Chapter Twenty-Two, Memories of Tomorrow, Part Two
Mall, Japan, September 2015
The next few moments were surreal as surprise played across Sasha's face as she turned back, while the blades slid back out. For a few moments Sasha stayed up right before she began collapsing to the ground.

She wasn't sure where the first scream came from, but it seemed to shatter the tension that had been built up. More screams joined the first and suddenly everyone who had been near was running.

Except for her.

She took a step forwards, Blitz's arm materializing around her own. A second step brought her closer, her arm raised to strike. He idly looked up at her, his own arm coming up with the trio of blades, covered in blood, no more. With her final step she pushed herself forwards, putting everything she had into her and Blitz's fist, he moved the blades to block.

Her fist met his blades over-top of Sasha, who was clutching her gut trying to stop the flow of blood coming from the three gashes.

He smirked as the they collided, his blades holding against her fist. For an instant the blades held, there was a flash of light from in front of her fist as the blades shattered under the impact. Surprised flashed across his face for an instant, then he drop down to avoid her fist. She didn't see the blow that hit her in the stomach hard enough to send her flying backwards.

She landed heavily, the impact knocking the air out of her, when she looked up she noticed that she was several meters from where she had been. Just how hard had she been hit, her stomach quickly answered for her, very hard. She looked up to see the man take a quick look at the trio of blades in his hands, a look of disgust flashed across his face as he tossed them away. From inside his jacket he pulled out a long double-edged sword, how had he managed to hide that thing, it was at least half as long as he was tall.

Dammit Sasha was still in front of him... She looked down slightly to see a streak of red leading from his feet to her. She looked down to her hand to see Sasha at the end of it, laying on her side in a gradually expanding pool of red, was she already to late. Sasha hacked once sending blood flying out of her mouth, it wasn't over yet, she just couldn't get Sasha out of here and fight the crazy sword wielding lunatic at the same time.

She looked over her shoulder a bit, stopping when she saw Jane standing there, eyes wide in shock. "Jane," the girl seemed to snap out of it, "get Sasha to a hospital as fast as you can."

"Y.. Yes." The girl stepped forwards and took Sasha from her, while she turned back to the man, who was beginning to walk towards her.

She turned to face while standing up and materializing Blitz's other arm. She wasn't going to let him hurt Sasha again, she wasn't going to let him hurt any of her friends. She took and step and then another going faster with each step, as long as she lived he wasn't going to hurt anyone else. She drew her fist back, poised to strike.

Nowhere in Particular
Her white brimmed hat shifted in the light breeze, the white clouds drifting lazily overhead in a blue sky. The fires had parted, she had thought for a long time that they never would, the cool water beneath her feet felt nice. She took a few steps forwards, her white dress billowing in the breeze, she took a look down to see her reflection. A metal giant starred back at her, grey metal plates curved to form the skin, while it's empty eyes starred back at her, all set against the crimson sky of a setting star. And now that the flames were gone, it was truly a beautiful scene, if only it would stay like this.

'Mother.. protect.'

Mall
Her fist flew towards him, she would stop him here no matter what it took. He blocked her with the flat of his blade, the sound of metal on metal rang out, it sounded way different than the movies. She pulled her fist back and took a step back while she did the same, before he could attack she pushed off from her back foot and brought her back fist forwards as fast as she could.

She would not let him hurt Sasha again after what he had done to her, she wouldn't let him hurt Cecilia, or Carmen who were still behind her. She was going to protect her friends with every thing she had. Her fist flew forwards, everything she had behind it, everything. "I won't let you hurt my friends." Her fist met the flat of his blade with another ring of metal...

Which quickly turned into a deafening screech, and then she found herself falling down. She quickly put her arms out in front of her to stop herself, only to have them give out as soon as they hit the ground. Her legs then gave out when she tried to push herself back up, leaving her sprawled out on the ground completely defenseless. What the hell just happened?

It took everything she had to tilt her head back to look up, he had taken a few steps back and was looking at her in complete disbelief. Then his sword slipped from limp fingers, her eyes followed it down where it hit the floor and let out a metallic ring. She looked back up at him, why had he dropped his sword...

