Back Next
The One Hundred Words' War
Part 1 of 1
Synopsis: Series of twenty-six one hundred-word fics... Jack and Daniel
are at it again, and the SGC's along for the ride!
1 - Trapping the Colonel
"So why isn't he in here bugging you?" Sam asked.
Daniel smiled, glancing up from the inscription he was studying only briefly.
Realization dawned on Carter. "You didn't."
Daniel's grin widened.
"You did," she moaned. "That was cruel, Daniel. He's never going to want to leave, now."
"Gives me more time to study this temple," the archaeologist shrugged, "and you can take those soil samples you wanted without him griping."
She grinned. "I like the way you think." As she left the temple, Sam barely contained her laughter at the sight of Jack O'Neill furiously working on a Rubik's Cube.
2 - The Colonel's Revenge
"O'Neill."
"Yeah, T?"
The big Jaffa tilted his head to one side. "Do you not believe sufficient time has passed? Has Daniel Jackson not struggled with this meaningless translation long enough?"
Jack shook his head. "It isn't meaningless. I paid good money to have 'The Klingon Hamlet' re-written with Elvish script. Once he's fought with it for exactly five hours and eighteen minutes, I'll tell him the truth."
"Why so long, O'Neill?"
The colonel smirked. "'Cause that's how long it took me to figure out that stupid Rubik's Cube he gave me had eight blue squares and ten white ones."
3 - The Linguist Strikes Back
Jack O'Neill scowled at Doctor Frasier. "How can a file completely disappear, then magically reappear in the amount of time it takes me to submit to a make-up physical?"
The diminutive doctor shrugged. "Carrie swears it was misplaced, Colonel. The only reason she even saw it at all was because of the bright yellow sticky note on its cover."
"So this whole do-over was—"
"Completely unnecessary," Janet Frasier finished. "I'm sorry, sir."
He waved off the apology, heading for the door. At the threshold, he paused. "What'd the sticky note say?"
Janet grinned. "'To be or not to be.'"
4 - O'Neill's Ultimatum
"I think I might have bitten off more than I could chew, this time."
Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "For what reason do you say that, Daniel Jackson?"
Daniel dropped the pen he was playing with and pointed at the computer screen. "He sent me an email. Jack never sends emails." Double-clicking on the icon representing a video file, the archaeologist and the Jaffa waited until the multi-media player brought up a short clip from a Looney Tunes episode.
Featherless and spluttering angrily, Daffy Duck declared, "Of courth, you know, thith meanth war!"
Teal'c nodded, allowing himself a small smile. "Indeed."
5 - Anticipation
Daniel peered cautiously around the corner, sighing in relief when he saw nothing amiss in his office. Jack had looked exceptionally smug earlier, leaving Daniel wondering what the colonel had planned to get even with him for hiding the file containing his most recent physical. Sighing, he stepped into the room and shut the door, hoping to get a little more done on his translation for SG-12 before his team left for P19-544 later that afternoon.
A sticky note was attached to his monitor. It read, "Anticipation is the worst, eh Danny Boy? See ya off-world!"
Daniel gulped. Oh boy.
6 - Have a Nice Trip...
SG-1 had left on their mission earlier that day wearing green fatigues. Four hours later, one of their number returned in brown.
"Colonel O'Neill, care to explain?" General Hammond demanded.
"P-One-Niner had some big honkin' mudholes, sir," Jack replied with undue cheer.
"It had apparently rained very recently," Captain Carter supplied, working hard to conceal her own grin.
"I believe Daniel Jackson's reflexes were significantly impaired by the saturated terrain," Teal'c added somberly. One couldn't tell if he found the situation as funny as the others apparently did.
"Long story short, General... I fell in," the mud-covered archaeologist forlornly finished.
7 - ...See You Next Fall
"Come on, Jack, you don't have to escort me to the infirmary," Daniel protested, wiping at the mud on his face with his handkerchief. "I'm okay."
