FIC: The Amazing Team TARDIS 2/4
Dec. 20th, 2007 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsTitle: The Amazing Team TARDIS 2/4
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
neadods
Written for:alilamba
Rating: G
Summary: When the Doctor, Jack, and Rose think they're freeing a slave, they end up in the middle of the universe's biggest reality game show.
Betas:dark_aegis, mechturtle, maureen_the_mad, and persiflage_1
Disclaimer: This is not a licensed BBC tie-in. Doctor Who, Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness, and the TARDIS all property of the BBC.
Part 1
CHAPTER 2 – "REMEMBER WHAT I DID BEFORE?"
They were still giggling while they ran the course, which they did without seeing any of the other teams. Afterwards, they’d been whisked into one in a long parade of cars immediately and without comment. It was only when three of the cars peeled away from the caravan that Rose realized that the losers were being sent home and they had made it to the next round.
Or maybe not. The cars didn’t go back to the hotel, as she expected. Instead, they drove for hours, the city fading to suburb, then farmland, and then acres and acres of nothing. There was one thing on the horizon, a smallish mountain, and they were aimed right at it.
Three hours later, all the teams were disembarking in a cobbled main square in a town on top of the mountain. The two nonhuman teams – well, the two obviously nonhuman teams – were there, as well as others Rose wasn’t sure she could identify. She was equally sure Jack could - while he was smiling and flirting with anyone who looked his way, she was absolutely positive that in the back of his head, he was running down a checklist of the competition. The Doctor, on the other hand, was looking around the town, openly acting the tourist. When she glanced at him, he nudged her and silently pointed out a bird’s nest in a mass of tangled, flowering vines flowing over some ancient statues. Something with bright plumage was peering back at them, and they smiled at it.
Sometimes it really was just about the innocent moments.
A crowd had gathered around the edge of the square, watching with interest. Hanro was there too, tucked behind a column, counting cars. When the last one rolled in, he switched on his smile and made a grand entrance from the midst of the crowd. “Congratulations to all of you! Welcome to the town of Soblenko, long a tourist destination because of its beautiful landscape. Tonight you’ll be staying at the prestigious…”
Rose tuned out, trusting the others’ body language to tell her when to pay attention again. When the Doctor (who was still rubbernecking) turned to look at Hanro, she came back in for “…I am only going to give you enough money for one teammate’s ticket. Your challenge is to earn the rest of the money. A good time to try would be at the market that will take place in this scenic square tomorrow, as it has the first of the month every year for the last two centuries. Stealing or otherwise breaking the law is not permitted. Remember, there are only two trains, so if you miss the morning train, you will have to wait until evening to return. Good luck. I look forward to seeing you back in the T3 arena.”
He walked forward in a cloud of monitor balls, going to each team and leaving behind a few bills and a few monitors.
“Excuse me,” Jack asked Hanro politely as he turned toward Team TARDIS. “Is food included in our hotel package?”
“Good question. You’d be surprised how many teams forget to ask that. It isn’t, and this is all the money you get.” Hanro dropped some bills into Jack’s hands. “However, you do not have to wait until the market opens to try to earn more.”
The other teams muttered in shock, closing ranks to try to work out strategy. In a moment, the humanoids with the feathered heads had dropped a hat near the edge of the crowd and begun a stately dance to their own piping whistles.
“So is this the thought or the trust challenge?” Rose asked.
“It’s not that simple,” the Doctor replied. “There aren’t three tests, one for each attribute. There are usually half a dozen little contests, which blend everything all together, with one or two really big challenges that focus on individual members of the team.”
Jack looked at the six bills in his hand. “I’m going to go do an intel recce.” He scanned the crowd. Spying someone to his taste, he grinned broadly and started towards a knot of people.
“I’m sure prostitution is against the rules,” the Doctor said.
“That wasn’t the idea,” Jack called back, but while his main target was a knot of people, he flirted with all his might with a particular matron, a monitor catching her every blush.
