Forgotton Family and Forgotton Past
Allison followed Tasmin as both agents made their way through the forest. It was dark, there was a drizzle and the underground was rocky. The agents were in pursuit of a Sue that for some reason was not hindered by these circumstances. The Sue was a half-Wraith. That might have something to do with it, Allison thought. She also thought, why didn't Tasmin bring a couple of umbrellas? Not that umbrellas were of much use when hiking in a drizzle, but it would have been the thought that counted.
Tasmin halted and crouched down. Allison lowered herself down next to her partner and wiped her hair from her forehead. Tasmin turned off her torch and put it in one of the pockets of her utility vest.
"Why are we stopping?"
"The Sue has turned around," Tasmin replied. "She thinks she has felt another Wraith. And over there is Teyla who has also sensed a Wraith."
"There's another Wraith here?"
"No, apparently, Teyla is giving off 'I'm a Wraith' signals now."
The darkness seemed to dissipate as the Sue set off into the woods again and Teyla went in pursuit of her.
She couldn't help but notice that it was built much like her. Whatever it was. She ran in persuit of the creature. She finally tracked it down to a water fall.
Teyla noticed the Sue had a tan skin colour and deciding this could not be a Wraith lowered her weapon. She told the Sue she was looking for a friend. The Sue replied she was looking for the same.
Soon as she took notice of Teyla, she only stared, she had to be looking at a mirror of somekind
By the time the agents reached the waterfall the Sue and Teyla were each holding a knife and circling each other.
"Make a note that Teyla put down her gun when her opponent pulled a knife," Tasmin said. "Her response should have been to raise her gun and declare: I do not wish to fight you."
Allison raised her eyebrows and gave her partner an are-you-kidding-me glare.
"Oh, just write it down."
Teyla told the Sue why she was on the planet, and quickly realized she had told her too much: she had also led on she was not alone. The Sue lunged at Teyla, but Teyla warded her off.
Teyilia then stood up again, this time Teyla was closer to the waterfall, "I was taught by my father if you would like to know" she said, leaving out his name for the time being.
"Do you talk this much when you have fights?" Tasmin asked.
"Only if I think it will distract my opponent more than me."
Teyla and the Sue continued fighting. A fight the former did not wish to start and the latter wanted to end soon. It bothered the Sue that Teyla was mirroring her movements.
"That's the third time the word 'mirror' is used to compare Teyla and the Sue. I wonder what could be the meaning of that." Tasmin's voice was dripping with sarcasm.
"Fourth time," Allison corrected. "And whatever the reason: it won't be good."
Teyla stopped to think when she heard the Sue was a half-breed. The Sue failed to take advantage of this lapse in concentration. The Sue questioned why Teyla had become soft of heart.
"You could have shot me, yet you did not, then you speak of others with you looking for the same as I,"
"Yes, I too would like to know why Teyla is behaving out of character."
The Sue sheated her weapon confident of her strength. Teyla came to a realization.
A memory was coming to her. She knew this girl from long ago. "I know you. Who are you and where do you come from?"
The Sue, who had felt hate and confusion before, felt scared now. She said she was born on Athos.
A brief flash of light distracted Tasmin from Teyla's reaction. She turned her attention to the Words and nudged her partner to do the same. The Words told them Ford was sitting in a tree, hiding from the half-Wraith, thinking it was nice not being addicted to the enzyme any more.
"Huh?" Allison said.
"My thoughts exactly."
The spotlight returned to Teyla.
She began very suspicious of this person and she wished Ford would magicaly show up all better and ready to help her get out of this situation and get back home.
"This story isn't really moving on, is it?" Allison said. "I'm soaked from this drizzle and the two of them have now spent twenty-five paragraphs circling each other and taking turns at stopping and contemplating how much they have in common. I know rushing a story is bad, but we've already known where this story is going from the moment the Sue decided not to mention the name of her father."
"You could just list clichéd hint dropping as a charge."
"At the moment I can't list any charges as my notepad is probably soaked as well."
