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sga_flashficTitle: The One Quiet Night of the Year
Author: heygirlie
Rating: PG-13, for bad cussing and F-bombs
Word Count: 6,888
Pairings: Various hints at some het and slash. Foreshadowing of possible McKay/Sheppard.
Summary: On Halloween, their friends turn into the creatures they were costumed as, and it’s up to Rodney and Ronon to save theday night! Featuring various thingspeople, and the Great Pumpkin.
A/N: Fusion with BtVS 2.06. Well, somebody had to do it. ;-) Halloween crack, people. PLEASE ENJOY.
~*~
“You say you’ve found something ‘very interesting?’” Elizabeth stood inside the room, along with the team of marines that had discovered it, and Rodney, who had come to investigate and was currently looking very gleeful.
“Ok,” he started. “As you know we’ve explored a little over half of Atlantis by now. Nothing exciting about that – mostly apartments and storage rooms, and of course plenty of labs that were useful before the Ancients took everything in them and left. But a few areas were left more or less intact, including this one.”
Rodney spread his arms to indicate the room at large. There were counters and cabinets, along with a console device Elizabeth recognized as Ancient. She could see objects behind some of the clear cases, and would guess that the console had either notes directly on it or at least directions to the real thing.
All right, so far she followed what she had heard. “So this is an untouched room. Does it have anything useful for you, or just the anthropologists?”
Rodney raised a finger. “Definitely useful for us. According to the database, this was the workstation of Janus.”
The implications came to Elizabeth pretty quickly, along with memories of her Other-Self. The old woman had used a strangely familiar soft lilt when talking about the man. Post-Simon – post-any-man, really – it wasn’t something Elizabeth wanted to dwell on. “Time travel.”
“Time travel! I know! I mean, do you know what this means? Besides another likely Nobel Prize for myself, once I’ve decoded all the records and verified all the likely experiments.”
One of the marines coughed; Rodney didn’t appear to notice.
Elizabeth thought she might want to guide her CSO’s chaotic excitement into something a little more controlled and productive. “What exactly does it mean? If you’re able to re-create all of Janus’s experiments with success, can we go back in time each time someone is killed to make sure that the accident doesn’t happen, that we don’t go to that certain planet?” Already she was thinking of the repercussions – how far back would be enough? To save Peter, or Colonel Sumner? All of the soldiers and scientists lost in their short time in Atlantis – how many split timelines would they be willing to create?
“Control over time doesn’t just mean going back. We could, uh, speed it up in some parts. Have research and injury recovery go twice as fast. Or, or slow it down. The Wraith or the Genii invade, and we activate sections of the city and trap them.” Rodney wasn’t the smartest man in the galaxy for nothing. He’d already thought ahead.
“Just be careful Rodney – ”
“I’m always careful with Ancient technology!”
“ – because you’re not invulnerable.” Elizabeth almost raised an eyebrow when he caught up, and gave a word of warning as she left. “And don’t let it take over your other research. I think it might be better if you found out how to build a ZPM instead of a time machine.”
Rodney made a frown, but it didn’t come with its usual complementary sarcastic zing. “Yeah. I’ll just, uh, radio Zelenka and have him send over some minions.”
~*~
Rodney dropped his lunch tray on the table. His three teammates resignedly took notice of such theatrics, because they had interrupted the discussion of the Halloween bash taking place later the same night.
“Is something wrong?” Teyla asked.
Rodney absentmindedly waved with his left hand and started stabbing his salad with his fork in the right. “Just my boss writing off the importance of finding the Ancient how-to guide on time travel.” He shoveled some food in his mouth. “She’d worse than Captain Janeway.”
“Time travel,” John drawled slowly, and his mind went to a happy place. He thought of the DeLorean – twenty years out of date and still almost as cool as a PuddleJumper. The nonexistent one outfitted with a flux capacitator, that is.
“Oh, tell me,” Rodney pleaded, in what might or might not have been mock horror, “You’re not going as Marty McFly. I already have to brave seeing most of my underlings in pitiful costumes in order to get some party food tonight; I won’t acknowledge them, and I won’t acknowledge you.”
“Well the thought had occurred to me, but I decided on something a little more classic. And easier to make. Which reminds me, Ronon?”
The other man shrugged and kept his eyes on his lunch. “Come by after we finish.”
Teyla was a little eager to know if he was getting help on his costume. Ronon was eager to give her the answer, “No.” And then, because the combined stare of three people on his ferocious attitude made him a little uncomfortable, on the inside, he elaborated; “I’m not putting on a costume. I like my own clothes.”
Over John and Teyla’s protests, Rodney congratulated him. “I won’t be the only one not making a fool out of myself then. I mean, sure, I agree with the idea that if you’re over the age of twelve it’s only polite to wear a decent costume in return for candy. But that rule doesn’t apply to the man responsible for keeping Atlantis safely and blissfully floating.”
“Many of my people wish they had so many creatures to dress up as. I believe some are slightly envious of the younger children who will be wearing Wraith-masks,” said Teyla. “And we are thankful to be invited and included in your celebrations. Some of us have been to harvest festivals on other worlds, and we have our own ceremonies for death. But not like this, and never one for both adults and children.”
John let her know her thanks were appreciated. “And guess which member of the U.S. military was randomly picked by a fair and objective system to dress up in a big, fat Great Pumpkin costume and act as Halloween-mascot-plus-candy-giver for the Athosian kids?” He didn’t give them time to answer, and opened his mouth when Rodney said, “Lorne.”
Teyla doled out a very tiny amount of sarcasm. “And what did Major Lorne do to receive such an honor?”
“Nothing, actually.” John was complacent. “Zelenka offered to do some program that would randomly shuffle names and then pick one.”
“It’s totally not nothing. He saw Lorne smiling at Elizabeth and making her laugh, and went for blood.” Rodney delivered the gossip with no small amount of pleasure.
“What?” said John with no small amount of confusion.
“Lorne and Zelenka are trying to court Dr. Weir?” said Ronon with no small amount of Low, Dangerous and Possessive Tone of Voice.
“Ok,” John said and didn’t squeak a moment later. “Uh, awkward.”
But only for him, apparently. Rodney and Ronon went back to their voracious eating, and Teyla sat serenely as ever, so that’s how he decided to leave them.
~*~
The Halloween party in the cafeteria was the creation of the best minds Earth had to offer – gone crazy, holiday style.
Fog rolled around Teyla’s ankles as she made her way over to the makeshift buffet. Creepy yet danceable music wailed from speakers that circled near the ceiling, and the lights were a mix match of low, blinking, and multicolored. An animated movie was being projected theater-size onto a blank wall, and there was a row of winter squashes that lined the entire area, where the floor met the wall, all of them gorged and carved and glowing from within.
Orange and black creations dotted the walls, and she was glad to see none of the fake spider-webbing with stuck insects or translucent red glue that had started to go up earlier. It had been too reminiscent of the innards of a hive ship.
She nodded to people as she came up to the table, ready to try some of the fabled Candy Corn. Some of the costumes Teyla saw were beautiful, and most were just strange. A good number of Atlantean personnel had been completely wrapped in long segments of the thin paper she had previously been told were for the use of wiping your privates, post toilet. Completely strange.
One of the children wearing a Wraith-mask – and though there were many since that was the closest her people had to Halloween costumes, a good portion of young Athosians were having their faces painted in a corner of the room by one of the more artistically inclined botanists – came up next to her, took a moment, and then shoved about a pound of Candy Corn onto a paper plate. She saw excited eyes behind the fake blue face.
A familiar voice in an unfamiliar accent jostled Teyla out of her thoughts.
“Howdy thar, ma’am!”
Teyla raised an eyebrow. Was it possible that Colonel Sheppard had started to partake of alcohol before he even joined the party? She took in his outfit, which was noticeably different from his uniform, but still foreign to her. And he was wearing Ronon’s brown coat. On its original owner it ended at his calves; on John it came down to the floor.
“John,” she greeted him, and his grin became even more pronounced. “What is your costume supposed to be of?”
“Cowboy. I know, I know, I’m betraying my history and all by not going as Maverick Mitchell or the Red Baron, but cowboy parts were easier to come by. Somebody had suspenders, somebody had a kerchief and hat, and, well, a brown coat.” Teyla knew she was missing an in-joke somewhere in there. “Plus I still get to wear my gun,” and he showed off his regular thigh holster, M9 inside, by theatrically flapping the coat to the side. “Sort of an amalgam of any famous cowboy I could think of. Although,” he continued, “I don’t need to ask you who are.”
Teyla bit back a smirk – she was so much more prone to them around her teammates – and smoothed down the back mini-skirt that went with her military requisitioned black tank top. It was adorned with a cardboard cutout of a chakram painted silver, to match the cardboard sword taped to her back. “I had help from the ladies at Poker Night,” she informed him.
“Well I think it suits you,” John sweet talked. “You’re every inch a Warrior Princess, and don’t let McKay fool you into thinking it’s anything less than a compliment.”
“Of course.” Rodney had stammered and blushed when she told him about her costume. She took that as a compliment.
