S-Plot - JL | Aendeh Dr. Tr'Esun, Rochelle Ivanova (MU) - "Tools of the Trade"
Posted on Sat Jun 11th, 2016 @ 5:02am by Captain Kaleb Ch'Valenvok M.D. & Rochelle Ivanova
Edited on on Sun Sep 3rd, 2017 @ 5:17pm
2,380 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission: Ebbtide
Medical bay on a Valdor class warbird was a work of scientific marvel. Lit up with bright white lights it could easily have doubled as a sound stage for any number of old Terran science fiction flicks circulating around alien abduction, and Rochelle couldn't help but wonder if the little green blooded bastards really had made it first and long before first contact day or whether the reference would be completely lost on people from their universe. Just how mirror was mirror? Already she'd noticed significant differences. Dahe'el was working for her Commodore doppelganger. Landon Neyes had shacked up with that same doppelganger instead of being the raging mess of a criminal she'd known him as... The list went on and on, seemingly never ending. As disturbing as they were, those thoughts were all she had to distract her as she stood under those garish lights, center stage, and naked as the day she was born. Circling her, much like a shark, was the same Centurion that had brought Tr'Bak news the night before.
"He said she's to be identical. Hair. Injuries. Eyes. Pelvic tilt considering the Commodore is a new mother... Identical, able to pass any examination or test by Starfleet, the Commodore's lover, seamless." The Centurion spoke with a tone so very condescending and dark, filled with distaste, appraising her like some vicar at a horse auction that was inspecting the livestock before making a purchase. A single finger ran along the looping tattoo, following it from the small of her back, over her left buttock, and down along the outside of her thigh. The smattering of stars and constellations wound in the shape and frame of an old Chinese dragon, beautiful but out of place and wildly inappropriate for what his liege had in store for her, "She's a lovely thing, isn't she? Such a pity she's been so wasted. Such a pity in deed. They've broken her. I suppose that's what makes us different... Better."
Rochelle held her ground, rolling her eyes even though her skin crawled beneath his touch. "Not as badly as I'll break you if you lay another finger on me." She hissed, throwing a glare over her right shoulder. The burn scared flesh covering most of her shoulder and upper arm only served to highlight the soft cream of her cheek and the sharpness of her good eye. Even when the Centurion raised his hand in threatening, she didn't so much as move a muscle, let alone flinch or duck to cover herself.
"Mind your tongue, miss Ivanova. Know your place."
"Does your boss know this is how you treat his guests? Last I checked your position was bitch, one step above paper boy." Her lips curled into a pretty smile until the doctor's lurking form caught her attention. Out of the corner of her injured eye she watched the fuzzy shadow approach. His sudden interest stilling both the Terran and the Centurion.
"Now, now. There is no need for such a pretty mouth to utter such ugly words." Tr'Esun said as he walked around the imperfect and shattered mirror version of the woman his erie'Ssiebb had come to loath beyond loathing. Tr'Esun did not share his Colonel's unadulterated hatred for Commodore Ivanova, though he held no great love in his aging heart for the red haired vixen either. The endless battle between Tr'Bak and this seemingly immortal Phoenix was beginning to weigh on the Empire and even from his medical center far removed from the fighting, Tr'Esun had heard of the frustration Commodore Ivanova had caused. Few throughout the Empire possessed Tr'Esun's abilities and fewer still were willing to do the things he could and had at the bequest of the Tal'Shar. Those things were the reason he had been sent to Tr'Bak. The erie'SSiebb required a service that Tr'Esun was uniquely qualified to offer, he was to resculpt a ruined body.
"Do you not wish to be whole again? To recapture the beauty that you have so wrongly been robbed of? For that is exactly what I intend for you Miss Ivanova." Tr'Esun studied the damaged body as he asked the question. Many of the scars could be easily removed and resculpted with a dermal generator, as could the tattooing. Regenerating the eye, would however, be another matter and would tax even his considerable skill. He stood directly before her now looking at her not simply as a still tragically beautiful piece of meat but rather as a raw block of marble from which he would soon create his masterpiece.
