Dr. Lexi T'Perro darted her eyes back to her datapad as Sara Ryder sauntered out of the medbay. She has finally recovered enough from her injuries to be allowed discharge, after her previous disastrous encounter with the Kett. Sara was carried onto the Tempest on a stretcher, and had spent an entire day unconscious while Lexi examined her injuries and patched her up with medigel.
Lexi rushed to check out Ryder's injuries upon learning of it, and quickly fixed up her broken jaw with some surgery. She carefully patched up a few deep gashes in the Pathfinder's left calf with medigel, where the wraith had sunk its claws. At this rate she is getting herself injured, we are going to run out of medigel soon, Lexi thought. I'll need to discuss with her about her recklessness in combat when she's awake.
Sara had smirked when she finally regained conscious in the medbay. She grumbled about the thick bandages that Lexi had swathed her in. "Doc, I look like a walking Christmas present," she joked. The Pathfinder then proclaimed that she was feeling fine, and insisted on being discharged. "Tell me how you got injured like this," Lexi pressed. Sara looked confused. "I was trying to free my left leg from a wraith, then…"she trailed off. After staring into space for a moment, Ryder shook her head sheepishly, "Sorry doc, I simply cannot remember anything after that. Then I woke up and find myself all wrapped up by you." As Ryder finished her sentence, she began smirking impishly again.
Lexi's forehead crinkled and ignored the Pathfinder's obvious attempt to flirt with her. Sara's physical injuries would heal just fine, her handiwork ensured that. What worried her was that Sara could not remember any details about how she got injured. Repeated questioning brought no further results, and Ryder seems to be getting more fidgety by the minute. Seeing that Ryder was unwilling to lie down on the bed properly and insisting that she should be up and about, Lexi gave the Pathfinder a shot of sedative to put her to sleep while she figured out what happened during the battle by talking to Peebee and Jaal.
Lexi decided to start with Peebee. She had to keep knocking loudly for several minutes before finally hearing shuffling footsteps from the other side of the door of the escape pod room. Peebee gave her an extremely annoyed look when she finally opened the door. "What do you want?!"
Lexi tried to remain calm and asked about what happen to Ryder, but Peebee refused to respond to her questions. Instead, Peebee slammed the door of the escape pod room in her face, and yelled at her to bugger off with threats to use Poc to zap the ends of her crest. Lexi could almost swore to herself that she heard sniffing from behind the door as she stormed off, shaking her head at Peebee's antics. Immature as usual, Lexi thought. Wonder what Ryder actually sees in her. Lexi quickened her pace to look for Jaal in the common room.
Jaal was hesitant to divulge about what happened to Ryder at first, knowing that the good doctor sometimes tries too hard controlling Ryder's health, from giving her advice on yoga poses to dietary recommendations. Ryder had complained to him and Peebee about the doctor's nagging emails while driving around in the Nomad more than once.
"The Pathfinder could have sustained serious brain damage. If you don't want to be responsible for having a hand in causing permanent disability to her, I strongly suggest you tell me what actually happened during the fight, right now," Lexi warned in a threatening tone. Jaal threw his hands up, and revealed that Sara had been mauled in the calf by a wraith, then slammed face-first into the ground by a fiend while trying to free herself from the wraith, due to failing to use her jump jets to avoid the fiend's massive paw in time. She was knocked out instantly, and it took him luring the fiend as bait and Peebee furiously firing her pistol at the fiend for almost five minutes before they managed to take it out. Lexi chided them for failing to properly protect the Pathfinder, and that it had resulted in Ryder having a broken jaw, a concussion, and being knocked out cold while Peebee radioed the Tempest for an evacuation. Due to their carelessness, Kallo had to do an emergency landing to allow Peebee and Jaal to carry the unconscious Pathfinder back on board. Jaal shook his head ruefully at the news.
Lexi was pacing back and forth in the medbay repeatedly. She considered melding with the Pathfinder to check if there were any serious holes in her memories, but quickly decided against it. It's probably… not professional for me to do that, a voice in Lexi's head whispered quietly. As much as she wanted to get close, she was afraid of harming the Pathfinder, afraid of history repeating itself. "Don't get too close, Lexi T'Perro," she berated herself. She considered finding Peebee, but that self-centred lass probably would not help, as she is too busy with her own projects. After deliberating for a while, Lexi decided to get the AI to check out Ryder's brain functions. As much as she distrusted the AI, perhaps it could be useful in situations like this, seeing how it can manipulate the human Pathfinder's vital signs. "Sam? Could you please check the Pathfinder's neurological system for any signs of damage?"
