Jumping For The Stars

Chapter 2 - Aliens

Teanna woke up to the feeling of Pecks tiny claws digging into her skin, slowly she opened her eyes seeing the furry faced martin starring down at her.

"Peck," she groaned, lifting the troublesome creature off her, and rolling off her back to set him on the ground. 

She froze half way through the motion.

"Where the hell am I?" She whispered.

The floor seemed to give a displeased shake at her word choice, causing her to drop the struggling creature in her hand and crash onto the metal mesh ground.

"Ow," she grumbled, rubbing the newly awakened pain in her shoulder.

Her focus on her pain was short lived as the door flew open, the man from earlier barging in. Did he say his name?, she couldn't help but think. Oh, yes, the Doctor. That was his name.

The Doctor didn't notice her in his hurry, jumping around a circular control center of sorts, pushing buttons as he passed them, pulling levers in his haste.

Teanna had already pulled herself back up onto the seat the she originally had laid down in. Now, she was watching him as silently as she could, her analytic mind trying to dissect the inner workings of the ship.

All of a sudden the Doctor stopped, almost as suddenly as his machine did, and he looked at Teanna. His body language was close to himself, arms crossed, indicating signs of nervousness, but judging by the grin that almost split his face in half, Teanna doubted that.

She asked the first question, "Where am I?"

"The TARDIS, she's called the TARDIS. T.  A.  R.  D.  I.  S. Means Time And Relative Dimension In Space," he answered, his tone both gleeful and proud. Gleeful at the fact that he got to tell someone about this place. Proud of it in itself.

"What does it do?" Teanna asked warily.

"She," he stresses the word. "She travels through time and space. It's in the name."

"Acronym, you mean it's in the acronym," Teanna corrected the Northern man automatically.

"And if it's in the name then," she begins to continue, but glances at the Doctor, remembering him taking offense to calling the 'TARDIS' an it. "Then she would be another dimension."

"Yep," he said, his grin seeming to get wider at her understanding. A proud father almost.

"This technology seems a bit out of Earth's reach. It seems..." Teanna trailed off.

"Alien," the Doctor concluded somberly.

"Yeah, are you-?" She couldn't finish the question.

"Absolutely," the Doctor answered, knowing how the sentence was going to end.

"Right," Teanna nodded slowly, grim reality slowly setting in.

Silence hung in the air for a moment.

"I should be going back to my friend," the Doctor said at the same time Teanna said.

"I should go back to my apartment."

The Doctor seemed to jump up, popping back into focus.

"Right, where do you live?" he said beginning to pull levers again, ignoring his own statement.

"Just drop me off where we were before. I can find my way from there," Teanna said, scooping up Peck in one hand and her bag in the other, and placed the furry creature in her bag before slinging the pack onto her back.

The Doctor didn't object to her choice of locations, and after a few seconds of the TARDIS moaning and shuddering the stood, once again, in the ally where it all began. Though, almost ended would be closer to correct.