Disclaimers: I don't own any of the characters, situations or dialogue found in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel the Series, or Stargate SG-1. This is purely a work of fiction and no intent to defame or gain profit from this enterprise is intended.

A/N: Augh! This is the scene that would not end! As much as I want to hurry this story along, it seems determined to move at a slower pace.

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Hail, Hail

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Riley knocked on the hotel room door, checked his watch and grimaced. He was running more than a half hour late to pick up Buffy and Dawn. SG-1 had gone through the 'gate this morning to investigate a planet that had fascinated Daniel but had no apparent military usefulness. They'd been promptly chased back to Earth by a bunch of angry villagers waving torches and yelling about demons and witchcraft.

The event itself wasn't that unusual, except that one of the villagers had gotten an arm tangled in the strap to Riley's P-90 and been pulled through the wormhole after them. They'd sent a MALP back through to the planet and returned the shell-shocked villager to his home as soon as they were certain it was safe to do so, but it had taken extra time.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It wasn't like Buffy would be ready anyway. Prompt had never been her thing. He knocked again.

Dawn opened the door, toothbrush in hand. "Hey, Riley. I'm running a little late, obviously. Buffy's ready, though."

Huh, imagine that. Probably a sign of impending apocalypse. He peeked into the hotel room, and sure enough, there she was, sitting in the upholstered chair by the window and flipping through channels on the television. She appeared to be fully dressed and groomed–she was wearing a pair of black slacks and a bright blue fuzzy sweater of some kind. Her hair was loose around her shoulders.

Dawn retreated to the bathroom and finished brushing her teeth. Riley stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. "Hi."

Buffy looked up at Riley and narrowed her eyes, studying him carefully. She and Dawn had spent over an hour dissecting Riley this evening and she had to give her younger sister credit–she seemed to have pegged him right on. He looked as good as ever, but Sam's death and whatever he was doing for a living these days had aged him–these days his eyes held as many secrets as Buffy's did. "Hi. You're late."

Riley shrugged. "Yeah, sorry about that. Got hung up at work."

She shrugged in return. "It happens, I guess."

The silence between them became awkward and the only sounds in the room were an infomercial and the sounds of Dawn brushing her teeth. Buffy broke first. "So, tell us about these friends of yours we're going to meet tonight–we didn't get a lot of time to talk on the way from the airport."

Actually, they hadn't had any opportunity to talk. Daniel and Dawn had spent most of the ride discussing the Watchers' diaries and Buffy had dozed while Riley drove them to the hotel.

Riley sat on the edge of one of the beds. "Well, you already know me."

Dawn grinned as she walked out of the bathroom, arms raised and hands busy as she braided her hair. "More or less."

Riley shot her a look. "Then there's Daniel, whom you met yesterday."

"Uh huh." Buffy nodded. Indiana Giles, up close and personal.

"Then there's General O'Neill. He's a good guy, if kind of obnoxious sometimes. Reminds me a lot of Xander, actually."

Dawn snorted. "They let a guy who reminds you of Xander be in charge of an Air Force base? Whose brilliant idea was that?"

Riley smiled in remembrance. It had been a shock to most of the SGC when Hammond had been promoted and Jack O'Neill had been promoted in his place, but no one had been as surprised as Jack O'Neill himself. "The President's, if I remember correctly."

"Okay...suddenly thinking I should have voted for the other guy..."

Grinning, Riley continued. "Then there's Samantha Carter. She's a Lieutenant Colonel with the Air Force, she's got a PhD in astrophysics, and she's the head of my team."

Buffy looked steadily at Riley. "So, basically, your boss is Wonder Woman."

Riley blushed. How to answer that? Or, more importantly, how to answer that in a way that wouldn't lead to either Sam Carter or Jack O'Neill kicking his ass if they heard about it. "Er..."

