:This is a sequel to Tripping the Rift, my Torchwood/Who/Marvel X-over. I'm going to do my best to make it so it's not purely necessary to read the first one, but there may be a few references, considering that this story starts immediately following that adventure. I'll also probably be filling in a few holes with one-offs in Archives of the Time Agency as I go along and will let you know if I publish a story that relates to this one in the anthology. There will be Anglo-Sino phrases scattered in the dialog, which I will provide translations for at the bottom of the chapters, the translations of which are gathered from multiple online sources. Standard business, of course, is the disclaimer that I don't own Torchwood or its characters, which are the property of RTD and BBC, nor do I own Firefly/Serenity or its characters, which are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Universal Pictures.:

My Torchwood fics
Deus Ex Machina (not yet published)
Oberon's Wild Night
Tripping the Rift
Kyhl's Story
Archives of the Time Agency
Serenity in Cardiff
Spending Time
Invasion of the Vending Machine From Hell
My Hero Bares His Nerves

From Tripping the Rift...

Jack looked up at the monitor as it beeped, the view switching to the RAM readout. "Okay, kids, looks like Torchwood's back in business."

Ianto picked up the remote, switching over to the map view, then bringing up the video shot of a medium-sized space ship plummeting toward the lake in Roath Park. "What sort of aliens are those?"

"Aught-three Firefly-class Mid-bulk Transport, mid twenty-fifth century to early twenty-sixth, although that one looks like it's pretty beaten up. Great little ship. Did a short tour with the browncoats getting shuttled around in one. Those aliens would most likely be humans from the colonies, probably smugglers or mercenaries." Jack broke into a grin. "If we're really lucky, they might have a professional Companion on board."

Chapter One

"Jack, mind filling me in on what you mean by humans from the colonies?" Ianto pulled onto the park road, shifting the SUV on the fly. "You're sure they're human?"

"Purer than the ones in Cardiff." Jack tapped his fingers on his knee. "We needed a Noah's Ark, so the Time Agency isolated the Anglo-Sino New Earth Alliance from the rest of the Earth colonies and alien influence in the early twenty-sixth century. They were the insurance that kept the species viable." He looked over at the lake. "At any rate, they're very human." His hand slid to his revolver as Ianto pulled into the carpark and brought the SUV to a stop. He swung out of the black vehicle and started for the lake, the younger Torchwood member trotting to catch up.

"So why are you so nervous?"

"Do I look nervous?" Jack stopped, looking back over his shoulder. "When do I ever look nervous?"

"Never said you looked it, said you are." Ianto slid his 9mm out of the back of his trousers waistband. "So should I be expecting to use this on whatever escaped your insurance policy?"

"I'm doing a good job at making you as trigger-happy as an American, Ianto." Jack flashed a dire grin as he continued toward the lake shore. "Kind of sexy and terrifying at the same time. Just don't shoot unless I give the order. No matter what, do you understand? That ship traveled way outside its range, through a coded isolation barrier, and five hundred years through time, meaning someone on board is a time agent." He stopped again as he heard Ianto chamber a round sharply. "Really terrifying. Really sexy, but really terrifying."

"I remember the last time I met a time agent, Jack."

"You know, John was never a poster boy for the Agency. Some of them were pretty decent people, the time agents. Not all of us were lured by the power of time travel into a life of crime." Jack continued forward over the next rise, looking down from the top at the Firefly-class ship, the cockpit perched above the water at the end of the long furrow it had carved through the park, the photon-reaction drive darkened at the other end. The rear cargo hatch sat unopened below it, half a meter of it underwater. "You still haven't promised me you won't shoot unless I order it."

"You have my word, sir," answered Ianto, stepping up next to him. "What would things come to if I started making decisions on my own?"

Jack glanced at his partner from the corner of his eye. "Are you in a mood because my robot ate your coffee machine?" His attention was drawn back to the ship as the cargo hatch hydraulics hissed, the double doors of the airlock sliding open. "I'll buy you a new one."