Teyla put on air of slight uncertainty and innocence. “I wonder though,” she said, and John leaned in closer so he could hear his friend better. “If I am the exalted and experienced fighter, training only one apprentice in the ways of battle between my adventures...”
John listened, and waited for her to continue.
“Then shouldn’t you have come as Gabrielle?”
And then she had to laugh at the face he made.
~*~
He was late for the party, but Rodney detoured to the Time Lab anyway. The room felt different without a dozen marines or a few other physicists and engineers inside, and he picked his way through the objects they’d been looking at.
His favorite one, that Dr. Simpson had horded to herself earlier, looked like a delicate little egg timer. Rodney cradled the priceless piece of masterful Ancient technology in his palms, and then yelped when it beeped and pricked the inside of both his hands. He almost dropped it into a million tiny shatters on the floor, but since it was an artifact by a McKay-approved brilliant scientist from the race of beings that build Atlantis and the Stargates, he played a weird game of hot potato by himself and got it safely back onto the table.
“Great,” he muttered. How long ago had Elizabeth told him to be careful? There was blood smudged all over the thing, his accidental stigmata stung like hell, and he’d probably just been pumped full of something slow acting yet nasty. Rodney used one of the wet wipes he always carried with him to clean off the device, and went to go find Carson for numerous invasive procedures to ensure he wouldn’t push up daisies by the night’s end.
On his way out the door he was bushwhacked sideways by a werewolf.
~*~
No one else seemed to care that Halloween was so suspiciously full of contradictions and dualities. The Earth holiday was for remembering the dead; the holiday was for making fun of death. It was for celebrating the bounty of the harvest; it was for little children to stuff themselves full of unhealthy treats. It was invented by pagans; it was commercialized by Christians.
Frankly, Ronon just wasn’t surprised when everything went suddenly and completely batshit insane.
He’d been eating his third brownie square, watching Elizabeth – she was wearing a red uniform, long sleeved and short skirted, with some kind of gold triangular patch that looked like a spearhead on her upper chest – and ignoring Sheppard, who looked ridiculous, even if Ronon had no idea what he was supposed to be. Sheppard was trying to make a joke to Teyla about somebody named Conan. It was clear to Ronon that Teyla was laughing at Sheppard, not with him.
Then the lights buzzed out for a few seconds, the music and the movie screeched to a halt, and in the time it took for Ronon to have his gun out and ready, Teyla was gone and Sheppard looked really confused. He also had a gun in his hand, and it wasn’t his normal consigned pistol. It had different shape; it looked antiquated.
“What in the blue blazes just happened?” said John, over the screaming and the fighting. He pointed the rusty revolver at Ronon when the taller man went to cover his six.
“Sheppard.”
“Who are you?”
The snarling blue mass that tried to attach itself to Ronon claws first was enough to distract him from that disturbing revelation. He felt the flare of his instinct to fight. Wraith.
Long white hair, and fish toned skin, and – a total height that came to Ronon’s navel.
He bashed the thing in the head with the butt of his gun, and it stumbled backwards. With a foot of distance between them Ronon got a good look and there was no question. It was a miniature Wraith. It looked like Wraith, it sounded like Wraith, and it smelled like Wraith.
But the cotton clothes it wore smelled of Athosian.
Then he was attacked from behind by a creature wrapped in rolls of linen, which might have been scented once but definitely didn’t contain the smell of rot from the man shaped thing behind all the layers. He couldn’t stay in the mess hall. He was a Specialist and thanks to the Colonel’s plain amnesia, the default leader in the vicinity, until he found someone else better from the Earth military. In order to just think for five uninterrupted seconds he’d have to get away, even if it meant leaving people to die. He would come back later to save who he could.
Ronon ran.
Once out of the cafeteria he ran through the halls, wondering what the hell he was going to do, and then heard a familiar sound: McKay, running and shrieking at the same time. Ronon followed the noise until he found McKay.
The scientist was running while looking behind him, and he slammed into Ronon. “McKay.”
“Ahh!”
“McKay.”
“Ronon!” Rodney got behind the larger man. “Do... you... see it?” He got the words out in between heavy wheezes. “Is... it... coming?”
Ronon pulled him along and into an empty room. He checked the corridor. “I don’t think you’re being followed.”
“Oh! Thank... god. I lost it.” With some of his air back, Rodney’s mouth caught up with his head. “I was attacked by this thing, this, you have no idea! It was growling and furry and it wasn’t a hungry marine!”
“We have bigger problems.”
“Don’t belittle my suffering! I was almost eviscerated by the degenerate spawn of Bigfoot and the GEICO commercial caveman! I had no warning, no weapons, and no back up!”
“How’d you get away from it?”
“I punched it as hard as I could in the balls.”
Ronon closed his eyes.
“Well, I, I think I did,” Rodney stuttered into the silence. “I mean it was hairy and you couldn’t really see anything, but I definitely hit something in that area that went squish, and it sort of shouted and went down fast -”
“We should try and find somebody else.”
~*~
They managed to find Teyla right away.
Rodney thought he was silently creeping along just fine until he found himself flat on his back with the tip of a chilly, metal sword edging the skin of his throat, and more than an eyeball up Teyla’s leg and skirt.
“Ok,” he croaked, “I admit that several of my more wanton fantasies start off somewhat like this, but none of them had the accompanying back pain. Ow.”
The whine of Ronon’s gun against her temple was enough to make Teyla back off. “All right,” she said, in a low purr that was definitely more familiar to Rodney’s inner pervert. “You got me. But I don’t like to be kept in the dark when there’s trouble, and I’ve just seen a lot of chaos. I could get restless... start to cause a little trouble of my own.”
“Yeah, well, hooray for you.” Rodney rolled a little to push himself off of the floor. He took so long that Ronon went and yanked him up by the hand which managed to pop off a line of vertebrae in the scientist. “Ooh! Oh, thanks.”
Ronon grunted. Rodney had missed his irritation completely. “Do you recognize us?” Ronon asked Teyla.
“Should I?” she drawled.
“Teyla, it’s us.” Rodney had his Must Figure This Out face on. It quickly changed to his Oh Crap face when she explained she didn’t know any Teyla and that she was in fact Greek soldier royalty.
“Sheppard didn’t know who I was either,” Ronon added. “I think he ran away from battle, when I was attacked by a Wraith.”
“A Wraith - !?”
“Not a normal one.” Ronon wanted to keep Rodney from panicking, and force-feeding him information was the best way. And the most practical in their current situation. “It was small.”
“Small? Like, what? It was young, it was a midget? You got attacked by a midget Wraith?”
“I think it was an Athosian, one of the kids.”
“What? How is that possible? Oh wait, wait, wait – ow, ow, ow!” Rodney grimaced in pain; it was harder to snap his fingers when his palms were hurting, but he still pointed at Teyla. “She went as Xena and I saw children with Wraith-masks on earlier. It’s the costumes – everyone wearing a costume was transformed into the thing or person they were dressed as. But why?”
Ronon didn’t care about that. “Doesn’t matter. How do we fix them?”
“How can I fix everybody if I have no idea what broke them in the first place!”
Warrior Princess Teyla jumped into the conversation at this point, and Rodney lied about the chaos being some spell of Janus the Greek god that they, the good guys, had to defeat and so she should join up and help them. It wasn’t very convincing. When the three of them were ambushed by a pack of les petits Wraith and one zombie, she stayed long enough to make sure the two humans stayed alive and everything else was left unconscious before running off to try and work things out Lone Heroine style.
~*~
The first thing that had to be done was lockdown all the computers in the city. Rodney hacked the system from a random terminal while Ronon stood guard for any of the various monsters roaming Atlantis. They were spreading out from the cafeteria.
“Ok, if anyone still has half a brain left and tries to do something stupid like take down the cloak or set a self-destruct, they won’t be able to. If they have no brains left at all and just start button munching it won’t do anything either, kind of like when you set the keyguard on your cell phone.” Rodney peered out into the hallways from behind Ronon. “Do you know what time it was when everyone turned into the cast of Monster Mash?”
“Close to 20:00 hours.”
“Right when I decided to make a visit to Janus’s lab.” Rodney sighed. “We need to backtrack and get to the laboratory I was working in earlier, I think I set off the device that’s doing all this.”
“How can you be sure that’s the cause?”
“I can’t, but it’s the most likely reason. It’s too... insane to be some kind of widespread virus that Atlantis never detected, nothing’s in lockdown like when we had the nanites. And I would really like it to be that simple, ok? Let me have that much.”
The two of them set off for Janus’s lab, but never made it. The room was further away from the transporters than most test sites and they kept running into either a) a monster, b) an untransformed person, or c) an untransformed person running away from a monster. After an hour of what should have been straightforward, Ronon and Rodney had set up two rooms, one for holding bound and sometimes knocked out monsters, and one for holding a much smaller amount of scared Athosian adults, scientists, and soldiers.
“This is going nowhere,” Rodney complained. “We can’t keep doing – what are we doing?”
