Title: Other Ways [1/?

Author: KB Twilight/Kaybii

Series: Stargate Atlantis and Yoroiden Samurai Troopers

Warnings: Implied slash (Sheppard/McKay and possibly, if-you-squint-and-turn-sideways Rajura/Naaza) but can be taken as gen, casting and general spoilers through season four for SGA, slight language.

Disclaimer: Stargate Atlantis is the property of MGM and Yoroiden Samurai Troopers belongs to Sunrise. I am making no profit off of this and no copyright infringement was intended.

A.N. A) As far as the McShep slash goes, there will be strong undercurrents but I won't come out and say anything (in the main fic anyway). Huh… sounds kinda like the show doesn't it? B) I've only written one Stargate Universe fic before, and that was for a writing class assignment (I got away with that, it was cool). So give me leeway while I get into the voices.

Prologue

The whole situation gave him horrid flashbacks of The Rod Incident. Not that their newest guests resembled their last in any way, but the manner in which they had arrived was too eerily similar. A controlled and so-important-you-couldn't-begin-to-understand-Colonel experiment in the labs gone so very wrong.

-.-.-.-

He was going to get yelled at. Just as soon as Rodney stopped terrorizing his subordinates long enough to notice him lounging in the corner, he was going to get yelled at for being a distraction, most likely with a few comments about his hair thrown in for good measure. It probably said something incriminating about his character that he was looking forward to it.Radek had glanced between them and rolled his eyes before going back to his computer, where colorful bar graphs fluctuated on the screen.

John really had no clue what was going on, only that it involved over half the physics and engineering department and was shiny.

It was one of the (many) bad things about having Colonel Carter in charge of Atlantis, McKay no longer felt the need to dumb down his reports at command staff meetings unless they directly involved John or Telya. Instead he had delivered a forty-five-minute speech laced with long, and impossible-for-normal-people-to-pronounce jargon on his and Zelenka's newest pet project.

By the time that meeting had ended, John's head was filled with so much fuzz he didn't even want an English explanation of the project. He had just sat blurry-eyed and watched McKay scurry from the room looking smug with Carter's go-ahead.

John schooled his features into an expression of innocence as Rodney finally noticed him and sent out "McKay Death Glare #14." McKay finished off his tirade with a "whatever stupid things you morons were thinking about doing, don't. If you blow up the city during the five minutes I take my eyes off you to deal with this, being dead will be the least of your worries."

The "minions" hurried to look busy as Rodney stalked over to him. John was struggling to hide his inner smirk. Rodney could always tell when he was inner-smirking. It was one of his powers.

And of course the moment that John had been waiting for for two and a half hours was when everything decided to go to hell.

-.-.-.-

It started with the explosion. A small, contained explosion in the room with what John had termed the 'shiny-machine.' Then several of the ancient consoles burst into flame and there was panic and over a dozen terrified scientists going in all directions. It was complete chaos on tiny scale. Then everything stopped.

The project self-terminated, a people-friendly version of the Ancient sprinklers put out the fires and for a full four minutes everyone stared in confusion. In the experiment chamber there were four crumpled bodies.