"I thought I told you to get one of those plastic notepads geologists use."
"I haven't exactly had time to go shopping, have I? With all these Atlantis Sues they keep dumping on us. Why are we getting these Sues anyway? I've done some Intel, as they say in this fandom."
Despite her efforts to glare at her partner Tasmin raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"Yes, thank you for that vote of confidence. I've done some Intel. We're in the sub-department of Rare Fandoms, but Stargate Atlantis is hardly a rare fandom. It is nearly fifteen times larger than A-Team fandom."
"The agents that originally started this department started in one of the Star Trek spin-offs, also much larger than A-Team, but a lot smaller than LotR or HP. Plus, Suefics are rarer in these fandoms than in the others."
"It doesn't feel that way."
"That's because we only get to see the Suefics."
While the agents argued the fic managed to move on. Ford decided to jump from his tree and Sheppard and McKay decided to go and look for Teyla after she had not responded to their hails over the radio.
Teyla got the feeling that someone was watching, but not a Wraith.
"Are you sensing that to?" she asked hoping this person might end up helping her if this thing watching them was indeed an enemy.
The Sue drew her other knife. She was discomforted that Teyla had sensed her prey too. Teyla asked why the Sue was hunting her friend. At that moment Ford stepped out of the shrubbery and pressed his stunner in the back of the Sue.
"Now, if she has had any kind of combat training, she would grab the weapon in her back, swiftly turn around and take out her opponent," Tasmin said. "And if Ford had logically applied his own training he would not have put his weapon in the back of his target as it would give her leverage to disarm him."
Ford deliberately paid no attention to Teyla and Teyla considered running for her P-90 which she had dropped on the ground earlier. The Sue dropped her knife and did as Tasmin had suggested: she grabbed the stunner and spun around.
Ford reacted on instinct and pulled the trigger in the same moment as Teyilia's move. The blast rippled down her body and Ford jumped back away from the cliff's edge.
The Sue was stunned and fell down the cliff toward the river that streamed below. Teyla grabbed her hand and fell down with her.
Tasmin ran out of her hiding place and looked down the cliff. Allison followed at a slower pace.
"Now that was stupid," Tasmin said.
Ford looked up in the direction of the PPC agents, but did not seem to see them.
"Perhaps it's better not to speak too loudly in the presence of completely OOC characters," Allison said cautiously.
Tasmin nodded. "You're right."
Ford leant over the edge, his eyes searching for the two women that went down. He called out for Teyla.
"Y...you pushed her!"
Ford, and the two agents, turned around to Sheppard, who aimed a P-90 at him, and McKay, who didn't seem to be holding a gun.
Tasmin unconsciously released the safety of her own holster so she could easily get to her gun if the need for shooting her way out should arise.
Ford raised his hands.
Suddenly the two agents were submerged in the river. Allison struggled to get to the surface.
"What the hell?" she yelled at her partner.
"A change of location without applying a scene break," Tasmin replied, struggling to keep her head above the water as they were pulled along in the strong stream.
"I thought you had set the Fic Location Follower to manual?"
"I did, but you know that this thing sometimes sets itself to automatic."
"Nice."
The neat thing about not knowing what was going on around while stunned by a Wraith weapon is, you can think over things, basically things that one never thought happened in the past, floating in the water Teyilia felt just on the outer-reaches of her body before completely blacking out that someone grabbed ahold of her.
"That just made no sense at all," Allison yelled. "Does she or does she not black-out from a stun blast? And why was I never told that a stun blast leaves a person paralysed yet conscious."
"I thought you had done Intel?" Tasmin yelled back.
"I did, but my Intel told me a stun blast left a person unconscious."
"This particular stun blast left the Sue thinking that perhaps she was not the only daughter of Tagan."
Then Tasmin and Allison were pulled from the water and deposited, dripping wet, back at the edge of the cliff in the company of Ford, McKay and Sheppard.
"Now, set that FLF to manual."
