Anythingdrabble Challenge 187 - Sucked in
May. 8th, 2021 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
m_findlowTitle: Sucked in
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairings: Torchwood team
Word Count: 500 words
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for Challenge 187 - Sponge at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
anythingdrabble
Summary: Jack has taken one for the team and the city.
The promised explosion was far less impressive than Jack had promoted it, the four of them were left hovering by the SUV whilst Jack went into the abandoned terrace house to deal with the signal that Tosh has verified as unequivocally that of an alien explosive device. Jack too had seen an energy signature like this one before and he knew what it was capable of, thus confirming that they were relegated to waiting outside.
It was less of an explosion and more of a fizzling cracking sound, followed by a hollow whump! and then everything fell silent. There was no kaboom, no glass exploding from the windows followed by tongues of white hot flame, or a crumbling of the two storey brick home collapsing in on itself. Truthfully, it was about as un-Torchwood as it came.
Jack stepped out of the front door, looking just as undamaged as when he'd walked in there. He grinned just as he always did when he was pleased with himself. 'Just in the nick of time to reach it as it exploded.'
Ianto frowned at him. 'Don't you mean, before it exploded?'
'Nope. Couldn't stop it if I wanted to. It would have irradiated every organic being within ten miles, but it found me first. I took the whole lot and absorbed it.'
'You look okay to me,' Owen said.
Jack chuckled. 'You should take an x-ray then. On the inside I'm just a gelatinous mess. If I sneezed, you'd get an ejection of liquefied internal organs. The vortex is the only thing keeping me alive. I'm like Schroedinger's cat right now, simultaneously living and dying.'
'Jesus,' Gwen swore. 'What do we do?'
'Just get me back to the hub,' he replied. 'I can handle it from there.'
None of them were entirely satisfied with Jack's assurances, but they did as he said, each silently wondering how Jack could survive this, and whether they were exposed just by being close.
Jack proceeded to a storeroom downstairs and returned with a wooden box, inside which was a spongy coral thing. It was brown and unappealing, looking far more like a dishwashing sponge that was about three years past due to be thrown away.
'Soaks up forty seven different kinds of radiation,' Jack explained. 'Twenty of those haven't even been discovered yet.' He grinned again and shoved it in his pocket. 'It's got a half life of fifty billion years.' Then he chuckled. 'Probably makes me the first and only human that will ever outlive it. Still, who wants to be glowing that long? Not to mention all the missed physical intimacy along the way.'
Gwen looked thoroughly unconvinced. 'We are safe though, aren't we?'
'Oh, yeah.' He waved it off like he'd said he'd been exposed to an overzealous sales assistant in the perfume department. 'Got me through the Chernobyl disaster back in '86. Russian government hated that they couldn't pin the blame on the alien, and the KVI never let me forget it.'
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairings: Torchwood team
Word Count: 500 words
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for Challenge 187 - Sponge at
anythingdrabbleSummary: Jack has taken one for the team and the city.
The promised explosion was far less impressive than Jack had promoted it, the four of them were left hovering by the SUV whilst Jack went into the abandoned terrace house to deal with the signal that Tosh has verified as unequivocally that of an alien explosive device. Jack too had seen an energy signature like this one before and he knew what it was capable of, thus confirming that they were relegated to waiting outside.
It was less of an explosion and more of a fizzling cracking sound, followed by a hollow whump! and then everything fell silent. There was no kaboom, no glass exploding from the windows followed by tongues of white hot flame, or a crumbling of the two storey brick home collapsing in on itself. Truthfully, it was about as un-Torchwood as it came.
Jack stepped out of the front door, looking just as undamaged as when he'd walked in there. He grinned just as he always did when he was pleased with himself. 'Just in the nick of time to reach it as it exploded.'
Ianto frowned at him. 'Don't you mean, before it exploded?'
'Nope. Couldn't stop it if I wanted to. It would have irradiated every organic being within ten miles, but it found me first. I took the whole lot and absorbed it.'
'You look okay to me,' Owen said.
Jack chuckled. 'You should take an x-ray then. On the inside I'm just a gelatinous mess. If I sneezed, you'd get an ejection of liquefied internal organs. The vortex is the only thing keeping me alive. I'm like Schroedinger's cat right now, simultaneously living and dying.'
'Jesus,' Gwen swore. 'What do we do?'
'Just get me back to the hub,' he replied. 'I can handle it from there.'
None of them were entirely satisfied with Jack's assurances, but they did as he said, each silently wondering how Jack could survive this, and whether they were exposed just by being close.
Jack proceeded to a storeroom downstairs and returned with a wooden box, inside which was a spongy coral thing. It was brown and unappealing, looking far more like a dishwashing sponge that was about three years past due to be thrown away.
'Soaks up forty seven different kinds of radiation,' Jack explained. 'Twenty of those haven't even been discovered yet.' He grinned again and shoved it in his pocket. 'It's got a half life of fifty billion years.' Then he chuckled. 'Probably makes me the first and only human that will ever outlive it. Still, who wants to be glowing that long? Not to mention all the missed physical intimacy along the way.'
Gwen looked thoroughly unconvinced. 'We are safe though, aren't we?'
'Oh, yeah.' He waved it off like he'd said he'd been exposed to an overzealous sales assistant in the perfume department. 'Got me through the Chernobyl disaster back in '86. Russian government hated that they couldn't pin the blame on the alien, and the KVI never let me forget it.'