“Hit-and-run and extraction.” Ronon grabbed two extra guns from the two marines, and more PlasiCuffs.
“Operation ‘This Will Most Likely Get Me Killed’ is a go – again,” muttered Rodney. He followed Ronon through the halls, creeping along and giving directions on where to go. The pace was standard: run, run, stop and check around a corner, run, stop and wait, see if there’s a monster around, run, run.
They almost ran into a fight between some of the undead in front of a transporter. The decision to backtrack and go around was scrubbed when they saw a known figure in a regular uniform and white coat stumble in the fray, about to become vampire fodder.
Ronon shot and fought while Rodney grabbed Carson and then they all ran like hell until they lost their pursuers. Further away from Janus’s lab than before, but in no immediate danger.
“Oh Carson, thank god.” Rodney put a hand on Carson’s arm, half for comfort and half for support.
“Good to see you Doc,” Ronon added.
“We think we know the reason for all the chaos,” said Rodney. “If you can get to this room we have set aside for the untransformed, they’ll be happy to see a doctor, than we can -”
Carson interrupted them with a paranoid look and an American accent. “Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t know any Carson. My name is Dr. Doug Ross.
Rodney’s face went dark red, and he slowly stretched out a hand, claw-style, in the direction of his formerly Scottish friend. “I swear to God, once I finish saving your life I’m going to kill you.”
They started to take Carson back, see if he could help anyone. Ronon thought it was a good idea; Rodney’s hurried explanation meant he was still a doctor, if somebody else completely.
“But he’s a TV doctor! They never get anything right! They have their own version of medical techobabble! It’s medibabble!”
“Shut up, McKay.”
They gathered even more people as they went along – they found Laura Cadman of all people, dressed in a Japanese sailor schoolgirl uniform and unique pigtailed hairstyle Rodney would forever be able to recognize from his brief stint into anime porn – and finally Rodney put his foot down. He gave Carson directions and told him to take everyone with him, try not to get killed.
“They were slowing us down,” he sniped, and Ronon had to agree with that.
~*~
In the course of their journey, Rodney and Ronon came into contact and/or did battle with:
Twelve (12) mummies, classical Egyptian style
Five (5) zombies, ranging from George Romero to “28 Days Later” style
Three (3) vampires, ranging from Anne Rice to Buffy style
Seven (7) witches, ranging from Wicked to Charmed style
Eight (8) ghosts, who were rightfully terrifying until it was understood that they couldn’t touch anything
Two (2) pirates, both of whom claimed to be Captain Jack Sparrow
Four (4) ninjas, none of whom were Asian pre-transformation
Six (6) fairy princesses, most of whom came from the WB
One (1) werewolf, presumably off somewhere nursing itself back to fertility
Add to that a dinosaur, a mermaid, Oogie Boogie, a professional baseball player, a geisha, a World War II soldier, various cute insects and animals, a prima ballerina, a flying monkey, Elvis, and what seemed like an endless amount of mini-Wraith, Rodney was pretty pissed off after another hour running circles around the city.
It didn’t help when he and Ronon came across John. Cowboy Sheppard had found the French Maid.
“Oh, how typical. We’re in the middle of a crisis and you’ve still got only one thing on your mind!”
Rodney’s outburst only seemed to amuse them. The woman giggled from where she sat in John’s lap and said something in French, while he took a gulp from a canteen. “Howdy,” he drawled happily. “You ain’t monsters.”
“No we aren’t. How lucky for you. Now get up, you’re sitting ducks out here in the open.”
“Hey!” John pushed away Ronon’s hand. “We’re doin’ just fine! Right, darling? Let ‘em come find us!” he bragged, and gave the woman a messy kiss.
“Shh! Don’t raise your voice!” Rodney looked around for the monsters that would surely pop out at any second.
John stumbled to his feet, pulling his companion up with him. “I ain’t afeared of no monster.” He put an arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Don’t worry lil’ lady, I’m the best shot this side of the Mississippi. I’ll protect you.”
Stephen King’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown came around a corner.
John’s face went ashen.
“Maybe not,” he said and ran in the other direction. Pennywise followed.
“Va te faire foutre!” shrilled the French Maid.
Rodney shouted after John, “Don’t you know never to run from anything immortal, it attracts their attention!”
“So does yelling,” Ronon growled, and shot the first mini-Wraith in range. The French Maid screamed and fastened herself to Rodney, which was unbelievably awesome until the other mini-Wraiths came at them five seconds later. They pulled and beat at him until he was on his knees – they couldn’t, Rodney realized, feed off of him if they weren’t tall enough to reach his chest – and one of them stood in front of him and raised a hand.
He was almost subject to one of his worst nightmares, death by a multitude of children, when he heard the whine of flying metal. Teyla’s chakram sliced open the top of the mini-Wraith’s hand, followed by the bottom of her boot to his person.
“Thank the gods,” Rodney murmured as she helped him up. “Where’s...” He saw Teyla get back into the fight, knocking heads and taking names along with Ronon, protecting Random European Cleaning Person. John was already long out of sight.
“Oh, crap.” Rodney ran to find him.
He followed the crazy laughing, and picked up the nearest blunt object. John was crouched against a wall with Pennywise hanging over him. The once kamikaze Air Force Lieutenant Colonel radiated fear, and was fast approaching the option of passing out from manly fright. Rodney snuck up as best he could, but It turned around at the last second with a demoniac shout, “Boo!”
“Ahh!” Rodney cried, for the second time that night, and flung the potful of 10,000 year old dead plant dirt in It’s eyes. Then he cracked It in the face with the pot itself.
“Ok,” he panted, and stepped over the body. “I never read the book and I only saw parts of the movie, so I don’t know if that’s how you do it, but right now he’s not talking or moving, so it’s good enough for me.”
Rodney had to drag the seemingly lifeless John for a few moments. When John did calm down enough to regain the use of his limbs, he used them to wrap Rodney in a bear hug.
“Oh, this cannot be normal cowpeople behavior,” Rodney mumbled from where his head was pressed into John’s shoulder. He moved it until he could breathe comfortably again.
“You saved my life, padre.”
“Yes, well, it’s because I’m frequently, secretly fond of you. Except for now. Get off.”
John pulled back and looked deeply into Rodney’s eyes. “You’re a brave one. I’m sorry you had to see I weren’t one myself. But if you’ll let me, I can tag along and make it up to you. Any way you like.” He licked his lips and then stared at a point in space somewhere past the top of the other man’s ear.
It took Rodney a moment.
“What? You – are you saying – you actually – no! This is – ok, well, to be honest I’ve spent some time thinking we might – wait, no, NO! Look what you’re doing to me, you horribly drunk and attractive cowboy.” Rodney smacked John upside the head, and knocked his stupid cowboy hat off. “Pull yourself together. We have to find the rest of our team and push through a horde of quasi-evil Halloween creatures to find and turn off an alien device. Come on, follow me.”
John sniffed. “I don’t know how I’m gonna quit you,” he wailed.
~*~
Things started to come to a head when the team had to break up a brawl between a Jedi Knight and a Sebacean Peacekeeper. Fortunately, John turned out to be much better at joining in with the shooting and hitting of things, as long as they weren’t clowns and he was closer to this side of sober.
“We need to keep moving,” weighed in Teyla. She spared a glace for the extra woman, who managed to run rather fast in high heels, but not fast enough to keep up as was truly needed.
They heard movement in the shadows, and everyone got out their guns and swords, except Rodney, who couldn’t properly hold a weapon. His best weapon was his brain, anyway, and that could stay safely in the cavity of his skull.
“It’s just us,” said Carson, with his weird non-Scottish accent. He had Cadman hanging off his arm. Ronon wanted to know why the hell they were out roaming the halls.
“I wanted to try and find other survivors,” Carson protested. “And – she came along. We got lost.” He looked down at Cadman, who beamed up at him with love in her eyes. “You know,” he continued without breaking eye contact, “we came across a bunch of those things and she stopped crying long enough to pull a scepter out from somewhere and shoot a sparkly beam of what looked like hearts and rainbows. It took them all down. Does anyone else find that disturbing?”
“I think it’s disturbing that I’m not disturbed at havin’ seen so many of a gal’s gams tonight.” John’s leer moved from Cadman, to Teyla, to the French Maid, and back again.
“You manwhore,” said Rodney.
“Candy,” said something.
Rodney thought he was pumped up with more adrenaline and fear than humanly possible, and then he turned and saw it.
He registered the thing in separate, horrific pieces. The inhuman, Wraith-and-Ronon towering stature. The fetid stench of old pumpkins. The spindly, vine form that somehow managed to support a bulbous, orange head. The leafy hand that pointed towards Rodney. And a gaping, pulpy mouth that spoke a voice – faintly reminiscent of a friendly yet snarky Air Force Major – in the exact same infliction of hunger and lust that regular humans, including Rodney, also used when speaking of delicious treats.
It’s isn’t important that Rodney screamed. Of course he screamed; high pitched and long winded, and about as stereotypical as one could imagine. No, what’s important is that so did everyone else, including Ronon, although with the level of terror going around no one was paying much attention to anything other than panicking and getting the hell out of Dodge and he was able to deny it later.
