(PARODY AMONG US): 7.15 Arrival

 

(PARODY AMONG US): 7.15 Arrival

Starring Natalia Cordova Buckley, Ian Alexander, D'Arcy Carden, Jason Hughes and Paul Clayton
With Tom Price, Scarlett Johansson, Ben Mendelsohn, Lisa Kudrow, Uma Thurman and Cher

Disclaimer: It's been two months since the last episode and this is just as continuity filled as before. I'm sorry for your inevitable suffering

* * *

Colchester stood imposingly by the original Torchwood Computer. 

"The Torchwood hub above the city is compromised. It's being used as a staging area for the Committee's invasion. It's good we made it down here, but there's very little down here we can use for offense." Colchester said to the group. "I'll be taking command, but-" Colchester trailed off, trying to be his usual steely self. "I - would appreciate any support that the team could give."

"Torchwood is still operational." Stacy stated. "Especially without Cherry, Richardson, or..." 

They turned in the corner to see Andy, placing a white sheet over Yvonne's prone body. 

Andy bit his lip, and despite all his usual easily upset nature, he was somehow utterly still. "He killed her. ...Richardson killed her." He said quietly. "He was here, he was here the whole time. How could we-" Andy's voice broke off for the first time. "He's going to pay." Andy growled. 

One by one, the team nodded. 

The alarms sounded. 

"The Children." Hunter whispered. "It's starting." 

Marie Hilton was a young single mother who lived in a small first floor apartment with her only child, Teddy, a young boy of around six. She was making him a sandwich for lunch - bread, cheese and margarine, which was currently what she had. She thought the world of young Teddy. He would change the world someday, she just knew it, and even though she was poor, she knew that she would give everything she had to Teddy in life. Give him the chance she didn't have. Teddy sat by the table, and Marie walked over and set the sandwich on the table with the water. Teddy was an earnest boy, and nodded happily, quite pleased with what he had. 

His neck then began to rotate 360 degrees, and out of his eyes poured a viscous black fluid which drained onto the floor, burning through the only carpet that they'd ever been able to afford.

Marie screamed, but it was too late. 

* * *

Ash began imputing things into his station. "Across the city there are snipers, people with those weird murder-your-soul-camera-things and a crowd of criminals outside, hundreds of angry ordinary people possessed by the bloodrage of the Committee. There's -"

the lights went out. 

"-No power, evidently." 

"Richardson's cut that too. His Butterfli software, probably." Anastasia replied. 

"Ana- are you, like, doing alright?" Ash asked. "I need to be sure." 

"...I'm fine." Anastasia stated eventually. 

"Yeah, but you're suddenly super calm out of nowhere, and to be fair, you did have a breakdown-"

"Drop it." 

Stacy strolled in. "I can't see anything! Can you believe this!?"

"Everything Richardson's trying to do is supposed to minimize what we can do to stop him." Colchester growled. 

The lights came back on.

"But luckily, even Richardson can't break the Hub's backup generators, thank you Toshiko Sato!" Ash blew a kiss into the air. "We have lights!"

"...We have lights? Just lights?" Hunter asked. 

"Oi, don't knock the lights!" Ash responded. 

"Ash, Stacy," Anastasia said. "You get going on a technical solution. Find out how the Committee got back, and why they and everything else went silent for so long. Colchester, I think we need to get up on the streets. Stop the snipers first, before all of the city officials are completely dead. Hunter, find our Plan B."

"Well, I was supposed to be leading, but by all means." Colchester rumbled sarcastically. 

Ash and Stacy looked at the dead Torchwood computers. "Yeah, sure." Stacy said sarcastically. "We'll get right on that whole technical thing." 

"Alright, good." Anastasia said briskly. "The hub has guns. Where are they again?"

* * *

The rooftop was on fire. Everything was on fire. In one particular notable instance, a fire extinguisher, was somehow on fire. 

A City on fire. 

Cherry wasn't on fire, but she might as well have been, for all the yelling and screaming and kicking she managed. "You killed her! You killed her, you bastard!" She screamed.

Richardson absentmindedly glared into the flaming city. "You know, I knew you would have been angry about it, but I wasn't expecting this angry. You hardly knew her."

"I knew her enough." Cherry snapped. 

"Well, it was nice knowing you, Cherry." Richardson said, mockingly. "The Nano-explosive I have placed within your skull is primed. Rainn and I shall be going now."

"What? What are you trying to-"

"I mean, it's simple enough. The bomb in your head goes off when your friends come to rescue you." Richardson said. "It makes it easier to kill as many of your friends as possible."

"You're disgusting. You sold it all out to the Committee, and for what? What do you get out of this?"

"Cherry," Richardson said in a faux sensitive tone. "I'm a nihilist. When I heard the Committee were gonna blow up the planet and remake it into whatever, I was well, annoyed, but I could totally see it coming. The planet was fucking doomed thanks to every big corporation that's ever corp-ed. I am making the most of my life, Cherry. Carpe Diem. If I help the Committee, I might live when "the Rapture comes." If I don't, well, I can at least say screw you to every stupid stifling law that was made to stop me from having a good time. I've checked Murder off my bucket list several times over, but there's so much more toys in the sandbox..." Richardson swung the door open, and walked away, leaving Cherry alone on the rooftop, primed to explode. "Adios."

