The Unexpected Coolness of Bear-Things by Nataliadarimini

[nataliadarimini.livejournal.com]

Title: The Unexpected Coolness of Bear-Things
Author: Nataliadarimini
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Wordcount: 2,900 and something 
Challenge: Superpowers
Summary:  John thought that perhaps there was nothing surprising at all about how much being forced to fight wild bear-type-things sucked.

"Okay.  This?  Is surprisingly uncool."   

John thought that perhaps there was nothing surprising at all about how much being forced to fight wild bear-type-things sucked.

 

"That is not what I meant!  I mean the whole super-powers thing! Are you slow?"

 

John thought that perhaps if they got out of this alive he would very much like to kick Rodney's ass.

 

"Hello?  I can still read your mind!  I would know every damn thing you were going to do before you did it!  And, hey, maybe you could be spending our last few minutes alive trying to come up with a plan rather than daydreaming about inflicting violence on me?"  Rodney kicked feebly at the wall of his cage, rattling it ever so slightly,  and causing the sort-of-bears that had just appeared at the edge of the clearing to growl ominously.

 

Oh, shit.
***

"The thing is that this energy reading is completely outside of our frame of reference, I have no idea at all what these readings indicate and we really, really, really need to check this out."

Dr. Weir look up from the pages in front of her and took in Rodney's pleading expression.  

"What do you think, John?" 

 

"It sounds good to me.  Teyla says that the people are nice and that they usually have enough surplus crops that they are willing to trade, so even if there isn't anything to the readings the trip wouldn't be a complete bust."  As he talked, John put the finishing touches on a stick figure of Rodney that had occupied the last several minutes of his time.  Rodney looked over and frowned, then reached across to add a caption in his red marking pen.

 
Teyla nodded and began to explain in low, dulcet tones the history that her people shared with those who lived on PX3-842. 

***

 

The trip was pleasant, which of course surprised John a great deal.  These people actually seemed nice and they had an appointment to visit the shrine of Agla later in the afternoon, which is where Rodney thought that the mysterious readings would reveal something useful.  In addition to this, Teyla had managed to get the local farmers to trade some of the most amazing fruit John had ever tasted for medical information, so Atlantis wasn't really losing anything but man-hours to teach the village elders. 

 

The only part that sucked were the damn bears.

 

They'd seen a pack of them on the way into the village, but hadn't realized what they were until one of them got curious and decided to investigate.  It had seemed docile until Rodney started yelling and then it decided that the team looked fairly appetizing and tried to take a bite out of Teyla.

***

 

The people of PX3-842 were understandably proud of the Galatial Gardens, in which they were all having what amounted to a picnic.  The statuary was breath-taking and the trees were pleasantly reminiscent of the hundred-year-old weeping willows that he'd seen in Louisiana.

 

The picnic part was okay, too.  There were things that tasted like shrimp, but looked like tomatoes.   There were things that looked like eggs, but turned out to be some more seriously delicious fruit.  There were things that looked like nothing that John was ever, ever going to put in his mouth, and Rodney assured him that he'd made the right choice because they were very much like something he'd had in Russia.  Then he'd shuddered and taken some more egg-fruit.

 

Miria, the minor dignitary who'd been more than willing to escort them all over and who had arranged their visit later to the temple, was telling them the myths that the statues illustrated.  Some of them sounded vaguely familiar.  Some of them sounded very familiar.  Some of them sounded like comic book plots, but that had to be a coincidence.

 

"Over there, the owl.  It is representative of discernment.  Legends tell of an owl that would fly about questioning those who were unwise.  When they would say something that revealed their foolishness, the owl would cock its head to the side and ask, "Oh, really?"

 

Her face was entirely devoid of mirth as she gazed appreciatively at the work of art, an expression of sublime derision in its stone eyes.

 

"Sounds like McKay," said Ronon, through a mouthful of food. 

