'So that's the portal to Olympus?' Sheila said as she carefully studied the stopped up portal while not looking directly at it.
Janeka was the one to respond. 'Looks like it. If it can keep all of the gods trapped in there, I'm not sure how we are going to bust it open.' She fingered the small talisman, part of a Relic she had forged to allow their band to communicate via telepathy. Band Chat 1.0!
'Spells like this usually have a weakness to balance the imperviousness from the other side,' Dana explained. 'So in this case, the door might be opened with great power on our side. Hence why they are guarding with so many monsters, gods and even a greater Titan.'
'So we might be able to open it. If our trick works well enough to get to the portal,' Dolph said.
'I so want you to change back as soon as possible,' Janeka grumbled across the telepathic link. 'Okay, they are covered in an illusion-'
"I am Kadiums, son of Zeus. Do you seek fame on the bloodied fields of Olympus?" the god in front of them demanded.
'Who the hell is Kadimus?' Dolph demanded.
'Later!' the other three mentally shouted out back to him.
"Yaaaaaah!" was the shouted reply.
'Focus! This is the- Oh, fuckity fuck,' Janeka said.
The ground had rumbled softly as a giant woman made entirely of stone, dirt, flowers and moss stepped out of the 'plug' between Elysium and Olympia. She was over a hundred feet tall of pure perfection with ruby rose petals and amethyst lilies for her irises, skin a pale alabaster stone. Her presence nearly stunned all those on the trampled fields of Elysium as she walked over to tower over them all.
"Stop, Kadimus! You are about to make a grave mistake," Gaia called out as she raised a hand. "They are cloaked in an illusion. Can you not sense that something is off?" She pointed her hand imperiously at the giants that were suddenly standing confused.
The four giants rippled as if struck in water, revealing the forms of the four young gods.
"Warriors! Kill the spawn of the kinslayer!" Kadimus shouted as he drew his short sword.
He then threw a lightning bolt at Dolph with enough power to light up New York City, causing the Aesir to scream out in pain. His bones actually shown through his body for just a second before a massive fog rolled down from the sky and then covered everything.
"Kill them!" bellowed the cyclops as he led the larger group against the stunned gods.
The sounds of fighting and combat filled the air.
"Do not let them escape!" Kadimus screamed in petulant anger. He dashed forward and grabbed Janeka by the neck. Which is when he realized he had been duped. "Another illusion?"
In the blink of an eye, the illusion added over the top of the giants, dissipated to reveal the dead or near dead forms of the hapless monsters.
Kadimus raised up a fist and then smashed down a wind to blow the mist away.
"You are being tricked, even after I warned you!" Gaia said in terrible anger.
Kadimus turned, seeing the four gods fleeing down the road. In anger again, he called down four lightning bolts to slay them again. He started to smile when one of the undead right next to him suddenly shoved a shotgun in his face.
"Eat lead, bastard," Sigurd, father of Dolph, called out as he pulled the trigger. "Ah, fuck."
He might as well have thrown confetti at the god.
With a roar, Kadimus hit the Einherjar with his gladius so hard that the undead was shattered into hundreds of pieces in a spray that took out three more undead.
"No, behind you! Kadimus!" Gaia called out. "Do not let them breach the ancient way that we guard!" She was starting to walk back towards the portal. With a gesture, she had the earth rise up and threw a great stone.
The young god Kadimus turned towards the blocked up portal to see the vampire, cyclops and two undead reach the portal.
The nospheratu moved in back, catching the huge boulder even as the monster started to grow and his form reset to his base form. Dolph, now over twenty feet tall gave out a great roar and with the creaking of his strained sinews and muscles, threw the boulder back to hit Gaia and send her staggering back in twenty foot steps.
The cyclops had glowing red lines covering it in a pattern or seams. With a bang, the robotic exoskeleton exploded off Janeka, her gun-sword Blaze of Battle already readied. "Let's do this!"
"Strike with all your elemental fury of battle right on the X," Dana called out as her shadows marked the spot just off the center of the plug, guided by fate and prophecy.
Fire wrapped around the gunblade even as Janeka narrowed her dark eyes. A blazing bolt of white fire erupted from the inset barrel, smashing home implacable purpose.
Sheila, still in the form of an undead zombie, had placed her hands on the edge of the passage. The plug was a portion of Terra itself, having been brought to this place by some fell magic or artifact. But the passageways themselves were partially spirits, living rivers dammed up. So they were wounded and cut off, but still living. And what was living could be healed.
The blockage groaned and slowly fell back, being pushed back by the desperate will of three young goddesses.
And then Kadimus threw a mighty boulder of his own and then leaped after it. Dolph had spotted the boulder but was just not fast enough to dodge the ten ton rock. It hit like Mjolnir itself, blasting him down the passageway. He was insensate and stunned as he smashed into the melted and fused plug. His arc knocked over both Janeka and Dana for just a second.
"Your heroism ends here!" Kadimus shouted as he landed near Janeka. He pulled back his fist and lashed out with a punch that the very slight daughter of Ares was already bending out of the way.
So the hiccup in time as Sheila and Dana flickered into the melee was quite the surprise. The youngest goddess did not try to stop the fist, for the force behind that made it impossible, but to redirect it as she pulled on his wrist. Dana had instantly understood her cousin's plan, tripping Kadimus while pushing on his back.
Janeka was only a split second behind them as her dodge let her thread through the melee. Her sword glowed with the fury of battle and lashed out with the power of battering rams into Kadimus's back too. He was surprised to find his unstoppable fist smashing home into the barrier (right over Dolph's insensate head), shattering it into millions of pieces in a great geyser of earth thousands of feet tall that could be seen high up on the mountain palace of Olympia.
"No! I did not mean that!" Kadimus shouted in fear and anger as he stared in horror at smashing what he was supposed to defend.
Gaia loomed over them all. "We are not yet undone! Slay them, my love, so that we can be free of Olympia tyranny!" Earth rose up at her command, streaking forward to fill the passage.