"You've been spending entirely too much time with Andrew, Buffy." Dawn interrupted as she walked to the dresser to get her jacket. Riley exhaled a sigh of relief. She rummaged for a minute, then began putting it on. "Actually, I guess Xander's the one with the Wonder Woman fetish...Andrew's way more into Princess Leia."

"Shocker, there. But that's also a big yes on the Xander front."

Dawn grinned at her sister. "That totally explains his thing for slayers, y'know?"

Buffy rolled her eyes at Dawn and stood, turning off the television as she did so. "Tell me about it. And me without my magic bracelets and invisible jet."

Riley opened the door and watched as the girls gathered their purses, stakes, bottles of holy water, double headed axe, and other assorted feminine paraphernalia. Dawn turned off the light as Riley pulled the door closed behind them, shaking his head. "Yeah. Way, way, way too much time on the phone with Xander." She turned to Riley. "So, Jack, Daniel, Samantha. Anyone else?"

"Yeah, don't call her Samantha. She's definitely Sam." How to explain his remaining teammate? O'Neill hadn't wanted Riley to break the news to them until the barbeque–he liked to see the look on people's faces when they learned they were sitting down to dinner with an alien. "Um...his name's Teal'c. He's not exactly what you'd call local..."

"Ooo...does he have a cute accent?" Dawn mentally rubbed her hands together in glee. If Spike had taught her nothing else, it was the potential sex appeal of a good foreign accent.

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The car ride to General O'Neill's was rather uneventful. Dawn spent the time peppering Riley with inane questions about his teammates from the backseat of his Jeep while Buffy covertly studied her ex from the passenger seat and tried to remember the route from the hotel for future reference.

For his part, Riley answered Dawn's over-eager questions and studied Buffy. Dawn and Xander had dropped the occasional mention of her activities into their e-mails and phone calls, but they hadn't said how she had matured, both physically and apparently mentally.

When he'd seen her six years before, she'd been almost skeletal in appearance and seemed to be holding onto life by a few threads of sanity. The simple act of being in a room of friends and family caused her pain. She was working a demeaning job she hated and involved in a bizarre (to him anyway) love/hate relationship with a vampire she didn't like or trust.

It appeared that the fight with the First and its results had visibly changed Buffy. Physically, she was more curved than he remembered, and though she'd kill him for saying so, she was starting to develop faint laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. Better yet, she no longer walked as if she were Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on her slender shoulders until the end of eternity. Sharing the burden of slaying had indeed made the work lighter, at least judging by Buffy's appearance.

She still bore scars from her losses, though. In an unguarded e-mail written under the influence of one too many bottles of hard cider, Dawn had confided that something about the circumstances surrounding Spike's death on the Hellmouth had changed Buffy–she'd become quieter and more introspective around all of the Scoobies and Giles. Some of the quiet and stillness had disappeared after she found out that his sacrifice had been somewhat less than totally permanent, but she still wasn't completely the bouncy, perky self she'd been when Riley'd known her in college.

Idly, he wondered how much of that was because of Spike, how much was her mother's death, and how much was a residue of her own death and expulsion from heaven all those years before. He supposed it didn't really matter, but it did mean that he'd probably have to get to know her all over again. Assuming she'd let him, of course.

As Dawn paused for breath in her questioning and played with the radio dial, Riley remembered the conversation he'd had with O'Neill and the rest of SG-1 after their return from the airport. He was still somewhat dumbfounded that the people in the upper echelons of government wanted to pin the success of another top secret project on anyone even remotely connected to Buffy Summers, considering the raging mess that the Initiative project had turned into once she got involved.

Sighing, he pulled into General O'Neill's driveway. "We're here."

"Cool. Buffy, you got the thing from Willow?"

Blinking herself back to full alertness after zoning out the window, Buffy began rummaging through her purse. "Probably would have been better if you'd remembered to ask me that before we left the hotel, Dawn. I think I left it...oh, no, wait, here it is." She placed what looked like a Gameboy on the seat next to her while she unbuckled her seatbelt.