Sam detected that Ryder's concussion was not serious, and she was fit enough to be discharged the next day. Lexi spent the night watching over the sleeping Pathfinder. As Ryder exited the medbay the next day, Lexi stared hard at her datapad, reminding herself of all the reasons she have to stay away from Ryder. She is young, impulsive, smirks too much, naïve and too trusting. But she is also kind, responsible, carries herself well, tries her best to help everyone, and… pretty. Stop harbouring thoughts about the Pathfinder, Lexi, she scolded herself again.
As Lexi continued staring at her datapad, her thoughts drifted back to the time she was back at the Milky Way, on Omega. Her father was regularly injured while working in his job, and she quickly learnt to patch him up, which eventually led her being a doctor. But her real interest was in alien anatomy, and she spent her university years learning about known alien species, including a few dissections. Her work led her to become an authority on alien anatomy among her peers, and she earned a reputation for helping out the hospital in Omega for treating patients of various species.
However, her Turian father was a bouncer, and her mother was a housewife, which means they did not have much to live on, let alone pay for her university fees. Despite holding down a hospital job after she graduated, Lexi struggled to pay off her student loans due to the steep interest rates it carried, as she had borrowed credits illegally from various loan sharks to pay her school fees. Desperate to pay off her debts to allow her aging father to retire, she dived into research to create a product that would sell well in the black market.
After countless nights of painstaking research, she managed to come up with a facial gel that would enhance the beauty of her own race, from notes she gathered in her old university days about Asari anatomy, and various ingredients from the Extranet. It involved some complicated gene modification ingredients that allowed an Asari to make her face prettier by Asari standards, and with Lexi's knowledge of Asari anatomy, she managed to put together the gel, dubbed "Azure Facial Gel". Lexi knew that the maiden dancers in Omega bars would gladly pay a good price for one of these gels, which would allow them to attract more customers to watch them perform and tip, and in turn, earn more credits.
Lexi first tested the gel on herself, and saw that it had an effect on her, giving her face a smoother complexion, and caused the scales on her face to dry out much less. This caused less peeling, and she thought it would be a good selling point as well. She sent some vials of the gel to a few friends who were willing to test it out, and received nothing but good reviews. With the incentive of free gel and the help of a few of her university friends, she managed to gather a sizable interest in her facial gel before she launched it in the black market.
On the first day when Azure Facial Gel "unofficially" launched on the black market, it was a hit. The gel was quickly sold out, due to the overwhelmingly positive testimonies from her friends. As more Asaris bought the gel and benefitted from the effects, word of mouth soon spread like wildfire and Lexi managed to build a base of loyal customers. The gel even got orders from the Asari homeworld of Thessia and several Asari colony planets, and Lexi heard that even the famed Commando Sarissa Theris was using her facial gel. Credits quickly rolled in and Lexi managed to pay off all of her student loans and allowed her father to retire from his physically demanding job.
However, six months later, Lexi woke up to continuous beeping from her omnitool. To her shock, she saw a flood of emails from her friends demanding an explanation and threatening to sue her for what she did to them. Confused, Lexi read through the emails, all of which complained that they had been afflicted with genetic damage due to the usage of her Azure Facial Gel, and demanding that she came down to help them reverse the effects immediately. Setting up a meeting point on her warehouse on Omega, Lexi quickly scanned through her blueprint and notes related to the gel, and decided that she could not find the problem in them. She needed to see them in person before she could diagnose what happened to them, since she did not feel any adverse effects from using the gel herself.
When her friends finally gathered at the warehouse a few hours later, Lexi was shocked to see that all her friends had the same face as her. Her eyes, her face shape, her nose, and her lips. There were some initial confusion as to who the real Lexi T'Perro was, but they eventually managed to sort it out. Her friends demanded an explanation from her and threatened to sue her and throw her in Asari prison for the rest of her life.
Horrified, Lexi quickly began to attempt to figure where she had gone wrong. She figured that it must had something to do with her genes. Promising a cure within a month, Lexi rushed back to her apartment to try to synthesize a cure quickly. Her friends had used her gel as her experimental users, after she assured them that it would work as intended and not have any side effects. They were the first few users of the gel, and Lexi felt a chill go down her spine as she counted the number of customers she had, and how much the usage of Azure Facial Gel had spread. Within two months, she would have hordes of angry Asari customers from every planet demanding her blood.
She had used her own genes to build a base to test for the genetic modification part of the ingredients during the creation of the gel, and removed her gene testing base from the final product. Checking through all the ingredients of the gel multiple times, she could not figure how she could have caused the gel to react with a gene that she had removed from the commercial version of the gel. Frustrated, Lexi got onto the medical section of the Extranet to search for any potential culprits in her ingredients.