"Already on it." Tasmin pulled a small device from one of her pockets. "It doesn't seem to want to comply. Perhaps it is not as waterproof as this label suggests."
"We really have to get a waterproof FLF. Or put it in one of these ziplock bags so water can't get to it."
Tasmin glared at her partner. "Thank you. I will try to remember that next time."
Sheppard still had the P-90 trained on Ford.
Aiden just wanted to crawl into a hole and not come out right now. This was not how he was supposed to be reunited with his friends.
Ford dropped the stunner. That startled McKay, but he quickly regained composure and noticed that Ford's eye had healed. Sheppard noticed it too. He said they should find Teyla and asked Ford if he could help them down to the river.
"They should have come with us," said Allison as the fic took another turn to test the agents for buoyancy.
The head of the Sue broke the surface of the water. She looked around and then dove back down to search for Teyla. She found her and brought her to a small ledge behind the waterfall where she studied her look-a-like.
Tasmin and Allison swam towards the waterfall and looked for a way to get out of the water and behind the waterfall.
At the top of the cliff Sheppard had found a trail that lead down. McKay and Ford followed him. Sheppard called for Teyla. She heard him and replied. When the men found them the Sue had blacked out again. McKay quickly started rattling off questions to find out how okay, or not okay Teyla was. She shot him a look telling him to stop talking.
Teyilia, though still out from the blast, could still hear, though foggy, she heard first Sheppards voice as he called for Teyla, then her mind started working even faster then before.
"This Sue really, really needs to learn what 'out' means," Allison said. "You're not out if you still have conscious use of your senses and have a working mind."
Tasmin grunted. "It would have been less annoying if she had said the stun blast had left her groggy, but she repeatedly mentions blacking out."
The three men got the two women to their feet and went their way to the Stargate.
-oOo-
The agents had taken a portal to Atlantis. At least the remote activator hadn't drowned. Stepping through the portal also meant stepping into another disguise, a dry disguise.
The Sue and Teyla were brought to the infirmary. They were placed on beds. The Sue slowly opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling.
meaning only one thing, I'm in the Ancestors Home?! How did I get here?
"This Sue is testing my patience. How does she know that particular ceiling is part of the city of Atlantis?" Allison pointed up. "Has she been here before? Does she have a handy guidebook: Ceilings in the Pegasus Galaxy?"
Tasmin mustered up a smile. "If she does we will confiscate it."
The Sue's thoughts continued. She remembered her childhood and how she had been denounced by her father.
Teyla's memories also took her to her childhood when a girl that had always been her sister was chased away from her village.
Allison sighed. With the FLF still broken she knew they would also be taken to that moment. She hoped the landing would be soft.
-oOo-
It was dark in the flashback. The agents, who had had no chance go change their disguises so they would not stick out like a sore thumb among all the OCs that made up Teyla's village, were glad they were hidden by the cover of night. A junior version of the Sue was in her bed clutching her blankets. Then she got up and climbed out of the window. She made her way towards the woods and the Stargate. When she was almost there Wraith came through the gate and attacked the village.
The flashback ended and the agents were returned to a corridor of Atlantis. Doctor Beckett ran past them on his way to the infirmary. The agents followed. Beckett had shrugged on his labcoat and fired of his first question for information before he noticed he had two patients. He stopped dead in his tracks.
"Colonel Sheppard," he began, slowly, "Who, may I ask, is tha'?"
Sheppard grimaced at the tone of the good doctors' voice.
"Ah, there are two doctors now," Tasmin noted.
"And I bet both of them are going to get their accents transcribed." Allison knitted her brows together in a glare.
Sheppard told Beckett he had three patients. Beckett first saw to Teyla, then turned to the Sue. Ford stepped out of the shadows where he had withdrawn earlier, announcing he was Beckett's third patient.
The Sue opened her eyes and tried to assess her situation. She saw Sheppard holding the knife she had dropped before attacking Ford. She felt bad about getting her sister hurt. She tried to send a message to her.
