Presenting the next and final part. I'm sorry for the delay in posting this - real life got in the way for a while. Thanks, and enjoy!
"You look exhausted," Adeline whispered to Rose as they ushered the year ones up the stairs to the year three classroom where the infamous show and tell was taking place.
"Didn't sleep well," Rose whispered back. Didn't sleep at all, really, aside from a brief doze, but you wouldn't hear her complaining about it. Two cups of Adeline's rocket fuel coffee didn't seem to do the trick either, and she still felt wiped out.
Adeline looked up at the kids a few feet ahead of them, then dropped her voice even further. "Actually, you look like you had a right proper shag last night. Kind of hard to mistake that rosy glow about you."
Rose stumbled on a stair and hastily righted herself. "Addie!" she gasped, shocked a bit at the woman's blunt words. They weren't inaccurate, however…
Adeline just shrugged, an impish grin on her face. "What can I say? Your Mr. Smith is well fit. Bit skinny for my tastes, but I can just imagine the stamina."
"Can we please just get the kids up to show and tell?" Rose said, ignoring the fact that she was blushing a rather deep shade of pink at the moment. Adeline laughed at her and continued the march to the classroom.
"Blimey, it's packed in there," Adeline said, peering in through the glass. Sure enough, when Rose peeked in she could see a few classes' worth of kids sitting on the floor, with most of the desks stacked on the sides so they could fit as many kids as possible in there. The teachers were lined up at the back, all looking beyond bored. Adeline and Rose guided their kids in, pointed out where they should sit, and joined the rest of the adults at the back of the room.
One of the younger teachers shot Adeline a glance. "So are we going to get a lecture on the symbolism of dragons and how they've traditionally represented female repression?" he teased her.
Adeline just crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. "I'll keep me mouth shut."
"I'll believe that when I see it."
Rose tuned their chattering out and looked towards the front of the classroom, her eyes settling on the girl who was obviously Octavia. She was a small, unobtrusive girl, with light brown hair that was pulled back into a loose ponytail. She wore the school skirt and sweater, sleeves pushed up over bony elbows. She was dragging a large wagon behind her. On the wagon was a cage that had a blanket over it. Suddenly the cage rattled, making Rose lean back instinctively. Those weird bells were going off in her head; something just wasn't right about this situation. She mentally thought about the school's layout, trying to think of the fastest way to get to the Doctor's classroom.
Octavia cleared her throat delicately and pulled her wagon to centre stage, straining a bit under the weight. "Right," she said, commanding attention surprisingly well from the assembled mass. Well, they all wanted to see the mysteries that blanket was hiding. "This is my dragon. Her name is Belle." Octavia pulled the blanket off the cage and stood back, smiling smugly at the expected gasps.
Rose leaned forward just slightly, getting a better look at the creature inside the cage. She had always figured that a dragon, if it did really exist, would have looked more like a Reaper, not like this…thing. It was about half a meter long and stoutly built. The skin was a muddy and mottled green-brown, and her head was slender and pointed, almost like the beak of a bird. The two distinct features that she noticed were a hefty tail that waved back and forth in the confines of the cage, and a massive claw in place of where the index fingers would be on the front paws.
Octavia opened the door to the cage and grabbed the leash that was draped over the dragon's back. With no small amount of coaxing (and what appeared to be a tub full of live crickets) she dragged the dragon out onto the floor, where it began to sniff around things and paw at the floor, leaving a few deep scratches in the linoleum with its two massive claws. Sure enough, while the teachers tried to keep their students away from the dragon, most of them rushed forward, wanting to get their hands on the creature.
The young teacher who had ribbed Adeline before crossed his arms over his chest and took a step forward. "Now, call me crazy, but that doesn't look like any iguana or gila monster I've ever seen. My little brother raises the things, and whatever that is isn't one of them."
"So if it's not one of those, what is it, Nate?" Adeline asked, shuffling a little bit behind him. Lizards of any sort were obviously not one of her favorite things.
"What I think it looks like or what I think it really is?" he said. Rose glanced over at the other teachers, who were slowly spreading out trying to corral their students away from the dragon. The dragon didn't look too good either. The whites of her eyes were beginning to show as she glanced back and forth in a panic, no doubt rattled by all of the kids trying to pet her, or scratch at her back, or, most unforgivably, pull at her tail.
Rose winced as one hard tug finally got to the dragon, who then whipped that powerful tail around, sending a few of the kids who couldn't leap out of the way in time to the floor. "Oh no," she muttered to herself as the kids started to chatter loudly, startling the dragon even further. Then, with a speed unexpected by her bulky size, the dragon leapt up onto the teacher's desk, sending books and papers all over the place as her tail crashed into things.
This galvanized the teachers into action, who started pulling students in the direction of the door. The scared students didn't need much help in that arena though, as they began to rush to the door en masse, leading to a nice bottleneck.
"What do you think it is?" Rose yelled in Nate's direction as they and Adeline began to pull the desks away from the wall, attempting to form some sort of barrier between the students and the huffing and snorting dragon.
As Nate and Adeline upended a table to use in the barricade, he laughed disbelievingly. "If it wasn't so impossible, I'd say it was a damn dinosaur!"
