Mission T05: Another Time Lord
Title says it all. There is another Time Lord, one that has not been hiding their DNA and yet still escaped the Doctor's attention.
A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum was founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts in italics taken from Another Time Lord by potterfreak1.618.
-oOo-
Because their first stop in the story would be Roald Dahl Plass Tasmin had chosen for them the disguise of normal people. Emma's argument that lots of aliens look like normal people got the reply: "Then what's the point of disguising ourselves as such an alien?" Emma had shaken her head in disbelief and followed her partner through the portal.
Emma turned to look at Jack, who was running across the Plass crouched over.
"What's he doing that for?" Tasmin wondered.
"Perhaps his trying to dodge the Sue."
"That didn't help much. He just ran into her head first."
Jack apologized profusely to the girl and helped her to her feet.
"I don't know what profusely means," Emma said, "but that looks like uncharacteristic grovelling. Jack just has to bat his eyelashes and all is forgiven."
"I'm sure there are moments when that doesn't work."
"C'mon. No one is immune to the charm of Captain Jack Harkness."
"She is." Tasmin gave a light nod in the direction of the Sue who walked away listening to the music on her MP3 player.
"That should be a charge in itself." Emma lifted the flap of her shoulder bag and got her notepad.
Jack followed the girl to ask her what music she was listening to.
The girl had the oddest expression on her face. The look she gave Jack was one of superiority, mischief, confusion, and maybe a little pity.
"Superiority is like so." Emma made a face. "Mischief would be like so." She tried on a smirk. "This would be confusion, and this is pity."
"That's actually contempt."
"And when you try that all at once you get ..." Emma screwed up her face. "A pain in your eyebrows. It's not possible to look mischievous and confused at the same time."
The Sue said the music she was listening to was Strontium Goat. Which was reason enough for Jack to knock her unconscious.
"That bad a band?" Emma asked.
"It's actually quite popular in the Thursday Next Continuum."
"What's it doing in this continuum then?"
"Let's find out."
“Jack, what the hell was that for?” Gwen shouted at him, appalled.
But Jack was worried. What the hell was this girl? She hadn’t even looked scared when he had grabbed her arm. But what was even scarier; she had music from a band that didn’t exist for another 29 centuries.
Tasmin huffed. "I wouldn't look scared either when a stranger grabbed my arm. I'd look annoyed and tell him to take his hand off me. Lest he never wanted to get it back at all."
Emma smirked. "And if it were Jack who'd lay a hand on you you'd swoon rather than look scared."
"Uh, yeah. In this case everything happened so swiftly. Jack grabbed her arm, turned her around and knocked her out. She didn't have time to get scared enough to wipe her look of surprise or annoyance of her face."
"Right. Let's see if we can travel down the invisible lift with Gwen and Jack." Emma started to run across the Plass to catch up with the two.
Tasmin quickly ran after her.
It was crowded on the stepping stone with the five of them. Jack carried the Sue over his shoulder, Gwen continued to shout at him for knocking down a girl oblivious that Jack was containing himself not to knock her out too, and Tasmin and Emma were trying not to get in the way.
"At least he didn't knock her up," Emma joked.
"The fic is still young," Tasmin replied. "Anything could happen."
"I'd like Gwen to stop shouting to happen." Emma stuck a finger in each ear to keep the noise level down.
Gwen continued shouting while she explained to Owen what she had seen happen. Jack took the Sue to the cells and locked her up.
He found a chair and placed it in front of the window of the girl’s cell and waited for her to wake up, deep in thought.
"Now would have been a good time for us to disguise ourselves as Weevils," Emma said. "We could have waited in the cell next door."
The agents had climbed up the stairs to Tosh's workstation where they joined the rest of the Team in looking at the CCTV footage of the cell block.
Tasmin didn't take her eyes off the screen to reply: "Yeah, sure."
Emma turned around and sat on the desk. She watched Gwen tell the others what had happened. By this time Gwen had stopped shouting. When Gwen was done explaining, or rather had finished expressing she didn't have a clue, the Sue in the cell woke up and the verbal pingpong between her and Jack started.
“What do you know about Strontium Goat?” she asked. “This is the 21st century, is it not?”
“Yes, it is. And I want to know how you got music from a band that doesn’t even exist until the 50th century.”
