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As far as creepy things went, John was pretty sure there was nothing creepier than a fur rug.
It wasn't exactly like animals were really known for their cleanliness after all, and the idea of walking or, god, lying on some ex-living-thing's skin was just... He shuddered.
He didn't think it would have been so bad if the entire village wasn't covered in the stupid things. Every single hut he'd been through -- Oh, hey, another disturbing floor treatment. Red, brown, black, white, freaking striped. Maybe it wouldn't have been so unsettling if there were actually some people in the village whose... weirdness could explain the need for all the dead things on the floor.
There weren't any people though. Not even one. Which was weird not only because villages usually, you know, had villagers, but also because one of the Athosians had just heard that the people of Eciton were looking to trade.
It would be simple, Teyla'd said, and she would be fine alone. But the prospect of finally getting out of Atlantis, even for a little trading trip, after three weeks just spinning his wheels was too exciting and John had convinced Elizabeth that, since Teyla'd never actually done business with them before and it never hurt for Atlantis to make some new friends, he, Rodney, and Ronon should go along with. Just to be on the safe side.
But now he had to wonder if maybe he should have just stayed home. Because the whole place was just... creepy.
Between the rugs and all the crazy pillows and the bead curtains, it was like the Pegasus Galaxy version of a hippie commune. Add in the whole spooky ghost town vibe and he was just not up for this level of weird yet. They needed to get out of here before "Age of Aquarius" started playing over the carefully hidden loudspeakers and they all turned into brainwashed, flower-child zombies and walked into a volcano to appease the gods of Birkenstock.
He shuddered at the rug one last time and stepped back into the main room where Rodney was hunched over the small, wooden table, poking at something that looked like a blender turned decorative planter. "You rea--"
"Do you have any idea what this is?" Rodney held up the planter and pointed.
"Patchouli? I don't know. Look, we really should--"
"No, not the-- Shut up, it's a power transfer conduit. And these idiots put dirt in it."
"Right." Sometimes John really wondered if Rodney was just making shit up as he went along. "How dare they."
Rodney sneered at him and went back to his poking.
John rolled his eyes and stepped around the table to stand beside Rodney. "You think you could wrap that up some time soon? I'd really like to get out of here."
"Yeah, yeah, just give me a minute." Rodney waved his hand but didn't look up. "Now go hover somewhere else."
He opened his mouth to say that he wasn't hovering, he was looming, but Ronon chose just that minute to duck through the door, a big bowl of what looked like crumbled up cake cradled in his arms.
John's hand shifted to his P-90 reflexively, half-hoping Ronon came with news of the zombie hippies. "Find anything?"
"Nope." Ronon mumbled, shaking his head and swallowing hard. "No people anyway. No sign of panic either. Looks like they just packed up and left."
John nodded and watched, transfixed, as Ronon reached into the bowl for another handful of the cake stuff and shoved it into his mouth. He was kind of used to the whole all or all philosophy that Ronon had toward eating by now but it still kind of caught him off guard him sometimes. It wasn't exactly disgusting, but it unsettled him for some reason that he couldn't really figure out. He shook off the feeling and tried to put on his irritated face. "Are you eating that? Come on, man, don't eat that, it could be... contaminated or something."
Ronon just shrugged and put the bowl down on the table, "Smells fine to me."
Rodney, who John probably couldn't have gotten to pay attention if he'd shot him but who had, of course, looked up as soon as the bowl hit the table, seemed to be taking Ronon's word for it. "Ooh. Yeah, that is good. It's kind of spicy but not too--"
"Not too much, yeah."
"Would you two stop eating that crap? Jesus, you'll eat anything. You're like a couple of teenagers." They looked up at him like they'd forgotten he was even there. Which, considering the blissed-out-on-food looks on their faces and the little crumbles of cake clinging to their lips, they probably had. John scowled and pushed the bowl down the table, away from their grabby little fingers. "Let's get out of here before you both ruin your girlish figures."
Ronon, sucking the last of the cake stuff of his fingers, shrugged and walked out the door. Rodney gave the bowl a last look of longing but grabbed his planter and followed.
John should have known it wasn't going to be that easy.
//
"What the hell is that?"
John tore his eyes away from the river of black creeping its way through the village gates and steadily closer to them and looked over to Rodney. The look of sheer "no. fucking. way." on his face would probably have been funny if John didn't know that he was probably making something pretty similar himself.
Teyla, who'd been standing right here, shocked still and staring, when the three of them had come strolling along, shook her head and looked over at him. "I have seen nothing like this in my life."
John had. But only once. A long, long time ago. "It looks like--"
The blast shot came from between him and Rodney. Rodney flinched down, grabbing for his head. "Shit!"
