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Title: Having a ball
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,865 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 163 - Ball
Summary: Owen isn't enjoying their day at the beach

It was a perfect day for a jaunt down to the beach. Well, at least as good as it got being in the middle of a Welsh autumn. The temperature might not have been ideal, but at least the sun was out, and that was good enough for the locals. The rift, it seemed, agreed with them and had chosen this particular spot to dump its latest present.

'Are we still getting a signal, Tosh?' Jack asked as he pulled into the car park.

'Hasn't moved from the area, though I can't be more specific,' she replied.

Gwen sat up in the front passenger seat and looked out the windscreen at the long stretch of beach. There were a few people dotted about, lounging on towels and in low deck chairs, and a handful of children making castles near the water's edge, squealing in delight as the waves rushed up to claim the sandy battlements.

'No one's screaming or running for their lives. That's a good start.'

'Meaning whatever it is, it's probably hiding,' he said, opening the door and feeling the salty breeze whip through his hair. It may have looked a picture of serenity, but there was something alien out there and it was their job to find it before anyone else did.

'Okay,' Jack said, 'Tosh, you stay here and monitor readings from the SUV. Gwen, you and Ianto talk to the locals. There's enough dog walkers and grey nomads around here that someone must have seen something. Owen and I will search the beach.'

'Not quite the day at the beach I imagined,' Ianto quipped, following Gwen as they began heading along the walking trail that ran along the top of the shoreline, headed towards a small rotunda and play area between the beach and the main road.

Owen plodded after Jack down the dunes and towards the shoreline, his feet getting sucked into the thick mounds of sand, whilst Jack seemed to almost float over it.

Stupid sand, he thought.

'Don't you just love the beach?' Jack said, remembering his childhood on the Boeshane.

'Yeah, brilliant. Best part of my week so far,' he muttered. Nature and Owen were definitely not best friends.

As he made his way down to where the waves finished lapping at the sand, Owen noticed the sad looking beach ball, bouncing and bobbing around in the gentle surf as they scanned the length of the beach for their alien signals. Surely there must be some disappointed kid somewhere who's missing that, he thought, as it swished around in the shallow water, never quite making it high enough up the beach to tear itself away from  the surf.

'Anything?' Jack asked.

'Nothing,' Owen replied.

They split up and Jack moved further down the beach, heading towards the dunes and tufted grass some distance from the shoreline, figuring it was a good place to hide if you were an alien, leaving Owen to scour the lower beach.

He prowled up and down, spotting the odd shell and globs of manky looking seaweed, a cuttlefish skeleton and half a dozen seagulls that seemed to look at him and ask the question, "got any food?". He shooed them away, convinced that none of them was harbouring an alien fugitive amongst their flock.

When he moved back up the beach they way he'd come, he found the beach ball not far behind him, lolling just beyond the edge of the tide. Must've finally washed ashore, he thought. He stepped over to it, bored with the lack of results, and the wet sand crusting his shoes, giving it a kick along the beach. He took a few more steps, reaching it again and kicked it a few more yards up the berm. He caught Jack watching him and stopped what he was doing, moving back up the beach to meet him, abandoning the game.

'Did you find anything, or are you just having a nice day out?'

'Unless you're looking for something to add to your homemade sea collage,' he snarked, still unsure why Gwen or Ianto couldn't have been down here helping out. He'd much rather be up where they were, out of the wind and the salt. He'd spied a donut van half a mile back, and the thought of hot, sugary jam balls made his mouth water.

Jack let out a frustrated sigh. 'Maybe the others had better luck. We should head back and check in.'

Jack strode away on long legs, leaving Owen to catch up to him. When he didn't, he looked back to find Owen still a few yards behind him, but playing with the beach ball again.

'Put it away Owen, we've got work to do.'

'What are you on about?' he complained, trying not to trip over in the shifting sands, before seeing that the beach ball was right behind him. How had that gotten there? Stupid wind, he thought, hoisting it long with his foot.

That was the last straw. The beach ball, or whatever was claiming to be a beach ball, returned with a vengeance, and began chasing after him, red and white stripes blurring together as it rolled speedily in his direction. Realising his error, he ran, yelling out Jack's name.

Jack turned and saw the pursuit, running headlong after both of them.

Gwen and Ianto had trekked up and down the length of the path, looking for anyone who seemed out of sorts. It wasn't as if they could just walk up to every cyclist and jogger, asking them if they'd seen any weird alien stuff turn up. No, they had to be more subtle about it, searching for telltale signs like someone sitting on a bench and staring oddly, muttering to themselves, or perhaps two dog walkers arguing about whether that thing they'd seen was really a dead jellyfish. In the end though, it all seemed perfectly pedestrian up here, so they'd returned back the way they came and rejoined Tosh at the SUV.

