Rose was quickly pushed off course by the heaving crowd of panicking people. She tried to fight towards the Doctor, but soon lost sight of him as well. Before long she didn't even know where she was, so her chances of finding him were slim at best. By trying to fight the crowd, Rose had put herself in a precarious position – she was being pushed and knocked about in all directions by people trying to go the opposite way to her. One particularly rough shove sent her falling to the floor. She curled up as small as she could, trying to avoid all the feet trampling around by her.
Overhead the dragon circled menacingly, roaring and spitting fire at anything that dared to stand in its way, including rollercoasters and buildings. On the floor, trapped as she was, Rose could only watch it, hypnotized by its majestic beauty, even in all its violent, destructiveness. She didn't even realise that the crowd had dispersed, leaving her free to stand up. She just continued watching it circle above like a giant bird of prey, waiting for the perfect victim to pluck out of the crowd for dinner. It took the scream of a small child to snap her out of it.
Sitting up anxiously, Rose scrambled around on her hands and knees, looking for the source of the terrified shriek. A small girl was trapped between several metal poles where the dragon had crashed into a stand, knocking it over. Rose rushed towards her and began tugging on the bars, trying to pull them loose without risking bringing the entire precarious structure down on the little girl. She managed to make a gap just wide enough for a small child to clamber through.
"Come on sweetheart," Rose said, holding out her hand to the girl, "you've gotta climb through, think you can manage?"
The girl shook her head and backed away. The dragon roared overhead and Rose looked up. It was swooping round again, which gave Rose about thirty seconds before she and the girl were toast.
"Come on!" she said urgently, "You can do it! I know you can. I'll help you just climb through this gap."
The girl nervously stepped forwards. She was sweet, with little brown pigtails and a blue check dress, and obviously terrified. Rose had to get her out quickly or the dragon would notice them.
"You have to go quickly now," Rose said, "We need to get somewhere safe where the dragon can't get us, come on now!"
She tried to be firm and not panicked, but it was hard when she could feel the beat of the dragon's wings on the back of her neck, stronger each passing second.
"Come on!" she shouted, losing her cool. The little girl started crying, but moved faster, desperately trying to squeeze her way through the gap. Rose pulled on the bars trying to make it wider, but as she felt the hot breath of the dragon, she knew there was no way they were going to make it. The little girl screamed and started backing away frantically. Rose turned round to see the dragon open its mouth, a jet of flame issuing from it and heading towards her. As the world went oddly quiet, Rose thought to herself at least the last thing she would see was rather beautiful.
Jack and Amber struggled with the controls of the shuttle bus, but managed to get it working, and heading in the right direction. Jack was being overly familiar again, so Amber smacked him, just to let him know she still hadn't forgiven him, even though she was fairly resigned to the fact that this was no more his fault than it was hers.
Quinn stood in the room with them, loading his gun and straightening out his long white hair, pushing it out of his face and frowning with concentration.
"Quinn, do you know who runs this place?" Amber asked, turning to him.
"All sorts of people, there are loads of different companies…" he said.
"No one in charge overall?"
"Not that I know of," Quinn said with a shrug, "Though I guess there must be."
"What about the Games?" Jack asked, "Who is in charge of them?"
"Again, loads of different people, whoever has the copyrights to the films they are based on."
"Perfect," Amber said, "that make it virtually impossible to track whoever actually is in charge of this place."
"Does it really matter who's in charge?" Jack asked, "What matters to me is finding Rose and the Doctor and getting out of here."
"I'm just wondering how come time has changed again," Amber said, "if the people who ran this place were wiped out in the Time War then that would explain it, see what I'm getting at?"
"Yeah," Jack said, slamming on the brakes of the shuttle bus as they arrived back where they had left the Doctor and Rose.
"Is that a Dragon?" Amber asked, peering out of the windscreen.
"It would appear so," Quinn said.
Amber primed her gun ready to shoot down whatever chose to cross her path, and Quinn had his rocket launcher.
"I'll take the dragon," he said, "you two get any people out of there!"
"Sure," Jack said, looking at the scorched land, "the dragon is all yours."
Amber simply nodded and dragged Jack out of the shuttle bus behind her.
"I can't see anything," Jack said, peering through the smoke.
Overhead the Dragon swooped over them as they ducked behind a torn down popcorn stand. In the heat of the flames burning all around them, the kernels of popcorn were popping all over the place, making it very hard to concentrate on anything else that was going on.