Rose and the Doctor watched him flatter and chat. “He’s going to come back knowing everything there is to know about this challenge, this town, her family, and her knickers,” the Doctor said, with an undertone of amusement.
“Aren’t we supposed to be doing everything together?”
“We don’t have to always be together to work as a team,” the Doctor pointed out. “Part of a leader’s job is to delegate. And I delegate dinner to you, because I haven’t any idea what to do about that, and you fragile apes get all testy when you miss a meal. Any ideas?”
Rose turned, watching Jack flatter, the other teams confer, and the townspeople basically staring at them bug-eyed, waiting for something entertaining to happen. “Y’know? I think I do.”
A monitor whirred by her left ear as she walked across the square, moving through the crowd to a man who was watching them from the door of what looked like a bistro.
“No, you can’t wash dishes for a free meal,” he said before she could open her mouth. “That group over there already asked.”
“Wouldn’t want to,” she told him. “I was thinking that we could give you something much more valuable than clean dishes.”
“Oh?” He wasn’t impressed. “And what would that be?”
“Publicity! Thousands of people watch this race. They want to visit where we visit, stay where we stay,” she paused a beat for emphasis, “eat where we eat. When all those tourists come, don’t you want to have a piece of that? All those sponsors paying pounds and pounds to be seen on this show, and you can have it for the price of three meals. The first wave of tourists come and you'll make back everything you spent on us and more." She made a point of looking at the crowd pressing close, hanging on her every word. “Might even make it back tonight.”
He snorted, but there was a grudgingly admiring tilt to the corners of his mouth. "No menus. I bring you a selection. You sit in the window so everyone can see. Take it or leave it."
"We'll take it," the Doctor said from behind her.
It was good grub. Conscious of the monitors and the townspeople clustered by the window as if Team TARDIS were exhibits in a zoo, the owner brought a taster selection of everything the bistro offered, and their enjoyment wasn't faked. At the end of the dinner, as people rushed in from the street to try to reserve their table, one of the waiters even slipped them a doggie bag of bread, cheese, and fruit "for the morning."
So it was a sated team that strolled across the dark square. "Well done, Rose," the Doctor said. "Jack, what have you found out?"
"Lots. I’ve been laying-"
"I knew it!"
"Laying plans for morning. Remember what I did before I met you?"
"Almost destroy the human race with alien technology by accident?"
Jack glared at the Doctor. "No, turn almost any old thing into easy money. In the morning we're going to have to buy a few supplies, but they won't be expensive and we won't have competition."
"So what is this brilliant plan?" Rose asked.
"I'll tell you when we're at the hotel." Jack waved at one of their competitors, loitering as inconspicuously as anyone can when a monitor is hovering beside them.
***
Jack disappeared while it was still dark the next morning, leaving Rose foraging instructions, the Doctor a shopping list, and the two of them strict orders to bring the bread and cheese untouched. Rose munched on the apple-like fruit as she followed a hand-drawn map to a little park, gathering up as many fallen sticks and twigs as she could carry to take back to the square. At least the work took the chill off; it was much colder here than it had been in the city yesterday. Even the monitor looked a little frosty.
The real vendors were just starting arrive and set up their stalls, and one of the other teams was there as well, the three people prowling restlessly, obviously still trying to figure out what to do. Rose grinned at them as she trotted by. Jack had marked their meeting place on the map, and the Doctor was there, holding a bag of produce in one hand and their intended breakfast in the other. After a few minutes, Jack appeared with a grin, a netted bag with utensils, a frying pan, and an iron hod to set it on.
"See? I said she'd be happy to loan us everything we need."
"You did your buttons up wrong," was the Doctor's sour reply.
While Jack fixed his clothing, they laid out the supplies and got a fire going under the pan. The other teams were arriving now. One set up a sign offering storytelling. Another started juggling. The feathered people started dancing again.
Rose watched them, then looked at the little fire. "Are you sure this is going to work?"