Teyla was slipping in and out of consciousness. She was afraid to die. When she received the message form the Sue she latched on to it and asked for help.
The agents were just outside the infirmary to be sure they would stay out of the visual range of the Sue. They followed the events that took place in the infirmary through the Words. Allison cringed as the Words lay Beckett's accent on thick. Tasmin cringed as Beckett seemingly lay one eye on Ford and determined that Ford was back to normal.
Beckett sent Ford to McKay to have his stun weapon analysed.
"Not too long ago," Tasmin said as they watched Ford leave, "most people would not have thought it a very good idea to let Ford walk around Atlantis with a stun gun."
"Beckett took one look at the guy, saw he no longer had that black eye and decided he was no longer an addict. As if that eye was the only indicator that Ford's system was fuelled with the enzyme."
"Beckett can't know that that eye is the only indicator for the enzyme addiction. And he most certainly would not presume it was. He'd run a few more tests on Ford before giving him a clean bill of health than just giving him the once over."
Teyla grabbed Beckett's hand and told him she was scared. He replied she was going to be all right and she relaxed trusting his judgement.
The agents, however, both took a mental note to charge the Sue with making them not trust Beckett's judgement any more, not after the Sue woke up and demanded to know where she was and Beckett told her without hesitation that she was in Atlantis.
"Was he taking a nap the day everyone was briefed on the fact that they had ended the Wraith attack by making them think Atlantis had been destroyed?" Allison asked. "And that he thus should not be telling total strangers that they are in Atlantis?"
"Hmm. Sheppard probably joined him in that nap 'cause he doesn't even make an attempt to stop him from sharing that information."
John tapped him on the shoulder. "Dr. Weir would like Ford to have a full physical and be checked for any signs of Wraith enzyme in his system before he comes back to work." John said.
"At least Weir hadn't been sleeping."
"Weir was probably the one doing the briefing," Tasmin replied. "So unless she talks in her sleep..."
Allison grunted.
Sheppard left the infirmary to catch some sleep and Beckett pulled up a chair to sit with Teyla.
-oOo-
The agents took a portal and stepped back into the story the day Teyla got out of bed and made a little walk to the balcony. Teyla had been given two officers as company to keep her from falling if she got dizzy. The Sue, however, seemed to have gotten free roam of the place. The agents thought this wrong. Thus Tasmin set their disguises to marines so they could guard the Sue. The Sue frowned at them when they told her it were Weir's orders that they should follow her around, but she accepted it nonetheless.
"All right. Come with me." The Sue led the way to the balcony near the infirmary.
Teyla was on the balcony and sang a song. The Sue told her she had missed the song, but that she had missed Teyla more.
she took out the knife from her belt as she had been given the thing back, both the knife and her weapond belt when she was cleared to leave,
Tasmin and Allison and one of the members of Teyla's escort raised their weapons. The Sue paid them no heed. She started to speak incomprehensibly. The gist of her speech seemed to be that that was the knife with which she had killed her mother to prevent her from being killed by Wraith. She gave the knife to Teyla and left, the two agents in her tow.
The Sue went to the sparring room. Where the agents again opted to wait by the door. A moment later Ronon showed up. He immediately raised his gun at the Sue.
Allison smiled. "It's good to see at least one of them is still in character."
"He hasn't been under the Suefluence yet. I doubt it will last long."
"you are a Wraith, I hunt Wraith, I kill Wraith, yet... how did you get here?" Roonon asked.
A little man, about a foot and a half high, with thick white dreadlocks and a light brown leather coat popped into existence.
"Catch him!" Tasmin said. "But be careful. I don't know whether mini-Wraiths have feeding hands."
Allison had gotten into position to catch the mini, but Tasmin's last comment made her stop and look up. "What?"
"I don't know. I've never seen a mini-Wraith before." Tasmin shrugged.
"That'll be nice to have around the office."