"There's someone!" Amber pointed out a young girl who seemed to be trapped between a load of metal bars.
"Is that Rose?" Jack asked, pointing to a blonde woman who was crawling over to where the girl was, attempting to free her.
Amber closed here eyes for a moment and concentrated. When she opened them again she nodded.
"Yes, that's Rose, knee deep in trouble again," she said, looking up at the dragon that was circling around to take a shot at Rose and the girl.
"Let Quinn worry about the Dragon," Jack said, "let's get Rose and that kid out of there."
He grabbed her hand and dragged her across the landscape of collapsed buildings, rubble and fire, leading her towards where Rose was crouched before the girl, helping her out of her cage.
There were almost there when the dragon swooped overhead, flaming at the mouth, heading straight towards Rose. Jack had to push Amber to the floor to save her from being singed. They rolled sideways together, avoiding the pillar of fire issuing from the dragon's mouth, watching helplessly as it got closer and closer to their friend.
The Doctor ran onwards to the TARDIS, skidding to a halt outside the door and quickly dashing inside. Slamming the corridor door shut, keeping out any other hungry, angry creatures that fancied taking a bite, he rummaged around for his keys, then dashed to the TARDIS.
Once inside his trusty police box, her ran to the controls, trying to get some screens going to give him a clue as to what was going on outside. For once they all seemed to be malfunctioning – he could just about get a picture but they were hazy and jumped, like when the TV aerial wasn't quite adjusted properly.
He ran around the console, hitting random panels with his trusty hammer, twirling dials and knocking switches on and off. All this effort seemed to make little difference to the quality of the picture, though he did get an odd screen up that seemed to be flickering with a load of numbers. Leaving that for now, he readjusted his main monitor, resorting to smacking the side of it to get the clarity of picture he needed to see what on earth was going on.
The picture cleared to reveal a wasteland of burnt buildings and flame. Frantically the Doctor scanned round, looking for signs of life. The view settled on Rose just as the flame shot towards her, circling her completely. The Doctor yelled 'No!' at the screen, but it was too late, there was nothing he could do for her now.
The little girl screamed, and Rose closed her eyes, but she felt no pain, not heat, nothing. It took some courage to open them again, but she forced herself to take a look. The flames seemed to have stopped short, a meer foot in front of her, beating relentlessly against an invisible wall that was protecting her and the child from the fire.
The dragon beat its wings furiously as it grew in frustration, unable to burn its victims. It pushed against the invisible barrier for a good few seconds before turning away, roaring in anger. It circled higher and higher, while below Quinn took his aim.
The Rocket Launcher was raised above his head, pointing at the magestic creature. It seemed almost a shame to destroy something so beautiful and graceful, even if it had almost killed two people and laid waste to the entire area of the park it had settled in. After a moment's remorse, Quinn pulled the trigger.
The heat seeking rocket made a beeline straight for the beast. Quinn turned around, not bothering to cover his ears as it blew up behind him.
Rose shrieked and jammed her hands over her ears as the explosion went off. She felt like crying, this was wrong, all wrong, but she calmed her nerves and opened her eyes, for they had jammed shut again. Opening them didn't seem to make muchdifference as the air was thick with a cloud of dust kicked up by the explosion.
Rose looked around at the milky white air, trying not to breath too much, which was hard to manage when your heart was racing at the speed hers was. She could see nothing outside about a metre from her. The cloud played tricks, swirling into shapes, forming images, tricking her eyes into believing she could see things when she couldn't. Peering hard into the white cloud, Rose was convinced for a second she saw the form of a large dog, or wolf. She jumped backwards, trying to avoid her attacker, but the cloud simply swirled and changed again, but not before the image of the snarling wolf became ingrained on her memory. Why was that image, those words following her everywhere? In her slightly hysterical state, an overwhelming sense of fear began to take over, and Rose nearly cried again. However, the little girl had climbed from between the bars she had been trapped in, and slipped her dainty hand into Rose's. As she did so, everything in Rose's head seemed to clear.
It was just her imagination, nothing more, her brain was preconditioned to want to see a Bad Wolf during an adventure, and her subconscious had formed the image from the dust. Yeah.
As the dust settled Rose breathed a sigh of relief. She could go and find the Doctor now, and she planned to give him a really big hug when she did, if he knew what it was for or not. She didn't need to find her other friends - she could just about make out Amber holding out her hand, projecting the invisible field of protection, and Jack lying beside her, waving and grinning like an idiot. Rose stood up and went to join them, taking the girl with her.
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