Sam was more than eager to get back to work, given the shakeup of the status quo in the past few days. They didn't actually go off-world but out of state to investigate a person of interest who knew far too much about the Stargate. It would have been nice to avoid getting ambushed by Tanner and his goons, but it did work out to the degree that nobody was hurt. They also managed to gain some insights into the possibility of off-world aliens living among them on Earth. It was entirely possible that there were more than Martin Lloyd and Tanner's group.

Once back on base, she spent a few hours in the infirmary before she and Daniel were cleared. Colonel O'Neill was due to go off-world and she figured she may as well take advantage of it.

It wasn't hard to find the girl considering her escorts made regular reports. No real surprise that she chose the commissary as a place to spend her time, though once Sam walked in she sighed softly. The kid was sitting alone, away from her SFs. Kylee's laptop was open, the girl was staring intently at the screen. The device only had access to the internet and a limited amount of software. Most importantly, Sam had given her access to the CAD software they used on the base and the manual, so it was up to her to figure it out. After going through the chow line, she took a seat across from the youngster.

"Hey kiddo," Sam said, setting her cup of blue jello and diet soda on the table.

"Hey," Kylee replied, very focused on the laptop.

"Whatcha doing?" Sam asked.

"Trying to make sense of this fossil." She said with the slightest smirk of the corner of her lips, and a snappy gesture to the screen. "Thinkin' about changing my field of study to paleontology."

"Very funny," Sam remarked. "I had the same issue when I had that kind of speed," Sam replied. "The cache filled up so quickly, I had to wait for it to catch up."

"Our computers aren't that slow, but I know what you mean. It's more that there's a much steeper learning curve. Unlike other things which my speed accelerates the process." Leaning over she pulled something out of the canvas shoulder bag Sam had found for her from their military equipment inventory. From it, she pulled out a ball of yarn and the needles, as well as a hat, a beanie albeit a flawed one, and a string of failed attempts hanging off of it spoke to several days of dedicated effort, if it had been herself doing it. Kylee then flicked her gaze to Sam.

"Okay, I'm impressed," Sam stated with a grin. Anything that kept this kid busy.

"But this software isn't as intuitive as what I'm used to. Feels like a pointless exercise, but as long as I'm not in my room watching a daytime soap and eating bonbons I think I'll be fine." She raised her eyebrows as if to signal how absurd it sounded. "Raise the red flags if I ever start."

Sam nodded and suppressed a giggle while leaning her chin into her hand.. "Do you wanna watch Colonel O'Neill go through the Stargate?"

Still staring at her screen and Ky tilted her head and slowly nodded. "Yes. But...what about going through the stargate?"

"Not today," Sam replied with an amused smirk, as Ky packed up the laptop.

"Aw," Kylee replied, pulling the laptop towards her to pack it away. "I'll go drop this stuff off and meet you there."

"Alright. Be quick about it." Sam said.

"Forget who you're talking to, Sam?" Ky said, turning to walk backward before heel turning back to follow the SF. "To my quarters, my good man."

The SF seemed somewhat exasperated but headed down to the elevator with the girl in tow. That gloomy cloud overhead seemed to have lifted, and she was at least focused on being productive. Maybe Sam was reading too much into it, but it seemed like things were beginning to look up for the kid, all things considered.

Within ten minutes she found herself walking alongside the girl up to the briefing room to watch as the gate dialed out. Kylee stood by the window and watched curiously as they dialed out to Martin Lloyd's homeworld; O'Neill, Teal'c, and Martin standing in wait for the wormhole to initiate.

"So, how does this thing work?" Kylee asked, her big blue eyes widening ever wider as she watched the first chevron lock. They had given her a rough exclamation but this was the first time she'd seen it in action and she watched eagerly with big curious eyes.

"Simply put, gate addresses are six points in space, followed by the point of origin. Sort of like a phone number. One of those old rotary phones." Sam replied as she described it in the most simple terms she could although she was fairly sure Kylee had the capacity to understand a fair bit more than that if she was given the chance.

"Oh. So ah… get any long distance charges on this thing?" Sam had to admit, Daniel was right. With all the silly jokes she did remind her of the Colonel, but it was just superficial similarities. Likely due in part to a similar upbringing in the midwest. Even then it wasn't something she should be putting too much thought into, especially considering that Kylee didn't exactly favor Jack in the looks department.

