John stood in the doorway of Carter's office. "You wanted to see me?" He figured if he stayed in the doorway, he could subtly communicate his need to be elsewhere, looking for and following up on leads to McKay's whereabouts.

She glanced up briefly. "Sit down, Colonel."

Damn. Subtle was never gonna be his forte.

Once he was seated, Carter set a piece of paper on the desktop and pushed it toward him. "Can you explain this to me?"

A minor "oh, shit" reaction occurred in the pit of his stomach, but years of practice allowed John to divert it long before it reached his face. "Depends. I don't know too much about paper, but I hear they start with wood pulp and—"

"Are you responsible for this, Colonel?"

"No," he said decisively, "no, I am not." After a beat, he added, "Well, not really." Another beat. "It depends on what you mean by 'responsible'..."

She surprised him by slapping the desktop in a rare physical display of annoyance. "Are you the one who wrote this ad? That's what I mean by 'responsible!'"

"No! I mean, I wrote something that this was based on, yes, but it's been sorta... refined... since then."

"Refined by whom?"

"I'm really not sure who all had a hand in it." As Carter looked to be nearing the slapping point again, he raised a hand and quickly said, "Seriously, I don't know exactly who made this. Let me tell you what I do know."

It had all started soon after John's initial run-in with Larrin. Rodney had complained about the fact that he never got taken prisoner by hot female aliens, and in response, John had written a mock-personal ad:

"Single supergenius seeks hot alien babe to kidnap him for nefarious purposes. Interests include astrophysics, engineering, blue Jello, whales, video games, and losing at chess. Respondents should be brilliant, beautiful, and have a thick skin. Interested parties may reply with best attempt at abduction."

John had emailed it to Rodney the following day, whose reply was along the lines of, "Oh, haha. One time you checkmated me, when my concentration was off. You are so on for a rematch, if you dare."

Carter was staring him down. "And?"

"And... we played another game a few days later." He smiled at the memory. "I beat him again. Boy, was he pissed."

"I'm talking about the ad! What happened to it after that?"

John shrugged. "I'm not sure. Someone must have seen the email on Rodney's screen or hacked into one of our accounts or something." At her look of shock, he just said, "It's the lack of an internet – I think they miss the challenge. Anyway, the next time I saw something like it, it was totally rewritten and had a picture of Rodney bawling out Miko. You know, with his mouth open a mile wide and his hands in the air and that wild look in his eyes."

Rodney had nailed him just as John was leaving his quarters, shoving the printout in his face. "You! This is your doing!"

Taking a step back, John had irritably yanked the paper from Rodney's hand and smirked, "Nice pic. It really captures your essence, I think."

"This is outrageous! It's one thing to have some harmless email fun between friends, Colonel, but when I walk into my lab and find copies of this little gem taped to the walls, I have to draw the—"

"Wait a sec, just calm the hell down. I didn't have anything to do with this version."

"You expect me to believe that?"

John sighed impatiently and read through the text of the ad. "Do you honestly think I would have used the word 'vainglorious?'"

Frowning, Rodney yanked the paper back and re-read. "Hmm. It's spelled correctly, too. You're right, you had nothing to do with this."

"Which was kinda unfair," John told Carter now, "because I did win the school spelling bee in sixth grade."

"Colonel Sheppard," she said, and John figured it wasn't good that she was using both title and name, "can you tell me how copies of this ad managed to find themselves off-world?"

"No. First I knew of it was when a marine reported seeing it on a couple different planets. Lorne and I never managed to root out who started posting them during missions, but we made sure everyone understood that regardless who was responsible for it, nobody on a gate team would be receiving shipments from the Daedalus until every damn copy of that ad had been retrieved. Took a few days, but we managed to get 'em all."

Carter thought about that for a moment, her eyes eventually widening. "Wait a minute. When was this? Was this the reason for that flurry of 'round-the-clock gate missions a few months ago?"

"Um..."

"The ones you told me were search parties looking for Dr. Parrish?"

John shifted into a defensive posture. "Okay, yeah, but it wasn't really a lie. Lorne instructed Parrish to go off-world and... hide." At her blank look, he sheepishly added, "You know, to make the search parties... not be a lie."

"And this seemed like a better course than just telling me the truth?"

"Well, you hadn't been here very long. We didn't want you to think we were a bunch of wackos."

Carter held up her hands, palms up. "What could possibly make me think that?"

Clearing his throat, John moved on. "So anyway, that's the story behind the personal ad. I'm sorry it happened, and looking back, we maybe coulda handled the whole thing better, but right now, shouldn't we be concentrating on finding out what happened to McKay?"

"I think this—" Carter tapped the ad with an index finger "— offers a pretty good clue to what happened to him."