Only to smash off the impenetrable chest of the Lion of Olympus. Hercules looked surprised at finding himself in this fight. "Ho?"
"Sorry, brother, but I needed a wall to stop Gaia's attack," Artemis called out as she unleashed a searing white arrow of moonlight from her bow at the Titan at his side. "So I reacted with all my speed to place us here." The huntress was already pulling back her bow again to fire again, to sear more deep wounds into Gaia.
The Antean giants were finally catching up to them when a rainbow shimmer heralded more gods appeared. The armored Ares, the hammer-wielding Hephaestus, Apollo the golden with his own bow, Athena with her spear, sly Hermes and his caduceus staff and Hera cloaked in her peacock cloak.
And last, but first among them stood Zeus. "Free! We shall never be bound and thrown down!" the king of the gods and sky shouted out. Twelve lightning bolts smashed out from his hands, blasting the same number of giants. "Capture Gaia so we can bind the Earth itself!"
The gods of Olympus roared their battle cry, but Gaia was already sinking into the earth. She took with her Kadimus, much to the horror of the Antean giants that were her foot soldiers as she left them to their fate.
Mighty were these giants, unable to be slain as long as they stood on earth.
It only took the gods of Olympus a mere minute to slay them to the last man, holding them off the ground to riven them of their lives.
"Ah, man! I missed the end of the fight," Dolph complained as Sheila finished healing him back to consciousness.
She and Dana were finally back in their ascended forms. Sheila then patted him on the shoulder and helped pull him to his feet. "I'm sure there will be many more battles, big guy. This was a bit closer than we had planned for."
Dana's smile was hidden in her dark shadows of her features. "If it were easy, anyone could do it."
Janeka nodded, her sword's tip on the ground as she watched the gods of Olympus approach.
Zeus narrowed his eyes as the four gods in front of him. "Who are you, to come to the aid of Olympus?"
"I am Bellicus Decipio, daughter of Ares," Janeka called out. "Goddess of Artifice and War."
"And I am Venatorfuriae, daughter of Artemis. Also goddess of the Furies and Vengeance," Dana declared.
"Shelinaria, daughter of Pallas Athena and goddess of Battle and Excellence," the youngest, sun-haired goddess stated clearly while studying her mother.
"Djorgen, god of the Cold Forge of the Aesir," Dolph said bluntly. They didn't need to know his lineage, as far as he was concerned.
Zeus started laughing. "Well, your timing was very good. The spirits of all of our warriors were flagging. Ares?"
"Yes?" the armored and grim god of war replied.
"Send some of your other children to guard the different passages from Olympus. Then we shall feast and celebrate the great victory and elevation of three new Olympian gods!"
The shouts of victory were deafening and could be heard in the Fate of the world.
And ripples traveled outwards to the unending worlds.
Great bonfires were burning on the fields at the root of Mount Olympus from the huge armies that lay in defense there. Sheila had put her hair into a fancy set of braids wrapped up around the back of her head and pinned in place. Along with the woman's toga she wore, she almost fit in at the feast tables of the gods. Ambrosia and nectar flowed quite freely, much to Dolph's delight.
Zeus had his arm around his wife Hera, a large chalice of filigree gold and amethysts in his other hand that was full of nectar. "Hephaestus, don't worry about that imposter. I haven't had a whisper from the four winds about him before the outbreak of this uprising."
His wife-sister seemed to be enjoying his attention, if not the words. She did turn away from Zeus to look at her deformed son. "He has the right of it. Their time is past and I personally do not know of this fake son of Zeus, this Kadimus. But now that I have his name I will discover his secrets. And then I will destroy him." You could almost see the continuation in her mind as she added, 'as I do any of his children'.
"Perhaps you are right, but they have forged a strong army. We were locked up too long. And now these Atlantean gods are taking over the mortal world," the stout and muscular smith of the gods said. "Luckily Bellicus and Shelinaria are both crafters in their own way. You daughter, Ares, is a marvel of a modern military engineer."
"Yeah, I'm going to upgrade some of my stuff in the forge hall you and Ares gave me. I'm surprised you both worked on it," Janeka said to the other crafter while looking at her father Ares in bemusement.
Sheila specifically did not look at her mother, but could see out of the corner of her eyes that Athena looked unimpressed.
"Yeah, just ignore me, because what kind of Aesir crafts," Dolph mumbled, then took another large swig of nectar.
The youngest goddess smiled, understanding his frustration. She looked around, trying to see something that was missing. Then Sheila realized who she expected to make a comment. But poor Tsukyo was still captured. That was really something they needed to focus on.
Off to the side, Artemis talked to her daughter Dana.
Sheila stood up and walked outside to the edge of the base of the palace.
"Shelinaria. Complicated, lengthy and unique while still alluding to your past," Paellas Athena said as she walked up.
"Mother," Sheila said carefully.
"So wary. I am not so threatening to my adopted children," the goddess said, a small curved smile upon her face. "While I am a goddess of war, that does not mean I strike first except when I am certain of the situation. I mean, my birth by springing forth from Zeus's head was here in this room."
"That would be a momentous occasion," the very young goddess said, trying not to react.
"I must get back to the party before I'm missed. Please do what you need to do," Athena said, walking back to the main hall.
Sheila tilted her head slightly, noting that there were several people in the room. Nymphs, dryads, a myrmidon and even the a goddess wearing jeans and an AC/DC t-shirt she had not been introduced to. Though she suspected that was Eris. Shelinaria raised an eyebrow.
"What?" snapped out the goddess of discord.
"I was just wondering what the most proper greeting I should use? Something honeyed and placating, or should I just be blunt and insulting? I'm pretty sure my cousin Bellicus Decepto would just say something about 'what's up, bitch?'" she said in a whimsical tone.
Eris blinked. "Did you insult you?"
"I'm sure there's some way you could be insulted with that if you wanted to be," Shelinaria agreed with a nod of her head.
"Now I know you are trying to confuse me," the temperamental goddess said, eyes narrowing in consideration.
