Chapter 25: Rule #1: Don't Provoke the Rift
Inspired by interactions in the Hotel California Panfandom RPG, this is a joint project between two women who adored the idea of Jack recruiting Buffy to Torchwood. Perhaps they adored it a little too much, but that remains to be seen.
Title: So Buffy Met Jack...
Authors: Amy tainted_crimson & Sarah magicom; Guest writer Danielle colorofangels
Crossover: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Torchwood
Spoilers: Through Buffy / Angel series finales and Torchwood Series 2 / Doctor Who Series 4. (Some elements borrowed from Season 8 comics)
Rating: FR-15 (for usual Torchwood-ness)
Disclaimer: Everything is owned by Joss/Fox and Russell/BBC!
Summary: After spending a few weeks trapped in an extratemporal holding cell together, Captain Jack Harkness offered Buffy Summers a job at Torchwood. And how could she ever turn down an offer like that?
Chapters: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
RULE #1: DON'T PROVOKE THE RIFT
They followed the readings on the Rift disturbance using the equipment in the SUV. It took them about 15 miles from Cardiff, to just outside a small village called Llanharan. Unfortunately, in the half hour it took them to drive there, the signal had already begun to dissipate. Whoever had been trying to open the Rift had either paused their efforts or abandoned them entirely. The area they traced the readings to, however, was saturated in Rift energy. They had opened it enough to cause a leak. If another attempt was made, who knew what kind of damage could be caused... or what could come through? Jack stepped out of the SUV in the middle of the muddy field where the readings of residual Rift energy were the strongest and glanced around. The ground was soft and grassy. It was a pasture for grazing. Sheep, possibly. Or maybe cows. He noticed Ianto stepping distastefully around a particularly large pile of dung. Cows it was, then.
Buffy very carefully avoided those large piles while walking beside Gwen, peering over the other woman's shoulder as she studied some detail in the readings. All the technobabble pretty much went right over the Slayer's blonde head, but she was pretty alright with that. Being so close to the Rift still, she couldn't quite tell, but she was fairly certain that...
"There's something funky going on here," she said quietly, her boots making little squishy sounds as they sank into the mud with each step. "I can practically smell the funk."
Jack looked at her over his shoulder. "What kind of funk?" he asked. "Because I can smell the cow patties too," he teased.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "I'm not talking about the poop situation," she retorted, Jack's sense of humor just as it always was.
"Buffy's right," Gwen said suddenly, frowning at the screen she was studying.
"I am?" She wasn't used to being right, or at least not to people actually admitting it.
The Welshwoman nodded and looked up at their Captain. "There's something strange in these readings," she explained. "Just... a little flicker of something, I'm just not sure what."
Jack exchanged a look with Ianto, then stopped and stepped back to look at the readout over Gwen's shoulder. Ianto stayed where he was, but watched them expectantly.
"I've never seen an energy signature like that," Jack said with a frown. "There's something...." He took the device from Gwen and adjusted some of the settings. "It's like something is missing," he mused. "Like there's something about it that we can't even detect."
Buffy's worried and slightly confused expression suddenly hardened as she turned to look around them. "Magic," she said darkly, her tone betraying the complete lack of doubt in her mind. "That's the funky thing, the something wrong that I just can't feel like I used to because of the Rift. My Spidey-senses are frazzled because of all the energy, but I can taste it in the air..."
Gwen had never looked at her teammate in fear before, but something in Buffy's voice made her more than a little weary of their blonde partner. She didn't want to ever be on the wrong side of that voice.
Jack rolled his eyes and handed the device back to Gwen. "Magic," he said dryly. "Great." He looked at Ianto and nodded to continue towards where the centre of the disturbance had been.
He looked back over his shoulder at Buffy again. "I guess that makes you our resident expert today," he told her.
"Goody for me," the girl in question grumbled, running her fingers through her hair and rolling her shoulders a bit. "Right. Okay. Magic can be local or long-distance, but there's always a phone number left behind that's at least a little traceable, so we just have to find it."
It took Gwen a moment to figure out what the hell Buffy was talking about; sometimes her teammate's speech patterns went a little over her head.
"And how do we trace it with our equipment?" Ianto asked, glancing at Jack beside him before looking to Buffy over his shoulder. "It's not exactly calibrated for magic," he pointed out wryly.
