A/N: I hope this chapter reaches it's goal, which is to make you laugh. Please read and enjoy!
Reviews are welcome!
Chapter 4
"Where do you think you're going?" Sergeant Connors asked. He had been a sergeant for a few years at the SGC already, and he had seen a lot of strange things happening, but two young kids walking around the halls unsupervised was a bit too much for him. Besides, he was on guard and it was his job to make sure nobody intruded the base.
"Too the shooting range?" One of the two young boys suggested innocently.
"Aren't you two a bit young to be here?"
"No. I'm twelve and he's nine. So as long as we're together we're twenty-one." The oldest one said with a smile.
"Do you even have permission to be here?"
"Do we need to?"
"Come with me please." Sergeant Connors said while grabbing both boys by a shoulder.
"Ow! Stop! You're hurting me!" Michael said loudly as he was pulled through the corridor by Sergeant Connors.
He merely grumbled, but he eased his grip on the shoulders of both boys.
They were walking towards General Hammond's room, when they heard a shout come from behind.
"Connors! Where do you think you are going with them?"
He turned around and saw Colonel O'Neill walking hastily towards him.
"They were snooping around, and the SGC is not a place for little kids to be running freely, so I'm taking them to General Hammond."
"They're with me, Connors. Do you honestly think we'd let two young kids walk into here freely?" O'Neill said angrily.
"No, sir. I…" Connors stammered.
"You weren't thinking. Again. Release them. They're here with the permission of General Hammond."
"Sorry, sir." Connors said hastily as he released his grip on the shoulders of the young boys.
Michael and Malcolm walked over swiftly towards O'Neill.
"Did he hurt you?" O' Neill asked softly.
"No." Michael said, and Malcolm shook his head in agreement.
"All-right."
O'Neill straightened his back and looked up. "Where'd he go?"
"He ran away." Malcolm said emotionlessly.
"Coward. Where were you going when he found you?"
"The shooting range." Michael answered.
"The shooting range?"
"Yes, that one."
"Why would you need to go there?"
"For testing."
"Testing what?"
"Can we show you?"
"Well, all-right. But you should probably warn Hammond or one of us when you go there. The shooting range is a bit too dangerous to have two little kids running around." O'Neill said as they walked towards the shooting range.
"We're not little kids!" Michael said.
"And we weren't running!" Malcolm added.
"No offense, but you are little."
"Are not!"
"Are too!"
"Are not!"
"Are too!"
"Arguing with us like a little kid makes you one yourself too!" Malcolm said.
"Fine. But I'm still an adult." O'Neill said.
"Are not!"
"Are too!"
"Are not!"
"Are too!"
"Why are you arguing like that?" Daniel asked as he rounded the corner to see what was causing the noise.
"O'Neill says we're little kids while he's arguing with us like a little kid too, which would prove that we are little kids for arguing with us like one, but wouldn't prove that he is one too!" Michael said quickly.
"I'm not getting that completely, but I'd say that you are physically still kids, whereas Jack is mentally one." Daniel said with a sigh.
"Nah-ah! No buts! From either of you!" Daniel said when he saw that the three in front of him were about to protest.
Malcolm and Michael sighed and looked unhappy, but they complied. Jack shot Daniel a glare, but didn't say anything.
"Now, where were you going?" Daniel asked.
"The shooting range." Michael said.
"Why there?"
"We need to test something."
"What exactly needs to be tested on the shooting range?"
"We can show you, but we need to do that on the shooting range."
"As long as you do it safely, and an adult, which means one of the personnel here, is present with you, it's okay with me." Daniel said.
"Can we finally test it now?" Michael asked.
"All-right."
"Okay then." He said as all three of them continued on their way to the shooting range.
They arrived in the shooting range a few minutes later, finding it completely deserted.
"Can we finally test it now?" Michael asked O'Neill.
"Not yet. Ear protectors first."
The two little kids searched for ear protectors their size, and found them after a while. They put them on, and O'Neill followed them.
Michael grabbed some kind of small bow, which he had obviously hidden in his bag previously, and a quiver of arrows. He stood in front of the range, and looked to O'Neill for confirmation.
Jack had been surprised when Michael grabbed the small bow from his backpack, but he figured the kids would have been in big trouble when they carried self-made weapons openly. Besides, it didn't look like an actual bow, more like a toy. O'Neill figured it couldn't do too much damage. And besides, being at the SGC was a dangerous job. So carrying a bow wasn't that extremely dangerous in comparison to being here.
O'Neill signalled Michael that he could go on and fire the bow. He took one of the arrows he was carrying and put it on the string of the bow. He pulled back, took aim, and let go.
O'Neill saw the arrow fly in slow-motion, and hit the target right in the middle. He was quite surprised by Michael's aim, but he didn't notice that both Michael and Malcolm had taken cover while the arrow was flying.
The following explosion blew O'Neill away. Almost a whole second after the arrow had found its target, it exploded. The force of the explosion caught the still-standing O'Neill and pushed him over. Michael and Malcolm, who had sought cover immediately, were unharmed.
"What the heck was that!" O'Neill shouted at the two kids that were huddled close together against one of the walls of the shooting range after standing up. The force had toppled him over, making him land painfully on the floor. But he hadn't been hit by scrap concrete, thankfully, and neither were Michael and Malcolm.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?" He continued to shout at the frightened little kids that were huddled together against the wall.
