XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Approximately ten Earth years after the raid on Saral.
Hasara Space Station, neutral ground for the meeting of the High Council of System Lords.
Ra had assumed that the insolent swine who had emptied his world and desecrated his temple would be easy enough to find and punish. He would just need to investigate a bit more and eventually, there would be signs pointing at the culprit. He had been fairly sure that it was one of his fellow System Lords at any rate.
Ten years and a few more emptied planets later, Ra had long since revised that opinion. Whoever was doing this, they were definitely not a System Lord, possibly not even a Goa'uld and they left no clue as to their identity.
Not to say that they didn't leave any clues at all, because they did. It was just that these clues weren't all that helpful in figuring out the identity of the mysterious attacker. Often they were merely more of the stone tablets with infuriatingly nonsensical drawings or messages carved into them.
The loss of Saral had been a fairly minor blow to his domain, important only in how it made him lose face in front of his rivals., but the continued attacks were starting to have an effect on more than just his reputation. Some of those planets were places where naquadah was mined and moving about enough slaves to get those mines operational again was a pain.
On the bright side, he wasn't the only System Lord to have suffered such attacks. He'd heard that several others had also been left with mysteriously empty planets and none of them were having any more luck figuring out who was doing this than he was.
What the constant poaching of their slaves and burning of their temples had accomplished however, was garner a lot of outrage. Enough that a summit had been called.
Ra both liked and detested summits. He liked them because he could flaunt his superiority over his fellow Goa'uld and he hated them because he knew exactly what a tempting target they made for the Tok'ra.
The other System Lords thought that his demands on thorough security precautions were excessive, especially his demand that not even Lo'taurs were to be present. The Hasara Space Station that had long served as a neutral meeting ground for the System Lords was after all heavily shielded, armed and protected by a fleet of Ha'tak.
Ra thought that their laxity would be their doom one day. He hadn't held on to his position as Supreme System Lord for millennia through luck, but through superior cunning and caution. The fools didn't seem to grasp that the danger of the Tok'ra was in infiltrators, not open attack. The formidable defenses were still required of course, as some ambitious Goa'uld might think to capture the space station for themselves, but they were not going to be effective against an assassin's blade.
Regardless of his mixed feelings on these summits, it had been necessary to call one.
It hadn't been him who had called it of course...that would imply that there was something that he couldn't handle, which was clearly ridiculous since he was the Supreme System Lord.
Most System Lords attended when a summit was called, but occasionally, some of them would refuse to. This time, the meeting chamber was full, though one of the System Lords had appointed an underling to speak in their place.
Sitting in the more ornate and slightly higher chair as befit the Supreme System Lord, Ra assessed his 'compatriots'.
The closest to his right was his backstabbing, egomaniacal brother Apophis, a constant thorn in his side that obviously wanted to sit on the throne of the Supreme System Lord. Just like him, Apophis still used the same host that he had long ago acquired on Tau'ri, a dark skinned man from Ancient Egypt whose skin had paled slightly over the years due to spending so much time away from the light of the sun.
Further down from Apophis sat Bastet, who favored female hosts and oddly enough, female Jaffa as her warriors.
Ra trusted her even less than his brother and that was saying something. This extreme distrust was based almost entirely on her preference for females. A Goa'uld Queen needed a female host in order to spawn larva, unless she whished to leave the host entirely and thus leave herself vulnerable.
After the betrayals of his Queens Hathor and Egeria, Ra made sure that every Queen was kept strictly controlled and restricted to prevent another such occurrence. Truth be told, it was not the betrayal itself that caused him such paranoia on the subject of Goa'uld Queens, but the fact that any Queen who gained power of her own didn't actually need anyone else. Queens could spawn larva without need of a mate or even the genetic sample of a human, though it made the larva stronger.
Hathor had wanted power of her own and had quickly risen to the rank of System Lord through judicious use of her ability to sway the minds of men by changing her host to produce a mind altering pheromone, while Egeria's spawning of the Tok'ra continued to be an irritation even millennia later. With the immense control that Goa'uld Queens could exert over their offspring and their own biology, they were far more dangerous than a regular symbiote and needed to be controlled lest they usurp him.
Fortunately, both Egeria and Hathor had been captured and put into stasis to prevent them for being a problem. Unfortunately, Hathor had been left behind on Tau'ri when the insolent slaves had rebelled and forced him off and the planet that Egeria had been entombed on had been lost in the meanwhile. He really should have killed them, but Queens were extremely valuable and he'd thought that he might be able to make some use of them in the future.
These facts were something that Ra had kept secret from his fellow Goa'uld. The fact that He'd lost control of Tau'ri because of a slave uprising of all things would have been a severe embarrassment, combined with the fact that he hadn't actually killed Egeria like the others believed might have been enough to cause them to band together and attempt to unseat him.
He'd actually lost the coordinates for Tau'ri long ago and the Asgard had since then made it clear that any attempt to find the First World again would result in dire consequences, even if that particular world was not in included in the Protected Planets Treaty. The little grey pests hadn't said what those consequences would be, but he wasn't willing to chance it. Having one of their ships decimate his fleets would be a devastating blow to his power.
