Torchwood fic: Kitty Kitty Bang Bang
Written for the bringthehappy Happy Fest.
Title: Kitty Kitty Bang Bang
Author: rustydog
Characters: Torchwood Team
Rating: PG13 for swearing
Spoilers: none
Word count: ~5800
Notes: It was close, but no animals were harmed in the making of this fic. Thanks again to travels_in_time for her wonderful beta help and for the title.
Summary: "Oh, come on, Gwen, it's a little bit funny. Kittens? BOOBY TRAPPED KITTENS!"
Owen finally burst out laughing and seemed likely to tip his chair backwards; Gwen looked like she'd enjoy assisting the chair in its inevitable journey to the floor.
"Owen, you little shit, it's not funny! They're innocent."
"Oh, come on, Gwen, it's a little bit funny. Kittens? BOOBY TRAPPED KITTENS!" Owen was already in high spirits from their recent visit to a house in Grangetown where Tosh had picked up alien technology readings. The tech had been cleared out before he, Jack, and Gwen arrived, but the single, sullen boy they had found guarding the place, one Devon, had been easy enough to lean on. A member of what Devon called his "gang" had discovered a nest of strange devices which would fuse with living organisms to create a rather nasty explosive, house-sized nasty in fact, and it detonated when the creature “got happy.” The gang had learned all this through an accident involving a warehouse rat, an accident which Devon was quite happy to describe in gory detail.
Such an accident, the boy went on, was judged to be the perfect diversion for a criminal action the gang was planning. While he refused to divulge any details of the crime, he did admit to supplying a litter of feral kittens his sister had been feeding in an alley. The kittens had been used as the explosives carriers.
This alone would merely have made Owen roll his eyes at yet another sick fucking thing to add to his mental list of sick fucking things humans were capable of. But having the privilege of helping to restrain Gwen as she hissed like an animal herself and, from where he was standing, attempted to pull off a twelve-year old boy's ear, that had made the whole thing worth it. Cats, he thought. Not all of them have retractable claws and a tail. Back in the conference room, he chuckled to himself again.
There was a slight movement under the conference table from Toshiko's direction. If booby trapped kittens were "a little bit funny," the thwack Owen's head made against the floor was a little bit satisfying, Jack's twitch of a smile said. From his tangle of legs and arms and chair wheels under the table, Owen swore at length.
Something down in the work area beeped loudly. Tosh pushed back her chair and hurried to her workstation. They heard her repeat one of the words Owen had just used. "Jack!" she called back to the group in the conference room. "The devices have been released in the city."
"Where?" Jack was moving toward the door.
"Just checking… oh, you're not going to like this. Looks like right in the middle of the Big Weekend funfair, in the city centre."
Owen, who had been picking himself up and tenderly feeling the back of his head, lost his balance again, undone by more hooting.
"Not just booby trapped kittens. Booby trapped kittens AT A FUN FAIR. Oh god. It's like a bloody Disney movie, all we need is a talking dog detective and a flying car."
"Maybe if Al-Qaida bought Eurodisney and started using alien incendiaries on Space Mountain," Jack observed dryly. "Do I have to remind you about the endorphin trigger and the disproportionately powerful explosive? Pull it together, Owen. We're heading out." He strode out of the room, followed by Gwen.
Ianto was utterly polite in helping Owen extract himself from the chair, but Owen disliked the irony that lurked in that smile.
"No, you don't have to bloody mention the explosive, Jack," he said to the billowing coat that was now moving toward the main lift. Dammit. He wasn't a monster. But kittens. Come on.
*
It was a fine, hot summer day. Jack, Gwen, and Owen strode through the crowd in the civic centre. Back in the cool darkness of the Hub, Toshiko was watching their progress on CCTV. She was also following their positions relative to the alien devices on a modified GPS map.
They had a distance to go before reaching the area where they would need to split up. Toshiko toggled to the feed that currently showed the trio walking toward the camera and pressed a key that caused the video to progress at half-speed. She had invented the function a year ago and occasionally used it to amuse herself. It made the team look very heroic, she thought, especially with the way Jack's coat streamed behind him. Though why he insisted on wearing that coat in August, she didn't understand.
In response to her murmured directions in his headset, Jack was leading the way behind a burger stall, straight through the middle of a group of loitering teenagers who were sharing a bottle of cheap contraband liquor. Their calculated expressions of disinterest cracked for a moment, and Tosh saw Gwen spin around to scold or apologize. As she was turning back to catch up with the team, Gwen smacked into a wooden pole, which turned out to be attached to a harlequin clown on stilts. The clown wobbled but regained his balance, and Gwen called out what was probably an apology over her shoulder as she ran.
By the time Gwen caught up, Jack had stopped the team in a relatively private area between two game stalls whose walls were hung with hundreds of stuffed character prizes. Toshiko could just see Gwen's back and the men's heads and shoulders on the nearest CCTV camera. Toshiko's communicator blipped as Jack tapped his earpiece. "Okay, Tosh, you said we've got four targets--"
"Kittens," she heard Owen correct under his breath, causing the corners of Toshiko's mouth to twitch. She wished Owen's amusement weren't contagious. The situation wasn't funny.
Jack ignored him. "Four potentially explosive targets spread throughout this area, none of them out of bounds of the funfair yet, right?" Tosh confirmed that. "From the map I saw, we know they're in different areas of the civic centre but you're going to have to direct us each more specifically, Tosh. Gwen, you get the one on the east corner--" he nodded in the direction of a lane of attractions whose entrance was marked with a balloon arch. "Owen, check the southeast corner, it looks like there are amusement rides there as well. I'll take the one across the square and the other one beyond that. Catch them and bring them back to the SUV as soon as you can. Everybody got it?" He was already moving out.
Gwen tilted her head, in doubt. "Jack, what do we do with them though? How does an endorphin trigger work?"
Jack spun back to look at her and Owen, who had reluctantly paused as well and was opening his mouth to speak. "No, Owen, you can’t shoot them,” Jack said. "We don't know how to disarm the devices yet, so just keep them safe and alive but not too comfortable. I have a feeling that if they start to purr… well, you're dead, to be blunt."
"So we want live, pissed-off kittens," Tosh heard Owen clarify as he spun to face southeast. "This is getting better and better."
*
Saturday afternoon was apparently one of the busiest times for the funfair. Children were everywhere, some tethered to their parents to keep them from disappearing in the crowd. Food stalls sent smells of hot oil, sausages, and the heavy sweetness of toffee out to mix with mechanical grease, aging fiberglass, and sweat.
Jack breathed deeply as he strode toward the crowded street where his first target was supposed to be. He had been to fair-type events throughout time, all over the universe. Some were staffed by highly skillful slave-class workers, some decorated their midways with brightly colored live heliumfish, a few featured agricultural products and homemade weapons of mass destruction in the same display barns, and one memorable one in 28th century Greater Korea had a popular ride that literally turned you inside out for ten seconds. Strangely enough, almost every fair in the universe offered some version of what the 20th century Americans had called Cornhole, though only one he knew of used Spastic Grubworms to fill the beanbags and offered underwater sex as the prize for a perfect score. Jack was very good at Cornhole.
