torchwoodteaboy | [RL WITH SULU]

"I'll make it easier for you and keep my hands in my pockets," Sulu said with a smirk, going so far as to actually shove his hands back in his pockets. "Now, what kind of doom are you leading me towards first, exactly?"

"You're going to meet Janet, the Weevil," Ianto said, as the went down the stairs and rounded the corner of a tunnel. "And probably...well, we don't have a name for it yet, but there's a Hoix a few cells down that would probably be pretty interesting to you as well. As for what a Weevil exactly is, well. You'll see when we get there, but basically, Weevils are big, mildly telepathic pitbull-like humanoids that can digest anything they run into. They generally live in the sewers and keep to themselves, but Janet here likes to attack people, so we keep her locked up. As for Hoix, well, they're kind of uglier versions of weevils, only their only goal in life it seems is to eat anything. Metal, plastic, you, you name it. I had to remove anything in the cell that might've gotten eaten off."

Sulu frowned in thought. Part of him wanted to ask about the capacity for reason, or the population count in the sewers, or any number of questions xenobiology classes had taught him to ask, but he kept them to himself for the time-being. "Any particular reason she likes to go after people? ...And how telepathic are we talking?"

Ianto shrugged. "We're not quite sure. She doesn't seem to have any other differences from other Weevils. Just every once and a while one goes rogue like this, and we have to make sure to take them off the streets. We try to house them here when we can, but most of the time they get a taste for flesh, they're too hard to bring in and we have to put them down. Janet's special, though. She's, well, cooperative. She'll just eat your face off if you get too close."

He led Sulu down another hallway to another staircase. "As for the telepathy, well. They can sense when another Weevil close by is suffering. They've got some sense of emotion from us as well. And, well. It's a bit of a long story, but for the end of things, Owen was sort of the walking dead, and they could recognize that. I think they even revered him. Got to his head, though, called himself 'King of the Weevils'." He stopped outside the door at the bottom of the stairs.

"This is it. You ready?" he asked.

"Sounds more cooperative than some people I've met," Sulu grinned. "And is there something about Torchwood that just makes people want to be monarchs?"

When they reached the door and Ianto asked him that forever worrying, bad-connotations-included question, Sulu just shrugged amicably. "I'm probably not, but that's never stopped me before."

Ianto chuckled. "I don't know. I guess when you spend enough time around Captain Jack Harkness, Himself, a bit of that ego starts to rub off on you as well."

Ianto pulled open the door to the cells and motioned Sulu in after him. The two entered a short, dark, slightly ill-kept hallway. Ianto led them to the first cell on the left, where, from inside the cells, Janet the Weevil crouched and stared out at them.

"Sulu," Ianto said, "meet Janet, our resident giant carnivorous pest. Well, second giant carnivorous pest."

Well. It wasn't unusual to find alien species that looked so different, but Sulu was pretty sure he'd never seen anything like Janet before. The angular arch to the eye sockets was kind of familiar, though...

"Hello, Janet," he said idly, not thinking twice about giving a greeting to a carnivorous, face-eating alien. (When you go to a university where vaguely-humanoid aliens are your professors, it becomes a default reaction to any extraterrestrial life.) "Just so you know, Ianto, I am really resisting leaning in and poking, right now."

"Good," Ianto says, "because she's liable to try and bite your fingers off." As if to prove his point, Janet seems to sniff the air, growling and bearing her teeth. Ianto stands back. He's never seen anyone's reaction to an alien before--it's always Jack showing people around, this whole experience is still pretty new to him. Pretty neat, though, if he said so himself.

"There are tons of them," Ianto explained, "living in the sewers and abandoned buildings and the likes. There are some theories about where they came from and what they are, but...they're a bit hard to believe, really..."

"Yeah, definitely noticing the biting off part." Sulu tilted his head to the side, like that would help him see the Weevil in a new light, the growling registering low on his "bad signs that you should pay attention to" scale.

"So, what's the leading theory? And... what do you do with her? Just leave her here?" Obviously, there wasn't much to do with something that wanted to eat your face, but he felt obliged to ask.

