No Tendo: A Fusion Tale
by Greylle (Kestral) and Kender_SciDISCLAIMER: all rights, copyrights, dittorights, implied rights, etcetera are owned by the original owners of such. Even if they are altered significantly, they'll be returned at the end of shooting before you know it.

Also note that some text in the original came in different colors, but doesn't support that function as far as i can tell.

Chapter 7: Traveling Man


Meanwhile, on T272-349 Ranma was pointing around one corner of the maze surrounding the Stargate at what looked like a terrestrial park, except that it was frozen over ages ago. Wide swatches of what had once been filled with the native approximation of grass were crossed by walkways and the occasional tree. A small water feature took up a spot at an intersection, and signs stood as silent words from the individuals who'd placed them. But the whole thing was covered in a layer of ice that had obviously been there for a very long time.

"That seems really creepy..." Hotaru whispered.

Ranma nodded. "You don't have to tell me twice. That's just something not right about it."

"It's because it's dead. I can imagine people being here, and they're... not. Something like that's spooky..."

"Sort of like when you're at school when everyone else has gone home," Shion commented.

"Exactly!"

"What you're feeling isn't totally because of the emptiness. It's because we're invading a quiet that's been here for a very long time."

The violet eyed girl wrapped her arms around herself and shivered from something other than the cold. "I didn't realize... Now I'm thinking of graveyards..."

"Don't worry," Ranma told her, "We'll keep each other safe."

"Thank you..."

"No problem."

"But that may be one," Al said and nodded down towards one of the buildings in the distance.

"What d'ya mean?"

"It looks almost like a..."

"'Pyramid'," Shion finished and frowned. "It's odd though. It looks almost like took Aztec, Egyptian and Cambodian ruins and squashed them together to make a building style..."

"That shouldn't have happened... should it?"

"I don't know, but Doctor Jackson did say that there were probably decendants of the ancient peoples the System Lords took from Earth still out on some planet or another. And Teal'c did say that they were conquering worlds that weren't controlled by the Goa'uld, so..."

"They had to be free in the first place."

"Exactly. But that's not what worries me," the scientist admitted.

"What do you mean?"

"This is in one piece. All of it is in one piece. If these conditions were due to a gradual shift in the orbit, I would have thought that there would have been more damage."

"Maybe they figured out what was going on and escaped while they could. Leaving everything as is."

"That is a possibility."

#Can I just say something though?# Boneparte asked. #Please be careful. This place might be worse than just being cold...#

"Oh?"

#It might be bad for humans, but that doesn't mean that there aren't nasty things that can live like this.#

"I have to agree with him. This is another planet, and we don't know what kind of things are out there. We can shoot them, but I'd kind of like a clear shot," Leona told them.

Shion gave off a small chuckle. "And I'd want to give you one on any monsters or defenses they left to greet us."

"That's all I ask for."

"I'd prefer not to face something that'd eat me, thank you," Al complained.

"Sorry, but if you wanted to pick the place to go to, you should have stayed home," Shion informed him.


T272-349:

"No, that's it, we can't go much further without additional air tanks," said Shion, trudging back towards the Stargate.

#At least we know what happened to the inhabitants.#

"Not much comfort in that," said Ranma.

"Whatever happened, they had a little warning," said Al.

"Fat lotta good that did 'em," said Leona, shifting her rifle around nervously.

#Any ideas what happened?#

"Yeah," said Shion. "Try this theory out. This world here is a pastoral one, high civilization, very pacificistic. Great view of a nearby globular cluster. Problem is that a brown dwarf or other gravitational body goes through their system. This planet gets shifted out of orbit. So instead of a roughly circular one, it makes an orbit that goes past a Mars equivalent for their 'winter' and about 'Venus' at the height of 'summer'."

"So there would be a narrow 'spring' and 'autumn' that would be inhabitable," said Al.

#This world does not appear to have much in the way of resources to recommend it.#

"No, but surviving technology is available here. Not everything's been wrecked from the temperature variations," said Al. "Though it's a bit primitive for us to get anything useful."

"That pyramid is too far off. The next team will need extra oxygen tanks, maybe full space suits and some kind of rover." Shion went to the DHD and began punching out symbols.


Colonel Maybourne could be a real weasel. There were things he wanted, and ideals he would fight for. He may have kept this image of himself, sitting on a streambank somewhere as he fished away a lazy afternoon. That was his retirement goal, if he lived that long and didn't have something come up. In the meantime he had to earn that.

Other than that one of his core points was the concept of 'peace through superior firepower' - as long as the USA had the superior weaponry and technology - then it was his own country that would have the best future in terms of economic and military might. As long as that was the case, his own people and country were safer than might otherwise be the case. If his own country did something that struck him as wrong, he consoled himself as not having all the facts. He didn't like unpleasant truths and shied away from them whenever he could get away from them.

