Title: Cold-Calling
Word count: To be determined
Fandoms: Naruto (Catch Your Breath fic-verse) and Stargate: SG-1
Premise: Yet another routine mission for SG-1 puts them on a strange new planet, because of course it does. Luckily, they run into the only person on the planet who knows what a colonel is. (Alternatively: Kei shakes her fist at the sky over reincarnation rules making no sense whatsoever.)
Glossary:
Chappa'ai = The language used by the System Lords, which all of the Jaffa speak. As does Daniel the Omniglot. (SG-1)
naquadah = A mysterious substance that's dense as all hell, is found in super-trace amounts in both Goa'uld and former hosts, and is what the Stargate is made of. Sort of a metal. Sort of super-plutonium. (SG-1)
Watashi wa Nohara Rin desu = I am Nohara Rin. (formal)
prim'ta = The infant Goa'uld Teal'c and other Jaffa carry in their pouches until they mature. Serves as a substitute immune system in the meantime. (SG-1)
Hayabusa-buntaichō = Squad Leader Peregrine Falcon/ANBU Captain Peregrine Falcon.
Ohayō gozaimasu! = Good morning! (formal)
Urusai! = Shut up!
Daijōbu desu ka? = Are you all right?
Daijōbu desu yo. = I'm fine./No need for concern.
Starting off interplanetary diplomacy by shooting one of the natives in the face, Daniel thought half-hysterically, has to be a new low. And then he remembered the entire rest of the SG-1 mission history, stampeding across his mind's eye view like the running of the bulls, and had to admit that it wasn't even in the top ten. With as many encounters with the System Lords as the plucky Planet That Could had, it probably didn't make the top fifty.
And as the intended target shrugged it all off with almost exactly the same ease as Ra had once upon a time, Daniel reflected that it really was just a typical Tuesday in the lives of SG-1.
Doctor Daniel Jackson
Yesterday, PK4-399
The data from PK4-399 seemed promising at first. The planet had the same nitrogen-oxygen balance as Earth did, with no outstanding concentrations of anomalous materials or lifeforms that seemed hazardous to human life. In fact, the MALP they'd sent first even provided a headlight-illuminated view of what seemed to be the inside of a temple complex. There were crumbling paintings on wall scrolls and red pillars. Someone had left a flat tray with cups on a dusty-looking table, and the MALP's tires were rolling across an apparent rug.
"Stay or go?" Daniel asked, after they'd spent an hour reviewing the feeds and the atmospheric data.
They'd even been able to send the MALP to find both the Dial Home Device and a conveniently located staircase, though the steps were too high for a wheeled vehicle to traverse. If there was any chance there was a human civilization that would help Earth stand against the Goa'uld—or was willing to accept help for the same reason—Daniel was ready to be the first through the Gate.
Aside from the robot, anyway. As a valuable member of the team, Daniel was sure Jack would make sure Sgt. Rollo V got credit for his discoveries. If he didn't, SG-2 probably would, and slap another promotion on the MALP for good luck.
"Go," was the order by General Hammond, and SG-1 headed through with no further prompting. The wormhole was inviting despite the inevitable sense of disorientation that followed gate travel and altitude adjustments, and Daniel was eager to get moving once again. It was a brand new day around a new sun.
Their first breath of the new planet's air made Daniel sneeze.
"Always a great sign," Jack said, as their team fanned out to secure the area as quickly as possible. The inch-thick layer of dust was the most likely culprit, but no one else had any time for that. "Teal'c, got anything?"
"Apophis never visited it during my tenure as First Prime. This complex is unfamiliar." Teal'c took up a position next to the only apparent exit to this gate's chamber, staff weapon at the ready. "But it does not mean the inhabitants are not potentially hostile."
Daniel sniffed, then adjusted his glasses by the bridge as he bent to examine one of the wall scrolls. His fingers did not brush the delicate-looking paper, because it looked like it would crumble at the slightest touch. "Oh! Jack, this isn't Goa'uld. It's not even an Indo-European derivative."
"It's not?" Sam asked, heading over to join Daniel once she'd finished her handheld scans of the immediate area. Nothing suspicious, or else she would have said something.
"Not at all," Daniel said, stepping back so Sam could see. "It's actually traditional Chinese script. The signature—or what I'm assuming is a signature, because it could easily be a title or part of one—is fairly stylized, but it's hard to mistake."
"And it says…?" Jack prompted.
"This part says 'crane wings over bamboo valley,'" Daniel replied, pointing at a tiny line of script toward the upper right corner. "The other seems to be the artist's name. Other than that, the use of literati painting—or shuǐ mò huà—" Daniel cut himself off as Jack raised an eyebrow. "Hey, this is the first sample we have of what language the inhabitants of this place may have used. Even if they did use Chinese when this was originally painted, the art is old. The language could have easily shifted over time. Just ask about the Great Vowel Shift in English sometime."
"If I don't, I'm sure you'll let me know when we run into someone not playing by those rules," Jack replied, and Daniel shot him a dry look. Knowing their luck—and Jack's penchant for making it worse by tempting the universe—he'd just guaranteed that they'd run into spacefaring pirates straight out of a cheesy film at some point in the near future. "Let's move. With any luck you'll be testing your Mandarin on the locals soon."
"That assumes that they even speak Mandarin," Daniel protested, but he was already heading for Teal'c.
"I wonder how long it's been since the last time this planet's culture encountered the Goa'uld," Daniel heard Sam say, but there wouldn't really be any way to guess beyond tracking linguistic drift in written language until they met someone who wanted to hold a conversation.
"It may be hard to tell. Chinese characters are one of several writing systems that evolved from pictograms, but they've been used by half a dozen cultures. Now, if that had been simplified instead—" Actually, if it had been in simplified characters, that would have raised questions Daniel wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to, except for the worrying and pressing possibility that the Goa'uld had somehow been abducting people from China while both Earth-based Stargates were effectively defunct. "Uh, never mind. That would have been bad."
"Define 'bad,'" Sam suggested, while they hiked up the stairs the MALP had been utterly stymied by. "Because thus far, this planet seems to be about as peaceful as the Land of Light. Aside from not encountering any people."
"We'd need to start asking China about missing persons' reports," Daniel said, wincing. "As a worst-case scenario."
"I can just imagine how well that would go over," Jack commented, in a tone that said it was a vast understatement.
"Do languages evolve on Earth so quickly?" Teal'c asked, as they approached the surface.
"They can," was Daniel's reply, and then they got their first real look at PK4-399.
SG-1 emerged from the cave and stood blinking in the early morning sunlight, and the terrain unfolded before them. While the MALP's data and Sam's scans had indicated oxygen levels consistent with decent altitude above sea level, it was one thing to hear it and another entirely to look down the slope of a mountain. The staircase they'd followed cut through a deep and ancient forest, giving them just enough of a view to see a valley between their vantage point and the next, shorter peak. If it wasn't for the plant life being entirely unsuited for Colorado Springs, being far less scrubby, it was almost like they'd turned around and walked right back through the Stargate onto some random mountainside by accident. And best of all, there seemed to be a village somewhere down the slope, because a thin streak of smoke was visible above the treetops.
Daniel sneezed again.
"It may be spring here," Sam suggested, eyeing the flowers growing on the path like Earth dandelions would. "Or early summer. But I don't want to make too many assumptions about seasonal patterns on a new planet."
"Sounds like both," Jack said. "Well, let's head down there. With any luck, we'll be able to do the 'take me to your leader' thing and make new friends."
"Indeed," Teal'c said. Which really seemed to sum it up.
"Danny, you're up first."
The walk down to the village was pleasant enough. While the stone steps were a bit worn down by time, they'd been maintained through the ages. It wasn't like some of the ruins they'd visited, which crumbled if Teal'c stared hard enough at one spot or if Sam tried poking mysterious new technology. Inertia kept them going until they reached the first real breach in the tree line, and that was when they got a good look at the supposed outpost of civilization.
Here and there, stretching upward and outward from the village, were huge gouges in the earth that looked like someone had scooped the sides or tops of the nearby topography out to make ice cream. The trees growing in those depressions were shorter than anything around them except for shrubs, and Daniel didn't have to be a botanist to see the scars. One of them had such an extreme divot that there was an unnaturally circular lake in the middle of what may have once been a winding river. A different one was practically moon-shaped.
The village itself was a burned-out wreck, long-abandoned despite the remaining evidence of human habitation. Defensive wooden fortifications had been torn asunder and buildings had been torched or shattered by some unknown force. Former vegetable gardens and once-pruned trees ran rampant, weeds grew freely among dirt and barely-paved streets. There was some evidence of cleanup efforts—no loose belongings or refuse, no bodies—but it was clear no one really lived here. If this was to be their jumping-off point for first contact, this was a poor start.
Sam picked her way through the ruins of a storefront, frowning as she emerged into the sunlight holding a box with a speaker on it. Daniel felt his hair try to stand on end as he looked at it. "I'm not sure what languages are in play here, or whether anyone's been here for the past decade other than our firebug. But this? This is a radio."
Jack paused, clearly halfway through deciding whether to call bullshit or not. Then Sam unfolded what looked like a pair of antennas from the top of it, and he gave up. "Does it work?"
"No," Sam said, turning it around in her hands so everyone could see the back and the shredded innards of the radio. "Someone smashed it. But it does tell us that their technology level is at least as far along as the Twenties back on Earth in some places. This is a civilian device. The fact that it isn't the size of a refrigerator puts them even further along." Sam set the radio in Daniel's hands so the resident anthropologist could try to puzzle out a culture that could and would make their technology look like it belonged in a retro diner. "I really think we should investigate that smoke before whoever made it wanders off. I have a lot of questions."
"As do I," Teal'c rumbled, eyeing the device. Teal'c used short-wave radios all the time on missions, so seeing its grandfather in the field had to be at least a little interesting. "And I would like to know if the people we will meet possess the technology to cause the battle damage we witnessed on our way here."
Unspoken was the underlying understanding that if they did, then SG-1's mission was more important than ever. They needed any advantage they could get against the System Lords, and anything that seemed to vaporize matter was likely on the level of zats and staff weapons in terms of energy manipulation. And the SGC had no interest in falling any further behind in the interstellar arm's race.
As they cautiously made their way up the apparent main street, Teal'c paused mid-stride, his head jerking to one side as he tracked some movement. A tattered flag flapped in the mountain breeze, which wasn't terribly suspicious, but Daniel had learned as well as any of them to trust Teal'c instincts. Prior to this point, Daniel had been thinking the only living beings in the area were probably the local equivalents of field mice. He'd heard birds earlier, or maybe things that sounded like them. Teal'c had a better ear for wildlife, given how many planets he'd visited.
"We are being watched," Teal'c said in a blunt tone, leaving no room for argument.
"Well, that's not very neighborly of them," Jack said, resting his arm across the top of his M-16.
"We're not their neighbors, strictly speaking," Daniel told Jack in a dry voice. "Even if we only came from one door over."
"Here's to hoping they understand what door it was and what it does," Sam said, looking around at the various dilapidated buildings. "A culture that can have radios and resort towns seems like a good ally to me."
"What is a 'resort town'?" Teal'c asked.
Daniel adjusted his glasses and was about to answer, but a blue-clad shape darted across the street right in front of them. Sam and Jack's rifles were both out and pointed in its direction, but Daniel pushed his way to the head of the group with Teal'c and blocked their shots. "Not yet! We didn't get a good enough look—"
Sam backed down first, pointing the barrel of her rifle down toward the street. Jack was only a split second behind, lifting his fingers free of the trigger guard to make his point.
Teal'c hadn't moved, but nodded encouragingly. "You have the lead, Daniel."
"Thank you," Daniel mouthed, before slowly heading up toward the last spot they'd seen the fast-moving shape. It had looked human, but he needed to get a better look before he could be sure. Nothing human usually moved so quickly, but Daniel had seen a lot of things while working for the SGC that he might've called "impossible" years ago.
Nothing happened. Daniel continued forward, maintaining his loose stance and keeping his hands away from his weapons. While he wasn't sure the natives would understand what guns were—as opposed to Teal'c staff weapon—he was making a show of good faith. And it was about the closest Jack would let him be to going unarmed in unknown territory after the time he'd died.
Well. After the most recent death, maybe.
"Nĭ hăo," Daniel tried, pitching his voice to carry without sounding too aggressive. He thought he saw another flicker of blue, and then the movement slowed. About twenty feet ahead of him, he could see just the edge of what might have been a coat. "Nín guì xìng?" Hello. What's your name?
The figure stepped out from behind the building all in one movement, and Daniel blinked.
For some reason, he hadn't expected to see a teenage girl. Wearing what looked like blue and black spandex exercise clothes, with bandages adorning each calf and both an equipment belt and a darker blue jacket to hide it, she looked more like she'd stumbled out of the a more drab version of the Eighties. And despite distinct almond-shaped eyes in a face with Asian features and skin tone, the irises appeared lighter than Sam's, and the girl's hair was ash-blonde, bound back with a metal plate on a headband.
Too young to have a mark for any System Lord, but could the headband and symbol be a callback to that practice? Daniel frowned internally. There was too little information.
The girl cocked her head to one side, then said, "Wakari masen. Anata wa dare desu ka?"
I don't understand. Who are you? Daniel winced almost imperceptibly as he translated in his head.
Oh, not good. Just because he'd seen Chinese characters earlier, he'd assumed that the planet's representatives were going to have ties to the Han Chinese ethnic group and speak a derived language. He'd forgotten that the writing system was one of the many exports China had handed off to other nations, just like the Greeks had. After seeing the Shavadai, guessing that more people could have been taken from the area was better than a shot in the dark, but it hadn't been accurate enough.
Hopefully he hadn't already started off interplanetary relations on the wrong foot. Clearing his throat, which got the girl's attention before she could focus too much on his teammates, Daniel tried again, "Watashi wa Daniel desu. Yoroshiku." I'm Daniel. Nice to meet you.
Standard greeting, really.
The girl's expression brightened somewhat, probably from finally hearing familiar words and tone. Bowing slightly in a manner Daniel tried his best to mimic, she said on one rapid burst, "Kochira koso! Atashi wa Aiko desu!" Likewise. My name's Aiko.
"I take it we can talk to them," Jack said quietly, and Daniel watched Aiko's attention shift to each member of SG-1 in turn. Her eyes narrowed slightly when she took in Teal'c, but she didn't otherwise react. Was that a trained response?
"That'd be correct," Daniel said, before switching back to Japanese. Now that he knew for sure which language he was going to be using, it was all coming back to him. He just hoped he wouldn't be asked to recall quite as many court mannerisms as the natives probably understood backwards and forwards. "Aiko, these are my friends. Teal'c, Jack, and Sam," he said, pointing each of them out in turn. "Can you tell us anything about this place?"
Aiko slowly mimicked the unfamiliar sounds, tripping mostly over the L sounds as expected. "Th" was also a sound that didn't appear in Japanese at all, which had to make her job harder. "Teal'c" came out sounding like "Tayakuru," but Daniel's spirits rose to see her trying. While he wasn't sure SGC would see it his way, it seemed as though this first contact mission was going swimmingly.
Then, once she was sure she could at least approximate the sounds, Aiko put her hands on her hips and said, "You don't look or talk like anyone from around here. I'd know. Where did you come from?" She paused for a split second, then said, "Though Tayakuru looks like he could be from the Village Hidden in the Clouds, I guess? But that's all the way over in the Land of Lightning…"
"Where are we now, though?" When Aiko gave him a look that seemed universal to teenagers everywhere—an expression that read "What, seriously?"—Daniel clarified, "My friends and I are from a place that's very far away. We came through the Stargate."
Aiko blinked. "Sutah…? What does that mean?"
Drat. Maybe the natives didn't know that term for it. Daniel cleared his throat and tried Goa'uld. "Chappa'ai?"
Aiko still looked confused. "I don't understand."
"It's a large metal ring that we found in that cave back there," Daniel tried to explain, pointing back in the direction from which they'd come. "It allows people to transport themselves from one to another just by walking through if it's turned on."
While Aiko opened her mouth to respond, though, a second blur shot across their line of sight and up onto one of the rooftops near Aiko's head. She was already turning to face the new arrival before Daniel saw the figure in full, as though her perceptive abilities were a little different than standard.
"Aiko, who are these people?" asked the young man, legs dangling over the eaves of the building. "You were supposed to be securing the perimeter."
"But Roku—"
As the two teenagers talked, Daniel paused to reevaluate his assessment of Aiko and her role. If she was supposed to be patrolling a controlled area, there was something going on. And his friends needed to know before the situation blew up in their faces for the fortieth time.
Without interrupting the ongoing conversation, Daniel turned back to them and said, "They're probably not civilian children."
Sam and Jack both tensed, and Daniel saw Teal'c react more to them than to the contents of Daniel's report. It made sense—Jaffa were trained practically from birth to serve their Goa'uld masters, so they didn't have the same concept of "childhood" that Earth-born humans did. Still, Teal'c knew better than most how to react to a threat—decisively—and when to apply that knowledge. Thus far, the kids hadn't tried anything, but the team had no intention of being played for fools again.
"Oi, Dan-san," said Aiko, snatching the group's attention again. She strode directly in front of Daniel and peered up at him, from a perspective nearly a foot straight down. "Are you some kind of soldier? You wear a flak jacket and there's this patch here on your shoulder."
"Aiko…" Roku sighed audibly. "You never stopped to consider he might be an enemy? That all of them might be?"
"I promise, we don't want any trouble," Daniel said, as Aiko reconsidered her laser-focused inspection of him and retreated a few steps, right when Roku dropped effortlessly from the roof to the ground. "We're peaceful explorers from the planet Earth."
The two teenagers exchanged significant looks again, apparently past the need for talking once they heard Daniel announce the SG-1 team's intent. Roku extended two fingers on his right hand, then swept his arm across his body. By the time he completed the motion, Aiko had already vanished in a blur of blue and blonde.
And then Roku raised his hand to the side of his throat and touched a slim, nearly-hidden earwig attached to his shirt collar. Daniel hadn't noticed it before because it was covered by the boy's dark hair, and he blinked. If they had short-wave radios small enough for unit-to-unit communication, this planet was far more advanced than anything they'd seen without stumbling directly onto a cache of technology on par with the Goa'uld. It just didn't happen.
Roku didn't take his eyes off any of them. "Kei-sensei, I'm sending Aiko back to you. We have company."
"Well, that went well," Jack commented. Even if he couldn't understand exactly what was being said, he had a good ear for tone. "We've stumbled onto a civilization that speaks an Earth language, uses kids as soldiers, and we're about to meet their boss."
"Sensei doesn't mean 'commander,' though," Sam put in, frowning slightly. "It means 'teacher' in most martial arts schools, doesn't it?"
"It could be an inconsistency due to linguistic drift," Daniel reminded them, even as he watched Roku continue to hold a sharp, short conversation with his presumed commanding officer. "If I could interrupt—"
"Are you sure?" Roku asked the voice across the connection, ignoring Daniel's attempted interjection entirely. There was a pause as he listened, before saying, "Understood." Roku sighed again, then crossed his arms defensively and prompted Daniel with, "Well?"
"Is there any way we can meet your leader?" Daniel asked.
"Kei-sensei wants to see you," Roku replied, which Daniel would realize later had not specified much of anything. "Follow me, but keep your distance. And don't touch anything."
Well, that was better than some of the welcomes SG-1 had gotten over the years. As the young man stayed at least twenty feet ahead of the group at all times, it was easy to see the torn-up town for what it was. Though Roku would pause occasionally to stare at one building or another, he kept his feet moving toward the vast fortified complex that, once upon a time, must have been the crown jewel to this place. It was almost designed in the form of an ancient Japanese castle, but someone or something had removed the roof in a single devastating blast, leaving the innards exposed to the weather. He didn't stop until they pushed their way through the main gate and into the complex.
The first section of the building was the remnants of a meeting hall. Parts of the walls were gouged or had suspicious stains from floor to ceiling, and someone had destroyed most of the artwork. There was a hole in the ceiling that went straight through to the roof, as though a large object had been hurled straight upward. The dust and ash omnipresent in other parts of the town were less thick on the floors in this building, almost as though the fighting here had been more discriminate. It was still a ruin, but to a different degree.
And right in the middle of the circle of light left by the devastation? A small metal fire pit, which seemed to be the source of the smoke Daniel had seen earlier. Two figures sat by the flames, but one of them vanished into thin air in the same speed-blur they'd seen before as SG-1 approached. Roku soon followed, leaving SG-1 with only one representative of the native population.
Daniel once again stepped up to the plate, keeping his hands in sight as the person slowly turned toward them. Dressed in an outfit that looked a little like Army fatigues with a different color scheme, complete with tons of pockets, a protective vest, and several knives, seeing the commander of the child soldiers worried Daniel more than he'd have admitted aloud. Though he did want to know where the cultural commonality of wearing sandals instead of decent boots had come from.
"We're peaceful explorers from the planet Earth," Daniel repeated, assuming that this "Kei-sensei" person hadn't heard what Roku hadn't transmitted. It never hurt to be careful.
And an amused woman's voice responded with, "Isn't the correct line supposed to be something like 'we come in peace; take me to your leader?'"
Jack, somehow, responded first. Daniel was busy gaping. "…You speak English?"
"Hai," said the woman, to no one's particular comprehension besides Daniel's. She'd…switched back just to mess with SG-1.
And then Daniel blinked as his brain caught up with his ears. The accent was thicker than Daniel thought his American English one was to Japanese ears, but it was definitely colloquial, modern language. And that particular bit of pop culture was as native to Earth as Daniel was. This woman was not just bilingual, but bicultural? How?
"You speak English and the first thing you thought of was that?" Jack demanded, disbelievingly. "If Daniel used that line, I'd never be able to take him seriously again."
"You don't take me seriously in the first place half the time," Daniel responded, while his mind whirled. If this woman knew Earth slang, then she'd probably been to or her people had been to Earth sometime in the recent past. Their Stargate's DHD was intact, but they hadn't been able to give Sam a chance to tinker with it and see what records they could prise out.
"We're getting off-topic," Sam reminded them in an undertone. "Why did you send the others away?"
"Because I want to protect them," the woman responded, approaching SG-1 with one casual step after another. When she was finally close enough that Daniel could accurately gauge her appearance—definitely East Asian, with jet-black hair and dark eyes and a scar running diagonally across her face—he noticed that she was tall enough to look Sam directly in the eye. "And because you're 'peaceful explorers from planet Earth,' unless you can give me a doctor's note saying exactly how pathogen-free you are, none of you will see my students again."
"...I take it you've studied early North American history, then," Daniel said slowly. After a second to think about it, he stuck out his right hand. "Doctor Daniel Jackson, archaeologist and anthropologist. And you?"
"Gekkō Keisuke. Family name first, personal name second. And yes, I know the first part sounds like a lizard," was the mild reply. To Daniel's slight surprise, Keisuke matched his handshake pound for pound. When she let go and stepped back, she commented, "I had wondered why Aiko was calling someone 'Dan-san.' She's never met the other one."
That felt like an inside joke he wasn't going to understand. So Daniel said, "Do you mind answering a few questions?"
"Sit with me and ask away." With that, Keisuke beckoned them over to the fire pit that was still sitting in the middle of the hallway. She sat down next to it, crossing her legs as though she was about to start yoga meditation. "Sorry I don't have tea or anything to act like a proper host, but this isn't the right place. And for all I know you're violently allergic to something here."
"Oh, believe me, we all got our booster shots," Jack muttered. Daniel tried not to wince at the reminder of Janet Frasier's aptitude with needles, but he'd always been a bit more willing to deal with the medical side of being exposed to new planets every month. Jack had more of a knack for complaining.
"What is this place?" Sam asked, once the entire team had settled down around the fire. Though it was still light outside, this tomb of a building was unnerving in a way the true tombs Daniel had explored over the years were not. This felt more like the few occasions he'd seen the skeletons of Pripyat.
"Ten years ago, it was a thriving town," Keisuke replied, with a tone and expression so bland it put MREs to shame. It was one of the more blatant lies by omission Daniel had ever seen. "Then it was attacked, and you can see what's happened since."
Stillness and rot. Daniel eyed the structure again and wondered instantly if Keisuke had been here when the place had fallen in. Though the woman was stone-faced, Daniel had a barely-unspoken suspicion that she was holding back some details that might come back to bite SG-1 later.
"While we're here," Jack began, which drew a look from Keisuke that implied a "and hopefully not for much longer" sentiment, "I'd like to get back to the little problem your joke brought up. We're a diplomatic mission, only"—here, Jack waved a hand a little and somehow effectively encompassed the entirety of the destroyed village—"we're short a local ruler or anyone to negotiate with. Where's the nearest town?"
Keisuke gave Jack a long, flat stare in response. "You aren't getting anywhere near the political or military heart of my country without vetting."
"Then it seems we're at an impasse," Daniel said, and took a few seconds to clean his glasses. Once they were back on his face, he asked, "Are you sure there isn't any way to get in contact with your leaders?"
"Leader," Keisuke corrected. Her eyes narrowed as she scrutinized Jack and Sam. "You're military. Jackson is a consultant, probably. Civilian contractor. And unless I miss my guess, Teal'c isn't enlisted either. Unless gold firehead emblems are acceptable now. Whenever the hell 'now' is." She crossed her arms. "So. How'd you get here, then?"
"Well," Daniel began, before meeting Jack's eyes and getting a measured nod They could afford to share some information. "It's 1999 on Earth. I take it this place uses a different calendar. And yes, Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter are military. Air Force. As for your other question…have you ever heard of a Stargate? Though I suppose there could be local terms I don't know yet."
Keisuke paused, staring at them. Then she took a long, deep breath, and muttered something inaudible and probably rather rude. Whatever her insights, she didn't see fit to share them. After a second or two, Keisuke got to her feet and said, "I'll make you an offer. Show me this Stargate, then head home. In twenty-four hours, I'll have a more diplomatic party put together. Can I rely on your superiors to do the same?"
Jack raised a skeptical eyebrow. He matched her stance, though, resting his arm across the automatic rifle at his waist. "And the first person we happen to run into can just snap her fingers and make diplomacy happen. Lucky us."
Keisuke sighed and reached back into one of her many pouches, withdrawing a knife with two perpendicular blades that both came to triangular points. The main blade was about five inches long, while the smaller one was more like two inches and budded off the former. She swung it around by the loop in the hilt, making everyone automatically wince, before flinging the knife directly into the floor with enough force to sink it up to the wrapped handle in the rotting floorboards.
For a second or two, Daniel wondered if there had been some hidden smoke grenade in the knife, because it and about a square yard of space disappeared into white smoke. The only reason no one twitched toward their firearms was that the smokescreen was tiny and Keisuke hadn't moved.
And from out of the smoke, a high-pitched voice said, "What can I do for you, Kei-chan?"
Teal'c was the first to recover, eyeing the oversized red toad as just another planetary oddity. After all, the Goa'uld may not have been keen on expanding their repertoire of hosts beyond humanoid ones, but that didn't mean other species didn't evolve in response to all kinds of environments.
"Kōsuke-kun, would you mind carrying a message to Sensei for me? These people would like to meet him, but they don't have permits." Permits? What kind of society were they dealing with, really? Keisuke went on, "Please let him know that I think it will be vital for the Leaf's future success. They probably have something to do with the geological activity around Mount Sky-Spirit, which can't go unaddressed."
And the toad saluted. "Of course, Kei-chan! Right away!" And once its foreleg made contact with its forehead, the toad vanished in a burst of smoke, exactly the same way it had appeared.
"I did not see any transport rings," Teal'c commented after a while. "Did any of you?"
The answer was a resounding "No."
Teal'c nodded. "Then our other options include the possibility of Goa'uld illusions, or a violation of…"
"A violation of the conservation of mass, of energy, and several other things," Sam finished, while Teal'c nodded in thanks. She smiled faintly. "Any chance I could get some readings? Could you do it again, Keisuke?"
"Not with Kōsuke. He's not mine," Keisuke replied with a shrug, plucking the knife out of the floorboards in a lazy scooping motion. "And if it's all the same, I'd rather get this diplomatic SNAFU on the road before I have to bleed for your people's science. I do that enough at home."
"I'm not seeing the connection," Sam admitted, though Keisuke was already walking off toward the destroyed front doors of the building, tucking the knife away. It seemed their time was up. "We'd never ask for blood samples without a direct medical need. I'm more interested in seeing more samples of your technology, especially if you have teleportation."
"You'll just give yourself a headache if you focus on that," Keisuke replied, as SG-1 followed. She gestured as she talked, clearly more relaxed about this interaction even if Daniel couldn't see a reason for it. "About all I can tell you is that no one on this planet's invented worthwhile personal firearms. And there aren't any internal combustion engines anywhere, even if somebody in the Land of Snow invented a locomotive last I heard."
What.
"That doesn't make any sense when you explain it like that," Sam protested. Still, her eyes were lighting up as the new mystery presented itself. "I'd love to know how you know about novel technologies your planet doesn't have. And about what ones you do have. Do you have any idea who invented them? Or how long ago?"
Keisuke held up her hands defensively. "You're asking the wrong person."
That non-explanation clearly didn't work for Sam. "But you're clearly aware of—"
By this point, with a minimum of fuss or panting, the group had managed to make their way back up the hill to the cave. Now that Daniel could see it clearly from the outside, the particular arrangement of house-sized boulders and foliage in the area made the cave's mouth somewhat hard to spot. Keisuke didn't seem all that surprised to be confronted with a cave, instead merely standing aside so SG-1 could enter it before she did.
Her reaction to seeing the Stargate, MALP, and the DHD was similarly mild, though Daniel thought he saw her jaw twitch as though she was grinding her teeth. All she said was, "Huh. So that's what brought you here."
"I take it the Stargates aren't widely known around here." Jack was already punching in the sequence to head back to Earth, and nearly literally. "If they were, there'd be a cult. How does 'Fellowship of the Ring' sound?"
Daniel saw Keisuke pinch the bridge of her nose, shaking her head. Under her breath, he heard her grumble, "Probably makes me Treebeard or something…"
"Are you certain there was not?" Teal'c asked, deliberately turning his head to eye the drawings. "Though the signs of human habitation are not recent, they are not beyond living memory."
Daniel looked to Keisuke and said, "Well?"
"Again, everyone who lived here isn't anymore. They moved. Or got killed," Keisuke replied, resting a hand on one of the walls and tracing the characters slowly with a fingertip. "If I get… What's the word? Clearance? Permission? Orders? Clearance. If I get that, and you're back, I might be able to tell you."
"Could I get that in writing?" Jack quipped, completing the sequence.
"No," Keisuke replied, and stood back as the gate lurched to life. Daniel could see the blue light of the wormhole casting her in a harsh glow, but she kept not reacting like a native of a pre-industrial society was supposed to. She was stonewalling them like a soldier from a professional military, but not from any nation they'd ever met.
And yet, she knew Earth. She knew the calendar. She knew the slang and the wordplay, and could pick out exactly which members of the team were a Air Force and who was not.
Daniel was going to have a headache by the time SG-1 finally figured out what was going on with PK4-399, and it would be one well-spent. He was already looking forward to finding out as much as he could, and he knew Sam was the same. Whether this planet would lead to any breakthroughs against the Goa'uld, it was too soon to tell.
That was what return visits were for.
USAF Colonel Jack O'Neill
After-mission debriefing, Earth
"—With a doctor's note," Jack concluded, even though he'd still have to write a proper after-action report once the verbal debrief was finished. He settled back down in his chair, his part played.
Though the rest of the SGC would have their impressions of the mission, only his team had been there. Even filtered through bureaucracy and couched in diplomatic language, none of it captured the entirety of the sheer dissonance in finding a woman like Keisuke Gekkō on the other end of the gate. But it had been fun, in a way. It was certainly the most wordplay Jack had gotten out of someone clearly thinking only of punting them back through the gate to Earth.
"It's fascinating, really," Daniel said, having already taken half a dozen notepad pages of scribbled notes and theories. "The children clearly had only one language—well, that we knew of—but seemed entirely convinced that their teacher would be able to communicate with us and handle the situation. And in turn, their teacher rattled off as many contemporary references in five minutes as we did. Aside from a few dropped terms that didn't seem to have the same connotations in their planet's version of Japanese, I'd almost call her an immigrant from Earth to PX4-399."
"I don't know if I'd call Lord of the Rings contemporary," Jack said, but Daniel was already too far gone to care about input from people who weren't anthropologists. It was the best time to bounce quips off of him, though the general didn't usually approve.
"And though I don't think they knew I caught it, it's clear that they have multiple ethnic groups on the planet." Daniel nodded to Teal'c, who had apparently been incorrectly identified by Aiko as a possible native. He hadn't mentioned that before they'd come back to Earth. "It's against what we know about policies of Goa'uld-controlled human populations. While it's true we don't tend to venture too far from the gate on each planet, the other SG teams have reported relatively consistent populations throughout most of their missions. Pulling from one population in Africa and another in Japan—recently enough that the Earth and PX4-399 dialects are mutually intelligible—makes this planet unique somehow."
He read all of those mission reports? But that was a thought for another time. Instead of voicing that thought, Jack leaned forward slightly just as he saw the least-liked person in the room start to open his mouth.
"Dr. Jackson, is there any chance the natives of this planet could be hostile to American interests?" asked Senator Kinsey. Or Senator Quisling, as Jack called him in the privacy of his head. They even sounded somewhat alike, though he wasn't sure Kinsey would get the reference. The man was about as consistent as a quark.
He needed to remember to tell that one to Sam and see if it actually made any sense.
"Our initial contact was clearly aware of what Earth is, as well as Earth culture and enough of the history to refer to historical plague vectors." Daniel was being very careful with his words. "It's more likely that they're aware there's a risk in associating with us. That, among other details Major Carter discovered, makes it more likely that they could be cautious allies if we act the right way."
"And what is the 'right way' for these people?" Kinsey wanted to know. The man was being as tractable as ever. "From what you've told us, they're a primitive society without even basic access to firearms. Honestly, General, I don't see much point in having these people as allies against the Goa'uld threat."
"That is not a given, sir. We have testimony from only one person, who was trying to shoo SG-1 off the planet before we could cause a plague, sir," Janet countered, pitching her voice just so to avoid coming across as giving Kinsey orders when the man wouldn't listen to anything but the voice between his ears no matter what anyone else said. He listened only long enough to decide who to drop a hammer on first. "That implies a sophisticated view of pathology that almost none of the 'primitive' planets have demonstrated thus far. From Dr. Jackson's notes, there was no superstition involved."
"In other words, Senator," Daniel said, "they're likely to appreciate being treated as equals, not burdens."
Or, as the senator tended to think of that approach, "being handled with kid gloves." Jack could already see the approach a society of soldiers would take to that. They'd walk all over SGC. Kinsey would throw a hissy fit.
"Honestly, I'm looking forward to heading back there and waving the note from Dr. Frasier in our new friend's face." Jack tried not to smile. "It'll be interesting to see what she says in response."
"We don't even know what they're called, or what they call their planet!" Kinsey, in his usual fashion, was beating a dead horse because he couldn't figure out what the actual important point was. The next thing they knew, he'd be going on about how God would save them from the probably-Shinto heathens. Who had localized space-time manipulation abilities far more subtle than the Goa'uld had shown so far. Maybe they weren't on the same level with the Reetou, but Jack wasn't ruling much out.
In truth, the situation they were facing was brand-new. While they only had the equivalent of still images regarding PX4-399's culture, it wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that the people there had technology at least a little comparable to Earth's. Maybe not the most advanced stuff, but they weren't living in some Roman-derived village or on the bleeding edge of space-age technology to the point it looped right back into pastoral serenity like the Nox or the Tollan. No, these people seemed almost like they'd be people Earth could actually interact with. Despite the lack of guns.
Thank God that Kinsey was about as adventurous as vanilla pudding. He wouldn't get anywhere close enough to the residents of PK4-399 to shout his self-aggrandizing speeches for fear of sullying his suit, with or without the blanket ban on non-SGC personnel going through the gate.
"Just to clarify, Colonel, did your contact specify diplomatic attache?" Hammond asked.
"...Now that you mention it, no." Ah, the wonders of twisty thinking. Maybe Hammond would be coming with them through the gate this time around. "Her exact wording was 'more diplomatic,' and she did seem to want to see us again."
"It wasn't an unsuccessful first contact," Daniel said. "But I don't think it's really over yet. We're the faces their people are going to get to know, at least at first. On the other hand, there's a real chance that she's going further up her chain of command than we are—the person she specified was someone she referred to as 'teacher', which in a military context could mean anyone from her personal mentor in boot camp to someone who has her as a professional aide." Daniel paused, then said, "And she did say that we'd effectively asked to meet him."
Jack eyed Daniel. "I guess that, for once, the 'take me to your leader' thing actually worked. No candy bars needed."
"I wasn't the one who said it," Daniel replied. He pushed his glasses farther up his face, then added, "If we were lucky enough to make first contact with someone who apparently has the leader of her nation or military on speed dial… Well, I'd say we go for it. We have twenty hours left to put a team together."
"Or we need merely rest before our departure time," Teal'c put in, drawing a sheepish look from Daniel. "We have an invitation."
Jack and Sam were already nodding by the time Teal'c finished. None of them were eager to hand off this mission to another team when there was so much they needed to establish before their host had booted them off the planet.
Though Daniel wasn't the only person with both high enough security clearance and a solid understanding of Japanese available, there was no one better for his particular brand of diplomacy. Even if the woman had seemed to take almost too much pleasure from twisting Daniel's preconceptions in knots. Sam, likewise, was a technology expert who was already champing at the bit to go back and get their contact to explain some of the tantalizing hints they'd gotten.
"Then we'll do that. And I'll be coming with you," Hammond said, which put an effective end to that conversation despite Kinsey's bluster. "We'll spend the intervening time coming up with a plan of how to approach the situation with SGC at the helm. Dismissed."
Twenty hours later
Jack wasn't really sure why he'd expected anything different.
During the gap in contact, of course details had changed. He'd expected to see a guard, dressed in the same uniform as Keisuke had been. He'd expected to see a change or two in the décor, since most people liked to put their best foot forward when it came to interplanetary relations even if they didn't throw a parade. He'd expected to see some kind of demarcation letting uninformed rubes know where and when the gate could activate. Someone had even posted a series of neatly-lettered signs pointing them out of the gate chamber.
It was just the details that threw everyone off.
All of the signs were in English, which Daniel had been very clear the natives did not use, with one glaring exception. They'd been painted on sandwich boards and left around as though directing traffic in an overcrowded parking garage. Even the all-capital label on the steps leading to the gate had been in English—and it read LOADING ZONE ONLY. Beyond that, hundreds of Japanese letters had been arranged into a rectangle around the platform, punctuated by four knives imbedded up to their hilts in the stone to mark the corners.
The guard Jack had noticed was someone about Daniel's age, with Asian features like just about everyone else they'd met here. His hair was a sandy brown that poked out from underneath a kerchief that made him look like someone planning on doing spring cleaning. He also had a six-inch toothpick sticking out of his mouth, a wedding band on his left hand, and didn't look at all surprised to see any of them. When Jack approached the end of the stairs, the man pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against and just waited.
"Ore wa Shiranui Genma desu," said the man, once they were within polite speaking distance. Jack mentally rearranged that into Western order as the man rattled off something that didn't sound like the rest of an introduction.
"He said you're about to walk into a—"
Jack reached the end of the ink letters and promptly ran face-first into an invisible brick wall.
"—barrier," Daniel finished, just a split second too late.
"Y'think?" Jack replied dryly, after stumbling back a bit. He wasn't hurt, just surprised. Curious, he put his hand up to meet what should've been thin air, only for his fingers to meet something that felt perfectly solid. Where he could have left fingerprints on a plexiglass wall, his fingers set the "invisible" force field to shimmering like a soap bubble.
Daniel wasn't paying any attention to him, of course. He was already trying to talk to the guy, who was looking entirely too smug about that little trick.
"This is something we need to see more of," Sam was saying, clearly too distracted by the shiny new technology to bother with the fact that they seemed to be trapped in a box, going by the poking Teal'c was doing behind her. The barrier didn't seem to have any more give under jaffa fingertips. "The ink we see here could be an aqueous solution of silver nitrate, maybe with dye to mask the color, or maybe naquadah, so all they'd have to do is run a current through it to stimulate the electrons in—"
Yep, Jack wasn't going to understand that for a while. "Doctor Jackson, do you mind asking your new friend to let us out?"
"Oh, he can't," Daniel replied distractedly. "Shiranui-san says we're going to be checked over by a medical expert before we get to go anywhere near the…Fire Shadow. Hokage? Yes, I thought so." Daniel surfaced from the depths of linguistic bliss to add, "That's the title they use for their leader, I think. But the medic should be arriving soon."
"O'Neill," said Teal'c, drawing his attention away from that little headache.
"What is it, Teal'c?" Jack asked, already turning to look.
What Jack had assumed was either new furniture or maybe a piece of replacement artwork, over in the corner next to the painting of cranes, was a huge white shape that had unfolded since the MALP had done its sweep. On spindly black legs, the vastly oversized crane looked down at SG-1 from about thirteen feet off the ground. Its beak alone was the length of some of the geese Jack had failed to chase off his lawn in years past, and it tilted its head this way and that to get a better look at them with its prey-positioned eyes.
"Tsuruya-san," Genma said with a flourish, extending his arm in the direction of the bird.
The bird opened its beak and spoke nearly as quickly as Genma did. Which, given the lack of lips, was probably more surprising than it had any right to be. Earth had parrots, but were they sapient? Sentient? What word was he even looking for?
"…Uh, she says Keisuke is in the area, but they're setting up…" Daniel paused, and the bird dipped its head as it waited for him to translate. "I think the closest idea we have is 'pre-fabricated housing.' Because it's raining outside."
"I assume there was something wrong with the village aside from the holes in the roofs," Jack said, his voice dry.
The bird stared with its beady little eyes, as though it knew what he was saying. Its sentences were a little choppy despite the faintly musical voice, but its intent got across fairly clearly, and Jack saw Genma wince a little.
"Don't translate that," Jack suggested.
"I wasn't going to. You can get told off in English like the rest of us do," Daniel told him, perhaps with just a hint of smug.
Jack was going to argue with that, only for someone to bustle down the hallway leading outside.
The new arrival turned out to be a tiny woman who was probably five foot and a buck even, or maybe a bit more than both if Jack counted her heels. She wore gloves and off-white scrubs under a white lab coat, with long, dark hair tied back into a complex-looking bun. She had a headband like the blonde girl from yesterday, rather than the bandanas, and purple tattoos on each cheek as well as a diamond-shaped mark on her forehead.
"Our esteemed doctor, I presume," Jack said.
"If you make any remarks, they're getting back to Janet, sir," said Sam, and Jack shut up.
The woman said a quick greeting to Genma and Tsuruya the crane, before snapping to attention in front of SG-1. She had her hands clasped in front of her stomach as she observed each of them in turn, then bowed. Once SG-1 had returned the gesture (at Daniel's insistence), the woman put her hand against the barrier and observed the inked lines on the floor carefully. They even glowed. Once she was satisfied, she gave the order. Or at least Jack assumed it was an order.
"Watashi wa Nohara Rin desu," was the introduction once the barrier came down.
SG-1 followed suit, with Hammond finally allowed to make his presence and rank known properly. While Jack watched the proceedings, he noted how everyone in the room—crane included—seemed a bit uncomprehending of military ranks beyond "general" and "captain." Sure, Daniel didn't have a rank and Teal'c wasn't even from Earth, but Jack was a little disappointed. Then again, he supposed that assuming everyone had Keisuke's knowledge level wasn't going to go over well no matter how he framed it. It was clear she was an exception, not the rule.
It just seemed like the exception in question had an awful lot of of influence.
But before they could move on, the native medic held up her hands to Daniel's arm, speaking softly.
"What's she doing, Dr. Jackson?" Jack asked, as the woman continued to explain something.
"Uh, hang on," Daniel said, before asking a question back. When he got a reply, he said, "She says she's making sure we're healthy. The barrier had a built-in detection matrix and now she's just checking the work that was done automatically."
Sam leaned over, curiosity alight in her expression. "Does that mean she has something like one of the Goa'uld healing devices? But wait, there's still no naquadah…"
Never let astrophysicists name anything, Jack thought to himself.
"I'm not seeing one," Daniel said, just as his arm was set free. When their tiny medical tyrant said something else, Daniel's expression became a little wry.
Jack couldn't let that go. "Something you want to share with the class?"
"Not unless you want to hear all the ways my nutritionist is failing me," Daniel replied. "Something about caffeine addiction. The rest is health advice."
It wasn't like SGC didn't run on the power of the base's many coffeemakers. That was what the insurance companies called an occupational hazard.
But before Jack could voice that thought, Daniel frowned suddenly.
"Oh, that's…" Daniel paused, then clearly requested clarification. After another quick exchange, he said, "Doctor Nohara can tell that there are major physiological differences between us and the natives of this planet. But she wants to get a second or third opinion before she can tell us what it may mean for any extended stays."
"No eating the hors d'oeuvres, got it," Jack responded, unconcerned. There was a reason SG-1, like all SG teams, carried MREs for missions no matter where they were going. Some of the mess kits were probably old enough to serve as mortar.
The local expert nutrition-critic let each one of them go by without much other comment ("Believe me, it's not that simple," said Daniel) until she got to Teal'c.
The woman paused, her gloved hand still on Teal'c's arm, before she turned and said something to Daniel that had both the crane and Genma sending her alarmed looks. It was very subtle, but Jack had been watching soldiers for longer than some of these people had probably been alive. The knee-jerk reaction of most was to reach for weapons, and he'd seen the twitching.
Daniel, having apparently expected the problem, replied in a conciliatory tone and had both of his hands waving in "calm down" motions almost before the tension was fully established.
"What'd she say?" Jack asked.
"She knows the prim'ta is there, but not what it's for. Hang on," Daniel replied distractedly.
While Daniel…probably had enough Japanese to be able to explain what Junior did for Teal'c and his lack of an actual immune system, it probably made sense that this planet had never run into Goa'uld before. They'd guessed as much, but it was nice to have confirmation that the snakes hadn't gotten a foothold on this planet. Sam's comment about the lack of naquadah aside from the gate was only good for about fifty meters, but…
After Daniel's half-frantic excuses, Rin merely crossed her arms and said something somewhat dry.
"Ha!" said Genma, more of a bark than a laugh.
"Doctor Jackson?" Hammond asked.
"She says, 'Have fun with your giant symbiotic abdominal parasite,'" Daniel supplied. "And before that, she asked if Teal'c was pregnant, and if not, what clan he was from."
Jack stared at him. "What?"
"Apparently, humans around here can have physiological differences that make the gap between Jaffa and Earth-born humans look like just another next-door neighbor." Daniel shook his head. "There are going to be a few more points we need to clarify when we get to the meeting."
At that point, the crane poofed away into smoke like the frog had the day before, while Genma apparently decided that it was time to do whatever his job was. He collected the knives from where they'd been left in the floor, tucking them all away into a pouch. Rin had already apparently checked over the rest of SG-1 to her satisfaction, and so left ahead of the group.
"Keep your eyes peeled, people," Jack muttered under his breath, as they finally saw the sky.
In the rain, the mountains outside of the gate chamber were subdued. The grayish cast made the area look somber, or defeated, when in reality there were actually more people running around than last time. By the time Teal'c brought up the rear, Genma was speaking to a third person in a quiet tone.
This new arrival, frankly, looked like someone who'd walked out of a slasher movie. While the uniforms Genma, Keisuke, and Rin had been wearing made sense for their professions, Jack wasn't sure what kind of job required a plague doctor mask. The…probably-a-man was also wearing a long black cloak that shed water like it was a raincoat.
"Meeting your first ANBU agent already. What do you think?" asked a familiar voice, and Jack whipped around to find Keisuke standing directly between their group and the cave mouth, carrying a bubble-print umbrella. She smiled a bit crookedly. "Or Ansatsu Senjutsu Tokushu Butai, if you don't like acronyms."
"Which means…?" Jack asked Daniel.
"'Special Assassination and Tactical Squad,' literally," Daniel said, eyeing the plague mask guy with some apprehension.
For his part, Captain Creepy didn't really seem to care if he was an object of curiosity. He was still talking to Genma, not reacting otherwise.
"You got it. Hayabusa-buntaichō is in charge of security here, so you're in good hands," Keisuke said. She held up her arm, revealing four more hook-ended umbrellas, all with somber black and white patterns instead of her whimsical one. "We have a bit of a hike down to the meeting site, unless you'd like to go the fast way. Umbrellas are for the slow way."
"I take it you're Keisuke Gekkō," said Hammond. He stuck out a hand for her to shake, and Jack was pretty sure he saw the masked agent twitch in SG-1's direction. "Major General George Hammond, Stargate Command. Do you have a rank we're supposed to use?"
"Well, to use your method… I'm a jōnin for the Village Hidden in the Leaves, in the Land of Fire," Keisuke replied, and as she shook Hammond's hand, the rest of SG-1 selected their umbrellas. She took a second to think over her translation before saying, "Means 'elite ninja,' which puts my rank at…somewhere between major and colonel, at least until someone declares war. You can just use my name as far as I'm concerned. However, the person you'll be meeting down in the valley is effectively the supreme commander of our nation's military."
Jack's brain was still stuck on 'ninja.'
Sam, fortunately, was a little less distracted. "For—I'm sorry, we're meeting the president?"
"No. A Hokage is not a president." Keisuke explained patiently, "A president is—supposedly—the head of a democratically elected government and the commander-in-chief, but doesn't actually lead the armies personally. Right?" This got at least two nods. "A Hokage is promoted to the head of the military through combat or diplomatic prowess, and controls the country's shinobi. Aside from the consent of the jōnin and his predecessor, he doesn't need the approval of the civilian population to get the job. Or to do it."
"Are we dealing with a military dictatorship here?" Jack asked instantly, and got two glares almost as quickly. One was from Hammond, the other from Daniel. "What? It's a valid question."
Keisuke, on the other hand, looked more amused than anything. "Coming from someone in the United States Air Force? You certainly don't have room to talk."
Jack was already opening his mouth to counter that, but Hammond cut him off. "Enough, Colonel. We came here for a diplomatic mission, not to get into an interstellar contest of who can make the most smart remarks."
Genma said something then, in a tone that suggested he was stopping short of ordering her to get everyone's asses in gear. Keisuke, wiping the smirk off her face in record speed, inclined her head and made a series of hand signals that were as fast as any sign language Jack had ever seen. It actually reminded him a bit of the hand signals they'd used back in… Well, Jack wasn't going to go there today. The guy named after a motorcycle vanished in a blur of black and bone-white, exactly how the kids the other day had moved.
"Here are your umbrellas," Keisuke said, apparently ignoring the localized teleportation the black-ops guy was doing on his own. "Originally, we were half-planning on teleporting you all down to the site, but it seems it'd be best to try not using novel methods on people not used to the sensation. Instead, we're getting a friend to help out."
"Your concern is appreciated. I assume the site is directly down the cliff-side, there?" Hammond asked, and Jack eyed the massive drop dubiously.
"Yes. If you want, you can take a look at the facilities we put together," Keisuke suggested, since it didn't seem like the ride was arriving in the next four seconds. So, they took the umbrellas and decided to wait a bit.
When Jack did as she suggested, it seemed that the meeting-place was on the shore of the perfectly circular lake the group had seen before. While before the area had been barren of human life, Jack could make out multiple gazebo-like structures taking shape. As they watched, a fourth one sprang fully-formed from the ground like it was a sprout on one of those nature documentaries that made liberal use of the fast-forward button. As the dust settled, he could see half a dozen people fussing over it, deciding where relatively large objects would go.
Pre-fab housing, huh? Jack was starting to feel that, even with two translators, there was a chunk of context the size of Mount Rushmore that just wasn't getting across.
And then the ground started to rumble. SG-1, as one, whipped around just in time to see a scorpion the size of a double-decker bus arrive at the base of the hill they were currently using as a lookout post. It had heavy-duty pincers the size of a dumpster apiece, and the stinger on the end of its tail was nearly as large. Now, if only its body wasn't bright red and its extremities green, it might've been an ordinary oversized monster of a bug. Instead, it was also festive.
It lashed its tail back and forth in a way that was either a mockery of waving, or a threat.
Keisuke didn't seem at all bothered, saying only, "She answers to Ninjin. Means 'carrot.' Now, it's time to go."
Major Samantha Carter
Five minutes later, PK4-399
Ninjin, the monstrous scorpion that looked more like a terrifying Christmas decoration than any vegetable Sam had seen recently, turned out to be what Keisuke called "basically a taxi." Of the kind that had six legs and long, pencil-thick hairs sticking out across its body like whiskers on a cat. Someone had rigged up a pair of benches to make sure no one on SG-1 wound up being impaled, but the scorpion's gait wasn't any more comfortable as they traveled through the forest.
Sam was used to horses, no matter which planet they found themselves on. Six skittering legs, no matter how large they were, remained alien and disturbing, and not just because Earth had long since lost the oxygen saturation required to support any arthropod that big. Maybe it had never had that much.
"So, what does Carrot Top here do as a day job?" Jack leaned forward, planting his boots slightly away from the hairiest part of Ninjin's back.
Keisuke made an "I don't know" noise, then tapped the scorpion's carapace. She said something in Japanese, and to Sam's surprise, Ninjin actually talked back.
"Was anyone else awake when we took the off-ramp to the Twilight Zone?" Jack asked, as the scorpion kept talking. "Because that seems just a bit relevant."
"Ninjin says she enjoys using a pottery wheel when she can find the time," Keisuke replied, as though Jack hadn't said anything. Flipping a triangular knife in her hands, she went on in a mild, entirely unfazed tone, "One of her sisters is a sanitation worker, and another one is a therapist. Actually, between the fifty-six of them, they pretty much do everything. "
There didn't seem to be anything to say to that. The rest of the trip to the meeting site was spent in awkward silence, because Sam's mind was occupied with questions that started with "how" and ended twenty different ways. They started with the physical requirements of a giant arthropod in a human-compatible atmosphere, careened wildly around to the question of sapience, ducked past a bullet point that read "human speech?" and ultimately never made it out of her mouth.
Ninjin folded all of her legs and settled onto the grass as soon as they arrived, allowing another person wearing the "ninja" uniform to heave a ladder into place so everyone could get off her back without tripping. While SG-1 climbed down the prescribed way, Keisuke stepped onto Ninjin's head, between her eight eyes, and hopped down the six-foot drop to the ground without pausing. Sam caught her speaking softly to another ANBU agent, though this one had a mask shaped more like a cat than the last one they'd seen.
"All right," Keisuke said, as Ninjin disappeared into a massive cloud of smoke. Her lack of reaction kept SG-1 from letting themselves show confusion or shock, and the moment passed. She made a sweeping gesture and left one hand palm-up in the direction of a nearby peak. "We've got a few more arrivals aside from you. Keep your eye on the birdie."
"Excuse me?" was about as far as General Hammond got, because a brown speck had appeared around the curve of a mountain ridge.
As they watched, open-mouthed, Sam calculated quickly. Given the approximate distance of the other mountains, and how quickly the grayish-brown spot was turning into a recognizable silhouette, it had to be both big and faster than any "bird" had a right to be.
The creature ripped past the lake, throwing a rooster tail of water in the air as it buzzed the surface. Wind blasted up, soaking anyone closer to the lake than the cat-masked ANBU in a shower of small fish. SG-1 fended the problem off with their astonishingly strong umbrellas Keisuke had provided, giving Sam a chance to get a look at the physics-defying bird.
It was at least the size of a Boeing 747, but living, flexible, and equipped with a beak shaped like a power drill. It also, if Sam's eyes weren't deceiving her, had three yellow, scaly legs. Only two of which were touching the ground when it landed, with the third apparently acting more like an airplane's vertical stabilizer, but far more redundant.
Keisuke muttered something, shaking her head slowly.
"What was that?" Sam asked Daniel, as their host walked on ahead with one arm raised in a lazy wave.
Daniel was busy pulling a fish out of a pocket. "She said, roughly, 'I was wondering when he'd figure out to summon the killer pigeon.'"
Jack eyed her. "As opposed to what?"
Keisuke didn't end up providing an answer, a bit too busy signalling the black-clad figure climbing down from the demon bird with her umbrella. From one perspective, it looked a little like aircraft carrier semaphore flags, but from another, it just looked like enthusiastically ruining the umbrella's integrity. When two of the supports broke, Sam liked to think no one was surprised.
By that point, thankfully, their distracted host had been joined by her friend.
"Uzumaki Nagato-sama," Keisuke said, as the man peered at them from under his shoulder-length blood-red hair.
"Senpai," Nagato corrected, though Keisuke merely shrugged him off. The rest of the conversation went directly to Japanese as, apparently, the two caught each other up on recent events. Though Sam couldn't understand the words, she could read the companionable tone easily enough. These two were old friends.
"What did that mean?" Jack asked Daniel, because it didn't seem like a translation was going to be coming from the self-identified ninja half as quickly.
"He's…sort of like a mentor, or a person who's been in the business longer than she has," Daniel explained, brow furrowing. "But the first thing she said implied that he was more like a local warlord, or maybe local nobility. The '-sama' suffix indicates deep respect."
Like Keisuke and most of her peers, he wore a steel-plated headband with a symbol on it, though the four vertical lines were a departure from the spiral design. Instead of the vest and blue-black fatigues, he wore a heavy black overcoat with a red line indicating either a zipper or hidden buttons where the seam met. On the outside of said coat, he also wore a heavy belt of gray leather and steel fittings that included multiple storage pouches.
Sam did a double-take when she got a second look at his eyes, however. Rather than normal human pupil-iris-sclera order, from innermost point to the edges of his eyes, Nagato's eyes were a series of concentric purplish-gray rings. The man also had skin literally as pale as milk, or maybe expertly applied white paint. Everyone else around here had at least looked normal, though their abilities were not so, and Sam had to admit she was at a loss.
That hadn't been in the introductory pamphlet. After that, the giant bird settling down with a flap of its wings? Pretty much punctuation.
"With Nagato-senpai here," Keisuke said, for the benefit of people who only spoke English as opposed to half the languages on Earth, "it's a real international event. If you wanted another sign that the Hokage is taking you seriously, there you go."
Nagato said something in a teasing tone, at which point Keisuke rolled her eyes.
Daniel said something, too, and the result was a pair of weird looks from both Japanese-speaking people. Hastily, he backpedaled and added, "Not that I have any idea of what constitutes 'unusual' around here."
"You ain't seen nothin' yet," said Keisuke, shrugging. Before Sam could ask what that was supposed to mean, Keisuke was already turning back to her friend and saying, "Nagato-senpai—" and the rest of the sentence went back to Japanese, which Sam didn't know enough of to pick out individual words.
"We're going to be escorted to the meeting hall," Daniel said, once he'd had a second to listen to the rapid-fire conversation.
Sam decided to reserve comments for later, preferably after everyone had time to actually sit down and not get caught on tangents.
The meeting hall itself was a clone of the one up the hill, at least at first glance. The layout was in the exact same style, with a divot taken out of the floor to indicate that ordinary people were supposed to leave shoes in the entrance. However, since neither of SG-1's ninja escorts bothered, neither did Sam's team. But when Sam looked around, eyeing light fixtures that looked like something from the 1950s, she noticed a strange quality that stretched from the exposed wiring and almost directly up to the furniture: the entire building was seamless.
It faked wood and nails fairly well, but the architecture felt artificial. Prefabricated, like Keisuke had said before.
Sam had never seen a prefabricated palace before—most military bases on the planet were more utilitarian than the main hall of a castle—but that was exactly what it was. There was a long table that included a distinct lack of the feasts they'd had on other occasions, while also lacking the weaponry, eye-searing fashion, and hostile intent that characterized Goa'uld meetings. At the head of a table big enough for about ten people, piled high with paperwork, was a figure wearing a robe and a red hat, along with a few other people who looked familiar. Sam picked out Genma and Rin, but no more giant animals than the ones that were just visible outside the door if she looked.
"'Take me to your leader' never got this much mileage before," Jack said, because he couldn't miss a moment.
"Lucky you," Keisuke said in an undertone, as she sidled past SG-1 to, eventually, guide them toward appropriate seating.
It felt almost identical to a meeting room in the SGC, but with less metal.
Once everyone sat down, with Nagato on the robed man's left and Keisuke to his right, and finally SG-1 and Hammond (of Texas) farther down the table, the probable Hokage removed his hat and set it squarely on the table in front of him. There weren't any chairs, but someone had helpfully set up thick cushions for the everyone attending the meeting at the shin-high table.
"Ohayō gozaimasu!" said the blond man who was, from the looks of things, actually in charge. When he was finished, he bowed slightly, his eyes disappearing under his spiky hair as the others at the table mirrored the motion toward SG-1. With the exception of Keisuke, who kept her ear turned toward the Hokage and her face toward SG-1 without so much as looking back at him.
Sam could practically feel the temperature drop in the moment Daniel glared at Jack to keep him from piping up out of turn. Probably with "Colorado," or something equally pithy.
"Allow me to introduce Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage of the Hidden Leaf Village," Keisuke said, when no one immediately acted. Even the politician she'd identified just continued to smile placidly, fingers half-laced together in front of him, despite what, to him, probably sounded like she'd said his name backwards.
Everyone Earthling's eyes slid toward Daniel, who had already inclined his head slightly deeper than their honored host had. Opening his mouth, Sam picked out their names and not much else, because Daniel had decided to translate even the titles as best he could.
The non-English-speaking part of the room followed the introduction with somewhat frozen politeness. The different cadences of English and Japanese made it hard to tell what tone Daniel was using or if specific terminology offended anyone, and even if it had, Sam wasn't sure their hosts would let anyone else know. The Hokage's placid expression didn't change significantly, which just about used up Sam's context clues.
Language barriers, Sam thought, were the worst.
Funnily enough, though, Sam was starting to notice a pattern. Or at least what she was pretty sure were loanwords that didn't make sense. While the terms were often filtered through a strong accent, she heard more than a few words that were somewhat familiar. Like the letters of the English alphabet, or numbers that she didn't really remember originating in Asia. Given how little she could understand at all, they stuck out somewhat.
"Major Carter, are you hearing what I'm hearing?" Jack asked, while Daniel and Keisuke continued to translate rapidly between both sides, as though verbally checking each other's notes.
Sam frowned faintly, tilting her head to one side. "That depends on what you're hearing, sir."
"I swear I just heard 'Korean barbecue' on a planet that doesn't have a DMZ," Jack said, eyes narrowing at the far end of the room, to where two of the other shinobi were apparently discussing meal options. From the looks of their uniforms, they were more support staff than combat-ready soldiers, and were far enough away that Sam didn't think SG-1 was supposed to notice them.
"You're not wrong," said Keisuke suddenly, from their left.
Immediately, Jack and Sam turned back to the shinobi at the head of the table. Daniel looked like he wanted to drop his head into his hands in despair, Teal'c had raised an eyebrow at them, and both the Hokage and Keisuke were amused.
There was the sound of a brief scuffle, but none of them turned their attention away from the head honchos this time. Even if there was the occasional thud in the background, it didn't seem all that important.
"Anyway," Keisuke said slowly, leaning her chin on her upraised knuckles, "I admit it was a perfect time for a line like 'we come in peace; take me to your leader' when we met you." Her eyes slid toward the Hokage, who inclined his head ever-so-slightly before she went on, "But what about these people?"
As Keisuke got to her feet, the sound of scuffling got louder until SG-1 couldn't ignore it without setting every combat-ready nerve in their bodies aflame.
There, being bodily dragged in the door like a bunch of rambunctious puppies, is a team of what are unmistakably SGC men. However, Sam's eyes narrow when she realizes that each of the four soldiers is entirely unrecognizable, even to her. Sure, they're obviously Americans and the muffled shouting that had come from the last man in line was distinctly Air Force-tinged underneath the gag, but Sam's brain is screaming at her.
She doesn't know these men at all. And only SGC puts anyone through the gate. Legally, anyway.
Jack, of course, was the first off the mark. "Well, look what the cat dragged in." He stepped forward as the men's captors step back, though their eyes are on the Hokage and not really on the graying Air Force colonel. "So, how was the trip through the beta gate, boys?"
The Hokage coughed for effect before he said something, which had Daniel and Keisuke's attention instantly.
"They found the four of them sneaking through the gate before our arranged meetup time," Daniel said, once the two translators had decided who was going first. "But since they're our problem, they decided to leave them alive."
"Any idea what they were looking for?" Sam asked.
"These types are always looking for advanced technology, right?" Keisuke's voice was dry as dust. "Too bad for them; we basically don't have anything electrical you couldn't find on Earth. Hell, did you notice that we don't even use pens half the time?"
"Writing implements aren't a decent measurement of technological advancement," Daniel said. He gestured in the general direction of the gate. "Worlds with Stargates often have leftover devices from Goa'uld conquests or…something. We still don't know for sure who built the Stargates in the first place."
Nagato, looking back and forth as the conversation continued, asked Keisuke a pointed question, to which she shook her head in a manner that was less than certain. She seemed more concerned with SG-1 overhearing what he'd said, rather than the actual content, because her gaze darted directly to Daniel.
Daniel was following that part, too. "I'm—I'm sorry, did you say 'kekkei genkai?' What does that mean, exactly?"
"Classified," was the instant response. "So, are you taking your would-be thieves back or not?"
Sam could see Jack's fingers twitch. Though he was as unhappy with the situation as any of them, there was a part of any decent US soldier that demanded that even traitors had to come home. The right to a jury of one's peers was a powerful pull. Some SG teams may have died in the line of duty, never seeing what took their lives, Sam couldn't help but feel like these particular spies and malcontents were getting the better deal. They didn't know anything about the culture on PK4-399 for certain, but the Japanese influences implied either forcing prisoners to commit suicide or cutting their heads off were their preferred execution methods.
The unsettling gleam in the Hokage's baby blues didn't speak much of mercy.
"Officially, none of them were ever here," Jack told Keisuke, turning his back to the captured rogue agents. "Your whole world is hiding behind a lot of little black Sharpie lines. Redacted to hell and back."
"As it should be," was the remark the Hokage made, once Daniel had translated back and forth. "We had advanced warning, thanks to meeting you, but these people would target vulnerable peoples and rip their hearts out if they could. This is not acceptable."
That was an understatement. And Sam didn't have to be an astrophysicist—though she was—to tell that Daniel and Jack were both gearing up for a response.
And while all of them were staring each other down and waiting to see who'd blink first—
Indoors, Sam thought later, gunshots were deafening. Daniel was half under the table before Sam hit him, knocking them both flat, while Jack did the same to General Hammond. Wind rushed all around the room as the masked agents rushed the gunman—holdout weapon, why hadn't anyone caught it?—and someone screamed. Someone else was barking orders, but not in English.
And in the midst of the chaos, no one noticed the Hokage crumpling in place with a bullet hole in the center of his metal headband until the corpse hit the wood floor, blood pooling beneath what would almost certainly be very little left of an intact skull. Or at least Sam didn't notice, but the shout from Teal'c was hard to miss—as was the outcry when one of the guards spotted the body.
"Urusai!" Keisuke snapped, her voice cutting through the din in an instant. She spared half a second's glance for the corpse that had been her liege lord, already moving toward the bound prisoners with clear violent intentions in every twanging nerve. "Hiding an assassination plot inside a supposed desperate last stand was a clever plan." What? "But you're not familiar enough with us to know when you're beaten."
Daniel had been halfway out of Sam's grip, about to check for certain if the Hokage was dead, when Sam noticed that the medic, Nohara, hadn't moved except to close her eyes and duck slightly when the gunfire happened. She hadn't made a single move to inspect the Hokage.
The instant that realization crossed Sam's mind, bringing sensations of dread and confusion in equal measure, the head of the table was engulfed in thick white smoke. When it cleared, Sam and Daniel found themselves reeling back from...a log.
There was no corpse and no blood. No dead Hokage. Just a bullet hole surrounded by wooden splinters that were scattered across the floor. Some of them were even imbedded in the wall scroll that had been behind the Hokage.
"No one around here stays a head of state for long if they can't keep themselves alive," Sam heard Keisuke say.
Just. What.
"How the hell—" Jack began, while the masked agents dragged the prisoners outside. "What's going on?!"
Keisuke didn't seem to be in the mood to answer anyone's questions, instead walking outside to shout at someone just as a door to one of the other halls opened.
There was the Hokage, striding into the hall as though nothing was wrong, accompanied by a gigantic toad who was carrying a man in black BDUs and a sniper rifle with its barrel bent into an L-shape. The supposed dead man sauntered over to the log that had been perforated in his place, nudged it out of his seat with one foot, and dropped back into place.
Keisuke chose that moment to walk back into the room, eyebrows rising at the sight of the captured sniper and the Hokage's inexplicable re-entrance, but didn't get to comment.
"Daijōbu desu ka?" asked the Hokage's voice, and Sam followed his gaze to Keisuke.
Who was rubbing the bridge of her nose as though she had a headache. "Daijōbu desu yo." And as her fingers came away from her face, she rolled a flattened dark lump between them.
A bullet.
And her eyes glowed.
"Goa'uld," Sam heard herself hiss, already reaching for her sidearm. This, at least, she could deal with.
AN: So, it seems as though everyone is in for a lot of shouting. And that multiple headshots are in the cards. Oops! Looks like it's time to get down to brass tacks.
There are several cameos in this chapter! If you're following ANBU masks in CYB, you should be able to recognize Yamato and everyone's favorite fighting falcon, Namiashi Raidō. There are a few more folks here, though Kakashi and Obito aren't. As far as SG-1 can tell. Perhaps it's for the best?
Anyway, thanks for joining me on this mad romp so far. :D
End of Part One! [cue commercial break]