"Well..." Ianto trailed off, feeling a bit silly for even mentioning them. "Some people like to think that they're, well...us. Well, I mean, not us us, but. Humans, somewhere down the line, when we've started reverse evolving. When we're boiled down to our basic emotions, and all we have is rage." Ianto shook himself. "But--... Obviously that theory's a little far-fetched. Like I said, we really have no idea. They just seem to appear out of nowhere all the time, and every single one of them is wearing those leather jump suits," he said, pointing to the jumpsuit Janet was sporting.

"As for what we do with her, well. We keep her fed and housed, but there's really not much more we can do with her. Let her out, she'll eat people. I mean, we could kill her, but," Ianto paused, remembering his days at Torchwood One, "Torchwood doesn't do things like that anymore, not since Jack took over Torchwood operations."

Sulu hummed thoughtfully. "It's not the most insane I've ever heard, really. Probably not right, but still. The jumpsuit thing is kind of weird, though." He glanced briefly at Ianto, "Jack's a good man for putting a stop to that kind of idiocy." Sulu, after all, was kind of a firm believer in alien rights. "There's no way to actually educate them, I guess, right? Or at least get Janet to not go around eating people."

Ianto's eyes lower to the ground. "We really haven't tried trying to educate them. I know it's not the best excuse, but we don't really have the time or the manpower to even attempt it. Not with only the three of us."

Ianto was sorry that he seemed to always turn the conversation in such sour directions. It was hard seeing the brighter side of things when so much of your life was in shadows, he supposed. "We do what we can, but further studies won't really be possible for a while yet."

Sulu shook his head. "It's an understandable issue. Honestly, even with the size of the Enterprise's crew, we wouldn't be able to do something like that properly, either. It's something that would required a dedicated taskforce."

It was kind of a shame, though; this sort of situation wouldn't work in his universe, at all, but here it was the only real option. And, as terrible as it was to think, at least Janet didn't know well enough that she was getting the short end of the stick. He offered Ianto a smile. "From what I know of 21st century entertainment, you probably would be worse off if you let her learn from television programming, so waiting to see if you can get someone that would actually be able to help is probably your best bet."

Ianto smiled slightly back at Sulu, appreciating his attempt to lighten the mood and the fact that he hadn't called Ianto out on being a downer. Ianto generally did feel bad for the creatures down in the cells, but there wasn't a lot that Torcwood could do for them. "Perhaps you're right." He pushed himself off from the wall where he'd been leaning, trying to shake himself of the mood.

"So, that's Janet. She's pretty intelligent, actually, for the things we have down here. Want to meet a Hoix? They'll give you a pretty good opinion of Weevils, comparatively."

"Well," Sulu grinned, winking, "I'm from the future, so of course I'm right." He laughed and waved a hand. "Sure thing. I'm pretty interested in the kinds of aliens you get, especially after seeing her," he gestured to Janet, "Since she's not exactly like most of the species I've seen before."

"Oi," Ianto said, "don't get cocky with me, sir. I'm going to have to start calling you Captain if you go too far."

Ianto led Sulu down the hall a bit, and around the corner to another row of identical cells. Only this time, instead of Janet staring out at them, the as yet unnamed Hoix in an obviously bigger cell. As soon as they approached it, the Hoix lunged at the sturdy plexiglass door, roaring and baring its teeth at them menacingly. "And this," Ianto said, "would be a Hoix."

Edited 2010-03-21 08:53 (UTC)

"Last I checked, the only person who's sat in any sort of captain's chair here is you," Sulu pointed out as they walked, grinning.

Of course, the violent greeting put Sulu pretty immediately on edge, and he was much quicker to keep a safer distance from the thing that obviously kind of wanted to eat him. "Well," he said, after giving the Hoix a once over, "That's more or less what I was expecting. Except for the teeth. Those are a little bigger."

Ianto had grinned at the captain's chair comment. He was still a little surprised that he'd even been allowed to do it, but he wasn't questioning Sulu's judgment, more like praising it.

