Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 233 (Patreon)

Chapter 233 - Instinct - Part 1

Of the various episodic encounters the Expedition had run into, there were two in particular that Eventus desperately hoped he would be able to avoid butterflying out of existence. The biggest of those was of course the rescue of Todd, because he was the only Wraith that Eventus knew for sure would actually be willing to work towards a peaceful coexistence between their two peoples.

The other of those was the encounter with the adolescent Wraith Queen that had been raised by a well meaning human with surprisingly firm morals. Because if they couldn't have Todd, a Wraith Queen who didn't actually want to kill humans was a potentially workable alternative.

So Eventus’s relief when Sheppard had called in and he had mentioned that they had discovered a Wraith Queen had been almost palatable.

“And you’re sure she’s a Wraith Queen?” Weir asked with a slight frown towards the radio.

“Yeah,” Sheppard confirmed. “Well, she's more like a Wraith Princess than Queen, I'd say somewhere between fourteen and eighteen. At least, assuming Wraith mature at the same rate as us humans.”

“They do,” Eventus interjected. “When born naturally they grow just like humans, at least, until they hit their mid thirties, at which point they basically stop aging all together.”

“Born naturally?” Sheppard asked, a trace of morbid curiosity in his voice

“The same way as Humans and Lanteans,” Eventus chuckled. “There's a whole section of the archives about Wraith biology if you're interested.” He grimaced slightly. “Though everything in there about female Wraith is based on genetic simulations since, at least as far as I've been able to discover, we never actually managed to capture one alive.”

They had tried numerous times, a few of which had even involved maintenance corps teams. But back during the war, Wraith Queens had only tended to come out from behind their fortifications when they believed they had the absolute upper hand. And even if a capture team did manage to fight its way to the Queen, that still left actually capturing said Queen, a task easier said than done given they had never been able to develop a psionic suppressor that worked on Wraith.

“Might be a good idea to send Beckett a copy of that if you haven't already,” Sheppard said.

“So about the Wraith?” Weir pressed.

“Yeah, so, Zaddik, that's the guy who's been raising her.” Sheppard explained. “He's apparently been working on this serum thats supposedly capable of replacing the Wraith's need to feed on people.”

Weir glanced over at Eventus.

“Theoretically possible,” he confirmed. “Wraith are born with a digestive system capable of processing normal foods, it just goes inactive around puberty. Reversing that to reactive their digestive system is relatively simple with the right combination of chemicals, however the problem we ran into at that point was that their healing factor would “fix them” before their newly reactivated digestive system had the chance to process more than a small bit of any consumed nutrients.”

Ironically their healing factor had been the major problem for pretty much every solution his people had tried for solving the Wraiths feeding limitation.

“The scientists investigating the issue eventually managed to come up with a partial solution for the problem that involved overwhelming the Wraith healing factor using a carefully calibrated combination of poisons that basically extended the reactivation window long enough for them to partially process regularly nutrient sources. However there were a number of issues with the solution that only made it viable in the short term.”

He gave everyone a second to process that before continuing. “Of course, we only ever tested the process on male Wraith, and it's completely possible that Zaddik has access to some novelly evolved bio-chemical that we never tried.”

“All right,” Sheppard said. “Story didn't really sound plausible to me, especially given there's a Wraith running around eating people. But figured either way Beckett might be able to learn something by looking her over.”

“I'll talk to him,” Weir seemingly agreed. “But I don't expect he will object.”

“I'll be coming along too,” Eventus put forward, not wanting to leave things to chance now that they had actually located the Wraith teen. “Possibly Rayla too.”

A slightly sour look flashed across Weir's features as she processed that before settling into a disapproving scowl. “While I'm sure you can protect yourself, there's every expectation of encountering one or more Wraith on that world, and Rayla has no real combat training or experience in off-world situations.”

Eventus stared at Weir for a moment, having a hard time believing that she of all people was actually failing to understand why he wanted to bring Rayla along on this. “Yes, it's dangerous. Yes, Ellia is a Wraith. But Ellia is also a scared heavily sheltered teenage girl who has never had any friends. None of you know how to handle that.” He scowled slightly. “Ascended save me, I don't know how to handle that. Rayla however is in the perfect position to do so because she's relatively close in age, visibly not human, and won't care in the slightest that Ellia is a Wraith.”

The combination of Elf genetics and healing gift also meant that she should be able to survive a Wraith feeding with only a fraction of the damage a human would take, though of course that would be something of a double edged sword if she was ever actually captured by the Wraith.

