Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or Who framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Captain Jack?
Chapter 1 – Arrival from a different dimension
The mood within the central hub that formed the nerve centre of Torchwood three's operations was grim at best, which was actually a slight improvement on the abject depression that had plagued the team for the last few weeks following the untimely deaths of Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper, who had given their own lives to save the others. The remaining three members of the team, Captain Jack Harkness, the leader of Torchwood three, Ianto Jones, who functioned as the administrator of the headquarters, and Gwen Cooper, and ex-police officer who had joined the team after discovering it single-handedly around two years earlier, hadn't really done anything since the deaths, for there seemed to be a distinct lull in the usual frenzy of paranormal activity that they had to deal with.
Or so it would seem, however on this rainy Thursday afternoon, surprisingly close to the concealed elevator entrance to the Torchwood hub opposite the Cardiff Millennium centre, a spike of azure coloured light was shafting down from what seemed to be a tear in the sky that glowed and crackled with energy. This was a projection of the rift, the fracture in time and space that had been causing trouble in the Cardiff area for hundreds of years, due to its property as a magnet for the menaces of the universe and as a source of free energy, which was exploited not only by the Torchwood team, but by a passing Time Lord who spent his days wandering the universe in search of a place in it, however generally finding only trouble.
The source of this particular spike of the rift's energy was a split across the fabric of time and space of not only this dimension, but through the the fabric of time and space that was wrapped around a dimension most unlike our own, where things taken for granted by the humans of our dimension could be challenged or plainly contradicted in the blink of an eye. From the centre of this strange portal, a faint shape began to form, slowly swirling and solidifying until the odd creature from within it plopped down onto the pavement with an odd squeak, took one look around at its surroundings and grew wide eyed in an instant.
"Uh oh…" he muttered, slowly climbing to his feet, "this can't be good." And even as these words left his lips, the scene was being repeated in several locations throughout the city, summoning five people from their world to this, along with the diminutive figure who was still gazing up at the millennium centre.
Two days later…
"So what have we got?" Jack's voice was surprisingly quiet and husky from its recent lack of use. The Captain was leaning over Ianto shoulder, staring intently at the scrolling data that was displayed on the screen. Inwardly, Jack was glad that there was finally something strange going on, for the lapse in activity had also meant that the team had little to do other then mourn their fallen comrades.
"Several spikes of energy that erupted from the rift," explained Ianto, who also seemed to be grateful that they had something to distract them again, "this sort of thing happens all of the time in this area so it's not surprising that we missed it, but two days ago at 11:05pm there were no less then six spikes of energy."
"Well, so what?" This latest voice belonged Gwen, who had finally stirred from the depressed stupor that she had been sat in for most of the morning, "you said yourself that this happens all the time."
"The strange thing about these spikes is that not only did they all happen at precisely the same time, to the millisecond, but they all lasted exactly the same length of time and registered as the exact same strength." This certainly sounded strange. The energy that burst from the rift was usually completely at random, with the energy signal ranging from minor to apocalyptic; to have six bursts at the same time at the same strength was, well, unheard of. "And if that wasn't enough," continued Ianto, tapping a few keys on the keyboard to bring an overhead map of the city up on the screen, "look at the distribution pattern of the six spikes." They all saw it, they all stared. Five of the spikes were evenly places around the city, forming a perfect pentagram around the Millennium centre and the hub that was concealed beneath it, whilst the sixth spike was…
"Right above us," muttered Jack, staring blankly at their stealthy elevator to the square above them, "at least we won't have to go far." Barely ten minutes later. All three of them were up on the surface, armed with scanners and detectors, checking for traces of alien activity. It was Ianto who made the first discovery, a single non-human footprint in a small patch of dirt beside a puddle.
"What do you make of this?" he asked uncertainly, gesturing for the others to come over and pointing to the footprint, "It's definitely not human but it's unlike anything I've ever seen before."
"The patterning vaguely resembles the common rabbit, "replied Jack, crouching down to get a closer look at the evidence, "but if you look at the heel structure of the print you can tell that whatever made this has to have been bipedal.
"So we're dealing with giant… space rabbits?" The mocking tone in Gwen's voice was obvious.
"Aliens come in all shapes and sizes," commented the Captain, scraping a sample of white powder from one of the grooves in the footprint. He raised it to his nose and sniffed it, chuckling to himself at the expression this had caused Gwen to adopt. "It's paint," he explained, straightening up again, "for some reasons whatever made this print had white paint on its feet." It was at that moment that two police cars pulled into the square with a screech of tyres, several officers emerging to aim their guns at the three members of Torchwood.
