Summary: The Doctor discovers the trick, and begins to plot a few of his own...
Notes: Could've used "The Magician" as the title, but I like my titles to be based on more clever observations... because the more you think about it, the more it's clear he always was.
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Chapter Two: Quicker Than the Eye
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On the other side of town, the Doctor had found himself unexpectedly charmed into buying a scarf. It was black, with blue stars, and it was ridiculously long, and he absolutely did not want it.
"It's just your style," the girl at the booth had said, beaming at him like he was a wandering hero.
He was sick to death of scarves, and he'd gotten it anyway.
Well, he'd always been a little bit insane.
He'd stuffed in into a pocket and was now wandering aimlessly around the streets, wondering if maybe it was time to start looking for Rose.
"Loren! Loren!"
He turned, naturally attracted to the sounds of distress. It was a woman, in a particularly disastrous shade of orange, running around the stalls. "Loren!"
"Ma'am, ma'am, slow down!" He caught her shoulders. "What's wrong?"
"I can't find Loren!" she cried, still looking around everywhere.
"Right. How old is he?"
She glared at him. "Loren's my boyfriend!"
"Oh. Right. What's he look like, then?"
"Tall, dark hair, big nose, blue eyes, ugly green shirt--"
"Right. Where'd you lose him?"
"He said he was going to go watch Erandi!" she cried. "He said he'd be back in an hour! It's been two!"
"Erandi-- that's a magician?"
"Yes! The Erandi, not Erandi the bloody Dock-worker! Are you stupid?"
"Yep!" said the Doctor cheerfully. "Completely daft. Have you checked--"
"Lyssa!" A man in a much more sedate blue ran up to them, panting. "I checked the-- I checked everywhere. He's not there. No one's seen him."
"He's gone!" Lyssa cried, grabbing the newcomer and sobbing. "Something's happened to him! They've taken him! They've taken him, they know who we are, they're going to get us all--"
"Shh!" hissed the newcomer. "We'll keep looking, all right? Someone has to have seen him. We'll find him! All right?"
"They're going to get us all," Lyssa whispered. "They know who we are, and they're going to get us all."
"C'mon, Lyssa. It's okay. We'll find him." The newcomer led her away, leaving the Doctor faintly unsettled.
It was an isolated incident, surely, but people didn't usually disappear here.
It was probably time to start looking for Rose.
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An hour later, he was standing at the TARDIS doors, still looking for her on the horizon. There was a band out nearby, playing to little notice and less money, and it was starting to get dark.
She should be there by now. She wasn't.
He threw some money into the band's hat-- they were actually startlingly good-- and stalked down the street, figuring out what to do.
He could check the city again, but she wasn't there. He'd checked it before, and he'd gone back to their meeting point and every route she might have taken, and she wasn't there. And she wasn't stupid. Not usually. For a human, at least.
So: there was someone else who'd disappeared today. As good a place to check as any.
He wasn't sure where they'd have gone, but that shade of orange would be instantly recognisable, even in this crowd. And there it was, throttling a fellow-citizen.
"What do you mean, didn't reappear!" Lyssa screamed, as the Doctor dragged her off. "They always reappear, that's the bloody point!"
"The point is they disappear, you silly bint!" the fellow-citizen yelled, dusting himself off. "I'm not a magician! What the hell d'you want from me? You ask me, I think your boyfriend siezed the opportunity to get as far the hell away from you as he could!"
"Shut the hell up, you sorry son of a--!"
"LYSSA!" The woman's friend ran up again, helping the Doctor restrain her. "This is NOT helping! Calm down!"
She did, a little, and the fellow-citizen seized the opportunity to run away.
The woman's friend sighed in relief and looked at the Doctor. "Thanks, man. Again."
"What happened?" asked the Doctor.
"We looked around to find the last person who saw him," the friend explained, after giving him a measuring look. "Apparently Erandi called him up as a volunteer in a magic spectacle-- one of those where they make a person disappear, you know? And he disappeared, but he never re-appeared. And that's the last anyone saw of him."
The Doctor closed his eyes. "You talk to Erandi?"
"He's a magician. Like he's going to talk to us!"
