Jack looked at the locked door. It was a simple enough lock mechanism – a bolt that slid into place when you activated the device with the appropriate key-card. Unfortunately it was impossible to pick, which meant he would have to get out of this room the easy way. Kick down the door.

Jack kicked it experimentally, his heavy boot connecting with the wooden panels. They creaked and complained, but didn't budge. He tried again.

"Are you ok in there?" he heard the voice of Fenrir from the other side of the door.

"Hey, kid, good to hear you!" Jack said, "Wouldn't happen to have the key-card for this door would you?"

"Certainly sir," the boy answered, and the door clicked open.

"Thanks!" Jack said, ruffling the kid's fur like hair.

"How did you end up locked in?"

"Someone locked me in, a girl, with pretty hot orangey eyes, not that you'd know hot, you're just a kid," Jack said.

"Hot, a temperature considered undesirable, varies from species to species?" the boy questioned.

"That's real cute kid, but I meant the other kind of hot," Jack said, his mind wandering to the blonde bombshell he travelled through time and space with.

"Oh god, Rose!" he said, and charged back down the corridor after her.

He ran into the end room of the corridor Rose had been exploring to find it empty.

"Ok, not good, not good!" Jack said. He looked round and took out his watch, scanning the area for Rose. His watch bleeped to tell him one of his companions was nearby, but it wasn't the one he was looking for.

"Found anything Captain?" the Doctor asked as he walked in the room, "I had a look at 2000, but there was nothing there, and the guest list isn't that impressive either."

"Yeah well, I haven't found anything, but I have lost Rose, and someone just locked me in," Jack said, "A pretty hot female someone."

"And your charm didn't get you out of there?" The Doctor quipped, "Where is she?"

"Rose or the other girl?"

"Well, I kind of think they are probably in the same place, don't you?" the Doctor said in his irritating condescending voice.

"Good point," Jack conceded, and scanned around with his watch. "Found her! She's heading for the TARDIS!"

"Let's go then!" The Doctor said, and charged down the corridors in the direction of their room.

Jack ran like a trained military man. The Doctor ran like an excited four year old. They got there in record time, but the door was open and there was no sign of Rose or anyone else. Whoever and whatever had Rose, had gone with her inside the TARDIS.

"Well, let's go and say hi," the Doctor said grimly, apparently not happy about having someone unwelcome on his beloved ship.

He unlocked the door and entered, throwing open the doors.

"Rose!" Jack called out, running in first. The Doctor skipped in after him.

Rose was stood next to Jack, which was both impossible and worrying – one Jack was enough to cope with. Rose was staring at the Jack which had just ran through the door with an extremely confused look on her face. The Doctor looked between Jack and er, Jack. One was staring intently at Rose, watching her every move, the other was staring intently at himself, nodding with an expression which said 'not bad, not bad at all!'

The Doctor rolled his eyes and turned back to the other Jack, who had turned into a reptilian woman, with thick blue tentacles for hair. The Doctor recognised her as a member of the Quertiz race, an amphibious species from the planet Lexican which had a tendency to be aggressive and calculating, often choosing Assassination as their desired profession.

Great, just great… the Doctor thought, then folded his arms and turned to face the amber-eyed assassin.


"But you were, she was…Jack was, oh I'm confused, again!" Rose said.

"Quiet!" the woman snapped, poking Rose with the tip of her gun.

"Don't hurt her!" Jack said, stepping forwards. The Doctor smiled slightly at his eagerness to protect Rose. Not so long ago Jack would have run away to save his own neck. Well, perhaps that wasn't entirely fair, he may have stopped to try and charm the person who was attacking him for a while first.

"I won't if you stay where you are," the Quertiz woman said, and Jack stopped dead in his tracks. A smile crept over her lips and she lowered the gun a little. "Glad we have an understanding. Now, down to business."

"I don't think you are in the position to be discussing business when you are standing in our ship." Jack said, folding his arms in a manner not unlike the Doctor.

"Who's ship?" The Doctor asked quietly, but Jack didn't correct himself.

"I don't think you are in the position to be telling me what to do," the woman replied, "considering I have a gun pointed at your friend's head."

"Maybe not, but can't blame a guy for trying huh?" Jack tried his cheesy grin, but it cut no ice with the woman. "Okay, so that's not going to work either, I'm running out of ideas here." He said, a little helplessly.

"Then why don't you shut up for a moment and listen to me," the woman said, then did something that surprised both the Doctor and Jack. She lowered her weapon and pushed Rose towards them. Jack rushed forwards and pulled the blonde into his arms and towards what he hoped was safety.

"A gesture of good faith," the woman said, "all I ask in return is that you hear me out before jumping to conclusions about me."

"May be a bit too late for that," Jack muttered, holding onto Rose protectively.

The woman waved her arm dismissively.

"I wasn't going to hurt her," she said, almost boredly, "not if I didn't have to."

"Well, let's start right from the beginning then, shall we?" Jack said, as the Doctor was yet to make comment and Rose was too weirded out to speak. "What's your name sweetheart?"

"Amber," the woman said coldly, turning off any charm Jack might have had.

"How appropriate," Jack said, equally coldly, beginning to dislike this woman less and less. Shame really, because despite her fangs she was pretty cute.

"Why, is there some great female assassin called Amber or something?" Rose asked, a snap of indignation and temper in her voice.