Following Tosh's instructions to keep going straight, he arrived at the street, which was lined with spectators seven or eight deep, blocking his way. Most of them were moving to the rhythm of joyous, pulsing tribal music coming from a band somewhere nearby. Being taller than most men had its advantages, and he could see over the spectators into the street, where a parade of flamboyantly costumed, birdlike dancers were passing. He hesitated. It was going to be tricky to get across. He could just interrupt the dance to run through, flashing his badge, but why attract attention and disturb these beautiful men and women?
He worked through the crowd, stepped into the street, and borrowed a rainbow-colored headdress from one of the dancers, who didn't seem to mind. Jack deftly mimicked the dancers' motions, moving a little further across the street with each gyration.
What happened next was something that wouldn’t have surprised him even a century ago. For one long moment, he felt transcendent. He must appear ridiculous: his head looked like a heliumfish and his clothes were completely out of place, but nobody cared; there was only the rhythm, the thump thump thump and their bodies, and he might be a drum or he might be swimming or flying or surfing a boulder as it bounded down a mountain, thump thump thump scattering a flock of birds, thump thump matching the heartbeat of a deer running alongside, thump-he missed his footing and stumbled into a spectator, who laughed with delight and accepted the headdress Jack passed along. He was panting. The moment was gone.
Still, as he checked in with Tosh for clarification on the target's location, he felt the aftereffects in a twinge, a memory of the joy he had once felt in the midst of action. Pursuit, being pursued, evading, seducing, marveling-time was, it had all been part of the same adventure. The universe thrummed with life, and he had been part of the rhythm. Now, the bodies swirled past him as he stood still.
He stepped clear of the crowd on the other side of the street and entered an alley. A grubby-looking tortoiseshell kitten was exactly where Tosh had said it would be: cowering between two rubbish bins, making itself as small as possible. It was a little quieter here in the alley, but the music from the parade still reverberated enough to rattle the metal lids on the bins. Jack reached to pick up the kitten, grateful, in this case, for its fearful state.
Strangely, it didn't seem to notice his presence at all until he was gripping its body with his hand. It yowled with surprise, and Jack held it away from himself in case it decided to lash out. The kitten took a couple of seconds to get its bearings, then apparently decided it was all right. It used its ready little claws to catch hold of Jack's sleeve and scrambled up his arm to perch on his shoulder, pressing itself against his neck. He could feel its ribs; its heart was beating like a snare drum, triple time to his.
*
Toshiko's directions led Gwen quickly and conclusively to what turned out to be a hall of mirrors. "THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS," the sign above the entrance proclaimed. Gwen narrowed her eyes. The last time she had been in a hall of mirrors, years ago, she had smoked cannabis on a dare from some mates before entering. The hellish ordeal that ensued had been an effective deterrent to further drug experimentation.
She had a quiet word with the attendant and, with the assistance of her badge, easily convinced him not to let any more people into the hall. He helpfully estimated that there were six people inside already.
She climbed the ramp and stepped through the entrance. The door closed behind her, shutting out most of the carnival noise and leaving her to adjust to the sickly reddish light coming from somewhere near the top of the walls. She was already starting to feel ill before she rounded the first corner and saw infinity reflected before her. She stopped to collect herself and considered contacting Toshiko, but realized that GPS directions would be of little use in a maze unless Tosh could actually see the layout herself.
All right. She closed her eyes for a moment, took several deep breaths, and tried to listen. Fortunately, this was an attraction without a soundtrack other than the occasional recorded laughter of the card soldier or mad hatter one might find around the next corner. Between the tinny orders of "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" Gwen could hear faint voices, one deeper and several that sounded like children. She couldn't hear a cat. She moved on, feeling her way along the glass walls rather than trusting her eyes.
Within three minutes she had run into a nerdy-looking teenager and two identical seven-year-olds who had no business being in a mirror maze alone-she double-checked to make sure she wasn't fooled by a reflection, and yes, there were two of them. She introduced herself quickly, took the children's hands, ordered the older girl to stay with them, and they proceeded. A few turns later, she felt one of the children tugging at her sleeve. "Gwen!" the girl said. "Kitty!"
And there it was. A grey tabby, it almost blended in with its dim surroundings. Gwen held out her arms to stop them all and looked at the kitten.
It was crouched defensively in what might have been a corner, but it was so hard to tell what was a real angle and what was an illusion, Gwen thought. It looked up, blinked at Gwen, and to Gwen's surprise, seemed to visibly relax. It got up, stretched, and, ignoring the humans for now, started to investigate its surroundings with interest. Gwen watched, puzzled and unsure what to do. She kept the children quiet.
Within a few seconds, the kitten was regarding itself in the mirror. In fact, it was regarding at least eight other grey tabby kittens in the mirror. Delighted, it rubbed its body against one of the other kittens, stood and put its paws against the other kitten's paws, and began to purr loudly. The sound reverberated around the small space.
Two seconds later the situation sank in. Shit shit shit, Gwen thought. "OUT!" she turned and commanded the children. "How do we get out of here? Move!" She started to exit one way, but the nerdy girl stopped her. "Not that way!" the girl said smugly. "I know this place like the periodic table." She spun at a right angle and led the group on a route Gwen could have sworn she hadn't taken coming in, but she was in no position to argue. On the way, they met a father and two boys and dragged them along. They were all outside in under a minute.
Gwen herded them all away from the building and scanned the area to make sure there was no one else standing close. Suddenly a loud CRACK came from the building behind her and was followed by another retort and a tremendous sound of shattering glass. She had gone to her knees to shield the twins from the blast, but as the noise stopped, she realized she had felt no explosion.
She sent the children to stand with the attendant and headed back toward the building. The outer walls were intact. Inside, she was startled to realize that although it was darker, she could see from one side of the building to the other, and it was less than ten yards wide. Portions of the mirror halls had fallen in shards. A White Rabbit puppet hung at a weird angle from a wooden partition. Gwen proceeded further inside, treading carefully on the glass. The bomb must have gone off, but apparently the explosive wasn't as powerful as they'd been led to believe. She stopped for a moment to listen; a strange rumbling was coming from somewhere nearby.
Purring. She looked around her, then produced a small torch, clicked it on, and scanned the piles of glass. Partially hidden by one of the piles, pressed against another wooden partition, was the tabby kitten. All of its fur was still standing on end, but otherwise it looked calm.
Gwen boggled and shook her head. "You are one lucky little Cheshire Cat," she told it, making her way toward it and picking it up. Impossible as it seemed, the kitten's purring actually increased in volume. "But how are you still here?" Gwen cradled the kitten in one arm and inspected the back of its neck where Devon had said the device would be embedded. There was a marble-sized lump under the skin and a lip of flat black metallic material protruding from what was probably a small wound, though the fur made it harder to tell. She shone the torch on what she could see of the black object. It looked hollow. Well, Tosh or Owen could find out more. Gwen made her way back to the entrance. The going was easy this time.
Just before she passed through the doorway back into the open, Gwen noticed something in the wood of the door frame. Juggling the kitten and a multi-tool Jack had advised she keep on her, she pried the object from the wood. It resembled a bullet that had been flattened by impact, but matched the material of the object in the kitten's neck.
She tapped her earpiece. "Tosh," she said urgently when she got a response, "tell the others that my target had projectiles, not explosives. Repeat, some of the cats may be bullets, not bombs." The statement gave her a momentary sense of the surreality of the whole situation. She shook her head incredulously.
Toshiko voiced concern. "No, I'm okay," Gwen reassured her, "no one was hurt. Including the kitten," she added with a smile. "I have a feeling it's neutralized now."
She stopped to have another word with the operator about reports of a localized earthquake that had probably shaken the mirrors loose. It took a bit longer to locate the twins' mother, who had apparently fainted when she heard the noise in the hall of mirrors and been carried away by medics without anyone knowing she had children inside. Finally Gwen set off for the SUV, the now-harmless kitten hooked contentedly in the crook of her arm. What a strange day.
*
Jack hadn't had a good reason to detain the boy Devon , which was a shame, because Ianto would have liked to interrogate him further. However, the recording of their encounter with him, a quick search of the house, and some skillful cyberdetection involving bank accounts and police files turned up everything Ianto needed to know about the criminal gang in question. They were people who had no business with a 12-year-old boy, he thought, and made a note to check on that again when all was said and done. A couple of anonymous but information-packed tips to the police about the gang's recent activities and current whereabouts, and Ianto's work was finished for the afternoon.
He nodded to Toshiko on his way out. "Running another errand," he explained, and she nodded back, engrossed in her maps and verbal directions to the team in the field.
*
"You're there," Toshiko's voice said, and Owen halted. "I can see you next to the bumper cars. It's got to be in there."
Owen growled. "In there? As in, in there? How the bloody hell did it get in? There's a two-foot wall."
"The gang are obviously depositing their… packages right where they want them, the bastards. Listen, I've got to go, Jack is having some trouble. Try to be nice, okay, Owen?"
Owen switched off his headpiece and regarded the ride. He had always hated Dodgems. They were too slow, too hard to control, and too easy for drivers to gang up on each other. Owen was sure Jack had somehow given him this assignment on purpose. He pictured the types of shrapnel that would be produced by a bomb in a ride like this, and Jack was right, it wasn't funny. He approached the operator.
"You've got to shut down the ride, mate."
"Shut it down? Who says?"
The Dodgems operator took more pride in his work than was warranted, Owen thought. He flashed his Torchwood I.D.
"Me, look, it's very important."
"Is it, now? And who is… Torchwood?" he asked, inspecting the badge more closely.
"Police special ops, look, there's a kitten out on the floor-"
"Is there? A kitten?" The man laughed, clearly unimpressed by a badge chasing a fluffy animal. "I don't see no bloomin' kitten."
"Believe me, mate, I know it sounds funny, but seriously-"
"No bleedin' way. They paid for six minutes, they get six minutes." The man shook his head and scoffed to himself, "Kitten."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Owen said, leaving the operator and stepping over the wall onto the metal floor. The kitten must have made its way near the center, because Owen couldn't see it now either. It wasn't dead, he assumed, or else, he thought sarcastically, he had missed an explosion while dealing with the idiot manning the controls.
The floor was covered with graphite, and Owen had lost his footing before the first car approached him. On his hands and knees, scooting toward the center of the track in the most undignified way he could imagine, he was bumped soundly from behind and propelled forward onto his face. Scratch that, lying face down on a bumper car track was more undignified than crawling on a bumper car track. Owen cursed loudly, caught the shocked look on the face of a pigtailed girl zipping by him, and decided he didn't care. But he had attracted the attention of several other young drivers, and Owen just had time to raise himself and look a ten-year-old boy in his gleaming eyes before the gold car sped forward and pinned him against a blue car on the other side. Extricating himself, slipping down, and cursing again in almost the same moment, Owen aimed for an area that seemed momentarily clear of cars and practically slithered across it toward the far wall.
From there, finally, he spotted the blasted kitten. Blasted, that's about right, he thought as he held onto the wall like a novice ice skater and pushed himself toward the animal. It was cowering against the wall and crying openmouthed, though the obnoxious music and machinery of the ride drowned out the sound of its mewing. Owen approached it, dodged a car that came spinning around the track seemingly intent on sweeping him off his feet, and reached down slowly.
In all the commotion of the ride, Owen must have seemed like just another part of the chaos, but when the kitten realized he was imminently near, it began to emit a growl that started deep in its tiny chest and grew until it could be easily heard over the bumper cars. It sounded like an approaching aircraft. It was the warning of an animal cornered by a predator, Owen knew.
"Okay, you little…" He swallowed the more satisfying names that came to mind and settled for "unfortunate beast," uttered through clenched teeth. He wasn't sure how to catch such a small cat, especially when it was threatened, and, of course, a dangerous device was embedded in the scruff of its neck. Could you grab its legs? Would the tail come off if you caught it there? In the heat of the moment, he couldn’t decide. He finally gave in to impulse, darted his hand down and palmed the kitten's head. He lifted it, and its body dangled, claws scratching at the air wildly. The girl with the pigtails screamed and was joined by most of the children queued up for the next ride; they must have all witnessed the capture.
"Oh for-" Owen restrained his tongue again, placed the writhing creature on his other palm, let go of its head, and lifted it for the children to see. "It's all right, I'm just-" he attempted a reassuring smile and managed more of a grimace, "-saving it from the Dodgem cars, right?" The kitten was digging its claws into his hand. Using his other hand, he attempted to vault the wall and fell again.
A pair of small hands reached out from across the wall. “I’ll hold him, sir!” squeaked a girl’s voice. A face dominated by round spectacles appeared at the top of the wall.
From the metal floor, Owen sighed. At least the cars had stopped momentarily. “Fine,” he growled, handing off the clinging animal before attempting to right himself again. It was easier with two hands, and he was able to successfully vault the wall this time.
His feet landed with a thick splash, and he looked down to see that he was standing in a puddle of relatively fresh sick. Several children tittered. Owen closed his eyes. Who the hell gets sick on Dodgem cars? he thought. Just perfect. He stepped out of the puddle and looked for the bespectacled girl. She was sitting on the ground, holding the kitten around its middle and letting it lick her nose.
If they start to purr… he heard Jack say, and then time seemed to slow down for the half-second it took Owen to reach the girl and snatch the kitten from her hands. His heart was pounding so hard he could barely hear the girl’s protests as he removed his rucksack and stuffed the kitten inside, ignoring the bite he received to his thumb in the process. How could he be such a clot?
As he loped away, leaving behind his short audience of wide-eyed doubters and mockers, he made sure to jostle the pack extra hard. His tiny passenger would not be allowed to get too comfortable again.
