SG-1 Fic: Then Came Sammy, by kuonji (G)
Title: Then Came Sammy
Series: A Different Sort Of Command, chapter 2
Author: kuonji
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Jack O'Neill, Daniel Jackson, Samantha Carter
Pairings: Jack/Daniel friendship
Category: team, AU, crack?
Rating: G
Spoilers: none
Words: ~2990
Summary: "I want to introduce you to someone." Jack and Dan gain a teammate -- and watch out, she's got teeth!
A/N: I would highly recommend reading the first part before reading this one.
Chapter 1: A Different Sort Of Command
A Different Sort Of Command
Chapter 2: Then Came Sammy
by kuonji
"This here's Jack. I've had him for thirty-two years. C'mere, Jack, you old ass, you."
Jack sauntered up to the fence where Hammond proffered a carrot, allowing the Master to pet his nose as he ate. When the other man with him tried to imitate the action, however, Jack gave him a long warning look.
The man withdrew, a look of amusement on his face. "I'll bet you have your hands full with that one, eh, George?"
"He's got his quirks, all right. But he's the best working animal I've ever had the pleasure of owning."
Jack preened under the praise, but, carrot gone and a heavy sniff revealing Hammond's pockets to be empty, he was soon distracted from the jabbering human-talk. A slip of white had fallen out of Hammond's pocket when he'd pulled out Jack's carrot. Surreptitiously, Jack moved one heavy hoof to cover the folded paper booklet. The men moved off without noticing a thing.
Jack heehawed to himself. He was sure that Dan would get a kick out of something new to read.
***
"Jack, you've found the Rosetta Stone!"
Quite unenlightened by this outburst, Jack gave up a good patch of clover with a sigh and ambled over to look down at the booklet that Dan was perusing in a kind of awe.
"I thought you said a moment ago it was instructions for a plane?" Jack liked planes. They were like very small and shiny birds that didn't twitter and crap all over the place. Once in a lucky while, you got one that made a big noise. Those were always fun.
"A model plane, yeah. But look!" Dan pawed delicately at the pages, turning to the inside front cover. There were the usual squiggles covering it.
"Okay...?"
"They're different languages!"
Jack squinted. Now that Dan had pointed it out, he could see more curvy shapes in the third section from the top. He still couldn't heads or tails of any of it, though. "Great," he said, knowing that he sounded about as thrilled as he felt.
Dan flattened his ears in impatience. "The Rosetta Stone was a millenias-old stone found in Egypt. It was a huge find, because it had the exact same passage carved on it in three different languages."
Jack mulled this over for a bit. "What's Egypt?" he finally asked.
Dan cocked his head in mid-lecture. "Um, it's someplace really far from here. I think there's a lot of sand. The TV program wasn't too specific about that." He wrinkled his nose, dismissing the thought. "Anyway, it was a massive discovery! They were able to figure out pieces of the languages they didn't know by comparing those passages to the one written in the language that they did know."
"So you'll be able to figure out what those gate instructions are?" Jack puzzled out.
"Yup!" Dan was panting in excitement now.
Jack pawed the ground in a satisfied manner. "I knew it would be useful." He ignored Dan's disbelieving look and went back to his clover.
***
"Hey Danny, figured out the mysteries of the universe yet?"
It'd been a couple of days since he'd seen his little friend. Dan was looking a bit haggard despite the prize of a large soup bone that he was in the process of lugging inside the barn. At Jack's greeting, he jumped, then tried to cover that by shaking himself fiercely. "Hi, Jack. Stabled today?"
"Yeah, my knees just aren't what they used to be. Doc Frasier came in and had a look at them." Jack stamped experimentally, desisting when it increased the ache in his joints.
"I thought I saw her van outside." Dan trotted over and flopped down in front of Jack's stall to gnaw on his bone. "To answer your question," he mumbled around his mouthful, "with Sha're's help, I've been able to translate the instructions for the gate."