"Lilacberry leaf essence…" Lexi muttered to herself exhaustedly. She had spent the last three days researching on every single ingredient in her facial gel. Dozing off, a loud video ad began to blast at full volume as Lexi's head hit the volume button, accidently unmuting her terminal. Jumping up in shock, Lexi rubbed her bloodshot eyes and forced herself to continue reading through the description of the plant. She had went through most of the main Extranet sites, but none had any information regarding a problem with gene manipulation with the any of the ingredients. She was searching through the more obscure sites for any information that could be helpful.
A description of the plant she was reading about caught her eye. The rare Lilacberry plant is native to the Asari homeworld of Thessia. The leaves of this plant are traditionally used to create facial masks as it has an effect of moisturizing the skin. According to the Asari geneticist Benezia T'Soni, the Lilacberry leaf, when mixed with Gooseroot Puffball spores, has a rare chance of absorbing genetic information of an Asari. The spores of the mutated Gooseroot Puffball would rapidly affect all other Gooseroot Puffball fungi. It is recommended to destroy all the affected speciments of the fungi to prevent any unwanted side effects.
Lexi was horrified by what she read. In order to save costs for creating the facial gel, she had bought a small specimen of both the Lilacberry plant seeds and Gooseroot Puffball spores, and grew them in her laboratory where she experimented on and created the gel. The Gooseroot Puffball spores she used during the initial testing must have spread airborne and contaminated the rest of the fungi she was growing. Seeing that there was no known cure for this condition, Lexi decided to fly to Thessia to the House of T'Soni to try to find Benezia T'Soni, and enlist her help in getting a cure for her accident.
Due to the long list of appointments Matriarch Benezia has with her associates, Lexi had to wait almost two weeks before having a chance to meet the Matriarch herself. She was invited to the guest room of a huge mansion, and tea was prepared while she tried to explain the situation to the Matriarch.
"My dear child, I have stopped being a geneticist for hundreds of years. I probably would not be able to catch up on all the latest advancements in genetic manipulation and therapy in the recent years, given how much has changed since then. My daughter Liara has set her heart on digging ruins, and she does not know anything about genetic studies. I am afraid I cannot be of much help. However, you are welcome to stay in my library and go through all my old notes on my studies, if it would help you."
Lexi thanked the Matriarch for her help, and spent the next month in the T'Soni library, pouring through all the research notes the former geneticist kept from centuries back. However, there seemed to be no sign of a solution for her problem. She was getting afraid of picking up calls from her omnitool as days dragged by into weeks, and ended up avoiding all incoming calls entirely. Worried that her family might get into trouble because of her, she decided to return to Omega.
When her ship docked on Omega after her month long hiatus, Lexi was greeted by thugs who were obviously waiting for her. "Dr. Lexi T'Perro? The Omega wishes to speak to you," a Batarian growled at her in a low voice. Lexi was terrified, but she decided to follow them anyway to see what Aria T'Loak wanted from her.
The Omega had a scowl on her face as she watched her subordinates approach with the terrified-looking doctor. She motioned for Lexi to sit down on her couch, and drew closer towards Lexi. Lexi held her breath.
"T'Perro? I heard you have been selling some Azure Facial Gel on my turf recently, and caused serious genetic damage to the face of some of my best dancers and warriors. Your actions are costing me my business. How do you intend to pay for that?"
Lexi did not dare to breathe the air out of her lungs. "I don't know… ", she started. Aria cocked her head back, and crossed her arms, "Luckily for you, I have secured compensation of credits for your action from a kind donor with the initials BT. Councillor Tevos came to plead for mercy for you as well, so I'll let you side this time. I want you to disappear from Omega by tomorrow. Just remember you owe me, Lexi."
Lexi breathed a sigh of relief as she scurried out of Afterlife. Packing her belongings and begging her parents to come with her, they boarded a ship to Tamaris, where she remained for the next fifty odd years, trying to find a cure for her facial gel.
That was, until, Aria summoned her back to Omega. Using the campaign slogan of "New Galaxy New Cure" to entice the Asaris, she was forcibly signed up for the Andromeda Initiative along with all the Asaris she had afflicted with the facial genetic disorder. They were sent packing to explore a new system outside the Milky Way, courtesy of Tevos. Lexi was thrilled, and was grateful for the opportunity to return from her exile…
Snapping back to reality, Lexi turned off the display of her datapad. Perhaps Peebee was right in stating that she looks at people like they are experiment subjects. Even though she cared for Ryder more than she would like to admit, she wouldn't risk hurting the Pathfinder.
Next time we dock on the Nexus, I could really use a drink. Or a bottle, or two. Lexi thought as she turned her attention onto the survey she had put together to evaluate crew members' mental wellbeing.