//------------------------------// // Chapter 4: Kaggen Won't Play Ball // Story: Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail // by Lithl //------------------------------// Stargate Command Isolation Room 2 Just after he had gone to sleep for the night, Daniel awoke to the distinctive sound of Zat'nik'tel fire outside the Isolation Room doors. He was up in an instant, on guard for danger; his enlarged orange-furred ears swiveled independently, and he marveled once again at the drastic increase to his auditory acuity both in their ability to detect sounds and the direction the sounds were coming from. With no weapon to defend himself with, he was forced to dive around the side of his bookshelf, out of the direct line of fire from the room's entrance. Most of the lights were also off, leaving the room in semi-darkness, giving him even just the slightest extra edge against whoever was attacking. Of course, with no base alarm blaring in his ears, it was likely that the attackers had killed or disabled a large portion of the base personnel. Considering he had been woken by the sound of a zat gun discharging, Daniel was leaning towards "disabled," as Zat'nik'tels were essentially stun guns unless you got hit repeatedly within a short time frame. "But who's attacking?" Daniel whispered to himself as his mind tried to plan his next move, his new tail twitching in agitation. Mitchell had taken it upon himself to modify the uniforms of all of the afflicted base personnel to accommodate the alien limbs, telling a story about learning to sew from his grandmother who had insisted that "ev'ry man oughtta know how ta' darn a sock!" As for potential threats... the System Lords were pretty much gone completely, though a few Goa'uld still held handfuls of planets; the Jaffa were allies, now; that left the Lucian Alliance as an enemy that would be wielding zats, but Daniel couldn't think how they would have gained access to the base. Did it have something to do with the incoming wormhole from earlier? Regardless of who was attacking, Daniel's first priority was to arm himself, and then find other SGC personnel that hadn't been taken out already, his team by preference although anyone would do in a pinch. And that required evading whoever was opening the door... "Daniel?" Vala called into the room, pushing the door open. One of the guards that had been stationed outside groaned and fell over limply. Daniel leaned out from his hiding place, his blonde mane – tied back in a ponytail – catching the light from the hallway and said, "Ah, Vala, so the base isn't under attack, then? It's just you?" Vala pouted, holstering the zat she was holding. "Daniel, I'm hurt that you think me incapable of attacking the SGC." "Would you prefer I tackle you to the ground and strip you of your weapon?" "Well, when you put it like that—" Vala began walking into the room with a slight sway in her hips. Daniel raised his arms and tried to flush the image from his mind. "Don't! Don't answer that. What are you doing, Vala?" Instead of getting an answer from Vala, Teal'c stepped into the room, wordlessly thrusting a tactical vest and a P90 into Daniel's arms. Behind him, Bra'tac stepped into view, and Daniel's eyes bulged a bit at the old man's new appearance. "We intend to put an end to this curse, once and for all! Your general will not permit anyone to go on this mission, so we go ourselves." If there was one thing that hadn't changed about the Bra'tac from Daniel's memories of the grizzled Jaffa warrior, it was the steel in his voice when speaking of his convictions. Daniel turned to Vala, who was busy securing the two marines that had been outside the room using some plastic handcuffs. Belatedly, he noticed something missing. "Vala?" he asked. "Why aren't you wearing a hazmat suit?" Finishing with the marines, Vala went through the motions of dusting herself off, before accepting a spare P90 from Teal'c. "You see, Purple'tac here showed up with a great story about the origins of the Goa'uld – you would've loved it, Daniel – and this curse that he says is the source of the transformation." Vala poked her head out of the isolation room door, looking both directions down the corridor to make sure nobody had been alerted to her isolation-breakout attempt or was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Vala jogged out into the hallway, Daniel followed her partially out of habit, partially out of curiosity. Bra'tac followed behind Daniel, and Teal'c silently brought up the rear, a second Zat'nik'tel at the ready for anyone coming up behind them. "When he was done, Doctor Lam said something about how this Cage fellow—" "Kaggen," Bra'tac corrected. "Right, this Kaggen fellow—" This time, Daniel interrupted her, as he awkwardly donned his tactical vest, juggling his rifle while the group made their way towards the base's main elevator. "Kaggen? As in Cagn, the creator-deity of the Bushmen from southern Africa? I was actually studying their mythology just the other day. So many visiting aliens have influenced Earth mythology, primarily near the Mediterranean Sea—" he began rambling. Vala turned to give Daniel a look. The kind of look that said "I know you know exactly how stupid it was to ask me that question." The kind of look able to cut off even the most oblivious of rambling eggheads. When Vala turned her head away from Daniel again, she continued, "Doctor Lam said something about how it was plausible that Kaggen had screwed around with humans before Ra even showed up. I translated her doctor-speak to mean that you guys weren't contagious, and that's why I'm not wearing a hazmat suit." "Oh," Daniel said, expecting something slightly different. "So why are you sneaking me out of my isolation in the dead of night?" Vala swiped her ID card, or at least an ID card, to call the elevator, and Bra'tac answered his question, "I know the address were we can find Kaggen. We will capture him, and force him to end this curse!" Taking up a defensive position on the opposite side of the elevator doors, Teal'c added, "The four of us cannot be court martialed for disobeying an order." "Or assaulting military personnel, misappropriation of military equipment, and misuse of military facilities..." Daniel mumbled. As the elevator doors slid open, Vala smiled. "Now you're getting it!" she said as she grabbed Daniel's arm and pulled him inside. Stargate Command Control Room With four quick flashes of blue lightning, the technicians in the control room all slumped over in their chairs. Bra'tac ran up to the technician sitting in front of the main dialing computer console, pushing his chair out of the way and typing a series of symbols into the computer. The computer began dialing the gate address where the group would most assuredly find Kaggen and bring him to justice, and the Stargate began to spin. Teal'c kept a wary eye and a ready zat for anyone showing up in the control room to interrupt them. As the dialing program advanced to its final chevron encodings, the two Jaffa hurried out of the control room towards the Stargate and a few more zat discharges could be heard from the Embarkation Room. Stargate Command Embarkation Room "Oh, we are going to get