Riley picked it up and turned it over, trying not to groan. If it was really a Gameboy, they'd never be able to keep O'Neill's concentration focused enough to recruit Dawn properly. The rumor was that once upon a time, General Hammond had gone so far as to forbid his subordinate from having one on base until the man's backlog of reports had been turned in.

The odds were against it being only a video game, though. He knew Willow better than that–there was simply no way that the woman who had warned him that 'a vague disclaimer is no one's friend' would have sent Buffy and Dawn somewhere with only a hand held game as extra protection. "What is it really?"

"Bug finder."

He looked at it in a new light and turned it over. "Really? How good is it?"

"Will and Oz designed it."

"I don't think holy crap quite covers that..."

Buffy continued, smiling at Riley. "They're not dating–they just used the wonders of encryption, e-mail and attachments to design it. He's still in Tibet being all wolfy and laconic...she's still in England. And, y'know, all about the girl lovin'. And babbling. And not destroying the world. This is just the prototype. Not that we know anyone else who really wants one."

"Wow." He knocked on General O'Neill's door and made a mental note not to let Carter get near the gadget. She'd have it in pieces.

Jack opened the door, saw Riley and two young women on his doorstep, and wondered which one had actually asked for Daniel's help on purpose. They both looked so normal. Extremely young, but normal. The blonde kind of looked like a cheerleader. "'bout time you got here, Finn."

"Sorry for the delay, sir." Riley walked into O'Neill's house. He had been there once or twice before, but never quite got over the airiness of the place–lots of windows and high wooden beams that reflected his superior's love of the outdoors. "General Jack O'Neill, I'd like to introduce you to Dawn and Buffy Summers."

They entered Jack's home and murmured greetings as they shook hands. Jack was shaking Dawn's hand when he noticed Buffy playing what looked like a Gameboy. Ooo! "What game?"

Buffy smirked at him as she scanned his home. "Find the illegally planted listening devices."

"Haven't heard of that one. Is it any good?"

Buffy's smirk turned into a grin. "The best."

Dawn peeked over Buffy's shoulder. "Find any?"

"Well, there's one in the lamp over there, one on the doorframe to the deck, and one somewhere in the kitchen. And then there's you, of course." Buffy pointed out the location of each as she spoke, ending with her finger pointing at Dawn.

Jack's jaw dropped in surprise and somewhat delayed comprehension as Dawn restrained herself from flipping Buffy the bird. Riley covered a smile with his hand. "You're telling me that I've got three listening devices in my house?"

"Well, four, technically, if you count Dawn's implant."

Jack's head was spinning. "Implant?"

"Yes, sir, General O'Neill, sir."

Familiar with the hurricanes that were the Summers sisters, Riley was smiling outright at Dawn's response. They'd have to work on that whole proper form of military address thing if she decided to stick around.

Right now it looked like O'Neill was developing quite the headache. He was rubbing his temples in a way he usually did only when he was arguing with Daniel Jackson over something. "Carter!"

It was Buffy and Dawn's turn to be surprised as the tall gorgeous blonde who had to be Sam Carter walked into the room, holding two beers. Buffy bit her lower lip, unsure how she felt about Riley working with this much perfection on a daily basis. Not that she wanted to get back together with Riley or anything, but Sam Carter was pretty darn intimidating. Not only was she apparently brilliant, but she was beautiful too. She'd probably be nice and funny and make it completely impossible to hate her. Darn it. Carter handed one of the bottles to Jack. "You bellowed, sir?"

Dawn and Riley snorted. Buffy shot Dawn an inquiring look, receiving an almost imperceptible nod in response, giving temporary provisional approval of Riley's teammates. O'Neill was sputtering. "Carter! If I'm understanding these girls correctly..."

"Women, sir."

"Excuse me?"

"They're over eighteen, sir. They're women." Buffy and Dawn nodded solemnly in agreement. This was almost as much fun as tweaking Xander. Plus, they didn't have to do anything other than nod.