The ever eloquent under pressure scientist was able to manage a “Fuck You, Charlie Brown!” as he ran.
~*~
After a good four hours of darting and sneaking around, Ronon changed tactics. He blasted and punched everything in their path to the laboratory holding the thingamajig. He shouted at Rodney for directions, and jump-kicked a random vampire in the way.
Finally, finally they made it inside the original lab. Rodney went to get the object and told the others to barricade the door.
“Ok, here it is!” Rodney looked it over and tried to figure out how to undue whatever it was he did. He almost missed Ronon raising his gun high, ready to bring it back down on the device. “No!” He shoved Ronon away from the table. Well, he tried. “This isn’t a VCR, you can’t just hit it until it works!”
“They’re coming,” Teyla warned them all.
“They?”
And then they came.
Like water in a sinking boat, they started to fill up the room: the vampires, the zombies, the mummies, the midget Wraith. And behind them all, roaring for human flesh, was the Great Pumpkin.
The ghosts came too; they might not be able to physically do anything, but they could watch. It’s not like there was anything else interesting to do.
There was crying in French, and blubbering in Japanese, and cursing from everybody. Two swords, two guns, and one chakram tried to fight off the mass. Rodney identified one third of the item and then he was smacked ten feet away. The Great Pumpkin advanced on him.
“No!” John punched a mummy and ran to put himself between Rodney and Certain Death. He stood tall and pointed his gun at the Great Pumpkin. “You ain’t gettin’ him!”
The Great Pumpkin gave John a leafy bitch slap. He landed somewhere other than where he started.
“Thanks a lot,” Rodney cried weakly, and gave one last whimper as the face of his demise closed in.
Ronon did a cool trick with his sword that involved 360° swinging and left him with a straight line to the counter where the device sat. He heaved up a stool and crashed its seat down on top of the Ancient egg timer, the force of the blow sending little bits of metals off the table.
Lorne tripped and fell onto Rodney. “Holy crap,” said Lorne, and passed out in his huge cotton pumpkin suit while still sprawled on top of the Chief Science Officer.
Everyone stood motionless and in a daze, until Rodney thoughtfully brought them back to reality. “He’s squishing me! Stop staring into space like idiots and roll him off before I die of suffocation by a man dressed as a vegetable!”
~*~
The next morning saw clear weather.
“So.” Elizabeth clasped her hands together, and looked at the people assembled in her office. “Damage control?”
“Done. We managed not to kill anybody, it turns out.” John forwent putting his hands on his hips, and shoved them in his pockets instead. “Dr. Beckett and his people worked through most of the night on the victims; mostly cuts and bruises, and some deep wounds that just needed cleaning and wrapping. A lot of the injuries reversed when the... thing finally stopped broadcasting. Hand patterns from Wraith feedings wounds would turn shallow, people with what should have been internal bleeding just had bruising. I’ve got Marines cleaning up debris around the city, and McKay sent some of his people to take down stuff in the cafeteria.”
He hissed in air through his teeth, anxiety obvious. “I don’t know what to do about the Athosians though. How exactly do you say ‘Sorry we got you all excited and then turned your kids into Wraith, but we promise not to do it again and it’s all better now?’”
“Indeed,” Teyla muttered.
“What the hell was that thing?” Ronon demanded to the room in general. “I thought the guy that ran the place was into time travel.”
“Look, we’ll never know for sure,” said Rodney. “The database said it was a lab, and the name connected to it was Janus. It’s possible the artifact was from a previous line of abandoned research and most of the other things are for experiments with time, or it could be that everything in there is just a smokescreen: fake research, fake experiments, fake everything.”
Elizabeth looked at Rodney, and leaned back in her chair. “Fake? How does that even work, having false research? What would be the point?”
“Well, we know the rest of the Ancients didn’t want him messing around with time. It stands to reason he would keep his efforts a secret. It wouldn’t be that hard, really, I mean a good scientist never works single mindedly on just one thing, unless it’s a life-or-death situation. You always have a bunch of things you want to work on, and you have stuff to show for it, but you focus on what you really want and just don’t advertise. The only people you have to worry about are other scientists who might be smart enough to figure out what’s going on...” Rodney trailed off when he finally realized everyone was staring at him. “Um. Anyway. Carry on.”
But all Elizabeth did next was praise his and Ronon’s successful efforts, and then let them go. Teyla stayed behind. All the women that had costumed in mini-skirts had stories to share with each other.
Ronon brushed past John and Rodney. Everyone felt bad that he’d had to endure through such a mess. He felt anxious to get back to his room where he kept the food he'd swiped from the Halloween party. After last night, Ronon deserved his chocolate.
“Hey, Rodney. Wait up,” John called, and caught up with him. “Listen, uh, thanks. Nice job with saving the city and all.”
“A thank-you from Colonel Sheppard, for an amazing feat of brilliance that saved us all from imminent doom? Wow, see, one of those things is a regular occurrence, and the other is a rare gift I don’t remember ever getting before.”
“Rodney.”
“Ok,” said Rodney, and he shrugged. “You’re either upset about coming off as a coward or gay, or both. Before you indulge in whatever stereotypical, manly-man jockstrap behavior you think will save face, let me say a few things and maybe I won’t have to endure through weeks of uncomfortable-ness.”
He actually pulled out a piece of crumpled paper, and looked it over before stuffing it back into his pocket. John mouthed, ‘Manly-man jockstrap behavior?’
Rodney intoned, “You are not a coward. You were under the influence of alien technology. Everyone has at least one thing they’re deathly afraid of. I’ve got about thirteen myself. You probably would have reacted in a similar vein even if you’d gone as Han Solo or Harry Potter.”
Well that was doubtful, but John nodded slowly.
“I honestly didn’t see the cowboy thing coming,” admitted Rodney. “Although I probably should have, what with that huge Johnny Cash poster and your abysmal taste for John Wayne movies.”
“John Wayne is classic.”
“Spaghetti westerns? The Dollars Trilogy?”
“You know what we should have had at the party; a karaoke machine, with plenty of country western music.”
“So I could listen to you butcher ‘A Boy Named Sue?’ No thanks, Colonel.”
Rodney stopped talking, and silently pulled John away from the regular commotion of people at work, onto an empty balcony. John would have said something himself, if he hadn’t already known what was coming up.
“So, about the other thing. The, uh, well.” Rodney’s eyes darted around.
“The thing being, where under the influence of alien technology, I came onto you,” John finished for him.
“Yeah, that’s it. That’s the one. Which is why I have us having the rest of this conversation out here, alone, away from any dangers to your military career. Anyway, I, it’s, it’s ok with me, I mean I’m not freaked out by you or anything -”
“Really.”
“I’m not! I’m just pissed at you for offering sex to a seriously deprived man when you were clearly out of your right mind and in a position to be taken advantage of.” Rodney crossed his arms. “I just want to come out of this your friend, and not suddenly the scientist on your team you’re coolly distant to. Just pick whichever choice you want; casual fuck-buddies, sappy romantic lovers, plain old teammates that joke about long legs and big breasts, as long as I’m fine and you’re cool, ok?”
John saw Rodney uncross and re-cross his arms, humming with contained energy. He looked in a way John thought he might be able to relate to; nervous, and hopeful.
“It’s ok. We’re cool.”
~*~
The End.
~*~
Author’s Notes: I swear this comm will kill me one day. The last time I tried to write for a challenge I got sick. This time I ended up having two essays, a take-home test and a presentation on possible solutions to the American health care system due all around the same time as my Halloween fic. *ded*
Because of certain things in Real Life this didn’t get beta’ed in time for a proper editing before the deadline. I can only hope the self-edited draft will still be amusing to some people. I’ll either update the post as my betas work or I’ll post a link to the finished version in other general comms when I can, depending on how big or minor the things pointed out to me are.
Constructive criticism is always welcomed. :)
I drew inspiration for the Great Pumpkin here. Ah, Robot Chicken. :D
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Author: heygirlie
Rating: PG-13, for bad cussing and F-bombs
Word Count: 6,888
Pairings: Various hints at some het and slash. Foreshadowing of possible McKay/Sheppard.
Summary: On Halloween, their friends turn into the creatures they were costumed as, and it’s up to Rodney and Ronon to save the
A/N: Fusion with BtVS 2.06. Well, somebody had to do it. ;-) Halloween crack, people. PLEASE ENJOY.
~*~
“You say you’ve found something ‘very interesting?’” Elizabeth stood inside the room, along with the team of marines that had discovered it, and Rodney, who had come to investigate and was currently looking very gleeful.
“Ok,” he started. “As you know we’ve explored a little over half of Atlantis by now. Nothing exciting about that – mostly apartments and storage rooms, and of course plenty of labs that were useful before the Ancients took everything in them and left. But a few areas were left more or less intact, including this one.”
