Devastation Comes In Big Packages [Planetary Annihilation/Multicross SI]
These flashback FEELS! I don't think they'll stop unless he does repress his memories, or finally succeeds in raising a generation of kids right.
Massgamer
Advance toward the Future
- Location
- The Future
Or with some outside help start the long hard journey to forgive and heal himself.
Won't be easy but is best in the long term and he can find purpose in helping others.
Maybe once much time has passed he can consider having kids once more but that is a big maybe for far in the future.
- Location
- Tel'aran'rhiod
I understand the necessity of a chapter like this after the previous one but I can only hope this is the last we see of it. The story was more interesting without existential crises.
Massgamer
Advance toward the Future
- Location
- The Future
Considering what the SI has been through it would be crazy not to be depressed and not at least mention the grieving process afterword.
Now hopefully Thor is to help the SI begin the process to heal though this will be with the SI for a long long time.
Now hopefully Thor is to help the SI begin the process to heal though this will be with the SI for a long long time.
- Location
- Tel'aran'rhiod
Johnny Cash's cover rates much higher than just depression
That is true.
It felt appropriate for where The Network's headspace is at, at the moment, so yeah, I can see where you're coming from.
At the same time, I don't know if it's less or more interesting as a result of where the story is right now - then again I'm the one writing it. We'll be moving on to the next universe within the next few updates, though, so there's that.
It felt appropriate for where The Network's headspace is at, at the moment, so yeah, I can see where you're coming from.
At the same time, I don't know if it's less or more interesting as a result of where the story is right now - then again I'm the one writing it. We'll be moving on to the next universe within the next few updates, though, so there's that.
Massgamer
Advance toward the Future
- Location
- The Future
If it means anything I think it's interesting.
Hopefully the next universe will not be too bad so the Network can relax a bit and maybe connect with people more.
Kairos123
Insomniac Extraordinaire
I disagree. Existential crisis isn't what this is, and the story is more entertaining now that it is focusing on something other than the typical "build all the things, save all the people." Exploring the eventual consequences of giving someone completely unprepared this much power is very, very interesting. Seeing him feel something for the mistakes made, the destruction wrought, and having that stick with him is another refreshing change.
At this point I'm far more eager to see where the story is going than I was in the Star Wars arc.
- Location
- Tel'aran'rhiod
The conflict was pretty interesting even if we only caught the tail end but I don't really come here to read about people getting served big steaming turd sandwiches, that happens enough in reality.
There's probably no forgiveness that can be dredged up after... all of that. The best Thor, or anyone else really, can do is help the commander move on.
Never thought I'd get this much feels in a PA SI fic.
Massgamer
Advance toward the Future
- Location
- The Future
Hopefully forgiveness and healing is at least a chance as time goes on.
You and me both.
Except you're Paul, his friend that owes him everything good in your life. And you have no idea how to help him.
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Mandabar
Waifu of choice is Rem. Give that girl some hugs!
- Location
- Florida, USA [Yes. Florida *FacePalm*]
Ah another chapter! After the last one there is now a high bar set. I think this one made the cut! 
Still Best Bro Thor is the one that is here. Poor guy good luck...
Huh I wonder if more Asgardians are in each ship now than just the few that used to be.
Network is just helluva depressed and feeling a bit suicidal.
Wait... Pegasus? I don't know if that ever was mentioned what galaxy they were fighting in. Sooo... There goes Atlantis and all the wraiths I guess. Though the wraiths I think were mentioned earlier that they were... eliminated before this crisis.
Hmm... A very good description.
Yuuuuuuup. That was Atlantis. Welp.
Best people Asgard keep their title.
I forget what the evidence is, there isn't tears, there isn't a mangled commander body.
Still Best Bro Thor is the one that is here. Poor guy good luck...
Huh I wonder if more Asgardians are in each ship now than just the few that used to be.
Seemed awkward, so I poked it.
Missing space after ellipses.
I'd agree yes. Zee is the one that had an existential crisis.
