AWESOME! I love this story. Please continue!

Haiku, my penance!
Left to languish your review.
My apologies.

'“No Jaffa were bitten in the making of this program.”'

Love it!

Thank you! :D
Glad you're still with me *hugs*

Thanks for the update! I hope your NY trip was as good as you had hoped. I have to admit that I wasn't in too bad of withdrawals while you were gone since I was going through a nasty migraine cycle and couldn't focus on much of anything beyond not dying, but I am still glad to have you writing again.

Ooh, you poor thing! I get migraines approximately once or twice a month and they're EVIL things! I usually have to go lie down in a dark room with my eyes shut until the painkillers knock me out. I hope you're feeling better. *hugs*
NY was even better than I'd imagined. So much so that I was hoping to break my leg on our last day just so I could stay longer. Sadly, I didn't succeed. :( So I'm back in the UK. I've got friends staying with me this week so I probably won't get much writing done but I'm hoping to have the next chapter up by the end of the month at the very latest. :)

I used to like this story but having some untrained piece of shit origin bitch that is too stupid to know better win against a trained slayer is a joke. They should have shot the hell out of Adria and the slayer the second they saw that she was weak. Slayers die rather nicely when you fill them with holes. Nice touch with Faith's sword but really not enough to make up for the idiot slayer and the bitch, as for that last scene I call bull shit. She's weakened and even if she wasn't I don't think she could control the ship without being in the interface chair. Ah well better luck next chapter.

Wow. You really liked the story before, didn’t you? :) I’m going to take the flames as a compliment, because you clearly feel passionately about the integrity of my story. Thank you. :)

I’ll start with the easiest thing to defend... Adria. In the original SG-1 episode, Counterstrike, Adria was able to control the ship without being in the interface chair at this point, and many others, and it's something I showed her doing in the previous chapter. Even in my version, although she is weakened by saving Deama's life as well as her own, she still has her powers, as demonstrated when she forced Daniel to his knees for trying to shoot her and threw Vala back into the altar, or even when she turned the ship’s shields on whilst nowhere near the control chair, although that wasn’t specifically shown in either show or story. We already know that Adria has no need to sleep, so we can infer that she’s recovering from her earlier exertions whilst still conscious. :)

As for Deama, she was a very last minute addition, who was originally slated to die without ever being discovered. Not by Adria, not by Faith and not by us. Because of that, none of Deama’s backstory has been published and she’s currently very two-dimensional, a fact that I am aware of and I do fully intend to flesh her out in further chapters. In the last scene onboard the ship, Deama blind-sided Jool, and while Deama hasn’t had the kind of training that Jool has (which is basically the same that Kendra got, plus two years of slaying experience), she does have at least one advantage over our Doc. Deama’s mind is bonded to Adria’s, and Adria’s had plenty of experience in how slayers fight. Had it looked at any point like Jool was getting the upper hand, Adria would have stepped in with her own powers. I should have probably made that clearer, but I’d already been up all night rewriting and I was still jetlagged.

You’d probably prefer the version where Deama dies, but unfortunately it’s vanished into the electronic ether because I foolishly saved right over the top of it (jetlag makes you do foolish things). I actually preferred the chapter with her in it. I found that the rewritten scenes were far stronger, and that Deama’s presence provided a balance for SG-13’s. Ultimately, in either version, Jool lost the fight.

I’m really glad that you liked Faith’s sword. :D Thank you for caring enough to review. I hope you like the next chapter more.

Glad the chapter, interesting cliffie.

Thanks Joe! :D Hopefully I'll have the next chapter out this month. :)

Thank you for sharing this gift of an epic. Faith shines in this gritty universe of yours, especially now that she is working apart from the SGC. (While I find her pairing with Cam intriguing, her character had not changed sufficiently to feel right directly supervised in a military environment, even one as eccentric as SGC.) I like the symmetry you've created of only one Slayer (if any) per 'alien' world with the pre-Buffy setup on Earth.

Kudos for bringing together minor characters for the supernaturally-inclined SG-13, and for making each of the new Slayers sufficiently layered as to be memorable. I haven't watched the 'Ori' arc of SG1, so I can't judge whether the thoroughness with which you've interwoven the original episodes is repetitious for those have, but personally I'm enjoying the 'Oriclave' twist and the building tension around the unknown Slayer who has 'chosen the Origin of her own free will.'

