“Look, lady,” Rocket said, “I’m not going to bite you, okay?” He had (reluctantly) agreed to be examined for any diseases and was now sitting on the edge of the exam table. For her part, Dr. Keller was intensely eager to study this strange creature that so resembled an Earth animal, and yet clearly was not. She was also understandably apprehensive, of which Rocket was uncomfortably aware.
“I’m not going to shoot you either, since they took my laser away. Which they broke, by the way.”
“I’m pleased to hear that,” Keller stammered. “Not that your laser got broken, of course, but that you’re not going to shoot me. Or bite me. Not that I thought you would anyway. You seem like … um … not a dangerous … um … person (this earned a quick nod from Rocket, approving of the “person”, not necessarily the “dangerous” part), “but you did fire your weapon through the Stargate unprovoked, so you understand we have to be cautious.”
“Yeah, okay,” Rocket grudgingly agreed. “I get that. Sometimes I might overreact a little bit, but I wouldn’t say I was ‘zackly unprovoked. Anyway, the galaxy is a dangerous place. I oughta know, cuz my team, we’re the Guardians. Of the whole galaxy, capisce?
Rodney McKay, who had remained silent in a corner under strict orders from Keller, finally had enough. “Yeah. The whole galaxy, huh?”
Rocket hissed at him. “That’s what I said, pal. Are you deaf, or just stupid?”
Rodney turned red. “now just a minute, you —“
“You — what?” Rocket stood up on the table, stretching to his full height, clearly ready to rumble.
“Okay!” Keller slammed her clipboard down on the table, making everybody in the room jump, especially the three tense Kais guarding the door.”Everybody just calm down!”
Rocket sat down and folded his arms. “I am calm,” he said coolly.
Meanwhile, in the calm and airy space by the sea, which the current residents of Atlantis had converted to a cafeteria/commissary, Lafe and Dgre conferred over drinks.
“I know you can’t give me details, but I hear you’re here on a secret mission” said Dgre. “I’m a little envious, you know. MyKai never takes me on adventures anymore. I had to nag him to come to Comic Con with me. He says he’s seen enough weird things.”
Lafe shrugged. “The boys don’t always confide in me if they think it might put me in danger. It’s very annoying, but I did get out of them that there’s a race of beings in this part of the galaxy who survive by sucking the life force out of other sentient species. Now that the Stargates have become common knowledge, there’s a fear that these life suckers might get loose.”
“So you here to make sure the Atlantean force is keeping a lid on things?”
“Maybe. I’ve heard these things are almost impossible to kill. I really think we might be here to figure out a way.”
XXXX
The Wraith had been hibernating for a long, long time in a remote, unexplored part of the city, left behind and forgotten after a long ago skirmish. His ever present internal alarm system, even in hibernation, was attuned to any signal that the latest Wraith quarry, Ronin Dex, had emerged. Unfortunately for him, the Atlanteans had helped Ronin by removing his tracker, and the city’s peculiar qualities had masked the presence of humans. What woke the Wraith now was an electro-magnetic laser pulse through the Stargate, and awake, the Wraith now knew humans were in the city.
He also detected the presence of beings who were unlike anything he had encountered before, individuals who were neither alive nor unalive.
But he was very, very hungry.
XXXX
MyKai had lost interest in the proceedings in the exam room, and decided it was time to collect his queen, and possibly persuade her it was time to go back to the Comic Con place, and from there, home. He fist-bumped his brothers Techno and Recon in farewell, and left.
As he strolled along the somewhat dimly lit corridors, absent-mindedly contemplating the pleasures of being alone at home with his queen, he gradually began to sense another presence somewhere up ahead. Something alien, cold, and deadly, making him put his hand on his wrist where his scorpion waited.
And then he saw it — the ghostly Wraith.
Simultaneously they each asked, “What are you?”
The Wraith began to try and extract MyKai’s life force, realizing at the same time that there was nothing he could latch onto. And MyKai fired his scorpion weapon into the Wraith’s chest, but there was no heart to destroy.
XXXX
Over to you. MyKai’s in real trouble, and it’s up to Dgre, Techno, Recon and the Atlanteans to figure out how to fix him. But the Wraith is in trouble too. Possibly protoblood is poisonous to him? Dgre always has extra protoblood and the formula to make more, but maybe the Wraith manages to stumble through the Stargate to Earth?
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