Ha, take that, real life! I got another chapter up. ^_^ And despite working on this and getting no sleep, I still did well on all the tests I had this week! *cheers*
My email is mysteriously not sending me any alerts, even after I added the bot email to my contacts. Ideas to fix it, anyone?
Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter.....
Chapter 7: Jack and Jackie
Jackie Tyler hated the moments right after her daughter's visits. The flat seemed so much emptier after she and that awfully rude Doctor of hers left.
Well, nothing cheered a woman up like shopping.
The black SUVs the Doctor had been so worried about were gone, Jackie noted as she walked to the bus stop. Silly Clock King (or something like that) was so busy putting her daughter in danger, he'd started to see it everywhere he went. Paranoid, that's what he was.
She'd already bought more pairs of shoes than she could afford – wait until Howard saw these heels! – when she saw a pair of blue sneakers she knew Rose would love. With only the slightest hesitation at the price, Jackie bought them. She knew Rose couldn't be persuaded to stay home by a pair of sneakers, but what was the harm in trying? And why couldn't Rose stay in London, anyway? She'd be perfectly safe, instead of running for her life from Vikings or cat people or Raxi – Raxi – Raxisomethings.
Jackie was walking back to the bus stop loaded with her purchases when she felt somebody brush by her. "Hey, you! Aren't you going to apol – "
That was when Jackie noticed that the person who had brushed by her was not a person at all, but rather a blue thing, shaped like a person and slightly out of focus. And it had not brushed by her as much as it had walked through her.
As more and more of the things appeared, Jackie's screams were lost among the thousands of Londoners who quite suddenly found themselves in a crowd twice the size it had been before.
Inside Torchwood Tower, chaos reigned.
"What are these things?!" shrieked Hartman as a fourth blurred figure arrived from thin air.
"I don't know!" snapped the Doctor as Rose and Jack helped him up. "They could be anything, from any dimension or parallel universe! They could be radioactive, they could be poisonous, they could be killers – "
The fourth figure marched towards one of the guards, a terrified young man who was holding his gun shakily. Just as the figure was close enough to touch him, the guard fired. Just as they had before, the bullets passed directly through the blurry figure, ricocheting haphazardly off the walls. One of them impacted the base of one of the levers, sending sizzling circuits flying out of place. Rose cried out as she felt a white-hot streak trace a line on her arm. One of the bullets had just grazed her.
Obliviously to the bullets, the figure passed directly through the quivering guard and proceeded with the other three to march out of the room through the wall.
"They're ghosts!" the young guard hollered hysterically. "Ghosts!"
His gun sparked and died in his hands as the Doctor, fury building in his eyes, pointed his screwdriver at it. Jack was already tearing off a non-bloodied strip of his shirt to offer to Rose as a bandage.
Slightly mollified when he saw Rose was (relatively) unharmed, the Doctor turned back to Hartman. "Are you ready to listen to me now?!"
"Are they really ghosts?" said Hartman, trembling.
"No," spat the Doctor, "Just not fully materialized. And I'm betting it's not just those four either." He stomped back into the TARDIS, Rose and Jack close behind him. The door slammed shut behind them.
The guards looked to Hartman questioningly as the blue box vworped vworped away.
"Find out where he went," she ordered, "I want to know what he's doing and how he's doing it."
Jack peeked out the TARDIS doors and stepped into the Tyler living room. "All clear!" he called back into the console room. "Nice place, Rosie."
Rose burst through the TARDIS door right behind Jack. "Mum! Mum!"
No answer.
"Mum!" Rose called frantically, dashing to check the other rooms. The Doctor stepped out after her.
"Jackie's not here?" He frowned.
"Could the ghosts have gotten her?" asked Jack, wondering if they should go after Rose, whose cries throughout the flat were becoming increasingly hysterical.
"They're not ghosts, they're partially materialized creatures from parts unknown."
"But 'ghost' is so much more catchy, don't you think?"
Rose returned to the living room quite distraught. "She's not here. Her purse is gone, but she's not here. She must have gone shopping or something."
"Rose," said the Doctor softly, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But Torchwood probably knows where you live. She might – "
"She can't be, her purse is gone," Rose insisted. She whipped out her mobile. "I'll call her!"
On the other line, Jackie's phone rang and rang, but no one answered. Both the Doctor and Jack gave her pitying looks. She hung up and glared at them both. "She's fine, she must be. Both of you, just – just go watch telly or something!"
