Mission T12: My Immortal
This particular title is used quite often in badfic. In this case it seems to be used for a different reason than what is common. Most likely the author meant the OC, in much the same way as they would call a favourite toy my doll.
A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum was founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts in italics taken from My Immortal by LeynOnMe.
-oOo-
Emma stepped out of the portal and was nearly knocked over by Jack in hot pursuit of a dark form. Jack steadied her, said, "stay with me," and continued his run. The agents looked at each other.
"I guess we go after him," Tasmin said.
The two agents tried to catch up with Jack. It was dark and the streets were sparsely lit. Even the author had trouble making out what it was that Jack was following and referred to it both as a dark object and a dark figure. Then Jack suddenly stopped and hid. He looked around the corner into the alley.
He saw the weevel he was pursuing standing in place, it faced a large trash bin, looking at something.
Tasmin and Emma also stopped and hid on the other side of the entrance to the alley. They had a good view of both Jack and of what was going on in the alley.
"Ow," Emma said pressing a hand to her side. "Any thoughts on why Jack doesn't apprehend that Weevil? It has stopped running, so now seems like a good time. And I'm not just saying that because I want to stop running after him."
Tasmin shrugged. "Not a clue."
The Weevil stood facing a bin. A soft voice had addressed it. Then a small figure jumped from the bin and hovered toward the Weevil. The latter creature was mesmerized for a short while.
"Perhaps Jack knew what was hiding in the trash?"
"How would he have known? All he saw was a Weevil staring at a trash can."
The person hovering in the air talked to the Weevil. Which seemed to break the spell it had over the Weevil as it jumped up and attacked the child. Then Jack ran out of his hiding place and scared off the Weevil. The child, the Sue, was lying on the ground bleeding from wounds inflicted by the Weevil.
He knew he had to get her back to the hub.
"Why always back to the Hub?" Emma asked. "They have hospitals in Cardiff. They even showed Cardiff had hospitals in canon."
"This time the Hub is the right call, though," Tasmin replied. "She was hanging in the air a moment ago. What if she starts floating above the bed in the operating room?"
"Fair enough," Emma conceded. "Wounded aliens can be taken back to the Hub."
Jack heard rustling coming from the direction the weevil took off.
"What's with the rustling noise, by the way? We're in a very urban area. There are no shrubs here."
"Must be that nest of mini-reapers that was created in this scene."
"I'm so not going to catch them," Emma said.
Ianto came around the corner. He had captured the Weevil. Jack told him he needed to get the Sue to the Hub.
"You may note the charge that Ianto didn't mention the hospital," Tasmin said.
Emma frowned.
"He hasn't seen her hanging in mid-air," Tasmin explained. "He would question Jack's suggestion not to take her to a proper medical facility."
The only question Ianto asked was whether the girl was okay. It was too dark for him to notice the massive lacerations. Jack and Ianto loaded the Weevil and the Sue in a truck and sped of towards the Hub. Jack rang Owen from the vehicle and told him to meet them at the Hub. The agents took a short cut by way of portal.
-oOo-
Emma leant on the railing and stared into the autopsy pit. Ianto had put a cover on the table and Jack had put the girl on top of that.
"She isn't floating now. Probably won't be floating due to all the blood loss. They could have taken her to hospital. This place isn't sterile enough for proper surgery."
"Guess Jack just didn't want to take any chances with the floating."
"At the risk of the Sue's life."
"Owen's a good surgeon. He will save her."
The giant cogwheel rolled aside and Owen came rushing towards the autopsy pit.
He had blue scrubs on and an undershirt. His hair was untidy and he had obviously just jumped out of bed.
"What? He sleeps in his scrubs?" Emma's gaze followed the doctor as he ran passed her.
"Apparently."
"He looks a bit like JD. From Scrubs," Emma added to her partner's frown. "But for JD the just-out-of-bed look takes a lot of gel and mouse." Emma made some kneading motions above her head.
Owen checked the Sue for vital signs and injuries, then rattled off a list of equipment he needed Ianto to get. Ianto nodded in understanding and Jack excused himself to his office.
"Up to this moment he's been worried about the Sue. You'd think he'd hang around and watch the proceedings. If only to be of assistance when Owen says, 'scalpel, suture needle'. 'Cause you may say Owen's a good surgeon, he'd be a better one if he didn't have to do everything himself."