"How long does it actually take to get somewhere?" Kylee as she looked down into the embarkation room.

"Instantaneously. Your molecules are dematerialized, and reconstituted back on the other side of the wormhole." Sam replied in an effort to see how well Kylee grasped the concepts, looking down at the ring as the sixth chevron lit up.

"So… not bending space, you're tunneling through it," Kylee said, looking over her shoulder. "I'm way off, aren't I?"

"Close enough," Sam replied, smiling brightly at her for picking up on the basics. The seventh chevron activated, the vortex splashed out and made the girl flinch. She opened her mouth in a start then grinned.

"I've dreamed about this sort of thing since I was little. Guess I landed myself in space camp, huh?" She quipped.

"If that's how you want to look at it," Sam replied, and watched as the Colonel, Teal'c and their guest walked through the gate, and moments later the puddle disengaged.

"Oh, what, that's it?" Kylee aske, pumping her arm in a faux cheer. "Woo."

Kylee paused, then smiled wryly.

"They don't call that room down there the splash zone, do they?"

Sam shook her head and gave a sideways glance to the girl who offered a spunky grin in return.

"Cute," Sam said.

"Yeah yeah. So what do you even-" Kylee began before the alarms began blaring.

"Unscheduled off-world activation," Harriman announced.

"Kylee, stay here," Sam ordered, turning sharply to head to the spiral staircase, and once in the control room, she looked out into the gate room.

"No IDC."

"Close the Iris!" Sam commanded eyes to the gate room. Hammond was quick-stepping down the stairs from his office, and Daniel making his way up from the hall to see what the commotion was.

The iris flickered.

That was not a good sign.

The flickering extended past the iris. Typing frantically, Sam dragged up the gate diagnostics. There was some kind of signal being broadcast but at that moment she had no idea what it meant. It was enough to keep the gate open, but why? So far there was no communication, and if it was the Tollan they would have already made contact.

"Any ideas, Major?" General Hammond said.

"Nothing yet, sir. There's a signal but we've not received anything yet." Maybe there was some data being transmitted?

The flickering that concerned her began to extend beyond the Iris, and some sort of shimmering mist flooded the area immediately in front of the gate. It seemed to start condensing into a mass, fifteen feet tall. The security team mobilized and aimed their weapons at the mist as it began to look more and more like a humanoid.

General Hammond ordered them to open fire, and at first, the bullets went straight through, hitting the wall behind the gate to no effect. All at once, the mist gave way in a hiss, revealing a massive metallic metal robot, of a design completely alien to the Major It had a single optical lens in its head, armored panels, and an almost biologically congruent design given that it was built with musculature shapes on its body made of metal and cable. As it manifested fully, it swung it's arm towards the security team and knocked several of them off their feet with a sweeping gesture.

A blur of blue and black could be seen dashing in, blue lightning trailing behind the form as it dashed in and out of the gate room, systematically collecting the airmen to get it out of the way. Sam just barely registered that it was happening, but her focus had been firmly on the robot as she struggled to think of a defense against it. It turned its head towards the control room, it's mono-eye beginning to glow, and it produced a loud humming sound, hinting at a possible weapon being charged, emanating from the head of the automaton.

Hammond ordered an evacuation, and to activate the self destruct, and Sam reached for the computer to activate it, not that she thought it was going to matter in two seconds when it fired, until that blue blur shot towards the robot and kicked it in the face hard enough to change the trajectory of it's shot.

A laser shot out up into the missile silo, breaking off pieces of concrete that fell down into the gate room. The robot recovered and turned its focus towards its new opponent, as did most of the people in the gate room or just outside of it. As much as Sam wanted to yell at her to get out of there, there was a chance she was their best shot of getting out of this.

Of all things to show up, it had to be one of these!

A battle droid from the cascade. Often they were just cannon fodder for them to practice against or fight beat em' up style, but they often had some interesting quirks to keep it interesting. For instance, adaptive armaments, force fields, the works. Ky had to figure out how tough this guy was going to end up being so getting these guys out so she could gauge its capabilities was her first priority. She had to protect these people, no matter what.

