Disclaimer: I have no claim on either Buffy: The Vampire Slayer or Stargate SG-1. They belong to their respective creators.

Setting: This is post-season 7 for Buffy but not including any of the comics. It has been longer since I have watched Sg-1 so I am not as clear on the time frame for them. So lets just say it is set somewhere before the destruction of the Gou'ld for Stargate.

Colonel Jack O'Neil was cursing. It was an activity which he had been involved in for the entire half hour drive from his house into town, and he was starting to run out of properly indelicate words to demonstrate his irritation, when Daniel finally spoke up.

"Calm down a little Jack." The nervous archeologist was currently driving the two of them, while trying not to let the older man's ire distract him from the road. The area around Cheyenne Mountain was always fairly devoid of humanity, but there was still some traffic on a Wednesday afternoon. Besides, the winter snow had already set up camp in late November in Colorado, and Daniel was a naturally cautious person, at least when there was no imminent threat of alien invasion.

"Those stupid NID bastards!" Jack responded, paying little heed to his teammate's words. "When are they gonna learn that an alien snake with a god complex does not make a good subject for a science fair project?" While Jack's tone may have not lost any of its ire, he was using full sentences now and Daniel took that as a small victory.

"You know, I told Hammond this would happen when those thugs made it through the gate three months ago. I knew we should have sent a team after them as soon as we got control back."

"He made the right call," Daniel rebutted with strained patience. "Without preparing a UAV or a MALP we had no way of knowing that they didn't accidentally send themselves to the surface of Mercury or into the middle of a volcano."

"Well they didn't, did they?" Jack asked with acid on his tongue. "Instead they got themselves a snake, brought it back for testing, let it escape, and now it's attacking Tokyo."

"But it's not in Tokyo, it's in Colorado Springs." Daniel amended thoughtfully after a few seconds.

"Well, I suppose the body count is lower at least."

"That's not what I mean. Don't you think this is a little too convenient? Somehow they get a hold of a living Goa'uld and somehow they bring it back to Earth and the first thing they do is set it down in our backyard to find. Isn't that strange to you?"

"Maybe they just thought they were hiding in plain sight," Jack suggested disinterestedly.

"Do you really think they are that stupid, Jack?"

"Considering how many times they've managed to let their own projects tear them a new one, yes, Daniel, I think they are exactly that stupid."

"I'm just saying we should keep our eyes out for anything weird when we get there," Daniel cautioned with a sigh. "I don't want to jump head first into a trap."

"Your concerns are duly- Right here, right here!" Jack shouted, interrupting himself to gesture wildly out the passenger window of the car.

"What was that about?" Daniel asked after correcting a wildly illegal right turn into the oncoming lane of traffic.

"The people on the sidewalk are running from something," Jack observed, exhibiting a tone worthy of the title of Colonel for the first time in the conversation. "That Starbucks up on the left, pull over here."

Daniel did as he was told and the two of them got out of the car and surveyed the scene. The few people you would have expected to see tooling around the semi-urban street at 4:30pm on a Wednesday had all vacated the area. All that remained were two men staring at each other in the open seating area of the nearby Starbucks, and one man on the ground beside them, with his head turned at just enough of an angle, that Daniel was certain he would never be getting up again. One of the two conscious men had to be the Goa'uld, but they didn't have enough information to tell which. For what it was worth Daniel's money was on the young man with the eye patch. A normal kid that young shouldn't have lost an eye unless he had led a very interesting life. That wasn't enough to go on though. The two of them hadn't been expecting to be called into action so suddenly and all they had was Jack's sidearm and a taser Daniel had long ago stashed in his glove box. For not the first time, Daniel wished Hammond would issue Zat'nik'tels as standard weapons for all his officers.

At the moment, the best they could do was tuck their respective weapons under their coats and hope they would have enough time between the Goa'uld revealing himself and the other man dying to act. They tried to approach the cafe as nonchalantly as possible in the situation and were blessed by the fact that the men each seemed too focused on the other, to pay them any heed. Slowly the two started to circle one another until the eye patched man was directly between them and his opponent. Then they stopped and the bi-ocular man's eyes flashed and he declared, "You should not dare stand in the presence of a god, kneel," in a haughty, distorted tone.