The problem with minis -- other than that they are sprouted by the misspelling of a canon character's name -- is that they take on the characteristics of the canon character they are named after. Which in Roonon's case meant that he was hard to catch. By the time Allison had caught him, tied him up and dropped him in a sack, Lorne and Sheppard were in the sparring room too, trying to talk Ronon's gun down.
Sheppard succeeded and Ronon lowered his gun. He asked who the Sue was.
"I am Teyilia, I know Teyla because she is my younger sister." Teyilia explained to Ronon, she noticed Lorne do a double take, and Sheppard just staring open mouthed, apparently Teyla had yet to tell the truth of who the half breed was.
Lorne seemed to think the situation was under control and left. Ronon took a little more convincing. Sheppard eventually showed him that the Sue was not a dangerous Wraith because she could not feed on him.
Allison's jaw dropped as Sheppard placed the Sue's hand on his chest. "If the Sue looks exactly like Teyla, then how did Ronon take her for a Wraith? Does he think Teyla is a Wraith?"
"No, he doesn't. He's actually quite protective of her considering she has some Wraith DNA."
"Maybe the white hair is supposed to be a dead give away. Apparently in this galaxy only Wraith have white hair."
"Not to mention that all the canon Wraith women had dark hair."
"How does that even work?" Allison said pensively.
"The hair?"
"No, no. The half-Wraith thing. The Wraith remind me a lot of bees: one queen, lots of drones, living in a hive. If they reproduce the way bees do, then there is no way one of them will successfully father a child in a human woman. Even if his sex-drive was larger than his desire to feed. And I can't really imagine Tagan having sex with a Wraith queen either."
"And knowing you, you've probably tried."
Allison glared at her partner.
Tasmin waved it away. "It hasn't been said, but I get the feeling Teyla and the Sue had the same father and mother."
"Then how can she be a half-Wraith?"
"Exactly."
The Sue and Sheppard left the sparring room and the agents followed closely behind. They could not make much sense of the conversation between the Sue and Sheppard. Sheppard told her about his job and why they had come to Atlantis. She then realized there was a connection between that and the Wraith waking up. Talk about waking made the Sue sleepy. Sheppard said she could sleep in the infirmary.
-oOo-
In the infirmary Ford seemed to be asleep sitting on the floor. The Sue got into the bed near to him. The agents stopped at the door and cautiously looked in. After a short while Ford spoke. The Sue sat up and engaged in a conversation with him.
"I think you are wondering why I was after you." she siad, her voice though sounding like a Wraith female only it had a kind sound to it. "you are no doubt wondering why I was following you?"
"How many times can we charge her for redundancy before it becomes superfluous?" Allison asked.
"I guess charging her three or four times with it would get the point across."
"I found out about you through the records of a Wraith fighter, your life sign was recorded in the computer of the thing,"
"She what? I thought she left her community of farmers and hunters at a very young age. Where did she pick up her computer skills? And the skill to read Wraith?"
"And the skill to get around and about aboard a Wraith fighter?"
"That sort of thing comes natural to Sues."
"So do computer skills."
Allison grumbled.
Tasmin chuckled. "I'm curious. You always try to make sense of Suefics. Have you found anything in this fic you could work with?"
Allison glared at her. "Are you kidding me? You are kidding me, right? This fic takes more time to muck out than a hog barn."
Ford nodded off to sleep and, according to the Words, dream of the Sue.
"Let's go in." Tasmin stepped into the infirmary.
A spotlight switched on over the bed of the Sue. She blinked her eyes against the bright light. She saw the two agents stand by her bed.
"It is okay now," she said. "I am going to sleep. You can get some rest too."
"We fully intend to," Tasmin replied. "First we have to take care of something." She aimed her gun at the Sue's forehead. "You."
The Sue jerked her arms to get to one of her knives and found the agents had put her arms in restraints. The agents smirked at her.
"Teyilia," Allison said, "we are Protectors of the Plot Continuum. We are here to charge you with crimes against fanfiction in general and Stargate Atlantis in particular. First we charge you with atrocious spelling, grammar and punctuation. It was often not even clear what you were on about. Added to that: misspelling a character's name. It's Ronon. Two O's, not three. And on two occasions you even misspelt your own name. Me thinks that's kind of silly." Allison chuckled.
