The Final Fate of Lionel Prendergast.

 By: Marco Salazar Matamoros.

 DISCLAIMER: I don’t own ‘Stargate: SG-1’, ‘Tenchi Muyo’, ‘Ranma ½’ and any other series I might mention here. As well, this is a crossover with the Superman Unleashed SUW and Metroanime’s writings.

I only own my own creations and the way I’ve decided to express them all.

I decided to write this to honor the longest-running sci-fi series out there, may it never die in the hearts of the fans.

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 “Appointed unto man once to die. Then comes judgment.”

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 The last thing he saw, before the darkness, was the flames coming towards him. The ‘Prometheus’, the ship he commanded, was disintegrating all around him, and he had first-row seats for its destruction, standing in its bridge, trying to teleport as many of his crew as he could to the planet below.

 In the darkness, he felt some amount of pride, since he had tried –god*dammit*, did he tried- to save them. No regrets on that part-except, possibly, that he could have saved more. But as the situation stood, he had made his effort’s worth.

 He could accept his final judgment, whichever it ended up being, with his head high.

 That’s when someone coughed softly right next to him, and said:

“I think you can open your eyes now, sir”, in this extremely demure voice.

 Prendergast opened his eyes, taking in his surroundings-and almost freezing. He was not the most religious man around-admittedly- but he *had* expected something like a white light, some clouds, Saint Peter…

 The room that he was standing in right now was Stargate Command. Or rather, the mission briefing room in Stargate Command, a perfect replica of it, down to the few scuff marks in the polished wooden table that he *could* remember from his first-ever debriefing, right before taking command of the ‘Prometheus’…

 The sole exception was the woman standing next to him. She stood almost as tall as him, and was dressed in a white military uniform with a red cape, gold tassels and a couple of medals. The two pips on her uniform’s throat were polished to a mirror shine. Her eyes were brown, a shade or two darker than her hair, and wide in excitement.

 She said something in a low voice in a language he didn’t quite understood (Japanese, maybe?), before she saluted him and said:

“Welcome to Asgard, Colonel.”

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 Now THAT made him do a double-take. “Asgard!?!?”

 “Yes, sir, Asgard. As in, ‘Valhalla’ Asgard, ‘Ragnarok’ Asgard….”. Prendergast though that maybe it would have sounded better on Jack or Shaft. Sarcasm just didn’t sounded good on her soft voice.

 “So… you’re Death?”

“Just standing in for her right now. She’s kinda busy, you understand, with many people dying on the multiverse. Some of them require processing as well, and then there’s the travelers.”

 That term made Prendergast raise an eyebrow. “What exactly do you mean with ‘travellers’?”

 “I’ll answer that in a few minutes, sir, but for now…” she pulled out a couple of chairs and sat down. “Please, Colonel, sit. I promise to explain, but I have to follow some protocol before that.” Prendergast did so.

 She took a deep breath and said: “For starters, my name is Kasumi Tendo. My rank –*former* rank- is that of Major in the JSDF. I’m what you would call an ‘SPB’, or ‘Super Powered Being’-a supergirl, if you want. I represent a small, secretive branch within the Asgardian government that is interested in your services.”

 Prendergast’s eyebrow shot up again. Although he *had* seen weird crap- he was captain of a *starship*, for Christ’s sake-but a *supergirl* talking to him? Nope, didn’t believed that.

“Now, Asgard is what you would call ‘Heaven’, ‘Purgatory’ or ‘Limbo’-a transition point in the middle of the Multiverse for people, living –the ‘travelers’- or dead. Some people who have died can apply here to return to life, some live people who travel here get killed, and the world keeps on turning-like I said, a transition point. Our official political statement is that we are neutral-kinda like Switzerland.”

Prendergast noticed that her voice was a little shaky when she said the ‘Switzerland’ part. “But you still go on and do battle at times, right?”

“Sometime people get lost out there, sometimes *things* happen in a universe that threaten to damage those nearby, and sometimes people just wanna take over the world. That’s when we act, because if the damage goes too far, eventually *we* get affected. And if *we* get affected, believe me, sir, *everything* gets affected.”

She leaned close to Prendergast and looked him right in the eye-and that’s when he saw *something* in hers, he didn’t knew exactly what, but it spoke of power and strength-which he decided right then to not have unleashed onto him.

“Currently, we’re undergoing a pretty bad stage. Because you see, the Offices-the Asgardian government- is becoming corrupt. They have given free reign to a number of undesirables to just... wander the Multiverse and do as they want. The chaos that they have raised insofar has been compensated by the good they’ve brought, but there’s people who believe that this balance won’t last. These people are a minority, sir.

