Title: Those Meddling Kids
Rating: PG, at a stretch.
Characters (in order of appearance): Ianto, Gwen, mentions of Toshiko and Owen, various extras for the crowd scene, Jack.
Prompt: 153 - "Jack swoops in to rescue Ianto and Gwen from aliens that captured them, only to find they escaped and handled said aliens."
Warnings: Very mild coarse language, spoiler for "Almost Perfect", possible mediocrity.
Disclaimer:I own nothing. Torchwood and Scooby-Doo belong to people with considerably more money. Which I make none of.
"Do you ever feel like a character in Scooby Doo?"
~Owen Harper, 'Trace Memory'
"You know, I feel a bit of a Daphne."
Gwen looked up at him, startled.
"What?" Then she smirked. "Does Jack know about this?"
Ianto fixed her with a look that clearly stated, 'You are not nearly as funny as you think you are, Mrs. Cooper.'
"I meant Daphne as in 'Scooby-Doo'." He shifted slightly where he was sitting. "I think we're corrupting you. You never used to be this dirty-minded, I'm sure."
"Oh yes, nothing but kittens riding unicorns across rainbows for me. At least, not until that dastardly Torchwood dragged me over to the dark side."
"We do have cookies." Ianto noted.
"And damned fine coffee. Not to mention aliens." She grinned back. "So. Why a Daphne?"
"You and I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time kidnapped or with the strange alien things - even beyond the average Torchwood employee experience - happening to us."
"Oi!" she protested, "I don't get kidnapped that often!"
He just looked at her.
"Well, okay. Sometimes." she amended.
Ianto remained silent.
"Yes, yes, alright, point taken." Gwen gave in. "You're right about the second bit, at that. All the random artefacts seem to mess with us rather than anyone else."
"I never want to have ovaries. Ever. Again."
She chuckled as his nose wrinkled in distaste. "Oh, they're not that bad."
"You're just used to them. Try having your reproductive organs swapped around and then we'll see what you have to say."
"Well, that's a disturbing image."
"You're welcome."
"So," Gwen began, eager to lead the conversation away from temporary alien-artefact-induced sex changes, "If we're Daphne-"
"Joint Daphne."
"-Joint Daphne, who's everybody else?"
There was a slight pause. " I suppose Jack's pretty much Fred."
They thought about it, dredging up far-off memories of a childhood cartoon. Solidly built, curious, a leader, made plans that sometimes only worked by accident or due to ingenuity of the rest of the team, always wanted to drive the Mystery Machine…
"Great," sighed Gwen, "You realize that I am forever going to think of the SUV as the Mystery Machine."
"I've always thought of it as the Batmobile, personally," commented Ianto.
"Velma would've been Tosh." She stated.
He hummed his agreement.
"Although, Tosh was a lot prettier," Gwen continued thoughtfully.
It was strange. Now, only a year after the loss of their team-mates , they could finally talk about them without choking back emotion. It still hurt; of course it still hurt. They had been family. But this was a faint hurt, a echo of a far away ache, not the debilitating, soul-crushing agony it had been not so long ago. She wondered at that; the infinite resilience of the human condition. Could be that, or that they were just permanently traumatised. Do you get PTSD if the traumatic stress never really goes away?
Christ, she really needed to think of more cheerful things.
" -maybe so," Ianto was saying as she snapped back into focus, "But I always thought Velma was pretty hot."
The stare he was bestowed with was almost solid.
"Really?"
He shrugged, smirking. "It's the miniskirt. Gets me every time."
Gwen paused. "You're taking the piss."
"I'm taking the piss, yes."
She laughed. "Arse."
"And yet, somehow, still so loveable."
"Yeah," she smiled, "I think we'll keep ya."
"Owen's the only one that I can't figure out." he mused.
"I think he's the bad guy they unmask at the end that was really obvious the whole time."
They thought back on every practical joke Own had pulled, every spillage and mess that he had made, all the while unconvincingly protesting his innocence.
Yeah, that fit.
"You know," Gwen continued, "I'm not sure I like being a Daphne."
"Hmm?"
"She was just so…helpless all the time."
"Not on the new series."
She stared. "There's a new series? How do you know about this?"
"I know everything."
In fact, David had pretty much forced him to watch it when he had had to baby-sit him last. Five years ago. It seemed so long ago - before Canary Wharf, before Lisa, even before moving to London. A different life. As much as he loved Gwen, he wasn't telling her everything about his family. Maybe later. Not yet.
The look that he privately labelled "Sceptical!Gwen" made an appearance, but she just teased, "Oh, of course. How could I forget?"
