A/N: Once the idea occurred to me, it had to be written. I didn't get to bed until 2 o'clock in the morning. This is an alternate Stargate Atlantis universe based on the Kingdom Hearts universe (specifically, the events of Kingdom Hearts II). I don't know what I was thinking, but I love this fic to pieces. Just don't take it too seriously.
Disclaimer: Nothing from Stargate or Kingdom Hearts belongs to me. Just checking. Also, I welcome feedback but flamers will have to face John and his Puddlejumper keyblade. Plus Rodney waving a staff and Ronon coming at you with a shield (can you imagine that? What a way to go!)
Surrounded by whiteness, John woke up. The last thing he remembered was walking down a road with McKay and Ronon, chasing that damn dog… there was a castle in the distance… and something beyond that. His memory wasn't just hazy, there was some kind of mental block.
What's weirder was that he had no idea where he was or how he got there. After wandering around for a minute or two, he found McKay and Ronon trapped in two white pods that looked a little like eggs. Freeing them was pretty simple, and then they found their way out to this planet he was sure they'd never been to before.
The native kids were friendly, helping him find that guy that Ronon said was some kind of powerful magic user (so John figured he was probably an Ancient).
It turned out they'd been in cryogenic stasis for a full year. After all that time, John's clothes were looking a little shabby, so those little old ladies that worked for the magic guy gave him some new ones, saying they would give him magic powers. Probably a local superstition, but he was happy to go along with it.
So after that, they took the ship that the magic guy gave them back to Atlantis. The others reacted as if they'd never been gone, which was damn strange. John was all for returning to Athos and finding Teyla, but he was told that the Wraith were all over the place again, as well as these new creatures known as Replicators. He asked to see Elizabeth, but apparently she'd never returned after that big fight with Cowen, and neither had Sumner.
Since everyone was so busy trying to restore Atlantis to its former glory now that the Wraith were gone, John went ahead and took the ship back out to look for Elizabeth and Sumner. With McKay and Ronon, he went through several planets, heading further and further out into the galaxy and finding a whole bunch of Wraith on the way, and a Genii or two. They even went back in time to when Earth was being built and saw Elizabeth in her first days as a leader. After John thought that he'd just about searched every planet, they got a distress call from Atlantis and had to head back there for an epic battle. The best part was when he got to fight a Genii wielding a musical instrument, not to mention the battle with a thousand Wraith and Replicators. Plus, he got to fight alongside a lot of the Atlanteans – Miko the ninja, Laura the large-breasted martial artist, Zelenka the stick-wielding mechanic… then there were Markham and Stackhouse, the macho/angst twins, in competition to see who could kill the most enemies. Good times.
Then Elizabeth turned up and everything started to make sense. She told him about Cowen the Wise, and how the person they'd known as Cowen was actually his apprentice, Kolya. This was the man who they had fought last year.
Or, more accurately, they had fought the Wraith version of Kolya. Elizabeth also explained that when someone is turned into a Wraith, their true self disappears and they split into two. One half becomes a Wraith and the other becomes a Replicator – a cold, emotionless machine. Most people turn into the mechanical, buglike forms of Replicators that John was used to, but those with strong minds became Human Form Replicators, and called themselves the Genii. Their purpose was to control the power of the ZPM because they thought that this would restore them to their former glory. Only problem was, they'd do anything to achieve this.
Mind reeling, John and his team headed out again with the order to destroy the Genii and restore the balance of things. They retraced their steps from planet to planet, this time finding plenty of Genii, which they destroyed each time before moving on. On some planets, one of the Genii would unleash a monstrous Replicator on them, and they'd destroy the Replicator only for the Genii to run away. The strange thing was, the Genii kept referring to John as Evan. The name sounded familiar, but he had no idea why. And why did they think that John was this "Evan" guy?
Finally, once he'd been to every single planet once more (with no sign of Sumner, although he'd often hear stories of a man in a black Genii cloak, and John was sure that it was him), they started getting a strange reading on their sensors. When they followed it, they found a new planet that hadn't been there before. What was stranger was that they were unable to land.
