[MGW] 189 - Is this going to hurt?

It had hurt. More than anything he could've actually imagined. That time in Axia IV with the teeth? Hardly a pin prick compared to the feeling of a Dalek vaporizing you from the inside out. He went down with a fight, but never the less, he did go down. Then, by some miracle, he was up again. Pulling in the breath of life, feeling everything get put back the way it was meant to be. His lungs expanded and he was alive again. If he had been a bit quicker, maybe taken less time to breathe in oxygen into the once again useful lungs, he might have caught up to the TARDIS before it left him behind.

Ironic actually, the first time in a few years that he actually wanted to be part of the team, and he got left behind. Hell of a thing.

There in the room where he'd been a few minutes too late he sat among the wires and cables, trying to hot wire his wrist cuff. One last trip, just to find where the Doctor was, lock onto his time signature and he'd catch up with them. Didn't have to be accurate, just slightly reliable.

Except it was.

It was so reliable that it hadn't locked onto the Doctor's time signature at all. So reliable that when he stood up he found himself in a cell, as a matter of fact a very familiar cell.

"Welcome back, glad to see you've joined the land of the conscious."

Rubbing at his eyes he smirked a bit, "Honestly Topher, you're the last person I wanted to see."

"Avoid a place for five years, bound to end up on the short list of people we'd throw in here without asking questions."

Clenching his jaw, he flicked his gaze toward the man on the other side of the bars, "Let me guess, Recall." His hand absently went to his wrist, where the leather strap had grown to feel like part of him, it was now bare.

"And he's a winner. Figured you'd done it on purpose, fried that time circuit on purpose. Not many'd know to do that, but I reckoned it'd have been just like --"

"Chauncy. First year of training, nearly sent himself twelve feet in the air. Division got wind of it and then we all have new updates with Recall implanted. I remember, I just didn't think I had overloaded it, not by that much at least."

"Here you are though."

"Here I am," Jack smirked at the man. "Why am I here?"

"Awaitin' review of your case. Seems the counsel's been in there for hours tryin' to figure you out. Special case it seems. Not sure what to do with you."

"Well they could let me go."

Topher smiled, "You'd like that, yeah? Free to go, off on your way?"

"Actually wouldn't be too bad," the smirk widened into a grin.

"We'll see 'bout that." Topher lifted his chin a bit, "Oi, look alive, they're comin' to fetch you."

Turning around Jack looked down the hall, seeing the counsel heading his direction. Topher pressed to the wall, saluting them as they passed him, watching with alertness as they stood in front of Jack's cell.

"Jack Harkness-"

"Captain Jack Harkness," he replied with a shrug of his shoulder. "Well, if you're going to use my taken name, you should really put the title in there as well."

They stared at him, even tone about their faces, as they continued without restating his name. "You have been reinstated within the Time Agency. All previous debts forgiven, and you are hereby assigned to Protocol Forty-Two."

"Oh no, you don't get off that easy, you took two years! I don't want whatever it is you're offering me, you can kill me."

"No, we can't. It seems, whatever happened along your timeline, whatever event you've been involved in. It cannot be reversed, it cannot be changed. You exist. Singularly. There shall never be another, there shall never be a need. You are him."

"Why does that sound creepier than you're saying it, which trust me, is somewhat difficult."

The bars opened and they handed him his wrist cuff, "We can initiate Recall at any point. You will maintain the cases we assign, you will not divert from the path. If you complete what we request, we will reinstate your memories. Do you agree to our terms?"

"If I say no?"

"We will place you in the rift. You will exist forever in nowhere."

"Go team!" Jack grinned, but they found no humor in his response. "Fine. Protocol Forty-Two... can't be too bad right?" Buckling his wrist strap on he pressed the mission details, and viewed them as they scrolled by. A long list of events that he'd have to nudge the other way. It was a hard job fixing time so that the future existed. All of the rest of the world, poking around in time, thinking they weren't actually hurting everything by just reliving one grand day... open one small portal, take care of one little parking ticket.

It all added up and it eventually, somewhere down the line, would change everything. The dates and times and places all listed off in front of him, and most of them he'd worked on before. People never did learn.

"Wait a minute..." Jack paused as he pulled up the details on one of the missions, "Where the hell's Pylea?"

Did he just call me a cow?

"Anomaly... like that's specific," Jack shook his head, tapping on the dial of his wrist cuff, trying to get something more than the one single word to come up on the display. Shrugging up a shoulder he shook his wrist, thinking maybe it'd Etch-a-Sketch itself some information. It didn't work, shame too, that would've been a neat trick.

Glancing up toward the sky, Jack pressed the edge of his hand to his forehead, a slight attempt to block the sunlight from his eyes, "Two suns... might even get a chance to work on my tan."

Turning around he got a look around and realized he was near the edge of a treeline, no doubt the forest behind him and the city in front of him. Just a matter of walking toward whatever was civilized and taking a bit of inventory. Asking the right questions, to the right person and he might be done with 'Pylea' before nightfall.

The ground wasn't too uneven, but his steps still picked up their pace as he moved down the hill. The city wasn't much, a bit rustic if anything. Glancing down to his coat he wondered just how much he'd have to explain away.

"You there! Cow! Why are you away from your master, where's your collar!"

Jack turned around a bit, trying to find some stray bovine that had wandered off a farm. He didn't see anything at all though, just a large, very loud, man wearing a tunic of sorts staring him down.

"Excuse me, I didn't see your livestock... or, maybe it's something else altogether," Jack replied, lifting an eyebrow up curiously. He was trying to run through the phrasebook he'd glanced at before opting to skip a few missions ahead on his to-do list. Pylea was new, different, and apparently lacking in proper fashion. Tilting his head he was shocked when the man placed a firm grip to his shoulder, "Uhm..."

"I asked you a question cow. Where is your master?"

Cow. Cow. Jack tried to run through the list quickly, because he was pretty sure that he hadn't heard anything about Pylea being a Bondage planet. Those were all mostly off in the fourth quadrant. He was into some different things, but livestock-fetish just never actually sat right with him. "I think you must be confused, the name's Captain Jack Harkness and I'm trying to-"

Jack was cut off abruptly as the grip on his shoulder loosened and the man fell to the ground, a small brunette girl stood behind him, a shovel in her hand, pressing her glasses up the bridge of her nose for a moment before looking behind her.

Clearly she had just knocked this man out and was either looking to see if she could clobber Jack as well, or... no wait, this didn't look right.

"It's alright, I'm not going to hurt you. I promise, just tell me what's going on."