Author's Note: Got sick. Here's the update.
It's action time!
"No," the Doctor breathed. Then he hit the side of the computer with a bang that made everyone nearby jump. "No!" he shouted. "No, no, no!" He slumped in place, his voice radiating with pain, bitterness, and anger. "Every time! Every single time, the Daleks take everything away from me."
Buffy was about to speak, but the Doctor jumped to his feet, his face stony and angry, his eyes boring holes into the ceiling. He buzzed the sonic at the teleporter controls, and they hissed and then exploded into a shower of sparks.
"DOCTOR," a cruel, grating metallic voice echoed through the chamber.
Jordan and Laura automatically shifted into a fighting stance the moment they heard the voice — with the exact same instinctive reaction that Buffy always got when she sensed a vampire.
"Oh, you noticed that, did you?" the Doctor replied. His voice now had that angry sense of mimicked lightness that just made his every word that much more biting. "Well, notice this: I've destroyed you time and time again. Whenever you face off against me, you lose. So if I were you, I'd run. Very, very far away. Do you understand?"
There was a pause. Then:
"THE DALEKS WILL GAIN THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE."
"Come on!" Buffy complained, throwing her hands up in the air. "You're going to kill me! You could at least work out what my name is!"
"THE DOCTOR'S TARDIS AND COMPANIONS HAVE BEEN LOCATED," the Dalek voice continued. "THEY WILL BE EXTERMINATED. THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE WILL BE GAINED. THE DALEKS WILL REIGN SUPREME."
"Go to hell!" shouted Jordan. "IPSA's been whooping your ass good for the last hundred and fifty years, and we can do it again!"
Laura, in the meantime, took a step back, her eyes fixed on the side of the ship. "Uh... Jordan?"
Buffy turned to look where Laura was pointing — at the hole they'd punched in the hull of the ship, then had sealed up with the bubble-stuff. Through the now-purple translucent substance, she could see a group of Daleks floating nearby, just outside the hull, eyestalks all trained on them.
Laura and Jordan both whipped out guns, but Buffy could tell from the looks on their faces that they knew this was the end for them.
The Doctor glanced towards the breach in the hull.
"Oh, give it a rest. You know that's not going to work," he said, walking towards it. "Take off the sealant, and you'd suffocate everyone inside this room. Including your 'Primary Objective.' And you're not going to risk that."
Sure enough, the Daleks didn't break through into the room.
"Now," said the Doctor, his voice cold and icy, "you've killed people that helped me, you've wreaked havoc with history, and you've threatened those I've sworn to protect. Adam may not know better, but you do." His eyes went dark. "You've made me angry, Daleks. Very, very angry. And when I'm angry, there's nothing you can do to stop me."
There was a whir, and then a click, followed by a loud hissing sound coming from the right and left doors. The Doctor, Buffy, and the two Slayers looked around.
"What was that?" Buffy asked.
"The Daleks overriding the door controls," the Doctor told her.
"Which means they're about to exterminate us," Jordan explained to Buffy, backing towards her and the others. She glanced over at Laura, who'd done the same, their guns pointed at the two doors that were beginning to slide open. "I'll take the left, you take the right. Remember: protect Bunfy at all costs."
"No, seriously, it's Buffy," Buffy corrected. "And you don't need to protect me. I'm the only one the Daleks won't..." She stopped mid-sentence, as she remembered. The last time the Daleks had invaded Sunnydale.
"What I want to know," the Doctor had asked Riley, "is why the Daleks haven't killed you, yet?"
The doors hissed open, revealing more Daleks than Buffy had ever seen before in her life. They poured into the room, their gun barrels twitching in anticipation.
"EXTERMINATE!" they were chanting. "EXTERMINATE!"
Buffy looked down at her hands. And remembered. Grabbing Riley's hand, as they fled from the Daleks that first time. Their fingers interwoven, as they were led away from the graveyard at gunpoint. His hand on her shoulder, inside the Dalek spaceship.
"Daleks don't take hostages," the Doctor had told them. "Not under normal circumstances."
Hands. Physical contact.
Buffy threw her arms around the Doctor's waist, then called back, "Jordan, Laura, hug me!"
Jordan and Laura looked over their shoulder at her.
"Just do it!" Buffy shouted at them.
They hesitated, then spun around and did as they were told, their guns still pointed in the direction of the Daleks.
The Daleks circled around the four of them, their eyestalks glaring, their guns twitching, but didn't fire.
"Why aren't they killing us?" Laura whispered.
"Because I'm touching you," said Buffy.
"Any beam the Daleks shot at us would go through Elizabeth," the Doctor said, a small grin of pride spreading across his face. "And their orders are to take her alive."
"YOU WILL SURRENDER!" one of the Daleks shouted at them. "OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"
Buffy laughed. "No, if we surrender, we'll be exterminated," she said. "If we just keep hugging each other, you can't touch us."
"SURRENDER!" the Dalek shrieked. "SURRENDER!"
"I've always said that group hugs are underrated," Buffy remarked. "Don't you think so, Doctor?"
"Absolutely!" the Doctor agreed. "Not that the Daleks would know. No arms."
The Daleks said and did nothing, remaining completely still and silent for a moment.
"What's this? The silent treatment?" Buffy asked.
"They're getting new orders," said Laura.
Oh. Okay, that was bad.
"And I'm guessing hugs aren't going to protect us forever, then?" Buffy guessed.
"Probably not," the Doctor agreed. "But, then again, we don't need forever. Just long enough."
One of the Daleks slid forwards. "WE HAVE BEEN AUTHORIZED TO PROPOSE A DEAL TO THE SLAYER DESIGNATED BUFFY."
Buffy raised an eyebrow. They really expected her to fall for that one, again? "What kind of deal?"
"YOU WILL SURRENDER TO THE DALEKS," the Dalek said, "OR YOUR TWO SLAYER COMPANIONS WILL BE EXTERMINATED."
"That's not a deal," Buffy pointed out. "That's a threat."
"SURRENDER!" shrieked the Dalek. "SURRENDER! OR THEY WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"
"And what about the Doctor?" asked Buffy. "Oh, wait, don't tell me. He's going to be exterminated, anyways, whether I surrender or not."
"THAT IS CORRECT," the Dalek informed her.
"At least they're being honest about it," said the Doctor.
"You're forgetting — I fell for this whole deal-thing last time," Buffy told the Daleks. "You don't make deals with inferior life forms. The moment I give myself up, everyone here's going to die."
The Daleks said nothing for a moment. Then, "YOU WILL SURRENDER, OR YOUR COMPANIONS WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"
"If you could have exterminated us, we'd be dead by now," Jordan shouted at the Daleks. "We know how you work. As long as we're with Bunfy—"
"Buffy," Buffy muttered.
"—no one gets exterminated," Jordan concluded.
"INCORRECT!" another Dalek shouted.
"INITIATE SPACIAL TRANSPORT BEAM!" shouted another.
The whir of machinery began around them, and a sudden wind whipped up through the room, blowing Buffy's hair into her face.
"That sounds kind of bad," Buffy said.
"Not if they're doing what I think they're doing," said the Doctor, his brow furrowed.
"And what's that?" Buffy asked him.
"Transporting the four of us to Adam's fleet," the Doctor explained, "so he can kill us, instead." He glanced back at the Daleks. "Only... you won't. After all, you don't want Adam to have time travel any more than I do."
"ADAM WILL BE IRRELEVANT ONCE WE GAIN THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE," said a Dalek.
"ALL LIFE FORMS WILL BE IRRELEVANT!" another confirmed.
"You won't have your 'primary objective' very much longer if you teleport us all away," the Doctor reminded them.
"INCORRECT," said the Dalek.
"INITIATE GENETIC ISOLATION FIELD!" shouted a second Dalek.
"GENETIC ISOLATION FIELD ACTIVE!" shouted a third.
Buffy began to feel something weird beneath her skin. Like her entire body had pins and needles, and she couldn't shake them off.
"Doctor," she said. "I think they just did something to me."
"Genetic isolation field," the Doctor muttered. "They're isolating your DNA. Making sure you stay here on their ship while the rest of us are transported."
"Okay, that's bad," said Buffy.
"INITIATE DELTA TRANSFER!" shouted a Dalek.
"No," said the Doctor. "That's the bad one."
"DELTA TRANSFER INITIATED!" shouted another Dalek.
"Why?" asked Buffy. "What's it do?"
"Brain swap," said the Doctor.
Buffy felt her heart beating far faster in her chest. She hugged the Doctor a little tighter, not really sure what else she could do, now. "But... you can stop it, right?"
A sudden burst of light, and a rippling sensation through the air, and then... nothing.
"Already did," the Doctor said, with a wink.