Ianto stepped closer to Sulu, feeling his tension. If he were Jack, he'd probably have a hand on the other man's shoulder or something to put him at ease, but Ianto wasn't really that much of a physical person. "The glass is pretty much as sturdy as anything see-through can be, but yeah. Staying back might be a wise decision. Hoix aren't known for their intelligence. They just live to eat, and they don't really even care what it is or if its digestible for them or not. We've found a couple here and there that had died from literally biting off more than they could chew."

"That's... intense, to say the least." Sulu, realizing that he was being far too tense in what was supposedly a secure situation - then again, how safe could the 21st century really be? - relaxed his shoulders and crossed his arms. "You don't know much about the origins of Weevils, but - what about these guys? Or do they share more in common than just a sour disposition?"

Ianto sighed. "Nope, don't really know a lot about this one either. Probably know even less about them then we do about the Weevils. See, the Weevils seem to have a community going on underneath the streets of Cardiff, but the Hoix are more solitary creatures. My guess is that they probably just ended up here through the Rift, because really, if there were more of them, we'd know about it. They're not very sneaky about these things."

He shrugged. "We don't know a lot about most of the things we encounter, really. Unless we've got something on record that's the same or similar, and unless Jack doesn't already have some previous knowledge of it, it's an unknown. You'd be surprised how many devices we have really no idea whether we just don't know how to work them or whether they really are completely useless here. Same goes for aliens. It's the problem with getting whatever the Rift throws at us, rather than going out and exploring where it came from, like you do with the Enterprise."

Sulu nodded. "Yeah. I'm sorry I'm asking all these questions, too, I just sort of default to the usual questions we ask ourselves at Starfleet. You know, the who-what-where-how." Which was more of his policy on questioning, really, than a general Starfleet guide, but it was timeless. "It really is too bad you can't find out the origins of some of these things; it'd probably be really interesting. But, you're already ahead of where my universe was at at this point in time, so..." He shrugged. "At least you have that."

Ianto smiled a bit. "Well, yes, we do have that. It's not much, but we do have it. Y'know, I wonder how my universe will compare to yours in the time you come from, but I hesitate to ask Jack about things like that. I mean, I shouldn't really know anyway, no one else in this day and age has someone like Jack around to ask things like this, so. I don't know. I feel like if I knew, I'd want to experience it, but that's impossible, not without the TARDIS or a working Vortex Manipulator, so. Maybe I'm better off not knowing."

Ianto shook himself. "Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent there. It's just that, well, time travel is something I've been trying to come to terms with for a while now."

Sulu shook his head. "No apology necessary. Time travel is one of those things that... Well, it can mess with your head." He chewed on his lip briefly, distracted between watching the Hoix and contemplating just how messy time travel really was.

"I'm not sure what just knowing about it could do to someone, but personal experience dictates that nothing good really ever comes from it. Unless you don't try to change anything. Even then, it's messy. But it's probably better not knowing." He grinned at Ianto, "After all, it's no fun if you already know what's going to happen, right?"

"No, I guess it isn't," Ianto said, with a smile. "I mean, it's not like it's exactly a spoiler. I wouldn't ask anything about something in the near future that I might find out while I'm alive, but. Sometimes I wonder. And then again, it's not worth knowing something if it ruins the way I see the world now, so." He shakes his head. "I wonder how Jack does it, living knowing what's coming next. At least, historically speaking."

The Hoix growled at them from its cell. "Don't suppose you'd like to go down to the archives, then?" Ianto asked, cocking his head with a smile. "Our friend here's not going to get any more interesting, and I'd rather not be snarled at while trying to hold a conversation."

Sulu shook his head. "I don't know. Personally, the idea of seeing the future, near or distant, is honestly kind of worrying. But it's pretty obvious that how our universes handle time-travel is pretty different; when Nero did it, he seriously altered the course of events and triggered an alternate reality." Not that he thought he was very alternate at all. Actually, as far as he was concerned, he was the original.

He stepped out of Ianto's way, gesturing with a hand. "Fine by me. If I wanted to be growled at, I'd talk to a Klingon, anyway."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject