Riot or Not...

Rose automatically clutched at her bondmate's arm and screamed as he slid senseless to the ground. His continuing presence in her mind told her he was only unconscious, not dead or dying, but it was still a shock. Her brain kicked into overdrive, fed by fury at their assailants, even as one corner of it registered with relief that the shimmer hadn't dissipated and his disguise remained intact. Within three seconds, she'd braced her legs and was preparing to launch a counterattack on Scarface, when suddenly a pair of energy bolts came sizzling out of the darkness further down the alley, and both of the attackers dropped without a sound.

She whirled, gasping, and then went limp with relief at the sight of Captain Jack Harkness holstering his gun and swaggering over. "You've missed me, haven't you – admit it!" he leered.

"I don't know how we ever managed without you, Jack!" she replied, giddy. Then she turned back to the Doctor, as he began to stir, groaning and reaching for his head. She helped him sit up against the green fieldstone wall.

"Owwwww," he complained. He looked plaintively up at Rose. "I got bashed, didn't I?"

"Yup," she answered cheerfully. "Nearly got your head caved in. That's another one you owe Jack, by the way."

"Who's counting?" replied the Captain, grabbing Scarface by the shoulders and dragging him over to his accomplice, one of the two that had been in the tavern with him at the beginning of the evening. There he dropped him, and then grabbed each of the two ruffians by an arm. "Be right back!" he exclaimed, and punching his vortex manipulator with the other thumb, was gone before his audience could react.

"Jack!" cried the Doctor, but it was too late.

"Dad!" "Doctor!" came from behind them, as Jenny and Josh came running back from the TARDIS. "Are you OK?"

"Yeah, I'm all right." He struggled to his feet with their help, then shook them off, gently but firmly. He drew breath to start showering the missing Time Agent's head with imprecations, and was cut off by the man's return in a flash of vortex light.

Alone.

Only slightly less irritated at Jack's ability to keep his feet during time jumps than his impetuous behavior, the Doctor started in directly. "What did you do with them? Where the hell did you take them?"

"Nowhere!" came the grinning reply. "They're right here!" A beat, then he dropped the other shoe. "Two weeks into the future, safe and sound, past the crisis. Even left them the gun. And, no, I didn't kill them. Those shots stunned them, that's all."

Confounded, all four jaws dropped, and then the Doctor began grinning, and then laughing like a maniac. "I like it. I like it! A simple, nonviolent, yet permanent solution. Let's keep doing that with all of them!"

And so they did.

Over the next two days before the demonstration, the busy team managed to corner and send forward eighteen more of the infiltrators, almost halving Jenny's original estimate of their total numbers. They also continued their 'counter-insurgency' tactics, confronting the opposition in taverns and markets and spreading the Doctor's gospel: Some things are worth preserving. He hadn't known it at the time, but his initial speech had been captured on a tiny hidden voice recorder by a news reporter quietly watching the scene, who then broadcast it several times the following days, and his catchphrase caught fire. They could almost feel the tide of public opinion turning around them, surging back to the Governor and the Covenant.

They also had several near-misses with Jordan, who kept skulking around trying to figure out what was going on. The Doctor and Jack, in one whispered conversation, seriously considered nabbing him, too, and putting him on ice until after the day of the bomb to keep him safe, but in the end decided they didn't dare, since they still had no clear picture of events. Doing so might throw them into yet another timestream split even further from their own past. Nor was Joshua able to read his mind any deeper, as, miraculously, the young man never came into contact with him again during those days. They didn't see the original Jenny once, but her modern self remembered being busy with her troops, drilling and outfitting them in preparation for the scheduled coming demonstration. The Devron Group's first serious mistake had been announcing the rally well in advance.

When the day finally arrived, Team Doctor (as Jack had mischievously named them, and the name had stuck, much to the elder Time Lord's chagrin) felt pretty good about their work. Barring further untimely interference, it looked like the day might slide smoothly into their preferred non-violent ending.

What was that old saying about best-laid plans?

^..^

The night before the demonstration, none of them got much sleep, not even the two non-Time Lords. Jenny got into a shouting row with her father about whether or not she was going to stay tamely inside the TARDIS while history – her history, thank you – was being potentially screwed to hell just outside and down the alley. He should have known from the start he was going to lose the argument. Besides, with her new regenerated face, it wasn't like anyone was going to recognize her and cause a paradox that way, was it?

"All right!" he finally shouted, giving in. "Fine! Do it your way!" And he stomped down the corridor in a high dudgeon to sulk in his and Rose's room. Rose let him stew it out of his system for an hour before she cautiously peeked inside to find him sitting against the headboard of their wide bed, hands clasped behind his head, staring morosely across at the large painting of her on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay. He'd redone it during their "second honeymoon", those first days after the Time Lock dropped, and her formerly tragic, tear-drenched face now shone with joy, eyes dancing, smiling that supernova smile. Even the background had been touched up, the gray storm clouds morphed into a spectacular orange-rose-and-purple sunset that spread upwards to the coral ceiling, wiping out the anguished cri du couer that had been scrawled above.

