torchwoodteaboy | [RL WITH SULU]

That fact did make Sulu feel pretty good about things but, being the reserved sort of guy he was, he refrained from making any more egocentric statements. He was sure he'd hit the quota a while back, anyway. "Hands in my pockets," he said, grinning as he did just that, "Promise."

Ianto raised an eyebrow, not really believing the promise, because he'd seen Sulu exploring things already, but he didn't say anything, giving Sulu the benefit of the doubt. He keyed in his code to the door on the pad beside, and walked inside. The room was pretty dark and cavernous, obviously having been some sort of tunnel at one point or another. Side rooms jutted from the main one for items that couldn't be classified or housed with the others. In the middle were shelves and shelves of files and artifacts and paperwork, all in an order that only Ianto himself seemed to recognize. Far along, at the end of where the shelves sat, was a desk with a computer set up like the rest of the workstations were in the Hub, which Ianto used to input new items to the computerized system.

"Welcome to the archives, then, Sulu," Ianto said, with a sweeping gesture towards the room. "We've got paperwork, weapons, paperwork, miscellaneous, paperwork, secure archives, paperwork, pretty much useless junk, and paperwork. Where would you like to see?"

Sulu steadfastly ignored that eyebrow raise, since he knew he was perfectly capable of not grabbing the first object within reach. He hadn't leaned in and poked the violent aliens, after all, right? Right.

That didn't stop him from nearly pulling his hands free when Ianto let him in; mostly because he was a little distracted by the vague intimidation and more quantifiable amazement factors. "Wow." When he got back to Earth, he was going to invest in an underground hideout. Seriously. "...How about you keep the reins on this one? I don't want to risk getting overzealous about anything."

"Well..." Ianto had asked because he really hadn't know where to show Sulu, but if Sulu was leaving it up for him to decide... "Maybe you'd enjoy the weapons and secure archives, then. They're generally the more 'don't touch' areas of this place, but what they have in there is more interesting than an alien toaster. Which we do have, by the way."

Ianto led Sulu into the archives, through some of the shelves to a door off to the left of the area. This time he leaned forward, the door scanning his retina for identification before unlocking. "This is the weapons section. Everything in here either has duplicates upstairs, or we won't be needing them for a while," Ianto said, reaching out and straightening a strange looking knife that was hanging on the wall, underneath of which hung a label stating "Life Knife".

((Okay, so! To make our lives easier, I made a list of the known artifacts in Torchwood's archives. Everything in the Hub is accurately labeled, so all Sulu has to do is ask something about an item if he wants to know, and Ianto will be able to successfully explain it. Hopefully that'll work for you--Ianto and I both are a little lost as to what to show off and what not to show off in the archives, so this'll help me, at least.))

"You're going to seriously test the limits of my restraint, huh?" Sulu laughed, following Ianto and pausing briefly outside to look over the identification mechanism. "Weird." Not that it was entirely foreign to him to see other modes of identification beyond voice and password recognition, but still, it was sort of like being Alice in Wonderland for him.

Of course, he forgot about retina scanners for the time-being, confronted with new and far more interesting things to resist touching. "Oh, bad choice," he said with an over-dramatic groan, "Never should have promised not to touch anything." Hands-on learning was a terrible thing when confronted with knives and guns. "Why in the world would you name something a 'Life Knife?' Especially one that looks like that." And, turning, "...And that thing, I can't tell if it's supposed to be from the 20th century or the 22nd." Oh, and he was already looking around to see if anything resembled a phaser.

((NOT A PROBLEM I actually... googled most of the stuff on that list before making this tag. Which is why it took so long :X I'm pretty sure that's the Dalek tommy gun you have listed, that I linked, right? If not, tell me. :|;; You have no idea how hard it's going to be for him not to grab things.))

"Oh, this?" Ianto asked. He turned to look at the Life Knife properly. "It isn't much on its own other than just an interesting knife. When someone is stabbed with this knife, they're a lot more likely to be receptive to, well, revival from death from these gauntlets we used to have. Needless to say, the gauntlets themselves proved to be more trouble than they were worth and needed to be destroyed, but the knife's still a knife, after all."

"And that," Ianto said, motioning to the gun Sulu'd pointed out, "is a Dalek-enhanced Thompson machine gun. Regular 1930's era Thompson taken by the Daleks, and well, upgraded to what you see there. Packs a mean punch, good enough to get through the Dalek armor and all. There's one upstairs as well, where it's a bit more, er, handy to get at. The stuff down here is either specific or duplicates of what's upstairs in the armory."

Ianto cocked his head to the side, with a smile, crossing his arms. "Tell you what. As long as you don't go pulling any triggers or pressing any buttons and getting either me or yourself shot or otherwise harmed... I'll let you touch. Think of it as, well, a payback for my one moment of glory."

