The Blonde Girl
By Lumendea
Chapter Ten: Mona Lisa's Revenge: Too Much Curiosity
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, Torchwood or the Sarah Jane Adventures because if I did this would probably be canon.
…..
Ordered chaos was now a phrase that made more sense to Rose as both museum security and metro police swarmed the room. Additionally, there was a third group that had a French flag on their shoulders. Rose assumed they were from the French embassy. Rose and her classmates were all quickly escorted to the main round hall of the museum where they were witness to even more police arriving along with crime scene specialists. The buzz of people talking filled the room and echoed about down the empty corridors.
Sitting down on a bench at the side of the main hall, Rose calmly watched everyone who was darting about and listened to the theories of her classmates. She chuckled as Mr. Harding yelled to an officer that the French would have his head and that he had told the board that he needed better security. Mr. Edwards was speaking with another officer and assuring them that the children hadn't seen anything strange, but had been escorted the whole time by Ms. Trupp or Mr. Harding.
She smiled when Sharon dropped down next to her and rested her hand on her chin with a thoughtful expression. Already she could hear the wheels turning in her friend's head.
"This is very strange," Sharon whispered to her. "I overheard the police, and there was some kind of energy spike that knocked out all the cameras in the museum. They say it is messing with all the normal equipment. They've got no video from the Mona Lisa room, none at all."
"Sharon," Rose said in a warning tone. "Don't."
"But this is interesting and weird," Sharon argued. Her brown eyes were sparkling with excitement and curiosity, and she was all but vibrating on the bench.
"Maybe the thief had a disrupter of some kind," Rose replied with a shrug. "I mean it is a museum, so there was a lot of time for them to case the area." Her eyes jumped up to a nearby camera thoughtfully. She couldn't deny that it was weird.
"But the painting!" Sharon said. She glanced around and lowered her voice. "Why would the thief hang an oil painting of the assistant in place of the Mona Lisa? And if you haven't noticed Ms. Trupp hasn't shown up since."
"Maybe to frame her or maybe she did it," Shareen offered as she joined them, sitting down on Rose's other side. "Course where do you sell the Mona Lisa?" Shareen questioned with a frown. "With it being so famous and all?"
"Oh, I bet there are a lot of very rich people who would be willing to buy it, even if they could never let anyone see it," Rose answered. "Or could only show it to other people who have art stolen. Or maybe it was an Italian nationalist who wants to see the painting back in Italy."
"It was an impressive painting of Ms. Trupp." Sharon looked towards the stairs leading to the main gallery and bit her bottom lip thoughtfully. "Someone went to a lot of effort on it."
"Yeah," Rose agreed slowly. "The background was the same as the Mona Lisa." She frowned even more and tried to envision the strange painting that they'd seen. "And it even had ageing cracks in it and not ones caused by heat. They looked like real age cracks."
"How do you know that?" Shareen asked with interest.
"I thought about using some techniques to give Lumen an aged look," Rose replied. "But I decided not to since it takes a lot of time and they look artificial. Those looked like natural age cracks rather than the one done with modern techniques." She licked her lips and tapped her fingers together in thought. Rose couldn't help it, her mind was spinning, and excitement was churning in her stomach. "A lot of things about that painting doesn't make sense. She was wearing the same outfit in the painting as she was wearing today, but oil paintings take months to dry. Remember how long mine took?"
"Course," Shareen said with a grimace. "The whole estate smelled of oil fumes for weeks."
"I see," Sharon said with a grin, "So for the painting to have been accurate like that then it must have been Ms. Trupp who did it because she'd know what to wear today."
"But why bother," Rose pointed out. "I mean there is no point to doing that. If you're going to steal a famous and heavily guarded painting then why stop to hang up a new one?"
"Maybe we should go have another look," Sharon suggested with a sly grin.
"No," Rose said. She gave Sharon a stern look. "It doesn't concern us, and I doubt the police will appreciate meddlers." When Sharon rolled her eyes, Rose grit her teeth. "There are French representatives here, Sharon!"
Sharon ignored her and jumped up from the bench with an extra spring in her step. Groaning, Rose watched her friend go over to Mr. Edwards and tell him that she needed the loo. Shareen smiled and followed before turning to give Rose a meaningful look. Sighing, Rose stood and joined her friends as they moved into one of the side corridors of the museum. It seemed that peer pressure was alive and well in her life. Rose followed them towards the loo, past the main security guards, and into a small room. Shareen pulled the map out of her bag and waved it in front of Rose.
"Never turn down a freebie Rose," Shareen told Rose happily. "This will help us get around the police."
"And the cameras are all still down," Sharon added with an excited squeak. "I love this; we're right in the middle of the crime of the century."
"Cool it, Nancy Drew," Rose said. "The painting and the culprit are probably long gone by now so don't get ahead of yourself."
