Challenge 389 - Ratted out

[m_findlow]

Title: Ratted out
Author: m_findlow
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Tosh
Rating: PG
Challenge: 389 - Rats
Notes: Fourteen drabbles, two men, and one big rodent problem. Doubles as my Challenge week side quest at fic_promptly for the same prompt.

'Every time I go down there, there's more of them!' Ianto complained.

'More what?'

'Rats!' he yelled. 'In my hub!'

'I think you'll actually find it's my hub,' Jack corrected him, and wishing he hadn't, based on the look he received.

'I can't work like this. I can put up with messy coworkers, and aliens with no sense of decorum and your table manners,'

'Hey!'

'But I draw the line at having the place crawling with vermin.'

'What do you suggest?'

'Surely we must have some kind of alien tech that handles pest control.'

'Let's go and find out then.'

Jack began rifling through a box of artifacts in the archives. Ianto was skeptical that Jack had any idea what was in the box and how it would help. Ianto hadn't yet sorted this area, so he had no idea if there was anything useful.

'Pretty sure I remember seeing it somewhere around here. Aha!' Jack said, brandishing something looking like an oversized egg beater.

'What's that?'

'Quantifiable decompressor. Don't worry Ianto, I'll have your vermin problem solved in no time.'

Ianto took a deep breath. Experience taught him that Jack's overconfident zealousness was often inversely proportionate to his success.

'Bring forth your rats!' Jack declared as they entered the lower section of the hub.

'They don't exactly appear on cue, and we can't spend all day down here picking them off one by one with, what is that thing?'

'We only need one. This ray will detect any other rats within fifty yards. When I zap one of them, the rest automatically shrink down to a more manageable number. They use these in the freight industry. Just imagine if you could shrink an entire bag of rice into a single grain.'

'So we'll still have rats, just less?'

'Exactly.'

They didn't have to wait long for one of their furry friends to make an appearance, scuttling down the edge of the corridor, oblivious to them.

'Here goes nothing,' Jack said, activating the ray gun, a bright blue light striking the rodent.

'Job done,' Jack said, picking up the creature by the tail.

'How will we know it worked?' Ianto asked, scrunching his nose as Jack dangled it in front of him.

'Less rats? There's not much more to it. Now what say we get rid of this guy and then you can reward me for a job well done?'

For days, Ianto was pleased at being able to work in the archives without hide nor hair of a single rodent. Then he found one.

'Jack, we have a problem. A big problem.'

'What is it?'

'A rat.'

'I told you'd there'd still be a few. What's the big deal?'

'Remember that bag of rice analogy? This rat is the size of the whole bag of rice.'

Jack came to meet Ianto downstairs, finding him hiding behind a large crate.

'Where's the rat?'

'There,' pointing at the huge, Clydesdale sized creature

'I think we're going to need a bigger mousetrap.'

'I thought you said it got rid of the rats?'

'Consolidated them into a smaller number to be more precise.'

'Consolidated them into one giant bloody rat more like!'

'It must have been broken when it fell through the rift,' Jack explained.

'And you didn't check first?'

Jack ignored Ianto's chastising. 'We can just reverse it.'

'Oh, no. I do not want two hundred regular sized rats everywhere again. Think of something else.'

'Okay, I think we have a shrink ray somewhere. We shrink the giant rat and problem solved.'

'Is that humane?'

'You're seriously worried about it being humane?'

'Are we sure there's only one of them?' Ianto asked.

'Well, since the one we caught didn't react like that, and this is the only one we've seen, I think it's safe to say they've all consolidated into this one.'

'Good, just checking.'

They stalked the large rodent to a quiet corner of the archives where it was munching on something unidentifiable.

'Here goes,' Jack said, zapping the rat.

Instead of shrinking, the rat seemed to get larger and larger.

'It's not working,' Jack stated.

'Yes it is,' Ianto exclaimed. 'Only it's us that are getting smaller, not the rat!'

'I don't understand what went wrong,' Jack said, now no taller than a soda can.

'Could one ray beam affect the other? Some kind of bounce back or interference?'

'It's possible, I suppose,' Jack conceded.

'So how do we unshrink ourselves?'

