t had started as a bit of a lark, really. That posh bloke had pulled up outside Johnny and Rhiannon's place in the fancy SUV. Took only a few minutes to hotwire it, a few more to drive a few victory laps and avoid Johnny hauling bricks at them. They'd planned to bring it back eventually, really. But then the kids stopped again. And there where whispers of aliens and soldiers trying to steal their babies and they just kind of forgot.
It was after the dust had settled a bit that Emrys had gone back for the SUV, which lay abandoned in an empty lot on the estate. And he and Huw had been smoking cigarettes in the back seat when Huw snuffed out his butt in the ashtray and accidentally opened a secret door in the back of the passenger seat. A secret door, just like in James Bond, including the pile of guns that fell to the floor. Strange guns, like nothing they'd seen before. Though, really, it wasn't as though either of them had much experience with guns anyway. A snuffed cigarette to the other side opened some kind of computer neither of them could operate and a boot to the dash revealed another stash of strange weapons.
They kept their mouths shut for a while. Johnny occasionally mentioned a brother in law who'd died when Thames House was gassed and it didn't take them long to make the connection. Then reports had started on the news, reports of impossible things. Spaceships, creatures, disappearances. The government tried to hush it up, but folks weren't feeling very friendly toward the government these days. But it wasn't until Huw's daughter was attacked in an alley by something that was definitely not a bloke in a Halloween mask that they decided enough was enough.
They got their mate Alun, a man who could keep his mouth shut, and showed him the stash in the SUV. Turned out Emrys had a knack for the weapons, those they could figure out anyway. Huw and Alun took turns trying to sort out the computer, with limited success. (Though, on the day of their first triumph, Emrys glanced in the rearview mirror and for a second, could have sworn he'd seen some bird back there with them. Cute Asian girl with a shy smile. Gone the instant he looked back.) First thing they did was return to that alley and track down the fanged sonofabitch that had jumped Molly. There were more, there were so many more, and they realized this was going to be long term.
They needed a name, Emrys insisted. Couldn't be a secret alien fighting league without a name. Alun wanted the Cromwell Crusaders. Huw called him a wanker and said that they needed something flashier, like Excaliber. Emrys, leaning against the SUV they'd by now forgotten was stolen property, suggested they might as well use the name that was on the side. No one was quite sure what Torchwood meant, but Torchwood it was.
After that, this was life as they knew it. Work or sleeping by day, then slipping out at night to take down aliens. Weevils, they learned from the computer. Weevils and Hoixes and something about a Rift, though they had yet to see that. They were only three men in a stolen SUV, but they realized they were the only thing standing between everything they loved and total annihilation.
And they were ready.