She gave the older goddess a shrug. "I seem to find myself in these sort of situations. Definitely not a boring life."
"Are you not worried that you will be cursed by me?" Eris demanded, invading her personal space and staring down her nose at the girl.
"Er, well? I'm not positive if I'm cursed or not already." Shelinaria gave her a shrug. "I'm not exactly 'Miss Pacifist', you know."
"You aren't supposed to say things like that!" the goddess of strife said.
"There is absolutely nothing I can say that you won't disagree with, is there?" the much, much younger goddess said. Her eyes studied the mural in front of her, showing an incredibly lifelike representation of Athena exploding out of Zeus's head, Hephaestus looking on in surprise as he dropped his hammer.
Shelinaria looked back over to Eris. "So 'what's up, bitch?' the young goddess quipped," she said in a deadpan tone.
Eris burst out laughing. "You have a damn weird sense of humor, brat."
"I thought everyone considered me to be a stick in the mud," she replied, turning back to the mural. It looked too real, as if you could step into it.
"Athena's vanity. And no, you can't enter it or magic it. It's just a perfect replication without a bit of soul. Not much better than a mortal photograph," the Goddess of Strife said with a snort of disdain.
"Art is in the eye of beholder," she replied with a grin.
"If it offends thine eyes, pluck it out!"
"Pretty 'hard-core' for being an art critic," Shelinaria replied as she tried to joke with the goddess. She narrowed her eyes, studying it with senses beyond the norm. And where she discovered invisible inlays that reflected x-rays laid out in the position of stars and planets.
A hidden message indeed, though not one most would have figured out.
"What are you staring at, brat?" Strife demanded.
"A message, I think. Subtle and tricky-"
"Athena's shit. Figures. Well, I'm bored now." The elder goddess just stomped off, her steps a discordant pitter patter on the polished, granite floor.
Sheila wandered over behind a pillar, thinking hard. She first changed her hair, a dull and dirty dishwater blonde. Then her skin darkened slightly as her blue-green turned dull and boring. Manifesting her full reality, dull red lines glowed from within her body. The gold band of her ring on her left hand burned with cold fury. The air in front of her rippled and twisted as she stepped through.
Beyond the portal lay the same room as thunderstorms raged outside this temple of the gods. Sheila narrowed her eyes. With a muted snap, the portal closed behind her.
Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt and the Moon stepped out from behind a pillar as she looked around for the missing youngest goddess. "I'm surprised at you, Eris."
Eris just grinned from the opposite side of the room. "Because I did not stir the pot, kettle?"
"Yes, indeed. I thought you would use her to incite the chaos you so love."
The goddess of strife just threw back her head and laughed for a long half minute. "Dearie Artemis, I did not need to add any chaos at all to her actions. She will shake the heavens already!" Eris just cackled afterwards.
"So she is an enemy of Olympus," the other goddess said as gripped her bow more tightly.
"Not that I could see. But you know... who needs enemies when I have friends like that!" Eris brayed out a loud laugh.
Artemis fumed at the statement, knowing that she stated it that way just to confuse her. "Fine. I will be watching her. Wherever she went!" She stretched out her senses to follow her youngest half-sister, only to see that it disappeared across the room behind a portal in a way she had not seen in so long that she did not even recognize it. "That should not be possible."
"Ah, the tracker couldn't follow the novice? Maybe she's actually smarter than she sounded," Eris sniped at the Elder goddess.
In the shadows behind the two goddess, Athena stood quietly and invisibly as she looked at the space the portal vacated. With a grim smile, she disappeared as if she had never been there.
Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, shaking Olympus as Zeus cried out in agony.
"Will no one rid me of this headache?" the thunder god bemoaned as he lay on his couch, head laid back with a wet rag on his forehead.
Hera sat at her husband-brother's side, a scowl on her face as she focused on the issue. "I feel a deep foreboding, as if something walked upon my shadow." Something wicked obscured her vision, the quiet power behind Olympus that protected it from all threats.
"Enough! Send for your son, woman. Let him split my head open and find this evil that tries to drive mighty Zeus mad!" The bearded god lay back, groaning again. Lightning sheeted across the dark clouds.
Half an hour later, the deformed young god Hephaestus arrived, his hammer in his hand. His robes dripped water upon the polished stone floor. His unkempt beard made him look like a wild man under the shadow of his hood.
Hera stood up to her full height, looking down upon her second son. "Hephaestus. Zeus demands that you open his head and remove the evil that pains him. Your standing within Olympus depends upon what happens here this day."
"A boon I demand then," the young god shouted out, causing the attendants and soldiers to bristle at his audacity. "I wish to be known as the god of the forge. And god of the forge of Olympus!" His deformed face scowled at Zeus and his mother.
"You demand?" Hera screeched.
Zeus groaned and clutched at his head. Lightning flashed, smashing down upon the mountain hard enough to send a pot tumbling to the ground. "If he cures my agony, I will grant his demand."
"But if he comes to a foul ending, son, I will visit upon you the torments of deepest holes in Hades," the queen-mother promised in a voice filled with hatred and anger.
"Mother, I thought you cared about no one?" Hephaestus said in a mocking tone.
Hera opened her mouth, only to be interrupted by Zeus's pained cries.
"Rid me of this pain, smith!" he roared, shaking the palace again with his slipping control of the true elemental Storm.
"Brother," Hephaestus said to Apollo, standing in the corner. "Please have yourself ready to tend to to Zeus's wound, for I will have to open his head to release whatever ails him."
The beautiful (not handsome) god, smiled in a way that lit up the room. After his failure to cure his father, being able to help would put him back in Zeus's good grace. His own sister had fled to her forests, far away. "Of course. Perhaps without what is in Zeus's head, my healing can finally cure him." His pride still stung from that failure.
The smith hobbled up near Zeus's head. "Steel yourself, Sky King." With a mighty smash, he brought down his axe on Zeus's forehead, splitting it asunder with his uncanny skill of craft.