"It really is an enigma. I'm sure I remind you of it often enough." He rejoined, renowned poker face in place. "Now, if you would kindly stop interrupting…"
She smiled sweetly. "So sorry. Continue."
"Apology accepted. Anyway, on the newer series, everything she carries around in her bottomless handbag is useful towards escaping and solving the mystery."
And with that, the last of his restraints slithered to the floor. He shook some feeling back into his hands. A slight wince crossed his features as the blood began to rush into his fingers with a sharp tingle, and he moved over and untied the ropes binding her, the chains already long gone.
"Ta," she sighed, steam puffing from her mouth in the frigid air, "I couldn't get that last knot. What were they, alien Boy Scouts?"
"If so, I really don't want to know what their other badges were, if 'Kidnapping' and 'Taking Over Foreign Planets' were two of them." He rolled his shoulders.
She stood, rubbing at her wrists where they had chafed, and dusted off her jeans. From the inside pocket of her jacket, Gwen pulled out something small and silver, while Ianto procured a Taser from somewhere about his person. Never mind bottomless handbag, Ianto seemed to be the possessor of bottomless pockets. Walking the narrow floor of the cell to the opposite side she placed the silver square to the surface of the door lock. After a moment, there was a click. The door swung open. She slipped the lock pick back into her pocket, and they cautiously set off.
Whenever they hit a fork in the corridor, one or either of them would pause a moment, before setting off in the right direction. It had been easy to memorise the route that they had led them; it seemed that the alien Boy Scouts weren't getting their Kidnapping badge. They really weren't very good at it. They hadn't even blindfolded them, for God's sake, and had only used three types of restraints. And don't even get themstarted on checking pockets.
Within a few minutes, they had reached the large chamber where the they had first woken up. The Tyngyhrtyui (why did they always have names that looked like someone had rolled their forehead across a keyboard?) were still there. Long spindly limbs, bloated body, head just slightly too small in proportion to the body; they were only humanoid if you squinted at them from a fair distance away. Possibly while drunk.
So far they hadn't spotted them, swarming as they were around the central platform. A huge metal monstrosity loomed over them there, looking like a steam punk's wet dream - if wet dreams sent the worldwide temperature down drastically to one better suited to the Tyngyhrtyuin constitution when activated. It didn't seem so bad when in an enclosed area, but when applied to the whole, the entire biosphere would be irrevocably changed, plunging the Earth into an ice age.
Ice age = bad.
(Also, another terraforming alien race? Really? Why don't they choose some other planet for a bloody change?)
They cast around, trying to reacquaint themselves with the room, planning their escape route. Gwen pointed out the large door to the outside. Ianto nodded.
From another one of his impossible pockets Ianto drew out a blue wire with what looked like putty on both ends; she recognised it as what Tosh had once explained as a Universal Adapter. Out of another he pulled an smooth, translucent tablet. He gave them to her as they swiftly approached a panel on the wall. She stared at it for a second, then slowly connected the adaptor to the panel. Archives were infinitely useful, she decided, especially when you had Ianto to extract the knowledge you needed from them. The putty-like substance formed perfectly to the shape of the outlet, becoming solid.
Turning the tablet over in her hands, she felt her finger brush against an abnormality.
There.
She almost pressed the other end of the adaptor into the abrasive patch on the tablet, but Ianto's hand around her wrist stopped her. Letting go, he held up one finger. Wait.
He stood on the other side of the panel, 3 metres away, and drew out the omnipresent stopwatch from one of his magic pockets. She had once made the mistake of asking Jack why Ianto carried it around everywhere with him, unable to get a straight answer from the Welshman. Before then, she would have thought that she would have lost the ability to blush after spending as much time as she did around Captain Innuendo, but apparently she had retained it, despite all odds. Perhaps she should feel special.
The hand that gripped the Taser held up three fingers, counting down; as the last finger curled she connected the adaptor to the tablet, at the exact moment that Ianto clicked the button on the top of the stopwatch.
The tablet began to cloud as it siphoned away the energy stores within the building. Over the incomprehensible chittering of the Tyngy-whatsits (was that racism? Xenophobia? She's have to ask Jack sometime; after she turned her bullshit filter on, he'd probably be very helpful) and the bleeping from the direction of the central platform, she could hear the seconds ticking past. The tension was palpable in the air; it could be seen in Ianto's muscles as he held the head of the Taser against the panel, could be felt as the strange material of the tablet dug into Gwen's whitening fingers. They could not screw this up.