It didn't make him evil, but it did make for conflicts between him and those with other philosophies.

However, events had been playing into another Old Dream of his. When he'd been a kid he'd watched Astro Boy and some of those other Japanese cartoons. Hadn't seen much lately, but he'd remembered Raideen and Danguard Ace and some of that stuff.

The prospect of having a REAL (all caps and double underlined) Giant Robot - or platoon of same?

"The Bolo is not giving us all the details of his higher systems technology," complained a scientist.

"What do you expect?" Colonel Maybourne asked. "These Artificial Intelligences are giving us details on technology which are several generations more primitive than their own - that's completely true. On the other hand this is stuff we can use NOW without having to spend a lot of time back-engineering. What about those fuel cells?"

"Tricky to recharge sir," said a tech as she looked up from her bench. "We could make replaceable banks of them though. Have trucks on the field pull the old ones, put new ones in - then scoot back to where sufficient resources can recharge the spent cells."

"Will it work?" asked the Colonel, looking back towards the scientist.

"Well, I suppose it could," admitted the scientist.

"Ah," sighed the Colonel. He could just picture it. Multi-ton walking tanks that could protect soldiers from enemy fire while looking big and impressive enough that some enemies would run just from the sight of them! Since there were engineering and repair projects that were undertaken by military personnel, Giant Robots were a distinct possibility. For the ground troops - something like the power armor from Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" perhaps?

"Why do we have to have a simulation field that looks like downtown Tokyo though?" asked the scientist.

"Doctor, there are some things which simply have to be," said Colonel Maybourne. "That's one of them."


"We've got a signal - it's SG-X," said Br'tnni.

"Open the iris," commanded Chupak.

As the figures waddled (still dressed in layers of clothing) through the Gate, Chupak gestured to them. "Hurry up. There's a storm about to break and we want to shut down the electrical equipment to avoid shorting things out."

Several of the team members looked up at the grayish-green clouds and quickly began shucking off their cold weather gear.

Bonaparte looked up and came to the same conclusion. #This could be a problem.#


"This is our first indication of what the city-builders looked like," said Specialist DeCamp while Specialist Lieber filmed. "Assuming that this is an adult, they were approximately four and a half feet tall. Skull shape has components of both primate and canine development. Muzzle and teeth structure are particularly canine. Note that the individual has a tail extending from the spine. Stocky build, possibly used to a higher gravity than we're used to. Get a pan of the room, will you please?"

Leiber obligingly did a slow turn of the room, recording everything for later dissection.

"The room was hermetically sealed," continued DeCamp. "Dust precipitated out of the air while it was sealed off. One reason we're reluctant to disturb anything. Sterile environment - little evidence of bacteriological breakdowns. We've had to shoo away those scarab beetles several times now - they're apparently natural scavengers. We're going for the moment with some sort of neutron or radiation weapon utilized here. Whatever hit was able to kill off the bacteria here, and there's evidence that the room was sealed from the inside. Whoever this was, he knew something was wrong and barricaded himself in here. Would you focus on the burn?"

Leiber focussed the camera and zoomed in on a spot on one wall.

"The scorched area is approximately six inches across. Going to the other side of this wall, the area is discolored and weathered - measuring nine inches across. Seems to support the idea of a burst of hard radiation. The wall itself is made of local stone and measures nearly fourteen inches in thickness. Current radiation count indicates nothing special above background."

Leiber pulled back out into the hallway, followed by DeCamp.

"We're sealing this area off again. We'll have to carefully go in and catalog everything to avoid inadvertantly destroying something."


Not all the Death Gliders had set down near the community on Refuge.

The problem was that there was not a lot of available land on the planet. Most of it was ocean. At its deepest point was a fault-line canyon that reached three kilometers below sea level. There were large stretches where the sea floor was less than three meters underwater.

One problem caused by this was the weather. Storms were frequent and violent. The settlement was largely protected by mountains on three sides. The few islands and stretches of land not near the encampment were not so well protected.

Life as a Jaffa was harsh, but a Death Glider pilot named D'anna was discovering it could get worse. MUCH worse.

As the storm raged around her, she knew misery that she'd never really experienced prior to this. Winds in excess of one hundred twenty kilometers per hour whipped sheets of water that reduced her visibility to mere feet. The roar of water and wind made hearing useless. Hunkered down in the relative shelter of a set of trees, D'anna had been tough and clever enough to make her own way in the male dominated Jaffa warrior life. That still didn't cut her any slack in the current environment.

She therefore couldn't see the little thing trundling across the grass, it's aerodynamic shape sloughing off the wind. She didn't see it crawl up to her Death Glider. She didn't hear or see it connect with her ship's control systems.