She hit speed dial and listened intently to her phone again. Jack obligingly switched the telly on and plopped onto the sofa, remote in hand. The Doctor's eyes anxiously flickered between Rose and Jack, and he ended up squeezing Rose's hand comfortingly while intently studying the news programme.
"These blue human-like creatures seem to be able to walk through walls – "
Jack switched the channel. A dotted map of the world appeared on the screen. " – seem to be all over the world, with especially high concentrations in heavily populated areas – "
Jack clicked the remote. " – president's meeting with the prime minister has been canceled due to the 'ghosts' – "
Click. "People are calling this the end of – "
"Mum!" said Rose suddenly into her mobile. "Are you there? Mum?"
Even over the telly, all three of them could clearly hear the piercing screech of Jackie Tyler. "Get your ruddy Doctor over here RIGHT NOW or so help me I will – !"
"Mum, calm down, we're still on Earth. Where are you? Uh-huh. Hold on, don't go anywhere, we'll be there in a tick." She hung up. "I was right, she went shopping. She's at Harrods. Says there's ghosts everywhere."
"All over the world, apparently," said the Doctor, nodding at the telly. "Right, then, we'll go pick her up. Then I'm going to trap one of those…" He rolled his eyes at Jack. "Ghosts."
"See?" said Jack smugly as they piled into the TARDIS, "Much better to say than partially materialized creatures."
"You gonna go out like that?" asked Rose, pointing at the large blood stain still splattered on his chest. Jack dashed off to the wardrobe room to grab a fresh shirt, leaving Rose to watch the Doctor set the coordinates.
"Can you regenerate again?" asked Rose suddenly.
The Doctor froze, hand in mid-flick of a switch. "Why, don't you like this one?"
"Well, yeah, but you said to Hartman….you said you had used them all up."
"Oh! Nope, just bluffing!" he said cheerily, resuming his work on the console.
"Good," said Rose, clearly relieved.
"I've got three more left!" Rose blanched. "What?" he continued, "That's plenty, isn't it? Nine down, three to go?...Maybe not?" Rose was completely silent. The Doctor stopped pushing buttons. "Oh. Oh, oh, oh. You thought I was immortal, didn't you?"
"Well, yeah, if every time you die you get a new face….."
"Nope! Mortal as you are….well, not as immortal as Jack. Well, unless I manage to avoid any accidents for the rest of time….be a bit boring, though, wouldn't it?"
Jack reappeared in a fresh shirt. "Ready!" he said, flashing a thumbs-up.
"Right, then, off we go! Allons-y!" exclaimed the Doctor, pressing one last button. "Oh, I definitely think I'll keep that. Allons-y, allons-y, allons-y...."
The TARDIS landed with a shaking crash across from Harrods.
The street was a madhouse. Cars lay abandoned in the street, ignitions still running. A double-decker bus had smashed into a brick wall. People dashed madly around, screaming into mobiles or running out of stores. Ghosts marched through the entire melee with no particular direction in mind. And in the middle of it, still clutching some shopping bags in one hand and a mobile in the other, was Jackie Tyler.
Jackie hurried to the TARDIS as soon as it materialized and Rose stepped out. Mother and daughter were reunited with a crushing hug before Rose yanked her mother into the TARDIS.
The man inside the alien police box was not the same one Jackie had seen just a few hours ago. "Don't tell me you changed your face again!" cried Jackie, dropping her shopping bags.
"Oh, no, I'm no Doctor," said Jack, charming smile spreading across his face. He extended a hand. "Captain Jack Harkness. I'm a friend of the Doctor's and your sister's."
"She's my daughter," said Jackie, utterly seduced. She took his hand enthusiastically.
"Really?" said Jack in an air of surprise, "I never would have guessed."
"Jack, that's my mum!" Rose looked as if she was going to be sick.
Jackie tore her gaze off Jack. "Course I am, sweetheart, but that doesn't mean – "
The Doctor emerged from beneath the console grating carrying a metal device on his back. "Who you gonna call?"
"Ghostbusters!" both Rose and Jack chimed.
"I ain't afraid of no ghosts!....Oh, hello, Jackie. Jack, trust me, you don't want to go there. Really."