"You fucking bastard!" Cherry called after him. 

* * *

Colchester strode imposingly across Cardiff center, carrying a massive, massive gun. He set a speaker on the ground. 

The crowd of rabid, hungry faces, the angry and violent criminals that Richardson had freed stared back at him with abject hatred. He murmurred to Anastasia. "Is the thing plugged in?" She nodded, and he turned. 

"People of Cardiff. You've hated us. You've slated our very existence, swore off our entire organization. Said that we were yet another uncaring bureaucracy. And for a long time, I was inclined to agree. It was just another job, just another position for me. I could care less about the aliens. But the people, the people I met... A few hours ago, a woman laid down her life for this city. Her name was Yvonne Hartman. You all said that she was cruel, that she was a vindictive bastard who would do anything in her scrawl for power. But she died, she died tonight to save us. And we're going to save all of you. 

Our name is Torchwood. And people will tell you that we mean you harm. That it's the end of the world. That this is Cardiff's final hour. Well, to that, I say, bollocks. We're here for you. We're here for this city. We're Torchwood. And everyone of us is willing to lay down our lives to save any one of you all. I've seen many Yvonne Hartman's do that for this city. As for Tom Richardson - we know you want us. Leave the people of this city alone. We're at the Hub. Come and get us."

And with that, he raised his gun and walked into the crowd of monsters and emptied several chambers of ammunition. 

* * *

Cherry bit her lip. She could feel the metal vibrating in her skull. It wasn't much, it couldn't even be moving, or she would be dead, but she could still almost swear she could feel it, she was so pained. Blood slowly trickled down from her nose or maybe her forehead? It was telling that she wasn't certain. Both in the barely concious headspace and that she hardly registered when Richardson or Rainn hit her during interrogations, (If you paid attention to them, they tended to break you much quicker) it just added up to another little thing that had just glossed under her radar. 

Ooh, yeah, that was a headwound. In addition to the nanofilliment to her skull. Because her life was just that bad at the moment.

God, the burning city. Why'd he have to leave her up here? Where she could see the burning, hear the screaming of the people - every single miniscule choice by him was yet another cruelty. She needed to take him down. 

The door of the balcony swung open.

...Marsha? 

Oh, god, no, Marsha. 

Marsha, her wife, coming to her rescue, unaware that anyone who came anywhere near her would be blown to smithereens. 

Marsha was carrying a gun (something that she never did, Marsha abhorred guns) and she was bruised heavily - had she been fighting on the streets, to liberate the city just like the rest of Torchwood? It was moments like this that reminded her of how much she loved her... which only filled her with more terror for her lover's life. 

NO! She tried to cry out. She could even hear it - loud, echoey, but it wasn't verbal. It was just a thought, so intense that she had thought it would make a sound. But she didn't make a sound. She couldn't move her lips, she was so tired. This was it. They were both going to die.

Not in a TARDIS, not because of some alien, but just because of a bastard with a bomb and a drill. 

Marsha stopped. 

Oh, thank god, she stopped. She was looking at her. As if by instinct she knew something was wrong - like she could see the dread in Cherry's eyes. 

With gargantuan effort, Cherry forced out a whisper. "Don't... come... any ... closer..." 

And against all odds, Marsha heard. 

* * *

The Children were walking. Stomping down the street in unison like an army. And that was what they were. Some had grown into abominations, mutated into the soldiers of the Committee, and some could be considered healthy if not for the pallid skin and blank stare, unblinking, as they strode down the street to war. Most leaked black acid from their orifaces, as if they had risen from the depths of some dark well. 

How could you fight a child? 

Oh, once in a while, a poor bastard would try. But one of the Mutants would rush him, and do horrible graphic things to his face with their sharp limbs. Or someone would raise a knife or a bludgeon when they saw the monstrous children stomping up their doorstep, chanting that this world was claimed in the name of the Committee, only to drop the knife instantly when they saw that behind the black horrid eyes, the child was scared too. 

* * *

"Recently, Yvonne tried to contact Gwen Cooper then Captain Jack, then Tyler Steele - they're all elsewhere, retired, far across the globe, another planet - when Torchwood went on the run around the trial, they went off the map." Andy said. "God, if only they were here now, we could-"

"I saw them when they were on the run. A long time ago, now. We aren't going to be able to get through to them." Ash noted. 

"It's all us. ...I'm ... I'm the last one." Andy moaned. "I've been here since the start. Since Gwen got on the bloody job in the first place. Dead. Gone." Pausing, as if the words were too painful to say. "I'm the last one," was all he could get out in an incoherent whimper. Ash put a hand on his shoulder. 

"There isn't a technical solution as far as I can see, but we can start by limiting the damage. For the past few years, Richardson has been subtly putting Butterfli software across Cardiff as a backdoor for his work, for the Committee. But what if we could find a way in there - disrupt the signal?" Stacy mused.

"Hellishly difficult..." Ash considered. "Definitely our best bet. If we could even get in there and loosen the Commitee's hold on the children -"

"They'd be down a considerable amount on their fighting force." Stacy finished. 

