Jack O'Neill had a headache

Food Fight

By Besterette

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. Spoilers for the Stargate SG-1 epsiode Deadman Switch, and the Fandemonium tie-in novel Siren’s Song by Holly Scott and Jaimie Duncan.

Jack O'Neill had a headache. Two of them. Sitting in front of him and not looking particularly guilty. The general took a deep breath, pondering the fact that this kind of thing was really way more fun when you were on the other side of the desk, and that he should definitely send George some kind of fruit basket.

"Would you like to tell me what possessed you two to start a riot at the Food Faire?"

Aris Boch shifted the gel ice-pack around to his temple and squinted through what was becoming a spectacular shiner.

"I didn't start it, if you call that a riot it was the smallest riot I've ever been in, and it just sort of got out of control."

"It was my fault, general." Kerry said quietly.

Aris turned to her. "It was not. You didn't encourage that pigdog's attentions."

"I should have strip-searched you before we left the hotel. I told you to leave the weapons behind."

"I did. Most of 'em."

Kerry sighed. "And I should not have let Vala help me shop for earthside civvies the other day," she glanced down at her cleavage. "My self image is still about thirty pounds heavier than this...I don't have the social skills and defense mechanisms for being hawt."

O'Neill pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why don't we just start at the top?"

"We decided to stop at a grocery store. Put your tax dollars to work, and back in the local economy by adding a few luxury goods and extras to the supplies we're shipping back to Ilempir," Aris began….

XxXxXxXxX

The second set of sliding glass doors parted, releasing a blast of cool air scented with the smell of roasting fowl, something Aris appreciated after the baking heat of the parking lot. He stopped for a moment, scanning the large chamber for dangers.

“Step back and enjoy the culture shock,” Kerry told him cheerfully, pushing a wire-frame cart ahead of her.

It wasn’t like any of the bazaars or agoras he’d ever been to, even the ones on major trading worlds. Neat bins of fruits and vegetables lined the wall, and were spread out on the tiled floor. No vendors stood beside them, hawking their wares and guarding against theft. No beggars. No housewives haggling. No flies. No rotten fruit, nothing bruised or imperfect, at first glance everything looked fit for a Goa’uld’s table. Oddly quiet, except for the piped in music the Tau’ri seemed to play in all public spaces.

He followed Kerry to where she was contemplating a bin full of fat glossy apples, dark red and streaked and yellow, all large as his fists. More fruits and vegetables he couldn’t name lay in nearby bins. The opposite wall held cases full of chickens roasted and fried, sliced cold meats and whole cheeses. Farther down a bakery.

“So this is the marketplace for the district?” he asked, impressed.

“This is a chain grocery store. There are probably twenty just like it around Colorado Springs…not counting places that just sell some dry goods, like Target.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Welcome to America, where excess is the norm.” Kerry looked around, eyes narrowing. “Don’t get me wrong, we still have people going hungry, even with all this. Which will just get thrown away when it goes bad, unless the store donates to gleaners for the homeless shelters.”

“Life is tough all over,” Aris snorted. Kerry gave an apologetic shrug, and picked up a pair of apples and put them in the cart. “Oh, and that’s a pineapple. No relation to these apples.” She pointed to a nearby table.

Aris took a look at the oddly textured Earth fruit that Doctor Fraiser had informed him he was allergic to after his physical and the DNA harvesting. “Okay. I get the pine part…it kind of looks like a pinecone. If you’d never seen a pinecone and only heard one described. Where did they get apple from?”

“I’ll see if I can google that when we get back to the hotel. I don’t know.” She pushed the cart on, and pointed out the seafood and butcher’s cases. “And that’s why I can’t clean brentle fish or skin a tree-squig. We have people who do it for us.”

“Spoiled brats. An entire planet of soft, spoiled brats.”

“The little luxuries that come from large established populations,” she corrected him. “Food from industrialized farms all over the world….” She paused, noticing a familiar box on the sale aisle. “ooh. Pop Tarts.”

Aris turned to find her picking up a box from a display. Bright colors, squiggles of script he couldn’t read. A picture of a square pastry with icing. “Pop Tarts?”

“We have these kitchen gadgets called toasters, just for toasting slices of bread. So someone invented these square pastries you can warm up in them. They’re really terrible.” She put the box back.

“Ten thousand years free from Goa’uld oppression, and your civilization comes up with toaster pastry.”

“Isn’t science wonderful?”

Kerry led him through aisles between shelves stocked with a bewildering variety of goods, in cans and boxes and jars. Most of them were variations on the same thing, packaged by different companies, or in different formulas. Canned whole tomatoes. Canned chopped tomatoes. Canned tomatoes without added salt. Canned tomatoes with garlic and spices already added to them. And so on and so on.

Aris regarded it all with a bit of bemused awe, as they passed through an aisle of cosmetics that would keep a harem painted and Kerry stopped to choose bottles of nail lacquer, moving down to paper-wrapped cakes of scented soap and bottles of the liquid soap called shower-gels, still innocently explaining.