"Charge," Tasmin replied.
Emma retrieved a notepad and pen from her shoulder bag. "At the very least Jack could be of assistance getting the Weevil from the truck."
"That's a charge too. Why aren't they using the SUV?"
A scene break that came too soon juggled the agents and fast forwarded the story to the start of Gwen's working day. She had brought coffee and doughnuts. She first ran into Ianto.
"What happened?" she asked referring to the child.
"Weevil."
"Oh."
"Oh, she says." Emma scribbled OOC on her notepad. "I'm sure Gwen is not the kind of person that needs her morning coffee before she can ask sensible questions like, 'why wasn't she taken to hospital?' She doesn't know about the floating, yet."
"Even if she did say just 'oh' it would be a questioning oh. Implying a lot of 'what's going on here?' questions. It's not like people are bringing the injured off the streets into Torchwood all the time."
"They do in badfic."
"I'm talking canon."
Gwen went into Jack's office to get an explanation and just as he was about to give her one Owen cut him off to tell him the Sue was stable.
"She, she two hearts!" Owen said. Gwen reacted in shock. Jack's eyes grew wide.
"No, it cant be!" He thought to himself with ought saying it out loud.
"Two hearts. Oh my," Emma said. "That's certainly something to make all of them speak and think incoherently." The agents had followed Gwen into Jack's office and sat themselves down on the couch. "Does this, does this mean she's Gallifreyan? Or as fangirls like to call them, a Time Lady?" Emma smiled excitedly at her partner.
"Time Lords, male or female, don't hover in the air. And I doubt the general populace of Gallifrey was any more capable of it."
"The Doctor hovered once."
"That was different."
"It always is."
"You know, I didn't say anything, but in the alleyway, just before the Weevil got her, she was flying."
"So, are we sure then that she is not from earth?" Owen asked uncertainly.
Both agents gapped at Owen. Tasmin was the first to regain her composure. She fumbled through her duffel bag to get her Canon Analysis Device. She pointed it at Owen.
[Doctor Owen Harper, male, canon character, out of character 38.4 percent]
"Not as bad as I had expected."
"That's probably because if the adverb had been dropped or changed to sarcastically he would have been in character."
Jack thought they wouldn't be able to determine that until the Sue woke up and they were able to ask her some questions.
"So despite the two hearts and the floating, she could still be from Earth? What, like a second generation alien, born here so from Earth? Since when is Jack that politically correct?"
Tasmin tentatively pointed the CAD at Jack.
[Captain Jack Harkness, pseudonym, male, canon character, out of character 53.5 percent]
"Ok, keep an eye on her. I want to know right before she wakes up or if anything changes, or anything!" Jack said.
"He's also rather impatient." Tasmin turned off the CAD and put it back in her bag. "Most people would like to know the moment someone wakes up. He wants to know even before that."
Owen didn't give a smart arse remark about Jack's impatience. He took one of the coffees from Gwen's tray and went to his desk. Followed by the agents Gwen left Jack's office too.
Toshiko had arrived while Gwen was in Jack's office. She was sitting at her computer desk doing something complicated that Gwen did not know. Actually, Gwen doubted that Jack knew what Tosh was doing. No one hardly ever knew exactly what Tosh was doing on her computer.
"My guess is it's the author that doesn't know what Tosh is doing," Tasmin said. Emma nodded in agreement.
Gwen went down to the autopsy pit to look at the girl. She marvelled at the beauty of her hair and freckles, and found the girl was wearing a charm around her neck.
"She had wounds in her neck. Owen would have taken off the charm before stitching her up."
"Guess he's not as good a surgeon as you claim he is."
Tasmin narrowed her eyes. "It's more likely the Sue had forgotten where all her injuries were. Write her up."
Gwen admired the piece of jewellery for a moment and then went to her computer to do some actual work.
-oOo-
At about six o'clock an alarm on Owen's computer went off to indicate the Sue was about to wake up. Owen, Jack and Gwen rushed to the autopsy pit. Tosh stayed behind her computer and Ianto was nowhere to be seen. Which puzzled the PPC agents 'cause the Torchwood people were generally a curious lot.
Jack's eyes were glued to her,
The agents shuddered.