"I like my machine," muttered the Welshman, his eyes fixed on the movement. He kept his pistol ready at his thigh, his thumb on the safety as he followed Jack toward the ramp that dropped down to splash into the shallow water at the edge of the lake, forming a decent bridge to dry land. He gave his headset a tap. "Gwen? We're at the crash site. Are you almost here?"

"Just pulling onto the park road," came the reply. "Everything okay so far?"

"We're about to meet our visitors." Ianto looked up to see a man in his thirties with short brown hair and wide-set cobalt blue eyes stride down the ramp, his bearing giving the impression that he was in charge in spite of his rather simple dress of a rust-colored shirt and khaki pants, held up by braces and tucked into functional leather boots. A low-slung hip holster with a single revolver and a long dark brown duster coat completed the unassuming uniform. To the man's left was a light-skinned black woman, almost as tall as the leader and around the same age, her black curls held back from her face in a loose tieback that allowed the ends to hang well over her shoulders. She was as plainly costumed as the man she followed, a green shirt under a brown leather vest, chocolate-colored pants, and dark boots, a black gunbelt holding her sidearm. On her left wrist she wore a leather strap, a buckle holding down a flap that covered whatever was the true purpose of the band. Ianto glanced to Jack's arm where a similar, albeit larger, strap was visible under the edge of his greatcoat's sleeve. The third person that came down the ramp seemed fairly harmless next to her larger companions, a teenage girl with long brown hair in loose locks that fell across brown eyes that dominated her pixie-like features. Her slight figure was draped in a peach-colored cotton sundress that dropped loosely to her midthigh, her feet completely bare. Ianto turned his attention back to the older woman quickly.

"Hello, there, Captain, you're a long way off your route." Jack crossed his arms. "Have a little problem with your grav-drive?"

The captain offered a querulant smile, all but matching Jack's position as he crossed his own arms at the base of the ramp. "Just a little mechanical issue," he answered with an American-sounding accent, a hint of backwoods twang to his words. "Got my mechanic on it right now, in fact, so we'll be off your world as soon as we fix it. Not looking for any trouble."

"Neither are we," replied Jack. "Just wondering if you know where you are."

The captain's eyes shifted quickly to Ianto and back to Jack. "Well, to be honest, seem to have lost our navsat. We in Alliance spa--?" He was cut off by the sudden concussive boom of a single gunshot. Ianto's eyes darted over to see Jack slump backwards, everything seeming to drop into slow motion as he struggled to understand the change in circumstance. The captain and the black woman both stared in equal shock. The teenage girl stood with the captain's revolver in her hand, still pointed where Jack's head had been before the bullet entered his skull between the eyes and dropped him. "Māde!" exclaimed the captain, grabbing for his gun as time swung back into its normal pace. Ianto raised his 9 mm up toward the girl, who was staring at Jack's body with a vacant look of curiosity. Before he could draw bead, however, he felt metal against his cheek as the black woman pressed the muzzle of her sidearm into his flesh.

"Don't think about it," she said in a low, steady voice. "We're real sorry, but it was an accident."

"Accident?!" Ianto clenched his teeth, holding his gun shakily. Jack might come back from a bullet, but he wouldn't. "She shot him in the head!"

"Yeah, well, it weren't part of our planned greeting." The captain got his weapon back and pointed it at Ianto. "Now you just wanna put that away until we can have us a sort or there'll be more corpsifyin' and that'd be not good. River, you get back in the ship, you hear me, girl?"

"He squished his brainpan and it won't stay." The girl commented, crouching down to peer at her victim. "That's not logical, it defies the rules."

"Same's could be said 'bout you, girl." The captain didn't take his eyes off of Ianto as he addressed her. "Now I said get back. Every time, nothin' goes smooth."

"Ianto!" Gwen's voice came over the headset. "I heard a shot, what's going on?"

"So we're at a standoff, now?" Ianto passed on the information as covertly as he could manage. "You two plan to shoot me, too?"

"Don't plan to shoot nobody, just seems to happen that way," the woman cooly responded.

"He won't lay down and stay down, Mal." The girl looked up at the captain, her expression full of child-like wonder. "Don't that beat all?"