“First tell me how you know about the 50th century,” countered the girl.
That comment rebuffed Jack completely. He felt forced to tell her he was from the fifty-first century.
Tasmin grabbed Emma's bag and pulled the notepad and pen from it. She scribbled down a charge.
The Sue then said she was in the twenty-first century because she needed the Rift.
"The Rift already existed in the nineteenth century. I'm sure it will exist still at a later time," Tasmin said.
"There's evidence in canon that the Rift existed long before that."
"Still, it explains why she is in Cardiff, not why she's in the twenty-first century."
“Wait, you needed the rift? What would you need the rift for?” Jack’s eyes widened. “Unless… are you a time lord?”
"That explains it! Bilis Manger was a Time Lord not a minion of the Beast," Emma said.
"Technically, Manger needed the Rift to open."
"Can't need the Rift to open without needing the Rift. Besides, my point was there are plenty more undesirables that need the Rift than just Time Lords. Do I need to remind anyone of the Gelth? Or Margaret the Slitheen?"
"The Sue would need reminding."
The Sue got furious when Jack said he had travelled with the Doctor. She started meditating and a moment later the TARDIS appeared in the Hub near the water feature. Martha and the Doctor got out.
"Error the first," Tasmin said glaring down at the Doctor past the computer. "The Doctor always checks his monitors first. As soon as he'd see he was at Torchwood he'd try to get out again. He doesn't like Torchwood."
Jack walked up to the Doctor and gave him a hug.
“Doctor! It is you, isn’t it? I can see you’ve regenerated. Nice body.”
“Jack, you’re dead. Really. You were killed by the Daleks.”
"Error the second. The Doctor knows Jack has survived the Daleks."
"Many fans like to think that the Doctor didn't know because that would mean he had left Jack on purpose and that would make him a jerk."
"There's plenty of evidence during season two and three to back the suggestion that the Doctor is a jerk. Are fans denying that too?"
Emma shrugged. "You're the one who said that fans only remember the parts of canon that are convenient to them."
“Where’s Rose?”
The Doctor still didn’t answer. Jack stared at him in disbelief, and then…
Both agents quickly ducked down. Cautiously they peered around the equipment underneath Tosh's workstation to assess the state of canon after Jack had punched the Doctor. The Doctor was looking distinctly lopsided and Jack's hair had changed colour.
"When are these 'fans' going to learn that Jack does not hit the Doctor; he hits on the Doctor?" Emma yanked the notepad and pen from Tasmin's hands and started scribbling furiously.
"You should try to make the charges legible at least," Tasmin said looking over her partner's shoulder. "We don't want to charge the Sue with the wrong offences."
"Don't worry. I'm not forgetting what I wrote. Even if I can't read it." Emma put a few keywords in capitals behind each line. "Seriously, though," she said holding the pad to her chest. "All these stories where Jack punches the Doctor because Rose is dead make me wonder how many people actually watched Parting of the Ways. He, A, loves them both, and, B, knows that the Doctor sent away Rose so that she would be safe. If anything: Jack should have drawn the conclusion that the Doctor never went back to pick up Rose."
"Yes, but that would require these fans to actually put themselves in Jack's position. And you can see over there what a poor job they make of that." Tasmin nodded down towards the crowd gathered around the water feature.
The Doctor had scrambled up. He had come to Torchwood on a hunch that there was a Time Lord, but he shrugged it off on the grounds that that was impossible.
"So is Jack." Emma sniggered.
“It’s not impossible, Doctor. Why couldn’t one survive? Why can’t I be here?”
"Time Lords that hide themselves from other Time Lords are acceptable." Tasmin cocked her head. "It's canon. Time Lords that just went undetected are not."
"And which is this?"
"I don't know yet. She didn't seem to be particularly hiding so far. You should write her up, though, for just walking out of her cell."
Emma nodded her approval and made the note.
The Doctor and the Sue stared at each other. The Doctor was nearly dumbfounded. Stuttering he asked for an explanation.
“How? How’d you escape. I cut off the time vortex so no Daleks could escape.” And no time lords, he thought to himself.
“I told you, I always survive. I just destroyed one of the barriers that you placed on the vortex and escaped to this planet.”