It was tall, kinda bulky, and while the bullets had left minor damage they hadn't done much which meant she had her work cut out for her. She was durable, not super strong, but if she could get enough speed she could do some major damage. Not to mention unloading some raw kinetic energy in some of her attacks. She dashed towards the wall and leapt off of it, springing towards the robot to punch the thing with her arm locked and loaded with some of her discharge. It gave the blow enough oomph to send the robot back into the wall, and it seemed to do the trick. Maybe she was overthinking this?

She got another hit in, and she was starting to feel pretty confident about the situation, until it grabbed her leg and slammed her down into the ground, then threw her into a wall. Okay. Ow.

She got to her knees and dove forward to avoid a barrage of energy pulses, then jumped up to her feet, it, meanwhile the droid had turned its attention back to the control room. She slipped into the speedster time, giving a cursory glance around the area. Why wasn't it going after her? Why would it go after them? Wasn't it here for her?

She looked up to Sam who was looking at where she had been a second ago, then looked up to see the robot powering up its weapon again. Alright, this thing needed to be taken down, now! To her right, she spotted a bolt of wire, heavy duty industrial cord. That would work! She grabbed it and set the bolt against the railing near the stargate so it would dispense quickly. Round and round the robot she went, entwining it in a web of cable, before landing on the floor and pulling it tight. She then sent a surge of power through the cord and the robot's body seized, almost exactly like a human would. Must have had a similar neural network for its kinetic motion as it had the same result.

She didn't count on the robot releasing the blast as it fell, however. Almost straight up. It tore through part of the wall near the middle of the silo, and a large chunk of wall began to crumble and fall. She bolted out of the room only narrowly avoiding getting smashed by one of the large pieces of concrete.

When she turned to go back in, one of the SFs grabbed her by the arm and gestured towards the control room, Sam had called her name and rushed out. Daniel was with her. Heck, most everyone she knew was up there. She looked to Sam, seeing the concern in her eyes, but she was determined as well.

"Sam?" Ky asked, wondering what exactly the Major had up her sleeve.

"Kylee. You need to shut the gate down." Sam said.

"How?"

"If you unleash enough electricity you can make it jump from our gate to another. If we dial out, we can use the Kawoosh to take that thing out."

"I need to build a charge. Can you hold it off?"

"Going to have to." Sam said quickly. "Go, fast as you can."

"Got it." She said.

Sam returned to the control room, SFs lined the entrance behind the large piece of concrete that had fallen infront of the entrance. They could use it as cover. The robot began to recover, when it did, the men opened fire, a grenade going off almost instantly. The robot cut itself free from the cord and unsteadily moved to its feet. All this, Sam watched from the security feed behind the closed blast door. On another monitor there was Kylee, moving past the camera at a rate almost too fast to see, making laps around the floor, charging her power through the motion, each step another closer to her solution.

She'd proposed the idea to General Hammond, considering how that if they could dial out the unstable vortex could easily take out the robot as long as it was in position. The fact that someone on the other side of this wormhole was keeping it open implied they had some idea of how the SGC worked, which made her wonder exactly who it could be. You would think by now that a Goa'uld would be gloating in a holographic projection.

She would thank their lucky stars they hadn't had that honor quite yet.

It was only a matter of shutting down the electronic devices in the control room so that they could reboot once the backup power turned on. Once they were back up and running they should have enough time to dial out and hopefully do some damage to that robot. It all depended on a lot of things going right for them.

The robot took the grenades, then shot a hole clean through the concrete wall they were using as cover. The electromagnetic energy that she was picking up on the sensors spiked. She could feel the hairs on her arm prick as she ordered another set of grenades. The robot turned and finally retaliated, sending another eye laser towards the entrance and Sam flinched as there was another cry in pain. It was then that the robot turned back menacingly towards the control room.

When all the equipment was turned off Sam went down to the lower level and patched into the intercom. "Kylee! It has to be now!" She yelled.

Again, the hair on her arms raised as she saw a flash of light dart out of the corner of her eye. She ducked for cover, grabbing one of the injured airmen.