The Sue woke up. Upon seeing unfamiliar surroundings, she jumped up disconnecting several of the wires with which she was attached to the various machines. She levitated above the table.
"I'm guessing Owen's not going to ask stupid questions about her not being from around here any more," Emma said.
"Never underestimate the power of the Suefluence."
The Sue was still too weak to keep herself up and she fell to the floor. Jack and Owen rushed to pick her up. Owen gave her a shot of pain medicine.
"Can't he just give her an aspirin?"
"No, not if she's a Time Lord," Tasmin said. "They're allergic."
"That's what I meant." Emma grinned.
The Sue panicked. She assumed she was in a hospital, but Jack assured her she wasn't. She was at Torchwood.
"Its a top secret organization. Outside the government, beyond the police. We help the human race protect themselves for the future using alien technology, and we help any aliens that come to earth. They all come through us." Jack explained.
"Look who's memorised the words to the opening sequence," Emma said.
"And look who failed to comprehend the logic behind them. If it's a secret, it's hardly likely Jack would tell every alien he met about it."
"Aliens are notoriously bad at keeping secrets and often try to use those secrets to their advantage."
The Sue went to sleep. A moment later she woke up again. She said she had to go to the bathroom.
"I'm not even going to be surprised that Owen didn't query her sudden need to take a bath," Emma said.
"I think it's too early to charge the Sue with using American slang in Britain. After all she may actually be from the US."
Emma raised an eyebrow.
"Or spent a prolonged period of time there. Still, Owen might have said something along the lines of, you're not in Kansas any more, Dorothy."
Owen was very congenial and helpful to the Sue. He even called Gwen to help her take a bath as he thought the Sue would be more comfortable aided by a woman than by a man. The agents were so stunned that they almost forgot they would have to move away from the stairs of the autopsy pit when the Sue came up them. A time rift, however, made sure the Sue returned to the pit even though she had even left it, leaving the agents undetected, and with some sore spots from being flung against the wall when they didn't brace themselves in time for the time rift.
While Owen checked the injuries of the Sue, the agents retreated to the couch in the corner to check their own injuries. Owen determined the Sue was healing fine, then took her to the conference room where Jack could talk to her.
He figured that even if she was an alian or a threat, she was a kid, so he should give her the advantage of the doubt.
"With a side-order of caution," Tasmin said.
"Okay, it's a redundant cliché--"
"So is that."
"But I feel it has to be said," Emma continued unperturbed. "Are this Sue and I even watching the same show? I mean, I see two characters who look like Owen and Jack, they are called Owen and Jack, but they are certainly not behaving like Owen and Jack."
"What other shows are there that have an Owen and a Jack?"
"The Vicar of Dibley," Emma said after a moment's pause. "But they're not this overly nice to little aliens either. Although, they might be nicer to little kids, 'cause they'd be a little harder put at believing it was an alien. Could be them."
Tasmin nodded. "If it is, then this is an unintentional crossover. That'll be hell to untangle."
Jack started his interrogation of the Sue in a non-threatening way -- because that's what the Doctor would do; his word was gospel to Jack -- and asked her what species she was.
"I'm, I'm a Time Lord..." Jack felt like his heart skipped a beat. He took a breath in. This is one thing he suspected... two hearts. But what about the flying? Again she beat him.
"At least, that is what it says I am."
"What what says?"
"at home, there is this machine thing, it tells me everything. It teaches me everything."
"Everything, except for proper spelling, grammar and punctuation," Tasmin noted.
The Sue said she lived in Neverneverland.
"Which explains why she's never going to grow up." Emma chuckled.
The Sue told Jack that she had come to Earth because she was lonely. She could never have visitors unless she invited them. She thought she was the last of the Time Lords. Jack sympathised with her.
She was alone, like him, bound to live forever. Other than the doctor, she has no one.
"Wrong," Tasmin said, "on all accounts. Jack is not alone; he is lonely. She will only live forever barring accidents."
"And we're just an accident waiting to happen."
"And thirdly, she does not have the Doctor. She thinks he's dead."
"Which is odd 'cause Time Lords can sense one another. The Doctor can't sense her. She can't sense him. She must be a fraud." Emma added the charge to the list.
Jack told the Sue there was another Time Lord and invited her to come and live at Torchwood.
"Somehow I don't think he means in one of the cells," Emma said.
The Sue took his invitation and gave him a hug.
