it's hunting season urbanized i / wish i could be there
At oh-dark-thirty on a quiet Saturday morning, when even Chicago is half-asleep, the bars emptied out and the graveyard shift still hours from its finish, two Time Agents teleport into the lobby of the Kashtta Tower in a molten flare of light.One of them, with all the air and flamboyance of a king, releases his companion's hand and steps forward,
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"Attention... Torchwood employees."
For a second, Gwen's seeing explosion after explosion tearing through her city, she's cocking a gun and pointing at someone's head... For just a heartbeat, Tosh is staring at schematics and readouts, Tosh is bleeding and it won't stop...
The voice continues, and they snap back to reality. This universe, here and now, and that's Jack's voice.
The two of them tumble out of their rooms almost at the same time, Tosh in a nightgown and slippers, Gwen barefoot in pyjama pants and a loose T-shirt, both with guns in hand. "Gwen-"
"I know." Gwen swallows hard, adjusts her grip on her gun, and starts down the hall ahead of Tosh. "Just... stay behind me. And be careful." You've got something very angry floating around in your subconscious with an agenda of its own...
They come out at the top of the stairs, and Gwen levels her gun at the first person she notices - which is Jack. She notices Hart a half-second later, and swings her gun to train it on him, but when she starts really looking at Jack, he doesn't look right. The coat's gone, replaced by a black leather duster, and... Maybe if she just talks to him, maybe...
"Jack?" She knows he won't answer the way she wants, but she has to ask anyway.
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"John Thane, Time Agency," he says, and even with a psychic rating hovering down around naught-over-null, he pushes meaning into the paper rather than letting it passive-scan. He eyes them, making it very clear that he's taken into account everything they have on them - not a difficult task, given that they're not exactly dressed in BDUs. "You can call me sir, Instagur, or Agent Thane. And I suppose you would be Torchwood."
His hands are in his pockets, and he lets one side of his coat slide back over his thigh where the larger and more impressive of the guns Hart loaned him rests. Enough to give just a whispered hint of what's in store if they decide not to play along.
"Very nice to meet you."
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She could use Sam right about now. Even Suzie, Suzie would be able to see... something. Though she's sure the rest of the team will be down before long, because none of them could have slept through that...
"And how can we help you, Agent Thane?" Gwen asks, her voice gone cold, a bit of an edge to the name. Tosh, following just behind Gwen and eying both of them in obvious deep suspicion, takes a quick stock of the various technology they have on them, at least the bits of it she can pick up with her Rift ability. It's not an encouraging array, compared to what Torchwood has on hand at the moment.
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He turns back, the smile that twisted one edge of his mouth hardening into something which is more threat than amusement. "Your friend can stand there," he says, pointing to a corner of the balcony which is both far away from him and Hart and offers each of them a clear line of fire. "Wouldn't want her getting any ideas about what constitutes public electronic property. As for you, I'm guessing Gwen Cooper. Your reputation precedes you."
The expression hasn't changed. He looks like he's considering, in exacting detail, how to slip something through her ribs and into the heart without too severely damaging the skin and breasts.
"Torchwood is under suspicion for collaborating with one and possibly more war criminals. We're willing to accept your full cooperation in bringing them to custody as evidence that you were unwitting accessories, but you are walking a very fine line."
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Gwen freezes as he focuses on Tosh, her expression darkening just a little. She glances back to Tosh and nods to her slightly, glancing back up to the balcony. "Go on. It's alright." It's so far from alright, but what else is she supposed to do?
Tosh bites her lip and moves back to where he indicated - at least here, she can keep an eye on anyone coming toward the stairs, and warn them before they actually reach them.
Gwen continues the rest of the way down the stairs and toward Thane, stopping a few metres from him and doing her best to ignore the way he's looking at her. "War crimes? You have got to be joking."
