The Need Has Always Been There
Fandom: Naruto; SGA (some SG1)
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or the Stargate series (any of them)
Rating: T
Pairings: not sure yet, maybe none
Spoilers: should be none
Warnings: there will probably be some maiming in the future of this fic, possibly cursing etc.
Summary: The Need had always been there. The tingling desire to tsukonomi McKay into next week... What if John Sheppard was an Uchiha? And what if his shinobi past caught up with him? Naruto Stargate Crossover
Chapter 2: Comatose
The next morning Ronon could be found waiting impatiently for John Sheppard to arrive at the training room. That wasn't an unusual sight to see as Ronon Dex had always been very peculiar about his sparring sessions with, well, basically anyone, and Lt. Colonel Sheppard had never been known to be very enthusiastic about them. It was normal to see the military head of Atlantis run late for those occasions, and Ronon usually took it in a stride, a smug smirk plastered on his face.
But today, Ronon Dex was even more impatient than usual.
Because there was nothing 'usual', normal about this sparring session. Nothing usual about this day at all. Or yesterday. Yesterday, Ronon had observed something rather unusual about his closest friend in the whole City of Atlantis. He'd been dressed strangely. He'd been soaked to the bone for no reason, because unless he'd made a quick dip into the ocean there was no way to accidentally get that soaked in Atlantis. Then there was that strange symbol on the back of his shirt that gave Ronon the shivers, and he knew, he just knew that there was a meaning behind that fan. And last but not least, that flash. That flash of red in John Sheppard's eyes that had made it difficult to sleep during the night. He'd told himself that he'd probably just imagined it, but to no avail.
His instinct was telling him differently. And Ronon's instinct had never been wrong.
In the end, he'd stopped turning in his bed when sleep had so obviously refused to come to him, and instead started to look forward to this training session. He'd made up his mind to ask Sheppard all those questions running amok in his head, so his worries would be eased, and because the sheer curiousity was driving him mad. For a few minutes in the darkness, Ronon had entertained the thought that it might be something alien that got into the city, and had taken possession of his friend. He'd gone as far as to reach for his gun, and go warn the night patrol, but again he had trusted his instinct, which had told him that it was completely Sheppard.
Maybe Sheppard was an alien, who knew, but how could Ronon not grant him the chance to explain?!
So, he had decided to wait. To confront Sheppard during their sparring session, and ask him about that weird conference. But Sheppard hadn't shown up yet, and Ronon was getting ever more infirm and weary. Still, maybe he'd just forgotten it was today, or at this hour. That seemed to be unlikely, but not impossible, and despite his weariness Ronon would rather think that was true, than… something else…
Nervously, Ronon played around with one of the sticks he and Sheppard used for their sparring sessions. The Satedan had been trying to teach his friend a game from his world, a fighting game. He had to admit that the Earthling had gotten better, the increase in his abilities almost incredible in the last few weeks. In the end Ronon had always beaten him, but the Specialist was beginning to wonder if that wasn't the fact because Sheppard had been allowing him to win.
There had always been a strange quality about the apparent incompetence Sheppard had shown at fighting him. The Lt. Colonel had always moved with a certain grace that seemed to indicate a mugh higher skill than he was showing off. As if he had been holding back for some reason or other. This weird edge to his fighting style, Ronon had noticed, had lessened in the last few weeks, but had never totally disappeared.
"Ronon! It's John. Something's wrong with him!"
Teyla's sudden appearance at the door ripped him out of his thoughts. The athosian woman looked around frantically, her eyes were filled with concern. Once she spotted him, she gave a wave of her hand to indicate that he should follow her. Frowning in curiousity as well as further uneasiness, Ronon did exactly that, wondering if maybe John had been possessed by some sort of alien entity after all when she lead him to the infirmary.
Upon entering, they found everything to be very quiet. Only one bed was being used at the moment, and despite several people being gathered around it, Ronon could make out John's lean form quite clearly. The Lt. Colonel lay extremely still as everyone gazed down upon him. Unnaturally still. The rise and fall of his chest as the man breathed was hard to see, and the medical staff had apparently thought it wise to give him some extra oxigen.
As Ronon and Teyla approached, it became appart that all the leading staff of Atlantis was gathered around John's bed. Even Colonel Caldwell had beamed down from the Deadalus. They had postponed their departure after McKay's enthusiastic debriefing about some incredible lantian device or other. Ronon had barely listened to the scientist, oddly captivated by the strange appearance of his other friend.