The only thing she knew for certain was that when the storm had finally abated - she was drenched and sore and cold and her Death Glider was gone.


One of the scouting teams in the mountains had radioed back about an approaching storm, giving the people of Refuge some time to prepare for it. When the clouds had come sweeping in, more than one of the villagers had been grateful for the warning. Lightning was mainly cloud-cloud, and rarer than it might otherwise be. Partly due to the low amount of dust particles in the atmosphere which was itself due to the small amount of land mass on the planet.

It made up for lightning with wind and rain, though much of the storm's fury had abated when it had hit those mountains. Those from Chulak were unused to the gusts of fierce wind that scattered things about. Those from Japan regarded it as a "baby typhoon" and were singularly unimpressed. Those who had gone through hurricanes or tornado weather made sure everything was fastened securely and moved their work indoors. Others stared at nature's fury.

Bonaparte weighed enough and was waterproof enough that the storm was merely inconvenient. His only observation on it was that he was going to hate trying to get the mud off of his treads.

The BOLO merely worked out a translation dictionary for the humans, wondering why it had taken them this long to ask for one. Human pride, perhaps?

Genma swore at the clouds for interrupting the construction of his martial arts training hall.

On most worlds, the Stargate was out in the open just as this one was. As the storm blew sheets of water across the Iris, plans were being made for a Taur'i structure to be built near the DHD which would shield not only the extra electronics, but provide a guard station beyond the tent currently straining at its anchors.

Fortunately someone had thought to warn Earth about being incommunicado as the storm had approached. Which made someone dialing in at the height of the storm and then failing to send an identification signal all the more worrisome.


Had she been under other circumstances, Minako might have thought that the situation was cool. After all, she had her own room in a secret base, and government officials were thinking of her as a rather important commodity. It was almost like something off of a television show, and had it been on one, she would have been wondering what it would have been like to be that girl.

Instead, she was wondering if there was going to be any way that this could get worse. "Do I really need to be lead around?"

"I would think that you wouldn't want to get lost," Lieutenant Moon replied.

"There is that, but can't I just poke around here, checking it out for myself?"

"No, that would be very bad."

"Why?"

"Other than the fact that they'd get rather mad at you for wandering around a secret installation without an escort or authorization as a member of this place?"

"What can they do?" the blonde muttered, "Keep me as a prisoner?"

"Yes, they can."

"What?"

"A small cell, with only a cot, and maybe a fully visible toilet and sink behind a very heavy metal door could be where you'd be placed. With guards in the halls who are told to shoot you if you attack them."

"Oh..."

"And there are places, like research labs, where, if you stumble in, you'll get yourself hurt, or worse."

"Eeep..."

The military officer shrugged. "Don't worry. So long as you have a guide, you can be certain that you're not going to risk too much. This is a military base, after all."

"Great..."

"But you should like this. I hear that you play volleyball, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, we have a gym of our own. It's not large, but we have top notch equipment. And then to the cafeteria. It might not be much, but there's plenty of variety."

"What? Like frozen foods?"

"No. Like sandwiches, coffee, and plenty of desserts. Somehow, we've got good cheesecake. And they're paying for your upkeep here."

Blinking for a moment, Minako stared at the woman, and then smiled. She was pretty sure that she was going to like her. Though she did have to wonder if there could have been another magical girl the military guys could have bothered.


There was no fairness in the way monsters attacked, at least by what Sailor Moon had experienced. Every time that she had to deal with a yoma, it was always at a time that was inconvenient. They never came out when she was in class and needed an out. Instead, they showed up when she wanted to do something like visit a friend, or go shopping.

At least the fact that she'd been getting many people cheering her on, including some tourists, did raise her spirits. Of course, right then, she was more than a little put out by the 'monster of the day'. Just the idea of dealing with a monster with long hoses for arms that could literally spank her silly, or whip the fuku from her back was not something that she wanted to think about. Heck, she didn't even want to get near it, though that wasn't quite the problem that she was having, as she couldn't get close enough to do anything.

That was until a rather familiar object pierced the hoses and pinned them to a wall.

"Tuxedo Kamen!" she called out, turning to gaze adoringly up at the man standing on the lightpost where he'd tossed his weapon of choice. "You saved me again!"

"Take heart, Sailor Moon. I am always ready to lend a helping hand," the young man in the rather fancy outfit replied.

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome. And now, let's get rid of this evil creature."

"Right! Moon Tiara... ACTION!"


Colonel Drake lowered his binoculars and snorted loudly. "A rose. That guy used a rose."

"It worked, didn't it?" Captain Flint replied with a small shrug.

"But still... Out of all the things that he could use, he uses a flower."

"What? You want to replace all stiletos with bouquets?"

"Of course not, and neither do you," Drake drawled.