 

Miria gestured to a statue of a bearded man with a stern expression.  "This is Luck, who is said to have delivered justice swiftly with his fists and kicks.  He is greatly admired by the young boys here.  I'm afraid they've taken to embroidering wildly on the old stories, claiming that the stars were rocks that he kicked into space and that he moved the mountains because they blocked his view of a bathing maiden."

 

Rodney looked at the statue and turned to John, "Hey, doesn't that look a little bit like that guy from-"  John nodded.

 

"This one, the one with the snakes twined around his leg, is a remembrance of something that actually happened, just before my mother's time.  This man was guarding a prisoner when an enemy released dozens of poisonous snakes into the prison.  He managed to save not only his charge, but also everyone else in the building."  She smiled fondly at the statue, whose smooth head reflected the sun cheerily.

 

John looked over at Ronon, "I swear, some of these sound so familiar."  Ronon just looked at him for a moment and then went back to eating.

 

"The most wondrous of all, though, is the young maiden with the box in her hands.  We did not create it; it has always been here.  The winds and the rains never mar her perfect features and she needs never be cleaned.  Some say that is be cause a bird would never dare to defile a present from the ancestors."  Rodney looked up at this and gave the statue a once over with his scanner without getting up.  John raised his eyebrows at him.

 

"Well, I thought that maybe it might, you know, do something.  But I don't think so."

 

Miria shook her head, "Oh, no, Doctor McKay, it does!  I performs miracles on a fairly regular basis."  Rodney opened his mouth to say something that was probably not going to be 'Oh, how fascinating, I love hearing superstitious garbage!'  So John intervened.

 

"Oh, really?  Tell us about them."

 

"Whenever we are in great need we can go to the statue and kneel.  It will grant us some sort of aid and the form that this help takes tells us what we ought to do.  Always we approach in pairs, though, for that is part of the nature of the gift.  It has not been needed in, oh, perhaps seven years.  Remlen and the elders, though are speaking of asking her again, because of the Vestra."  John looked at Teyla for confirmation.

 

"Yes," Teyla said, "The animals you called 'Yogi-gone-wrong.'"  The bear-type things were apparently a threat in the city as well as near the stargate.

 

Rodney got up off of the blanket on the ground and went to the statue, taking a shrimp-thing with him.  "I'm just going to take a closer look for a minute, be right back."  But as he got closer to the thing, which hadn't seemed quite so far away a minute ago, it looked a little like it was glowing.  And maybe shaking a little.

 

"Ooh!" squeaked Miria, "It is happening!  It is happening right now, without the prayers or the meditation or the feast or the anything!"  She seemed, at that moment, much younger than she had before.  She bounced up and down a little.

 

"Oh, hell."  John lurched up off the ground and took off after Rodney.  Ronon passed him after a couple of seconds, but then, from virtually nowhere, a bear-thing came out and shrieked its entirely incongruously high-pitched battle cry.  It lunged for John, but Ronon grabbed it and yanked it back.  John was about to shoot it when Rodney screamed. 

 

Teyla was coming, so he left the bear in his teammates' hands and sped after Rodney, who now looked like he was speared by a beam of light and in serious danger of having the statue fall over onto him with its wild rocking.  He wasn't quite sure what he could do, but dammit he was going to do something.

 

He didn't get a chance.  Before he could get to Rodney, the light speared him as well and he blacked out.

 

***

 

John woke up in an uncomfy chair.  An uncomfy chair that was on a dais surrounded by thousands of enthused aliens.  Crap.

 

"Well, finally.  I can't believe you fainted.  I didn't.  No, I had the singular pleasure of being awake for the entire damn thing.  Yay for me."  Rodney was in another chair next to him.

 

Rodney, he started to say, but then found that no sound was coming out of his mouth.  He tried again.  And then another time, just to have a plentiful amount of evidence to work with.  He shifted on his chair.  It had to be made of rock or something.

