The Fantastic Atlanteans by Gategrrl [PG]
Title: The Fantastic Atlanteans
Author: Gategrrl
Pairing: none, but shep/rodney friendship and team
Rating: PG
Wordage: about 3500
Disclaimer: the characters belong to MGM and Acme Shark. No copyright infringement intended. No profit made from this work of fiction.
Summary: They never knew they had it in them.
No warnings - humor -
The Fantastic Atlanteans
"Wait!" said Rodney, "You can't just plow through that radiation anomaly!"
Sheppard glanced back at Rodney, who was fluttering around the instrumentation. Ronon looked on with a shade of amusement and Teyla kept an eye on the view out the window.
"Relax, will you, Rodney? It's only the hundredth wall of unknown radiation since we've started flying through the spacegates, okay? The instruments say it's fine."
"But --"
"Rodney!"
"Fine, then," said Rodney, "Don't listen to your expert science advisor AND the guy who's saved your AND Atlantis' collective ass more times than even YOU can count."
"I can count higher than your saves, Rodney."
"Like your kill-count?" Ronon asked.
Sheppard's jaw locked into forward position. He gunned the engine (as much as you could on these little jumper) and smirked as Rodney ground his teeth at the report on his screen. Driving grandma's Porsche was never this much fun.
The jumper zoomed through the mysterious faintly glowing web of radiation hovering between the Stargate and the planet. And then Sheppard felt like he was caught in a high-voltage bug-zapper. He thought he could see bright lights and glowing skeletons inside Teyla and Ronon and Rodney and weird psychedelic patterns behind his eyeballs. His own body felt disconnected from his brain, and then he lost track of time.
"Colonel Sheppard." Someone poked him. Goddamn hard, they poked him. "Colonel SHEPPARD!"
His head snapped up and hit the back of his chair. "Ow! Stop that!" He rubbed the back of his head. Then, his painfully poked arm. "You didn't have to poke me that hard, for gods' sake."
"LOOK," the voice demanded. (he thought it might be Ronon's, but he wasn't sure) The person was out of his peripheral range. Hard hands gripped the sides of his head none too gently, bending his neck and forced him to look out the window.
"Oh crap!" said Sheppard.
"Yeah, Colonel Sleeping Beauty, we've been trying for half an hour to wake you up. Get us out of here!"
The jumper tumbled in a graceful wobble toward the planet, in an orbit, Sheppard noticed, about as direct as one taken by a brick called the space shuttle.
A few quick kung-fu mind moves and --"It's not working," he said. He wasn't nervous yet, but then, Rodney hadn't started swearing loudly and heartily in obscure science tech language. When that happened, THEN he'd start sweating.
"What do you mean it is not working, Colonel Sheppard? You have the gene, it should work." Teyla stated the obvious matter-of-factly, but with some bite to it. "Is there a problem with the jumper itself?"
He glanced over at Teyla and gasped. "Er, Teyla? Why are you - I mean, what - " Although the jumper was in trouble, he could spare a second to gawp. Her arm looped around the rear of her chair, and her legs sprawled bonelessly around the chair's base. He thought he saw a shoe near her neck, then realized her foot was still in it.
She delicately glared at him.
The crackle of fire whipped up behind him to his right. He turned. Ronon paced, looking ready to start up a barbecue with pale flickering flames licking his briquet skin. His glare had the added intensity of flaming red eyes. The fiery look went well with Ronon's usual surly expression, but it wasn't all the flickering coming out of Ronon's hair and ears that made John gasp. That was almost ordinary for him.
"Rodney?" he squeaked.
Rodney, eyes buried deep within a stone-like terracotta colored skin (maybe Ronon had fired him up in a kiln?) continued the class-action glare. "We had a hell of a time realizing you were right there, sitting pretty in your seat Colonel Invisible. And yes, thanks to you not listening to me, I now look like the Everlovin' Thing, thank you not very much."
"You poked me? That HURT."
"And I'll poke you again if you don't get with it. What else became invisible, your eyes or brains? Do something!" said Rodney, out of lips with sandpapery texture.
"Well I -- " stuttered Sheppard. Teyla unwound her leg from her neck and shook it out. It sprang back almost into its normal shape. He thought he heard a twang as her other leg snapped back into shape. He decided to focus on the gateship for now. Nothing worked. He told the others. The planet loomed larger in the small window.
"I think our genetics were altered," said Sheppard.
"You think?" snapped Rodney. Ronon flared up. "Do I have to get the extinguisher for you?" he then snapped at Ronon.
"Hey!" Sheppard said brightly, "maybe Ronon can get out and push? In the comic book, can't the Torch guy do that sort of stuff?"
"Torch?" said Ronon. "You aren't spacing me. And I'm not getting out to push."
"Wouldn't work anyway," said Rodney. "Fire needs oxygen to burn. None of it out there. And Ronon doesn't have the mass to straighten the flightpath out. Jeez. And if you'd read the comic book, you'd know that."
"Then that's it then," said Sheppard. "I can't control the jumper. It doesn't respond to me anymore."
The planet below had such pretty lights, too, outlining one of the continents, nice and homelike even if the outlines weren't the same. He thought of some old Star Trek episodes where they kept running into Earth duplicates. Now why the hell didn't that happen with them? It'd be bleepin' fantastic to have some Pad Thai right about now.
Everyone sat in silence. Ronon held his hand up and practiced flaming his fingertips. Teyla wriggled her body into shapes Sheppard had remembered fantasizing about when he was a young teen, always wondering why it was Mr. Fantastic who got to be stretchy...until, oh yeah. There was the real reason he was 'Mr. Fantastic'. It took him a long time to catch on. He slapped his face with an invisible hand and startled himself.