"I've heard this whole song and dance before," the man in the eye patch responded, in an entirely too casual tone to have just encountered an alien species for the first time. "Can we just get on with it; I have a seven dollar cup of coffee that's getting cold in there."

At this the Goa'uld let out a displeased shout and lunged at the boy who jerked back in surprise and stumbled over a chair behind him, falling to the ground. As the youth hit the earth, the two professionals recovered from their shock at his cavalier attitude and rushed to try and save him, but they both knew they wouldn't make it in time.

What happened next was almost too fast for even Colonel O'Neil to understand. The boy tucked his feet under the chair, which had served as his stumbling block, and immediately kicked upwards. The Goa'uld, who had leapt forward in order to land heavily on the boy's chest, instead collided with the chair mid jump and tumbled onto the ground next to the kid. Before anyone could react to this, the boy adeptly rolled over on top of the Goa'uld, withdrawing what looked like the sharpened leg of table from his coat and stabbing it through the Goa'uld's heart.

Jack and Daniel could only stare in stunned silence at the kid who supposedly, upon meeting his first Goa'uld, killed it with furniture. While the pair were trying to remember which way was up, the youth seemed to be concerned with whether his quarry was actually dead or not. As he started to look over the face of the man whom he had just impaled, the dying parasite took this as it's last chance at survival. It tried to jump into the open mouth of the boy who reacted immediately, bringing both of his hands up to grab the little snake's tail and closing his mouth hard on reflex, biting the head of the Goa'uld off.

When the youth opened his mouth again, the snake's head fell out landing gently on the corpse of its host. He then let go of the body and crawled away a few feet before proceeding to vomit profusely. After watching the kid void his stomach, Daniel walked up behind him and shot him with the Taser until he fell unconscious, because he wasn't sure what else he was supposed to do. "What exactly do we do now?" Daniel asked surveying the carnage around them.

"I had originally hoped for turkey, but somehow I've lost my appetite," Jack answered before pulling out a phone to call his commander.

Xander Harris awoke handcuffed to a table in a concrete room with a monster headache and a taste in his mouth that reminded him of the time in kindergarten when Willow had convinced him that the rotted drywall in his basement was cotton candy flavored. Objectively this was not the worst situation he had ever woken up in. During high school he had been kidnapped by a giant praying mantis and his life had gone downhill from there. Still the vaguely governmental vibe he was getting brought back some particularly bad memories and put him in an even darker mood. This was partly why, when the two men finally showed up to have a nice chat with him, he didn't even let them get through their introductions before he started saying the word, "mouthwash" over and over again for ten minutes until the smaller one with glasses finally decided to play good cop and get him some of the stuff and a bucket to spit it in.

When he was able to close his mouth without wanting to scream aimless obscenities he turned to the men and said, "You guys look like the G.I. Joe type, well half of you anyway. You army men?"

"Yes," Captain Salt and Pepper answered, clearly trying to recover the patience which he had lost to Xander's previous antics. "As I was saying I am Colonel-"

"Call Riley Finn, he's a Captain or a Sargent or… I can never remember. Anyway he's with a black opsy part of the army in South America right now. Call him and he'll tell you that you want to let me go." In the past year and a half since Xander had left the crater which was once Sunnydale behind, he had needed to rely on this card on several occasions when he or a local slayer had been involved in a tussle with the civil authorities. This was the first time he had actually been detained by an officer of the army, but it was also the first time he had murdered someone in broad daylight so close to a military base, so he thought it was probably fair.

"W-What?" Mr. I Love Books asked, clearly completely surprised by the combination of candor and complete non-compliance associated with that statement. He certainly never would have expected some shadowy governmental agent operating on US soil to declare the name of his commanding officer in the first three sentences of a discussion.

"Riley Finn, with 2 n's," Xander answered, helpfully holding up two fingers. "He'll tell you to let me go, or we could just cut out the middle man and you could let me go now." It wasn't fair, but whenever Xander was put in this kind of situation, he couldn't help but prod at his interrogators a little. Perhaps it was his own little revenge for how incompetent the Sunnydale PD had been. Now, there was a group of men who were always trying to add one more to the answer to the question, 'how many grill fork accidents do you need to cover before you start getting suspicious?'