 

"Oh.  That's interesting.  It looks like that woman was right:  the statue does do something.  Though I can't see that this could really be called a miracle.  I can't tell that it's done anything but make me feel really tired and pissed off.  But you have apparently devolved to the point where you lack speech.  Hmm."

 

John thought that this was not that far off from Rodney's usual state of being.

 

"Oh, very funny, Colonel, that's just-  oh."

 

That didn't sound good.  John glanced up at Rodney's face and winced.  John hated it when Rodney got that particular look on his face.  It always meant that he'd just had an unpleasant epiphany.

 

"I have a look for that?  What the hell?"  Rodney looked very much affronted.  "Also, did you seriously devolve?   Because that was supposed to be a joke but apparently you're having trouble noticing that I can read your mind."

 

Oh.

 

A woman strode across the platform, leaving a small group of women wearing the traditional diplomatic dress of PX3-842.  She herself was dressed a bit more like a carnival worker.  She raised her bare arms in an overly dramatic gesture, bracelets jangling.  For some reason or other, this impressed the crowd greatly. 

 

"Before you the legends of Agla are brought to life!  For seven long years we had been without her aid!  We had wondered whether the stories were myth!  But now proof has been given to us in the form of these two!  They have come from afar to be granted the gifts of old and they will save us from the Vestra!" 

 

"We will?  I don't think so!  Wait, seven years is enough to completely forget about witnessing freaky crap like that?  Do these people have the memory of goldfish?"  whispered Rodney, hopefully safe from being heard over the roar of the people.

 

John thought that he had read somewhere that the goldfish-memory thing wasn't true.  Rodney snorted.

 

"Thank you for completely missing the point, for maybe the three-thousandth time in our relationship."

 

Where are Teyla and Ronon? John tried to see if he could project an actual question to Rodney instead of just offering him all of his stream-of-consciousness.  But Rodney just hissed and covered his ears, apparently getting the attention of the sparkly woman.

 

The woman walked behind them and spoke words that John thought she meant to be stirring and maybe even moving.

 

"Here.  Yes, here. In these two chairs.  Yes, in these two chairs. These two approached her gracious beneficence, and, led by what impulse I do not know, they offered themselves up for the good of all."

 

Wait, what?  John did not like the sound of that.  He still didn't know where the rest of his team was.  He did not like this woman who seemed to be a cross between a sideshow barker and a televangelist.  Rodney was in pain because he asked him a freaking question.  He was-

 

"Tell us!  Tell us what gifts you have been given!"

 

getting seriously, no seriously pissed and if this woman didn't stop screaming she was going-

 

"Show us," shrilled the woman, "Show us the bounty of Agla!"

 

to be given a demonstration of the myriad ways that his team was a hell of a lot more dangerous than some fucking bears.  He grabbed the arm of the chair to calm down and it came off in his hand. 

 

Oh.

***

 

"So, in summation, I can read your mind and in return am too weak to lift a pencil.  You have the strength of twenty men or two-and-a-half Ronons but are no longer able to torture us with your singing.  These don't feel like gifts.  Well, maybe.  In a hateful, O.Henry kind of way."  Rodney sat in his "protective box" that looked a lot like cage but supposedly would protect him from the bear-things.  John paced around the perimeter of the clearing and pondered their likelihood of surviving.

 

"I can't help but think that the machine is either broken or, much more likely, was never intended to give people special help.  I mean, you'd think that the ancients would have devised a mind scan sort of thing to determine the nature of the problem and then given something simple and practical.  The idea of a weak guy and a mute taking down a bunch of bears... well, it's... it's stupid.  The very idea that this is what the ancients intended offends me deeply.  Not that they were perfect or anything, but they at least made an effort not to be quite this... this... lame."  Rodney was gesturing at John, but half-heartedly, as though his arms were way too heavy.

 

John was trying very hard to think of some way to get out of this alive rather than just bitching.  Despite his agreement with what Rodney was saying, he had to try to use these random-seeming attributes to get them out of this. 