"Don't move!" instructed one of the officers grimly, glaring directly at Captain Jack over the butt of his gun. "We're arresting you for the murder of two men last night at 10pm!" Narrowing his eyes in confusion, Jack slowly reached behind his back and silently gestured for the team to get back to the elevator. Ianto was the closest to the lift and was able to slip into the camouflage field almost immediately, causing several of the police officers to round their guns on the spot where he had been standing a moment ago.
"Where did he just go?" asked a female officer angrily, one of the ones whose gun was still trained on Jack.
"Doesn't really matter," replied Jack, "we'll be out of your hair soon enough." As he said this, he leapt forward a few inches, not enough to provide any threat, but it got all of the police officers focused on him again, allowing Gwen to slip into the camouflaged field of the elevator as well.
"What's going on!?" demanded the first officer, now thoroughly unnerved by the way the people they were trying to arrest kept vanishing before their eyes.
"Oh just your everyday hallucination," commented Jack wryly, taking a step closer to the spot where his two team-mates had vanished.
"Stop moving!" ordered a third police officer, "freeze or we will fire!"
"Sorry," stated the Captain, actually sounding apologetic, "but getting arrested really isn't part of my plans here." And with that, he took a few hurried steps back into the elevator field; vanishing as well as the artificial pavement tile began its descent into the hub. Several shots rang out; however by the time the bullets reached the spot that they had vanished from the team was already securely inside their headquarters again.
"What was that abo…" began Ianto; however was cut short as an even stranger question occurred to him, "what's that music?" He slowly picked his way across the room towards the main computer, where a faint tune was emerging from several of the speakers dotted around the room. A media player window was open on one of the active computer screens, to which Ianto lent closer to read the song name. "The Merry-go-round broke down?" He placed one hand on the mouse, moving it to close the media player, when quick as a flash, a white blur whipped out from behind the screen, landing on the keyboard and causing the sound volume to amplify until it filled the whole hub.
"I happen to like this song!" The creature was… well it was a white rabbit with a tuft of ginger hair on the top of his head, standing on two legs dressed in a set of red dungarees, a blue and yellow bow tie and a pair of yellow gloves.
"It's a… space rabbit…" stammered Gwen incredulously, barely believing that her sarcastic comment from before was coming back to haunt her so soon.
"Stop it!" exclaimed Jack, lunging towards the rabbit, who promptly took off to one side. "Damn that thing's fast," he muttered, turning and setting off in pursuit of the rabbit, picking up a small hand gun from a side counter as he picked his way quickly across the room.
As he approached the morgue section of the hub, he noticed one of the chamber doors slamming shut before him. "Get out of there!" he yelled, angrily tearing the door open again, to find it empty. As he did this, the rabbit emerged from a second of the chamber doors a few metres away, crawling up the room and entering a third a few feet above. Gun raised in front of him, Jack reached up and opened up this door too, once again finding it empty. In a blur, the rabbit emerged from the original door that he had vanished into, this time crawling a few feet to the right and entering a fourth chamber. However, before the Captain had time to open this chamber, the door burst open again, revealing a rather green rabbit gasping for air.
"Eww," it exclaimed, waving one hand in front of its nose, "this one's occupied." With a nervous glance up at its pursuer, the rabbit dropped to the floor just before Jack's hand reached him, kicking out to slam the morgue chamber into Jack's hand. Swearing in pain, he clutched his hand close to him and rounded on the rabbit to continue his pursuit.
"Will someone please turn off that bloody music!" exclaimed the Captain as he followed his quarry further into the base. However, he soon reached the cryogenics chamber, only to find that he had lost the rabbit. "Where did he go?" muttered Jack to himself, "there's no way he could have moved so fast." That was when a loud banging noise emanated from the nearest of the cryogenic units, causing Jack to train his gun on the spot where the rabbit would emerge if it was inside. He slowly moved forward, grabbed onto the opening of the chamber and pulled it open, gun forward.
Splat! A snowball had soared out of the cryogenic unit the moment it was opened and hit Jack directly in the face, a second icy projectile emerging and skimming past his shoulder. He angrily wiped the snow from his face with his free hand, looking down to see the rabbit now slightly blue with several icicles hanging from him and another snowball in one hand.
"Boy it's c…cold in th…there…" stammered the rabbit, teeth chattering from the cold. However, if he was affected by the lack of heat it didn't show, for a moment later he took off again down a corridor and further into the base. Jack once again turned and began to give chase, only to slip on the snowball that had been dropped by the rabbit as he fled and end up flat on his face.
A few minutes later, Jack re-entered the main hub, and crossed to the computer, slamming his finger down onto the mouse in a futile attempt to turn off the music.
"It's no use," stated Ianto, who was sat in a swivel chair to one side, "the rabbit seems to have crashed the system, everything is frozen on there." He stood up, Gwen a few paces just behind him. "Where is the rabbit by the way?"