((Hee, yeah, that's the right gun. And problem solved for him not being able to grab things--Ianto noticed how much it was going to challenge him not to. xD;; Also, sorry it took me this long to get back to you as well--distracted by writing prompts and talking to people in the common room.))

"As a Starfleet officer, I'm trained not to push buttons or pull triggers unless I know what I'm doing." Or when in a corner, but this was hardly a crisis situation. Nonetheless, he grinned and immediately reached for a gun labeled as a "Portable Meson Gun" - not actually holding it properly, just getting a feel for its weight.

"Also, if literature can teach you anything, it's not to play with life-giving toys. Did the gauntlets come to life and try to strangle you when you used them, or something? And you've used that name before, Dalek - what's that, exactly? Like a Weevil?"

Ianto made a face. "It didn't really bring life back. Not usually, anyway. It would just establish a contact with someone recently deceased and bring them back for about a minute before completely not working at all. Turned out that our coworker, Suzie, was doing private research she shouldn't have with it, killing people to bring them back and such. She even set it up so that we'd have to try and revive her with it so she could get away. She revived permanently, though, with the help of this knife, draining the lifeforce of our other coworker, Gwen. Needless to say, we destroyed the glove, but there was another one." He quirked an eyebrow at Sulu's handling of the gun. "That's the thing about gloves. They come in pairs."

"As for the Daleks, well," he shrugged. "I suppose I could show you the files we have on them after we're through here. It's worth knowing, in case they ever find out a way to get through the Rift into parallel dimensions, if it's possible to do so." He smirked. "Always helpful to be one step ahead of the game, yeah?"

Frowning briefly, Sulu put the gun back exactly where it had been. "You deal a lot with... uh, I guess that's magical, huh? I mean, lifeforce and stuff, that's a little more occult than scientific." He glanced around, hesitating before leaning in to read a label. "What's a 'Droon'? And it's always better to know what you might be getting into, rather than just hoping that nothing bursts through your airlocks mid-warp. Even though that can't happen, really."

Ianto shakes his head. "I wouldn't say 'magic' exactly. Jack's convinced that there's a scientific explanation for everything, just that we haven't figured it all out yet. I mean, the Resurrection Gauntlets and the Life Knife were made out of the same material that's unlike anything we've found anywhere else. It's possible we just don't know the scientific explanation for it all yet."

"As for a Droon," Ianto said, with a grimace. "They're basically extraterrestrial insects. They lay their eggs somewhere warm and wet, which actually usually ends up being the sinus cavities of humans. People don't realize this, because they just think they're getting a particularly nasty head cold. Most of the time the eggs are harmless, and people just sneeze them out, but sometimes they survive to hatch. Lucky for us, before they hatch, they emit huge changes in alpha-wave patterns, so we can go and rescue whoever it is by tracing the patterns before it's too late. These audio paddles submit a frequency that forcibly extracts the egg out."

"Smart man." Even if there were a lot of things you just couldn't explain - at least, that was the impression Sulu got after being on the community. "There are always new things out there, so it's likely that's the case."

He made a face. "I do not envy you guys. Parasitic lifeforms are one of the worst things to deal with. Luckily, McCoy gets to deal with that. ...Not luckily for him, but still." He looked around briefly and then caught sight of a large weapon; sidling over to read the label, he grinned. "I'm pretty sure there's got to be a more official name for this thing than 'Jack's Big Gun.'"

Ianto chuckles. "Yes, well, he has his moments."

At the mention of the gun, though, Ianto's face colored. He'd actually forgot he'd labeled it as that. "Oh, that?" he stepped forward, a bit embarrassed, towards the big gun. "I forgot that I had it labeled as that honestly." He scratches his head, smiling and blushing. "Honestly, I don't think we have an official name for it. It's just a really big laser gun, I think."

Maybe it was the label that kept Sulu from actually trying to pick up the thing, or maybe it was just the fact that you don't go grabbing other people's weapons when they're specifically named their gun. Either way, he just gave Ianto a very amused look.

"I can see the really big part. I think you're actually missing the 'really' from the label." He laughed, "And to keep from sliding dangerously far into innuendo territory, I'll keep all my questions to myself."

Ianto quirked an eyebrow at him. "If I didn't keep it in here, he'd just have it out on display in the Hub the whole time. Got to keep the 'really' out, though, lest it inflate an already engorged ego. And I'll really stop now," he said, with a face and a blush. He just hadn't been able to resist.

"If you'd like, we could go to the special archives now as well," he said, moving the subject of conversation off of 'Jack's Big Innuendo'. "Afraid you can't touch much of the stuff in there, but its interesting to look at, at least."

Sulu laughed at that giving Ianto a look. "Really. Are you sure you got that all out of your system?" After a brief glance to all the other cool things he could grab at and examine, Sulu nodded. "It's probably better if you show me something else, before I decide to go through your entire catalog of weapons."

