Ficlet: Just Another Tuesday

[badly_knitted]

 

Title: Just Another Tuesday

Author: badly_knitted     

Characters: Ianto, Jack, Owen

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers: Nada.

Summary: In Torchwood, even the unusual can become commonplace…

Word Count: 429

Written For: My own prompt ‘Torchwood, team, Torchwood, where dinosaurs are an occupational hazard,’ at fic_promptly.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.

Ianto wasn’t sure why he even bothered to be surprised any more. You’ve seen one dinosaur, you’ve seen them all. The Rift seemed to find it amusing to spit out another one every few months. Jack had even bought a book on the subject, treating it like a spotter’s guide, crowing with delight when they got one he hadn’t seen before. Right now, he was frantically flipping through the pages of said book, trying to identify the Rift’s latest offering, hampered by the fact that the book’s authors had no definite idea of what colours and skin patterns the different species had in reality. This one happened to be sage green and dusky pink with a pale lemon underbelly. Quite pretty really.

“Aha!”

“Find something?” Ianto was trying to get a clear shot at the visitor so he could hit it with a tranquillizer dart.

“See those bony ridges on its head? I think it’s a Dilophosaurus.”

“Let me guess; it’s carnivorous.”

“Oh yeah! Lots of very sharp teeth!”

“Great! How come we never get the vegetarians?”

“We do! We had that Stegosaurus, if you remember. The one you wouldn’t let me keep.”

Ianto couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Three years later and you’re still holding a grudge about that?”

“I liked it!”

“We had nowhere to keep something the size of a double-decker bus!”

“We could’ve put her in the garage.”

“Right, sure, just park the poor creature next to the SUV in a space it wouldn’t even have been able to turn around in. That would have been unforgivably cruel. It’s a good thing we don’t have that problem now that Tosh has enough control over the Rift Manipulator to send them back where they came from.” He spared a brief glance at Jack. “Though, I do still cherish the expression on the Doctor’s face when we asked him to transport a dinosaur back to the late Jurassic.”

“She was beautiful.”

“Yeah, she was,” Ianto agreed, taking careful aim and scoring a bullseye on the Dilophosaurus’s flank. It gave an eerie wail and started to run back towards the trees. Ianto cursed and headed out in pursuit, Jack hot on his heels. He tapped his comms. earpiece as he ran. “Owen, I hit it but it’s heading your way and it looked pretty pissed off!”

“Yeah, I can hear it. Bloody Torchwood, the only place on earth where dinosaurs are an occupational hazard.”

“Just be grateful it’s not Jurassic Park.”

“Ha bloody ha, Teaboy!”

All in all, Ianto considered, it was just another Tuesday in Cardiff.

The End