A rumble, like rolling thunder, followed in Kylee's wake, she bolted into the gate room and there was an explosive crackle along with her yelling out forcefully, causing the power to cut out, as Sam had expected. There was only a moment of delay for the backups to come back on, the Major raced down the stairs, calling back to Harriman as she went to dial out as soon as the system came online.

The smell of burnt flesh and smoke burned her lungs but she managed to slip through a narrow passage into the gate room to look around, and the gate started to spin. "Thank god."

Electricity jumped off the gate, Kylee pushing herself up to her knees, glancing back towards Sam and holding her hand up. "Hey get back! I don't know if that thing's fully deactivated yet."

Kylee stumbled a bit as she got to her feet, looking as tense as ever as she watched the robot twitch in a kneeled position. Almost like she could feel that the danger wasn't over. Good instincts, as almost as Sam had considered that the robot's eye flickered back to life and shot a hand towards Kylee and due to her considerable reaction time she managed to leap into a back flip to avoid it, but she nearly lost her footing on the landing.

The robot made a grinding mechanical scream as it tried to advance towards them, until finally, the damage they had done, the grenades, the EMP, the electric shock and physical blows from Kylee, finally took its toll. It's leg broke in two and it fell to its knees. Kylee wasn't fairing much better, all she had done had managed to sap her strength, but she was still willing to fight it seemed despite her visibly weakened frame.

"Incoming wormhole!" Harriman said, and Sam whipped her head around. Had they beaten them to it or was it one of their allies? She'd even take Urgo at this point, or Harlan.

Even so, the Kawoosh did exactly what she had hoped, taking out the upper body of the machine, only to begin to flood the room with even more of the mist from before. There were more of these things, coming to destroy them.

For the first time in a long time Sam had felt outclassed and out of her element. How the hell were they supposed to get out of this one?

Sam ran to her, grabbing her arm and heading for the door but Kylee slipped her arm from the older woman's grasp. "Go!"

"Kylee you can't!" Sam said, and Kylee threw a lash of electricity on the floor by Sam's feet.

"I'm the only one who CAN, Sam! Get everyone out of here!" She said, charging her body with electricity so she could charge forward. She reached back to a panel with some electric wires and tried to yank them free. She could channel power from the grid, if only…

"Watch out!"

Two new robots manifested, one was the same as before, the other one was basically a tank, shooting out its massive arm at her like a cannon on a telescoping limb. When she'd seen it, she'd figured every hit would just fill her gauge back to something where she'd be useful again, but she hadn't anticipated it pinning her to the wall.

She discharged again, and even while she was running on limited reserves now, it should have done some damage. Even if it did she couldn't detect it. The arm retracted and drew her back in, her legs dangling into the air and her eyes went wide, looking at the robot, feeling the same sense of helplessness that she'd felt almost too recently. But it stopped, it just held her. It held her like she was being taken prisoner and that was almost too much to bear until the other one started going after Sam.

An image of her mother's face flashed in her field of vision, her mind's eye, and she screamed out. "NO!" Digging deep and releasing what she had, a kinetic pulse just about ripped the metal right off of the hand of the robot and knocked the other one down. She fell to the ground and dove into a roll, grabbing a gun on her way down and aiming it at the robot.

It was a losing fight. She knew that, but there was no way Ky was going to let Sam get killed on account of her and her mistakes

"Get out of here Sam!" Ky yelled, then backed away as the hand reached back down to grab for her.

Then, there was a roar.

A familiar roar.

A tear formed above them, like someone cutting through a ship's sail and jumping through, a massive lion leaped at the robots. It glowed white, it's jaw, flanks, and underbelly all ethereally patterned with the night sky and twinkling stars as if there was really an entire universe inside of the animal. It's mane glowed with a sunlike warmth that was unlike anything Ky had ever seen before. It was a friend, a welcome sight from her own world, and one she'd never thought she'd see again.

Orion.

Kylee dropped the gun, grinning when a familiar beast dove through the tear and collided with the robots, claws and teeth shredded through the metal like butter.

Sometimes you gotta love it when a deus ex machina shows up to save your sorry ass. He was something called a Starborn, a being made of light. Probably as close to a demigod as you can get in her world. At least, by the way, Orion explained it, 'gods' were a little higher up on the pecking order than he was. Either way, she was glad to see him.