"No, I meant the colour of her eyes," Jack said.

"Oh trust you to notice something like that!" Rose said huffily. Amber also treated him to a cold glare.

"Well, what do you want then Amber?" Jack asked.

"Pathetic as this is going to sound, I need your help," Amber said, "my ship crashed and the flight generator is broken."

"So, you're an assassin from the future who just happened to land on Perth before the opening of their two-thousandth library," Jack said disbelievingly.

"Yes," Amber said plainly, "Why would I care about their stupid libraries… wait, how do you know I'm from the future?"

"Seen your ship, impressive piece of equipment you got there girl!" Jack said.

"How did you find it? I had it put in camouflage mode, even I couldn't find it!"

"Well, I had this," Jack said, producing the locator. Amber's eyes widened.

"That's mine!" she snapped, snatching it from his hands.

"Very nice by the way, love. Particularly like the old psychic field trick – nearly had us fooled. Only it's not so good on groups of people that all fear something different." Jack said.

"It gets me around, or not as the case is right now." Amber replied coolly.

"I like a girl with good assets." Jack said, charm plastered all over his face. Rose smacked him.

"I can't believe you are trying to chat up a girl who tried to kill me!" she said.

"Oh, give me some credit – if I had tried to kill you you would be dead!" Amber retorted.

"You're using an Image Hoster, right?" the Doctor interrupted, speaking for the first time.

Amber looked over him and for a moment Rose thought she saw a flicker of surprise cross her features, but she hid it well, returning to impassive almost instantly.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rose asked, "You sound like you're talking about the internet!"

"It's almost like that," the Doctor said, "an Image Hoster is a small device you can clip to your belt, or put in a pocket. It stores about four to five images normally and projects them over your own body, making you take on the appearance of someone else, anything with a similar basic structure anyway, only it can't do eyes. Eyes are too complicated and the device can't keep up with all the subtle movements."

He put his hand to his face and scratched at his chin thoughtfully. "So, you have one Perthian image, one of Jack, and this one, as Quertiz only have blue eyes," he said, "why don't you take off that jacket and give us a demonstration, as you are all for gestures of good faith!"

Amber regarded him warily, then removed the thick leather jacket she was wearing, and threw it to the floor by their feet. As it left her body it switched from almost Earthy design leather, to a dark silver jacket made of some material that Rose didn't recognise, but it looked very futuristic. The Doctor smiled brightly at Amber's sullen face.

"So, you're an assassin from the future with a broken ship, you send out a distress signal, not calling for reinforcements as I first thought, but actually for help. Help arrives and you plan to sneak back to their ship and steal resources to fix your own, fly away before anyone knows what happened. Unfortunately for you, two things went wrong in that little plan, A you lost your locator and couldn't get back to the crash site because it was swamped with Perthians mere minutes after you crashed and B you got a lot more than you bargained for with my ship, so, before we go any further and decide whether you deserve our help or not, let's find out what you really look like!" He reached into his pocket for his Sonic Screwdriver, held it up and switched it on, a look of smug satisfaction on his face.

The expression faded when he realised that nothing was happening.

"You're not using an Image Hoster, are you?" he asked.

Amber shook her head.


"Well, there's a simple solution to this problem," Jack said, "If her clothes switch back to normal when we take them off, we just take off an item of clothing every time she switches, until they don't change anymore!"

"I don't believe you!" Rose said.

"And it wouldn't work anyway, I'd just change them back to what they normally look like separate to the rest of my body," Amber pointed out.

"Damn," Jack said, then, "well can we try it anyway, might be fun!"

This earned him a playful slap from Rose.

Meanwhile the Doctor had stooped to pick up the jacket Amber had thrown to the floor, and was inspecting it closely, running his fingers over two diagonal stripes on the shoulder of one sleeve, one blue, one pink. He also checked the label, then looked up at Amber, a disbelieving look on his face.

"Katering Clothing, established around the year one million four-hundred thousand, famous for their incorporation of living material, the two stripes that have to make contact with the skin of a shapeshifter that allow said shapeshifter to alter their clothing as well," he frowned deeply, "Amber, what do you really look like?"

Amber sighed wearily and looked to the ceiling of the TARDIS. Rose watched with horror and fascination as her tentacle like hair shrunk into her head and was replaced by long, lustrous sky-blue hair. The blue tint to her skin faded and changed to a lightly bronzed shade. Her combat style trousers and heavy boots were replaced by tight fitting black trousers and elegant but deadly high-heeled boots. Her white tank-top became an equally tight fitting top, made from the same material as the jacket. Finally her teeth reformed into perfectly straight, normal teeth and a blue gemstone pushed its way out of her forehead like a third eye, reminding Rose oddly of the gas-masks pushing their way out of the faces of the Empty Child victims.

Jack stared in awe as Amber folded her arms again, finished with her transformation. Rose couldn't help staring a bit, though she was fairly sure her reasons for staring were not the same as Jack's (he had now moved on from staring to 'checking out' with little, if any, reservation). The Doctor was also staring, but with shock and a hint of hurt in his eyes.

"That's impossible," he murmured, "Your race is dead!"

"I could say the same of you, Time Lord," Amber said, her eyes fixed on the Doctors.


Thanks again to all those who review and stuff! Slightly shorter chapter today, next one longer and soon though!