Chapter Two: The Thief
The Doctor was totally, completely, and ecstatically in his element.
An element that, by the look of fond exasperation Rose was giving him, "John Smith" shared. When Lethbridge-Stewart had ordered them out to investigate the latest robbery (object of immense value stolen, no sign of forced entry or any entry at all, the only areas without cameras being a ventilation shaft too small for a terrier to fit through and so on and so forth), the Doctor had opened his mouth to protest—long, loudly, and no matter what anyone might say, not even close to whiny.
However, when he had gone on to explain that it was U.N.I.T. Labs that had been robbed, the foremost scientific laboratory in this strange world, well…
…that was something else entirely.
"Ohhhh, look at this!" he all but cooed, half-kneeling to better inspect the wild tangle of copper wire, plastic tubing, and electrically pink liquid trickling along twisting paths in a child's roller coaster of science. "That's—it's—well, to be honest, I have no idea at all what it is, but it looks brilliant!" His fingers all but itched to get into it, take it apart to see what it did, make it better. And that was only the beginning. All around him were test tubes and tools and gadgets being taken apart and gadgets being put together, oh, and a line of bright yellow police tape all around the lab. He loved police tape. Never been able to resist the stuff. They always had the good stuff, the really important stuff, behind the tape.
A warm puff of air brushed his shoulder as Rose leaned down over his back, chuckling softly. "Look at you, like a kid in the toy shop!" she laughed, and delight skittered through him at the sound. He'd thought he would never hear her laughter again, his beloved girl. "What d'ya think it's for?" she asked curiously, the curly wire edge of her notepad digging into the tender flesh at the curve of his shoulder as she looked closer.
The Doctor grinned, twisting so that his face was within a half-inch of Rose's. He was just about to spin some long and, to her ears, completely incomprehensible but very impressive explanation for "wire-tuby-drippy-liquid thing", when a wry feminine voice from the doorway called out, "Lemonade."
With the way the day was going, he really shouldn't have been surprised to see Sarah Jane Smith striding through the door, looking thoroughly official with a trench coat and badge and, he noted with a distasteful wrinkle of freckled nose, gun strapped to her hip. Grim-faced and solemn in a way that just seemed wrong for his old friend, she ducked under the tape across the door, kicking the broken and scattered remnants of machinery broken in the robbery out of the way as she passed. "At least that's what Dr. Sullivan tells me. These scientists, they can never do anything the simple way."
The note of faint scorn in Sarah Jane's voice was enough to remind the Doctor that he really needed to find a way back to his own reality, his own Sarah Jane and his precious ship and… His gaze followed Rose hungrily as she stood, went to Sarah Jane with pen in hand and an excruciatingly familiar expression of determined excitement. Lewis and the Sarge, he recalled, hearts aching with each double beat at the memory. Well, he was living it now, wasn't he? Deducting.
"Yes, but," he put in abruptly, shoving his heartsbreak and his grief back into the corner of his soul as he'd become oh, so terribly good at doing and managing to startle Rose and Sarah Jane (D.I. Smith, he corrected himself, playing back their conversation from the recorder of his subconscious) so they jumped as he did so, "what would a common robber want with a machine that is, basically, atomic-level glue? I mean, it's hardly something to put a model airplane together with." Over Rose and Sarah Jane's startled glances, he pondered, "Well, I suppose you could, after all. Model airplanes, made of atoms and molecules that could be bonded and what have you, but really, it seems overkill for something you could do with an average tube of glue-"
"Wait, wait." The Doctor flinched back a little as D.I. Smith's finger came directly at his face. Honestly, she could put an eye out like that! "You understood that technobabble?"
"Ummm…" Right. Mild-mannered reporter, not supposed to be able to distill the most advanced human science to a child's toy—even if, for him, that was exactly what it was. "Yes?"
Rose's lips parted in an O, her jaw had gone slightly slack with surprise. "Mostly?" he squeaked, all but squirming under Sarah Jane's hard stare.
"And how would you know so much about the stolen property, Smith? I know you tinker a bit, but U.N.I.T. Labs experiments are way beyond you," she interrogated, eyes narrowing dangerously. Had she been that intimidating back in the seventies? He didn't remember her being.