It was an intriguing question to say the very least. Did she want to be whole again? Whole. The word burned questionably through her mind as she sought to define it along with just what it was that they thought left her 'broken'. Scars were scars, burns were burns. Her eye had been a casualty of war left frosted over in exchange for her life being allowed to continue. Every little thing that made her 'broken' had a story and yielded to her a considerable amount of intrigue and history. They made her who she was. Rochelle shifted her weight under the old Romulan's gaze, resting her hands on her hips as he leveled with him and she, in turn, met his eyes with her own. "You're asking if I want to become a carbon copy of someone else." She snorted sharply, all too aware of the groan from the Centurion behind her as he rolled his eyes. She could feel the vibrations of his foot steps as he lurked off to find a seat and allow Tr'Esun to try and work with little jackal. "I'd say no, that I'm proud of who and what I am - but that would make me one hell of an ingrate, wouldn't it?" Her head tilted as she posed the question, weighing the thought and measuring the rhetorical words for what they were. "Let's be frank, Doc. If I say no, I'm a cadaver that you'll wind up wrenching on after shit for brains gets done breaking my neck or poisoning my breakfast cereal or whatever it is that he's trained to do. Either I willingly allow you to Bob Ross this shit," she said, gesturing to the lean length of her relatively short body, "or it happens anyway. So get on with it, motherfucker." her lips wrapped around each word with a heavily untamed degree of smugness.
Tal'Aura snarled, his fingers curling on his disruptor as he listened to the Terran speak with such vile vehemence. "This project is a joke, Tr'Esun. Tr'Bak's lost his mind, it'll never work. I don't even think you can accomplish his laundry list and look at her! She's a common whore! Nothing can change or fix that, not even all the training in the universe!" He spat with a shake of his head, and Rochelle raised an eyebrow, shrugging at the Centurion's words, refusing to give them much creed. That absolutely wasn't her place. "While Commodore Ivanova is a lot of things, a gutter whore she most definitely is not." He added, finding his feet and quickly crossing the distance between his chair and where the doctor and woman stood. "Give me one good reason we shouldn't pull the plug on this and have the Praetor end this madness?" Tal'Aura asked, sneering at the old doctor who, at least in the Centurion's eyes, was just as insane and deeply attached to the project as the eerie'Ssiebb - though for entirely different reasons. Tr'Esun likely saw it as a challenge, the man was mad on a scientific level far beyond the realm of possibility and imagination.
"I know." Rochelle chirped, "Because he'll kill you before you have half a chance to reach the Praetor? Sit down before you fall down and find a tissue. You're foaming."
Tr'Esun smiled broadly impressed by the brashness of the young woman before him. She would have made a good Romulan were it not for the unfortunate genetic handicap of being human. "For this to be successful, my little firebrand, you must want this as much as we do. If your heart is not in this your mouth will betray your body and belie our schemes."
Tr'Esun stepped back and folded his arms across his chest looking directly at the Centurion. "I think you have done all you can to assist with this situation, Tal'Aura. I can handle her from here. She will either cooperate or not, but as she has so clearly stated she will serve our purposes one way or the other." The Centurion's antagonism was beginning to grate on Tr'Esun's nerves and getting him out of the room would probably make life easier for both Miss Ivanova and Tr'Esun.
Tal'Aura looked between the pair of them, down at the tiny little human and up at the aging doctor. His mouth opened likely to spit some degree of venom at them both, but quickly snapped shut and was traded for a stiff shake of his head. The entire project was lunacy. Sheer unadulterated madness. He couldn't quite believe his role in the ordeal. Rochelle on the other hand waggled her bright copper brows at him, the pointed tip of her pink tongue snaking out to run the line of her teeth - goading him into action he knew he couldn't take. She'd found him stymied and lost with no path to follow other than the directions Tr'Esun had given him to the door. "Tell me when she's ready. I'll escort her back to Tr'Bak when you're done." He huffed and spun on his heel. It was a pity doors couldn't be slammed on starships. The glass likely would have shattered in his wake.