into so much trouble for this!" Daniel complained as Vala stunned the last guard in the gate room. The Stargate began spinning, its chevrons encoding and lighting up. Vala holstered her zat gun and stood back, waiting for the dialing sequence to complete, apparently without any care in the world. "You worry too much, Daniel," she said. "We'll only get in trouble if we run off on this unsanctioned mission and we don't bring back any goodies for the general." Realizing that pushing the issue with Vala was a hopeless endeavor, Daniel just rolled his eyes. As the final chevron locked and the unstable vortex formed in front of the wormhole, Bra'tac and Teal'c arrived, ready for action. "We should move now, before someone investigates our activities," Teal'c said. The four conspirators ran up the ramp to the Stargate together, stepping through the portal before anyone could prevent their escape. PHE-405 – Exterior, Night The heavy rainfall certainly made travel trickier. In a new experience for Daniel, his ears instinctively turned down to keep water out. "Is it just me, or does it seem like almost every random planet we visit is a copy of British Columbia?" Daniel asked as he tried to ignore his tail dragging through the mud. When the blonde hairs had been dry, he'd been able to keep it from dragging on the floor of the SGC, but now that he was traversing unknown and uneven ground, and his tail was soaked, the end was getting completely caked. He glared with some jealousy at Teal'c, who had had the presence of mind to tie his considerably longer tail into a complex braid which resulted in the tail only reaching his knees. The man has been completely bald for longer than I've been alive, and when he finally did grow hair before all of this it was hardly braidable. His wife doesn't even wear a braid. When did he learn how to do that?! Daniel winced when Vala shone her flashlight in his face, and all three of his alien companions stared at him blankly. "Oh, right. Forget I said anything." As the group resumed their trek, Vala asked, "So how much further is Kaggen's base?" "Several hours, at least," Bra'tac replied nonchalantly, as though he were simply saying rainbows were colorful. "We can't stay in this region for several hours!" Daniel cried. "This is obviously a floodplain, and this rain is easily enough to cause a flash flood. We need to find higher ground, and preferably shelter! Soon!" "DanielJackson is correct!" Teal'c cried over a clap of thunder. "We should find a place to make camp, and continue searching for Kaggen tomorrow!" Bra'tac hesitated a moment, before changing direction and leading the group away from their original destination. "There should be a hill with cave systems nearby," he said. "But it will be difficult to find in the dark!" "I'll take 'difficult' over 'suicidal'!" Daniel practically had to scream over rolling thunder that seemed to be right on top of them. Everyone reflexively folded their sensitive ears tight against their skull, save for Vala who neither could move her ears nor needed to protect them as much. PHE-405 – Cave System The group did eventually find the caves Bra'tac was searching for, and took shelter from the now-torrential rain. An intangible tension lifted from their collective shoulders, as something primal told their little lizard brains that shelter from the elements also meant safety from predators. The cave itself appeared to be an ancient lava tube, gently sloping up and away from the valley floor where the danger of a flood loomed. Unfortunately, the rainwater also meant that there was no dry wood available for constructing a fire. Soon after arriving in the cave, Vala removed her boots, pouring out a copious amount of water. She followed up by stripping out of her uniform down to her underwear. "Vala!" Daniel shouted, quickly turning around, his face slightly flushed. Vala smirked as she laid out her clothes against the cave wall to dry them. "What is it, Daniel?" she asked innocently. "You don't expect me to wear wet clothes all night long and freeze to death, do you?" "The woman has a point," Bra'tac conceded, and he began pulling off his armor. "Sleeping in wet clothing will do us no favors in our confrontation with Kaggen tomorrow." Teal'c began to follow suit, but Daniel still did not move, resolutely turning away from the half-naked Vala. Of course, that gave her the opportunity to sneak up behind him and press herself against his back. "What's the matter, Daniel?" she whispered in his ear, which had folded back in annoyance at her antics. "Are you afraid to show a little skin...?" As she pulled away, her playful expression turned to one of disgust. "By the way," she said, "your hair and tail are an absolute mess. You need to get cleaned up." "And I suppose you brought a brush, did you?" "Of course I did!" In a flurry of activity that Daniel didn't quite manage to follow, he ended up stripped to his Egyptian pyramid-print boxers and seated on the cave floor, with Vala running a brush through his hair and tail. Teal'c and Bra'tac were already asleep, simultaneously leaving Daniel and Vala on de facto first watch and being unable to help him out of his current situation. Despite his reservations, Daniel was relaxing under Vala's ministrations. He'd never had hair longer than his shoulders before, and the sensation of a brush pulling through his locks couldn't really compare to a comb setting short hair straight, especially when pulled by someone else. The brand new nerve endings in his tail doubled the experience, and he simply couldn't really compare it to anything he had felt thus far in his life, even including his adventures as a member of SG-1. Stargate Command General's Office "What do you mean 'they're gone?!'" Landry practically screamed into the phone on his desk. The regular one, not the red one. Walter's voice remained calm, "It seems that both Teal'c and Bra'tac broke out of the base last night, incapacitating several marines and technicians. Daniel and Vala are gone, too." The general pinched his nose in frustration. "'Never give an order that can't be obeyed,'" he sighed into the handset. "Sir?" Sergeant Harriman asked. "General MacArthur. I should've known that Bra'tac would've stopped at nothing to go after Kaggen, and there was no way Teal'c would do anything I say if it meant going against Bra'tac." Landry took a sip of his morning coffee, "Vala's just acting out because she's gone stir-crazy, and I'm sure Daniel has been swept up by the others." "I'll prep a UAV," Harriman said. "Walter, prep a UAV... dammit, how do you do that?" "Experience, sir." "I still can't justify sending a team, but we can at least give them some remote support. If we give them a fighting chance, maybe they'll manage to make it home and I can yell at them." "As you say, sir." Stargate Command Isolation Room 1 Colonel Mitchell sat up in his bed, yawned and stretched. It was day three of the outbreak, but Mitchell felt better this morning than he had in weeks. If it weren't for the indigo hair hanging in his eyes, he would've suspected a spontaneous remission of the symptoms. And the independently mobile ears. And the tail. Especially the tail. Ready to shave and go