*
As Jack ran toward the ball pit, he peeled the clinging tortoiseshell kitten off the collar of his coat like a burr from a sock and deposited it one of the large pockets in his coat. An attendant who was counting out children at the end of her queue stopped and stared.
"Don’t mind me, sorry!" he bellowed as he passed. Three long strides later, the attendant and the queue of children watched Jack leave the ground, soar through the air over the barrier, and land on his stomach in the far side of the pit. Red, yellow, green and blue hollow plastic balls exploded from the pit in his wake.
The attendant, a stocky older woman with a bulldog demeanor, charged forward. "Here now," she bellowed, "and who do you think you are, Superted?"
With some difficulty and care to avoid his left coat pocket, Jack rolled over onto his back among the balls. He held up a smart black kitten with three white paws. "This, madam," he said cheerfully, trying now to sit up, "was in your ball pit. Imagine if the children had accidentally crushed it. That would be as bad for business as urban legends about pythons, I imagine." He cocked an eyebrow at her.
In reality, of course, Toshiko had spotted the kitten on one of her cameras and warned Jack that it appeared to be having a lot of fun with the balls in the pit.
"And how did that get in there, then?" the attendant retorted, suspicious.
"That's what I'd like to know!" Jack said disarmingly as he scrambled to the edge of the pit and stepped over the net barrier. The kitten seemed to have been shocked out of its playful mood. "These things are all over the place today. I'm going to have a word with the sanitation inspectors when I get home." As he dropped the black kitten into his right pocket, the tortoiseshell poked her head out of the left.
"Well. If I see you around again, I'll have security out!" she called after him as he strode away. "And don't let the creatures suffocate in that ridiculous coat," she added in a normal voice once he had gone.
*
Owen had arrived back at the SUV first. Gwen had joined him fifteen minutes later, quite relaxed, and Jack arrived panting just after her. Before they climbed into the SUV, Jack made them present their kittens for inspection. Gwen's tabby was the only one with a device visible above the skin, though all of the kittens had protrusions on their necks.
"Yup," Jack said as if they had already discussed something, "I saw these once. Livemines." He handed his two kittens to Gwen and moved toward the driver's side of the SUV. Once he was pulling into the street, he continued, "They used to be put in intercepted homing pigeons--well, birds like pigeons anyway, and when the birds arrived at their destinations, the enemy who planted them could be sure of some effective homefront destruction, whether from projectiles like yours, Gwen, or bombs. Not a big deal tactically, but hell on morale."
"That's-" Gwen couldn't seem to find words. She held up the grey tabby in front of her. "But it's not going to happen here, Alice," she said to it, almost cooing. Owen made sarcastic, gagging noises from the back seat.
Gwen had given Jack's kittens to Owen, complaining that they started purring the moment they saw her. So Owen had been tasked with keeping the other three kittens "neutral," as Jack had put it, and he turned out to be brilliant at it. The kittens hated him. His ginger was the wildest of the lot; he had to keep passing it from hand to hand to avoid being bitten.
"That's despicable," Jack finished for Gwen, "I know." Then he was in contact with the Hub. "Tosh, I'm going to need those neuron field clamps you were testing the other day, do you have them?" She must have replied in the affirmative, because he nodded and turned slightly toward Owen. "You're okay with doing delicate surgery on very small patients, aren't you? Good. I just don't know about anesthesia, if they're unconscious their stress levels will be way too low--"
"I've been testing endocrine blockers on the Weevils," Owen said. "Thought of it on the way back to the SUV with this bugger in my pack. If I can work out a small enough dose--it won't be a sure thing, but I think I can manage. Yeah."
Gwen turned around in her seat. "I'm surprised you haven't suggested locking them in a containment unit until they purr themselves to death," she teased. "What happened to the 'bloody Disney movie'?"
He didn't take her bait. "You were right, it wasn't funny," he said quietly and turned his head to stare out the window.
Jack put the Hub on speakerphone. "Tosh, did Ianto find out anything about the gang who did this?" he asked.
"I think so, he's been out twice-Ianto?"
Ianto's voice came over the speaker. "All taken care of, sir. Four men and a woman. The police picked them up ten minutes ago with plans and paraphernalia for carrying out a midday bank robbery."
"Good job, Ianto, good job, Tosh. We'll see you there with our three patients,” Jack told him.
"You're kidding," Gwen said, recoiling. “All this trouble, horrible alien devices, and this was all about a bank robbery?"
"Seems so mundane," Jack agreed.
"Bastards," Owen growled from the back. "I was hoping to lock them up for a bit with some animals that can defend themselves." No one replied, but there was an air of agreement in the SUV, punctuated by a short mrau from Alice.
*
Owen had ordered Jack and Gwen out of the autopsy room. Gwen thought he was a little confident thinking he could handle three patients at once with no assistance, but the procedure did sound fairly simple and safe once the drugs had been administered. Finding a way to strap the little things down had been the difficult part. In the end, Ianto had fashioned something quite clever out of gauze and hemostats. Now Jack and Toshiko were sitting on the couch while Gwen stood nearby, fidgeting with Alice and peeking down into the autopsy room occasionally.
It was only a quarter of an hour later when she saw Owen relax, put down the instrument he'd been using and pick up scissors to cut the kittens free. She sank into the couch between Jack and Tosh. "Well, that's all right," she sighed.
Owen climbed the stairs with an armful of squirming fur, came round to the couch, and deposited the rest of the kittens in Gwen's lap. "There you go," he said. "How good am I? Tell me."
"You're very good, Owen," Toshiko obliged, smiling at him. The black kitten with the socks had tumbled into her lap.
A cough from the landing got their attention. Ianto was standing with his hands clasped behind him. "If you would all care to join me in the conference room..." he gestured. Jack shrugged, perched the tortoiseshell on his shoulder, and headed past Ianto. The others followed his lead, kittens in tow.
Upon entering the conference room, they each stopped and stared for a moment. Jack chuckled. "A themed variation on coffee and biscuits, Ianto?" The table was piled with bags of pink and blue candy floss flanked by plates of brandy snap and toffee apples.
"Oh, there's coffee, sir. I just thought you might not have had time to enjoy the funfair and all of its fine delicacies."
They finally moved in, Gwen wrinkling her nose humorously at Ianto as she passed him. They took seats and began passing the brandy snap as Ianto served coffee. The kittens were allowed to wander freely on the table; cotton floss was opened, though ultimately more floated through the air as sugar confetti and stuck to fur and hair than was consumed. Sugar highs were achieved, and Tosh swore that at one point she heard Owen giggle. Jack suggested Gwen should adopt the grey kitten, and thus the group learned of Rhys's tragic dander allergy. Owen pretended to weep sympathetic tears. Gwen finally admitted that booby trapped kittens were a little bit funny, from a certain point of view. With enough sugar.
Jack had been around the block a few times, and it was generally a pretty nasty block. A day that combined fluffy animals, children, and terrorism could not be expected to end well. But this one had. He caught Ianto's eye across the table, indicated the general revelry with a slight tilt of his head, and nodded his thanks.