"Let you go?" Mr. Books asked incredulously. "You do know that you stabbed another man to death, right?"

"Yes, but I did watch him try and twist another guy's head off first, so I'm pretty sure you can count that as self-defense. Hell, you might even call it a public service… Does that mean I get a medal?"

"Certainly not if anyone hears you talking like that," the man now properly identified as COLONEL Salt and Pepper, answered with a smile.

For a heartbeat, Xander was caught completely off guard. That statement almost made the man seem like he had a sense of humor, which Xander knew was against government policy. Besides, no matter how much he smiled, the man's eyes were clearly evaluating him. Once Xander had recovered, he put on a show of ruefulness as he said, "Right, everyone thinks humility is so important nowadays. And here I was hoping to get a medal and one of those giant skeleton keys that you can't get rid of and don't really fit anywhere."

"You know I don't think they give those out to anyone, unless you are in the 1950's and a cartoon," the Colonel answered, his smile broadening.

"Jack," Mr. Books said chasteningly.

"Right," the Colonel, who must be Jack, said to his colleague. He then immediately turned back to Xander with a straight face and said, "What do you know about the Goa'uld?"

This question was clearly meant to surprise Xander, who had been theoretically led into a false sense of security. Regardless of his mental state, Xander was surprised by the man's sudden development of a speech impediment. After hearing the question, Xander blinked a few times before finally responding, "Are you asking about ghouls? They're like fancy zombies, right? Like, zombies... with top hats. Why?"

"Goa'uld," Mr. Books repeated, slowly emphasizing every painfully foreign syllable.

Xander stared at the bespectacled man for a few seconds before turning back to Jack and asking in a conspiratorial whisper. "Is he… special?"

On hearing this, Jack burst into uproarious laughter that took almost a full minute to settle down. In response, his colleague gave him a dirty look before turning to Xander and trying a new tact, "Why were you carrying a sharpened wooden stake?"

"I am interested in pitching tents," Xander answered with a completely straight face.

"With one stake, no frame, and no canvas? I would say you have a lot to learn," Jack replied.

"Would you believe me if I said I was building a really tiny fence?"

"I would believe you more if you said you were trying to plant a table tree."

"I was trying to plant-"

"Answer the question," Mr. Books said seriously, interrupting Xander's response.

"Looks like our Danny Boy is getting cranky, you better give us a proper reply, kid," Jack added with a smirk.

"Is this rapport we're developing? It's weird, I feel strangely violated," Xander replied, looking at the older man. Seeing that neither of them were going to bite at that, Xander sighed, leaned back in his chair and gave the best explanation he could come up with over the years. "I'm a carpenter by trade and it doesn't feel right wasting wood. So scraps I can't really use for anything else, I sharpen and carry around for a while, for protection. It makes me feel safe."

"So you are telling us that you keep a stake to protect you from car jackings?" the man that was now Danny, or probably Daniel would fit him better, asked incredulously.

"You would be surprised how effective it can be," Xander answered with a helpfully earnest expression. "If you pull a knife on a guy and he gets out a sharp stick like he's ready to rumble, that guy's crazy. You run from him."

Jack chuckled and said, "I suppose that's as good an explanation as I could come up with." His face then turned to the serious side and he said, "Your driver's license is from California, what are you doing all the way up here in Colorado Springs."

"Sunnydale California to be precise," Xander corrected bluntly, "Since my home town was blown off the map I figured it was a good time for a road trip, you know, get a feel for myself and whatnot."

"For a year and a half," Probably Daniel said skeptically.

"What can I say, I'm more complicated than I thought."

"So what made you stop in Colorado Springs?" Jack asked, as if genuinely curious. "It's not exactly a number one tourist destination."