Rodney sulked in the rear, trying to manipulate delicate circuitry with thick blocky fingers. He sat down, crossing his arms, panels strewn about behind him.
Sheppard experimented with the invisibility, variously making himself transparent, partially transparent, getting only his skin to disappear (that made him want to gag, so he stopped that) and finally, he did the full disappearing act again, only this time, limiting the field to his body, leaving his clothes sitting on the chair. He thought it was amusing. Rodney poked him hard, again, this time on the shoulder, and knocked him off the chair. Quite a feat, considering he was still belted into it.
"So sorry," said Rodney, "I don't know my own strength. Listen. You know how Sue Storm can use her invisibility shield?"
"No, Rodney, I don't," said Sheppard, rubbing the spot Rodney poked, and feeling more than a little peeved. "I wasn't into Marvel, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah. Use that power you have and envelope the gateship and break the landing for us."
"What?"
Rodney sighed. "Haven't you even seen The Incredibles? You know Violet, the girl with the invisibility issues?"
"No, Rodney, I don't know anything about invisibility issues."
He caught Teyla rolling her eyes upward...or downward...whichever way it was to the ceiling of the gateship, because its orientation toward the planet was increasingly spinnier.
"Close your eyes and try making an...um...an umbrella shape around the ship. Or an airplane shape around it. Then land it!"
You didn't have to realize how close they were to the atmosphere now to know there wasn't much choice. He closed his eyes, ignoring the crackle of Ronon's skin on fire, and concentrated. He tried a couple of forms out in his mind, until he opened them up, frustrated. Rodney already had a paper out in front of his nose, a diagram drawn on it. It looked like a kids' drawing, but it didn't matter. It was in a form he could understand: aerodynamics, and bad cartoon drawings. "Oh, okay!" said Sheppard. And he closed his eyes again, forming the oblong shape in his mind, flexing it out like a manta ray, swimming the jumper down through the atmosphere. It wasn't enough to keep the skin from heating up.
"I think I can help." Ronon put his arms out to the sides of the jumper, which was now at least 140F inside, and then miraculously, the temperature felt cooler. At least comparable to a simmering Edward's Air Force Base-type heat.
"Thank you," said Teyla, with the others agreeing with her. At least Rodney was: Sheppard still had to concentrate hard to get the aerodynamics right in his mind.
"I need to burn this off, though," said Ronon. "I'm too hot."
"Don't touch me then," warned Rodney. "I'm hot enough."
Through his concentration, Sheppard was able to voice a warning - hardly needed, Teyla beat him to the "Putonyourseatbelts!" cry.
Lots of bumping, jerking around, he felt his mind pop a mooring with the shield, and he felt his mind do some little tricks he never knew it had - and somehow, he knew enough to put the strength of his mental shield in the right places. It did allow the landing to trash other parts of the jumper though. He hoped, he really hoped, there was a repair garage somewhere on this planet. Maybe they'd get lucky and land near a Midas. That would be cool.
They hobbled away from the jumper. It lay at an angle (never flat, accidents never landed flat) near the edge of a series of steep cliffs. They had landed on a ridge.
"This sucks," said Rodney. "Couldn't you have landed us near one of the cities? Would that have been so hard? It's not like they were easy to miss."
Teyla came back from a foray down the ridge. It was eerie, watching her maneuver like a spider down the steep, almost vertical slope. "These are cultivated fields. They are cut into the sides of the mountains and ridges and are very narrow," she reported back.
"So there's a settlement nearby?" Ronon flared up and let off the built up heat. The others stood back from him as he singed the ground. He abruptly found himself a few feet up in the air, windmilled his arms, and lost his balance, landing on his rear end, and swearing copiously in his own language.
"Why don't you go scout the territory out, Flameman," said Sheppard. "Doesn't that Torch guy in that comic book fly?" he asked Rodney.
"Hopefully better than you can land," said Rodney. Rodney had just finished his inspection of the heat scorched hull - well, okay, it was grilled on one side in particular, and parts of the interior mechanics and wiring were fused and useless.
"Any landing you walk away from is a good one." Sheppard said, pilot's mantra at the ready.
"Then I would appreciate walking away in my OWN skin, thank you not," Rodney said. "Wearing rocks is not my idea of --"
Ronon flared up again, and this time, made a short controlled flight around the ridge. He landed on his feet this time. He raised his lips into a semblance of a smile - as good as a grin from him - and jetted off into the sky leaving a contrail a jet would be proud of. A yell, sounding suspiciously like a "Yahooooo!" drifted back to them from high above.
"At least we can see where he's heading," said Teyla.
"And everyone else can see where he's been." Sheppard said. "Maybe someone will send help."
"Maybe they'll send for the pitchfork and torches night crew," Rodney sourly, "once they get one good look at me."
"Maybe you can carry the jumper down the side of the ridge, Rodney. Wasn't the Thing kinda like the Hulk?"
He glared at John again for the thousandth time that day. What did Rodney have, a pebble up his ass? "The Thing was much better than that brainless green Hulk thing."
"David Banner was at least as smart as you, or maybe even smarter, Rodney. And didn't he end up with that hot scientist he worked with?" John resisted temptation to stick his tongue out. He was afraid Rodney might grab it with those stony fingers of his and twist it. He felt a need to shield his crotch.
"Oh, please. Comparing me to a fictional scientist working with weird science? Puhlease. And at least I don't have a girl-power."
At that remark, Teyla stretched an arm out and pushed Rodney. Rodney lost his balance and landed hard on his butt, creating a small crater.
"Do not ever say that again," Teyla said coldly, "or I shall be forced to tell Lt. Cadman some of what you told me."
"You wouldn't."
"I would."
"Girl Power is good. Honest. It is."
"I am glad you agree, Rodney," said Teyla.