He wasn't sure if Bastet was actually a Queen, but he wasn't willing to chance it, so he made sure to send his loyal attack dog(and son) Heru'ur to invade her holdings every so often to keep her weak.
Bastet was likely aware of this, but couldn't really strike back as strongly as she would have wished, so she had struck up a strong alliance and even friendship with the System Lord who sat next to her, Kali.
Kali also favored female hosts, which had drawn Ra's distrust towards her as surely as it had to Bastet. Kali too, suffered periodic attacks by Heru'ur to keep her weakened for this reason.
Much to Ra's consternation, this only made the friendship and alliance between Bastet and Kali stronger. Separately, they were weak in comparison to the other System Lords, but together they were formidable.
On the next seat over from Kali sat Nirrti, yet another one who used female hosts most of the time, though not always. Ra was almost certain that Nirrti wasn't a Queen.
Not that it would have made much difference in her case, as Nirrti had the smallest military of any System Lord. Her greatest strength had always been in the devastating biological plagues she could unleash against her enemies, as well as her penchant for treachery. She was the most likely among the System Lords to stab you in the back by a wide margin.
Ra knew that Nirrti didn't actually care about her position as a System Lord, she had only claimed it to keep the others off her back while she dabbled in genetic research, selective breeding and other such pursuits in her search for the perfect host. No doubt she bitterly resented having to be present for this summit, but she was too paranoid to assign an underling to do it and too cautious pass up the information that would be gained.
After Nirrti came Olokun in a host of extremely dark complexion, who fancied himself a scientist and researcher on the level of Nirrti at least, but was in fact an incompetent idiot. It was no doubt only his well known skill in intelligence gathering and the highly defensible nature of the solar system where his throne world was located that allowed him to keep his position.
Next was Izanagi in a tall, stern faced host of Asian descent, sporting long black hair combed into a ponytail. Rumor had it that he kept his Queen, Izanami, locked in her chambers where she was allowed to do nothing but spawn new larva for him.
Ra approved of that, but doubted the wisdom of allowing his chief underling and offspring, Amaterasu, as much leeway as he did. He suspected it would end with Izanagi's death eventually.
Next was Yu-huang Shang Ti(or just Yu for short), the oldest of the System Lords by a considerable margin. He used the same host that he had used since abandoning his Unas host thousands of years ago, a Chinese man with a rather ridiculous looking patch of facial hair hanging from his chin.
Yu was an oddity among the System Lords for several reasons. For one thing, he hadn't taken the persona of a god exactly, preferring to be called the Jade Emperor and he'd chosen his host based on knowledge rather than appearance. His was the largest domain after that of Ra, so he was obviously doing something right, but nobody wanted to emulate him.
Another oddity was his reputation for being trustworthy. Unlike the other Goa'uld, nobody could remember a time when Yu had broken his word, which gave him considerable leverage when negotiations had to be conducted.
Ra spared little attention for Yu despite the elder System Lord potentially being his greatest rival. Yu's domain was on the other side of the Galactic Core and they had little interaction with each other, which was how they both liked it.
Next in line was Camulus, who was all in all a fairly unremarkable Goa'uld in a pale skinned host with dark hair that he liked to keep oiled for some reason. He'd only established himself relatively recently and was not any kind of great power, but he was a good strategist and tactician.
In the next seat sat Morrigan, who was not actually a System Lord herself, but a representative of one. She used a very pale and very buxom red haired woman as a host, both of which she accentuated with a deep black corset.
Of all the Goa'uld using female hosts, Ra was the most suspicious of her. Despite not being a System Lord herself, she clearly held great favor to be allowed to represent the one she served. The fact that she was known to be cunning only exacerbated his distrust.
Mind you, Ra didn't actually know whether she was a Queen or not, but he was forever suspicious of Goa'uld that used female hosts.
In the next seat over was Svarog, who used a muscular man with blue face paint as a host. He was just as egomaniacal as Apophis but otherwise fairly unremarkable.
After Svarog came Cronus, who had some years ago come into a great deal of power and influence for once again defeating Zeus and being the one who had banished Sokar after his rebellion.
Lastly came Ba'al, the most recent Goa'uld to ascend to the rank of System Lord due to his usurping of Zeus' fleet and immediately using it to help drive off Sokar. Ra had no choice but to reward his former underling for that act, even though he knew that Ba'al would have turned on him if he'd thought that allying with Sokar would have been more advantageous.
Regardless of the problems between them, the System Lords did still band together against outside threats, such as the unknown that was poaching their slaves.
"Why was this summit called?" Nirrti asked with a certain level of impatience, speaking out of turn and earning herself Ra's irritation in the process.
"No doubt it concerns the emptying of several worlds suffered by certain System Lords, something that you would have known had you bothered to keep yourself informed." Olokun answered and taunted.
Nirrti scoffed derisively. "Whether you cannot keep your slaves from being stolen from you or not is no concern of mine. I see no reason that a summit should be called over this."
"But the summit was called and you will keep your objections on the matter to yourself." Ra interjected warningly, relishing the glowering silence he received from both Olokun and Nirrti. He knew they hated him for imposing a tithe of slaves and naquadah on them long ago, but they didn't dare protest against it, knowing that he could destroy them.
That tithe would coincidentally allow him to recover from these attacks much sooner than the others.
