Buffy was still in shock when she returned to her hotel after her second day in Cardiff. She had never thought to find Captain Harkness in the cemetery, but there he had been—in an old military coat no less. She wasn't expecting the eccentric style of dress either. She had even fewer expectations of receiving a job offer. She still didn't know why she took it. It just seemed right at the time—just like the odd fashion style seemed right for the captain.

When Buffy got up the next morning her phone started to ring.

"Summers," she answered automatically.

"What the hell are you doin' in Cardiff, Slayer?"

"Hello Spike."

"Yeah, 'allo and all that. Are you going to answer my question?"

"Well, how much did Dawn tell you?"

"She read me that email you sent her. Right upset she was about it too."

Buffy sighed. "First she won't see me, then when she does she's distant and sulky, and now she's upset that I decided to go to Great Britain for a while? Can't she make up her mind?"

"The Nibblet just doesn't want to go through what she went through seven years ago."

"I'm not dead, and I'm still on the planet; this isn't like then."

"All right, no need to get your knickers in a twist. So why did you up and leave for the Old Country?"

"I recently found out that Hank Summers isn't my father. I've come to meet the real one."

"And you didn't tell Dawn this because…"

"She seems perfectly happy with her current family, and I didn't want to involve her before I knew what our biological father's reaction would be. Plus, how do I explain that though he was with my mother only enough for her to get pregnant once, he has two daughters because some monks took my blood and made her out of a mystical ball of possible-world-destroying energy?"

"I see your point."

"I'm glad someone does. Listen, Spike, I have to go. I think I'm joining Torchwood today."

"Torchwood?"

"Yeah, it's a different group that fights aliens here in Cardiff."

"Why would they go to Cardiff? And why are you joining another of these 'organisations?'"

"Hell if I know. If they tell me, or I think of the reason, I'll let you know."

"You better, Slayer."

They both hung up. Leave it to Spike to be the one to track her down wherever she's been… and to remind her about the problems with telling Harkness about their relationship. But that's why she was here. Bracing herself for the changes that would come today, Buffy headed out to the Plass.

As she approached the tower she saw Captain Harkness rising out of the ground just in front of it.

"Don't tell me you have an elevator from your secret base to the middle of this very public area? Didn't they teach you anything about staying low profile?" She had heard Torchwood was the most known secret organisation in the city. That seemed to explain where Buffy got her lack of stealthy/secret identity skills.

He seemed surprised and looked at her with calculating eyes. "It's our invisible lift… supposedly invisible anyways." He stepped down. "The perception filter keeps people from noticing anyone on the spot."

Buffy could hear the challenge: how did she notice him? "I'm a very perceptive person."

He laughed, and he seemed to let the subject go. "Step on and let's give you that tour, shall we?"

They both stood on the square, he pressed something on his wrist strap, and the ground began to drop. Buffy watched as the tower continued for what had to be at least a hundred or even two hundred feet below the pavement. The whole cavern was a cross between an Underground station, the Batcave, and a bit of retro Star Trek. As they descended a pterodactyl swooped past them.

"You have a dinosaur," she stated as if she were talking about the weather.

"You don't seem too surprised," he said.

"I've seen a dragon before. Did someone open some sort of temporal gate?"

The Captain again looked surprised, but this time it was a pleased surprised instead of an annoyed surprised. "There's a rift in space and time running through Cardiff. Things fall through more than occasionally."

"Hence the Batcave in Wales." As the square stopped there was a young man in a suit waiting just to the side. "This Alfred?"

Jack laughed. "Buffy Summers, meet Ianto Jones. Sort of our Alfred, but better looking."

"I wasn't aware we were expecting a visitor today," Ianto said, unruffled by the comparison to Batman's butler but slightly miffed at not knowing she was coming.

"I didn't have the chance since I sent you all home last night," Jack replied. "Can you start pulling out the paperwork? Buffy's going to be joining us."

The Welshman looked her over; Buffy was certain that he noticing how small and blonde she was. But a large part of her loved that people underestimated her. The looks when they found out what she was capable of more than made up for it. He left—presumably to get the paperwork—and passed another man just coming through an impressive cog door that made a whole lot of noise. The man stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Buffy.

