Team Building with Jack Landors (SPD, A Squad, #15, T)
characters: SPD’s A Squad (Sky/Jack)
prompt #15: villain
word count: 3000
rating: T
summary: Apparently "patrol" now equals "gossip time." Or "debriefing." That sounds more official.
Team Building with Jack Landors (villain)
by *Andrea
Charlie had kept her word. She was back in the B Wing lounge in minutes--but she didn’t bring Jack with her. Call from Kat, she said, and if she knew more than that she wasn’t sharing. Sky frowned, but what could he do? Jack was A Squad Red. If the head of Base Tech said she needed to see him about something, then she needed to see him. End of story.
He had resigned himself to dinner alone when Sophie’s morpher came alive. Jack’s android teammate had joined them in the lounge when she realized her cat was missing again, and she’d made a perfectly logical guess as to where the creature might have gone. Bridge and Z loved that cat.
“A Squad,” Jack’s voice said, quieter over Sophie’s morpher than anyone’s because she kept it turned down as far as it would go. Sky could barely make it out. “Meet up at six-forty-five. Repeat, patrol resumes at 1845. Please acknowledge.”
Sky caught Z’s eye as Sophie went for her morpher. “Six forty-five?” Z repeated, craning her head around to see the time display. “The whole squad?”
A Squad’s break time had just been doubled. Knowing Jack, he wouldn’t make them stay out longer to compensate, either. And Sky wouldn’t put it past him to do it out of the goodness of his heart... if it weren’t for the fact that Jack hadn’t eaten yet, and he was, as far as anyone knew, still with Kat in the lab.
“A Squad Blue acknowledges,” Sophie told her morpher.
The whole squad, though? It wasn’t like Jack had to keep them all around while he ate dinner. Surely he could send them back out and catch up once he’d finished whatever he was doing.
“Yo, Sky!” Sky’s morpher was considerably louder than Sophie’s, because he actually needed to be able to hear it in the middle of a crowded room if something important was going down. Unfortunately, that made Jack’s informal address all the more obvious.
He saw Charlie hide a smile. Z laughed outright. Sophie gave him a wide-eyed look that said she still harbored illusions of Jack being the perfect SPD cadet. He acknowledged with a sigh, and Jack must be rubbing off on him because he said, “What?” instead of “Tate,” and that drew another grin from Z and a look of surprised amusement from Charlie.
“You still in B Wing?” Jack’s voice demanded.
“Yes, Jack,” he said, ignoring the stare from Sophie that said she was watching all the wrong role models. “I’m still in B Wing.”
“All right, I’ll be right there.” Jack sounded distracted all of a sudden, like maybe he was actually doing his job instead of using his morpher as a personal communication device. “Don’t go anywhere. I need a favor.”
“Yes, sir,” Sky said, because this was still an official channel, whether Jack made it a personal one or not. And because there was more subtle sarcasm in those two words than almost anything else he could say.
“What was that?” Jack’s voice replied. “I didn’t quite catch that last part.”
Sky felt his lips twitch, and he was very careful not to let it show in his voice. “Don’t push it,” he told his morpher.
“Understood,” Jack answered. He didn’t bother to hide his grin, and Sky couldn’t help but smile. He put his morpher away before Jack could hear it.
Charlie was pretending to watch the cat, but Z had propped her chin on her palm and was actually batting her eyes in his direction. “What?” he snapped, smile vanishing. Sophie, too, was staring at him like Jack’s contagious insubordination was new to her.
“Aw, I just think you’re cute,” Z teased. “With your ‘yes, sir!’ and your doing Jack favors...”
“I’ll be doing you a ‘favor’ in a minute,” Sky muttered. “And I don’t want any witnesses.”
Jack was closer than they’d thought, and it turned out to be a good thing. Because Z didn’t let it go, Sky didn’t let anything go, and Charlie, unexpectedly, sided with him. Z was never, ever, outnumbered. Sophie looked like she thought she might have to referee an actual fight by the time Jack walked in, took one look at them, and made as if to walk out again.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Another Z blocked his way, and a fourth grabbed his arm and turned him back around. “See what happens when you leave us alone? What could Kat possibly have to say that’s more important than us?”
“Nothing’s more important than you,” Jack told her, with a grin that said he meant it as he let her drag him back into the room. “But Kat’s going on vacation, and I had to say goodbye.”
Sky stared at him, rivalry forgotten, and he wasn’t the only one.
