Okay, let's shake things up a bit more. Different people, different story. Our duo is headed off to New Earth. We hope you enjoy this.

Thank you, everyone, for all the reviews and follows, and favorites. they make our day!

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor felt a familiar sensation coming from his breast pocket and pulled out the psychic paper from within. A glance at it confirmed he'd received a message.

"Invited-black tie-senate building." Time and space coordinates followed.

The writing was familiar. The Face of Boe had contacted him again. We shall meet again, Doctor, for the third time, for the last time, and the truth shall be told. Until that day….

He wondered what the important message was.

Eager to get there, he searched for Rose, who was hidden in the depths of the TARDIS somewhere. It didn't take him long to find her. The TARDIS had brought him to the library, where he found Rose looking through a book on first aid, which included the procedures for CPR and the Heimlich maneuver.

The Doctor smiled, happy that she was finally learning that. The information had vexed her for a while. He sat down on the couch next to her, which caught her attention.

"Hello," he said, grinning broadly.

"Hi," she replied, putting the book down.

"I've got us a destination," he announced.

"Oh, really? Where?" Rose asked.

"The Face of Boe contacted me again." He pulled out the thin, leather wallet and showed her the message inside.

"Black tie, huh?" Rose commented, returning the grin that was plastered on his face. "I've got the perfect dress!" She hopped up and ran off, leaving a laughing Doctor behind. He loved her enthusiasm. It was infectious.

The laughter stopped when he realized he had to wear his tuxedo.

The Doctor stood in the console room, adjusting his bowtie and cuffs. What took her so long to get ready? He started fidgeting with the console and accidentally popped a wire loose. If it came off so easily, it needed fixing anyway, he thought.

While he was fixing it back in place, he heard the soft footfalls of Rose behind him. He finished putting the wire in place and turned to look at her.

Oh. She was wearing a midnight blue dress that hung off one shoulder. It hugged her curves to a point halfway down her hips, where it flared out. The skirt portion of the dress was in two layers, the top in a rose patterned lace that matched what covered her shoulder. The dress was paired with the sensible kitten heels she had found on Alteri Three after complaining about how difficult it was to find shoes that were great for running and looked good at the same time. Her hair was pulled up in an off center bun, with a pair of black hair sticks to hold it together.

The Doctor picked up his jaw off the floor and turned back to the console to fiddle with the controls harmlessly as he got his mind back under control. Deciding that a good ramble would take his mind off of staring at her legs, he took a deep breath and turned back to his lovely companion.

"Oh, black tie. Whenever I wear this, something bad always happens," the Doctor grumbled as he adjusted his cufflinks.

"Oh, I dunno, I think it suits you. In a James Bond kind of way," Rose told him flirtatiously.

"James Bond? Really?" he preened and adjusted his bow tie.

"Or, you know, kitchen staff," she added in a fit of giggles.

He smirked at her little joke and responded, "I'll have you know that working in the kitchens has proven itself to be a very useful tactic on several occasions, Rose Tyler! Not only with the Cybermen, but at that high school as well. And that's just in the last year."

"Ugh, don't remind me about that!" Rose groaned as she remembered her time serving gravy to ungrateful teenagers. Though, it had revealed the important information about the Krillitane oil, she had to admit.

The Doctor chuckled and sent them off to their destination without tossing them to the floor. The TARDIS seemed to be considerate of the work Rose had put into her hair and dress for the evening.

"New Earth, the year five billion and twenty-nine. We're six years after our last visit," he announced as they walked toward the doors of the time ship together.

"Ah, good times," Rose joked. "You, me, the spirit of a trampoline."

"Crazy Cat-Nuns trying to kill us," he added and took her arm in a gentlemanly manner.

They stepped out of the TARDIS, but not into the black tie glitter that Rose expected to see. They were in an alley. It was bright out and had recently rained, but she couldn't see the sky.

"Well, looks like we've got a trek to the gala," the Doctor said. "Let's see where we are."

He walked over to a nearby computer terminal and accessed a map of the city. In a moment, they could see where they were in relation to the Senate building of New, New York.

"Ah. It's just a lift and a short walk away," the Doctor told her reassuringly. He grasped her hand and led her through the crowd of people towards the lifts.

On the way there, Rose noticed posters with the little green moon symbol. They looked like they were advertising various moods.

"Happy. Mellow. Bliss," Rose read off.

"Interesting. Wonder how long they've been doing this," he commented.

"It's got the hospital symbol on it, like it's advertising a medicine or something," Rose pointed out.

The Doctor hummed in agreement and used his sonic to activate the holographic advertisement attached to the poster. A short video played that seemed to imply that there were patches that could alter your mood.

"What people do to feel something else," Rose said, shaking her head sadly. It seemed that in the future, the drug problem had taken on a different form. She remembered seeing people who were high on illicit substances, willing to do just about anything to feel what they had felt before.

"Well, we'd best be on our way. Wouldn't want to miss the party," he said with a smirk and offered her his arm once again. Rose took it, grateful to think about something else.