I'd like to see even more of your subtle exploration into how Faith's pre-space experiences complement the different backgrounds and world views of her new sister Slayers and others she meets along the way. The little exchange between Jem, Nya, and Faith in chapter 21 (‘How Kayliss Became Liss’) re: Jem’s age is a good example, while bits like Faith’s insight into Mallie being ‘totally hyper’ (“almost like she was showing off for someone”)—introducing an interesting parallel/contrast between the early Faith and Buffy dynamic—could use an additional line or immediate turn to a free-associated topic to bring forth that extra dimension a touch more explicitly.

Two nitpicky things: first, I was very surprised that Jon and Jool acted as if forgetting to use protection during their one-night stand made potential pregnancy unavoidable; it’s exceedingly unlikely that both of them are ignorant about so-called ‘morning after’ pills, aka emergency contraception. If taken within five days, such pills act just the same as regular birth control pills (i.e, they prevent pregnancy) rather than induce abortion (termination of pregnancy).

Second, the Latin phrase ‘ferrum exsisto fortis’ was a wee bit off for ‘sword become strong’ (‘exsisto’ (first person singular, present active indicative)=I emerge/come forth/appear/project, thus ‘ferrum exsisto fortis’~I, the sword, come/am coming forth strong) Am curious whether you meant to use existo, existere instead of exsisto, exsistere; only the later can customarily be translated ‘become.’

You can certainly make a good argument based on its context that the phrase is from a language which is a derivative of Latin, rather than from actual Latin. If you did want the later, however, the verb should have been in the singular imperative: ‘ferrum exsiste fortis’ (sword, emerge strong!). To be really nit-picky, fio, fieri, factus sum would probably be a more appropriate verb choice for what you’re trying to get across (think of the difference between ‘existence’ and ‘becoming fact’): ‘ferrum fi fortis’: sword, be made/become strong!

Anyway, as you’ve probably gathered from this long review, I’m very much enjoying your fic, and am looking forward to the next installment. One side-benefit of reading the whole series in a few days is that I can watch you slowly becoming a better writer from the start of the 3rd fic through where you are now in the 4th.

Wow! Talking of epic, thank you for the review! :D *hugs* Sorry it's taken me a while to respond, but I've been in the States this week, for the first time ever! :D Which I hope has helped give me some insights into the sort of things that Faith would be missing stuck out in space.

Talking of Faith... *grins as she rereads your comments* I think that you're right, the reason that I had so much trouble with her in Visions was because she's too headstrong to work directly under the military, even the SGC. Once I unleashed her in Slayers, she became much easier for me to control and I'm having real fun developing her character to the point where she would be able to work with the SGC. And of course, in Lost, she was working against them for most of the time. The Cam pairing started as part of the challenge I was originally issued but now really works for me. I see them as almost the SG-1 versions of Farscape's Crichton and Aeryn... they have that 'Odd Couple' opposites-attract kind of vibe. And they're (literally) star-crossed lovers.

Yay! Kudos! We love the kudos. :D I didn't want to pull major Buffy characters into the main plot (although they now each have their own subplot) and I originally wasn't planning to create SG-13 (the story would have gone faster if I hadn't) yet they just came together after Buffy told Landry that she'd send her people to find Faith. I really fought against Andrew's inclusion at the time, but I now find that he provides a lot of humour.
The Space Slayers... They're a motley crew you know. :) There's going to be a lot of them by the time the Ori arc ends so I'm really pleased that the ones we've discovered so far aren't coming across as 2-D cutouts pasted randomly around Faith on her travels.
I certainly hope that the Ori arc isn't proving too repetitious for those who've seen it, but I'm not planning on majorly altering the canon events, apart from occasionally throwing SG-13 into the mix. Slayers was originally intended to address some of the plotholes I found in season 10 and Ark of Truth. Chapters would probably come a lot faster if I just posted scenes which were altered, but I've picked up so many readers who haven't seen the season now that, quite often, the plot makes no sense to them (and you) without including unaltered scenes. Fortunately, episode chapters tend to go faster.
Not this time though. It's that Unknown Slayer's fault! I thought I'd dropped enough clues for people to work out where she was and for those who've seen the upcoming episode to be able to work out how she was going to be dealt with. Originally, she was scheduled to die in the next chapter (problem solved, enter the substitution - who we already know) but the response to her has been so overwhelming that I've had to delay posting the chapter so I can rewrite scenes to include her. Adria's got her first member of her Oriclave...