It was about this time that Daniel wandered into the hallway. Sam caught his eye and winked at him and turned back towards O'Neill. Daniel smiled, understanding her signal, and leaned back against the wall of the entryway, prepared to watch the latest episode of the 'Sam and Jack' show.

Buffy walked over and stood next to Daniel, leaning on the wall next to him and poked him in the side. Daniel looked down at her. What kind of person poked another person to get their attention? "Yes?"

She gestured with her head at Sam and Jack. "How long have they been a thing?"

"Oh, they're not dating."

"Seriously?" Sam Carter was now glaring at Jack O'Neill as he banged his head into the wall. "Looks like they're dating to me."

"Regulations." Daniel, never the best person to explain any military regulations, attempted to do exactly that. Dawn, from her spot next to the front door, must have asked Riley a similar question since he was emphatically shaking his head.

Finally, O'Neill threw up his hands and stalked away from the front door, slamming it closed as he went. "Okay, fine, Carter, whatever. Not nearly the point. What is the point is that these two..." O'Neill had apparently decided to give up on gender terminology altogether and was now pointing at both Buffy and Dawn. "...seem to think that there's listening devices planted in my house broadcasting everything that's said here, and since you're our resident science geek, I thought you'd be nice enough to tell them they're wrong."

Buffy interrupted. "Actually, General O'Neill, that's not quite true..."

He stared at her. "What's not quite true? Trust me, she's our resident science geek. You said there were four listening devices in my house, right?"

"Three, actually."

Jack pointed at Dawn again. "What about the one planted in your sister?"

Dawn spoke up, blushing. "It's technically more of a homing beacon than a listening device."

"Homing beacon?" Sam was definitely taking more of an active interest in the conversation now.

Dawn blushed harder. Her ears, cheeks and neck were now bright red. "Um, yeah. After the seventh kidnapping attempt, Buffy, Faith and Xander asked Will and Oz to come up with something that would make me easier to find."

Buffy grinned and poked her sister. "Hey, at least they didn't have to make it transdimensional until after the twelfth attempt."

It was Sam's turn to have her jaw drop. She thought she very professionally resisted the urge to give take Buffy down to the floor, rip the gadget out of her hands and run into O'Neill's garage for his toolbox while laughing maniacally, and mentally patted herself on the back. "Are you telling me that you have a homing device that works from a different dimension?"

Buffy responded, "Uh huh...", and shrugged her shoulders, clearly unclear on what all the fuss was about. "No big, really. A coupla microchips, one Gameboy with an extra mojoey location spell, and voila, instant Dawn findage."

Daniel looked a little confused about what his companion had said and looked at her for a translation. She shrugged again. "What?"

As Daniel sent a pleading look in Sam's direction, Riley wandered off to grab a beer and find Teal'c. He'd forgotten that chaos followed Buffy around and he was more than a little surprised to find that he'd missed it. Dawn walked over to lean against the wall with Buffy and Daniel, in case she was needed. Besides, they hadn't been formally introduced to Sam Carter yet.

Meanwhile, Sam had almost recovered from her surprise and was now staring at Dawn's shoulders, trying to see the implant through three layers of clothing and failing miserably.

O'Neill, on the other hand, was drafting a requisition form in his head. Hmmm...two for every member of an off-world team... "...four for Daniel...makes, let's see...carry the three..."

Realizing where Jack's brain had inevitably taken him, Daniel looked vaguely offended. "Four, Jack?"

Jack paused in his calculations, unrepentant. "In case one of them malfunctions, Danny. One in each shoulder, two in your butt."

Daniel pushed his glasses up his nose and folded his arms across his chest. "I don't get lost that often..."

Buffy grinned at the archeologist, delighted. Giles hardly ever pouted. "How often are we talking about here?" Daniel mumbled something incoherent. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I believe that DanielJackson stated that he becomes misplaced once or twice a month."