"Like Jack said," Gwen piped up suddenly in a burst of inspiration. "It's like something's missing. So we just look for the things we can't detect, the readings that just don't make sense." Her eyes darted to Buffy for confirmation and the Slayer nodded with a small smile.
Ianto looked at Jack in exasperation, wishing Tosh was there. He was certain it wasn't as simple as that. Not if they were going to actually trace it. Especially if it was long-distance, as Buffy had suggested it might be. The lack of a detectable signal let them detect its existence, as it were. They needed a specific signal to follow it anywhere.
Jack conceded to him wordlessly and stopped, turning to reach for the detection device Gwen was holding.
With Tosh gone, Jack was the most technically saavy of them. In fact, there were times when Tosh was there that Ianto had suspected Jack was still the most technically adept. Still, Ianto was loathe to voice his doubts about using the scanner himself. Gwen wouldn't have argued with Tosh's authority on technical issues. She wouldn't argue with Jack's. Ianto? Well, he may have been at Torchwood longer than Gwen, but he was younger than her and he'd always held a lower post within the organization. She treated him with respect - sometimes more respect than anyone else did - but there was no question that she knew she was the boss of him when it came to work.
He watched as Jack tried to manipulate the settings on the scanner to narrow down the strange readings into something properly detectable, but he was beginning to think, as Jack's expression betrayed his frustration, that their equipment just wasn't designed to work on magic.
The lack of talking was a big clue to Buffy that things weren't working out for Team Torchwood. They were a pretty talkative bunch when on the job, but this time the chatting just wasn't happening. Sighing loudly, she stuck her hands on her hips and thought.
"Okay, the techy thing obviously isn't working," she acknowledged. "So try looking for something physical. There has to be something somewhere that the magic was focused on, unless the baddies are a bunch of amateurs trying to focus on the Rift itself, but if that were the case, we probably wouldn't be here right now because they'd have blown up most of Wales with that little stunt." Yes, Buffy had been paying attention the past few years and knew a tiny little bit about magic. It wasn't completely unheard of!
Jack thrust the detection device in his pocket and looked around them.
"We're in the middle of a muddy field," he said, spreading his arms for emphasis. "I don't think we'll be able to tell one bit of disturbed earth from another."
Ianto also glanced around. He pointed further into the field. "The centre of the disturbance was further that way," he told them. "Another five hundred yards." He looked at Jack. "Maybe we should see if there's anything to find. Like footprints, or..." he shrugged. "Residue or something."
Jack nodded. There wasn't much else they could do. He started in the direction Ianto had pointed, leading the way.
The girls followed, taking care not to step in anything that might ruin their shoes for all eternity. When they got closer to the center of the readings, Buffy signaled for Gwen to move out a little so they could cover more ground with the boys in the middle; luckily, it turned out to be a good idea when suddenly she crunched instead of squished.
"Uh, guys?" she called out over her shoulder, her eyes glued to the patch of inexplicably dry and crispy grass. "Think I found Funk Central."
"Great detection skills," Jack teased as he stepped over to look at the strange dry patch. He crouched to examine it more closely than looked up at Buffy.
"Ever seen anything like this before?" he asked.
Frowning, she gave a distracted, "Sort of," before crouching down as well. She stared at the grass for a moment, as if determining patterns in the twisted black, and then she suddenly started digging away at it, ripping of fistfuls of the stuff that left dark streaks of dirt and soot on her hands.
Jack narrowed his eyes slightly. This kinda of messy manual labour wasn't really Buffy's style. He wondered what she was up to. He looked up at Ianto to see if he had a clue, but he was watching Buffy curiously as well.
Gwen stepped out of the way to avoid a flying glob of dirt and burnt mess. Looking at her friend in concern, because apparently she'd just lost all semblance of sanity, she leaned closer to hesitantly say, "Uh, Buffy, what are you-"
Buffy froze and so did Gwen's speech. Everyone just stood there for a second, waiting, until the Slayer slowly lifted out a chunk of crystal the size of her palm.
They all just looked at it for a moment. It was Ianto who finally broke the spell.
"What in the hell is that?" he asked, his brow furrowed in consternation.