A streak of flame and black smoke trailed back to their ridge, and Ronon landed almost exactly on his original spot, nicely toasted to an even scorch.
"Well?" asked John. "Did you find anything?"
Ronon flared up a couple of times like a mobster's lighter. He kept flicking his fingers on, waving them around. It was hypnotic. "Settlement about thirty clicks that way," Ronon said, pointing a flaming finger toward the rumpled horizon.
"Isn't that on the other side of that rather LARGE mountain?" Rodney stumbled over to the edge of the ridge.
"No," said Ronon. "There's a town on the closer side of that mountain. There's a village down there, and huts along the way. I thought I saw tracks from the town leading over the horizon, but this is a very mountainous area."
"Why'd you come back so soon, without help?" complained Rodney. He coughed and sat down.
"We are in very high mountains. I couldn't get as far as I wanted." Ronon went over to the gateship and patted it down for more heat energy.
"High altitude. There's not as much O2. Okay, let's pack up, food, water, you know the routine everyone. Rodney, you get the jumper." John said, all breezy and picnicy.
"What?" blurted Rodney. "Excuse me. I may look like a rock, but do not mistake me for one. Use your power of invisibility and move it yourself." Rodney peeled back the door, unmindful of the extra damage (admittedly, not much more than it already sustained) and came out with a full pack, busting with power bars and as much equipment as he could carry. Teyla merely stretched her arm around the edge and plucked her pack out. Ronon shook his finger tips out and shrugged. He tossed his pack over to Rodney, who caught it, shrugged back at Ronon, and tied it to his own.
John spent the rest of the day imagining a sled under the jumper, sliding it down over the ground in as controlled a fashion as he could, without damaging the narrow terraces of land dug out of the side of the steep mountains. He was getting a hell of a headache. Ronon scouted the land ahead, telling them what to expect.
Breathing hard, they reached the first of the inhabited tiny villages. There were three houses, it was getting late, and they were beat. And the villagers were not in the least surprised to see them.
Teyla folded herself back together to her approximate original dimensions, and got her joints right. The people living there in the mountains spoke a variation of a language she half-understood - but nonverbally, they got her traders' gesture patois. The woman of the house pointed out a barren field. John lifted the jumper with an image of a giant shovel in his mind, and dumped it into the soil and weeds.
Ronon spent the night sitting by the fire, entranced with it. The children were delighted when he pointed a finger at a mushy thing-on-a-stick each held, and turned it toasty brown. Rodney, meanwhile, growled when anyone approached him, even John, who tried sneaking up on him while invisible. But when another family asked if Rodney could move some large boulders from some otherwise good arable land, he gruffly relented. John suspected it was as much curiosity about his own strength as anything else. Rodney grasped the boulders clumsily, shattered one of them down the middle, and tossed the remnants down a ravine. He cleared the field in a couple of hours. The natives slapped him on the back and shoved some gallons of drink his way. They all had a good time tossing small shots of the high test moonshine at Ronon, who flared and giggled every time.
John rolled off of his pallet first thing in the morning. His body made an impression on the dirt floor in the guest room, but nothing else was visible. At least his headache was fading and almost gone, whereas Rodney's was in force. Teyla spoke with the villagers, and with much nodding, hand-shaking and bowing, they finally left the three-house village and stumbled on down narrow paths and deep slopes toward the larger town on the other side of the mountain. Ronon refused to fly ahead. He smelled like high test moonshine. With all the alcohol in his clothing, he was afraid he'd explode.
"C'mon, Rodney, carry this for a little while, please? Whaddya say?" begged John. Sweat dribbled down his face, dropping distractingly from his nose in a water torture rhythm. They'd walked five miles down the path.
Rodney stopped walking, hands on his rocky hips. He scowled. John cringed. Rodney scowling as the Thing was not a pretty sight. "I might be able to lift it, but the mass is too large for me to heft about. It's not a Tonka Toy. And I'd like to point out, it was your idea to bring it along with us. What did you think it was, a ladies purse?"
"Well, yeah, it was my idea, but --" and then a fiendish idea occurred to him. He slapped his head. The gateship plunged to the ground, crashing onto a few small rocks, making everyone jump. "Everybody, get in the jumper. Now. We're flying out of here."
The others looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. For all he knew, he had. "Okay, not right this minute. Give me a rest break, and then I'll see if I can lift us out of orbit of this planet, and we'll be on our way."
"Does this mean I'll have to get out and push?" said Ronon.
The jumper rocked, rattled, and rolled. Teyla braced herself against as many walls as she could, and kept herself from screaming (heroically, John admitted to himself). He himself had no compunction against screaming, except he had to concentrate and hold the damned ship together. Rodney did enough screaming for them both. Ronon piped in with a high pitched whimper now and again, but John couldn't be sure those sounds might have come from the punctured and dented sides of the gateship. It was harder to control it without the Ancient interface.
Well, he thought, at the apex, at least I'll know better how to land this thing. This time he aimed for a populated area, after careening roughly 15,000 feet into the air, nearly to the upper atmospheric layer, before plunging down again. Teyla did not hesitate blasting her lungs clear during the rapid descent. Again, John thought, a landing you walked away from, was a GOOD one. GOOD.
"Okay, so it wasn't smoothest landing ever," he admitted, over the sounds of three people vomiting.
John surveyed the rush of what were apparently emergency vehicles to the long ditch the jumper plowed out like an earth-born bullet. Rodney rolled over to him on rocky legs. Teyla wobbled on a few feet behind him.
"That sucked beyond measure, Sheppard," said Rodney.
"Hey!" said John, pointing at the ditch in the ground. "Lookit that!"
Rodney caught his breath. "Look at what? What is there to look at, but our transportation nearly flattened like a bullet and a large number of people charging at us like we're Frankenstein?"
