Fic: Any Other Day: Friday (aka part 5b/8, team, NC-17)
Title: Any Other Day: Friday (aka 5b/8)
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Team, Rhys (Jack/Gwen, Gwen/Rhys, Jack/Ianto)
Ratings: NC-17 (in some parts)
Timeline: Post-Meat, Pre-Reset (assumes flashback knowledge from Fragments)
Summary: Hey, this one time? At Torchwood? Gwen and Jack switched bodies and everything went pear-shaped.
Author's Notes: I this fic, because I love the team, I say, THE TEAM. Thanks to 51stcenturyfox for the beta! This was started back in May 2009, when I wasn't nearly the TW freak that I am, and so I think it's more cracky than I had intended. It's funny. It's potboiler fic.
SPECIAL THANKS to laurab1 for the bitching fanart! Check that shit out!
This fic is a WIP, divided by days: Monday-Tuesday. It should have 8 parts, some longer than others, depending on what happens any given day. There you go.
PREVIOUSLY, on TORCHWOOD: Monday, Tuesday (A), Wednesday (A), Thursday (A), Friday (A)
Owen and Simran carried the pot of boiling water to the sliding balcony door together, and then Simran kicked the Xogs away from it while he opened it and dragged the pot outside. She shut the door behind her and they each lifted a handle. The pot was huge, and he had to admit he was surprised that they'd managed to get this much boiling water so quickly, but they'd divided it amongst multiple smaller pans on the stove and done some in the microwave until they had a monster container that would be enough to cook fifteen metric tonnes of spaghetti bolognese. Any other time Owen would have been feeling a sense of secret delight that he was actually getting to do something akin to dumping boiling oil on something, a hidden desire that he'd always felt one should get to try out in one's life.
Simran grunted with the effort and they set the pot on the ledge. "Strange, but I wouldn't have been able to do this in my old body," she muttered. "My normal body."
Owen smiled. "Small favours, yeah?"
She peered over the edge and paled. "It's still there."
Owen followed her gaze to where the thing was about two storeys away, but the wind was blowing and it had stopped for a minute until the currents died down. There were no natural handholds on the smooth side of the building, so it was digging its claws into the brick work.
Owen looked down the road and saw the black SUV racing towards the building. "Hey look," he said, pointing to the road. "Cavalry."
The creature reached up and rammed the tips of its claws back into the building, resuming its climb. Simran made a barking noise that Owen interpreted as shock, but could have also been a response to being cooped up with eight dogs for the past few days. He resumed his grip on his side of the pot. "All right, let's get it as flush with the wall as possible and-"
The pot tipped and steaming water poured from it in a steady stream. He didn't want to dump it all at once, they literally couldn't with the weight, but he was betting that the secret to getting a body off a building was to apply as much hot oil (or water) for as long as possible. There was a stretch of time in which the water seemed to slow and then it hit the creature's leathery skin with a slap and Owen wasn't sure if he imagined the hissing noise, but he sure as hell didn't imagine the screaming.
It was more like a shrill alarm, like a smoke detector Owen had once had and disabled first thing moving into the flat. It was multi scale and shrill, and it was a good thing he had the empty pot in his hand, because Simran let go of it to clap her hands over her ears. After the past thirty minutes, he didn't blame her if the sound was sending her over the edge. The creature grabbed at its burnt head with one hand, and that must have upset its purchase in the wall, because its remaining claws slipped out and it fell backwards, tumbling down about ten stories to land in the landscaping. Owen stared at it and wondered what would happen if he were to try to fire his gun directly down. Bullets were heavy, right? A downward trajectory would just make them go faster.
He didn't have to worry, because the SUV streaked around the corner, passenger window down, and Owen could see Gwen's hair whipping as her body-meaning Jack-hung out the window, both arms out as if she was two fisting it. They must have seen the creature from the road whilst it was on the building; one of the guns was trained up to where the creature, the other out straight for a level aim. They both readjusted to the thing on the ground when Jack saw that it was gone, almost directly below Owen.
The bushes rustled, and Owen could see it from his birds eye view, but there were a few large shrubs in the way. He noted the wind and dropped the pot a few feet to the left of the creature, and was rewarded when it listed right as it fell and landed exactly on the thing with a metal bell thunking sound that repeated up the side of the building.
Jack's aim adjusted as the SUV rolled to a slow crawl, and when the creature stood up on two feet, he unloaded into it with the eerie efficiency of the MI-5 doing a drive-by. There was no audible report, so they'd either used a tranq gun or the silencers they applied when they knew they'd be shooting in public and wanted to hold off the cops as long as possible. The thing screeched again, but it was so far down that it wasn't very loud at all, and it fell down into the shrubbery and laid still. Owen dusted his hands and grinned at Simran. "Sorted."
They turned back to the sliding glass door and Owen noted that the Xogs hadn't ceased barking. That was both good and bad. Good to know that danger was still there, but useless unless they were more specific. Unless it was the one in the lift.
Dylan stalked down the hallway, hair still a mess, in the scrubs he'd worn from the hospital, despite that he'd been given actual clothing to wear, and a hairbrush. One glance at Simran reminded Owen that some people handled shock better than others.