"I was only being polite – "
"An-y-way! Rose, Jack, take one of these," the Doctor tossed a traffic-cone-shaped gadget to each of them. "We need to surround one of the ghosts so I can track which universe they came from and determine if they're harmless or not."
"Harmless?" yelled Jackie, "Course they're not harmless, they're everywhere! There you were, nattering on about black SUVs, when there are real ghosts out there!"
"Are they really harmless?" asked Jack, hoisting up his cone and examining it.
"Well, as far as I can tell they're not hurting anyone," said the Doctor, fiddling with the device on his back, "They could even be people from a parallel Earth partially manifesting in this one, not even aware they're here."
"So these could just be parallel Londoners?" suggested Rose hopefully.
"Or ravenous murderers who haven't started a killing spree because they haven't fully materialized yet," said the Doctor cheerfully, adjusting the device on his back. "Let's find out, shall we?"
"Oh, no, you're not going out there again!" cried Jackie, hands on her hips.
Ignoring her, the Doctor unraveled a tangle of wires from his pack. "Right, Jackie, you stay here….Try not to touch anything. The rest of you, allons-y!"
"Rose!" Jackie protested, but her daughter had already followed Jack and the Doctor out the door.
"They're getting clearer," the Doctor muttered, absorbing the scene of panicked people. "See? They're not quite as out of focus now."
"Is that good?" asked Rose, biting her lip.
"Depends on if they're harmless or not," said the Doctor, connecting Rose's and Jack's devices with a wire. "Right, Rose, Jack, don't get between the ghost and the device you're holding. When we've got it surrounded, I'm going to trigger the triangular field, and I don't want either of you caught inside."
Jack and Rose both nodded to show they understood.
The Doctor pointed at the nearest ghost. "Right, let's get it, then!"
Rose and Jack ran ahead of the ghost, looping around so the wire connecting them cut across the ghost's path. The Doctor held up his own cone, forming the third corner of their triangle. He threw another wire to each of them. "Plug it into the green hole!" he yelled, and they each did. The Doctor pushed something on the device on his back, then put his cone on the ground. Lasers emitted from each of the cones to form a pyramid around the ghost, which thrashed in its new prison violently.
"Right, stay there, be back in a tick!" he yelled, dashing back to the TARDIS. Rose glanced nervously at the ghost banging on the invisible walls of the pyramid.
"What's he doing?" she shouted to Jack. He usually understood whatever technological magic the Doctor was performing.
"No idea!" Jack shouted back, grinning madly, "But I can't tell you how much I've missed this!"
The Doctor reemerged from the TARDIS, dashed over to them, and pointed his screwdriver at his cone. "Increasing the frequency!" he yelled. The pyramid glowed brighter, the sonic whine increasing to an almost unbearable pitch….
And the ghost vanished.
The Doctor pushed more buttons on the device on his back, and the cones powered down. Rose and Jack disconnected their cords.
Jack stared at the spot the ghost had been. "Left a pretty big footprint, whatever it was," he muttered, as they scooped up the gadgetry and hurried back to the TARDIS.
"You're mad, all of you! And especially him!" screeched Jackie, jerking a finger at the Doctor, who was already examining the computer screen, glasses on.
"Right, let's see if we can narrow this down…." He smacked the screen once, then resumed typing. Rose gazed over his shoulder at the indecipherable symbols until the Doctor stopped his typing. "Oh, but that's…." He turned to look at Rose. "They're from Pete's World. Makes sense, really – the walls between our universe and that one must be particularly weak, especially since we traveled there…"
"Pete's World?" asked Jack, raising an eyebrow.
"It's a parallel universe," said Rose, remembering. "Where my dad's alive. We went there by accident once. Left Mickey there…." Her eyes widened in horrified realization. "Doctor, the footprints, the marching….they're – "
"Cybermen," finished the Doctor grimly. "The ghosts are all over the world, and they're all Cybermen."
A/N: The idea is that the Doctor used the same device as he did in the show, but since he already knew they came from Torchwood, he increased the power so he could track them further. And I had to include that brilliant bit with the Doctor saying "I ain't afraid of no ghosts!" XD
Furthermore, who else dreamed of Jack meeting Jackie onscreen and the hilarity that would ensue?
Also, for those of you who only read this story in the first place because it said "DoctorWhump"....Well, there's more of that coming. ;)
It kills me to do this, but.....I'm a review junkie. Feed my addiction, please. =)