John grinned, a piece of grass hanging from between his teeth. "Doesn't this remind you of Superman? You know, when he's a baby, just before the Kents pick him up?"
Rodney's mouth hung open for a second.
"Can this 'Superman' fly us through the Stargate?" asked Teyla. And then the rush of the crowd was upon them, and they were swept away.
* * *
They were seated in a small room, with a circular bench to match the curve of the wall. None of the people who maneuvered them into the room was present. As soon as they were in the room, the door vanished. Ronon tapped on the curved earthen wall.
"Would anyone mind if I blast it?" he pointed at the wall. John shrugged. He pointed upward.
"Nope, not going up there," said Ronon.
Teyla stretched her legs out and inspected the skylight's seal. "It is tight. I would break the glass, but I do not think that would be a wise idea. Unless you would like to project an invisible umbrella?" she asked John.
John shook his head. "Naw, don't do that. Let's not offend our hosts, shall we?"
"Of course not," said Teyla.
"Yeah." Rodney said. "After all, some comely Ancient Ascended lass might come for a visit, and we'll get out of this how do you think?"
Ronon stopped turning the wall into glassy ceramic with his flame throwing arm. "He'll get us out. He's got a way with the women." He caught John's scowl. "That's what I heard."
Teyla bent and spread out and pretzeled herself into shapes beyond impossible. Rodney pointedly ignored her contortioning.
"Why don't you bang on the wall, Rodney?" said John. "Make some dents before Ronon turns it into something harder than rock."
Rodney spread his knuckly hands out in front of him. "I'll never be able to fine tune another microscope again. Or, or, be taken seriously when I go pick up my Nobel Prize. Or -" He shut up.
John suspected he knew what Rodney was going to say. "Maybe now you'll be able to eat citrus?" he suggested helpfully. "Beat up all those assholes who made fun of you in high school and college? Sit and talk with the guys up at Mount Rushmore? Become the guy-half in Rodin's The Kiss? Finally get that dumb blond's attention?"
Rodney looked at him sharply.
"My spidey-sense is tingling," John said, after a moment. Sure enough, a white gauzy twirly presence materialized in the center of the room.
It floated there all diaphanous for a moment before settling on a vague form. "You are the strangers." It stated.
"Well, yes, we are. And since coming here, we've become even stranger. Hello. I'm John Sheppard, and that is Rocky Rodney, over there is Teyla Emmagan the Stretchy, and last but not least, is Ronon, the Flaming."
Their introductions made, John waited for the Ascended being to name itself. "You passed through the radiation net," it said. "It changed you and gave you attributes to match your natures."
"That so?" John said.
"The rest was up to you."
Rodney groaned from the other side of the room. John peered through the milky whiteness of the Ancient. "Can we cut to the chase, please? Can you change us back?"
"And um, get us up to the Stargate? The one orbiting your planet? Please?" begged Rodney.
The Ancient turned to look at Rodney. "You do not wish to stay and protect the people here? Is that not why you came through the veil? Is that not what your entry through the Stargate meant?"
John and Rodney stared at the Ancient blankly.
"Are you female?" asked Ronon.
The Ancient did the Ascended version of a blink and a stare.
"Is this a Ten Tasks for Hercules thing?" John asked cautiously. "Are we supposed to do more?"
"Ancient chicks dig him," Ronon continued, nodding at John. He turned to Rodney. "I used that the right way?"
"Er..."
The Ancient sighed. Its shape tightened up into the form of a male, rather young looking - not far out of the pimply stage (and John thought he spotted a couple of blemishes on the Ancient's face). "I was hoping you would want to stay. The people here are in need of a hero or four, and you all fit the requirements fantastically."
"Tired of playing superhero by yourself?" said Rodney. "As excellent as I am as the Thing, I am more excellent as myself. And there's a really hot Ancient chick we could hook you up with if --"
The Ancient brightened. And then the brightness dimmed. "Oh, wait. Chaya, right?"
"How did you know?" said Teyla.
The Ancient pointed a shiny tendril at John. "He's got her all over him. Would any of the rest of you like to stay?"
A small chorus of no-thank-you-very-muches came at him from all sides of the round room.
John wondered what the Ancient was going to do. He stood in the middle of the room for a few minutes, completely silent and unmoving. Like he was talking to someone on another plane, John suspected.
"Stand behind the benches," said the Ancient teen. "You'll know what to do. If you want to come back, all you have to do is dial the address, and you'll come out here. Know that if you do, you will be well-loved and honored." And then he vanished in timeworn Ancient tradition.
"A hit-and-run Ancient," marveled John. "How unusual. Who was that masked man?"
Teyla narrowed her eyes. "He wore no mask, John."
A whirlpool poked out of the center of the room and widened, hiding the floor underneath. It expanded until their toes touched its edge.
"Into the frying pan, everyone." John sighed.
"We still don't know if we're going to be normal when we get back," Rodney pointed out. "The rest of you can at least pass."
Ronon and Teyla stepped into the whirlpool and dropped out of sight after giving a small wave.
"Do you want to stay Rodney? Do you want to take the risk that you might not look normal again? Or do you want to stay here and be a hero?"
Rodney stared at the whirlpool. "It depends."
"On what? We can't debate this for too long, you know. See - the whirlpool is getting smaller." He waited a beat. "I'd stay, Rodney, but honestly, if I'm going to be invisible, I'd rather not be living it. I'd rather be where people see me. And that's back at Atlantis. And Rodney, you see me, don't you?"
Rodney's head jerked up. "Yeah, I see you."
"Then you have to come with me, back to Atlantis. Where you can see me, and I can tell that you don't have a heart made out of stone. Okay? Okay?"
Rodney nodded his head after a nerve wracking moment. The whirlpool sucked into itself as they jumped into it. John always felt afterward it was like jumping into a swimming pool on the first day of summer.