"I can't fucking sleep," Dylan complained, and Owen the remembered that sometimes people were right arseholes. "What the fuck is wrong with all the goddamn-"
There was a massive hollow boom, and the walls of the flat that faced the inner hallway shook. Something metal hit the door, because a large piece of it spiked through the wood, and it took Owen less time than he'd thought to realise that-
"It's blown the lift," he said, pulling his weapon and gesturing widely with his other arm. "Both of you, get the dogs back in the bedroom, that one-" he gestured to the hallways that led opposite the direction of the lift. "Keep yourselves to the outside wall. Simran-" he bent down and pulled up his trouser leg, yanking the small .22 from the ankle holster. Jack was good for some things, and Owen had him to thank for suggesting that he go more than armed. Sometimes he wondered if Harkness was psychic. He didn't dwell on it often, because the idea that Jack would know what he was thinking was terrifying.
She took the gun in her hand and looked at it as if she'd just handed her a bag of excrement. "Point, pull the trigger," he coached. The gun was fairly simple. "Only six shots, so don't go all gangster, okay?" He smiled reassuringly and pulled her finger from the trigger to rest on the side of the gun; inexperience would end up with a cooling body and regret.
Simran and Dylan herded the dogs with a frightening level of efficiency and left him training his weapon at the front door, listening for footsteps and finally deciding that he was going to use the wet bar for cover. Hiding behind a bar in a shootout was also something that he could tick of his list of boyhood fantasies today.
He braced himself when he heard shouting in the hallway, and then the report of a gun without a silencer, which meant the Webley, and Gwen. There was some thumping, and he crouched behind the bar, gun up and ready to be pointed directly at the door.
"Owen, are you in there?" Jack called, and Owen pressed his forehead against a row of schnapps bottles in relief. "Owen?"
He didn't rise, but called out, "Yeah," and listened as someone yanked the shrapnel from the door and reached in to unlock it. "We're coming in," Jack said, and when the door swung open, Owen trained his gun on it until he could verify that it was them and not aliens with very good vocalising skills.
"Hey there," Jack said as Gwen finished wiping her hands down with Jack's handkerchief and tucking it in her pocket. "I see you found the Belbels, too."
Owen couldn't see anything but a clawed foot lying on the ground. The rest of it was out of eyeline of the doorway, but from its placement it looked as if it had been ready to break down the door. "That them? Yeah, met them."
"It's a good thing Gwen's guns hold a lot of bullets," Jack groused. "I'm not a good shot in her body."
Gwen shook the Webley. "At least you have more than six bullets," she returned. Owen was starting to think that this was one of those things they should have worked out earlier in the week-who would be shooting what and perhaps they could have practised.
"There's an autoloader, Gwen," Jack said disparagingly as he cleared the wet bar. Owen could have told him there wasn't anything behind that. Jack tapped his nose and pointed Gwen down the snub hallway that was flush with the inner walls.
Gwen rolled her eyes. "You know what's more auto than an autoloader, John Wayne? A magazine. Holds fifteen, thirty if it's double."
Jack put up his gun and waited for Gwen to return. "Look at John Woo over here. 'Fifteen, thirty if I double it.' He smiled. "You need panache."
Gwen gave him the finger. "Clear back there. I think we got them all."
Owen flipped the safety on the SIG and lowered it. The dogs were barking like mad still, and he wondered if he had enough drugs to knock them all out in the spare kit in his bag.
Jack blinked. "The one in the shrubs, the one in the hallway. Where's the other one?"
"What?" Owen flipped the safety back off his weapon and watched Gwen retreat down the hallway to the rooms on the outer wall of the apartment.
"Where's the third one?" Jack asked, scanning the room before sliding the glass door open and peeking out onto the open patio. "They hunt as mates, in threes."
Owen trained his weapon down the side of the balcony and stared at the wall below them. "These are the kinds of things we should all know before we get into-"
"I'm telling you now," Jack said. "It wasn't in the stairwell, and it's not climbing up, so it's…" They both turned their heads to the outer wall to the left long enough to see the Belbel smash the window to the bedroom and dive in. "Coming from the roof," Jack finished as they dashed back in the door towards the hallway where the dogs had been released and were running out into the living area. Jack and Owen trained their guns on the hallway opening and stepped around them. Owen wished he had the language skills to tell the dogs to either be quiet or be useful, but instead, they circled his legs and he almost tripped over the Jack Russell.
The Belbel crashed out into the hallway, dragging Dylan by the neck and walking towards them. It gestured to them with a gun, blaster, something space age but definitely impossible to mistake for anything but a weapon. It vacillated between holding it to Dylan's head and pointing it at them.
"Oh, helpful," Owen muttered, sighting down his arm.
Jack raised his weapon. "Drop it and let her go," he warned.
"The thing, the thing, give it the thing," the Belbel sang in a high pitched voice. Dylan clung to its arm, desperately trying to pry it from across his throat.
Owen glanced at Jack. "That's nice and specific."
Gwen appeared from the other bedroom, weapon drawn, but the movement drew the attention of the Belbel and it fired. Owen could barely see the shot blast out of the gun, he had thought that when he would finally see a laser gun like in Star Wars, the bolts would be visible. Instead, it was barely a muzzle flash and Gwen slapped her hand to her chest before falling face down on the carpet. The Belbel retreated, stepping back over Gwen towards the bedroom and dragging Dylan with it.
Owen wanted to spend a second wondering what had just happened. Part of his brain had said, 'Jack was just killed. Again.' The rest of him recognised that Jack was standing next to him and very not dead. And that part of his brain had to shut down, because Dylan was screeching, and there was a Rottweiler running down the hall towards the Belbel. They still had a clear shot, if they were really really good.
"Do you want to take this, Jack? What do you want to do?"
There was no sound from next to him, so he glanced over. Jack's eyes were wide, but he didn’t move, just held his gun out and pointed, hand shaking slight.
"Jack," Owen repeated, "what do we do?"
