Red Is My Colour Prompt for Day Eight
Title: Rastafras! A (Soft) Rock Opera in Three Movements
Author: blue_fjords
Pairings/Characters: Jack, Tosh, Ianto, Owen, Gwen, canon pairings
Setting: season two, sometime after “Reset” and before “Fragments”
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Word count: about 1,800
Rating: PG
Summary: Team Fic with jazz hands. For the crack, y’all.
Prompt:
Vivaldi's Four Seasons
"Winter"
Allegro non molto
To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
In the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
To run, stamping one's feet every moment,
Our teeth chattering in the extreme cold
Largo
Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.
Allegro
We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously, for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and, rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home despite the locked and bolted doors...
this is winter, which nonetheless brings its own delights.
Tuesday, 14:00 (Allegro non molto)
The Rastafras, bearing no physical resemblance to any Earth-bound Rastafarian, living or dead, was simply too damned fast.
Owen was in the lead, surprising for a man with no breath to fill his lungs, or blood to pump through his legs. Then again, the Rastafras had extremely sharp claws and an extremely sharp nose. Dead man was his entrée of choice, and Owen was the only one on the menu.
Tosh and Ianto followed next, Ianto’s long fingers firmly grasping Tosh’s small hand. Her other hand clutched her PDA, which was busy flashing “BUSY!” across its screen. Gwen was hot on Tosh’s heels, cursing violently under her breath instead of conserving her air. Jack brought up the rear, turning every now and then to bellow “Rastafras!” at the top of his lungs.
“You’re not really helping, Harkness!” Owen called from the front of the pack.
“But it’s supposed to work!” Jack called back, still with such a note of bewildered dismay that Owen would have felt sorry for him, if he was the type to pity Jack for anything.
“I see a doorway up ahead on the left,” Ianto called suddenly. “Owen, do you see -“
“On it!”
Owen threw himself at the door, but the door shoved back and sent him sprawling, taking out Ianto and Tosh in the process. Gwen barely spared them a glance before running up and turning the handle. The door opened easily and she slipped inside. Jack shooed the other three in ahead of him and slammed the door, locking it behind them.
“Right!” Jack exclaimed while everyone else caught their breath (some more figuratively than literally). “Ianto. You know where we are?”
“Level Nine, Sir,” Ianto replied, hands on his knees. Jack took a moment to appreciate the curve of his back before Owen cleared his throat noisily.
“Right! Now, I think -“
A large thumping on the other side of the door interrupted that thought.
“Shit!” Gwen cursed. “I really wanted to hear Jack’s thought.”
The door shuddered again.
“Ianto, where does this corridor lead?” Jack asked.
“Uh, back-up generator room, 50 yards down.”
“Really?”
“No, I have no idea where it goes. This is Level Nine. Nobody’s been down here in over ten years. Sir.”
Jack gave him a reproachful look as the door came half off its hinges.
“Okay, gang, time to explore!”
They took off again, Jack immediately running headfirst into a brass pipe hanging crookedly from the corridor ceiling. Ianto gave a put-upon sigh, tossed Jack over his shoulder, and they took off again. Some more.
They didn’t get far before rounding a corner and practically falling into the lap of another Rastafras.
“Eek! Rastafras!” Owen shouted, waving his hands wildly. The Rastafras stopped, blinking. Torchwood blinked back. The Rastafras turned and shuffled off with an ambling gait that was still too damned fast.
“Umm . . . everyone else just saw that, right?” Gwen asked, hesitatingly.
“Owen using jazz hands to tame the wild beast?” Jack asked, from his perch upside down over Ianto’s shoulder.
“Well, that, and it worked,” Gwen answered. “But we’ve lost it again. I mean, the second one. Damn, there are two Rastafrases, Rastafrasi - ”
Tosh’s PDA chose that moment to chirrup. “Brilliant! Search results on the Rastafras, plural being Rastafrases, Gwen!”
Tuesday 14:20 (Largo)
“It says here that Rastafrases travel in pairs, one sister and one brother,” Tosh continued, as the others gathered round, this time Jack on his own two feet.
“That’s kind of sweet,” Gwen commented.
“They weren’t trying to eat you,” Owen shot back.
