
"I don't care what it is!" the neighbour says.
"I think we need to just..." the Doctor begins.
"I want an apology off her!" the other man yells.
"Stop picking on him." the other woman says.
"Yeah, stop picking on me!" the other man agrees.
"And stop pretending to be blind! It's evil!" the other woman yells.
"I don't believe in evil." the neighbour growls, glaring at one of the men.
"Oh no, you just believe in tarmacked with sack loads of kidnapped kiddies in their van..." the other man exclaims angrily.
"Ay, ay, ay, that's not what she's saying," the neighbour defends.
"Would you stop ganging up on me?" the man asks.
"Feeling guilty, are we?" the neighbour shrills.
"Fingers on lips!" I yell shouting over the babble. I put my finger on my lips whilst the Doctor also does it before I glare around at all of them as if I'm daring them not to do the same. The council worker behind a man has already obeyed and after a moment of complete bewilderment, two more men have put their fingers on their lips. I look at Rose with a pointedly look before she follows suit. And by now, all of us have our fingers on our lips and silence has fallen. "In the last six days, three of your children have been stolen. Snatched out of thin air, right?" the Doctor asks.
"Er... can I...?" one of the people asks, gesturing to ask permission to take her finger off her lips before I motion for her to do so. "Look around you... this was a safe street 'til it came. It's not a person. I'll say it if no one else will. Maybe you're coppers, maybe you're not. I don't care who you are. Can you please help us?" she asks before the Doctor looks down at me whilst I look up at him before we both look at the crowd of people. "We'll save those kids." the Doctor and I tell them all at the same time.
**********
Rose and I are stood on the front lawn of someone's house as the Doctor sniffs around the front lawn like a sniffer-dog. "Want a hanky?" Rose asks the Doctor.
"Can you smell it?" the Doctor asks the two of us. This causes both of us to sniff the air. "What does it remind you of?"
"Sort of..." Rose trails off.
"Metal?" I ask my husband who begins nodding.
"Mm-hm!" the Doctor hums in agreement.
"Oooh!" Rose grins. The Doctor and I both wave at the man in the window before the three of us leave.
**********
The Doctor, Rose and I all walk down a narrow alleyway. "Danny Edwards cycled in one end but never came out the other." I tell them before feeling something.
"Whoa, there it goes again!" the Doctor gasps. Well, it seems as if he's feeling something as well as I am. "Look at the hairs on the back of my manly hairy hand."
He shows Rose and me his hand. "Honey, there's nothing manly about your hand. It's just hairy. And it shouldn't be." I tell him.
"Oi." the Doctor says, slightly offended.
"And there's that smell... it's like a um... a burnt fuse plug or something." Rose says, inhaling and getting us back onto the right track.
"There's a residual energy in the spots where the kids vanished. Whatever it was, it used an awful lot of power to do this." I say before we walk out of the alleyway and back in the close.
Rose is walking a few paces behind the Doctor and me, as we are holding hands, back in the close. "Aren't you a beautiful boy?" Rose asks suddenly.
"Thanks!" the Doctor beams, making me elbow him in the ribs. "Ow!"
The Doctor and I turn around to see Rose talking to a cat. "We used to have one just like you. Didn't we, Lexy?" Rose asks me, making me smile over at Rose and nod my head. The cat meows. The Doctor watches uncomfortably, looking as if he has a nasty taste in his mouth. "What?" Rose asks the Doctor.
"No, I'm not really a cat person. Lexy wasn't as well for a while. Once you've been threatened by one in a nun's wimple, it kind of takes the joy out of it." the Doctor says before the cat wanders over to a cardboard box. "Come here, puss!" Rose says following. The Doctor averts his eyes whilst the cat climbs inside a box. "What do you wanna go in there for?"
There is a whooshing sound, and the cat's meow echoes slightly as if it's fading into the distance. "Doctor! Protector!" Rose yells urgently, causing the two of us to hurry over to her as Rose stands. "Whoa! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" the Doctor and I say, backing off slightly before we wave the smell away and picks up the empty cardboard box. "Iron residue. Blimey! That takes some doing!"