“What?” Charlie demanded. “Kat’s leaving?”
“Yeah, I think she needs some time,” Jack said with a shrug. “This whole thing’s been pretty rough on her, you know? She basically held the base together these last few months. She led the counteroffensive when this place was overrun, and that was before we reactivated her reserve and put her on call two nights out of three. She’s gotta have some downtime.”
He felt cold. He would have shivered, except he was too frozen to move. He could actually hear his own pulse, slamming through his body, urging him to fight or flee. Jack was lying to them, calm as could be, throwing the words in their faces like they were nothing.
“That’s bullshit,” Charlie said, and her voice eased the tightness around his heart with a suddenness that almost made him gasp. Of course it was. They all knew that. Jack wasn’t trying to get anything by them; how could he? It was just a show. Just part of his show.
The Jack and Sky show, he thought, looking away and catching one of the Zs looking at him sympathetically. He was still waiting for it, wasn’t he. Waiting for the day Jack betrayed him. Tonight at eleven...
“Yeah, I’m glad you think so,” Jack was telling Charlie. “Cause without her, I’m a Ranger short, and as far as I’m concerned? Your vacation’s over. Get your team down to Dr. Coon first thing tomorrow morning and she if she can’t speed up the post-release process a little.
“In fact,” he added. “Patrol with us tonight so I can give an active duty assessment tomorrow. Sky, you too. I need you to cover the rest of Kat’s shift. C Squad’s got the night shift, so you’ll be done at ten--you up for it?”
He was trying to get them off the base. Sky looked at Charlie, and, somewhat to his surprise, found her looking back. She’d heard it too. How the hell did she know Jack so well already? He didn’t have time to wonder, though, because she was already nodding.
“Let me call Des first,” she said. “He’s out tonight, doesn’t know he needs to be in early tomorrow. I’ll meet you downstairs in half an hour.
Jack didn’t look away from Sky until he gave a curt nod of his own.
“Fine,” Jack said. “No, wait--” He grimaced, taking it back the moment the words were out. Glancing at Charlie, he said, “You can’t get into the armory. Cruger restricted your access. I’ll stop on my way down and bring your gear with me.”
“Right.” Charlie was already on her feet, her expression hidden as she turned away from them. That was all the acknowledgment Jack got as she strode out of the room, presumably off to alert her teammates.
“Seriously?” Z asked. There was only one of her now, and Sky had seen two of them vanish as Charlie passed, but he’d missed the disappearance of the third. “She needs a vacation? That’s the best you could do?”
“She does need a vacation,” Jack told her. “Everyone on this base needs some R & R. Sadly, I can’t dismiss everyone at once, so we’re gonna have to prioritize. The person most likely to blow us all up if she doesn’t catch up on her sleep goes first.”
Z snorted, but she accepted this like it almost made sense. And, okay... almost. Jack did have a way of putting things that made them sound bizarrely plausible.
Which was why the patrol rotation he assigned drew a speculative look from Sophie and Sophie alone. She had been quiet in the lounge, and she had left them to themselves at dinner--but she could clearly see that something was up. So when Jack put them in teams of two, with instructions to overlap and switch off every hour, Sophie wisely let Charlie choose her as her partner.
Sky would get her last, then. He arranged them neatly in his head: him and Jack, Charlie and Sophie, Boom and Ally. Switch. Charlie and Jack, him and Boom, Sophie and Ally. Switch. Jack and Boom, him and Sophie, Charlie and Ally. By the time they finished their patrol, Jack’s entire team, not to mention the leaders of two others, would be fully briefed on whatever he couldn’t talk about on base.
“Not bad,” Sky admitted, as he and Jack watched the rest of A Squad move out.
“Don’t trust me?” Jack said at the same time.
They turned to look at each other. Jack just waited, clearly expecting an answer.
“I get it,” Sky said at last. “I don’t know who you think is listening on base, but if Kat’s really gone, I assume it’s an inside job. Whatever it is.”
“That wasn’t the question,” Jack pointed out.
Sky glared at him. “Don’t ask for blind loyalty, Jack. Even you’re not infallible.”
Jack’s face broke into a grin. “I think I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Thanks.”
Even you’re not infallible, he’d said. Because maybe he did come close. On occasion.
“Well,” Sky grumbled, one hand on his tac vest. “You have your moments.”
Jack beamed at him. “I love you, too.
