Sam, Jack, Teal'c and Daniel stood at the bottom of the Stargate Ramp waiting on the last person. "Dammit, she was supposed to be here by now. You did tell her one hour, right?" Jack asked Daniel.
"Yeah, but I haven't seen her since then." Daniel replied.
"Sorry we're late!" A familiar voice yelled, but with a strange echo to it. Kyoko came running in carrying a duffel bag, but Tros was nowhere in sight. Instead Kyoko had red armor with brown stripes covering her lower body from the waist down, with a tail larger than Tros's coming out from the base of her spine. The armor on and around her legs was thicker and stronger there, and mimicked Tros's legs and feet. There was also some more armor covering where her fishnet shirt normally was, and also on her hands were gauntlets that mimicked Tros's hands, so that she had two fingers and a thumb with sharp claws. The armor was connected from the top of the tail to the backside of the breast plate where there were two box like objects and it went up her neck slightly where a red and brown respirator was attached that was hanging around her neck. You could see the marks of a few compartments where there would be pockets on a pair of pants, and the upper armor and the gauntlets were slightly more form hugging with no space for storing anything.
"Where's Tros?" Sam asked.
"Right here. We merged, that's why my voice has this strange echo." Kyoko told her. Daniel's curiosity was immediately sparked again, and Kyoko noticed. "I'll tell you more about it later." She assured him. He nodded, and they turned back towards the Stargate. After a moment, the Stargate flared to life, and SG-1 was walking up the ramp while Kyoko was hanging back for a moment. Sam noticed.
"What's the matter?" She asked.
"Nothing. Tros is just acting weird again." Kyoko replied.
"I bet she's just scared." Jack taunted over his shoulder as Teal'c and Daniel walked through the gate. This riled Kyoko and Tros up.
"It's you who should be afraid. You don't even know what a Zoid is!" Kyoko countered. Jack just shrugged and took the final step.
"You sure you're fine?" Sam asked Kyoko.
"Yeah, I'm sure." Kyoko replied, jogging past Sam and through the gate. Sam shrugged and followed after her. As soon as Sam was through, there was a whining noise followed by a flash as the Stargate quit, and every monitor in the control room went on the fritz.
The small group all tumbled out into a dark cave, with no available light. After a moment of fumbling around blind, Jack and Daniel were able to get a pair of flashlights on. Kyoko stood right behind them, rubbing her arms trying to get some feeling back into them. "What's with that thing? It was freezing!" She complained.
"You get used to it after a while." Jack replied, sweeping the flashlight around. Eventually he came to rest on a hole in the ceiling.
"Oh, that's where Tros tunneled in. We can probably get out through there." Kyoko told them. They looked at her incredulously, except for Teal'c. It was a good thirty to forty feet up there.
"Right, like we can all fly right up there and get through it." Jack replied.
"Who said anything about flying?" Kyoko replied, crouching down almost like a frog before spring up towards the hole. As she neared the apex of her jump, she reached out and grabbed the edge of the hole, using her claws and feet to dig into the dirt and rock. After a moment or two of scrambling, she pulled herself up in, and turned around so that her head was hanging out of the hole. "Toss a rope up!" She yelled down, stretching her arms out. Teal'c was the first to respond, and tossed one end of the rope up. She caught it, and wrapped it around her wrist. "Alright, I'll pull you guys up here one at a time, alright?" She yelled down.
"You expect to be able to pull us up there?" Jack asked incredulously. Kyoko just shrugged.
"Won't find out unless we try. You, grab on!" She replied, yelling the last part to Daniel who was closest where the rope was hanging. He looked surprised, but recovered and grabbed the rope. Kyoko pulled herself back up into the hole where she turned around so that she was right side up again. The boxes on her back suddenly flared to life, and she stopped using her feet to wedge herself into the tunnel. She dropped a bit, but the boosters put out a bit more power and she started to go up the tunnel a ways, pulling Daniel and the rope with her. The booster's sputtered a few times, but she was eventually able to get him so that he could crawl in and wedge himself in. She gripped the wall, and shut her boosters off before clambering back down to the entrance where Daniel was. "Now help me pull the rest of them up." Kyoko said, dropping the rope down to the others. This time, Sam grabbed it. They repeated the process for her, and then again for Teal'c and Jack. After getting the last person up there, Teal'c, Kyoko's boosters were smoking slightly from being worked so much in one sitting. "Tros says that the tunnel is maybe six or seven hundred feet long. It will go up fairly steeply for about thirty feet before it levels out somewhat and we can walk instead of climb. And we may have to dig our way out at the end." Kyoko told the four before turning around and scrabbling up the tunnel, making quick progress with her claws. The others followed, although at a slightly slower rate.