Gwen stopped and looked out over the wide expanse of beach, seeing Owen running headlong down the beach, Jack loping after him, and a beach ball between them.

'Bloody typical,' she cried, getting Ianto's attention as he turned to her. 'Here we are doing all the hard work, whilst those two lark about in the sand!'

The three of them stopped and began to watch them as they galavanted along the shore, close enough to make out that it was to definitely them, with Jack's long flapping coat being the biggest giveaway, but far enough away that they couldn't make out the expressions on their faces, nor the exact words that were being shouted out between them.

It wasn't until Owen made a sufficient change in direction, that they bore witness to the beach ball also making a miraculous one eighty turn, following him as he zigzagged across the beach, Jack still towing several yards behind.

'Last I checked, beach balls don't move on their own like that,' Ianto said, observing the bizarre spectacle.

'Think maybe we've found our alien?' Tosh asked.

'I think that's a safe bet,' Gwen replied. 'Ianto do we have nets or something in the SUV that we could use to catch it?'

Ianto rolled his eyes and stomped off towards the back of the SUV, leaving the girls to keep an eye on things.

'Do we have nets?' he muttered, pulling out a large set from a reinforced storage unit in the boot. 'How else do they expect us to be able to catch pterodactyls?' he said to himself, annoyed at the stupidity of the question.

Laden with the heavy net, he followed the girls down the beach where they'd tried to get closer to Jack and Owen. Jack had seen them approach and stopped his mad chase, rejoining them, completely out of breath.

'It's... definitely alien... God,' he puffed, leaning his hands on his knees as he bent over to catch his breath.

'Do something!' Owen yelled as he sprinted past them again, a few yards away, now on his own in the relentless pursuit. It might have looked like an inflatable plastic ball, but he wasn't going to risk finding out what it might do to him if it ever caught up.

'Get closer!' Jack yelled, having already seen Ianto armed with the nets.

It took Owen a full minute before he was able to run far enough along the beach to be able to do a wide turn and double back to where he'd come from.

'Here it comes,' Jack warned.

Gwen and Ianto each took one end of the net, whilst Jack and Tosh grabbed the other, throwing it over the ball as it spun past them. The net was heavy enough that it arrested the ball's movement almost immediately, but they walked over and added their own weight to the edge of the net to ensure it didn't try and sneak out from underneath.

'Took... your bloody... time,' Owen gasped collapsing on his knees into the sand, unable to remember when he'd last run that long, legs aching.  

'I thought you were fitter than that,' Jack mocked.

'I... saw you... huffing and puffing... old man,' he replied. 'Sand... is a... nightmare... to run on.'

Whilst Owen was recovering, the four of them went to inspect their quarry more closely. It had very quickly stopped struggling against the netting and was now quietly mewling.

'It doesn't look very dangerous,' Tosh said.

'Probably isn't,' Jack replied. 'Just some poor shape shifter who's landed here and tried to blend in as best it could.' It was still making sad little noises. 'Too scared to even reveal itself,' he added. Jack carefully lifted up the corner of the net.

'Are you sure that's wise?' Ianto asked.

Jack reached in and began stroking the ball, making little shushing noises, trying to let it know that they didn't want to hurt it. Eventually the ball shrunk, until it formed into a tiny black creature with a long pointy tail that ended in a little spade shaped tip, and four legs that were attached to its body with fine stretchy webbing between them, like a hairless flying fox. When the wind kicked up, it shuddered from the cold. Jack picked up the tiny creature and cradled it in his arm before tucking it inside his thick coat for warmth.

'Poor little guy.'

'Poor little?' Owen sputtered. 'It tried to kill me!'

Jack rolled his eyes. 'It chased you. Hardly the same thing.'

'Who's afraid of the big scary shape shifter?' Gwen teased, popping a finger inside Jack's coat to stroke its little head, receiving a purring sound in return.

Jack pulled the car keys put of his pocket and tossed them at Ianto. 'Let's go home. Owen, grab the nets and put them back in the car. We won't be needing them.'

'Thanks for you concern for my wellbeing,' he grumbled, hoisting the sand covered nets off the ground, feeling the sand trickling inside the arms of his jacket, scratchy and adding to his irritation.

'First rule of Torchwood, Owen.'

'Don't mess with the rift?' Gwen supplied.

'Nope. Don't kick the aliens.'