"Orion!" She yelled. Orion didn't look to her, not yet. Not with another, yes, another robot forming near the stage. He growled and opened his mouth to fire out a blast of white-hot star-power at the wormhole's event horizon. If she had a better word for it, she'd use it. Orion being a cosmic level entity he was more than capable of pulling some stunts that were usually impossible.

He glanced at her briefly, but then leaped into the stargate, and it disengaged.

She fell to her knees and stared at the empty room, feeling shaken, but also just the sheer insanity of what just had happened hit her all at once. They were attacked by crazily overpowered robots only to be saved by a cosmic lion. More importantly, they were alive. She laughed.

"Oh my god…" She said, wiping her face with her hand. "I really thought we were gonna kick the bucket there…"

Sam stared at her, eyes wide with incredulity, then looked back up at the gate. "Friend of yours?"

Kylee nodded and sighed, pulling Sam up to her feet along with her. "Basically our Obi-Wan."

"You neglected to mention you know Aslan personally," Sam said ruefully but she was just trying to process what had just happened, at least by the tone of her voice. She gave a half-smirk and looked at her thoughtfully. "You know, Colonel O'Neill is going to tell you what you did was insane. He's right, but what he'll be trying to say is thank you."

"That's a funny roundabout way of saying thank you yourself…" Kylee replied and started limping towards the blast doors. Her leg hurt a little from being smashed into the wall, and in fact, she was starting to feel the bruises all over her body. "But thanks for the warning about the incoming lecture."

Sam chuckled softly and followed her out, letting the medical personnel and airmen come in to take a look at the damage.

[Sometime after the Infinity Cascade's Event]

Time didn't mean much to a Starborn. Orion himself had lived millions of years before he ever gained sapience on the planet Earth. He was born in another star system to another sun and drifted, playing in the corona of his home star much like any other form of life would in their native environment. They didn't possess any meaningful form, not that could be recognized by a human's perception. Now, they had ascended beyond what they once were into a state of overwhelming power. Such power, as they say, had responsibility. Noble words, to be sure.

This Earth had been in ruin, buildings crushed, small pockets of humans living on meager accommodations, picking from the scraps and salvaging what they could from their once beautiful cities. That was the reality that any human could see, Orion saw more. There were tattered lines of destruction that went deeper than any human weapon could cause. Entropic decay of this reality had caused the fall of Earth to those who would have otherwise been defeated in the core reality.

Now he was tasked to clean up the pieces, and that's what led him here. However, while he knew he was in the right place, he was not in the right time which appeared to be the reason why this planet was in ruin. Whether it was the fault of the infinity cascade and powers beyond him, he could not yet determine. He followed the leylines of time to a crater in the middle of a mountain range. Some manner of porthole was revealed after he cleared some of the debris, and he flew down to the bowels of this human complex. Within, was a large metal ring with the dust settling on it. It lay in the corner, buried in debris. Nobody had been down here in nearly twenty years. The decay seemed to be the strongest here, so all he had to do was go to the time when the time aberration occurred, then he could set this reality back on its rightful path.

He intervened, the automaton identical to ones he had seen in the Cascade, and the ring he had seen before was erect and operational, but exactly how did it work? Further, the presence of young Hightail didn't escape his notice, yet she shouldn't have been there, which also posed an issue.

On the other side of that wormhole, once he reversed it, he engaged armored warriors arming a large device, one which did not match the technology of the rest of their facility. One which resembled that of the Cascade. Fools. They did not know what power they were meddling with. He destroyed it, and subdued the warriors with little difficulty.

It was then, that he was whisked away to another plane, one of the realms above. These were the overseers of this universe, it seemed. Like him, beings of light, but unlike him, they were not always so. They were composed of the light of ascended souls.

And they did not seem particularly pleased with him.

Jack was gone for three hours.

They didn't find much on that planet, no cultural keepsakes, no signs of intelligent life, no technology worth mentioning. Marty decided to call it quits and head on back. He didn't blame him, seeing the destruction of your world had to be demoralizing.

Somehow, in the three hours that they were gone, all hell broke loose at the SGC. Someone managed to tear a new hole in the gate room, and by the looks of things making a renovation, the joke would have been in terrible taste.