It's our life experiences that make us who we are and I'm glad that I'm doing a good job of showing how Faith's past affects her present. Thanks for the tip about how better to show that. :) I really appreciate it.

Nitpicking! :D I'm a pedant too! The whole Jool/Jon/contraception thing is a bit of a stretch, I agree, especially since Jool is a doctor. You're right about the "morning-after" pill (which is actually effective for 72 hours after in the UK) but, like most forms of contraception, it's not 100% effective. Also, the longer you leave it before taking it, the less likely it is to be effective, and Jool didn't realise that they hadn't used contraceptive for a couple of days. Also, it's there to provide a valuable life lesson to any teenagers who might be reading this. One night stands are Bad! Especially when you have to work with the person.

I'm so not a latin scholar! I had to use two different translation engines to get Sword Become Strong and I didn't realise exsisto was first person singular. You're right, I wanted the singular imperative! I'll have to go back and change it. Ferrum fi fortis, right? Sounds vaguely fe-fi-fo-fum-ish! ;) Thank you! *hugs* I LOVE fellow nitpickers!

I know what you mean about watching me become a better writer. I recently reread the whole series while I was posting Lost and parts of Visions and Slayers made me cringe! Still, that's why I'm writing this. You see, I'm actually hoping to go on and write an original novel when I've finished this series (it's my way of proving to myself that I'm capable of writing something that long and of honing my writing skills). I promised myself that when I'd finished the Ori arc I'd go off and write a book in the hope of being paid to do something I love. I was expecting it to take two years, maximum! Still, I'm ploughing onwards, determined to finish. It just keeps growing though, because now I know how I'm going to pull Angel and co out of hell after the Ori arc. It's looking like there's going to be another three stories in the series after Slayers ends. :S

Anyway, I've babbled on for long enough and probably told you far more than you wanted to know. Plus, my dinner's ready. :) Thank you again for your review! *hugs*

hey.

Already there, uh.

Anyway, good work, glad to have read this story, a bit disappointed at the slow rhythm- there are thousands if not more of inhabited world in the SG Galaxy, and i *really* am hoping you aren't going to do all of them, and all with 4-5 chapters.

Hey,

Glad you made it. :) *hugs*

Thank you. As I think I said in my previous reply, I might have bitten off more than I can chew with the multiple plotlines and characters here. Believe me, *I* really hope Faith's not going to visit all of the worlds in the Galaxy, but I'll tell you something I haven't told anyone else. She's got to pick up a total of twelve slayers in this story, and it's going to run to the end of the season. Each slayer will come from a different world and ten of them will come from a world SG-1 has been, one from each season. So far, we have Nya, Liss and Val in that camp. Kay and Mallie are the two not from a season of SG-1. We're about to hit episode seven of SG-1 season nine. We've still got a long way to go. I'm trying to get it all out as quickly as I can (believe me, I am) but there's a heck of a lot going on.

Hope you stick with me, especially because the next chapter's an episode one and should be quite fast-paced.

Thanks for reading and reviewing! *hugs*

still a lot of fun, but the last few chapters were really, really, really slow.

Yeah, I'm having a lot of trouble with the time between episodes. I've got to introduce loads of slayers before this story's over, and that means character development. Then I possibly made a mistake by introducing SG-13, giving myself a third group of characters to include. Not including SGC personnel, villians and guest appearances, that means I'm juggling sixteen characters, three group plotlines, a story and series arc.
Unfortunately, quite often the action in Faith's world co-incides with the action back at the SGC or with SG-1. I'm trying to cut the time between episodes as short as possible but it's difficult, especially since we know a couple of upcoming episodes take set amounts of time (Momento Mori for example takes three weeks. How long then for Vala's recovery before I can kick off Company of Thieves?)

uh, i actually am quite perplexed by SG-13 not reporting what's happening to the council.

*very* our of character.

Curse of the red shirt :D

And yeah, they couldn't escape the Andrew lol.

The ultimate geek's nightmare. ;)

He had to find out eventually... :D Glad you like it.

Update, update! Happy, happy update! Thank you.