'The trigger on the beam is too large for us to push. We're going to have to make it upstairs and find one of the others to fix it.'

'Great. And in the meantime, we have to cover the equivalent distance of miles and miles of corridors and stairs.'

'And also not get eaten by Ratty McCheeseface, here.'

'Excellent!'

Ianto grunted with effort. Jack had given him a leg up to help reach the top of the step, but now he had to pull himself the rest of the way up, and then somehow pull Jack up as well. And then do it all over again. Nine times.

'Next time you say you can fix something, remind me to tie you to your chair!'

'I was only trying to help,' Jack replied, grabbing Ianto's hand and scrambling up the rough concrete. How rats ever managed it was beyond him.

'Stick to looking dashing and flirting. You're good at that.'

On their travels back to the hub, they came across another rat, this one normal sized. Well, normal compared to the giant one. It was still as tall as their shoulders in their shrunken state.

'Must be a newcomer,' Jack observed. 'Can't have been here when we zapped the other one.'

'I'm beginning to feel as if life as a rat is harder than it looks,' Ianto confessed.

'Don't tell me you sympathise with them now?'

'No, but I'm not about to hit one with my shoe anytime soon either.'

'Should I be craving cheese?'

'Are you?'

'No.'

Ianto sighed.

Exhausted and grimy, they finally reached the main hub. Tosh was still there. Bless her for working so hard.

She heard the tiny squeaking voices and caught sight of them.

'Is that really you?'

'Yes Tosh, it's us. We need you to fetch the shrink ray from the archives and reverse it.'

'Okay, you're going to have to give me directions.' She scooped them both carefully into her hand.

'You're both so cute. Like little action figures.'

'Mock us later. And take your gun with you. You'll need it for the giant rat.'

'Giant rat?'

'We'll explain on the way.'

They didn't even make it as far as the archives before running into their big problem. Obviously it had gone exploring for food, the archives, lacking in edible items for a creature this size.

'You're going to have to shoot it, Tosh.'

'Isn't there a more humane way?'

'We tried humane. Look how that panned out,' Ianto replied dryly.

'I can't! We'll figure out another way.'

She slowly and carefully edged her way past. The rat didn't seem to care, any more than it had Jack and Ianto when they were fifty times bigger than it.

'Animal lover,' Jack commented.

Tosh found the shrink gun right where Jack had dropped it. A few minutes of careful calibration and Tosh had the pair of them back to their full size.

'Thanks, Tosh,' Jack said gratefully. 'That's one problem sorted out. Now all we have to do is get rid of Ratty. I have an idea.'

'Oh, no you don't,' Ianto declared. 'No more ideas from you today. You've caused quite enough trouble. Tosh, what do you suggest?'

'Tranquiliser? Then maybe Owen could put it down humanely?'

'Excellent. A nice sensible plan that doesn't involve alien tech.'

Jack looked suitably put out.

A few hours later, Owen had done the deed, euthanising the enormous rodent. Whilst he was in the process of disposing of the corpse, Ianto had taken the liberty of confiscating the shrink ray and the decompressor, locking them away in secure archives where Jack wouldn't be tempted to use them again.

'But what about your rat problem?' Jack asked.

'I think I'll stick to traditional methods. Rat bait and traps. Plus, Tosh is developing an electrical field generator. Owen says that certain frequencies upset rodents. Should be enough to keep them away.'

'So no more rats?'

'No more rats.'

Comments

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

*snickers* That was fun. We have ants, and I do not even want to know how Jack would handle them! :D

[bk_forever]

Well, Jack's ideas did help get rid of the rats, in a round-about way, so it's not all bad!

Thanks for the fill =)

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

He he, yeah, the crazy ideas just kept coming! Jack wasn't brave enough to remind Ianto that he was the one to suggest alien tech in the first place.

I think this is the equal longest drabble fic I've written, it just kind of kept growing. Once I got past four drabbles I was going to convert it into a regular fic and fill your fic_promptly topic instead, but thought to myself, hey, why not make it really hard on yourself and write the rest in drabbles. :)

[bk_forever]

I've done that before, and I've got a long one on the go at the moment that already over 20 drabbles long and covers the last half of the second season. One day I'll get it finished. It's an interesting challenge though, writing a fic in drabbles!