Rising from the Ashes of Ascension

Chapter 34

Disclaimer: As much as I might wish, I do not own Stargate: SG1, Highlander: the Series, or any recognizable characters from either show. However, any characters that are not from either show are mine and I will use and abuse them as I see fit. Everyone else will be returned eventually, for I am only borrowing for awhile, but they might end up a bit scuffed.

Warnings: Potty language, violence, and occasional sexual references

"Why am I here? How long has it been since Kali imprisoned me?" the Newkirk-Goa'uld barked.

"Uh boss? What's going on?" a nervous henchman asked, looking extremely nervous.

"You will address me as Lord Parshvanatha, worm!" the Goa'uld barked.

"Jesus, not another one," Jack ground out while frantically sawing through the zip-ties around his wrists, but trying to not make it look obvious.

"I d-d-don't understand," henchman-number-two stammered, looking at his former boss with no small amount of fear.

Newkirk, or Lord Parshvanatha as he preferred to be called, stalked over to his number two guy and took away his gun before backhanding him, sending the guy reeling from the blow. He briefly looked at the weapon before shooting the guy he hit and then turning to shoot his other henchman.

Both men looked shocked that their friend and fellow watcher would shoot them but they quickly crumpled, dying an inglorious death.

"Human filth, what planet am I on?" Parshvanatha barked at Jack and Teal'c, not realizing that the larger man was a Jaffa. "Where am I?" The Goa'uld looked angry, mixed with confusion. The last thing he remembered was being ripped out of his host's body by Kali and shoved into a stasis jar as punishment for leading an uprising against the queen Goa'uld, in her view; in reality he made the mistake of disagreeing with her in public. "Where is Kali so I might seek my revenge upon her?"

"Look Parmesan, is it?" Jack began, with a familiar smirk on his face.

"You will address me as Lord Parshvanatha," the goa'uld said coldly.

"Whatever," Jack snorted. "Not like it matters to me, or anyone else on this planet. Kali was killed real nice by Danny. You should thank us."

"It was the least I could do after that bitch tried to snake me," Daniel said wearily. Getting shot, dying, and the recovery – several times – took a lot out of him.

Jack choked back a laugh, quickly warming to their familiar banter and snarkiness. "People don't appreciate your sacrifices for this planet."

Daniel laughed mirthlessly, shifting slightly, trying to get comfortable. "Not to mention how many other planets owe me. It's not every day someone poisons themselves with radiation to save an ungrateful bunch of war mongers. I deserve a parade or something."

"Well, we did get you a cake when you came back. It had whipped icing," Jack reminded his favorite archeologist.

Daniel smiled thinly. "It was nice, but it would have been nicer if Walter's name hadn't been on it."

"It wasn't my fault," Jack protested. "The bakery got the order for your welcome back home cake and Walter's birthday cake mixed up. It's the thought that counts!"

"For the thought to count, you actually have to think. Who doesn't check a cake at the bakery before you pay for it?" Daniel said snidely.

Parshvanatha, frustrated, and a bit amazed at the sniping before him, yelled at his captives. "Human! Quit your prattling and answer my question! What planet am I on?"

Jack's face took on a cold look. "No. You ended your sentence in a preposition. You bastard."

Daniel didn't help anything by snickering. Teal'c just rolled his eyes.

Amanda looked shocked at all that had taken place, seeing a snake leap into a man's mouth then seeing the man's eyes flash an eerie amber glow. She was amazed at how Daniel and his friends were able to remain calm and even managed to continuously smart off while prisoners of the renegade Watchers. It was, in her opinion, like this was a normal thing to happen to them. She also wondered where Methos and Daniel's mortal friend, Samantha, were at the moment.

"What is wrong with you people," she hissed. "Two people are dead, dead-dead and not our kind of dead, and this guy, and his eyes, and that snake thingy from the jar. And don't forget the fact that we're tied up and this Watcher is apparently crazier than normal! This is a bunch of screwy that I did not sign up for," she finished her rant, venom dripping from her words.

"There is a lot wrong with this Amanda dear. Where do I start?" Daniel laughed, looking down at the bullet hole in one of his favorite, non-uniform, shirts.

Jack sighed. "Please do not end your sentences in a preposition Amanda. It is quite irritating and shows bad form." He continued to covertly saw at his bonds, hoping he could break through the heavy plastic.

"And really, this isn't all that screwy. It's kind of gotten to be old hat," Daniel said, shrugging slightly, ignoring the twinge in his shoulders that the gesture caused.

"If you want to start with labeling things as being screwy, talk to Danny. He is a walking, talking definition of screwy," Jack grunted, trying his best to not let anyone know he just cut into his wrist, feeling his warm blood trickling down on to his hands.

"Hey!"

"I'm just saying, your life is kind of screwy. Mr. Die, come back, die, come back again – and I'm not talking about your condition," one could tell Jack wanted to use air quotes with the word condition. "Seriously, how many times can you do your Lazarus imitation? It's a bit old."

Before Daniel could retort with something witty, Parshvanatha interrupted.

"Enough!" the Goa'uld roared.

Just then the Goa'uld-Watcher grabbed his head, pained by the mingling of memories that the unwilling host possessed, causing him to stumble further away from Jack and Teal'c.

At that moment, Jack managed to saw his way out of his bindings while Teal'c was finally able to break through the plastic handcuffs. Both men rushed the Goa'uld, knowing what the other planned, learned over the years while battling the System Lords and other unpleasantness experiences throughout the galaxy.

Parshvanatha seeing the two rushing him, kicked out at them, connecting solidly with Jack, throwing him off course. Teal'c, however, was a force of his own, crashing into the Goa'uld, knocking him into the wall, making him lose his grip on the gun.