The wounded god roared in pain and anger, even as a great wind and vapors shot forth. As famously portrayed many times, Athena appeared with her spear in her hand, armed and armored. Her steel gray eyes took in the whole room as her grip tightened.
And for far less than single split second behind her, obscured through the fog, two shadows stood at her back. Then with a blink, the shadows disappeared, leaving the young goddess to face the room.
Apollo blinked and rubbed his eyes. "I could have sworn I saw..."
"Who are you?" Hephaestus said, sounding as smitten as the most sappy and lovelorn teen.
"I am Athena, daughter of Metis and Zeus!" the young woman cried out, the tip of her spear moving a few inches left and right. Her head turned to the left and right, widening as she saw nothing behind her.
Zeus held his hands to his head, the gaping gash healing with his own power and Apollo's ministrations. His eyes alit upon his oldest, lastborn daughter. He tilted his head to the side. And that piqued Shelinaria's curiosity, so she focused hard on listening to that ear.
"This is my daughter that you freed. She is no threat while I am trapped in your stomach," the most quiet of whispers said within his ear canal.
"A feast for my new daughter!" Zeus roared, a smile plastered on face. He was free from his pain and he now had yet another daughter. While Metis and his never-born son had been a threat, the god regretted that he had consigned the firstborn daughter to a fate like Kronos had visited upon his own siblings.
"And Oceanus's daughter?" Hera asked with her sharp tongue.
"Still safely in my stomach. And still telling me not to do foolish things," Zeus said as he sat up. "A feast! I declare a week of celebration! Let the winds carry the news of my first daughter coming to take her rightful place on Olympus!"
A cheer broke out and ever so slowly, Athena relaxed. Her placid face hid her confusion. She narrowed her eyes at an armored god that glared at her. The feud between Athena and Ares started that very moment.
Days later, the newest and yet oldest daughter of Zeus retired to a room given over to her. Zeus had promised a new home would be built in her honor as soon as possible. Looking in the standing mirror of gold, she finally felt safe enough to remove her helm.
The cough from the corner caused her to spin around, spear at the ready. "Who dares intrude?" Athena demanded.
Shelinaria appeared on the edge of a divan, her hand pulling back from a shadow, draped in a simple robe and cloak. "An ally, hopefully. I was sent her to witness something that I think all of the other gods of Olympus missed or misunderstood."
"What do you think you witnessed?"
"I think I witnessed someone disappearing with your mother and brother before a fight broke out between the three of you and Olympus." Her blue-green eyes caught her mother flinching.
"Preposterous," Athena lied.
"So it would be impossible for Zeus and Metis to have twins and for the older daughter takes up the role of shieldmaiden to protect her brother that is prophesied to overthrow their father, with their mother to guide them in their private war." Shelinaria kept her voice level and soft.
"You fool, are you trying to get us killed? The four winds are his spies. Zeus would happily swallow us all to keep his stolen throne!" the older goddess hissed out.
"No, I'm not a fool or trying to get us killed. But I'm trying to decide if you want to follow through in helping destroy Zeus for his entirely justifiable fear, even though he has not treated any of his other children in such a manner. Nor did he treat you so badly once he found out you were supposedly no threat," the junior goddess said. In fact, Sheila felt the strain of holding back the air and making a sound proof vacuum around the windows, doors and other airways.
"He's a monster!" Athena said, her lips curled in a sneer.
"He has taken monstrous actions. But he is also the heart of civilization and the rise of culture. The Muses, justice and liberty. Civilization."
"And how is he not a monster like his father and grandsire?" Athena demanded.
The plain form of Shelinaria smiled and shook her head. "He did not sire more monsters upon Gaia. His heart is fickle and his lusts great, but he only acted out of fear of Kadimus."
Athena's gray eyes widened at that. Then narrowed in anger. "I would do anything for my dear brother. Even overthrow Olympus!"
"Well, we can't ignore prophecy now can we? Self fulfilling one's are the quite annoying ones. Does that mean you would destroy the Overworlds, the Underworlds and even the Mortalworld? Or is merely deposing mighty Zeus and his sister-wife Hera enough for you?" Shelinaria stared at her defiantly. "Are you the heroic rebel or the heinous nihilist?"
"That is a false equivilence," the young goddess said, frowning at her. "Where did you take Kadimus, trickster?"
"I took him nowhere, but perhaps you will take him to someplace that no one would look for him with a power not of their own," her daughter said.
Athena's cold, gray eyes studied the girl. "Not a prophecy. Who are you?"
"Just the daughter of what most people thought was the most heroic and just just of Olympians. But that seems like it must still be decided," she replied in a cagey tone. "It is time to take my leave, as I think I have learned what I was supposed to here. And maybe even said what I needed to."
Glowing lines flared brighter as Shelinaria took a step back, disappearing into the future. Looking around the 'her' guest room in the present, she frowned.
"Well, it's time for some heroics." With that, Shelinaria went seeking her band of heroes.
It was just a few hours later that Shelinaria left behind her band and rescued Tsukyo-Ryu (and his cute shinto priestess Yukio the cheerful) to walked through the rugged hills and mountains covered in pine trees, following the strange fate bonds that came from her and headed out into impossible otherwhere in all space and time through a path that only existed for herself. She almost gained a headache as she focused on the one, single strand that she thought might lead to a version of herself that was close in power.
"Halt! You are on US Air Force property! State the nature of your business!" a voice yelled out as she turned the corner of the paved road and to the abruptly close entrance to a underground base.
"Just looking for myself," she quipped with a smile on her face.
"Is that you, Miss Henderson? I thought you weren't allowed off base," the sergeant asked the younger girl. "Especially with your glowing hair."
"Sounds like I found myself. Janeka would probably quip about taking me to your leader, but I'd rather you take me to the me here." She gave a pretty smile at the soldier.
The sergeant nodded as he spoke into a portable handset like police used. "Doppelganger! Doppelganger!"
The other two soldiers raised up their MP5's. "Don't move."
"You know, I haven't made a single aggressive action since I got here. And you are starting to annoy me," Shelinaria said as her eyes started to glow to match her anger.