***
ETA - Notes:
Cornhole
Superted
A silly cartoon for travels_in_time...
Title: Kitty Kitty Bang Bang
Author: rustydog
Characters: Torchwood Team
Rating: PG13 for swearing
Spoilers: none
Word count: ~5800
Notes: It was close, but no animals were harmed in the making of this fic. Thanks again to travels_in_time for her wonderful beta help and for the title.
Summary: "Oh, come on, Gwen, it's a little bit funny. Kittens? BOOBY TRAPPED KITTENS!"
Owen finally burst out laughing and seemed likely to tip his chair backwards; Gwen looked like she'd enjoy assisting the chair in its inevitable journey to the floor.
"Owen, you little shit, it's not funny! They're innocent."
"Oh, come on, Gwen, it's a little bit funny. Kittens? BOOBY TRAPPED KITTENS!" Owen was already in high spirits from their recent visit to a house in Grangetown where Tosh had picked up alien technology readings. The tech had been cleared out before he, Jack, and Gwen arrived, but the single, sullen boy they had found guarding the place, one Devon, had been easy enough to lean on. A member of what Devon called his "gang" had discovered a nest of strange devices which would fuse with living organisms to create a rather nasty explosive, house-sized nasty in fact, and it detonated when the creature “got happy.” The gang had learned all this through an accident involving a warehouse rat, an accident which Devon was quite happy to describe in gory detail.
Such an accident, the boy went on, was judged to be the perfect diversion for a criminal action the gang was planning. While he refused to divulge any details of the crime, he did admit to supplying a litter of feral kittens his sister had been feeding in an alley. The kittens had been used as the explosives carriers.
This alone would merely have made Owen roll his eyes at yet another sick fucking thing to add to his mental list of sick fucking things humans were capable of. But having the privilege of helping to restrain Gwen as she hissed like an animal herself and, from where he was standing, attempted to pull off a twelve-year old boy's ear, that had made the whole thing worth it. Cats, he thought. Not all of them have retractable claws and a tail. Back in the conference room, he chuckled to himself again.
There was a slight movement under the conference table from Toshiko's direction. If booby trapped kittens were "a little bit funny," the thwack Owen's head made against the floor was a little bit satisfying, Jack's twitch of a smile said. From his tangle of legs and arms and chair wheels under the table, Owen swore at length.
Something down in the work area beeped loudly. Tosh pushed back her chair and hurried to her workstation. They heard her repeat one of the words Owen had just used. "Jack!" she called back to the group in the conference room. "The devices have been released in the city."
"Where?" Jack was moving toward the door.
"Just checking… oh, you're not going to like this. Looks like right in the middle of the Big Weekend funfair, in the city centre."
Owen, who had been picking himself up and tenderly feeling the back of his head, lost his balance again, undone by more hooting.
"Not just booby trapped kittens. Booby trapped kittens AT A FUN FAIR. Oh god. It's like a bloody Disney movie, all we need is a talking dog detective and a flying car."
"Maybe if Al-Qaida bought Eurodisney and started using alien incendiaries on Space Mountain," Jack observed dryly. "Do I have to remind you about the endorphin trigger and the disproportionately powerful explosive? Pull it together, Owen. We're heading out." He strode out of the room, followed by Gwen.
Ianto was utterly polite in helping Owen extract himself from the chair, but Owen disliked the irony that lurked in that smile.
"No, you don't have to bloody mention the explosive, Jack," he said to the billowing coat that was now moving toward the main lift. Dammit. He wasn't a monster. But kittens. Come on.
*
It was a fine, hot summer day. Jack, Gwen, and Owen strode through the crowd in the civic centre. Back in the cool darkness of the Hub, Toshiko was watching their progress on CCTV. She was also following their positions relative to the alien devices on a modified GPS map.
They had a distance to go before reaching the area where they would need to split up. Toshiko toggled to the feed that currently showed the trio walking toward the camera and pressed a key that caused the video to progress at half-speed. She had invented the function a year ago and occasionally used it to amuse herself. It made the team look very heroic, she thought, especially with the way Jack's coat streamed behind him. Though why he insisted on wearing that coat in August, she didn't understand.
In response to her murmured directions in his headset, Jack was leading the way behind a burger stall, straight through the middle of a group of loitering teenagers who were sharing a bottle of cheap contraband liquor. Their calculated expressions of disinterest cracked for a moment, and Tosh saw Gwen spin around to scold or apologize. As she was turning back to catch up with the team, Gwen smacked into a wooden pole, which turned out to be attached to a harlequin clown on stilts. The clown wobbled but regained his balance, and Gwen called out what was probably an apology over her shoulder as she ran.
By the time Gwen caught up, Jack had stopped the team in a relatively private area between two game stalls whose walls were hung with hundreds of stuffed character prizes. Toshiko could just see Gwen's back and the men's heads and shoulders on the nearest CCTV camera. Toshiko's communicator blipped as Jack tapped his earpiece. "Okay, Tosh, you said we've got four targets--"
"Kittens," she heard Owen correct under his breath, causing the corners of Toshiko's mouth to twitch. She wished Owen's amusement weren't contagious. The situation wasn't funny.
Jack ignored him. "Four potentially explosive targets spread throughout this area, none of them out of bounds of the funfair yet, right?" Tosh confirmed that. "From the map I saw, we know they're in different areas of the civic centre but you're going to have to direct us each more specifically, Tosh. Gwen, you get the one on the east corner--" he nodded in the direction of a lane of attractions whose entrance was marked with a balloon arch. "Owen, check the southeast corner, it looks like there are amusement rides there as well. I'll take the one across the square and the other one beyond that. Catch them and bring them back to the SUV as soon as you can. Everybody got it?" He was already moving out.
Gwen tilted her head, in doubt. "Jack, what do we do with them though? How does an endorphin trigger work?"
Jack spun back to look at her and Owen, who had reluctantly paused as well and was opening his mouth to speak. "No, Owen, you can’t shoot them,” Jack said. "We don't know how to disarm the devices yet, so just keep them safe and alive but not too comfortable. I have a feeling that if they start to purr… well, you're dead, to be blunt."
"So we want live, pissed-off kittens," Tosh heard Owen clarify as he spun to face southeast. "This is getting better and better."
*
Saturday afternoon was apparently one of the busiest times for the funfair. Children were everywhere, some tethered to their parents to keep them from disappearing in the crowd. Food stalls sent smells of hot oil, sausages, and the heavy sweetness of toffee out to mix with mechanical grease, aging fiberglass, and sweat.
Jack breathed deeply as he strode toward the crowded street where his first target was supposed to be. He had been to fair-type events throughout time, all over the universe. Some were staffed by highly skillful slave-class workers, some decorated their midways with brightly colored live heliumfish, a few featured agricultural products and homemade weapons of mass destruction in the same display barns, and one memorable one in 28th century Greater Korea had a popular ride that literally turned you inside out for ten seconds. Strangely enough, almost every fair in the universe offered some version of what the 20th century Americans had called Cornhole, though only one he knew of used Spastic Grubworms to fill the beanbags and offered underwater sex as the prize for a perfect score. Jack was very good at Cornhole.
