2:43am
The neon numbers flashed before her eyes and with a groan Rose Tyler rolled onto her back away from the clock, taking half of her light purple duvet with her. The new view of the dark outline of the dresser spurred her thoughts in the direction of the coming day and how she really ought to convince her mother that she didn't need to take her shopping because she had hardly enough room to fit anymore clothes in her closet at home. She thought fondly of the usefulness of a transdimensional wardrobe on a certain time and space ship and then let her mind wonder to the lovely captain of that ship.
Her first year in this parallel universe had been the hardest she had yet to experience in her brief 23 years of life. After arriving back at the mansion from Norway, Rose had proceeded to her designated room and did not come out for a week. Her mother had protested and tried everything she could think of to boost her daughter's spirits, but at the persuasion of Mickey and Pete she had finally left Rose to herself. However at the end of the week Rose had emerged looking happy and healthy at least on the surface.
Mickey and Pete were both sitting at the large table adjacent to the kitchen, each nursing a large stack of pancakes.
"You know Pete I swear your stomach is an empty pit! Same goes for you Mickey!"
Jackie's comment lifted Pete's gaze from his breakfast to his lovely wife situated in front of the kitchens door. She looked absolutely radiant with the effects of pregnancy suiting her well and a small smile grazing her face.
Mickey swallowed his food before commenting, "Yeah, well there's only a few beautiful things that I can without a doubt be sure of in this universe and pancakes are one of 'um!" He gestured to the shrinking stack on his plate and continued eating.
Jackie turned to Pete, "An' what about you mister, what's your excuse?"
Pete opened his mouth to reply when the door was pushed open and Rose Tyler slipped through. Her white blouse bunching out of it place tucked into her black slacks as she attempted to maneuver around her mother without spilling her own pancake stack. The room was silent for a moment as Rose successfully walked around her mum then reached for the syrup on the table. With a grin that her mother thought would not grace her daughters face again, Rose leaned towards her parallel father.
"So Pete, Torchwood need an alien expert?"
Although her parents and Mickey hadn't anticipated her reaction to this new life and Rose's apparent peace with her past, they were happy that she seemed to accept what happened and move forward with her life. Working at Torchwood Rose quickly became familiar with the controversy from her coworkers and from the Directors of other branches about her extremely young age and any sort of proven experience. However all thoughts of her qualifications were immediately forgotten two months after Rose started as a field agent.
"I don't know."
"Excuse me?"
Jamie sighed, being the head of alien identification was something he thoroughly enjoyed and had many perks, but feeling like an idiot when explaining alien races to the head of Torchwood was not one of them.
"I repeat sir, I don't know."
"You're supposed to be the best! We have a hospital that's suddenly missing with four of Torchwoods agents inside. Now I need you to tell me what's causing this!"
The man standing in front of him was Senior Director Abernathy, all the way there from Torchwood 3 and was perfectly capable of making sure he never received another job again. Jamie swallowed and tapped his fingers nervously against the desk next to him.
"Look sir, there are no aliens we have record of who make it a habit to steal buildings with a large number of people inside."
The Senior Director, who at this point was rapidly turning a very unique shade of red, opened his mouth to respond when Director Tyler of Torchwood 1 stepped in.
"Abernathy, leave the man alone, I am as concerned as you are! Rose was touring the maternity department in that hospital for Jackie who has not been in the best spirits as of late and I'm sure they will only go downhill at the news of her missing daughter, so for your safety and mine, stop yelling at this man and maybe we can figure out what happened!"
Abernathy nodded when suddenly the news casters voice echoed through the top floor of Torchwood tower from the television broadcasting the new coverage in the corner.
The young female newscaster with perfectly sculpted blonde hair was standing in front of the reappeared hospital with patients pouring out in various stages of distress. Medics were quickly administering oxygen masks and policemen were already storming the hospital.
"The Hospital has reappeared! And patients are coming out as we speak! Sir, please tell the viewers at home what took place here!"
A ragged man looking to be in his thirties and in a state of shock glanced at his arm where the reporter had grabbed him as he was walking past.
"We- we- we were on the moon!" He managed to choke out.
"The moon?" The reported asked incredulously.
The patient nodded realizing that the faster he told what happened the sooner he could leave.
"And there were rhinos! And we were running out of air and then she saved us!"
"She?"
The sound of the television was cut off as the elevator doors opened and four people rushed in and one was carried.
"Rose!" Pete shouted as he ran to where she was laying extremely still in the arms of one of the agents her blonde waves fallings over the man's arms. The man carrying her moved forward and Pete was suddenly aware of the protective stance all the agents had around his daughter.
"We need to debrief, all of you in the conference room!" The senior Directors booming voice seemed to have little effect on the agents who were hurrying past the small group in the direction of the infirmary.
"Evans!"
Paul Evans was a senior agent of around forty five who was known for his tough no nonsense attitude as well as his extensive battle scars.
"Sir?" The man's gravelly voice held irritation as he looked off towards the other disappearing agents
"What exactly happened?! We sent you four to investigate the unusual static build up and the hospital disappears! And what this about rhinos and the visiting moon?! Then you come back with an unconscious off duty junior agent, and no one seems to want to tell me anything!"The senior director at this point had to pause for breath as his face was rapidly turning unnatural shades of red once more.
"We were investigating the static build up when it happened. The rain suddenly started falling up and then we were on the moon. Don't ask me how it happened because I don't know. That's when the rhinos came in, they started scanning everyone in the hospital starting at the bottom floors and working their way up. Everyone in the hospital was panicking, and we did our best to calm people down but we were on the bloody moon! The men were staring to get nervous because we obviously had never encountered any of this in training and the air was starting to get thin-"
"How was there air? You were on the moon?"
