A/N: This chapter is my favourite so far.

CHAPTER EIGHT: BUGS

Teyla woke up back on Earth and immediately sensed a wraith right next to her; she rolled to one side and smashed into Ronon, who woke up with a startled grunt.

Teyla took in the annoyed looking wraith, who was obviously injured, and the (colourful) crashed wraith dart and she and Ronon dived across the crash site to their weapons which were in a pile.

Ronon lifted his gun and was about to kill the wraith when Mulder appeared with a bazooka and blasted it into hell.

"Where did that come from?" grunted Ronon, obviously impressed.

Mulder shrugged. "I know someone in the town who sells illegal weapons. I got this and shot down the spaceship that picked you guys up."

Teyla smiled. "Thank you."

Mulder sent her a stony glare. "The 'Starplate' activated again, it shot a beam up into the sky, catching up a lot of the small spaceships on its way up. I need to know how to use it to get Scully back."

"The hive ship has gone," announced Teyla suddenly. "I can no longer sense it."

"So the Starplate sent it away?" asked Ronon.

"From Agent Mulder's description of the Starplate's activation I think so," replied Teyla.

"Good," grunted Ronon.

"You still haven't told me how to get Scully back!" exclaimed Mulder.

"We don't know," explained Ronon.

"What?!"

"What Ronon means is we don't know how to use it. Doctor McKay would have figured out how to use it, but he is the smartest man in our universe," clarified Teyla.

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"Shit!" yelped Lorne and backed away from the machine Zelenka was working on as it suddenly burst to life and let out a series of low and high beeps while flashing.

Zelenka swore in Czech and also backed away.

Doctor Beckett, who had arrived in the room only minutes before so he was ready to give medical attention to anyone who came back through the machine and needed it, stared uncertainly at it. "I take it it's not meant to do that?"

"No," said Zelenka. "It flashes when switching between universes, but it hasn't beeped before."

The device suddenly stopped it's random beeping and let out a very high pitched sound causing everyone in the room, as well as some surrounding rooms, to clamp their hands over their ears.

"Turn that thing off!" yelled Lorne.

Zelenka (very helpfully) yelled back in Czech.

"You're going to wake the bloody dead!" complained Carson. "Turn it off!"

An alarm sounded through Atlantis.

Weir ran into the room wearing earmuffs. "What is that noise?!"

The machine suddenly began letting of beams around the room. Weir dived back out of the room to avoid one. Zelenka and Lorne both dived to the floor as beams sailed over their head while Beckett was hit before he could do anything. He disappeared.

The machine stopped making any noise. The alarm stopped. Atlantis was thrown into silence.

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Sheppard woke up with a very nasty headache, with a leave tickling his nose. He sneezed and almost over balanced.

"Whoa!" he yelled as he grabbed another branch to steady himself and stared at the very long drop to the ground. Exactly how had he ended up in a tree?"

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McKay picked himself of the ground and looked around at Scully and SGA-8, looked down at his scanner and then did a double take.

"Where's Sheppard?" he asked in alarm.

Lt Mills looked around in confusion. "I don't know. I dragged him into the path of the …um… the Starplate's beam. He should be here."

Scully stared around at the forest's tall smooth trees. "Where are we?"

McKay waved he question away. "Don't know. Sheppard's not here and…" McKay checked data on his scanner. "…if he was still in the universe we just left, my scanner has confirmed that it blew up behind us."

There was a short silence, which was soon interrupted.

"Whoa!" came a yell from above them.

Lt Mills jumped. "Sir?"

"Sheppard, where the hell are you?" inquired McKay irritably over his radio.

"Um… I'm in a tree… what happened?"

Scully frowned.

McKay sighed. "A tree? Well done, how do you do it? At least you can't get at me for blowing up five-sixths of that solar system anymore."

"Why not?"

"Because, Colonel, you just single-handedly blew up a whole parallel universe!" McKay informed him.

"I… WHAT?!"

"The universe we just escaped from, you screwed it up so badly that it blew up!"

"Really? Um… sorry?"

"You think sorry is gonna cover it?! Next time think before you go blowing things up!" complained McKay.

Scully wondered why Sheppard was in a tree. "Why is he in a tree while we're down here?"

McKay sent her a side-glance. "Why? Would you rather be a tree?"

Scully scowled. "No. I was just wondering why he ended up in a tree."

Sheppard heard her over McKay's radio. "So was I! Why do I have to be in a tree?"

"Because the Starplate in this universe probably got slightly unbalanced as the other universe blew up and because you caused it it malfunctioned slightly and put you in a tree."

"Great. Well I'm not staying up here so I guess I better climb down."

"Sir, the tree trunk seems very smooth without any hand holds and the trees are pretty tall," pointed out Mills.

"Lieutenant Mills?!"

"Yes sir."

"What the…? When did you get here?" asked Sheppard.

"Dr Weir sent my team through the parallel universe machine back on Atlantis to find you and your team," explained Mills.

"Oh. Well at the moment there's only half of my team and an FBI agent here... assuming Scully's still there."

"She is," said McKay. "Still not looking very happy though."

Scully was in fact very unhappy. She was, by the looks of things still not in her universe and when she did get back she was going to have an angry partner and an impossibly hard case summary to deal with.

"Don't blame her. I'm not very happy and weird stuff happens to my daily."

McKay sighed. "Well you're in a tree, I didn't really expect you to be singing the Joy Song."

"Don't you mean Song of Joy?"

"No. The Joy Song. You know- I've got the joy joy joy joys down in my heart. Where? You know, that one."

"No, I don't know that one. That was one of the weirdest songs I have ever heard and you only sang one line!"