Rodney spread his arms to indicate the room at large. There were counters and cabinets, along with a console device Elizabeth recognized as Ancient. She could see objects behind some of the clear cases, and would guess that the console had either notes directly on it or at least directions to the real thing.
All right, so far she followed what she had heard. “So this is an untouched room. Does it have anything useful for you, or just the anthropologists?”
Rodney raised a finger. “Definitely useful for us. According to the database, this was the workstation of Janus.”
The implications came to Elizabeth pretty quickly, along with memories of her Other-Self. The old woman had used a strangely familiar soft lilt when talking about the man. Post-Simon – post-any-man, really – it wasn’t something Elizabeth wanted to dwell on. “Time travel.”
“Time travel! I know! I mean, do you know what this means? Besides another likely Nobel Prize for myself, once I’ve decoded all the records and verified all the likely experiments.”
One of the marines coughed; Rodney didn’t appear to notice.
Elizabeth thought she might want to guide her CSO’s chaotic excitement into something a little more controlled and productive. “What exactly does it mean? If you’re able to re-create all of Janus’s experiments with success, can we go back in time each time someone is killed to make sure that the accident doesn’t happen, that we don’t go to that certain planet?” Already she was thinking of the repercussions – how far back would be enough? To save Peter, or Colonel Sumner? All of the soldiers and scientists lost in their short time in Atlantis – how many split timelines would they be willing to create?
“Control over time doesn’t just mean going back. We could, uh, speed it up in some parts. Have research and injury recovery go twice as fast. Or, or slow it down. The Wraith or the Genii invade, and we activate sections of the city and trap them.” Rodney wasn’t the smartest man in the galaxy for nothing. He’d already thought ahead.
“Just be careful Rodney – ”
“I’m always careful with Ancient technology!”
“ – because you’re not invulnerable.” Elizabeth almost raised an eyebrow when he caught up, and gave a word of warning as she left. “And don’t let it take over your other research. I think it might be better if you found out how to build a ZPM instead of a time machine.”
Rodney made a frown, but it didn’t come with its usual complementary sarcastic zing. “Yeah. I’ll just, uh, radio Zelenka and have him send over some minions.”
~*~
Rodney dropped his lunch tray on the table. His three teammates resignedly took notice of such theatrics, because they had interrupted the discussion of the Halloween bash taking place later the same night.
“Is something wrong?” Teyla asked.
Rodney absentmindedly waved with his left hand and started stabbing his salad with his fork in the right. “Just my boss writing off the importance of finding the Ancient how-to guide on time travel.” He shoveled some food in his mouth. “She’d worse than Captain Janeway.”
“Time travel,” John drawled slowly, and his mind went to a happy place. He thought of the DeLorean – twenty years out of date and still almost as cool as a PuddleJumper. The nonexistent one outfitted with a flux capacitator, that is.
“Oh, tell me,” Rodney pleaded, in what might or might not have been mock horror, “You’re not going as Marty McFly. I already have to brave seeing most of my underlings in pitiful costumes in order to get some party food tonight; I won’t acknowledge them, and I won’t acknowledge you.”
“Well the thought had occurred to me, but I decided on something a little more classic. And easier to make. Which reminds me, Ronon?”
The other man shrugged and kept his eyes on his lunch. “Come by after we finish.”
Teyla was a little eager to know if he was getting help on his costume. Ronon was eager to give her the answer, “No.” And then, because the combined stare of three people on his ferocious attitude made him a little uncomfortable, on the inside, he elaborated; “I’m not putting on a costume. I like my own clothes.”
Over John and Teyla’s protests, Rodney congratulated him. “I won’t be the only one not making a fool out of myself then. I mean, sure, I agree with the idea that if you’re over the age of twelve it’s only polite to wear a decent costume in return for candy. But that rule doesn’t apply to the man responsible for keeping Atlantis safely and blissfully floating.”
“Many of my people wish they had so many creatures to dress up as. I believe some are slightly envious of the younger children who will be wearing Wraith-masks,” said Teyla. “And we are thankful to be invited and included in your celebrations. Some of us have been to harvest festivals on other worlds, and we have our own ceremonies for death. But not like this, and never one for both adults and children.”
John let her know her thanks were appreciated. “And guess which member of the U.S. military was randomly picked by a fair and objective system to dress up in a big, fat Great Pumpkin costume and act as Halloween-mascot-plus-candy-giver for the Athosian kids?” He didn’t give them time to answer, and opened his mouth when Rodney said, “Lorne.”
Teyla doled out a very tiny amount of sarcasm. “And what did Major Lorne do to receive such an honor?”
“Nothing, actually.” John was complacent. “Zelenka offered to do some program that would randomly shuffle names and then pick one.”
“It’s totally not nothing. He saw Lorne smiling at Elizabeth and making her laugh, and went for blood.” Rodney delivered the gossip with no small amount of pleasure.
“What?” said John with no small amount of confusion.
“Lorne and Zelenka are trying to court Dr. Weir?” said Ronon with no small amount of Low, Dangerous and Possessive Tone of Voice.
“Ok,” John said and didn’t squeak a moment later. “Uh, awkward.”
But only for him, apparently. Rodney and Ronon went back to their voracious eating, and Teyla sat serenely as ever, so that’s how he decided to leave them.
~*~
The Halloween party in the cafeteria was the creation of the best minds Earth had to offer – gone crazy, holiday style.
Fog rolled around Teyla’s ankles as she made her way over to the makeshift buffet. Creepy yet danceable music wailed from speakers that circled near the ceiling, and the lights were a mix match of low, blinking, and multicolored. An animated movie was being projected theater-size onto a blank wall, and there was a row of winter squashes that lined the entire area, where the floor met the wall, all of them gorged and carved and glowing from within.
Orange and black creations dotted the walls, and she was glad to see none of the fake spider-webbing with stuck insects or translucent red glue that had started to go up earlier. It had been too reminiscent of the innards of a hive ship.
She nodded to people as she came up to the table, ready to try some of the fabled Candy Corn. Some of the costumes Teyla saw were beautiful, and most were just strange. A good number of Atlantean personnel had been completely wrapped in long segments of the thin paper she had previously been told were for the use of wiping your privates, post toilet. Completely strange.
One of the children wearing a Wraith-mask – and though there were many since that was the closest her people had to Halloween costumes, a good portion of young Athosians were having their faces painted in a corner of the room by one of the more artistically inclined botanists – came up next to her, took a moment, and then shoved about a pound of Candy Corn onto a paper plate. She saw excited eyes behind the fake blue face.
A familiar voice in an unfamiliar accent jostled Teyla out of her thoughts.
“Howdy thar, ma’am!”
Teyla raised an eyebrow. Was it possible that Colonel Sheppard had started to partake of alcohol before he even joined the party? She took in his outfit, which was noticeably different from his uniform, but still foreign to her. And he was wearing Ronon’s brown coat. On its original owner it ended at his calves; on John it came down to the floor.
“John,” she greeted him, and his grin became even more pronounced. “What is your costume supposed to be of?”
“Cowboy. I know, I know, I’m betraying my history and all by not going as Maverick Mitchell or the Red Baron, but cowboy parts were easier to come by. Somebody had suspenders, somebody had a kerchief and hat, and, well, a brown coat.” Teyla knew she was missing an in-joke somewhere in there. “Plus I still get to wear my gun,” and he showed off his regular thigh holster, M9 inside, by theatrically flapping the coat to the side. “Sort of an amalgam of any famous cowboy I could think of. Although,” he continued, “I don’t need to ask you who are.”
Teyla bit back a smirk – she was so much more prone to them around her teammates – and smoothed down the back mini-skirt that went with her military requisitioned black tank top. It was adorned with a cardboard cutout of a chakram painted silver, to match the cardboard sword taped to her back. “I had help from the ladies at Poker Night,” she informed him.
“Well I think it suits you,” John sweet talked. “You’re every inch a Warrior Princess, and don’t let McKay fool you into thinking it’s anything less than a compliment.”
“Of course.” Rodney had stammered and blushed when she told him about her costume. She took that as a compliment.
Teyla put on air of slight uncertainty and innocence. “I wonder though,” she said, and John leaned in closer so he could hear his friend better. “If I am the exalted and experienced fighter, training only one apprentice in the ways of battle between my adventures...”
John listened, and waited for her to continue.
“Then shouldn’t you have come as Gabrielle?”
And then she had to laugh at the face he made.
~*~
He was late for the party, but Rodney detoured to the Time Lab anyway. The room felt different without a dozen marines or a few other physicists and engineers inside, and he picked his way through the objects they’d been looking at.
His favorite one, that Dr. Simpson had horded to herself earlier, looked like a delicate little egg timer. Rodney cradled the priceless piece of masterful Ancient technology in his palms, and then yelped when it beeped and pricked the inside of both his hands. He almost dropped it into a million tiny shatters on the floor, but since it was an artifact by a McKay-approved brilliant scientist from the race of beings that build Atlantis and the Stargates, he played a weird game of hot potato by himself and got it safely back onto the table.
