What a difference 20 years makes

Posted on Jun 05, 2014 @ 7:55am by Selyara Chen
Edited on on Jun 05, 2014 @ 8:53am

Mission: The Tangled Webs We Weave

"What a difference 20 years makes"
(cont. Ghosts haunting the airwaves)
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Location: Risa
Stardate: 2.14.0603.2105
Scene: The Waters of Lethe Spa and Massage Parlor

Selyara hadn't been herself for the last few months. She'd heard from her carefully chosen intelligence network that one Rawyvin Seth had been looking for her, and she'd thought it prudent to disappear after one of her new operatives had shown up on his shocked family's front door, disemboweled and turned into some sort of sick marionette, dangling from his own intestines.

She was smart enough to have gotten the message: “I've found one of your puppets, I can find you too,” and she was smart enough to know that she did not under any circumstances want to find herself within striking distance of Rawyvin again. He was probably angry about being stabbed and tossed off a shuttle, and that could only mean he had fresh, more sadistic ideas of what sort of pain he could inflict as punishment.

She would almost certainly not enjoy his new notions.

She briefly wondered if it might not have been better to have slept with him rather than pushing him out of the hopper. Perhaps that would have been easier.

She doubted it.

It probably would have heightened the creepy desire to possess and control, and she would have ended up cowed, abused, terrified, and ultimately discarded. And Rawyvin didn't seem the sort to let his discarded playthings free for someone else to use.

She may have to play cat and mouse with him and be forever looking over her shoulder, but at least she was in control of herself, her body, her actions.

And so she'd become another person- a stopgap measure- while she tried to figure out what to do, how to protect herself, what she wanted to be.

That was how Mizithra Enaii, a nice, naive Betazoid girl looking for a life of love and adventure was born, and came to be working on Risa in a spa called “The Waters of Lethe.” The spa specialized in telepaths that were able to temporarily suppress memories that caused stress or anxiety in their clients, allowing them to relax and enjoy their stay on Risa free from worries, cares, and bad memories.

Self indulgent and useless, Selyara/Mizithra thought, but it had ended up being a valuable position for her. People from all walks of life, all positions in society, and a hundred different species came to her willingly, begging her to access their minds. Of course, none of them knew how much she could read from their minds. All the telepaths at the spa were certified as high functioning empaths only, able to deaden nexuses of pain, but not read thoughts. Easy peasy to fake.

“Mizzie!” Anissa, a short blonde Betazoid broke in on Selyara's reverie. Selyara liked Anissa inspite of herself. Cheerful, kind, and something of a mother hen to all the men and women that worked at The Waters of Lethe, Anissa reminded Selyara of someone she might have been.

Unfortunately, Anissa was a little bit too good of a telepath. Selyara had to stay on her guard at all times, and even then, she occasionally saw Anissa giving her an odd look as though something suspicious had slipped past Selyara's carefully constructed barriers.

“Just let me get ready, I'll be there soon.” Selyara walked to the mirror and surveyed her reflection, straightening her uniform. The disguise was flawless. She barely recognized the face that stared back at her. Long chestnut hair that fell in waves down to her waist, creamy pink tinged skin, unmarked by the her familiar tattoos and the sallow green of Vulcan blood, deep black bottomless eyes of a betazoid, and perfectly rounded shell like ears. All the cosmetic tinkering had been expensive, but it had been worth it.

She turned around and headed towards the room, whistling as she went.
This one should be interesting.
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Location: TERRA
Scene: Federation HQ, president's office Time Index: 20.5 years in the future

"Ah. Richard. So nice to see you again." The voice was a harsh, rasping thing, more suited to a death rattle than to the voice of a woman who was so annoyingly, irritatingly alive and vivacious.

She was a constant thorn in his side, a woman who had built herself and empire, even as he had built and planned his coup. His control might have been complete by now, if it weren't for her. Her control over the raw materials of war, her control over information, her goddamn fleet of mercenary vessels that made eliminating her a tactical mistake. And more to the point, her stubborn refusal to see reason and join him.