"True. But that's not all. I mean, fighting in evening wear is good for the movies, but I'm not about to run out in my dress uniform to my next battle... unless it somehow becomes necessary. Never can be totally sure... Then again, I'm not the goofball he is."

"I know. But it's what we've got to deal with."

"Too bad his little show didn't make much sense..."

"We have to deal with teenaged girls in skimpy outfits who have super powers, and have been fighting energy sucking monsters, and you want 'sense'?"

"Good point," the other man agreed.


The BOLO recovered the third Death Glider, sliding it into a bay and beginning a dissection of all available systems. The BOLO had been designed to do this, on facing new technologies employed by an enemy - it would dissect and analyze and incorporate anything potentially new or useful.

These Taur'i or humans already had some of this technology available to them and were no doubt working out details even now on their homeworld.

Naquadah and naquadria yielded their secrets quickly to the efficient machine intelligence. Metallurgic samples were put under the molecular microscope and eventually discarded as being along the lines of bear skins - so primitive that they didn't have any value at all.

Meanwhile, the remote micros were on their seek and steal mission. If any were captured or couldn't complete their mission - boom. They were all well away from human habitation and seeking those ships which had landed elsewhere on the planet.

The BOLO backtracked as it realized it had found something very interesting in this ship. Very interesting indeed.


Tuxedo Kamen slumped where he'd been hit by the yoma of the week.

Sailor Moon might have tried desperately, recovered then, gone on to defeat the enemy, etcetera. An outside observer wouldn't necessarily think this was likely.

tink tink tink went a little metal ovoid. The yoma glanced down at it.

BOOM!

"Don't lose heart, Sailor Moon!"

!
POOM! POOM!
beep-ping - chiuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

As several large individuals in city camouflage and personal body armor started firing assault weapons (also a shotgun and some kind of raygun) at the yoma, Sailor Moon blinked. "Hah?" She'd seen some movies with guys like this but to say this was unexpected was kind of understating the case.

"You can do it, Sailor Moon! Believe in yourself!"

"Hah?" said both the yoma and Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon couldn't remember this happening in those movies. Nope.

clik clik went a large shotgun as it was brought up within five inches of the yoma's face. BCHOOOM!

"Uhhhhhhhh," said the yoma of the week, currently missing a few pieces.

"Fall back!" said the lead soldier. "Now Sailor Moon!"

"Right!" agreed the fourteen year old girl. She wasn't just a fourteen year old Magical Girl facing an ancient evil. She was a fourteen year old Magical Girl backed up by heavily armed Marines facing an ancient evil.

Hey, she wasn't so proud she was going to turn down some backup just because they weren't teenage girls.


"She got it?"

"Yup. Confirmed these are the same kind of bad guys. Normal weapons cause them to regenerate. Energy weapons seem to disrupt whatever they're using to regenerate. Get any readings on this?"

"Yeah, I'm just trying to make sense of it," said Uematsu. "Look - rose boy there threw a rose. Look at that trajectory though. As straight as a sniper rifle shot. It also penetrated the carapace of the 'yoma'."

Smith nodded. "I saw that. Armor piercing roses. It's just that it's so..."

"Yeah," agreed Uematsu. "You know, this could be a form of superstring manipulation. Vibrational patterns?"

"I don't know, I've heard some martial artists could potentially manage this sort of thing," said Smith. "Coffee?"

"Cream and sugar if you don't mind," said Uematsu.

"So what kind of strangeness did your gadgets and gizmos find?" asked Smith as he fixed up the coffee pot.

"Background radiation dropped to as near nothing as far as my instruments could find," said Uematsu. "From the point the yoma showed up until after the fight."

"What about radios?" asked Smith.

"Same thing. Signals damped down to near nothing. Whatever the two are doing is playing hell with the EM bands," said Uematsu. "Rose Boy lowered emissions further. After the fight we see a return to nearly normal levels, so the yoma was the primary culprit in suppressing the fields."

"Magnetic?" asked Smith, pouring coffee.

"If you'd looked at a compass anywhere near the yoma, it wouldn't give you a reading. Whatever those things do they're negating a lot of energy fields. Now here's an interesting spike. This is when Azuma hit it with that 'zat gun.'"

Smith looked over the page. "Whoa."

"Burst of energy across the spectrum," explained Uematsu. "Another occurs when the yoma 'dies' or discorporates. It's a pity we couldn't set up more extensive equipment, but we'd probably have to capture one to do that."

"Until we know for sure how to kill one, let's not open that particular box," said Smith, making a face.


Minako's room was on Level 15, and she quickly discovered that everyone else on that level shared bunks with other personnel. The restroom and showers were Western-style and communal.