"Wait, sorry, ordinary fellow, here, don't they still have a LOT of other soldiers?"

"One problem at a time. Backdoor first." Ash said, fingers moving like lightning across the keyboards. 

He was incredible, Andy thought. ...They were all incredible. 

* * *

Hunter was on Plan B, Anastasia had said. Hunter wasn't exactly sure what that had meant, and Anastasia had rushed out, quickly. But Hunter was sure something about this whole thing didn't fit. 

The Committee had engineered a cease in all activity, city wide, the rift, everything. It was absurd, so insane, so perfectly done exactly in the middle of a political scandal and with Torchwood's only real funding being Richardson - who they now knew was the enemy, it all didn't add up whatsoever.

Least of all, whatever had happened to Object One. 

The Bad Penny, the Silas Oblast, The Last of Erebus, something with that many titles going silent in all this chaos felt like something that didn't add up. Even when everything else was quiet, Object One being silent felt off. 

Unless it had fallen into Enemy Hands. 

Hunter scanned for the Object's rift emissions at his terminal, expecting not to find a single thing, when a pinprick shined across the graph of Cardiff - Object One was not only here, it was in his lefthand pocket. 

* * *

Anastasia swore as they swarmed down across the millennium plaza. She had trained for this, but still, she didn't feel ready as she cocked the dual pistols she was holding, making sure that her face remained steady, that her lip didn't tremble in fear as the crowd rushed towards her, as the Snipers rained down fire from above. 

Colchester's words echoed. 

For every single person that had died for this city before, they were going to fight. 

And so she squeezed the trigger of her guns as they rushed towards her, making sure that the recoil didn't shock her as they blasted towards the crowd. 

She yelled, primal, let all of her rage spiral out of her - these monsters had to be stopped. All of them had to be stopped. 

* * *

"I'm sorry this had to all happen." The voice of Object One stated, as Hunter rolled it over in his hand. "They want to hurt me. They want to take me, and use me to destroy this world. To unleash the last of Erebus that is kept inside this medallion. I hid for so long - you musn't let them find me. You musn't." The voice whispered. It sounded even more aged than when he had heard it before, Hunter thought.

Like it had been through a hell of a lot since they'd last spoke. 

"Yvonne tried to make you one of us," Hunter snapped. "You're the very heart of the Committee."

"I don't want to be the Committee. I want to be like you," Object One insisted. 

"I... It's all your fault. If I hadn't thought that you were responsible, I wouldn't have called Cherry to replace Yvonne. She wouldn't have trusted Richardson and. .. and maybe Yvonne would still be alive! Maybe this all wouldn't have fallen apart in the first place -" Hunter snarled.

"Maybe you would still be the you that you aren't now." Object One stated, the near serene edge to her that was always there sounding slightly dimmer. "Maybe you would still be a hateful man that hurt people, that didn't learn to trust, that didn't learn to love." 

"...That's...." Hunter felt the rage build up inside him. "You can't talk to me that way." 

"I can't be right? Oh, heaven offend." Object One replied, smartly. 

Hunter sighed. She was right - wait, when did he start thinking of her as a She? It was the Enemy, a medallion of death, sealed evil in a can! How could he possibly trust this thing - it had torn his life apart. And it was just about to persuade him to - 

He rolled over Object One in his hand. Over, and over, and over. Gritting his teeth. 

But it was right, wasn't it? Wasn't it?

This was it. This was Plan B. Maybe even Plan A. 

He thought back to inadvertently insulting Ash and Tania in the Library, long ago. Back when he just thought about what he was told when he was a child, that all of that gay shit was wrong. 

He was wrong. When exactly did all of that change? He wasn't sure. 

He had changed. He had learned to love Ash...now he had to learn how to trust. 

"So," Object One whispered. "What's it going to be?"

* * *

Hunter ran to the computer stations of the Hub, where Stacy, Ash, and Andy were hurriedly typing frenzied words into a computer. "I've got it!" He said. 

"What?" Stacy turned. 

"...Object One, the plan, the whole thing!" He insisted. "I-" 

And then the city shook. 

Or at least the building did. 

"Oh, no." Hunter said, reaching for his gun, as the Torchwood Hub door slid open. An Assassin had gotten in - someone had - 

Rainn, and 3 armed Guards, in dangerous black uniforms. Hunter recognized them as "slabs," programmable mercenaries used by criminals across the quadrant. 

"Torchwood." Rainn smiled. "The Committee has sentenced you to die."

And then the guards raised their guns and fired.

This Story (Hypothetically) Starred

Natalia Cordova Buckley as Anastasia Rodriquez

Scarlett Johansson as Cherry Classified

Jason Hughes as Brayden Hunter

Ben Mendelsohn as Tom Richardson

Paul Clayton as Mr. Colchester

Ian Alexander as Ash 

D'Arcy Carden as Stacy Kingston 

Tom Price as Andy Davison

Lisa Kudrow as Marsha Classified

Uma Thurman as Rainn Foreman

Beth Chalmers As Marie Hilton

and Featuring

Cher as Object One