Oh, dear. A slayer that willingly converted to Origin? That's a bad one. How did that happen anyway? Somehow, I figured that the Slayer spirit wouldn't allow any slayer to feel comfortable enough around any of them (Priors, etc) to even consider "joining in" with them. Then again, one would assume that the Slayer spirit would also prevent anything like the Buffy/Angel relationship from ever happening, and that was obviously not the case. And since it was the Higher Powers (presumably) that were discussing it, subterfuge is kind of not an option for the explanation. They'd know the difference, I assume.

I'm finding it interesting that Faith is so uncomfortable with being honored and admired, since that seemed to be what she craved and was jealous of Buffy over. I guess her self-esteem is really in the basement? She doesn't seem to realize that she deserves it this time. She's not pretending to be someone that she's not, and she isn't in someone else's body. She really did do good, and the people of Camelot recognize it.

Argh, you've got me clamoring for another update, again!

lol! You realise that my latest spurt of creativity is your fault, don't you? You threatened me with the possibility of emotionally scarring your children when I didn't have a word of this chapter written! So I stuck my head down and ploughed into it. Then a mild case of writer's block combined with the frustration from the annual family squabble and the boredom of Boxing Day, and I pulled up the document with my notes for the prequel to Visions of Vampires. Three days later (with twelve hours off to sleep, somewhere roughly in the middle) I was proof-reading Lost, in LA. I blame you. :P

The Unknown Slayer... *sighes* That's my fault. I guess I didn't make it clear enough in the chapter. I'll have to adjust what I've written so far of the next chapter to compensate. Basically, on the planet Adria's just conquered, the one SG-1 and SG-13 just 'Gated to, the slayer (Clava) Adria was trying to capture has just converted to Origin. Now, you haven't watched the series, so you're just going to have to wait for the next chapter to find out just why The Powers That Be (good guess) were more concerned about who they'd find to replace her... :)

I figure Faith's self-esteem has been in the basement for so long that it, like vampires, is now allergic to sunlight. The only time she's ever been comfortable with praise and recognition was with Major Wilkins, and even then, it took the Mayor some time to break down her walls. It doesn't help that the curse she liberated Camelot from was really a hologram and there fore, in Faith's eyes at least, Not Real. Mind you, I suspect that even if she'd saved them from a demon, she'd still be uncomfortable with the level of attention she's getting. The key to the city? Well... um, the village really.

Chugging through the next chapter... 5,000 words written and I'm almost halfway through the episode now. Of course, it's all about to go really wrong now...

wow

Yeah! :D

A Slayer converting to Origin of her own free will? That doesn't sound too promising -- I hope for once the 'higher powers' ARE actually going to do something right and helpful, and not leave Faith and her Slayers blowing in the breeze.

Congrats on your productive New Year so far, in terms of new chapters! Your readers are very grateful.

Definitely not of the good! Fortunately, free will and the lower planes already have events in motion to erase that particular slayer. Which means that all the PtB have to do is what they do best... sit on their arses and call another slayer into Faith's fight.

Thanks! :) I have to admit, if you'd told me a week before Christmas that not only would I be updating SiS days into the New Year but that I'd also be posting the VoV prequel and finishing a drabble series I started a couple of years ago, I'd have laughed in your face. I hadn't even begun The Unknown Slayer at that point and LiLA was just a vague series of events in my mind. Turns out family squabbles and writers block are good for some things after all! :)

Thank you for reviewing! Hope you had a great Christmas and New Years. *hugs*

nice work so far really epic story you have :)

Thank you very much! :D I'm glad you like it. It certainly keeps me occupied! :)

Here's hoping that Jonas is able to make a full recovery, eventually, between his own advanced genes and Vala's healing device. Meanwhile, it's nice to see the Slayers able to take a rest for a little while in friendly surroundings, even if Adria is on her way there (or perhaps she's going to seek out and try to subvert some other Slayer, yet unknown to Faith?).

Without giving too much away... ah, feck it. It's Christmas! Adria's off to find the slayer that Faith's scheduled to find next. Technically, Faith had already found Valencia in Visions of Vampires. Valencia was the first slayer Faith came across and the one that she missed. So Adria's got a headstart on Faith. So your second guess was right! :D Congratulations... have a Christmas tree shaped cookie! *passes you the plate*