Title: Torchwood hunting at the mall
Characters: Captain Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, and Suzie Costello.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Animal hunting.
Author's note: pre-season 1, written for a French challenge, the prompt being: writing an action scene. There will be a sequel.
Disclaimer: Still not making money out of this. Characters are still belonging to RTD and the BBC.
Beta:
...
If the rift persisted on staying silent, they were all bound to go mad. It was quiet, too quiet, and for far too long.
As for Ianto the situation was becoming critical. He was running out of excuses to escape the Captain's attentions. Not that it wasn't interesting. Jack was extremely inventive, and from any point of view Ianto could think of. The problem was that as soon as the man entered his personal space, Ianto could never tell him no, in spite of his good intentions, but the young man had limits, while the Captain seemed to have none.
To be honest, while Jack and Ianto releived their boredom in the archives, Owen and Suzie were doing much the same in the lab. Meanwhile, Tosh had developed a nice little program that allowed her to bypass the Hub's CCTV, making herself a nice collection of free porn.
"I do not know how you can still walk," Suzie exclaimed as she saw Ianto coming back from the archives.
"Missing it?" Ianto replied, and then glancing toward the autopsy room, he added: "Clearly you didn't get a better call. Coffee?"
"Coffee!" the other three responded in chorus.
"Coffee," Suzie said too, looking Ianto over from head to foot like a zoo animal: "He'll get tired, you know,"
"Should I conclude that he was the one who got tired?" he asked sarcastically, taking the direction of the kitchen.
Suzie had never liked Ianto, she wasn't sure why, but she didn't like him. He was too smooth and too polished to be true.
"So Tosh, are these algorithms still running?" she asked.
"Yes, yes" Tosh said quickly resuming her work like a good little girl. "Oh!" she said.
"Oh?" three voices asked.
"Jaaack! We've got an alert." She shouted.
"Of course at rush hour," Owen said.
"Where?" Jack hastened to her.
"Hey, give me a minute," Tosh replied, "At Toy's R's."
"Shit," Owen and Susie said in unison.
"Tosh, with us. Ianto you're monitoring us from here," Jack said.
It wasn't really the best hour to drive across the city, and as they approached their destination they had to drive through a crowd of panicked people. The residents of Cardiff weren't yet accustomed to looking elsewhere.
"Ah, there you are! Up there, first floor, it came out of nowhere, it's huge," A cop told them. The man was clearly relieved to have someone he could throw the bones at.
"What does it look like?" Owen asked while checking his weapon.
"Well, I'm not a Jurassic Park fan," the young cop stuttered.
Jack frowned then, putting his gun back in its holster, he began to look around and into the crowd until he found what he wanted.
"Hey! Kid. Yes you," he shouted to a six or seven-years-old boy looking more fascinated than frightened.
"Did you see it?"
"Yes, sir. A triceratops, as big as your car," the kid told him with a cheer enthusiasm.
"Oh, that should be a baby, then?" Jack replied.
The boy pondered a moment, and then agreed with the Captain.
"Ok, looks like we're back on business, kids," he said opening the back of the 4x4 to load up with more adequate weaponry.
"Jack, just to be sure; you don't intend to adopt it?" Owen asked sarcastically.
"Why not? It's just a baby, Owen? Don't you have a heart?" Jack replied displaying a large grin while throwing to the doctor one of the two hypodermic guns in which he had invested since Myfanwy's capture. Then, he said through his com for Ianto: "I think we need you to come and join us with the lorry."
"Since when do we have a lorry?" Suzie asked as they entered the mall, now completely emptied of its human occupants.
"Did I forget to mention it?" Jack replied.
"Yep," the other three said in chorus.
"You know, we're really a heck of a team," Jack said indicating by a simple gesture that they should scatter.
Following the trail of a triceratops in a mall, even that large wasn't really a problem. However the capture could turn out to be more difficult.
"Hey Jack. I hope you bought the rhino-model." Owen commented, through its com.
"The oversized-rhino-model thanks to the kind of game around here," Jack replied.
"Hey Ianto, did Jack ever tell you that the lorry was to offer Myfanwy a friend to play with?" Suzie said through her com.
"What?" Ianto snapped as he was just reaching the evacuated perimeter.