Following Tosh's instructions to keep going straight, he arrived at the street, which was lined with spectators seven or eight deep, blocking his way. Most of them were moving to the rhythm of joyous, pulsing tribal music coming from a band somewhere nearby. Being taller than most men had its advantages, and he could see over the spectators into the street, where a parade of flamboyantly costumed, birdlike dancers were passing. He hesitated. It was going to be tricky to get across. He could just interrupt the dance to run through, flashing his badge, but why attract attention and disturb these beautiful men and women?
He worked through the crowd, stepped into the street, and borrowed a rainbow-colored headdress from one of the dancers, who didn't seem to mind. Jack deftly mimicked the dancers' motions, moving a little further across the street with each gyration.
What happened next was something that wouldn’t have surprised him even a century ago. For one long moment, he felt transcendent. He must appear ridiculous: his head looked like a heliumfish and his clothes were completely out of place, but nobody cared; there was only the rhythm, the thump thump thump and their bodies, and he might be a drum or he might be swimming or flying or surfing a boulder as it bounded down a mountain, thump thump thump scattering a flock of birds, thump thump matching the heartbeat of a deer running alongside, thump-he missed his footing and stumbled into a spectator, who laughed with delight and accepted the headdress Jack passed along. He was panting. The moment was gone.
Still, as he checked in with Tosh for clarification on the target's location, he felt the aftereffects in a twinge, a memory of the joy he had once felt in the midst of action. Pursuit, being pursued, evading, seducing, marveling-time was, it had all been part of the same adventure. The universe thrummed with life, and he had been part of the rhythm. Now, the bodies swirled past him as he stood still.
He stepped clear of the crowd on the other side of the street and entered an alley. A grubby-looking tortoiseshell kitten was exactly where Tosh had said it would be: cowering between two rubbish bins, making itself as small as possible. It was a little quieter here in the alley, but the music from the parade still reverberated enough to rattle the metal lids on the bins. Jack reached to pick up the kitten, grateful, in this case, for its fearful state.
Strangely, it didn't seem to notice his presence at all until he was gripping its body with his hand. It yowled with surprise, and Jack held it away from himself in case it decided to lash out. The kitten took a couple of seconds to get its bearings, then apparently decided it was all right. It used its ready little claws to catch hold of Jack's sleeve and scrambled up his arm to perch on his shoulder, pressing itself against his neck. He could feel its ribs; its heart was beating like a snare drum, triple time to his.
*
Toshiko's directions led Gwen quickly and conclusively to what turned out to be a hall of mirrors. "THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS," the sign above the entrance proclaimed. Gwen narrowed her eyes. The last time she had been in a hall of mirrors, years ago, she had smoked cannabis on a dare from some mates before entering. The hellish ordeal that ensued had been an effective deterrent to further drug experimentation.
She had a quiet word with the attendant and, with the assistance of her badge, easily convinced him not to let any more people into the hall. He helpfully estimated that there were six people inside already.
She climbed the ramp and stepped through the entrance. The door closed behind her, shutting out most of the carnival noise and leaving her to adjust to the sickly reddish light coming from somewhere near the top of the walls. She was already starting to feel ill before she rounded the first corner and saw infinity reflected before her. She stopped to collect herself and considered contacting Toshiko, but realized that GPS directions would be of little use in a maze unless Tosh could actually see the layout herself.
All right. She closed her eyes for a moment, took several deep breaths, and tried to listen. Fortunately, this was an attraction without a soundtrack other than the occasional recorded laughter of the card soldier or mad hatter one might find around the next corner. Between the tinny orders of "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" Gwen could hear faint voices, one deeper and several that sounded like children. She couldn't hear a cat. She moved on, feeling her way along the glass walls rather than trusting her eyes.
Within three minutes she had run into a nerdy-looking teenager and two identical seven-year-olds who had no business being in a mirror maze alone-she double-checked to make sure she wasn't fooled by a reflection, and yes, there were two of them. She introduced herself quickly, took the children's hands, ordered the older girl to stay with them, and they proceeded. A few turns later, she felt one of the children tugging at her sleeve. "Gwen!" the girl said. "Kitty!"
And there it was. A grey tabby, it almost blended in with its dim surroundings. Gwen held out her arms to stop them all and looked at the kitten.
It was crouched defensively in what might have been a corner, but it was so hard to tell what was a real angle and what was an illusion, Gwen thought. It looked up, blinked at Gwen, and to Gwen's surprise, seemed to visibly relax. It got up, stretched, and, ignoring the humans for now, started to investigate its surroundings with interest. Gwen watched, puzzled and unsure what to do. She kept the children quiet.
Within a few seconds, the kitten was regarding itself in the mirror. In fact, it was regarding at least eight other grey tabby kittens in the mirror. Delighted, it rubbed its body against one of the other kittens, stood and put its paws against the other kitten's paws, and began to purr loudly. The sound reverberated around the small space.
Two seconds later the situation sank in. Shit shit shit, Gwen thought. "OUT!" she turned and commanded the children. "How do we get out of here? Move!" She started to exit one way, but the nerdy girl stopped her. "Not that way!" the girl said smugly. "I know this place like the periodic table." She spun at a right angle and led the group on a route Gwen could have sworn she hadn't taken coming in, but she was in no position to argue. On the way, they met a father and two boys and dragged them along. They were all outside in under a minute.
Gwen herded them all away from the building and scanned the area to make sure there was no one else standing close. Suddenly a loud CRACK came from the building behind her and was followed by another retort and a tremendous sound of shattering glass. She had gone to her knees to shield the twins from the blast, but as the noise stopped, she realized she had felt no explosion.
She sent the children to stand with the attendant and headed back toward the building. The outer walls were intact. Inside, she was startled to realize that although it was darker, she could see from one side of the building to the other, and it was less than ten yards wide. Portions of the mirror halls had fallen in shards. A White Rabbit puppet hung at a weird angle from a wooden partition. Gwen proceeded further inside, treading carefully on the glass. The bomb must have gone off, but apparently the explosive wasn't as powerful as they'd been led to believe. She stopped for a moment to listen; a strange rumbling was coming from somewhere nearby.
Purring. She looked around her, then produced a small torch, clicked it on, and scanned the piles of glass. Partially hidden by one of the piles, pressed against another wooden partition, was the tabby kitten. All of its fur was still standing on end, but otherwise it looked calm.
Gwen boggled and shook her head. "You are one lucky little Cheshire Cat," she told it, making her way toward it and picking it up. Impossible as it seemed, the kitten's purring actually increased in volume. "But how are you still here?" Gwen cradled the kitten in one arm and inspected the back of its neck where Devon had said the device would be embedded. There was a marble-sized lump under the skin and a lip of flat black metallic material protruding from what was probably a small wound, though the fur made it harder to tell. She shone the torch on what she could see of the black object. It looked hollow. Well, Tosh or Owen could find out more. Gwen made her way back to the entrance. The going was easy this time.