Owen and Ianto came up the stairs and headed for the conference room carrying lunch. The agents only caught a glimpse of Owen, but enough to determine he was a tall, beardy fellow, a resident of Dibley.
"I think I'm not going to take any more character measurements from Owen," Tasmin said.
"I'd be surprised if you'd find enough canon in him to do a proper measurement. For either canon."
"Hayley is going to be joining the team." Owen looked surprised, but happy.
"I don't think Dibley-Owen would say that either."
"Owen may have actually been replaced by some kind of pod person," Tasmin suggested.
"Or taken a very high dose of some very illegal narcotics."
"Yes, the real Owen wouldn't be happy. He'd be wondering if Jack had lost his senses hiring little kids off the street."
Owen and Jack stepped out of the office and Owen voiced his concern about a child joining Torchwood.
The agents looked at each other.
"I hope you have brought your exorcism kit," Emma said.
"I never leave home without it," Tasmin replied.
Plus, she and my doctor are the only two of their kind left, and they need to meet.
"His doctor? Jack, you can't die. I'm sure your broken bones mend pretty quickly too. What do you need a doctor for?"
"Headache pills," Tasmin replied. "Or rather, that's what I need."
"I think I have some Bleeprin." Emma opened her shoulder bag and dug through it to find the bottle of pills.
"I'd better not. I have a race this weekend and I don't want to end up in the positive dope squad."
"In that case I suggest we either kill this Sue now, or go somewhere were Owen and Jack aren't vying for Best Dad Award." Emma dumped the bottle back in her bag.
"I'm afraid it has to be the latter. There's a lot more fic ground to cover. And write her up for being the only Time Lord that can fly."
"Well, duh, if she's the last of them."
Tasmin glared at her partner. Emma hurriedly opened a portal.
-oOo-
Even though Tasmin agreed to move out of the direct vicinity of daddy!Owen and daddy!Jack she did insist the two agents followed the further events through the Words. And thus they sat down on Roald Dahl Plass and read the Words.
Jack, Ianto and Gwen took the Sue shopping for clothes. The Sue very much enjoyed having three personal shoppers. Exhausted from their shopping spree the four of them went for ice-cream.
"I have the distinct feeling I've been in this fic before," Emma said.
"Can't be. We only get each mission once. There's just a strong similarity with another story."
"After a while all the fics start to look a like."
"Some." Tasmin nodded.
"see you later Hayley!" Gwen said, kissing Jack on the cheek goodbye. Not a real kiss of course. It was the kind friends give to each other when they haven't seen each other for a while-type of thing.
"That was a bit redundant. If you say kiss on the cheek no one is actually going to think she pressed her lips against his mouth an tried to sneak her tongue in for some tonsil hockey."
Tasmin gave her partner a disturbed look. "Not to mention that also friends who regularly see each other, like Gwen and Jack, give each other those kisses on the cheek kind of kisses. Either when saying hello or saying goodbye. As is the case here."
"And whatever the case is, it's also a real kiss. Air kisses, those wouldn't be real. But when lips are touching someone else, it's a real kiss."
"Agreed."
"Good. I'll write her up."
Gwen and Ianto left the Sue and Jack alone because they had some other business to attend to. The Sue and Jack went for a walk and had a heart-to-heart.
"um, you, you're not from now, are you?" Jack was a little surprised. 'How could she have known that' he thought. But then he remembered the doctor was able to tell that too. And she was a time lord as well.
"Yes, well," Emma said, "Jack sort of gave himself away to the Doctor, calling him a Time Agent and trying to sell him some space debris. Twentieth century Earth folk wouldn't know of these things, so it was kind of hard to miss that Jack was a bit out of place."
"But he did pick up on Jack being immortal without Jack giving away any clues."
"I still think he learned that when he sucked the Bad Wolf out of Rose and could see all of time at once."
"Fair point. This Sue didn't do that, so how does she know he can't die?"
"The Sue seems to think such knowledge just comes naturally to Time Lords."
"I cant die either." She said. She looked out at the lake and sighed.
"Has she tried that?" Emma perked up. "How many times."
"She was probably told about the immortality by this machine of hers that tells her everything." Tasmin grimaced. "So we can probably look forward to a full set of regenerations."
