Timeline: Technically Post-Chosen & Post-Continuum, but this story is set in season one of BtVS and early seasons of SG1.
Disclaimer: Nothing copyrighted belongs to yours truly.
Author's Note: Written for Day 2 of the 2023 August Fic-A-Day.
A/N: Sequel to 2021's A Symphony of Echoes and 2022's A Cascade of Echoes.

This story takes place after 'A Symphony of Echoes', but before 'A Cascade of Echoes'.

Standing in the small, supposedly quaint town of Sunnydale made all of Buffy's senses tingle with the notification that there was an overabundance of demons. She had begun feeling them even before they had reached the city limits. The Hellmouth itself was giving off terrible vibes as well. It was different from the symbiotes she had gotten used to being around.

As she didn't spend much time on Earth anymore, especially not in areas with vampires and demons, she had gotten out of the instinctual sensing she had done while she had lived here. Now they were assaulting her senses and putting them into overdrive even though it was daylight and would be for hours.

*Calm yourself, Buffy.* Her symbiote soothed her, *We will not be here for long. We are just going to introduce ourselves and explain a few things, and then we will leave.*

*I know, but my senses are going haywire. There are so many vampires and demons, and I don't even know what in this town. It's kind of amazing, actually. Los Angeles has a lot of demons and whatnot, but it isn't like this.*

She surveyed the street they were on, and it all looked like your typical suburban neighborhood. Rows of houses with neat gardens, a few children playing. There was nothing to imply they were living literally on top of one of the openings to a hell dimension, which she supposed was part of the point. She guessed people either couldn't sense the Hellmouth or they were so used to it that they instinctively ignored it.

She had done the research and knew that her alternate mother was in D.C. attending an art exhibition, thereby leaving her daughter home alone for a few days. It was a short window of opportunity, but it would be better to have this discussion at the Summers house where they were less likely to be overheard than some semi-public place where anyone could drop by.

*Knock on the door, Buffy, or she will sense us first and come out. It will leave a bad first impression if she finds us standing out here staring at her front door. *

*I know, I know.* She knocked decisively on the door, mainly because she despised the high-pitched sound of doorbells. *Happy?*

*Ecstatic,* Egeria replied a little drily. It had taken a few decades but her symbiote had finally gotten onboard, at least a little, to her way of speaking.

It took it a short while, and Buffy followed the other woman's footsteps from what she guessed was her bedroom, out into a hallway, down a set of stairs, and finally over to the front door. She fidgeted a little nervously but composed herself by the time the door opened to reveal her teenage alternate.

Meeting her own startled hazel-green eyes was strange, but it didn't compare to the shock of her younger other self. "Hello, Buffy. Mind if I come in? We need to have a little talk about a few things."

"What? Who are you? And why do you look like an older me?"

"Short answer; I look like you because I am you, or rather an alternate you. I'll explain more, but not out here."

Those hazel-green eyes narrowed, but her curiosity won out and she took a step back as she held the door half-open. "If you can."

Buffy smiled, "Thank you." Then walked through the door and into the house. It was cosy, if a little bare as they didn't appear to have moved in completely yet. It wasn't really surprising as they had only lived there for a short time, and getting settled at school and work was a little more important than interior decorating.

Her host, well, the house owner's daughter, showed her into the living room where they got comfortable before the other Buffy began a barrage of questions again. She allowed it for a few minutes as it would give her starting point for how to try and explain the situation, before she held up a hand.

"Easy on the questions there. As I already told you, I am you but from an alternate time. One that doesn't exist anymore. In that timeline, our lives appear to have been the same until shortly after Merrick sacrificed himself. Our paths diverged from there. You moved to Sunnydale and I remained in LA for another couple of years, and then I traveled after graduation.

"I won't bore you with the details, but I became friends with someone who it turned out was part of a team that crossed over from yet another timeline."

The other Buffy had sort of curled up in a chair across from her, but she looked confused and definitely not like she believed her. At all. "You're not with the sense-making."

She gave a small grimace, "I know, but." And she cut herself off. "You know what? We both know we're bad with the explanations, so I'll just throw you off the deep end because you're not going to believe this anyway." The other Buffy laughed a little at that, and she did, too. Because it was true.