through what would surely be another day of tedious medical testing and experimental medications, Mitchell swung his legs over the side of the bed to hop down and head to the makeshift sink against the wall. As soon as he tried to place his weight on his feet, however, he stumbled and nearly face-planted on the concrete floor. It didn't take long to figure out what new symptom was the cause of his fall; he no longer had any feet to stand on. In their place, he now had a pair of hooves; cursory inspection suggested that they were superficially similar in construction to the hooves on the many horses he had seen growing up on his parents' Kansas farm. His knees had also reversed, which made standing back up awkward, and his legs were covered in fine white hair all the way up to his boxers. In less time than he expected, Mitchell managed to stand back up, and figure out his newly-rearranged joints well enough to stay there, even if his stance was somewhat shaky. Carefully, he walked over to the intercom to call Doctor Lam, his hooves clopping loudly on the concrete. "Hey, doc," he said when the other end of the line was picked up. "Good morning, Colonel. Please tell me you didn't grow any new appendages last night. I'm still recovering from the tails." "Well, I don't think it really counts as a 'new' appendage, since I've had feet my entire life, but it seems I've become a satyr." "Pardon... a satyr?" "Yeah, you know... the half-man, half-goat monsters from Greek myth?" Mitchell hmm'd into the handset, "Although my new hooves look more like a horse than a goat. And now that I think about it, my tail is pretty horse-like, too." He glanced over at the mirror and noticed a shape under his bangs and said, "On the 'new appendage' front, though, I appear to have a horn growing out of my forehead..." Mitchell heard the doctor sigh, and he could've sworn he heard her bang her head on something hard. Possibly the wall. "I'll be down in just a moment, Cam." It only took a few minutes for Lam to arrive in the isolation room. "I swung by the cafeteria on the way," she said, showing a bowl full of Froot Loops and a small bottle of milk, "be good and you can have breakfast early." She still wore her hazmat suit, though. Mitchell's stomach rumbled, but the idea of the colorful fruity cereal didn't appeal like it normally would. "They wouldn't happen to have something... I don't know... denser, would they? Maybe some oatmeal?" Lam rolled her eyes. "Beggars aren't supposed to be choosers, Cam!" "But I'm not a beggar. Vala will be around soon and I can get some from her," Mitchell grinned impishly. "Wait, the general didn't tell you?" Mitchell's grin dropped instantly. "What? Vala didn't get infected, did she?" Doctor Lam shook her head. "No," she said, "Vala broke Teal'c and Bra'tac out of containment last night, and the three of them grabbed Daniel. They escaped the base through the Stargate! You and Sam are the only members of your team on the planet, and I'm not sure anything short of a nuclear blast could get Carter away from studying the artifact you guys brought back." "Damn it!" Mitchell cried in frustration. Almost on reflex, he kicked out with one leg, hitting the nightstand and sending it across the room where it fractured against the wall. Carolyn stared at the display in shock; the nightstand was hardly a tremendous weight, but Mitchell's kick had cleared over a dozen feet and cracked open the wooden furniture like a cheap piggy bank with a simple display of frustration. Mitchell barely seemed to notice as he continued, "Why would they go gallivanting off on their own?" Doctor Lam noticed his odd word choice, but decided not to comment on it. "Bra'tac had some wild idea about the origin of this contagion yesterday, and Teal'c would follow him to Hell and back." "Teal'c already helped blow up Hell," Mitchell pointed out unhelpfully. "SG-1 killed Satan and everything." "... Right. Anyway, Vala is impulsive and going stir-crazy. While Daniel can get in trouble, he at least can't be court-martialed, so there's his reason for going. Or being taken along for the ride, knowing Vala," Carolyn shrugged. She set the rejected bowl of cereal on the table and walked up to Mitchell, staring at the small horn in the center of his forehead. "Have a seat, let me take a look." Cameron complied, and Lam pulled what looked like a dental probe and a magnifying glass out of a supply bag, and began to examine the skin surrounding the base of the horn. "Does it hurt?" she asked as she prodded him with the probe. Mitchell almost shook his head, before remembering exactly what part of his body was being examined. "No," he said, "I didn't even realize it was there unit I saw myself in the mirror." "Can you feel this?" she asked, as she ran the probe along the full length of the horn, just two inches. Mitchell flinched at the contact. "Yeah, that feels weird," he said. "Weird how? Did it hurt?" "No..." he trailed off. The doctor repeated the motion with the probe. "Ah!" he flinched again. "It's almost like the tickling in your nose when you need to sneeze, but can't." Mitchell reached up with his own finger and rubbed his horn, curious. "Ahh..." he winced at the alien sensation, but didn't release the bony protrusion. After just a moment of continuous contact, his body convulsed once, as though sneezing. Instead of expelling air and mucous from his nose, however, a small shower of sparks poured forth from the tip of his horn. Doctor Lam jumped back; if anyone were to compare video, the motion was identical to her jump when presented with Airman Bosworth's new tail during his autopsy. "What the hell was that, Cam?!" "I don't know!" he cried. The lieutenant colonel took a moment to center himself and said, "I don't know what that was, but we can worry about it later. Finish your check up so I can get some breakfast. Please." Doctor Lam nodded, and began examining Mitchell's new hooves and backwards-bending knees. As she worked him over, she spoke with him, getting feedback on the sensations he was feeling as she poked and prodded him. "Well, at least I have one piece of good news. Your knees are completely unchanged," she said at one point during her examination. "Uh, I don't know if you noticed, doc, but they're bending the wrong way." "That's not your knee, that's your heel. Don't ask me how, but your femur, tibia, and fibula have all shortened dramatically, and the structure of your foot has changed to force you into a digitigrade stance." The doctor straightened up and motioned Mitchell to stand. "Now remove your boxers, I want to see the progression of this body hair." With his white-coated ears folded back in mild embarrassment, Mitchell did as he was instructed. He even managed to go a full ten seconds after seeing what his boxers had been covering before crying out in despair at what he had lost. Stargate Command General's Office Generals O'Neill and Landry were once again teleconferencing to keep the SGC apprised of events in the outside world, and keep the Pentagon apprised of the goings-on in Earth's secret first line of defense against alien attack. "... so this 'Kaggen' may be the ultimate source of the epidemic. Now half of SG-1 have