Title: Night Of The Harvester - Part 3
Title: Night Of The Harvester - Part 3-
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack, OCs.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2544
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Judging by the pictures, Harvester is like no other creature Jack and Ianto have encountered. The question remains, is it native to Bounteous, or not?
Written For: spook_me 2024, using Torchwood, Pumpkinhead / Jack O' Lantern.
Disclaimer: Sadly, I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Set in my Through Time and Space ‘verse.
Previous Part
The following morning, as promised, the sketches and reports were delivered to Jack and Ianto’s door, the TARDIS having chosen to resemble, at least from the outside, a modest house on the outskirts of the settlement. Instead of her favourite tree form, she’d thought it prudent not to blend in too well with her surroundings, as there were a number of large trees being felled near the town and she didn’t want anyone trying to chop her down by mistake.
Over breakfast, Jack and Ianto read through everything they’d been given, then turned their attention to the pictures.
“Okay,” Jack said, sitting back in his chair in the comfortable console room, where they spent most of their time when they were on a planet. “That is not normal.”
“No, it’s not,” Ianto agreed, picking up one of the sketches for a closer look. “It’s very well drawn, whoever sketched it has, or had, a good eye for detail, but if this is an accurate representation of Harvester, it’s one of the most bizarre lifeforms we’ve ever come across.”
“Evolution can result in some very strange beings, but this one definitely takes the cake. If it’s native to this planet, then I’ll eat my hat.”
“You don’t wear a hat,” Ianto said, amused. “And you’re not eating my hat; that’s an important part of Des Llewellyn’s wardrobe. If you want to eat a hat, you’ll have to buy one.” Throughout the exchange, he hadn’t taken his eyes off the picture he was looking at.
“Maybe I’ll eat a metaphorical hat.” Jack frowned. “I guess it could be a shapeshifter.”
“The metaphorical hat?”
“No, our mystery monster. Some species can take any form they choose, so it might have picked this form to appear more menacing to the settlers.”
“That’s a possibility. There are plenty of shapeshifting species in the universe, it’s a safe bet we haven’t encountered all of them yet.” Ianto pulled another picture towards him, comparing the two. “And menacing is a good description. A monster made up entirely of something they grow in their fields, an animated pile of pumpkins and gourds with evil faces…” Ianto shook his head. “That’s something right out of a Halloween nightmare.”
“Evil faces with sharp teeth.” Jack picked up another of the sketches. “Ten of them, if the artist wasn’t given to embellishment, and this is only a front view. I wonder how many more there might be on its back.”
“Not sure I want to know. According to one of the reports I read, Harvester stalked through the fields tearing up crops with its clawed hand and stuffing everything into its mouths. Plural. Its other hand tore up vegetables with its teeth and swallowed them whole.”
“That would be an alarming sight, alright.”
“Mm.” Ianto glanced up at his husband. “Not something you really want to meet on a dark night; packs of Weevils were bad enough. And look at the size of it! If the background is to scale, it has to be at least fifteen feet tall.”
“That might be to our advantage. Bigger they are, harder they fall.”
“What I want to know is, where does it put everything it eats? If the reports are to be believed, and we have no reason to think the locals haven’t been scrupulously honest in their accounts of events, it consumed all the crops from four farms on its last visit, didn’t leave so much as a stray grain of corn.”
“Perhaps,” said the TARDIS, joining the conversation, “like myself, it is bigger on the inside.”
“Ohhhh,” Ianto’s eyes went wide. “Now that’s a scary thought!”
“It is also claimed that it drains the life force from every living creature it encounters,” the TARDIS added. “Is that not more to be feared than its ability to consume such large quantities of raw produce?”
Ianto nodded. “You have a point. Then again, Jack and I have considerably more life energy than your average person, or herd animal.”
“Indeed, and it is continuously replenished, but even so, I should imagine being drained would not be a pleasant experience, and it could take you considerable time to revive, perhaps even days.”
“That’s definitely something we should take into account when we tackle this thing.” Jack looked thoughtful. “I think we’ll need to wait until it pops up on a farm, then see if we can scan it from a safe distance, try to find out exactly what it is, and whether it has any weaknesses we can detect. If we have to, we can try to overload it with our life energy…”
“Like you did with Abaddon?”