***
Tosh wished they'd thought this whole thing through better, because if they had, she would have brought more guns. The Belbels were horribly large. Ianto had fired the EMP gun at the water tower once the lift had reached the top with them on it, and it had refracted all about (the low bass bwaaaap of the gun was always amusing to hear, Tosh thought), shorting out all the electronics within a half block radius. She winced and apologised silently to the Millennium Centre when Ianto had set the gun down on the invisible lift for safekeeping and they'd stood there, watching the two Belbels press buttons on their wrist computers uselessly and speak in a sibilant language that Tosh wished she could decipher. They kept flicking their tongues in the air, as if they were smelling something, and they glanced about. The perception filter wasn't reliant on electronics, so it was still functioning.
Ianto drew his Glock and held one finger up to his lips, and then he pointed to the stone under them. It was easy enough to understand. He waited until both their heads were pointed elsewhere and then stepped back towards the water tower and darted behind it.
Tosh trained her SIG on the two Belbels but did nothing. The moment she fired, they'd figure out where she was. Even if they couldn't see her, all they had to do was spray the water tower with bullets or lasers or whatever and they'd see her. She wasn't even sure the perception filter would stand up under close Belbel scrutiny, and they were still in the centre of the Plass, well away from her.
Ianto ran from the water tower to the first pillar and they saw the movement. One of the Belbels brought its weapon up and aimed for the pillar, and Tosh fired, stepping off the stone and backing up to the other side of the water tower, away from them. She could dive behind it for cover, which she did only when Ianto fired off a succession of rounds as he moved from one pillar to the next. Tosh watched them almost forget about her, and she sprinted around to the other side of the water tower to peek out. It was easier to see Ianto as well, plastered to the second pillar.
The Belbels left the middle of the Plass at a run, but they weren't very agile. Tosh suspected that their hunting skills relied on tech, brute strength, and the element of surprise.
She fumbled in her pocket for a stun grenade. Let's see how they handled this surprise. She yanked the pin and yelled to Ianto as she tossed it out into the Plass proper, then closed her eyes and covered her ears, turning away. It was the middle of the morning, so she wasn't sure how useful the flash would be, but the bang part should have been a little bit disorienting.
It was. She heard it even with her ears covered, and when she brought her gun up to fire, Ianto was already walking through the smoke, gun up and sounding. He caught the first Belbel in the chest and the second one in the head. They both flew backwards, and he advanced on them while they were down. The one with the head shot didn't move again, but the one with the chest wound took at least three more hits from its supine position, in the legs, chest and groin.
Tosh took a second to wonder just what all Jack and Ianto had been doing off-hours. She was never going to make a tea boy joke again, and she might just be buying him coffees for a few days.
Tosh stepped out from behind the water tower and was about to join him in the shoot-a-thon when a gun reported in the distance and something like a laserbolt smacked into the pillar nearest them, leaving a hole that would definitely need to be explained. And spackled. Her geometry brain sussed out the direction immediately (twelve-o clock, of course), and she and Ianto scattered. Ianto slid behind the pillar, but she felt the sight on her skin like a light sunburn before she could move far, and she froze, looking at the red dot crawling along her arm, smoking the fabric of her coat as it went along.
Her eyes raised and the Belbel finally reached her, stopping about fifteen feet away and considering her, head tilted, nictitating lenses sweeping its eyes a few times before it opened its mouth.
"The thing the thing, give it the thing," the Belbel hissed, curling one hand in and out in a "gimme" gesture. From the corner of her eye she could barely see Ianto creep around the pillar, away from her. His hand pulled the slide of his gun.
Tosh held her hands out to either side. "Thing, what thing?" she asked. When in doubt, stall exponentially.
The Belbel considered her words and then curled its claws again. It made a whistling noise that sounded strangely familiar. "The thing," it repeated. "Give it the thing."
She was about to say, "Be more specific," when Ianto stuck his arm out and let off a few shots, giving Tosh a clear path of retreat. She didn't make it to the water tower, but she did make it to the invisible lift and she teetered there, trying to slow her breathing without making any sound, turning quietly on the cement to watch the Belbel take a few steps towards the pillar. Her foot caught in the strap to the EMP gun, and she caught herself before she dragged the metal noisily across the stone. Ianto made wide eyes at her. He tapped his magazine and held up three fingers. How had that happened? And then he nodded in her direction.
A glance down at the Plass revealed that sometime over the course of the running and the shooting, Ianto's two spare magazines had slipped from his trouser pockets and were now gleaming happily and yet uselessly in the sun fifteen feet to her right. Oh shit, really.
She raised her hands and waved them in a "What?" gesture. The Belbel seemed to sense her hand movement and it swung the gun around back in her general direction. Again, she was back where she started-unseen, but horribly vulnerable. Her own gun was still in her hand. She could do some cover fire, or she could throw Ianto her gun, or she could--
"Oi! Think fast!" Ianto yelled, and threw something bright and sparkling at the Belbel. He pulled his gun, but dove behind a pillar to avoid the few shots of energy coming his way as the hunter shot at him before catching whatever it was Ianto had thrown in one hand-claw-thing.
The yo-yo whined up to a high pitch as the Belbel lifted it to its face, squinting at the colours, and then it exploded, taking the Belbel's hand and face with it. The body wavered upright for a moment, and then fell to the side with a thump.
Ianto left the cover of the pillar and approached the smoking body with caution, gun raised. Tosh covered him, and then they stared at the remains dumbly. Ianto wiped his brow, breathing heavily.
"More internet tutorials?" she joked weakly as they caught their breath.
