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Chapter 3
They stared, in disbelief, at what had come through the gate. Nothing had prepared them for that.
Teal'c was the first to speak, "Colonel Mitchell, how do you wish us to proceed?"
He hollered a response, "Hold your fire, but do not let that thing out of your sites." The group kept their weapons trained on the familiar figure before them. It began to advance towards the group. "Jackson, what should we do?"
"You're asking me?" Daniel yelled back.
Mitchell responded, "You know more about these guys than anyone. Is there any hope we can… fix her?"
"I don't…"
The prior formerly known as Vala stopped mere feet away from Daniel's position. She lifted up her staff and thrust it hard against the ground. The blue crystal illuminated. Her face remained as expressionless as it had been since stepping through the gate. In a deep, forceful voice, she began, "Hallowed are the Or…" She all of a sudden dropped her head towards the ground. "Oh, I can't keep this up." As she lifted her face they could see that she was laughing. "Daniel, your face is priceless!"
SG-1 stared in shock and disbelief. She walked over to Mitchell and casually pushed the P90 he was still absent-mindedly aiming at her to the side. "For a second there, I thought you were actually about to wet yourself."
Carter had stopped aiming at her, but had yet to remove her finger from the trigger. Just in case. As Vala walked past, Sam had to make the comment, "Like the outfit."
Vala walked over and stood next to Teal'c. "It's not exactly my taste, but it did come with matching accessories." She waved her staff around a little, then settled it at her side, the same way Teal'c was holding his Jaffa staff weapon. She looked over to him and whispered, "Mine's bigger."
Teal'c raised one eyebrow in what almost looked like a playful expression. "Indeed."
Daniel sounded almost angry as he blurted out, "Why are you here?"
She gave an over-exaggerated pout. "Daniel, I missed you."
Carter rolled her eyes. "I think what Daniel wanted to know, what we all want to know, is how did you escape the Ori?"
"Turns out, the Ori are not nearly as 'all-knowing' as they would have us believe." Vala smiled. She dramatically walked up the steps of the gate platform and stood at the top, as if waiting for her spotlight. "Apparently when I ringed off the cargo ship I was sucked through the event horizon of the black hole, and into the Ori's galaxy. Have I mentioned how dreadful I find that place?"
"You wanna get to the parts we don't already know?" Mitchell tried to keep her from getting sidetracked.
"Hmph." She acted insulted. Daniel and Mitchell exchanged glances and rolled their eyes. Vala continued, "Well, the planet I ringed to was quite similar to that charming little village where I was burned to death. You remember that village, don't you, Daniel?" She was a little surprised when he gave her a somewhat pitiful glance at that last remark, instead of the snide comments she expected. She kept going anyway. "Fortunately, I arrived at a time when no one was around. I quickly… procured… some of the customary garments for the area and attempted to blend in until I could figure a way out of that awful place. My opportunity came five excruciatingly boring days later. There really is a limit to how much prostration a girl can take."
"She does enjoy listening to herself talk." Daniel replied to Carter's eye rolling.
"As I was saying," Vala quickly turned the attention back to herself, "on the fifth day a prior appeared through the gate. He said that he was 'recruiting true believers to aid in spreading the word of Origin'. Rumor had it that volunteers were being prior-ized and sent to the 'realm of the non-believers'. I figured it was my best chance to get back here, so I volunteered."
"How did you withstand the, what did you call it? 'Prior-izing'?" Daniel asked incredulously.
"That's just what I call it. They have some stuffy biblical term for the whole transformation process. I never actually experienced it."
His response was, "Then what's with the…" he hand gestured wildly to indicate her new appearance.
"I was just getting to that. Believe it or not, for all the effort you all put in to try and kill one Prior with your very large, not at all phallic, bombs and missiles and such, sneaking up behind one and bashing him over the head with a rock seems to do the trick."
"You have got to be kidding." Carter groaned.
Mitchell just shook his head. "I swear, sometimes I feel like my life is one big Looney Tunes cartoon. Why don't we just drop a really big anvil on all the Ori?"
"I do not believe that tactic would prove successful." Teal'c offered. "Many times the coyote attempted such a trap for the fleet footed desert bird, and was met with defeat on each occasion." Daniel realized that Teal'c's statement wouldn't have been half as funny if Teal'c hadn't kept a straight face through the entire thing.