"For someone with the qualities of a lizard, she climbs an awful lot like a monkey." Jack muttered.
"If you have time to talk, you can be climbing faster!" Kyoko yelled back.
In a town a few kilometers away…
"I'll give you six thousand credits for it." A young boy with black hair, brown eyes, and fair skin told the large salesman. He stood at about average height, slightly lanky and with a runner's build and was about seventeen years old.
"This unit is worth well over twenty thousand!" The salesman replied indignantly.
"No, they're not. They might be worth four thousand at best considering their best ability was rendered useless because of your inability to take care of them. I was told that they would be able to use the CPC function, but after looking closer I can easily tell that they can't hold a charge." The boy explained.
"If you can't take the price, then go look for some elsewhere." The salesman told the kid.
"If you were able to get someone to buy those things at that ridiculous price, I'd eat my Zoid. Four thousand five hundred, take it or leave it." The boy taunted.
"Fifty-five hundred…" The salesman offered.
"Alright, since I'm feeling generous. Pleasure doing business with you." The kid replied, handing the man a wad of bills. "And you can get these delivered to the shop down on main street, as was mentioned in the ad?" The kid asked.
"Yeah, sure." The salesman replied. The kid grinned, pleased with the day's dealings and headed off down the street whistling to himself.
Back in the desert…
SG-1, Kyoko, and Tros were all trudging through the desert sand, SG-1 getting uncomfortable in their full gear while Kyoko had slung her trench coat over Tros's back. "Why didn't you warn us that we were this far out from town?" Kyoko asked as the walked along. Little did any of them know, but the only town within five kilometers was in the other direction. Where they were heading, it would take several days worth of travel on foot to get to a town. As it was, night was beginning to fall and the five people and the Organoid had no shelter.
I could have sworn that the town was closer than this though! Tros complained, confused as to what happened.
"Able to tell you anything that's going on with the timeline, where you are on it, and how you got there, but unable to tell you where a town is! That's Tros!" Kyoko muttered. She stopped suddenly, thinking that she had heard something. Tros stopped also, and then the Stargate group also stopped.
"What's wrong?" Jack asked. In the distance, a drilling noise could be heard, and then it stopped. A moment later it resumed.
"A Zoid. Probably a construction model judging from the noise." Kyoko replied.
I bet we could take it. It would probably be helpful in getting us something to actually defend ourselves with and would make our trip back into town quicker. Tros said. Besides, I love watching those Brachios walk. They waddle so funny!
"Idiot." Kyoko muttered before looking at Jack. "If we want to be able to defend ourselves, we need to get a Zoid. And I don't have any credits and I doubt you do so we'll have to hijack one of the construction ones." Kyoko told him.
"Why do we need a Zoid?" Sam asked before Jack could say anything.
"How else do you propose we defend ourselves?" Kyoko countered before trudging off in the direction of the drilling sounds. Tros followed after a moment.
Doesn't matter whether or not we get caught here, either. It's another one of those weird time rips that we were experiencing a while back. Tros added.
"Y'know, it would be nice if you could tell me these things sooner…" Kyoko mumbled as the peaked a sand dune with a cliff not too far in the distance. She stopped dead in her tracks, and Tros ran into her from behind.
HEY! Tros exclaimed. The SG-1 group stopped before cresting the dune. Tros peered around Kyoko to see why she stopped. Oh, son of a fuck… He muttered.
"Crap, it spotted us!" Kyoko replied, turning around and running down the dune with Tros coming after her. The SG-1 group watched them a bit surprised at their actions. It was their first time seeing the two actually scared.
"What do you think they are afraid of? Is it not just units for building things?" Teal'c asked. Jack was cut off again by the loud thrumming of the boosters on the Berzerk Fuhrer that crested the hill. It landed in front of Tros and Kyoko, its back facing them, but still cutting off their path of escape. The Zoid actually was missing most of its armor, having only the X Breakers off of the Strum unit, the foot locks and the normal Buster Claws.
"I assume that this thing here is a Zoid?" Jack asked Kyoko as she came running back. He was afraid of the answer.
"Yeah, and one of the more powerful ones, although it's missing a lot of its armor." Kyoko replied.