gone AWOL to try and get answers," Landry finished updating O'Neill. "And in world news today," Jack began, trying to imitate a stereotypical news reporter, "it seems al-Qaeda has taken credit for the worldwide outbreak. I don't know if the CIA were involved in getting them to take credit or not, but they're saying stuff about punishing everyone who isn't a true believer. President Hayes is supposed to be delivering a response speech today. I don't know exactly what he intends to say, but he won't be taking retributive action against al-Qaeda for this, we've been keeping him in the loop." "He may do something for theater. There's no way the world would let a single terrestrial organization get away with this without some kind of response. If Hayes doesn't do something, somebody else will." "It's not like these are nice guys we're talking about, Hank." Landry nodded. "True," he said, "but once you work  in the SGC, the petty squabbles of home stop meaning as much when compared to everything that's going on out there. I don't really want to see al-Qaeda taking heat for something I know for a fact they didn't do. It's just not right." "We're going to find a solution to this, Hank." "'You're never beaten until you admit it.'" Landry stared into the middle distance in front of the camera. "Patton?" Landry nodded. "We still have the best minds in the entire world working to solve this problem, and a few minds from other worlds as well. I'm not worried." Stargate Command Colonel Carter's Lab Carter was less troubled by her continuing transformation than Mitchell – largely due to the lack of a new protuberance on her face and no surprise gender reassignment – and was hard at work analyzing the alien artifact. She was on her laptop, poring over the data she'd collected thus far and sipping from a cup of coffee when Dr. Greene walked in the room. "Good morning, Colonel!" said the too-cheery redhead. "Are you ready for your first exam of the day?" "Yeah, sure, just give me a minute?" Carter asked without looking away from the computer, taking a long pull of her coffee, but her blue ears stood at attention. "Colonel, how many cups of coffee have you had today?" Carter stopped what she was doing as she considered the question. "Um..." "If you don't know the answer, then it's 'too many.' Did you even sleep last night?" Reluctantly, Samantha put down her still-steaming coffee and swiveled around to face the doctor in the bulky hazmat suit. "That depends, what time is it?" Dr. Greene attempted to glare at Carter intimidatingly, but it didn't really work out. She was not tall or imposing under the best of circumstances, and the plastic suit could make anyone into a caricature of themselves. All that on top of Carter's combat experience made the doctor's attempt at intimidation come out more like the adorableness of a child in a police officer costume. Still, Carter was kind enough to give the woman some slack. "I'll get some sleep when you leave, promise." "You'd better," the doctor groused. "I'll make sure to have sedatives with me when I come by later, and I'm not afraid to use them!" As Greene performed her exam, she shared the scuttlebutt with Sam. Both women expressed sympathy for the patients whose genders had been forcibly flipped over night. The symptom was occurring in both men and women, with no apparent pattern. According to Greene, the gender ratio of the afflicted personnel had shifted from being heavily in favor of men, true of the base at large, to being nearly equal. "How about your research?" Dr. Greene asked when she was done updating Carter's patient record. "Have you figured anything out yet?" "The radiation being emitted by the artifact is definitely an intentional feature, for lack of a better word," Carter sighed. "I've found a repeating pattern, like it was designed as some kind of signal. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out what the 'message' might be, yet. Of course if this is an actual message, then odds are almost certain that it's in a language I don't know, and I'd need Daniel to translate. And he's apparently offworld." Greene gave Carter a friendly pat on the shoulder. "You'll get there," she said. "We have faith in you. Plus," she added on her way out of the lab, "Daniel's not the only linguist here, you know. He may be your friend and teammate, but every team runs into the same problems you need Daniel for on your missions." PHE-405 – Exterior, Day Daniel, Teal'c, and Bra'tac had each awoken to the same surprise as Mitchell and so many other men in the SGC. Some members of the group had taken the change harder than others. "What the hell is wrong with you, Vala?!" Daniel hissed at the sulking, healthy human as they trudged through a muddy field. "This mission has turned into a damned taco party, that's what!" she hissed back, trying to keep her disagreement between herself and Daniel. "I used to fly solo, or I paired up with an interesting guy or two like you. Ever since joining SG-1, I've enjoyed a comfortable 3:2 ratio," Vala cut her hands through the air to emphasize her point. "You're pissed off because there aren't enough men around for you to ogle?!" Vala frowned, "... It sounds so shallow when you say it like that." Several yards ahead, Teal'c and Bra'tac were having their own disagreement. "Master Bra'tac, speak to me!" "This is a disgrace!" Bra'tac spat. "One more crime that we must hold Kaggen accountable for." "What does it truly matter?" Teal'c asked. Bra'tac glared at Teal'c with a fire in her eyes, but she did not stop marching forward. "Kaggen has added insult to injury by transforming us into… into…" "Women?" Teal'c asked, accusingly. "A disgrace!" Bra'tac cried. "Why would you think such a thing, master?" Teal'c asked. "Are the Hak'tyl not capable warriors, and all women? I thought that you respected Ka'lel on the High Council? Is she a disgrace to the Free Jaffa Nation?" After an uncomfortable silence, with her ears folded down in shame, Bra'tac said, "That is different." The steel had left her voice, however. "No," Teal'c shook her head, "it is the same. We may not send our women out to war, but they train as hard as we do to defend our homes and our children while we are away. You remain a capable warrior, master, regardless of what an ancient curse has done to your body." Bra'tac was silent for a time. Eventually, she quietly said, "You are wise, Teal'c. Wiser than I sometimes give you credit for. Perhaps I still see in you the impetuous chal'til that you were so many years ago." Teal'c chuckled, fond memories of days long past flashing through her mind. "And occasionally I still think of you as 'that old hashak,' as I did then. We can both be wrong occasionally." "Indeed," Bra'tac grinned up to her pupil. PHE-405 – Kaggen's Compound Outskirts After several hours of walking, which became much easier for Daniel and the two Jaffa after discarding their combat boots in favor of walking on their bare hooves, Vala and her three transformed compatriots crested a soggy ridge. In the valley below, they spied a small fortress built into a cliff face. Vala and Daniel each pulled out a pair of binoculars to try and get what limited reconnaissance they could. "Ah