He turns the box around, impressed. "Just to snatch a living organism out of space and time. This baby is just like, I'm 'avin' some of that, I'm impressed." he finishes.
"So the cat's been transported?" Rose asks.
"It can harness huge reserves of ionic power." I tell her.
"We need to find the source of power." the Doctor says, pointing before looking around. "Find the source and you will find... whatever has taken to stealing children and fluffy animals. See what you can see."
He whacks Rose on the shoulder, gestures his eyes. "Keep 'em peeled, Lewis."
Rose nods her head as the Doctor and I walk off.
**********
The Doctor and I run around the corner in the nick of time and start running as soon as we see Rose in trouble. "Stay still!" the Doctor yells, as I whip out my sonic screwdriver before pointing it at the giant scribble and it convulses, collapsing into a small ball that falls into Rose's outstretched hands. The Doctor and I rush to Rose and we stand over her. "Okey dokey?" I ask her before holding out my hand and pulling Rose to her feet.
"Yeah, cheers." she says slightly out of breath.
"No probs." I say before hugging her quickly and then turning our attention to the object in Rose's hand. "I'll give you a fiver if you can tell us what the hell it is." I tell Rose, poking it with my sonic. "'Cos I haven't got the foggiest."
"Well, I can tell you've just killed it." Rose tells me.
"It was never living. It's animated by energy. The same energy that's snatching people." I tell her, throwing it up and down, delighted. "That is so dinky! The Go-Anywhere creature. Fits in your pocket... makes friends, impresses the boss... breaks the ice at parties..."
I put it into a pocket before Rose laughs as we walk away.
**********
I put the object on the TARDIS console so that it can analyse it. "Oh, hi ho, here we go. Let's have a look." the Doctor says. The Doctor, Rose and I are watching the computer screen, which is displaying Gallifreyan symbols. I gasp suddenly. "Get out of here..." I gasp.
"What's it say?" Rose asks confused as I stare at the screen in shock. The Doctor takes out a pencil from his pocket and holds the object out in front of him. He uses the rubber at the end of the pencil to rub out part of the object. "It is!" he says in shock before blowing on it. "It's graphite! Basically, the same material as an HB pencil."
"I was attacked by a... pencil scribble?" Rose asks in confusion and shock.
"Scribble creature." he says, sniffing it, then lets Rose sniff it before I take it and sniff it. "Brought into being with ionic energy. Whatever we're dealing with, it can create things as well as take them."
"But... why make a scribble creature?" I ask.
"Maybe it was a mistake... I mean, you scribble over something when you wanna get rid of it. Like a um... like a drawing. Like a... a..." she rambles before she realises something. "... child's drawing."
The Doctor and I glance at her. "You said it was in the street."
"Probably..." the Doctor says.
"The girl." Rose says.
"Of course!" I say before becoming confused. "... What girl?"
"Something about her gave me the creeps... even her own mum looked scared of her." Rose says.
"Are you deducting?" the Doctor asks.
"I think I am." Rose says.
"Copper's hunch?" I ask.
"Permission to follow it up, sarge." Rose says, making me laugh slightly.
**********
The three of us walk up to the front door of Trish's house. I rap on the letterbox and Trish opens the door whilst giving us a friendly smile. "Hello! I'm the Doctor, this is my wife, the Protector, and this is Rose. Can we see our daughter?" the Doctor asks her.
"No! You can't." Trish snaps.
"Okay! Bye." the Doctor says before the three of us walk away in silence, waiting.
"Why?" Trish asks finally causing the three of us to turn around. "Why do you want to see Chole?"
"Well, there's some interesting stuff going on in this street, and I just through, well, we thought, that she might like to give us a hand." the Doctor explains.
"Sorry to bother you." Rose says.
"Yeah, sorry. We'll let you get on with things. On your own. Bye again!" I tell her before we turn and walk away again, but Trish does not close the door. And after a few moments... "Wait!" she calls causing the three of us to turn again. The expression on Trish's face is helpless and vulnerable. "Can you help her?" she asks. This causes me to smile.
"Yes, we can." I tell her. Trish invites us inside of the house and before I know it, Rose and I are sat on Trish's sofa and the Doctor flings his coat down next to me.