“So?” he continued, before Sky could object to such a public declaration. “Want to hear an interesting story? I’ll warn you right now, it’s gonna sound slightly less crazy in the dark on a deserted ghetto street.”
“Maybe we should wait until we get to the ghetto, then,” Sky said dryly.
“It might take that long to convince you,” Jack replied.
Sky waved for him to get started as they fell into step together. “Do your best.”
“What do you know about Time Force?” Jack asked instead.
Sky gave him an irritated look. He didn’t appreciate games, but Jack didn’t back down. “Conspiracy theory from the turn of the century,” he said curtly. “Military force from some imaginary future time helps the Power Rangers capture mutants. Turns on them, kidnaps some of the Rangers, destroyed during their eventual escape. Or sent packing. ‘Back to the future,’ as it were. Depending on which version you like better.”
Jack spun around to walk backward, making his stare all the more obvious. “How do you know stuff like that?” he demanded. He sounded, for lack of a better word, outraged. “Is there some sort of SPD course on pop culture?”
“I do live in this city,” Sky pointed out, amused beyond reason by Jack’s reaction. It went a long way toward dissipating his own annoyance. “My dad was a Ranger. I know what people say.”
“You don’t listen to anyone!” Jack exclaimed. He waved one arm wildly as he spun around, just in time to avoid a lamp post. “How do you pick up stuff like this? I’d never even heard of Time Force!”
Sky smiled at his outburst. Crazy Jack was inexplicably calming. It was calculating Jack that made him uneasy. “Long day?” he inquired.
“You have no fucking idea!” Jack shouted. Now he was just venting, and somehow, it didn’t bother Sky at all. “I get attitude from you for getting up to work with Ally, I get attitude from Kat who thinks Cruger will somehow smell her nail polish from the other side of the galaxy, I get D Squad turning into a germ factory because one of their cadets picked up some kind of cold and apparently they’re all, who knows, sleeping together for all I know--”
He ran out of breath there, which was probably a good thing. Sky didn’t say anything, though, and Jack just kept going. “I’ve got Des lecturing me about how if you were a woman I’d never spend so much time with Ally, and I get Dan in my face because I slipped up and called him ‘she’ when he’s obviously a girl, and as far as I can tell, everyone on this base is fucking insane!”
Sky waited a beat to see if he would continue, then asked, “So. Get any work done today?”
“When do you think I had time to work!” Jack yelled. “I’m so glad to be on patrol I may never go back!”
Sky tried very hard not to smile.
“I know you’re smiling,” Jack warned him. Loud. Familiar. “Do you know I actually wanted Cruger to leave because I thought he’d take some of that damn drama cloud with him? Little did I know! He’s the one who keeps it down by not caring!”
“Jack Landors,” Sky remarked, unable to keep his amusement to himself any longer. “President of the asylum.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” Jack grumbled, coming down with a sullenness that made Sky feel more sorry for him than anything. “This was supposed to be your morpher, you know.”
He had the feeling that “you’re welcome” wasn’t the appropriate response. “You carry it better than I would,” he said instead. And that was the right thing to say, because Jack was actually silent for several seconds.
“I’m shocked to hear you say that,” Jack said at last.
Sky didn’t think he was kidding.
“Tell me where Kat is,” he said.
“Uh...” Jack only stammered around him. Sky was almost positive. Being him, he couldn’t be completely sure, but he was happy to fill in the blanks in the absence of contradictory evidence. Jack might throw him off his game, but he did the same for Jack.
“Right,” Jack was saying. “And we’re back to Time Force.”
“I thought we’d covered Time Force,” Sky said impatiently. “Freaks. Crazy rumors. Some people even say Commander Collins used to work for them, if that gives you any idea. Can we move on?”
“This is us moving on,” Jack told him. “Collins did work for them. She was exiled to our time for screwing it up twenty years ago. They’re still chasing her sister.”
“Kat,” he said flatly. Because Jack was right. That was crazy.
“Exactly.” Jack did the snapping thing again, and Sky had no idea where he’d picked it up but he wasn’t sure he liked it. “And possibly me.”
Sky blinked, then frowned at him. But the mere fact that Jack was pretending it was nothing, unfortunately, meant that it probably wasn’t. He was serious.
“You’re not serious,” Sky said aloud. It was worth the possibility of ridicule to get confirmation on this, because he did trust Jack. Right here, right now. Jack would tell him straight up if this was a joke or not.
