Chapter 16
Jack "Martin" put on his most charming smile for Buffy's benefit. "Pardon me, Miss, but I didn't catch your name," he purred while he upped his pheromone production.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "It's Buffy and if you don't stop hitting on me, I'm going to put some serious hurt on you," she warned.
Jack smirked and lowered his head submissively. "Yes, Mistress. I'm sure I've earned whatever punishment you desire," he told her, his voice dripping with sexual overtones. Buffy threw her hands in the air and walked a few steps away before she really lost her temper. Jack looked up and made eye contact with Spike. "I don't know where you picked her up, but you know what the boss said about the Doctor," he whispered, suddenly all business. "Keep the hot blonde busy while I contact the boss and ask what she wants us to do. Hopefully, we won't have to scrub the mission," he told him before dashing off to a nearby alley.
Buffy came storming back and looked around, her hands on her hips. "Where's 'Captain Horny'?" she inquired.
"Went off to make a phone call, I think," Spike replied, still in shock over the Immortal slipping him the tongue. "Said he had to talk to his boss about the Doctor," he relayed to her. While keeping watch on the street corner where the Immortal had dashed off to, Spike rubbed his mouth with the back of his sleeve. "Got any gum, Pet?" he asked his wife hopefully.
Jack looked behind him to make sure he hadn't been followed by the young, blonde friend of the Doctor. He lifted off the leather strap covering the controls of his Vortex manipulator and adjusted a stud, activating the personal emergency frequency he and Assistant Director Song had set up. Within seconds, a glowing blue hologram of his boss sitting behind her desk sprang to life in front of him. River looked up and smiled patiently at him, waiting for him to begin. "I think we might have a problem on this mission," he told her bluntly, forgoing his usual charm. "John picked up a girl and she's connected to the Doctor," he explained.
River's face darkened for a moment and then she forced a smile back on her face. She knew that the time had finally come for her future husband to meet the past version of one of his closest friends; a meeting that would put into motion the plan that she and Jack had been working towards for over five years. She knew that it was only a matter of time before the eventual destruction of the Time Agency. The sad part was that Jack would end up losing years worth of memories due to his involvement. Even though she had known what was going to happen before she had sent Jack on the mission, it still pained her that her friendship with this version of Jack would soon be over. "It's all right, Jack. It's time," she replied, a sad smile on her lips.
Jack noticed the look on his boss' face. "Time to put the last domino in place, huh?" he asked softly. River's silent nod was the only response he got. Jack took in a deep breath to get his courage up. "I thought that was why you sent us here. OK, just make sure you have things set up on your end. If anyone finds out what we're really up to, a lot of powerful people will be out for our blood," he reminded her. Before severing the link he added, "Also, make sure John's name is kept out of things. I don't want him hurt when things start to go bad." He secured the leather flap again and walked back to where he had left "John" and Buffy.
Jack nodded at Spike and gave him a thumbs up sign. "Let's go meet the Doctor," he stated, forcing cheerfulness into his voice.
********DrW********
Faith walked close by the tenth Doctor's side. She wasn't holding his hand due to her wanting to be ready to fight, but she still brushed his hand whenever she could. Since the incident with the Tusk gang, she had been forced to break the arm of two separate pickpockets and crush the genitals of a pimp who offered the Doctor a sizable amount of money for her. She had kissed the tenth Doctor's cheek when he joked she was worth ten times what the pimp had offered.
The Doctor whistled a happy tune as he looked around the passageway. His eyes lit up when he spotted a burnt out brown box laying with the other garbage off to one side. "Oh look, I haven't seen one of those in years," he exclaimed and dropped to one knee next to the refuse pile. "Sargoian media delivery device," he said to no one in particular. He tossed the box into the air and caught it before it hit the ground.
Faith rolled her eyes at her boyfriend's antics. "OK, I'll bite. What's a 'Sargoian media delivery' doohickey?" She inquired.
"It's sort of like a telly, but emits smells instead of sights and sounds. The Sargoians don't have eyes or ears so they communicate by means of complex odor combinations," the tenth Doctor explained. He looked down at the device and frowned. "Problem is, Sargoians are methane breathers so one of their sitcoms usually ends up smelling like an outhouse at an all-you-can-eat chili festival," he added before dropping the box and wiping his hands on his overcoat.