Ianto's eyes were wide, pupils blown with adrenaline as he stared at the body in front of them. "Not as such, no."
***
Jack felt the gun in his hand, he felt the weight of it, and he knew instinctively what his fingers should do. It was a clear shot, really. He'd taken one just like it a few months ago when he'd just got back. And that had been while he was rusty as hell, untempered from a year without weapons on the Valiant. He should be able to do this. But his hand shook, and the sighting he usually did with his arm and the barrel didn't want to line up, the little instinctual 'click' he heard in his head when he knew he had the shot refused to come.
He waited.
"Jack," Owen said again.
"The thing, give it the thing," the Belbel hissed.
He almost had it and then he thought that maybe he listed to the left, and if he did that he's nick Dylan and--
"Jack, I've lost the shot-"
Gwen was facedown on the floor.
"Do you have it, Jack-"
An arm appeared in the doorway to the second bedroom, moving quickly to press the muzzle of a gun into the side of the Belbel's head, and it let loose a shot before the barrel even touched the leathery skin. The bullet blew out the other side of the head to lodge in the plaster, in one ear and out the other, Jack might have said if he had been in a better place.
The arm lengthened until it attached to a shoulder and then the head and neck and body of Simran Parikh. Or rather Simran in Dylan. The body fell against the wall, taking Dylan with it, and it slumped there; Simran pressed in again with the .22, releasing another five shots into the Belbel's skull. The creature jerked its hold on the body it held, and Dylan's eyes rolled up into his head, before he went slack and fell forward when the arm holding him finally loosed in death.
Simran lowered the gun and looked at them, eyes wide, mouth open. "Oh."
Owen safetied and holstered his gun, and Jack realised that he should still have his trained on the Belbel just in case, just in case, but his eyes were having trouble not looking at Gwen on the floor. She laid face down, one leg askew, one arm trapped under her chest, the other against the wall a bit. The Webley was out of sight so she must have fallen on it.
Owen pulled Dylan from the Belbel and checked for a pulse, but he must have been satisfied with what he felt under his fingers, because he pushed the Belbel further back and nodded to Jack. "Six shots in the head. Unless there's something we don't know about these things-"
"No," Jack said, lowering his gun. He could do that. He could put his gun away. He slipped it into the side holster and blinked. What was he supposed to do now? Gwen. He should do something about Gwen.
"Is she going to…?" Owen asked. He had one hand on Simran's shoulder and the woman pulled away from him for a second before she registered his face, pressing into the wall and sliding down it to huddle on the floor. They were all mashed into a small space here.
Jack shook his head. "I don't know," he whispered. For all his joking with Gwen, he hadn't really meant it when he'd suggested that she, that she kill herself just to see what it was like. It wasn't worth anything anyway, and the risks outweighed the, the everything. This had just been a dumb accident. What if they had been in the right bodies? Would they have done it the same way? Would he have cleared the other room? Would she have blundered out the same way? Would he have shot the thing in the head long before, trusting his aim?
The dogs milled about them, now eerily silent, snuffling the bodies and Simran and Owen and Jack, winding around them or sitting on either end of the hallway like sentries. The Yorkie licked Simran's hand, and her fingers threaded in its wiry coat absently.
"I went gangster," she murmured to Owen, and he laughed and wrapped his arms around her, one of his hands reaching down to pull the gun from her loose grip on it. He glanced at Dylan, passed out on the floor and laughed more.
"I think I can honestly say that it's okay in this case," he told her.
Jack sank to his knees beside his body and rolled it over. He didn't want to confront that it was Gwen, so he didn't look at the face, but busied his fingers feeling the chest for the shot and where the wound should be healing, if not healed already. If it wasn't healed, then he would start to worry. His hand laid on the top shirt, too frightened to press down to feel the burn under the cloth.
Gwen sucked in a huge breath and sat up, flailing, and some part of Jack's brain thought, 'Is that what I look like?' but the rest of him was about to cry, something he noticed was quite easy to do in Gwen's body. Her arms braced her upper body as she leant back on them, visibly shaking. A shot to the chest hurt like a sonofabitch, even for the first few seconds upon waking. Her eyes were wide and Jack knew that she was confused, she had no idea where she was and what had just happened. She might even be remembering the past minute or so of being…wherever she had or hadn't been.
Owen let out an uncharacteristic whoop and waved with one hand, the rest of his arms filled with a sobbing Simran. Jack grabbed Gwen's shoulder and pulled her sideways and she bucked him, still disoriented. It would come in a few seconds and he had to hold her, had to grab her in his arms and press against her, Gwen, in his body, back from the dead, dear god, thank god, whatever he might mutter in the night to whomever was out there.
"Hey hey," he said softly, "Gwen it's me, it's me, it's Jack."
She took in a few ragged short breaths, as if she had just finished running the Preakness, and her head turned to him. "Jack."
He smiled. "Welcome back."
Her hand left the floor and groped her chest, fingering the scorch mark where the laser had hit her, digging into the cloth to touch the hale flesh there, and he covered it with one of his own hands. "It's okay," he said slowly. "You're okay." That was loaded, wasn't it?
Gwen turned her wide eyes on him, his wide eyes on him, and her mouth made a perfect O. "I remember," she murmured. That was loaded too, but he wasn't sure with what when her face changed to something he didn't understand, and her voice breathed. "Oh, Jack."
Next to then, the Yorkie lifted its leg and pissed on the Belbel's gun hand, and the blaster shorted with a few sparks. Jack watched the dog scratch at the carpet and then settle against Gwen's thigh as if it was immensely proud of itself.