"ALERT! ALERT! TELEPORTATION SYSTEMS ERROR!" the Daleks shouted. "DELTA TRANSFER FAILED!"
"Ah, yes, that would be me," the Doctor said. "Had a route around in your teleportations system while I took the temporal teleporter offline. And looks like I took down your brain swapping gizmos, which was an unexpected bonus."
"How long will it take them to fix that?" asked Jordan.
"Couple minutes, if we're lucky," the Doctor informed her.
"And if we're not?" asked Laura.
"Thirty seconds," the Doctor replied.
"INITIATE REPAIRS ON TELEPORTATION AND DELTA WAVE DEVICE SYSTEMS!" shouted a Dalek.
"REPAIR TEAM DISPATCHED!" shouted another.
"Still got ten minutes ETA to reinforcements," Jordan whispered to the others.
"YOU WILL SURRENDER TO THE DALEKS!" the Daleks shouted at Buffy. "OR THE DOCTOR AND YOUR TWO COMPANIONS WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"
"Oh, well, now you're really feeling desperate," said the Doctor. "If you're throwing my life into the bargain as well."
"SILENCE!" shouted the Daleks. "SILENCE!"
"What's the matter?" the Doctor asked. "Your brilliant plan backfiring already?"
"THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE WILL BE GAINED," a Dalek proclaimed. "THE HUMANOIDS DESIGNATED SLAYERS WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"
"ALL OTHER LIFE FORMS WILL BE IRRELEVANT!" another Dalek added.
"AND THE DALEKS WILL REIGN SUPREME!" the others chanted. "THE DALEKS WILL REIGN SUPREME!"
"Yeah, Doctor, speaking as someone who's fought the Daleks her whole life, they're not feeling desperate, right now," said Jordan. She nodded over at the chanting Daleks. "This is their way of gloating."
"I thought that exterminating was their way of gloating," Laura whispered.
"No, exterminating is their way of living," Jordan corrected.
Buffy frowned. There was something she was overlooking, here. Something the Doctor knew that she obviously hadn't caught, yet.
As if to confirm her suspicions, a sudden dialogue box popped up in the air, revealing a white-domed Dalek that Buffy recognized, from before, as the Dalek Supreme.
"DALEKS WILL ACQUIRE THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE AT ONCE," said the Dalek Supreme. "THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE WILL BE MOVED TO A SECURE LOCATION."
"TELEPORTATION FUNCTIONS OFFLINE!" shouted a Dalek.
"TELEPORTATION SYSTEMS IRRELEVANT," the Dalek Supreme commanded. "THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE MUST BE SECURED. IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO SEPARATE HER FROM HER COMPANIONS."
"WE OBEY!" chorused the Daleks.
"Hang on," said Buffy. "You really are feeling desperate, aren't you? So... why?"
The Daleks edged closer to Buffy and the others, their gun barrels twitching. "YOU WILL FOLLOW," they commanded.
"Or what?" asked Buffy. "What're you going to do? Pick me up and make me follow you? Oh, wait, you can't! Because you don't have hands!"
"YOU WILL OBEY," came the booming voice of the Dalek Supreme, "OR THE PLANET EARTH WILL BE EXTERMINATED."
Buffy froze. Then gave an uneasy laugh. "Yeah, right! I mean, you'd never be able to..." She trailed off, as she noticed the expression on the Doctor's face. "They... can't, right?" she asked the Doctor.
"PLASMA PROTON ENERGY FIELDS SURROUND THE PLANET," the Dalek Supreme informed her. "THE CORRECT ACTIVATION CODE WILL ENSURE ITS DESTRUCTION."
"That's such a bluff!" shouted Jordan. "If you could destroy the Earth, you'd have done it already!"
"No, they probably wouldn't," the Doctor said, with a sigh. "The Earth's a useful temporal nexus point. Everyone on the planet's expendable, but the Daleks wouldn't give up the planet itself unless they had to. For the sake of... say, another temporal nexus point." He glanced down at Buffy, and grimaced.
Temporal nexus point? Oh. Line Hopper. Right.
Buffy looked back at him, her eyes asking a question that she dared not ask aloud, for fear of the answer.
"They're... not bluffing," the Doctor confessed. "The energy field they're describing would cause exactly the interference patterns I saw on Gratewell's instruments, earlier."
Buffy felt her heart sinking. These Slayers of the future might have a duty to protect this whole section of the galaxy, but she was the Slayer of 1800 years ago. And her duty was to protect the Earth.