“So yes, I'm going to ask Rayla if she wants to come along, and if she says yes, I'm going to bring her.

“Very well,” Weir scowled. “But I want you to know that it is over my objection.”

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“So how about it,” Eventus asked as he finished explaining the general situation to the Elf. “Do you want to come along on the off-world mission with us or not?”

“Off-world,” Rayla repeated as if she was having a hard time believing the question. “To an actual alien planet and not just Earth where I'll be stuck inside Stargate Command again?”

“Yes,” Eventus confirmed slowly. “To a cave, in an actual forest, on an actual alien planet, in an area that looks suspiciously like the forests outside of Vancouver Canada, to help with a mission where your perspective as what's functionally a heavily sheltered teenaged girl will be uniquely valuable.”

Ascended willing, Rayla would be able to keep Ellia from descending into the guilt driven depression spiral that had basically caused her to commit suicide in the original timeline.

“Yes!” Rayla practically yelled only to cringe slightly as she realized her own volume. “I mean, yes. I'd absolutely love to.”

“Great,” Eventus nodded. “Pack an overnight bag and wear the cosplay adventuring outfit you secretly synthesized since it's close enough to what women normally wear in pegasus that nobody is likely to give it a second glance.”

Rayla stared wide eyed at him. 

“...You know about that?” She finally squeaked.

“I know about all your cosplay outfits,” Eventus offered, only to chuckle slightly at the way the Elf visibly paled at that. “And yes, that includes the Pirotess one you used to mess with the soldiers last week.”

Personally he had found the whole thing absolutely hilarious, though Doctor Weir had been less than amused and basically forced him to explain that the Elf was neither biologically nor emotionally underage by either of their species standards, knew exactly what she was doing, and despite her stature was perfectly capable of breaking a human if they thought they could take liberties with her against her will.

Crossing her arms, Rayla pouted angrily at him. “Everyone except Zelenka was saying I reminded them of their little sister or cousin, how am I supposed to find a boyfriend or girlfriend with that!?”

Eventus raised a single eyebrow.

“Not that I'm looking for either right now,” Rayla hastily added as she noticed his look. “But it's the point of the matter! Because you never want to let yourself get locked into the little sister zone!”

“Vala?” Eventus guessed, since that seemed the most likely source for Rayla's forward thinking on that particular front.

“...Yes.” Rayla mumbled, glancing down guiltily for a moment before meeting his eyes again. “But Teyla said something similar when I asked her about why she wears those tight laced halter tops that make her breasts look nearly as big as mine. Which is actually kind of impressive given she’s over two full sizes smaller than me.”

“Rayla,” Eventus said.

“And like,” Rayla continued without noticing. “I am way too big for that Pirotess outfit, the first time I tried it on my breasts slipped out the moment I did anything even remotely acrobatic.”

“Rayla,” Eventus repeated.

“Which defeats the entire point of an outfit like that,” Rayla went on, seemingly lost in her own struggles at this point. “I had to spend hours hunting through the clothing archives for this partial wrap around bra that I’m pretty sure was specifically made with that kind of plunging neck line in mind since it holds everything stable while remaining functionally invisible from any of the angles that people can actually see.”

“Rayla,” Eventus tried for a third time.

“But that did such a great job of holding everything in that a bunch of female soldiers came to me afterwards asking how I managed it,” Rayla grinned triumphantly. “So then I took them to one of the dressing rooms and we spent the rest of the day going over all these obscure clothing options Lantean’s had invented.”

Letting out a sigh, Eventus gave up and waited patiently for Rayla to finish.

“They were super excited when I showed them the high heel section and explained how they didn’t have any of the problems that human high heels do. Which is completely fair since I’m pretty sure the only reason I was able to wear the ones in the SGC’s costume room without trouble was Elf differences.”

“It is,” Eventus confirmed once it became clear she wasn’t going to continue any more. “Biologically speaking you could run all day through a forest in six inch stiletto heels and the only problem you’d run into is effects of the reduced surface area of the stiletto on the forest floor.”

“Now,” he silenced Rayla with a glare as she began to open her mouth to say more. “You have fifty minutes left to pack, so you’re probably going to want to go get that done if you actually want to come along.”

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Author’s Notes: They really did Ellia dirty in canon, though to be fair a lot of that was because the actress couldn’t handle the makeup. On the up side that did mean we ended up with Jennifer Keller.