"Hey, great." Jack was impressed, but not particularly surprised. Dan was one of the smartest (and most stubborn) animals Jack had ever met. His mate Sha're, a spunky little blue merle sheltie mix, was quite adept in the human language as well. "So when can we open the old thing?"
Despite serving as sounding board throughout the months of Dan's little obsession, Jack had never thought it'd actually work. Now he had to admit to a certain amount of curiosity.
Dan whined a resentful downward tone. His forehead furrowed in neat vertical chevrons. "Turns out, it's not that simple," he said. "See, the gate's ancient. It's at least fifty years old, and it hasn't been used for half of that. It won't work as is.
"I can read the specifications for the gate's motor, or at least sound out the terms I don't understand. But we still need somebody who's capable of fixing the gate physically. Aside from the humans, well..." Dan licked his bone despondently.
A whistle cut through the evening from outside. "Here, Danny!" Jack recognized the Master's voice.
Dan, ears pricked, jumped to his feet. He fumbled with the soup bone but seemed reluctant to take it with him. Jack watched as Dan, in paroxysms of indecision, dropped the bone, started toward the door, then rushed back.
"I'll hold onto that for you," Jack offered, wiggling his ears in amusement.
As expected, Dan's hackles raised. "No!" he barked. "You never treat my things with respect."
"Sure, I do."
"Oh, please. You always zone out when I try to explain the intrinsic value of the perfect soup bone, how it melds utility and pleasure and art, and how each bone is different according to what animal it's from, how it's prepared, whether it's--"
"Exactly!" Jack interrupted, indeed zoning out. "You can trust me not to steal it."
Dan seemed to waver. "But--"
"Just leave it here. It'll be fine when you come back," Jack promised.
"Dan! Where are you, boy?" Hammond called again. "There's someone here to meet you!" Dan stiffened, then ducked his head, giving in but obviously still harboring some misgivings. Dan always was overly emotional about his toys.
"Oh, all right. Thanks." He shoved the bone under a pile of straw in Jack's stall. "Don't let anything happen to it, okay?" he fretted. "I need this. I concentrate a lot better with something to chew on."
"It'll be fine," Jack soothed. "Hey," he called again, as Dan bounded away. He turned to look back from the doorway. "Don't worry. You'll think of something."
Dan wagged his tail once in thanks, before ducking outside.
***
"Jack! Jack, wake up!"
Jack snapped awake, hearing Haley and Sattie, the ponies next to him, snuffle inquiringly as well. "What?" he asked, ill-tempered at the disturbance. He'd been having a good dream. Something about... flies? Or was it fish.
"I want to introduce you to someone." Jack blinked his eyes clear. Dan was dancing from feet to feet with excitement, as if frenetically marching in place.
"Who?" Jack asked, wary. Things tended to get... interesting whenever Dan was this happy about something.
Dan stood back. "C'mon in. This is my friend, Jack, the donkey I told you about."
A long, sleek form sidled up to Jack's stall door. In the early morning light, Jack saw a brilliantly yellow short-hair cat. She sat down primly and licked a front paw in a formal cats' greeting. "I'm Sammy," she introduced herself. "I just came from the auto shop last night." She cocked her head up at him, not entirely approvingly. "We didn't have donkeys there."
"Well, you won't meet a bigger ass than Jack," Dan assured her.
Jack mock-glared at his friend. "You've already met the sweet sonuvabitch."
Dan goggled. "You don't even know what that means," he accused.
Jack swayed his rump, nonchalant. "You'd be surprised what a vocabulary Master Hammond has when we disagree about when work is done for the day."
Dan barked a laugh.
"So..." the cat cut in, sounding slightly put out at the verbal detour. "Dan told me about the project. It sounds fascinating."
"Why, are you a linguist, too?"
"She's a mechanic!" Dan answered for her. "Sammy grew up inside the garage. She says she can get the gate hooked up and running."
Jack looked down at the delicate shine of fluff. Her yellow eyes were very big and she looked like she'd be better suited to curling up and purring next to the fire. "Grew up in the garage, you say? You sure she's up to the job?"