"Even though there is plenty of evidence in canon to suggest the regenerations are a gift awarded to Time Lords and not a natural ability. She seems to be too young to have received the gift in the first place."
"We don't know how Time Lords age. She could be a couple of decades or even centuries old."
Emma shrugged. "Fair enough."
Jack and the Sue hugged.
Finally he found someone other than the doctor who was worth living all these years for, and wouldn't leave him.
"Please, that is pathetic. Why hasn't Jack picked up on the possibility that the machine of hers is a TARDIS? You'd think he'd be right interested in that. Considering this story is set during the first series of Torchwood, when Jack spent a lot of time on roof tops waiting for the Doctor to return. If he had a TARDIS he could return to the Doctor, or send out some kind of message."
"Because this story is about what the Sue thinks Jack needs, not about what Jack would need."
Jack and the Sue went back to the Hub where the Sue showed off her new clothes and Jack showed her her room.
The next morning the Sue flew around the Hub for a bit and then joined the team when they went to investigate an alien disturbance.
"Should we join them too?" Emma asked. "That doesn't sound like it is going to be cavity inducing sweet."
"I guess."
-oOo-
The agents arrived at the house almost simultaneously with the Torchwood team. The lights and siren on their car had attracted quite a crowd and the agents joined the spectators.
Jack ordered everyone to have their guns ready. They all went into the house; the Sue closed the ranks.
"I guess we don't have to worry any more about Jack or Owen trying to be best daddy," Emma said.
"Unbelievable," Tasmin said. "They are even acting out of character for the character they were first given in this fic."
When the Sue was about to enter the living room Jack stopped her. There was an alien in the room. Gwen and Ianto's guns were pointed at it, which seemed enough to control the alien. Owen and Tosh were tending to some of the wounded. Jack told the Sue to run. The alien ran after her and Jack after it.
"Great, more running," Emma said before they set off after Jack.
"You should take a note that despite all their fire power no one fired a shot at the alien."
"While I'm running? My handwriting is barely legible when I'm standing still."
"When we've stopped running, of course." Tasmin rolled her eyes.
She looked around. It was dark and no one was out. 'forget this' she thought, and she jumped in the air but did not come back down.
The alien paused for a second then flew up too. The Sue asked Jack for help. He suggested to her she should fly into space. She did as she was told and flew up.
Pretty soon, they would be in the hottest part of the atmosphere and if that didn't finish off the alien, space should. She heard a scream. She looked around. It was the alien. It let out another scream that pierced Hayley's heart. She stayed there, motionless as she watched the alien burn in the atmosphere.
Tasmin rolled her eyes. "The higher up you go the colder it gets. Meteors don't burn in the atmosphere because of the temperature that is there, but due to the temperature they create. A meteoroid moves so fast it compresses the air in front of it and that causes the air to heat up, and consequently the meteoroid. It's called ram pressure."
Emma nodded. She took her partner's word for that. The agents had come to a stop next to Jack and Emma was able to write again. "Could that alien also have gone into spontaneous combustion due to air resistance?"
"It's a common misconception that air resistance is involved in heating up meteoroids. It isn't, as I've just explained. If you're going to play the air resistance angle, than the alien should have combusted much closer to the Earth, where the air is thicker and there is more resistance. But even then the alien's speed was not enough for him to catch fire. The Sue even had to slow down a bit so the alien would not get too far behind."
"She should have burned before he did."
"The alien actually caught fire outside the atmosphere. Where there is not air to compress or to cause friction. Or oxygen to fuel the fire."
Emma tried to scribble it all down.
The Sue felt remorse for what she had done. She cried when she came down. Jack held her until she was done.
The agents shuffled on their feet. A crying Sue is never a pretty sight.
"We could go back to the Hub," Tasmin suggested.
Emma just nodded before she opened a portal.
-oOo-
When the agents arrived Jack, Ianto and the Sue had just gone on a grand tour of the Hub. Rather than following them on foot the agents decided to hijack one of the computers and watch the CCTV feed.
One of the stops on the tour was the cells, where the Sue met the Weevil that had attacked her.
"It's, it's the one that attacked me." She said.
"Probably indigestion," Emma said. "It took a bite out of a Sue."
There were more Weevils in one of the other cells and the Sue walked over to them. She seemed to make contact with them. Then she quickly left.
"What was that all about?"