“True,” Tosh went on, as if she had never been interrupted, “the Rastafrases hire themselves out as sort of, well, funeral directors/garbage collectors. After a war, teams of Rastafrases go in and eat the dead.”
“I guess that’s one way of cleaning up,” Ianto mused.
“Yeah, but what about the part about yelling their names at them? I know I was told that at some point,” Jack interrupted, gesturing towards the PDA.
“But was your source reliable?” Ianto queried, raising a brow.
“Not near as reliable as you,” Jack assured him.
Ianto smirked to himself as Owen made gagging noises.
“That’s in here, too,” Tosh was uniquely talented in ignoring her teammates; it came in handy surprisingly often. “Apparently, the females are the dominant of the species. Most people never even come into contact with the males. At any rate, the females react to, well, kind of being cheered on. The males prefer singing.”
There was a silence.
“Are you making this shit up?” Owen asked incredulously.
“Yes, Owen, I really want us to spend the entire afternoon lost in the Hub while the Rastafrases run amok,” Tosh said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Of course I’m not making this up! See?”
She waved the PDA in his face, so he was unable to see anything.
“Right, thanks, Tosh; this is very helpful,” Gwen interjected. “But I still don’t understand why that Rastafras just left us.”
“The sisters won’t leave without their brothers,” Tosh started again, slightly mollified. “We distracted her, but her brother is still out here. We need to get them together.”
“Exactly, Tosh. Great work!” Jack said briskly, rubbing his hands together. “The opening in the Rift they came through - it still an opening?”
Tosh hit another button. “Yes. It’s on Level Six, in a storage room.”
“Okay then! We should split into two groups and lure them back there.” Jack nodded decisively.
“By ‘lure’ you mean ‘singing and dancing’?” Owen asked slowly.
“Of course not, Owen! I mean singing and . . . and . . .” Jack fumbled for the right word, so Ianto supplied it.
“Cheering.”
“Exactly! You have to cheer her on, Owen! You can do that, right? And sing for the young man?” He didn’t wait for Owen’s reply. “Who’s with me?”
Tosh stepped forward immediately. “That’s the ticket, Tosh! We’ll take Owen with us and go left. You two go right,” he directed at Gwen and Ianto, who actually looked a little relieved. “Everyone stay on comms.”
Tuesday 14:35 (Allegro)
Gwen and Ianto moved off at a slow trot, turning right down the corridor. Gwen was quite pleased she had wound up with Ianto. He was the only team member she could count on to not make fun of her (like Jack or Owen) or save the CCTV footage (like Tosh) if she went, well, a bit too far. She had never seen the point of a cheerleader before, but as the female Rastafras appeared again at the end of the corridor, she couldn’t help but get into the spirit of the thing.
“Rastafras!” she shouted, jazz hands extended. “Rastafras!” she began to beat out a rhythm with her foot. One-two-three and four! One-two-three and four! “Rastafras!” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ianto look heavenward, then he too started stamping his foot, waving his jazz hands, and yelling “Rastafras!”
Meanwhile, down the left-hand side of the corridor: “Okay, kids. We need to start singing. Any requests?” Jack gave a little hop to get in front of the other two, then bowed to Tosh with a flourish, gallantly offering his arm.
“Owen has a special place in his heart for a certain musical,” Tosh replied with an answering twinkle, linking her arm through Jack’s.
“Oh, no.” Owen was beginning to regret not cleaving to Tea Boy and Gwen.
“High on a hill stood a lonely goatherd!” Tosh sang with enthusiasm.
“Lay odl lay odl lay hee hoo!” Jack chimed in.
There was a loud moan further down the corridor. It sounded like a constipated cat.
“I don’t think he likes show tunes,” Owen deadpanned, privately grateful.
“Quick, Tosh! We need a duet!” Jack cried as the Rastafras caught a whiff of dead flesh and started towards them.
“Love lift us up where we belong,” Tosh started, and Jack joined in. Owen just hovered behind them, trying not to smell dead.
“Where the eagles cry, on a mountain high!” Jack threw his arm around Tosh’s shoulders as they sang, slowly herding the Rastafras down the corridor towards a staircase.
“Love lift us up where we belong, far from the world we know, up where the clear winds blow!”
“Owen! Come in Owen!” It was Ianto on his comm. He could hear Gwen yelling “Rastafras!” in the background.