see some movement in the trees, but Ah can't tell if it's just the animal life," said Daniel. Vala stared at Daniel in mild shock at the shift in her voice which hadn't been there earlier in the morning when they had broken camp, but Daniel continued scanning the trees, oblivious. Eventually, Vala returned to scanning the valley with her binoculars, until she hissed, "There! Left of the main entrance! There's a Jaffa!" As she tried to get a better view of the Jaffa in the valley below, she said, "He's not wearing a house guard mask, though, and we're too far away to see the brand on his forehead. I can't tell who he might be serving under." Daniel looked to Vala and asked, "What would Jaffa being doin' out here? Kaggen wouldn't be using them as guards, would he?" Daniel turned to Bra'tac to ask her what she might know, only to find that both of their Jaffa companions were displaying clear discomfort. Any attempt to hide the problem under a mask of stoicism was betrayed by the still-unfamiliar ears performing their own expressions. Vala turned to see what had grabbed Daniel's attention. "Muscles, Bra'tac… what's wrong?" "Nothing's wrong!" Bra'tac insisted, her voice at least an octave higher than it had been that morning. "We're ready to fight whatever Kaggen can throw at us, especially if he has Jaffa enslaved to do his bidding!" Teal'c, however, could not keep her composure as well as the elder Jaffa could. She fumbled with her tactical vest, running into some difficulty removing it, followed by her shirt, until finally she gave a sigh of relief as a pair of butter-yellow wings spread from her back of their own accord. Fortunately for Daniel's sensibilities, the gender changes had not progressed above the waistline. "… oh," was all Vala could think to say at the display. "Well, I suppose that would be a little uncomfortable." She turned to Daniel, "What about you? Any more changes besides your accent?" "What's wrong with mah accent?" Daniel asked, annoyed. Vala stared at her for a moment, eyes half-lidded, before turning back to Bra'tac. "And you, Purple'tac, take off your armor." "No!" She cried impetuously. "You're clearly uncomfortable. Take it off!" "Why should I?!" "Master Bra'tac," Teal'c said, her voice calm and soothing, "if you are in as much discomfort as I was, I guarantee taking off your armor will make you feel better." Bra'tac looked to Teal'c, who smiled comfortingly. Bra'tac looked to Vala, who glared. Bra'tac looked to Daniel, who nodded and rolled one hand as if to say, "get on with it." Grumbling under her breath, Bra'tac finally began removing the armor plating under her cloak. Once that was discarded, she removed the cloak itself, and after a little bit more prodding from Vala, she finally removed her chainmail and the tunic underneath, revealing a pair of bright orange wings much like the ones on Teal'c's back, save for coloration and size – while unsettlingly large on the Jaffa's back, Bra'tac's wings were only about half the size of Teal'c's. Vala picked up Bra'tac's chainmail in one hand and her breastplate in another, glancing from one to the other to Bra'tac's wings and back. "I don't think we can get these modified to fit you," she said, "at least not out here." Bra'tac snorted derisively. "A true warrior doesn't need armor; it's his wits, agility, and skill that keeps him alive in battle," she said. "Or her," Vala added with a smirk. "Indeed," Teal'c nodded. "Now," Daniel clapped Vala and Teal'c on the shoulders, and looked to Bra'tac, forming an impromptu huddle, "we need a plan of attack." Just then, the team's radio crackled to life, "SG-1, this is Stargate Command, do you copy, over?" Harriman's voice was instantly recognizable. After a tense discussion between the four co-conspirators consisting entirely of looks, Daniel replied, "We read ya, Command. We have discovered what appears to be Kaggen's compound. We have not yet met with any resistance, but we can see Jaffa on guard in the forest surrounding the front door. We don't know anything about their numbers, but there don't appear to be defensive weapons in the area." "This Command Actual," General Landry's voice came over the radio, "a UAV is headed to your position. You'll have aerial reconnaissance within a few minutes, and we'll continue to cover the area for as long as we can. Command out." An artificial wormhole such as the one created by a Stargate cannot exist for very much longer than 38 minutes under normal conditions. That was simply a fact of wormhole physics. When the wormhole shut down automatically, the SGC's remote control over the UAV would be lost and the machine would crash, if its remote controller had not taken it down for a landing by that point. Daniel rummaged through her pack, retrieving a small tablet device, which she soon managed to connect with one of the unmanned aerial vehicles the SGC used for safely scouting planets at longer range than the MALP could handle. The drone slowly built up a partial map of the planet as it headed towards the group. "Well, this changes things," Daniel said. "If we can get a read on their numbers and positions with infrared, we can take out the guards by surprise." "What if the Jaffa see the UAV?" Vala asked. "That will not be too much of a problem," Bra'tac smiled. "As every good Jaffa warrior knows, the Tau'ri send their flying machines far in advance of any people. With the Chappa'ai nearly a day away on foot, the guards seeing the drone might shoot it down, but they will not be put on high alert for many hours." PHE-405 – Kaggen's Compound Grounds A Jaffa warrior patrolled the forest near the entrance of the compound. He was not the only one in the general area, but none of the others were near enough to see through the forest that covered much of the valley. The warrior was not afraid; not only was he extremely skilled at his craft, but few knew of the address for this planet, and the compound was far from the Chappa'ai. If there was anything more dangerous than a wild animal, it was far more likely to be inside the fortress than outside. A nearby rustling drew his attention, and he pointed his staff weapon in the direction of the noise. He crept closer, carefully and silently. Suddenly, a foxlike animal burst from a bush, scampering across his path. The warrior relaxed. Just another creature of the forest. Then he was grabbed from behind, a hand covering his mouth so that he could not attempt to alert his brethren. Adrenaline flooded his system, and he fought back with all his strength. His staff weapon was quickly lost, but a few lucky blows with his elbow into the side of his unarmored attacker was enough to get free. The warrior spun around to get a better view of his opponent, and was surprised at what he saw. The man he faced had a symbiote pouch in his gut like any adult Jaffa, but he had long, flowing pink hair on his head, and a similarly pink braided tail visible behind him. Two long, horselike ears were constantly swiveling, covered in yellow fur, and the not-Jaffa clearly had yellow-furred hooves as well. The final absurdity was the pair of yellow feathered wings folded on the man's back. The patchwork creature was like nothing he had ever seen – although there had been rumors among the troops recently – but the warrior's analysis did not last long. This thing had attacked him and disarmed him; it would not live to see another sunrise. The warrior charged his opponent, who responded in kind. The pair grappled one another, each trying to grasp some advantage in the mêlée. The Jaffa warrior attempted to trip up the creature's equine hooves by sweeping its legs, but a swift kick from the beast struck his knee just right to shatter the joint completely. At that moment, the Jaffa knew his chances of death had dramatically increased. The monster was a match for him in hand-to-hand combat, but now he had lost almost all of his mobility. His only hope was to drag himself to his fallen weapon and fight sins against nature with the might of his god. The warrior crawled desperately to his weapon. He reached out, his fingers curling around the haft, when with a sickening crunch his opponent completed a leap that ended with all of its weight on the warrior's wrist, which was instantly crushed. The warrior cried out in pain. He hoped his brothers would hear his death throes and avenge him by killing this abomination against god. But he would not be there to see it. The beast reached down and tore the warrior's weapon from him unresponsive fingers. It pointed the staff at the warrior's head, and fired. Moments later, Daniel arrived from the west, at the same time that Vala and Bra'tac arrived from the east. "I managed four silent takedowns," Vala said breathlessly, "Purple'tac says he... she took out seven on her own. How about you two?" Spotting the corpse with a charred hole where its head should be, she added, "Although I don't think any of ours were quite so... messy." "Ah got three," Daniel replied. "And this was my sixth, ValaMalDoran," Teal'c said, calm as a cucumber. "Twenty-one dead or disabled," Daniel summarized. "That matches the heat signatures we got from the UAV." "The ones I fought all bore the mark of Ba'al," Bra'tac said. Ba'al was the last remaining Goa'uld bearing the title of System Lord, but he was also one of the few Goa'uld willing to look at the big picture enough to work with the people of Earth against a common enemy. Vala's left eye twitched at the mention of the System Lord. "Come on, girls," she said, hefting her P90, "I still owe Ba'al a few things." Of course, Ba'al also had a bit of a thing for Qetesh, the Goa'uld that had taken Vala as a host, and he seemed to have some difficulty separating Qetesh from Vala in his mind. "Just because the Jaffa have Ba'al's mark doesn't mean they're workin' for Ba'al," Daniel argued. "We've seen Goa'uld steal each other's soldiers without re-branding 'em lotsa times." "Yeah, yeah," Vala groused, "less talking, more walking. We just need to get inside..." PHE-405 – Entrance to Kaggen's Compound The group approached the door to the fortress, a literally monolithic affair. "Okay," huffed Vala, "how do we get in?" "There must be a way in," Bra'tac reasoned. "These Jaffa were not guarding nothing." Daniel approached the door, placing her hand on its surface and closing her eyes, as though the stone would talk to her if she just took the time to listen. After a moment, she took a step back and scraped at the ground with a hoof. "Daniel...?" Vala tried to get her attention. Daniel's legs sprang to action, and she gave the stone door a mighty kick. For a moment, it seemed like nothing had happened, and Daniel was resting her hoof against the stone. With a grunt, she jerked her hoof back, taking a significant portion of the surrounding stone with it. "Well that's new," said Vala. Teal'c approached cautiously. "DanielJackson… can you... kick down a ten meter stone door?" "Uh… maybe?" Daniel replied sheepishly. PHE-405 – Kaggen's Compound Despite the guards outside, the group met relatively little resistance after passing through the front door, sufficiently demolished by Daniel's powerful kicks. The interior walls of the compound were much more austere than Goa'uld buildings and ships. Goa'uld design had walls positively covered in symbols similar to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, embossed in gold, while this structure had much more abstract designs in various shades of brown, red, and orange which often blended with the color of the earthen walls so well that it was difficult to tell the art was even there. The group moved slowly, those with hooves taking care to avoid making too much noise on the stone floor. Doorways had inscriptions next to them, which Daniel said were "almost like a written Khoe dialect." Unfortunately, she admitted, Khoe was not among the dozens of languages she could translate, at least not without copious reference materials, and modern Khoe had no written form in the first place. The group instead relied on Teal'c's tracking ability; layers of dust suggested that the facility had not been maintained for many years, but recent tracks through that dust – along with the presence of Jaffa guards outside – served as evidence that Ba'al or some other Goa'uld who had stolen Ba'al's warriors had recently made his presence here. The group cautiously made their way through a series of branching corridors, until they eventually heard a voice coming from around a corner. It had the same guttural resonance of a Goa'uld puppeting its host and putting on a show of their power, but the underlying voice was feminine and unfamiliar. "Where is that miserable beast?" the voice growled. "My lord," another voice began, "this complex is large, and labyrinthine. There are still many areas we have yet to search." "I'm well aware of the scale of this fortress, Jaffa. And you would do well to recall that your predecessor... lost his position for reporting things which I already knew," the unknown Goa'uld threatened her underling. "Of course, my lord," the Jaffa responded. "But if the beast we hunt is responsible for the transformations, why is it that you cannot simply dismiss his magic?" "You dare to question the powers of your god?!" the Goa'uld raged. "No, my lord! I—" the Jaffa's protest turned to a gurgling scream heard over the telltale hum of a Goa'uld Kara kesh, a multifunctional tool which many System Lords enjoyed using as a torture device. Sustained use on a subject could figuratively melt their brain, with lethal results. After a few moments, the group of eavesdroppers heard the heavy thump of an unconscious, or dead, Jaffa hitting the floor. The Goa'uld shouted, "Jaffa, kree!" Another Jaffa spoke up, "Yes, my lord!" "Congratulations on your promotion," the Goa'uld growled sarcastically. "It's obvious the beast isn't here, and hasn't been here for a considerable amount of time. Collect your men from outside and start distributing explosives. If I can't have Kaggen, then he can't have his fortress." Standing right at the corner, Vala rolled her eyes, giving Daniel barely a second to grasp her plan of attack before she executed it. "And that's our cue," she said as she turned around the corner, immediately opening fire with her P90 on one of two Jaffa warriors still standing in the hall. Daniel rolled low behind Vala and tagged the other Jaffa warrior in the leg with her pistol, who