Sergeant Thompson nodded to something he heard. "Do not make an aggressive actions, just hold position."
Shelinaria started tapping her left toes impatiently. Fifteen minutes later, a grizzled, gray-haired soldier ambled up at the head of a group of soldiers.
"Fellas, I don't think she's going to start something," General Jack O'Neill said in a drawl. "So let's just put the safety on the weapon so that we don't annoy the glowing girl." His pale, blue eyes studied the Sheila in front of him. "So exactly how can we help you at the entrance to NORAD here today, young lady?"
"I'm looking for myself. And the path I need is either through the base and into a sub-basement or in the caves below it, but I need to travel in that direction," she explained. "Or you could just let the Sheila here come to me, I'm not that picky."
"Sorry, sir. I thought it was our Sheila having slipped out again," Thompson said carefully.
"Ah, not a problem. Well, Sheila isn't available and I can't really allow you into the base," Jack said carefully. "And well, you aren't our Sheila."
"Which you aren't surprised about, but you are worried about doppelgangers." Shelinaria pursed her lips in thought. "How long until Sheila becomes 'available'?"
"Oh, not more than a day. Maybe two-"
"And now you are lying." The young goddess suddenly had a suspicion that if her alternate self was there, it may be as a prisoner.
The general blinked as he thought he was a bit better at dissembling. "I'm sorry-"
"And you used weasel words on her 'availability' which could even include imprisonment. So I'm afraid I'm going to ask you to get the hell out of my way." The young goddess then reached forward and bent the barrels of the two MP5s that were pointed at her.
"Weapons free! Weapons free," Jack shouted as he backed up fast, pulling out his pistol.
The general had seen a lot of one-sided fights, but this was the first time he saw someone dodging bullets at less than fifteen feet. In thirty seconds she had disabled ten soldiers by breaking their guns and knocking them away onto the hard packed dirt.
"Well, that was not exactly human," he said glibly while trying to buy enough time for the armored doors to cycle shut at the end of the tunnel. He was not even going to bother shooting at her at this point.
"Goddess here, so no, not human any more. So, trying to distract me?" she asked candidly.
"Kind of obvious, huh? But that door is going to close in less than five seconds-" Jack stopped speaking as the girl had disappeared as if she had teleported. He pulled out a walkie-talkie. "Carter, please tell me she did not make it through the security door."
"She made it through, General. The sensors and guards at the door did not even see her, but she just broke the doors off of Elevator Four at the top, then the bottom doors as we are talking and has now broken the door of the Secure Lift and just appeared on the lowest level." Samantha Carter was clicking as rapidly as possible to keep up on the security system, bypassing the Gateroom technician Walter Harriman.
The armored door to the Gate Room was smashed out of the way with a deafening metal clang. It landed across the room with a clamor.
"Holy shit. She just blew through our security like it was not even there," one of the technicians said.
"Jack, she's in the gate room. I don't think we can stop her without our final solution," the colonel called out over the secure com.
"You have got to be kidding me," Jack grumbled as he waited for them to start opening the armored door at the top of the base.
Shelinaria looked up at the control booth. "So it's a gate, not an artifact with Sheila imprisoned within it," she said casually up to Sam and the technicians. "Where does it go?"
"The Stargate goes to any star system in our galaxy that has a receiving gate. So you haven't seen one of these before?" the scientist asked over the PA system. How had she realized it was a gate? Out of the side of her mouth, she mumbled to the senior technician, "Is the gate address we lost SG1 still in the queue to try and dial?"
"If you could dial that address, Colonel Carter, so I can continue after myself?" the young goddess asked after hearing her comment.
"You can hear me, can't you?" Sam said without turning on the PA.
"Well, yes. That glass isn't that thick."
"Unlocking the iris and dial the address, Mr. Harriman," the colonel said without even slightly looking at the safety markers that the threat was standing on the wrong side of.
As it rotated and locked in each chevron, the young girl studied the gate. This was rather incautious, but it was the only way she knew to catch up to herself. She certainly could not just fly there.
What did a god need with a spaceship indeed-
The Stargate activated, blasting out its event horizon to dematerialize anything in front of the portal.
"Did we get her?" Sam asked.
"No, you did not," the goddess replied in a tetchy voice as she floated down from where her body had sent her into the air as a reactive dodge. "Just for that, you get to come with me."
"What!?" The colonel pulled out her service pistol just as the bulletproof and nearly blast proof window was shattered with a punch. There was a feeling of too fast motion but no pain of whiplash and they were suddenly travelling through the stargate to the world that they had lost SG1 on. The stinging from her hand indicated that the gun had been removed during that leave-taking.
"It changes quantum states from physical normal matter and then energy. Interesting." Shelinaria was staring back into the open stargate, frowning as she realize that the slippery strand of fate she was follow was going right back into the gate, twisted in an eye watering manner that indicated that it led off into a closeby alternate reality.
"How the heck did you pick that up from just one trip through the stargate?" Carter demanded. This was really annoying.
The goddess was studying the control console off to the side. It picked up her mental desire to shut the gate off and with a woosh, the event horizon disappeared. "I felt most of that, actually." She started tapping controls, following the pattern of grease marks from the hands that had last dialed.
"Did you ask the Dial Home Device for the last outbound address?" That was technically possible, but they had not really gotten that to work without outside assistance.
"Hand marks on the surface. Sort of like how you can get ATM pin numbers from touchscreens," the goddess remarked. She was studying the new event horizon closely, extending her senses as much as possible. "Hmm. Radio signal with a coded message. On the same frequency that you guys were using."
"I wouldn't know, you kidnapped me before I could grab a radio," Samantha Carter said in a bland tone.
"And our chance of splatting on the 'iris'?" Shelinaria noted the small, subdued gulp on the other woman. "Is quite high it appears."
"You are like some sort of lie detector," the colonel said while glaring at the girl. "But yes, if we went back there we would fail to materialize as the iris is just right beyond the event horizon."
