At last, one vacation not ruined by the Goa'uld... so far. Jack had finally given up trying to get everyone to go fishing with him, so now, the whole of SG-1 strolled down a New York sidewalk, basking in the absence of missions, Goa'uld, and other save-the-world stuff.Ahead, they noticed that some UFO-looking object had smashed into a truck. Officials were trying to keep everyone from asking questions when SG-1 joined the crowd."Can I have your attention, please?" yelled one man wearing sunglasses that Jack thought were particularly sharp. He held a metal cylinder above his head, attracting the glances of even people across the street. "Please watch for the light," he directed as a bright light flashed from the small device. As he put it away in his jacket pocket, he explained, "You've witnessed one of the many minor car crashes today in New York City. No one was hurt and the cars only have a few new scratches."
Teal'c turned to Jack to see his reaction. When he saw his companion's face as blank as the others', his Jaffa sense of alarm sprang up. "O'Neill! Captain Carter! Daniel Jackson!" Having determined that he couldn't do anything for his friends, he approached the man in the black suit.
His surprise showed like a beacon on his face when he saw that Teal'c hadn't been affected by the neural neutralizer. "Good afternoon, sir, can I help you?" the man began as the Jaffa grabbed him by the collar.
"What have you done to..."
"Hey, T, making friends?" Jack came up behind his comrade. "What'd he do?"
Teal'c's face went blank and the curiously confused Jaffa expression appeared. "O'Neill, this man has done something to affect your mind."
"Oh, really? Not the first time. What'd he do?"
"Do you not remember?"
Jack cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. "Remember what?"
Teal'c looked back to the man he was holding. "What did you do?"
"T," Jack said, "Whatever he did, we can deal with it later. We're on vacation."
Who ever he was looked at the colonel. "No, we can deal with it now." Apparently, he had seen an older man, also in a black suit, come around the corner of the truck which kept them from being seen from the street.
"Put him down," demanded guy number two, his gun drawn.With great reluctance, Teal'c complied.
"D, it didn't work on him," explained the younger man, pointing to the Jaffa.
The older man swallowed and spoke to the four strangers in front of him. "I'm going to have to ask you to come with us. The three of you have the option of staying here."
Jack sighed. Why did this sort of thing always happen to them? Why? "I don't think you'll take him alone. Where to?"
"Some place."
Looking around the rest of his unit, Jack stated, "Good thing we didn't have plans."
Jack glanced around the small waiting room they'd been led to after a short ride and an elevater trip. "So what's the story, Teal'c?"
He raised an eyebrow. "We were walking down the street and came upon the scene of an accident. The younger man flashed some sort of light. After that, you did not seem to remember arriving."
Sam and Daniel looked up. "I don't either."
The door on the opposite side of the room from the elevater opened. "Sorry to keep you waiting, but this has never happened before. "
"What exactly would that be?" questioned O'Neill.
"Our neural neutralizer didn't work on your friend here and I'd like to know why," explained a rounded man in a black suit, directing his statement to Teal'c.
"I am not at liberty to discuss probable answers." The Jaffa knew that it was probably because of his symbiote, but unless these people already knew about the Goa'uld, he couldn't tell them.
"They're guaranteed to work on all humans," he said, frustration and anger fringing his voice.
"That would be the problem," muttered Daniel, loud enough only for SG-1 to hear.
A beep sounded from the man's pocket. Immediately, he pulled out a communications device and listened to it. "A ship from the ground?" he repeated with disbelief.
Carter leaned over to the colonel. "Sir, they were going to test the X-304s today."
"Let's hope they work better than the X-301!" Raising his voice, he addressed the man in black. "Any chance we could see this ship of yours? Identify it?"
Exasperation showed on the man's face. "I doubt you could identify it. By ship I meant space ship." Normally, he wouldn't have explained it, but these people hadn't been given much of a choice in coming here and he knew he could erase their memories.
"That's how we interpreted it," Carter told him. "Do you know where it lifted off from?"
"Somewhere over the western United States."
"Then it's nothing to worry about. Just..." Her voice died off when she knew she was saying too much.
"Can I get an image? These people think they might be able to positively identify it." When it came onto the screen on his communications device, he turned it around so that the others could see.
"Major?" Jack prompted. The transport looked somewhat like the X-303, but it had more of an Asgard-ish shape to it.
"Just what I thought, sir."
"Could have been worse."
The other guy couldn't believe these people. Why wouldn't they just tell him what it was? "And? What planet is it from?"
Jack ignored his question. "I'm afraid I'll need all the recordings you have of that ship."
"Excuse me, but I can't give them to you."
"Why not?" His patience wore thin. Their vacations were jinxed. They might as well give up and just work all the time.
"You don't have the clearance."
"Well, if I don't, then you certainly don't."
"How did you detect that ship?" Sam asked, preventing the likely following fistfight from occurring, which probably would have ended with Teal'c holding the strange man against the wall or something.