"Bit of a selfish bitch," Emma said. "Why didn't she try to rescue anyone from her species?"
"Stupid bitch too. Daleks could have escaped through that hole in the perimeter too, and the Time War would have gone on."
“They always said you were a genius. No wonder they were all jealous of you. You were the only one to survive out of all of the time lords…” he barely finished.
"Before all this stupidity made his brain implode." Tasmin glared down. "It was genius to come up with a plan that would end the Time War once and for all. It's not genius to disable that plan. At least not when you're fighting on the same side."
"But she's Mary Sue. She put the idiot in Idiot Savant."
Tasmin gave her partner a puzzled look then chuckled lightly. "I guess you are right about that."
The Sue said another Time Lord had escaped.
"She did rescue another one of them after all," Emma noted.
"That's two Time Lords that went undetected by the Doctor," Tasmin noted.
“Who?” he croaked finally.
“The Master,” she said softly, watching his reaction intently.
"She does have poor choice in friends, however."
The party of eight started to ascend the stairs. Tasmin and Emma quickly hid in the kitchenette.
After the Doctor and the Sue entered Jack's office he sent his Team away. They went down the stairs and gathered around a coffee pot to eavesdrop on the conversation in Jack's office. Tasmin and Emma snuck closer to the office to listen in. Jack had left the door open.
“So, uh, who’s the master? Is he like your long-lost cousin or something?” asked Jack.
"Is Jack like, you know, a Valley-girl?" Emma asked.
"No, and neither are you. Don't talk as one."
The Sue laughed hysterically. Both agents found her cackling grating, but understood it was necessary for the Sue to show she was evil.
“The Master isn’t his cousin, he’s his brother,” she answered their wordless question breathlessly.
Tasmin and Emma looked at each other. Emma raised her eyebrows.
Tasmin shrugged. "They knew each other as children, but I think it would have been played out in canon if they had been brothers."
"Twin brothers even."
The Sue and the Doctor went on to list the many of the Sue's accomplishments. Rolling her eyes Emma took notes of the fact she beat the Doctor and the Master at graduation, was a prodigy, and had found a way to slow down her ageing, which effectively made her look, and act, like a twelve-year-old.
Wow, thought Jack, that girl is annoying.
"Is that a brief stint of personality trying to break through?" Emma asked cautiously.
"Shh, she's going to explain how she managed to fool the Doctor into thinking she was dead."
"That will probably have something to do with how brilliant she is."
"Probably, yeah."
“I wasn’t hiding Doctor. I didn’t really think that there was any point.”
"That's just blatant denial of canon. And it doesn't explain one bit how the Doctor did not sense her."
"Shh."
Then she added thoughtfully, “I don’t even know if I care that you destroyed it. They all hated me. They were jealous. They couldn’t stand me being perfect at everything. I think I’m glad they’re gone…”
"Oh, did the poor woobies hate you for being pwufect? That is so sad." Emma made a pouting face. "Let me give you a hug for comfort."
"I'd like to give her something else." Tasmin pulled both her guns from her duffelbag and entered Jack's office.
Emma quickly scrambled up and went after her.
"Eilonwy. We're Protectors of the Plot Continuum and we're here to charge you with crimes against fanfiction and against the continua of Doctor Who and Torchwood in particular."
The Sue cackled madly again. "You can't charge me. You have no power over me."
Tasmin shot the Sue between the eyes with her Beretta. The Sue fell down on the floor, narrowly missing Jack's desk.
"Tasmin!" Emma shouted out in horror.
"No!" the Doctor cried out. He dropped on his knees and gathered the Sue up in his arms.
"You should charge the Sue before you shoot her. Not the other way 'round."
"She'll regenerate."
"That's no excuse. Though an interesting topic for an ethical debate: can a person be held responsible for crimes committed in a previous incarnation?"
"I think you can find some arguments on that topic among Hindu philosophers. In any case: in PPC there is jurisprudence we can. In the form of killing all the incarnations of a Stu or Sue Time Lord."
"Yeah, but only after they have been charged."
Tasmin shrugged. The Sue regenerated, again into a twelve year old girl. Emma studied the charge sheet to determine in which order she wanted to charge the Sue.
"What did you do that for?" the Sue snapped at Tasmin.