Well, that made one of them.
END FRIDAY
On to Saturday
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Team, Rhys (Jack/Gwen, Gwen/Rhys, Jack/Ianto)
Ratings: NC-17 (in some parts)
Timeline: Post-Meat, Pre-Reset (assumes flashback knowledge from Fragments)
Summary: Hey, this one time? At Torchwood? Gwen and Jack switched bodies and everything went pear-shaped.
Author's Notes: I this fic, because I love the team, I say, THE TEAM. Thanks to 51stcenturyfox for the beta! This was started back in May 2009, when I wasn't nearly the TW freak that I am, and so I think it's more cracky than I had intended. It's funny. It's potboiler fic.
SPECIAL THANKS to laurab1 for the bitching fanart! Check that shit out!
This fic is a WIP, divided by days: Monday-Tuesday. It should have 8 parts, some longer than others, depending on what happens any given day. There you go.
PREVIOUSLY, on TORCHWOOD: Monday, Tuesday (A), Wednesday (A), Thursday (A), Friday (A)
Owen and Simran carried the pot of boiling water to the sliding balcony door together, and then Simran kicked the Xogs away from it while he opened it and dragged the pot outside. She shut the door behind her and they each lifted a handle. The pot was huge, and he had to admit he was surprised that they'd managed to get this much boiling water so quickly, but they'd divided it amongst multiple smaller pans on the stove and done some in the microwave until they had a monster container that would be enough to cook fifteen metric tonnes of spaghetti bolognese. Any other time Owen would have been feeling a sense of secret delight that he was actually getting to do something akin to dumping boiling oil on something, a hidden desire that he'd always felt one should get to try out in one's life.
Simran grunted with the effort and they set the pot on the ledge. "Strange, but I wouldn't have been able to do this in my old body," she muttered. "My normal body."
Owen smiled. "Small favours, yeah?"
She peered over the edge and paled. "It's still there."
Owen followed her gaze to where the thing was about two storeys away, but the wind was blowing and it had stopped for a minute until the currents died down. There were no natural handholds on the smooth side of the building, so it was digging its claws into the brick work.
Owen looked down the road and saw the black SUV racing towards the building. "Hey look," he said, pointing to the road. "Cavalry."
The creature reached up and rammed the tips of its claws back into the building, resuming its climb. Simran made a barking noise that Owen interpreted as shock, but could have also been a response to being cooped up with eight dogs for the past few days. He resumed his grip on his side of the pot. "All right, let's get it as flush with the wall as possible and-"
The pot tipped and steaming water poured from it in a steady stream. He didn't want to dump it all at once, they literally couldn't with the weight, but he was betting that the secret to getting a body off a building was to apply as much hot oil (or water) for as long as possible. There was a stretch of time in which the water seemed to slow and then it hit the creature's leathery skin with a slap and Owen wasn't sure if he imagined the hissing noise, but he sure as hell didn't imagine the screaming.
It was more like a shrill alarm, like a smoke detector Owen had once had and disabled first thing moving into the flat. It was multi scale and shrill, and it was a good thing he had the empty pot in his hand, because Simran let go of it to clap her hands over her ears. After the past thirty minutes, he didn't blame her if the sound was sending her over the edge. The creature grabbed at its burnt head with one hand, and that must have upset its purchase in the wall, because its remaining claws slipped out and it fell backwards, tumbling down about ten stories to land in the landscaping. Owen stared at it and wondered what would happen if he were to try to fire his gun directly down. Bullets were heavy, right? A downward trajectory would just make them go faster.
He didn't have to worry, because the SUV streaked around the corner, passenger window down, and Owen could see Gwen's hair whipping as her body-meaning Jack-hung out the window, both arms out as if she was two fisting it. They must have seen the creature from the road whilst it was on the building; one of the guns was trained up to where the creature, the other out straight for a level aim. They both readjusted to the thing on the ground when Jack saw that it was gone, almost directly below Owen.
The bushes rustled, and Owen could see it from his birds eye view, but there were a few large shrubs in the way. He noted the wind and dropped the pot a few feet to the left of the creature, and was rewarded when it listed right as it fell and landed exactly on the thing with a metal bell thunking sound that repeated up the side of the building.
Jack's aim adjusted as the SUV rolled to a slow crawl, and when the creature stood up on two feet, he unloaded into it with the eerie efficiency of the MI-5 doing a drive-by. There was no audible report, so they'd either used a tranq gun or the silencers they applied when they knew they'd be shooting in public and wanted to hold off the cops as long as possible. The thing screeched again, but it was so far down that it wasn't very loud at all, and it fell down into the shrubbery and laid still. Owen dusted his hands and grinned at Simran. "Sorted."
They turned back to the sliding glass door and Owen noted that the Xogs hadn't ceased barking. That was both good and bad. Good to know that danger was still there, but useless unless they were more specific. Unless it was the one in the lift.
Dylan stalked down the hallway, hair still a mess, in the scrubs he'd worn from the hospital, despite that he'd been given actual clothing to wear, and a hairbrush. One glance at Simran reminded Owen that some people handled shock better than others.
"I can't fucking sleep," Dylan complained, and Owen the remembered that sometimes people were right arseholes. "What the fuck is wrong with all the goddamn-"
There was a massive hollow boom, and the walls of the flat that faced the inner hallway shook. Something metal hit the door, because a large piece of it spiked through the wood, and it took Owen less time than he'd thought to realise that-
"It's blown the lift," he said, pulling his weapon and gesturing widely with his other arm. "Both of you, get the dogs back in the bedroom, that one-" he gestured to the hallways that led opposite the direction of the lift. "Keep yourselves to the outside wall. Simran-" he bent down and pulled up his trouser leg, yanking the small .22 from the ankle holster. Jack was good for some things, and Owen had him to thank for suggesting that he go more than armed. Sometimes he wondered if Harkness was psychic. He didn't dwell on it often, because the idea that Jack would know what he was thinking was terrifying.