"Yes, I'm sure," Ianto said, still flushed a bit. "For now, at least."

"C'mon, then." He opened the door, leading them back into the archives. This time he walked back towards his computer desk, only turning to the left right before it. There was a door much like the last one. He stepped up to it, leaning in for the retinal scan. The lock to the door unlatched when it confirmed his identity, but paused in opening it. "I'm going to remind you now that this is the secure archives, and when I say don't touch, it really means don't touch, yeah?"

The security measures didn't seem nearly as strange the second time around, and Sulu gave Ianto an honest smile. "Not a problem. I was serious when I said I wouldn't touch anything unless you said it was all right." After all, he knew that sort of rule was put in place for a reason - generally, it was for the same reason he had to contain some of his plants.

Ianto nodded, then opened the door to the secure archives. It was different than the weapons archive and the main archives, because rather than having everything out on the walls like the former, it had shelves like the latter. However, these shelves were covered with labeled containment boxes of various shapes and sizes, inside of which held some of the most dangerous items Torchwood had ever had the misfortune (or fortune, depending on how you looked at it) to encounter.

"Welcome to Secure Archives," Ianto said. "About half the stuff in here has been used to try to, or in the wrong hands would end up destroying this planet."

((Once again, secure archives are found in the archives list, have a blast~))

"I get the 'no touching' rule a lot better with that sort of intro," Sulu said, heading in to look around (all from a decent vantage point; it was easier not to touch things when you weren't in reach). "What I have to wonder is, though, isn't it kind of dangerous to have every destructive device in the same room?"

"Well, we don't have the explosives that we've found in this room," Ianto said. "That would be stupid. But it is caled secure archives for a reason. The door's keyed only to me and Jack, and, well, Jack's always going to be around, so there's no worry there. Plus, it's not like we'll ever need anything out of here. They'll stay in this room forever, if we have any say in the matter. Besides," Ianto continued, "nothing in here will react to anything else, especially not while in their separate containment boxes. I'm only one man--I can't keep track of a separate archive for each object, even if we do have the room for it."

Sulu nodded, pretty much approving of the explanation - it honestly didn't seem like there was going to be any easy breaking-and-entering going on in Torchwood, anyway. "Understandable. I was only asking because, well, it's usually the most pressing question on my mind when faced with dangerous objects. That, and, 'How quickly can this turn into a terrible situation?'" He grinned at Ianto, "But I have a feeling you've got it covered."

"So," he said, looking over one of the objects conveniently labeled, "What's a Ghost Machine and how badly does it ruin lives?"

"We've got it as covered as we're going to get it, at any rate," Ianto said, with a shrug and a smile. Yes, the objects were conveniently labeled, but that was for the benefit of whoever it was that would follow after Ianto, should he die or leave Torchwood or become incapable of telling anyone about the rest of the things in there.

"A Ghost Machine, eh? Well, see how it's got two different halves?" Ianto asked, pointing to the two separate halves of the object. "It contains nanotechnological quantum transducers that can convert emotional energy left over from significant events into visions of those events. One half allows you to see the past, the other allows you to see one version of the future. Obviously, the future is not meant to be known ahead of time. That's why it's in here. It's better if we don't mess about in things like that."

Sulu frowned thoughtfully at the explanation, crossing his arms. To him, it sounded like something the 21st century would cook up in a sci-fi novel or something, but the fact that it existed was pretty intriguing. That kind of technology could, theoretically, lead to some major leaps in development around the world - which, obviously, was not how it was supposed to work out here.

"Makes sense," he said after a moment, "Not the mechanics of it, really, but the reason why it's here. I'll be honest, something like that would be amazing to take apart and examine. There's nothing like that anywhere that I've been - or, well, that Starfleet's been." He glanced at Ianto, "What constitutes as significant, though? Sorry, you might be stuck here answering kind of ridiculous questions."

"Anything that's significantly emotional," Ianto said with a shrug. "I don't really know the details myself, no one was really paying much attention to me at that time. But when Owen used the one half he witnessed a crime from the past, and when Gwen used the other half she saw a murder that happened in the future."

"Sorry I can't be more helpful about it, really," he said. He bit his lip a little. "I think it's better left alone and out of this century, though. Both of them were pretty shaken up about it all. It doesn't seem to be something to be playing around with, even if it is in the name of science."

"No, it's okay. Like I said, that was kind of out there, even for me. And don't worry, I'm not planning on hijacking it to try and see what makes it tick," Sulu laughed, "I'm not capable of insidious plots like that."

Sulu looked at Ianto and smiled. "I feel bad, just sort of picking and choosing whatever looks remotely interesting or has a catchy name - is there anything in here you find particularly interesting? Or is it all just kind of run-of-the-mill for you by now?"

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