"Hinting at a telepathic connection with Weevils. Charge."
The purpose of the tour had been to take the Sue to the archives, where her possessions had been taken. The Sue wanted to take some things from her pockets.
"Having pockets that are bigger on the inside. Charge."
Then the Sue asked to be taken to the roof. Jack showed her. She asked if he liked to come with her. He declined and the Sue flew away on her own.
"Jack's not only not actively pursuing that TARDIS possibility; he's even actively saying no to the option to investigate. This Sue doesn't know jack about Jack. When's she coming back?"
Tasmin glanced at the Words. "Fic is going to skip ahead a few weeks. Look, there's even a chapter break to accompany the time lapse."
The agent basked in the smooth transition. Their happiness was short-lived as the fic did continue with spelling errors and bad characterisation.
As for the team, Owen had gone through 2 girls already, trying to find 'the right one', Tosh had made a new computer program, though no one understood how it worked, Ianto had bought new coffee cups that he took particular pride in, and Gwen had been doing well with rheys.
"I think that's character bashing. Surely, Ianto's life is not so empty that he takes pride in coffee cups?!"
"If it is, he would have been better off working at a china shop."
The Sue had returned during the time lapse and was adjusting to life at the Hub. She also had been experiencing nightmares.
"I was about to say 'don't get too comfortable'," Emma said.
An alarm went off -- which made the agents jump; it reminded them of the console. Tosh reported that security had been compromised. Something had come into the Hub, but Tosh couldn't detect what or where it was. Jack decided to wait. Everyone else relaxed.
Tasmin and Emma looked at the people gathered around Tosh's computer.
"They relax? Is this a ploy to lull whatever broke in into a false sense of security?"
"No, it seems that from one scene to the next they just forgot what was going on."
"Causing memory loss in characters." Emma wrote it down.
A few days later -- luckily for the agents the lapses were accompanied by scene and chapter breaks -- the Torchwood team sort of got their act together. It wasn't until the Sue was attacked by the intruder that the team took the security breach seriously.
"I think I'm going to charge her with getting their priorities skewed." Emma put pen to paper.
"Charge her with trying to forcefully draw sympathy from the reader by having all these bad things happen to her."
"Everyone loves the victim. Well, you're not supposed to hate the victim. It's bad form."
"If the Sue had acted appropriately, the Sue might not have been attacked."
"That's par for the course with Sues, isn't it? Nothing happens in a fic unless it happens to them."
The team gathered in the conference room to discuss the situation. Jack sent the Sue out with Ianto. The Sue did not let on she realised he did not want her to hear the next bit and quietly left.
"Let's go charge her." Emma jumped form her seat. "I'm bored stiff with this fic. A little walk to the kitchenette would do my muscles a world of good."
"We've got about all the charges there are in this fic. No point in sitting the rest of this out." The agents caught up with the Sue and Ianto by the coffee maker.
"Excuse us," Emma said.
Ianto immediately reach for his firearm.
"Don't bother," Tasmin said, pointing her Beretta 92SB at him. "You don't carry a weapon inside the Hub."
Ianto's gun disappeared from his hand. "How? What?"
"Hayley, we are Protectors of the Plot Continuum," Emma introduced the two agents. "We are here to charge you with crimes against fanfiction in general and Torchwood fanfiction in particular."
The Sue gave Ianto an uncertain look. She tried to fly up, but Emma put her hand on the Sue's head and pushed her back down.
"We charge you with being a Mary Sue. We charge you with controlling the story so you get what you need -- attention and sympathy -- rather than that the story gets with it needs."
"But it's my story."
"Yes, but the characters in it aren't yours. We charge you with making all the characters out of character. They all forget about their job when you are around. They don't try to shoot an alien running away. They relax after a security breach. We charge you with making Owen sleep in his scrubs, making him insecure and not at all snarky. We charge you with making him want to be best dad, and being happy about an alien kid moving in. We charge you with having Ianto not raising the hospital question, not being curious about an alien on the autopsy table and with taking pride in coffee cups."
"I, never," Ianto scoffed.
"We charge you with Jack placing trust in you because you are a kid and it's what the Doctor would do. The Doctor doesn't trust anyone off-hand. Even if he did, we charge you with Jack not using his own judgement in matters alien. We charge you with recognising Jack is waiting for the Doctor, but not jumping at the possibility that you have a TARDIS with which he could contact the Doctor. We charge you with Jack having a heart-to-heart with a kid, and with generally being pathetic.