"Further," Allison continued, "we charge you with looking exactly like Teyla, yet also looking like a Wraith. Do you think Teyla looks like a Wraith?"
"No." The Sue sounded a little frightened. "I also do not look much like a Wraith. I do not have the gill of Wraith."
"Then, in what way do you look like Wraith?"
"My hair?"
"Your hair? You really think that Ronon is going to pull his gun on every white haired person he sees and call them Wraith? You do not know Ronon well, do you?" Allison pulled her notepad from her pocket. She hadn't written anything in it, but she liked to hold on to it for stature. "Also concerning Wraith: we charge you with being a half-Wraith, but not giving any kind of explanation, let alone a sensible one, where the Wraith half is coming from."
"The same as Teyla. Some of her DNA is Wraith."
"Yes, some. Not half."
"Speaking of Teyla. If your skin colour is the same as hers, sunburnt," Tasmin flicked the Sue in the forehead, "is not a good word to describe it."
The Sue looked at her incredulously.
"We charge you with having been with the Wraith and living to tell about it, with having learnt their language, at least in reading, and knowing how to use their computers. What are you, a Wraith worshipper?"
The Sue jerked her head back to Allison. "That is the worst insult you could give to one of my people," she said through gritted teeth.
"Well, it's fully deserved. We charge you with knowing you're in Atlantis from looking at the ceiling. We charge you with Beckett telling you you are in Atlantis, and with someone giving you your weapons back and free roam of the place."
"I was given an escort."
"We gave you an escort. You had conveniently left out the escort. So either you are using the same potion as Lucius, or Weir, Sheppard and whoever else thinks about security are out of character. Ford was also OOC as after his rehab he seemed to have forgotten his combat training. And by the way, alien rehab centre? I can't decide whether that was the stupidest thing I've heard of in this galaxy, or the fact that you maintained some level of consciousness after having been stunned.
"Lastly, we charge you with redundancy, clichéd hint dropping and redundancy. In short, we charge you with being a Mary Sue. Tasmin will now make you redundant."
Tasmin shot the Sue. While she put away her gun Allison undid the restraints on the Sue and started to wrap her in a sheet. Jointly the agents pulled the Sue off the bed. Tasmin opened a portal.
"Something's wrong. We have a red light." Tasmin showed Allison the remote activator.
"Isn't that just because Ford is still in Atlantis?"
"No." Tasmin glanced the Words. "We have two other Sues." She pointed at the Words.
"Two other Sues?" Allison dropped the Sue's top end on the other side of the portal.
Tasmin pushed the legs of the Sue up high, then quickly closed the portal. The Sue's body would surely lose balance, but not fall back into the fic.
"Where are they?"
"Mess hall."
"Good. I'm starting to feel a little peckish."
-oOo-
Allison had loaded her tray with an assortment of food. She insisted that Tasmin take a tray as well for they would look conspicuous in the mess hall if they didn't have food on their plates. Tasmin reluctantly took a tray and put an apple and a bottle of water on it.
Allison gave the two items a stunned look. "I thought you long-distance runners had to eat a lot because you burn a lot of energy."
"We do, but as a rule I don't eat in strange places. There could be something mixed through the food that could render me positive in a dope test."
"You run top-competition?" Allison asked as they walked to a table near the First Sue. "I never knew that of you."
"I don't think I ever mentioned it."
"So, are you any good?" Allison set her tray down on the table.
"This is why I never told you."
"Why? It's an honest question."
"Not if you ask with an undertone of hoping I failed."
"C'mon, you're Tasmin. You don't fail."
Tasmin eyed her partner suspiciously.
"So, what is your time on the marathon?" Allison tried to ask as sweetly as she could.
"Just over two and a half hours."
"See, that's very good."
"How do you know this? I didn't think you were into long-distance running."