He glanced at her in the doorway and gave a heavy sigh, lips twitching against his will. "I can't stay angry with you smiling at me like that," he admitted, tipping his head to the painting. "I'm going to have to find another room to be grumpy in."

Laughing, she slipped into the room, closed and locked the door behind her, and prowled provocatively up to him, a la Cassandra. His eyebrows shot skyward, and he reached out to pull her close, but she put her finger lightly on his lips, shushing any comment he might have made. Her fingers trailed seductively down his arm, tracing the lightest of patterns, then paused above the shimmer-wristwatch he still wore, and her smile broadened, echoing the portrait. She gave him just enough time to realize what she was up to and grin back before she stabbed the button and proceeded to make an old hopeless secret fantasy come true, making love to her old Doctor.

^..^

The next morning found the five of them positioned carefully around the plaza, awaiting the arrival of the various characters in the day's drama. Jack had found a handful of tiny, nearly invisible comlinks, "for those of us who can't speak telepathically", and now each of them was so equipped. The temporary stage had been built the day before, directly on the spot that would later be graced by the memorial obelisk. Jenny's troops came marching in, with her at the lead, a good hour before the scheduled start of the rally, and arranged themselves in a semi-circle around the edge of the plaza behind the stage, on the side leading generally towards Government House. Their orders were simply to keep things calm, and keep any march that developed away from the seat of power a few blocks away.

Team Doctor stood back near various pillars of the arcade on the sides away from the troops, with Jenny in the middle, as far away from her old self as she could get. All of them were keeping a sharp eye out for Jordan, but none of them had spotted him yet as the growl of a distant crowd reached them, growing ever louder, then the supposedly-impromptu march swept into the plaza from several of the connecting streets, filling it to capacity within minutes. Listening closely to those nearest them, each of the team realized that the situation could still go either way with sufficient prodding.

The Doctor was becoming more and more nervous with each passing second, unable to pinpoint exactly what was bothering him, until he made himself pause and block out the noise for a moment, focusing his senses inward. He realized his normally acute time sense had become numbed, befuddled with the sensations of several different time loops and timestream splits focused on the next few minutes. Fighting down a sudden rising panic, he opened his eyes again and began searching for anomalies, whispering into his comlink for everyone to stay sharp.

The leaders of the march had climbed up onto the stage and launched into their speeches, beginning with Petron Diener, the other candidate for Governor that Jenny had named Devron's puppet. Jenny had been dislodged from her safe perch by the entering crowd, swept along against her will until she was fairly close to the stage – and suddenly found herself only three people away from her former self. She kept her eyes firmly on the stage, not wanting to attract "her" attention. Luckily, the old Jenny was on high alert, continuously sweeping the crowd beyond with her eyes and ears, and dismissed the brunette as not dangerous with a single glance.

"I've got Jordan!" came Rose's whisper through the comlink. "He's standing against the arcade, near the west entrance, just watching." That put him far to one side of the stage.

"Stay back, but keep an eye on him," replied the Doctor. "Joshua, work around closer to him, too."

"Gotcha," came the young man's whisper, and he began threading his way behind the crowd, ducking through the arcade itself. "I'm two pillars away," he reported, then began reaching out mentally, trying to sneak past the Time Agent's mental barriers again.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

"He's spotted something, up on the roof opposite!" Rose's alert was the only warning they had. The sharp crack of rifle shots began echoing around the plaza, four, five, six of them in as many seconds, and with each one, another person fell. The first three were soldiers, including a young Decker, the fourth was one of the leaders on the stage, and the last two were spectators at the front of the crowd – including the man standing right next to the regenerated Jenny.

Screams instantly began piercing the air, and the panicked crowd surged in all directions, including towards the soldiers who had just witnessed their comrades fall. In a trice, without orders, most of them nervously jerked their rifles up. Whether they'd intended to or not, some fingers tightened on triggers, and the shots dropped three more civilians.

Unnoticed in the general melee, bright flashes of light came from two widely-spaced spots on the plaza, as first Jordan, then Jack, stabbed their vortex manipulators and flashed themselves up to the roof.

Up by the stage, time suddenly dilated for Jenny, and she felt like she was watching from some far distance, as the crowd surged into her from behind, forcing her ever closer to her old self. The blonde's head whipped around in slow motion, and they found themselves staring into each other's eyes as they both stumbled and began falling helplessly towards each other. Skin creeping, the brunette Jenny watched as horrified recognition stole into those familiar blue eyes. With only inches left between them, an icy shadow crept across them both, and they both glanced up involuntarily, seeming to take a lifetime to move their gaze.

Hanging above the crowd, lazily flapping its enormous black silken wings, was the soul-chilling form of a Reaper.