Rose froze, her hands grasping onto the back of a wooden chair. The dragon did look rather like replicas and skeletons of dinosaurs she'd seen in a museum as a kid. Combine that with a temporal disturbance taking place in this very school… "Oh hell," she muttered, running for the door. "I'll be right back!" she yelled. "I'm going to get help!"
"Who on Earth is going to know how to handle a rogue dinosaur?" Adeline shouted at Rose's back as she darted around students and slipped through the crowded doorway. She ran down the hall and pushed open the door to the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. Halfway up she felt one of the side seams on her skirt give, the rip echoing against the walls. It was a hell of a lot easier to run this way though, that was for sure.
She practically flew down the hallway, skidding to a halt at the doorway to the Doctor's classroom. Rose peered through the window, gasping for breath, and could see the Doctor there in front of a class, hair in a state and right eye just slightly twitching. 'Must be that class then,' she thought. She rapped on the window and beckoned him urgently, telling him to get out here now.
The look he gave her could only be described as grateful as he walked hastily towards the door. "Just…read the next chapter in your textbook," she heard him say as he pulled the door open. "Rose, what's going on?" he asked.
"You know that dragon-iguana thing?" she said, panting a bit. "It's neither. It looks like a dinosaur."
The Doctor's eyes grew wide. "What?"
"Yeah, it looks an awful lot like a dinosaur, and it's currently destroying the year three classroom."
"Read the next four chapters!" the Doctor hollered back into the classroom, then pulled the door shut and locked it tightly with the sonic screwdriver. "That should keep anything from getting in there." He grabbed Rose's hand and they tore off down the hall, taking the stairs three at a time.
The second floor corridor was packed with students and teachers, most of them heading for the exits. It was apparent that word had gotten out to the other classrooms about an escaped animal and everyone was trying to leave the building post-haste. The Doctor and Rose moved against the tide of humanity, not stopping until they reached the door to the classroom.
Adeline and Nate were still in there, attempting to make a rather dodgy barricade that the dragon was in the middle of dismantling with a few swipes of her powerful tail. The rest of the teachers had hastily buggered off, preferring to call either the police or fire brigade once the school had been suitably evacuated. The Doctor paused inside the doorway, staring at the dragon with a healthy bit of admiration. "Not a dragon?" Rose panted behind him.
"Definitely not a dragon," the Doctor said, moving slowly into the room. Anything faster would startle the creature even further. "Scientific name that your time's given it is Drepanosaurusunguicaudatus, also known as, well, a monkey-lizard, but definitely a long extinct monkey-lizard."
Adeline looked up as the two approached and groaned. "I thought you were bringing help, not a history teacher." The Doctor just arched his eyebrow at her. He was about to come back with a snappy retort that could put many a retort throughout history to shame, when Rose spoke up.
"Just trust me, Addie, we'll take care of this."
The dragon — no, dinosaur — was now standing on top of the barricade of desks, staring at them with strangely inquisitive eyes. The four of them backed away slowly, pressing up against the back closets. No one dared breathe, thinking that the slightest movement would make the dinosaur charge right for them. Between the four of them they could probably take the dinosaur down, but most likely the dinosaur wasn't trying to deliberately hurt them. She was probably scared and a very long way from home, a feeling Rose knew all too well. And so it would be up to them, well, she and the Doctor really, to get the dinosaur out of the school and eventually back to its proper time, hopefully without getting injured or damaging too much property in the process. Rose felt a small scrabbling beside her, and she looked down to see the Doctor's hand thumbing at the settings on the sonic screwdriver. To her right, she saw that Adeline had a death grip on Nate's hand, and neither one of them looked too good at the moment. Fear had a way of doing that to people, especially if they weren't used to these sort of life-endangering situations.
"So what do we do now?" Rose whispered to the Doctor.
"Get her back to the TARDIS…somehow. Give Geoffrey something to play with until we're able to get them back to their proper times?" the Doctor said, twirling the screwdriver between his fingers.
"It's not going to eat us, is it?" Adeline whimpered from her other side and dug her nails into Nate's hand again, making the man wince. "That would be really, really bad."
"Drepanosaurids eat mostly insects," the Doctor said, glancing over at her. "Hence the massive claws on the front limbs; they're used to scrape away at bark to get to the critters beneath it."
"Pygmy anteaters have the same feature," Nate whispered. "Really one of the only other species around today that have that distinct claw."
"That's right," the Doctor replied, shooting him an impressed look — well, as much of an impressed look that could be given to something that wasn't a rampaging werewolf.
"Dabbled in zoology once upon a time," Nate said, blushing just the slightest.
"Good man." The conversation quickly degenerated into rather dull and scientific terms, leaving Rose and Adeline gaping incredulously. Really though, Rose knew she shouldn't have been surprised. Temporally displaced dinosaur on the loose, and the Doctor ends up ignoring it in favor of chats about tree sloths. Temporally displaced dinosaur trotting out the door to the classroom into the hallway…
"Oh, shit," Adeline said, moving for the door with Rose hard on her heels. They were just in time to see the dinosaur push the door to the stairwell open with her bulky body and leap downwards.
