The archaeologist peered down one of the snaking avenues. “And the edge streets here are twisty, but toward the center it starts looking more like a grid. That would fit with Japanese sacred cities. So if we want to find noble or city-temple power centers, we should look in there-”
Jack held up a hand. “Hold it. Ma’chello got protected by people on some planets, sure. But do we know he had an in here?”
“If he brought equipment through the ‘Gate, sir, I think someone would have had to have noticed,” Sam said practically.
“Exactly,” Daniel nodded. “He got onto this world, he got off of this world – he had to have reliable access to the ‘Gate and it’s in a major temple. With a lot of wood in the construction. I don’t know how long it’s been abandoned but I can almost guarantee it was active while he was here.”
“Meaning he had an in with the guys who ran the place,” Jack concluded. “Okay, fair. But why not set up in the temple?”
Now Daniel gave him a raised brow. “Jack. Would you try to run scientific experiments in the Sistine Chapel? In tourist season?”
“…Point.”
Teal’c looked downhill, a gaze older than any of them probably weighing a dozen factors about Goa’uld and Goa’uld-resisters Jack hadn’t learned yet. “The location of Ma’chello’s lab may depend on how much the inhabitants knew of the perils of his work.”
Ooo, and that was a nasty thought. “I’m guessing, not damn much,” Jack said flatly. Glanced at a flash of movement – leaf blowing down the street, down boy. “Body-swapping machines, little assassin things that just happen to drive average people insane- No. Unless the guys in charge here were complete and total idiots, if they’d had clue one about the kinds of things Ma’chello would pull to fight Goa’uld, they’d have locked him up in a supermax, no one in or out, if they let him work at all.”
Frankly Jack would have just dropped the guy off the nearest cliff. But then again he might be just a bit touchy about having to watch his best friend struggle not to die while Ma’chello gallivanted off with Daniel’s body and credit cards. Just a bit.
A/N: Jack may be carrying a grudge. Ya think?
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
Is this a gentle hint that Ma’Chello is not the most ethical scientist in SG1 canon? Because I’m starting to get that impression.
Thanks.
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Pretty much a text book “He who would fight monsters” case study. He wanted to hurt and kill Goa’uld. Which is why I think the Kanabe are Naqadha sensing.
It’d be in character for him to convert people into walking smart missiles to attack the Goa’uld. “Reasoning” that less would die overall with this (forced) sacrifice (of others).
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*Eyes 2-by-4.* Yeah. Gentle.
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Also, i dont remember SG1 having to deal with an actual zombie apocalypse…
not to this degree…
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The Touched outbreak, I think, is the closest they came, and with that one people could be saved.
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Was that the one with antihistamines being the cure?
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That’s the one. 🙂
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“You shoot us? Fine, it’s war.
You torture us? Whatever, it’s a war against evil people.
You steal our bodies? Well, what should we expect fighting evil body-snatchers.
But maxing out our credit cards? That’s just tacky.”
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Well, yes. *G*
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I’m wondering if this was really Ma’chello. But it’s possible. It even makes sense that first outbreak of Kabane happened outside Hinomoto. Perhaps, outbreak here was accident. Hinomoto is island, which would made it perfect for watching an experiment while being safe.
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Well the Kabane themselves might be an ‘unintended but still useful’ result of Ma’chello’s work. Because I think we can all agree that Kabaneri are at the very least equal to Goa’uld and Jaffa in terms of strength, speed and agility; perfect for resistance fighters/super-soldiers. Sure needing to drink human blood is a minor annoyance but can be easily acquired from the no-doubt grateful populace.
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Perhaps his intent wasn’t just to create Supersoldiers, but perhaps a pathogen that would allow the infected individual to go toe to toe with Jaffa and Goa’uld themselves, while possibly giving them an immunity to Goa’uld infection. Perhaps even retroactively, a virus to overcome even the abilities of a symbiote. It certainly would an ambitious project but if successful it could deal a massive blow to the Goa’uld. All of their slaves suddenly capable of fighting back and immune to possesion, in addition if it spreads it could kill the Jaffa and Goa’uld as well. An extreme theory perhaps, but I think it could be possible. If Ma’chello went to Hinomoto to begin his work on the project, a test drive if you will, so the first iteration of the virus isn’t airborne just in case something goes wrong. Sure he might end up destroying the population of an entire planet if things go wrong, but if it works he could save many many more while also getting his revenge… at least thats what I could imagine him thinking.
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Ancients: We unleashed the plague of the Wraith upon the Pegasus Galaxy!
Ma’chello: Hold my beer.
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True. That was epic fail, if I seen one… Ma’chello isn’t even competition.
Though he’s trying. Hard. 😑
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…Sadly enough, I suspect Ma’chello would indeed think that way.
(Which gives an interesting way to fill in the plothole of, how did Biba’s scientists know how to make Kabaneri in the first place?)
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SG-1 would like to inform the universe that when it comes to Ma’chello, there is no minimum safe distance.