Network is just helluva depressed and feeling a bit suicidal.
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Ah another chapter! After the last one there is now a high bar set. I think this one made the cut!
Wait... Pegasus? I don't know if that ever was mentioned what galaxy they were fighting in. Sooo... There goes Atlantis and all the wraiths I guess. Though the wraiths I think were mentioned earlier that they were... eliminated before this crisis.
H
I mentioned it once or twice, I think.
The Pegasus Dwarf Galaxy Pegasus
It's where the Wraith and Atlantis were.
As for the corrections, I'll go do those. Thank you.
62 - Decay
Note: Not completely happy with this, but Sun Jian just wasn't up for much conversation which to be fair is kind of understandable.
62 - Decay
A hundred by hundred meter box of grey unpainted steel that had dents everywhere from my near manic flailing was obviously not what Thor was probably expecting when he found me. There was none of the usual décor that I had always displayed with the Asgard up until this point. He was probably wondering where the paintings, the lush vibrant coloration, and sculptures and what have you were. I'd made the Sun Jian body but couldn't make the usual trappings that the man had always preferred on his ships. Something that his people had copied over time as was the nature of things, copying the leader and all that.
Fuck, I can't even think of myself as Sun Jian anymore. I'm trying, yeah, but I just…can't. That was another me. Happier. Stupider.
"What…has happened here?"
His voice is quiet, and distinctly horrified. Which is a fair response.
I start to say 'I won the war', but all I get out is the first word before I have to stop. It's too lifeless. It's not the booming voice of Sun Jian with all the proper emotion. Even if that emotion was supposed to be grief and exhaustion all that came out was a flat, flat dead voice. It's not the right one. No, try again. Rewrite the emotional subroutines that I've kind of cracked apart through continual brute force suppression over the course of the war, try to make new ones. Or maybe that's just the way they're supposed to be now considering everything. Is that how my fucked up-edness is supposed to be manifesting? Who knows.
No. I already know what can happen to my kind with careless internal editing. There's no way to predict what might come out the other end. But it's fine. I can put on Sun Jian's mask onto the frame. I can plaster the 'right' emotions in too. Just have to pull on my memories before…all of this. Dredge up the masks. The words. Drag sensation back into something I can shape with the face that I've built and speak with the throat I fabricated. There we go.
"I," make sure to cough, it's more organic and what Thor is used to, "I won the war."
Which is a lie, now that I think about it. I don't feel very much like I won at all.
"I…," his voice seems to fail around then.
It's not so bad that he can't seem to find the words to express what he's thinking.
Which is fine.
I'm ok with silence honestly.
Wait, no, Sun Jian wouldn't be.
"It was one of my daughters. She…did something to the rest of her siblings. Corrupted them. Consumed them. Set them against me. It was not, as I had first thought, the Ori. She used that against me."
My voice is still too dead to be a perfect version of Sun Jian's. Damn.
"The Pegasus Galaxy…," Thor is obviously struggling to try and make his way past the sheer carnage he saw on his way here. Or to somehow comprehensively deal with seeing his 'old friend Sun Jian' like this.
"It's dead. Destroyed, for the most part," I – wow nodding is hard to do right.
I've spent too long without being in a single body, building and organizing my millions of fleets and trillions of ships. I mean, I stopped focusing on a body right up until the end. With the last of my…with the last of them. I want to be angry at myself for those feelings or the lack there of but I'm struggling to summon up even that kind of emotion. Which is kind of weird. And…all of a sudden the body is being wrapped up in the Thor's muscular arms to the point of raising it up slightly off the ground leaving only the toes are still on the ground.
The Asgard didn't really do hugs before Sun Jian met them. Or handshakes. They'd been relegated to the little grey man bodies for so long that such physical activities had been almost entirely forgotten despite the memories that were continually implanted into the clones.
"I am sorry."
I can pick out the honesty in his voice. The empathetic sadness. Slivers of shock as well.