The fluff seemed to grow slightly in size.
"I've been watching those humans fix everything from motorcycles to tractors my whole life. Trust me, I can handle a farm gate."
Jack snorted at the condescending tone. "You just don't seem the type of animal for the job."
The cat bristled even more. "You have a thing against felines?"
"Oh, no, I like cats just fine. It's housepets I have a problem with."
"Hey, just because you do your work outdoors and I do mine indoors doesn't mean you have the right to look down on me."
"Listen, Sam. Nobody's looking down on you, but I'm not one for taking attitude from puffed up kitty cats."
With a hiss, she clawed her way to the top of the stable door, ending up alarmingly close to Jack's tender nose. They stared each other down.
"Anyway," Dan jumped in to say, "Sammy's agreed to help. And now that you've, um, met each other, we can all work together. Smoothly. You know, supplement each other." Dan cringed but soldiered on with sincerity in his voice: "I think we can really do this."
Dan's hopeful enthusiasm was painfully obvious. Jack had to admit he felt a little silly, anyway, arguing like a colt. He backed up a step.
Sam seemed to feel the same way. She licked her breast in a self-conscious manner. "Of course, Dan. I'm sure we'll get to... like each other. Once we know each other better."
"Oh, I adore you already," Jack muttered. At Dan's sharp look, he grudgingly added, "I'm sure you have what it takes. You look like a tough one."
The cat looked like she was about to make a less-than-admiring reply, but then she turned up her nose and leapt down to the ground instead. "See you at the house," she said to Dan before stalking out again.
Dan hung back, watching her go. "You used to call me a housepet, too," he remarked after a while.
"You still are, really," Jack teased. The fact that Dan managed to finagle his way onto one of the girls' soft beds most nights didn't escape Jack's attention. When Dan didn't look amused, however, he quickly added, "That was before I saw what you could do." It was true, too. Despite Dan's usually easygoing nature, once he took vicious charge of a flock (or a situation), he was a force to be reckoned with.
Dan seemed somewhat mollified by that.
"Oh, hey," Jack reminded him. You forgot your bone."
"Right, thanks." Dan sounded more distracted than grateful as he dug up his treasure. "Sammy's an excellent mouser, by the way," he said as he headed out of the stable, bone in mouth. "I wouldn't get on her bad side if I were you."
Jack sighed. Housepets.
***
Dan took Sam to see the gate the next day. Jack, who had been let out to his pasture once again, was forced by his own meddlesome nature to accompany the two. The gate was in a corner of his pasture, after all. It would be senseless not to follow.
Once there, Dan stood eagerly on his hind legs to scratch the eight-foot tall structure. "This is it," he announced, looking expectantly at Sam.
The cat, who seemed to have dropped all vestiges of the coolness from the day before, stalked towards the gate, her tail lashing the air. "Amazing," she breathed, rearing back to see to the top of it. "Look at how big it is! I'll bet you could fit trucks through this baby."
She studied the center of the gate, where a crack between the two halves showed. "This is where it opens," she said confidently -- before springing four feet in the air to hook her claws into the wood.
Both Jack and Dan jumped in surprise, but Dan recovered first. "See anything useful?" he called. Jack reminded himself that although he had little experience with felines himself, Dan had spent his puppyhood in a shelter with a wide variety of animals.
Sam, hanging vertically on the gate by what looked like pure friction and tenacity, was peering intently at something. "It's been chained shut and padlocked. Normally, I could pick it, but this lock looks pretty corroded."
"Um... pick." Jack could see Daniel mentally turning the word around in his head. "You mean, open it without using a key, right?"
Sam craned her neck back to look at Dan. Her ears tipped forward. "That's right. I knew I'd like you," she pronounced. She pushed off the gate backwards to land lightly in the grass again. "I think we'll have to cut it. We can figure that out later. Show me the motor."
Dan eagerly led them to a hinged wooden box built into the side of the solid fence that surrounded Hammond's farm. "This is where the motor is," he explained. "Jack saw people open it once before. Years ago."
