Blankness. Peace. Vague gray shapes, non-threatening, and not always there. Dreams, flitting about, some that he remembered, others that he only caught wisps of, that faded in the grogginess of wakefulness. Someone calling his name.
Shinji.
Wakefulness. The world was shaking. No, someone was shaking him...
Shinji.
"Shinji...!"
He blinked sleepily, and a familiar face came into focus. Short messy blue hair wreathed a pale oval face. Crimson eyes blinked expectantly.
"We'll be late for school, Shinji."
He turned over, suppressing irritation.
"Just a few more minutes," he mumbled, trying to find the peaceful place he had been moments before.
"You've said that three times already," the Irritator repeated, pulling at him insistently. He turned, wracking his brain, finally settling on the course of action that almost always worked.
"Don't lean over me when you're only half-dressed," he said, glancing down. The girl promptly blushed, and pulled back, wrapping her arms around herself protectively and pouting slightly. Her mouth opened and closed.
"When are you going to get over that sister-complex of yours?" she finally asked, turning and walking stiffly out of the room. It wasn't quite a stalk, but it was close. He breathed a sigh of relief, and turned over, pulling the covers over his head, to catch a few more minutes of sleep. He jumped at a soft weight on the covers.
"On the other hand," a voice cooed into his ear, "maybe you're not the only one with a complex." Arms wound their way around his neck, and he stiffened.
"R-Rei!" he squeaked, "what're you-" He looked up to see her laughing eyes as she smoothly got up and turned to go.
"Well, at least you're awake," she said, not looking back. He blushed, hiding his frustration, among other things. There was no point trying to sleep now. Smothering a yawn, he stumbled out of bed and into the hallway.
"Morning, sleepyhead!"
He tried to squirm away as Yui brushed a hand through his hair as she breezed by. She was immaculate, sickeningly so, for how early it was. Nine AM early. "Hurry up, or you won't have time for breakfast."
"Mom, I'll eat as I walk..."
"That's unhealthy, Shinji, you know that!" She tut-tutted a she turned a corner. "You should sit down, relax a bit before school. That way, you-" The lecture continued, but diminished in volume as she continued on to the kitchen. He continued his usual morning routine in the bathroom, washing his face amidst an incessant beating on the door.
"Rei...!" Yui's distant voice, chastising his younger sister. He smiled, and rinsed off his face slowly. "Cut it out!"
"But mom...!" Rei's voice took on a subtle whine. "I've got to finish getting ready, and he's hogging the bathroom!"
"Use the other one," Yui's distant voice answered.
"But all my stuff is in this one!"
Shinji took his time and enjoyed the small victory. They were few and far between, he being the older and she the younger, and a sister on top of that.
Five minutes later, he stepped out of the bathroom, and she somehow wriggled past him before he had even left the doorway. He felt the rush of air as she slammed the door, and couldn't suppress a chuckle.
"Jerk," she hissed through the closed door. She must have heard his laugh. Shinji gathered his book bag from his room, lunch from the counter, and breakfast from the table, and trudged his way past the kitchen.
"Oh, stop looking so down," Yui said, pinning him down and kissing him on cheek. "It's not that early, and you know it!" She pulled back, a gentle smile on her face, her hands on his shoulders as he squirmed away.
"Mom, stop," he protested weakly.
"Have you got everything?" she asked.
"Yeah, of course, why do you always ask?" he answered automatically, mentally checking off everything. "Oh, wait, my homework!" he dropped everything, dashed back to his room, and retrieved the necessary item, returning and stuffing it in his book bag.
"There, aren't you glad I asked?" she said cheerfully. He grimaced, finally allowing a half-grin to show the ruefulness he felt.
"Thanks mom," he said, pausing a moment to hug her with one arm as he passed.
"Now mister, is that all I mean to you?" she looked at him archly, and he wavered for a moment. Yui smiled, confirming that she'd been pulling his leg. "Go on, you'll be late," she said, turning to go into the living room. He walked over and hugged her.
"I love you, mom." She looked over her shoulder at him, then turned and hugged him back.
"Well, what brought this on?" she murmured, brushing a hand through his hair. He turned and slipped from her embrace, jogging for the door.
"Bye mom!" he called over his shoulder.
"Shinji, your breakfast! And your book bag...!" she called after him. He turned, backtracking and retrieving the items as Yui continued into the living room.