"To show that I do have power over you. Emma has power over you too." Tasmin smiled measly at the Sue. "Emma?"
"Yeah, I have the power of Santa Claus. I've made a list; I've checked it twice. And you, dear Sue, haven't been nice," Emma sang to tune. "First of all, we charge you with being a Mary Sue: you are impervious to Jack's charm; you ask a question of the I-asked-you-first variety which Jack for some reason feels compelled to answer; you just walk out of one of Torchwood's holding cells; you are the smartest Time Lord ever and everyone hates you. And that was before you sabotaged the Doctor's war strategy.
"Second, we charge you with contrived plot devices. To use the Rift you need to be in Cardiff, not in the twenty-first century. Plus it's not just Time Lords that need the Rift for something or other. Even if this story were set just after Day One Jack would still know that. He would not put two and two together and come up with eleven.
"Third, we charge you with a disregard for canon. Time Lords can sense each other unless they are in some sort of hiding. Yet, you can sense the Master, who is hiding, but can't sense the Doctor, who isn't hiding. Further, the Doctor knows Jack has survived the Game Station."
"Yeah, I did." The Doctor looked up at Jack. "I knew you had. You shouldn't have, but you did." He dropped the Sue. "It was Rose."
"Coming to Rose," Emma continues. "Jack knows the Doctor would do anything to take care of Rose. He would not demand an explanation from the Doctor about her whereabouts or well-being, and he most certainly would not hit the Doctor."
"I would hit on the Doctor," Jack added with a cheeky grin.
"That's what I said." Emma winked at him.
"Oh, c'mon. It's fanfiction. It's part of the point to rewrite the bits of canon you don't like."
"Yes, but could you at least show yourself to be a fan of the material? And not change the personalities of the canon characters. I've already mentioned a few points why Jack wasn't himself. I'd like to add that Jack also does not tell his prisoners that he is from the fifty-first century. Particularly not when that isn't relevant for the interrogation."
"It was relevant. It was to make me talk."
Tasmin huffed. "Jack knows torture techniques. He has ways of making you sing like a nightingale. He'd use them long before he'd tell you where he picked up the skills."
"Further, you show yourself not to be a fan of Gwen by having her shout a lot."
"Yeah, well, Gwen."
"Yeah, well, doesn't matter. Treat the characters with respect or don't use them in the story."
The Sue rolled her eyes. "Anything else?"
Emma looked over the page of her notepad. "Not from me."
"One from me: we charge you with listening to fiftieth century music on a twenty-first century music player."
"What?"
"The MP3 format has been around for nearly thirty years, but do you really think it will be around for another thirty centuries?"
"Uh, I converted the music so I would blend in in the twenty-first century?"
"It would only have to look the same, not be the same."
"I have another one: if you need to add 'obviously' to describe someone's mindset, it wasn't obvious that they had that mindset."
"Done?" Tasmin grinned at the Sue.
"Done."
"Eilonwy. You have been charged. For these crimes you are sentenced to death. And we have the power and the means to execute you." Tasmin shot the Sue between the eyes again.
"How many regenerations left, you figure?"
"It wasn't mentioned so I'm guessing the full set."
"Well." Emma closed her notepad and addressed the three canon characters still standing around. "Nothing to see here any more. So why don't you all go back about your business? Doctor, Martha, the TARDIS is through there and down the stairs. Jack ..."
"This is my office." Jack gave Emma a you-know-that look.
"Then go do something office-y."
Jack grinned and decided to see the Doctor and Martha out.
After Tasmin had shot the Sue thirteen times she put away the Colt and the Beretta. "I need to restock on bullets. I wasn't expecting to run through them this fast in Torchwood." She opened up the portal.
The agents each picked up an end of the Sue and carried her through the portal into the incinerator room.
"If agents were getting paid per kill, rather than per mission, I imagine the agents in Doctor Who / Torchwood Division would be the best paid agents around."
Tasmin chuckled. "We should only be so lucky."
"Perhaps we should bring this to the attention of the Employees Council."
"The PPC doesn't have an Employees Council."
-oOo-
A/N: If you don't like most of the characters in a certain fandom it is perhaps not the greatest idea to be writing fanfiction about them. Writing a good fanfic about characters requires that you understand what makes them tick and how they would behave in certain situations. That usually is a lot easier when you like characters, or at least respect them.
