Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 132

Chapter 132 - Vacations End

It had been a shame that a diplomatic emergency of some kind had dragged Xiaoyi away from the last night of their vacation. But Eventus had already imposed himself on the Chinese government enough that he wasn't going to overly begrudge them a sudden need for her expertise with something.

So he’d gotten a full night's rest, said goodbye to serving girls, and was now waiting in front of the Jumper for Xiaoyi to arrive back from wherever it was she had to go.

The sound of luggage wheels on stone drew his attention away from his deep dive into the mythological realms of Chinese history, and he looked up to see a somewhat haggard looking Xiaoyi approaching in the same suit she’d hastily thrown on last night.

“Get everything taken care of?”  He inquired, hooking his interface back onto his belt.

“Barely.” Xiaoyi confessed. “Our American Ambassador decided to retire yesterday, so there was an emergency meeting to help select his replacement.”

Eventus cringed as his imagination brought forward several possibilities for why the man might have decided to step down now of all times. “I hope that wasn't my fault?”

“A little bit.” Xiaoyi admitted wryly. “But only in the sense that the amount of work he’s had to do has skyrocketed since you walked through the gate.”

“Can’t argue with that I suppose.” Eventus ruefully admitted, pulling the jumper remote out of his pocket and clicking it.

With a beep of warning the ramp began to lower, and once it finished he motioned to Xiaoyi that she was free to enter.

“Thanks for waiting by the way.” Xiaoyi offered as they walked in.

“It was no problem.” Eventus reassured her. “Gave me time to make sure everything was packed up properly, and say thanks to the serving girls.”

He paused in this step half way up the ramp. “I did end up leaving them a tip.”

Xaioyi glanced over her shoulder with a frown. “A tip?”

“A bag of a hundred gold coins.” Eventus expanded.

“The ones with your face on front and a depiction of Atlantis on the back?” Xiaoyi asked, narrowing her eyes at him in a way he knew meant she still found the humor with that choice particularly lacking.

“Those were the ones.” Eventus confirmed with a nod. “I know the IOA didn't want me to hand them out. But I stopped by to thank the housekeeping quartet and they looked like the Wraith were about to descend on their hometown.”

“And how did that lead to you giving them a bag of gold?” Xiaoyi asked dryly.

Eventus rubbed the back of neck a bit awkwardly. “Well, I asked them what was wrong. However they just put on those fake service smiles and tried to reassure me that everything was fine.”

Which it obviously hadn't been.

“There was nothing I could do if they didn't want to tell me about it, so I thanked them like I originally intended and left. At which point I overheard Qin Tai mutter under her breath about how they were going to be stuck in this job forever.”

“So you gave them a bag full of gold coins.” Xiaoyi followed with a sigh. 

“It felt like the least I could do.” Eventus admitted awkwardly. “And the coins themselves aren’t really any different from the commemorative stuff you Humans produce for fun. So the only stand out part of them is that they’re a hundred percent pure instead of ninety-ninety point ninety-nine percent pure.”

“What’s their total value in Yuan?” Xiaoyi asked after a moment.

Frowning slightly, Eventus took a moment to run the mental conversion. “About four hundred thousand Yuan.”

“Not my problem then.” Xiaoyi said as she continued in only to stop half way through the rear compartment. 

“It was a long night.” She put forward while glancing over at one of the jump seats. “Do you mind if I stay back here for a quick nap so I'm not completely wiped out by the time zone change?”

“Go ahead.” Eventus said as he continued into the cockpit. “Want me to dim the lights and close the bulkhead door?”

Xiaoyi took a moment to secure her bag before lowering herself into a seat with a tired sigh. “I would appreciate it.”

Sliding into the pilot's seat, it barely took a thought for the rear compartments lights to dim and the door to slide shut. After which he plotted out the course to New York and engaged the vessel's cloak. Finally initiating the liftoff procedure, he handed control off to the autopilot before switching fully back into his ‘on the job’ mode.

“I suppose I should check if I have any messages.” Eventus sighed as he reached down and grabbed his interface.

A few mental commands set the message system back to normal operation, and he let out an annoyed groan at the number that appeared on top of the now blinking message icon. 

“Alright then.” He muttered under his breath. “Let's see what I missed.”

Setting the first voice message to play, he felt his eye began to twitch as the voice of Walter started explaining about an energy draining problem they'd run into at the museum.

“I feel like SG1 should just be banned from going to museums at this point.”

Skipping past the next three messages, which the interface summarized as just variations of the first, his eye twitch intensified as he listened to Doctor Jackson request any information he might have about an outpost by the name of Olympus that had existed either on or in Mount Vesuvius.

“I swear if it turns out that disaster was our fault I'm going to make Janus hand write apology notes to every Italian on the planet.”

The following message was marked as being from Rayla, and a feeling of impending exasperation settled over him as he set the elf's message to play back.

“Um, so, I may have had to confiscate something really dangerous from the humans.” Rayla's voice echoed out in a tone that somehow made the elf sound particularly small.

“I didn't want to.” She hastily added. “But the time traveling Daniel's daughter left a memory imprint on her psionic amplifier which showed me just what sorts of things someone could do with it. And I know you said someone could become Emperor Palpatine with one of those. But I thought you meant in the sense of throwing lighting at people, not mind controlling entire governments.”

Even though his ability usually made him immune to such things, Eventus could somehow feel a headache coming on.

“So after pulling the amplifier out of the force field I kind of refused to hand it over to them… And then sort of accidentally cast fireball…”

Eventus started thumping his head into the back of his chair. “This is the universe's revenge for all those times I criticized others for being absentee mad scientists, I just know it.” 

“Don't worry!” Rayla continued. “Nobody got hurt, and the fire suppression system kept the artifacts from being too badly damaged. But then, when we were outside they tried to get me to hand it over again, and I accidentally made everyone but General O'Neill fall asleep like you did with me that one time.”

“How does this keep getting worse.” Eventus muttered in muted amazement.

“I think General O'Neill kind of gave up after that.” Rayla went on. “Cause he called the Prometheus and had them beam me back to the SGC. Where they stuck me in my room and said I couldn’t come out unless I left the amplifier behind. Which I think might have been them trying to get me to leave it behind so they could grab it when I wasn’t around.”

“Why do I feel like I should thank Vala for that.” Eventus grumbled.

SG1 with a psionic amplifier would probably have been fine, but there were a lot of other humans who would have been within the chain of custody of such a device. And knowing what he did about certain absurdities of their universe, it probably would have ended up being studied by someone like Felger. And only the Ascended knew how badly someone with that level of neuroses would screw things up with the sudden ability to affect reality via thought.

“Don’t worry!” Rayla seemingly tried to reassure him. “I didn’t fall for it, and I’m making sure to wear it all the time so they can’t sneak in and grab it while I’m asleep or something.”

Eventus waited for the other shoe to drop.

“But um… I might have accidentally triggered the fire alarm a few times while experimenting with creating fire… So now I’m sharing a room with Teyla, which went okay for a bit, but then I accidentally sensed a secret of hers with my health sense, and things got awkward.”

He stared at the portable interface for a moment waiting for her to say more, only to give an annoyed frown as the message over indicator popped up.

“Shit like this is why Moras ran off to play Wizard isn’t it?” He asked nobody in particular.

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Author’s Notes: And that’s the end of the vacation arc. Next chapter, we have the start of the arc with overwhelmed diplomats, exhasperated asgard, intractable jaffa, and scheming Goa'uld.