Just before she passed through the doorway back into the open, Gwen noticed something in the wood of the door frame. Juggling the kitten and a multi-tool Jack had advised she keep on her, she pried the object from the wood. It resembled a bullet that had been flattened by impact, but matched the material of the object in the kitten's neck.
She tapped her earpiece. "Tosh," she said urgently when she got a response, "tell the others that my target had projectiles, not explosives. Repeat, some of the cats may be bullets, not bombs." The statement gave her a momentary sense of the surreality of the whole situation. She shook her head incredulously.
Toshiko voiced concern. "No, I'm okay," Gwen reassured her, "no one was hurt. Including the kitten," she added with a smile. "I have a feeling it's neutralized now."
She stopped to have another word with the operator about reports of a localized earthquake that had probably shaken the mirrors loose. It took a bit longer to locate the twins' mother, who had apparently fainted when she heard the noise in the hall of mirrors and been carried away by medics without anyone knowing she had children inside. Finally Gwen set off for the SUV, the now-harmless kitten hooked contentedly in the crook of her arm. What a strange day.
*
Jack hadn't had a good reason to detain the boy Devon , which was a shame, because Ianto would have liked to interrogate him further. However, the recording of their encounter with him, a quick search of the house, and some skillful cyberdetection involving bank accounts and police files turned up everything Ianto needed to know about the criminal gang in question. They were people who had no business with a 12-year-old boy, he thought, and made a note to check on that again when all was said and done. A couple of anonymous but information-packed tips to the police about the gang's recent activities and current whereabouts, and Ianto's work was finished for the afternoon.
He nodded to Toshiko on his way out. "Running another errand," he explained, and she nodded back, engrossed in her maps and verbal directions to the team in the field.
*
"You're there," Toshiko's voice said, and Owen halted. "I can see you next to the bumper cars. It's got to be in there."
Owen growled. "In there? As in, in there? How the bloody hell did it get in? There's a two-foot wall."
"The gang are obviously depositing their… packages right where they want them, the bastards. Listen, I've got to go, Jack is having some trouble. Try to be nice, okay, Owen?"
Owen switched off his headpiece and regarded the ride. He had always hated Dodgems. They were too slow, too hard to control, and too easy for drivers to gang up on each other. Owen was sure Jack had somehow given him this assignment on purpose. He pictured the types of shrapnel that would be produced by a bomb in a ride like this, and Jack was right, it wasn't funny. He approached the operator.
"You've got to shut down the ride, mate."
"Shut it down? Who says?"
The Dodgems operator took more pride in his work than was warranted, Owen thought. He flashed his Torchwood I.D.
"Me, look, it's very important."
"Is it, now? And who is… Torchwood?" he asked, inspecting the badge more closely.
"Police special ops, look, there's a kitten out on the floor-"
"Is there? A kitten?" The man laughed, clearly unimpressed by a badge chasing a fluffy animal. "I don't see no bloomin' kitten."
"Believe me, mate, I know it sounds funny, but seriously-"
"No bleedin' way. They paid for six minutes, they get six minutes." The man shook his head and scoffed to himself, "Kitten."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Owen said, leaving the operator and stepping over the wall onto the metal floor. The kitten must have made its way near the center, because Owen couldn't see it now either. It wasn't dead, he assumed, or else, he thought sarcastically, he had missed an explosion while dealing with the idiot manning the controls.
The floor was covered with graphite, and Owen had lost his footing before the first car approached him. On his hands and knees, scooting toward the center of the track in the most undignified way he could imagine, he was bumped soundly from behind and propelled forward onto his face. Scratch that, lying face down on a bumper car track was more undignified than crawling on a bumper car track. Owen cursed loudly, caught the shocked look on the face of a pigtailed girl zipping by him, and decided he didn't care. But he had attracted the attention of several other young drivers, and Owen just had time to raise himself and look a ten-year-old boy in his gleaming eyes before the gold car sped forward and pinned him against a blue car on the other side. Extricating himself, slipping down, and cursing again in almost the same moment, Owen aimed for an area that seemed momentarily clear of cars and practically slithered across it toward the far wall.
From there, finally, he spotted the blasted kitten. Blasted, that's about right, he thought as he held onto the wall like a novice ice skater and pushed himself toward the animal. It was cowering against the wall and crying openmouthed, though the obnoxious music and machinery of the ride drowned out the sound of its mewing. Owen approached it, dodged a car that came spinning around the track seemingly intent on sweeping him off his feet, and reached down slowly.
In all the commotion of the ride, Owen must have seemed like just another part of the chaos, but when the kitten realized he was imminently near, it began to emit a growl that started deep in its tiny chest and grew until it could be easily heard over the bumper cars. It sounded like an approaching aircraft. It was the warning of an animal cornered by a predator, Owen knew.
"Okay, you little…" He swallowed the more satisfying names that came to mind and settled for "unfortunate beast," uttered through clenched teeth. He wasn't sure how to catch such a small cat, especially when it was threatened, and, of course, a dangerous device was embedded in the scruff of its neck. Could you grab its legs? Would the tail come off if you caught it there? In the heat of the moment, he couldn’t decide. He finally gave in to impulse, darted his hand down and palmed the kitten's head. He lifted it, and its body dangled, claws scratching at the air wildly. The girl with the pigtails screamed and was joined by most of the children queued up for the next ride; they must have all witnessed the capture.
"Oh for-" Owen restrained his tongue again, placed the writhing creature on his other palm, let go of its head, and lifted it for the children to see. "It's all right, I'm just-" he attempted a reassuring smile and managed more of a grimace, "-saving it from the Dodgem cars, right?" The kitten was digging its claws into his hand. Using his other hand, he attempted to vault the wall and fell again.
A pair of small hands reached out from across the wall. “I’ll hold him, sir!” squeaked a girl’s voice. A face dominated by round spectacles appeared at the top of the wall.
From the metal floor, Owen sighed. At least the cars had stopped momentarily. “Fine,” he growled, handing off the clinging animal before attempting to right himself again. It was easier with two hands, and he was able to successfully vault the wall this time.
His feet landed with a thick splash, and he looked down to see that he was standing in a puddle of relatively fresh sick. Several children tittered. Owen closed his eyes. Who the hell gets sick on Dodgem cars? he thought. Just perfect. He stepped out of the puddle and looked for the bespectacled girl. She was sitting on the ground, holding the kitten around its middle and letting it lick her nose.
If they start to purr… he heard Jack say, and then time seemed to slow down for the half-second it took Owen to reach the girl and snatch the kitten from her hands. His heart was pounding so hard he could barely hear the girl’s protests as he removed his rucksack and stuffed the kitten inside, ignoring the bite he received to his thumb in the process. How could he be such a clot?
As he loped away, leaving behind his short audience of wide-eyed doubters and mockers, he made sure to jostle the pack extra hard. His tiny passenger would not be allowed to get too comfortable again.
*
As Jack ran toward the ball pit, he peeled the clinging tortoiseshell kitten off the collar of his coat like a burr from a sock and deposited it one of the large pockets in his coat. An attendant who was counting out children at the end of her queue stopped and stared.