A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum was founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts in italics taken from Another Time Lord by potterfreak1.618.
-oOo-
Because their first stop in the story would be Roald Dahl Plass Tasmin had chosen for them the disguise of normal people. Emma's argument that lots of aliens look like normal people got the reply: "Then what's the point of disguising ourselves as such an alien?" Emma had shaken her head in disbelief and followed her partner through the portal.
Emma turned to look at Jack, who was running across the Plass crouched over.
"What's he doing that for?" Tasmin wondered.
"Perhaps his trying to dodge the Sue."
"That didn't help much. He just ran into her head first."
Jack apologized profusely to the girl and helped her to her feet.
"I don't know what profusely means," Emma said, "but that looks like uncharacteristic grovelling. Jack just has to bat his eyelashes and all is forgiven."
"I'm sure there are moments when that doesn't work."
"C'mon. No one is immune to the charm of Captain Jack Harkness."
"She is." Tasmin gave a light nod in the direction of the Sue who walked away listening to the music on her MP3 player.
"That should be a charge in itself." Emma lifted the flap of her shoulder bag and got her notepad.
Jack followed the girl to ask her what music she was listening to.
The girl had the oddest expression on her face. The look she gave Jack was one of superiority, mischief, confusion, and maybe a little pity.
"Superiority is like so." Emma made a face. "Mischief would be like so." She tried on a smirk. "This would be confusion, and this is pity."
"That's actually contempt."
"And when you try that all at once you get ..." Emma screwed up her face. "A pain in your eyebrows. It's not possible to look mischievous and confused at the same time."
The Sue said the music she was listening to was Strontium Goat. Which was reason enough for Jack to knock her unconscious.
"That bad a band?" Emma asked.
"It's actually quite popular in the Thursday Next Continuum."
"What's it doing in this continuum then?"
"Let's find out."
“Jack, what the hell was that for?” Gwen shouted at him, appalled.
But Jack was worried. What the hell was this girl? She hadn’t even looked scared when he had grabbed her arm. But what was even scarier; she had music from a band that didn’t exist for another 29 centuries.
Tasmin huffed. "I wouldn't look scared either when a stranger grabbed my arm. I'd look annoyed and tell him to take his hand off me. Lest he never wanted to get it back at all."
Emma smirked. "And if it were Jack who'd lay a hand on you you'd swoon rather than look scared."
"Uh, yeah. In this case everything happened so swiftly. Jack grabbed her arm, turned her around and knocked her out. She didn't have time to get scared enough to wipe her look of surprise or annoyance of her face."
"Right. Let's see if we can travel down the invisible lift with Gwen and Jack." Emma started to run across the Plass to catch up with the two.
Tasmin quickly ran after her.
It was crowded on the stepping stone with the five of them. Jack carried the Sue over his shoulder, Gwen continued to shout at him for knocking down a girl oblivious that Jack was containing himself not to knock her out too, and Tasmin and Emma were trying not to get in the way.
"At least he didn't knock her up," Emma joked.
"The fic is still young," Tasmin replied. "Anything could happen."
"I'd like Gwen to stop shouting to happen." Emma stuck a finger in each ear to keep the noise level down.
Gwen continued shouting while she explained to Owen what she had seen happen. Jack took the Sue to the cells and locked her up.
He found a chair and placed it in front of the window of the girl’s cell and waited for her to wake up, deep in thought.
"Now would have been a good time for us to disguise ourselves as Weevils," Emma said. "We could have waited in the cell next door."
The agents had climbed up the stairs to Tosh's workstation where they joined the rest of the Team in looking at the CCTV footage of the cell block.
Tasmin didn't take her eyes off the screen to reply: "Yeah, sure."
Emma turned around and sat on the desk. She watched Gwen tell the others what had happened. By this time Gwen had stopped shouting. When Gwen was done explaining, or rather had finished expressing she didn't have a clue, the Sue in the cell woke up and the verbal pingpong between her and Jack started.
“What do you know about Strontium Goat?” she asked. “This is the 21st century, is it not?”
“Yes, it is. And I want to know how you got music from a band that doesn’t even exist until the 50th century.”
“First tell me how you know about the 50th century,” countered the girl.