"Don't mind her," the captain said to Ianto, trying to take a soothing tone. "She does tend to ramble on and we do tend to not know what the hell she means." His attention was diverted from Ianto, his eyes darting to Jack and then widening as Torchwood's leader sat up, wiping at the spot of blood on his forehead. "Gao yang jong duh goo yang," muttered the captain under his breath.

"I told you so," said the girl flatly.

"What the hell did you shoot me for?!" Jack pushed himself up, glaring at the trio.

"I wanted to see how it worked." The girl stood up as well, squinting at Jack. "Your cerebellum should have been obliterated."

"Well that would explain the headache," Jack said between clenched teeth, then looked at the captain. "Good to see you followed my order, Ianto. I would've shot them by now."

"They did have me at a slight disadvantage in numbers, Jack." Ianto dropped his eyes to the side to the blur of gunmetal he could see against his cheek. A smile crept to his lips as he saw Gwen step out from the other side of the ramp, her own pistol aimed at the woman. "Now we might be in a better position to talk."

"Hands up, drop your weapons, please," said Gwen. "You alright, Jack?"

"I'm a little curious as to why everyone we meet tries to kill me lately," Jack brushed dirt from his coat. "Whatever happened to shaking hands as a form of greeting instead of ventilating people's skulls?"

Ianto lowered his weapon as the other two complied with Gwen's request. "So what do we do now?" He bent down to collect their weapons.

"You're awful polite for Feds," commented the captain.

"We're not Feds, we're Torchwood." Jack put his hands on his hips. "Welcome to Earth That Was."

The captain and the woman looked at each other, then at Jack, lowering their hands slowly. "How can that be?" asked the woman. "There's a hundred years travel in a long distance transport to Earth That Was. We haven't even heard from anyone that far out since the start of the Unification War."

"You're browncoats? From after twenty-five ten?" Jack asked, tilting his head.

"It's twenty-five eighteen by my watch," she replied, lifting the strap and checking it. Ianto frowned, able to see that it looked nothing like the manipulator interface on Jack's wrist strap, pretty much appearing to be nothing more than a military-style timepiece with a compass.

"Of course there's no such thing as browncoats anymore," said the captain quickly. "The war's been over a good while."

"Yeah? Who won?" Jack looked up from the woman's wrist strap dismissively.

"Well..." the captain shrugged. "I did mention there's no such thing as browncoats anymore, right?"

"So you did." Jack looked at the girl, raising a brow. "And you've got a reader with you, too."

"Sorry, who or what's Torchwood again?" asked the captain, shifting the conversation. "Some kind of Old Earth faction, are you?"

"You could say that. We deal with problems like your ship here," answered Jack.

"Things that fall through time, like us." The girl looked up at the sky absently. "So many voices here, so crowded."

"Um, through time, did you say, River?" The captain chuckled. "Huāngmiù."

"It's not," she protested, holding up a leather wrist strap that looked almost identical to Jack's. "I wanted to see if it worked. It brought us here."

"Jack?" Gwen looked over to him. "Why does she have one of those?"

"I don't know," he answered. "I don't recognize her. Only one other I remember who had one like that, but he went..." He trailed off as a tall, muscular man with a goatee and mustache stumbled down the ramp from the cargo bay, one hand to his bandaged head, dressed in a faded yellow t-shirt with the words 'Blue Sun' barely visible in the transfer on the chest, khaki cargo pants, and work boots. A younger man with black hair, dressed neatly in a white shirt with a high collar and an embroidered vest over grey slacks, followed him.

"Sorry, Mal, I tried to get him to lay down but he never listens," said the younger man, grabbing the bigger man's elbow and being easily shaken off of it.

"She hit me in the noggin with a gorram fryin' pan!" The big man glared at the girl who had shot Jack, who in turn had returned to staring at the sky.

Ianto looked over to see Jack staring at the big man, his jaw slack. "Jack? What's wrong?"

"He went MIA," breathed Jack. "He MOTHERed and never came back."

Māde!: Fuck! (sino)

Gao yang jong duh goo yang.: Motherless goat of all motherless goats. (sino)

Huāngmiù.: Ridiculous. (sino)

gorram: Goddamn (anglo)