BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Doctor Who optioned by the BBC.

October 29, 1997

Angel was walking through the damp of the sewers when he heard a sharp cry of pain and some muffled sobbing. As he started moving faster and the sound rose again, he could tell it was a woman calling for help though he couldn't make out the words. He had chased a large Benoit demon into the sewers twenty minutes ago and its scent was strong between him and someone who sounded like easy prey. Rounding the corner, he saw what resembled a tall, blue telephone booth with the doors removed. The interior was darkened, except for a small grate in the floor at the back that was lit from beneath.

Angel peered into the box, his hand on the doorjamb, then ran forward when he heard a fresh wail from below. When he'd cleared the threshold, a dark metal grate slammed down behind him and the sound abruptly cut out. "Neat trick." Angel grunted, looking up at where the obviously magic grate had fallen from. "I half expected some grill to be buried in the floor, but if you're going to cheat, why not go all out?"

The box he'd stepped into rattled and shook and lifted away from the doorframe, revealing a brief glimpse of two doors opening inwards from the sewer before Angel's cell spun to face another wall that had no business being inside a telephone booth, especially not with all the lights embedded into its metallic surface. Angel sat down abruptly, rubbing his head to fight off a case of vertigo as the floor swayed gently beneath him. "I really hate portals."

"Tell me about it," snarled the Benoit demon from the hanging cage to his right.

"Expecting any bounty hunters in Sunnydale?"

"Not with this equipment, no. And I'm still hungry." The demon made a snorting sound. "You smell like death. The guy dusted the last two vampires on sight, so if you want to escape, you'd better start trying."

Angel groaned and rose to his feet. After testing the walls and main grill, he'd made it as far as reaching through the floor grate to try and find a release on the underside when the cell rotated again and started descending.

As he stood up and brushed himself off, Angel was nonplussed to find that his captor was someone in a well-made Darth Vader costume.

"I recognize you," the figure spoke in a deep voice without any of the character's snap-hiss. "You're one of the few capes guarding this city. Thanks for proving this stuff is effective against smarter people than this wise ass," he said, gesturing upwards at the sharp red demon (who let out a disgruntled 'hey'). "Let alone the rest of my take. Now, will you kindly get the hell out of my box?"

Angel frowned. "What happens to them?"

"Catch and release of the non-violent types, harvesting the killers for spare parts if they're worth something, acid bath if they're not." Sighing, the costumed figure gestured with a gauntlet, causing Angel's cage to rise and the rest of the cages to line up facing his. "Don't want to cause bad blood where I'm doing business, so feel free to interrogate them one-on-one."

After a few minutes, Angel waved to come down. "Lucky. Everyone checks out as hostile except for that one." He pointed upward at a seemingly empty cage where what appeared to be a vague shadow would occasionally twitch, revealing the outline of an anthropomorphic chameleon. "She's a rock-eater and probably wandered in by mistake."

"Sure and sorry 'bout that." The cloaked man nodded as he worked a control panel attached to the back of a glove. "I'm letting her out first, just so you aren't tempted to try anything while the doors aren't blocked."

Angel opened his mouth and started to say something, but closed his jaws with a frown. Starting over, he decided to go a half-way gracious route. "Whatever. Thanks for capturing that guy and the rest. I mean, I have an appointment to get fitted for a costume in the next half-hour. If it had taken me any longer to catch him on my own, I wouldn't have made it."

Behind the mask, Xander blinked in surprise and backed up a half-step, covering for his shock with a swirl of his cape.

Angel sighed and kept talking as his cage lowered into place. "Just to be clear, stay away from werewolves and everything else that's basically human, or we'll crack down on you hard... Also, no gladiator fights – they never work out well. And one more thing - why the Darth Vader get-up?"

Xander did his best to make the mask look offended. "Seriously, that's what you see when you look at me? You're very strange."

##

Having watched Angel through the monitors until the souled vampire had passed out of sight, Xander hurried to raise the lowered cell and close the TARDIS' doors. "Well, that was a good use of a day. Alright, you lot. Follow me!"

"Like we have much of a choice," grumbled a slimy green demon as first her cage and then the other six descended along a track into one of the TARDIS' hallways.

"This will do." Xander stepped into an empty room and began running his gloved hands against the far wall and pulling at the sides of the room and rubbing another patch of wall in small circles. While he moved about, he spoke in a calm and soothing tone about what he needed and how he knew that his ship could help, because he knew from the booklets and his personal experience that she was a very special ship.

When he was done, the room had shelves extending from the walls along with a control screen and a large arched door leading into another room. The white lights had cooled to a pale blue and the air seemed heavy and moist.