John took the ship to the planet where he'd first awoken and went in search of the three kids that had helped him out the last time he'd been there. Amazingly enough, they had news about Teyla – she'd been there a few days ago but had then been kidnapped by the redheaded Genii. John had nothing to go on and was about to leave, but the kids had figured something out. When he'd awoken, John had a few items on him that he couldn't explain – items that also existed in the kid's town. From this, the kids had decided that there was another town out there, just like theirs. Not really believing this, John figured that it was all he had to go on, so he followed the kids to the mansion and left them "guarding" the place while he snuck around inside.
There was a white room with pictures of him, McKay, Ronon, Teyla, the Genii, Elizabeth and Sumner. There was also another guy who looked a bit like him but with lighter hair and a stockier build. Dismissing these, John moved on.
So, eventually McKay found the Ancient tech that would transport them to the town's doppelganger, only to realise that it was broken. The redheaded Genii (whose named turned out to be Ladon) turned up once more, this time wanting a truce and promising that he knew how to fix the machine. Just when he'd almost fixed it, a bunch of Wraith and Replicators turned up. John and the others fought them as best as they could, but just as the machine was fixed, the last Wraith left alive sucked the life out of Ladon, killing him before John could save him. Before he died, he called John Evan and professed his undying love for him. John thought it was probably best to humour a dying man.
The transporter worked just fine, and when they used the device that told them where in the galaxy they were, they found that they'd ended up in that place they couldn't get to earlier. Curiouser and curiouser.
From then, it was easy enough to move through the town and into the castle, finishing off a couple of incredibly skilled Genii along the way. For some reason, they were still calling him Evan, no matter how much he protested that it wasn't his name.
It was in the Castle that John found Sumner and Teyla again… but something had changed. When he first saw Sumner, John though it was Kolya… well, the Wraith version of Kolya that he'd killed last year. It was Teyla that realised this was Sumner in Kolya's body, warped by the journey he had taken into darkness to make him stronger. Teyla also told him that she'd been rescued from Ladon by a Genii girl called Sora, who had turned out to be the Replicator version of herself. When they had touched, Sora's mechanical body had disintegrated into its components, but her memories and essence had entered Teyla's brain. John didn't really understand it until he blacked out and the guy from the pictures – Evan – appeared in front of him. This was the Genii version of himself, a Replicator who had been created without John's memories and so had allowed himself to be indoctrinated into the Genii. After almost a year, he left in search of something, but ended up in an artificial version of the town John had woken up in, with identical copies of the kids he'd met. When Evan had entered his version of the mansion, he'd found John in there, and merged with him in the same way Teyla and Sora had.
With his mind full of confusing answers, reality returned to John and he found that no time had passed for Teyla and Sumner while he was talking to Evan. With McKay and Ronon, plus his two old friends, he journeyed even deeper into the castle, finally coming up against the leader of the Genii himself – the man who called himself Cowen but was really the Replicator version of Kolya. They battled and RepliKolya got away, but something strange happened to Sumner. A bright light surrounded him, and when it dissipated he looked like his old self again, hair quite a bit longer than before.
As was inevitable, the two of them fought RepliKolya once more, side by side in an epic battle to the death. RepliKolya had inexplicably gained more powers, but that was OK because John and Sumner mysteriously managed to figure out ways to use teamwork against his every attack. Finally, RepliKolya was defeated and John and Sumner were left in a strange void between worlds… had they Ascended?
They had no idea how long they stayed there, but after an eternity, John heard a familiar noise – the sound of chevrons locking. A few metres away, he saw the wormhole engage, and instinctively recoiled from the kawoosh of matter that came at him, even though he was too far away for it to hit him anyway.
A message in a bottle rolled through the gate, and John picked it up. It was from Teyla, saying that she missed the both of them and wished that they would return. Holding hands, John and Sumner stepped through the Stargate – the door to light – and through to Athos on the other side.
Some days later, when the five of them were relaxing on the beach, they got a message from Elizabeth. But that's another story.