"Is everything all-right?" Carter panted as she ran into the room, obviously having heard the loud explosion that rocked the SGC.
"Wow. What happened here?" Daniel asked an angry-looking O' Neill when he entered the room a split-second behind Carter.
"They wanted to test their new weapon." O'Neill shouted angrily.
"They built a weapon that caused that?" Daniel signalled toward the far end of the room, where Michael had aimed towards.
O'Neill pivoted around to see what Daniel was pointing to when his mouth fell on the floor in surprise. There was a fucking crater in the wall. Not a bullet-hit, not a tear, but a fucking CRATER! The shot had destroyed well over a cubic metre of solid concrete, tearing away a large chunk of wall of the shooting range. Thankfully the concrete was specially made for this kind of damage, and hadn't splintered a lot. But there were large chunks of loose concrete lying spread out over the floor.
"How the heck did you make such a dangerous weapon?" O'Neill asked angrily.
"We sorta tried to make a mixture that exploded on impact, but it was a bit too effective I think." Michael said softly.
"A bit? You blew away half the wall!"
"Sorry!"
"What happened here?" Frasier shouted as she entered the room followed by several other medics.
"I tested my new weapon." Michael said softly, looking a bit sad.
"You did that?" Frasier asked.
"Yes." Followed softly.
"Is everyone unharmed?" Frasier asked.
"I think so." O'Neill answered, looking questioning towards Malcolm and Michael.
"I'm all-right." Michael said while he stood up.
"Me too." Malcolm added.
"All-right." Frasier said.
"We should probably call Hammond that everything is all-right here." Sam said.
"Except for the crater in the wall that these two here caused." O'Neill added.
Daniel moved towards the phone and called for Hammond.
"So how did you manage to make such a large explosion?" Sam asked Michael.
"Malcolm here theorized a kind of explosive mixture, and I found a way to make it safely. It's a liquid, and we coated an arrow in it."
"An arrow?"
"Yes, an arrow like in bow and arrow. These ones." Michael said as he showed them the bow and arrow he built.
"Couldn't you at least have given me a head warning?" O'Neill asked.
"How? I couldn't hear anything through the ear protectors."
"You should have said something before you fired it." O'Neill said sarcastically
"But we asked if we could test a weapon in the shooting range, so it's only logical that it's dangerous. If it weren't, I'd obviously have tested in somewhere else." Michael returned.
"This shooting range is for weapons that are supposed to kill a person, not destroy a tank!"
"How was I supposed to know that!"
"GUYS!" Sam shouted over the two arguing voices.
Michael and O'Neill stopped arguing and looked at her questioningly.
"Malcolm, Michael, if you want to test anything dangerous please report it to us first, including what it is and how dangerous it is. Colonel, you could have given them a head warning about what kind of shooting range this was." Sam said loudly. "Now, If would you mind telling us what was on the arrow that caused such an explosion?"
"A mixture of a meta-stable substance and some deuterium and tritium." Malcolm answered shortly after a look from Michael.
"Nuclear Fusion?" Sam asked surprised.
"Uh-huh. The meta-stable substance absorbs the deuterium and tritium. On impact, the crystalline structure of the carrier substance shatters and forms itself anew in a smaller, more compact structure. That process pushes the deuterium and tritium so hard together that they fuse and create helium and a lot of energy." Malcolm explained.
"How do you control it? Nuclear Fusion gives off a whole lot of energy, enough to destroy the whole mountain."
Malcolm shot Michael a look, and he answered. "Well, we only use very little amounts of it, and we use the wrong mixture. Good enough to create nuclear fusion, but strong enough to do a little bit of damage to a wall."
"A little bit?"
"Ok, a big bit."
"So you could have blown away the whole mountain if you made a mistake in the mixture." O'Neill said.
"In theory, yes."
"Why only in theory?" Sam asked.
"Well, we never actually tested the best and most powerful mixtures."
"How did you manage to create a meta-stable substance?"
"Well, I theorized the existence of a few of those mixtures, and Michael figured out how to create them." Malcolm answered.
"It's very easy. You only need some red mercury and a gamma-radiation source." Michael added.
"Where did you find such a source? It's pretty radioactive, so I don't think you could buy one on the internet."
"You'd be surprised. But they're still pretty expensive, so I made one from an old toaster."
"An old toaster?"
"Yeah. It becomes much easier to create your own radioactive elements when you heat things up a little bit."
"Radioactive? Are you serious? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"
"Yes, I'm pretty sure I know just exactly how dangerous that is. That's why I took precautionary measures."
"Such as?"
"Making a radiation-absorbing suit that works pretty well, as well as a containment chamber for storage."
"Do you have any idea what happens when your containment chamber breaks?"
"Hmm. Let me think. The radioactive radiation would be released. And given that the other precautionary measures I took fail too, I think there would be a radioactive containment of an old salt layer about three-hundred meters under my house." Michael summed up
"Three hundred meters? How did you get that far down?"
"By using a spoon and a dictionary? No seriously, what do you think?"
"So you're saying that a twelve and a nine year old boy built a nuclear reactor of some kind to produce radioactive elements, a safe storage three hundred meters underground in a salt layer, figured out the theories of meta-stable substances, produced enough deuterium and tritium for successful nuclear fusion and made a controllable mixture that is usable for destroying things without a lot of personal risk?" Sam said.
"Well that about sums it up, I think." Michael said.