They -the minority- are the people I represent. We’re recruiting people –with capabilities and experience- to carry out operations. These operations, of course, are covert, but are meant to try to bring some balance. And that’s where you some in, Colonel Prendergast.”

“You want me to become a hitman? Heaven’s Hitman?” He said the last one with sarcasm. “Do you have any idea of how that sounds?”

“In actuality, sir, I understand that you were captain of a USAF spaceship prior to arriving here. If we hired you –if you’d accept- we’d give you a post as captain of a ship, with anybody from your former crew who accepts. All you’d have to do in return is to transport stuff for us every once in a while.”

“You have spaceships?”

“We’re in the middle of the Multiverse, sir. There’s nothing we can’t eventually obtain. But that is if you accept.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then we’ll just delete your memory of this conversation and deliver you to a proper government contact, one that will put you with the rest of your crew and -possibly- reincarnation somewhere. But I cannot assure your safety once outside this base, sir, not yours, not anybody’s.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I don’t do threats, sir. It’s just not me. But the truth is more than enough.”

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Prendergast and Kasumi stood there for a couple of minutes, unmoving and not saying anything else. She had said what she needed to say, and now it was his turn to decide. She could hear Prendergast’s heartbeat, steady as a clock, definitely in control. Whatever his decision would be, he was thinking it carefully.

Thinking back to this morning, when she woke up to find Roger attired on his own honor guard uniform (a USMC one, she noticed), she didn’t knew what it was for.

And then she found out. The Offices’ Black Ops division. The Watchers just weren’t enough right now. They had to make some more teams, and quick. Roger had just gotten back from speaking to an Alternate of Jack O’Neill, and had the hangover to prove it. Roger got a call soon after his explanation, completely killing any attempt at a nice day, and he promised to make it up to her later. She got the call from Washu just after he left, regarding the Alternate of Prendergast that had suddenly appeared in the Briefing Room of the Bunker, and her immediate attention.

It was the first time she had to change at super-speed since she came to Asgard.

Her train of thought was derailed when her super-hearing picked something up: a familiar beep-beep-beep over at the Control Room, followed soon by the familiar whirrings and alarm of the ‘Gate opening.

She looked up to the ceiling (secretly annoyed to the blinking red light on it), and the said to Prendergast:

“You wanna see something interesting, sir?”

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She walked to the nearest window and pressed a button, opening the blast door that covered it. Prendergast got up and froze when he saw what was beyond it.

It was a Stargate, and a perfect replica of the Gate Room over at NORAD, he noticed. But the Stargate, and the room itself, was super-sized, and he could almost see a full-sized F-302 (hell, a god-damned *tank*) rolling thru the thing with no disassembly required.

Right now the Stargate was dialing up, and soon after it opened, the massive ‘water’ effect almost reaching the other side of the room. What followed right after that, he was used to (in a way).

A demented amount of energy blasts came right across it and slammed all over the room, preceding the charge of seven people right out the ‘Gate, all of them firing back with automatic weapons Prendergast had never seen before. The blue-white contrails that came out of the muzzles reminded him of the railguns on the ‘Prometheus’.

Kasumi noticed that there was someone missing. She slapped another button and said aloud, the voice carrying to the Gate room thru speakers:

“Where’s Roger?”

One of the men –Prendergast then did a double-take, was *that* a *robot*?- turned to look at them and seemingly shrugged. Kasumi then let go of the button, tensed up….

…and jumped right thru the glass, shattering it and landing in front of the robot. She grabbed him by the front and lifted him up just as the shards of the window (thick shards as thick as Prendergast’s arm and that glittered in metallic tones, he noticed) crashed with the ground. The shards, he also noticed, did a metallic sound when they hit.

“Where’s Roger?”, she asked again, this time almost growling.

“He stayed behind!”, the robot said. “He made us go first, said he’d leave ‘em a surprise!”

Kasumi dropped the robot (who fell on his butt), and then said: “I’ll go after him.”

One other shooter stopped firing and grabbed her by the arm –and Prendergast then though, /if she could lift the robot, what will she do to the shooter?/- and yelled over the gunfire:

“No, you can’t! He’ll come here shortly! If *you* go, we’ll have to come after you!”

And then, a man came thru the ‘Gate. A pretty small man, firing like crazy with a machine gun. He skidded to a halt right in front of Kasumi, almost crashing with her.

The robot and the man yelled the same order: “CLOSE THE GATE!!!”

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The Stargate closed with a particularly loud clap, and that’s when the soldiers stood at ease. A couple of them exchanged high-fives, one of them fell to his knees and started to pray, and the rest just relaxed.

