"Gatemage!!!" Spaniel called out, glaring at the writer before him. The young woman started, looking up from the website she was at. She whipped around to look at the figure behind her. The Maog was in the shadows, but she could still see him. "Gatemage, we need to talk," The young woman turned completely around, focusing on Spaniel.
"Sorry, what about, Spaniel?" Gatemage asked, folding her hands on her lap and leaning back in her chair in a businesslike manner. Then she blinked rapidly. "One mo, Spaniel," she tilted her head back and put some drops in each of her reddened eyes. Once she wiped away the bit that had caught on her eyelashes, Gatemage nodded in acknowledgement of Spaniel who began to talk.
"Gatemage, we've been patient, but you've locked us up in a closet for almost a year! You've forgotten about us! Just because we're not from Earth doesn't make it so we don't have feelings! Crack, Tam, Teralk and I have had it! At first, we were just waiting, but then Tam and Crack began to have a relationship, and do you realize how bad it's gotten for Teralk and me? If they keep up with the relationship, Teralk and I will be babysitting! I'm NOT going to be able to deal with that! Gatemage, please, give us something to do!!" Spaniel began to pant. Gatemage blinked tiredly.
"Okay, will do. Can you wait another day, Spaniel?" she looked at the clock on the wall, it was after midnight, and she was beat. The Maog nodded reluctantly and Gatemage smiled. "Okay, Spaniel, I'll work on your story tomorrow... just let me get to bed, I feel like I've just run a marathon. I'm totally beat. My suggestion... keep Crack and Tam apart tonight, okay? G'night" she mumbled as she stumbled over to the stairs. Spaniel rolled his eyes and helped the young writer up the three flights of stairs to her room.
"I'm going to go tell the others, you can make it to bed by yourself, right, Gatemage?" he asked concerned.
"Yeah. You go... Separate... I'll get back to work with you tomorrow, promise. okay, Spaniel?" Gatemage replied. Spaniel nodded and ran down the stairs out of Gatemage's sight. She sighed, got into her pajamas and sat down on her bed, which was near flush to the floor. "Now what?" she asked herself, holding her head in her hands as if it weighed a ton, "I've run out of funny things to say!" she shook her head slightly, out of hopelessness.
"Mage," a familiar voice said, Gatemage looked at her wall, the calendar on it in particular, wondering how the picture had changed position. "Why don't you sleep on it?" the image of Dan Payne, the actor who played the Kull warriors and other characters on Stargate SG-1 and the überWraith on Stargate Atlantis, said. This convinced Gatemage that it was time to get some sleep, not because he said it, but because she was sure that she needed sleep to stop herself from hearing things. Watching the image return to his proper condition, Gatemage shook her head again, going to the bathroom to remove her contacts before she went to sleep. After returning her vision to her natural less-than-her-arms-length radius of clearness, she stumbled into her bed-space, which was in fact a closet that she had moved her bed into because she was tired of her sister's sloppiness resulting in a bed with her sister's dirty shirts in it, having not been there when Gatemage made her bed and the bed not being unmade until she got into it and found the shirts. Turning off the light, Gatemage made her way back to the bed in the pitch-black closet, laying down on her bed and wrapping herself in the blankets. Sighing, Gatemage closed her tired eyes and, within a few seconds, was fast asleep.
Sitting in a holding room, HELPNO-1 was trying to figure out what was going on. Several hours later Crack was still muttering. "I don't get it," Crack said to the rest of HELPNO-1, "they look almost exactly the same," he thought about it for a moment, they could almost smell his brains burning with the effort to put forward a thought, but apparently, Crack's brain was able to come up with an idea. "I know!"
"What, sir?" asked Tam, looking up from the odd child's toy that the people of this... they called it SGC... had seen fit to give to HELPNO-1, apparently, the one who looked like Crack (Jack was he called?) liked to play on this type of toy... he had called a Gameboy. It was similar to the stratagem simulator called a Situcrator that was used in training, or like the child's toy called a Frannroy.
"We're in an alternate reality," he said confidently, he wore a smile that looked like he was trying to smirk, but got a severe cramp as he tried to do so and was still trying to hold the smirk. It was an amusing sight, and the rest of HELPNO-1 had a hard time refraining from peals of laughter as they looked at Crack's face. That is to say, Tam and Spaniel had trouble, for Teralk did not often laugh.
"So?" Spaniel asked, trying to grasp what this do with anything. He was plainly confused and seeing the confused Maog only made Tam quiver with more laughter, for a confused Maog is quite the sight. Spaniel then shot Tam a warning glance which helped to cure her giggles.
"We have to get out of here!" Crown'Heel crowed triumphantly. He shot his hand up into the air, a painful thing because he was rather tall for a Spaceball. His hand hit the ceiling. Tam and Doctor Traction winced, while the Rat'ta was, like usual, unmoved.
"I'm sorry, Crack, but how are we supposed to do that?" Spaniel said, being logical, unlike Crack. Teralk raised his eyebrow, tilting his head slightly off to the right. Tam paused the game she had become immersed in (Super Mario, similar to the game Suraara that her nieces and nephews played) wards and look expectantly at Crack. Crack seemed a bit shaken that everyone was looking at him so attentively.
"I..." he felt around his pockets, seeing if the SGC people had missed anything he carried. His fingers closed around something and he pulled it out of his pocket. It looked like a toy rat. Smiling smugly, Crack pulled the tail of the rat and a beam of light shot out, hitting the security cameras in the room. "They missed out Rat'nik'tels..." his grin grew wide as the rest of HELPNO-1 pulled their Rat'nik'tels out of their pockets. Teralk pulled what looked like several collapsible camping cups from his multitudinous pockets. He attached them and placed a Rat'nik'tel within a compartment in the collection of "cups". When he finished assembling them, he stepped forwards, holding his newly assemble weapon. "I didn't know Rat weapons were collapsible..." Crack muttered, shrugging.
"Alright, Spaniel, I've got to get some sleep, I wrote a lot more than I've written in a WHILE. Let me get back in the groove of it. It's late, Spaniel. And I gave you guys something. I'm beat, tell me it's alright that I go to sleep, please!" Gatemage pleads the grumpy looking Spaniel who is standing over her shoulder. The Maog sighs.
"Fine, go to bed, Gatemage, but you have to promise to write more soon. You don't have to deal with Tam and Crack like I do. At least they will be working with the story... how short a time it covers rather than... what they've BEEN doing," he rolled his eyes and scratched at one of his furry ears. "Go to bed. You need sleep to come up with more ideas... And, please do, because Teralk will come next time you need urging... and as the writer, I know you don't want to be beaten by one of your characters! So on to bed, Gatemage," Gatemage smiled at him and thanked him. Spaniel nodded and turned to leave, his tail whipping the doorway has he left the room. Sighing, the tired young lady went to post the bit of the story she'd been working on so that Spaniel wouldn't have to send Teralk to complain. That done, Gatemage went up to bed.