"He will talk to us," Lyssa said ominously. "One way or another, he's going to talk to us."
"Lyssa--"
"They took him, Andy! Just like Mina, just like Rome, just like Taro, and now we know how they're doing it, but we're never gonna prove it and we'll never get him back. Not unless we do something."
"Who are these other people they took?" the Doctor asked.
"Friends of ours," said Andy. "Look, Lyssa--"
"Not just friends, were they?" the Doctor asked. "Not if they're being systematically kidnapped."
"I--" Andy started.
"No, listen to me. I don't care what you're doing. I'm not turning you in. I just need to know what's going on. I want to help you."
"It's really none of your business," said Andy.
"We're a political group pushing for the liberation of Anwan as a free and seperate country," said Lyssa.
"LYSSA!"
"I'll take any help I can get!" Lyssa snapped. "So shut the hell up! It's not like there's anyone else to put in danger anymore!"
"Anwan," the Doctor repeated. Became a seperate country in about fifty years, once the government realized that it was counterproductive to keep people who hated you inside your borders. "And you've all been disappearing?"
Andy nodded, resigned. "Not just us. A lot of other political groups, too. Everyone from the Prisoners' Rights group to the Militant Anarchism Society. From harmless old ladies to bitter felons. Anyone outside the mainstream. I didn't believe it for months. Now I do."
"So you think they've identified you, and they're taking you out," the Doctor concluded. It seemed a reasonable conclusion to him, which was very bad. "One by one. With these magicians, who are suddenly getting a government subsidy."
"Right," said Andy.
"What d'you think they're doing with 'em?" he asked, not sure he wanted to know.
Andy shook his head. "I don't know. All we know is they don't come back."
"Right. And, one more thing. This 'Rome' you mentioned. What did she look like?"
Lyssa blinked. "About this tall, yellow hair, big teeth..."
"When'd she disappear?"
"I think yesterday. Why?"
The Doctor resisted the urge to sigh, or scream, or mount a full-out assault on the capitol building. "'Cos I think I know where my friend Rose has disappeared to. We need to make a plan. You know anywhere safe?"
"Evidently not," Andy said bitterly.
"My place," Lyssa said. "Can't do any more harm."
"Right. Lead on."
As she did, the Doctor made a mental note of something he wanted to tell Rose the next time he saw her. Rose? The next time I say a place is perfectly harmless? Please do me a favor and hit me with something heavy several times... .
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It's perfect, isn't it? Using magicians to kidnap. You go along with anything they say, and everyone expects you to disappear...
"We have to find out what happens to them," said the Doctor. "Where they're taken. D'you have any contacts in the government?"
Andy shook his head. "Do you?"
"Met some clerk today. Doubt that'll help much."
"It won't," said Lyssa, shaking her head. "I'm a clerk too."
"Do you know how these magicians are recruited?"
Lyssa shook her head.
"Any places they might be taken?"
Lyssa shook her head.
"Anything at all that might be useful?"
"I can get you into the capital building," she offered.
"And we'll help you any way we can," Andy added. "And tell the other groups what's happening. Some of them have guns."
How do you figure out where they're taking these people, how they're doing it?
Infiltration.
"You're sure you don't know how these magicians are recruited?" he asked again.
Lyssa shook her head. "Usually people go out and look for them, I thought-- but recently, they've been coming to the office themselves. There's some sort of exam, where they decide if they're good enough magicians-- or, obviously, good enough kidnappers-- but I don't know what the exam's like, or what they're looking for--"
"Fantastic." The Doctor grinned suddenly. Andy and Lyssa stared at him in the way people usually did when he smiled like that. "I am going to need your help. It'll be hideously dangerous, though. Have to do to you whatever the others did to the ones who've disappeared. Thought I'd warn you now."
"They're going to get us anyway," Andy said, after a moment. "Why the hell not?"
"Great. I'm going to go set things up."
"Wait, what are you doing?" Andy asked.
"Becoming a magician. What else?"
"But doesn't that take-- take experience?"
"Yep!" The Doctor replied, heading for the door. "Think nine hundred years' worth'll do?"
At least the scarf was going to come in handy.
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