The Methuselah Hunters

Lt. Commander Richie

Disclaimer: Doctor Who is property of BBC, Trinity Blood of Sunao Yoshida (may he rest in peace). It's their sandboxes full of toys, and while they're inside for lunch I'm the angry neighbor kid that jumps the fence and puts their action figures in compromising positions.

Warnings: Humor, completely made up jargon, an awful lot of running, the requisite 10/Rose flirting and spoilers for Trinity Blood up to but not into Know Faith/Silent Noise and Who up through but not surpassing "The Satan Pit". Disregards the timeline of the varying Great and Bountiful Human Empires because I am lazy. Contains 10 and Rose trussed up in artbook Trinity Blood uniforms (feel free to laugh and/or fangasm).

A/N: I am a bad person and I love it. I've also combined Firefly and Bleach before, though the internet is never seeing that. SO YES! Two of my favorite things, Trinity Blood being an old favorite and Doctor Who being a brand new one, combined into one thing! This will either end very well or very badly. Allons-y!

Best read on 3/4 or 1/2 width.

Chapter 3


-/-

"Explain to me why it is, exactly, that you are not currently dead or awaiting interrogation by the Inquisition." The beautifully striking woman behind the desk had a rather fearsome edge to her voice as she addressed her two captives, her delicately gloved fingers steepled in front of her fine chin. The lush red and gold garments of a Cardinal she wore only accentuated her rather fearsome beauty, as did the monocle she had delicately perched over her right eye. The Doctor and Rose tried to share a wary glance, but neither dared move because of the large guns aimed at painful and disabling regions of their bodies.

"If I 'ad to hazard a guess, which I imagine I do given the current situation- I would really 'ave to say it's because you, Your Grace, are a very understanding and patient woman not particularly given to completely rash decisions like shooting supposed imposters on top of what appears to be a very nice Persian rug that would no doubt cost quite a bit of time and money to have blood scrubbed out of," the Doctor's statement inflected into what almost sounded like a question for a moment at the end, and Rose risked a quick and somewhat cross glance at him. If the icily beautiful Cardinal found the Time Lord's conjecture to be at all amusing, her ironclad visage certainly did not betray that.

"Usually this is true," her large blond curls shifting about and red and gold fabric whispering over itself, the Cardinal reached out one gloved hand and picked up her teacup as she spoke. "But at the moment I find myself slightly preoccupied by the seemingly inescapable problem of two people that are most certainly not of the priesthood or sisterhood impersonating two officers of my Special Operations Section." With that said she took a long sip of the steaming liquid at then sat the white and gold china back down with all the grace of a woman of very high breeding and status. The Doctor had the grace to look slightly caught and maybe an inkling of guilty, but the expression was gone as soon as it had arrived. Rose's look took a little longer to fade away, but she mirrored the same general uneasiness of a child that had been caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

"There's a…" Rose trailed off for a moment, her blue eyes flicking from the impeccably-dressed Cardinal to the Time Lord beside her and then slightly further back to catch a slight glimpse of the short-ish russet-haired man with the guns and blank expression behind them. She swallowed in a manner that could be construed as nerves, before her attention turned back to the treacherously beautiful Cardinal behind the large desk. "We got a perfectly good explanation. Really," she finished lamely, shooting a very pointed look at the Doctor in hopes that he would pick up where she left off. Something that was almost halfway to amusement briefly flickered across the face of the blond in red behind the desk, before her eyebrows knit just barely downward in a slightly unamused fashion.

The Doctor, after a brief moment of awkward and slightly confused floundering in which he somewhat resembled a fish, nodded resolutely.

"As you may have noticed, Your Grace, the both of us are from Albion. I have no doubt in my very considerable and quite frankly rather terrifyingly brilliant mind that you know without a doubt that Albion is the capitol of the civilized world as far as Pre-Armageddon Technology is concerned. The whole country is completely and fantastically advanced because of this and I say that with no small amount of pride because quite frankly I love that tiny island and I've put more than my fair share of work into it!" The Doctor's babbling continued with all the force of a busted-open faucet without a handle, and Rose stifled a sigh as she shifted from one foot to the other in her rather vexing heels. Trust the Doctor to babble like a madman in a half-convincing manner while simultaneously thinking up a plan that would no doubt be abandoned just inside of twenty minutes. The blond froze as the large gun trained at a non-vital but still very painful part of her anatomy made a noise that sounded both very loud and very threatening. "Oi! You'll not be threatening Rose with that barbarically stupid piece of outdated projectile weaponry, thank you very much!"

"Not helpin'!" she hissed at him, otherwise holding as still as she possibly could while barely wavering on her heels. The Doctor completely ignored her angry admonishment, preferring instead to flash the Cardinal his very wide and brilliant Cheshire cat grin.

