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“You’re not the first,” Jack Harkness hissed, standing at the base of the campaign platform and staring up at the stage.
The Orange Alien stared down. He was winning the election, and he’d been gloating, rubbing his fists together, making happy buzzy noises, and preparing a victory speech. It was going to be so great, it was going to be the greatest, everyone else was a loser and so on.
Now he squinted and pursed his lips at the interloper. “What?”
“You’re not the first alien who’s visited another planet, trying to take power.” Jack Harkness spoke loudly so all could hear, and climbed on stage. There were big red, white and blue flags with stars and stripes all around. The orange alien wore a red tie that clashed with his toupe. He was somehow more hideous in person than the media made him out to be.
“Who are you?” The orange poof on the alien’s head wobbled, and he lurched forward. He clearly couldn’t see very well, and squinted to make up for it.
The Captain stood his ground, his grey coat swirling around his feet. “I’m Captain Jack Harkness, of the BoeShane peninsula. Former time agent. Former emperor of the world of Kanlin.”
“Wrong. Insane!”
“I’m perfectly sane. I’m from Boeshane. Now I represent Torchwood. Defending the human race against alien threats.” Jack laughed, ignoring the dumbfounded look on Orange’s face, and gazed around at the audience.
“This man?” Jack announced. “He wasn’t even born on your planet. He talks about making things great again-- but what does he really stand for? He's out to make money. To earn power. Sure, it will be great, for him -- You'll just be poor, angry slaves. Is that what you want?”
Jack was stalling. Any second now the security guards would clamber down. Orange would yell, “Get him off my stage!” and Jack would be summarily discarded in a pile on the street outside.
But Orange appeared to be in a good mood. The polls showed a solid arc of States that were flooding in red in his favor. Blood red was his favorite color next to rich green. He felt secure on his platform, so he just cocked his head at Jack. “You’re the emperor of where now? Is that an African country?”
“Kanlin was a planet,” Jack told him. “My partner and I went in. We gave them gifts. We talked a good game. Made promises. And in return? They made us emperors.”
“Sounds like a good life,” Trump said. He cocked an eyebrow, clearly interested. “But how did you do it?”
“It was easy,” Jack said. “We had infinite resources, and they had so little. So much despair, and hatred for their own leaders. They were just aching for us to swoop in and promise something else. So that's what we gave them. Something else."
“Good story,” Orange said, “I like it so far. I like you. What happened next?”
“All that power, it felt great for a while, and then? It just felt meaningless. When you have power, you can force and bully the people you don't like. You can force people to serve you. But in the end, it’s useless. Meaningless. You can’t force them to respect you, or like you. In the end, the people rise up and demand what’s theirs.”
“So they rebelled,” Trump said. “You were a pretty lousy emperor then. Disappointing.”
“No,” Jack said, “We took full control for a while. Then got bored and left. What we did was wrong. And now I’m here to stop it from happening again. I’m on a mission to stop you.” He took a step forward. Orange stepped back.
Out in the crowd, a hundred faces were staring at them. He wasn’t sure how much of the conversation they could hear or comprehend. And then one beautiful voice called out.
“It’s done!” It was Toshiko, who had been working in the back while Jack stalled and distracted the Orange alien and the crowd. She had finally dismantled the brain-washing rays and take down the camouflage that the orange alien wore in public.
“It’s over,” Captain Jack Harkness announced. He strode forward, ready to pull his Webley and take a shot at the sad, deranged demagogue.
But he didn’t have to. The orange alien spluttered. Then he huffed and puffed. Then he even buzzed and seized and wriggled. And now, they could all see what he really was. The shimmer on the orange pig came down, and the true alien underneath was revealed -- a blob of fat with small tufts of orange hair sprouting out the sides, with a slobbering mouth and bug eyes.
Jack watched as the crowd’s faces changed. His constituents and staffers gasped. “What a monster!”
“Get it off the stage!”
“Let’s build a wall against that!”
“I can tell who likes food now, fatty!”
And the crowd of frustrated, angry, hateful supporters turned against him just like that and swarmed the stage. They were salivating to beat him with their signs and stomp him out of existence. All the hate he’d conjured in them, and directed elsewhere, was turned back on his own head. "No! No! It wasn't supposed to be like this!"
And the alien did the only thing he could do to save himself—he beamed up in a flash of bright light, and was gone.
“It’s over!” Toshiko ran up to Jack. “I did it!”
“You were fantastic!” Jack told her, and hugged her.
On screen, the map turned blue as the spell wore off. The people stared around at each other. Some began to cry. Others began to hug. Some called their loved ones to apologize. They were sad, and embarrassed, but eventually fireworks started to flare and everyone celebrated. The world was finally sane once again.