"Yeah, but if I hadn't distracted you, you wouldn't have slipped," Jack pointed out. "I feel responsible."
"Really?"
"Yeah!"
Daniel looked skeptical. "So this has nothing to do with getting back at me for hiding your physical?"
"The thought hadn't even crossed my mind," the colonel answered, his expression serious for only a moment. "However, if you'll step this way, there are a half-dozen nurses waiting to give you a very thorough sponge bath..."
8 - Switching Things Around
Jack O'Neill snagged a beer from the kitchen and dropped onto the sofa with a sigh. Picking up the remote, he turned on the TV, automatically flipping to FOX to watch The Simpsons.
The TV remained stubbornly on the History Channel.
Stupid batteries, he thought, hauling himself to his feet and walking over to change the set manually, blinking in surprise when that didn't work, either.
Good one, Danny, Jack grinned inwardly. Contemplating his next move, he took a swig of beer...
...Then promptly spat it back out.
Apparently Daniel had also switched his beer for a very cheap brand.
9 - Spring Cleaning
"Daniel, are you okay?" General Hammond asked in concern, noting the dark circles under the young man's eyes.
"I'm fine," he answered with a small smile. "A bit tired, but fine."
"You should spend more time off-base," Hammond admonished gently. "Get some sleep, son, instead of working through the night."
"I was off-base last night. I spent pretty much the whole night cleaning, though."
"Cleaning?"
Daniel grimaced. "Yeah. Jack greased all my door knobs, unscrewed all my light bulbs, replaced my shampoo with chocolate syrup, covered the floor with kitty litter, and loosened the hose on my vacuum cleaner. Cleaning, General."
10 - The Pen is Mightier than the Sword
General George Hammond stared at the contents of the manila folder in surprise. "You hand-wrote your entire report on P19-544?"
"The mud planet?" Jack O'Neill grinned. "It's all there, sir, from the moment we stepped through the 'Gate 'til Daniel found that big honkin' puddle."
"It's twenty-four pages!"
"Yeah, my hand got a little cramped there toward the end, so it might not be very easy to read."
"Colonel, is there a specific reason you chose not to type it?"
O'Neill coughed lightly. "Because..." At Hammond's impatient glare, he quickly finished, "Daniel switched around all the letters on my keyboard."
11 - The Desk Job
"Hey, Daniel, I've got the mineral analysis back from—what happened in here?"
The archaeologist smiled shyly. "Not what happened... whom. And the answer is 'Jack'."
Sam Carter laughed. "You two are still going at it?"
"I switched around the letters on his keyboard, so he glued together all the pages of SG-5's survey from P2T-117. That's when I 'borrowed' the motion sensor from the men's bathroom and rewired it to turn his lights off when he came into his office and turn back on when he left."
"So that's why he suspended your desk from the ceiling?" Sam grinned.
12 - Venting Frustration
"Is there a problem, sir?" Sergeant Siler asked, after witnessing O'Neill struggle to get the door to his office to budge an inch inward.
"Yeah, Siler," the colonel panted. "Somebody—read 'Daniel'—put all my office furniture in front of my door so I can't open it."
"May I suggest crawling through the ventilation system to move the furniture from the inside of the room, sir?"
O'Neill blinked. "So that's how he did it!" he crowed triumphantly, heading for the nearest ventilation port.
Sergeant Siler decided then not to point out who else had made the trek through the ductwork.
13 - An Uplifting Experience
"I still don't get how he could've done it, Carter."
The major sighed. "Daniel's security clearance grants him access to almost every file in the database, sir, including all the base schematics. He could have easily—"
Jack waved her off. "What I mean is, how did a skinny archaeologist move three bookcases, a desk, and two filing cabinets in front of my door?"
Sam shrugged. "The same way you fastened a pulley to a ceiling support and lifted a two hundred-pound desk five feet off the floor, sir."
The colonel fisted his hands in his hair. "Who helped him?"