"So our holdings were not the only ones to suffer these mysterious attacks." Morrigan picked up the conversation. "One of our worlds was suddenly emptied with little indication of who had done it. We had suspected a rival Goa'uld, but the evidence left behind seemed to contradict it."
"Claw marks in the walls, bare footprints in the ground and cryptic messages left on stone tablets or gouged into the stone?" Ra asked, fairly certain that he was right.
"Exactly so."
"Two of my worlds have been emptied in such a manner." Apophis inserted himself into the conversation, his tone agitated and angry.
"I have lost three." Yu said simply, seemingly calm.
"One of mine has been emptied some years ago, a world I favored for the skilled craft working slaves." Izanagi said, making no mention that this particular world had also been favored because the slaves there were usually quite stubborn and spirited. He always enjoyed breaking them of their defiance.
That was why he'd never stationed an underling there to do it for him, preferring to send his Jaffa to snatch a few slaves every so often.
"As has mine." Bastet said angrily. It had happened months ago, but thinking about it still made her angry. She had heard about it happening to some of the other System Lords, but had figured it to be merely the usual warring between them. She'd known it wasn't as soon as one of her own worlds was hit.
It had been a minor world in every way and it's loss was no great injury to her. What angered her was how extremely insulting the whole thing had been. Insulting enough that she had called for this summit to deal with the perpetrator, since it had been exceedingly obvious that it wasn't a Goa'uld.
Flashback
Bastet ground her teeth together furiously as she stared at her desecrated temple, her Bast Guard doing their best not to shuffle nervously in the face of their goddess' anger.
Attacks by rival Goa'uld would have been taken as a simple matter of the way things were. Sometimes her temples would be razed just as she razed theirs, a particularly brazen Goa'uld might have even defiled it, but most of the time it would have simply been repurposed for their own use.
It went far beyond that this time though.
Nearly every wall was defaced with rather accurate images of her. That much was something that she might have been pleased by considering how well made they were, if not for the fact that all of these images showed her being impaled on a male member.
By far the worst was the giant sized image that was a clearly top down view of her on her knees, having the offending member shoved into her mouth while a clawed hand held her harshly by the hair. It was made even worse because the image showed her mouth barely fitting around it, while she looked upwards with an absolutely worshipful expression.
There were similar images of herself staring worshipfully at the instantly hated male member, sometimes drooling as it spurted thick streams of what was clearly semen into her mouth and all over her face.
Brazenly and recklessly, the man who had done this had even drawn an himself in detail on all of the ones that showed the man's face, clearly feeling no danger at all in exposing himself like this. No doubt seeking to anger her further by so casually discarding anonymity.
Though anonymity might simply have been a lost cause for a man with horns growing from his head. If that was even his true appearance...it seemed rather unlikely.
As a final insult, there was another image of just him, this time clothed and holding up the thumb of his right hand with a strangely infuriating smile on his face. Under that image was a short message that was possibly just as infuriating as the defilement of her temple.
'You'll be on your knees soon after meeting me in person catgirl.'
In the end, she was forced to destroy the temple herself to make sure that no one ever saw it. Simply cleaning it wasn't an option, as the lewd imagery had been literally burned into the walls by some unknown means. She'd even had the Jaffa that had seen it executed to prevent them from talking about it.
End flashback
"And I have lost five." Ra concluded, snapping Bastet out of her angry remembrance.
"Is there any sign as to who is responsible?" Cronus asked, knowing little of the matter because none of his worlds had been attacked.
"No, the coward attacks only weak worlds and never with ships, always taking all the slaves and Jaffa with him." Izanagi answered.
"We will find who it is and see their world burned to ash for this insolence." Ra proclaimed strongly.
The next couple of hours were taken up by conversation as the System Lords figured out a time line for these attacks, intersped with constant veiled insults being hurled at each other.
Seeing the bickering made Yu want to take a torture rod to some of the worst offenders, those being Apophis, Cronus, Svarog, Nirrti and Olokun in order of irritation caused from most to least. He would have included Ra in that list, but Ra was merely being his usual condescendingly superior self rather than childish.
"Enough! We must find out who is doing this and how he chooses his targets if we are to put an end to it." Yu said forcefully, bringing some measure of order to what had rapidly descended into a room full of bickering children, each of which just so happened to be thousands of years old.
Bastet could have spoken up and revealed to them what had been drawn in her defiled temple, but then they would have wanted to see it for themselves, which would mean she'd have to tell them she'd destroyed her own temple. Too many awkward questions. Besides, if the man doing this really was horned, then he'd be quite distinctive in any case.
"I believe that Saral was the first." Ra said, retaking control of the meeting, not wanting his rivals to think that Yu was somehow better than him for keeping his focus on the task at hand.
This time it took merely thirty minutes to figure out a timeline, after which they all puzzled over the seeming randomness of it. Saral had indeed been the first and Bastet's world had been the last.
"A curious pattern." Cronus said, trying to sound smart.
"What pattern?" Ba'al scoffed. "The only pattern I see is that only weak or undefended worlds are attacked."
"Silence whelp!" Cronus snapped at the much younger System Lord, incensed that he'd been called out so rudely. "That much is plain for all to see, but there is obviously a cunning mind behind the choosing of planets to be attacked."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Meanwhile on Erius.