"Who's she?" he asked a bit rudely.

"Buffy Summers meet Owen Harper," Jack introduced, completely unfazed and still smiling.

"Doctor Owen Harper," Owen groused.

Jack just laughed as if he had heard it before. "I'll need you to take a couple of samples from Buffy. She's signing up today."

"Samples?" Buffy asked.

"Just the standard blood, DNA, that sort of thing," Jack reassured her. "Rules and regulations. You probably had to do the same for UNIT, right?"

"Wait," Owen said. "She's a UNIT grunt?"

"Oi!" Buffy said while pulling her best Donna impression. "A bit more than just a grunt. I led my own team for three years."

"And now you've been demoted to Torchwood?"

"Promoted," Jack corrected. "Right out of San Diego."

"So it's demoted and exiled then," Owen replied. He then walked away and down into what had to be his area of the Hub. He shouted back to her, "Are you coming, Bunny?"

"It's Buffy!" Buffy gave a dramatic sigh and eye roll. "Hold my purse?" she asked with a false cheery sarcasm.

"I'll give you the tour when you're done," Jack called after her. Then as he went into his office he couldn't help himself as he looked through the bag and her wallet. Stakes, holy water, lip gloss and other feminine accoutrements, pictures in the wallet of Buffy and a younger girl that looked like she could be a cousin, pictures with a red headed girl and a dark haired boy, and then a picture of a woman that had to be Buffy's mother.

Jack looked for a while at the picture of the mother. She looked familiar. Well, back in the late seventies he had gone to help UNIT with a problem just outside of LA. He could have met her then.

HXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXH

Ianto was bringing up the paperwork for this new recruit, when Tosh and Gwen came through the cog door.

"Morning Ianto!" Gwen greeted brightly. "Oof, that's a lot of paperwork you've got there."

"New recruit," he said.

"What?" Tosh asked.

"Jack just brought her in. No warning about it."

"I wish he would stop doing that," Gwen said. "Keeping all these secrets, just pulling out new surprises at every turn…"

"That's Torchwood," Tosh said half-heartedly, as she agreed with the Welshwoman. "What's her name?"

"Buffy Summers," Ianto said.

"Buffy? That's a bit unusual of a name, isn't it?" Gwen said. "What's she like?"

"American, blonde, five foot four."

"Not exactly Torchwood material," Tosh muttered.

"That's what I thought," Ianto said.

"Oh, come on!" Gwen said—ever the optimist. "She might be nice."

They watched as Jack came out of his office. Gwen moved to speak first, but Jack cut her off. "Is that the paperwork, Ianto?"

Ianto nodded and held out the stack of papers to him. Again Gwen tried to speak, but Jack was too quick at ignoring it. He yelled down to the medical pit, "Owen, if you're done turning Buffy into a pincushion I'd like to see her in my office."

Everyone could just make out Owen's grumbles, "Yeah, yeah, she's coming. Hold your horses, Harkness."

The others watched a short blonde come from Owen's pit and go into Jack's office. Then the two left and started the tour. Knowing introductions would come later, everyone settled into work at their individual stations while occasionally glancing up to observe the newcomer.

HXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXH

Hours later…

Buffy glared at Jack. The tour was fun; the Batcave had some pretty awesome stuff in it. There was definitely more alien junk, but then again, Buffy worked field operations and other people dealt with the "stuff." She wasn't too sure about keeping the weevils locked up; her slayer self wanted to just eliminate the problem and put the creatures out of their misery. She decided to wait to bring that up later.

But then that smiling, sadistic captain sat her on the other side of his desk filling out the paperwork. His part to sign and fill out was small compared to her mountain of dead trees. And you'd think after being shot that a paper cut wouldn't even register as a pain, but no! At least the incredible pain was brief—the perk of having super slayer healing.

So here she was, finally done with the forms, glaring at the grinning man. The nerve!

"So with all your fancy computers," she said at last, "why did I have to fill out all those papers?"

"Computers are easier to erase than vault-sealed paper files," he said. "Ianto will put in all the information in our computers and store the hard copy with the other records."

"Lucky him."