Oh. From right beneath his shoulder to just above his elbow she could she the bone of his arm, the muscle and skin on one side was completely gone. She was fairly certain that if she had any energy she would have lost her lunch right there. Then she saw behind him, the place looked like it had just seen a firefight. Pieces of the floor tiles were everywhere intermixed with plaster from some of the nearby support pillars. She saw one of the trees that had been in the divider fallen over, a large part of it's trunk missing. One of the nearby benches had the two ends bent outwards while the wood in the middle was shattered. Above the railings for the second floor walkways had been deformed as far as she could see, the that had been beneath them was gone.

"JUST WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU!?" His voice slammed into her ears, sending waves of pain through her head. She managed to bring her head back up after a few moments to see him advancing, having picked up his sword with his other hand. Dammit, she couldn't stop him.

He walked right up to her and brought the blade up to strike, she could only watch as the blade came down towards her head. She couldn't move or do anything, this was it the end, she wouldn't be able to save this world from the Goa'uld. She wouldn't live to give her mom grandchildren, she had accomplished nothing, and now it was the end. She felt something wet slide down her cheek.

Mere centimeters from her head twin pole-arms flew out stopping the blade in it's tracks, moments later the man stepped backwards as the gold and black form of Carmen's IS passed over her. For a moment she thought she was going to be stepped on, then Carmen pushed the man back, her repeated strikes pushing him farther and farther back. She could only watch as Carmen swung at him time and time again only to have the blows blocked by his sword, but every time he blocked he was forced to take a step back.

Then a pair of large cold hands picked her causing her to lose sight of the fight. She was rolled over onto her back with the cold hands beneath her, her eyes gradually focused on Cecilia's face less than half a meter from her own. "I'm getting you out of here."

"No... Help.. Carmen." Her voice came out as little more than a whisper.

"Carmen doesn't need my help, you however do. You look awful right now."

"I'm... Fine" She could hear the ring of metal on metal in the background.

"No you aren't, were you trying to blow up the mall?"

"What...?"

"Are you telling me you didn't notice," Cecilia's face quickly became unfocused along with everything else. "Hey don't fall asl-" Everything went black.

Two days later, Area Fifty-One
Carter set down the phone and sighed before turning to the rest of the gathered people. "Cassie's going to be okay, she'll just need some time to recover." The tension in the room took a nose dive, all of them had been worried when news of Cassie's hospitalization had broken. But hopefully things would finally start to go back to normal, she needed something to distract her for a bit, it would do wonders for her stress. "Now if you'll excuse me I have a meeting with Thor in an hour I want to get ready for."

"But what about Cassie?"

"There is nothing more I can do for her here, helping Thor and the Asgard will do more good than fretting over her condition across the ocean." With that she left the room and made her way down to her office, which was little more than a place for her to store her notes. Real work happened elsewhere.

Arriving at the office she grabbed the notes she had marked as relevant, then proceeded down towards the meeting room. The room itself was fairly plain, concrete walls, floor and ceiling, a single door and two way window. A large wooden table sat in the center with several chairs around it, though she noted that one whole side of the table was devoid of chairs, Thor always brought his own.

She began setting out her notes while the other members of the meeting arrived, two of them were the lead weapon designers for the SGC and Area-fifty one. Nearly every weapon that the SGC had ever built or used had passed at least one of their desks at some point. David Cooke, and Michelle Goodman, if someone had a weapon question they were the people to talk to. The rest were people with work related to development of kinetic weapons, it was what Thor wanted to talk about after all.

She glanced down at her watch one last time, Thor would be here in three.. two.. one. A bright light appeared in the room accompanied by the telltale chime of an Asgard transporter. Right on time as usual, though she hadn't expected anything different. You could set an atomic clock by an Asgards punctuality.

"Greetings, and thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

"It's our pleasure," Cooke opened for them, while the Asgard nodded. "Now as to the reason of your visit..."

"Your people are the foremost experts of kinetic weapons, currently the most effective weapon against the replicator menace. While our current kinetic weapons have proven effective so far, it is our belief that it is only a matter of time before the replicators uncover some way of reducing it's effectiveness. We wish to have a something to use when that happens. And since kinetic weapons have proven the most successful we have decided to focus our effort in developing them further."

"So you want to get an upgrade ready to get a leg up on the replicators adaptability?"

Thor was silent for a second, "that is in essence of what we are looking for."