“Yes. With two of us, it would be double the dose, and if I was too much for a demon several hundred feet tall, a pumpkin monster won’t stand a chance.”
“You hope.”
“I hope.” Jack looked across the table at his husband. “We’ll keep that as our last resort though. Hopefully, we can find a better way of dealing with Harvester, preferably something involving a lot of firepower, so we won’t have to get near it.” He stood up. “In the meantime, I have the native wildlife to investigate. Maybe I’ll find some answers there.” Taking his coat from the coat rack, he shrugged into it. “Care to join me?”
Ianto shook his head. “Maybe later. First, I want to see if I can talk to a few people who were around the last time Harvester came. Perhaps there might be details not in the official reports, things they didn’t consider worth mentioning. I’ll catch up to you later.”
OoOoOoO
Studying the corn grubs turned out to be more of a problem than Jack had been expecting, considering the number of creatures reported to be ravaging the settlers’ crops. Although word was passed around from farm to farm of their guests’ interest in the creatures, the only specimens to be found were a couple that had already been exterminated. Jack accepted the dead grubs anyway, brushing aside apologies as unnecessary, explaining that he could still learn a fair amount about them from the bodies. Perhaps he would have a better chance of acquiring live specimens once the sun set and the grubs emerged from their hiding places to continue feeding, so he'd try again then.
What Jack discovered upon examining the small corpses proved both enlightening and concerning. For a start, they were without a doubt native to the planet, according to the tests he ran in the TARDIS’ lab. More important was the face that despite their small size, and their curious lifecycle, which was based on observation of the creatures only during those times when they ventured above ground, there was evidence that they might well be sentient. Each grub had a pair of forelimbs that ended in hands with opposable thumbs, giving them the ability to grasp grain stems, and climb to gorge themselves on the ripening grain.
With only a few days before the corn grubs would retreat to the safety of their underground burrows, where they would remain until the following summer, Jack and Ianto were fast running out of time to learn more about them, so later that afternoon Tanisa introduced the two men to a farmer who had spent the past few years studying the corn grubs as a sort of hobby. He was currently experimenting with protecting his crops from the grubs’ depredations by means of pumpkin-headed mannequins.
“They fear the pumpkin heads,” Garreg Nucambe explained. “As they fear Harvester. I have tried planting pumpkins and squash amongst my grain crops, which did reduce my losses, to an extent, but such mixed planting hampers the harvesting of the grain. This season, I have achieved some success with carved pumpkins on poles, although they work best if there is a body beneath. Back on earth, it is written that our ancestors, centuries ago, used similar mannequins to protect their crops from thieving birds.”
Ianto nodded. “Scarecrows. Farmers would stuff an old suit of clothes with straw, perhaps with a sack of straw or a carved turnip for a head, and as the scarecrow flapped in the wind, it was supposed to startle the birds. Crows proved too smart though. They started using the scarecrows as convenient perches. Some of the birds were frightened off, fooled into thinking the scarecrows were people guarding the crops, but in the end, it wasn’t as effective as farmers might have hoped. The birds simply grew accustomed to the presence of the scarecrows and learned to ignore them.”
“Still, the grubs greatly fear Harvester, and so fear the pumpkins because of their resemblance to him. They stay away from the edges of grain fields that border fields of pumpkins and squash. My… scarecrows have helped to protect my crops this year; in the fields where I placed the mannequins, I have lost considerably less grain to the corn grubs than in previous years.”
“Interesting.” Jack grinned. “Maybe I could harness the power of the humble pumpkin to round up a couple of living grubs. All I’d need is a suitable outfit and a big enough pumpkin. I could go out into the fields after dark and pretend to be one of Garreg’s scarecrows come to life, I’d like to see how the grubs would react to that.”
Ianto rolled his eyes. “You just want an excuse to play dress up.”
“Nothing wrong with having a bit of fun, is there? Besides, I’m not planning on sticking my head inside a real pumpkin, that would be a bit sticky. I’m sure our TARDIS could produce a reasonably realistic pumpkin mask.”
‘I believe that can be accomplished,’ the TARDIS replied, inside Jack’s head. ‘I shall start work on your disguise right away.’
“Aside from the mask, all I’ll need are some shabby overalls, work boots, and maybe a scythe…”
“A scythe?” Ianto raised an eyebrow.
“For dramatic effect, not to do any harvesting.”