She took no sides, but if she chose she could inflict serious damage on the Federation forces or bolster the rebellion's forces. She would never win alone, but she could bloody their nose.

But fortunately for him, her reason d'être was one thing and one thing
only- She wanted to watch the galaxy bleed and burn. She wanted war and suffering.

She'd earned the name Eris, the goddess of discord, which she found intensely amusing, going so far as to name her flagship the Pomme d'Or.

"I would say the same, Selyara, but you know better." Edgerton was one of a select few who knew her real name, a dubious honor to say the least. He knew it only because she wanted him to know who she was, know exactly who he was dealing with, and how dangerous she could be.
He would have preferred not to deal with her at all, but it was, as always unavoidable. The view screen flickered on and Edgerton flinched, his eyes involuntarily closing.

"Now now Edgerton, you know the rules. You want something from me, you look at your handiwork, you see what your dog did to me." The anger in her voice grew. He opened his eyes quickly. Her anger meant her price was going up. The sight of her, though she had seen it a dozen times before, never failed to make him nauseous.

She had been a beautiful woman before her run in with Rawyvin Seth, and half of her still was. The left side of her face was a pale gold with the peculiar green tint of a Vulcan, her hair was long and dark and hung to her waist, and her eye was striking green and keenly intelligent, if more than slightly mad. The right side of her face...
Well, that was where the horror lay, an unholy, raw mass of scars. The lips and eyelids had been removed, and the skin removed from muscle like a mask. She had healed, but Rawyvin had seared the underlying tissues, making synth skin impossible. Her arm had been replaced with a spidery metallic piece, and the rumor was that most of her right half had been replaced using Borg technology. But the worst, to Edgerton at least, was the jagged gash across her throat. It looked as though it had been torn by teeth, and he wondered how she had survived.

Edgerton knew that the physical scars were only the tip of the iceberg. He did not even want to contemplate the horrors she had likely experienced during the month that she'd been in Rawyvin's tender care, and was glad that she seemed all to content to forget them, rather than to share with him. The torture and abuse was not what had driven her to madness. The final straw had been the obscene, brutal murder of her adopted family- Rawyvin Seth's punishment for having left him. Never mind that he had been done with her anyway- the fact that she didn't have the decency to die, and furthermore, the fact she had not returned to him once she recovered had been cause enough for him to 'teach her a lesson'.

After that, whatever she might have been, whatever side she might have taken in the civil war changed. No longer content to sit back and gain information and make money and achieve power as a neutral third party she actively participated in the war, all but controlling some of the Alpha Quadrants precious resources. Oh, she made money and gained power, but her information and her resources were distributed in whichever manner she thought would cause the most bloodshed. She might sell you weapons at a high price then warn the rebels you were coming for free, or sell rebels facing an invasion a few heavily armed ships for a basket of produce, then give you advance warning of half of their proposed tactics. Or she may simply sell you the weapons, and let you go on your merry way- it was a crapshoot with her. Anything and everything to prolong the war and increase causalities. She wanted mutually assured destruction.

She had nearly been persuaded to join the rebellion by one Michael Turlough Kane, a professional pain in the ass whom Edgerton regretted having recomissioned, soon after the murder of her family. Luck was again on his side, because she had already cracked and was too far gone to make rational decisions.

And so, the devil or not, he found himself here, begging and bargaining for Dilithium crystals and Deturium from the mines she controlled.

You never knew what her demands would be. He'd had to run down a thousand bottles of hundred year old Esenzia Tokaj in exchange for a shipment of antimatter, and then a month later, she'd required the shipment's weight in gold and Andorian star sapphires. For information she charged more- shuttlecraft, weaponry, and once, he wished he was joking, for him to re-form a musical band she used to like as a child, and have them play for her.

Impetuous, insane, dangerous, he just prayed that no one would ever be able to turn her to the rebellion's side.
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NRPG: Just a little look in on Selyara to see how she's doing after her escape from everyone's favorite SOB. DISCO balls, I have a post for you guys in the work as well, but I thought mushing the two of them together would be a little too confusing.

Alix Fowler
The eternal tormenter of:

Selyara Chen
Federation's Most Wanted