"Good," Goodman took over, "first off we should look at what you have right now, because if I remember correctly your using solid shot cannons, along with PD railguns."

"That is correct."

"The advantage that kinetic weapons has over energy based weapons, besides being effective against replicators, is that they can fire a large variety of sub-munitions. Directed energy weapons are merely a simple beam, and plasma weapons are just a ball of plasma that explodes on target, you can't really do to much with that. While you can't do much with the barrel of a kinetic weapon you can however to a lot with what is fired."

Cooke stepped in, "when we first learned of the replicators we started coming up with a few ideas of our own. One of the first things we looked at was a shredder round, basically a shell containing several dozen rods or balls that deploy either a set distance from the barrel, a set distance from the target or upon impacting the target. This allows it do damage a cover a larger area in a cone from the location of separation, the downside being that it requires a larger barrel to be used."

"That seems like it would be effective, but the shell would be significantly easier to intercept than a solid piece, not to mention harder to produce in numbers."

"True, but the first can easily be reduced by using a larger solid tip on the shell, while the second it's not something that can be overcome. But it should also be weighed against the effects that are produced."

Goodman then spoke up, "we also looked at..." This was going to take a while.

Later

Carter looked over the mass of notes she had accumulated during the meeting, along with the notes she had brought with her. It was a mess that was going to take a while to sort out, it would take her mind of other things, though it would also prevent her from getting back to her own projects. Not something she wanted at all, but it was work that needed to get done, at least Jolinar helped make the whole process go faster.

When the knock on her door came she almost told whoever it was to go away, she didn't have time for distractions right now. Instead, "come in, the door's unlocked." She would have to deal with this quickly so she could get back to work. The door was opened by an Airman, with no one beside him... then she looked down to see the Asgard beside him. "Thor!"

"I hope I am not disturbing you."

"No not at all," Thor's frown told her that the lie had not gone unnoticed. "So what brings you here?"

"I have a favour to ask of you, but first there is this." He walked up to the table and motioned for her to clear a spot off. She quickly cleared a small area of her desk, creating even bigger piles that had to be gone through. After she was done Thor set his hand above the desk, a flash of light and a chime deposited a thick tome onto the open space of her desk. "I believe you will find it useful."

She picked up the tome and looked at the front cover, "Introductory Plasma Shell Physics, sounds interesting." She was definitely going to give this a good read, or two or five... she should probably create a copy as soon as possible.

"I have done my best to translate it into your language, though I should warn you right now that there are many words your language lacks that were needed. For those I kept the original word and put in the closest possible translation."

"Thank you," she would most likely need to keep Daniel or one of the other language experts on call. "And the favour?"

"I want to accompany you to the SGIC."

That was unexpected, "I'm sure that can be arranged." It wasn't like he was asking for to much.

StarGate Initiative Center
When he had said accompany her she had wondered how he intended to do it with out her walking around with a little grey alien at her side. The method he was using was not something she had been expecting at all. At the same time she was half glad her superiors had agreed, it got here away from all the idiots trying pestering her for a copy of IPSP, command was the one handing out copies not her. Yet they still kept coming to her, it had gotten rather annoying.

So here she was, walking around the Center with a holographic projection of Thor's chosen avatar accompanying her, a wristband holding all the necessary hardware.. Superficially it resembled that of his viking avatar minus armour and with modern earth clothes, Jolinar however had spotted numerous changes from the original, she didn't think they were worth noting. It was a brilliant solution when one thought about it, as long as no one tried to actually touch Thor's avatar, something else she had to pay attention to. Thankfully the Center was rather empty today which made that particular task easier.

"It is quite amazing how far you have come in such a short time." At the moment they were walking past an exhibit detailing technology from the late nineteenth century. "Most civilizations have required upwards of a millenia to accomplish what you have in little over a century. From primitive electronics to basic artificial intelligences, that took us almost three hundred of your years to accomplish."

"We had help from the Stargate program, that probably helped us along a lot."

"True, but even before then you still had accomplished much, and even then my analogy is still correct. You have for the most part done nothing but refine your computer sciences, your program has yet to truly bring something new, well apart from crystal computing. But the point remains you have accomplished much in a such a short time, most of it before the Stargate."

"I suppose your right, but I still can't help feeling that it's not enough."