"Ah, so I'm fine. You should stay here though." And then she disappeared.
Sam blinked, then frowned as the event horizon flickered and flashed for just a second.
"Nothing still?" General Hammond.
The operator shook his head. "Wait, there was some sort of energy that has been detected, but the computers can't agree what it was."
"A transmission?" the leader asked as he looked down at the stargate.
So the figure that appeared down in front of the locked down iris was quite a surprise. She looked up at the bald general. "No, not a transmission. I'm impressed your sensors could even pick up my incorporeal form. So another alternate world, but on a more strictly scientific... axis. That must have been why I could not easily walk through the shadow realities to here."
"And who, young lady with glowing hair, are you?" Hammond demanded over the overhead.
"Shelinaria, goddess of Excellence and Battle. I'm looking for myself. In a confusing sort of way," the goddess explained.
"You would have been slightly more believable if you had said you were an Ancient," the general replied in an amused, dry tone.
"Ancient? I'm thirteen. Or just weeks, if you go from my apotheosis. Or is that the name of an actual race? That's pretty stupid, if it is."
"You've been a goddess for just a few weeks? Nevermind, I don't want to know- Jackson, just the man I wanted to see. Go down and talk to the goddess that materialized through the stargate."
Daniel Jackson blinked as he looked over to Hammond, then nodded. "Since she's talking, we are going to negotiate?"
"That is the idea," the general said patiently.
It took a moment for Daniel to get down into the main room in front of the stargate. At some point the gate had closed. "So where are the rest of your SG1?" he asked curiously.
"The rest of my what? SG probably stands for stargate. So teams or squads sent through the stargate? And militarily named sequentially? Hmm. And the version of myself that I followed here is part of this group. Interesting." Her eyes (with glowing blue-green irises) narrowed as she studied him. He wasn't military.
"You just traveled through a stargate to get here? How did you do that?" the archeologist asked very carefully in a too-casual tone.
"I arrived in the other me's dimension and followed her through. I have to admit, I thought they may have been keeping her imprisoned." She gave an artfully cute shrug of her shoulders. "So I may have overreacted and then took... aggressive action to follow her trail through the stargate. I only left bruises and material damage though." She suddenly grinned at him. "Well, and probably wounded egos for trumping their fairly mundane security."
"Dozens of soldiers armed to the teeth with assault rifles and massive armored doors are... mundane?" the bespectacled academic asked in muted horror.
"Well, yes. No huge monsters the size of mountains, ravenous and bloodthirsty undead or bestial giants. I was dealing with normal people with guns when I was just a heroine, much less a demigoddess." She tilted her head as the academic thought over what she said for a moment.
"What are your intentions here, exactly?" Daniel asked intently.
"To talk to the shard of myself that is here to figure out a way to reintegrate my... our soul nondestructively."
"And destructively doing that is, I take it, bad."
"Yes, I don't want to accidentally kill her," Shelinaria said bluntly. Or myself.
"Oh."
Cameron Mitchell ambled into the room full of SG1 analogues. "Can I get the Sheila that was filling in for Carter? I think you're the only one."
The more skinny and lithe girl among all of the blonde Samantha Carters stood up. "What's going on? I was passing on how to make advanced neutrino ion generators."
"The Asgard told you how to make those?" the 'native' Cameron asked.
"No, I figured that out from Atlantis. It's part of its secondary power supply. I think the Asgard improved it for their own use though. So what is going on, Col. Mitchell?" Sheila asked.
"You showed up wanting to talk to yourself. Considering it's Tuesday and what has already happened, that's not even too weird. She says she's a goddess looking for herself. Of course, she has the glowing hair thing going on all the time." Cameron had been talking animatedly as they walked down the concrete hallways.
"I could do that, but I figured it would freak out people too much. And I still need to figure out a way back to my own spacetime." Sheila then waved her hand in front of her face and her hair started glowing.
"Yeah, that is pretty freaky." The colonel frowned. "She doesn't seem to be from a reality where the Stargate Command exists. I kind of thought it was one of those things that was going to exist in all these alternate dimensions," Cameron mused aloud.
"Oh, not even slightly. With an infinite amount of possibilities, the Stargates and the Ancients are still only a small subset of infinities." Sheila raised an eyebrow ts the massive, armored door that led to the Stargate room. They were quite thoroughly locked. "She isn't lowering her presence in the mortal world. That's... possibly quite dangerous."
"Is she going to blow up?" the leader of SG1 asked.
"No, it's potentially more dangerous than that. But she probably has a reason," the slightly older analogue of Sheila said as the armored door finally cranked opened into the gate room.
"Because guns are so every non-threatening," Shelinaria said to them as they entered.
"I'm sorry?" Cameron asked, sounding confused.
"She was responding to our conversation, as she was obviously listening in." The youngest and temporary member of SG1 looked at the slightly shorter version of herself. "So exactly why are you... being so forceful in your presence here?"
"I thought you were locked up here so I bypassed the security on your last world and here. Hmm. You are lacking a few items I possess, so you appear to be a divergence further back in the past. But you are a full fledged goddess." Shelinaria frowned at the slightly metallic tinge of smell of the same metal as the Stargate was made of.
"I accelerated my apotheosis just a bit with the Ancient's ascension genetic modifications. So I'm sort of ascended," Sheila said as she leaked her own essence within her to fully intrude on the base three-dimensional mortal world. "So would you be able to return me to my own time and space?"
"Most likely, if we are careful. I accidentally absorbed a young heroine version of myself in a world that had vampires running things in the background, but I think I have a solution. Can you make a battle duplicate of yourself?" the girl in the black and gold trim uniform asked.
"I think so."
Cameron, Sam and Daniel all shared a look of confusion. At least until both girls seemed to take a non-step and suddenly there were twice as many of both of them.
"So you are thinking of having these aspects merge, but since they aren't truly us, if destroyed, we might be able to merge without critically destroying ourselves. I like it. But what about getting me back to that Azlanti bastard that stranded me in this set of realities?" Sheila to the left side said as she put her fists on her hips.