"Yes!" Jack said. "Look around. Cold morning, isn't it? You can practically see people turning blue." He looked at the jugglers. "Well, the ones who aren't blue already. Larissa – she's the one who loaned me this stuff – she said that in other challenges, teams usually do what they're doing, entertainment. It works, but the market's saturated, see?" Two of the teams got into a shoving match over territory. "But nobody's offering hot food, nowhere in this whole market. We're a novelty and we're offering a valuable service. Chop the cheese for me, will you?"
"I'll cook," the Doctor said, starting to break eggs into a bowl. "Oh, don't look at me like that, you two, anyone can make an omelet! Rose, you get everything ready so we can work fast as possible. Jack, rather than squatting over a fire here, why don't you go do what you do best?"
Jack leered at him. "I thought you said that was against the rules?"
The Doctor rolled his eyes, but Rose could see the hidden smirk. "Go get attention and lure people over." He dropped butter into the pan with a hiss. "First omelet's up in three minutes."
Jack made a fabulous front man, and the Doctor made a fairly decent omelet. In the end, Rose had to run down to buy the tickets alone, because the townspeople kept the Doctor cooking almost to the moment the train arrived. Larissa collected her tools and a kiss as they bolted for the station, five of the other teams nipping at their heels.
***
Hanro gave them their rankings as they waited in the arena, footage of the game playing silently on huge screens behind him. Rose noticed that the teams who weren't there had big subtitles reading "Eliminated" even while they tried to earn the last of their money. Everyone in the arena had got the same points for making the early train, but Jack's and Rose's innovations had put Team TARDIS well into the lead. That called for a big, bouncing, giggling group hug and when they came out of it, Hanro was offering the Doctor two white playing cards.
"What're these, then?"
"They're the assignments for the Ultimate Trust challenges. As leader, it is up to you to pick who does what."
He didn't take the cards. "That thing in the scrapheap with Roshan and them – was that an Ultimate Trust challenge?"
"Yes."
That took the bounce out of everyone as they stared at the cards. The blindfold. The chains. The stick. The tears. The blood.
"S'okay, Doctor," Rose said softly. "Only a game, yeah? We can stop if it goes wrong. I'm willing to try."
"Jack?"
Jack may have doubted in private, but he wasn’t going to let the Doctor down in public. "You know me, I'll try anything once."
The Doctor was still frowning at the cards. "I don't know what these mean. Can you give a hint?"
"This one is the challenge for tomorrow. Both your people should be able to do either task – and if not, well, part of the game is seeing how well you as leader handle something that’s beyond their capabilities. That's all I can tell you."
With a shrug, the Doctor took them and held them out to Rose and Jack.
They were simple black marks on a blank white field. The one for tomorrow had a line jutting horizontally from the top of a circle. The other had a slanting line balanced on a circle, like a child's drawing of a seesaw. Jack frowned, then slowly took the one with the horizontal line. That left the other for Rose. They somberly held them up so the monitors could show their choices, mirrored in a dozen screens high above them.
"Get rest, everyone," Hanro told them all. "Tomorrow will be a hard day."
Part 3
The weirdest thing just happened to me as I was putting in the last comments. Word crashed... and when it came up, the file was missing from the thumb drive. Not "my changes were missing" - the FILE was missing! Not in the trash. Not in the temp folder. Not returned to an earlier version. GONE. Has this happened to anyone else? Any advice on recovering it? Or should I just be glad that I can rescue last night's version out of email and gladder that M was the final beta and wanted a printed copy to work from?
Author:
neadodsWritten for:
alilambaRating: G
Summary: When the Doctor, Jack, and Rose think they're freeing a slave, they end up in the middle of the universe's biggest reality game show.
Betas:
dark_aegis, mechturtle, maureen_the_mad, and persiflage_1 Disclaimer: This is not a licensed BBC tie-in. Doctor Who, Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness, and the TARDIS all property of the BBC.
Part 1
CHAPTER 2 – "REMEMBER WHAT I DID BEFORE?"