“I wish that was true,” Jack said. “‘Cause I’m just about out of words, here.”
“Time Force is real,” Sky said.
Jack nodded. “Yeah.”
“Collins is from the future,” Sky said.
“Yeah.”
“And I suppose she’s trying to hide Kat from her former employers by having you send her on vacation?”
“Yup,” Jack agreed, more cheerful now. “Thanks. That was easier than I expected.”
“What do they want with Kat?” Sky demanded. “That doesn’t make any sense. So she’s helping Collins. What, is she breaking some kind of... time law?”
“Yes?” Jack sounded much less sure of this. “I dunno. I’m still trying to figure out what they want with me.”
“What do they want with you?” Sky demanded. “I can’t help but notice you’re not on ‘vacation’.”
“I don’t think they know who I am,” Jack said thoughtfully. “Which is fair,” he added, “since neither do I.”
“You’re Jack Landors,” Sky informed him. He didn’t like the way this conversation was going. Okay, one for the conspiracy theorists--out of a million--if Jack said so. But this wasn’t allowed to change anyone’s world. “SPD Red. What else do you need to know?”
“Well.” Jack seemed to give this serious consideration. “Be nice to know when I was born. Someone messed with my file; did you know that? Now I have a birthdate and parents and everything. At least as far as SPD is concerned.”
“Someone changed your file,” Sky repeated. Well, screw them. Jack’s day had been a lot longer than he'd realized, and he had the sudden irrational wish to start it over. He could have at least... not... glared at him when he left this morning.
“Yeah, now I’m a pisces,” Jack remarked. “Syd’ll be disappointed.”
It was a stupid question, and the fact that he couldn’t keep himself from asking it gave him some idea of how important the whole thing must be to Jack. “What--when were you born?”
Jack shrugged. “According to my new file? March of ‘05. Kat thinks that’s a little off, though.”
And Kat would know, if anyone would. Not enough to give Jack an actual birthday--or if she did, she’d never told them. Jack had shared Syd’s birthday ever since she found out he didn’t know his own.
“Off by how much?” Sky asked at last.
He saw Jack glance at him out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he turned his head Jack had looked away. Scanning the street ahead like the answer didn’t matter at all. “About a thousand years,” Jack said. “Give or take.”
prompt #15: villain
word count: 3000
rating: T
summary: Apparently "patrol" now equals "gossip time." Or "debriefing." That sounds more official.
Team Building with Jack Landors (villain)
by *Andrea
Charlie had kept her word. She was back in the B Wing lounge in minutes--but she didn’t bring Jack with her. Call from Kat, she said, and if she knew more than that she wasn’t sharing. Sky frowned, but what could he do? Jack was A Squad Red. If the head of Base Tech said she needed to see him about something, then she needed to see him. End of story.
He had resigned himself to dinner alone when Sophie’s morpher came alive. Jack’s android teammate had joined them in the lounge when she realized her cat was missing again, and she’d made a perfectly logical guess as to where the creature might have gone. Bridge and Z loved that cat.
“A Squad,” Jack’s voice said, quieter over Sophie’s morpher than anyone’s because she kept it turned down as far as it would go. Sky could barely make it out. “Meet up at six-forty-five. Repeat, patrol resumes at 1845. Please acknowledge.”
Sky caught Z’s eye as Sophie went for her morpher. “Six forty-five?” Z repeated, craning her head around to see the time display. “The whole squad?”
A Squad’s break time had just been doubled. Knowing Jack, he wouldn’t make them stay out longer to compensate, either. And Sky wouldn’t put it past him to do it out of the goodness of his heart... if it weren’t for the fact that Jack hadn’t eaten yet, and he was, as far as anyone knew, still with Kat in the lab.
“A Squad Blue acknowledges,” Sophie told her morpher.
The whole squad, though? It wasn’t like Jack had to keep them all around while he ate dinner. Surely he could send them back out and catch up once he’d finished whatever he was doing.
“Yo, Sky!” Sky’s morpher was considerably louder than Sophie’s, because he actually needed to be able to hear it in the middle of a crowded room if something important was going down. Unfortunately, that made Jack’s informal address all the more obvious.
He saw Charlie hide a smile. Z laughed outright. Sophie gave him a wide-eyed look that said she still harbored illusions of Jack being the perfect SPD cadet. He acknowledged with a sigh, and Jack must be rubbing off on him because he said, “What?” instead of “Tate,” and that drew another grin from Z and a look of surprised amusement from Charlie.