"Errr…." Oh, he really hoped that he was reading this reality correctly, or else this could be very awkward. "I've been…talking to the Doctor?" he guessed.
"The Doctor?" Rose, frozen by the shock of finding out her partner had somehow managed to acquire the brain of a genius, suddenly became animated once again. Her eyes lit with excitement. "When did you have a chance to talk to him? We came straight here when we heard about the robbery."
"I—well, that is—y'see…" he temporized, restraining himself forcefully from tugging his ear or scratching fingers through his hair. Yes, that part might be a bit hard to explain. Not that he was having a real great time with the whole "secret identity" thing to begin with. Why did he even have a secret identity to begin with in this reality? Did he have some kind of superpowers? Now that…that would be amazing. Fantastic, even. "The thing is, Rose—"
Saved by the scream.
By the time the three of them had run full-tilt into the next room, there were three officers shoving furniture aside to search underneath, a Detective Inspector shining his torch into the cabinet under the industrial sink, and one very shaky astrophysicist up on the counter, just barely avoiding stepping on an unlit Bunsen burner as she shivered for her life. "What is it, what happened?" Rose burst out, pen already in hand for any breaking news. D.I. Smith aka Sarah Jane crossed immediately to the astrophysicist on the counter, trying to coax her down.
"It ran over my shoe!" the hysterical woman yelped, resisting all efforts to take her hand and guide her to the floor. "It was at least a foot tall, and it—it—"
"Now calm down and come here," D.I. Smith ordered gently, trying to catch a flailing arm. "We'll find whatever it was, only do come down-
Just at that moment, there was a flash of movement in the periphery of the Doctor's vision, a tiny blue blur streaking for the empty sheet-metal cupboard in the corner, and the nerve-stricken astrophysicist wailed inconsolably, clambering away from the edge of her counter.
Sitting on a stand at the door was a massive jar of, of all things, jelly babies. Hating to waste such sugary goodness, but desirous of their container, the Doctor slid it quietly off the table, dumping the contents onto the counter just out of reach of the hysterical scientist. The police, including Sarah Jane, watched carefully as he motioned to Rose, making a small shaking motion with his free hand.
Silently nodding her understanding, Rose gently slid her clicking heels off, then padded, barefoot and quiet, to the heavy cupboard. She wedged herself into the space between its back and the wall, squeezing in until only her head was still visible around the side. Silently mouthing off the numbers, the Doctor ticked them down for her benefit on his fingers, getting as close to the cabinet as he dared with the jar upended in his hands.
One. Two. THREE!
The cupboard tipped, a blue figure rolled out and the Doctor slammed the glass jar down over it, trapping the little thing between the glass and the floor. It squeaked indignantly, more a meep really, as police, amnesiac time traveler-slash-reporter and Detective-Inspector, and one Time Lord having a very strange day gathered around its transparent prison.
"It's…" Sarah Jane breathed, eyes wide as she lost all sense of speech at the sight before her. Squeezed behind her, one of the officers made a squeak of shock not unlike the furious meeping of the little prisoner.
"It's the Doctor," Rose whispered, tapping a fingernail lightly against the thick glass top of the jar.
And indeed it was. The Doctor slipped on his spectacles to better inspect, sliding flat onto his stomach on the floor and putting himself on eye-level with the captive. It was a perfect miniature him: wild hair, arms crossed over the chest, and all. A chest covered by blue spandex and the Seal of Rassilon. With a cape! Did he have a cape? He hadn't felt a cape, back at the Daily Galaxy, but maybe it was in a pocket? Thankfully the whole costume had gone away with a second touch to the Mark, too quickly for him to investigate much.
The miniature Doctor was ranting relentlessly in its squeaky language, gesticulating wildly as it kicked at its glass prison, then sat down to massage its bruised little foot. It was a perfect, twelve—no, more like ten—inch replica of himself. Right down to the sonic screwdriver, he noted as a silver instrument smaller than his little finger made an appearance.
"D.I. Smith?" the Doctor (the full-sized one, that was, as he mentally dubbed the other Mini Doctor) drawled, rolling onto his side to peer at the little clone. "No forced entry, only unsupervised space being a four-inch ventilation pipe, nothing caught on camera?" He grinned wildly up at them. "I think we just might have found your robber."