"Your Grace, my partner and I are from the future." With that bombshell dropped, the Cardinal's office seemed to erupt into chaos. By the door, an older gentleman smoking a large pipe inhaled incorrectly and began coughing uncontrollably. The slightly see-through woman floating to the left of the Cardinal's desk, lightly tinted blue by the properties of her holographic form, gasped loudly and with enough shock evident that a flicker lanced through her digital form. A few yells of indignation and disbelief went up throughout the room, the loudest being from the rather swarthy Spanish man with the massive mane of black hair and the silver-haired man with the glasses. The somewhat vertically-challenged russet-haired man with the guns said nothing, his visage unchanged by the revelation.

Rose gave the Doctor a look that quite plainly told him with no uncertainty that he had better have a plan to go along with that blurb of technically-inaccurate information.

"Enough!" With a yell, Cardinal Caterina Sforza stood from her chair and pounded a fist on the desk in front of her. The uncharacteristic display of anger was enough to quiet the entire room. At some point the monocle had fallen from the woman's eye, and she replaced it carefully before straightening and surveying the room with livid steel-gray eyes. "I have had enough of this foolishness. You will cease with this rampant stupidity and obvious telling of lies and you will tell me why you are here! No matter your intentions or feelings on the matter at hand, I am not amused!" Rose and the Doctor, laughter in their eyes at the woman's choice of words, shared a sly look before returning their attention to the angry Cardinal.

"Your Grace?" Her addressing sounded a little unsure, but Rose didn't back down as she spoke. "I swea', we are who we say we are." Her blue eyes flitted to the Doctor's brown ones for a split second, and she drew a little strength from the warmth and faith she saw in them. "I'm Sister Rose Tyler, from Westminster. He's Father John Smith, from Lancashire. We really are members of th' clergy."

"I've got our identification in one of my pockets, Your Grace. If y'like I could get it out-" the Doctor went for one of his pockets and like that the entire room was bristling with weapons. The gun aimed at him by the russet-haired Father cocked, and he found himself aimed at by three other pistols of varying caliber by the gentleman with the pipe, the beautiful black-haired nun in the suspender belt and stockings and the silver-haired man with the glasses. "Oi! Can a man not get somethin' outta 'is pockets in this day an' age or somethin'?" With a chagrined look on his face, the Doctor's hand went back up into plain view of the rest of the room. Cardinal Sforza gestured to the silver-haired man with the glasses and he holstered his antique pistol before taking the Doctor's cloak in hand and reaching into the inside pocket. A puzzled expression flitted across his face before he reached farther, and then farther, and then all the way up to his shoulder in surprise.

"You've got a hole in your pocket, you know," the priest said conversationally, a child-like smile gracing his features as he groped around in the pocket that he assumed went all the way to the bottom edge of the Doctor's nearly floor-length cloak. After a moment of searching he withdrew a handful of papers and a brown and gold ID card. While he had been having adventures in the Doctor's pocket the pretty nun in the suspender belt and stockings had swiftly gone through Rose's much smaller pockets and produced a similar ID card and a small handful of Rokklummish currency. The green coins looked a bit like poker chips, and the nun raised a beautifully-sculpted eyebrow at them before depositing the handful back in the pocket she had found it in. Cardinal Sforza accepted the two ID cards and the wad of papers, surveying them through her monocle with a steadily rising eyebrow.

"These are impressive fakes," she said after a moment, sinking back down into her chair and crossing her legs under the desk. "But your forger has mistaken the date. Both your ID and documentation have tomorrow's date on them."

"Tha's 'cause you don't issue those to us until tomorrow," at Cardinal Sforza's lightly incredulous look, the Doctor elaborated with a very put-upon look gracing his features. "Sister Tyler an' I are time travelers. You've not given those to us yet relative to your own time stream, but accordin' to our own non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint just outside of time we've been agents of the Papal State Affairs Special Operations Section for… what, quite a while, yeah?" The Doctor turned to Rose then, a silent and invisible plea for her to play along in his raised eyebrow. She gave a resolute nod, her hands flying to her wimple as it finally came loose and nearly fell from her head.

"I'm sorry, but I find myself unable to stand by without interjecting at this point," the older gentleman with the pipe finally spoke up, tapping said pipe on the side of the hand that clutched his cane before placing the end in his mouth and taking a puff. "You both claim to be time travelers, yet all you have to substantiate your rather outlandish claims are ID cards and documentation with badly forged dates on them. Why should we trust anything you have to say? You must know very well that the Vatican does not deal kindly with imposters, especially of its Special Operations agents. I'm sorry to say, but you could very well be lying through your teeth to save your own skins." The air in the lavish office of the Cardinal seemed stiff and thick as the gentleman of Albion finished speaking, and he took another puff of his pipe for good measure. After a moment the Doctor's face broke into a grin so wide it could probably break his chin right off. He opened his mouth to speak, looking as positively elated as he did when he came across some vexing piece of machinery or a particularly clever piece of human ingenuity.