"I'm not, but I remember Paula Radcliffe setting a new world record at 2.15 something. I figure your time must be good too. You don't get as much training in as she does."
"That's true." Tasmin smiled. She opened her water bottle and took a gulp.
The Second Sue asked if she could sit with the First Sue.
"No please take a seat." she said trying to stay awake. "I'm sorry I don't think we've met. I'm Amber. Amber Rollings. I'm one of the pilots here." she said offering to shake hands.
"ATA gene," Tasmin said bringing the bottle to her mouth again.
"What?" Allison paused her hand holding the sandwich long enough to ask the question.
"To pilot a puddle jumper you need the ATA gene."
"Well, she brought that information up very subtly."
"Yes, she did. Uncanny."
The other Sue introduced herself as well and sat down. She took a bite from her sandwich.
The sandwich had some sort of meat in it. She took a moment to wonder how closely it was related to chickens on Earth. One would think that after several thousand years of separation, there would have been more of a split between to two genuses.
"Everything tastes like chicken," Allison said. "It's all about using the right spices."
"Perhaps your papillae are just not very sensitive."
"That may be true. I, for instance, don't taste any difference between organic and regular pork. Yet, there are people who think it tastes better. If anything, it should taste drier because organic meat isn't as fat. I think the experienced taste difference is largely psychological," Allison said in between bites and while chewing. "You feel good because you are eating organic so your brain also registers it as tasting good."
"Possibly, the human brain is excellently equipped at fooling itself."
"Yes. I'm on Major Lorne's team. And you? Which team have you been assigned? I mean, since the attack."
"And there's another example of fooling itself. She says 'attack', but what she's referring to is 'siege'. By using a less grave word she is trying to down play the event and the effect it had on her. But she's only fooling herself. It was a siege, and unless she faces up to that she will never learn how to deal with it."
"You also never mentioned you were into psychology."
"I'm not really. It's just something I read in the paper once. And it makes sense: if people don't label things properly then how can they deal with them properly."
"I haven't labelled this sandwich properly, mystery meat and all, but I know quite well how to deal with it. I eat it."
"You know what I mean."
First Sue said she was going to be put on a new team and lead it together with Bates, which she wasn't happy about."
"Nor will Bates be," Tasmin said, "having to put up with a Sue."
The Sues ate in silence for awhile. Second Sue brought up girls' night, and First Sue agreed they should go. Second Sue decided her meal was finished and got up. She wished the other Sue a good day and left.
"Follow her?" Allison asked her half eaten meal in mind.
"No, I think we'll pick up more charges if we stay here."
Major Lorne entered the mess hall. He grabbed a tray and some food and looked for a place to sit.
He spotted Rollings sitting at one of the tables. The two had had a brief encounter when he had first arrived in Atlantis, but he hadn't had much contact with her since. From the sounds of it, she didn't have a steady team position... and he was searching for a fourth member...
"Why would Lorne want a pilot on his team? He's a pilot himself."
Allison briefly raised her eyebrows at her partner before returning her attention back to her food. "You know as well as I do that if a Sue wants to hook up with a pilot, she often becomes a pilot herself." Allison swallowed to get the lump from her throat.
"That's true." Tasmin tried to smile sympathetically at her partner. "That's probably the case here."
She always thought he was a cool guy but never thought of him as cute. Till now.
"Make that definitely."
The Sue and Lorne talked about Sheppard and how he got out of training new arrivals because he saved the city so many times.
"I'm sure him being a lieutenant-colonel and the highest ranking officer in Atlantis has nothing to do with it," Tasmin remarked. She squeezed her water bottle and realized too late that she had not replaced the cap.
"People not understanding military hierarchy is getting to you." Allison pulled her own tray to safety and threw a couple of paper napkins to her partner.
"There was also some covert Rodney bashing in there."
"Rodney? We're calling him Rodney now?"
"I am." Tasmin glared at her partner. She returned the cap to her bottle and wiped her hand on her clothes.