Buffy and Dawn turned to the huge man who was suddenly standing slightly behind Daniel Jackson. Buffy glanced around the entryway. She was surrounded and feeling slightly claustrophobic. "Okay, suddenly feeling kinda short."

"Shouldn't be anything out of the ordinary for you, Buff." Dawn smirked at her sister.

"Shut up." Buffy thought for a second, then whispered to Dawn. "Super tall strong guy's not completely human."

"Vamp?"

"Naah. Something else."

Dawn nodded. "Got it."

O'Neill smiled again, having missed the whispered conversation about Teal'c. These were definitely his kind of people. Save the world, make smart ass remarks, save the world, yadda yadda. There were still a few thousand unanswered questions, though. He looked to the Jaffa. "T, who's watching the grill?"

"RileyFinn."

"Okay." He decided to grab the flapping reins of the situation and take command. "Carter, if it's okay with you, can we get back to where there are listening devices planted in my freaking house?"

Carter looked abashed. "Certainly, sir. Uh, and maybe we should introduce ourselves and adjourn into the living room?"

Oops. So much for military discipline. He gave a little wave. "Hiya. Jack O'Neill, Sam Carter, Teal'c. You already met Daniel, and I guess you know Finn from wayback. So, which one's geekgirl and which one's the savior of the universe?"

"GEEKGIRL?" Dawn was more than a little annoyed at O'Neill's classification. She kicked supernatural ass, thank you very much. She gave a little 'hmph' and folded her arms in front of her, unconsciously imitating Daniel Jackson's position from earlier.

"Guess that answers that question..." Daniel spoke to Teal'c under his breath.

He nodded. "Indeed."

"It's a term of endearment." Carter rolled her eyes behind Jack's back.

Buffy was grinning at her sister. Wait until she told the gang about Dawn's new nickname. She nodded at Sam and Teal'c. "I'm Buffy Summers. Dawn's the one whose head just exploded." Dawn shot a dirty look at Buffy and stalked into the living room.

Jack would worry about smoothing things over with Dawn later, after she decided to work with them. He shook Buffy's hand again. God, she was young. "Meetcha. Now, about those bugs..."

Buffy looked disgustingly proud about something. She gestured around the room. "No sweat, problem's totally fixed."

"They're gone?" He hoped that wasn't the case. He wanted to give Carter the chance to trace the technology and signals to find out who was bugging his friggin' house.

Buffy shook her head. "Nope. Just some kind of dampening spell Will cooked up. Comes free with the service. They won't pick anything up until Dawn and I leave. That way, your big bad won't know you're onto them. Cool, huh?"

He grinned. "Very. Would you do me a favor, though?"

Buffy looked at him cautiously and stuck her left hand in her pocket, bracing her right hand and the device on her hip. "Depends on what it is."

He smirked at his 2IC. "Hand Carter that doohickey in your hands so she can look it over. I promise not to let her take it apart. But she'll explode if she doesn't get to examine it soon and I just had the carpets cleaned."

"Sir!" Carter looked vaguely offended until Buffy handed her the hand device, at which point her facial expression became avaricious.

"It's only a prototype, Colonel Carter." Sam immediately held the thing like it was made of crystal and worth as much as the 'gate and vowed not to hand it to Jack, who would start playing with it, actual Gameboy or not. She was still upset that she couldn't take it apart, though. "If you want one, though, I'm sure Will or Oz would send you the specs. Or, y'know, most of them, since they don't have a patent yet."

Sam looked up from her examination of the object. "Call me Sam, Buffy. Um...is tomorrow too early to get them here?"

Jack grabbed Sam's elbow and pulled her into his living room, where he gently pushed her down onto the leather sofa. "Easy there, Carter. Higher priority stuff tonight, remember?"

"Yes, sir. It's just that..."

"Aah!" He stuck his hand in her face. "Phhsht. Not another word, Carter."

"Yessir." She immediately flipped the device over and started trying to figure out how to take it apart. Then she flipped it back over and started punching buttons.