That comment rebuffed Jack completely. He felt forced to tell her he was from the fifty-first century.
Tasmin grabbed Emma's bag and pulled the notepad and pen from it. She scribbled down a charge.
The Sue then said she was in the twenty-first century because she needed the Rift.
"The Rift already existed in the nineteenth century. I'm sure it will exist still at a later time," Tasmin said.
"There's evidence in canon that the Rift existed long before that."
"Still, it explains why she is in Cardiff, not why she's in the twenty-first century."
“Wait, you needed the rift? What would you need the rift for?” Jack’s eyes widened. “Unless… are you a time lord?”
"That explains it! Bilis Manger was a Time Lord not a minion of the Beast," Emma said.
"Technically, Manger needed the Rift to open."
"Can't need the Rift to open without needing the Rift. Besides, my point was there are plenty more undesirables that need the Rift than just Time Lords. Do I need to remind anyone of the Gelth? Or Margaret the Slitheen?"
"The Sue would need reminding."
The Sue got furious when Jack said he had travelled with the Doctor. She started meditating and a moment later the TARDIS appeared in the Hub near the water feature. Martha and the Doctor got out.
"Error the first," Tasmin said glaring down at the Doctor past the computer. "The Doctor always checks his monitors first. As soon as he'd see he was at Torchwood he'd try to get out again. He doesn't like Torchwood."
Jack walked up to the Doctor and gave him a hug.
“Doctor! It is you, isn’t it? I can see you’ve regenerated. Nice body.”
“Jack, you’re dead. Really. You were killed by the Daleks.”
"Error the second. The Doctor knows Jack has survived the Daleks."
"Many fans like to think that the Doctor didn't know because that would mean he had left Jack on purpose and that would make him a jerk."
"There's plenty of evidence during season two and three to back the suggestion that the Doctor is a jerk. Are fans denying that too?"
Emma shrugged. "You're the one who said that fans only remember the parts of canon that are convenient to them."
“Where’s Rose?”
The Doctor still didn’t answer. Jack stared at him in disbelief, and then…
Both agents quickly ducked down. Cautiously they peered around the equipment underneath Tosh's workstation to assess the state of canon after Jack had punched the Doctor. The Doctor was looking distinctly lopsided and Jack's hair had changed colour.
"When are these 'fans' going to learn that Jack does not hit the Doctor; he hits on the Doctor?" Emma yanked the notepad and pen from Tasmin's hands and started scribbling furiously.
"You should try to make the charges legible at least," Tasmin said looking over her partner's shoulder. "We don't want to charge the Sue with the wrong offences."
"Don't worry. I'm not forgetting what I wrote. Even if I can't read it." Emma put a few keywords in capitals behind each line. "Seriously, though," she said holding the pad to her chest. "All these stories where Jack punches the Doctor because Rose is dead make me wonder how many people actually watched Parting of the Ways. He, A, loves them both, and, B, knows that the Doctor sent away Rose so that she would be safe. If anything: Jack should have drawn the conclusion that the Doctor never went back to pick up Rose."
"Yes, but that would require these fans to actually put themselves in Jack's position. And you can see over there what a poor job they make of that." Tasmin nodded down towards the crowd gathered around the water feature.
The Doctor had scrambled up. He had come to Torchwood on a hunch that there was a Time Lord, but he shrugged it off on the grounds that that was impossible.
"So is Jack." Emma sniggered.
“It’s not impossible, Doctor. Why couldn’t one survive? Why can’t I be here?”
"Time Lords that hide themselves from other Time Lords are acceptable." Tasmin cocked her head. "It's canon. Time Lords that just went undetected are not."
"And which is this?"
"I don't know yet. She didn't seem to be particularly hiding so far. You should write her up, though, for just walking out of her cell."
Emma nodded her approval and made the note.
The Doctor and the Sue stared at each other. The Doctor was nearly dumbfounded. Stuttering he asked for an explanation.
“How? How’d you escape. I cut off the time vortex so no Daleks could escape.” And no time lords, he thought to himself.
“I told you, I always survive. I just destroyed one of the barriers that you placed on the vortex and escaped to this planet.”
"Bit of a selfish bitch," Emma said. "Why didn't she try to rescue anyone from her species?"