The Sue and Lorne engaged in a pseudo-flirty conversation. Lorne started to consider adding her to his team.
Tasmin pinched her water bottle again.
"More McKay bashing? Tasmin, I do believe you like the man." Allison chuckled.
"No more than any other canon male."
"Sure."
It seemed Lorne was looking for a new team member because one of the scientists on his team had decided to leave the team.
"Now would be a good moment to ask that pilot question again," Allison said.
Tasmin nodded. "The off-world expeditions have many different goals: scientific exploration, setting up trade relations, reconnaissance. Changing the consistency of the team is going to change its purpose."
Then Lorne decided to answer all the questions the agents had posed:
"I figure that this time around I'll probably be needing another military hand, not another scientist. Lindsay gets into enough trouble alone, even without a civilian around to encourage her. And of course there's the problem that right now I'm the only member of my team who can safely pilot a jumper..."
"So, he wants to change the nature of his team because he has a biologist he can't keep in check," Tasmin summarized. "A biologist's job is to catalogue animal and plant life. Their very nature is to observe. How much trouble could they get into?"
"Ignoring your bias towards an entire profession, I'll go out on a limb here and say, less trouble than sergeants who give colonels that tell them to train pilots a piece of their mind."
"I'd never thought I'd say this, but this Sue is actually ranked too low. It may have something to do with not everyone having the ATA gene, but the Air Force doesn't have too many pilots below the rank of captain."
Lorne stood up and told the Sue he had business to attend to.
The agents decided to leave too. Once out of the mess they portalled ahead to girls' night.
-oOo-
Girls' night was held at Laura Cadman's quarters, and chock-full of women. Allison wondered aloud why in a city like Atlantis not a bigger room could have been found. Some of the women agreed with her. Cadman clapped her hands and everyone stopped talking. She suggested they all would play a game of truth or dare. Tasmin rolled her eyes.
Second Sue got picked first.
Anne bit her lip, thinking for a moment. "How about... Dare."
"Oh, time out." Tasmin jumped up and made a T with her hands. "First of all, women that have long since been out of college do not play 'Truth or Dare' with women they barely know, much less with their colleagues.
"Amber Rollings, you want the truth, here is the truth: you are a Mary Sue. You have no grasp of hierarchy in the military; you do not understand that composition of a team determines its mission; you don't seem to have noticed that if Atlantis needs pilots for the jumpers they have to request pilots from SGC. And I very much doubt that SGC would respond to that request by sending people that can't fly to save their own life.
"You also fail to understand that if Lorne thinks you are cute in any way, he will not put you on his team because he can do without the distraction. Further, you are a bad speller and you repeat yourself a lot. And for some reason you changed your name to Andrea."
"Actually," the Sue addressed said, "my name is Anne and I asked for a dare."
"A dare? You want a dare? I dare you: dodge this bullet." In the blink of an eye Tasmin had drawn her Colt and shot the Sue.
"Tasmin, you shot the wrong one."
"What?" Tasmin threw her partner a look.
"She was a Sue, but Amber/Andrea is sitting on the other side of Weir."
"Oh." Tasmin turned her attention to the other Sue. "What I just said to her." The other Sue was also shot. Tasmin blew some smoke from the barrel of her gun. She squinted her eyes and looked at the assorted women staring at her in shock. "Anyone else want to get shot? Then I suggest you leave now."
The women got up and quickly left Cadman's quarters.
Tasmin holstered her gun. "Let's clean up in here."
Allison crossed her arms and stared at her partner for a moment. She shook her head. "You got so upset over McKay bashing and you didn't even charge them with it."
"Shoot."
"No, that's what you did. Try to watch that trigger happy finger of yours in the future. You know what the consequences are."
"But, I'm not..."
"Yeah, denial is the first sign. Trust me, I've been there."
"Yeah," Tasmin said quietly.
Allison gave her partner a squeeze in the shoulder. "Let's clean up in here. And go home." She tried on a reassuring smile. "You're Tasmin. You're the best. If anyone can beat this thing you can."