"They're not forgeries, Your Grace," from her space in the air next to the Cardinal's desk, the holographic nun worked at an equally-holographic floating console in front of her. Through the translucent light blue pixels the whole room could see that the woman had called up scans and data on the ID cards and documentation that the silver haired priest had pulled from the Doctor's pocket. "This is your signature and handwriting on your stationary, and these ID cards register in the Vatican databases. Both cards return Certificate of Authenticity error messages that cite that the information was electronically dated tomorrow and as such cannot be read until then. My systems aren't registering any codes or programs out of the ordinary that might be forcing the display of the error. If these are forgeries, they are the best I have ever seen."

A silence seemed to blanket the room, and Rose shuffled a little in her heels in a way that she hoped didn't look very suspect.

It was rather rudely broken by an explosion loud enough that it rattled the windows to the left of the Cardinal's desk and made ripples appear in her teacup.

Smoke began to rise over the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica, the angle meaning that the explosion had been in the Square. The room erupted into chaos, a good portion of the AX operatives present rushing for the door in a cacophony of robes and armor and shouts. Heedless of the gun aimed at his vital regions by the diminutive but stocky russet-haired Father, the Doctor took a step forward and slammed his hands onto the desk to look Cardinal Sforza in the eyes.

"We are your operatives, Your Grace. Direct us as you will- whatever that explosion was you'll need all the help you can get," his voice was calm in the sea of madness that was the Cardinal's lavish office. But despite the din he could be heard quite clearly, and his brown eyes for a moment conveyed the kind of seriousness and depth that the Cardinal did not see often. The blond woman looked obstinate for a long moment, her ironclad eyes narrowed dangerously behind her monocle. One fine gloved hand fisted in the red and gold panels of her skirt, taking a good portion of the white underskirt with it.

"Your Grace?" The holographic nun looked apprehensive as she spoke, one translucent hand fisting around the equally-translucent crucifix on her rosary. When no answer was given, the nun blinked out of existence. The silence between the two at the desk went on for only a moment longer before Cardinal Sforza made a sound that was almost a snort of derision, but she was far too dignified to make any such noise. Her hand let go of her skirt, and she picked up the two ID cards from her desk and held them out with a steely expression still fixed on her face.

"Father Smith, I don't pretend to know why I'm doing something as monumentally stupid as this will no doubt turn out to be. As of right now, yourself and Sister Tyler are provisional agents of my Special Operations Section." With a humorless look, the Cardinal dropped the ID cards into the proffered hand of the man in question. He smiled widely at her actions, the act lending a very Cheshire-esque quality to his countenance. He opened his mouth to say something, but she cut him off. "If you make me even so much as begin to regret this, you will be given to Cardinal di'Medici's Inquisition without so much as paperwork filed. You do not exist- not yet, at least- and when people do not exist people do not look for them when they disappear." The threat hung, very credible, in the air between the two parties.

"Your Grace, I'm just now registering an unidentified aircraft in Vatican airspace through what appears to be heavy shielding. It's been dealt a good amount of damage- shall I shoot it down or apprehend it myself?" The holographic nun blinked back into existence- this time to the right of the Cardinal's desk- most of her face and upper body obscured by holographic panels that she worked furiously at.

"Shoot it down, Sister Kate, and have operatives standing by to apprehend the pilot," Cardinal Caterina paused, then, and fixed both the Doctor and Rose with a very heavy stare. "What are you waiting for, a Papal edict? You have your orders. If the pilot survives being shot down, apprehend him!" Rose immediately snapped to what she hoped was attention, giving a sloppy salute that obscured part of her face with her large cuff. The Doctor nodded, shoving his ID card into his bottomless pocket and handing the other to Rose. She took it with a smile, her tongue just barely showing between her teeth as she plunged her hand into her pocket and then grabbed the Doctor's proffered hand.

"The safety of the Vatican is in the best hands it can ever be, Your Grace," the Doctor said, a smile breaking across his features in what he certainly hoped was a reassuring manner. "C'mon then, Sister Tyler! Allons-y!" Before the Cardinal could even get a word in edgewise, the two had made a break for the open office door in a rush of fabric and jingling armor. With naught much else to do, the treacherously beautiful blond lowered herself back into her chair and picked up her teacup once again.

"Do you think trusting them was a good idea, Your Grace?" With a questioning look on her light blue and translucent features, Sister Kate moved one of her consoles out of her line of sight. Cardinal Sforza, her face a beautiful impasse, took a sip of her tea.

"I certainly hope so Sister Kate," she muttered, before picking up the crumpled documents that had been retrieved from Father John Smith's pocket in one long-fingered hand. She surveyed the script on them from behind her monocle, taking another sip of her rapidly-cooling tea as she did so.

-/-


Wow, the last time I updated this was almost a month ago. Crap. I need to start finishing the last two chapters so I won't run out of them. Second to last is mostly done, but I only vaguely know what I want to do with the last one. Oh boy!

So, dat new series of Who. Can't wait for more~

-Richie