"Akitsu sweetie?" Naruto said absently.
"Yes master?" The Ice Sekirei perked up, cheeks coloring slightly in pleasure at being called sweetie.
"Be a dear and give me a number between one and fifty." He couldn't very well use a twenty sided die with that many planets to choose from after all.
"Ah..." Akitsu paused, trying to think of a number. At last, she decided to give one based on the number of orgasms Naruto had given her the previous night. "thirteen."
Naruto scrolled down to the thirteenth planet on the short list of planets he'd okayed for a raid earlier and memorized the stargate address. His eyebrows climbed upwards slightly at seeing which planet the thirteenth one on the list was. That should be interesting and it might also serve a secondary purpose in leaving him absent for a longer time than normal. It was the planet of an independent minor Goa'uld that he'd learned about by raiding the data crystals on Goa'uld controlled worlds.
Yes, even years after the first attack on Saral, the Goa'uld still had no concept of 'operational security'. He did have faith that they would figure it out eventually though.
Once he was done, he turned towards Akitsu and gave her a hug. "Thanks."
The Ice Sekirei sighed contently in the embrace and rubbed her cheek against his bare chest. She felt a strange urge to sneeze rising up, but pushed her nose into Naruto's chest to force it down. She didn't want to get snot all over him, even if he would probably find it funny.
"Alright, now that I've got a target I just need to tell Te'lok that we're all set to go." Naruto said after a few moments.
Akitsu made no indication that she was intending to let go anytime soon.
"You'll need to let go of me." Naruto prompted eventually.
Instead of that, Akitsu started nibbling on his nipple, using her powers to cool her spit enough that it made Naruto take a surprised inhale at the sudden coldness.
With a certain amount of regret, he pulled her away, smiling at her disappointed pout. "I'll play with you once I get back. Why don't you go find Xanna to play with in the meanwhile, I think she's reading a book in the bedroom."
"Ah...okay." She agreed in her usual subdued tone.
As soon as he'd walked out, her shoulders slumped a bit. Xanna had been having times when she was distant in the past ten years and those times were getting more frequent. It worried the passive Ice Sekirei more than she cared to admit, enough that old fears of being discarded had resurfaced.
It wasn't that Xanna had been mean or anything, just...distant. It confused and worried Akitsu terribly. She hadn't wanted to bother the horned woman if she was thinking about it, but she also knew how jealously possessive she was of her husband, so she'd also hesitated to spend too much time around Naruto.
She just wished that things could go back to how they used to be.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Back with the Goa'uld.
"Whatever reasoning our enemy is using to choose his targets, I can make no sense of it." Olokun admitted unhappily. "What of the messages left behind?"
"Mere nonsense." Apophis said dismissively.
"Do not be so quick to dismiss it merely because you cannot understand it." Ra spoke to his brother condescendingly.
Apophis glowered and swore to himself that Ra would suffer greatly for this insult once he defeated him.
"There may be some clues in those messages that would hint at the identity of our attacker or his next target." Ba'al suggested logically. "We should examine them carefully."
Having no reason to argue against the suggestion, the System Lords did so.
Saral had been the first, with the unhelpfully baffling carving of male genitals.
The second had been another of Ra's worlds, though this one had no Goa'uld or Jaffa presence and was only visited when Ra wanted to pick up some slaves of a paler complexion. It had a higher than normal gravity as well, and the population was generally shorter but stronger as a result.
A stone tablet with a crude representation of a face had been left there, just a circle with two dots for eyes and a curved line to represent a mouth that made it look disgustingly cheerful. This too made little to no sense to the System Lords.
"See? Mere nonsense." Apophis sneered again.
"Wait for them all to be revealed before you make such proclamations." Ra condescended again.
As it happened, the third world to be attacked was in the domain of Apophis. It had had no Goa'uld overseer, but there had been a small Jaffa Garrison present to ensure that the slaves mined the modest naquadah deposits.
The message left here was considerably more gruesome, several symbiotes of varying levels of maturity had been stabbed through their tails with hooks and hanged to dry in the sun over a nearby lake on a wooden pier. On the pier itself, a stone tablet had been left with the message 'Gone fishing.' carved into it.
There was no mistaking the fact that the display was meant to equate them to the worms that slaves and Jaffa often used as fishing bait and it caused them no small amount of anger.
"An obvious insult." Cronus muttered angrily, getting nods of agreement from all present.
The fourth belonged to Yu and was another of those worlds that were left unsupervised because there was no need. It was a dangerous planet with hostile wildlife and plant life, which kept the population low and the humans were often grateful to get away from it, making them easily trained and obedient slaves.
It was discovered to be completely empty the same as all the others, with a simple stone tablet bearing the rather philosophical message of 'If you would divine the future, study the past.'
The fifth was once again one of Ra's planets, another one of those that was left alone except when it struck the Supreme System lord or one of his underlings to go collect a few slaves from it. An entirely unremarkable place that might well have ended up as one of those planets that the Goa'uld simply forgot about until the native population advanced enough to draw attention to itself again, upon which time it got blasted back to the stone age from orbit.
In the middle of the now forlorn and empty village a stone tablet had been left behind. It bore the ominous and downright threatening message of 'From beneath you it devours.', which was completely incongruous with the tracks that spoke of a peaceful exodus.