She took the gun in her hand and looked at it as if she'd just handed her a bag of excrement. "Point, pull the trigger," he coached. The gun was fairly simple. "Only six shots, so don't go all gangster, okay?" He smiled reassuringly and pulled her finger from the trigger to rest on the side of the gun; inexperience would end up with a cooling body and regret.
Simran and Dylan herded the dogs with a frightening level of efficiency and left him training his weapon at the front door, listening for footsteps and finally deciding that he was going to use the wet bar for cover. Hiding behind a bar in a shootout was also something that he could tick of his list of boyhood fantasies today.
He braced himself when he heard shouting in the hallway, and then the report of a gun without a silencer, which meant the Webley, and Gwen. There was some thumping, and he crouched behind the bar, gun up and ready to be pointed directly at the door.
"Owen, are you in there?" Jack called, and Owen pressed his forehead against a row of schnapps bottles in relief. "Owen?"
He didn't rise, but called out, "Yeah," and listened as someone yanked the shrapnel from the door and reached in to unlock it. "We're coming in," Jack said, and when the door swung open, Owen trained his gun on it until he could verify that it was them and not aliens with very good vocalising skills.
"Hey there," Jack said as Gwen finished wiping her hands down with Jack's handkerchief and tucking it in her pocket. "I see you found the Belbels, too."
Owen couldn't see anything but a clawed foot lying on the ground. The rest of it was out of eyeline of the doorway, but from its placement it looked as if it had been ready to break down the door. "That them? Yeah, met them."
"It's a good thing Gwen's guns hold a lot of bullets," Jack groused. "I'm not a good shot in her body."
Gwen shook the Webley. "At least you have more than six bullets," she returned. Owen was starting to think that this was one of those things they should have worked out earlier in the week-who would be shooting what and perhaps they could have practised.
"There's an autoloader, Gwen," Jack said disparagingly as he cleared the wet bar. Owen could have told him there wasn't anything behind that. Jack tapped his nose and pointed Gwen down the snub hallway that was flush with the inner walls.
Gwen rolled her eyes. "You know what's more auto than an autoloader, John Wayne? A magazine. Holds fifteen, thirty if it's double."
Jack put up his gun and waited for Gwen to return. "Look at John Woo over here. 'Fifteen, thirty if I double it.' He smiled. "You need panache."
Gwen gave him the finger. "Clear back there. I think we got them all."
Owen flipped the safety on the SIG and lowered it. The dogs were barking like mad still, and he wondered if he had enough drugs to knock them all out in the spare kit in his bag.
Jack blinked. "The one in the shrubs, the one in the hallway. Where's the other one?"
"What?" Owen flipped the safety back off his weapon and watched Gwen retreat down the hallway to the rooms on the outer wall of the apartment.
"Where's the third one?" Jack asked, scanning the room before sliding the glass door open and peeking out onto the open patio. "They hunt as mates, in threes."
Owen trained his weapon down the side of the balcony and stared at the wall below them. "These are the kinds of things we should all know before we get into-"
"I'm telling you now," Jack said. "It wasn't in the stairwell, and it's not climbing up, so it's…" They both turned their heads to the outer wall to the left long enough to see the Belbel smash the window to the bedroom and dive in. "Coming from the roof," Jack finished as they dashed back in the door towards the hallway where the dogs had been released and were running out into the living area. Jack and Owen trained their guns on the hallway opening and stepped around them. Owen wished he had the language skills to tell the dogs to either be quiet or be useful, but instead, they circled his legs and he almost tripped over the Jack Russell.
The Belbel crashed out into the hallway, dragging Dylan by the neck and walking towards them. It gestured to them with a gun, blaster, something space age but definitely impossible to mistake for anything but a weapon. It vacillated between holding it to Dylan's head and pointing it at them.
"Oh, helpful," Owen muttered, sighting down his arm.
Jack raised his weapon. "Drop it and let her go," he warned.
"The thing, the thing, give it the thing," the Belbel sang in a high pitched voice. Dylan clung to its arm, desperately trying to pry it from across his throat.
Owen glanced at Jack. "That's nice and specific."
Gwen appeared from the other bedroom, weapon drawn, but the movement drew the attention of the Belbel and it fired. Owen could barely see the shot blast out of the gun, he had thought that when he would finally see a laser gun like in Star Wars, the bolts would be visible. Instead, it was barely a muzzle flash and Gwen slapped her hand to her chest before falling face down on the carpet. The Belbel retreated, stepping back over Gwen towards the bedroom and dragging Dylan with it.
Owen wanted to spend a second wondering what had just happened. Part of his brain had said, 'Jack was just killed. Again.' The rest of him recognised that Jack was standing next to him and very not dead. And that part of his brain had to shut down, because Dylan was screeching, and there was a Rottweiler running down the hall towards the Belbel. They still had a clear shot, if they were really really good.
"Do you want to take this, Jack? What do you want to do?"
There was no sound from next to him, so he glanced over. Jack's eyes were wide, but he didn’t move, just held his gun out and pointed, hand shaking slight.
"Jack," Owen repeated, "what do we do?"