"If we could have done anything-,"
"I saw you try. I wish you hadn't."
He drops the body slightly back onto its feet and grips its shoulders so he can stare down into the eyes directly. Firmly?
"We could not just stand by and let the savior of our species, and my personal friend, die. And I am still Supreme Commander you know."
Friend. Right. Sun Jian hadn't been able to differentiate between what he remembered from the show and the reality he'd found himself in. After fixing the Asgard and taking down the Replicators he'd spent decades and decades building up that friendship. Not even forcibly but by natural result of visiting the Asgard as they invited him back for celebrations and such. Sun Jian – I? – had watched them rebuild an actual culture around people who walked rather than relied more on teleporters, who didn't clone themselves again and again, who…well. Did a lot of things that they had lost the ability to do through their self-inflicted circumstances.
"I saw you losing ships almost immediately. How many times did you try?"
"They were automated," Thor waves the admittedly weak words away with his hand before stepping back slightly to consider the body before him. "We had learned enough fighting the Replicators to not try and choke the fleets of your…of them…with our bodies."
"Oh."
I hadn't even noticed that. Too focused. Too…distracted. An oxymoron but it sounds about right.
"You are hurting, and I would know what I can do to help you."
He smiles and everything but I don't feel myself responding. The mask sort of twitches but it's more like a ghost of emotion rather than the real thing even though I'm not suppressing them anymore.
"I don't think you can, Thor. I just had to hunt down and murder my children. Or at least one of them, and put the husks of the rest down."
His smile fractures slightly.
"You shouldn't remain here old friend, this entire galaxy is an entire mass grave and at this point all it's good for is resource harvesting."
"Harvesting? What for?"
I don't point the body's finger precisely in the direction of the Milky Way, but he generally gets it.
"My return. I've been away too long. The Goa'uld have lived for too long. The Empire is…changed from what it was meant to be. They know what they've done."
His smile is almost entirely gone now, and what remains is sad.
"We knew it wasn't your fault for what they tried to demand of us."
I can access the BEHOLDER easily now, slipping past the ever increasing cyber defenses that the far too paranoid Mulani intelligences are putting up. I flit through different Nodal Reports and – sonofabitch.
Oh. Hey. Actual anger. Neat.
"They tried to take your technology."
His hands are on it again, jostling the body slightly.
"Sun Jian, no. They were trying to improve the Empire, that wasn't-,"
"They tried to take your technology. They almost kidnapped Hermiod."
I can move the fleets easily. I can feel them shifting back and forth almost in agitation along with my emotions. Millions of USDs that I'd left drifting on minimum power activate their engines and start flashing forward to create an outright wall at the galactic edge pointing towards the Milky Way. An exercise in attempted catharsis has me set off a few salvos of Doom Cannons to blast apart hollowed out planets in futile rage. They shouldn't have – they were trying to support the continual growth of – but they were attacking allies – I
"But they didn't, and ceased their attempts eventually. I don't blame them."
"How can you not!?"
The first time I think I've shouted since he arrived.
"They didn't have your guidance, and you personally warned me about the dangers of them being left alone for too long."
I think I'm starting to grow irritated with how calm he is.
But by then I'm accessing the rest of the system I left in place and flash reading through every report that I missed. Theft of the Nox technologies, exterminating the Aschen outright and taking their worlds for the Empire, abusing my directives, purposefully sabotaging free worlds that had nothing to do with Goa'uld anymore or the Empire just to increase the size of the polity and hundreds more sins. Corruption left in place just so long as the greater system functioned, the Eyes stepping entirely across the line of oppressive presence from what I'd intended…
I'd tried almost everything to avoid creating a system that would collapse if I – if Sun Jian left – but this is almost as bad. Instead of collapsing it…mutated to try and make up the difference.
I don't even know if fixing this is possible in the first place. I mean, yeah I'm going to try but…fuck.
It's ridiculous that it got like this but I've been gone for over a century. They're – well I made sure they weren't as sophisticated as the rest of the intelligences that I've given rise to but without my continual touch they've really gone beyond what I ever intended. Or wanted.