"Maybe, but your forgetting that who your comparing yourself to, when you have been around as long as us then compare. But until then know that there is still much to learn, though also know that no matter how advanced you are, there is still things to be learnt." She turned back to the display and thought on what Thor had said, of course there were things the Asgard didn't know, but he made it sound as though they still had a lot to learn. Certainly the Asgard had mastered something in their long existence.

So caught up in her thoughts that she failed to notice the smile that crept across Thor's avatar, or the short black-haired woman with over-sized glasses trailing them.

Tabanae watched as Carter and the man continued their tour of the Center, she had been surprised to see Carter here, she wasn't scheduled to speak until tomorrow. She hadn't planned on being here either but it was a good distraction from the mess back in Japan, and it did present her with an opportunity, one she was going to take advantage of. Now she just needed to follow Carter without being noticed, and wait for an opportunity. And with any luck the man would leave her at some point, and if he didn't she would just have to be more overt.

And now that she had a plan all she had to do was follow through, which involved waiting, and waiting, and waiting. She followed the pair for three hours and nothing appeared to change, they just kept moving from exhibit to exhibit chatting idily. Which wouldn't have annoyed her as much as it did if she could make out what they were saying. She needed more practice in English.

She felt a small measure of pride as they walked by the subspace mechanics exhibit. She had been responsible for putting most of it together, and while most of what was there was taken from the Goa'uld and Asgard, there were a few things of her own that had been added in. Though she somehow suspected that the Asgard had already come up with some of the theories she had at some point. Still it felt good to actually introduce something new rather than just copying someone elses work.

"I had not thought you were this far already," the words came out as little more than a whisper, but she heard them.

"Far?"

"Oh excuse me, it's just that I had thought you were much farther behind in your research than this, though it shouldn't be all that surprising. You do seem to so things faster than anyone would expect. You're already looking into real-space space-time curvature effects of subspace, beyond the usual sensor distortions used for navigation."

"Well we did have the incident with the Prometheus a few months ago that got people on edge."

"Incident?"

"The-" She was cut off when Thor's avatar suddenly stopped moving for a moment. "Thor?"

"Excuse me, I have an incoming priority message from Ida that will most likely require my full attention. I should not be long." Before she had a chance to say anything the avatar winked out of existence, and now she was standing around awkwardly trying to figure out what to do next.

Tabanae could hardly believe her eyes when the man simply vanished, not walked away or been left behind, simply vanished. If she hadn't seen it for herself she would have chalked it up to her simply missing him leave. But no she by chance had been looking right at the pair when the man vanished, and she had no way of dismissing it. He had been there one moment and then gone the next, several comments about men leaving women popped into her mind, but she quickly dismissed them.

Several possibilities flew into her mind, many of them ludicrous, all of them offering some explanation. But she had no way to know which if any was the correct one. In the end two general possibilities came to mind, he had either been a projection or had teleported away. Well she could rule out teleportation as that was outright impossible, and without an IS core even quantum storage was out of the question. So that left a projection of sorts, holographic maybe, no that required room sized equipment and didn't have the detail or solidness that he had possessed. Thought this was the center, which meant what she had seen was the equivalent of a call for her, though something still didn't sit right.

Right now that was partially irrelevant, she had an opportunity to accomplish what she had come here to do and she intended to take full advantage of it. Moving forwards as quietly as she could, she hopped surprising Carter would make her easier to get information out of. That plan fell apart when she had barely made it hallway from her previous location to Carter, when the other woman spoke up without turning around. "Oh hello there, looking for something."

It had caught her off-guard enough that she couldn't think of anything to say right away. Instead she probably looked absolutely ridiculous when Carter turned around to her with her own mouth agape n shock.

Carter wasn't sure what to expect to see when she turned around to the source of the very well muffled footsteps. Something she wouldn't have picked up on if it hadn't been for Jolinar, though she did have to wonder why someone would be sneaking up on her here. She took a moment to look over the short woman who had been trying to sneak up on her. Short black hair, with a pair of over-sized glasses on her face, wearing a simple dark-red dress, with a pair of black pants underneath. Just who was she?

So lost in thought she didn't notice Jolinar talk until it happened. "What brings you here Tabanae." She didn't think it was possible for a mouth to drop that low.

Jolinar, how?

Tabanae felt her mouth open even wider than it already was, how had she been recognized, facial recognition programs couldn't even recognize her in her disguise. If Carter had done so during a conversation she would have been unsurprised, but she hadn't even said anything yet, so just how was she recognized. Then another voice came, "well I see you've found a new friend Ms. Carter, and well met miss Shinonono." She hung her head, was it really that easy to see through her disguise. She turned to see the man who had been with Carter earlier approaching.

"Does this disguise work at all."

The man look startled, "your wearing a disguise?" She nearly impacted the floor face first, was it really that bad.

She however managed to recover herself. "That's nice coming from mister vanishing into thin air, how did you do that by the way."

"Magic." Not a pause, not an instant to think, just a immediate straight answer, and he did it with a straight face, she was half tempted to take his word for it. If what he was saying wasn't an outright lie, magic didn't exist after all. "And if you want to disguise yourself," his form suddenly changed, one second she was looking at one man, the next she was looking at another. "Magic is quite useful." She heard some snickering behind her and turned to see Carter covering her mouth with one hand, at least someone found this amusing.

"Very funny, and what brings you back, you were awfully quick to leave earlier."

"I had an important message that needed my attention. And now that it has been dealt with I had wished to resume my talk with Ms. Carter, though I must admit that the opportunity to talk to you Ms. Shinonono is nice as well. Though I do have to ask, were you planning on attending Ms. Carters presentation tomorrow as well."

"Oh, crap." She turned to Carter, "Sorry but I have to get going."

"Perhaps another time then Ms. Shinonono."

"Perhaps." As she watched the two of them leave some nagging part of her mind kept insisting that she was forgetting something. But she couldn't remember what it was.

"I must admit I am surprised that you forgot about the presentation, I was hopping to be able to sit in on it."

"Been caught up on a bunch of other things, luckily I still have time. And magic really, she would have gotten hologram quite easily."

"Well it is the Magic portable hologram projector, quite useful I might add."

She stopped for a second. "How many times has it been a hologram in a chair showing up instead of you in person."

"I prefer that number remain discrete." Well that was certainly interesting, and enlightening. Though she began wondering how often Thor had shown up as a hologram and how many times he had shown up in person. Honestly she had no idea which could be which, because except for a few times Thor had just remained seated in his chair... That did seem to be the most common way he visited.

Hospital, Japan
Jane wlaked down the white hospital corridors, carrying a small bag of Carmens favorite food, apples, she would never understand how the other girl could devour so many. But she wasn't going to bother with it, Carmen just probably liked them, nothing truly odd about that. Coming to a stop in front of Carmen's room she gave a quick knock on the door, hopefully Carmen would be awake. "You can come in Jane." Damn Carmen was good.\

She opened up the door and stepped in, Carmen was currently the only occupant of the room, though that could change. She walked into the room setting the bag down on the bedside table before pulling up a chair. "Before you even ask I'm doing fine, doc said I should be okay to go within the next few days, a week at the most. So don't go worrying about me however," Carmen reached into the bag and pulled out one of the apples, "if it means I keep getting presents like this I might just decide to stay longer."

"For a girl with close to a hundred stitches you seem to be doing pretty well."

"You make it sound bad, I got off easy compared to Cassandra, and... Sasha." Silence overtook the pair, she still remembered holding Sasha in Desert Dawns brown arms while flying over the city. Her engines overheating as she pushed them past their limits, she had pushed them so hard that Dawn required some serious repairs before flying again. But even so... She felt tears forming in her eyes.

"Jane," she looked back at Carmen, "don't go so hard on yourself, you did everything you could." She clenched her fists. "I'm not talking you out of sulking am I. Your so much like Cassandra, trying to shoulder all the responsibility on yourself."

"I'm the class rep, it's my job to take responsibility."

"Sasha's not in our class." She let out a sigh, there would be no winning this particular argument. "Anyways did you bring it."

She leaned in close to Carmen, "of course I did, as if I would miss the opportunity."

"Good, now why don't you go close over the curtain."

"Oh right," she had completely forgotten about that. She got up from her chair and quickly closed over the curtain. Returning to her seat, "now where were we," Carmen was smiling at her with the biggest smile her face could manage, she was fairly certain she was doing the same back. She was going to enjoy this. "Lets begin."