Faith shook her head, wondering how someone who had lived as long as he had still managed to suffer from ADHD. "Doc, tracer," she reminded him. He looked down in embarrassment, which caused her to chuckle. He smiled at her and pulled out the tracer. The blue end of the tube pointed down a different passageway and they followed the indicated path.
The Doctor had his eyes locked on the tracer and didn't realize it had led them into a dead end corridor. "Blast!" he swore when the tracer pointed directly at the wall in front of him. The blue end had started glowing brighter, showing him that the segment was close. "We'll have to double back and see if we can't find another way past this wall," he told Faith.
Faith looked up and noticed an air vent near the top of the wall. "Maybe not," she replied, pointing to the grate covering the vent. Faith stood with her back to the wall and cupped her hands in front of her. "Come on, up you go," she suggested.
Had it been anyone else, the tenth Doctor would have balked at the notion of being lifted into place while he tried to figure out how to remove a grate. However, he had learned early on in their relationship to rely on Faith for the more physically demanding tasks they came upon. "Right, but no funny business. I almost fell and broke my neck the last time," he chastised her. Faith tried to look innocent while the Doctor planted a foot in her hands and balanced himself. She did her best to try and ignore what was directly in front of her face. The tenth Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the four corners of the grate, blasting the magnetic locking fixtures open. He tugged the grate off and threw it behind him. "OK, now how do you want to . . . OOF!" he exclaimed as Faith tossed him into the air vent without warning. She waited until his feet were out of view before hopping and grabbing the edge of the vent. With almost no effort, Faith pulled herself into the vent behind her boyfriend.
"You could have warned me?" the tenth Doctor complained once Faith was in the vent with him.
"Like how you warned me about that restaurant on Titan?" Faith replied.
The tenth Doctor sucked in air through his teeth. "Yeah . . . I suppose I did deserve that," he said absently. Craning his neck forward, he looked down the air shaft. "Bit tight in here, we'll have to go single file," he told her. They crawled down the airway for several minutes, always going straight, following the tracer. Eventually they reached another grate that let out into a lavishly furnished room. The blue end of the tracer glowed so much the Doctor had to put it back into his jacket in case someone might see it from the room. The air vent had widened enough that he motioned Faith to crawl up next to him and have a look for herself. Faith looked through the grate and saw a large, blue fat man sitting behind a gold encrusted desk. The Doctor pointed towards the desk and whispered, "Tracer pointed straight at him. I'm guessing he has the key segment somewhere on his person."
Faith stifled a laugh when she looked closer at the blue alien. "Looks like he ate the other two from the group," she whispered. The questioning look her boyfriend gave her helped her regain her self control. "You know . . . The Blue Man Group," she offered. He still looked confused, but Faith was spared from having to explain more when the door to the room flew inwards. A man with the body of a human but the head of a shark walked into the room flanked by half a dozen vampires with their game faces on. All of them were dressed like gangsters from the Al Capone era.
The shark like man chattered his teeth several times before speaking. "Dorium, Dorium, Dorium, where have you been?" he wondered. "You haven't been returning my calls, my emails, or even meeting with my messengers. I'm beginning to think you're trying to avoid me," he pointed out.
"Mr. Teeth, how good to see you again," Dorium lied. "Must be that new assistant I hired. It's so hard to find good help these days. I'll have a word with him," he promised.
Teeth nodded to one of the vampires behind him and the severed head of a red skinned boy was tossed onto Dorium's desk. "Saved you some time," Teeth chortled.
Dorium made a disgusted face and swept the head into a waste basket next to his desk. "To what do I owe the honor of your visit, Mr. Teeth," he inquired politely.
Teeth snapped his jaw several times in anger before he regained his control. "You sold us a freighter full of worthless sonic pistols!" he growled.
Dorium looked indignant. "I did no such thing! I sold you a shipment of top of the line sonic pistols. It's not my fault someone destroyed the plant where the batteries were made and put in a banana plantation in its place over night," he shot back.
The tenth Doctor snickered when Dorium mentioned the banana plantation. Faith poked him in the ribs. "What's with you and bananas?" she prodded, guessing correctly that he had been the one responsible for the weapons plant to be destroyed. The Doctor shushed her and Faith went back to watching the room.
"Let me tell you what is going to happen," Teeth warned Dorium. "I'm going to get every credit back that I paid for those guns and then I'm going to take the interest you owe me for my troubles out of your fat ass," he said with a smile that showed off several rows of serrated teeth in his enormous mouth. "Take him," he ordered his vampire flunkies. Two of them moved faster than Dorium could see and grabbed his arms.