They were still giggling while they ran the course, which they did without seeing any of the other teams. Afterwards, they’d been whisked into one in a long parade of cars immediately and without comment. It was only when three of the cars peeled away from the caravan that Rose realized that the losers were being sent home and they had made it to the next round.
Or maybe not. The cars didn’t go back to the hotel, as she expected. Instead, they drove for hours, the city fading to suburb, then farmland, and then acres and acres of nothing. There was one thing on the horizon, a smallish mountain, and they were aimed right at it.
Three hours later, all the teams were disembarking in a cobbled main square in a town on top of the mountain. The two nonhuman teams – well, the two obviously nonhuman teams – were there, as well as others Rose wasn’t sure she could identify. She was equally sure Jack could - while he was smiling and flirting with anyone who looked his way, she was absolutely positive that in the back of his head, he was running down a checklist of the competition. The Doctor, on the other hand, was looking around the town, openly acting the tourist. When she glanced at him, he nudged her and silently pointed out a bird’s nest in a mass of tangled, flowering vines flowing over some ancient statues. Something with bright plumage was peering back at them, and they smiled at it.
Sometimes it really was just about the innocent moments.
A crowd had gathered around the edge of the square, watching with interest. Hanro was there too, tucked behind a column, counting cars. When the last one rolled in, he switched on his smile and made a grand entrance from the midst of the crowd. “Congratulations to all of you! Welcome to the town of Soblenko, long a tourist destination because of its beautiful landscape. Tonight you’ll be staying at the prestigious…”
Rose tuned out, trusting the others’ body language to tell her when to pay attention again. When the Doctor (who was still rubbernecking) turned to look at Hanro, she came back in for “…I am only going to give you enough money for one teammate’s ticket. Your challenge is to earn the rest of the money. A good time to try would be at the market that will take place in this scenic square tomorrow, as it has the first of the month every year for the last two centuries. Stealing or otherwise breaking the law is not permitted. Remember, there are only two trains, so if you miss the morning train, you will have to wait until evening to return. Good luck. I look forward to seeing you back in the T3 arena.”
He walked forward in a cloud of monitor balls, going to each team and leaving behind a few bills and a few monitors.
“Excuse me,” Jack asked Hanro politely as he turned toward Team TARDIS. “Is food included in our hotel package?”
“Good question. You’d be surprised how many teams forget to ask that. It isn’t, and this is all the money you get.” Hanro dropped some bills into Jack’s hands. “However, you do not have to wait until the market opens to try to earn more.”
The other teams muttered in shock, closing ranks to try to work out strategy. In a moment, the humanoids with the feathered heads had dropped a hat near the edge of the crowd and begun a stately dance to their own piping whistles.
“So is this the thought or the trust challenge?” Rose asked.
“It’s not that simple,” the Doctor replied. “There aren’t three tests, one for each attribute. There are usually half a dozen little contests, which blend everything all together, with one or two really big challenges that focus on individual members of the team.”
Jack looked at the six bills in his hand. “I’m going to go do an intel recce.” He scanned the crowd. Spying someone to his taste, he grinned broadly and started towards a knot of people.
“I’m sure prostitution is against the rules,” the Doctor said.
“That wasn’t the idea,” Jack called back, but while his main target was a knot of people, he flirted with all his might with a particular matron, a monitor catching her every blush.
Rose and the Doctor watched him flatter and chat. “He’s going to come back knowing everything there is to know about this challenge, this town, her family, and her knickers,” the Doctor said, with an undertone of amusement.
“Aren’t we supposed to be doing everything together?”
“We don’t have to always be together to work as a team,” the Doctor pointed out. “Part of a leader’s job is to delegate. And I delegate dinner to you, because I haven’t any idea what to do about that, and you fragile apes get all testy when you miss a meal. Any ideas?”
Rose turned, watching Jack flatter, the other teams confer, and the townspeople basically staring at them bug-eyed, waiting for something entertaining to happen. “Y’know? I think I do.”
A monitor whirred by her left ear as she walked across the square, moving through the crowd to a man who was watching them from the door of what looked like a bistro.