"Stupid bitch too. Daleks could have escaped through that hole in the perimeter too, and the Time War would have gone on."
“They always said you were a genius. No wonder they were all jealous of you. You were the only one to survive out of all of the time lords…” he barely finished.
"Before all this stupidity made his brain implode." Tasmin glared down. "It was genius to come up with a plan that would end the Time War once and for all. It's not genius to disable that plan. At least not when you're fighting on the same side."
"But she's Mary Sue. She put the idiot in Idiot Savant."
Tasmin gave her partner a puzzled look then chuckled lightly. "I guess you are right about that."
The Sue said another Time Lord had escaped.
"She did rescue another one of them after all," Emma noted.
"That's two Time Lords that went undetected by the Doctor," Tasmin noted.
“Who?” he croaked finally.
“The Master,” she said softly, watching his reaction intently.
"She does have poor choice in friends, however."
The party of eight started to ascend the stairs. Tasmin and Emma quickly hid in the kitchenette.
After the Doctor and the Sue entered Jack's office he sent his Team away. They went down the stairs and gathered around a coffee pot to eavesdrop on the conversation in Jack's office. Tasmin and Emma snuck closer to the office to listen in. Jack had left the door open.
“So, uh, who’s the master? Is he like your long-lost cousin or something?” asked Jack.
"Is Jack like, you know, a Valley-girl?" Emma asked.
"No, and neither are you. Don't talk as one."
The Sue laughed hysterically. Both agents found her cackling grating, but understood it was necessary for the Sue to show she was evil.
“The Master isn’t his cousin, he’s his brother,” she answered their wordless question breathlessly.
Tasmin and Emma looked at each other. Emma raised her eyebrows.
Tasmin shrugged. "They knew each other as children, but I think it would have been played out in canon if they had been brothers."
"Twin brothers even."
The Sue and the Doctor went on to list the many of the Sue's accomplishments. Rolling her eyes Emma took notes of the fact she beat the Doctor and the Master at graduation, was a prodigy, and had found a way to slow down her ageing, which effectively made her look, and act, like a twelve-year-old.
Wow, thought Jack, that girl is annoying.
"Is that a brief stint of personality trying to break through?" Emma asked cautiously.
"Shh, she's going to explain how she managed to fool the Doctor into thinking she was dead."
"That will probably have something to do with how brilliant she is."
"Probably, yeah."
“I wasn’t hiding Doctor. I didn’t really think that there was any point.”
"That's just blatant denial of canon. And it doesn't explain one bit how the Doctor did not sense her."
"Shh."
Then she added thoughtfully, “I don’t even know if I care that you destroyed it. They all hated me. They were jealous. They couldn’t stand me being perfect at everything. I think I’m glad they’re gone…”
"Oh, did the poor woobies hate you for being pwufect? That is so sad." Emma made a pouting face. "Let me give you a hug for comfort."
"I'd like to give her something else." Tasmin pulled both her guns from her duffelbag and entered Jack's office.
Emma quickly scrambled up and went after her.
"Eilonwy. We're Protectors of the Plot Continuum and we're here to charge you with crimes against fanfiction and against the continua of Doctor Who and Torchwood in particular."
The Sue cackled madly again. "You can't charge me. You have no power over me."
Tasmin shot the Sue between the eyes with her Beretta. The Sue fell down on the floor, narrowly missing Jack's desk.
"Tasmin!" Emma shouted out in horror.
"No!" the Doctor cried out. He dropped on his knees and gathered the Sue up in his arms.
"You should charge the Sue before you shoot her. Not the other way 'round."
"She'll regenerate."
"That's no excuse. Though an interesting topic for an ethical debate: can a person be held responsible for crimes committed in a previous incarnation?"
"I think you can find some arguments on that topic among Hindu philosophers. In any case: in PPC there is jurisprudence we can. In the form of killing all the incarnations of a Stu or Sue Time Lord."
"Yeah, but only after they have been charged."
Tasmin shrugged. The Sue regenerated, again into a twelve year old girl. Emma studied the charge sheet to determine in which order she wanted to charge the Sue.
"What did you do that for?" the Sue snapped at Tasmin.
"To show that I do have power over you. Emma has power over you too." Tasmin smiled measly at the Sue. "Emma?"