"A conductor," Buffy answered, not even glancing up at the fact that the question came from Ianto. "The magic got directed here, and the crystal directed it," she waved a finger at the sky, "up there." She rubbed a little at one of the flat surfaces and peered closer. "I think there's writing here... Runes of some sort. Could be human, could be demon. I was never very good with languages, that was always Dawnie's thing..." Her voice trailed off and she turned her head a little. Listening.
Jack and Ianto didn't noticed that Buffy seemed to be onto something else. They'd moved on to their own discussion.
"We have to find out where we can identify the symbols," Jack told Ianto. "See if you can find anything in the archives..."
Ianto looked at him like he'd lost his mind. "Jack," he interrupted, "someone is using magic crystals to provoke the Rift. We're out of our depths here."
"Buffy's worked with this stuff before," Jack pointed out. "She can help you research it. She'll know where to look."
Personally, Gwen was trying to decide just who the bloody hell Jack thought he was talking about.
Buffy, however, had been paying attention to other, much more pressing matters. Like the sounds of her own impending doom. Switching on her earpiece, she informed her boyfriend, who wasn't there and really should have been, "Spike, they're here."
Jack turned around when he heard Buffy make a cryptic announcement to Spike.
"Wait," he said firmly. "Who's here?" The unverbalized question being 'And who should you be telling about it first?'
"Who do you think?" she replied in what was halfway down Snappish Avenue. "The other people who would be interested in magic playing Whack-A-Mole with the Rift."
It was probably not the best way to respond, but Buffy's day had suddenly gone the way of the Sunnydale Hellmouth. Boom.
Jack gave her a seriously unamused look.
"If you're going to have a problem so much as answering a simple question on this case, would you like to exercise your option of standing down?" he asked sternly. "If 'they', as you call them, are coming, maybe this situation is a little to close to home."
Meanwhile, back at the hub, Spike had already come to the same conclusion based solely on what could hear of their conversations, and knew exactly who they were and was currently cursing up a colorful streak. It was times like these that he really hated the fact that he was stuck inside until the sun went down.
"Slayer," Spike said into the comm, completely ignoring Jack and the fact that he was having it out with Buffy for not including him in the chain of command, "any indicators to which witch they sent?" he asked, figuring the most important thing was to find out if they would be dealing with Willow or one of the other NC witches.
Buffy was having a very hard time not going all Slayer on Jack for his tone. He was the boss, but did he really think... Spike helped with that, of course. Just hearing that gorgeous voice sent a wave of calm through her.
"It's Willow," she answered, then scowled a little as she added, "and Kennedy." Glancing at Jack, she said, "It doesn't matter how close to home it is -- you guys won't stand a chance if I'm not here."
"Fair enough," Jack allowed. "And what can we expect? You know," he added. "The people here at the scene?"
"A pain in the ass," Spike replied grumpily when Buffy confirmed that it was exactly who he was hoping it wasn't, "that what you can expect. You're way out of your league on this one," he said to the Torchwood team, confirming Buffy's statement.
Gwen wasn't impressed by all the talk. After everything she'd faced with Torchwood, a bunch of witches and Slayers wasn't a big deal, right? "Exactly how out of our league are we talking here?" she questioned incredulously.
And felt like she'd had the wind knocked out of her when Buffy answered in a dead serious tone, "You piss them off and you'll be retconned and back in the city in under five minutes, with all record of this wiped from the equipment, even the stuff in the Hub."
Jack was aware of how seriously the New Council was to be taken. After his first conversation about them with Buffy, he'd quietly gotten in touch with certain of his contacts and found out more about them. Of course, that was only for his own edification. He hadn't shared the information with Gwen and Ianto.
"Maybe, but I think about that point they'd find they were out of their league," he aanounced. "What, exactly, do they know about the Rift?" Not a lot. That he was sure of, if nothing else.
"Don't suspect it matters how much they know," Spike interjected. "Red's got a bad habit of playing with toys she doesn't understand."
"And Kennedy will do whatever Willow says," Buffy muttered, her opinion of her least-favorite Slayer pretty easy to grasp. Of course, last she'd heard, the couple were on the outs again. Maybe they were trying for another makeup. What number was this, eleven? Twelve?