“I should think not. You don’t know the first thing about using a scythe, you’d probably take both your legs off with your first swing if you tried.”
“Thanks for the vote of no confidence,” Jack huffed. “It doesn’t need to be sharp or anything, it just needs to look good. Plastic would be fine, just as long as the look is authentic. Oh, and I’ll need a lantern. It’ll be dark in the fields, so I’ll want to see where I’m going.”
“Of course,” Ianto drawled. “Don’t want you tripping over your scythe.”
“You could at least try to be supportive,” Jack grumbled. “This will work, you’ll see.”
“Against the corn grubs? Yes, maybe, but Harvester is going to be another matter entirely. This isn’t all about fun and games, Jack.”
“I’m well aware of that. I just think the grubs might provide us with some useful information. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
“Can’t hurt, I suppose. Fine, go play dress-up if that’s what you want.”
“Oh, I intend to.”
OoOoOoO
That night, Jack got dressed in his costume, and Ianto helped him put the lightweight fake pumpkin on over his head. Their TARDIS had done an amazing job with it, modelling it after the images of Jack O’ Lanterns she found in the minds of her two companions, and adding an inorganic luminescent coating so that the eyes and mouth glowed eerily, as if they were lit from within. The lamp that Jack was to carry resembled an old-fashioned oil lamp, but was treated with the same luminescent coating, providing a bright golden glow to light Jack’s way without any danger to the crops from fire, should it get dropped for any reason. A bandana tied around Jack’s neck hid the gap between the pumpkin mask and Jack’s neck, and with the lamp in one hand and the tall, sickle-bladed scythe in the other, he looked suitably creepy.
“Wish I’d had a costume like this for Halloween back on earth,” Jack said, his voice echoing a bit inside the mask.
“It is quite impressive,” Ianto agreed. “Are you sure you can walk in it without tripping though? I wouldn’t think the visibility would be all that good through the eyeholes.”
“It’s not, that’s why I’m looking through the mouth, not the eyes. It’s not bad as long as I tilt my head forwards when I’m walking.” Jack rolled his shoulders inside the scruffy set of overalls he was wearing. “Right, let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
“I’m ready whenever you are. Just try not to scare the locals.”
“Aw, but that’s half the fun!” Ianto could hear the pout even though he couldn’t see it.
“We’re supposed to be helping these people, not giving half of them a heart attack. Save your creepy, threatening behaviour for the grubs. I’ll walk with you to the edge of town, but when we get there, you’d better go into the fields by yourself. It’s not going to be a very convincing performance if you have a human escort.”
“We should have asked our TARDIS to make you a costume too.”
Ianto shook his head. “No thanks. One pumpkin-head is quite enough. Two would be overkill.”
The townsfolk had already been told what Jack would be doing. Gossip spread fast in the small settlement. Very little happened there beyond the regular routines of daily life, and everyone knew everybody else’s business, so anything out of the ordinary was bound to draw interest. Many people came out of their homes and businesses to watch Ianto and Pumpkin Jack pass by, and excited children ran along beside them until they reached the last few houses, crowding together there to wait and watch for the pumpkin man to return. They were too young to have been affected by Harvester’s last visit, all of them having been born since then, so despite knowing the tales of Harvester, Jack in his outfit was a curiosity rather than something to be feared.
Ianto walked on a little further with his lover before stopping. “Right, this is as far as I’m going. Good luck. And Jack? Please try to be careful.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’d better be. I’d rather not have to mount a rescue mission.”
“Have some faith! I know what I’m doing.”
“That’s debatable. Okay, go put the fear of Pumpkinkind into the grubs, but don’t expect too much from them. Just because they have hands doesn’t necessarily mean they’re any closer to sentience than your average marmoset.”
“Duly noted. The size of their brains would suggest otherwise though.” Adjusting his grip on his wickedly sharp-looking scythe, the blade of which was actually made from a soft, rubbery material, Jack strode out into the darkness, beyond the reach of the small town’s lights. Lantern held high to light his way, he soon disappeared from Ianto’s sight.
With a sigh, Ianto sat down on a boundary marker to wait. Not that he was worried about his husband, there was really no reason to be since Jack was immortal and the planet didn’t have any large carnivorous predators. The worst that could happen was that he might trip on something and break his own neck, and if that happened, their TARDIS would alert Ianto. He just hoped Harvester didn’t decide to show up early…
TBC in Part 4
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack, OCs.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2544
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Judging by the pictures, Harvester is like no other creature Jack and Ianto have encountered. The question remains, is it native to Bounteous, or not?