"We charge you with bad plotting and bad plot devices. Everything happens to you: attacked by Weevil, being chased by an alien, getting attacked by another alien. After a while it just becomes boring. It'd be more interesting if a few things happened to the others as well. We charge you with thinking you are the last of the Time Lords. We charge you with being a fraud, because if you were a Time Lord, the Doctor would have known about you, and undoubtedly have come and found you. We charge you with being able to fly, which we don't think Gallifreyans can. We also charge you with just knowing Jack's not from around. It's not a Time Lord thing to just know stuff. They did learn it some place.
"Talking about just knowing stuff. We charge you with presenting yourself as an omniscient narrator yet not knowing what's going on. For example, Jack following a dark form, Tosh's computer program. We also charge you with the need to explain that a kiss on the cheek is not meant in any way sexual, and the same for calling a kid cute. We charge you with bad spelling, particularly of proper nouns. They ought to have a capital letter. We charge you with bad grammar and we charge you with bad punctuation. Also, we charge you with bad placement of scene breaks. I've got the injuries for proof.
"We charge you with forgetting where your injuries are, or with forgetting that Owen would remove any necklaces before tending to a wound on the neck. We charge you with being taken on a mission despite Jack and everyone worrying about you. We charge you with not understanding elementary workings of the atmosphere and space. Such as it being cooler the further you get from Earth and there not being any oxygen in space so the alien could not burn there. Didn't this machine of yours tell you about these things?"
The Sue was near tears. All she managed was to shake her head.
"We also charge you with having a sort of telepathic conversation with a Weevil. There was no follow up on that, so that was just strange." Emma folded up her notepad. "You have been charged. Tasmin will shoot you now, for as many times as is necessary."
"Step away from Ianto."
The Sue did as she was told. Tears were now rolling down her cheeks. "I didn't mean any harm."
"Pests never do. Doesn't mean we're not going to take measures against them." Tasmin looked the Sue in the eyes. "That machine tell you you were a Time Lord and immortal?"
The Sue nodded.
"The machine was wrong. Immortality, or regenerations, is a gift award to certain Gallifreyans. Have you received a gift from the Gallifreyans?"
The Sue shook her head.
"Then you are not immortal. You won't be able to regenerate if you get killed." Tasmin waited for this information to sink in with the Sue, and then she shot her. "I love it when logic pulls through in the end."
"Hey," Ianto said. He made a step towards the agents, stopped, blinked, shook his head and turned around to tend to the coffee maker.
"It looks like canon is already snapping back into place."
Tasmin pulled a bin liner from her duffel bag. She held it open for Emma so she could dump the Sue in. "Yeah, we just have to see about the other canons, especially Jack and Owen. See how they are coping."
Dragging the Sue behind them the agents went over to the conference room. The rest of the team were gathered there. All of them sat quietly around the table. The agents looked at each other.
"This doesn't look quite right yet," Emma said. "What are you doing?" she asked the team.
The team continued their glassy stares. Only Jack moved his head a little like he had heard something.
"Without the Sue they don't know what to do," Tasmin assessed.
"It'll pass, won't it?"
"We could hurry up the process a bit." Tasmin put her bag down. She pulled a little box from it and a pair of sunglasses.
Emma knew what was about to happen. She fetch her own sunglasses from her bag and put them on.
Tasmin flashed the neutraliser. "You just sent an alien packing and are enjoying a quiet cup of coffee before you go back to work."
The agents packed up their stuff. Emma opened a portal that would lead them back to their response centre. The last thing she saw before she stepped through the portal after her partner was Ianto entering the conference room with a tray filled with steaming mugs.
-oOo-
A/N: One of the most important things to remember when writing fanfiction is that the canon characters -- usually -- have day jobs and other stuff that keeps them busy. They are not going to forget about all that when someone new walked through the door. The Torchwood people are not going to relax after learning that someone broke into the Hub, but they don't know who or how. That's scary stuff when someone breaks into a high-security place. The team would investigate it, try to find the leak and close it. They would not break out the ping-pong game and have an office tournament. They'd do that afterwards.
By the way, Emma was wrong about there being a Jack in the Vicar of Dibley.