Prologue: Rebel
The Harlequin smiled in his last moments. They weren't killing him, at least not yet, but the relentless timekeeping agents were peeling off the mask which protected him and inspired others, and when they were done he would only be a man in most of a clown suit. Nonetheless, he smiled, staring into the eyes of his foe's timepiece-themed mask ("clock face," he laughed to himself) as his own was torn from him.
"Well, well, well," his enemy intoned emotionlessly, punctuating each word by tapping together all four pairs of fingertips at once. "This will help us dispel those rumors of a man returned from the dead, Mr..." He paused, his mask revealing none of the confusion beneath it. "I don't appear to have you on record. That is puzzling. But no matter. Let us begin. Repent, Harlequin!"
The man in most of a clown suit smiled and coughed from his seat in the midst of the Detemporizer. "This was in my history files... what was it I was supposed to say... Oh yeah. Get stuffed." He paused for a second, then smiled again, knowing he would be the first to call his enemy by the secret name which no one dared use in his presence. "Ticktockman."
"You will repent, you know," the Master Timekeeper replied. "Whatever I have to do to make it happen, you will repent, just like the first Harlequin. And you will go on the communications web, and you will tell everyone that the Timekeepers' way is A-OK, and things will go back to the way they are meant to be. But by then your time will long since have been up. Repent, Harlequin!"
"You're an idiot," the man in most of a clown suit replied. "I'm tougher than Everett C. Marm, and as for my time..." He grinned wide and flashed his foe the thumbs-up before jamming his thumb against the time-scan module, which buzzed for a much longer time than was normal, beeped once, twice, three times, and eventually so many times that they all ran together and both men lost count, then finally continued to buzz for a full minute before dying (like so many other people had in this chair), releasing a puff of smoke which drifted toward the Master Timekeeper's desk. The man in most of a clown suit smiled again. "Good machine," he remarked. "Gives good readings. Never heard of anything so accurate... including your schedule. Mind reading me the printout?" He gestured to the side of the machine, where a ticker-tape printer was still spewing forth its report.
The Master Timekeeper stood up, taking care to brush the dust from his three-piece suit, and walked around to pick up the end of the tape, now several feet in length. He was becoming unnerved, he realized, by more than just the Harlequin's grin in the face of switching-off and the time-scanner's erratic behavior. His agents had informed him that this new Harlequin had always worn gloves to protect his identity, but when they had brought him in today, his hands had been bare, as if he had planned this all along...
"A simple malfunction, Harlequin," he reported as he looked over the printout. "There are hundreds of numbers here, all negative, going back thousands of years. They cannot possibly be correct. And this last one..." His eyes went wide as he began to suspect it, then flew to the printer to confirm his fear.
The last number was still printing.
He threw himself to the floor a second before the Detemporizer exploded. Standing up afterwards, he took stock of himself and the room. Neither his guards nor the Harlequin had been so lucky. He had nearly convinced himself that this was a mere act of sabotage, a suicidal publicity stunt, when the body of the man in the almost-completely-destroyed clown suit gasped and stood up, turning to face him.
"Well, that kind of puts a monkey wrench in things," he remarked. "Still, at least you won't be messing with time anymore."
"I think I've got enough left in me to deal with you," the Master Timekeeper replied as a large apparatus resembling a cannon barrel descended from the ceiling and aimed itself at the man in the clown suit. "Before the Detemporizer prototype blasts you out of time and space, tell me- what was your name, Harlequin?"
"Since I doubt that'll stop me from coming back," the man in the clown suit replied, "I'm Jack Harkness. Captain Jack Harkness."
There was a flash, and the Master Timekeeper was alone in his office.