Present day:

"Can I shoot him now?!" Xander asked. "You wouldn't let me shoot him when he insulted Cordy, but now I can do it and not risk actually killing him."

"Sure, go ahead."

Bang! Maniacal laughter.

"What is going here?!" Dr. Weir, confronting three misbehaving boys.

"Carson's gene therapy worked." Dr. McKay said. "And I found this personal shield. We're just testing it."

"By letting them shoot you?!"

"It's perfectly fine, see?" Another shot. "The shield absorbs the impact, instead of resisting it." Xander told her.

"Which means what, exactly?"

"It means it slows the bullet down so much it has no impact on him, instead of pushing it away from him, which would cause a ricochet. As long as the shield is on, we could shoot him until we run out of bullets and he'd be just fine and no one else would get hurt. It's a great stress reliever." Xander smiled in his innocently charming way.

"He's right and it's alot of fun too." Shepherd said.

"Be that as it may, take it off and get back to work." Dr. Weir ordered. "We have a city to explore."

"Yes, ma'am." From Xander.

"Yes, Dr. Weir." From Sheppard.

"Elizabeth, we are working. Testing out anything we find is necessary to understanding it." From Dr. McKay.

"I think you've tested this one enough. Take it off."

"Okay." And tried to pull it off. When he couldn't get a grip on it, he started to panic and the others began to look concerned. "This may be a problem." Dr. McKay said.

They tried several different ways to pry it off and Sheppard and Xander, with their strong natural gene, tried to override McKay's artificial one. Every failure had his panic level rising.

"This is interesting." Xander commented. "It must allow oxygen in and carbon dioxide to exit or he'd suffocate. Which suggests a level of permeability. But solid objects are kept out. I wonder if liquid could get thru it. You might drown using it."

McKay immediately grabbed a cup of coffee and tried to drink it but couldn't get anything and ending up dumping it on himself.

"Maybe it's mostly one way." Xander suggested. "Things can exit, but not enter. You need to calm down, Dr. McKay. With the mental component Ancient technology has, your panic is just feeding it power. It'll probably fall off if you calm down."

"Calm down?! I could die here! I'm not calming down anytime soon, Captain."

Before they could come up with a different strategy, an alarm began to sound. They eventually discovered that one of the Athosian children, while playing, had unleashed something that seemed to be consuming energy sources in the city. Dr. McKay pulled the ZPM to avoid it being consumed and they tried to trap it, but it eluded the traps.

"It's intelligent." Dr. McKay. "It's figured out every trap we've come up with and avoided them all."

"Then maybe we should just let it leave." Teyla suggested. "If it's been imprisoned for 10,000 years maybe it just wants to leave."

"They locked an intelligent creature up to study it and forgot about it when they left. It may not be able to distinguish between us and them. The longer it stays, the more at risk we all are. I'd be pissed if I was this creature." Cordelia said.

"Elizabeth, they may be right. Letting it go probably is the best solution." Dr. McKay.

"Very well, but how? If we active the Stargate, it may go after the Stargate."

"We put a decoy in front of it." Dr. McKay said. "One of the naquada generators. It'll go after the generator and then, hopefully, thru the Stargate."

"It's worth a try." Dr. Weir said and McKay left to get the generator, which he placed in front of the Stargate.

The creature was drawn to it, just as they had hoped, but didn't seem to be interested in or able to understand the Stargate's purpose. Dr. McKay resolutely marched into the cloud creature and grabbed the generator and threw it thru the Stargate. The creature followed it. They found McKay unconscious on the floor in front of the Stargate, the shield depleted. He was taken to the infirmary and recovered quickly.

Xander went to see him.

"I'll be honest with you, McKay. I don't like the way you talk to my wife. On the other hand, you kinda remind me of her, personality wise. And it was a really brave thing you did. You had no way of knowing if the shield would hold against that thing. Be snarky if you want to, that's fine. But try cutting back on the insults, okay. If you want to make friends, less insults will go a long way towards that. I happen to like snarky people. So, cut down on the insults and we should be able to work together just fine. Especially since the Major has decided he wants the three of us and Teyla to be the flagship team. Trust me, we'll get alot farther with people out there if you're not insulting them. Cordy's tactless on purpose. She considers tact a form of dishonesty. You can be tactless without being insulting. Use your big brain to figure out how for yourself."

"You can be pretty tactless yourself, Captain." McKay said.

"My friends call me Xander. We're not quite there yet, but I can see it happening."

"Xander? Is that short for something?"

"Alexander."

"That's a mouthful of a name."

"I know."

"I'll think about what you said. Xander." McKay called him.

"You do that, McKay." Letting him.