"Whoever they are," Jack said, turning to Buffy, "they're not blowing up my city with my Rift on my watch. When they get here, you stress to them how dangerous the situation is and how much they need our help with it."
"Yes, because I'm sure that will just go over peachy," Spike said sarcastically. "Then we can all sit down to tea before they pack up and toddle off back to Cleveland," he deadpanned, still moody over the fact that he couldn't really do anything but provide snarky commentary from where he was sitting.
Buffy rubbed at her forehead with the back of her wrist, trying to avoid mucking up her face. "I'll be fine, Spike," she told him quietly. She wasn't sure she really believed it, herself, though.
"Buffy," Jack said in a gentler tone, though he was clearly still being dead serious, "we're not going to do anything to antagonize them, but I don't see how we have much choice here - and neither do they. I'm happy to explain that to them myself, but if they won't listen to me, then you need to make them understand that they can't just... whatever it is that they usually do. Not when dealing with the Rift. We have to work together on this. There are too many lives at stake."
"I know," she said quietly. "They won't be happy with the idea, but I know."
She took a deep breath and then held the crystal out to Ianto. "We need to keep hold of this until negotiations are over with. Think you're the man for the job?" She was trying to lighten the mood, but her smile just didn't have its heart in it.
Ianto reached out and took the crystal, giving her a small, understanding smile. He tucked it into an inside pocket of his jacket.
"Safe and sound," he told her softly.
Buffy's smile was a bit more sincere at that. Oh, Ianto. There was a reason she was so attached to her Coffee God, and it wasn't just his fancy way of enabling her caffeine addiction.
Her eyes moved past him, though, catching on the figures in the distance. Coming their way. She turned to Jack, her eyes lingering a moment longer, and said, "I'm gonna go meet them. I know, you usually like to be the one giving the speech and being in charge, but they won't like this idea, we already know that. They may be a little more okay with it if I talk first." She hoped.
Jack nodded. He put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a small squeeze, then stepped aside to stand with Gwen and Ianto.
He wasn't sure how much he liked the idea of Ianto holding onto the magical evidence the dangerous magic people would obviously want, but Buffy wouldn't have given it to him if she thought it would make him a target. Still, Jack stayed close and watchful as Buffy walked away from them.
Notes: Get ready for some drama, we're planning a lovely weekend of writing to get out Chapter 26!
Title: So Buffy Met Jack...
Authors: Amy tainted_crimson & Sarah magicom; Guest writer Danielle colorofangels
Crossover: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Torchwood
Spoilers: Through Buffy / Angel series finales and Torchwood Series 2 / Doctor Who Series 4. (Some elements borrowed from Season 8 comics)
Rating: FR-15 (for usual Torchwood-ness)
Disclaimer: Everything is owned by Joss/Fox and Russell/BBC!
Summary: After spending a few weeks trapped in an extratemporal holding cell together, Captain Jack Harkness offered Buffy Summers a job at Torchwood. And how could she ever turn down an offer like that?
Chapters: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
RULE #1: DON'T PROVOKE THE RIFT
They followed the readings on the Rift disturbance using the equipment in the SUV. It took them about 15 miles from Cardiff, to just outside a small village called Llanharan. Unfortunately, in the half hour it took them to drive there, the signal had already begun to dissipate. Whoever had been trying to open the Rift had either paused their efforts or abandoned them entirely. The area they traced the readings to, however, was saturated in Rift energy. They had opened it enough to cause a leak. If another attempt was made, who knew what kind of damage could be caused... or what could come through? Jack stepped out of the SUV in the middle of the muddy field where the readings of residual Rift energy were the strongest and glanced around. The ground was soft and grassy. It was a pasture for grazing. Sheep, possibly. Or maybe cows. He noticed Ianto stepping distastefully around a particularly large pile of dung. Cows it was, then.
Buffy very carefully avoided those large piles while walking beside Gwen, peering over the other woman's shoulder as she studied some detail in the readings. All the technobabble pretty much went right over the Slayer's blonde head, but she was pretty alright with that. Being so close to the Rift still, she couldn't quite tell, but she was fairly certain that...
"There's something funky going on here," she said quietly, her boots making little squishy sounds as they sank into the mud with each step. "I can practically smell the funk."