"Dear," she said, directing her attention to her husband, who was firmly ensconced in his paper, and was slowly eating his breakfast. "You'll be late."
"Hm?" he made a brief glancing motion in her direction. "Sure, Yui."
"You've already said that three times," Yui answered, her eyes narrowing. She reached over, pulling the newspaper down a few inches. "Mister Ikari?"
His eyes lowered the few inches she had lowered the paper, still following the story he was reading.
"Sure, Yui," he repeated.
Shinji was about to turn to go when his sister brushed by him. A faint smell of lavender passed with her. He suddenly found himself nearly pulled off his feet and dragged through the door. She had looped an arm through his and had not even slowed down.
"Bye, kids!" Yui called.
"Bye, mom!" Rei answered, as Shinji tried to catch his wind, and his footing. He regained both, and pulled together the shreds of his dignity, settling into the cool-guy walk that most boys his age tried to perfect. In this case, one hand in pocket, the other hanging loose, book bag appearing to be almost an afterthought, slung on haphazardly. Rei's gait beside his was dynamic, the flitting fly to his slow mosquito buzz. First on one side of him, then on the other, at one moment, an arm looped through his, the next moment shying away from him as if he were the plague, and all the while complaining.
"Really," she said, "what were you doing in there? It doesn't take you a long time in the bathroom, I know it doesn't." She reached over and mussed up his hair. He didn't flinch, or try to fix it. "It wasn't your hair, you just ran a comb through that." She sniffed delicately. "Aren't you going to fix it?" she asked.
"Don't care," he mumbled.
"What if I were to untuck your shirt?" she asked, tugging half of it out, where it blew loosely in the wind.
"Don't care," he repeated tiredly. She bounced to his other side, pulling the lunch sack from his loose grasp.
"What if I took your lunch?"
"Don't care," he said again, hiding his irritation.
"You've got money for a school lunch, don't you?" she asked, her eyes narrowing. "Did dad give it to you? Or was it from your part-time job?"
He ignored the interrogation, letting her believe what she wanted, and smiling a little.
"C'mon, answer me...!" she insisted, latching onto his arm again, as if trying to pull the answer from him by force. He said nothing, and didn't try to push her away. This eventually worked, and she settled down for the long walk to school. After half minute or so she reached over and took his hand, looking at him for a moment. He glanced at her, and squeezed her hand. Mutual forgiveness now out of the way, they continued walking.
Shinji glanced back once, and saw his mother standing on the balcony of their apartment, five stories up. She waved, the motion barely visible this far away. He didn't wave back, knowing she probably wouldn't see it, and not wanting to do anything that might set Rei off again.
He didn't look back after that, and a few minutes later their line of sight was broken by intervening buildings. He didn't see When Yui dropped her hand, her smile fading slowly. He didn't hear the clanking, which slowly grew in volume, soon accompanied by whines of micro-machinery, and moving parts.
A man entered the Ikari family household living room, or what used to be a man. An infestation of black tubes covered various parts of his body, and his pale gray skin was mostly covered by a black material that was dull and shiny at the same time. One arm terminated in a vicious looking scissor-drill-like combination, while the other appeared to be a mostly-human-like hand. Mechanical and biological flowed together almost seamlessly, making it hard to tell where the man ended and the machine began.
Gendo did not even give any indication that he knew anything was out of the ordinary, and kept reading his newspaper. Yui turned her head and looked at the newcomer, her eyes blinking rapidly for a few seconds. Then she turned, and again looked out towards where Shinji had disappeared down the street. The man-machine turned as if on cue, and clanked away. Perhaps that moment of eye contact had heralded a complex exchange of information. To an outsider, there would be no way to tell without the proper scanning devices.
Almost idly, Yui walked over to an otherwise blank, featureless section of wall, and waved her hand over it. Opaque white turned midnight black, forming a large rectangular view-screen. She watched as myriad white lines etched themselves onto the blackness, a flowing spiderweb of interconnections. It was dense in places, like nodes in a complex web, and thinned out at the edges. The screen moved up and to the left, into one of the sparser areas, zooming in. A blinking dot of yellow became visible, slowly traveling along one of the spiderweb-thin lines, heading out towards an area that was nearly blank of lines.