collapsed, but the warrior was still combat-capable. The wounded Jaffa managed to grip his staff weapon and squeeze off a couple of shots in Vala and Daniel's direction, before Bra'tac and Teal'c rounded the corner themselves, finishing him off with a pair of staff blasts to the chest. The Goa'uld who had been commanding the Jaffa was unexpectedly fuchsia. A shock of curly pink hair, pink tail, and pink-furred hooves showed that she was affected by Kaggen's 'curse' as much as the SGC had been. Her reactions to the ambush were swift, using her Kara kesh to raise her personal defense shield against the P90s and Ma'tok staves, before ducking into the cover of a nearby doorway. Once the immediate threat was out of view, Vala sagged against the wall, bleeding from a shoulder injury inflicted by the enemy Jaffa who was too stubborn to die properly. While Daniel stood to her full height and helped Bra'tac cover the Goa'uld whose hair could still be seen in great contrast to the dirt-colored architecture, Teal'c grabbed Vala by her tactical vest and pulled her back around the corner. "You are injured, ValaMalDoran," she said simply. "Yeah, I noticed, Muscles," Vala replied through gritted teeth. Although it was hardly a fatal wound, any injury from a Ma'tok staff hurt to an incredible degree. The Goa'uld were not known for deploying humane weapons. Teal'c began dressing Vala's wound, and Daniel called out to the Goa'uld, "Come on out now! Your Jaffa are all dead, you're outnumbered." "Was that Qetesh I saw get hit?" squeaked the Goa'uld from her cover. The artificially-added gravel was gone from her voice, the charade unnecessary with no underlings in earshot. "And, of course, Apophis's two shol'va as well. It's so nice to see that the Tau'ri are being affected by this curse, too," she gloated. "Who does that make you, then, blondie? Another member of SG-1, I suppose?" "Ya say that like ya know us," Daniel said. "Oh, I'm hurt. You don't recognize me? I realize I've done something with my hair since last we crossed paths, but surely you can at least make a guess," the Goa'uld snarked back. "These slaves to a false god were all branded by Ba'al," Bra'tac growled. "Do you claim to be him?" "First prize to the traitor," Ba'al replied. "An' what in tarnation are ya doing here?" Daniel shot back. "The same thing I imagine you're doing: trying to find Kaggen, to force him to restore my host to its proper shape." Ba'al paused before adding, "I'm sure O'Neill could tell you just how good I am at interrogation." SG-1's first encounter with Ba'al had been when then-Colonel Jack O'Neill infiltrated a base controlled by the System Lord, and was subsequently captured and interrogated. Ba'al's method of interrogation included repeatedly torturing his subject to death, and then resurrecting them with a Goa'uld sarcophagus. Nobody had been able to get Jack to tell them how many times Ba'al had killed him, and Daniel suspected that Jack had actually lost count. At that moment, Ba'al was forced to duck under the butt of Teal'c's staff. After dressing Vala's wound, the Jaffa had managed to sneak around to a connecting hallway and take the Goa'uld by surprise. The personal defense shield absorbed energy discharges such as staff blasts and it halted high-speed kinetic impacts such as the bullets from a P90, but it permitted slower-moving objects to pass through freely. Slower-moving objects such as a Ma'tok staff being swung like a club. Ba'al raised her Kara kesh to begin fighting back, but she was too slow. Teal'c grabbed the wrist wrapped in the ribbon device and wrenched it free from its owner's possession. Flushed out of cover with both Bra'tac's and Daniel's weapons pointed at her, and with her personal defense shield lost, Ba'al took the most sensible option available to her: she surrendered. This was not the first time Ba'al had been taken into custody. Previous capture attempts had always resulted in his eventual escape, and on at least one occasion Ba'al had allowed himself to be captured as part of a long-reaching plot. Daniel was thus understandably cautious as she approached the prisoner with a pair of plasticuffs while Teal'c and Bra'tac kept their weapons trained on the pink Goa'uld. By the time Ba'al was secured, Vala was back on her feet again. Ba'al noticed her approach and said, "Ah, Qetesh, so nice of you to join us. And as lovely as ever, I see. Managed to escape Kaggen's curse, did you?" Vala didn't reply as she approached. She stood, staring into Ba'al's now-sapphire eyes in silence. Then Ba'al doubled over as Vala threw all of her power into a punch with her uninjured arm, hitting the Goa'uld right in the solar plexus. Vala turned away from the groaning System Lord and began to walk back towards the entrance. "Come on, girls, let's get out of here." PHE-405 – Exterior, Day There was little talking as the group slogged through the still-muddy plain back to the Stargate. Eventually, however, Daniel broke the silence. "What Ah don't understand is, why you're buying into the 'curse' explanation?" she asked Ba'al. "Ah mean, Ah get tellin' your Jaffa something like that, but why keep using that language with us?" "What, just because we can do things beyond the comprehension of ignorant brutes means that we can't acknowledge there exist things beyond even ourselves? What was it that your famous Tau'ri writer said? 'There are more things in the universe than you can dream of.'" Ba'al smirked at her ability to reference the culture of her captors. "Oh please, even I know that's not right," Vala rolled her eyes. Ba'al's smirk morphed into an annoyed scowl. "'And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come; Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on, That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake, Or by pronouncing some doubtful phrase, As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,' Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,' Or such  ambiguous giving out, to note That you know aught of me: this not to do, So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.'" Daniel affected a stereotypical Elizabethan accent, all hints of her new voice missing. As she finished her short monologue, she noticed that the other women were all staring at her with stunned interest. Those undergoing transformations had their large ears perked up, capturing every word. Daniel, on the other hand, shrank slightly from the sudden attention. "I did not know you were a thespian, DanielJackson," Teal'c finally said. Daniel relaxed slightly as the group continued towards the Stargate. Scratching behind one orange ear, she said, "Aw, well... that scene struck me when Ah was the laughing stock of the archaeological community. Ah mean, Ah'm still a laughing stock, but at least we know Ah was right. The pyramids were landing pads for alien space ships." Daniel sighed slightly, kicking at a rock in her path. It flew a good ten feet before getting buried in the soggy ground of a small knoll. "Hamlet and Horatio saw a ghost. Hamlet reminded Horatio that just because you don't think it can be true, doesn't mean you should ignore the evidence in front of your eyes. Ah guess Ah felt the same way about