"Okay, here goes. Aliens are real. Yes, there are ones that look a lot like the Roswell ones, no, you probably won't meet them. The big bad is a species called Goa'uld and their foot soldiers called Jaffa. Goa'uld are bodysnatchers and in their natural form look like a small snake/fish thing. They take humans as slaves. Some are used as hosts since it gives they total control of the body and it also gives them opposable thumbs. Yes, they have spaceships, no, Earth does not. Unfortunately. Got that?"

Other Buffy had sat up more properly as she spoke, but all she said was a confused, "Huh?"

*You really are terrible at explanations," her symbiote commented with long-suffering amusement.

*Shhh. I'm explaining things badly here, don't interrupt.*

*As you wish. I will merely watch you confuse the girl even further. Carry on.*

"Perhaps that was the wrong place to start. Okay. Let's try that again. Decades ago, back in the 20s or 30s, an archeological expedition found a huge metal ring buried somewhere around the Giza Plateau in Egypt. They didn't know what it was, but, of course, they kept it. In the 40s it got a transatlantic journey from the Middle East to Colorado Springs, where they ran a lot of tests to try and figure out what it was or could do. This was during World War II so they hoped it could be used as a weapon somehow.

"Fast forward to the 1990s and it's in military hands. They managed to hire a disgraced archeologist who cracked the problem of how to use it to travel to other planets. And-"

That was about as far as she got before the other Buffy interrupted her, "The military uses a giant RING to get to other planets? How? Wouldn't they need a spaceship? You said we don't have any."

"We don't," she reinitiated. "Don't ask me to explain how the Stargate works, it's a lot of unintelligible technobabble I don't understand. But in short, it was created by the first evolution of humans or something more than 10 millennia ago. Their technology is a lot more advanced than ours. You can travel to other planets as long as it has a Stargate. If it has enough power it can even take you to other galaxies, or that's the theory.

"A lot of their technology work because of something genetic, meaning certain descendants of theirs can still use it while the average homo sapiens, or alien, can't."

Other Buffy raised a delicate eyebrow, "Descendants like us?"

"Yes."

"So we can do whacky things with this technology if we find it?"

"Depends on what you find. Some of it might kill you in very unpleasant ways, and others can be amazing. None of it comes with instructions, because apparently, the Alterrans didn't believe that."

She remained silent for a little while, clearly trying to either digest the new information or trying to decide if she believed her. Rather than share her conclusion, she merely commented, "Now I know why people keep telling me to let other people make with the explanations."

Inside Buffy's head, Egeria laughed.

"Do you have an explain-y person who can do that instead?"

*No comment from you,* Buffy warned the tenant in her head.

"I'll see what I can do about that, but not today. I need to explain some other things first before you can meet the other person.

The doorbell chimed and this reality's Buffy got up a little panicked. "You can't be seen! That's probably Willow and Xander. They were coming over to do homework and I forgot all about it."

Buffy rose a lot more calmly. "Don't worry about it. I'll leave quietly through the backdoor so they won't see me. See your friends, but don't tell them anything about me or what I've told you."

"Okay, but I don't think they would've believed me even if I did."

She turned to leave and had just passed through the door to the kitchen when the teenager asked, "Will you be back another day? I don't know if I believe you, but I want to hear more."

Buffy turned back and replied, "Yes, but it won't be for another few weeks at least. I have business to attend to, and it might take a while."

They quickly said their goodbyes as the doorbell rang again.

Once they were out of the house and a few streets over, Buffy commented, *She couldn't sense you. She didn't know you were there.*

*I noticed. I expected her to ask about my presence before she would allow us into her home, but she did not appear to suspect there was anything else happening than what she could see. It was most strange. We must ask about this when you have told her about me.*

As soon as they had left the house, she had pulled on a cap and sunglasses. Unlike her younger self, she had allowed her hair to remain a chestnut brown rather than dye it blonde, but the similarities were still there.

*We'll have to add it to the long list of questions we already have, but that's for another day. I have utterly confused her with my disjointed non-explanation, so hopefully, this will go better the next time. Now we need to get to the car and get back to L.A., we're running a little late.*