Level 16 was security, and Minako didn't see much of that. Level 17 was apparently something that periodically changed and was a shooting range today. Levels 18 through 20 held laboratories, and Minako was just as glad to skip those. Level 21 was the infirmary, handy to know if she ever got hurt. Level 22 was the mess hall, cafeteria, whatever you wanted to call it. They skipped level 23 as it was a power grid, while level 24 held some little robot gadgets called MALPs and UAVs and other difficult to pronounce words.

Level 25 was another personnel bunks and private rooms level. Other than some guy rushing around trying to find a leak in one of the pipes, it was fairly boring. Level 26 was storage, a few bunks, and the leak. They promptly went up to tell the plumber that he was on the wrong level. Level 27 had a briefing room.

Minako was fairly bored at this point, the only sound she was making at this point was her bubble gum popping as she went along for the ride. Even the fact that her guide at this point was tall and blond and muscular, a Corporal Guile, wasn't that interesting by this point.

"Chevron 6 Engaged," said a loudspeaker as Minako followed her guide into the room.

"Hmmm," said Minako, wondering what that weird thingie was at the end of that ramp.

"This might interest you, Miss Aino," said the Marine, looking amused.

Minako suddenly realized that everyone was looking at her. "Huh?"

"Chevron 7, Engaged," said the same loudspeaker voice.

FWOOOSH CHOOOOM! ripple

"Miss Aino? A little less tightly please."

Minako realized she'd leapt up into the guys arms and was clutching his neck. "Oh. Heh heh. My bad. Sorry."

"Incoming wormhole established," said the loudspeaker voice. "Signal received. It's Refuge. Hotaru's right on time."

Minako watched as someone stepped through the rippling curtain of water and stopped at the bottom of the ramp.

"Can I put you down now, Miss Aino?" asked the Marine.


Wincing slightly, Minako nodded, and had a hard time looking at him as she found her feet touching the floor again. She didn't know which was worse, showing that much surprise, or the likely meaning taken from her leap into his arms. Of course, she couldn't doubt that anyone would be surprised by what she'd just witnessed, she just wished that she could have had some warning.

"Don't worry, Miss Aino," the Marine told her. "Everyone gets surprised by it the first time."

"What is?" she asked.

"It's the Stargate, and since you aren't being pulled away in handcuffs, I guess you are supposed to be here," a young sounding voice commented.

The blonde turned to look and saw a girl a little younger than herself stepping from the ramp and heading her way. That was a rather big surprise, since she hadn't expected any of this, but when she'd seen someone walk out of the water, she'd thought that the person would be... older. "Umm... yeah..."

"Minako Aino, meet Hotaru Tomoe. Hotaru, this is Minako," the corporal commented.

"Uhh... nice to meet you..."

"It's nice to meet you too," Hotaru replied, giving her a friendly smile. "You must be new here."

"Well... sort of. They just brought me here recently."

"From Japan?"

"No, England. My Dad's company needed him there, and so we moved. But I am from there."

"Oh, that's great! My Dad worked here for a long time, so I kind of stayed here with him. It wasn't exactly meant for kids, but the people here were really nice to me."

"I suppose... I'm not used to living underground, if you know what I mean," Minako muttered sourly.

"I do. It's so much nicer living above the surface, isn't it?"

"Yeah, and I wish that I could do so at the moment."

"I know, but they might not keep you here all the time. They might even let you go through the Gate to Refuge!"

"'Through the Gate'?"

"Uh-huh!" the younger girl chirped. "This is really an alien transport machine. You put the address for one into another, and some sort of wormhole tunnel thing connects them. You walk through and get to go to other worlds just by taking a step! And there are thousands of them around!"

"'Thousands'?"

"Yes, but the people who made them vanished a long, long time ago. So other races get to use the network system, like us and the Goa'uld," Hotaru said, and let her expression speak about the latter group.

"Are they these 'Go-Auld' really that bad?"

"Worse! They enslave other races and make them worship them as if they were gods! And they invade and take over people's bodies to use as their own."

"They do?!" Minako gasped, somehow unable to deny the girl's words either due to what she'd just seen, or because she seemed to be so... nice and honest. "Sounds like they're monsters."

"Trust me. They are. But why are you here?"

"She's like you. She... transforms," Guile answered.

"You do?! You change into that sort of outfit, and get those powers? I didn't realize that there were any others like me around!"

"You... transform?" the elder girl weakly murmured.

Hotaru nodded. I get this outfit to wear that my father isn't too happy about..."

"And magical powers..."

"Exactly!"

"Wow... I thought that it was only my mission..."

"Huh?"

"I'm supposed to be out protecting this planet..."

"Who told you that?"

"My advisor, Artemis. He's the one who gave me the way to use my powers, and tries to tell me what to do, even if he's my... cat... EEEP!" Minako squeaked and slapped her hands over her mouth. "I don't think that I was supposed to just come out and say that!"