Jack didn't like the reminder of his age, but he didn't frown at the credit. "Yeah, some young fella in funny boots and big gloves."
"Probably a mechanic," Sam commented, already reared up and sniffing around the lid. She jumped up beside Dan, leaned over the edge, and batted investigatively at the latch with her claws.
"That's what I was thinking," Dan agreed, enthusiastically. "It's my theory that he was here giving the motor a last check. He must have deemed it unfit to use, so Hammond locked it off and abandoned it."
"Aha!" The latch came open with a snap. Jack snorted, impressed.
"How the hell did you do that?"
Sam darted him a startled look of pleasure that was quickly reformed into one of smug satisfaction. "Told you I could pick locks, didn't I?" She leaped lightly down. "Here, can you push it open?" Sam asked Dan, who readily complied. It took several shoves, but the lid creaked open all the way, smacking into the fence behind.
Dan exploded with sneezes as the dust swirled over him. Jack guffawed, only laughing harder when Dan shot him a dirty look from his watery eyes. To Jack's surprise, he saw Sam crinkle her eyes in a cat laugh as well. It was a surprisingly pleasant look on her, but she smoothed it out a second after Jack turned to her.
"I'll take a look, then," she said, the picture of professional equanimity once more. Jack rolled his eyes.
"Have fun, your highness."
He may as well not have spoken, because Sam was already slipping inside and mumbling excitedly to herself. "Look at this! Not too much rust. The covering did its job. Rats have gotten into some of the wiring; positive lead is unsalvageable, but-- wow! just look at the crusting on those pistons. This is going to take a lot of work..."
Jack was only able to understand the last sentence of all that babble. He threw a look of bewilderment at Dan, who, he was pleased to note, looked just as bamboozled as himself.
"Um, rust?" Dan ventured.
"Oh, that's what happens to metal parts when there's water around. The iron corrodes, forming a mass of particles on the surface. Sometimes, the rust jams the moving parts of a car as it expands around the corrosion area, or a part just grinds down and falls apart entirely. I've seen an entire hubcap in the yard that--"
"Whoa!" Jack cut in. "So this is going to take a while, right?"
Bright yellow eyes reappeared. "Uh, very much summarized -- yes."
Dan sagged with disappointment, his fur flattening out all over his body like he'd been wet down. "I can't stay long today. The Master wants to split the flock into the C and D paddocks today, and he's going to need me. A few of the sheep are close to birth time and even if Sha're rounds up the..."
Jack tuned the rest out. He didn't pretend to understand the details of Dan's shepherding. It usually just helped Dan to think out loud. Jack knew humans, though; they liked their schedules and their normalcy. Hammond would get right suspicious if Dan were late for duty and his new cat were found fiddling around with the machinery instead of the rodents.
"Why don't you go back and do your thing," he suggested. "Sam can stay here and take the engine apart. I'll go out a ways and keep a lookout. Don't want the humans getting suspicious, right?"
"Oh, good thinking," Dan said.
Sam blinked her large yellow eyes slowly but made no protest. "That is a good idea," she said. She disappeared into the wooden box, only to pop right back up. "Hey, Jack."
Jack suppressed the urge to be snide as he answered, "Yeah, Sammy?"
"I think we'll get along." She flashed him a toothy edge of a challenge that managed to look cute.
"Color me surprised, but I think so, too," he replied. "I'll bray if anyone's coming. Keep an ear out."
Sam flicked her left ear obligingly, before ducking back into her work. Jack left her to it, turning his hooves towards the farm, where any humans were most likely to come from.
Dan loped alongside, seeming to have recovered his cheer. "I knew you two would get along."
Quick as lightning, Jack reached down and nipped Dan's rump, causing him to yelp -- but he didn't disagree.
END.
A/N: I call this the Barnyard AU in my head, but that calls up bad connections to the movie about udder-toting anthropomorphic juvenile delinquent cows.
