STAR TREK: A Long Road (Voyager Fix It Quest)

Hmm...

Expected more votes >.> I should wait longer and let more people vote.

The hike cut through the jungle - which began to thin out as they traveled, Lyan setting a rather brutal pace, her feet chewing up the kilometers, meter by meter. Harry was glad that Tom had kept on his ass to keep in the gym. It was a big problem in Starfleet, that their surface skills suffered during long tours on starships, and he felt kinda grateful that he wasn't completely wimping out in his first long hike. He did notice that Lyan had no water, no food, and was walking with a grim focus - and he said: "So, uh...you've got a sword..."

She glanced at him, withering. "Verily," she said, dryly, pausing to wipe at her forehead with the back of her palm. "And I see thou art unarmed."

"No, I...I have a weapon, don't worry," Harry said, edging around exactly what that was. He shook his head. "It's just, uh, I was wondering are you a...knight? An...adventurer? A...mercenary?" He asked each one carefully, watching her face. Lyan's cheeks flushed more and more with each suggestion, then she huffed and looked aside.

"No," she said, then started to walk forward.

"Well, it's just, it's a very nice sword," Harry said. Did...wait, were swords hard to make in the past? Or was it like everyone had a sword, back before guns. He wracked his brains, but for some reason, instead of the history courses he had taken during high school and college, all he was instead thinking of was the way that Lyan's shift was riding up her back as she walked ahead of him. He focused on the air above her head, his cheeks heating while she said, bluntly.

"I stole it."

"Oh," he said. "From...who?"

"From my father's armory!" She snapped, turning around, glaring at him. "Thou art a stranger to these lands, so I suppose thou must learn of it sometime." She flushed, then prodded his chest with her finger. "I am...Princess Lyan."

"Oh!" Harry said. Princesses. He'd had an entire semester on monarchies and their integration into the Federation, it got really touchy considering the conflicting directives of both...including everyone's cultures and insuring every individual within those cultures had their rights respected. The big issue was no one could actually agree on...what...and where those barriers landed. Some days, it felt like the Federation was always three bad disagreements away from ripping itself into a bunch of tiny parts. And maybe if they didn't have the Klingon and Romulan Empires lurking off in every direction, a lot of people might have left right then and there.

Of course, that kind of abstract debate about law and procedure seemed a lot less procedural and abstract when there was a lady with about a hundred centimeters of sharpened steel ready to draw and stick into someone who pissed her off.

"Thou hath heard of me?" Lyan asked, skeptically.

"No, uh...one second," Harry said, then reached up, pulled his combadge off. "So, uh, in my people, we don't have kings and princesses anymore - but, uh, don't worry, I...can still do all the bows and stuff..." He fiddled with the controls on the back.

Lyan snorted. "What do thou have if thy lack-" ZZT "-kings and queens?"

Harry put the badge back on. "Uh, oh, we elect people."

"You elect people," Lyan said, slowly. "Like the nose counters down south?"

"Yup!" Harry said, smiling at her. "It's more complicated than just counting people, uh, there's a lot of...it's a lot, and I'd love to explain it to you."

"Curious, your grammar just got a lot better," Lyan said, turning her back to him as she began to walk forward again. "Did you do some magic or something? Is that an amulet you have there?"

"...kinda!" Harry said, nodding. "Speaking of, uh, magic, what about those Adepts? Aren't they your kings?"

"My father...is...the Ultraviolet Adept, yes..." She started to walk faster.

"...so they're hunting you because you're a runaway?" Harry asked, jogging to keep up with her. "Is that's what's going on?"

"Shut up, you'd run away too if you ever met him," Lyan snapped. "He's named for he has mastery of the ultraviolet - he is unseen, yet can see much. He slips through bonds and can pass without notice, and yet, learn all. He reads thoughts and memories and reveals the past with a wave of his hand." She shook her head. "He's a vile, awful, creeping, odious little man and I will not be ruled by him, father or not."

"Got it, got it," Harry said, then put his hand on her shoulder. He smiled. "In the Federation, the, the land I'm from, no one can be ruled against their will. Even by parents."

"Really?" Lyan asked.

"Yeah!" Harry said. The complications of Federation child-caring was a bit beyond the topic of the conversation, but the idea of a father being able to dictate anything he wanted to his daughter, especially an adult daughter, was...just utterly barbaric to Harry's perspective. He drew his hand back, realizing it had been there on her shoulder for a while longer than he had...intended. Lyan looked away, then resumed her walk. "So, uh...can you tell me about the other Adepts and their powers?"

"Well, they have powers after their chosen element," Lyan said. "Infrared is the master of flame and heat and light. Antimatter makes dark perversions of the world around her - she can make the dead live and the living dead, or turn steel into brittle glass, and glass into unbreakable, opaque solids." She shrugged a bit. "And the Adept of Positron...she, with her ally Infrared, stand against Ultraviolet and Antimatter. Her mastery is the construction of...I suppose, as you're not from these lands, you might not have heard of a device called a 'positronic brain.'"

Harry blinked at her.

"...is her name...Soong, by any chance?" Harry asked.

"No, her full title is Enpa Ta, the Positronic Adept," Lyan said. "Why?"

"Just checking," Harry said, laughing quietly. "So, huh. Like. Does your father use tools to...do what he does? Like, uh, like this!" He pulled his phaser out. "I can use this to strike enemies with...fire, I guess. Does Infrared use something similar?"

"No," she said, snorting. "Adepts don't need tools, they're not wizards. They simply do as they wish. For weaker spells, they need not even gesture. Just...think it and it happens. For more powerful acts, they need to invoke the power with gestures, words..."

Harry nodded.

Great.

The jungles petered out and they came to a set of low, light pink foothills, which themselves went up and up to dark pink mountains. Harry did a quick doubletake. Those mountains...he half recognized them. One of the peaks had a very distinctive notch in it - from the tour guide, it had been a geological event from millennia ago. It had been preserved as a natural monument.

The rest of the mountains had been riddled, completely riddled, with strip mines.

But now, they looked as they would have been before the Mining Cartels had gotten their diggers into them. Harry sighed, sitting down on a hill and caught his breath, while Lyan stretched her arms behind her back. She pointed, once she was done. "There's the Castle Positron," she said, and looking at one of the mountains, Harry could see it, just barely, a glittering castle of pinkish stone and fluttering flags. It looked like the only way up there was skimmers or transports or-

Or those treacherous paths of craggy rocks and death defying drops.

"Great," Harry said.

"Well, we could see if there are pegasi in this area," Lyan said, sighing softly. "They could fly us right up - if we could convince them."

Harry took his combadge off, shaking it. "Stupid thing..."

"What?" Lyan asked.

"Just, my universal translator is still throwing out bizarre terms, I...did you say pegasi?"

"Yes, winged horses," Lyan said. "I've never spoken to one, but I've seen them flying too and fro in the distance."

"...you know, if I wasn't stranded here, this would be the find of my lifetime," Harry said, grinning as he started to stand up.

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CURRENT TRUTHS: None
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 0

Well, then!
[ ] Risk the deadly climb of the cliffs of insanity
[ ] find a pegasus and see if they'll carry you. You...have never ridden a horse. But...maybe they're sentient?
[ ] Use your phaser to just carve a set of stairs up the mountain. You have the replacement charge packs to do it...and it'll impress Lyra!
[ ] Write in