"It's only got ten lines in the song," Mills told him, earning a funny look from Scully.

"You've heard it?" asked McKay in surprise.

Mills shrugged. "Yeah."

"I found the err…" Sergeant Amy West trailed off not wanting to say Starplate.

"The Starplate?" asked Sheppard.

"Yes."

"Ah, about time," said McKay and picked it up, accidentally pointing it at Sheppard's tree.

A blue beam shot out of it, hitting Sheppard's tree.

McKay's radio immediately burst to life.

"Ahhhhh!"

"Ow! Crap!"

"Bloody hell!"

"YOU'RE CRUSHING MY ARM!!"

"Oh sorry! Ahhh! I'm falling!"

Scully stared up at the tree and frowned as someone fell out but their arm was grabbed by someone else before they could fall too far.

McKay gave a long drawn out sigh. "Carson, I wouldn't have thought you'd volunteer to go out of Atlantis."

"I didn't volunteer Rodney. I was in the room and the device went wild!" Beckett sounded panicked; well he was dangling from a tree.

Sheppard's voice cut across any complaints Beckett was about to make. "Beckett, find some hand holds and hold on, you're gonna pull my arm off!"

"Hand holds? This is the smoothest bloody tree I've ever seen!"

"Just do it!" snapped Sheppard.

Beckett attempted to cling to the tree. "I think I'm okay."

"Good," said Sheppard, but before he could let go of Beckett's arm the doctor slipped and McKay watched as Sheppard was pulled out of the tree and the two stopped with a jerk.

"Ow!" yelled Sheppard. "My leg's stuck!"

McKay rolled his eyes.

Scully was looking at the tree next to them; something had just crawled out of its branches. It had a long tail, pincers and a bright orange underbelly. It looked like some sort of mutant bug. It was crawling across the tree to Sheppard and Beckett. Scully pointed at it.

"What's that?" she asked.

McKay saw it. "Ohhh no."

The bug put one foot on Sheppard's head. Sheppard slowly looked up and saw the bug, which grabbed hold of his hair in its pincers. Sheppard's reaction was fully audible from the ground.

"AHHHHH!!" yelled Sheppard waving his free arm around in an effort to knock it off. "Get it off! Get it off!"

He movement immediately caused both him and Beckett to start swinging. Beckett hadn't seen the bug and was yelling at Sheppard to stop banging him against the tree. Scully found the whole scene very amusing. Who would have though a military colonel would react like that to a bug!

McKay, however, was not laughing.

"Sheppard calm down! You're not even hitting it! You're hitting Carson into the tree instead!"

"IT'S ON MY HEAD!! GET IT OFF!"

McKay held his radio away from his ear.

"Ow! What's on your head? Ow! Stop that!" Beckett was also panicking.

Lt Mills didn't seem to know what to do.

Scully was struggling not to laugh. Of all her life of seeing people with fears of bugs she'd never seen anything like that. To be fair, it was a pretty big bug.

It's tail swayed infront of Beckett's face.

"Please say I didn't just see that!" pleaded Beckett. "Ow! You swung me into the tree again!"

"I don't care!" Sheppard was desperately trying to knock it off his head.

"Yes you did just see that," confirmed McKay. "Help him get it off before he accidentally kills you both!"

Beckett, unfortunately, also didn't seem to like the bug. "Don't drop it on me!"

"I just want to get rid of it! Get it off!"

Scully stared up at the swinging pair. The bug hadn't moved and appeared to be hanging on to Sheppard's hair for dear life.

"What is it?" Scully asked McKay, still amused.

"It's an iratus bug and it's not funny," snapped McKay. Sheppard heard him through the radio.

"Of course it's not funny! IT'S ON MY HEAD!!"

"Ouch!" yelled Beckett as he was swung into the tree. "Calm down before we fall!"

"Calm down?! I HAVE AN IRATUS BUG ON MY HEAD!!"

Scully started to snigger; it had to be one of the funniest things she had ever seen. McKay turned to her.

"It's not funny!" he repeated.

"Who's laughing?" complained Beckett, still panicking.

"YES," came a triumphant yell over the radio.

Scully looked up and saw the bug sailing through the air. Sheppard scrabbled to one-handedly take the safety off his P90 and fired at the bug until it fell down to the planet's surface in a sprinkle of bug.

This was shortly followed by a series of snapping-branch noises.

"Oh help," whimpered Beckett.

The two of them half fell half slid down the tree as they tried to hold on to the smooth bark. Beckett tripped at the bottom and fell froward and Sheppard rolled and ended up flat on his back looking dazed. McKay glared at him.

"Finished your panic attack yet?"

Sheppard glared right back. "Once you've hung upside down from a tree with an iratus bug on his head and stayed calm, then you can tease me for that!"

Mills looked confused. "I thought iratus bugs didn't live in trees."

Sheppard picked himself off the floor. "I guess we're not back yet."

A/N: I had to do that. I just had to. Oh and because of it I'm making up a little challenge for fun, it's called… 'When Sheppard gets an iratus bug on his head' I'd love to see what other people can come up with! Send me a message if you try it or know someone else that's already done something similar.

And for those people who are still wondering what the Joy Song is, here's the words…

I've got the joy joy joy joys down in my heart. Where?

Down in my heart. Where?

Down in my heart.

I've got the joy joy joy joys down in my heart. Where? Down in my heart today.

And if the devil doesn't like it he can sit on a tac. Ow!

Sit on a tac. Ow!

Sit on a tac!

And if the devil doesn't like it he can sit on a tac. Ow! Sit on a tac today.

And if you want to annoy someone you repeat that over and over and over and over until the annoyed person hits you.