A/N: This series's unofficial name has officially been dubbed 'the Farm AU', thanks to green_grrl. ;)
Chapter 3: Not A Carnival, Folks
Series: A Different Sort Of Command, chapter 2
Author: kuonji
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Jack O'Neill, Daniel Jackson, Samantha Carter
Pairings: Jack/Daniel friendship
Category: team, AU, crack?
Rating: G
Spoilers: none
Words: ~2990
Summary: "I want to introduce you to someone." Jack and Dan gain a teammate -- and watch out, she's got teeth!
A/N: I would highly recommend reading the first part before reading this one.
Chapter 1: A Different Sort Of Command
A Different Sort Of Command
Chapter 2: Then Came Sammy
by kuonji
"This here's Jack. I've had him for thirty-two years. C'mere, Jack, you old ass, you."
Jack sauntered up to the fence where Hammond proffered a carrot, allowing the Master to pet his nose as he ate. When the other man with him tried to imitate the action, however, Jack gave him a long warning look.
The man withdrew, a look of amusement on his face. "I'll bet you have your hands full with that one, eh, George?"
"He's got his quirks, all right. But he's the best working animal I've ever had the pleasure of owning."
Jack preened under the praise, but, carrot gone and a heavy sniff revealing Hammond's pockets to be empty, he was soon distracted from the jabbering human-talk. A slip of white had fallen out of Hammond's pocket when he'd pulled out Jack's carrot. Surreptitiously, Jack moved one heavy hoof to cover the folded paper booklet. The men moved off without noticing a thing.
Jack heehawed to himself. He was sure that Dan would get a kick out of something new to read.
***
"Jack, you've found the Rosetta Stone!"
Quite unenlightened by this outburst, Jack gave up a good patch of clover with a sigh and ambled over to look down at the booklet that Dan was perusing in a kind of awe.
"I thought you said a moment ago it was instructions for a plane?" Jack liked planes. They were like very small and shiny birds that didn't twitter and crap all over the place. Once in a lucky while, you got one that made a big noise. Those were always fun.
"A model plane, yeah. But look!" Dan pawed delicately at the pages, turning to the inside front cover. There were the usual squiggles covering it.
"Okay...?"
"They're different languages!"
Jack squinted. Now that Dan had pointed it out, he could see more curvy shapes in the third section from the top. He still couldn't heads or tails of any of it, though. "Great," he said, knowing that he sounded about as thrilled as he felt.
Dan flattened his ears in impatience. "The Rosetta Stone was a millenias-old stone found in Egypt. It was a huge find, because it had the exact same passage carved on it in three different languages."
Jack mulled this over for a bit. "What's Egypt?" he finally asked.
Dan cocked his head in mid-lecture. "Um, it's someplace really far from here. I think there's a lot of sand. The TV program wasn't too specific about that." He wrinkled his nose, dismissing the thought. "Anyway, it was a massive discovery! They were able to figure out pieces of the languages they didn't know by comparing those passages to the one written in the language that they did know."
"So you'll be able to figure out what those gate instructions are?" Jack puzzled out.
"Yup!" Dan was panting in excitement now.
Jack pawed the ground in a satisfied manner. "I knew it would be useful." He ignored Dan's disbelieving look and went back to his clover.
***
"Hey Danny, figured out the mysteries of the universe yet?"
It'd been a couple of days since he'd seen his little friend. Dan was looking a bit haggard despite the prize of a large soup bone that he was in the process of lugging inside the barn. At Jack's greeting, he jumped, then tried to cover that by shaking himself fiercely. "Hi, Jack. Stabled today?"
"Yeah, my knees just aren't what they used to be. Doc Frasier came in and had a look at them." Jack stamped experimentally, desisting when it increased the ache in his joints.
"I thought I saw her van outside." Dan trotted over and flopped down in front of Jack's stall to gnaw on his bone. "To answer your question," he mumbled around his mouthful, "with Sha're's help, I've been able to translate the instructions for the gate."
"Hey, great." Jack was impressed, but not particularly surprised. Dan was one of the smartest (and most stubborn) animals Jack had ever met. His mate Sha're, a spunky little blue merle sheltie mix, was quite adept in the human language as well. "So when can we open the old thing?"