Jack looked at her over his shoulder. "What kind of funk?" he asked. "Because I can smell the cow patties too," he teased.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "I'm not talking about the poop situation," she retorted, Jack's sense of humor just as it always was.
"Buffy's right," Gwen said suddenly, frowning at the screen she was studying.
"I am?" She wasn't used to being right, or at least not to people actually admitting it.
The Welshwoman nodded and looked up at their Captain. "There's something strange in these readings," she explained. "Just... a little flicker of something, I'm just not sure what."
Jack exchanged a look with Ianto, then stopped and stepped back to look at the readout over Gwen's shoulder. Ianto stayed where he was, but watched them expectantly.
"I've never seen an energy signature like that," Jack said with a frown. "There's something...." He took the device from Gwen and adjusted some of the settings. "It's like something is missing," he mused. "Like there's something about it that we can't even detect."
Buffy's worried and slightly confused expression suddenly hardened as she turned to look around them. "Magic," she said darkly, her tone betraying the complete lack of doubt in her mind. "That's the funky thing, the something wrong that I just can't feel like I used to because of the Rift. My Spidey-senses are frazzled because of all the energy, but I can taste it in the air..."
Gwen had never looked at her teammate in fear before, but something in Buffy's voice made her more than a little weary of their blonde partner. She didn't want to ever be on the wrong side of that voice.
Jack rolled his eyes and handed the device back to Gwen. "Magic," he said dryly. "Great." He looked at Ianto and nodded to continue towards where the centre of the disturbance had been.
He looked back over his shoulder at Buffy again. "I guess that makes you our resident expert today," he told her.
"Goody for me," the girl in question grumbled, running her fingers through her hair and rolling her shoulders a bit. "Right. Okay. Magic can be local or long-distance, but there's always a phone number left behind that's at least a little traceable, so we just have to find it."
It took Gwen a moment to figure out what the hell Buffy was talking about; sometimes her teammate's speech patterns went a little over her head.
"And how do we trace it with our equipment?" Ianto asked, glancing at Jack beside him before looking to Buffy over his shoulder. "It's not exactly calibrated for magic," he pointed out wryly.
"Like Jack said," Gwen piped up suddenly in a burst of inspiration. "It's like something's missing. So we just look for the things we can't detect, the readings that just don't make sense." Her eyes darted to Buffy for confirmation and the Slayer nodded with a small smile.
Ianto looked at Jack in exasperation, wishing Tosh was there. He was certain it wasn't as simple as that. Not if they were going to actually trace it. Especially if it was long-distance, as Buffy had suggested it might be. The lack of a detectable signal let them detect its existence, as it were. They needed a specific signal to follow it anywhere.
Jack conceded to him wordlessly and stopped, turning to reach for the detection device Gwen was holding.
With Tosh gone, Jack was the most technically saavy of them. In fact, there were times when Tosh was there that Ianto had suspected Jack was still the most technically adept. Still, Ianto was loathe to voice his doubts about using the scanner himself. Gwen wouldn't have argued with Tosh's authority on technical issues. She wouldn't argue with Jack's. Ianto? Well, he may have been at Torchwood longer than Gwen, but he was younger than her and he'd always held a lower post within the organization. She treated him with respect - sometimes more respect than anyone else did - but there was no question that she knew she was the boss of him when it came to work.
He watched as Jack tried to manipulate the settings on the scanner to narrow down the strange readings into something properly detectable, but he was beginning to think, as Jack's expression betrayed his frustration, that their equipment just wasn't designed to work on magic.
The lack of talking was a big clue to Buffy that things weren't working out for Team Torchwood. They were a pretty talkative bunch when on the job, but this time the chatting just wasn't happening. Sighing loudly, she stuck her hands on her hips and thought.
"Okay, the techy thing obviously isn't working," she acknowledged. "So try looking for something physical. There has to be something somewhere that the magic was focused on, unless the baddies are a bunch of amateurs trying to focus on the Rift itself, but if that were the case, we probably wouldn't be here right now because they'd have blown up most of Wales with that little stunt." Yes, Buffy had been paying attention the past few years and knew a tiny little bit about magic. It wasn't completely unheard of!
Jack thrust the detection device in his pocket and looked around them.
"We're in the middle of a muddy field," he said, spreading his arms for emphasis. "I don't think we'll be able to tell one bit of disturbed earth from another."