"Time you met the rest of the team." He led her out of his office. One woman was busy at work, but the other had a look of pretending to be busy and inconspicuous. Jack introduced her first. "Buffy Summers, Gwen Cooper. And over there—Toshiko Sato. You all probably already know," he threw a pretend glare at Ianto (busy tiding up the table in front of the couch), "Buffy is joining the team. Ianto, the paperwork just needs to be filed, and then if you could get Buffy her gun."

"Oh no!" Buffy protested. "I don't do guns."

"Every member of Torchwood must be armed," Jack said.

"Yeah, well I'm not every member of Torchwood."

"Didn't you have one with UNIT in San Diego? You have to defend yourself. You carry a gun." Jack's tone was firm, the tone that meant the argument was over. But he had never argued with Buffy Summers.

"No, I didn't carry a gun when I worked for them, and I won't carry one now. I'll carry a knife, a crossbow, a stake, a sword, a mace… hey, Friar Tuck be damned! I'll even carry a quarterstaff, but I will not carry a gun."

"A knife is too impractical." Jack still had the firm tone.

"A knife doesn't run out of bullets," she countered.

"She has a point," Owen interrupted, just coming up from his pit. "Jack, can I have a word with you?"

"See!" Buffy said.

"This is not over!" Jack said and emphasised by pointing at her. The two men went down to the medical area and spoke quietly so no one heard them.

"A quarterstaff?" Gwen asked as soon as Jack was out of sight. She laughed slightly as she joked, "Where did Jack find you? The Middle Ages?"

"I found him… sort of," Buffy said in an off-hand manner.

"Welcome to the team," Gwen said with a large smile.

"You're from California?" Toshiko asked.

"Born and raised! But I thought it was time to leave the desert for a while."

"You couldn't have come to any place more different," Tosh said. "All it does is rain."

"About that, I'll need to update my wardrobe with weather-friendly outfits. And I love those boots, by the way! Where's the best shopping around here?"

HXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXHXH

"What is it, Owen?" Jack asked the doctor quietly.

"Buffy Summers," Owen said. "She isn't human."

"What?" Jack expected a slayer to be slightly off… but only slightly.

"It gets even better," Owen continued. "I ran her DNA through the system to see what sort of alien she might be. I'd figure part alien since there are some human genes mixed in. I got nothing, except it did pull up a similar match. A paternity test, if you will."

Owen pointed to his screen. There in glowing pixels it said that Jack Harkness was the father of Buffy Summers.

Jack then remembered where he had met Buffy's mother before. It had been a while since he was in LA. Joyce. She had been one hell of a woman.

"How can she not be human?" Jack asked. "Joyce was definitely human, and I'm human."

"I don't know," Owen said. "All I do know is that she's not fully human, there's some unusual but harmless energy around her, and she's your daughter."

Jack said, "Turns out I was right to keep an eye on her."

"Is that why she's here? You were keeping an eye on her?" Considering Jack and his open flirting, Owen left that last question open. Though it was more than a bit weird that he might have been flirting with his own daughter—whether he knew it or not.

"Let's just say, I knew before this that Buffy had some special qualities. Don't underestimate her just because she's small and blonde. Look over her medical records with UNIT. I'm surprised they didn't pick up on this. I'm not going to bring any of it up with her just yet, so we're going to keep this between us."

Owen nodded and went back to his screen to puzzle out the results and Buffy's medical history some more. Jack returned to the main area where the girls were talking about clothes. Being any other man, he might have rolled his eyes. But being who he was, he knew quite well that Buffy would need to change her California wear for Cardiff outfits.

"Gwen, Tosh," he said. "Why don't you take Buffy out shopping for a more Torchwood appropriate wardrobe? I'll have Ianto hunt you down a place to live. That hotel is going to get expensive. I'll keep an eye on rift activity and shout if anything comes up. Welcome to Cardiff, Miss Summers."

Meanwhile he had to sit and wonder about the new puzzle that was Buffy Summers.

Comments, questions, and ideas are welcome. I feel like a broken tape, but please review. Thank you all so much for putting my story in your favourites or on alert, but reviews let me know better how I'm doing as an author.