“Great,” he muttered. How long ago had Elizabeth told him to be careful? There was blood smudged all over the thing, his accidental stigmata stung like hell, and he’d probably just been pumped full of something slow acting yet nasty. Rodney used one of the wet wipes he always carried with him to clean off the device, and went to go find Carson for numerous invasive procedures to ensure he wouldn’t push up daisies by the night’s end.
On his way out the door he was bushwhacked sideways by a werewolf.
~*~
No one else seemed to care that Halloween was so suspiciously full of contradictions and dualities. The Earth holiday was for remembering the dead; the holiday was for making fun of death. It was for celebrating the bounty of the harvest; it was for little children to stuff themselves full of unhealthy treats. It was invented by pagans; it was commercialized by Christians.
Frankly, Ronon just wasn’t surprised when everything went suddenly and completely batshit insane.
He’d been eating his third brownie square, watching Elizabeth – she was wearing a red uniform, long sleeved and short skirted, with some kind of gold triangular patch that looked like a spearhead on her upper chest – and ignoring Sheppard, who looked ridiculous, even if Ronon had no idea what he was supposed to be. Sheppard was trying to make a joke to Teyla about somebody named Conan. It was clear to Ronon that Teyla was laughing at Sheppard, not with him.
Then the lights buzzed out for a few seconds, the music and the movie screeched to a halt, and in the time it took for Ronon to have his gun out and ready, Teyla was gone and Sheppard looked really confused. He also had a gun in his hand, and it wasn’t his normal consigned pistol. It had different shape; it looked antiquated.
“What in the blue blazes just happened?” said John, over the screaming and the fighting. He pointed the rusty revolver at Ronon when the taller man went to cover his six.
“Sheppard.”
“Who are you?”
The snarling blue mass that tried to attach itself to Ronon claws first was enough to distract him from that disturbing revelation. He felt the flare of his instinct to fight. Wraith.
Long white hair, and fish toned skin, and – a total height that came to Ronon’s navel.
He bashed the thing in the head with the butt of his gun, and it stumbled backwards. With a foot of distance between them Ronon got a good look and there was no question. It was a miniature Wraith. It looked like Wraith, it sounded like Wraith, and it smelled like Wraith.
But the cotton clothes it wore smelled of Athosian.
Then he was attacked from behind by a creature wrapped in rolls of linen, which might have been scented once but definitely didn’t contain the smell of rot from the man shaped thing behind all the layers. He couldn’t stay in the mess hall. He was a Specialist and thanks to the Colonel’s plain amnesia, the default leader in the vicinity, until he found someone else better from the Earth military. In order to just think for five uninterrupted seconds he’d have to get away, even if it meant leaving people to die. He would come back later to save who he could.
Ronon ran.
Once out of the cafeteria he ran through the halls, wondering what the hell he was going to do, and then heard a familiar sound: McKay, running and shrieking at the same time. Ronon followed the noise until he found McKay.
The scientist was running while looking behind him, and he slammed into Ronon. “McKay.”
“Ahh!”
“McKay.”
“Ronon!” Rodney got behind the larger man. “Do... you... see it?” He got the words out in between heavy wheezes. “Is... it... coming?”
Ronon pulled him along and into an empty room. He checked the corridor. “I don’t think you’re being followed.”
“Oh! Thank... god. I lost it.” With some of his air back, Rodney’s mouth caught up with his head. “I was attacked by this thing, this, you have no idea! It was growling and furry and it wasn’t a hungry marine!”
“We have bigger problems.”
“Don’t belittle my suffering! I was almost eviscerated by the degenerate spawn of Bigfoot and the GEICO commercial caveman! I had no warning, no weapons, and no back up!”
“How’d you get away from it?”
“I punched it as hard as I could in the balls.”
Ronon closed his eyes.
“Well, I, I think I did,” Rodney stuttered into the silence. “I mean it was hairy and you couldn’t really see anything, but I definitely hit something in that area that went squish, and it sort of shouted and went down fast -”
“We should try and find somebody else.”
~*~
They managed to find Teyla right away.
Rodney thought he was silently creeping along just fine until he found himself flat on his back with the tip of a chilly, metal sword edging the skin of his throat, and more than an eyeball up Teyla’s leg and skirt.
“Ok,” he croaked, “I admit that several of my more wanton fantasies start off somewhat like this, but none of them had the accompanying back pain. Ow.”
The whine of Ronon’s gun against her temple was enough to make Teyla back off. “All right,” she said, in a low purr that was definitely more familiar to Rodney’s inner pervert. “You got me. But I don’t like to be kept in the dark when there’s trouble, and I’ve just seen a lot of chaos. I could get restless... start to cause a little trouble of my own.”
“Yeah, well, hooray for you.” Rodney rolled a little to push himself off of the floor. He took so long that Ronon went and yanked him up by the hand which managed to pop off a line of vertebrae in the scientist. “Ooh! Oh, thanks.”
Ronon grunted. Rodney had missed his irritation completely. “Do you recognize us?” Ronon asked Teyla.
“Should I?” she drawled.
“Teyla, it’s us.” Rodney had his Must Figure This Out face on. It quickly changed to his Oh Crap face when she explained she didn’t know any Teyla and that she was in fact Greek soldier royalty.
“Sheppard didn’t know who I was either,” Ronon added. “I think he ran away from battle, when I was attacked by a Wraith.”
“A Wraith - !?”
“Not a normal one.” Ronon wanted to keep Rodney from panicking, and force-feeding him information was the best way. And the most practical in their current situation. “It was small.”
“Small? Like, what? It was young, it was a midget? You got attacked by a midget Wraith?”
“I think it was an Athosian, one of the kids.”
“What? How is that possible? Oh wait, wait, wait – ow, ow, ow!” Rodney grimaced in pain; it was harder to snap his fingers when his palms were hurting, but he still pointed at Teyla. “She went as Xena and I saw children with Wraith-masks on earlier. It’s the costumes – everyone wearing a costume was transformed into the thing or person they were dressed as. But why?”
Ronon didn’t care about that. “Doesn’t matter. How do we fix them?”
“How can I fix everybody if I have no idea what broke them in the first place!”
Warrior Princess Teyla jumped into the conversation at this point, and Rodney lied about the chaos being some spell of Janus the Greek god that they, the good guys, had to defeat and so she should join up and help them. It wasn’t very convincing. When the three of them were ambushed by a pack of les petits Wraith and one zombie, she stayed long enough to make sure the two humans stayed alive and everything else was left unconscious before running off to try and work things out Lone Heroine style.
~*~
The first thing that had to be done was lockdown all the computers in the city. Rodney hacked the system from a random terminal while Ronon stood guard for any of the various monsters roaming Atlantis. They were spreading out from the cafeteria.
“Ok, if anyone still has half a brain left and tries to do something stupid like take down the cloak or set a self-destruct, they won’t be able to. If they have no brains left at all and just start button munching it won’t do anything either, kind of like when you set the keyguard on your cell phone.” Rodney peered out into the hallways from behind Ronon. “Do you know what time it was when everyone turned into the cast of Monster Mash?”
“Close to 20:00 hours.”
“Right when I decided to make a visit to Janus’s lab.” Rodney sighed. “We need to backtrack and get to the laboratory I was working in earlier, I think I set off the device that’s doing all this.”
“How can you be sure that’s the cause?”
“I can’t, but it’s the most likely reason. It’s too... insane to be some kind of widespread virus that Atlantis never detected, nothing’s in lockdown like when we had the nanites. And I would really like it to be that simple, ok? Let me have that much.”
The two of them set off for Janus’s lab, but never made it. The room was further away from the transporters than most test sites and they kept running into either a) a monster, b) an untransformed person, or c) an untransformed person running away from a monster. After an hour of what should have been straightforward, Ronon and Rodney had set up two rooms, one for holding bound and sometimes knocked out monsters, and one for holding a much smaller amount of scared Athosian adults, scientists, and soldiers.
“This is going nowhere,” Rodney complained. “We can’t keep doing – what are we doing?”
“Hit-and-run and extraction.” Ronon grabbed two extra guns from the two marines, and more PlasiCuffs.
“Operation ‘This Will Most Likely Get Me Killed’ is a go – again,” muttered Rodney. He followed Ronon through the halls, creeping along and giving directions on where to go. The pace was standard: run, run, stop and check around a corner, run, stop and wait, see if there’s a monster around, run, run.
They almost ran into a fight between some of the undead in front of a transporter. The decision to backtrack and go around was scrubbed when they saw a known figure in a regular uniform and white coat stumble in the fray, about to become vampire fodder.
Ronon shot and fought while Rodney grabbed Carson and then they all ran like hell until they lost their pursuers. Further away from Janus’s lab than before, but in no immediate danger.
“Oh Carson, thank god.” Rodney put a hand on Carson’s arm, half for comfort and half for support.
“Good to see you Doc,” Ronon added.
“We think we know the reason for all the chaos,” said Rodney. “If you can get to this room we have set aside for the untransformed, they’ll be happy to see a doctor, than we can -”
Carson interrupted them with a paranoid look and an American accent. “Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t know any Carson. My name is Dr. Doug Ross.