***
Tosh wished they'd thought this whole thing through better, because if they had, she would have brought more guns. The Belbels were horribly large. Ianto had fired the EMP gun at the water tower once the lift had reached the top with them on it, and it had refracted all about (the low bass bwaaaap of the gun was always amusing to hear, Tosh thought), shorting out all the electronics within a half block radius. She winced and apologised silently to the Millennium Centre when Ianto had set the gun down on the invisible lift for safekeeping and they'd stood there, watching the two Belbels press buttons on their wrist computers uselessly and speak in a sibilant language that Tosh wished she could decipher. They kept flicking their tongues in the air, as if they were smelling something, and they glanced about. The perception filter wasn't reliant on electronics, so it was still functioning.
Ianto drew his Glock and held one finger up to his lips, and then he pointed to the stone under them. It was easy enough to understand. He waited until both their heads were pointed elsewhere and then stepped back towards the water tower and darted behind it.
Tosh trained her SIG on the two Belbels but did nothing. The moment she fired, they'd figure out where she was. Even if they couldn't see her, all they had to do was spray the water tower with bullets or lasers or whatever and they'd see her. She wasn't even sure the perception filter would stand up under close Belbel scrutiny, and they were still in the centre of the Plass, well away from her.
Ianto ran from the water tower to the first pillar and they saw the movement. One of the Belbels brought its weapon up and aimed for the pillar, and Tosh fired, stepping off the stone and backing up to the other side of the water tower, away from them. She could dive behind it for cover, which she did only when Ianto fired off a succession of rounds as he moved from one pillar to the next. Tosh watched them almost forget about her, and she sprinted around to the other side of the water tower to peek out. It was easier to see Ianto as well, plastered to the second pillar.
The Belbels left the middle of the Plass at a run, but they weren't very agile. Tosh suspected that their hunting skills relied on tech, brute strength, and the element of surprise.
She fumbled in her pocket for a stun grenade. Let's see how they handled this surprise. She yanked the pin and yelled to Ianto as she tossed it out into the Plass proper, then closed her eyes and covered her ears, turning away. It was the middle of the morning, so she wasn't sure how useful the flash would be, but the bang part should have been a little bit disorienting.
It was. She heard it even with her ears covered, and when she brought her gun up to fire, Ianto was already walking through the smoke, gun up and sounding. He caught the first Belbel in the chest and the second one in the head. They both flew backwards, and he advanced on them while they were down. The one with the head shot didn't move again, but the one with the chest wound took at least three more hits from its supine position, in the legs, chest and groin.
Tosh took a second to wonder just what all Jack and Ianto had been doing off-hours. She was never going to make a tea boy joke again, and she might just be buying him coffees for a few days.
Tosh stepped out from behind the water tower and was about to join him in the shoot-a-thon when a gun reported in the distance and something like a laserbolt smacked into the pillar nearest them, leaving a hole that would definitely need to be explained. And spackled. Her geometry brain sussed out the direction immediately (twelve-o clock, of course), and she and Ianto scattered. Ianto slid behind the pillar, but she felt the sight on her skin like a light sunburn before she could move far, and she froze, looking at the red dot crawling along her arm, smoking the fabric of her coat as it went along.
Her eyes raised and the Belbel finally reached her, stopping about fifteen feet away and considering her, head tilted, nictitating lenses sweeping its eyes a few times before it opened its mouth.
"The thing the thing, give it the thing," the Belbel hissed, curling one hand in and out in a "gimme" gesture. From the corner of her eye she could barely see Ianto creep around the pillar, away from her. His hand pulled the slide of his gun.
Tosh held her hands out to either side. "Thing, what thing?" she asked. When in doubt, stall exponentially.
The Belbel considered her words and then curled its claws again. It made a whistling noise that sounded strangely familiar. "The thing," it repeated. "Give it the thing."
She was about to say, "Be more specific," when Ianto stuck his arm out and let off a few shots, giving Tosh a clear path of retreat. She didn't make it to the water tower, but she did make it to the invisible lift and she teetered there, trying to slow her breathing without making any sound, turning quietly on the cement to watch the Belbel take a few steps towards the pillar. Her foot caught in the strap to the EMP gun, and she caught herself before she dragged the metal noisily across the stone. Ianto made wide eyes at her. He tapped his magazine and held up three fingers. How had that happened? And then he nodded in her direction.
A glance down at the Plass revealed that sometime over the course of the running and the shooting, Ianto's two spare magazines had slipped from his trouser pockets and were now gleaming happily and yet uselessly in the sun fifteen feet to her right. Oh shit, really.
She raised her hands and waved them in a "What?" gesture. The Belbel seemed to sense her hand movement and it swung the gun around back in her general direction. Again, she was back where she started-unseen, but horribly vulnerable. Her own gun was still in her hand. She could do some cover fire, or she could throw Ianto her gun, or she could--
"Oi! Think fast!" Ianto yelled, and threw something bright and sparkling at the Belbel. He pulled his gun, but dove behind a pillar to avoid the few shots of energy coming his way as the hunter shot at him before catching whatever it was Ianto had thrown in one hand-claw-thing.
The yo-yo whined up to a high pitch as the Belbel lifted it to its face, squinting at the colours, and then it exploded, taking the Belbel's hand and face with it. The body wavered upright for a moment, and then fell to the side with a thump.
Ianto left the cover of the pillar and approached the smoking body with caution, gun raised. Tosh covered him, and then they stared at the remains dumbly. Ianto wiped his brow, breathing heavily.
"More internet tutorials?" she joked weakly as they caught their breath.
Ianto's eyes were wide, pupils blown with adrenaline as he stared at the body in front of them. "Not as such, no."