Kasumi turned to look at Prendergast and opened her arms wide in a flourish.

“And this”, she said aloud “is our flagship unit: The Watchers. They do anything, from mapping worlds to saving them to, occasionally, raising hell in them.”

She pointed towards the robot: “Commanding officer, Captain Grey Shard.” The robot waved.

Then she pointed towards the kneeling soldier: “Mecha Pilot, Private First Class Shinji Ikari.” He didn’t do anything but keep on praying (or maybe it was puking, Prendergast couldn’t tell).

She pointed to the two high-fivers “Close Quarters Combat experts, Gunnery Sergeants Ranma Saotome and Ryoga Hibiki.”

And then she pointed to a thin, pale man (was that an albino?, Prendergast noticed). “Silent Incursion Specialist, Corporal Jack Lauren.” Who stared at Prendergast with this unwavering, red-eyed stare.

She hugged a man (a *kid*) with a white bandanna before introducing him as: “Team Mechanic, Specialist Mackey Stingray.”

She turned towards a blond girl that stood there, breathing hard. “Our kind guest, Civilian Specialist Samantha Carter.” Prendergast was almost shocked, because *this* Carter looked no older than 15, but she looked at him, and sure enough, she was her. She had the same eyes.

And finally, she hugged (and kissed the hair of) the small man that had almost barreled into her. “And this is the Watchers’ Executive Officer, Lieutenant Junior Grade Roger Hackett.”

Prendergast looked at the unit with wide eyes, and just though:

/God… Dying for my duty was something I accepted, but why did you placed me *here*?/

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Some time later, Prendergast and the unit were sitting in the Bunker’s mess hall, drinking coffee. By now, there was another person with them: a small girl with odd red hair, who called herself ‘Washu Hakubi’ (“Call me Washu-chan, Colonel!”, she had told him earlier).

 “So… this is your place?”, Prendergast asked her. She nodded energetically.

“Well… actually, it was not *mine* before, but rather the Offices’. This was a classified depot for relinquished property that they didn’t needed anymore, so I bought it cheap and redesigned it to my tastes.”

 Prendergast tried not to think what ‘her tastes’ could be to replicate the whole of Stargate Command, nut and bolt, out of a whim. “You mentioned this was underground a minute ago. So, how far down is this thing?”

 “28 floors. Like I said, it was classified. This far down, on this kind of soil, there’s very little chance of detection.”

Questions like these had been brought out by Prendergast for the while he’d met her, with outrageous answers for them all. He’d been taken to a tour of ‘The Bunker’ (their name for this copy of SGC), he’d seen their fighters (F-302s with some rather… *odd* modifications), their armory (which, at any other time, would have passed off to him as some sort of sci-fi museum section or prop storage. He was kindly explained that the rifles he saw firing before were man-portable railguns -and for real, since he couldn’t believe it), and the outside (the view of the Offices’ arcology was not going to leave him for some time to come).

So he saw everything they could offer to him. He’d seen the mess that was several of those dimensions the ‘free reigned’ had modified-outrageous chaos, all of it, as promised, with the unspoken promise of expanding in the future.

And this group was the only one standing against them? They might as well grab one of those sci-fi guns and turn it on themselves-it would be a lot less painful, he thought.

But, then again, he had commanded the ‘Prometheus’. Before him, George Hammond himself had done the job, and those who served with him had classified him as a miracle maker.

And then again, from day one, Stargate Command had gone against insurmountable odds and pulled off miracles-what else could it be, to have managed to defeat the Goa’uld so many times?

And then there was the Wraith over at Pegasus, and then the Ori came, and well… the ‘Prometheus’ was now a bunch of orbiting scrap over some stupid planet in civil war to prove how that was going. He had been told that reincarnation would require a number of memory wipes, and being placed way before the time he died-on the best-case scenario. If he did decided to stay, it would be under the command of the Offices-most exactly, the Black Ops Division. And they had their hands too tied at the moment with the ‘local’ mess to go against those bastards.

If he stayed, he’d be on a similar ‘life’ as the one he lived-nothing but patrolling, battling… dammit. But he wouldn’t be alone, and he’d be packing the meanest warship that they could give out (Washu had guaranteed that to him).

So… what to choose?

It took him forever (the better part of an hour, actually), but he made his choice.

“I think you’re all crazy, and seriously undergunned, outnumbered and very desperate, if you wanted to recruit me. But you’re right. We have to stop them.” At that he turned towards Kasumi, and grinned. “So… where the hell do I sign up?”

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SOME TIME LATER:

MAY 23^rd, 2028, 3: 45 A.M. (LOCAL TERRAN TIME).