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"This is a face that doesn't joke, puppy," he says. "Not on the first date, anyway. Kraxe telíma," he mentions over his shoulder to Hart. Such pretty eyes. "And you're not in a position to dictate this situation. We only give so many free passes before you get your head over the ananchronism and learn what a more civilized time already knows." He steps forward, idly closing another metre between them. "You don't question the Agency."
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Even as she says it, she's running through everything she saw Jack do to those angels on the CCTV, how quickly he moved when he dislocated Tosh's arms, what this man could do to her if he wants to... She manages to say it without looking away from his face, though, and with hardly a tremor in her voice.
Hart shifts his weight just a little, watching intently.
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It's not the good kind of silence. It's the kind you don't want to get when you call up the technicians at the local nuclear silo, and it's punctuated by Thane's lips pulling up into something which it would be tempting to read as a reassuring smile.
"I think you're operating under a misconception," he says, voice perfectly even. This has gone beyond a fun visit in the middle of the night when he and Hart are fucked-out and looking for diversions. This is the job now, and he can play any one of ten thousand angles. "The Time Agency's jurisdiction extends as far as her agents. You can take it up with a higher authority, but at the moment, I'm the highest one you've got. What happens is this: we require your full cooperation. You give it. If you, as leader of your organization, refuse it-"
Thane is one fast fucking draw.
The gun is up in his right hand, one shot pressed off, passed to his left, raised to level directly at Toshiko's heart without once pausing in its arc. The shot, a hard compression wave, caches Gwen in the stomach. It has no penetrative force, but it would be enough to fracture ribs were that where it landed. It's the gutpunch from Hell, and she's going to be tender there for days.
"Then under the jurisdiction of the Agency, we depose you," he says, voice still perfectly pleasant, gun not wavering from its position fixed on Tosh. He raises his right hand, beckoning Hart over. "Now, usually depositions are immediate and terminal, but you're new. You'll learn. I have faith in you."
He steps forward.
"We'll try this again. The Agency requests your cooperation in the apprehension of a war criminal. What's your final answer? And keep in mind that pride goeth before some very unpleasant things, Gwen Cooper."
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Hart saunters over at Thane's gesture, studying Gwen with a very satisfied smirk. Gwen still hasn't quite caught her breath, is still trying not to cry from the pain, but she glances back up at the balcony and catches Tosh's eye, and Tosh has been through enough already without this. She looks back to Thane and gets to her feet again, trying hard to pretend it doesn't hurt, though it shows anyway.
"What do you need, Agent Thane?"
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"Thank you." The worst part is, his voice is so sincere. His right hand is making its way to the small of Hart's back, a never-so-subtle You were right. They ARE a great deal of fun. Might almost be useful, to boot. "A Time Lord. Named the Doctor. I hear he got involved in the politics here - you're lucky to be standing."
Now his voice is sympathetic, kind - oh, he's on their side. He just knows better than them. Knows when to make a stand. That's him, all over.
"There was a war. A Time War. Time Lord practices listed entire worlds, entire civilizations, as acceptable collateral to their ultimate aim... of genocide."
It's one spin to put on it. And Thane is very good at spin.
"We estimate casualties to be in numbers you'd need scientific notation to get a grip on. Where I come from, that counts as a war crime. And because of the unique nature of the Time Lords and the damage they did, the Time Agency is perhaps the only organization capable of recognizing and addressing it."
He watches her eyes, waiting for that to sink in.
"We need to locate, detain, and contain him. And we've been informed by a very good source-" A very good, very dead angelic source whom Hart and Torchwood both are probably more than glad to be rid of- "that Torchwood numbers among his associates."
You can see why we came in with guns, his voice implies. We regret to inform you that you can't be trusted. But we're extending the trust we can, to you. We're making the effort.
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"I hope you don't expect us to be able to call him and have him come running. The Doctor's a bit like a cat, and we can't say where he is or what he's doing when he's not here."
