Hello everybody !

As my English teacher of this year is, hrm... not the best, I try to entrain my English by another way... XD

So this is a little traduction of my French fanfiction, with John Sheppard, an old machine and... a cat ? Yes, a cat in Atlantis, you have read correctlt ! :-p

Thanks so much for your reading ! :-)

Rodney the cat

All the team was supposed eating together at this meal. But at the cafeteria, John, Teyla and Ronon waited for Rodney during a long time. A very long time. A too much long time : after a moment, Ronon arrived at the end of his patience and goes away, grumbling with bad mood against these stupid scientists who always lost the course of time as soon as they embarked on new searches about something. Staying alone at their table, John and Teyla exchanged a look.

"Have you seen him today ?" asked Teyla, a little anxious.

"No." answered the soldier, shrugging his shoulders. "But you know McKay, when he's absorbed by a new machine, it's impossible to detach it…"

Sheppard finished his third cup of coffee, which he rested on the table once empty, then he stood up and pushed back his chair with a sigh.

"Well, I'm going anyway to see what he's doing. It's true that it is rare that he skips a meal like that."

Teyla nodded, reassured to note that he seemed to get a little worry too. John left the cafeteria and browsed the corridors of the City until a teleporter. Once in this one, a card of Atlantis with many luminous points appeared. He teleported himself at the other side of the City, left the cabin and walked again during a few minutes to join Rodney's laboratory. He penetrated in ; the Canadian scientist was not there.

Sheppard frowned. It wasn't normal. Rodney seemed to have forgotten that he owned, like any member of Atlantis, a place of his own which was called in common language a bedroom. Instead of that, he spent his life in this laboratory, so he would necessarily have been there.

"McKay ?" he called him. "Are you around ?"

John closed the door of the laboratory behind himself and undertook to browse the place in length and across. He knew that his colleague was fearful : if something had scared him, it would not surprise him to find the awesome scientist rolled into a ball under a desk, waiting courageously for the danger to pass. Sheppard went so far as open the cupboards to see if by any chance Rodney wasn't hidden inside, all shaking, but no, they really weren't anyone in the laboratory cupboards. Taken aback, John approached from one of the desks, on which one was put a strange black machine which flashed in places in purple and orange. Was it this which could have scared McKay ? But for what reason ? Sheppard pulled towards him the wheelchair of the desk and sat down, perplexed, in front of the machi…

"MIÂÂÂÂÂW !"

John leaped roughly on his feet, caught instinctively his gun and pointed it immediately towards the seat without thinking an only second about the ridiculous situation. The wheelchair turned slowly on itself. Sheppard had the finger on the trigger, ready to push in front of this monster with this so terrible scream whose had made his friend Rodney run away, and discovered…

"A… cat ?!" he choked.

The brown-coated feline sat on the black leather of the wheelchair and addressed to John a black glance, before to look down towards his paws with an upset expression. In front of him, the soldier didn't believed his eyes, completely thunderstruck. What was a cat doing on Atlantis ? And where could be Rodney, damn it ? But what was this whole story, at the end ? The animal began to scratch the seat. Sheppard rushed to him.

"Hey, hey, hey, the cat, stop this immediately, you hear me ?!"

He caught the feline by the scruff of the neck and raised him at arm's length to avoid to being clawed. Then he put his eyes on the marks let in the leather, and realized that these marks were comprehensible for him, because they formed letters, which themselves formed some words.

"I am Rod…" he read. "No ? McKay ? It's you ?!"

The cat nodded with difficulty with a grumbling expression, and John rested him. On the floor, because it was not necessary to exaggerate, maybe it was Rodney, but for the moment, it was also and mostly a fat cat. Yes, fat. But unhappy to had been rested here rather on his seat, Rodney the cat placed himself in front of Sheppard's legs, who nearly fell. He took his feet in the cat and toppled forward, caught up at the desk at the last time, and the flashlight hung on his belt bumped into it. With a click, it lighted and a little round of light appeared on the floor. Growling against that cretin of Canadian feline, John got ready to switch it off when he noticed the behavior suddenly strange of this one.