Written For: spook_me 2024, using Torchwood, Pumpkinhead / Jack O' Lantern.
Disclaimer: Sadly, I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Set in my Through Time and Space ‘verse.
Previous Part
The following morning, as promised, the sketches and reports were delivered to Jack and Ianto’s door, the TARDIS having chosen to resemble, at least from the outside, a modest house on the outskirts of the settlement. Instead of her favourite tree form, she’d thought it prudent not to blend in too well with her surroundings, as there were a number of large trees being felled near the town and she didn’t want anyone trying to chop her down by mistake.
Over breakfast, Jack and Ianto read through everything they’d been given, then turned their attention to the pictures.
“Okay,” Jack said, sitting back in his chair in the comfortable console room, where they spent most of their time when they were on a planet. “That is not normal.”
“No, it’s not,” Ianto agreed, picking up one of the sketches for a closer look. “It’s very well drawn, whoever sketched it has, or had, a good eye for detail, but if this is an accurate representation of Harvester, it’s one of the most bizarre lifeforms we’ve ever come across.”
“Evolution can result in some very strange beings, but this one definitely takes the cake. If it’s native to this planet, then I’ll eat my hat.”
“You don’t wear a hat,” Ianto said, amused. “And you’re not eating my hat; that’s an important part of Des Llewellyn’s wardrobe. If you want to eat a hat, you’ll have to buy one.” Throughout the exchange, he hadn’t taken his eyes off the picture he was looking at.
“Maybe I’ll eat a metaphorical hat.” Jack frowned. “I guess it could be a shapeshifter.”
“The metaphorical hat?”
“No, our mystery monster. Some species can take any form they choose, so it might have picked this form to appear more menacing to the settlers.”
“That’s a possibility. There are plenty of shapeshifting species in the universe, it’s a safe bet we haven’t encountered all of them yet.” Ianto pulled another picture towards him, comparing the two. “And menacing is a good description. A monster made up entirely of something they grow in their fields, an animated pile of pumpkins and gourds with evil faces…” Ianto shook his head. “That’s something right out of a Halloween nightmare.”
“Evil faces with sharp teeth.” Jack picked up another of the sketches. “Ten of them, if the artist wasn’t given to embellishment, and this is only a front view. I wonder how many more there might be on its back.”
“Not sure I want to know. According to one of the reports I read, Harvester stalked through the fields tearing up crops with its clawed hand and stuffing everything into its mouths. Plural. Its other hand tore up vegetables with its teeth and swallowed them whole.”
“That would be an alarming sight, alright.”
“Mm.” Ianto glanced up at his husband. “Not something you really want to meet on a dark night; packs of Weevils were bad enough. And look at the size of it! If the background is to scale, it has to be at least fifteen feet tall.”
“That might be to our advantage. Bigger they are, harder they fall.”
“What I want to know is, where does it put everything it eats? If the reports are to be believed, and we have no reason to think the locals haven’t been scrupulously honest in their accounts of events, it consumed all the crops from four farms on its last visit, didn’t leave so much as a stray grain of corn.”
“Perhaps,” said the TARDIS, joining the conversation, “like myself, it is bigger on the inside.”
“Ohhhh,” Ianto’s eyes went wide. “Now that’s a scary thought!”
“It is also claimed that it drains the life force from every living creature it encounters,” the TARDIS added. “Is that not more to be feared than its ability to consume such large quantities of raw produce?”
Ianto nodded. “You have a point. Then again, Jack and I have considerably more life energy than your average person, or herd animal.”
“Indeed, and it is continuously replenished, but even so, I should imagine being drained would not be a pleasant experience, and it could take you considerable time to revive, perhaps even days.”
“That’s definitely something we should take into account when we tackle this thing.” Jack looked thoughtful. “I think we’ll need to wait until it pops up on a farm, then see if we can scan it from a safe distance, try to find out exactly what it is, and whether it has any weaknesses we can detect. If we have to, we can try to overload it with our life energy…”
“Like you did with Abaddon?”
“Yes. With two of us, it would be double the dose, and if I was too much for a demon several hundred feet tall, a pumpkin monster won’t stand a chance.”