They found the lift they were supposed to take and the Doctor hit the button. The door opened, and Rose frowned at how small it was. She wouldn't be able to lay down in it, if she had wanted to, of course. Might even have had trouble sitting with her legs stretched out.

"It was an afterthought," the Doctor guessed, interpreting what she was thinking from the look on her face. "They put it in an available space when they needed another way to the upper part of the city."

"As long as it works," Rose replied and stepped in.

There were no buttons, which was similar to the lift in the hospital, but it didn't seem to respond to voice commands either as a little panel lit up on the wall. "Ah," the Doctor said in realization and pulled out their 'invitation' on his psychic paper. He held it over the little light for a moment and the lift started on its way.

Suddenly, the swiftly moving lift shuddered and stopped without the usual slow down, causing both occupants to come off the floor when inertia kept them moving. The Doctor grabbed Rose around the shoulders to steady her as they regained their footing.

"Woah, there."

"Doctor? What happened?" Rose asked worriedly, hoping that the lift wouldn't start going the other way. "Are we there? Why didn't the doors open?"

"The lift stopped," he replied. "It's not a mechanical failure. The system would have given an alarm," he deduced. "It's not electrical, or that'd be obvious. It's like it was shut off." He went over to the little panel and ran his sonic over it, trying to get the lift to start again, but nothing happened. He tried again with a different setting with the same result.

"It won't let me in!" he complained.

"Can you get the doors open? Or the access to the shaft?" Rose wondered.

"Doesn't look like it, but give me a few minutes," he told her and continued to try hacking into the system. "Deadlocked!" he exclaimed after several tries.

"Do we need to worry about running out of air or anything, Doctor? It's a really small space in here," Rose asked nervously.

"No," he replied, pointing up at the corners, where small vents could be seen. "The filtration's still working. I can hear it, but it'll get hot in here with us stuck." He paused a moment when he analysed the content of the air in the compartment. The space was quickly filling with the scent of Rose's pheromones, fear foremost, distracting him from finding a quick solution to their problem.

"Relax," he told her. "We'll get out."

"If the lift doesn't fall first," Rose said and he could hear her heart rate increasing.

"It's not going to fall. There's a mechanical stop. If the lift's dropping too fast, it opens up and grabs onto the walls," he assured her. It didn't help. Her fear stayed.

Trying to comfort her just as he did on an impossible planet surrounding a black hole, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her tight. Her arms snaked around his waist and she breathed him in.

"We're trapped in here, Doctor. And if it's deadlocked, that means it's on purpose," Rose admitted her real fear finally.

"Not trapped. Temporarily contained," he told her. "We haven't tried all possible ways to get out yet."

"I'm being irrational," Rose realized.

"Fear's not always rational," he assured her. "Besides, like you said, the lift's stuck on purpose, and-" he cut himself off, knowing that continuing that thought would definitely be a bad idea. "And we haven't tried the access hatch!" he finished, pointing up to the square in the ceiling.

Rose looked up at it too, and he could feel her mood shift as she realized that they had hope for an escape. They'd have to climb the shaft, but it wasn't the first time they'd done so.

The Doctor spent quite a while with his sonic aimed at the ceiling of the lift as he tried to release the access panel so that they could leave the cramped space. Rose was sitting, awkwardly on the floor as she waited. It took him nearly fifteen minutes of meticulously releasing, from a distance, the multiple magnetic seals on the panel which was meant to open from the outside, but he gave a triumphant "Ha!" when it finally opened.

"You've got it opened?" Rose asked.

"Oh, yes," he replied. "Come on, up you go!" he added as he grabbed her hands to help her back up to her feet. He reached down to boost her up and suddenly realized his predicament as she paused to reach through the small opening while she was perched sitting on his shoulder. His arm was wrapped supportively around her thighs and his own hearts rate increased exponentially.

Rose hadn't given a thought to climbing up on his back to push the hatch open, ready to get out of there, but once she was up there, she realized what had to happen for her not to fall. She wound up sitting on his shoulder, with his arm wrapped around her thighs. His hands were, by necessity, on her bare skin. She had pulled her skirt up higher to be able to move her legs more while she was getting secure. She froze for a second when she realized what happened.

Well, there was some more fuel for her fantasies, she thought. She noticed the Doctor's breath hitch for a moment, but dismissed it as being due to the extra effort of holding her up. She needed to focus on her task and not her hormones.

Rose grabbed the edge of the opening and pulled herself up, with the Doctor pushing her from below. She climbed out onto the top of the car, trying not to think about the show she must be putting on for the Doctor and turned to give him a hand up.

The Doctor jumped up, grabbing the edge of the square opening with his fingertips. He used his feet to climb the wall as he pulled himself up. Rose helped him the rest of the way, but when the Doctor went to stand up, she pulled on him at the same time his black Chuck slipped and he fell, landing on top of her.

"Oof!" she gasped in surprise and discomfort.

"Sorry! Sorry!" he exclaimed, flustered by the rather compromising position and helped her up as he got to his feet.

