Chapter 9: Discovery

Nov. 2nd, 1997

Stargate Command – 9:00 am

Hammond stood at attention as the President, William Clinton, walked into his office. It was unusual for the President himself to visit, so he knew something big had to be up.

"Mr. President," Hammond said as he saluted.

President Clinton returned the salute. "At ease, George," he said as Hammond relaxed. "I read over the report on everything that led your people to Sunnydale, California."

"Yes, sir," Hammond replied as he and Clinton sat down. "Apparently we have a possible foothold situation."

"You are referring to the young woman your people think could be Commander Brynn of the Battlestar Valkyrie," Clinton said with a nod. He handed Hammond a photograph. "This young woman?"

Hammond looked at the image and nodded. "Yes, sir."

"I don't know how they got those ships," Clinton explained as he slid a file across Hammond's desk. "But her name is Buffy Summers. What is in this file is classified at the highest levels, just like the Stargate. I personally am giving you and SG-1 clearance to know what is in this file."

Hammond opened the file and read the first page. When he looked at Clinton, he had to wonder if someone had manufactured a hoax and fooled the president somehow. "Demons and vampires, sir?"

"That's right," Clinton asked. "We don't know for sure if they came from off planet or have always been here. The demons that is, vampires on the other hand are humans that have died and been resurrected."

"This makes little sense, sir," Hammond said trying wrap his head around the fact that demons and vampires actually did exist.

"I know, George," Clinton said. "I was very much like you when I was first told this secret, one that is shared by every single leader of the world. Ms. Summers pretty much has diplomatic clearance the world wide and the group that is in charge of her training has the pull to make any investigation into criminal activity disappear. Of course even if they didn't have that pull I would pardon her for any crimes anyways. I've even been thinking of offering her family an income for her work in battling the forces of darkness."

Hammond looked at the window that overlooked the briefing room and then back at the President. "What do you want us to do?"

"Simple," Clinton replied. "Since she and her group now have these ships at their disposal. Get her help against the Goa'uld. And offer her our aid in her war as well."

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Sunnydale High School – Same Time

Joyce Summers pulled her car into the parking lot of the high school and brought it to a stop next to the few others that were there on a Sunday afternoon. As Joyce, her daughters and Tara got out of the car, Tara got a feeling that something was amiss. "Mrs. Summers," Tara said. "I have a bad feeling."

Dawn looked at Tara and then opened herself to the Force. "I do as well, mom," she said.

Joyce looked at the blond teenager, that she had taken in the day before, and Dawn as she remembered that the two of them were now Jedi. "Can either of you tell me exactly what you sense?" she asked.

"Like we are being watched," Tara answered.

"Tara's right," Dawn agreed.

Unbeknownst to them they were not only being watched but had been followed from the Summers' residence by an unmarked van. Inside that van sat SG-1.

"What are we going to do, sir?" Sam wondered.

"Once they are inside we follow them in," Jack answered.

"Why here?" Daniel asked.

"Commander Brynn," Teal'c answered, "appears to be impersonating a high school student."

"Teal'c is right," Sam agreed as she looked over the seat at Daniel and Teal'c. "Remember the police report listed Buffy Summers as being sixteen going on seventeen in January."

"Here we go," Jack said as Joyce, Buffy, Dawn and Tara entered the high school through a side door."

The four of them got out and made their way to the side door and Jack quietly opened it. It appeared the door led into the stacks of the school library. They heard voices from somewhere in the library.

"You two are sure that you felt like you were being watched," Giles said.

"Yes," Tara replied. "In fact the feeling has gotten more intense in the last couple seconds. I am sure someone just entered the room through the same doors we just did."

"She's right, Commander Brynn, Captain Kirk and Caprica Six," Jack said as he, Sam, Daniel and Teal'c came out of the stacks.

Buffy sighed as she looked at the assembled group. "I guess we're busted. Might as well explain. Might suggest getting Angel here also for visual proof."

"I'll do that," Giles replied as he pulled out his communicator and flipped it open. "Giles to Enterprise. One to beam up, energize." He disappeared in a transporter beam.

"When he gets back we'll explain," Buffy said as she looked back at SG-1.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

An hour later Giles stood at the railing on the upper level of bookshelves as he tried to give SG-1 an explanation for what had happened.

"This world is older than any of you know," he told them solemnly, spinning a globe for emphasis. "And contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as a paradise. For untold eons, demons walked the earth. Made it their home ... their hell."

Despite being skeptical all of SG-1 listened intently.

"In time they lost their purchase on this reality," he continued as he came down the stairs, "and the way was made for mortal animals. For man. What remains of the Old Ones are vestiges. Certain magics, certain creatures such as vampires."

"Okay," Sam said, "this is where I have a problem, because we're talking about vampires."

"Angel," Giles said, "If you don't mind …"

Angel nodded as he turned to face SG-1. He let his face shift into its vampiric visage and then back to normal.

"Angel is a vampire," Giles said.

"So," Jack said, "Vampires are real."

If Angel had walked in already in his vampiric visage they might have assumed he had a birth defect or some other genetic anomaly. But by watching his face morph from normal to the vampiric visage and then back to normal, it was hard to dispute that there were real vampires. Especially when Giles had them look at Angel's reflection in a mirror and they saw none.

"They are," Angel said. "Till a hundred years ago, I was one of the most evil around. Then I was cursed with my soul."

"While I can see the reality with my own eyes," Sam said. "I have to ask, how much of the stuff that Bram Stoker wrote is real?"