John sighed heavily and turned to look back at Ronon. "Now, was that really necessary?"
Ronon glanced at him but didn't put his gun down, keeping it trained on the village gates. "I don't like bugs."
Rodney whipped around, his arms flailing, waving his planter at Ronon. "What is wrong with you? A warning too difficult? Too many words involved? Jesus."
Ronon shrugged. "You should have been prepared."
"Been prepared? For you to get trigger happy and just start shooting at random things?"
"Yes." Ronon said, as if that was the most obvious answer in the world.
Rodney flailed again. "You are the most--"
Teyla stepped between them, glaring at both Ronon and Rodney. "I believe a little focus on the situation at hand would not be amiss."
They both looked down, pulling faces like chastened Catholic school boys. Chastened by the young, hot nun Catholic school boys.
Satisfied that she'd made her point, Teyla nodded to him.
John smirked and Teyla raised her eyebrow, he cleared his throat and motioned to the gates. "Like I was saying, those are army ants."
Teyla and Ronon just looked at him blankly. Like they did.
"So, you're an Entomologist now?" Rodney scoffed and shot him a dirty look, crossing his arms over his chest.
"No." John sneered. And then cleared his throat and looked back over to the ants. "I just... watched a lot of MacGyver."
"Oh, yes." Rodney laughed his I'm so superior to you laugh. The one with the jaunty little head shake attached. The one that John hated. "And why is that not a surprise?"
"Yeah, yeah." John rolled his eyes and ignored him. "All right, let's get out of here."
Rodney made a disgusted noise. "And exactly how are we supposed to do that? In case you haven't noticed, they're coming through our only exit."
Point to McKay.
Not for the first time, John couldn't help thinking that the Jumpers, as great as they are, would be even better if they were a little more like KITT. He sometimes imagined himself calling over the radio for help, that sweet, sweet voice calling back, "on my way, John," and then flying in to the rescue, kicking whoever's ass needed kicking, and just generally being a cool talking Jumper. They would have laughs, they would have tears, they would fight Jumper's evil twin, Other Jumper, he would get to wear a black leather jacket... it would be awesome.
Yeah, he was going to have to get someone on that one of these days. Until then though...
"We'll have to make a run for it, I guess."
Ronon actually turned his head to look at him, his gun dropping a whole half an inch before he realized and corrected himself. Teyla opened her mouth, then closed it, tilted her head to the side and furrowed her eyebrows. Rodney just stared, open-mouthed. John tried to keep his Confident Leader face on.
"Look, what are our options? Wall of rock on two sides and a clear drop on another -- I don't know about you guys but I didn't pack my rock climbing gear today. So... that's it, we make a run for it through the gates -- go out the same way we came in."
For a second, they just stood there, staring at each other, and John stared to wonder if maybe he'd spoken in another language without realizing it. He didn't know any other languages but, hey, he was standing in the middle of a hippie commune in another galaxy and there was a river of ants coming his way -- anything was possible.
And then Rodney shook himself out of whatever trance he was in.
"Are you out of your mind?" He did that laugh John hated again and threw his hands in the air. "What am I saying, of course you're out of your mind. You'd have to be to ever think that was anything even close to a good idea."
"Well. Do you have a better one?"
Rodney stared at him for a second and then glared. "No."
"Either of you?"
Ronon shook his head. Teyla sighed and said, "I believe it is our only option."
Point to Sheppard. "So... we make a run for it."
They looked at him, obviously waiting for him to make the first move, and he sighed to himself, leaned down and started untying his boots.
"We're doing this barefoot?"
"Yeah, and I thought we'd get naked and cover ourselves in honey while we were at it." He looked up, squinting against the setting sun. "No, what we're going to do is tuck our pants into our boots so the ants don't crawl up our pant legs."
"Oh. Okay, yeah, that's... that's a good idea," Rodney said as he crouched down to untie his own shoes. Teyla and Ronon exchanged a look, Ronon shrugged, and they both leaned down to follow suit.
He sighed and pushed his pant leg down into his sock roughly. God, he fucking hated bugs.
//
Up-close, the ants actually looked... much worse than far away -- reddish-brown, angry, and unstoppable. He hadn't really expected that, he was kind of expecting it to be one of those "Objects In Mirror..." issues. But, no, he just wasn't lucky enough for that. No, sir.
Great. Just great.
He licked his lips and breathed out hard, turned to look at his team. "All right, we're going to take this slow and try not to piss them off too much."
Teyla nodded nervously. Ronon grunted in ascent, his right hand on his gun and looking more than a little ridiculous with his coat slung over his shoulder and his pants shoved into his boots like that. Rodney just stared at the bugs. John nodded once to give the illusion that he was ready even though he was so not.