"Looks like you've been promoted from butler to menagerie keeper," Owen joked.
"I'm not sure it's a promotion," Ianto grumbled. Even if he was pleased that Jack had kept Myfanwy, he was beginning to find that Jack's mania for taking care of all the harmless lost travellers to be as exhausting as his sexual ardour.
"Look out," the captain shouted, reminding them what they were there for.
Jack had found the Triceratops, but had apparently lost his gun. Hopefully the beast was in playful mood. First Tosh, and then Suzie watched their captain pass by them, soon followed by a beautiful baby weighing about three tons.
"Don't miss it!" Jack shouted as he passed by Owen.
The vibrations caused by the dinosaur's gallop had completely unbalanced the doctor and his shot just missed the Captain.
Jack forgivingly grabbed Owen by his arm dragging him along in his run for safety.
"Don't stop. I think he just wants to play but it is a bit too big," the Captain told him.
"Really? Didn't you talk about adopting it?"
"Adopting, not cuddling with it," Jack pointed out.
Having reached the end of the alley, Owen turned left and headed to a storage room, while Jack turned right along the rail that defined the core area, where stairs, escalators and elevators intersected in a pretty mess.
The creature coming straight from prehistoric time opted for the man coming with a lot of detour from a far future: he smelled good!
Tosh and Suzie did the same but in the other way around in order to put themselves in position just before the last turn and waited for their captain and his pursuer.
Spotting them Jack chose to go straight forward, offering the girls a better firing angle. They both emptied their magazines into the beast, which only attracted its attention. It was now clearly hesitating between the two pretty women and the guy who smelled good, cruel dilemma!
"It's an herbivore," Ianto told them through his com, he had been finally able to cross the police line forbidding access to the site.
"Here's our specialist in dinosaur," Suzie said with a little smile as she and Tosh tried to initiate a strategic withdrawal while reloading their weapons.
His game buddy seeming about to abandon him, Jack returned cautiously to his path.
"Hey Harkness! Don't tell me that you're intending to try and catch it with bare hands now?" Owen said arriving on the other side.
"I'm not going to let it charge the girls. He might be herbivorous but it must surely weigh at least three-tons," Jack replied.
"Hey - Expert? Any ideas?" Owen asked Ianto through his com.
"Did someone think about bringing chocolate?" Ianto asked back.
The four others teammates glanced at each other, at least three of them were completely at loss while the triceratops was still hesitating, especially as it had now registered the other potential players coming from behind.
"Nope. Obviously nobody got that," Jack said.
"There must be a supermarket on the ground floor, if you're in need," Suzie added sarcastically. "But believe it or not, we've got a job to do right now."
"We used chocolate in order to capture Myfanwy," Ianto explained.
"And a large syringe, that I should have kept," Jack added. He was now getting very close to the dinosaur's tail under the bewildered look of Owen.
"Owen, can you tell him a syringe must not be reused," Ianto argued. The young man went off in search of chocolate.
Meanwhile, as the beast chose the new girls as his playmates, Jack, caught it by the tail and pulled with all his strength. This did not significantly slow the big baby, but after a good ten yards, it became annoyed. The dinosaur turned around sharply to face the man hanging onto his tail for dear life. Unfortunately this last move sent the Captain flying several meters in the air and over the railing.
In his haste, the Triceratops, unaccustomed to the fragility of aluminium and Plexiglas railings, was taken by his own weight to fall two floors below.
Owen, Tosh and Susie rushed down the stairs to find Jack, while Ianto was staring at the mass that had just missed crushing him. The young man felt a little guilty for being relieved that this venerable testimony of the past was dead on the spot.
"Jack, did you see Jack?" Tosh shouted.
"Jack?"
Jack had fallen between the escalators, and the chances that he was still in one piece were...
"Is there anyone kind enough to give me a hand?" Jack voice called out.
Jack was one floor below, struggling to get out of a large storage bin of fruits and vegetables.
"How is our friend?" Jack asked when he saw the whole team coming to rescue him.
"Sorry," they replied in a sad chorus.
"You make a nice bunch of hypocrites," he said brushing his coat. "Okay, well, at least, we'll have meat for the winter. It makes a very good stew," he added displaying a large grin.
The end.