"Er, I don't think you should poke it like that, Carter."

"Why not, sir?" After all, poking at previously unknown technology was one of her best things. She was usually allowed to poke with impunity.

Buffy spoke up from her perch on the arm of the sofa before O'Neill could, knowing that Dawn wouldn't really want to contradict someone she might have to be friendly with for years while she was working on her translation project, seeing as how Sam was a friend of Daniel Jackson's. "It's keeping the dampening spell stable, Sam. I don't know how to fix it if it goes all wonky."

Jack smirked at Daniel, for some strange reason. "Wonky, huh? Is that a technical term?"

Buffy was never one to give up a good verbal sparring session. "Yes. And I'd be careful using it if I were you, General. If you're untrained and unlicensed, it could blow up in your face. Nothing worse that spellular fallout."

Dawn grinned at her sister. "Yeah. For instance, you could be standing on the street, staring at bridal gowns because you've been bespelled to marry a snarky British vampire with a bad dye job when the guy you've got a mad crush on walks by and you tell him everything..."

Riley poked his head in from the back patio, grinning. "Is that how that happened?"

Dawn cracked up. "I totally forgot you were there, Ri. Yup, that's what really happened."

He walked into the room brandishing the barbeque tongs and looked pointedly down at Buffy, who was pointedly ignoring the curious looks she was getting from everyone in the room. "It's official. You, Buffy Anne Summers, are officially the worst liar I've ever met. 'I saw that fear in your eyes when you caught me looking at wedding dresses, and I had to give you a hard time...you were looking at me like I was a cartoon ball and chain...'."

Buffy made a face at him, then shot a dirty look at Dawn, who was still giggling from her spot on the floor as she whispered the entire story to Daniel and Teal'c. Teal'c's eyebrow almost hit the seal on his forehead and Daniel kept glancing at Riley and grinning. "Oh, yeah, because 'Sorry about the misunderstanding, Riley, but my best friend Willow, y'know, the witch, was angsting over her breakup with her boyfriend the werewolf and did a spell that her will be done and the spell took everything she said very literally' would have sounded so much more plausible."

"She does have a point, Finn." Over the years in SpecOps and then with the SGC, Jack had become the master of the lame-ass cover story to explain the unexplainable. After all, it's not like it was any kind of rational to have an archeologist working as a civilian consultant in deep space radar telemetry for a government project located miles under the ground in the middle of Colorado.

Riley nodded once at his CO. He very obviously had more to say to Buffy on the subject, but turned on his heel and returned to the back patio until they could speak more privately.

Daniel looked at Buffy and decided to dive in. "Your best friend's a witch?"

"Yup."

"And she dated a werewolf?"

Buffy was twirling a piece of hair. Daniel swallowed, finding it a little distracting. Buffy shared an entire non-verbal conversation with Dawn with eye movements and hand gestures, ultimately deciding that as long as they didn't use full names, they should be okay. "Yeah, but he was only wolfy three days out of the month, so it wasn't a big deal. We locked him in a cage of the library and kept him guarded so he didn't hurt anybody."

"Well, naturally."

Buffy grinned at Daniel, who'd spoken. "If it helps, my other best friend dated an ex-vengeance demon for four years, off and on."

Daniel took his glasses off and placed them on the coffee table. "How, exactly, would that help?"

Buffy pondered for a second. "Huh. I guess it wouldn't help you, if you're all determined to be weirded out by this kind of thing. But aren't you the guy who said the Egyptian pyramids were built by aliens? I'd think your brain would be much more elastic."

Daniel was unable to respond, struck dumb by the visual of someone playing with his brains as if they were Silly Putty.

As usual, Jack was unafraid to step into the breach. "Huh. Yeah. About that. Funny story..."

Riley's timing was dead on. He called them all to dinner before Jack fully opened that particular can of worms. According to the rules of etiquette as drafted by SG-9, parasitic aliens out to destroy Earth were much more of an after dinner topic.