He steeled himself and turned, lifted his foot and--
"Okay, wait."
John whipped around so quickly Teyla, who had been right behind him, jerked back. "Yes?"
Rodney looked up from the ants and cleared his throat. "I would just like to say, for the record, that I think this is an incredibly stupid idea and I am only going along with it because any usable technology in this little piece of hell has been filled with dirt --" he held up the planter "-- and... I don't have time to come up with a better one."
"Duly noted." John tried not look crestfallen, he'd been hoping that Rodney had come up with one of his eleventh-hour ideas. Something involving a slingshot or the building of a hovercraft from scrap metal and a potato peeler. He turned back around and took a deep breath. "Okay, watch where you step."
The first step was actually not so bad; the ants had apparently never seen any Earth horror movies and didn't rise up, bond together, and create one giant man-eating ant like he'd imagined that they would. The second step proved the same. It was actually something like the tenth step when they really started to make an effort to crawl up his boots and onto his pant legs.
"Uh--"
"Colonel--"
"Sheppard--"
He shook his leg and nodded. "Yeah, okay, not working, Plan B -- run!"
Two strides in and Ronon was barreling passed him, pulling his gun and shooting at the ground ahead as he went. The other ants filled the gaps almost before Ronon could even make them so it was really kind of pointless but John was running for his life, he wasn't about to argue the point.
He could hear Teyla behind him and then, just a little further behind, Rodney, and, underneath all of it, the crunchy bug sounds that, for whatever completely fucking bizarre reason, made him think of trying to walk on nachos. Which then made him think of the crumbly, hippie cake that Ronon and Rodney were stuffing their faces with just ten minutes earlier and how this totally still would have happened but, just for the moment, was entirely their fault and how he was going to kill them both when they got the hell off this creepy hippie ant planet.
They hauled ass for a good two minutes, the blanket of ants covering everything in a way that was... completely mind-blowing. Yeah, he'd seen MacGyver but that was a TV show and... MacGyver at that, it wasn't something he'd ever expected to see in real life. But John hadn't ever really expected to see life-sucking monsters with poor oral hygiene or the lost city of Atlantis either so, you know, there you go.
When Ronon disappeared around the curve in the trail that was, John remembered, just feet from the edge of the clearing where he'd parked the Jumper, John, rather belatedly, sent up a pray to whatever gods looked out for guys like him that the Jumper wasn't going to be covered in ants. Because, really, if that was how it was going to be, he might as well just have Ronon shoot them all.
Lucky for him, though, the gods appeared to be listening and, as he broke from the forest and into the clearing, the first thing he saw was his beautiful Jumper, all pristine and ant-free, shining in that brilliant, pink-orange light that hits right as the sun sets. He'd never seen a more beautiful sight in his life -- if he hadn't been so busy jumping around, shaking his legs, wildly brushing at his pants, and stomping viciously on all the ants he dislodged, he probably would have cried.
It was kind of like they were all dancing. Well, interpretive dancing. Rodney did sort of a back-to-nature/monkey thing, smacking at his calves and shoes, jumping spastically, and making these, "ah, ah, ah" noises. Ronon was more of the tribal war dance type, he stomped, kicked, and jumped -- all leather and hair and randomly shooting at the ground. Teyla... well, Teyla was like ballet. As much as sweeping vicious, killer ants off your body can be like ballet anyway. John didn't really know what he was doing but he was happy as long as it wasn't any of that shitty dancing he'd done in the 80's.
God, he hoped no one was watching.
It tapered off after a while. Ronon and then Teyla and then him and then Rodney. At the end of it, it was just a lot of dead ants and the four of them, breathing hard and looking around, smiling at each other, proud of the feat they had just managed. A real Kodak Moment, bonding experience. A beautiful, moving, feel-good sort of thing.
"Ah, shit, you little fucker!"
Rodney slapped the back of his neck, pulled the ant off, and, after crushing it between his thumb and forefinger, threw it onto the ground. And stomped on it. With both feet.
And then he stopped, staring down at the ground and breathing hard in a way that made John extremely glad heat vision didn't just develop on command.
John winced. Teyla winced. Ronon winced.
Teyla cleared her throat and looked over at John. "Perhaps we should return to Atlantis?"
And if that wasn't the best idea that John had been trying to get everyone else to agree to all day he didn't know what was.
"Yeah, perhaps we should." John looked over at Rodney, rubbing the back of his neck and scowling at the three of them, still clutching his planter in one hand, the patchouli drooping sadly over the sides. "Come on, Rodney, Beckett's got a shot in the ass with your name on it."