*Hey troops! Day two on the job and I'm already glad to be back into the swing of things. So, this chapter is very much an exposition of sorts, rattling through more background at a breakneck pace, whilst dropping plenty of hints of what is to come. I hope you like it and if you do, please please drop a review to let me know! Thanks again to the wonderful Chantelle (you can't escape the recognition) and to everyone who has read, reviewed, followed and favourited! See you all tomorrow! TPD*
Chapter 2: Training
The two men had never met before. And they would never meet again. They were messengers, nothing more. Each had an earpiece in their ear and strict instructions to say exactly what was said to them. No paraphrasing. Anything more or less and they would be terminated. Follow the instructions and they would make one million US dollars for a short conversation. The first man entered the car park from the South, the second from the North. They met on top of the abandoned, five storey car park, looking around to make sure that neither of them were followed if they wanted to live.
"Is everything in place?" the first man asked quietly, pulling his collar up against the biting wind. The second didn't bother.
"Yes," he replied. "The boy has no idea that we are watching him. He believes that his little…protégé is a secret known only to him."
"The fool," the voice speaking in the first man's ear sounded amused, so the first man conveyed that in his tone of voice. "Who is she?"
"Nobody important," the second man shrugged. "Her name is Clara Oswald. She has come at just the right time."
"How long until she finishes her training and is integrated?" the first man sounded impatient and the second voice was cool as velvet.
"Just a couple of weeks now. She's moved at a remarkable rate. Even Hunt himself wasn't expecting such progress."
"Excellent, then everything is going according to schedule. Nothing can stop me now. As long as you do your job correctly."
"Don't worry," the second man implored. "I will take care of Clara Oswald."
And with that, the earpieces activated and both of the men in the car park had their brain stems fried.
Clara knew that the kick was coming, but she couldn't move in time and it collided with her gut. She ducked the following punch and staggered back, guard up, able to buy herself a precious few seconds to recover. Her hair was up in a bun, she was dressed in a black tank top and shorts and her naked feet were blistered. She was covered from head to toe in sweat; it glistened off her toned muscles. She countered, slamming a fist into Jake's side but he didn't budge. He jabbed at her shoulder and whilst she was off-guard, the foot came whirling round and this time; the blow took her off of her feet. Clara hit the floor, her body screaming in agony. She managed to sit up and then she saw stars, as the next blow broke her jaw. She was so stunned she forgot rule one and lay there for a moment to catch her breath. It was less than a second before his foot came thundering into her gut and Clara let out a small noise of pain, nothing more than that.
"Dead," Jake informed her in a monotonous, unimpressed voice. That was a lesson that Clara had learned on her first day of training. Her first lesson. The fight wasn't over until he killed her. Or she killed him. But in nearly six months, she'd never been able to land more than a handful of blows in a fight until he snapped her neck or kicked the life out of her. He was brutal. She'd complained about it on her first day, when he'd punched her so hard her head had felt like it was going to come off and then when she lay there, waiting for him to help her up, he'd kicked her in the gut.
"That's…not…fair!" she had wheezed, practically crying. He had already given her a taster of the power he was going to give her at that stage, but she had still been smarting.
"The people I'm pitting you against," Jake had replied in a tender voice, but a firm one. "Won't fight fair. They won't care that you're short or a girl or human. They will rip you limb from limb in a heartbeat. So yes, I could fight fair. I could stop when you need to stop. And then, we finish training and you know all the moves and you can fight as well as anyone and you're dead in a week. I've seen it happen. So I'm going to fight like every other shit bag in the universe. And I won't stop until you're dead. If you need a moment to breathe, earn it."
And he taught her how. He taught her that confidence was everything. If you hop up and grin at them, and act like a blow that fractured your skull barely touched you, then they pause, they hesitate, they panic and you have a moment for your skull to heal and your body to get its second wind. She still lost every fight, but he told her that he'd been doing this for years and that she could fight every minute of every day for the rest of her life and still never be able to kill him. He wasn't training her to kill him; he was training her to kill everyone else.
Although the physical training was hard, away from the jousting arena, he was actually the sweetest person Clara had ever met. Ever since he had saved her life in the alleyway, everything had changed. He had taken her to a warehouse on the edge of Blackpool. He had told her that he had acquired the building so that he could train her whilst she lived at home. She didn't have to completely disappear. Not yet anyway.