"What happened?" the Specialist asked in a gruff voice.
Dr. Beckett looked up from the chart he was holding.
"We don't know. He didn't appear for the check-up I had ordered after yesterday's… uhm…strange events, and when I sent Lorne to look for him," the scottsman explained, indicating towards the major, "he found him like this in his bed. We brought him here immediately, and I ran several tests, but, for now, all I can say is that he seems to be comatose."
"You mean he is unconscious?" Teyla inquired further.
"No, it's deeper than that, but… look at this," the doctor answered, pointing at a monitor that seemed to be registering Sheppard's brain waves. They seemed impossibly active for a comatose man. "It's like he's dreaming, but he can't wake up. It's unlike anything I've ever seen…"
"Okay," Elizabeth said, taking charge. "Keep working on it. If something or someone is doing this, I want to know how, and how to reverse it. Run any test you deem necessary. We need our military leader back. I'll go warn everyone. Major Lorne, question the night patrol."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Maybe they've noticed something out of the ordinary. Or maybe someone else has," the leader of the expedition suggested, hope clear in her voice, as she turned to leave. Ronon took this as his cue. He had wanted to talk about it with Sheppard first, but that was out of question now, and maybe what he saw could help. He opened his mouth to state his observations of the previous day, but the words died on his lips when an earth-shattering scream that obviously originated just outside the doors, resounded through the halls.
Colonel Caldwell and Major Lorne sprang into action immediately as did Ronon, Teyla and McKay- although the latter did so by letting out a squeak, and a panicked "What?!". They ran outside to find Katie Brown, a hand over her chest as if to calm her racing heart, staring down at the bodies of two limp marines. Carson was with them a moment later, all of them suspecting that whatever got Sheppard had spread, but instead Carson's eyes widened in horror as he shook his head at Elizabeth.
"They're dead," he stated in an even tone. "I'll do an autopsy, maybe it's got something to do with Colonel Sheppard anyway, and it just wasn't so succsessful with him."
Elizabeth nodded mutely.
"And have some of your men run those tests on Sheppard," Colonel Caldwall suggested.
"Major Lorne, if you could…now…" Dr. Weir was fighting for her voice.
"Immediately, Ma'am," the major replied, and reached for his come. "All personel on duty last night, report to the conference room immediately. Sir, ma'am."
With that, he hastened off.
"I'll see if I can help," Colonel Caldwell announced after a moment. "I'm no use here, sitting at Sheppard's bedside. I'll ask Hermiot to run a scan of the city with the sensors of the Deadalus. Maybe something shows up."
"Yeah, and I'll do the same with the city's internal scanners," Rodney leaped at the possibility to get out of the infirmary. He wasn't very good company for a comatose. He didn't see the point.
"I'll grab some marines, and search the city for something strange," Ronon decided, all thoughts of telling gone with this new threat.
"I'll come with you," Teyla said, grabbing his shoulder.
Elizabeth gave them all nods of understanding respectively, then turned back to look through the open doors into the infirmary one more time. Seeing John lying helpless, immobile on some bed had her blood run cold with dread. If whatever had rendered him this way, had also killed the marines, then this would only be the beginning. Then they needed him, because he was the only surivor, the only one who might be able to tell them what was going on.
And he came in handy in a crisis, she thought with a smile.
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(meanwhile, in John's head)
It was dark. Pitch black, in fact.
There was a rustling somewhere to his side, and John heaved a sigh. He knew what this meant. He had arrived. He was there, in this darkest, most dangerous spot in his subconscious. The place he dreaded most. His one true fear was contained in this very place, and their dance had only just begun. It was strange, to know where he was, know what was waiting for him, and yet being unable to see it.
Everything was black. He was standing in nothingness, or at least that's what he thought nothingness would look like. What did he know, though. He'd seen a lot of things in his life- two lifes, one before and one after he joined the air force, and he'd joined it only as a breather. Had agreed to become their liason only to get away from his other life for a little while. Then Atlantis came. He'd seen a lot of things since, but nothing he had not seen.
He shook his head. These thoughts would lead him nowhere.
Another rustle, and metal hitting metal with a clear 'ding' sound.
Heaving another sigh, he turned to his left, and moved towards the sound. Soon, he started to make out a shape through the darkness. Something darker against the dark. Something more black against the blackness of the background. He almost chuckled at this perception of the shape. How could something, anything be 'more' black than black itself, than the absence of any and all light?!
It was ridiculous.
It was moving.
