Just Another Shop Girl (2/18)
Nov. 30th, 2008 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocus
Chapter Two: Monsters and a Shop Girl
“What was that thing?” Rose demanded the minute they were safely within the confines of the TARDIS. She rested against the locked door, panting hard. A moment later she jumped forward in fright as the monster banged into the doors of the TARDIS actually making it shake. She turned around and stared at the door hoping desperately that it would hold under the violent attack.
“Don’t worry, Rose,” the Doctor said as she hurried up the ramp and over to his side. He picked up her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “It can’t get in here. We’re perfectly safe.”
“I'm not worried," she said rolling her eyes. At his challenging look she amended, "Well, maybe a little. Moslty I just want to know what is it?” she repeated holding her free hand over her rapidly beating heart, trying to convince it to slow down.
“I don’t know,” the Doctor admitted. “Never seen it before.”
“I have. That, my friends, is a Tirawl.” Jack looked down at the view screen watching the blue-hided animal with the big yellow stripes across its forehead. It was about eight feet tall. “And more important than what is it is why aren’t those people noticing it’s here?”
The Tirawl bumped up against the TARDIS again and let out a loud bleeting noise. It repeated the effort several times, each time shaking the ship enough to make them lose their balance.
“What’s it doing, Doctor? Why does it keep attacking the ship?” Rose wanted to know.
“It’s not attacking the ship,” the Doctor said matter-of-factly. “The TARDIS would do an emergency take off if she sensed any danger to us.”
“What’s it doing then?” Rose demanded pulling away from his hand and crossing her arms over her chest. She gave him her best ‘hurry up, out with it,’ look.
“I’d have thought it was obvious. The TARDIS is big and blue with yellow on it, too. I think it’s trying to mate with us.”
Rose snickered. “Ah, the Tirawl version of Jack, then? Find something even remotely compatible and try to get it into bed?”
“Hey!” said Jack. “I resemble that remark.”
“Don’t we know it,” the Doctor replied. “Well, we can’t leave it rampaging about a populated area.”
“So what are we going to do about it then? And how? Music?” Rose asked.
“Don’t think it’ll be soothing any savage beasties today,” commented Jack. “I’d say we just get out of here, Doc. Those look like military come to deal with it.”
And at first they appeared to be, but it became rapidly obvious that they were something else entirely. Two trucks had pulled up and men dressed in smart black uniforms piled out of one of the vehicles. Several of them were armed with machine guns and one held a much bulkier weapon that was obviously a tranquilizer gun.
The man with the tranquilizer gun aimed and fired. The beast turned part way around and looked at the man who had shot him. He made a sound very much like ‘hunh,’ and then slowly pitched backwards, crashing hard to its back then rolling onto its side. The man who had shot him came forward and stroked the creature on the head and shook his head sadly. “Poor dumb beast,” came the muttered words over the TARDIS sound system.
The rest of the soldiers swarmed over the Tirawl then and managed to roll him into a large net and drag him along the ground to the back of one of the large military-type trucks. They heaved him up into the bed of it and then slammed the doors shut behind it hiding the creature from view. The soldiers who had not joined the monster in the back of the first truck climbed into the second and as suddenly as they had pulled up, they were gone.
“All right then,” the Doctor said entering some coordinates into the TARDIS computer panel. “That bit of excitement is over. Let’s hop over to Barnsbury and see if we can’t find that ring of yours, Rose.”
“But…wait a minute,” Rose said. The Doctor’s fingers hovered over the controls and he looked at her questioningly. “We’re just gonna let them take it? It’s an alien. Shouldn’t we…I don’t know, do something?”
“They weren’t hurting it,” the Doctor said. “Sometimes it is okay for the Earth to clean up its own messes.”
“Besides,” added Jack, “It’s probably better not to tangle with that particular organization.”
“You recognize them?” Rose wondered.
“I have my suspicions. I’m sure they have everything well in hand. Let’s go.”
Rose sighed but when the Doctor’s hands came down on the controls and sent the ship into flight she didn’t protest again.
Tessa looked up from her physics book as the little dangly bell on the shop door alerted her to the fact that someone had come inside. “I’m pretty sure this is it,” said a tall man with big ears, an even bigger nose, and a battered leather jacket.
“That’s what you said at the last five shops, Doctor,” said the pretty blonde girl who had followed the older man into the store. She did not look particularly happy with him.
“I can’t help it if the ticket got spilled on and the name of the shop is too indecipherable to read. I’m not the one who wanted the curry. Anyway, I really do think this is the right one this time, Rose. I’ve been here before. It looks familiar.”
“They’ve got some nice stuff here, Doc. That might help counterbalance the wobble in the gravitronic deflector array,” he said pointing to a large piece of blue-green sea glass that had been blown into the shape of an orb. Tessa gasped as she looked at the man that had trailed the other two into the shop, startled by his appearance. He was gorgeous with black hair and sparkling sapphire eyes and a cleft in his chin so deep that she desperately wanted to put her finger on it.
“It might at that, Jack.” The other man, the girl had called him a doctor, was still speaking but she barely noticed.
“Oh, and this is pretty,” Jack said holding up a necklace. “What do you think, Rose?”