"But you did," Guile replied, raising a brow at her.

The blonde just hung her head and whimpered.


Luna watched the white cat in front of her shiver and frowned. "Is something the matter?"

"I just got this really strange chill," Artemis replied, "But I'm not quite sure why."

"Perhaps it's because we've got people interfering where they shouldn't."

"They were trying to help..."

"They weren't Senshi!"

"They had to be some sort of team out to protect the country."

"That still doesn't change the fact that they weren't Senshi."

"So? What else do you expect the government to do?"

"The government? Where do they come into this?!"

The white moon cat shrugged. "They were using guns in Japan. So they had to get permission to do so without concern."

"They could have been people who didn't care about such things in the first place, and they might have gotten hurt, as they aren't Senshi!"

"Yet, they had weapons that actually seemed to hurt the latest yoma."

"They're still involving themselves in Senshi business, and won't know what they're doing," the black feline grumbled.

"You sound like you don't like this turn of events."

"Of course I don't! They're getting involved in things that only Senshi can handle!"

"They seemed to do pretty good from where I was looking."

"Grr... Why aren't you more concerned about this?"

"I don't know... Maybe it's because they made it easier for Sailor Moon to win?"

That took the wind out of Luna's sails, and she looked rather put out by that fact.


Minako and Hotaru were standing in the "shooting range", looking down at the constructed targets.

"They look awfully silly," said Hotaru after a few moments.

"These are representations of some of the things found in Japan right now," said one of the technicians a little defensively.

"Uhm," said Hotaru.

"She's right. They are silly looking," said another technician. "Unfortunately Technician Butcher is also right. These are what they look like."

"So explain again what we're supposed to do," said Minako, still nervously.

"Hotaru has transformed several times now," said Technician Butcher. "Unfortunately, she doesn't have your transformation pen and doesn't have any control over her transformations."

"So how do you transform if not with a pen?" asked Minako of Hotaru.

"I just do it somehow," said Hotaru, looking down at the floor.

"Every time she has accessed these abilities, she has apparently been in the middle of an attack by hostile forces," said the other technician. "I'm Technician Glen Cook, by the way. This is Technician Jim Butcher. My specialty is xenoarchaeology, and Jim is in astrophysics. The devices you see around the room are recording and analyzing devices, trying to determine how your device works so that we can help Hotaru transform when she wants to."

"Ah hah," said Minako, seeing the logic but still not too sure about all this. Only one thing to do. "Venus Power, Make UP!"


whrrrr - Chum! klick!

T'kr'vll'gnee startled from his mid-day drowse at an unexpected sound. What had that been, anyway?

whrrrr - Chum! klick!

Three of his eyes came to rest on the Ancient Ring. It had shifted position? What was that light there?

whrrrr - Chum! klick!

T'kr'vll'gnee sent out an uluation, informing those nearby that something was happening. He shifted position from lying atop the rocks, bringing weight onto his rear and tail so that he could flee if necessary. The Ancient Ring had remained a mute testimony of some unknown civilization for ages untold. Perhaps it was dangerous?

whrrrr - Chum! klick!

Others came, curious. With four of the designs lit up in a comforting kubral coloration, it was clear that the Ancient Ring was doing something. There also seemed to be a disorienting shift in the flow of kra't'kk around the Ring.

whrrrr - Chum! klick!

Five designs were lit. What did this mean? When none were left unlit, would something happen? Some message from the ancient past perhaps? It was known that the Ancient Ring was not built by themselves, for its materials were unknown and the odd dissonance of the flow of kra't'kk around it was unsettling to say the least.

whrrrr - Chum! klick!

Six designs lit. Odd that those parts moved. T'kr'vll'gnee sent a query to the approaching elder - did s/he think that this was dangerous?

whrrrr - Chum! klick! fwooooooosh SHOOOM!

Several of those watching kicked off and leapt backwards, raising their manipulators in gestures of shock. WATER?! Liquid water? But no, there was no trace of that offensive if necessary element showing in the air around the Ancient Ring. Not that the substance would last long out in the open anyway. Therefore they were not all in danger of dying from the substance overload.

Closer inspection revealed that the kra't'kk flow was an incredibly complicated pattern around the ring and fiercely brilliant in the "water" glistening to their eyes.

Then, incredibly, an object emerged from the water and moved on wheels away from the Ring. Any spawnling could see that the thing had its own tapestry of patterns of kra't'kk within it, and it was connected by complex strings to the "water." Some strings flitted from the object, while others sped from the Ring to the object.


Had things progressed normally in this timeline, she would be dead by this point. A young and perky repairer of devices who would have inquired a little too closely and been slain by Apophis' decree. Not even worth a footnote in the way things had developed actually.

