Kirito skipped down a few paragraphs. “It’s not just strength. She specifically mentions reaction time.” He glanced back at them. “She thinks the low-mod group isn’t that different from a normal human. But above that… she couldn’t test it while we were unconscious. But she believes we’re very. Very. Fast.”
Klein bit back a few choice curses. On the one hand, this could be good. A competent doctor looking after them was what they needed. On the other – if Bluebook was some kind of black op, and it was looking more and more like it had to be one….
Thousands of civilians trapped in a death game. Doesn’t matter if the Air Force is the good guys. Governments are going to want somebody’s head on a pike. And if they can’t find Kayaba– Klein winced. Here we are. Foreign citizens, AWOL sailors and Marines – way too easy to make us disappear. Damn it, what the hell could have been so important the military went anywhere near Kayaba–
Kirito was leaning toward the screen, wide-eyed. “There’s a note here on how fast. ‘Think, toothed hummingbird on the Nox homeworld, General’.”
Klein’s train of thought screeched to a terrified halt. Say what?
“Homeworld?” Asuna got out, sounding as stunned as Klein felt. “That… can’t be what it sounds like….”
Kirito had at least five PDFs open at once, flipping between summaries. “The ashrak came off a world called Nasya. There’s some references to Jaffa endurance exercises ‘favored on Chulak’. Hok’taur rumor on Argos, connected to… System Lords using nanites to manipulate human evolution and create better hosts. Someone called the NID tried to isolate them from a blood sample, but it fell apart outside of a living circulation….” White-lipped, he pounded in a search.
“Hosts?” Klein exclaimed. “What is this, Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”
“Our bodies did get snatched,” Argo reminded him. “Nanites. You know that word?”
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
Whoopsiedaisy. Should maybe have compartmentalized your stuff more, Janet.
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*Wry G* She tried. But the staff needed access to this stuff for ideas!
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Feces, meet rotary air impeller.
To be fair to Janet, well she needs to give him something to compare the possibilities. And Earth is lacking the examples, at least ones both Hammond and Fraizer might both know.
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Well this is going to be an ‘interesting’ conversation when SG1 returns. And if somebody doesn’t start clarifying matters Janet’s going to need more then grizzly traqs.
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It gets more interesting. 😉
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Now they have some information the SGC doesn’t know they have. If they hold some of it back, they will have something to verify the SGC’s version of truth with if the SGC can be made to talk soon.
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*Nod* Mutual leverage!
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Oooh, Kirito got to the personal stuff quick. Like, man, I’d think a secure computer wouldn’t allow someone to keep a digital keychain. (It is a *pain* when you have to reset those. Something funky happened and I had to start a new digital one on my laptop. It *sucked.*) Unless someone left that on the sticky as well…
But man alive, that is not a fun explanation. So now our guild leaders and solo have to decide how they want to play with this knowledge. Do they sit on it, and see what the SGC has to say? Do they attack with it? Or do they do a combo? Also, if they find that the SGC is either unwilling or unable to do anything about the red players, with what they know now…. Someone might bite the blade and take care of it. *I* certainly wouldn’t leave them at my back, or my family’s back. And that’s just what will happen if Laughing Coffin or the other reds get loose, they could target the families. There are at least a few of the people in the game who are the kind who could kill for family.
And I’m calling people who are repentant or just thieves ‘orange’ while Laughing Coffin and the other killers ‘red.’ The players certainly seem to have made a differential. Tied up means trouble. Tied up so can’t move is derentius and dangerous.
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Probably a combo.
As for LC… remember that a lot of the sane players are scarred and horrified by the fact they had to kill some people. They really don’t want to have to do something to LC. Really.
Circumstances may force otherwise.
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Something tells me that’s not the “official” medical files Kirito is looking though. Janet wouldn’t be leaving those kinds of notes just anywhere to be found (ie. on the hospital computers itself). It’ll be really interesting to see how Kirito and Co. decides to play this.
On the other hand, I’d be very surprised if Kirito and Co. don’t know where/when they are at this point… so at least they know SGC wasn’t lying about that!
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And being able to verify at least that much does take some of the pressure off. Whew.
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Probably not the common files everyone uses. However, Janet probably does compose reports at the Hospital about the players for Hammond.
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Given that the SGC does security for speaking in alien tongue off base, they probably broke into a Janet’s personal computer. I doubt that they have the SGC computer connected to the outside world after the electrical Entity (season 4 episode 20), the replicators, and other nasties. Those PDF’s were probably sanitized for outside use.
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That’s actually very likely. Poor Janet. She’ll never live it down.