"Oi, boys!" Rose hollered, making them look her way. "Talk about tree sloths later - runaway dinosaur just took off down the stairs!"
Without any more words the group took off running, following the path of mild destruction the dinosaur left in her wake. The Doctor led the pack, sonic screwdriver held out in front of him flashing intermittently. They took the stairs two and three at a time, with Adeline eventually kicking her shoes off when one of the heels broke. "What's the flashy thing he's waving about?" she asked Rose as they approached the first floor.
"Sonic screwdriver," she yelled up at her.
"What?"
"Explanations later!" the Doctor said, stopping at the base of the stairs as soon as he saw the fire doors swinging wide open. He aimed the screwdriver at them, then nodded after a few seconds. "Okay, you two head around to the front of the building and see if she went that way. Rose and I will head towards the woods and see if she's in there." The other two just stood there, gasping for breath, definitely not as used to the whole running away bit as the Doctor and Rose were. "Go!" he prodded, making Adeline and Nate run off for the front."
"That's them out of the way," the Doctor nodded, walking towards the woods as if he were on a leisurely stroll.
"Why couldn't they help?" Rose asked.
"Be easier with just the two of us," he replied. "Besides, if I'm reading these results correctly, which I no doubt am, we're not going to need them…"
Sure enough, not five minutes later they found the dinosaur fast asleep, curled up between the large roots of an old tree. "It looks so harmless asleep," Rose said softly, leaning in close.
"And it's going to stay that way, 'least until we get it back to the TARDIS," the Doctor said, adjusting the frequency and aiming it at the dinosaur once more. "So, do you want the head bit or the tail?"
The halls of the school were totally empty Rose saw as she walked through them, however when she reached the staff room it was buzzing. A handful of the teachers were in
there, including Nate and Adeline, who were slumped over on an old sway-backed plaid couch nursing cups of tea. Octavia and her family were there as well, mother and brothers all in a corner having a rather…vocal chat with the Headmaster, complete with hand gestures on both sides.
"Any luck?" Adeline asked, staring distastefully at the soles of her feet, the stockings laddered and smeared with grass stains and streaks of mud.
"Nope," Rose fibbed, helping herself to a cuppa. Would they really believe though that the dinosaur was currently holed up in a room in a spaceship that was bigger on the inside than the outside, with an alien pilot who was attempting to figure out if the TARDIS would finally start moving again now that they had the dinosaur aboard as well? "Went through a good bit of those woods back there and the only remotely interesting thing we saw there were a couple of squirrels."
"Damn," Adeline sighed. "We were all around the front grounds and nothing there either. Dunno where she could have gone…"
"Don't worry," the Doctor called out as he walked by the open door to the staff room, "I've just called animal control."
"We called them an hour ago," Professor Powell shot back, rolling his eyes.
"Oh, right…"
Rose glanced over at Octavia, who was sitting at the table with a not quite despairing, but still pretty upset look on her face. "Give me a minute," she said, putting her cup down and moving over to the girl. She pulled out the chair next to her and sat down, making Octavia shoot her a glare with watery eyes. "How are you doing?" Rose asked.
"I want Belle back," she said decisively.
"Well…" Rose trailed off, searching for the right words. "Maybe she had to go home. She really was just a baby, so she probably has a mother out there looking for her." She tapped Octavia lightly on the nose, making the girl wrinkle a bit. "Just imagine how you would be if you got lost? You'd want your mum more than anything else, right?"
"I guess so," Octavia sniffled, going a bit misty in the eyes. "Do you think she's all right?"
Rose leaned in and winked at the girl, a show of solidarity between females. "I'll bet you anything that she's just fine right now, and almost home."
"Okay," she nodded. "That's good." Rose patted her on the back comfortingly, giving her a few more minutes to sniffle and shred up a tissue as she calmed down. When she glanced up she saw the Doctor staring at her from just inside the doorway, an unreadable look in his dark eyes. Suddenly though, he smiled widely at her, and winked.
"I'll be back in a minute, love," she said to Octavia, then went to join the Doctor. He pulled her out into the corridor, out of earshot of everyone else. "How's she doing?"
"Settled comfortably and munching away on some lovely insects. At least the TARDIS is in a good enough mood to do that." The Doctor scratched the back of his neck and exhaled roughly.
"Still not moving then?"
"Nope. We're going to have a menagerie in there by the time we pick up everything that got lost falling through time."
"She'll come around eventually, you know that." Rose grinned up at him. "Besides, she wouldn't want you stuck with the class from hell much longer either. The TARDIS is even more protective of you than I am."
"Funny that, I thought I was supposed to be the one protecting you," he grinned at her, both of them knowing full well that the whole point of things was that they protected each other, and that was what made things brilliant. Impulsively, he pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, then grabbed her hand and trotted off down the hall. "Come on, we've still got work to do."
One knight, a dinosaur, a painting by Leonardo DaVinci, a 48th century hover-scooter, a first edition of the Canterbury Tales, and an escaped llama from southeast New England later the TARDIS began to move again, taking the strays home and returning Rose and the Doctor to the stars.
The End