Darkened Stars - Chapter 9

Darkened Stars - Chapter 9

Stardate 29359.8 - May 11, 2352 - 16:28:00

Rain dropped what she was carrying and rushed over to check the two women, the sheer amount of blood surrounding them painting a grim picture even if the lack of breathing hadn't.

Checking their pulses, she let out a whimper upon finding no response, and she fought back the sudden urge to run off to her room and curl up in the closet. 

After all, there were things to do.

The Asari didn't know if the Klingon death ritual was actually necessary for a dead Klingons passage to the afterlife, but she knew from years old memories of Lower Decks that there was in fact something after death. 

So she pried open each of the women's eyes, and then screamed into the sky, warning the spirits of the dead that two new souls were coming to join them. 

After which she used a faux leather sleeve to wipe the tears from her eyes before getting back up to her feet and heading over to the hallway communications panel, where she entered in the command string that would route her to the local Klingon authority.

“Who speaks?” The Klingon officer that appeared on screen demanded.

“Raine… Of house Palkar.” She named herself, the emotional effect of seeing people she actually knew and liked dying having left a numb feeling hanging over her. “I… My lady and her mother have fallen in honorable combat to a dishonorable foe.”

It was something that had to be said for a number of different reasons, not the least being numerous groups would be likely to hunt her down if she didn’t.

“The record keepers will be informed.” The Klingon returned with a solemn nod. “Good hunting.”

With that the communications channel cut off, leaving Rain to stand there staring at the blank screen for a moment before the man’s final words fully registered.

“Oh right.” She muttered to herself, the sudden memory of just what response Klingons likely expected in such situations lighting a small fire in her breast. “Revenge.”

She took a brief detour to Jel'ang's room to grab a replacement disruptor, and then dragged herself back to the living room, only to flinch as her eyes roved over the bodies still laying where they had fallen.

Dragging her eyes away from the macabre sight, she let out a mild sigh of relief upon noting that the unconscious ninja girl she had dragged back with her from the ambush was still laying on the floor of the entryway where Raine had dropped her.

It took little effort to drag the still unconscious ninja back to Jel'ang's room, the choice of location all but made for her due to the ready supply of restraints the woman had kept for reasons that over the years had made Rain really glad Klingons believed in optional bedroom soundproofing.

Securing the woman's limbs, Rain pulled off her head covering, only to be left blinking in abject shock at the young but recognizable face underneath.

“Are your fucking kidding me!” She exclaimed, trying to figure out how out of the billions of humans on Earth she could have encountered one of maybe a dozen she recognized from before her encounter with Q.

Okay, Rain thought to herself as she wracked her memory, what did she know about Keiko O'Brien. The woman had been born in Japan, was a genius botanist, and had gone on to have a number of Enterprise D and Deep Space Nine related adventures. Meanwhile what she remembered about the mirror universe version of the woman was functionally nothing outside of the fact that she could sort of recall her showing up in one of the novels.

“You really have no idea how much this pisses me off.” She muttered as she stared at the unconscious woman’s face, trying really hard to ignore just how hot the Japanese woman was given how very much not the time this was for those sorts of feelings.

“It was a simple plan.” She continued, the stress of everything enough to leave her all but ranting at this point. “Tie you up, figure out melding, then rip everything I might need about who you work for out of your head before killing you. At which point I’d go kill them, steal everything not wielded down, and then try to fuck off from this shithole of a universe to the sane one.” 

“The last part is kind of skipping from step E to step Z I’ll admit.” She conceded, her only real lead on that goal being Smiley's genius or the Enterprise-A that Discovery had somehow had end up in the Prime universe. “But fuck if I care at this point.”

“And now I can't do any of that, because you're someone who's actually important.”

She was fully aware that wasn't a healthy way to be looking at people, but she felt she could be forgiven for it this once given she'd just lost the closest thing she'd ever had to a big sister.

“She'd be mocking me so hard right now if your friends hadn't killed her.” Rain began, lowering her voice a couple octaves before continuing. “Just because you've suddenly realized how awkward it is to have an attractive woman unconscious and restrained, is no excuse for not stripping her down to make sure she doesn't have any hidden weapons.”

“Well guess what!?” She went on, back in her normal voice. “It really is!”

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It in fact had been very awkward, and then gotten several levels more so upon reaching the young woman's underclothes and discovering she was apparently a member of the sarashi school, since those were unfortunately spacious enough that she'd had to cut them off to check underneath.

A caution that had proved itself entirely valid upon the discovery of some type of memory metal dagger like weapons hidden under and within the various wraps.

So now she was waiting for Keiko to wake up from the stun, while doing her level best not to stare at the young woman laid out in Klingon bondage gear wearing only the far too large leather corset and panties she'd found in Jel'ang's closet.

The restraints rattled slightly as Keiko suddenly tensed, a likely sign she was awake given that so far the young Japanese woman had been the very model of unmoving while unconscious.

