Ketchup, by Jaed (PG)

[figs_sg1_rec]

Rec Category: Humor
Pairing: none
Category: humor, gen, Daniel Jackson, Jack O'Neill, team
Warning: gratuitous ketchup stains
Author on LJ: unknown
Author's Website: unknown
Link: Ketchup

Why This Must Be Read: Armed only with a tomato ketchup bottle, Daniel must save SG-1!

This fic is one of those rarities: an over-the-top humor piece that actually works. Told in one of the most engaging and authentic Jack voices (with the OTT bit included) I've ever read, this hilarious little story tells the gripping tale of a booby-trapped pyramid and Daniel's noble attempts to release the others from their lethal prison, armed only with - yep, a bottle of ketchup.

While it's clear from the very first paragraphs that this fic is not meant to be taken seriously, it takes itself seriously, which is why it works so well. Too many parodies are ruined by a self-conscious awareness that this is humor, so why should the author bother to make the characters true to themselves? In Ketchup, however, Jaed neatly avoids this pitfall. Yes, the characterizations are exaggerated, but they're still characterizations. Jack does have a tendency to mother-hen, and Teal'c does tend towards deadpan humor in which he deliberately misconstrues Jack's colloquialisms, and Sam does play with technology that might get her into trouble as well as diplomatically try to find a way to tell her colonel that he's crazy, and Daniel does... well, just about everything in this fic. Except get hurt. Which makes this parody practically unique. :)

Daniel is in love with the hieroglyphs. Correction, they are not hieroglyphs. They may look like hieroglyphs, but actually they are something different related to something I've never heard of. Daniel goes on about this for a long time, scribbling away in the notebook all the time, and sneezing at intervals. I lose him somewhere after the first three minutes. After fifteen minutes, I wander over to see what Carter has found. She is having an argument with herself about metal alloys.

I decide to check out the other rooms with Teal'c. Just in case the savage grasshoppers are hiding out in there, waiting to leap out at Daniel. We take a look around and find a lot of empty rooms. There is more dust, and some more squiggly not-hieroglyphs on the wall. Daniel will be ecstatic. We go back to the entrance room just in time to spot Daniel wandering off through a doorway in the wall. Dammit, five minutes ago there was no doorway in that wall. He must have found one of his secret passages.

I'm just about to yell at Daniel to come right back now, when there is a crashing sound. I hear Daniel call out, "Jack". This is followed by the sound of something falling a long way. Teal'c, Carter and I sprint for the doorway. We come to a stop at the brink of a hole. Black, round, with one of those bottomless pit looks about it.

"Carter, get the rope. Teal'c, I'm going down the hole, you..."

"Uh, Jack." I look up and see something picking itself up out of the dust on the other side of the hole. Something archaeologist shaped. It sneezes.

"Daniel Jackson did not fall down the hole, O'Neill."

"Thank you, Teal'c." I pause for breath and to count to ten. "Daniel, why didn't you fall down the hole?"

"I can fall down the hole, if you want Jack." Daniel has on his placating, puppy in trouble statement.

"I do not believe that O'Neill wishes you to fall down the hole, Daniel Jackson."

"Thank you again, Teal'c."

"Actually, it's not a hole, it's a well."

"A bottomless well. Probably full of savage grasshoppers."

Daniel ignores the grasshoppers. "There was a cover, but it must have been cracked. It broke when I trod on it, and the pieces fell down the well."

I take no chances. "Daniel, you are not going down the well to look at the pieces. However much exciting, squiggly writing there is on them, you are NOT going down the well." I look around. For some reason, the Goa'uld haven't written on the walls. I suppose every house has that bit of decorating still to do. "Is there anything remotely interesting in this room?"

"Not really."

"Good. Come round the hole. Carefully."

I watch as Daniel walks round the hole to join us.

"Everybody outside." The gang troops back into the entrance room, and I head for the packs. There are some reels of tape that Daniel uses to label his artifacts, and I borrow one. Everybody watches as I attach the tape across the doorway. "No-one. And by no-one, I mean YOU Daniel, goes in the room."

"I think it may be a kitchen."

"I don't care what it is, Daniel. You don't go in there." I turn to Teal'c. You see that hole?"

"It's a well."

"Teal'c, you see that well?"

"I see the well, O'Neill."

"If it moves. Especially, if it moves towards Daniel. You shoot it."