"You mean to say that thing normally has more armor than that?" Jack asked incredulously. Kyoko just nodded. Their attention was drawn back to the Fuhrer as they heard a series of cannon shots rang out through the crisp air. The Buster Claws snapped open, and a shield flared to life just as a series of shells impacted it. After the last shell impacted, the shield died, and the buster claws snapped shut and fired off a couple of shots at targets that the people standing behind it couldn't see. The first shot blew away a bunch of sand revealing the Cannonry Molga just in time for it to get shot. Several more could be seen emerging from the sand. Total, there were six live ones left. The Fuhrer growled in a menacing way as the Molgas were all moving to try and get a better firing angle on the rex like Zoid. It suddenly whipped to its right, and stabbed an X Breaker into the ground, and pulled it back, dragging with it an impaled Molga without a Cannonry unit. The Fuhrer turned and tossed it into another nearby Molga taking both units out of commission. It then turned to the remaining five, and the Buster Claws snapped open and began to crackle with energy. The foot locks snapped into place and the tail began to vent steam as the CPC barrel slid out of its hiding place in the throat with energy already building up. The Molgas immediately turned tail and ran. The Fuhrer snapped the buster claws back into their resting position and the CPC cannon retreated into its throat. It settled down, and lowered its head to the ground, as the cockpit seal hissed and opened up allowing the pilot to climb out. As soon as his feet hit the ground, the cockpit snapped back to its shut position. It was the same boy that had been bartering with the salesman back in town.
"You guys okay?" He asked.
"Oh yeah, fine and dandy. Just got done getting shot at by a bunch of caterpillars with cannons and being saved by some big rex robot. Just a normal occurrence that we're all perfectly fine with." Jack replied. Kyoko elbowed him, and glared at him.
"Yeah, sorry about that. But you guys saved me right there. If I hadn't caught you on my sensors then I never would have noticed the Molgas. They were just outside my sensor range." The kid said. Kyoko sent a pointed glance at Tros before turning to face the kid again.
"Well we were just trying to find a town, and when we heard the sound of drilling we figured we could ask whoever was doing it for directions. We thought that it was some construction Zoids or something." Kyoko explained. Tros slinked off in the waning light.
"Well the nearest town is back that way." The boy told her, pointing in the direction they had come from. Tros burst from the sand behind him, and was about to tackle him when the Fuhrer twirled around and smashed its Buster Claw into him, causing him to go flying. "Fuhrer! What did I tell you about attacking people, or Zoids, or anything else!" The kid yelled at the large Zoid, causing it to slink backwards a bit, ashamed. Tros came slinking back to Kyoko, his left eye having gone out again. "Hey, sorry about that. To apologise, I can probably help you guys out a bit. At least give you some protection for a while." The kid replied, a sheepish grin on his face.
"What do you want in return?" Kyoko asked suspiciously.
"So you're a bit smarter than you look. I'd like you guys to protect me when we're on foot in towns. I have people coming after me in Zoids, with knives, with guns, some even try to kill me with their bare hands. I can't defend myself well in town since I don't have Fuhrer to help out." The kid told her. Kyoko surveyed him, trying to measure him up.
"Is this the only armor Zoid has?" Kyoko asked. The kid nodded.
"Unfortunately, yes." He said. Kyoko mulled it over in her head for a moment.
He does have a Berzerk Fuhrer, but that could be a drawback if we ever decide to double cross him, or he decides to double cross us. But if we need to we can isolate him in a town where his Zoid can't help him and attack him then. Tros muttered.
"I guess it's a deal. If you try anything, though…" She trailed off. The kid nodded his head in understanding.
"Yeah, yeah. Or else. I get the deal." The kid replied. All this time, the SG-1 group stood slightly stunned. Even Teal'c.
"Imagine what we could do with just one of these things!" Jack muttered.
"Imagine what we could learn from dismantling one of them." Daniel muttered at the same time.
"So who's going to come into town with me to get a transport of some sort?" The kid asked, bringing most of them out of their shocked states. Everyone looked at Teal'c. Teal'c stepped forward. "Alright. I think you can squeeze into the second seat." The kid muttered.
"Oh, what's your name?" Kyoko asked him.
"Huh? Oh, it's Turner. And you guys are?" He replied, looking the group over.
"I'm Kyoko, the Organoid is Tros, the woman is Sam, the guy with the glasses is Daniel, the big dude is Teal'c, and the other guy is Jack." Kyoko told him.
"Alright. We shouldn't be gone too long, but if you need to hide then I drilled a pretty large hole in the Cliffside. You can stay there while you wait." Turner told her.