08/12/06
Author: Gategrrl
Pairing: none, but shep/rodney friendship and team
Rating: PG
Wordage: about 3500
Disclaimer: the characters belong to MGM and Acme Shark. No copyright infringement intended. No profit made from this work of fiction.
Summary: They never knew they had it in them.
No warnings - humor -
The Fantastic Atlanteans
"Wait!" said Rodney, "You can't just plow through that radiation anomaly!"
Sheppard glanced back at Rodney, who was fluttering around the instrumentation. Ronon looked on with a shade of amusement and Teyla kept an eye on the view out the window.
"Relax, will you, Rodney? It's only the hundredth wall of unknown radiation since we've started flying through the spacegates, okay? The instruments say it's fine."
"But --"
"Rodney!"
"Fine, then," said Rodney, "Don't listen to your expert science advisor AND the guy who's saved your AND Atlantis' collective ass more times than even YOU can count."
"I can count higher than your saves, Rodney."
"Like your kill-count?" Ronon asked.
Sheppard's jaw locked into forward position. He gunned the engine (as much as you could on these little jumper) and smirked as Rodney ground his teeth at the report on his screen. Driving grandma's Porsche was never this much fun.
The jumper zoomed through the mysterious faintly glowing web of radiation hovering between the Stargate and the planet. And then Sheppard felt like he was caught in a high-voltage bug-zapper. He thought he could see bright lights and glowing skeletons inside Teyla and Ronon and Rodney and weird psychedelic patterns behind his eyeballs. His own body felt disconnected from his brain, and then he lost track of time.
"Colonel Sheppard." Someone poked him. Goddamn hard, they poked him. "Colonel SHEPPARD!"
His head snapped up and hit the back of his chair. "Ow! Stop that!" He rubbed the back of his head. Then, his painfully poked arm. "You didn't have to poke me that hard, for gods' sake."
"LOOK," the voice demanded. (he thought it might be Ronon's, but he wasn't sure) The person was out of his peripheral range. Hard hands gripped the sides of his head none too gently, bending his neck and forced him to look out the window.
"Oh crap!" said Sheppard.
"Yeah, Colonel Sleeping Beauty, we've been trying for half an hour to wake you up. Get us out of here!"
The jumper tumbled in a graceful wobble toward the planet, in an orbit, Sheppard noticed, about as direct as one taken by a brick called the space shuttle.
A few quick kung-fu mind moves and --"It's not working," he said. He wasn't nervous yet, but then, Rodney hadn't started swearing loudly and heartily in obscure science tech language. When that happened, THEN he'd start sweating.
"What do you mean it is not working, Colonel Sheppard? You have the gene, it should work." Teyla stated the obvious matter-of-factly, but with some bite to it. "Is there a problem with the jumper itself?"
He glanced over at Teyla and gasped. "Er, Teyla? Why are you - I mean, what - " Although the jumper was in trouble, he could spare a second to gawp. Her arm looped around the rear of her chair, and her legs sprawled bonelessly around the chair's base. He thought he saw a shoe near her neck, then realized her foot was still in it.
She delicately glared at him.
The crackle of fire whipped up behind him to his right. He turned. Ronon paced, looking ready to start up a barbecue with pale flickering flames licking his briquet skin. His glare had the added intensity of flaming red eyes. The fiery look went well with Ronon's usual surly expression, but it wasn't all the flickering coming out of Ronon's hair and ears that made John gasp. That was almost ordinary for him.
"Rodney?" he squeaked.
Rodney, eyes buried deep within a stone-like terracotta colored skin (maybe Ronon had fired him up in a kiln?) continued the class-action glare. "We had a hell of a time realizing you were right there, sitting pretty in your seat Colonel Invisible. And yes, thanks to you not listening to me, I now look like the Everlovin' Thing, thank you not very much."
"You poked me? That HURT."
"And I'll poke you again if you don't get with it. What else became invisible, your eyes or brains? Do something!" said Rodney, out of lips with sandpapery texture.
"Well I -- " stuttered Sheppard. Teyla unwound her leg from her neck and shook it out. It sprang back almost into its normal shape. He thought he heard a twang as her other leg snapped back into shape. He decided to focus on the gateship for now. Nothing worked. He told the others. The planet loomed larger in the small window.
"I think our genetics were altered," said Sheppard.
"You think?" snapped Rodney. Ronon flared up. "Do I have to get the extinguisher for you?" he then snapped at Ronon.
"Hey!" Sheppard said brightly, "maybe Ronon can get out and push? In the comic book, can't the Torch guy do that sort of stuff?"
"Torch?" said Ronon. "You aren't spacing me. And I'm not getting out to push."
"Wouldn't work anyway," said Rodney. "Fire needs oxygen to burn. None of it out there. And Ronon doesn't have the mass to straighten the flightpath out. Jeez. And if you'd read the comic book, you'd know that."
"Then that's it then," said Sheppard. "I can't control the jumper. It doesn't respond to me anymore."
The planet below had such pretty lights, too, outlining one of the continents, nice and homelike even if the outlines weren't the same. He thought of some old Star Trek episodes where they kept running into Earth duplicates. Now why the hell didn't that happen with them? It'd be bleepin' fantastic to have some Pad Thai right about now.
Everyone sat in silence. Ronon held his hand up and practiced flaming his fingertips. Teyla wriggled her body into shapes Sheppard had remembered fantasizing about when he was a young teen, always wondering why it was Mr. Fantastic who got to be stretchy...until, oh yeah. There was the real reason he was 'Mr. Fantastic'. It took him a long time to catch on. He slapped his face with an invisible hand and startled himself.
Rodney sulked in the rear, trying to manipulate delicate circuitry with thick blocky fingers. He sat down, crossing his arms, panels strewn about behind him.