There was the distinctive hum of a backup generator starting up just as soon as the stopwatch reached whatever mark Ianto had been waiting for. Simultaneously, he triggered the Taser, short circuiting the power source before it even began to give out electricity. Gwen felt very, very fortunate that the altered handle of the Taser and the surface of the now-opaque alien battery thing protected them from the backlash. She got the feeling that they wouldn't have survived the surge.
Ianto sighed as he dropped the still-sparking weapon. It had been his favourite, and there probably was no coming back from that.
There was a loud screeching noise. The Tyngyhrtyui had let out a concurrent cry (this particular species is comprised of many different clusters with a collective consciousness within each group; Ianto recalled the archives recording, tucked away in the 1970-1972 section, a single data chip with the knowledge from a far-off solar system. It had been found, flung from the Rift and surprisingly undamaged, in western Abergavenny), having just realised that the readings on their Giant Air Conditioner had switched off as the contraption began to let off scalding steam. Skylights that bordered the roof dripped with condensation and gave speckled cast to the room, as they were now the only source of light.
Exactly half of the aliens began to furiously tinker with the GAC, employing the "Frustrated Last Resort" technique - I.e. pressing all the buttons and hoping like hell one of them will work - while the others skittered around desperately, trying to find the reason behind the power failure.
It wasn't long before the humans were spotted.
Ianto and Gwen were just over halfway to the door when they found themselves surrounded.
"Well, this isn't good," murmured Ianto, backing up a step. He felt/saw her mirror his action.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious."
"You're quite welcome, Sergeant Sarcasm."
The aliens didn't move quickly at all, but they were blocking every chance of exit. Any resemblance to humans was diminished by the close range; their pulsating bodies were shiny with a blue-ish hue, their bodies and limbs and eyes reminiscent of a spider and a lizard's secret love-child.
Wall.
Ianto swore.
The Tyngyhrtyui collapsed.
Gwen and Ianto stared.
"What?"
Gwen clicked. "Didn't you say that they react badly to heat? Messing with the power must have turned off the air conditioning keeping this place frozen."
He seemed to consider this. "Sooo… It doesn't render aliens unconscious if I swear?"
"Don't think so, love." she chuckled.
"And I so wanted to be a superhero," he drawled. They began to move to the door.
"Well, we did just save the world," Gwen pointed out.
Ianto smiled at her. "That we did."
He cast a look back at the mess that they had made (apparently Tyngyhrtyui sweat was somewhat viscous and indigo, something that was missing from the reports. He'd have to add it, when he got back to the Hub), and sighed. "Not looking forward to cleaning this lot up."
"Get Jack to do it?" she suggested.
He gave her a Look.
"I want Cardiff to still exist in the morning, thank you. Remember the Oyuvgob?"
Gwen winced. She remembered the Oyuvgob.
"It took months to get the stains out," he stated gloomily.
She nudged him in the ribs. "Come on, then. Better get your kit."
Reaching out, she swung open the large double doors just as Jack swept up to them, Webley drawn.
"Hello, Jack," Gwen greeted mildly. She brushed past him with a nod and Ianto in tow.
Inwardly, Ianto ran over everything that he needed to do: help apply the Tosh-approved modified portable prison cell to the warehouse so that it wouldn't get any warmer and compromise their prisoner's health; get Gwen to set up restrictions around this part of the docks so that no-one else would wander into the area while they were sorting this out; put that vacuum-cleaner thing on perpetual suck so that the Tyngyhrtyui wouldn't drown in their own sweat; name said vacuum thing; re-stock the first-aid kit in the Batmobile; bribe Jack to do his paperwork; finish Jack's paperwork; get the shortbread biscuits that Gwen likes for finishing her paperwork (as she probably would); treat Jack for actually doing any paperwork…
Outwardly, he flicked a warm smile and a nod at Jack before turning to Gwen and offering his elbow.
She linked her arm through his. "To the Mystery Machine?"
He nodded, looked over his shoulder at Jack; "Come on then, Fred. Could use a hand with this."
Gwen giggled.
Their fearless leader stood, nonplussed, at the door to the spaceship-cum-warehouse, staring after them. His Webley hung loosely at his side. He checked his scanner; no, they were definitely his team. So, the question here, really, was…
"…The hell?" ~End~
A.N; The series Ianto refers to is "What's New, Scooby-Doo".
A.N 2; I hadn't actually read "Trace Memory" when I started this. Obviously, strange minds think alike. Or something.
Also, this was less "Gwen & Ianto BFF BAMFs" and more "Unpronounceable Aliens Aren't Very Good At Things". Sorry. Hope you liked it.
Arohanui, QOTP