She pauses, and glances over to the PA system. "Do you mind if I call my second in command? I'd prefer if he were here for this conversation." God, she needs Sam right now. Hates to drag him or any of them into this, but he's obviously going to be anyway, and she needs to know how much she can believe this man. Hart, she's certain, is a pathological liar, but Thane...
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See? He can be perfectly pleasant so long as you're on his side. Or at least he can keep the venom masked so well that you'd never know it was there, and remember him fondly for years after the fact... and in the end, isn't that same enough?
He nods to her question. "Of course. Anyone you need." They're Time Agents, and no one here has the resources to take them on. Besides, if what Hart has told him about Torchwood is true... well, Thane has the feeling that they won't be overeager to fight.
As a gesture of goodwill, he holsters his weapon. What that's supposed to mean when he's fairly sure that he could kill everyone in the room and then some before Torchwood could get off a shot even starting with his gun put down...
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She turns away to walk back to the PA controls behind the receptionist's desk, and endeavours to sound calm as she hits the button and says, "Sam, I could use you in the lobby now, please." She pauses just a half-second, and then releases the button, turning back toward the Time Agents, moves a bit toward them so she'll have a clear view up the stairs when Sam shows up.
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Sam glances to Gwen, not-Jack, Hart... He can assume why Gwen needed him, and there's only the slightest flicker of expression as his gaze swings back to Thane. He knew he recognized that voice, but something about it was wrong. This isn't quite an explanation, but he gets the feeling it's the beginning of one. His jaw tightens, just a little, and he starts down the stairs to meet Gwen.
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Meanwhile, two people who actually are members of Torchwood have been making their way down as well. Suzie's armed and making her way to the lobby, but the moment she sees Thane, she freezes. She knows him, and the instant of recognition is very, very plain.
And Shepherd Book is coming down as well. Unarmed, every inch the man of peace, but to a trained eye, there's something almost too deliberately harmless in the way he moves, a thin veneer covering something far more dangerous; something that's sizing these two intruders up with no small amount of displeasure.
They carry themselves like something dangerous, and his instincts label them Operatives before he can remind himself it's a different 'verse. Time Agency, said the PA broadcast. Whatever that means, whatever authority these two have, they're capable of killing everyone in this room. Possibly even him, given there are two of them, and all the training in the world doesn't make him immune to gunfire.
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Thane watches them all come down without the slightest hint of threat in his posture of demeanor. A few of them might be able to do some damage - the lion in with the sheep, especially, though that's not referring to the literal lion, there. (And isn't that just beautiful. Though he'd make for quite the trophy if Torchwood tried to cross them.) There's the girl who looks like she might know him, more than this usual business of knowing Harkness, but of them...
A-ha! He looks back to Hart, tone ever-so-easy. "The plain one," he says casually, sticking to Ransham, "not too big, not too small, with puss at his knee. If it isn't Little Sister to Harkness' Big Brother, I owe you ten anything."
And Little Sister was there. He was there when Harkness opened up the paradox and left Thane buried back under debris in his own mind for God knows how long. But Thane smiles at him just like everyone else, while rage and a vicious hate coil over each other in his mind.
"This is more like a welcome," he says. "If I'm right you shake hands in this region, have I misremembered?" He steps forward, senses overalert, extending one hand. Get in close enough and he can get a preliminary base for how someone carries themselves, their posture, their composure and to some extent composition. You need that base in order to take them apart. "Instagur John Thane, Time Agency." And oh, he's watching for the slightest hint of recognition.
To a certain observer, he hasn't got much of a shadow. There's something tar-black and dark moving very close to him, but it's almost completely integrated. That's until one notices the thing behind him.
As shadows go, it's not spectacular. It's human-sized and mostly human-shaped, indistinct and part-formless, though it's the sort of formlessness one would get were someone to tame them and wrap them in a straightjacket and keep pulling and distorting the cloth until it covered the head.
The second shadow doesn't make a sound, but it's struggling.
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