“No, you can’t wash dishes for a free meal,” he said before she could open her mouth. “That group over there already asked.”
“Wouldn’t want to,” she told him. “I was thinking that we could give you something much more valuable than clean dishes.”
“Oh?” He wasn’t impressed. “And what would that be?”
“Publicity! Thousands of people watch this race. They want to visit where we visit, stay where we stay,” she paused a beat for emphasis, “eat where we eat. When all those tourists come, don’t you want to have a piece of that? All those sponsors paying pounds and pounds to be seen on this show, and you can have it for the price of three meals. The first wave of tourists come and you'll make back everything you spent on us and more." She made a point of looking at the crowd pressing close, hanging on her every word. “Might even make it back tonight.”
He snorted, but there was a grudgingly admiring tilt to the corners of his mouth. "No menus. I bring you a selection. You sit in the window so everyone can see. Take it or leave it."
"We'll take it," the Doctor said from behind her.
It was good grub. Conscious of the monitors and the townspeople clustered by the window as if Team TARDIS were exhibits in a zoo, the owner brought a taster selection of everything the bistro offered, and their enjoyment wasn't faked. At the end of the dinner, as people rushed in from the street to try to reserve their table, one of the waiters even slipped them a doggie bag of bread, cheese, and fruit "for the morning."
So it was a sated team that strolled across the dark square. "Well done, Rose," the Doctor said. "Jack, what have you found out?"
"Lots. I’ve been laying-"
"I knew it!"
"Laying plans for morning. Remember what I did before I met you?"
"Almost destroy the human race with alien technology by accident?"
Jack glared at the Doctor. "No, turn almost any old thing into easy money. In the morning we're going to have to buy a few supplies, but they won't be expensive and we won't have competition."
"So what is this brilliant plan?" Rose asked.
"I'll tell you when we're at the hotel." Jack waved at one of their competitors, loitering as inconspicuously as anyone can when a monitor is hovering beside them.
***
Jack disappeared while it was still dark the next morning, leaving Rose foraging instructions, the Doctor a shopping list, and the two of them strict orders to bring the bread and cheese untouched. Rose munched on the apple-like fruit as she followed a hand-drawn map to a little park, gathering up as many fallen sticks and twigs as she could carry to take back to the square. At least the work took the chill off; it was much colder here than it had been in the city yesterday. Even the monitor looked a little frosty.
The real vendors were just starting arrive and set up their stalls, and one of the other teams was there as well, the three people prowling restlessly, obviously still trying to figure out what to do. Rose grinned at them as she trotted by. Jack had marked their meeting place on the map, and the Doctor was there, holding a bag of produce in one hand and their intended breakfast in the other. After a few minutes, Jack appeared with a grin, a netted bag with utensils, a frying pan, and an iron hod to set it on.
"See? I said she'd be happy to loan us everything we need."
"You did your buttons up wrong," was the Doctor's sour reply.
While Jack fixed his clothing, they laid out the supplies and got a fire going under the pan. The other teams were arriving now. One set up a sign offering storytelling. Another started juggling. The feathered people started dancing again.
Rose watched them, then looked at the little fire. "Are you sure this is going to work?"
"Yes!" Jack said. "Look around. Cold morning, isn't it? You can practically see people turning blue." He looked at the jugglers. "Well, the ones who aren't blue already. Larissa – she's the one who loaned me this stuff – she said that in other challenges, teams usually do what they're doing, entertainment. It works, but the market's saturated, see?" Two of the teams got into a shoving match over territory. "But nobody's offering hot food, nowhere in this whole market. We're a novelty and we're offering a valuable service. Chop the cheese for me, will you?"
"I'll cook," the Doctor said, starting to break eggs into a bowl. "Oh, don't look at me like that, you two, anyone can make an omelet! Rose, you get everything ready so we can work fast as possible. Jack, rather than squatting over a fire here, why don't you go do what you do best?"
Jack leered at him. "I thought you said that was against the rules?"