“…and this one’s honey and almond, that’s one of my favorites. Hey, Method. Lavender and the olive leaf, let me grab a couple of those….”

He’d wondered, when the rumors started circulating about the Tau’ri and their SG teams, especially SG-1, how any race of humans could be so innocently arrogant.

Yeah. Earth wasn’t paradise. Kerry was honest about that. But here there were markets stuffed with goods for anyone with the coin to buy. Nothing reserved solely for the so-called gods. Kerry called herself blue-collar, worker caste…and yet had never been hungry, had lived her whole life in a house with good walls and a roof and heat for the winter and cooled air for the summer. Bought medicines when she was sick, books and dvds for her entertainment. Owned more clothes than she could wear in a week, and some pieces of golden jewelry. Painted her nails and lips and lined her eyes with the equal to ground malachite, and bathed in scented soap, anointed herself with oils, perfumed her skin and even the air she breathed, if she so chose.

Kerry had never been beaten. Never treated like less than an animal. She’d never seen anyone killed, before Ilempir.

The Tau’ri lived like system lords. And he’d wondered at their arrogant pride.

XxXxXxXxXxX

“I like pop tarts. Although I’d have to say the pinnacle of human civilization is dutch apple pie. Can we get to the hitting, please?” O’Neill interrupted.

Kerry took up the narrative.

“So that was when this total chipster approached me, and like I said, I’m used to being invisible to those kind of guys, so I didn’t know how to react, and things….um…escalated.”

“Chipster?”

“Aging frat-rat. Y’know. Entitled asshat. Chip Skuzzington the third.”

“Ah.”

“So this chipster walks up to me, and says….I still cannot believe anyone with higher brain function levels than clam dip would believe this was an appropriate pick-up line to use on a complete stranger…he says…”

XxXxXxXxXxX

“Hey baby, I’ve got some sausage I’d love to slide between your buns.”

Kerry had been reading the label on an imported German mustard since she’d never seen the brand before, and was not really listening. She glanced up at the stranger invading her personal space, and took a step back with a distracted reply. “Buns? I think the breads were in Aisle 4.”

“I haven’t seen you shopping here before. New in town? I can show you the sights.”

“Just passing through,” Kerry moved to walk away.

He grabbed her arm. She looked up in annoyance. Once, she would have found this kind of thing intimidating. After Maybourne, Lorelei, the Goa’uld….this punk wasn’t even in her weight class any more.

“Hey, don’t be so shy, how about your phone….ow, you bitch.” He yelped as she twisted free and kept moving. And suddenly Aris was there between them.

“You owe the lady an apology.”

“Fuck you, old man,” he tried to shove Aris, empty macho posturing.

XxXxXxXxXxX

“And that’s when Boch hit him?” O’Neill nodded.

“That’s when Aris grabbed a handful of the guy’s shirt and lifted him over his head.”

Aris turned the gel ice-pack over in his hands. “I forget my own strength sometimes.”

“And then you threw him.” O’Neill glanced down at the police report.

“That was because the guy grabbed a bottle of worchestershire sauce off the top shelf and tried to break it over Aris’s head.”

The big Ilempiri bounty hunter rubbed the ropy line of scar tissue that ran along his jawline. “I don’t like people waving broken glass near my face,” he said flatly.

O’Neill smiled reluctantly in agreement. “And then store security showed up and Aris stunned them, and someone called the cops.”

“I didn’t know they were security at the time. Just a couple of people running towards us. In my little corner of the galaxy, getting jumped at a marketplace leads to a short list of very unpleasant things happening next.”

“At least it was a hand stunner. Nobody actually saw it. A za’at or his blaster would have been harder to explain. The last I heard they thought they’d slipped on the freshly waxed floor, and hit their heads,” Kerry took a deep breath. “I’d like to point out that we aren’t making a fuss and turning it into an intergalactic incident from our side of things…how much trouble are we in?”

“We suppressed the police investigation. So no official records…unless you want to press charges. Our ‘chipster’ is staying in jail for a few days anyway. And since he just so happens to be the same moron who hit on Carter and called Daniel ‘Four Eyes’ while we were all hopped up on Atoneek armbands, I’m inclined to call it a Darwin Award nomination.”

“Darwin award?”

“Evolution. Survival of the fittest. That boy’s too stupid to walk upright…” Kerry waved a hand.

“Ah.”

“So. In the interest of continuing cooperation between our two sovereign planets, yadda, yadda, yadda…I’m confining you both to base until you have completed Daniel Jackson’s lecture series ‘Earth For Dummies’ that being a complete cultural briefing on the laws, morals, and taboos of the big blue marble we call home.” O’Neill waved a hand. “And our sincerest apologies to the Nitori and her consort. Get out of my office.”

They rose. As the couple went out the door, O’Neill could hear Boch mutter, “it’s a good thing they didn’t find out about what happened at the bookstore.”

He considered pretended that he hadn’t heard it, and sighed.

Definitely owed General Hammond a nice fruit basket.

“Okay, get your mik’tas back in here. WHAT BOOKSTORE?”

End