Arcadia's Family (Book THREE)

Spyro

The Doctor:

Oh, why was she here? I had Arcadia's friend Courtney here, stood at my console with him, and SJ was texting someone from the chair and being a typical teenager, with Phi and Clara off with something else. "Oi! Give over! Cadia!"

"I got stuff to clean up with." She held up some paper towels to my confusion. "And I got these from the chemist."

She showed me some weird things on her wrists. "Vortex manipulators?"

"Travel sickness."

"Good." That made a little more sense. "Because I don't like people being sick in my TARDIS. No being sick. And no hanky-panky, Cadia, Courtney." For some reason my daughter blushed there. Who was she texting? Clara and Phi came back at that point, staring at me. "Sorry, that's the rules. Even for me."

My wife shook her head, her golden eyes skeptical. "Look, Courtney, Dove, you're not going to be needing those because you're not going to be doing any travelling. Doctor, will you just, just tell her?"

Wait, what was I supposed to be doing again? "Tell her what?"

"Tell her that she's special." Clara muttered through clenched teeth.

Seriously? "Have you gone bananas?"

"Do you really think I'm not special?" The young girl asked, now younger than my twins, a similar age to Jenny. Ish. "You can't just take me away like that. It's like you kicked a big hole in in the side of my life, even when Arc said you say it a lot. You really think it? I'm nothing? I'm not special?" Arc? Who was that?

"How'd you like to be the first woman on the moon?" I asked her after muttering to myself for a moment. "Is that special enough for you?"

Her face lit up a little. "Yeah, all right."

Yes, a trip to the moon, sounded good. "Okay. Now we can do something interesting."

I set us going, to Phi and Clara's protest, but we all got changed into spacesuits, stepping out into a storage area with cylindrical objects, either with the US flag, but others with Cyrillic writing. "This isn't the moon." Courtney pointed out. "Where are we?"

"On a recycled space shuttle, Dove." My wife replied, taking off her helmet. "2049, judging by that prototype version of the Bennett oscillator. "Where's the gravity coming from?"

"What are they?" Clara asked, looking at the things as we all took off our helmet in unison.

"About a hundred nuclear bombs." I replied as an alarm sounded through the airlock. "Ah. We're on our way to the moon. Check that. We're about to crash into it! Hold on! Hold on!"

We all grabbed hold of cargo nets, Courtney sticking to Cadia, and Phi to our daughter. It was great having her back fully, in with us all the time. But she was pretty angry right now. "Why didn't you just tell her you didn't mean it?"

The space shuttle belly-flopped onto the moon's surface and skidded to a halt. The three person shuttle crew entered the hold where we were next, lead by a woman. "Who the hell do you think you are?"

"Why have you got all these nuclear bombs?" 

"I'm not going to give you another chance."

Really? Stupid guns. "Oh? Well, you're just going to have to shoot us, then. Shoot the little girl first."

Courtney stared at me. "What?"

"Yes. She doesn't want to stand there watching us getting shot, does she? She'll be terrified. Girl first, then her teacher, and then my kids, my wife me. You'll have to spend a lot of time shooting ua because we will keep on regenerating." My twins and their friend sat on the deck behind a bomb, sulking. "In fact, I'm not entirely sure that I won't keep on regenerating for ever."