“We’re not here to do trinket shopping, Jack,” the Doctor growled. “We’re here to find Rose’s ring. Honestly, if I’d known how hard it would be to track it down, I’d never have pawned it.”
“You shouldn’t have pawned it anyway. Not without asking,” Rose admonished.
“You’re the one that wanted to go to that concert so badly. The only tickets left were from the scalpers. We needed the money. How was I supposed to know it was a family heirloom? You’re the only one in your family with any kind of taste. I thought you’d bought it for yourself.”
“It belonged to Grandma Tyler. She gifted it to me directly after Dad died. And even if it wasn’t an heirloom it was still mine. You need to keep your hands out of my drawers without asking.”
“Don’t think he wants to do that,” smirked Jack.
“Shut up, Jack!” the pair said turning on him, Rose blushing furiously. Honestly, they sounded like an old married couple. She wasn’t sure where the handsome man fit in.
“Can I help you?” Tessa asked finally approaching the little group. The man they’d called the Doctor pulled a claim ticket out of his pocket.
“This you?” he asked.
Tessa looked the form over. “Yes, it is.”
“Told you,” the Doctor said with a sideways glance at Rose. “Thank goodness,” he muttered more quietly under his breath.
“Yeah, but you told me all over Canonbury, too, and it certainly wasn’t there.”
“Would you like to buy it back?” Tessa asked quickly hoping to prevent a row. She looked from one to the other of them.
“Yes,” said Rose. “Please.”
“It’s eight hundred pounds then.” She walked over to the display case, unlocked the back of it, and reached for the item with a tag that matched their half. The beautiful man named Jack pulled a crisp wad of notes out of his pocket and handed it over. She counted it out and then pulled off the tag and put the ring down on the top of the glass counter.
The Doctor picked it up and then took Rose’s hand. Slowly he slid the ring onto her finger, holding it slightly longer than was necessary. For a moment Rose looked like she was about to melt into the floor before she shook herself and put a happy grin onto her face. “Sorry, I took it without asking, he said in a low voice.
“Thanks for getting it back for me,” she said in an equally low voice. She stood up on her tiptoes and brushed her lips lightly across his cheek in a gesture so achingly sweet it made the breath in Tessa’s chest hitch.
The Doctor blushed quite pink as she pulled away but gave her a brilliant smile. “You’re welcome.” His voice was husky and so private she felt she was intruding on the moment. Tessa sighed. She wouldn’t have taken the pretty young girl and the tall, rough-hewn man as a couple, but the way they were looking at each other showed that there was something pretty deep between them. She only hoped to have something like that one day.
“You two need some privacy?” Jack queried cheekily from behind them. The Doctor dropped Rose’s hand and they hastily pulled away from each other. She almost wanted to smack the handsome man for ruining the tender moment.
At the sound of glass shattering Tessa looked up towards the front of the shop. What she saw there made all the color drain out of her face. Something out of her nightmares had broken through the front shop window. She could only think of it as a monster, covered in deep blue hide, two horns on its head, and a rigid series of yellow stripes on its forehead. It bellowed in anger in pain.
“Uh oh, we got company!” shouted Jack.
“What’s wrong with it?” Rose called as the creature began to crash about the store. Tessa’s brain couldn’t deal with what she was seeing so she backed away quickly, tripping over something on the floor. She banged her head against a piece of furniture on the way down and knocked herself senseless.
“We need to get out of here!” Rose shouted.
“What about the girl, Doctor?” Jack asked. He had moved quickly and caught her before she’s tumbled all the way to the floor. “We can’t just leave her here unconscious.”
The Doctor looked at the girl and back to the Tirawl that was coming closer and closer. He nodded at Jack who swung the girl all the way up into his arms. “I sure hope there’s a back way out of here,” the Doctor said.
They made their way into the back room quickly and there was indeed a door there that led out to the alleyway. From there it was a quick dash to the TARDIS. “Do you think she’ll be safe if we just leave her right here?” Jack asked.
“We’re not leaving her!” Rose gasped. “Not with that thing coming after us. She could get trampled to death!”
“Well, she’s not coming with us,” the Doctor said. “Think I’ve let you collect enough strays lately,” he added with a glance over his shoulder at Jack.
“Hey!”
“Look, she’s passed out. She might be in shock. The least we can do is drop her off at hospital,” Rose insisted.
The Doctor grumbled but when Rose unlocked the TARDIS and went inside he motioned for Jack to carry the girl inside. Jack did so and set her down on the jump seat, his fingers moving to her throat to check for her pulse. It was steady. He watched as the Doctor entered a new set of coordinates and the familiar sounds of dematerialization commenced.
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-02 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 02:03 am (UTC)I have a feeling Tessa's in for an interesting day!
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Date: 2008-12-02 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-02 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 09:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-02 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 02:21 pm (UTC)Psst - typo para 3 mostly/moslty
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Date: 2008-12-02 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-02 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-01 09:09 pm (UTC)This story is proof that smut is not necessary in order to create a wonderfully romantic and loaded fic. God, that line and the next two paragraphs made me melt. Love it ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-12-02 12:43 am (UTC)