"You can't do this to me! I'm president of the chamber of commerce on this station!" Dorium protested. Right after he said that, Faith's phone vibrated. The Tenth Doctor was pressed so close against her that he jolted when he felt the phone move. Unfortunately, he managed to smack his head against the top of the air vent at the same time. All eyes in the room turned to look at the air vent. "Rats . . . we have huge rats on this station," Dorium improvised. He had no idea what was in the air vent, but he prayed to the great profit maker that it was someone who could help him.
"See what it is and then meet us at the ship," Teeth ordered one of the vampires. With a jerk of his head, Teeth walked out of the room followed by his vampires and a very distraught and very overweight blue skinned man.
The vampire who had been left behind pushed a chair over to the wall where the air vent was. He ripped the grate from the wall and stuck his face in the vent to see if he could determine what had made the noise. His face was quickly intercepted by a fist that knocked him to the ground.
Face dove out of the air vent and rolled into a crouched fighting position. "The blue fat bastard was right . . . A gutter rat," the vampire chuckled.
"Ooooh . . . I wouldn't have said that if I were you," the tenth Doctor called out from the air vent. He was resting his head on his hands with his elbows propped up. Glancing in Faith's direction, the Doctor added, "Make it quick if you don't mind. I'm not really sure how I'm going to get down."
While the vampire was looked up at the Doctor, Faith threw her wooden stake at his chest. The vampire's head snapped around and he caught the wooden weapon mere centimeters above his heart. "Nice throw, gutter rat, but I'm over 300 years old and it will take more than a little girl to take me down," he boasted.
"You mean, like a Slayer?" Faith asked sweetly before standing up.
"Shit, I thought we took care of the last of you bitches years ago," the vampire moaned. He rushed at Faith, his arms ready to grab her and his fangs out to tear into her throat. Faith grabbed the nearest object she could find and threw it at him. The small potted palm tree was knocked away with contemptuous ease, shattering the ceramic pot in was in. The vampire followed up Faith's attack with two quick punches to her midsection. She responded with a round house kick to his knee. The vampire flinched, but did not go down.
The person who did go down was the tenth Doctor as he tried to ease his way out of the air vent but only managed to fall out with a loud thump. Both combatants looked over at him for a moment before he raised his arm. "I'm all right, carry on," he let them know.
Faith punched the vampire in the face as hard as she could, knocking him back several feet. He regained his balance and struck her across the chest with his arm, sending her flying behind a couch.
"Here, maybe this will help," the tenth Doctor yelled as he tossed the remains of the small palm tree towards the vampire.
Catching the small tree in mid air, the vampire sneered at Faith, saying, "I guess your friend over there doesn't like you very much."
"On the contrary, I love her," the tenth Doctor proclaimed loudly. Faith smiled when she realized this was the first time he had admitted that publicly. "The palm tree will helprelease you from your curse and finally let you find some peace after your death," the Doctor explained.
The vampire gave Faith a look as if to say, "He's kidding, right?" when his hearing picked up the ultra high pitched noise coming from the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. The sap inside the living tree vibrated so fast it instantly flashed over into steam, shattering the small palm tree, and showering the vampire with lethal wood fragments. He had time to look down at the four large wood shards sticking out of his chest before exploding into a cloud of dust.
"I really am sorry, but we're short on time" the tenth Doctor apologized to the dissipating cloud of dust. He walked over to Faith and offered her his hand to help her up.
Once Faith was up, she brushed some tree splinters out of her hair and retrieved her wooden stake. "I could have taken that guy, easy!" she pouted.
"I know you could have," the tenth Doctor assured her. "That fat blue fellow has the key segment on him and I want to get it before that shark faced thing bites off the part where he keeps it," he said quickly and led Faith to the door. "I think it's time we rejoined the others. We're probably going to need back up," he guessed.
Faith remembered her phone had vibrated before the fight started and she dug it out of her pocket. After reading the text message, she handed it over to the Doctor. "I don't think that's going to be a problem," she told him.
The tenth Doctor froze when he read the message on Faith's phone:
Faith, just bumped into the Immortal.
He wants to meet with the Doctor.
We'll take him back to the hotel.
Get your mind out of the gutter! - lol
-B-