"As you saw we have no reflection, we can be killed with a stake, a cross will burn us. Other than Dracula himself, and there is a real life Dracula that Stoker based his novel off, vampires can not turn into any form of animal, bats included. Dracula is only able to do it because of some gypsy magic he learned a long time ago. Now while most vampires shy away from garlic. It is more because of the smell than anything, we have an enhanced sense of smell," Angel said. "And we find the smell of garlic to be just as repugnant as you might. Vampires are also stronger than a human and we have better hearing. I can hear your hearts beating even now standing several feet away from you."

"Do you have any fighting skills?" Jack wondered.

"The demon that takes over when the soul leaves the body does seem to have some innate fighting skills."

"Do you drink human blood?" Jack wondered.

"I don't, personally," Angel said. "I have a diet of pigs blood. That has more to do with my soul though. With my soul, I have a conscience, I feel remorse. I am the only vampire that we know of with a soul. When a vampire is first sired a demon takes up residence and the soul goes on to whatever afterlife you believe in. So since vampires do not have a soul they do not have a conscience or feel remorse so they do feed on human blood. They don't care. To them you all are just food."

"In Sunnydale," Joyce said. "Vampire attacks are attributed to a barbeque fork. Most humans can not accept the reality of our world. So they turn a blind eye. Your occasional missing person reports, are people that have become a vampire."

"Okay the supernatural exists," Jack said. "But magic?"

Giles smiled. "I am by no means a witch, but I dabbled in magic in my youth," he said. "Flamma frigus. Escudo."

Lightning suddenly flew from his outstretched hand towards a book he knew what not be harmed by anything other than living flame.

"That is ball lightning!" Sam said.

"Are you sure?" Giles asked. "From what I know from my science classes. Ball lightning doesn't act like that. Nor are their any of the attributed after effects. Such as the the odor of sulfur."

Sam took a whiff of the air and noticed Giles was right. There was no smell of sulfur. "Okay let's say its possible for magic to exist. How is all of this related to all of you?"

"Last night," Joyce said, "a man by the name of Etan, his Earth name is that of Ethan Rayne. He is from my world." She noticed confused looks on the faces of SG-1. "I am approximately twenty thousand years old. I was born on the planet of Edenia in the galaxy you refer to as Andromeda. I've been living on Earth for the last thirty years. Anyways Etan cast a spell transforming everyone who had bought a costume from him into their costumes. The god his spell called upon loves chaos, so Janus took the intent of the spell one step further and the starships you all saw in orbit were created. During the spell everyone here with the exclusion of you four and myself became the people you talked to last night. Then when I faced Etan and broke his spell their original memories returned."

"Not only did the ships remain," Tara said. "Some of us were changed also." She looked down at her lightsaber clipped to her belt and using the Force she telekinetically lifted it off her belt and to her waiting hand. She then activated it and a violet blade of light sprang forth.

"May I?" Teal'c asked as Tara floated the lightsaber to him. He held it in its hand and then twirled it as if it was something he had done before. "Fascinating."

"Well Teal'c," Jack said. "You're the one that seen Star Wars like five times. Is it real?"

"It is indeed, O'Neill," Teal'c said as he deactivated the lightsaber and handed it back to Tara.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Stargate Command – 11:00 am

"So you believe the explination that magic gave these people a spaceship?" Hammond asked as he sat at his desk. He remembered that the President had told him he didn't know how the Sunnydale group had got their ships.

"As much as I hate to say it, there is no other scientific explination that would explain how American citizens would have access to ships like these," Sam said on the other end of the phone. She and Jack had called in to give Hammond a report. "And the physical evidence weighs strongly in their favor. Even if you dispute magic, you can't dispute that vampires do in fact exist. We talked with one at length. Saw the physical transformation. Saw him drink blood, pigs blood mind you."

"I even sparred with him and he beat me hands down. The only other person to do that has been Teal'c," Jack added.

Hammond sighed. "What's your opinion on this?"

"I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt," Jack said.

"I'm in agreement, sir," Sam said.

"I've talked to the President," Hammond said. "When he read the report you submitted on Ms. Summers and her group he personally came to see me. He briefed me on everything that goes on in Sunnydale. In fact he gave me information that I am to go over with you that is highly classified. I have reviewed it and I think the next step is to talk to these people in person."

"Yes, sir," Jack replied.

Washington D.C. – Senator Kinsey's office – Same Time

Kinsey frowned. He had to wonder why he was learning of this just now. Was Samuels that incompetent? "The SGC has known about these ships for two days and told no one? On top of that they've invited the people to Colorado to discuss relations."

"Yes," The NID operative said. "But that is not all. From what I learned so far. These people are not aliens, their people from this planet."

"How is that possible?" Kinsey asked.

The NID operative slide a file across the desk labeled simply, Initiative.

Kinsey looked over the file. "What does this have to do with these people?"

"It is proof of the supernatural. We have in our custody the culprit responsible for the unintentional creation of the ships that fought the Goa'uld. He's an English national here on a Green Card."

"You still have not told me what this has to do with these people."

"He cast a spell that for the night of Halloween changed everyone into their costumes. These people were affected. They are American citizens."

"Do you know who they are?" Kinsey asked.

"Yes."

"We can use that information," Kinsey said with a smile. "Out of curiousity how did you catch a man capable of doing reality altering magic?"

"The Initiative learned of what was happening and sent in an operative. They found out what was going on via interviews with several high school students who had not been transformed. Their investigation led them to his place of business. There they found they were already too late, someone had beaten them to Mr. Rayne. He was well, pretty badly beaten. We're not sure who got to him first, but he was not in much condition to fight us when we detained him."

"Make sure he has guards around the clock," Kinsey said. "We would hate for him to try and do something that would get him out of containment."