“Coming to you loud and clear from 1982,” Owen whispered back. “You have yours? We have ours.”
“Yup. Meet you on Level Six. And remember, once they’re in sight of each other, the female will assert her dominance, and you’ll have to switch to chanting.”
“Looking forward to it,” Owen replied, grimacing at the final “blow.”
Five minutes later, Gwen could hear a rousing rendition of “Love Shack” finishing up with Tosh: “Tin roof!” and Jack: “Rusted!” They were all within sight of the Rift opening as their two visiting aliens finally met back up.
Team Torchwood circled around the two Rastafrases, jazz hands in full bloom, chanting loudly. Jack could read the expressions on their faces as easily as if they spoke in his ear.
Gwen: Rastafras! Rastafras! Rast - oh, I really need to pick up pasta on the way home.
Tosh: This is kind of cool, like we’re in a children’s dance troop. I mean, if I had ever been in a children’s dance troop, I imagine it would feel like this. Rastafras!
Ianto: I had better get laid tonight. Rastafras.
Owen: Rasta-fucking-fras! Don’t even think about saving the CCTV footage of this, Harkness! I will hunt you down and kill you.
The two Rastafrases joined hands, and Jack could have sworn the brother winked at him as they stepped back through the opening. It flared for a moment, and then broke up into thousands of little dust motes.
Jack wasted no time on uncomfortable silences. “So! I think we deserve to close up shop a little early today, yeah?”
Gwen nodded. “Yeah, I need to go to the grocery store.”
“Exactly! I bet Tosh and Owen need to do . . . other stuff out there . . . Ianto, you willing to stay a little late and help me with this paperwork?”
Owen snorted, and muttered, “Subtle, Jack,” but Ianto looked pleased in spite of himself.
And after they made their way back up to the main floor, and Gwen had grabbed her coat and set off in search of pasta, and Tosh had surreptitiously started downloading certain parts of the CCTV footage to her private collection , and Jack had hurried up to his office to make it presentable for paperwork time, Ianto turned to Owen.
“So, Owen? You know when we were on our comms?”
Owen frowned. “Yeah?”
“How did you know that song came out in 1982?”
Author: blue_fjords
Pairings/Characters: Jack, Tosh, Ianto, Owen, Gwen, canon pairings
Setting: season two, sometime after “Reset” and before “Fragments”
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Word count: about 1,800
Rating: PG
Summary: Team Fic with jazz hands. For the crack, y’all.
Prompt:
Vivaldi's Four Seasons
"Winter"
Allegro non molto
To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
In the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
To run, stamping one's feet every moment,
Our teeth chattering in the extreme cold
Largo
Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.
Allegro
We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously, for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and, rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home despite the locked and bolted doors...
this is winter, which nonetheless brings its own delights.
Tuesday, 14:00 (Allegro non molto)
The Rastafras, bearing no physical resemblance to any Earth-bound Rastafarian, living or dead, was simply too damned fast.
Owen was in the lead, surprising for a man with no breath to fill his lungs, or blood to pump through his legs. Then again, the Rastafras had extremely sharp claws and an extremely sharp nose. Dead man was his entrée of choice, and Owen was the only one on the menu.
Tosh and Ianto followed next, Ianto’s long fingers firmly grasping Tosh’s small hand. Her other hand clutched her PDA, which was busy flashing “BUSY!” across its screen. Gwen was hot on Tosh’s heels, cursing violently under her breath instead of conserving her air. Jack brought up the rear, turning every now and then to bellow “Rastafras!” at the top of his lungs.
“You’re not really helping, Harkness!” Owen called from the front of the pack.
“But it’s supposed to work!” Jack called back, still with such a note of bewildered dismay that Owen would have felt sorry for him, if he was the type to pity Jack for anything.
“I see a doorway up ahead on the left,” Ianto called suddenly. “Owen, do you see -“
“On it!”
Owen threw himself at the door, but the door shoved back and sent him sprawling, taking out Ianto and Tosh in the process. Gwen barely spared them a glance before running up and turning the handle. The door opened easily and she slipped inside. Jack shooed the other three in ahead of him and slammed the door, locking it behind them.