 

Okay.  Their gifts.  This meant that Rodney was the brains and John was the brawn.  "Just like always," Rodney said peevishly.

 

Ronon and Teyla had been poisoned by hitherto unsuspected bear-thing-fangs while John was sleeping off whatever happened at the statue and they were now being cared for in the Halls of Healing, with special attention because they were the friends of the gifted.

 

The sideshow-televangelist had been so pleased by John's dramatic exhibition of his gift that she'd danced feverishly all over the platform and almost flashed them all her breasts.  The crowd had roared and she'd come back a second time to demand that Rodney show his gift as well. 

 

Rodney's hands were still over his ears and he'd just looked sullenly at her and claimed that he'd been gifted with the ability to hear the innermost thoughts of idiots.  She'd stopped dancing and gave him a wary look.  "No, not you," Rodney had said, "Him."  He'd indicated John with his thumb and she'd just looked perplexed for a moment while she tried to figure out how to spin this.

 

She'd ended up claiming that they shared a special link that would help them to anticipate the other's moves in battle, but that just wasn't true.  Rodney maybe, but what use was that when he was in a cage for his own protection?

 

"Okay.  This?  Is surprisingly uncool." 

 

John thought that perhaps there was nothing surprising at all about how much being forced to fight wild bear-type-things sucked.

 

"That is not what I meant!  I mean the whole super-powers thing! Are you slow?"

 

John thought that perhaps if they got out of this alive he would very much like to kick Rodney's ass.

 

"Hello?  I can still read your mind!  I would know every damn thing you were going to do before you did it!  And, hey, maybe you could be spending our last few minutes alive trying to come up with a plan rather than daydreaming about inflicting violence on me?"  Rodney kicked feebly at the wall of their cage, rattling it ever so slightly, and causing the sort-of-bears that had just appeared at the edge of the clearing to growl ominously.

 

Oh, shit.

***

 

"Actually, Elizabeth, it turned out that the Colonel wasn't just feeding me his thoughts, but also all kind of psychic energy.  Once the bears were on him I just got so mad that I kind of disintegrated them with my mind."  Rodney was almost more smug than John had ever seen him.  He drew waves coming from his stick-figure-Rodney's head.  Rodney looked over and used his red pen to write *DOOM* under the figure.  Then he added the rough outline of a bear and gave it an X for an eye.

 

"I was holding my own, I swear,"  said John.  " Another ten minutes and I'd have had them."

 

Dr. Weir smiled indulgently at the two of them.  Ronon and Teyla were in the infirmary still, so it was only the three of them at the moment. 

 

"I've always known that you two make a good Batman and Robin.  And the powers stopped working once you were through the stargate?"

 

"Yeah," said John, "Carson say we're as normal as normal can be now.  Which is almost a shame.  I could have gotten used to being a superhero."

 

"Well, really, Colonel, You already are.  I would think that the ATA gene was enough of a superpower for anyone."  Rodney kicked him under the table and smiled.

Comments

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

Cute. Thanks.

[nataliadarimini.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[emeraldsword.livejournal.com]

I like it :-) Especially the strength of twenty men o two and a half Ronons. Good job.

[nataliadarimini.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much.

[sheepfairy.livejournal.com]

SNAKES ON A PLANE! Okay, that was all kinds of awesome.

[nataliadarimini.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I am such a dork for that movie.

[riva-today.livejournal.com]

Oh sweet mother of luggage!

Do I truly recognize the O RLY owl, the mighty Chuck Norris, and Snakes on a Plane?

I am humbled before your genius.

[nataliadarimini.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, thank you. I was so afraid everyone would just point and call me lame for that. I'm glad you liked it!

[sholio]

I saved this back when I originally read it, but I can't believe I didn't comment on it! *headdesk* I really loved it; the boys are so cute in all their infinite dorkiness. And the local legends! heeeee.