His name was Jake Hunt. For years now, he and his team had been lurking in the shadows, protecting the world against anyone and anything that threatened its destruction. He possessed the Power. Clara had found this name to be wholly unsatisfying, but that was what it was called apparently. The Power was as old as time itself, moving through generations, protecting those who needed it most. And it had found its way to Jake, who utilised it to defend the innocent. He protested that this made him sound rather heroic, but he didn't consider himself a hero. He was a killer. A cold blooded killer. And ruthlessly efficient at it. He was stronger than any man alive, faster than any man alive and he had control over kinetic energy. The balls of light Clara had seen him summon were pure kinetic energy, and they could kill anyone who wasn't as strong as him, if they couldn't defend themselves.
He had been feeding Clara the Power, drip by drip, steadily increasing her body's capacity. The first few doses had been chaotic. She felt like her entire body was burning, her veins turned into pure fire. But it felt good. And as she learned to harness it, it grew cold, like ice at her fingertips.
She learned more and more. About the team she was joining, about its history, but he was always quiet when it came to the dead. He'd never talk about those he'd lost. She learned about her powers and how to control them, as the dosage was upped and upped until she felt like she would bring the entire building down on top of them if she wasn't too careful. Power transfer was done by holding hands. Very rudimentary, but it was effective. Early on, he pressed a needle to her head and drove it into her skull, which had hurt quite a bit.
"That," he informed her, as she rubbed the sore spot. "Was a chip that is implanted directly into your brain. If you betray me, I can activate it, and kill you instantly."
Clara felt her blood run cold. "Don't you trust me?" she asked quietly. He snorted at that.
"Fuck no," he replied. "And you shouldn't trust me. Or anyone. Trust is not something that you should ever share in our business Clara Oswald. Because if you trust people, it opens you up to get killed."
He was constantly working, so sometimes she'd go less than a day without seeing him, other times it could be up to two weeks. Sometimes, he'd be in perfect shape, others he'd be beaten black and blue, broken bones, blood and everything. He always managed to kick the shit out of her though, no matter how bad his injuries.
One day, he came into her flat, looking pale as anything. He had a split lip and he was hobbling slightly, but he seemed more shocked than anything. He sat down and she made him a cuppa and he just sat there, looking like his entire world had ended.
"What's wrong?" Clara had asked softly, as she handed him his cuppa. And he had looked at her, his eyes harsher than she had ever seen them.
"Nothing," he had replied instantly. "Grab your stuff, we're going fighting."
Often they sat in her flat and talked for a while before the fighting, often they talked afterwards and sometimes they didn't even fight at all, they just trained other ways, be it control, knowledge or history. But on that day, they fought all day and he fought savagely, breaking her in ways she hadn't even realised that it was possible to be broken. He didn't say a word to her all day, until the final time that he picked her up off the floor.
"I'm sorry," he apologised, as she tried to comprehend a new level of pain. "I just wanted to let you know Clara, you're…you're fighting hard." She looked at him disbelievingly. "I know you feel like you're getting nowhere, but trust me, you're progressing faster than I ever could have imagined."
And then he had left, leaving Clara more confused than ever. Shortly after, he had told her about his team. There was himself of course, the leader and general. Then, there was his right hand man. His right hand man was a techno whizz who could hack any computer, came up with the most insane technology and, according to Jake anyway, dressed like an idiot. His name was the Doctor. He wasn't human, he didn't come from Earth, but Jake didn't say much else about him. The Doctor was the techno guy and the coordinator, he tended to run missions from the side, but he could fight when needed.
Then, there was River Song. River was an espionage specialist; she would go undercover and was an expert in sabotage, infiltration and seduction. She was so useful to have for more subtle missions, in case Jake needed something done quietly, instead of with the usual fanfare.
Amelia Pond was the complete opposite. She was, in Jake's words, a berserker. He knew that he could trust Amy to cause as much destruction as possible in a short amount of time. She had only one level, she didn't show restraint, which made her invaluable at times.
Amy's husband Rory was the group nurse. He was as capable a soldier as the others, but when someone needed patching up after a particularly bad injury, it was Rory who sat them down, tied off their bleeding arteries, picked the bullets out of them, strapped them up and made sure that they rested.