“You still in B Wing?” Jack’s voice demanded.
“Yes, Jack,” he said, ignoring the stare from Sophie that said she was watching all the wrong role models. “I’m still in B Wing.”
“All right, I’ll be right there.” Jack sounded distracted all of a sudden, like maybe he was actually doing his job instead of using his morpher as a personal communication device. “Don’t go anywhere. I need a favor.”
“Yes, sir,” Sky said, because this was still an official channel, whether Jack made it a personal one or not. And because there was more subtle sarcasm in those two words than almost anything else he could say.
“What was that?” Jack’s voice replied. “I didn’t quite catch that last part.”
Sky felt his lips twitch, and he was very careful not to let it show in his voice. “Don’t push it,” he told his morpher.
“Understood,” Jack answered. He didn’t bother to hide his grin, and Sky couldn’t help but smile. He put his morpher away before Jack could hear it.
Charlie was pretending to watch the cat, but Z had propped her chin on her palm and was actually batting her eyes in his direction. “What?” he snapped, smile vanishing. Sophie, too, was staring at him like Jack’s contagious insubordination was new to her.
“Aw, I just think you’re cute,” Z teased. “With your ‘yes, sir!’ and your doing Jack favors...”
“I’ll be doing you a ‘favor’ in a minute,” Sky muttered. “And I don’t want any witnesses.”
Jack was closer than they’d thought, and it turned out to be a good thing. Because Z didn’t let it go, Sky didn’t let anything go, and Charlie, unexpectedly, sided with him. Z was never, ever, outnumbered. Sophie looked like she thought she might have to referee an actual fight by the time Jack walked in, took one look at them, and made as if to walk out again.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Another Z blocked his way, and a fourth grabbed his arm and turned him back around. “See what happens when you leave us alone? What could Kat possibly have to say that’s more important than us?”
“Nothing’s more important than you,” Jack told her, with a grin that said he meant it as he let her drag him back into the room. “But Kat’s going on vacation, and I had to say goodbye.”
Sky stared at him, rivalry forgotten, and he wasn’t the only one.
“What?” Charlie demanded. “Kat’s leaving?”
“Yeah, I think she needs some time,” Jack said with a shrug. “This whole thing’s been pretty rough on her, you know? She basically held the base together these last few months. She led the counteroffensive when this place was overrun, and that was before we reactivated her reserve and put her on call two nights out of three. She’s gotta have some downtime.”
He felt cold. He would have shivered, except he was too frozen to move. He could actually hear his own pulse, slamming through his body, urging him to fight or flee. Jack was lying to them, calm as could be, throwing the words in their faces like they were nothing.
“That’s bullshit,” Charlie said, and her voice eased the tightness around his heart with a suddenness that almost made him gasp. Of course it was. They all knew that. Jack wasn’t trying to get anything by them; how could he? It was just a show. Just part of his show.
The Jack and Sky show, he thought, looking away and catching one of the Zs looking at him sympathetically. He was still waiting for it, wasn’t he. Waiting for the day Jack betrayed him. Tonight at eleven...
“Yeah, I’m glad you think so,” Jack was telling Charlie. “Cause without her, I’m a Ranger short, and as far as I’m concerned? Your vacation’s over. Get your team down to Dr. Coon first thing tomorrow morning and she if she can’t speed up the post-release process a little.
“In fact,” he added. “Patrol with us tonight so I can give an active duty assessment tomorrow. Sky, you too. I need you to cover the rest of Kat’s shift. C Squad’s got the night shift, so you’ll be done at ten--you up for it?”
He was trying to get them off the base. Sky looked at Charlie, and, somewhat to his surprise, found her looking back. She’d heard it too. How the hell did she know Jack so well already? He didn’t have time to wonder, though, because she was already nodding.
“Let me call Des first,” she said. “He’s out tonight, doesn’t know he needs to be in early tomorrow. I’ll meet you downstairs in half an hour.
Jack didn’t look away from Sky until he gave a curt nod of his own.
“Fine,” Jack said. “No, wait--” He grimaced, taking it back the moment the words were out. Glancing at Charlie, he said, “You can’t get into the armory. Cruger restricted your access. I’ll stop on my way down and bring your gear with me.”
“Right.” Charlie was already on her feet, her expression hidden as she turned away from them. That was all the acknowledgment Jack got as she strode out of the room, presumably off to alert her teammates.