The Doctor rolled his eyes, but Rose could see the hidden smirk. "Go get attention and lure people over." He dropped butter into the pan with a hiss. "First omelet's up in three minutes."
Jack made a fabulous front man, and the Doctor made a fairly decent omelet. In the end, Rose had to run down to buy the tickets alone, because the townspeople kept the Doctor cooking almost to the moment the train arrived. Larissa collected her tools and a kiss as they bolted for the station, five of the other teams nipping at their heels.
***
Hanro gave them their rankings as they waited in the arena, footage of the game playing silently on huge screens behind him. Rose noticed that the teams who weren't there had big subtitles reading "Eliminated" even while they tried to earn the last of their money. Everyone in the arena had got the same points for making the early train, but Jack's and Rose's innovations had put Team TARDIS well into the lead. That called for a big, bouncing, giggling group hug and when they came out of it, Hanro was offering the Doctor two white playing cards.
"What're these, then?"
"They're the assignments for the Ultimate Trust challenges. As leader, it is up to you to pick who does what."
He didn't take the cards. "That thing in the scrapheap with Roshan and them – was that an Ultimate Trust challenge?"
"Yes."
That took the bounce out of everyone as they stared at the cards. The blindfold. The chains. The stick. The tears. The blood.
"S'okay, Doctor," Rose said softly. "Only a game, yeah? We can stop if it goes wrong. I'm willing to try."
"Jack?"
Jack may have doubted in private, but he wasn’t going to let the Doctor down in public. "You know me, I'll try anything once."
The Doctor was still frowning at the cards. "I don't know what these mean. Can you give a hint?"
"This one is the challenge for tomorrow. Both your people should be able to do either task – and if not, well, part of the game is seeing how well you as leader handle something that’s beyond their capabilities. That's all I can tell you."
With a shrug, the Doctor took them and held them out to Rose and Jack.
They were simple black marks on a blank white field. The one for tomorrow had a line jutting horizontally from the top of a circle. The other had a slanting line balanced on a circle, like a child's drawing of a seesaw. Jack frowned, then slowly took the one with the horizontal line. That left the other for Rose. They somberly held them up so the monitors could show their choices, mirrored in a dozen screens high above them.
"Get rest, everyone," Hanro told them all. "Tomorrow will be a hard day."
Part 3
The weirdest thing just happened to me as I was putting in the last comments. Word crashed... and when it came up, the file was missing from the thumb drive. Not "my changes were missing" - the FILE was missing! Not in the trash. Not in the temp folder. Not returned to an earlier version. GONE. Has this happened to anyone else? Any advice on recovering it? Or should I just be glad that I can rescue last night's version out of email and gladder that M was the final beta and wanted a printed copy to work from?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 04:03 am (UTC)"See? I said she'd be happy to loan us everything we need."
"You did your buttons up wrong," was the Doctor's sour reply.
And how clever! Jack's definitely owed a kiss or two from the Doctor for coming up with the winning strategy to earn money, and Rose did bloody well on the food side. So when's the Doctor going to be the one to win a round? ;)
Mind you, the next round sounds pretty scary... good job they all trust him, or is it? *grin*
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 04:08 am (UTC)Bwahahaaaa!!! That's our Jack!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 06:52 am (UTC)The weirdest thing just happened to me as I was putting in the last comments. Word crashed... and when it came up, the file was missing from the thumb drive. Not "my changes were missing" - the FILE was missing! Not in the trash. Not in the temp folder. Not returned to an earlier version. GONE. Has this happened to anyone else? Any advice on recovering it? Or should I just be glad that I can rescue last night's version out of email and gladder that M was the final beta and wanted a printed copy to work from?
No, never had that happen to me at all - you say it wasn't in the temp folder - was that the temp folder on your hard drive or on the thumb drive? Because if it's not in the temp folder, it's gonna be pretty impossible to recover unfortunately...
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 11:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 02:43 pm (UTC)I guess the big question is, do you stop enjoying the story then?