14 - Stealth Tactics
"And this operation requires us to be stealthy, yes?"
Colonel O'Neill closed his eyes briefly. "Right. We don't want anyone to know we're here."
There was a moment of silence, which was soon interrupted by a tearing sound and the rattle of plastic. "What purpose does this clear material serve?"
"Saran wrap," Jack corrected, carefully stretching the material across the bowl of one of the toilets in the men's restroom nearest the archaeology labs. "It's a prank."
"Prank?"
"A trick played upon an unsuspecting individual to cause him embarrassment," Teal'c explained quietly.
"These Tau'ri are, indeed, very peculiar," Bra'tac observed.
15 - What's That Smell?
"I didn't expect him to raise such a big stink about it."
Louis Feretti snorted into his coffee. "Man, Doctor J, you have been hanging around Colonel O'Neill too long. His sense of humor's rubbed off on you."
"Say it ain't so!" Daniel exclaimed in his best O'Neill impression.
"So why'd you need Siler's wrench, anyhow?"
Daniel shrugged. "Bullion cubes in the showerhead, Lou."
"Lemme guess... hot water dissolves the cubes and—"
"And Jack pulls 'rank' on everyone," the archaeologist finished.
Feretti groaned. "I'm glad SG-2 was able to help you 'move'."
"Me too, Lou..." Daniel grinned. "Me too..."
16 - Conspiracy of Colonels
Robert Makepeace sat down across from Jack O'Neill at the mess hall table. "So how'd the war go while SG-3 was gone?"
Jack O'Neill lazily stirred his bland mashed potatoes. "It went," he replied cautiously.
"Jackson's winning, isn't he?"
The older man dropped his fork. "I think he's got the nursing and maintenance staffs on his side."
"Well you've got the Marines of SG-3 on yours!" Makepeace boasted.
"I'm so thrilled," Jack deadpanned.
"You should be," the Marine answered. "While we found some fascinating ruins on 227, let me tell you about the plant life. See, there are these vines..."
17 - Offworld Ambush
P8K-227 was a lush tropical world, brimming with trees, bushes, and extremely vocal birds. Everything was a vibrant green so intense, the sudden appearance of the slate gray stones of the abandoned temple SG-3 had discovered was a shocking juxtaposition to the jungle's mossy backdrop.
Despite his usual ambivalence toward the indigenous flora of other planets, Colonel Jack O'Neill was inwardly quite appreciative of the creepers dangling from the low ceiling of the ruin. Vines which a certain colonel in the United States Marine Corps had advised him were very sticky in nature.
Oh, the many joys of 'Gate travel...
18 - A Tangled Tale
"This isn't funny."
"You should see it from where I'm sitting."
"I'm stuck."
"Seriously?"
"Yes!"
"You can't even move just a little—"
"OW! No, I can't! Did you do this on purpose?"
"Me?"
"Yes, you! This is about this little practical joke war we've been having, right?"
"Well..."
"It is, isn't it?"
"You started it."
"Look, I'm sorry, okay? It was a stupid prank. It should never have gone this far."
"Apology accepted."
"Good. Now get me out of here!"
"You know what we have to do, don't you?"
"Oh God."
"It's the only way."
"Just cut it, Jack."
19 - Hair-Raising Adventure
"Would anyone care to explain what happened?" Janet Fraiser demanded at the full height of her five-foot fury.
"I am unsure," Teal'c replied evenly. "Major Carter and I were conducting soil samples near the Stargate when O'Neill radioed to inform us that he and Daniel Jackson would be returning to the SGC."
"Did he offer any explanation?"
"Not at that time."
"When they got there, Daniel's face was red and he wouldn't look at us," Sam Carter added. "That's when the Colonel explained that his hair had been caught by some vines with rather interesting adhesive properties."
"Oh, poor Daniel."
20 - Crop Circle
"Wow, Doctor Jackson, what happened to your hair?" gasped Doctor Owens, nearly dropping the tablet he was carrying into Daniel's office.