Despite serving as sounding board throughout the months of Dan's little obsession, Jack had never thought it'd actually work. Now he had to admit to a certain amount of curiosity.
Dan whined a resentful downward tone. His forehead furrowed in neat vertical chevrons. "Turns out, it's not that simple," he said. "See, the gate's ancient. It's at least fifty years old, and it hasn't been used for half of that. It won't work as is.
"I can read the specifications for the gate's motor, or at least sound out the terms I don't understand. But we still need somebody who's capable of fixing the gate physically. Aside from the humans, well..." Dan licked his bone despondently.
A whistle cut through the evening from outside. "Here, Danny!" Jack recognized the Master's voice.
Dan, ears pricked, jumped to his feet. He fumbled with the soup bone but seemed reluctant to take it with him. Jack watched as Dan, in paroxysms of indecision, dropped the bone, started toward the door, then rushed back.
"I'll hold onto that for you," Jack offered, wiggling his ears in amusement.
As expected, Dan's hackles raised. "No!" he barked. "You never treat my things with respect."
"Sure, I do."
"Oh, please. You always zone out when I try to explain the intrinsic value of the perfect soup bone, how it melds utility and pleasure and art, and how each bone is different according to what animal it's from, how it's prepared, whether it's--"
"Exactly!" Jack interrupted, indeed zoning out. "You can trust me not to steal it."
Dan seemed to waver. "But--"
"Just leave it here. It'll be fine when you come back," Jack promised.
"Dan! Where are you, boy?" Hammond called again. "There's someone here to meet you!" Dan stiffened, then ducked his head, giving in but obviously still harboring some misgivings. Dan always was overly emotional about his toys.
"Oh, all right. Thanks." He shoved the bone under a pile of straw in Jack's stall. "Don't let anything happen to it, okay?" he fretted. "I need this. I concentrate a lot better with something to chew on."
"It'll be fine," Jack soothed. "Hey," he called again, as Dan bounded away. He turned to look back from the doorway. "Don't worry. You'll think of something."
Dan wagged his tail once in thanks, before ducking outside.
***
"Jack! Jack, wake up!"
Jack snapped awake, hearing Haley and Sattie, the ponies next to him, snuffle inquiringly as well. "What?" he asked, ill-tempered at the disturbance. He'd been having a good dream. Something about... flies? Or was it fish.
"I want to introduce you to someone." Jack blinked his eyes clear. Dan was dancing from feet to feet with excitement, as if frenetically marching in place.
"Who?" Jack asked, wary. Things tended to get... interesting whenever Dan was this happy about something.
Dan stood back. "C'mon in. This is my friend, Jack, the donkey I told you about."
A long, sleek form sidled up to Jack's stall door. In the early morning light, Jack saw a brilliantly yellow short-hair cat. She sat down primly and licked a front paw in a formal cats' greeting. "I'm Sammy," she introduced herself. "I just came from the auto shop last night." She cocked her head up at him, not entirely approvingly. "We didn't have donkeys there."
"Well, you won't meet a bigger ass than Jack," Dan assured her.
Jack mock-glared at his friend. "You've already met the sweet sonuvabitch."
Dan goggled. "You don't even know what that means," he accused.
Jack swayed his rump, nonchalant. "You'd be surprised what a vocabulary Master Hammond has when we disagree about when work is done for the day."
Dan barked a laugh.
"So..." the cat cut in, sounding slightly put out at the verbal detour. "Dan told me about the project. It sounds fascinating."
"Why, are you a linguist, too?"
"She's a mechanic!" Dan answered for her. "Sammy grew up inside the garage. She says she can get the gate hooked up and running."
Jack looked down at the delicate shine of fluff. Her yellow eyes were very big and she looked like she'd be better suited to curling up and purring next to the fire. "Grew up in the garage, you say? You sure she's up to the job?"
The fluff seemed to grow slightly in size.