Sheppard experimented with the invisibility, variously making himself transparent, partially transparent, getting only his skin to disappear (that made him want to gag, so he stopped that) and finally, he did the full disappearing act again, only this time, limiting the field to his body, leaving his clothes sitting on the chair. He thought it was amusing. Rodney poked him hard, again, this time on the shoulder, and knocked him off the chair. Quite a feat, considering he was still belted into it.
"So sorry," said Rodney, "I don't know my own strength. Listen. You know how Sue Storm can use her invisibility shield?"
"No, Rodney, I don't," said Sheppard, rubbing the spot Rodney poked, and feeling more than a little peeved. "I wasn't into Marvel, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah. Use that power you have and envelope the gateship and break the landing for us."
"What?"
Rodney sighed. "Haven't you even seen The Incredibles? You know Violet, the girl with the invisibility issues?"
"No, Rodney, I don't know anything about invisibility issues."
He caught Teyla rolling her eyes upward...or downward...whichever way it was to the ceiling of the gateship, because its orientation toward the planet was increasingly spinnier.
"Close your eyes and try making an...um...an umbrella shape around the ship. Or an airplane shape around it. Then land it!"
You didn't have to realize how close they were to the atmosphere now to know there wasn't much choice. He closed his eyes, ignoring the crackle of Ronon's skin on fire, and concentrated. He tried a couple of forms out in his mind, until he opened them up, frustrated. Rodney already had a paper out in front of his nose, a diagram drawn on it. It looked like a kids' drawing, but it didn't matter. It was in a form he could understand: aerodynamics, and bad cartoon drawings. "Oh, okay!" said Sheppard. And he closed his eyes again, forming the oblong shape in his mind, flexing it out like a manta ray, swimming the jumper down through the atmosphere. It wasn't enough to keep the skin from heating up.
"I think I can help." Ronon put his arms out to the sides of the jumper, which was now at least 140F inside, and then miraculously, the temperature felt cooler. At least comparable to a simmering Edward's Air Force Base-type heat.
"Thank you," said Teyla, with the others agreeing with her. At least Rodney was: Sheppard still had to concentrate hard to get the aerodynamics right in his mind.
"I need to burn this off, though," said Ronon. "I'm too hot."
"Don't touch me then," warned Rodney. "I'm hot enough."
Through his concentration, Sheppard was able to voice a warning - hardly needed, Teyla beat him to the "Putonyourseatbelts!" cry.
Lots of bumping, jerking around, he felt his mind pop a mooring with the shield, and he felt his mind do some little tricks he never knew it had - and somehow, he knew enough to put the strength of his mental shield in the right places. It did allow the landing to trash other parts of the jumper though. He hoped, he really hoped, there was a repair garage somewhere on this planet. Maybe they'd get lucky and land near a Midas. That would be cool.
They hobbled away from the jumper. It lay at an angle (never flat, accidents never landed flat) near the edge of a series of steep cliffs. They had landed on a ridge.
"This sucks," said Rodney. "Couldn't you have landed us near one of the cities? Would that have been so hard? It's not like they were easy to miss."
Teyla came back from a foray down the ridge. It was eerie, watching her maneuver like a spider down the steep, almost vertical slope. "These are cultivated fields. They are cut into the sides of the mountains and ridges and are very narrow," she reported back.
"So there's a settlement nearby?" Ronon flared up and let off the built up heat. The others stood back from him as he singed the ground. He abruptly found himself a few feet up in the air, windmilled his arms, and lost his balance, landing on his rear end, and swearing copiously in his own language.
"Why don't you go scout the territory out, Flameman," said Sheppard. "Doesn't that Torch guy in that comic book fly?" he asked Rodney.
"Hopefully better than you can land," said Rodney. Rodney had just finished his inspection of the heat scorched hull - well, okay, it was grilled on one side in particular, and parts of the interior mechanics and wiring were fused and useless.
"Any landing you walk away from is a good one." Sheppard said, pilot's mantra at the ready.
"Then I would appreciate walking away in my OWN skin, thank you not," Rodney said. "Wearing rocks is not my idea of --"
Ronon flared up again, and this time, made a short controlled flight around the ridge. He landed on his feet this time. He raised his lips into a semblance of a smile - as good as a grin from him - and jetted off into the sky leaving a contrail a jet would be proud of. A yell, sounding suspiciously like a "Yahooooo!" drifted back to them from high above.
"At least we can see where he's heading," said Teyla.
"And everyone else can see where he's been." Sheppard said. "Maybe someone will send help."
"Maybe they'll send for the pitchfork and torches night crew," Rodney sourly, "once they get one good look at me."
"Maybe you can carry the jumper down the side of the ridge, Rodney. Wasn't the Thing kinda like the Hulk?"
He glared at John again for the thousandth time that day. What did Rodney have, a pebble up his ass? "The Thing was much better than that brainless green Hulk thing."
"David Banner was at least as smart as you, or maybe even smarter, Rodney. And didn't he end up with that hot scientist he worked with?" John resisted temptation to stick his tongue out. He was afraid Rodney might grab it with those stony fingers of his and twist it. He felt a need to shield his crotch.
"Oh, please. Comparing me to a fictional scientist working with weird science? Puhlease. And at least I don't have a girl-power."
At that remark, Teyla stretched an arm out and pushed Rodney. Rodney lost his balance and landed hard on his butt, creating a small crater.
"Do not ever say that again," Teyla said coldly, "or I shall be forced to tell Lt. Cadman some of what you told me."
"You wouldn't."
"I would."
"Girl Power is good. Honest. It is."
"I am glad you agree, Rodney," said Teyla.
A streak of flame and black smoke trailed back to their ridge, and Ronon landed almost exactly on his original spot, nicely toasted to an even scorch.