“Seriously?” Z asked. There was only one of her now, and Sky had seen two of them vanish as Charlie passed, but he’d missed the disappearance of the third. “She needs a vacation? That’s the best you could do?”
“She does need a vacation,” Jack told her. “Everyone on this base needs some R & R. Sadly, I can’t dismiss everyone at once, so we’re gonna have to prioritize. The person most likely to blow us all up if she doesn’t catch up on her sleep goes first.”
Z snorted, but she accepted this like it almost made sense. And, okay... almost. Jack did have a way of putting things that made them sound bizarrely plausible.
Which was why the patrol rotation he assigned drew a speculative look from Sophie and Sophie alone. She had been quiet in the lounge, and she had left them to themselves at dinner--but she could clearly see that something was up. So when Jack put them in teams of two, with instructions to overlap and switch off every hour, Sophie wisely let Charlie choose her as her partner.
Sky would get her last, then. He arranged them neatly in his head: him and Jack, Charlie and Sophie, Boom and Ally. Switch. Charlie and Jack, him and Boom, Sophie and Ally. Switch. Jack and Boom, him and Sophie, Charlie and Ally. By the time they finished their patrol, Jack’s entire team, not to mention the leaders of two others, would be fully briefed on whatever he couldn’t talk about on base.
“Not bad,” Sky admitted, as he and Jack watched the rest of A Squad move out.
“Don’t trust me?” Jack said at the same time.
They turned to look at each other. Jack just waited, clearly expecting an answer.
“I get it,” Sky said at last. “I don’t know who you think is listening on base, but if Kat’s really gone, I assume it’s an inside job. Whatever it is.”
“That wasn’t the question,” Jack pointed out.
Sky glared at him. “Don’t ask for blind loyalty, Jack. Even you’re not infallible.”
Jack’s face broke into a grin. “I think I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Thanks.”
Even you’re not infallible, he’d said. Because maybe he did come close. On occasion.
“Well,” Sky grumbled, one hand on his tac vest. “You have your moments.”
Jack beamed at him. “I love you, too.
“So?” he continued, before Sky could object to such a public declaration. “Want to hear an interesting story? I’ll warn you right now, it’s gonna sound slightly less crazy in the dark on a deserted ghetto street.”
“Maybe we should wait until we get to the ghetto, then,” Sky said dryly.
“It might take that long to convince you,” Jack replied.
Sky waved for him to get started as they fell into step together. “Do your best.”
“What do you know about Time Force?” Jack asked instead.
Sky gave him an irritated look. He didn’t appreciate games, but Jack didn’t back down. “Conspiracy theory from the turn of the century,” he said curtly. “Military force from some imaginary future time helps the Power Rangers capture mutants. Turns on them, kidnaps some of the Rangers, destroyed during their eventual escape. Or sent packing. ‘Back to the future,’ as it were. Depending on which version you like better.”
Jack spun around to walk backward, making his stare all the more obvious. “How do you know stuff like that?” he demanded. He sounded, for lack of a better word, outraged. “Is there some sort of SPD course on pop culture?”
“I do live in this city,” Sky pointed out, amused beyond reason by Jack’s reaction. It went a long way toward dissipating his own annoyance. “My dad was a Ranger. I know what people say.”
“You don’t listen to anyone!” Jack exclaimed. He waved one arm wildly as he spun around, just in time to avoid a lamp post. “How do you pick up stuff like this? I’d never even heard of Time Force!”
Sky smiled at his outburst. Crazy Jack was inexplicably calming. It was calculating Jack that made him uneasy. “Long day?” he inquired.
“You have no fucking idea!” Jack shouted. Now he was just venting, and somehow, it didn’t bother Sky at all. “I get attitude from you for getting up to work with Ally, I get attitude from Kat who thinks Cruger will somehow smell her nail polish from the other side of the galaxy, I get D Squad turning into a germ factory because one of their cadets picked up some kind of cold and apparently they’re all, who knows, sleeping together for all I know--”
He ran out of breath there, which was probably a good thing. Sky didn’t say anything, though, and Jack just kept going. “I’ve got Des lecturing me about how if you were a woman I’d never spend so much time with Ally, and I get Dan in my face because I slipped up and called him ‘she’ when he’s obviously a girl, and as far as I can tell, everyone on this base is fucking insane!”