Slowly, the trio worked their way through the maze of the museum and back towards the Mona Lisa room. In order to check for guards and police, Sharon had pulled a compact mirror from her bag and was using it to check around every corner. Due to the layout, this only worked about half the time and resulted in Rose rolling her eyes frequently. Rose sighed again softly as her friends continued to creep through the museum taking slow, careful steps while Rose just calmly walked behind. They entered another large gallery, and Rose frowned as she looked around.
"Wait," Rose said.
"What?" Sharon asked, giving Rose a confused look.
"Where are all the guards and police," Rose asked her. "The Mona Lisa has been stolen, but we haven't seen anyone for at least ten minutes. Forensics should be all over this place." Rose stepped away from her friends and looked around the room, walking calmly into the centre of it. "I'm missing something," Rose whispered to herself. "Something has changed here, and something is wrong, but what is it."
Then she saw it, and her jaw dropped just as her heart started racing. Turning to her friends, she grabbed their hands and pulled them towards the door. "We are leaving now!" Rose hissed loudly.
"But Rose," Sharon whined. "If something strange is happening I want to know what it is."
"No," Rose said sharply. "We are getting out of this museum now." She released their hands and turned to look at them. "Please trust me now like you did that day under Spellman's," Rose pleaded.
Her two friends glanced at each other, but fell silent and followed Rose out the door. Taking in slow breathes, Rose focused on navigating their way out and keeping her fear under control. Now she was carefully looking around the corner, even if she wasn't sure what she was looking for. Glancing at the paintings they passed, she shivered, and she felt sicker by the minute. In many paintings were new figures that hadn't been there before, men and women in police uniforms and the forensic teams. They were standing in the landscapes and portraits as if they had been painted out of the real world and into each painting, but their shocked and frightened expressions were what scared Rose the most. She touched the pendant that the Doctor had given her three years ago and took a deep breath as they entered the main hall.
Her friends beat her to the door and tugged on it, but the door didn't move. "Rose," Sharon cried out, "The main doors are sealed."
Rushing up to the doors, Rose pushed hard on them, but Sharon was right. The doors were sealed, and they were now trapped inside the museum.
"We can wait here, right Rose. The police will find us and let us out?" Shareen asked, turning to her friend. "Rose you look very pale."
"What are you children doing here?" Mr. Harding shouted. Rose spun around to find the man marching towards them from the shop, his face red with anger. "The police are investigating the theft and don't need you getting in the way! This is a very important art theft!"
"This is more than an art theft," Rose told Harding in a low tone. "And it is much more dangerous."
"You had better believe it," a smooth, elegant voice with a French accent said from behind them.
Spinning, Rose looked up at the staircase and gasped in alarm and shock. There standing at the top of the grand staircase was a woman dressed in the same Renaissance clothing as the Mona Lisa, with long brown hair and holding a pistol in her hand, pointing it right at Mr. Harding.
"Who are you?" Harding asked, moving forward and seemingly not noticing the gun.
The woman raised her… well actually Rose noticed that she did not have eyebrows or eyelashes, but she gave Harding a withering look. "I thought you were an art expert," the woman said. She calmly walked down the steps towards them and gave Harding a strange look. "I am the Mona Lisa," she announced with an enigmatic smile.
They were all silent as they stared at her until Harding snorted and asked, "No really, who are you?"
"I am the Mona Lisa," she told him with a frown of displeasure. "You cannot fake this kind of class."
"You can't be the Mona Lisa," Rose calmly announced looking her over carefully. "You must be some kind of alien manifestation of the painting." Rose was aware that her friends and Harding turned to look at her with open mouths while the Mona Lisa stepped closer to Rose, pointing the pistol at her.
"And why is that little girl," the woman demanded.
"On Earth women in five-hundred-year-old paintings don't just leave their frames and put someone else in them," Rose replied with a frown. "You put Ms. Trupp into the painting didn't you?" Rose grimaced as the pieces all came together. "She's become the painting by Leonardo da Vinci."
"Leo never would have painted her," Mona Lisa snapped. "He was so determined to paint me that he even borrowed oils from his weirdo neighbour to start me, but that whale of a woman, not a chance."
"So you're out of your frame?" Rose raised her chin and considered the pistol with a hint of concern. It looked real enough to her, but the Mona Lisa painting certainly hadn't had a pistol in it so where had she gotten it from? "What is it you want?"
Mona Lisa smiled down at Rose, not a friendly smile at all as her eyes grew cold. "I've spent five centuries hanging on a wall little girl. I think that it is time for me to have a little fun." She pointed the gun back at Rose and her friends. "And I think I'll start with some target practice."
"Run!" Rose shouted. She pulled Sharon's hand and darting to the side of the room for a corridor.
Two shots followed them, hitting the walls and echoing loudly in the room along with the Mona Lisa's laughter as the three girls rushed out of the main hall. Mr. Harding gaped at the display for a moment before the Mona Lisa turned to him and smirked.
"It's just you and me now."