"Well?" asked John. "Did you find anything?"
Ronon flared up a couple of times like a mobster's lighter. He kept flicking his fingers on, waving them around. It was hypnotic. "Settlement about thirty clicks that way," Ronon said, pointing a flaming finger toward the rumpled horizon.
"Isn't that on the other side of that rather LARGE mountain?" Rodney stumbled over to the edge of the ridge.
"No," said Ronon. "There's a town on the closer side of that mountain. There's a village down there, and huts along the way. I thought I saw tracks from the town leading over the horizon, but this is a very mountainous area."
"Why'd you come back so soon, without help?" complained Rodney. He coughed and sat down.
"We are in very high mountains. I couldn't get as far as I wanted." Ronon went over to the gateship and patted it down for more heat energy.
"High altitude. There's not as much O2. Okay, let's pack up, food, water, you know the routine everyone. Rodney, you get the jumper." John said, all breezy and picnicy.
"What?" blurted Rodney. "Excuse me. I may look like a rock, but do not mistake me for one. Use your power of invisibility and move it yourself." Rodney peeled back the door, unmindful of the extra damage (admittedly, not much more than it already sustained) and came out with a full pack, busting with power bars and as much equipment as he could carry. Teyla merely stretched her arm around the edge and plucked her pack out. Ronon shook his finger tips out and shrugged. He tossed his pack over to Rodney, who caught it, shrugged back at Ronon, and tied it to his own.
John spent the rest of the day imagining a sled under the jumper, sliding it down over the ground in as controlled a fashion as he could, without damaging the narrow terraces of land dug out of the side of the steep mountains. He was getting a hell of a headache. Ronon scouted the land ahead, telling them what to expect.
Breathing hard, they reached the first of the inhabited tiny villages. There were three houses, it was getting late, and they were beat. And the villagers were not in the least surprised to see them.
Teyla folded herself back together to her approximate original dimensions, and got her joints right. The people living there in the mountains spoke a variation of a language she half-understood - but nonverbally, they got her traders' gesture patois. The woman of the house pointed out a barren field. John lifted the jumper with an image of a giant shovel in his mind, and dumped it into the soil and weeds.
Ronon spent the night sitting by the fire, entranced with it. The children were delighted when he pointed a finger at a mushy thing-on-a-stick each held, and turned it toasty brown. Rodney, meanwhile, growled when anyone approached him, even John, who tried sneaking up on him while invisible. But when another family asked if Rodney could move some large boulders from some otherwise good arable land, he gruffly relented. John suspected it was as much curiosity about his own strength as anything else. Rodney grasped the boulders clumsily, shattered one of them down the middle, and tossed the remnants down a ravine. He cleared the field in a couple of hours. The natives slapped him on the back and shoved some gallons of drink his way. They all had a good time tossing small shots of the high test moonshine at Ronon, who flared and giggled every time.
John rolled off of his pallet first thing in the morning. His body made an impression on the dirt floor in the guest room, but nothing else was visible. At least his headache was fading and almost gone, whereas Rodney's was in force. Teyla spoke with the villagers, and with much nodding, hand-shaking and bowing, they finally left the three-house village and stumbled on down narrow paths and deep slopes toward the larger town on the other side of the mountain. Ronon refused to fly ahead. He smelled like high test moonshine. With all the alcohol in his clothing, he was afraid he'd explode.
"C'mon, Rodney, carry this for a little while, please? Whaddya say?" begged John. Sweat dribbled down his face, dropping distractingly from his nose in a water torture rhythm. They'd walked five miles down the path.
Rodney stopped walking, hands on his rocky hips. He scowled. John cringed. Rodney scowling as the Thing was not a pretty sight. "I might be able to lift it, but the mass is too large for me to heft about. It's not a Tonka Toy. And I'd like to point out, it was your idea to bring it along with us. What did you think it was, a ladies purse?"
"Well, yeah, it was my idea, but --" and then a fiendish idea occurred to him. He slapped his head. The gateship plunged to the ground, crashing onto a few small rocks, making everyone jump. "Everybody, get in the jumper. Now. We're flying out of here."
The others looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. For all he knew, he had. "Okay, not right this minute. Give me a rest break, and then I'll see if I can lift us out of orbit of this planet, and we'll be on our way."
"Does this mean I'll have to get out and push?" said Ronon.
The jumper rocked, rattled, and rolled. Teyla braced herself against as many walls as she could, and kept herself from screaming (heroically, John admitted to himself). He himself had no compunction against screaming, except he had to concentrate and hold the damned ship together. Rodney did enough screaming for them both. Ronon piped in with a high pitched whimper now and again, but John couldn't be sure those sounds might have come from the punctured and dented sides of the gateship. It was harder to control it without the Ancient interface.
Well, he thought, at the apex, at least I'll know better how to land this thing. This time he aimed for a populated area, after careening roughly 15,000 feet into the air, nearly to the upper atmospheric layer, before plunging down again. Teyla did not hesitate blasting her lungs clear during the rapid descent. Again, John thought, a landing you walked away from, was a GOOD one. GOOD.
"Okay, so it wasn't smoothest landing ever," he admitted, over the sounds of three people vomiting.
John surveyed the rush of what were apparently emergency vehicles to the long ditch the jumper plowed out like an earth-born bullet. Rodney rolled over to him on rocky legs. Teyla wobbled on a few feet behind him.
"That sucked beyond measure, Sheppard," said Rodney.
"Hey!" said John, pointing at the ditch in the ground. "Lookit that!"
Rodney caught his breath. "Look at what? What is there to look at, but our transportation nearly flattened like a bullet and a large number of people charging at us like we're Frankenstein?"
John grinned, a piece of grass hanging from between his teeth. "Doesn't this remind you of Superman? You know, when he's a baby, just before the Kents pick him up?"