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*Nod!* She just did that recently, too; ouch.
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I’m sorry, but disappearing 6,000 people whose family knows where they are, who are involved in an internationally famous incident and who’s government is actively pissed that they’ve been shanghaied is NOT going to be easy. Klein is simply wrong.
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Klein is maybe a little bit paranoid. I blame Kayaba.
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We also have to remember that Klein doesn’t have all the information General Hammond has. All he knows is that all the players are in a military base in America along with multiple disturbing facts.
1. The official statement regarding this place isn’t matching what they are seeing at all. Meaning that this is a classified Black Operation or something similar.
2. This operation somehow moved them all to America with or without Japan’s consent (Asuna probably brought up some of her observations). If it’s the latter………not good.
3. When they woke up, they were barely given the minimum of information, no true proof of who the group was:
>“I don’t see ID. I don’t see any orders. Comes down to it, I don’t even have any proof I’m in America.>
And phone calls to anyone at all are “Will have to wait.”
4. Finally there’s the fact that Kayaba was altering them in the game and these people were testing them to try and see the extent of their capabilities. The whole ‘off world, aliens etc’ aspect is simply icing on the cake.
Sure things might get defused to varying degrees in chapter 4 but I don’t think we can blame the Guild Leader/Marine Corporal for being just a bit twitchy about all this.
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*Nod* I think Hammond has gotten a little too used to the weirdness; he hasn’t realized quite how bad this looks from the outside.
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>*Nod* I think Hammond has gotten a little too used to the weirdness; he hasn’t realized quite how bad this looks from the outside.>
Probably be even more ‘interesting’ to hear what the people of Colorado Springs think about whatever is going on in the mountain.
They might not have any solid clue about what is going on but with the constant streams of soldiers, equipment etc pouring into the mountain, they’ll know something is weird.
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*G*
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And Kayaba may have screwed his language centers worse making him more paranoid.
There’s some reason to think that the dialect you grow up hearing leaves you more inclined to trust people you hear using that way of speaking. Klein’s a native English speaker who had Cheyenne mountain English jammed into his head. There may be a disconnect from what he is accustomed to that is throwing him out of equilibrium.
As an aside, Argo’s “Sharpie”, and question about “nanites” implies some things about her. Either she is a normal case, and only has the reduced dictionary of Cheyenne mountain English. Or she also had some other English, and the two are interacting oddly.
I’m currently favoring older Argo models over younger Argo models for this one. That may be an artifact of her not being in boss fights, hence being rested and calmer for the wake up. Of the young adult before SAO Argo models, the scutwork for a private investigator model would match only having Japanese better than the reporter and military intelligence models.
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Eh, never attribute to alien tech what can be explained by simple fretting.
“Sharpie” is a word Argo may have actually heard other gamers use. “Nanites”, not so much.
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Things are going to get interesting. These findings might make it imperative for the players to get information out. And I hope the military’s plan for the Stargate becoming public is up to date, since I think it will be required. Keep up the good work.
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*G* Thanks!
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Well, I didn’t think that cat was going to stay in the bag. There are too many people involved for this to stay quiet. Through as the post above mention, it is easy to understand why Klein is twitchy. It all looks extremely shady and after Kayaba, everyone is justifiably paranoid.
Won the bet with myself that Kirito would find something in those computer files that would give the players the “there are aliens” reveal or at least the suspicion that there are aliens.
Maybe it’s for the best this way. Hammond can say “I didn’t tell them. They found out.”
Because sometimes getting people to change the status quo, even it is necessary, is like pulling teeth. “But that’s the way we’ve always done it” or “It’s been working fine for the last X years” is the most common excuse.
Yes, sometimes the way you’ve always done it is the best way. But sometimes it isn’t. Or it doesn’t stay the best way.
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Certainly not all the way in the bag. Once you have six thousand people with measurable physical differences who did not sign up for that, something is going to come out. The only question is how much needs to get disclosed.
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*Nod*
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Hammond plans to look veeeeeery innocent.
(And curse at how his security got breached later, because they’re even better than his files said….)
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Why do I think that someone equally knowledgeable about this mess and the players upon hearing that his files got hacked will just say “Kirigaya?” and then attempt to look sympathetic . . . not quite managing it because (1) still annoyed with the Americans and (2) kinda of glad that for once trying to figure out what that kid did or did not do and if he did, prove it is someone else’s problem . . .
‘Cause methinks that while they can’t prove it, someone might suspect that Kirito is a lot better hacker and tech nerd than he appears . . .
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*Snrk* I doubt Midori would be surprised, for one.
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