Rose looked up at the shaft, then down, trying to see how far they had come. Anything to give her an excuse not to let him see how red her face had become. Beside her, the Doctor was doing the same.

"Can we just go to the next floor and get out?" she asked.

"We can try. Wait here a minute," he answered. He climbed up to the next level and ran his sonic over the door. Nothing happened. He went up to the level above and tried again. When he couldn't get through, he came back down.

"Do you know what level we need to get to?" Rose asked when his feet touched the roof of the lift.

"We've got to get above level two hundred in order to be in the upper city levels. The different sections can be blocked off separately." he responded. The next door beside the ladder read one hundred and fifty three.

"Quite a ways to go. Well, let's get going," Rose said, gesturing to the ladder attached to the wall.

"Ladies first," he told her.

"But," she squeaked as she gestured to her skirt and thought of him looking up it from below the whole climb.

The Doctor sighed, knowing what she was worried about, but he had good cause for her to go first. "Rose, I want to be able to catch you if you slip from the ladder. We don't have any safety ropes, it's a long way down, and you're not exactly dressed for mountain climbing."

Rose conceded that he had a point. "Eyes front," she warned him and reached out to grab the ladder. When she got her footing, she started climbing up.

The Doctor got on as well when she was high enough for him to do so. He fully intended to keep his eyes in safe territory, but he had to keep an eye on Rose's feet and check how she was managing endurance-wise, in case she suddenly lost her grip. The broad flare of her skirt meant that he unintentionally caught several less than innocent glances.

In an effort to distract himself, he started talking about the cities of the time. "Most human built cities after the year Five Billion are compartmentalized. Back to the beginning of cities, people found that disease or fire would spread faster in the close living quarters, so they built new cities like ships. Close off one area from the others, and nothing should get through. Doesn't always work, especially when the thing to be quarantined has already gotten through the seals, but it works well enough to have become standard."

"Yeah, didn't work so well in the hospital," Rose replied.

"Well, it would have if Cassandra hadn't released all of them the way she did. It usually works more or legs…. LESS!" he corrected his sudden slip, his face turning a deep crimson. He was glad she couldn't see him at the moment.

When Rose didn't make a comment on his slip, he breathed a sigh of relief and continued his babble.

"If the system is working right, and it usually is, no one outside of the quarantined area knows that the section is closed off unless they try to go to it until it's opened back up again. Keeps people from panicking unnecessarily. Panic can cause more damage than what they are panicking about."

The babble and occasional answer from Rose continued as they went up the forty seven levels of ladder. As time went on, Rose's answers became breathier.

When they were at level one hundred ninety-seven, Rose had a horrible thought and asked the Doctor a question. "What you said about the diseases and all?"

"Yeah?"

"Would it be like this if the level we were trying to get to was locked down?" she wondered.

"Uh." She had a good point. He thought about it for a moment. "If the level was shut down, it wouldn't stop completely. The lift would have just stopped at a different floor."

"But you can check for something like that before we go out at level two hundred, yeah?" Rose asked him.

"I can run a scan with the sonic, but if it isn't a known pathogen, it won't show up," he told her.

Rose didn't answer. He heard her breathing hard, then her foot slipped, and she cursed. The Doctor climbed up a bit further, ready to catch her if she fell. He was glad the climb was almost over. His own hands hurt, he knew she had to have blisters by then.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, yeah," she answered, having found her footing again. She held onto the ladder with her arm instead of her hands. "Just give me a minute."

"Take your time."

"So, are we going to do anything before we crack open the doors or just take our chances with what might be on the other side?" she asked as they rested a moment.

"I'm going to scan, of course," he replied. "If I find anything, we'll move up to the next level.

"Think we might've missed the party by now?" she teased and he could hear the smile in her voice even if he couldn't see it at the moment.

"Oh, always a party when we're around. This is more our style than schmoozing anyway. Except maybe for nibbles. I love nibbles," he replied.

"We're here," Rose said suddenly, and the Doctor looked up to see that she was correct.

She moved up the ladder a little further so the Doctor could climb up next to access the doorway. He scanned first with his sonic for any signs of pathogens in the air on the other side of the doors, fire or dangerous gasses. It all seemed fine and he took a deep breath before switching settings to hopefully open the doors.

After a few seconds, with a thunk and a hiss, they opened, and he stepped off the ladder, holding out his hand for Rose to take. She gasped and winced as he held her hand a little too tightly. Her skin was red and there were indeed the signs of blisters on the way.

Seeing no one around, he had her hold her hands out and used another setting on his trusty screwdriver to numb the pain in her hands, followed by a different one to help with the swelling.

"Should keep some of those nanogenes in your pockets, yeah?" she joked.

"Nah, you know how dangerous those things can be in the wrong place," he replied as he finished up. "I've got a cream in the TARDIS that'll heal that right up as soon as we can get back."

Rose looked around them and said, "Well, we should find someone and figure out why the lift's been stopped."

When Rose could take the Doctor's hand more comfortably, they walked together out of the alcove for the lift and into the main corridor. What they saw had them reeling.