With another few presses, the door opened, giving the impression of a wide open space barely lit by dark blue lights and the cages full of protesting demons entered into it, one by one. Sighing, Xander closed the doorway and activated a large monitor inside the room so he could be seen and heard by his captives. "I'm not about to keep prisoners. You lot violently prey on intelligent species. For many of you, probably all of you, this will be a quick death. Frankly, I'm just starting out in this line of work, so consider what I'm about to do as me keeping my options open."

Xander cut the feed as the room began prepping its inmates for cryogenic storage. "Right." Xander began pacing, keeping an eye on the process in case of any escapees. "I should follow this up with crystallized acid so any power failure will leave a room full of technicolor goop rather than dripping wet, angry demons." He removed his helmet and shook out his hair. "These clothes sure came in handy. The Doctor has some awesome wardrobes... Right... Once I'm back in sync with Jack and the Doctor, who might be Ms. Calendar if Jack's guess played out, we really need to comb through this place for any personal effects that they... Might want."

Xander's voice trailed off and he spent his remaining time in the room in silence.

##

After returning the suit to its hook and shelves, Xander made his way back to the main room of the TARDIS. As he crossed the threshold, he heard a faint grinding noise that was slowly rising in volume.

Adjusting the cameras on the main control console, Xander did a double-take. "Hey, no!" Xander flipped on the outside speakers. "Bad Rock-Eater," he loudly snarled at the vague silhouette of something trying to gnaw on the TARDIS. "Stop that!"

Making sure that the current time was set firmly in place, Xander fired up the engines and initiated a short hop that left the TARDIS perched on top of the Sunnydale High gym, sans Rock-Eater.

Examining the time controls closely, Xander began to see the settings that kept the dimensional constraints constant. After a short stop to the TARDIS library to retrieve some journals and manuals, he settled in for some serious studying and machinery prodding. A few hours later he had a decent understanding of the displacement effect that he'd encountered on bringing the TARDIS out of its resting place.

It helped that there was a set of coordinates labeled in Jenny Calendar's neat handwriting: 'Champions' Paradise'

Xander patted the console to reassure the TARDIS. "I know you like that place, but it seems like more of an ending to a journey than a beginning. The Doctor's notes are vague, but I want to steer clear of any admin spaces until after I'm back in sync with her timeline. They seem to be associated with light, so if I'm aiming elsewhere..."

Xander whipped around the control panel, flipping switches and pulling toggles as the panels filled with Gallifreyan text and diagrams. "Mostly dark. Mostly empty, as it seems you'd prefer some clearance when 'landing'. High traffic to and from, so we won't get trapped behind thick walls. Here we go!"

Rather than the characteristic noise of the TARDIS engines, the entire place shivered and acquired a double image as if light was pouring out from every surface. When it settled, everything seemed normal, other than that the phone box doors of the TARDIS entrance had been replaced by carefully weighted marble slabs.

"Did it work," Xander asked, only to hear the muffled sound of someone hammering at the door. "Good enough answer as any."

After a quick check of the surroundings, Xander opened the doors to reveal a demonic woman in a dark and richly embroidered robe that would have fit in nicely in the Italian Renaissance. "You can't park this here. What are you thinking?"

She turned her prominently veined head abruptly, checking out the oddities of the command room, only to settle her gaze firmly on Xander's jeans and loud Hawaiian shirt. Reaching into the folds of her clothing, she pulled out a glossy pamphlet and began to furiously flip through it.

"Look, you can't come here without intermediaries," she said as she grabbed Xander's arm and pulled him out of the TARDIS. "You're not even in the right timespace so you can't hire anyone here. You need to be over there!" The dark-haired woman jabbed her finger at some numbers in the pamphlet under a picture of some humans and demons in late-twentieth clothing and then pointed out towards what would be the horizon in anything but a black and featureless plain. "And even if you were in the right place, us justice demons don't lightly take intruders into Arashmaharr... Are you even listening to me?"

Xander, for his part, was gazing upwards at the sixty-story glowing crystal monolith that the TARDIS was currently resembling. He recovered from his shock, worked his jaw back into place and muttered: "No wonder it's bigger on the inside."

He was interrupted from his thoughts by a tug on his sleeve. He gazed downward into the distorted face of a dark-haired young girl, who appeared to be no older than twelve. "Hello, I'm Halfrek," she said with a grin - a wide and open smile he'd last seen on 'Dorothy' when his Adventurer-self had bumped into the Wizard of Oz group. "And I can punch through stone walls."