Rikku checked her instruments. "The MALP is through. Temperature is reading 115 Celsius. Radiation - high. Air pressure - 450 psi. 6.39 gravities. Atmosphere is heavy in nitrogen, carbon dioxide. Very little oxygen."

"So it is uninhabitable? Pity," said LeGuin. She'd hoped for something more out of the address.

"Uhm, actually, it looks like the inhabitants are trying to get our attention," pointed out Rikku as she stared at the monitors.

"What?" LeGuin stared at the monitors herself before she could formulate a response. "Oh... well, it's definitely not life as we KNEW it."


Genma looked in satisfaction as his new home was built. If it were possible for the Genma Saotome of a Tendo timeline to look over the plans and this place taking shape, he would have been properly envious.

As it was, Genma knew a level of satisfaction in this and was supervising as best he could while mainly remaining out of the way of the craftsmen themselves. He was not an expert stonemason or carpenter or blacksmith. He possessed no great skills in plumbing, setting up electrical systems, or artistic gifts. After a brief attempt at supervising, he simply showed pictures brought back from the computers available at Cheyenne Mountain of various features and stylings that he thought appropriate.

Then Genma Saotome went back to training the younger set of students in the basics of the martial arts. Sticking with what he knew rather than impede the process of his own dream.

Genma Saotome had learned a small measure of wisdom as a result of the Way Of The Observant Thief.

That didn't mean he didn't check up on it from time to time - often he'd nod and make a pleased noise before heading back to the task he felt he was better suited for.

No small or rickety dojo this. He'd have a grand hall for some of it, a practice yard for the rest. He'd have a dojo that was built to last as long as any Japanese cultural asset had lasted - longer than many of those in fact. It'd also be easier to heat and have a furo that would be the envy of some bathhouses. Though the younger students would make do with cold water. More incentive to make it to the advanced levels.

Tough construction too. It would be able to withstand the elements and at least impede Goa'uld attacks when it was done. It might not be able to withstand the full power of a ha'tak strike force, but it would certainly require more than staff weapons to penetrate its defenses.

The quickly constructed sawmill was using the constantly running streams for power, and producing local wood for construction. Of course that was a temporary measure - the real sawmill would be built later using lumber from the temporary one as well as other resources being put together even now.

There were elements of classical Japanese temples, Tibetan monastaries, and other structures thrown into the mix. Genma saw it taking shape and knew that the basics to make it habitable would be done in a week. Finishing it would take a decade or more though - to elevate it to what he considered a proper headquarters for the Anything Goes style.

Genma was careful to wipe the pleased smile off his face before returning to his students. Couldn't let them think he was soft or anything.


Cimmeria was a land of the Norse, and it was Early Industrial in some areas, strictly agrarian pre-Renaissance across more of it.

SG-1 had made contact, and then had to go breaking Thor's Hammer that had guarded the Stargate. Contacts had been made just as they had been made in the unaltered timeline.

There were some differences however. Ripples in the timestream, choices that hadn't been available were now being made.

One of these had been some Cimmerians who had seen the SG teams and wanted to see more of this universe they were a part of. That wanted to bring things home that could improve their lives. That wanted to set up their own explorations.

One of whom was huge. Not huge as in obese. Huge as in this guy was bigger than Teal'c, standing 6'8" tall. Muscled in a way that only steroids and serious dedication to bodybuilding would have accomplished if he had been born on Earth. Tough looking in the manner of someone who could weather the elements like a mountain and who had seen battles without number, and triumphed over them all.

His name was Konan, and he was a Cimmerian.

He had started out life as a blacksmith in a mountain village. In time, he'd learned the warrior arts and gone 'a-viking' in order to find new employment and discover what career path would be best for him. He'd been woodsman, hunter, farmer, warrior, weaponsmith, farrier in that time.

What he was good at, what really seemed to fascinate and intrigue him, was exploring. Well, melee combat was perhaps his forte, but it was the exploring that really piqued his interest.

The Tau'ri weapons were dainty little things. These "triggerguards" would have to be removed to accept one of his fingers on the firing mechanism. The staff weapons seemed overly clumsy but acceptable. At least he could manipulate the controls of these devices.


"You need... remedial classes!" declared the yoma-teacher, making a gesture. "More homework! And more than that - Detention!"

"Aiiieeeeee," shrieked a thoroughly frightened Sailor Moon.

A schoolgirl named Ami reached for her pen.

"Here, miss," said a large fellow coming through the door, quickly reaching her and handing her the little stick.

"What are you doing here? You're too old to be students!" said the yoma-teacher, preparing an attack as several adults entered her classroom.

"Ahem," said one of the figures stepping through the doors. "Where evil beckons, we're there to take it down!"