"Don’t mind me, sorry!" he bellowed as he passed. Three long strides later, the attendant and the queue of children watched Jack leave the ground, soar through the air over the barrier, and land on his stomach in the far side of the pit. Red, yellow, green and blue hollow plastic balls exploded from the pit in his wake.
The attendant, a stocky older woman with a bulldog demeanor, charged forward. "Here now," she bellowed, "and who do you think you are, Superted?"
With some difficulty and care to avoid his left coat pocket, Jack rolled over onto his back among the balls. He held up a smart black kitten with three white paws. "This, madam," he said cheerfully, trying now to sit up, "was in your ball pit. Imagine if the children had accidentally crushed it. That would be as bad for business as urban legends about pythons, I imagine." He cocked an eyebrow at her.
In reality, of course, Toshiko had spotted the kitten on one of her cameras and warned Jack that it appeared to be having a lot of fun with the balls in the pit.
"And how did that get in there, then?" the attendant retorted, suspicious.
"That's what I'd like to know!" Jack said disarmingly as he scrambled to the edge of the pit and stepped over the net barrier. The kitten seemed to have been shocked out of its playful mood. "These things are all over the place today. I'm going to have a word with the sanitation inspectors when I get home." As he dropped the black kitten into his right pocket, the tortoiseshell poked her head out of the left.
"Well. If I see you around again, I'll have security out!" she called after him as he strode away. "And don't let the creatures suffocate in that ridiculous coat," she added in a normal voice once he had gone.
*
Owen had arrived back at the SUV first. Gwen had joined him fifteen minutes later, quite relaxed, and Jack arrived panting just after her. Before they climbed into the SUV, Jack made them present their kittens for inspection. Gwen's tabby was the only one with a device visible above the skin, though all of the kittens had protrusions on their necks.
"Yup," Jack said as if they had already discussed something, "I saw these once. Livemines." He handed his two kittens to Gwen and moved toward the driver's side of the SUV. Once he was pulling into the street, he continued, "They used to be put in intercepted homing pigeons--well, birds like pigeons anyway, and when the birds arrived at their destinations, the enemy who planted them could be sure of some effective homefront destruction, whether from projectiles like yours, Gwen, or bombs. Not a big deal tactically, but hell on morale."
"That's-" Gwen couldn't seem to find words. She held up the grey tabby in front of her. "But it's not going to happen here, Alice," she said to it, almost cooing. Owen made sarcastic, gagging noises from the back seat.
Gwen had given Jack's kittens to Owen, complaining that they started purring the moment they saw her. So Owen had been tasked with keeping the other three kittens "neutral," as Jack had put it, and he turned out to be brilliant at it. The kittens hated him. His ginger was the wildest of the lot; he had to keep passing it from hand to hand to avoid being bitten.
"That's despicable," Jack finished for Gwen, "I know." Then he was in contact with the Hub. "Tosh, I'm going to need those neuron field clamps you were testing the other day, do you have them?" She must have replied in the affirmative, because he nodded and turned slightly toward Owen. "You're okay with doing delicate surgery on very small patients, aren't you? Good. I just don't know about anesthesia, if they're unconscious their stress levels will be way too low--"
"I've been testing endocrine blockers on the Weevils," Owen said. "Thought of it on the way back to the SUV with this bugger in my pack. If I can work out a small enough dose--it won't be a sure thing, but I think I can manage. Yeah."
Gwen turned around in her seat. "I'm surprised you haven't suggested locking them in a containment unit until they purr themselves to death," she teased. "What happened to the 'bloody Disney movie'?"
He didn't take her bait. "You were right, it wasn't funny," he said quietly and turned his head to stare out the window.
Jack put the Hub on speakerphone. "Tosh, did Ianto find out anything about the gang who did this?" he asked.
"I think so, he's been out twice-Ianto?"
Ianto's voice came over the speaker. "All taken care of, sir. Four men and a woman. The police picked them up ten minutes ago with plans and paraphernalia for carrying out a midday bank robbery."
"Good job, Ianto, good job, Tosh. We'll see you there with our three patients,” Jack told him.
"You're kidding," Gwen said, recoiling. “All this trouble, horrible alien devices, and this was all about a bank robbery?"
"Seems so mundane," Jack agreed.
"Bastards," Owen growled from the back. "I was hoping to lock them up for a bit with some animals that can defend themselves." No one replied, but there was an air of agreement in the SUV, punctuated by a short mrau from Alice.
*
Owen had ordered Jack and Gwen out of the autopsy room. Gwen thought he was a little confident thinking he could handle three patients at once with no assistance, but the procedure did sound fairly simple and safe once the drugs had been administered. Finding a way to strap the little things down had been the difficult part. In the end, Ianto had fashioned something quite clever out of gauze and hemostats. Now Jack and Toshiko were sitting on the couch while Gwen stood nearby, fidgeting with Alice and peeking down into the autopsy room occasionally.
It was only a quarter of an hour later when she saw Owen relax, put down the instrument he'd been using and pick up scissors to cut the kittens free. She sank into the couch between Jack and Tosh. "Well, that's all right," she sighed.
Owen climbed the stairs with an armful of squirming fur, came round to the couch, and deposited the rest of the kittens in Gwen's lap. "There you go," he said. "How good am I? Tell me."
"You're very good, Owen," Toshiko obliged, smiling at him. The black kitten with the socks had tumbled into her lap.
A cough from the landing got their attention. Ianto was standing with his hands clasped behind him. "If you would all care to join me in the conference room..." he gestured. Jack shrugged, perched the tortoiseshell on his shoulder, and headed past Ianto. The others followed his lead, kittens in tow.
Upon entering the conference room, they each stopped and stared for a moment. Jack chuckled. "A themed variation on coffee and biscuits, Ianto?" The table was piled with bags of pink and blue candy floss flanked by plates of brandy snap and toffee apples.
"Oh, there's coffee, sir. I just thought you might not have had time to enjoy the funfair and all of its fine delicacies."
They finally moved in, Gwen wrinkling her nose humorously at Ianto as she passed him. They took seats and began passing the brandy snap as Ianto served coffee. The kittens were allowed to wander freely on the table; cotton floss was opened, though ultimately more floated through the air as sugar confetti and stuck to fur and hair than was consumed. Sugar highs were achieved, and Tosh swore that at one point she heard Owen giggle. Jack suggested Gwen should adopt the grey kitten, and thus the group learned of Rhys's tragic dander allergy. Owen pretended to weep sympathetic tears. Gwen finally admitted that booby trapped kittens were a little bit funny, from a certain point of view. With enough sugar.
Jack had been around the block a few times, and it was generally a pretty nasty block. A day that combined fluffy animals, children, and terrorism could not be expected to end well. But this one had. He caught Ianto's eye across the table, indicated the general revelry with a slight tilt of his head, and nodded his thanks.
***
ETA - Notes:
Cornhole
Superted
A silly cartoon for travels_in_time...