Rodney's mouth hung open for a second.
"Can this 'Superman' fly us through the Stargate?" asked Teyla. And then the rush of the crowd was upon them, and they were swept away.
* * *
They were seated in a small room, with a circular bench to match the curve of the wall. None of the people who maneuvered them into the room was present. As soon as they were in the room, the door vanished. Ronon tapped on the curved earthen wall.
"Would anyone mind if I blast it?" he pointed at the wall. John shrugged. He pointed upward.
"Nope, not going up there," said Ronon.
Teyla stretched her legs out and inspected the skylight's seal. "It is tight. I would break the glass, but I do not think that would be a wise idea. Unless you would like to project an invisible umbrella?" she asked John.
John shook his head. "Naw, don't do that. Let's not offend our hosts, shall we?"
"Of course not," said Teyla.
"Yeah." Rodney said. "After all, some comely Ancient Ascended lass might come for a visit, and we'll get out of this how do you think?"
Ronon stopped turning the wall into glassy ceramic with his flame throwing arm. "He'll get us out. He's got a way with the women." He caught John's scowl. "That's what I heard."
Teyla bent and spread out and pretzeled herself into shapes beyond impossible. Rodney pointedly ignored her contortioning.
"Why don't you bang on the wall, Rodney?" said John. "Make some dents before Ronon turns it into something harder than rock."
Rodney spread his knuckly hands out in front of him. "I'll never be able to fine tune another microscope again. Or, or, be taken seriously when I go pick up my Nobel Prize. Or -" He shut up.
John suspected he knew what Rodney was going to say. "Maybe now you'll be able to eat citrus?" he suggested helpfully. "Beat up all those assholes who made fun of you in high school and college? Sit and talk with the guys up at Mount Rushmore? Become the guy-half in Rodin's The Kiss? Finally get that dumb blond's attention?"
Rodney looked at him sharply.
"My spidey-sense is tingling," John said, after a moment. Sure enough, a white gauzy twirly presence materialized in the center of the room.
It floated there all diaphanous for a moment before settling on a vague form. "You are the strangers." It stated.
"Well, yes, we are. And since coming here, we've become even stranger. Hello. I'm John Sheppard, and that is Rocky Rodney, over there is Teyla Emmagan the Stretchy, and last but not least, is Ronon, the Flaming."
Their introductions made, John waited for the Ascended being to name itself. "You passed through the radiation net," it said. "It changed you and gave you attributes to match your natures."
"That so?" John said.
"The rest was up to you."
Rodney groaned from the other side of the room. John peered through the milky whiteness of the Ancient. "Can we cut to the chase, please? Can you change us back?"
"And um, get us up to the Stargate? The one orbiting your planet? Please?" begged Rodney.
The Ancient turned to look at Rodney. "You do not wish to stay and protect the people here? Is that not why you came through the veil? Is that not what your entry through the Stargate meant?"
John and Rodney stared at the Ancient blankly.
"Are you female?" asked Ronon.
The Ancient did the Ascended version of a blink and a stare.
"Is this a Ten Tasks for Hercules thing?" John asked cautiously. "Are we supposed to do more?"
"Ancient chicks dig him," Ronon continued, nodding at John. He turned to Rodney. "I used that the right way?"
"Er..."
The Ancient sighed. Its shape tightened up into the form of a male, rather young looking - not far out of the pimply stage (and John thought he spotted a couple of blemishes on the Ancient's face). "I was hoping you would want to stay. The people here are in need of a hero or four, and you all fit the requirements fantastically."
"Tired of playing superhero by yourself?" said Rodney. "As excellent as I am as the Thing, I am more excellent as myself. And there's a really hot Ancient chick we could hook you up with if --"
The Ancient brightened. And then the brightness dimmed. "Oh, wait. Chaya, right?"
"How did you know?" said Teyla.
The Ancient pointed a shiny tendril at John. "He's got her all over him. Would any of the rest of you like to stay?"
A small chorus of no-thank-you-very-muches came at him from all sides of the round room.
John wondered what the Ancient was going to do. He stood in the middle of the room for a few minutes, completely silent and unmoving. Like he was talking to someone on another plane, John suspected.
"Stand behind the benches," said the Ancient teen. "You'll know what to do. If you want to come back, all you have to do is dial the address, and you'll come out here. Know that if you do, you will be well-loved and honored." And then he vanished in timeworn Ancient tradition.
"A hit-and-run Ancient," marveled John. "How unusual. Who was that masked man?"
Teyla narrowed her eyes. "He wore no mask, John."
A whirlpool poked out of the center of the room and widened, hiding the floor underneath. It expanded until their toes touched its edge.
"Into the frying pan, everyone." John sighed.
"We still don't know if we're going to be normal when we get back," Rodney pointed out. "The rest of you can at least pass."
Ronon and Teyla stepped into the whirlpool and dropped out of sight after giving a small wave.
"Do you want to stay Rodney? Do you want to take the risk that you might not look normal again? Or do you want to stay here and be a hero?"
Rodney stared at the whirlpool. "It depends."
"On what? We can't debate this for too long, you know. See - the whirlpool is getting smaller." He waited a beat. "I'd stay, Rodney, but honestly, if I'm going to be invisible, I'd rather not be living it. I'd rather be where people see me. And that's back at Atlantis. And Rodney, you see me, don't you?"
Rodney's head jerked up. "Yeah, I see you."
"Then you have to come with me, back to Atlantis. Where you can see me, and I can tell that you don't have a heart made out of stone. Okay? Okay?"
Rodney nodded his head after a nerve wracking moment. The whirlpool sucked into itself as they jumped into it. John always felt afterward it was like jumping into a swimming pool on the first day of summer.
08/12/06