Rodney’s face went dark red, and he slowly stretched out a hand, claw-style, in the direction of his formerly Scottish friend. “I swear to God, once I finish saving your life I’m going to kill you.”
They started to take Carson back, see if he could help anyone. Ronon thought it was a good idea; Rodney’s hurried explanation meant he was still a doctor, if somebody else completely.
“But he’s a TV doctor! They never get anything right! They have their own version of medical techobabble! It’s medibabble!”
“Shut up, McKay.”
They gathered even more people as they went along – they found Laura Cadman of all people, dressed in a Japanese sailor schoolgirl uniform and unique pigtailed hairstyle Rodney would forever be able to recognize from his brief stint into anime porn – and finally Rodney put his foot down. He gave Carson directions and told him to take everyone with him, try not to get killed.
“They were slowing us down,” he sniped, and Ronon had to agree with that.
~*~
In the course of their journey, Rodney and Ronon came into contact and/or did battle with:
Twelve (12) mummies, classical Egyptian style
Five (5) zombies, ranging from George Romero to “28 Days Later” style
Three (3) vampires, ranging from Anne Rice to Buffy style
Seven (7) witches, ranging from Wicked to Charmed style
Eight (8) ghosts, who were rightfully terrifying until it was understood that they couldn’t touch anything
Two (2) pirates, both of whom claimed to be Captain Jack Sparrow
Four (4) ninjas, none of whom were Asian pre-transformation
Six (6) fairy princesses, most of whom came from the WB
One (1) werewolf, presumably off somewhere nursing itself back to fertility
Add to that a dinosaur, a mermaid, Oogie Boogie, a professional baseball player, a geisha, a World War II soldier, various cute insects and animals, a prima ballerina, a flying monkey, Elvis, and what seemed like an endless amount of mini-Wraith, Rodney was pretty pissed off after another hour running circles around the city.
It didn’t help when he and Ronon came across John. Cowboy Sheppard had found the French Maid.
“Oh, how typical. We’re in the middle of a crisis and you’ve still got only one thing on your mind!”
Rodney’s outburst only seemed to amuse them. The woman giggled from where she sat in John’s lap and said something in French, while he took a gulp from a canteen. “Howdy,” he drawled happily. “You ain’t monsters.”
“No we aren’t. How lucky for you. Now get up, you’re sitting ducks out here in the open.”
“Hey!” John pushed away Ronon’s hand. “We’re doin’ just fine! Right, darling? Let ‘em come find us!” he bragged, and gave the woman a messy kiss.
“Shh! Don’t raise your voice!” Rodney looked around for the monsters that would surely pop out at any second.
John stumbled to his feet, pulling his companion up with him. “I ain’t afeared of no monster.” He put an arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Don’t worry lil’ lady, I’m the best shot this side of the Mississippi. I’ll protect you.”
Stephen King’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown came around a corner.
John’s face went ashen.
“Maybe not,” he said and ran in the other direction. Pennywise followed.
“Va te faire foutre!” shrilled the French Maid.
Rodney shouted after John, “Don’t you know never to run from anything immortal, it attracts their attention!”
“So does yelling,” Ronon growled, and shot the first mini-Wraith in range. The French Maid screamed and fastened herself to Rodney, which was unbelievably awesome until the other mini-Wraiths came at them five seconds later. They pulled and beat at him until he was on his knees – they couldn’t, Rodney realized, feed off of him if they weren’t tall enough to reach his chest – and one of them stood in front of him and raised a hand.
He was almost subject to one of his worst nightmares, death by a multitude of children, when he heard the whine of flying metal. Teyla’s chakram sliced open the top of the mini-Wraith’s hand, followed by the bottom of her boot to his person.
“Thank the gods,” Rodney murmured as she helped him up. “Where’s...” He saw Teyla get back into the fight, knocking heads and taking names along with Ronon, protecting Random European Cleaning Person. John was already long out of sight.
“Oh, crap.” Rodney ran to find him.
He followed the crazy laughing, and picked up the nearest blunt object. John was crouched against a wall with Pennywise hanging over him. The once kamikaze Air Force Lieutenant Colonel radiated fear, and was fast approaching the option of passing out from manly fright. Rodney snuck up as best he could, but It turned around at the last second with a demoniac shout, “Boo!”
“Ahh!” Rodney cried, for the second time that night, and flung the potful of 10,000 year old dead plant dirt in It’s eyes. Then he cracked It in the face with the pot itself.
“Ok,” he panted, and stepped over the body. “I never read the book and I only saw parts of the movie, so I don’t know if that’s how you do it, but right now he’s not talking or moving, so it’s good enough for me.”
Rodney had to drag the seemingly lifeless John for a few moments. When John did calm down enough to regain the use of his limbs, he used them to wrap Rodney in a bear hug.
“Oh, this cannot be normal cowpeople behavior,” Rodney mumbled from where his head was pressed into John’s shoulder. He moved it until he could breathe comfortably again.
“You saved my life, padre.”
“Yes, well, it’s because I’m frequently, secretly fond of you. Except for now. Get off.”
John pulled back and looked deeply into Rodney’s eyes. “You’re a brave one. I’m sorry you had to see I weren’t one myself. But if you’ll let me, I can tag along and make it up to you. Any way you like.” He licked his lips and then stared at a point in space somewhere past the top of the other man’s ear.
It took Rodney a moment.
“What? You – are you saying – you actually – no! This is – ok, well, to be honest I’ve spent some time thinking we might – wait, no, NO! Look what you’re doing to me, you horribly drunk and attractive cowboy.” Rodney smacked John upside the head, and knocked his stupid cowboy hat off. “Pull yourself together. We have to find the rest of our team and push through a horde of quasi-evil Halloween creatures to find and turn off an alien device. Come on, follow me.”
John sniffed. “I don’t know how I’m gonna quit you,” he wailed.
~*~
Things started to come to a head when the team had to break up a brawl between a Jedi Knight and a Sebacean Peacekeeper. Fortunately, John turned out to be much better at joining in with the shooting and hitting of things, as long as they weren’t clowns and he was closer to this side of sober.
“We need to keep moving,” weighed in Teyla. She spared a glace for the extra woman, who managed to run rather fast in high heels, but not fast enough to keep up as was truly needed.
They heard movement in the shadows, and everyone got out their guns and swords, except Rodney, who couldn’t properly hold a weapon. His best weapon was his brain, anyway, and that could stay safely in the cavity of his skull.
“It’s just us,” said Carson, with his weird non-Scottish accent. He had Cadman hanging off his arm. Ronon wanted to know why the hell they were out roaming the halls.
“I wanted to try and find other survivors,” Carson protested. “And – she came along. We got lost.” He looked down at Cadman, who beamed up at him with love in her eyes. “You know,” he continued without breaking eye contact, “we came across a bunch of those things and she stopped crying long enough to pull a scepter out from somewhere and shoot a sparkly beam of what looked like hearts and rainbows. It took them all down. Does anyone else find that disturbing?”
“I think it’s disturbing that I’m not disturbed at havin’ seen so many of a gal’s gams tonight.” John’s leer moved from Cadman, to Teyla, to the French Maid, and back again.
“You manwhore,” said Rodney.
“Candy,” said something.
Rodney thought he was pumped up with more adrenaline and fear than humanly possible, and then he turned and saw it.
He registered the thing in separate, horrific pieces. The inhuman, Wraith-and-Ronon towering stature. The fetid stench of old pumpkins. The spindly, vine form that somehow managed to support a bulbous, orange head. The leafy hand that pointed towards Rodney. And a gaping, pulpy mouth that spoke a voice – faintly reminiscent of a friendly yet snarky Air Force Major – in the exact same infliction of hunger and lust that regular humans, including Rodney, also used when speaking of delicious treats.
It’s isn’t important that Rodney screamed. Of course he screamed; high pitched and long winded, and about as stereotypical as one could imagine. No, what’s important is that so did everyone else, including Ronon, although with the level of terror going around no one was paying much attention to anything other than panicking and getting the hell out of Dodge and he was able to deny it later.
The ever eloquent under pressure scientist was able to manage a “Fuck You, Charlie Brown!” as he ran.
~*~
After a good four hours of darting and sneaking around, Ronon changed tactics. He blasted and punched everything in their path to the laboratory holding the thingamajig. He shouted at Rodney for directions, and jump-kicked a random vampire in the way.
Finally, finally they made it inside the original lab. Rodney went to get the object and told the others to barricade the door.
“Ok, here it is!” Rodney looked it over and tried to figure out how to undue whatever it was he did. He almost missed Ronon raising his gun high, ready to bring it back down on the device. “No!” He shoved Ronon away from the table. Well, he tried. “This isn’t a VCR, you can’t just hit it until it works!”
“They’re coming,” Teyla warned them all.
“They?”
And then they came.
Like water in a sinking boat, they started to fill up the room: the vampires, the zombies, the mummies, the midget Wraith. And behind them all, roaring for human flesh, was the Great Pumpkin.