His ears had stood, attentive, and his look was shining with interest. The pure cat instinct had visibly taken over Rodney's personality. To be sure of it, Sheppard put gently his hands on his belt, unhooked his flashlight then pointed it in another direction. The round of light moved.

Immediately, Rodney the cat jumped on it with enthusiasm. John shook his flashlight and the feline pursued the task of light, excited, trying to block it under his paws but without ever succeeding. He meowed with frustration. The soldier switched off his flashlight. The cat blinked, seeming regain consciousness and looked at John with a questioning expression.

"McKay ?" asked the soldier prudently. "You… hrm, are you OK ?"

Rodney the cat moved a little his head, and did a thing which could may be at the origin a shrug, but which given to Sheppard the impression that the feline tried to jump without take off his paws from the floor. He seemed not remember about the precedent seconds. Sheppard switched off his flashlight again and the cat immediately gone play. Realizing that the overactive hairball which moved in all directions in front of him wasn't another that the awesome Rodney McKay in the form of a cat, John could do only one thing. Burst out laughing.

Noticing a paper dumpling on the desk, certainly crumpled some time earlier by the brilliant genius himself, John had suddenly an idea. Continuing to occupy the cat with his flashlight with a hand, the soldier searched with the other one in the drawers of the desk and finally found a roll of tape. He would have preferred some twine, but it would be better than nothing. He took a long band which he folded on itself to do a sort of thick plasticized wire and surrounded the paper dumpling with Scotch tape. Then he switched of his flashlight.

Rodney the cat shook his head and looked at Sheppard with surprise, asking himself why his friend was death of laugher. With a big smile, John shook under his muzzle his improvised ball. Immediately, the eyes of the cat shined, and McKay's intelligence left room for the cat instinct, more primitive, but also so funnier. He jumped on the paper dumpling. But John unrolled his wire of Scotch and started running everywhere in the laboratory like a crazy. The dumpling spun under the outraged eyes of the Canadian cat, who immediately began the hunt to recover this paper which came back to him by right. During ten good minutes, so there was in the D-24 lab of Atlantis' City a John Sheppard absolutely hilarious, running everywhere and playing ball with a fat brown cat. Yes, fat.

Sadly, the game ended when the plasticized wire been struck in one of the wheels of a wheelchair. Rodney the cat could easily jump on the paper dumpling and began to shred it minutely with a big enthusiasm. John watched him doing during a few seconds with still a light amused smile on his lips, then he came back to the machine, which he watched before notice a little green button on the side.

"Ok, McKay, we stop playing. The break is over."

Sheppard pushed on the button and there was a flash of blinding light. When he opened his eyes, he almost burst out laughing again so much was the situation once more time comical and eccentric. The doctor Rodney McKay was on all fours under a desk, with some Scotch wrapped around his fingers and his arms, in the process of chew with application some paper confetti. Realizing his situation, the scientist spat as best he could the pieces of paper, wanted to stand up but bumped his head in the desk, and finished by stand up by massaging his skull with a grimace. He stared John. John stared him. He broke finally the silence between them. He had seen the look of Sheppard, which were shining with amusement. He had certainly some blackouts concerning his passage in the form of a cat, but knowing his colleague, he had a little idea of what could have gone through his head. Anyway, McKay found absolutely shameful that he dared to take advantage of his animal weakness.

"And you find this funny, you."

Rodney's hair was completely tousled, and he still had some confetti at the corner of his mouth, ridiculing his annoyed tone. John really had to restrain himself to not burst out laughing a new time. Noticing his look always mocking, McKay sighed.

"What ? I was thinking about my cat when I activated the machine, I couldn't know, me…" he said with a plaintive voice.

"An advice, McKay : you should make he make a little more sport." laughed Sheppard.

"I'll think about it." pretexted the Canadian. "In the meantime, if we went to eat ? I have a lynx hunger !"

John raised an surprised eyebrow. Rodney realized his blunder and rolled his eyes.

"Oh, shit !" he exclaimed, leaving the room.

Stayed alone, John leaned towards the floor, picked up the rests of the paper dumpling and the wire of Scotch by giggling alone, then put all in the dustbin and left in turn the laboratory. He was asking himself what this invention could have served in the past.

In any case, he found it absolutely brilliant.