Pete nodded at the Director's question thinking the same thing himself.
"Apparently there was a force field of some sort, but I'm getting to that."
Pete Tyler was quite surprised that Evans was even telling this story, he didn't think he had heard the man speak more than four words at one time.
"So with the air thinning most of us agents were basically coming to terms with dying up there and we were planning on making the most of that by taking out the rhinos when agent Tyler walked into the waiting room we were positioned in. She told us that the rhino aliens were called Judon and were looking for an alien hiding in the hospital and that we were going to help find it. So with no other real options we followed Tyler and found out that the alien we were looking for was something called a Plasmavore because it sucks the blood of its victims and can appear as their whatever they are on the scanner."
Evans grinned wolfishly at the disgusted look on Jamie's face as he listened quietly in the background. Jamie noticing the senior agent's eyes on him decided to comment.
"How in the world did you figure out the aliens species?"
Evans grin softened. "Tyler told us."
Jamie snorted, "And how would she know?"
"Because her Doctor told her about them." The tone the agent used made it seem like this was obvious.
"Her doctor?!" Jamie scoffed, "That doesn't even make-"
Evans ignored him and continued on interrupting Jamie's rant.
"Anyway, so this plasmavore vampire thing had sucked quite a few of the people in the hospital dry so it was appearing human on the Judon's scanners. The blood sucker also had some hidden plans of blowing up the hospital and half of earth. Tyler however was completely calm during the whole thing, acting like this was completely normal and when we cornered the alien in the MRI room she gave herself up to the blood sucker. The Judon walked in on the thing sucking her blood and ran a scan. Rose said that she had foreign alien substance still on her from her traveling days, and apparently that was also in her blood. The scanner registered the plasmavore as an alien and took the thing away and brought the hospital back to its rightful position."
Evans paused and glanced up at the Senior Director.
"She saved our lives sir, there is no doubt that everyone in that hospital would have died on that moon without her."
Rose grinned as she remembered her first mission with the people who would one day make up the best team any of the Torchwood branches had ever possessed. Her team was the reason that after two years Rose was comfortable in this world, not completely happy, but comfortable. She had thrown herself into her training as a means of distraction and now was a master in hand to hand combat as well as quite adapt in a variety of weapons, self defense only of course. Rose was coping and had even dabbed in a bit of dating here and there, mostly to make her mother happy as Rose was still completely head over heels for a certain alien. But she didn't completely despise the dates either, some of the men were intriguing and Rose enjoyed a change of scenery. Finding the dates was not a problem considering she was the heiress to the Vitex fortune. However, besides the abundance of boys, being in the public eye brought a quite a few problems, the paparazzi being at the top of her list.
As soon as word got out about Jackie Tyler's mysterious return after being confirmed dead during the cybermen fiasco and the factor of the Tyler's apparent lost daughter whom Jackie had found while she was "dead", caused the paparazzi to respond savagely. Rose couldn't leave the mansion's grounds without being snapped by at least fifty different photographers that were stationed outside the house gate at all times. It was then Rose decided that she really needed her own place. She knew that it wouldn't stop the paparazzi, but she figured three Tyler's in one place was drawing them in, especially now that her mother would be showing soon.
Despite Rose's refusals both her parents would not let her pay for the new living quarters and they ended up buying the warehouse that Rose had fallen in love with. The place had been renovated so that it was now functional to live in and absolutely stunning.
Instead of at her house however, Rose was currently back in her old bedroom at the Tyler mansion. Her Brother Tony's first birthday was being held the next day, and as a faithful daughter she had volunteered to help in getting the house ready for the small party. She had conveniently forgot that her mother would obviously put her in her old room and all she desperately wanted was to be anywhere but here. This room was where she had embraced her doom to the parallel world and understood that she could never see the doctor again. Rose normally didn't believe in this kind of thing, but she just felt like all the emotions she wallowed in two years ago were still here and if she stayed in this room any longer she was going to drown in them.
With a small sigh, Rose pushed the duvet away and headed toward her overnight bag containing her running shoes.
The cold night air chilled her skin as Rose Tyler ran past a sign welcoming her to the Glenwood Natural Forest Reserve. The paved road suddenly gave way to a dirt path that strung throughout the entire park. Normally running in a dark forest in the middle of the night would scare most people, but then Rose Tyler was never like most people. The quiet of the forest was exactly what she needed at the moment and with the busy and more often than not dangerous life she lived, Rose found this reserve to be the only place she could really think and feel without other people trying to tell her what to do.
With each step Rose thought about the stressing aspects of her life and forced the emotions to leave her momentarily as she focused on the present and expelled the negative thoughts. This was not an uncommon occurrence for Rose as she often found herself sneaking off to be here whenever she felt stressed or over emotional at the oddest times. This visit was not disappointing as Rose immediately started feeling much better and enjoyed the peace that the Forrest had to offer. Of course, how could she have possibly realized that this would be the last time she was able to do so for quite some awhile.
A brown haired woman sat in a corner of what appeared to a sophisticated medical facility built in some kind of rock cavern. She seemed to be in deep thought as she stared transfixed at the light pink notebook she held in her hands.
"Subject is active, and heading towards the designated position."
The woman glanced up, the movement causing her shoulder length hair to fall slightly in front of her brown eyes as her mouth relaxed into a small frown.
"Proceed." Her affirmative was quiet as her soft voice echoed off the cave walls and even she heard the resignation in it. With a small sigh her head once more dipped down as she studied the worn notebook with a great interest, trying to ignore the young blonde runner in a Forrest being featured on all available screens.