“Right!” Jack exclaimed while everyone else caught their breath (some more figuratively than literally). “Ianto. You know where we are?”
“Level Nine, Sir,” Ianto replied, hands on his knees. Jack took a moment to appreciate the curve of his back before Owen cleared his throat noisily.
“Right! Now, I think -“
A large thumping on the other side of the door interrupted that thought.
“Shit!” Gwen cursed. “I really wanted to hear Jack’s thought.”
The door shuddered again.
“Ianto, where does this corridor lead?” Jack asked.
“Uh, back-up generator room, 50 yards down.”
“Really?”
“No, I have no idea where it goes. This is Level Nine. Nobody’s been down here in over ten years. Sir.”
Jack gave him a reproachful look as the door came half off its hinges.
“Okay, gang, time to explore!”
They took off again, Jack immediately running headfirst into a brass pipe hanging crookedly from the corridor ceiling. Ianto gave a put-upon sigh, tossed Jack over his shoulder, and they took off again. Some more.
They didn’t get far before rounding a corner and practically falling into the lap of another Rastafras.
“Eek! Rastafras!” Owen shouted, waving his hands wildly. The Rastafras stopped, blinking. Torchwood blinked back. The Rastafras turned and shuffled off with an ambling gait that was still too damned fast.
“Umm . . . everyone else just saw that, right?” Gwen asked, hesitatingly.
“Owen using jazz hands to tame the wild beast?” Jack asked, from his perch upside down over Ianto’s shoulder.
“Well, that, and it worked,” Gwen answered. “But we’ve lost it again. I mean, the second one. Damn, there are two Rastafrases, Rastafrasi - ”
Tosh’s PDA chose that moment to chirrup. “Brilliant! Search results on the Rastafras, plural being Rastafrases, Gwen!”
Tuesday 14:20 (Largo)
“It says here that Rastafrases travel in pairs, one sister and one brother,” Tosh continued, as the others gathered round, this time Jack on his own two feet.
“That’s kind of sweet,” Gwen commented.
“They weren’t trying to eat you,” Owen shot back.
“True,” Tosh went on, as if she had never been interrupted, “the Rastafrases hire themselves out as sort of, well, funeral directors/garbage collectors. After a war, teams of Rastafrases go in and eat the dead.”
“I guess that’s one way of cleaning up,” Ianto mused.
“Yeah, but what about the part about yelling their names at them? I know I was told that at some point,” Jack interrupted, gesturing towards the PDA.
“But was your source reliable?” Ianto queried, raising a brow.
“Not near as reliable as you,” Jack assured him.
Ianto smirked to himself as Owen made gagging noises.
“That’s in here, too,” Tosh was uniquely talented in ignoring her teammates; it came in handy surprisingly often. “Apparently, the females are the dominant of the species. Most people never even come into contact with the males. At any rate, the females react to, well, kind of being cheered on. The males prefer singing.”
There was a silence.
“Are you making this shit up?” Owen asked incredulously.
“Yes, Owen, I really want us to spend the entire afternoon lost in the Hub while the Rastafrases run amok,” Tosh said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Of course I’m not making this up! See?”
She waved the PDA in his face, so he was unable to see anything.
“Right, thanks, Tosh; this is very helpful,” Gwen interjected. “But I still don’t understand why that Rastafras just left us.”
“The sisters won’t leave without their brothers,” Tosh started again, slightly mollified. “We distracted her, but her brother is still out here. We need to get them together.”
“Exactly, Tosh. Great work!” Jack said briskly, rubbing his hands together. “The opening in the Rift they came through - it still an opening?”
Tosh hit another button. “Yes. It’s on Level Six, in a storage room.”
“Okay then! We should split into two groups and lure them back there.” Jack nodded decisively.
“By ‘lure’ you mean ‘singing and dancing’?” Owen asked slowly.
“Of course not, Owen! I mean singing and . . . and . . .” Jack fumbled for the right word, so Ianto supplied it.
“Cheering.”
“Exactly! You have to cheer her on, Owen! You can do that, right? And sing for the young man?” He didn’t wait for Owen’s reply. “Who’s with me?”
Tosh stepped forward immediately. “That’s the ticket, Tosh! We’ll take Owen with us and go left. You two go right,” he directed at Gwen and Ianto, who actually looked a little relieved. “Everyone stay on comms.”