"I've been watching those humans fix everything from motorcycles to tractors my whole life. Trust me, I can handle a farm gate."
Jack snorted at the condescending tone. "You just don't seem the type of animal for the job."
The cat bristled even more. "You have a thing against felines?"
"Oh, no, I like cats just fine. It's housepets I have a problem with."
"Hey, just because you do your work outdoors and I do mine indoors doesn't mean you have the right to look down on me."
"Listen, Sam. Nobody's looking down on you, but I'm not one for taking attitude from puffed up kitty cats."
With a hiss, she clawed her way to the top of the stable door, ending up alarmingly close to Jack's tender nose. They stared each other down.
"Anyway," Dan jumped in to say, "Sammy's agreed to help. And now that you've, um, met each other, we can all work together. Smoothly. You know, supplement each other." Dan cringed but soldiered on with sincerity in his voice: "I think we can really do this."
Dan's hopeful enthusiasm was painfully obvious. Jack had to admit he felt a little silly, anyway, arguing like a colt. He backed up a step.
Sam seemed to feel the same way. She licked her breast in a self-conscious manner. "Of course, Dan. I'm sure we'll get to... like each other. Once we know each other better."
"Oh, I adore you already," Jack muttered. At Dan's sharp look, he grudgingly added, "I'm sure you have what it takes. You look like a tough one."
The cat looked like she was about to make a less-than-admiring reply, but then she turned up her nose and leapt down to the ground instead. "See you at the house," she said to Dan before stalking out again.
Dan hung back, watching her go. "You used to call me a housepet, too," he remarked after a while.
"You still are, really," Jack teased. The fact that Dan managed to finagle his way onto one of the girls' soft beds most nights didn't escape Jack's attention. When Dan didn't look amused, however, he quickly added, "That was before I saw what you could do." It was true, too. Despite Dan's usually easygoing nature, once he took vicious charge of a flock (or a situation), he was a force to be reckoned with.
Dan seemed somewhat mollified by that.
"Oh, hey," Jack reminded him. You forgot your bone."
"Right, thanks." Dan sounded more distracted than grateful as he dug up his treasure. "Sammy's an excellent mouser, by the way," he said as he headed out of the stable, bone in mouth. "I wouldn't get on her bad side if I were you."
Jack sighed. Housepets.
***
Dan took Sam to see the gate the next day. Jack, who had been let out to his pasture once again, was forced by his own meddlesome nature to accompany the two. The gate was in a corner of his pasture, after all. It would be senseless not to follow.
Once there, Dan stood eagerly on his hind legs to scratch the eight-foot tall structure. "This is it," he announced, looking expectantly at Sam.
The cat, who seemed to have dropped all vestiges of the coolness from the day before, stalked towards the gate, her tail lashing the air. "Amazing," she breathed, rearing back to see to the top of it. "Look at how big it is! I'll bet you could fit trucks through this baby."
She studied the center of the gate, where a crack between the two halves showed. "This is where it opens," she said confidently -- before springing four feet in the air to hook her claws into the wood.
Both Jack and Dan jumped in surprise, but Dan recovered first. "See anything useful?" he called. Jack reminded himself that although he had little experience with felines himself, Dan had spent his puppyhood in a shelter with a wide variety of animals.
Sam, hanging vertically on the gate by what looked like pure friction and tenacity, was peering intently at something. "It's been chained shut and padlocked. Normally, I could pick it, but this lock looks pretty corroded."
"Um... pick." Jack could see Daniel mentally turning the word around in his head. "You mean, open it without using a key, right?"
Sam craned her neck back to look at Dan. Her ears tipped forward. "That's right. I knew I'd like you," she pronounced. She pushed off the gate backwards to land lightly in the grass again. "I think we'll have to cut it. We can figure that out later. Show me the motor."
Dan eagerly led them to a hinged wooden box built into the side of the solid fence that surrounded Hammond's farm. "This is where the motor is," he explained. "Jack saw people open it once before. Years ago."
