Stargate Atlantis: Darts

The idea

They headed back to McKay's lab, Rodney to disentangle and put away his nest of equipment, John to sit waiting, finishing off a Pegasus-apple.

"So, what do you want to do?" asked Rodney.

"I dunno. Is it still hot out there? We could go swimming off one of the piers?" suggested Sheppard.

"Still hot? Are you kidding?" spluttered McKay. "Why do you think all the balcony doors are shut. Atlantis' air conditioning wouldn't be able to cope with the heat this planet's throwing at us!"

"Hey, d'you ever get yelled at as a kid for doing that?" asked Sheppard. "In the car when you just wanted the window down to feel the wind?"

"I got yelled at for everything as a kid," replied Rodney, drily, "Although, unusually, not for that. I was well aware of the functioning parameters of the air conditioning before I was five years old."

John took a last bite of his apple, crunching juicily. He looked at the core, debated whether to throw it at McKay, dropped it instead into the wastebasket.

"Hey, what's this?" he asked.

"If it's any kind of device whatsoever," said Rodney irritably, not looking up, "It's referred to as an 'LIA', that is a 'Leave It Alone' device."

"No, this stack of paper."

"Oh, that, that's just a load of tech specs, technical specifications, from that planet... P2Z-9M3 or something," Rodney replied in his rapid-fire manner. "Don't think they've discovered the paperless office yet. One of my minions scanned it in; that can be recycled, except we don't have recycling facilities... why?"  

"Oh, nothing..." John took a sheet of paper off the stack, waved it speculatively, placed it on the workbench and with a few deft folds, fashioned it into a paper dart.

His eyes flicked up to look at McKay, then back to the dart. An apple he could resist... a dart?  A quick flick of his wrist sent it gliding in one swift swoop. It hit Rodney in the back of the neck.

"What the?!" Rodney turned, grasping his neck, saw the dart lying in the floor.  "Colonel Sheppard!"

"Sorry," John smirked.

"No, you're not!" spluttered Rodney, "and anyway," he said, picking up the dart,"that's not even how you do it."

"It hit you, didn't it?  Don't know what they make this paper out of, but it makes great darts!" said John, sending another dart towards Rodney, this one with one wing bent up and one down so that it spiralled through the air.

Rodney caught the spiralling dart and held both up, eyeing them critically.  "That's what I'd refer to as 'fast and dirty' design," he commented, with an air of superiority. "No finesse!"

"Finesse this!" responded Sheppard, thrusting another dart in Rodney's direction, this one banking a sharp left, spiralling in to evade his grasp and ending it's flight path by impacting with his chest. "Sometimes flying experience and gut instinct get the best results!"

"Well, why don't we see about that?" said Rodney, snatching a sheet of paper and beginning, with patient precision to craft his own dart.

By the time he was finished, the lab was littered with John's darts, which had varied in their shape and trajectory, but had all completed, more or less, their planned missions.

McKay held up his creation. "The McKay Mark I," he announced.

"Oh, great name," Sheppard snarked. "The Todd Mark..." he looked around at the floor, quickly counting, "Mark 9."

"What, yours are wraith darts?" asked Rodney incredulously.

"Well," Sheppard drawled, "yeah!  The wraith seem to know what they're doing, don't they?"

Rodney made a disgusted chuffing noise. He held up his dart as if to throw it, then surveyed the lab.  "Corridor?" he suggested.

"Corridor," John agreed.

The maiden flights of the Todd 9 and the McKay 1 ended in a collision and a rather heated argument about who bore responsibility and led to a discussion about a more suitable venue for test flights.

"Top of the control tower!" was Rodney's idea.

"What the very top?" asked John doubtfully.  "Have you been up there? Up the ladder above the jumper bay and out the hatch? There's no handrail out there McKay!"

Rodney, looking slightly green at the thought, reconsidered. "Well the balcony outside the gateroom, then."

"Oh, yeah, the one near a certain Colonel Carter's office.  'Cos that'd work," Sheppard drawled sarcastically.

"Oh, yeah, Sam," said Rodney, thoughtfully.

The problem, as both men knew, though neither cared to admit, would not be Sam's disapproval. No, the problem would be her enthusiasm.

Her face would light up with its luminous smile, all her instincts as a seasoned pilot and genius astrophysicist sparking, and in the most older-sisterly way, she would not only take over, but would probably make the best dart and win their competition.

This could not be allowed to happen. Shifty hazel eyes met guarded blue.

"Sam wouldn't approve," said Rodney quickly.

"Of course she wouldn't approve!" John agreed hastily.

"It would be beneath her dignity as CO of Atlantis," Rodney blurted in a rush.

"Absolutely!" John confirmed. "We'll need a diversion!"

"Diversions we can do!" Rodney stated positively.