The ghosts came too; they might not be able to physically do anything, but they could watch. It’s not like there was anything else interesting to do.
There was crying in French, and blubbering in Japanese, and cursing from everybody. Two swords, two guns, and one chakram tried to fight off the mass. Rodney identified one third of the item and then he was smacked ten feet away. The Great Pumpkin advanced on him.
“No!” John punched a mummy and ran to put himself between Rodney and Certain Death. He stood tall and pointed his gun at the Great Pumpkin. “You ain’t gettin’ him!”
The Great Pumpkin gave John a leafy bitch slap. He landed somewhere other than where he started.
“Thanks a lot,” Rodney cried weakly, and gave one last whimper as the face of his demise closed in.
Ronon did a cool trick with his sword that involved 360° swinging and left him with a straight line to the counter where the device sat. He heaved up a stool and crashed its seat down on top of the Ancient egg timer, the force of the blow sending little bits of metals off the table.
Lorne tripped and fell onto Rodney. “Holy crap,” said Lorne, and passed out in his huge cotton pumpkin suit while still sprawled on top of the Chief Science Officer.
Everyone stood motionless and in a daze, until Rodney thoughtfully brought them back to reality. “He’s squishing me! Stop staring into space like idiots and roll him off before I die of suffocation by a man dressed as a vegetable!”
~*~
The next morning saw clear weather.
“So.” Elizabeth clasped her hands together, and looked at the people assembled in her office. “Damage control?”
“Done. We managed not to kill anybody, it turns out.” John forwent putting his hands on his hips, and shoved them in his pockets instead. “Dr. Beckett and his people worked through most of the night on the victims; mostly cuts and bruises, and some deep wounds that just needed cleaning and wrapping. A lot of the injuries reversed when the... thing finally stopped broadcasting. Hand patterns from Wraith feedings wounds would turn shallow, people with what should have been internal bleeding just had bruising. I’ve got Marines cleaning up debris around the city, and McKay sent some of his people to take down stuff in the cafeteria.”
He hissed in air through his teeth, anxiety obvious. “I don’t know what to do about the Athosians though. How exactly do you say ‘Sorry we got you all excited and then turned your kids into Wraith, but we promise not to do it again and it’s all better now?’”
“Indeed,” Teyla muttered.
“What the hell was that thing?” Ronon demanded to the room in general. “I thought the guy that ran the place was into time travel.”
“Look, we’ll never know for sure,” said Rodney. “The database said it was a lab, and the name connected to it was Janus. It’s possible the artifact was from a previous line of abandoned research and most of the other things are for experiments with time, or it could be that everything in there is just a smokescreen: fake research, fake experiments, fake everything.”
Elizabeth looked at Rodney, and leaned back in her chair. “Fake? How does that even work, having false research? What would be the point?”
“Well, we know the rest of the Ancients didn’t want him messing around with time. It stands to reason he would keep his efforts a secret. It wouldn’t be that hard, really, I mean a good scientist never works single mindedly on just one thing, unless it’s a life-or-death situation. You always have a bunch of things you want to work on, and you have stuff to show for it, but you focus on what you really want and just don’t advertise. The only people you have to worry about are other scientists who might be smart enough to figure out what’s going on...” Rodney trailed off when he finally realized everyone was staring at him. “Um. Anyway. Carry on.”
But all Elizabeth did next was praise his and Ronon’s successful efforts, and then let them go. Teyla stayed behind. All the women that had costumed in mini-skirts had stories to share with each other.
Ronon brushed past John and Rodney. Everyone felt bad that he’d had to endure through such a mess. He felt anxious to get back to his room where he kept the food he'd swiped from the Halloween party. After last night, Ronon deserved his chocolate.
“Hey, Rodney. Wait up,” John called, and caught up with him. “Listen, uh, thanks. Nice job with saving the city and all.”
“A thank-you from Colonel Sheppard, for an amazing feat of brilliance that saved us all from imminent doom? Wow, see, one of those things is a regular occurrence, and the other is a rare gift I don’t remember ever getting before.”
“Rodney.”
“Ok,” said Rodney, and he shrugged. “You’re either upset about coming off as a coward or gay, or both. Before you indulge in whatever stereotypical, manly-man jockstrap behavior you think will save face, let me say a few things and maybe I won’t have to endure through weeks of uncomfortable-ness.”
He actually pulled out a piece of crumpled paper, and looked it over before stuffing it back into his pocket. John mouthed, ‘Manly-man jockstrap behavior?’
Rodney intoned, “You are not a coward. You were under the influence of alien technology. Everyone has at least one thing they’re deathly afraid of. I’ve got about thirteen myself. You probably would have reacted in a similar vein even if you’d gone as Han Solo or Harry Potter.”
Well that was doubtful, but John nodded slowly.
“I honestly didn’t see the cowboy thing coming,” admitted Rodney. “Although I probably should have, what with that huge Johnny Cash poster and your abysmal taste for John Wayne movies.”
“John Wayne is classic.”
“Spaghetti westerns? The Dollars Trilogy?”
“You know what we should have had at the party; a karaoke machine, with plenty of country western music.”
“So I could listen to you butcher ‘A Boy Named Sue?’ No thanks, Colonel.”
Rodney stopped talking, and silently pulled John away from the regular commotion of people at work, onto an empty balcony. John would have said something himself, if he hadn’t already known what was coming up.
“So, about the other thing. The, uh, well.” Rodney’s eyes darted around.
“The thing being, where under the influence of alien technology, I came onto you,” John finished for him.
“Yeah, that’s it. That’s the one. Which is why I have us having the rest of this conversation out here, alone, away from any dangers to your military career. Anyway, I, it’s, it’s ok with me, I mean I’m not freaked out by you or anything -”
“Really.”
“I’m not! I’m just pissed at you for offering sex to a seriously deprived man when you were clearly out of your right mind and in a position to be taken advantage of.” Rodney crossed his arms. “I just want to come out of this your friend, and not suddenly the scientist on your team you’re coolly distant to. Just pick whichever choice you want; casual fuck-buddies, sappy romantic lovers, plain old teammates that joke about long legs and big breasts, as long as I’m fine and you’re cool, ok?”
John saw Rodney uncross and re-cross his arms, humming with contained energy. He looked in a way John thought he might be able to relate to; nervous, and hopeful.
“It’s ok. We’re cool.”
~*~
The End.
~*~
Author’s Notes: I swear this comm will kill me one day. The last time I tried to write for a challenge I got sick. This time I ended up having two essays, a take-home test and a presentation on possible solutions to the American health care system due all around the same time as my Halloween fic. *ded*
Because of certain things in Real Life this didn’t get beta’ed in time for a proper editing before the deadline. I can only hope the self-edited draft will still be amusing to some people. I’ll either update the post as my betas work or I’ll post a link to the finished version in other general comms when I can, depending on how big or minor the things pointed out to me are.
Constructive criticism is always welcomed. :)
I drew inspiration for the Great Pumpkin here. Ah, Robot Chicken. :D
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-31 11:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 05:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-31 02:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 05:02 am (UTC)And you're very welcome. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-31 03:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 05:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-31 05:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 05:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-31 05:07 pm (UTC)That could possibly have been the best line ever. Thanks for posting!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 05:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-31 06:23 pm (UTC)“What? You – are you saying – you actually – no! This is – ok, well, to be honest I’ve spent some time thinking we might – wait, no, NO! Look what you’re doing to me, you horribly drunk and attractive cowboy.” Rodney smacked John upside the head, and knocked his stupid cowboy hat off. “Pull yourself together. We have to find the rest of our team and push through a horde of quasi-evil Halloween creatures to find and turn off an alien device. Come on, follow me.”
John sniffed. “I don’t know how I’m gonna quit you,” he wailed.
FELL OFF CHAIR LAUGHING.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 05:22 am (UTC)Thanks for the feedback. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-31 07:42 pm (UTC)That's the point where I gave up and started laughing out loud. *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 05:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-31 08:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 05:36 am (UTC)Thanks for the feedback!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-02 03:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-03 01:22 am (UTC)*pets you*
Date: 2006-11-02 04:39 am (UTC)HeeHEEEEEEE!!!
Still giggling quite a bit, actually.
Guess it's a good thing there were no Buffys, eh? *sniggersnort*
And who the hell was the poor werewolf that Rodney punched in the nads? *chortles madly* Poor wee lad...
Excellent job, and I hope you were able to get all your other work finished in time?
*pets you more*
-----}-@
Re: *pets you*
Date: 2006-11-03 01:26 am (UTC)(My school work - erm, well. More or less. ^_^;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-02 09:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-03 01:32 am (UTC)(P.S. checked out Suimei, and my fav pic is "Dolly." So strangely morbid and cute.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-02 08:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-03 01:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-29 03:36 pm (UTC)"Wait, no, NO! Look what you’re doing to me, you horribly drunk and attractive cowboy.”
"Stop staring into space like idiots and roll him off before I die of suffocation by a man dressed as a vegetable!”
But truthfully, the whole thing rocks. Great work!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 01:36 am (UTC)