"Tangle vines on P8K-227," the younger archaeologist sighed, fingers stealing upward to touch the aforementioned short strands. "Apparently, the only way the base barber could even it out was to cut it all this close."
"Are you sure?"
"That's what he said, anyway."
Owens frowned. "Oh."
"Why?"
"'Cause I just overheard Colonel O'Neill say to Colonel Makepeace, 'I told the guy to leave him only half an inch all over'."
Daniel's eyes blazed. "Jack, this is far from over..."
21 - The Peanut Gallery
"I shouldn't have done it," Jack admitted. "I should have stopped right then. Daniel apologized, but I couldn't stop myself. I just had to tell the barber to give him a closer cut than he really needed."
Sam carefully kept a straight face as she looked around the colonel's once-pristine kitchen. "He did a good job, sir."
"Yeah," Jack agreed. "Frankly, I'm impressed. I mean, filling my drawers and cabinets with packing peanuts is really something else."
"Atmospheric static combined with the draft generated by opening the door—"
"Creates a big mess," he sighed. "I've taught him too well."
22 - Recurring Theme
There was no other explanation for it. Jack O'Neill had gotten outside help.
The colonel could barely program his own VCR, much less set Daniel's computer to consistently play the theme song from The Simpsons every five minutes.
The volume dial on his speakers, the audio controls that came with the computer's operating system, and the PC's power switch were all stuck as well. The music routinely played just loud enough to be picked up by the base's PA system, which had also been rigged to stay on.
There was only one way to escape.
Moaning, Daniel unplugged the computer.
23 - Treading on Sacred Grind
"Colonel O'Neill... Doctor Jackson... This has gone on long enough!" Hammond shouted. "This command is divided against itself with half of the base supporting each of you. Up until now, gentlemen, this wasn't a problem, but it just became a major issue. Wreck each other's houses, sabotage each other's offices, but do not mess with the coffee!"
"It wasn't me, sir," Jack began, shooting a suspicious glare at his best friend and opponent. "I can't stand decaf."
Daniel blinked in surprise, expression innocent. "It wasn't me, either."
"Then who in the Sam Hill did it?" the red-faced general demanded hotly.
24 - Confession
"I really think we went too far this time."
There was no verbal reply.
"Let's face it, up to this point, everything was going really well: the general didn’t mind so long as none of the pranks affected p erformance, but this time? The general's peeved, to say the least."
There was still no answer.
"Suggestions, occasional assistance rendered—reluctantly, of course—but now... They're going to catch onto us, this time."
Silence.
"Jeez, you switched all the coffee on base to decaf!"
At last, there was a response. "I still do not understand the Tau'ri reliance upon caffeine, Captain Carter."
25 - One and One is Two
Jack twiddled his thumbs. "I don't get it. If it wasn't either of us, then who switched the coffee?"
Daniel gasped. "Sam reprogrammed your TV. Teal'c helped me with the packing peanuts."
The colonel looked equally stunned. "Carter's the one who did the Simpsons thing to your computer. Teal'c hauled your desk off the floor after I got all the cables and pulleys attached."
"They've been playing us all along," the archaeologist moaned. "From the very start! Sam taught me the thing with the Rubik's Cube!"
"Yep," O'Neill nodded in agreement. "Oh, those two are so going to get it..."
26 - Open Season
"You know, Jack, while we're plotting our revenge, there's a few others we should consider," Daniel began, sipping from his cup of real coffee.
"Oh?"
"Siler rewired your lighting for me. SG-2 helped me move your furniture."
"Makepeace told me about the vines on 227," Jack confessed.
"Really?"
"Oh, yeah! Then, of course, there's the barber, and Owens from the linguistics department, whom I got to translate The Klingon Hamlet..."
Daniel grinned wickedly. "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so, Brain," Jack replied, delighting in the rejoinder from his second favorite cartoon. "Open season on the SGC!"
Back Next