Jack didn't like the reminder of his age, but he didn't frown at the credit. "Yeah, some young fella in funny boots and big gloves."
"Probably a mechanic," Sam commented, already reared up and sniffing around the lid. She jumped up beside Dan, leaned over the edge, and batted investigatively at the latch with her claws.
"That's what I was thinking," Dan agreed, enthusiastically. "It's my theory that he was here giving the motor a last check. He must have deemed it unfit to use, so Hammond locked it off and abandoned it."
"Aha!" The latch came open with a snap. Jack snorted, impressed.
"How the hell did you do that?"
Sam darted him a startled look of pleasure that was quickly reformed into one of smug satisfaction. "Told you I could pick locks, didn't I?" She leaped lightly down. "Here, can you push it open?" Sam asked Dan, who readily complied. It took several shoves, but the lid creaked open all the way, smacking into the fence behind.
Dan exploded with sneezes as the dust swirled over him. Jack guffawed, only laughing harder when Dan shot him a dirty look from his watery eyes. To Jack's surprise, he saw Sam crinkle her eyes in a cat laugh as well. It was a surprisingly pleasant look on her, but she smoothed it out a second after Jack turned to her.
"I'll take a look, then," she said, the picture of professional equanimity once more. Jack rolled his eyes.
"Have fun, your highness."
He may as well not have spoken, because Sam was already slipping inside and mumbling excitedly to herself. "Look at this! Not too much rust. The covering did its job. Rats have gotten into some of the wiring; positive lead is unsalvageable, but-- wow! just look at the crusting on those pistons. This is going to take a lot of work..."
Jack was only able to understand the last sentence of all that babble. He threw a look of bewilderment at Dan, who, he was pleased to note, looked just as bamboozled as himself.
"Um, rust?" Dan ventured.
"Oh, that's what happens to metal parts when there's water around. The iron corrodes, forming a mass of particles on the surface. Sometimes, the rust jams the moving parts of a car as it expands around the corrosion area, or a part just grinds down and falls apart entirely. I've seen an entire hubcap in the yard that--"
"Whoa!" Jack cut in. "So this is going to take a while, right?"
Bright yellow eyes reappeared. "Uh, very much summarized -- yes."
Dan sagged with disappointment, his fur flattening out all over his body like he'd been wet down. "I can't stay long today. The Master wants to split the flock into the C and D paddocks today, and he's going to need me. A few of the sheep are close to birth time and even if Sha're rounds up the..."
Jack tuned the rest out. He didn't pretend to understand the details of Dan's shepherding. It usually just helped Dan to think out loud. Jack knew humans, though; they liked their schedules and their normalcy. Hammond would get right suspicious if Dan were late for duty and his new cat were found fiddling around with the machinery instead of the rodents.
"Why don't you go back and do your thing," he suggested. "Sam can stay here and take the engine apart. I'll go out a ways and keep a lookout. Don't want the humans getting suspicious, right?"
"Oh, good thinking," Dan said.
Sam blinked her large yellow eyes slowly but made no protest. "That is a good idea," she said. She disappeared into the wooden box, only to pop right back up. "Hey, Jack."
Jack suppressed the urge to be snide as he answered, "Yeah, Sammy?"
"I think we'll get along." She flashed him a toothy edge of a challenge that managed to look cute.
"Color me surprised, but I think so, too," he replied. "I'll bray if anyone's coming. Keep an ear out."
Sam flicked her left ear obligingly, before ducking back into her work. Jack left her to it, turning his hooves towards the farm, where any humans were most likely to come from.
Dan loped alongside, seeming to have recovered his cheer. "I knew you two would get along."
Quick as lightning, Jack reached down and nipped Dan's rump, causing him to yelp -- but he didn't disagree.
END.
A/N: I call this the Barnyard AU in my head, but that calls up bad connections to the movie about udder-toting anthropomorphic juvenile delinquent cows.
A/N: This series's unofficial name has officially been dubbed 'the Farm AU', thanks to green_grrl. ;)
Chapter 3: Not A Carnival, Folks