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On Earth, it was several hours for all hell to break loose. An other-dimensional menace, called the ‘Mu’, had captured Tokyo years ago, and now it was going to be re-taken by Earth’s militaries.

But even if the situation would have (and had) been the subject to a rather interesting series, our scope instead now shifts towards the orbit of this little blue planet, where not three minutes ago a starship had appeared. This starship, shaped like a three-pronged blade, was battleship gray and bristling with weaponry the likes of which the two armies down there had never seen before. On the starboard side of the ship, the words ‘SGCS JASPER MASKELYNE’ were painted in large white letters.

“Forward engines, full stop. Enable AGs and maintain position.”, the ship’s commander ordered.

“Aye-aye, sir. Engines, full stop. Anti-Gravity generators enabled. Maintaining position over target area.”, the engineering aide said, pressing two buttons on his console.

The battle cruiser slowed down to a full stop right over the battlefield, and the view from orbit was amazing, to see the least.

“Is that Tokyo?”, Prendergast said in a moment of confusion.

“Yes, sir.”, the science aide said from his console. “Apparently, it has been surrounded by a sphere of energy. I’m also detecting a chronological phase-out within and no human life-signs in the surrounding area.”

Prendergast looked to his science aide (who was, ironically, a Fraal) and said: “Phase-out.”

“The time inside the sphere is passing six times slower than the time outside.”

“So if this is Earth in 2028, inside is…?”

“2012, sir, more or less.”, the science aide said. “It also appears that the surrounding army is getting ready to destroy the field, from the energy projectors I’m managing to detect.”

Prendergast rose from his seat and walked closer to the frontal monitor (since this bridge lacked windows, a thing that he had liked a little from back on the ‘Prometheus’) and squinted.

“It sure looks like Jupiter to me”, he said dryly.

After dying and being ‘drafted’, he had also found his humor to be more like Colonel O’Neill’s (and that was one thing that he didn’t know the reason of, no matter how many times he went to the base shrink).

Washu had come thru and given him command of a ship of his own. The ship’s name, ‘Jasper Maskelyne’, wouldn’t have been his first choice (and he checked: it had been the name of a British magician-turned-military camouflage specialist), but it had somehow managed to fit. The ‘Jasper’ was a Stargate-verse ‘Deadalus’-class that she had adapted with a full-blown cloaking system (guaranteed to keep on working no matter what) and more powerful weaponry, as well as a shield that she swore would never let him down ‘no matter how many satellites come your way, Colonel’.

The price for the command of such a ship –to ‘transport stuff’, like they had said.

Like a small squad of Black Ops shooters that were right now approaching the teleporters.

“Call the transport room.”, Prendergast ordered, to which the comms aide answered with an ‘affirmative’ and a stroke of a keyboard.

“Captain Shard, we’re right now orbiting ‘Tokyo Jupiter’ and awaiting for your team to mobilize, as agreed. I hope that you like our present, as well?”

On the teleportation room, six power-armored soldiers were doing a final weapons check as the cyborg patted a sealed canister (and if the skull-like face could have been able to smile, his would wave been wide).

“Yes, sir. This ‘Pee-Wee’ sure will make the job. Thanks.”, he said.

“Once we transport you down there, we’ll break orbit and leave. I assume that you have an exit route of your own?”, Prendergast said.

“You’re free to stay and watch the fireworks, if you want.”, someone said. Prendergast could recognize the voice as Lauren’s, but there was something odd with it, like it was changing to someone else’s.

“Sorry, but no. Our patrol route just happened to allow us to make a small deviation for your delivery, and as it is, we’re going to have to rush to return before the Offices notice. Thanks for the invitation, anyway.”

“Understood, sir, and thanks for the ride.” Carter, now sounding more like her adult counterpart. The ‘ka-chak-bzzz!’ of a Morita rifle’s charging was heard after that.

“Godspeed, Watchers.”, he said, and to the engineering aide: “Execute.”

And just like that, in a flash of light, the shooters were gone. The ‘Jasper Maskelyne’ turned to leave orbit right after that and moved towards the Moon and the closest inter-dimensional jump-point they could achieve. It would take them four minutes in STL engines to arrive to the point.

Prendergast sat back again in the captain’s chair and keyed the terminal on his arm rest to show him the view of the rear camera. Then he zoomed as much into Tokyo Jupiter as he could.

Right before jumping, Prendergast managed to see a small mote of light appearing suddenly on the surrounding town, right next to the sea. From his rushed calculations, for him to see it, it must have been a massively powerful, concentrated explosion.

Like the one of a SICON ‘Pee-Wee’ nuclear warhead doing its job.

Much to his own chargin, Lionel Prendergast smiled.

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