"What? How? I told you, I threatened those teams with their supply runs. Lorne personally supervised the operation. We got every copy of that ad back within a few days of it being leaked."

"Colonel." She picked up the paper and jiggled it, causing it to rustle. "One of the teams searching for McKay just brought this back from off-world."

John's face betrayed his shock as he slumped in his chair. "Oh." He ran a hand over his face, then smirked wanly. "Gotta give props to viral marketing, huh?"

"No, no, no!" Rodney yelled. It was just his luck to be kidnapped by the least desirable personal ad respondent in the known universe.

"Stop yelling!" the biker chick yelled back. "My hearing is perfect – or it was until you came along!"

"Came along? Came alo— I didn't just stroll into your life, remember? You kidnapped me! You were lying in wait! I was just minding my own business, doing my job, when you swept in out of nowhere and took me against my will!"

"But you asked for it!"

"Hello, logical impossibility! If I wanted to be taken against my will, it wouldn't be 'against my will,' now would it?"

She frowned and even sort of pouted, rendering her unexpectedly cute, even if she was still a loony with a dangerous brain-twisting device and a hairstyle that looked like something you'd use to clean mud from your shoe treads. "Then why did you publish this request? I've seen it on at least three different worlds."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you! I didn't publish this ad. I didn't even write it! It was never anything but a joke – a stupid, juvenile, planned-with-the-brainpower-of-lobotomized-monkeys kind of joke."

She stared at him, looked at the ad, then back at him again. "But... how can it be a joke? It's not even funny."

"Bingo!" cried Rodney, pounding the table with his fist. "At last, something we agree on."

Groaning, the woman fell forward dramatically, burying her face against her arms on the table. Rodney blinked and startled a little as the ponytail whipped forward and lightly stung his hand. The back of her head was covered with brown stubble; it had apparently been some time since it was shaved. It looked sort of velvety and he had a powerful urge to touch it and find out if it really felt that soft.

Luckily, this particular trip to Crazytown was postponed when she abruptly raised herself to a sitting position and briskly announced, "Well, it doesn't matter. We can still do it."

Blushing slightly with the knowledge of how close he'd come to feeling up her scalp, Rodney was flummoxed. "We can? We can what? What can we still do?"

"The kidnapping. I admit, I preferred it when I thought it was a mutual thing, but I see no reason why it still can't work out."

Rodney, of course, could see any number of reasons why it wouldn't work out, but articulating them was a problem when he was dealing with someone who wasn't accepting outside input.

"After all," she continued, stuffing the ad back into her pouch, "you'll still be very useful to me, because it's not like my needs disappeared when I found out this was all just a joke, right? And since I really did handle it like a real kidnapping, I have the means—" she tapped the device— "to compel your cooperation, which I now realize won't be given willingly. So it all works out all right, if not exactly the way I had planned."

She'd shouldered the pouch and stood as she finished this little speech, aiming the device at Rodney. "So, now that we finally have reached an understanding, I will ask you to come with me and not give me any trouble, or else I'll have to, you know." She mimed turning one of the dials and then swayed side-to-side, rolling her eyes and waving her free hand.

Feeling cheated wasn't something Rodney tended to respond to well. He remained seated and fixed her with an obstinate glare. "Wait a minute. What understanding did we reach, exactly? You found out your assumption was mistaken, and I found out you're a... Wait, I didn't find out anything about you!"

"Why would you need to know anything about me?"

"Why did you answer this ad?"

"Because I—" She caught herself and glared. "It doesn't matter. I'm the one with weapon. I'm in charge here."

"Oh, I'm not so sure about that," Rodney gloated, leaning forward in his seat. "I mean, yes, you have the portable Vertigo Maker, but you barely understand how to use it. And whatever you want me for, by your own admission, requires my cooperation. Now, I hate being dizzy as much as the next guy, but as instruments of coercion go, the Stumble-a-tron there leaves something to be desired."

"Oh, really?"

She twisted a dial viciously. Rodney cringed and braced himself.

Nothing happened.

Straightening, he smiled triumphantly and folded his arms. His captor's eyes widened as they looked to the device. She slapped it a couple of times, prompting him to snort, "Problem?"

She was clearly panicked and distracted. If he was ever gonna pull of any of that action-hero stuff Sheppard and Ronon seemed able to do in their sleep, now was the time... when he was up against an inept kidnapper he outweighed substantially whose attention was on something else.

He lunged forward, intending to cross the tabletop and snatch the device from her hands. However, the instant he began to move, he was overcome by nausea. His forward motion was diluted as his legs wobbled underneath him, and instead of crossing the table, he crashed his ribs crashed into the side of it, sending it toward his charming hostess. Holding his ribs, he hit the un-level floor on his knees as the table collided with the kidnapper.