Ianto also glanced around. He pointed further into the field. "The centre of the disturbance was further that way," he told them. "Another five hundred yards." He looked at Jack. "Maybe we should see if there's anything to find. Like footprints, or..." he shrugged. "Residue or something."
Jack nodded. There wasn't much else they could do. He started in the direction Ianto had pointed, leading the way.
The girls followed, taking care not to step in anything that might ruin their shoes for all eternity. When they got closer to the center of the readings, Buffy signaled for Gwen to move out a little so they could cover more ground with the boys in the middle; luckily, it turned out to be a good idea when suddenly she crunched instead of squished.
"Uh, guys?" she called out over her shoulder, her eyes glued to the patch of inexplicably dry and crispy grass. "Think I found Funk Central."
"Great detection skills," Jack teased as he stepped over to look at the strange dry patch. He crouched to examine it more closely than looked up at Buffy.
"Ever seen anything like this before?" he asked.
Frowning, she gave a distracted, "Sort of," before crouching down as well. She stared at the grass for a moment, as if determining patterns in the twisted black, and then she suddenly started digging away at it, ripping of fistfuls of the stuff that left dark streaks of dirt and soot on her hands.
Jack narrowed his eyes slightly. This kinda of messy manual labour wasn't really Buffy's style. He wondered what she was up to. He looked up at Ianto to see if he had a clue, but he was watching Buffy curiously as well.
Gwen stepped out of the way to avoid a flying glob of dirt and burnt mess. Looking at her friend in concern, because apparently she'd just lost all semblance of sanity, she leaned closer to hesitantly say, "Uh, Buffy, what are you-"
Buffy froze and so did Gwen's speech. Everyone just stood there for a second, waiting, until the Slayer slowly lifted out a chunk of crystal the size of her palm.
They all just looked at it for a moment. It was Ianto who finally broke the spell.
"What in the hell is that?" he asked, his brow furrowed in consternation.
"A conductor," Buffy answered, not even glancing up at the fact that the question came from Ianto. "The magic got directed here, and the crystal directed it," she waved a finger at the sky, "up there." She rubbed a little at one of the flat surfaces and peered closer. "I think there's writing here... Runes of some sort. Could be human, could be demon. I was never very good with languages, that was always Dawnie's thing..." Her voice trailed off and she turned her head a little. Listening.
Jack and Ianto didn't noticed that Buffy seemed to be onto something else. They'd moved on to their own discussion.
"We have to find out where we can identify the symbols," Jack told Ianto. "See if you can find anything in the archives..."
Ianto looked at him like he'd lost his mind. "Jack," he interrupted, "someone is using magic crystals to provoke the Rift. We're out of our depths here."
"Buffy's worked with this stuff before," Jack pointed out. "She can help you research it. She'll know where to look."
Personally, Gwen was trying to decide just who the bloody hell Jack thought he was talking about.
Buffy, however, had been paying attention to other, much more pressing matters. Like the sounds of her own impending doom. Switching on her earpiece, she informed her boyfriend, who wasn't there and really should have been, "Spike, they're here."
Jack turned around when he heard Buffy make a cryptic announcement to Spike.
"Wait," he said firmly. "Who's here?" The unverbalized question being 'And who should you be telling about it first?'
"Who do you think?" she replied in what was halfway down Snappish Avenue. "The other people who would be interested in magic playing Whack-A-Mole with the Rift."
It was probably not the best way to respond, but Buffy's day had suddenly gone the way of the Sunnydale Hellmouth. Boom.
Jack gave her a seriously unamused look.
"If you're going to have a problem so much as answering a simple question on this case, would you like to exercise your option of standing down?" he asked sternly. "If 'they', as you call them, are coming, maybe this situation is a little to close to home."
Meanwhile, back at the hub, Spike had already come to the same conclusion based solely on what could hear of their conversations, and knew exactly who they were and was currently cursing up a colorful streak. It was times like these that he really hated the fact that he was stuck inside until the sun went down.
"Slayer," Spike said into the comm, completely ignoring Jack and the fact that he was having it out with Buffy for not including him in the chain of command, "any indicators to which witch they sent?" he asked, figuring the most important thing was to find out if they would be dealing with Willow or one of the other NC witches.