One down. One to... Go? The dyed raven woman tilted her head at the doctor, studying him for what he was worth. She'd have thought him kind if it wasn't for the fact that the bastard was an evil genius bent on biologically re-engineering her for the sole purpose of screwing with a group of strangers that had somehow gotten themselves hopelessly entrenched on Tr'Bak's shit list. "Now where were we? Oh yes... My heart and mouth..." Rochelle mused, tapping her lower lip with one of her index fingers and cocked a hip as she settled into thought. Modesty had never been one of her virtues, her unabashed nakedness couldn't have bothered her any less and the Romulan hardly seemed bashful or lascivious as he looked upon her. No. The man was an artist waiting for his canvas to happily bob her head and welcome him to play Picasso with everything from her guts on out. "You paint a pretty picture when you wax all philosophical, Doc, I'll give you that," she admonished him, reaching to run her fingers through her pixie-length hair. Under the lights it was shockingly discernible that the color really was a pathetic attempt at a dye job. The rich brassy undertones of her natural red practically screamed as they shimmered metallic beneath the choking blue-black, "but you're hardly being heuristic here." The twenty dollar word left her lips without a single stutter or concern, brilliantly highlighting the deep degree of intelligence contained within the rowdy pirate's cerebral cortex. She was smart, sassy, and brutal - all she lacked was purpose beyond being someone's puppet and despite Tr'Bak buying her 'freedom', she'd jumped from the frying pan and into the fire... Once again as a marionette, her strings being pulled yet again by a force other than her own.
"Or maybe you are..." She murmured, now chewing on the same nail that had rapped against her pretty pout - badly chipped nail polish and all. The fact that she was being given a choice, for the first time in her entire life it seemed, drove a point home. Granted, the choices were horrific reverse mutilation or death and then horrific reverse mutilation, but they were choices all the same. It empowered her. Gave rise to the thought of what her future may look like should Tr'Bak be successful. Was it at all possible for her to have a life like the one the Commodore lead? Child? Exotic lover? Power beyond compare? An arch nemesis? It was the total picture, a dream come true for a chick like her that had spent her every living moment as one form of a slave or another. The word 'pirate', while romantic, hardly spoke the truth in full about what she had endured even if her embattled appearance made it seem all the more alluring. Rochelle sighed and shook her head, "I'll do it. I'll do it because it could lead to a better future for everyone involved." Aside for maybe the Commodore, but she didn't count. She'd already lead a nearly 29 year long life in the lap of privilege.
Tr'Esun nodded his head with the reply, "Of course you will my dear. Your reasons may comfort you but you would be wise not to vest too much faith in... a better future." Moving to a panel on the bulkhead of the ships sickbay, Tr'Esun keyed in a quick combination of numbers and opened the cabinet containing the tools of his trade. Pulling out a dermal regenerator and a device used to remove the ink of tattoos he turned back to the woman. "You won't feel much here. I am going to remove your tattoo and then heal the scar tissue created when you received it." Tr'Esun walked around behind the woman looking at the artistry of the design and briefly wondered what it meant to the woman it adorned. His own people often placed tattoos on various parts of their body to commemorate family ties and social rank and Tr'Esun wondered for a moment if this was the case with the woman. "This will be the only "pleasant" part of this process. In some ways I envy you the chance to start anew. Shall we begin?"
"Do your thing." Rochelle sighed, closing her eyes and doing her damnedest to forget him and the inhospitable space they occupied. The next few hours would be long and arduous to say the very least.
---
Aendeh Dr. Tr'Esun
Tal'Shiar Surgeon
Anima Venator
&
Rochelle Ivanova
Mercenary
Mirror Universe
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