“I know you're awake.” Rain told her, doubting it would get a response but feeling the need to try anyway given that this whole situation was already making her cringe enough as it was.

A full minute passed with no response before with a sigh Rain grabbed the pain stick she had also found in Jel'ang's closet and prodded Keiko briefly on the bare foot with it.

The human woman's eyes shot open as a silent whimper echoed out from between gritted teeth, a respectable effort given Rain knew that even at its lowest setting a Klingon pain stick was the equivalent for a human of being struck with a cattle prod.

“Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Rain began, fighting back the urge to smack herself for using such an obvious villain line. “The easy way is you tell me who sent you to attack House Palkar and where those people are holed up. At which point I will run off to either kill them or die trying, as is the typical Klingon response in situations like this.”

The Asari waited a moment to see if Keiko would respond to that, only to let out a sigh when her only response was a rage filled glare.

“The hard way.” Rain continued, patting the pain stick for emphasis. “Involves me spending however long it takes using various creative means to make you want to tell me who sent you to attack House Palkar and where those people are holed up, at which point I will run off to either kill them or die trying, as again is the typical Klingon response.”

The scorn filled look Keiko shot Rain at that suggestion was more than a little disheartening given the Asari wasn't really sure how long she would be able to stomach actually torturing someone if it came down to it. 

“Tell you what.” Rain added in when no further response from Keiko was forthcoming. “I'll sweeten the deal with option one by not handing you over to the Alliance.”

A minute of silence passed between them, and then Rain poked Keiko with the pain stick again. Only to visibly cringe at the scream that issued forth from the woman's mouth, something Keiko apparently caught given the smirk that flashed across her face.

“Well fuck.” Rain muttered with a tired sigh. “You've realized it's highly likely you can just out last me.”

Getting up, she walked over to stand directly next to the restrained woman.

“But that's really not going to end however it is you might be thinking. Because you see, option two, it was because I really wanted to avoid option three.”

With that she made a beckoning motion with one of her hands, and the chair she had just gotten out of was surrounded with a mass effect field and slowly lifted up before floating over to her.

“Which is that I rip the information I need from your mind with my psychic powers.”

She gave Keiko a friendly smile as the chair set down, taking note of the fact the defiant look on the Japanese woman's face had been replaced with one of actual fear.

“So what will it be?” Rain asked with that same pleasant smile plastered on her face as she sat down.

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Stardate 29360.8 - May 12,  2352 - 01:16:00

Standing across the street from the twenty story tall building partially hidden in the shadows, Rain was fully willing to admit she might have overestimated her chances of actually fighting her way directly through everyone involved in this.

And fuck if she was willing to pull a Spike Spiegel and try a suicide run to the top floor, even if the Real Folk Blues was now stuck playing on a loop in her head.

“You know it's funny.” She offered to the night sky as she stared at the obvious yakuza-like guards standing around the ground floor of the building. “I told the Klingon guards I was leaving for blood vengeance, and they just wished me luck. I even asked about collateral damage, and do you know what they said?”

“It doesn't matter so long as it's to Terrans, and I gotta say, that's a respectable lack of care that I'm fully willing to take advantage of.”

Laughing quietly to herself, she held her hands out in front of herself, concentrating as she did upon her biotics. Dark energy began leaking off her body as she did, and a compressed sphere containing dozens of transecting mass effect fields formed between her cupped hands.

Then she compressed them and added more, repeating the process again and again over the course of at least a minute until she had a beach ball sized mass of destruction held back only by her rapidly failing will.

“Kamehameha bitches.” She whispered as she released the sphere, taking an inordinate amount of joy in watching it plow through the transparent aluminum windows of the ground floor before vanishing from her sight.

A single second passed.

And then a roughly sixty meter radius sphere of the building vanished as the matter it was made of was torn apart at the molecular level.

She turned and ran, the sound of the entire structure collapsing in on itself under its own weight, her only accompaniment as the entire area seemed to come alive.

“The body, and then the head.” Rain muttered to herself as she passed the three block mark, slowing down to take a long and deep drink from the raktajino filled thermos she had brought along.

The alien stimulant hit her rapidly flagging system like a shot of adrenaline to the chest, though she knew from experience she'd be feeling the cost double when it wore off fully.

Continuing towards her second destination, Rain could make out the faroff form of Klingon hovercraft already on their way towards her sudden demolition project. A completely expected occurrence given the Asari doubted even their sensors could have missed that large of a gravitic discharge.

But that could be future Rain's problem, because present Rain had just discovered that, contrary to what a number of hollywood productions on her original world had tried to tell her, revenge did in fact make you feel better about a loss.

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Author’s Notes: Poor Rain, she’s reached the point of the grieving process where she takes a woman captive, strips them naked, locks them up in bondage gear, and then burns down their childhood home. Wait… What do you mean that’s not actually a part of the grieving process?