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I was thinking something similar: since the goa’uld kill their hosts on skedaddling, crazy regeneration and great not-dying skills would seem to be the solution. Alternatively, rather than just making someone able to go toe-to-toe with a goa’uld/jaffa the iron cage could be a method of snake-proofing someone if it wasn’t limited to the heart, they’d have a lot of trouble getting through to take a host.
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I’m wondering how of the kabane is Ma’chello and how much of it is him mad scientisting an already existing virus.
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*G* Closer!
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I suppose we can be grateful kabane don’t have an actual breeding instinct, just feed and infect. Actually, is infecting humans an instinct, or is it just because said human got away just long enough to smell like kin and link to their network?
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We, er, actually don’t know if they do or not. I’m not going to get a chance to watch the movie until it comes out on DVD, but the bits we see of Kabane nests hint that something is going on.
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…That’s terrifying. Likelihood of some poor soul being dragged back to the nest to teach young spawn how to hunt?
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I could see that scenario.
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The fact that they have enough mind to keep the poor guy alive in order to teach hunting is terrifying.
What happens when they have enough sense to keep a stock of people to train hunting with?
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Huh. Did that happen in the movie? I don’t have Prime, so I haven’t had the chance to see it.
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/…That’s terrifying. Likelihood of some poor soul being dragged back to the nest to teach young spawn how to hunt?/
Even worse possibility.
Biba went bonkers and was using the Kabane to enact revenge on his father along with anyone else in his way. What happens when a Kabaneri sides with the Kabane against humanity for whatever reason? We know that there it at least some mental connection between the two types of entities.
So now you have a Kabane horde/Fused colony with at least some access to a human’s mentality/knowledge.
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And from a review I found, that may sum up the movie. Meeeeep.
(I was already playing with a variation on some of these ideas for Track and its sequel’s major mess. So. Yeah.)
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/And from a review I found, that may sum up the movie. Meeeeep. /
Yep, it is. I was trying to be circumvent about it for people that wanted to go in 100% blind.
And let’s face it, Ikoma and Hozumi are incredibly lucky considering the cultural mentality of Japan/Hinomoto regarding those that are ‘different’ along with the fact that they are half Kabane. You know the creatures that the entire populace have lived in terror of for ~20 years?
Seriously, the fact that Kurusu, Ayame and the others gave them any sort of chance wouldn’t be a very common event considering the whole ‘half-Kabane’ thing.
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And probably part of the only reason they are that lucky is most of the people left in command are teenagers.
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Sudden thought: A Kabane can still function even when decapitated, with the potential to regrow the head outright upon receiving more blood, does that mean the Caged Heart isn’t a heart so much as a secondary brain center thing of a like to Vathara’s Hollow Virus Shinigami? In this case it would only make sense considering Ma’chello made them to counter the Goa’uld (or so it is implied thus far), well…
I imagine there is a special kind of ‘oh ****’ for the theoretical snake-eyes’ed worm that jumps a kabane, wraps around the brainstem, and only then realizes it grabbed the wrong brain, or, in this case, I suppose I should say ‘nervous system controller’, because, really, ‘heart’ just doesn’t seem to fit when you add ‘Kabane’ or ‘Caged’ before it. Not in this context.
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No wonder they’re crazy with that much metal in the brain…
What I’ve been wondering is how the blood flows, really. Even if it’s not a neural-center of some kind, I imagine it’s hard for a heart to beat wrapped in metal. Some species lack hearts and their veins do the job on their own instead, but they are so much smaller it’s hard to believe it would work so scaled up.
Your theoretical snake makes me laugh though. 😁
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Well, Kabane don’t exactly show tons of evidence for oxygenated blood flowing to the brain at decent pressure.
More seriously, there is a lot we don’t know about the Kabaneri. Changes to blood, changes to blood vessel tissue, changes to tissue function, changes to interior structure of the heart… There are tons of absurd scenarios we don’t have the confirmed information to rule out. For all we know, Kabaneri flesh tolerates strong enough electrical fields to pump things using those. We can infer that probably isn’t the case, but it would be very hard to prove impossibility.
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In canon we do see heartbeats, and breathing.
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I do know that insects lack hearts, for the most part, and their internal circulation is different from ours in that their blood moves freely in their body rather than is restricted to vessels like ours are. I think there’s some kind of internal pressure system that keeps the flow going?
In referencing insects, and I don’t know if this has been brought up in the comments yet, some ants are known to mass together in, well, look up ‘ant ball’ or ‘ant raft’, also: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-science-fire-ant-rafts.html
…anyone else getting a ‘primitive Black Smoke’ vibe from those pictures?
::For all we know, Kabaneri flesh tolerates strong enough electrical fields to pump things using those.::
Hm…a possibility for how the Black Smoke, and Ikoma on the Black Blood, could be pulled off? Some form of macro-electricity-manipulation-a-la-magnetism? Or EM manipulation outright?
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*Snrk* Probably not, or the shogunate would have been able to detect Kabane by use of radio interference.
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The heart isn’t wrapped in metal. There’s a cage at some distance around it.
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