***
Jack felt the gun in his hand, he felt the weight of it, and he knew instinctively what his fingers should do. It was a clear shot, really. He'd taken one just like it a few months ago when he'd just got back. And that had been while he was rusty as hell, untempered from a year without weapons on the Valiant. He should be able to do this. But his hand shook, and the sighting he usually did with his arm and the barrel didn't want to line up, the little instinctual 'click' he heard in his head when he knew he had the shot refused to come.
He waited.
"Jack," Owen said again.
"The thing, give it the thing," the Belbel hissed.
He almost had it and then he thought that maybe he listed to the left, and if he did that he's nick Dylan and--
"Jack, I've lost the shot-"
Gwen was facedown on the floor.
"Do you have it, Jack-"
An arm appeared in the doorway to the second bedroom, moving quickly to press the muzzle of a gun into the side of the Belbel's head, and it let loose a shot before the barrel even touched the leathery skin. The bullet blew out the other side of the head to lodge in the plaster, in one ear and out the other, Jack might have said if he had been in a better place.
The arm lengthened until it attached to a shoulder and then the head and neck and body of Simran Parikh. Or rather Simran in Dylan. The body fell against the wall, taking Dylan with it, and it slumped there; Simran pressed in again with the .22, releasing another five shots into the Belbel's skull. The creature jerked its hold on the body it held, and Dylan's eyes rolled up into his head, before he went slack and fell forward when the arm holding him finally loosed in death.
Simran lowered the gun and looked at them, eyes wide, mouth open. "Oh."
Owen safetied and holstered his gun, and Jack realised that he should still have his trained on the Belbel just in case, just in case, but his eyes were having trouble not looking at Gwen on the floor. She laid face down, one leg askew, one arm trapped under her chest, the other against the wall a bit. The Webley was out of sight so she must have fallen on it.
Owen pulled Dylan from the Belbel and checked for a pulse, but he must have been satisfied with what he felt under his fingers, because he pushed the Belbel further back and nodded to Jack. "Six shots in the head. Unless there's something we don't know about these things-"
"No," Jack said, lowering his gun. He could do that. He could put his gun away. He slipped it into the side holster and blinked. What was he supposed to do now? Gwen. He should do something about Gwen.
"Is she going to…?" Owen asked. He had one hand on Simran's shoulder and the woman pulled away from him for a second before she registered his face, pressing into the wall and sliding down it to huddle on the floor. They were all mashed into a small space here.
Jack shook his head. "I don't know," he whispered. For all his joking with Gwen, he hadn't really meant it when he'd suggested that she, that she kill herself just to see what it was like. It wasn't worth anything anyway, and the risks outweighed the, the everything. This had just been a dumb accident. What if they had been in the right bodies? Would they have done it the same way? Would he have cleared the other room? Would she have blundered out the same way? Would he have shot the thing in the head long before, trusting his aim?
The dogs milled about them, now eerily silent, snuffling the bodies and Simran and Owen and Jack, winding around them or sitting on either end of the hallway like sentries. The Yorkie licked Simran's hand, and her fingers threaded in its wiry coat absently.
"I went gangster," she murmured to Owen, and he laughed and wrapped his arms around her, one of his hands reaching down to pull the gun from her loose grip on it. He glanced at Dylan, passed out on the floor and laughed more.
"I think I can honestly say that it's okay in this case," he told her.
Jack sank to his knees beside his body and rolled it over. He didn't want to confront that it was Gwen, so he didn't look at the face, but busied his fingers feeling the chest for the shot and where the wound should be healing, if not healed already. If it wasn't healed, then he would start to worry. His hand laid on the top shirt, too frightened to press down to feel the burn under the cloth.
Gwen sucked in a huge breath and sat up, flailing, and some part of Jack's brain thought, 'Is that what I look like?' but the rest of him was about to cry, something he noticed was quite easy to do in Gwen's body. Her arms braced her upper body as she leant back on them, visibly shaking. A shot to the chest hurt like a sonofabitch, even for the first few seconds upon waking. Her eyes were wide and Jack knew that she was confused, she had no idea where she was and what had just happened. She might even be remembering the past minute or so of being…wherever she had or hadn't been.
Owen let out an uncharacteristic whoop and waved with one hand, the rest of his arms filled with a sobbing Simran. Jack grabbed Gwen's shoulder and pulled her sideways and she bucked him, still disoriented. It would come in a few seconds and he had to hold her, had to grab her in his arms and press against her, Gwen, in his body, back from the dead, dear god, thank god, whatever he might mutter in the night to whomever was out there.
"Hey hey," he said softly, "Gwen it's me, it's me, it's Jack."
She took in a few ragged short breaths, as if she had just finished running the Preakness, and her head turned to him. "Jack."
He smiled. "Welcome back."
Her hand left the floor and groped her chest, fingering the scorch mark where the laser had hit her, digging into the cloth to touch the hale flesh there, and he covered it with one of his own hands. "It's okay," he said slowly. "You're okay." That was loaded, wasn't it?
Gwen turned her wide eyes on him, his wide eyes on him, and her mouth made a perfect O. "I remember," she murmured. That was loaded too, but he wasn't sure with what when her face changed to something he didn't understand, and her voice breathed. "Oh, Jack."
Next to then, the Yorkie lifted its leg and pissed on the Belbel's gun hand, and the blaster shorted with a few sparks. Jack watched the dog scratch at the carpet and then settle against Gwen's thigh as if it was immensely proud of itself.
Well, that made one of them.
END FRIDAY
On to Saturday