"It doesn't make it right. They've run slipshod over everyone else trying to get at the Goa'uld, spurning the Tok'ra after I personally set up that alliance…"
The body is pacing now. It kind of helps.
"They grew to hate the Goa'uld and wish to exterminate them," is Thor's quiet response, "As you do."
The bo – I – whirl to glare at him.
"Not like that! Never like that! The Mulani haven't even told anyone that their little shadow war ended up burning another three worlds before they stopped. That was after I left!"
Thirty years ago, kept away in their little back server that I don't let them know I know about now. That they don't tell anyone else about. That they shouldn't have.
Thor blinks at the new information.
"I was unaware of that."
"Well yeah," I throw my hands up in the air, "I built them to be good at secrecy!"
Fucking self-improving artificial intelligences. That was a mistake. I can't afford to make another one like that. Anything like that. Never again.
"Still, you will be able to deal with it. You're you."
"You're just saying that because I saved your species from extinction in two different ways and revolutionized your technological base at the same time."
He's smiling again. Nnnggh.
"It certainly helps."
"Why are you even here, Thor?"
"To check on my friend," he shrugs. "To offer a hand with whatever you might need. The Asgard owe you a reasonably immeasurable debt for the 'saving us from extinction in two different ways' which you have always seemed somewhat flippant about."
I suddenly realize that I don't want to deal with this. I want to just build my ships and fleets and through solve any and all of my problems with sheer firepower. It wouldn't be that hard. I could just obliterate every single Goa'uld held world, gun down the Mulani who might refuse to submit to my authority and curtail their black operations, and be done with it. Let the Asgard be themselves around their own galaxy and the Milky Way and let the Empire of Wu fall apart like it maybe should have instead of keeping itself wired together through some frankly deplorable arrogance and stupid rules.
Seriously?
The refusal of gift thing being a basis for a whole slew of ridiculous justifications for shit? What the hell is that even about?
Still.
"I appreciate that, Thor. But I don't know of how much use the Asgard will be for what I've planned next."
"Which is?"
I have the resources of the remains of Pegasus at my disposal. A lot of it is wrecked. More of it is exhausted of resources entirely. But despite being classified as a dwarf galaxy it's still a galaxy. One that I've been using up without interruption or anyone halting the process for more than a short length of time since I killed Z…Zeta. Even without that I still have access to a little over two trillion individual droid commanded...things under me from astromech to drone to fighter all the way up to my largest vessels. I can't control all of them at once, obviously, but I've had a hell of a lot of practice flicking through my droid commanders and issuing long term goals and orders for them to try and accomplish. Units under my direct control are an exact one, this unnamed gunmetal grey USD. Mostly because there was no point in naming them all and affectionately painting them in any pattern when I was focusing on the war.
That doesn't even get into my resource economy and fabrication facilities spread out across Pegasus. Even now I can feel my queued up orders being put into action. I also feel said previously mentioned economy begin draining almost as badly as it was during the war.
"I'm thinking…I'm going to exterminate the Goa'uld and fix my Empire. Mostly with force."
I've got the time. I've got the resources and building capacity. I've got the technology of Dakaara, the Sangraal…hell just about every superweapon in the nearest few galaxies. Including the Time Dilators. Make a big enough field, accelerate the time inside…sure. Why not. Why not.
There's not a thing in the universe that can stand up to me right now, and if the Ancients don't like it they can shut the hell up before I do to them what I did to the Ori.
The Emperor is coming home.
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Stargate often has time travel shenanigans. Could we expect to see a preemptive counterattack from a younger Zee through that when Sun Jian is preoccupied fixing his empire?
Seriously, the Asgard are probably one of the best Advance Alien races to have ever existed in a sci-fi TV show. They are more than willing to learn and adapt to new ways of thinking and most importantly, they actually acknowledge and learn from their mistakes, something many in the Stargate verse don't seem to do well.