my hypotheses." PHE-405 – Stargate The transformations did not stop just because the victims were awake. By the time the group reached the Stargate near sundown, the fur had covered their arms and necks, beginning to spread onto their torsos, ready to meet the creeping fur coming up from their legs. Their fingers had begun to stiffen and thicken, and all four of them were walking with a noticeable hunch, as the shape of their pelvis shifted. Finally, their skulls had begun to change, with mouth and nose pushing forward. Daniel could no longer fit her index fingers behind the trigger guard of her weapons. Her strength, however, had proven to be unmatched by any human beyond possibly the best strongmen, and she thus didn't actually feel unarmed. She didn't have the same training in close-quarters fighting that soldiers like Mitchell or Carter had, but sheer power could make up for a fair bit. Teal'c and Bra'tac continued to hold onto their staff weapons, and were certainly able to operate the simple button controls built into the haft, but their grip was loose, and it was unlikely they would be able to effectively use them in mêlée. Vala stepped up to the dialing console in front of the Stargate, and entered the coordinates for Earth. Once the wormhole was established, she entered her personal iris code into her GDO, the only member of the group who could still easily press the small buttons. "Vala, I'm sure you can imagine my opinion of your actions over the past twenty-four hours," a grumpy-sounding General Landry's voice came over the radio. "Don't worry, general! We brought you a present!" Vala replied with a fresh injection of cheer for being nearly home. "A present? Are you saying that you four captured Ka—" With her back turned to Ba'al, Vala didn't see the prisoner begin to move. Daniel, Teal'c, and Bra'tac, in the middle of the most physically awkward portion of their transformation thus far, could not react quickly enough to prevent her from taking her opportunistic attack. A simple body-check in Vala's back was enough to send her flying into the event horizon and through the Stargate. As Ba'al slowly turned back to her remaining captors with pink ears flat and teeth bared, her curly hair spontaneously fell straight, emitting a curious sound reminiscent of a deflating balloon. A stunned silence settled over her opponents, and Ba'al casually pulled her hands apart as though her plasticuffs were made of paper. "She..." Daniel stammered, "Nobody gave us the go-ahead to enter. The iris wasn't open yet!" Ba'al put on a manic grin. The two Jaffa levelled their staff weapons at her, while Daniel began screaming into her radio, begging the technicians at the other end to open the iris, hoping against hope that she could get the message through in the few seconds it would take Vala's pattern to cross the galaxy. Ba'al's ear twitched, and she leapt into motion. A split second later, both Ma'tok staves opened fire at the position she was. The Goa'uld rushed inside Teal'c's effective firing range. A quick strike, blocked by the staff, knocked it from Teal'c's tenuous grip. Following a flip of her tail, Ba'al kicked straight out behind her, where Bra'tac was approaching from. The elder Jaffa attempted to block, gripping the staff in a fashion that would prevent her from being disarmed. On the plus side, she managed to keep her hold on the staff. However, Ba'al's kick was powerful enough to snap Bra'tac's staff in two, sending the winged warrior up and away. Her head collided, hard, with the top of the gate before her momentum took her through the event horizon, as well. Teal'c let out a wordless roar and begin swinging with all her might. Ba'al ducked and weaved, she blocked and parried, and Teal'c failed to land a single effective blow. Eventually, Teal'c overextended with a thrust, and Ba'al made sure to make her pay for it. The Goa'uld compensated for her poor grip by using both hands, grabbing Teal'c by her wrist and elbow. She spun in a semicircle, her straight pink hair fanning out, in a manner that might be called "majestic" in another context, before executing an over-the-shoulder throw. Teal'c landed just short of the wormhole, but she crossed its event horizon before she could roll to a stop. And then there was one. Daniel unclipped the P90 from her tactical vest, which she wasn't able to operate anyway, and tossed it to the side. With one hoof digging into the dirt she said, "Ah don't care how useful you might be in interrogation. Yer dead." "Bring it, hayseed!" Ba'al cried. Then she paused, her stance relaxing slightly in confusion over what she'd just said. Daniel charged during Ba'al's moment of distraction, her arms outstretched. There was no technique, little strategy. Only main force. Ba'al met her directly, their hands grappling with limited effectiveness wherever they could find a hold on each other. The force of Daniel's charge pushed Ba'al back a full five feet before the Goa'uld managed to slow the other woman's advance. Deep gouges in the rain-softened earth trailed from Ba'al's hooves as she resisted Daniel's push towards the gate. Eventually, Daniel's advance halted, the steam built up from her charge expended. Both combatants strained against the other for several moments, until Ba'al's eyes widened as Daniel found purchase and began to push Ba'al further once again. Ba'al tried to move one hoof to find something better to brace against, but it was a fatal error. Cutting Daniel's resistance in half only made her job easier, and in moments Ba'al was close enough to the wormhole that she could have reached out and touched the event horizon. Beads of sweat rolled down Daniel's face. A vein began to pop out against her neck. Ba'al made her fight for every inch, but it was clear at this point that despite the Goa'uld's great strength in her new body, Daniel's was greater. Ba'al began to panic, when her tail began to swish of its own volition, lightly brushing against the rippling blue event horizon of the Stargate. Ba'al gave Daniel a toothy grin. Daniel should have noticed and realized something was up, but she was too focused on forcing her opponent into the wormhole. Whether her intent was to send Ba'al back to Earth, or somehow disengage the gate while Ba'al was partway through – severing anything that had passed the event horizon – none could say. With a jerk, Ba'al suddenly twisted out of Daniel's grip, completely abandoning the contest of strength. Daniel couldn't abandon her struggle so easily, though, and with nothing resisting her push she tumbled forward into the Stargate. "Aw, bisc—" she managed to get out before the wormhole engulfed her. Alone on Kaggen's planet, Ba'al grinned from ear to ear as her hair sprang back into its earlier set of dense curls with a boing sound just as curious as the deflating balloon that had accompanied it turning straight. She casually walked back to the Stargate's dialing console. She began pressing buttons, first shutting down the connection to Earth, and then dialing some other gate address, and stepping through when then new connection was complete. Once Ba'al was gone, the Stargate shut down again on its own, and PHE-405 stood silent once again.