"So who am I replacing?" Clara had asked casually. He hadn't answered her question directly.
"You're going to be an all-rounder," he informed her. "Like me. Trained in all forms of combat, stealth, leadership, tech. Consider me your idol, what you should aim to be." He seemed rather full of himself after that, but she had seen the look in his eyes. One of pain.
Clara felt like she knew them, even though she'd never met any of them. She asked why she hadn't them and he had told her that she wasn't ready. She wasn't sure what he meant by that, but as time went on, it became increasingly clear to her that she would be joining them soon. He kept dropping hints about her almost being ready and how she'd been the perfect student and how much the Doctor was looking forward to meeting her.
"Sorry," Clara groaned as he helped her up. "Forgot rule one."
"Forget it in a fight and you're dead meat," he reminded her, shaking his head slightly. "You're better than that Clara," he reprimanded. She rolled her eyes at this and he bit his lip. He was clearly thinking. "Listen," his voice was tender, so she knew what was coming, she had been expecting it for weeks. "You need to die."
The words crashed into her, one after the other, and Clara inhaled sharply. She had finally quit her teaching job a couple of weeks previously and she had been ignoring her father and friends, per his instructions. She had been showing all the signs of classic depression, putting on a wonderful show. But even so, going that one step further, disappearing into the shadows completely…she wasn't sure that she was ready for it. Her unease must have been etched all over her face, because he gave her a comforting look.
"The Doctor's arranged for Clara Oswald to completely disappear," he told her. "All you need to do is make sure that your friends, your dad, all think that you're dead. You'll become like me, like the rest of us. A ghost." She nodded. "I'm sorry Clara, but you knew that it would come to this."
"Doesn't make it any easier," she muttered darkly. "Was it hard for you?"
"Hardest thing I've ever done," he replied with a smile. He was lying and she knew it. But she let him lie. His lies were only to protect himself. She knew that he didn't trust her. Not fully. Not yet anyway. That was why he lied. About himself mostly. She knew almost nothing about this dark-haired stranger, only the job. Every single time that she tried to broach the subject of his personal life, he had either ignored her, or laughed in her face.
"There is no life beyond the job," he had said harshly. "You're in for life now Clara."
And she had known what she was getting into, what she was signing up for. It was going to be hard, almost impossible, but it would be worth it. She often thought about what had compelled her to follow him, that day that they met and she knew that it had been the curiosity, but it had also been yearning. For a better life. For a life where she could help people. More people. You never looked a gift horse in the mouth and Clara Oswald had been given a chance to help more people than she could possibly have imagined. And if the price was her own life, in every sense, then so be it. It was a price she was willing to pay.
He'd given her a week to get it done, but the next day, he came back. And he looked different and she could sense that he was different. He was haggard and limping badly, worse than she'd ever seen him. He almost fell into her flat and she supported him over to the chairs.
"Change of plans," he groaned, stretching out but wincing as he did so. "Do you have a human sized ice pack?" Clara raised an eyebrow at him incredulously. "Worth a shot. I'm sending you on a mission." Her eyes widened. "Now."
"What?" she spluttered. "But what happened to me coming to your base, slowly integrating, only going on missions after a week or so when I'd settled?"
"Fuck that," Jake groaned. "I'm sending you on a solo mission. Tonight. I have no choice Clara, I'm sorry, but I know you're ready for it." She stood frozen to the spot, staring at him. "We've been chasing this bastard for weeks. Walter Simeon. Otherwise known as the Great Intelligence. He picks up information, uses it to get what he wants, bring down governments, building an empire that stretches across fifteen planets. He knew that we were on to him, so he sent in an army to kill us all. We wiped every last one of them out," Jake grimaced. "But we took a heavy beating. I'm in the best shape out of us and I'm not in a good way. We have Simeon's location, all we need is someone strong enough to fight."
"Me?" Clara spluttered. "But…but…"
"Clara," Jake groaned. "I need you to do this. You are strong enough, once I give you your final power boost. You just need to break into the compound and either capture or kill Simeon. There'll be armed guards but you know how to deal with them. Remember, try to stun them, not kill them."
"I'm not…"
"Clara." He stared into her eyes. "You are ready."
And she believed him.