The cafe was perfect. The Doctor dropped comfortably into a chair, and he surveyed his surroundings with an interested smile. No one in the universe could pull off a cozy little eatery quite like the Londoners. He loved the soft textures, the worn-in tables, the sweet aromas of coffee and baking bread, the clink of cups and the murmur of conversation. He couldn't live without the wild and the strange and the fascinating -- but it was the little things that made life worth living.

Rose asked him a question, and at her comment on his dialect he gave her a smug grin. "Yes, it is!" he encouraged her, and he let himself be distracted by a gorgeous stack of blueberry pancakes that was being carried past them. He intentionally paused before his answer, just to drag out the dramatics; it was such great fun to tantalize Rose's curiosity. He could see her in the corner of his eye, and he waited until she was just bursting with more questions before he leaned his elbows on the table and peered at her with interest. Some people he lied to, just to gently satisfy their small minds; others he would intimidate purposely with the truth just to watch their heads explode. Rose, though -- Rose was [i]curious[/i].

He took a breath. "If I told you that I come from a far-distant planet, and that the big blue box in your bedroom is my spaceship, would you believe me?"

At that moment, there was a terrific crash, smash and clatter in the kitchen, like an entire shelf of plates had toppled to the floor. The Doctor sprang immediately from his chair, swung around behind the bar and pushed his way into the kitchen, where shards and bits of porcelain littered the floor. Everyone was talking at once, pointing in all directions, blaming one another for the incident, but some claimed to have seen a little dark [i]thing[/i] sprinting through the debris toward the stock shelves. The Doctor set to scanning the kitchen with the sonic screwdriver, searching for signs of intelligent plastic despite the cook and waitress behind him who insisted he leave at once. If only he could catch one!

While everyone in the cafe craned their necks to see what was going on, something small and dark skittered across the floor past Rose, toward the door that led outside. It moved too fast to see clearly, but it was no more than eight inches tall and ran on two legs, and it was dressed in a playhouse doll's outfit. It had a silver key clutched in its tiny hands.