Buffy took a deep breath. "I'll go," she said, shifting to take the Doctor's hand, instead, "but I'm not leaving the Doctor." She paused, then glanced over at Jordan and Laura, and took Jordan's hand in hers as well. Jordan grabbed Laura. "Or those two." Buffy's eyes went back to the Dalek Supreme. "You got that?"
"AGREED," said the Dalek Supreme.
Buffy didn't move, just trained her eyes on the Dalek Supreme. "And here's a warning for you," she said. "I'm not a Slayer. I'm the Slayer. And if you piss me off, you're going to find out why there are legends about me 1800 years after I'm dead. You got that?"
"STATEMENT—" the Dalek Supreme started, but was cut off by a sudden jolt that shuddered through the whole ship.
The Doctor began grinning ear-to-ear. "And that would be time, then!" he said. He pointed his sonic screwdriver up at the ceiling of the ship, using his spare hand. "You ready to face the consequences of your actions, Daleks?"
Jordan's jaw dropped open. "But... but... IPSA's still not even close to—"
"Of course not!" said the Doctor. "But this isn't IPSA!" He turned on the sonic, which glowed green in his hand.
As if in response to the sonic, the ship lurched again, and the Daleks began screeching warnings and systems diagnostics and just random things that Buffy couldn't understand.
But she did understand one thing.
"It's Adam, isn't it?" she asked the Doctor. "We finally did your plan. We got Adam to fight the Daleks."
"Oh, yes!" said the Doctor, waving the sonic as if it were a beacon. "Adam wants me. And thanks to the sonic, he now knows exactly where I am."
"ADAM IS IRRELEVANT!" said the Dalek Supreme. "HE WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"
"And if you'd actually tried to exterminate him, you'd know that's easier said than done," said the Doctor. "You might not have wanted to even out the sides, but I did. And right now, I've got two companions back in 1999 doing their level best to ensure that Adam can wipe your army out entirely."
"INCORRECT!" shouted the Dalek Supreme. "YOUR COMPANIONS HAVE BEEN LOCATED! THE DALEKS WILL EXTERMINATE—"
"One single Dalek will follow my two companions into the past," the Doctor corrected, "back to when Professor Walsh was still designing Adam. Where, I'm guessing, Amy and Rory will probably try to sabotage Adam's creation."
"THEIR SABOTAGE WILL FAIL," said the Dalek Supreme. "YOUR PLANS ARE—"
"My plans?" the Doctor asked. "Who said anything about the sabotage being my plan? I knew someone wanted me in the 39th century, and I knew they'd follow my companions back in time. Since it was you lot... well, my plan was to make sure that there was a Dalek in the Initiative at exactly the right moment in history. And I believe that I've accomplished that."
"Why'd you do that?" asked Buffy.
"ALERT! ALERT!" shouted one of the Daleks. "DALEK EXTERMINATION BEAMS NOT FUNCTIONAL FOR THE BIOLOGICAL DEMONOID DESIGNATED ADAM."
"To make that happen, of course!" the Doctor told Buffy. "I'll just need to give the Initiative computers a quick buzz of information when I go to pick up Amy and Rory, and voila! A species that can destroy Daleks, while withstanding a direct hit by an extermination beam."
"But... that wouldn't even out the sides!" Buffy protested. "That'd just make Adam completely invincible!"
"Daleks don't need an extermination ray to make sure you're dead," Jordan muttered to Buffy. "Believe me, I know."
"Two armies, perfectly matched, fighting to mutual destruction," the Doctor announced to the Daleks. "Your army. And Adam's."
"HULL BREACH IN SECTOR 20!" shouted a Dalek.
"HULL BREACH IN SECTOR 67!" shouted another.
"ALERT! ALERT! ADAM'S ARMY ENTERING DALEK SHIP!" shouted a group of Daleks.
"DALEKS TO ASSUME BATTLE FORMATIONS!" another Dalek shouted.
"WE OBEY!" chorused the Daleks.
"And that's our cue to run!" said the Doctor, tugging at Buffy's hand and nearly yanking her and the others off their feet as he darted for the nearest door.
"ALERT!" shrieked a Dalek. "ALERT! THE DOCTOR IS ESCAPING WITH THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE!"
"THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE MUST BE SECURED!" shouted the Dalek Supreme. "THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE—"
"For the last time," Buffy screamed back at them, as she darted out of the room, "my name is Buffy!"