The sixth planet belonged to Izanagi and had apparently been emptied without fuss due to the lack of Goa'uld or Jaffa presence. The stone tablet left there bore a similarly ominous, though not quite as threatening, message saying 'My flesh is forever!'
The seventh once more belonged to Apophis, though this one had been defended by one of his minor Planet Lords. The underling in question was found under the balcony of his own palace, apparently having stumbled and fallen off according to the Jaffa trackers.
The signature stone tablet bore the more understandable but still unhelpful message of 'My teeth made them flee in shame.'
It was not hard to deduce that Apophis' underling had apparently been running away and fallen to his own death, something that made the System Lord in question fume in anger. How dare his underling make him look bad by dying like that!
Yu had lost the eighth, this one defended by a Jaffa garrison of considerable size. There had obviously been a fierce battle as the Jaffa defenders fought against the invaders, but were ultimately defeated. There were several wrecked Udajeet and even one Al'kesh to give silent testimony to their resistance. Several of the Udajeet looked to have been knocked out of the sky with thrown boulders, while the Al'kesh has been cut open like a fish by a long bladed weapon of impossible sharpness.
Next to the wreckage of the Goa'uld bomber, a stone tablet had been left, carrying the philosophical message of 'He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in danger.'
The ninth planet to be attacked had been under the governance of one of Morrigan's underlings, which was the main reason that her own overlord had sent her to the summit. The underling in question had been found with her head cleanly severed from her body, bisecting the Goa'uld symbiote in the process.
Next to the macabre sight of a severed head with a terrified expression frozen on its face by death, a stone tablet lay with a message saying 'There can be only one!'.
None of them could make any sense of that one at all. There could be only one what? If such a thing were found next to say...Ra's severed head, one could have assumed that there could be only one Supreme System Lord, but finding it next to the underling of an underling was simply baffling.
The tenth planet to be attacked had once again belonged to Ra and it had once again been undefended. The tablet left behind on this one was another of the ominous type, saying 'Out of the darkness we will rise.'
The eleventh belonged to Yu and had also been one of the undefended ones. Rather than a philosophical message as had been the case for Yu so far, this one had a series of lewd drawings that clearly represented sexual positions.
That had annoyed Yu a great deal. It was a little known fact that he actually enjoyed philosophy, so he'd found the messages left behind rather enjoyable. Not enough to be worth losing that many slaves over, but enough that it made him angry to have the expected philosophical saying replaced by crude carvings.
The twelfth had been Ra's and had taken months to discover the theft of the slaves due to how little it was visited. Once again not fitting with the apparent peaceful nature of the slave exodus, the ominous message of 'I'm hiding in the dark, my teeth are razor sharp.' had been left behind.
The thirteenth and last planet that they knew of to be attack belonged to Bastet. It had held only a moderate force of her Jaffa warrior women, along with a priesthood at her temple. As always, all the people were missing, though this time even the temple cats that were a common fixture at her temples had been taken.
The tablet left behind for her to find bore perhaps the strangest message yet.
'Dead I am the rat, feast upon the cat.
Tender is the fur, dying as you purr.'
The System Lords puzzled over the seemingly nonsensical words, which made little enough sense in English and none at all when translated into Goa'uld. Obviously it was a reference to cats being Bastet's sacred animal, but other then that they were at a loss to interpret it.
These tablets, along with the omnipresent bare footprints, claw marks and the ruined temples(if there were any on the planet) were the only clues they had and they spent a long while arguing over what it might all mean. In the end, the only thing they managed to agree on was that this needed to be stopped.
"But in order to strike back, we need to know the location of their world or at least where they will strike." Camulos said, speaking for the first time.
"True, we know only that they will not strike at heavily defended worlds." Yu agreed.
"That suggests that they do not have the strength to attack anywhere else." Ba'al surmised.
Silence reigned for a while, with everyone knowing that they had far too many worlds where they only exerted influence through the stargate to defend. They simply didn't have the resources to bolster the defenses of every planet that could be subject to these mysterious attacks. Even if they completely stopped warring against each other(which simply wasn't going to happen), they would still come up short.
The idea of sending an ashrak assassin against this enemy was also stalled because they didn't actually know who the enemy was.
Prevented from easily exacting their vengeance, the System Lords anger grew and they became all the more determined to retaliate for the insolence of daring to attack them like this. They could not hide forever after all.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Galactic North, North-west, Perseus Arm, planet Ratania.
Throne world of the minor Goa'uld Kuvera.
While the System Lords were trying to puzzle out the connection between disjointed song lyrics from Skillet's Monster and Rob Zombie's Dragula, quotes from Confucius and the Highlander movie, lewd carvings and other random bullshit that had been going through his head at the time that those raids had taken place, Naruto was attacking yet another Goa'uld world.
The stargate on Ratania opened with its characteristic outburst of unstable plasma, discharging Naruto with a horde of warriors at his back. It was the middle of the night on Ratania and the Jaffa guards had been half asleep since little ever happened on their planet and were thus easily overcome.