He looked at her, again exasperated and annoyed. "With sensors, what else?"
She glanced at her CO. "Sir, that ship was supposed to be undetectable, even by other, more advanced sensors."
"Back to the drawing board on that one."
The man in black stepped back a bit. "Who are you people?"
The room became distinctly quiet before Daniel answered, "At the moment, we're tourists."
Jack remembered something about what the man had asked earlier. "How is it that you know so much about other planets, anyway? And don't tell me you're an astronomer." Teal'c caught a slight signal from the colonel and began to move closer to what's his name.
"Let's just say it's my job. And you?"
"You'd like to know that, wouldn't you?" Sam sank back to where the guy couldn't see her and called Hammond on her cell phone.
Meanwhile, Mr. "I'm confidently in charge of the situation" seemed to shrink from the weight of the Jaffa's stare. "I really do need to know why the neural neutralizer didn't work on you. It wasn't faulty and it should've worked."
Sam finished her brief conversation with their CO. "If you'll give us all documents relating to that ship, we might be able to tell you what you want to know." Jack and Daniel spun to face her, their jaws about as far down as they could go. "General's orders."
"Okay, I'll think about it."
Jack spoke up, turning back to the man in the suit. "Then we'll think about answering you."
"It's amazing to think that we've been halfway across the galaxy and only found humans and right in New York there are so many strange life forms," remarked Carter as they again strolled, this time on an upper story, looking down at the customs offices in the MIB headquarters.
"Yeah, you guys ought to install a naquada detector to send everyone through, make sure no Goa'uld get here this way." Jack knew that if the SGC had no knowledge of this place, the system lords probably didn't, but it couldn't hurt to play it safe.
"No what?" asked the man from earlier, who they now knew as S.
Teal'c nodded. "You are indeed fortunate that you do not know of the Goa'uld."
"Why?"
Teal'c stoically turned toward him and raised an eyebrow. "The Goa'uld have enslaved entire worlds, proclaiming themselves to be gods."
Carter looked toward her CO. "Sir, if we didn't know about the MIB, there's a good chance that the Goa'uld haven't heard of them either."
"Good. One less way Anubis can attack us," commented Jack.
"Anubis?" S questioned dubiously. "Wasn't he some mythological character or something?"
Daniel nodded. "You'd be surprised how many of them are actually Goa'uld."
Something had been bothering Carter since they had left that waiting room. "S, how did you detect the ship that lifted off from the western US?"
"Scanners, like I said."
"What kind of scanner? What do they pick up?"
He shrugged. "Just about any large, foreign object in the solar system. In fact, several months ago, we picked up a large ship that crashed into the Pacific Ocean. When our guys got there, they couldn't get in to investigate; the Air Force got there first and flat out refused our authority."
Sam winced. "I remember that. You wouldn't have wanted to get in anyway."
"Why not?" S asked as they came to a stop outside a glass office that had a view of the main customs area.
"It was full of bugs that wanted to take over the world," Jack explained.
"Draconians?"
"Replicaters," answered Daniel. "At least, that's what the Asgard call them."
"We know of the Asgard, but no one said anything about the SGC."
"Well, we're even," Jack said with a tight smile. "Thor never told us about you."
"Thor doesn't know about us. We apparently contacted his ship while he wasn't onboard, and they weren't willing to tell us much." He looked toward the man waiting not-so-patiently in the office. "Zed 'll see you now."
As SG-1 walked through the door that S held for them, Sam whispered to them, "Hammond said to treat this like any other first contact."
Jack nodded. "Try to get any technology that might help against the Goa'uld, yadda, yadda."
"Except without the 'we came through the Stargate' part," reminded Daniel.
The rather large man behind the desk stood and offered his hand to each of them. "Welcome to MIB headquarters. I'm Zed."
Jack stretched out his hand. "I'm Colonel Jack O'Neill, this is Major Samantha Carter, Doctor Daniel Jackson, and Teal'c," he said, pointing to each in turn.
"You can take off your hat now," Zed told the Jaffa.
"Oh, go ahead," Jack encouraged at Teal'c questioning glance. "If we're going to tell him why his neutron-a-lyzer didn't work on you, what's it matter if he sees your gold tattoo?"
The Jaffa removed his hat, allowing the man in black to see his gold tattoo of a snake in a circle. Zed wondered why he had to keep it covered up, but kept his musings to himself. The other SG-1 members barely seemed to notice it, but it was all Zed could look at.He cleared his throat and forced himself to look at the colonel. "So why doesn't the neural neutralizer work on him?"
"Ah, ah. First, we get the recordings of that ship you saw today and then we tell you," Jack answered, possibly the most diplomatic thing he'd said in his life.
"Consider it done."
"Nope. Now or we send reporters like Teal'c into New York to get the story of a lifetime."
Teal'c cocked his head and looked to his friend. "O'Neill, I do not-"
"Not now, Teal'c."