"Time travelling a few years is not hard," the other goddess replied blandly.
Both 'other' Sheila's looked excited at that. "You cracked time travel? You can make a time machine?"
"I could have-"
Sam interrupted here. "You can make a time machine?" That was something even the Ancients had not mastered as a race.
"I could have, but this I got the old fashioned way," Shelinari said, shooting the older blonde scientist a frustrated glare.
"Oh, you stole it," Sheila said with a laugh.
"Of course. Using Cronus's ichor, I forged a relic that allows me to control time. But we need to see if we can merge or not."
Two versions, aspects in quantum states of the two goddesses met in the middle. They each raised a hand, palm forward, to grasp them. And reality shook as if struck by a cosmic bell. Invisible, intangible but still shaking the world.
Daniel staggered backwards. "My god. What are they doing?"
Light, brighter than the sun, had erupted from where their hands were joined. Both of their faces were tense and tight with concentration as they tried to keep themselves from being erased from existence. It was a unsubtle struggle that shook the aether.
The Ancients and the Ori sensed something happening in the galaxy that had been hidden for such a long time.
And in between one moment and another, the two goddesses holding hands ceased to exist at the moment of merging. And then the rush of memories struck the two remaining alternate aspects.
"Years living on a planet by yourself?"
"You are twelve? That's so unfair," the older teen said in frustration.
General Hammond felt a tick above his left eyebrow, something that always was a sign that his high blood pressure was getting out of control.
"So... it worked?" Daniel asked, interrupting the too confusing conversation.
An airman looked up from the phone he had answered in the control booth. "General Hammond? We've got a situation."
With a sparkle, the SG-1 Sheila disappeared.
"Asgardian transport beam?" Shelinaria asked to make sure her new memories were fully accurate.
"The Daedelus just left orbit and is headed out at full speed, sir," an operator called out.
They were only gone fifteen minutes. The 'evil' SG-1 had planned meticulously, hacked the records of the local Stargate Command and stole their ship. And three teams of SG-1 (Sheila's own team, the native team and one that she got the best feeling in their stories from) all appeared on the ship before it left transport range and quickly captured SG-1 'Dark'.
They were desperate, as they were losing against the Ori and they gotten the idea to steal resources that they had missed in their time by travelling to others. Even if that left the reality they were visiting in trouble.
With the missing puzzle of who had instigated the trick to switch dimensions, it was fairly easy to setup up the Stargate to send people home. The native members of SG1 had done the lion's share of the work after the SG Sheila had told them how.
The two very young goddesses were watching closely as everyone was being sorted out in the gateroom, both of them suddenly felt a massive pull. In the blink of an eye, they thumped into the dusty ground outside of a diner under the desert sun.
"What the hell?" the girls echoed each other as they stood up.
The door was opened by a waitress. "This is neutral ground. We want to talk about you two mucking up things and starting a war between galaxies."
Both girls grunted slightly in exertion as they pushed off the ground. "They're imposing us to lower ourselves to mortality," Shelinaria said.
"I think they limit themselves too, but we are heavily outnumbered here," Sheila said to her connected counterpart.
They both dusted off their knees and then walked into the cool dark room. One side of the room was filled with far too many normal looking humans with varying normal dress to fit the space while the other had robed men and women that seemed to convey something of a religious bent.
"These are the interlopers? They are ascended, so have broken the armistice. Why should we not go to all out war?" the leader in robes on the right demanded.
"Because they are not affiliated with either of our groups, but interlopers from beyond our scope. Luckily, they don't wish to stay here. If they leave within the next twenty-four of their subjective time we will not move to imprison them for eternity," one of the Ancients said.
"Unacceptable," the spokesman for the Ori declared. "By negotiation, the owners of that realm shall forfeit a valued position or place. We declare Earth forfeit, to be destroyed immediately."
"No. Outside interference was noted as possible and planned for. If the alien interference can be removed from our domain without greatly tilting the balance, no penalties were to be levied," the Ancient noted to counter the demand.
"It's a great game, played by careful rules," Sheila said with narrowed eyes.
"I'm pretty sure that Ares would have jumped across to attack the other side by now," Shelinaria noted.
"She saved the Asgard," the Ori leader snapped back.
"Who are still woefully limited to just the physical realms of the unascended, so essentially are equal in importance to the Tauri and your entire galaxy of followers," was the calculated reply.
The two halves of the once singular race, ancient beyond belief, glared at each other.
"We should just destroy them utterly." The Ori were quite furious at this point.
"They did not join our war and in fact have only dealt with the mortals and one renegade. This exaggeration makes me wonder if you are so confident on your power... or are bluffing. Remaking our galaxy may be a bother, but it would allow us to correct so many mistakes." The Ancient Altarian seemed poised and composed as he stated his chilling position.
"Then have them begone. Twenty-four hours subjective, out of our dominion. Otherwise we will destroy them and start all out war," the Ori declared.
With that, the Ori all disappeared in the blink of an eye.
"Will you be able to remove yourself from our Continuum?" the Ancient spokesperson asked curtly.
"Um, maybe?" Sheila said. "Shelinaria here has some abilities I didn't have, but did not have some of my ascended abilities I've been developing."
"We just need to get back to the planet you arrived on originally. Then we'll be fine. We won't have any problems with the Ancients in the near alternate realities as we pass through, will we?" Shelinaria asked curiously.
"We are not so limited to just one simple existence, like you gods of the mystic in the far realities. I am here and many other places, for we understand things far more than you can imagine. So we will know." The Ancient tilted his head. "You have twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes left."
Both girls glared even as they stepped out of the diner that was nowhere and back to Stargate Command.
"Whoa," Mitchell said as they appeared in a flash of light in the main gate room. "What happened to you two? We've been holding your team back."
Sheila's Mitchell had that look 'we're on the clock'. "Can we get the short two minute version?"
"The Ascended Ancients and the Ori have given us twenty-four hours to leave this neck of reality or the Ori get to vaporize Earth," Sheila said bluntly. "So let's go."