"I don't know," replied the Captain, obviously frustrated, "it got the drop on me in the cryogenics chamber and took off into the base somewhere."
"You mean that thing's loose!?" exclaimed Gwen incredulously, "What if it's dangerous?" That was when a series of gunshots rang through the base, along with several loud crashes.
"The armoury!" yelled Jack, "Ianto, Gwen, come with me this time!" With a grim nod from each, the trio took off, this time knowing exactly where the rabbit was from the continued ringing of gunshots, which at the very least helped to drown out the Merry-go-round broke down which was still ringing out across the headquarters.
The team of Torchwood three burst into the armoury to find that the rabbit was dancing on tip toes from gun to gun, which for some reason were detonating whenever the rabbit came into contact with them. However it seemed that despite the rabbit's best efforts, he was trapped within the ring of projectiles, unable to get away without being shot at least six times. With a grimace, Jack moved forward into the ring of death, several bullets shooting into his chest. However, he still managed to seize the rabbit by the ears and hoist him into the air, which stopped the various guns from firing. He turned, threw the rabbit into Ianto's arms and clutched his chest for a moment as death approached him, leaning against one of the gun racks until the bullets worked their way out of his system.
Ten minutes later, a now fully-healed Captain Jack and his team mates were stood in a semicircle around one of the swivel chairs, to which the rabbit had been roughly tied.
"Okay rabbit," snarled Jack, annoyed at the difficulty they had faced in capturing such a simple thing, "talk. Who are you?" He would have been threatening enough even if he didn't have a gun pointed at his prisoner, who was cowering in the swivel chair in fear.
"P-p-p-p-please don't hurt me!" sobbed the rabbit, "my purpose in life is to just make people laugh!" His ears flopped down in front of him, one of which wiped a tear away from his eye.
"You haven't answered my question," snarled Jack, "this is a secure base. Who are you and how did you get in here?"
"The name's Roger, Roget Rabbit!" explained Roger, "Sorry about the mess I caused but you startled me, it just occurred to me to run. But… I came here for help!"
"Help?" repeated Gwen, gazing down at Roger with pity, "Why do you need help? How did you know to come here?"
"Well, I was walking along on the way to the studios where I work when suddenly," Roger's tone dropped into what he obviously thought was a dramatic voice, "this blue energy surrounded me and I was dumped in that square up above."
"That'll be that energy spike," commented Ianto, "it seems the rift has drawn someone in from another world again."
"Another dimension," corrected Jack, "I've heard of this before, some sort of dimension where cartoons actually live along side humans." He leant down, getting on eye level with the rabbit. "That doesn't explain how you got into the hub.
"Well, I tried asking around for help but no-one would listen too me," Roger quickly explained, a slightly fearful expression still in his eyes, "finally this old woman mentioned that Torchwood dealt with that sort of thing so I asked around to find out where you were located but nobody seemed to know! I tried the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers; no-one knew where you were!" He grinned, flipping his ears back into the upright position. "But the guy at the Pizza place, he knew."
"Remind you of anyone?" asked Jack with a grin, casting a glance towards Gwen who returned the smile, remembering how she had discovered the Torchwood the very same way.
"What did you do the computers?" inquired Ianto, who had been ineffectually trying to repair the system, "nothing I do seems to shut off this music!"
"Oh that wasn't on purpose," admitted Roger, "I accidentally knocked over a glass of water that was rested nearby and the whole thing sparked."
"So essentially you've fried our entire network!?" exclaimed Jack, rounding on the Rabbit once again.
"It's not that bad," explained Ianto, attempting to prevent any anger towards the Rabbit, "As soon as the system has dried out we'll be able to reboot it. And until then…" he reached down behind the computer and pulled several cords out of the back, cutting off the power to the speakers, "…that stops the annoying music."
"What were those police officers talking about?" asked Gwen suddenly, recalling the events from earlier, "They mentioned a murder."
"I refuse to believe this is a coincidence," muttered Jack, "first those energy spike summoning our friend here…"
"Wait!" exclaimed Gwen, once again interrupting the flow of the conversation, "if there were more energy spikes then surely more people were brought here then just Roger!"
"You're probably right," replied the Captain, obviously deep in thought, "but until we find them I'll finish my sentence. First those energy spikes, now there's been a murder that I'm being blamed for. Whoever was summoned is probably responsible for the murders, so then rabbit," he turned his attention back to Roger, still threatening despite the fact that he's put the gun down on a counter, "what do you know about the murders?"
And that's it for chapter 1. Please review, I like reviews. I get depressed without reviews, you don't want me to be depressed do you?