A/N: Just a little something I've had thunking around in my head for a long, long, long while. If anyone has any suggestions or anything let me know. Enjoy!
In the beginning there was only 12. She came into the world a smeet, small and frail. Her skin was pale, her body hairy, and she was made mostly of hydraulic acid. She was not Irken in the least bit, not even vaguely Irkenoid. No, she was a creation, a clone of an entirely different species thought to be long since gone.
She was created from saliva left on a sucky cup taken from a garbage can on Foodcourtia. Her DNA donor was a man who was known by many as simply "The Doctor". A doctor of what nobody knew. Nobody knew much about him except for what he was. He traveled the universe in a blue box stopping when a place caught his fancy. He did not go unnoticed, even in the part of the universe controlled by the Irken empire.
The original plan was to capture him, take him and the female he was travelling with away for study. They didn't make it though so they had to settle for the next best thing, their DNA. From the genes isolated as the males they extracted a sequence, the sequence, of that fabled race known as the Time Lords.
From the female they extracted vastly inferior DNA which was largely of no use to them. Originally they were thought to be mates of some sort and their DNA was combined to make the being. After the first five failures they thought that this wasn't a good idea. Their next three clones were male and did not last very long. Death followed the beings and the project was shelved for almost two eras before being started again. Five tries after that they got their most stable, most perfect clone. 12.
Of course at this point pak technology could keep an Irken alive for twice as long as was naturally possible. In her genes she hid the secret of immortality but it was a secret which the Irken's wanted but did not need. The Control brains said that they did not need this. The next plan was to clone a race of super soldiers which could regenerate during a battle. This was just not cost effective. Besides, the control brains could just create more Irkens if people were not up to the task of breeding enough soldiers. With nothing to do with her she was brought into the empire as an assimilated being; during this time such things were still possible.
She went on to become a military inventor, like most assimilated beings. She spent some time on Vort before transferring to Military Research Base/Snack Bar 21. It was there that she met Dak.
Dak was not a particularly interesting person. He was born to layer Maroon and Fertilizer Zell as one of four smeets. He was raised in an educational facility like most Irkens of the past few generations. He was fitted with a pak shortly after birth like all Irkens and that was that. Most parents didn't mate for life and raise their offspring, not anymore. Not so near the heart of the empire, anyway. There were some fringe groups far away that protested the way the empire was going and chose to live apart. Pakless Irkens they were called.
Dak was not pakless. Dak was not tall. Dak was not a genius or anything like that. When it became clear that he was not going to get very tall he went into the military. Tall or short nobody threatened someone authorized to use a planetary destroyer unit. It was during his second round of training that he met 12.
He trained as a soldier at first, as any Irken entering the military was. it was there that he met 12. She was part of a group of assimilated aliens, all Vortians. Vortians may have been ugly with their big horns and blue skin but she was completely unlike anything he had ever seen before, and therefor hideous. He skin was pale and blotchy, her eyes were white with a pupil and iris, and she had rust color hair sheered close to her head. Oh, and later on he found out that she was made of hydraulic acid. No wonder she was stuck with the Vortians.
Still, she was fascinating. He had never, ever seen an alien like her. He had never even seen something like her in an information file. He needed to figure her out. So he bothered her, and bothered her, and bothered her. Eventually she caved in and told him all about her disgusting guts. It took almost and era but they became friends. Well, as much friends as an Irken and a…whatever she was could ever possibly be friends.
They grew up and worked together designing weapons to reign doom upon the heads to the enemies of the Irken Empire. For a time it was good. Time went by quickly for them during the good times. Nothing, however, could last forever.