“You hope.”
“I hope.” Jack looked across the table at his husband. “We’ll keep that as our last resort though. Hopefully, we can find a better way of dealing with Harvester, preferably something involving a lot of firepower, so we won’t have to get near it.” He stood up. “In the meantime, I have the native wildlife to investigate. Maybe I’ll find some answers there.” Taking his coat from the coat rack, he shrugged into it. “Care to join me?”
Ianto shook his head. “Maybe later. First, I want to see if I can talk to a few people who were around the last time Harvester came. Perhaps there might be details not in the official reports, things they didn’t consider worth mentioning. I’ll catch up to you later.”
OoOoOoO
Studying the corn grubs turned out to be more of a problem than Jack had been expecting, considering the number of creatures reported to be ravaging the settlers’ crops. Although word was passed around from farm to farm of their guests’ interest in the creatures, the only specimens to be found were a couple that had already been exterminated. Jack accepted the dead grubs anyway, brushing aside apologies as unnecessary, explaining that he could still learn a fair amount about them from the bodies. Perhaps he would have a better chance of acquiring live specimens once the sun set and the grubs emerged from their hiding places to continue feeding, so he'd try again then.
What Jack discovered upon examining the small corpses proved both enlightening and concerning. For a start, they were without a doubt native to the planet, according to the tests he ran in the TARDIS’ lab. More important was the face that despite their small size, and their curious lifecycle, which was based on observation of the creatures only during those times when they ventured above ground, there was evidence that they might well be sentient. Each grub had a pair of forelimbs that ended in hands with opposable thumbs, giving them the ability to grasp grain stems, and climb to gorge themselves on the ripening grain.
With only a few days before the corn grubs would retreat to the safety of their underground burrows, where they would remain until the following summer, Jack and Ianto were fast running out of time to learn more about them, so later that afternoon Tanisa introduced the two men to a farmer who had spent the past few years studying the corn grubs as a sort of hobby. He was currently experimenting with protecting his crops from the grubs’ depredations by means of pumpkin-headed mannequins.
“They fear the pumpkin heads,” Garreg Nucambe explained. “As they fear Harvester. I have tried planting pumpkins and squash amongst my grain crops, which did reduce my losses, to an extent, but such mixed planting hampers the harvesting of the grain. This season, I have achieved some success with carved pumpkins on poles, although they work best if there is a body beneath. Back on earth, it is written that our ancestors, centuries ago, used similar mannequins to protect their crops from thieving birds.”
Ianto nodded. “Scarecrows. Farmers would stuff an old suit of clothes with straw, perhaps with a sack of straw or a carved turnip for a head, and as the scarecrow flapped in the wind, it was supposed to startle the birds. Crows proved too smart though. They started using the scarecrows as convenient perches. Some of the birds were frightened off, fooled into thinking the scarecrows were people guarding the crops, but in the end, it wasn’t as effective as farmers might have hoped. The birds simply grew accustomed to the presence of the scarecrows and learned to ignore them.”
“Still, the grubs greatly fear Harvester, and so fear the pumpkins because of their resemblance to him. They stay away from the edges of grain fields that border fields of pumpkins and squash. My… scarecrows have helped to protect my crops this year; in the fields where I placed the mannequins, I have lost considerably less grain to the corn grubs than in previous years.”
“Interesting.” Jack grinned. “Maybe I could harness the power of the humble pumpkin to round up a couple of living grubs. All I’d need is a suitable outfit and a big enough pumpkin. I could go out into the fields after dark and pretend to be one of Garreg’s scarecrows come to life, I’d like to see how the grubs would react to that.”
Ianto rolled his eyes. “You just want an excuse to play dress up.”
“Nothing wrong with having a bit of fun, is there? Besides, I’m not planning on sticking my head inside a real pumpkin, that would be a bit sticky. I’m sure our TARDIS could produce a reasonably realistic pumpkin mask.”
‘I believe that can be accomplished,’ the TARDIS replied, inside Jack’s head. ‘I shall start work on your disguise right away.’
“Aside from the mask, all I’ll need are some shabby overalls, work boots, and maybe a scythe…”
“A scythe?” Ianto raised an eyebrow.
“For dramatic effect, not to do any harvesting.”
“I should think not. You don’t know the first thing about using a scythe, you’d probably take both your legs off with your first swing if you tried.”
