Fabulous Animals
Title: Fabulous Animals
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Tosh. Reference to Owen and Gwen.
Warnings: Slightly smutty. Mostly a comic birthday fic (over a year late) for the amazing tanarian.
Disclaimers: I should own Torchwood and its characters. I'd do a damn sight better job of caring for them than those pillocks.
Notes: Clearing out some more old WIPs. This was spawned from a discussion regarding BBC nature programs from childhood and David Attenborough's ability to maintain an excited whisper while showing wild animals bonking on the telly.
The device, when it was retrieved from a rift spike, looked like nothing more than a compact disk except for it's colouring. Jack groaned after reading the alien language and threw it on a desk muttering, "Damn nature programs," while walking away. Ianto and Tosh, waited until Jack's office door slammed shut before taking a careful look at the disk.
With a furrowed brow, Ianto asked quietly, "Think it will work?"
Tosh was turning the disk over in her hands, looking for any defects or damage, "It should. Jack said that fortieth century Play Station could read any media dropped in it's tray." She pulled her glasses off and an evil smirk lit her face, "After work? I'll bring the pizza?"
"I'll make sure my Malteser supply is intact. Jack gets a bit peckish in the early hours." Ianto held his tongue for a moment as a little blush, "Probably didn't need to mention that."
Tosh gave him a huge grin, "No. But it was entertaining."
Apparently the not-really-there consciousness guiding the rift decided to be kind, and Ianto left Jack in his office with a stack of paperwork that even if he only signed each page without reading would take at least three hours. Ianto was well prepared for the sad puppy eyes that Jack tried by saying, "There is a fresh pot of coffee going and the carafe is full. The curry shop will drop your dinner off upstairs at seven."
Jack frowned, "Can't you stick around? Maybe we could go Weevil hunting later?" Jack raised an eyebrow, hoping to get lucky.
Ianto smiled and turned towards the door, "Not tonight, got plans. But you're welcome to come over after you've finished all of your homework." He chuckled to himself as he heard Jack quickly pulling folders down and flipping to signature lines.
Ianto settled on his lumpy sofa, several packets of SmartPrice jaffa cakes piled on the coffee table along with three boxes of Maltesers for Tosh and enough wine to get them through whatever the recording may contain.
Tosh was fiddling with the last cable connecting his television to the futuristic Play Station. The device suddenly lit up as the screen turned blue with several words in a multitude of languages. Tosh stood up smiling, "There. Now, just need to..." She pressed her hand on the glowing top of the device and the text on screen shifted to standard English. They had discovered early on that the device somehow read language information from the end user, who needed to concentrate on a specific language if they knew more than one. Still, it had been amusing to watch Owen and Gwen bicker over the device for the entire week Tosh had been in London since she'd left it operating in Japanese. At the moment, the screen simply said, 'Supply compatible media.'
Tosh pulled the disk from a case and dropped it on the glowing top of the gaming console before sitting on the couch next to Ianto, Maltesers already crunching in her teeth. For a moment, the disk sat inert on the surface, then floated slightly above it and began to spin rapidly. The television screen said, 'Media accepted, selecting appropriate vocal dubbing.' Before the screen flickered and showed a squid-like creature with w-shaped pupils and rapidly shifting skin colours. Waves of orchestral music poured from the speakers as a voice that was a dead-ringer for David Attenborough began speaking in excitedly hushed tones.
"Greetings ladies, gentleman and multi-forms to this very special presentation." The announcer's skin flickered through several patterns and colours, along with some muscle-induced shape changing which the systems translated. "As you all know, the Shadow Proclamation only allows a very small number of xenobiologists permission to visit the primitive worlds under its protection, and we were extremely fortunate to receive permission to study the apex predator on Sol 3, its social units and reproductive patterns."
The image shifted and Ianto dropped the half empty packet of jaffa cakes and they both watched slack-jawed as the screen clearly showed the Torchwood SUV and the team climbing out. "Using our finest technology, we learned much about the social structures and mating habits of these elusive creatures." Ianto could feel his face begin to heat up as the screen showed Tosh carefully placing the imaging devices in a carrier box and the lid slowly close as Jack's coat flashed by.
Ianto groaned and quickly ran into the kitchen, "We're going to need something stronger than chocolate for this..."
Jack had grinned at the small silver orbs as they were collected and left them to Tosh for study, but no one knew they were actually recording all activity within the Hub. If they had, well...
The narrator's voice droned on, "While Sol 3 appears to have several structures above ground, some of the species appear to spend most of their time below ground in tightly bound social groups similar to those seen in hive insects. In this situation, we believe this rogue hive is dominated by a thief queen who cannot, herself, reproduce." The screen showed Jack, coat fluttering around him as he ran around shouting and pointing at the team. The screen stilled on an image of Jack mid turn and then began displaying tiny text as an image overlay appeared. "This thief queen, is interesting as she possesses a binary reproductive system, but lacks self fertilization usually found in binary species."
Tosh began to choke as the chocolate covered malt ball slid into her esophagus. A firm slap from Ianto dislodged the culprit, "Oh God, I always thought he was kidding!" Ianto just gulped down the scotch in his glass and refilled.
"The queen has collected a small colony of worker females which she directs in the protection and guarding of the hive. This female," the screen image shifted to Tosh, "is primarily responsible for guarding the hive from intruders and assists in locating food which is collected by the warrior female and the queen." Tosh was sitting at her computers and a weevil alert sounded, sending Gwen and Jack hurrying out the blast door. The screen locked on Tosh and a display overlay appeared similar to the one shown for Jack. "It is interesting to note that unlike most hive creatures where only the queen is sexually mature, this worker female appears fully capable of reproduction yet has not. We believe the maturation is due to the female being stolen from another hive by our thief queen, but the way reproduction has been quelled is even more surprising."
The video changed to Jack and Gwen returning with a weevil, only for Owen to step forward and take the now cowering creature. The image locked on Owen and the display information changed. "This is the secret as to how the queen keeps her worker females from reproducing. It is a drone, but shows no biological activity. We've never witnessed anything like this before and were quite excited to study how this reanimated corpse functioned." The video followed Owen as he led the weevil down into the holding cells as each weevil they passed crouched and began moaning. "Apparently the drone is responsible for maintaining the live food stocks and the larder in cold storage, making him highly desirable to the worker females." The video jumped to Owen and Tosh sitting on the sofa, her leaning against him as they both read reports.
Tosh grabbed her wine from the coffee table and gulped it down, Ianto already had the bottle in hand to refill the glass. The narrator continued rambling about the feeding habits of the hive and the use of reanimated drones.
Jack leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above him. He'd soldiered through Ianto's tower of paperwork in under two hours- now it was time for a reward!
Ianto had his face buried in a sofa pillow groaning as the narrator continued on while Tosh watched on in shock. "The thief queen appears to both feed on the seed of her chosen drone while apparently storing copious amounts internally for future breeding purposes. And as displayed here, the mating rituals of the pair are varied and colourful."
Both Ianto and Tosh jumped when the door to Ianto's flat flew open and crashed into the wall while quickly followed by a well known voice, "Ianto? Homework's done- can we play headmaster and the naughty schoolboy?"
Ianto's groan was probably be heard in Abergavenny.