"This Earth we're leaving, right?" Vala said in a fairly serious (for her) voice.
"Any Stargate Earth. So back to our mystic end of the multiverse. Which should not be that hard. So let's go," Sheila said impatiently.
The native Colonel Cameron blinked at that. "Walter, this team just hit top priority. They go home now," he said as he looked up at the command booth.
"Sir?" the bald technician asked.
"Now, please? I'm not doing this just because it makes your work harder."
The other SG-1 teams were pushed back a bit, even the the ones with the eight tall robot in primary colors with a red emblem on its chest.
The gate was calibrated to send them back, locked on and activated with a 'ka-woosh'.
"Oh, I sorta grabbed your Carter as I left your Earth," Shelinaria said as they walked up to the gate.
"Why did you do that, Sheila-Henderson?" Teal'c asked formally.
"She tried to vaporize me with an event horizon and I took it a little personally. She's not hurt, but she's probably a bit stuck. And I go by Shelinaria now," the younger goddess said as they stepped through the stargate.
Sheila sighed. "Misunderstanding meeting number two. And she broke into the Mountain."
"Yes, she did," Samantha Carter said, her hands on her hips from where she stood by the dial home device. "At least she found you."
"They weren't that far from heading back on their own. But the two of us have to leave as quickly as possible," Shelinaria said. She grinned impishly suddenly. "The fate of Earth depends on it."
Vala just started snickering at that.
The stargate was flickering green only to disrupted as a lithe figure was flung out the portal in a tangle of limbs to slam into the vines of the jungle thirty feet away.
Sheila sputtered and then spat out a leaf. "Ugh. Where am I?" The fifteen year old looked around, blinking at the watery portal. It flickered twice...
...then shut off.
"Uh, oh," she said.
On the other side of the portal, which was a much more standard swirl of green energy floating in front of an obelisk, the demigod Mendezi Alphonse smiled in the basement of his creepy mansion.
"And good riddance to bad rubbish," the Azlanti said with a sneer even as he cleaned off his obsidian knife.
The humming from behind him was quite ominous with its heartbeat. Mendezi turned around just in time to catch a bolt of black energy in the face. His headless corpse skidded across the ground as a strange humanoid lowered his arm and the high tech cannon sealed back up inside the gauntlet.
"Jnaxk twaanis," the vaguely blueish bug-looking being said in satisfaction. He started to walk to the location where the portal had been.
The appearance of two girls with glowing hair had him readying his weapons at them.
"Looks like he beat you to dealing with your enemy," Shelinaria said conversationally. She winced as glowing lines appeared across her body and started to flicker. Instantly she started to reduce her legendary presence in reality.
"I agree. And good riddance is right," the (slightly) older goddess said.
"Shelinaria." Its multifaceted eyes seemed to study both of them. "Gods," it hissed out, then disappeared with a crack of imploding air.
The half-ascended goddess blinked at that. "What was that?"
"Possibly an enemy. I didn't feel anything mystical from him at all. He might as well have been a rock," the girl in fatigues said with a rueful grin.
"Considering Tsukyo can sweet talk guns, that's not really saying much," the younger girl said with a roll of her blue-green eyes.
"Really?" The older girl looked around. "Does everything seem a bit dark and washed out?"
"The only place that I've been to that doesn't look like that is my native reality," Shelinaria said carefully.
"Shadow-shadow that darkly flickers on the wall, real and unreal all in one..."
"You are real," the younger girl countered.
"But not as real?" The other goddess studied 'herself'. "And why did you weaken yourself right now? With an enemy around that just killed a demigod?"
"I was probably going to start dying again. The goddess stuck at Apotheosis..." This 'sucked', as Tsukyo would say, Shelinaria thought to herself.
"This is just an offshoot, a reflection of reality. True reality." The sixteen year old was thinking furiously. "It really did not help, did it?"
"Probably not." She was going to have to become a monster wasn't she?
Sheila put her hands on her 'doppelganger's'. "I think it would gnaw at me, knowing that I'm not as real as I could be. And that 'reality' still needs saving."
"It will kill you," Shelinaria said in horror.
"No, because we will still exist, casting a shadow across realities." She started to glow red, suffusing with power.
The younger goddess released her legend back to full power. A single crack of red was glowing star bright, absorbing the older girl. With a thundering boom, the basement full of arcane implements (and those of bloody murder) was rocked by an explosion of magic.
Shelinaria lay kneeling on the ground, one shaking hand on the ground. A hand that clenched, then punched the stone floor to leave a small crater in the rock. Trembling she stood back up and pushed hard to leave this wretched place, filled with death and evil magic. There was no scenery to change, no path to take without finding the door.
So she pushed harder, more frantically as she relived the life of a young girl that just wanted to help save humanity from uncaring and alien monsters from beyond the stars. With a snap, she started her journey back; one step at a time.
Hundreds of miles away, the being in pearlescent blue armor studied the information his nanite swarm told him what had happened.
The Destroyer's weakness might lead to a decisive victory. And she did not know him yet. She was a blight upon reality, contaminating the quantum foam and spreading her vile delusions and mysticism. Terna-Kar had sworn to destroy her, because she was a dire threat to his master plan.
Upon his singularity point engine recharging, he blinked back into the room. Gone, just as his nanomachines had told him. His multifaceted eyes studied the room with senses far beyond the limited science that this world boasted. Reality showed where it was destabilized.
Small devices in his shoulders and hips activated, starting to warp and shear hyperspace. The petals of the space-warp carefully unwound, spinning wider and faster like a daisy or propellers of an airplane.
Terna-Kar stepped through onto a blasted ruin of New Orleans. The dune sea to the south disappeared far off into the distance.
"I will have vengeance, Shelinaria. If I have to hunt your pasts for a thousand thousand years, you will pay for the destruction of my world," the strange being said.
Now to continue the hunt. Cleated feet crunched down the ruins under the red sun, ignoring what had happened here in this far lost Earth.