He was briefed and filled in on the details, Teal'c was sent to work some engineers to test the effectiveness of staff weapons on the metal scraps they had left just in case. As for him, his duty as CO of his team brought him to the foot of Major Carter's bed. There were other reasons, but it was better just to file those away for now. Carter stirred a little, snoozing and opened one eye first to look up at him. The doctor said she'd crashed shortly after being sent here from the gate room, and a few of their guys were in the ICU. Hard to believe all this happened within a half-hour of him leaving.

"Sir?" Carter asked and opened both of her eyes. "Hi."

"You okay, Carter?" Jack asked. She looked like she'd had one hell of a day, and it was late now. "Heard you got thrown into the twilight zone. You know you're not supposed to do that while I'm off-world."

"I'll try to avoid it for next time, sir," she said, offering a small smile. "It was close. If Kylee's friend didn't show up I don't think we could have fought two more of those things."

"Her friend. General Hammond said something about a big cat." Jack replied.

"Ever read Chronicles of Narnia?" Carter asked.

"That's what I'm hearing." Jack nodded. "Was she going to tell anyone about that?"

"It never came up!" Came from behind a curtain. Jack reached over to pull it around. Daniel and Kylee sitting up, playing with a deck of cards. By the looks of it, Jim Rummy.

Daniel waved, he looked fine.

"Did you know he was gonna show up?" Jack asked frankly, only probing as much as he needed to for the moment. They'd have to debrief her regardless.

"No. Even then, what was I supposed to say? 'Oh, by the way, I'm like, totally besties with Space Aslan.' You'd have thought I was nuts." She replied, not even bothering to suppress her eyeroll.

"Oh no, we still think that," Jack replied and glanced to Sam who smiled softly. Kylee looked between Sam and Daniel and gave up a little pout.

"I didn't think the robots would show up either. Sorry about that." The kid said, lowering her eyes to her cards then setting her hand down.

Sam turned her head sharply to Kylee, eyebrows knit with confusion. "You recognize them too? Kylee…"

The kid pressed her lips together and tucked her hands away. "We were a little busy."

"I know. Next time, you need to speak up sooner." Sam admonished.

"I will, sorry," Ky said and crossed her arms, settling back into the pillow of her bed and pushing her hands through her hair to push it back behind her ears.

"What were they actually after?" Daniel asked and set his hand down as well.

"Based on what I saw it was defending itself from our response team, not targeting them. It didn't target Kylee until she became a threat." Carter stated, glancing up to Jack, her eyes meeting his. "It was targeting the control room."

Kylee frowned. "The robots were the same kind I fought at the Infinity Cascade. Why would it be after you guys?"

"Good question. If you don't know the answer, let's hope your lion buddy can shed some light on that." Jack replied. "Either way, you did good, kid."

"He will," Kylee replied, turning her eyes away in a way similar to Sam did when she got flustered, and met eyes with him again. "Gotta live up to my reputation as a superhero, right? If they show up again, I'll have your back."

"Isn't that our job?" Jack asked.

"Killer robots." Kylee countered.

"And you're still a kid. So it's our job to watch out for you, like it or not." Jack replied.

"Uh-huh. I'm not that young." Kylee tilted her head and gave him a sidelong glance.

"You keep saying that. I'm still not convinced. You were born in 1998, that makes you, what.. Two, two and a half?"

Kylee exhaled heavily and knit her brows, regarding him with all the sass she could muster. "Makes you old enough to be my grandpa, then, doesn't it?"

"Well, that depends. How hots your grandma?" Jack grinned at her baffled expression until she swatted him in the arm. Carter stifled a laugh.

"You're not her type," Kylee said ruefully, trying not to laugh herself.

"Alright, Sir. I think that's enough. Janet's around the corner giving you the stink eye." Carter replied, Jack checked, there she was, about ready to put him in traction.

"Yeah, I think it's about time to let you ladies get some rest. That's an order." Jack said.

"Yes sir," Sam said then glanced over at Kylee who raised her brows and exhaled then waved him off with a mock salute.

Now it was just a waiting game, to see how this case all figured out. Who the hell was in this reality, after them with a couple of robots? Somehow he knew he wasn't going to like it.