It was always moving, but now more so than normally. John took a deep breathe, and suddenly the shape opened it's eyes. There it was, the famous, dreaded Magekyo Sharingan, looking at him, and, with a flash of annoyance, he was looking back with the same red and black gaze. The same blood-red eyes. The same black shapes around the pupil. The same contrast between the iris, and the white background.
The exact same eyes.
His eyes narrowed in time with those of the shape's. More rustling. More 'ding' noises. Then groaning. And furious hisses. And then light fell upon the shape. No, not light. There was no light in this place. Whatever light was still left in him did not reach this place. Could not reach this place where it was burried. He would not let it, because it would use anything as a weapon to get free. His deepest fear, it made John almost chuckle. No, no light fell upon the shape. The shape just suddenly became clear, a contrast to the nothingness around it.
And he was staring back at himself.
There was nothing human about those features, though, but their outward appareance. Everything else was the furious, hungry, evil scowl of a caged animal. Ready to lash out, and take control the moment the heavy iron chains of his mind let up enough. The moment they snapped, even if just for a moment. Just a split-second, and it would be free, and there would be no stopping it.
The Beast Within.
The chains had been loosened, and the Beast was struggling to get free, but John couldn't let that happen. He would stare at the Beast, and subdue it until it was put back to sleep again. Sighing once more, he sat himself infront of the struggling beast, staring with his Mangekyo Sharingan, willing it to fall back into slumber, but the Beast was strong. It would not be easy. It would be a long fight.
'You won't hurt my friends. You're not getting free,' John vowed.
And the Beast roared.
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(back with the other, several hours later in the conference room)
"No one has seen or heard anything strange last night," Colonel Caldwell reported back from the interviews he and Major Lorne had with the night shift. "And Hermiot didn't find anything out of the ordinary either."
"Of course not," McKay snorted. "He's an Asgard. He'd never notice the obvious."
"And what is 'the obvious', Rodney?" Teyla asked patiently. "Because we couldn't find anything out of the ordinary either."
Ronon grunted in agreement.
"This!" Rodney shouted, turning his computer chart so that everyone could see it.
"What exactly are we looking at Rodney?" Elizabeth questioned further. "All I can see is a model of the city, and a lot of blinking dots which, I suppose, are the life signs of everyone in Atlantis."
"Exactly, but you see there are too many," Rodney pointed out. "Or, to be more precise, there's exactly three too many. Even including the Deadalus personel."
"We've got an intruder?" Major Lorne asked.
"If you'd listened to me, you'd know that that would be three intruders. Plural."
"But the point still stands. There is someone- okay, several someones here that shouldn't be, right?" Elizabeth wondered. "And apparently, they're pretty good at hiding because Ronon, Teyla, and the marines didn't find anything."
"Well, they wouldn't," Rodney amended. "Not in a city this big. Especially if those three people don't move as a group, and stay out of habitated areas as much as possible. Or disguise themselves. I mean, seriously, who knows every face in Atlantis?!"
The doors swung open that moment, and Carson came running in, the look on his face slipping between horror, disgust, and something akin to admiration- or maybe it was just amazement. Elizabeth's eyebrow arched up in question, but Carson couldn't say anything more about Sheppard's condition yet. Instead, he stated that he had completet the autopsies on both victims.
"It's incredible. There were only two tiny, circular wounds in the men's neck. One might miss them if one doesn't know what to search for. Especially if marines had longer hair. It looks almost like they've been bitten by very long canines or-"
"What, you mean like vampires?" Rodney panicked.
"Or," Carson spoke up again, glaring at the scientist who had interrupted him so rudely, "they've been hit by something long, thin, and pointy. My suggestion would be something built like a needle, only bigger."
"But how can a needle kill?" Ronon grunted.
"I actually have a theory about that," Carson replied gravely. "On Earth, there is this… technique. Alternative medicine. It's called acupuncture. It's a technique of inserting and manipulating a special type of needles into specific points of the body (1), most commonly used to relieve pain. In asian martial arts there are often techniques that are kept secret, because they can be used to kill, and, I suspect, that this might be a special style of acupuncture that does essentially the same."
A moment of shocked silence followed this statement.
"Is that what put Sheppard into coma?" Ronon asked.
"Could be," the doctor admitted.
End of chapter 2!
A/N: Well, I decided to continue this story, and I finally found a point from where to start. I'm sorry that I can't write Carson's scottish accent, but if I tried it would only end in tears, so please bear with me.
Please leave a comment, and tell me what you think.
(1) all information about acupuncture taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia