Fic: Unusual Weather Conditions
Title: Unusual Weather Conditions
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Tosh, Ianto, Owen, Gwen, Jack
Rating: G
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: The Rift can make weather in Cardiff a bit out of the ordinary.
Word Count: 750
Written For: m_findlow’s prompt ‘Any, any, cloudy with a chance of what???,’ at
fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Being right on the Rift often meant unpredictable weather patterns that tended not to match what was forecast for the rest of the region on any given day. Normal methods of meteorological prediction simply couldn’t cope with the additional contributing factors the Rift flung out at random.
Of course, being Torchwood’s technical genius, Tosh was in the ideal position to come up with a solution, namely Torchwood’s very own weather predicting program, which gave the team a far more accurate way of knowing what weather conditions they might be facing the following day.
“Don’t forget your umbrellas tomorrow,” she called out as the team left for the night. “There’s a ninety-four percent chance of hail. It shouldn’t be bigger than pea-sized, but take extra precautions just in case.”
Sure enough, the next day it hailed out of a clear blue sky. Owen had ignored the warning and got pelted, coming in damp and grumpy.
“I did warn you,” Tosh told him sympathetically.
“The sun was shining! I thought you must’ve got it wrong!”
“Rift weather doesn’t follow the usual rules,” Jack smirked. “You should’ve learned that by now.”
A few days later, Tosh had another warning. “Be careful if you’re going anywhere tonight guys, there’s a ninety-six percent chance of black ice on roads and pavements.”
“Ice in June?” Gwen sounded sceptical.
“Ignore Tosh’s warnings at your own risk,” Ianto said gravely. “The Rift does weird things to the weather at times, in case you haven’t noticed.”
The next morning, Gwen bought Tosh a cupcake. “Thanks, Tosh. If it wasn’t for your warning, Rhys would’ve taken a nasty tumble and he needs to keep fit for the weekend. He’s playing rugby with some friends against their old nemesis. It wouldn’t look good if he had to pull out.”
“Just doing my job,” Tosh assured her new colleague, but she accepted the cupcake anyway. Who wouldn’t?
Things carried on that way, with Tosh occasionally giving advance warning of odd weather conditions, until one day in the middle of August Ianto found her tapping away at her computer with a frown on her face.
“Problems, Tosh?”
“It’s my weather predictor program, I think it must have developed a glitch, because this really can’t be right.”
“What does it say?”
“That tomorrow it’ll be cloudy with an ninety-eight percent chance of squid!”
“Cloudy with a chance of what?”
“Squid.” Tosh sounded apologetic.
“Huh. That’s what I thought you said. Well, in that case, I’m definitely bringing my umbrella,” Ianto replied. “Nothing against squid, mind, but if they’re going to be falling from the sky I think precautions would be wise.”
“You don’t really think it could be right, do you?” Tosh peered up at him over her glasses.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned through working for Torchwood, it’s that nothing is outside the realms of possibility.”
“Good point. Okay, better warn everybody I suppose, just in case it’s right.”
OoOoOoO
The following day, the squid-fall was quite impressive. News crews abounded on the Plas, reporting on the freak shower of tiny cephalopods. Ianto merely fetched some buckets, part-filled them with seawater and started collecting the falling creatures. One of the journalists asked what he was doing.
“I’m going to make sure they get back to where they belong; they’ll get trodden on and die if they’re left here,” he pointed out, inadvertently sealing his fate. Soon all the press were hailing him as the squid-rescuing hero of the hour and his picture was splashed across every paper and news program in the country.
“You’re famous,” Jack teased. “Ianto Jones, patron saint of squid. Everybody will know your name, you’ll probably get sacks of fanmail.”
Not that Ianto cared; he’d be forgotten soon enough, once something more interesting and newsworthy happened. In the meantime, the important thing was to make sure several thousand baby alien squid got sent back home to their own planet.
“Clean-up is part of my job, Sir,” he reminded his boss. “If you’ll recall, you wrote it into my contract after the first time you saw me wielding a mop.”
Jack opened and shut his mouth a few times, but failed to come up with a suitably witty response, leaving Ianto to stroll away with a very satisfied smirk on his face. Jack usually had something to say about everything, so it wasn’t often that Torchwood’s General Support Officer could leave his boss completely speechless, but if there was one thing Ianto relished, it was having the last word.
The End