Sky waited a beat to see if he would continue, then asked, “So. Get any work done today?”
“When do you think I had time to work!” Jack yelled. “I’m so glad to be on patrol I may never go back!”
Sky tried very hard not to smile.
“I know you’re smiling,” Jack warned him. Loud. Familiar. “Do you know I actually wanted Cruger to leave because I thought he’d take some of that damn drama cloud with him? Little did I know! He’s the one who keeps it down by not caring!”
“Jack Landors,” Sky remarked, unable to keep his amusement to himself any longer. “President of the asylum.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” Jack grumbled, coming down with a sullenness that made Sky feel more sorry for him than anything. “This was supposed to be your morpher, you know.”
He had the feeling that “you’re welcome” wasn’t the appropriate response. “You carry it better than I would,” he said instead. And that was the right thing to say, because Jack was actually silent for several seconds.
“I’m shocked to hear you say that,” Jack said at last.
Sky didn’t think he was kidding.
“Tell me where Kat is,” he said.
“Uh...” Jack only stammered around him. Sky was almost positive. Being him, he couldn’t be completely sure, but he was happy to fill in the blanks in the absence of contradictory evidence. Jack might throw him off his game, but he did the same for Jack.
“Right,” Jack was saying. “And we’re back to Time Force.”
“I thought we’d covered Time Force,” Sky said impatiently. “Freaks. Crazy rumors. Some people even say Commander Collins used to work for them, if that gives you any idea. Can we move on?”
“This is us moving on,” Jack told him. “Collins did work for them. She was exiled to our time for screwing it up twenty years ago. They’re still chasing her sister.”
“Kat,” he said flatly. Because Jack was right. That was crazy.
“Exactly.” Jack did the snapping thing again, and Sky had no idea where he’d picked it up but he wasn’t sure he liked it. “And possibly me.”
Sky blinked, then frowned at him. But the mere fact that Jack was pretending it was nothing, unfortunately, meant that it probably wasn’t. He was serious.
“You’re not serious,” Sky said aloud. It was worth the possibility of ridicule to get confirmation on this, because he did trust Jack. Right here, right now. Jack would tell him straight up if this was a joke or not.
“I wish that was true,” Jack said. “‘Cause I’m just about out of words, here.”
“Time Force is real,” Sky said.
Jack nodded. “Yeah.”
“Collins is from the future,” Sky said.
“Yeah.”
“And I suppose she’s trying to hide Kat from her former employers by having you send her on vacation?”
“Yup,” Jack agreed, more cheerful now. “Thanks. That was easier than I expected.”
“What do they want with Kat?” Sky demanded. “That doesn’t make any sense. So she’s helping Collins. What, is she breaking some kind of... time law?”
“Yes?” Jack sounded much less sure of this. “I dunno. I’m still trying to figure out what they want with me.”
“What do they want with you?” Sky demanded. “I can’t help but notice you’re not on ‘vacation’.”
“I don’t think they know who I am,” Jack said thoughtfully. “Which is fair,” he added, “since neither do I.”
“You’re Jack Landors,” Sky informed him. He didn’t like the way this conversation was going. Okay, one for the conspiracy theorists--out of a million--if Jack said so. But this wasn’t allowed to change anyone’s world. “SPD Red. What else do you need to know?”
“Well.” Jack seemed to give this serious consideration. “Be nice to know when I was born. Someone messed with my file; did you know that? Now I have a birthdate and parents and everything. At least as far as SPD is concerned.”
“Someone changed your file,” Sky repeated. Well, screw them. Jack’s day had been a lot longer than he'd realized, and he had the sudden irrational wish to start it over. He could have at least... not... glared at him when he left this morning.
“Yeah, now I’m a pisces,” Jack remarked. “Syd’ll be disappointed.”
It was a stupid question, and the fact that he couldn’t keep himself from asking it gave him some idea of how important the whole thing must be to Jack. “What--when were you born?”
Jack shrugged. “According to my new file? March of ‘05. Kat thinks that’s a little off, though.”
And Kat would know, if anyone would. Not enough to give Jack an actual birthday--or if she did, she’d never told them. Jack had shared Syd’s birthday ever since she found out he didn’t know his own.
“Off by how much?” Sky asked at last.
He saw Jack glance at him out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he turned his head Jack had looked away. Scanning the street ahead like the answer didn’t matter at all. “About a thousand years,” Jack said. “Give or take.”