“Thanks for the vote of no confidence,” Jack huffed. “It doesn’t need to be sharp or anything, it just needs to look good. Plastic would be fine, just as long as the look is authentic. Oh, and I’ll need a lantern. It’ll be dark in the fields, so I’ll want to see where I’m going.”
“Of course,” Ianto drawled. “Don’t want you tripping over your scythe.”
“You could at least try to be supportive,” Jack grumbled. “This will work, you’ll see.”
“Against the corn grubs? Yes, maybe, but Harvester is going to be another matter entirely. This isn’t all about fun and games, Jack.”
“I’m well aware of that. I just think the grubs might provide us with some useful information. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
“Can’t hurt, I suppose. Fine, go play dress-up if that’s what you want.”
“Oh, I intend to.”
OoOoOoO
That night, Jack got dressed in his costume, and Ianto helped him put the lightweight fake pumpkin on over his head. Their TARDIS had done an amazing job with it, modelling it after the images of Jack O’ Lanterns she found in the minds of her two companions, and adding an inorganic luminescent coating so that the eyes and mouth glowed eerily, as if they were lit from within. The lamp that Jack was to carry resembled an old-fashioned oil lamp, but was treated with the same luminescent coating, providing a bright golden glow to light Jack’s way without any danger to the crops from fire, should it get dropped for any reason. A bandana tied around Jack’s neck hid the gap between the pumpkin mask and Jack’s neck, and with the lamp in one hand and the tall, sickle-bladed scythe in the other, he looked suitably creepy.
“Wish I’d had a costume like this for Halloween back on earth,” Jack said, his voice echoing a bit inside the mask.
“It is quite impressive,” Ianto agreed. “Are you sure you can walk in it without tripping though? I wouldn’t think the visibility would be all that good through the eyeholes.”
“It’s not, that’s why I’m looking through the mouth, not the eyes. It’s not bad as long as I tilt my head forwards when I’m walking.” Jack rolled his shoulders inside the scruffy set of overalls he was wearing. “Right, let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
“I’m ready whenever you are. Just try not to scare the locals.”
“Aw, but that’s half the fun!” Ianto could hear the pout even though he couldn’t see it.
“We’re supposed to be helping these people, not giving half of them a heart attack. Save your creepy, threatening behaviour for the grubs. I’ll walk with you to the edge of town, but when we get there, you’d better go into the fields by yourself. It’s not going to be a very convincing performance if you have a human escort.”
“We should have asked our TARDIS to make you a costume too.”
Ianto shook his head. “No thanks. One pumpkin-head is quite enough. Two would be overkill.”
The townsfolk had already been told what Jack would be doing. Gossip spread fast in the small settlement. Very little happened there beyond the regular routines of daily life, and everyone knew everybody else’s business, so anything out of the ordinary was bound to draw interest. Many people came out of their homes and businesses to watch Ianto and Pumpkin Jack pass by, and excited children ran along beside them until they reached the last few houses, crowding together there to wait and watch for the pumpkin man to return. They were too young to have been affected by Harvester’s last visit, all of them having been born since then, so despite knowing the tales of Harvester, Jack in his outfit was a curiosity rather than something to be feared.
Ianto walked on a little further with his lover before stopping. “Right, this is as far as I’m going. Good luck. And Jack? Please try to be careful.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’d better be. I’d rather not have to mount a rescue mission.”
“Have some faith! I know what I’m doing.”
“That’s debatable. Okay, go put the fear of Pumpkinkind into the grubs, but don’t expect too much from them. Just because they have hands doesn’t necessarily mean they’re any closer to sentience than your average marmoset.”
“Duly noted. The size of their brains would suggest otherwise though.” Adjusting his grip on his wickedly sharp-looking scythe, the blade of which was actually made from a soft, rubbery material, Jack strode out into the darkness, beyond the reach of the small town’s lights. Lantern held high to light his way, he soon disappeared from Ianto’s sight.
With a sigh, Ianto sat down on a boundary marker to wait. Not that he was worried about his husband, there was really no reason to be since Jack was immortal and the planet didn’t have any large carnivorous predators. The worst that could happen was that he might trip on something and break his own neck, and if that happened, their TARDIS would alert Ianto. He just hoped Harvester didn’t decide to show up early…
TBC in Part 4