Normally you wouldn't be able to simply gate to a Goa'uld throne world and attack it like this, but Kuvera was a very minor Goa'uld that couldn't just put a shield around the gate to prevent it for various reasons. Those reasons being mostly that he had no Queen of his own and needed to use his Jaffa as a mercenary force to barter for Goa'uld larva to sustain them.
It would be bad for him indeed if someone who sought the services of his Jaffa ended up crushed into molecular paste upon exiting the gate.
"We have secured the perimeter my lord." Te'lok said to Naruto loudly over the sounds of many feet stomping the ground and people efficiently setting up portable barricades made of armor slabs from deconstructed death gliders. They had done this before and practiced it a lot, so it was done quite quickly
He wasn't wearing the Jaffa armor anymore, Naruto having ordered that a lighter, more practical cloth uniform be made for them. It wasn't worth a damn thing as armor, but then again, Jaffa armor wasn't worth a damn thing against Jaffa weapons either. He hadn't liked it at first, but he did have to admit that it was much easier to move without the bulky plate and chain armor and it wasn't as if they were putting down peasant revolts anymore either, against whom the armor had actually been useful.
"Good." Naruto nodded approvingly and surveyed the continued stream of people coming through the gate in orderly lines. "Lets get this invasion started then."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Back on Erius.
Xanna held back a sigh, keeping her eyes on the book in front of her but having trouble focusing on the words.
It was a good book and she'd been enjoying it, especially as it had been a gift from Naruto once he'd cottoned on to the fact that she missed having something to read on this planet full of illiterate peasants. They were learning, but well over half of their population still didn't know how to read and write, the process of educating them being slowed down by the influx of new people with differing cultures every time Naruto went to raid another Goa'uld world. They most certainly weren't going to be producing any good literature for a long while yet, which meant that she was forced to pop back into their previously visited dimension whenever she wanted something to read.
At least, that had been the case until Naruto had taken it upon himself to compile a library for her, full of books that he thought she might find interesting. A bit unnecessary since it wasn't any great hardship to find her own books, but undeniably sweet and it did save her a bit of effort.
It was especially sweet since she knew that he had his own problems with living in such a primitive society, having gotten somewhat addicted to the various electronic toys that had been at least half the reason that his quest to get some little sisters had taken so long in the first place.
She'd made him a secret entertainment room for that, furnished with the best computer she could steal, a state of the art sound system and enough songs that he could keep pressing 'next song' on shuffle for at least an hour without getting the same one twice if he were so inclined.
He'd cackled gleefully despite the lack of internet, been very appreciative and called her the best wife ever to have set it up for him even if it had barely taken any effort. So easy to please sometimes.
It was also a good place to retreat when he wanted to get away from the overly amorous attention of the servant girls, a situation that was a source of never-ending amusement for her. Naruto couldn't help himself from flirting with them, but he didn't want a harem either, resulting in a truly bizarre reverse harem situation where he tried to stay out of their beds for as long as possible without completely snubbing them.
If he'd just listened to her and kept the servants at a cool distance, treating them well but not too friendly, he wouldn't have this problem. Naturally he couldn't help himself from acting as if they were friends and seducing them almost by accident. It distinctly reminded her of the time when he'd ended up being a favorite riding pony for the majority of the prostitutes in Konoha's red lights district.
Her amusement at Naruto for his inability to stop womanizing was slightly soured at the moment however, because of the situation he'd engineered to get her to talk to Akitsu.
Clearly, he had noticed that there was something on her mind in regards to the Ice Sekirei, but he hadn't pried into it as one might expect and had instead simply waited for her to figure it out. Months had passed and eventually years and she still hadn't figured anything out and now he'd apparently decided that it was time to do so, so he'd gone haring off to a planet that would take a good deal longer than most before everyone was evacuated and resettled on Erius, during which time he'd have to stay on the other side to make sure that things went smoothly.
So here she was, unable to enjoy her book because she knew her husband was going to get progressively more annoying with his ideas if she didn't resolve the distance that had developed between her and Akitsu in this odd threesome of theirs, it was evident even now.
While Xanna was lounging comfortably naked on a nice couch, Akitsu was kneeling on the floor and rubbing her feet, keeping her head down and being quiet as a mouse. In other words, acting as slavishly submissive as she had when they'd first taken her in, more so even.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that she was scared of being discarded but not knowing what she'd done wrong, so she'd just defaulted to the most inoffensive behavior that she knew of.
Xanna had noted this, but hadn't been able to decide what she wanted to do about the Ice Sekirei that had latched onto them like a particularly affectionate kitten. She hadn't wanted a third party in this relationship, but Naruto was clearly fond of her and not intending to send her away until Akitsu decided to go, which simply wasn't going to happen.
She didn't bother hiding her sigh this time as she put away her book, which instantly made Akitsu tense as if she expected bad news and was bracing herself for it.
"Akitsu?" Xanna asked, bracing her elbow on the nearby armrest and her cheek on her fist to look at the Ice Sekirei lazily.
"Yes mistress?"
Instant response in a completely bland monotone with a hint of fatalism behind it? Yes, definitely preparing herself for expected bad news.
"What do you want to do with your life?"
Confused blink from the Ice Sekirei. Clearly an unexpected question.
"Ah...I wish to stay with you and Naruto." Akitsu answered timidly.