The Goa'uld in the brief scuffle managed to pull the stocking cap off of Teal'c's head, revealing the gold symbol of Apophis. "Shol'va!" Parshvanatha snarled, shocked and disgusted that a Jaffa would dare to defy him, to work in conjunction with these humans.

"The Goa'uld are false gods that I refuse to follow any longer. The Jaffa nation will be free of your kind," Teal'c spit, angry at the member of the race that enslaved him and his people for thousands of years.

Just then, Sam and Methos came rushing into the room, brought by what they had seen on the security cameras.

Methos was shoved by Parshvanatha into Teal'c's path, halting his attempt to attack the Goa'uld again. The immortal crashed into Teal'c, bounced off his chest like he was no more than a beach ball, and crashed into a heap on the floor. Teal'c was forced to stumble back, wobbling slightly. If it had been under any other circumstance, it would have been hilarious, but it gave the newly arisen Goa'uld enough time to grab Sam and use her as a shield, protecting his worthless body.

"Back or the woman dies!" Parshvanatha snarled, backing slowing towards the door, dragging Sam with him, his arm wrapped around his throat.

"Oh please," Sam snarled and jammed her elbow into the solar plexus of her captor and at the same time stomped her booted foot into the instep of his foot, causing him to abruptly let go of her. Next she swung around and delivered a vicious roundhouse kick that nearly bowled him over, clearing her of her commanding officer's line of sight.

Jack, who had grabbed the gun that the Goa'uld-Watcher has used against his own people, fired at his target, hitting the snake-head in his right shoulder.

Blood immediately welled up from the wound, causing Parshvanatha to grab at site and stumble backwards. With a venomous look as his eyes flashed gold, the lost Goa'uld turned and fled the basement storage area.

"Shit!" Jack yelled. "Teal'c, you and Adam go after him! Carter, help me get these two free," the Colonel ordered his second-in-command and the Jaffa and the Immortal raced after the fleeing Goa'uld. Nobody wanted a parasitic-snakehead loose on the planet, especially one that knew about Immortals and, potentially, the Stargate program.

While the other two went off after the fleeing Goa'uld, Sam raced over to Amanda and started sawing through her bonds with her own knife while Jack did the same for Daniel.

"Clean up this mess and let's get out of here before we're discovered. Daniel, leave your fake copy of the statue and grab the jar. Amanda, get rid of the broken pieces of the statue that you broke," Colonel O'Neill barked out his orders.

"Sir, what about them," Sam asked, checking for a pulse on the two lackey Watchers that had been gunned down by their leader.

"Leave 'em," Jack said not unkindly. "We don't have any zats with us to make them disappear and we can't get caught with two dead bodies. We haven't taken off our gloves, so no prints, and you and Adam took care of the security cameras, so there isn't an electronic record of us being here."

"Jack here," Daniel said, handing his friend a bandana. "You're bleeding a bit."

Sam nodded and went to help Amanda pick up the shattered pieces of stone while Daniel replaced the statue among the shelves and shove the pieces into the bag that had held the replica statue.

"I had better get an explanation for all of this," Amanda muttered, feeling pissed that she got shot and her dress got ruined, not to mention that the whole eyes glowing thing was super freaky.

Sam, hearing the Immortal's words, nodded. "This is a disaster. General Hammond will have our heads for this," she muttered, amazed how a simple B&E could turn into a total disaster. "I'm going to end up in Leavenworth, I just know it."

Once they were done with cleaning up their mess, as much as possible, ignoring the two corpses in the room, the gang grabbed their belongings and ran out of the room, though Daniel made sure that the lights were off and the doors were locked, thus hopefully their misdeeds would be discovered long after they had left the area.

Upstairs they met Methos and Teal'c in the dark hallway that lead off from the main hall of the museum, both of whom looked incredibly pissed, minus the errant Goa'uld

"Bastard got away," Methos breathed, looking like he could happily murder someone, with or without his sword. Teal'c simply nodded, but his eyebrow was arched in such a way to convey that he too wanted to rip someone's head off.

"Well, shit," Jack ground out, listening carefully for signs that the museum's security was approaching. Instead all he heard was the DJ at the reception playing Wind Beneath My Wings.

Methos looked pained. "So they wanted to start out their marriage badly by playing that song?" he asked, a look of revulsion briefly on his face. "You're My Best Friend by Queen would have been a better choice."

"Do not disparage the work of the Devine Miss M," Teal'c rumbled. "And everyone will agree that Somebody to Love by Queen is a better choice from their catalogue."

"Holy crap," Jack muttered, grinding the heel of his hand into his temple, hoping that that action would make the blinding pain in his head go away. He took off his jacket and handed it to Amanda to hide the obvious bullet holes in her dress. "We leave by the front door, like a normal couple and the others by the side door.

"Get out of here, make sure you're not followed, and we will meet up back at the hotel," Jack ordered the others, making a command decision to cut their losses, for now, and retreat.

"Sorry Jack," Daniel muttered, his arms wrapped around his torso in a long familiar gesture for the cultural expert of SG-1, feeling like crap that everything had gotten so messed up.

"Shit happens Danny," Jack replied and left with the gorgeous Amanda as his date.

"Let's go," Sam said, leading her group down the hall and out the door, filled with frustration and anger at such a simple op to go so wrong.

A/N: So what do you think? Crap or not? Be a pal and leave me a constructive review to let me know what your thoughts are.

This chapter has been long overdue. Sorry. Thank you to Lorilei for all of your help, prodding, threats, and encouragement. You are a swell friend to have in my life. I believe there are only a few chapters left, but still, I want to thank everyone who has read my stuff, whether you liked it or not I do appreciate you giving it a chance. So if anyone would like to perk me up just a bit (I'm watching the World Series and my Royals are making me a little sad right now), a review would be lovely. Thanks everyone!