Crouching beside the table, he saw her legs scrambling to keep her body balanced and upright. Glancing upward just as she lost that battle and fell onto the table, he took advantage of no longer feeling sick and arose, grabbing for the device. The upward movement renewed the nausea and a voice in his head said, Motion sickness! That's what this setting does!

He planted his feet and tried to keep his head and torso as still as possible while wresting the device from her grip. She'd recovered enough to realize what he was after and had managed to retain her grasp even though she was now on her back on the tabletop. Rodney groaned, understanding that it was going to be necessary to move in order to take full possession of the instrument. He tightened his fingers around the metal box and yanked as hard as he could, stepping backward as he did so.

His stomach set sail on stormy seas as he pulled the device off the table. Unfortunately, the kidnapper still had a hold on it and as her body left the table, gravity cried, "Mine!" and pulled her to the floor. Rodney was obliged to follow or surrender the box.

"Ow! My back!" he barked, now too angry to allow the nausea to get in his way. He rolled onto his stomach and tugged harder on the device. Their faces were inches apart, and when she realized her grip was giving out, she shocked the hell out of him with a head-butt. Rodney cried out – god, that had hurt! – but he wouldn't release the box. Inspired by her primitive attack, he pushed the metal box sharply upward, striking her in the chin. Presto! The device was free.

Who said violence never solved anything?

She was apparently stunned, which gave him a small window of opportunity. From a pocket of his tac vest, Rodney drew a small precision screwdriver and scratched a short line into the base of the box directly over the top of each dial. Then he scratched corresponding lines on the dials themselves to meet the ones on the box. Beneath those, he scrawled "MS" for "motion sickness."

He was absorbed in this work and forgot he was supposed to be watching for signs of reanimation in his opponent (really, guarding prisoners was so not his thing); it was just his good luck that she issued a cry of rage as she lunged toward him. More proof of her stupidity; stealth was clearly indicated in a situation like this.

Not being stupid, he responded quickly, aiming the device at her. The reaction was immediate: she sank to her knees. "Blood of a wraith!" she gasped. "What are you doing to me?"

"According to you, 'nothing,'" Rodney said smugly. "Although where I come from, it's generally known as 'payback.'"

Curious about the purpose of the second dial, he gave it a clockwise twist as well. It didn't seem to have any effect on the kidnapper, but when he turned his head, it swam enough to suggest that the dial controlled the range of whatever field it generated. He hastily dialed it back to the previous position. The last thing he needed was to make himself sick.

He'd expected her to succumb, at least long enough for him to start figuring out his next move toward getting the hell back to Atlantis, but her will was strong. Fighting through the motion sickness, she started toward him on her hands and knees. Frowning, he twisted the top dial a quarter turn clockwise.

Immediately she stopped moving, blinked frantically as she stared without focus, and waved one hand in front of her face. "Blind!" she screamed. Rodney actually heard the window behind him rattle with the sound. "You beast! You've made me blind!" She collapsed to the floor in despair, churning out hysterical sobs.

Part of him received this news with a certain satisfaction, but her distress was so intense that it unnerved him. Nothing the device had done to him had been quite as disturbing as blindness. Not wishing to be cruel, he decided to change the setting. He marked the dial first; it would be handy to know how to avoid (or repeat) that affliction.

She was so consumed with grief over her lost sight that she didn't seem to notice it had returned. Shouting over her wails, Rodney snapped his fingers impatiently. "Hey! Hey, Metallica – open your eyes!"

Gulping and gasping as she realized her sight had been restored, she slowly sat up. With both hands, she wiped copious tears from her cheeks and eyes, sniffling and huffing shuddery little sighs as she gradually calmed down. She looked up at him with doubt and fear in her eyes, which made him unexpectedly uncomfortable.

Offering a smile meant to convey good will, Rodney said, "See? All better. Sorry about the blindness; I didn't know that would happen, obviously. But now, maybe we can talk a little, okay? I'm more than willing to hear all about why you needed me enough to resort to kidnapping, and maybe I'll even be able to help you out, as long as you tell me certain things, such as what planet we're on right now. Okay? Now, let's start with your name."

She stared at him in silence long enough for him to wonder if he'd now made her deaf. "It's Tarru," she said finally.

"Tarru. Um, great, good. Lovely name. Mine's Rodney – Doctor Rodney McKay. See how well we get along when we agree to be civil?"

Sniffing again, Tarru merely nodded, smiling shyly. He returned the smile until he saw her gaze move to the window behind him and her expression turn to horror. He spun around to see what new threat had arrived to make this experience just that much suckier, only to feel Tarru's body slam into his legs in a tackle that would probably have made any football coach in North America proud.