"Does anyone still want to hear how I got away?" Vala attempted to get the attention back on her.
"Oh, please, do continue." Daniel replied sarcastically.
"Well, there was a horde of newly converted Priors milling about the gate area. The ringleader would basically dial an address and one would go through. Then he'd dial another address and the next nearest Prior would go, so on and so forth. So then, when one of them wandered slightly away from the others I skillfully engaged and defeated him."
"You just said you snuck up behind him at hit him with a rock." Daniel interrupted.
"Well I haven't exactly seen you taking out Priors left and right." Vala shot back. "I took his cloak and staff, and add some bleach to the hair, a little pale make-up," she wiped a sleeve of the cloak across her face and it revealed a streak of normal, flesh-toned skin, "a couple 'Yay for prostration!'s and 'Hallowed are the Ori's, and I make one convincing Prior. I made sure I was near the gate when they were ready to send to next barer of good tidings and hellfire through to this galaxy. When it was my turn I just walked on through."
"Then why did you come through the gate backwards?" Carter asked.
"I may have felt the need to express my feelings about them through words and hand gestures just before stepping through." Vala smiled wickedly.
"Could you try not provoking the very powerful, vengeful beings that are trying to destroy our galaxy?" Daniel commented.
Mitchell had a look in his eye that made Daniel a little nervous. "So, Vala, you were never captured or tortured, or fearing for your life? Never tried to reach out for help?" Mitchell asked.
"No." She looked a little confused. "Though you could count five days of prostration as torture."
"Uh huh." Mitchell noted and shot Daniel a look.
Just then their radios crackled and an authoritative voice was heard. "SG-1, this it Colonel Caldwell of the Deadalus. We are in position to ring you aboard. Please respond."
"We read you Colonel." Mitchell responded. "Though I should inform you that it will now be five members to ring up and that there is going to be a change of course."
The voice over the radio responded, "Acknowledged." There was a brief pause before he continued in a voice that sounded a little too smug, "Dr. MacKay is going to be very disappointed to hear that. Prepare for ring activation."
As the group walked towards the ring platform Vala asked, "So now you know how I got here. What are you all doing here?"
"We were on our way to rescue you." Daniel mumbled almost incoherently.
"What was that?" She had heard what he said, but felt like embarrassing him further.
As they all huddled together on the ring platform Teal'c was the one to respond, "Daniel Jackson has been unable to sleep since your disappearance. He believed the graphic nightmares that occurred each time he attempted to achieve sleep, were a message indicating your need for our assistance. We therefore devised a rescue operation to extract you and return you to Earth."
Daniel opened his mouth to try to deny Teal'c's statement, but just as he did, the rings popped up around them and they instantly found themselves on the Deadalus. Vala cut in before Daniel could get a word out. "You were worried about me." She sing-songed.
"Was not," was all Daniel was able to get out.
"Admit it. You missed me." She looked triumphant.
Daniel wanted to vehemently deny that he had been anything but glad that she was gone, but the realization that his nightmares had come from nothing but fear for her, combined with the death glares he was getting from his teammates, made him admit, "Well, maybe just a little." He held up his hand and put his pointer finger and thumb about as close together as physically possible without touching. He gave her a little half-smile. He then addressed the group, "Well, now that this is over, I'm going to bed."
"Oh goodie!" Vala exclaimed as Daniel turned to leave.
He spun back around with a slightly disgusted look, "Alone." Then, Daniel walked off.
Vala followed him, and there banter could be heard trailing off as they walked down the hallway. "But Daniel.."
Mitchell just shook his head. "I'm gonna go get on the horn and apprise General Landry of the… situation."
As Mitchell walked off Carter and Teal'c just stood in the hallway for a moment. Carter broke the silence, "It's good to be back." They both looked down at the new SG-1 team patches that Mitchell had given them, right before the mission, with the suggestion of "Think it over". They smiled at each other and Teal'c agreed, "Indeed."
The End.
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A/N: See... I'm not that evil. I hoped you all enjoyed the story. Kudos to anyone who caught the allusion to the Farscape episode "Avenging Angel". Please review... Vet school's keeping me pretty busy right now, so I'm not going to spend my very limited time writing fanfic if it seems like nobody likes it... ok, guilt trip over. Thanks for reading.