Xanna's lips twitched slightly at the predictable answer. At least Naruto had managed to finally get her to drop the honorifics when she spoke their names, though she did that only rarely.
"Yes, but what do you want to do? What activity is there that you enjoy which involves neither me nor Naruto?"
Worrying at her lower lip, Akitsu got the distinct impression that 'whatever you want me to' would have been the wrong answer.
She liked sex, but only with them.
Unlike Xanna, she didn't really like reading because it made her sleepy. Except if she managed to get Naruto to read for her. Some of her fondest memories were of when Naruto would read a book out loud while she and Xanna rested on his chest, though Akitsu had to admit that she paid less attention to his words than she did to the sound of his voice.
Despite her power, she didn't really like fighting and avoided conflict wherever she could. She wouldn't have hesitated to fight and kill if either Naruto or Xanna had ever needed defending, but they didn't and Akitsu found that comforting.
She'd wanted to help them build this empire they were set on creating, but had been forced to abandon that idea. Her avoidance of people who weren't Naruto or Xanna made it impossible to help with that. At the end of the day, she didn't care whether they lived in a palace or a cave in the woods, as long as they were there she would be happy.
Several other activities came to mind, but she generally only liked them because either Naruto or Xanna were involved.
"I don't know." She admitted tremulously after a few minutes of silence, looking as if she was about to cry.
"I will be honest with you Akitsu." Xanna began without much sympathy, knowing that her words would be painful to hear. "You are fun to play with and I enjoy your submissive attitude, but you are too clingy and needy, not to mention rather dull outside the bedroom unless there is someone to play mind games with around."
"I'm sorry." The Ice Sekirei choked out, now openly crying and clearly trying not to wail. She still remembered how annoying the horned woman had found it whenever Kusano had bawled her eyes out for one reason or another and had no wish to irritate her any further.
Xanna sighed again, feeling just the slightest twinge of guilt in the dark recesses of her heart at having reduced Akitsu to tears. She just knew that this ability to feel bad about hurting someone with the truth was Naruto's fault. The truth was what it was and she wouldn't have cared who felt hurt by it before getting involved with him.
Not that her husband generally cared who he hurt with it either, unless it was one of 'his cuties'.
"Come over here." She beckoned gently, patting the empty space on the couch next to her and the Ice Sekirei hastened to obey, laying her head down on Xanna's chest and wrapping her arms around the horned woman's midsection.
"While I had considered it, I will not send you away." Xanna said after Akitsu had gotten the convulsive hitching of her chest under control.
Akitsu sniffled a bit and rubbed her cheek against the soft but firm breast that her head was resting on, sighing contently when she felt the familiar comfort of long, clawed fingers trailing over her scalp.
"I will however, want you to find a hobby for yourself that does not include either me or Naruto."
"Help?" Akitsu asked shyly, feeling braver now that she had a little bit of assurance that she wasn't about to lose everything she held dear.
"Just think, have you ever done anything to pass the time while you were bored that you enjoyed doing?" Xanna asked, fully understanding why something like this might be difficult for the Ice Sekirei. Having been treated more like an object than as a person for pretty much her entire life before Naruto had found her would leave anyone damaged.
Now that it wasn't looking as if her worst nightmare was about to happen anymore, Akitsu could think a bit more clearly and remembered something that she'd overlooked earlier. Unfortunately it was kind of embarrassing.
"You've thought of something." Xanna stated amusedly, feeling Akitsu's face heating up.
The Sekirei silently nodded, face still burning.
"Show me."
Reluctantly, Akitsu extracted herself from the embrace and made for the exit, mumbling a 'be right back.' as she did so.
Several minutes later, She came back with a book that Xanna recognized as the one that Naruto had given her years ago that was meant for taking notes.
Akitsu sat next to the horned woman and twiddled her thumbs nervously while Xanna took the book and started leafing through it.
"Akitsu, this is just the self study that Naruto or I assigned you while we were teaching you." Xanna said flatly, somewhat baffled as to what the Ice Sekirei was playing at.
"...The middle." Akitsu said meekly, face still a blazing pink color despite her passive expression.
Giving her another odd look, Xanna nonetheless turned to the middle of the book, seeing yet more homework, this time the slightly higher level math that they'd gotten to by that point. Turning a few more pages finally revealed what had Akitsu so embarrassed.
Intersped between the various quadratic equations were crude drawings of a man and woman with horns, with little hearts floating around them.
Highly amused, Xanna kept turning pages to see what came next. The drawings got better bit by bit, until they were actually fairly well made representations of her and Naruto. The math petered out eventually, to be replaced by the drawings entirely. They also changed from simple doodles into rather kinky sexual positions that one might find in the Kama Sutra, though this one mostly had three people involved rather than two. Many of them Xanna recognized as things they'd already tried in practice.
There were other things aside from visual representations of Akitsu's kink though.
Naruto in the middle of executing a sword stroke, his usual fierce grin firmly in place. Akitsu had given the whole thing a dramatic addition by making it look as if he was cutting the very air.
Herself with ten tails splayed majestically behind her.
Both of them sitting on their throne while a multitude of people bowed to them.
A rather ridiculous one of all three of them holding hands in a circle, all with silly smiles on their faces.