Tuesday 14:35 (Allegro)
Gwen and Ianto moved off at a slow trot, turning right down the corridor. Gwen was quite pleased she had wound up with Ianto. He was the only team member she could count on to not make fun of her (like Jack or Owen) or save the CCTV footage (like Tosh) if she went, well, a bit too far. She had never seen the point of a cheerleader before, but as the female Rastafras appeared again at the end of the corridor, she couldn’t help but get into the spirit of the thing.
“Rastafras!” she shouted, jazz hands extended. “Rastafras!” she began to beat out a rhythm with her foot. One-two-three and four! One-two-three and four! “Rastafras!” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ianto look heavenward, then he too started stamping his foot, waving his jazz hands, and yelling “Rastafras!”
Meanwhile, down the left-hand side of the corridor: “Okay, kids. We need to start singing. Any requests?” Jack gave a little hop to get in front of the other two, then bowed to Tosh with a flourish, gallantly offering his arm.
“Owen has a special place in his heart for a certain musical,” Tosh replied with an answering twinkle, linking her arm through Jack’s.
“Oh, no.” Owen was beginning to regret not cleaving to Tea Boy and Gwen.
“High on a hill stood a lonely goatherd!” Tosh sang with enthusiasm.
“Lay odl lay odl lay hee hoo!” Jack chimed in.
There was a loud moan further down the corridor. It sounded like a constipated cat.
“I don’t think he likes show tunes,” Owen deadpanned, privately grateful.
“Quick, Tosh! We need a duet!” Jack cried as the Rastafras caught a whiff of dead flesh and started towards them.
“Love lift us up where we belong,” Tosh started, and Jack joined in. Owen just hovered behind them, trying not to smell dead.
“Where the eagles cry, on a mountain high!” Jack threw his arm around Tosh’s shoulders as they sang, slowly herding the Rastafras down the corridor towards a staircase.
“Love lift us up where we belong, far from the world we know, up where the clear winds blow!”
“Owen! Come in Owen!” It was Ianto on his comm. He could hear Gwen yelling “Rastafras!” in the background.
“Coming to you loud and clear from 1982,” Owen whispered back. “You have yours? We have ours.”
“Yup. Meet you on Level Six. And remember, once they’re in sight of each other, the female will assert her dominance, and you’ll have to switch to chanting.”
“Looking forward to it,” Owen replied, grimacing at the final “blow.”
Five minutes later, Gwen could hear a rousing rendition of “Love Shack” finishing up with Tosh: “Tin roof!” and Jack: “Rusted!” They were all within sight of the Rift opening as their two visiting aliens finally met back up.
Team Torchwood circled around the two Rastafrases, jazz hands in full bloom, chanting loudly. Jack could read the expressions on their faces as easily as if they spoke in his ear.
Gwen: Rastafras! Rastafras! Rast - oh, I really need to pick up pasta on the way home.
Tosh: This is kind of cool, like we’re in a children’s dance troop. I mean, if I had ever been in a children’s dance troop, I imagine it would feel like this. Rastafras!
Ianto: I had better get laid tonight. Rastafras.
Owen: Rasta-fucking-fras! Don’t even think about saving the CCTV footage of this, Harkness! I will hunt you down and kill you.
The two Rastafrases joined hands, and Jack could have sworn the brother winked at him as they stepped back through the opening. It flared for a moment, and then broke up into thousands of little dust motes.
Jack wasted no time on uncomfortable silences. “So! I think we deserve to close up shop a little early today, yeah?”
Gwen nodded. “Yeah, I need to go to the grocery store.”
“Exactly! I bet Tosh and Owen need to do . . . other stuff out there . . . Ianto, you willing to stay a little late and help me with this paperwork?”
Owen snorted, and muttered, “Subtle, Jack,” but Ianto looked pleased in spite of himself.
And after they made their way back up to the main floor, and Gwen had grabbed her coat and set off in search of pasta, and Tosh had surreptitiously started downloading certain parts of the CCTV footage to her private collection , and Jack had hurried up to his office to make it presentable for paperwork time, Ianto turned to Owen.
“So, Owen? You know when we were on our comms?”
Owen frowned. “Yeah?”
“How did you know that song came out in 1982?”