"For molesting schoolgirls and touching improperly, we be here to hurt you," said a heavily accented other soldier.

"WHAT?!" declared Sailor Moon and Ami together.

"She didn't... did she?" asked Sailor Moon, turning red.

"I DIDN'T!" insisted the flustered teacher-yoma.

"Mercury Power Make UP! For doing things while I was asleep, I... I... can never forgive you!" Ami transformed to Sailor Mercury.

"This situation has gotten completely out of control," observed the yoma. "Class..."

"(She's going for a weapon,)" said the one who didn't speak Japanese and had mangled his opening line. "(Eat hot plasma!)" SHOOOM!

"Sailor Moon!" BLAM! "Do not give up!" bing ping chiuuuuuu! "Your cause is right!" clk-clk CHOOOM! "Your aim is true!" brrrrrrt! "So dust the yoma already!"

"RIGHT!" said Sailor Moon, letting fly with her attack.

Sailor Mercury just stared. A lot.

"Sailor Moon!" called out one of the heavily armed and body-armored Marines. "As long as your cause is righteous, know that the forces of justice shall rally behind you!"

"Right!" said a tremendously cheerful Sailor Moon. It was one thing to be fighting ancient evil demonic beings. It was quite another that she had people with really big guns deferring to HER when she was fighting ancient evil demonic beings. It was actually kind of comforting.

"Uhm, excuse me," said Sailor Mercury. "We don't have to pay for the repairs to the classroom do we?"


"This is all so wrong! Who is that girl? Some kind of yoma?"

"The force is strong in this one."

"Artemis. Knock it off."

"Honestly, Luna, if we're going to find the Princess - then having access to a government database would be awfully handy don't you think?"

Luna stopped. "What?"

"Look, these guys are a mix of armed forces," began Artemis. "This guy here was speaking English and had badly fractured Japanese. According to the badge on his uniform - Misawa Air Force Base. Do you know what else is at Misawa?"

"Guns?" asked Luna, sarcastically.

"The Japanese Self Defense Force," answered Artemis. "I've been reading up on them since the last time. I still don't know where the rayguns fit in - unless these are really really elite forces. Tom Clancy stuff."

"You and your gaijin references," grumbled Luna. "You spent entirely too much time gallavanting around in England."

"Well, technically, we're both 'gaijin'," pointed out Artemis.

Luna settled for biting his tail. Such comments did not deserve a verbal response.


The Refuge SG teams were to be different from their Cheyenne Mountain equivelants.

The Tau'ri SG teams were one of several categories though any given team was primarily composed of individuals from the military. Covert Ops - surprise and stealth oriented. Diplomatic Ops - develop longterm contact. Engineering Corps - setting up bases and research sites. Exploration - to seek out new worlds and new civilizations. Marine Combat Unit - when something absolutely positively needed to be killed. Medical Unit - when dealing with plagues, civilizations being hit by nasty organisms, or similar "mishaps" needed cleaning up. Scientific Ops - when something needed to be researched over a long period. Search & Destroy - similar to Covert Ops or the Marine Unit, except that the targets were more specific like a single object or enemy.

Refuge was to be civilian and semi-independent. Their missions were unlikely to involve large amounts of firepower. Exploration missions and Diplomacy operations were similar. They didn't have enough engineers or physicians for either to form a specific team, and likewise they lacked Marines or large numbers of scientists.

SG-X was the primary unit. Of course, that meant there had to be a backup unit. Since this was supposed to be the civilian end of things, and these were to be humans allied with the Tau'ri - these were people of Refuge itself going forward to explore on their own. They were therefore Jaffa.

Auron, a fierce older warrior and veteran of many battles. One of Bre'tac's contemporaries.
Tidus VanBuskirk. College jock turned NAVY Seal, assigned as the Tau'ri representitive.
Yuna, a former priestess who wanted to be a singer eventually.
Rikku, the gadget-wielding engineer among the set.
Lulu, the Jaffa priestess turned lore specialist.
Wakka, the jock turned warrior.

SG-X2 had a somewhat different mission objective. They'd use the Stargate until the point when they could accumulate resources and then utilize those resources to purchase a teltac transport ship. From that, they would then have a means of transport and exploration not dependent on the Stargate. They could even explore their own planetary system - looking for available resources not present on Refuge itself.

Naturally, everyone was hoping they'd find naquadria. There were asteroids in the system, and that was the most likely place to find such resources.


AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Yes, me and Kender wrote these over at the AA. We started this story back in 2004 in fact.

No, i certainly do not do recreational drugs, nor do I condone their use.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I DID write a few stories under another pen name. However i'm trying to put most of that behind me. Mostly.

No, i certainly didn't get any of this from anyone else's story.

Yes, i'm posting this to to try and cure a writer's block.