That and more filled the rest of the book. By the last page, the drawings were starting to look quite well done, though still not something she'd wish to see made public. Akitsu's drawing skills weren't quite doing her justice yet.
"This wouldn't happen to be the reason that you suddenly lost interest in learning math would it?" Xanna asked in amusement after she reached the end.
Akitsu shifted awkwardly before answering in an embarrassed mumble. "Math...boring."
Xanna snorted, agreeing with that assessment wholeheartedly. "So you started doodling out of boredom and then kept at it?"
Akitsu nodded, happy to see that the horned woman wasn't mad at her for it despite the fact that Akitsu had been the one to ask for lessons only to find them dull afterwards.
"But these look to be years old, why did you never continue doing this if you enjoyed it?"
"Ran out of space." The Ice Sekirei answered, face lighting up with color again.
"And it never occurred to you to ask for another empty book or perhaps even a canvas?" Xanna asked with an archly raised eyebrow, causing Akitsu to visibly shrink in embarrassment.
"Would have to tell what for." She pouted, Xanna's tone making her feel silly.
"And you were too embarrassed to tell either me or Naruto about this, so you decided to abandon what looks to be an interesting skill instead?" The horned woman continued in the same arch tone before sighing. "Sometimes you can be truly absurd Akitsu, how you can still be embarrassed about some drawings after all the things that Naruto and I have done to you is beyond me."
Akitsu said nothing, only bowed her head and glowed a brilliant pink.
Xanna watched her with silent amusement for a few more seconds before speaking again. "Too bad really, since these are quite good for a beginner."
"They are?" Akitsu asked, perking up a bit at the thought that the horned woman liked her drawings.
"Mhm." Xanna hummed, leafing through the last few pages again. "I dare say that with some more practice you might end up being quite the artist. You are certainly looking to be more talented than either myself or Naruto."
They could both use their powers to create photo realistic imagery, such as what Naruto had done with Bastet's temple several months ago, but trying to draw it by hand was beyond them.
Akitsu blinked in surprise at the last sentence. "Never learned how?"
Akitsu had been certain that Xanna was good at pretty much everything.
Xanna snorted in amusement at the question, remembering that particular scenario. "I tried. I was only about twelve hundred years old at the time and I was certain that I had finally managed to master my foul temper. I was passing through a town one day and beheld some truly beautiful works of art being displayed by a famous painter. Seized by a desire to learn how to create something like it myself, I approached the man and demanded he teach me, only to be refused. I was angered but kept it in check and seduced him into teaching me how to paint like him by promising him pleasure beyond imagining if he did so. He proved surprisingly susceptible to it."
Personally, Akitsu suspected that Xanna was underestimating how good she was at seduction, though the Ice Sekirei was undeniably biased.
"I spent several months learning how to paint but made very little progress and became frustrated by my failure. My teacher had meanwhile become frustrated by the way that I was not living up to my promise."
By this point, Akitsu had a suspicion as to how this arrangement had ended.
"He lost patience first, calling me a talentless harlot and that it was time for me to keep my word and spread my legs, since that was clearly the only thing I was good for."
Xanna paused for dramatic effect, smirking when Akitsu leaned in with interest.
"I tore his head off and the blood spray ruined all of his works in progress. Clearly, my temper was not quite as in control as I'd thought, but at least it was better than that of an overly self important human like him." Xanna finished, sounding satisfied.
Akitsu decided not to point out the discrepancy between a man being angry for being led around by his penis after being lied to and demanding that she do as she'd said she would, and her being insulted by his demand and tearing his head off in retaliation. It was unlikely to serve any purpose.
Besides, that man should have known better.
"Ah..." She finally said, simply for lack of anything else to say. She couldn't find anything appropriate to finish it with though, so she just trailed off into silence.
"But enough about the past, lets see how good you really are." Xanna said when it became obvious that Akitsu was not going to comment on the story.
A canvas shimmered into existence nearby, along with a variety of pencils.
"Would you draw me?" The horned woman asked.
"Now?" Akitsu asked nervously.
"Now is a perfect time." Xanna confirmed. "I'm already naked and posing for you."
The Ice Sekirei was still looking more than a little apprehensive, so Xanna decided to throw in a little more encouragement. "You have nothing to worry about, no one will judge you if it isn't perfect and we will have something to surprise Naruto with once he comes back. I am certain that he will impressed that you can draw."
Nibbling on her lip, Akitsu made her way to the canvas and grabbed one of the pencils. After a minute of indecision, she finally brought it to the paper and began to drag it across. It had been years since she'd done this last, but it came back to her quickly and she began to lose herself in the activity. Having the subject in front of her her instead of needing to work from memory also made it easier.
Back on the couch, Xanna reopened her book and sighed contently at the fact that she could enjoy it again now that there was no tension hanging in the air. She still wasn't sure about keeping Akitsu around for an extended period, but she would settle for having resolved the most immediate problem, namely Akitsu being overly clingy to the point of being irritating. If the girl had a hobby, then it would keep her from hovering around as if she didn't know what to do with herself.
As for keeping her around...well, Akitsu still had quite a few decades in front of her. The answer would surely reveal itself with time, as it always did. Naruto had the right of it this time, there was no point in overthinking it.
Naruto at least would be pleased that the distance between her and Akitsu had shrunk.