"Yeah, I have the power of Santa Claus. I've made a list; I've checked it twice. And you, dear Sue, haven't been nice," Emma sang to tune. "First of all, we charge you with being a Mary Sue: you are impervious to Jack's charm; you ask a question of the I-asked-you-first variety which Jack for some reason feels compelled to answer; you just walk out of one of Torchwood's holding cells; you are the smartest Time Lord ever and everyone hates you. And that was before you sabotaged the Doctor's war strategy.
"Second, we charge you with contrived plot devices. To use the Rift you need to be in Cardiff, not in the twenty-first century. Plus it's not just Time Lords that need the Rift for something or other. Even if this story were set just after Day One Jack would still know that. He would not put two and two together and come up with eleven.
"Third, we charge you with a disregard for canon. Time Lords can sense each other unless they are in some sort of hiding. Yet, you can sense the Master, who is hiding, but can't sense the Doctor, who isn't hiding. Further, the Doctor knows Jack has survived the Game Station."
"Yeah, I did." The Doctor looked up at Jack. "I knew you had. You shouldn't have, but you did." He dropped the Sue. "It was Rose."
"Coming to Rose," Emma continues. "Jack knows the Doctor would do anything to take care of Rose. He would not demand an explanation from the Doctor about her whereabouts or well-being, and he most certainly would not hit the Doctor."
"I would hit on the Doctor," Jack added with a cheeky grin.
"That's what I said." Emma winked at him.
"Oh, c'mon. It's fanfiction. It's part of the point to rewrite the bits of canon you don't like."
"Yes, but could you at least show yourself to be a fan of the material? And not change the personalities of the canon characters. I've already mentioned a few points why Jack wasn't himself. I'd like to add that Jack also does not tell his prisoners that he is from the fifty-first century. Particularly not when that isn't relevant for the interrogation."
"It was relevant. It was to make me talk."
Tasmin huffed. "Jack knows torture techniques. He has ways of making you sing like a nightingale. He'd use them long before he'd tell you where he picked up the skills."
"Further, you show yourself not to be a fan of Gwen by having her shout a lot."
"Yeah, well, Gwen."
"Yeah, well, doesn't matter. Treat the characters with respect or don't use them in the story."
The Sue rolled her eyes. "Anything else?"
Emma looked over the page of her notepad. "Not from me."
"One from me: we charge you with listening to fiftieth century music on a twenty-first century music player."
"What?"
"The MP3 format has been around for nearly thirty years, but do you really think it will be around for another thirty centuries?"
"Uh, I converted the music so I would blend in in the twenty-first century?"
"It would only have to look the same, not be the same."
"I have another one: if you need to add 'obviously' to describe someone's mindset, it wasn't obvious that they had that mindset."
"Done?" Tasmin grinned at the Sue.
"Done."
"Eilonwy. You have been charged. For these crimes you are sentenced to death. And we have the power and the means to execute you." Tasmin shot the Sue between the eyes again.
"How many regenerations left, you figure?"
"It wasn't mentioned so I'm guessing the full set."
"Well." Emma closed her notepad and addressed the three canon characters still standing around. "Nothing to see here any more. So why don't you all go back about your business? Doctor, Martha, the TARDIS is through there and down the stairs. Jack ..."
"This is my office." Jack gave Emma a you-know-that look.
"Then go do something office-y."
Jack grinned and decided to see the Doctor and Martha out.
After Tasmin had shot the Sue thirteen times she put away the Colt and the Beretta. "I need to restock on bullets. I wasn't expecting to run through them this fast in Torchwood." She opened up the portal.
The agents each picked up an end of the Sue and carried her through the portal into the incinerator room.
"If agents were getting paid per kill, rather than per mission, I imagine the agents in Doctor Who / Torchwood Division would be the best paid agents around."
Tasmin chuckled. "We should only be so lucky."
"Perhaps we should bring this to the attention of the Employees Council."
"The PPC doesn't have an Employees Council."
-oOo-
A/N: If you don't like most of the characters in a certain fandom it is perhaps not the greatest idea to be writing fanfiction about them. Writing a good fanfic about characters requires that you understand what makes them tick and how they would behave in certain situations. That usually is a lot easier when you like characters, or at least respect them.