"As I was passing through I saw a diner that was advertising the world's best hash browns," Xander answered, for once honestly. "I've been on the road for over a year and I've seen dozens of world's best hamburgers, the world's best coffee is on every other block, I've even seen the world's best Panini once, but I figured you've got to have some confidence if you are going to brag about having the world's best hash browns. They only serve them with breakfast, though, so I was going to stay at a Super 8 and try them in the morning."

"I've had them before," Daniel said with a sigh. "It turns out the world's best hash browns taste pretty much like hash browns."

"Yeah, I don't really know what I was expecting," Xander responded regretfully.

"Do you have any relatives we could contact about your situation?" Jack asked.

"You could contact Riley Finn," Xander answered hopefully.

"Do you have any RELATIVES we could contact about your situation?"

"I don't think so. Most people evacuated the town before it went under, but my father was always the tie yourself to a tree in a hurricane type of guy and my mom was always… with him. They're probably dead."

"You didn't try and get them to evacuate with you?" Daniel asked, this time showing some genuine curiosity.

"No, I barely managed to make it out myself."

"Is that how you lost your eye?" Jack asked.

"No, that happened before," Xander said, shoving down the image of the thumb coming in to eclipse his vision forever. He then put on a half-smile and said, "Don't ever bet a blind man that he can't hit the bulls-eye in darts. It's a good investment, but it's bad for your health."

Before his interrogators could respond to that, a faint knock came from the only door into the room and Jack went to answer it. Xander could hear some muffled, yet clearly passionate, discussion before Jack came back in and said, "Well it appears you are free to go Mr. Harris. The MP's outside will take you to a car which will take you to wherever you should wish to go."It was clear from his tone that he had lost whatever confrontation had just taken place and all Xander could do in that moment was sing a private song of thanks to Riley in his heart as the cuffs were taken off of him.

After watching the young man depart, Colonel Jack O'Neil burst into General Hammond's office. He was closely followed by Dr. Jackson who, while trying to persuade his colleague to behave reasonably, seemed no less frustrated. "Why'd you order us to cut him loose?" Jack demanded, paying no heed to the General's current preoccupation with a phone call.

"Something's come up, I'll have to call you back, Arthur," General Hammond muttered into the receiver before slowly lowering it down onto its dock and turning to the two men. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

"We were finally starting to get somewhere with the Harris kid, why'd you end it so soon?" Daniel said, repeating his friend's request in a slightly less excited tone.

"I had a couple people look up that Riley fellow the kid mentioned. After all, we are in the same military. That's what we're supposed to do, talk to each other about things when we might have accidentally arrested one of our allies," Hammond responded, clearly no more happy about the current situation than his subordinates. "The thing is as soon as we gave the name and description to that Riley kid he hung up. Then twenty minutes later I get a call from the Secretary of Defense and he tells me to stand down. He said that he appreciates our work with the gate and everything, but we should keep our focus on the gate and not look into things which have nothing to do with us."

"Did you tell him about what we saw?" Daniel asked incredulously. "There's no way this kid doesn't have something to do with the Goa'uld or the NID. Not with the way he handled that situation so easily and certainly not after that interview we just had with him."

"I raised my objections," Hammond answered. "And he said that the Harris boy and whatever his business may be is none of ours. He left no room for discussion."

"Come on General, you can't expect us to just let some kid with potential connections to the rogue faction of the NID to do whatever he wants in our backyard!" Jack burst out.

"We have our orders, Jack," Hammond answered sternly. "Now, Carter is still at that exotic particles conference in Pittsburgh and Teal'c is still off world with Bra'tak. I can't send out half of SG-1 on missions, so your belated Thanksgiving break continues and you are on your own time. Furthermore, I am very busy at the moment. If any of our surveillance equipment should go missing, then I don't imagine I would have the time to look into the matter until next week."

"Thank you, George," Jack said with a nod before turning to leave.

"I don't know what you would be thanking me for, Jack,"the General said as he turned his gaze back to the paperwork on his desk.

Notes: I have this finished and am just slowly getting it polished up so I should be posting a chapter every few days. As you may have noticed I am strongly considering turning this into a series because I have some pretty detailed ideas of places I want to take these characters in the future. But I would appreciate any thoughts or feedback you may have as this is my first fanfiction ever!