Buffy was having a very hard time not going all Slayer on Jack for his tone. He was the boss, but did he really think... Spike helped with that, of course. Just hearing that gorgeous voice sent a wave of calm through her.
"It's Willow," she answered, then scowled a little as she added, "and Kennedy." Glancing at Jack, she said, "It doesn't matter how close to home it is -- you guys won't stand a chance if I'm not here."
"Fair enough," Jack allowed. "And what can we expect? You know," he added. "The people here at the scene?"
"A pain in the ass," Spike replied grumpily when Buffy confirmed that it was exactly who he was hoping it wasn't, "that what you can expect. You're way out of your league on this one," he said to the Torchwood team, confirming Buffy's statement.
Gwen wasn't impressed by all the talk. After everything she'd faced with Torchwood, a bunch of witches and Slayers wasn't a big deal, right? "Exactly how out of our league are we talking here?" she questioned incredulously.
And felt like she'd had the wind knocked out of her when Buffy answered in a dead serious tone, "You piss them off and you'll be retconned and back in the city in under five minutes, with all record of this wiped from the equipment, even the stuff in the Hub."
Jack was aware of how seriously the New Council was to be taken. After his first conversation about them with Buffy, he'd quietly gotten in touch with certain of his contacts and found out more about them. Of course, that was only for his own edification. He hadn't shared the information with Gwen and Ianto.
"Maybe, but I think about that point they'd find they were out of their league," he aanounced. "What, exactly, do they know about the Rift?" Not a lot. That he was sure of, if nothing else.
"Don't suspect it matters how much they know," Spike interjected. "Red's got a bad habit of playing with toys she doesn't understand."
"And Kennedy will do whatever Willow says," Buffy muttered, her opinion of her least-favorite Slayer pretty easy to grasp. Of course, last she'd heard, the couple were on the outs again. Maybe they were trying for another makeup. What number was this, eleven? Twelve?
"Whoever they are," Jack said, turning to Buffy, "they're not blowing up my city with my Rift on my watch. When they get here, you stress to them how dangerous the situation is and how much they need our help with it."
"Yes, because I'm sure that will just go over peachy," Spike said sarcastically. "Then we can all sit down to tea before they pack up and toddle off back to Cleveland," he deadpanned, still moody over the fact that he couldn't really do anything but provide snarky commentary from where he was sitting.
Buffy rubbed at her forehead with the back of her wrist, trying to avoid mucking up her face. "I'll be fine, Spike," she told him quietly. She wasn't sure she really believed it, herself, though.
"Buffy," Jack said in a gentler tone, though he was clearly still being dead serious, "we're not going to do anything to antagonize them, but I don't see how we have much choice here - and neither do they. I'm happy to explain that to them myself, but if they won't listen to me, then you need to make them understand that they can't just... whatever it is that they usually do. Not when dealing with the Rift. We have to work together on this. There are too many lives at stake."
"I know," she said quietly. "They won't be happy with the idea, but I know."
She took a deep breath and then held the crystal out to Ianto. "We need to keep hold of this until negotiations are over with. Think you're the man for the job?" She was trying to lighten the mood, but her smile just didn't have its heart in it.
Ianto reached out and took the crystal, giving her a small, understanding smile. He tucked it into an inside pocket of his jacket.
"Safe and sound," he told her softly.
Buffy's smile was a bit more sincere at that. Oh, Ianto. There was a reason she was so attached to her Coffee God, and it wasn't just his fancy way of enabling her caffeine addiction.
Her eyes moved past him, though, catching on the figures in the distance. Coming their way. She turned to Jack, her eyes lingering a moment longer, and said, "I'm gonna go meet them. I know, you usually like to be the one giving the speech and being in charge, but they won't like this idea, we already know that. They may be a little more okay with it if I talk first." She hoped.
Jack nodded. He put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a small squeeze, then stepped aside to stand with Gwen and Ianto.
He wasn't sure how much he liked the idea of Ianto holding onto the magical evidence the dangerous magic people would obviously want, but Buffy wouldn't have given it to him if she thought it would make him a target. Still, Jack stayed close and watchful as Buffy walked away from them.
Notes: Get ready for some drama, we're planning a lovely weekend of writing to get out Chapter 26!