The view zoomed in until the single white line took up the entire screen, and slowly the blinking dot of light resolved itself into a tiny square of gray, which grew until it too filled most of the screen. Complex interconnecting structures and beams made up a giant cube, which flew along a tunnel of white. Illusion of movement was created by changes in the intensity of the light, and by regular gray shapes that whizzed by at intervals.
A giant cube traveled through a tunnel of light, slowly approaching its destination.
The bridge was a smoothly buzzing machine, everything ticking along at the proper pace, a controlled meltdown, just the way it was supposed to be. Captain Christopher Zimmerman looked around in satisfaction, then yawned noisily, stretching his feet out from where he sat in the command chair of the cozy little bridge.
'Straight-Shot' Zimmerman to his crew, at least out of his earshot, that is, was anything but a straight shot, making the name more ironic than accurate. Maybe that was how he got it. His tactics and choice of course were usually more crooked than one of Darkseid's Eraser Beams, but he had a reputation for getting the job done, and his way of doing things perfectly meshed with the scouting role. Thus, he had been given Captainship of a Sabre-Class Light Destroyer and had been shipped out and assigned to the new Seventh Fleet, home of one of Star Fleet's newest Admirals, one who was, and would become even more, famous for straightening out possible 'problem-officers'.
"Well, Cap, we're coming up on the next scheduled course change," The ship's XO said, giving a subtle reminder to his Captain, who gave all the appearance of just having woken up from a nap.
"Hnnh?" Zimmerman looked questioningly at his First Officer for a moment. "That so?" The man did not respond to the obvious bait. "Well then," The Captain shook himself, sitting up and looking over to Navigation.
"Trance, anything diddling your sensors over there?"
Lieutenant Theresa Terrance Garcia looked up in consternation.
"N-No sir," she replied, clearing her throat softly and rechecking her instruments quickly. The Captain had quickly pounced on her middle name, giving her the unofficial call-sign 'Trance' which the rest of the crew cemented to her with some eagerness. Many in the crew had wondered why the Captain would choose so straightlaiced an officer, even going to far as to request her specifically, when he was known for being so lax himself. It was one of many conundrums that made up the odd Captain Zimmerman.
"No sir," she said confidently, after another few moments. "Nothing abnormal on the sensors."
"Good," Zimmerman said, turning in dismissal of any further input from the stiff Lieutenant, who glanced at him out of the corner of her eye disapprovingly, before returning to her precious sensors. "Well, in that case, let's-" The man's next words were drowned out by the crash of something impacting the hull of the ship, and the sudden whooping of the Red Alert siren.
"Report!" Zimmerman barked out, hanging onto the arms of his seat for dear life as the ship swung crazily, the inertial dampeners struggling to cancel out the sudden unexpected course changes. The Captain looked back over at Theresa, who was bent over her control panel, somehow glued to her seat with no seeming effort on her part at all.
He waited, knowing that she would speak when she had all the variables and information gathered and parsed in her mind, and when she spoke, it would be with absolute authority. It was for this reason he had requested her. Other Captains had overlooked her in their reviews, choosing to ignore her eidetic memory and quick analytical brain to focus on how withdrawn she was with the other crew. Most Captains wanted a Nav officer who got along with her crew-mates, but Zimmerman knew how special Theresa was, if she was treated right, and he saw to it that she was.
"Massive subspace anomaly almost directly on top of our previous location, sir!" she said sharply, as the helmsman regained the ship's attitude control, and brought her back to an even heading. "It's..." She did a double-take of her readings. "-impossible," she whispered. Zimmerman's eyes narrowed at such a sketchy report from a usually astute officer. He held himself back from saying anything, deciding that the report said a lot in and of itself. If something had rattled Theresa, it was big indeed. Sure enough, she regained her composure and blushed. "Sorry, sir," she murmured sheepishly, even though her expression conveyed a hidden panic. "It's Borg," she said, and those two words brought the entire bridge crew to a halt for a few seconds. "It's unmistakable. A transwarp conduit opened almost on top of us."
"On screen," Zimmerman said smoothly, resisting the urge to ask her if she was sure. It would have been an insult, one she probably wouldn't forget. The main viewer dominating the front of the bridge stabilized, showing a distant gray speck. "Magnify." The speck jumped closer, and outlining a cube in stark detail. The normally bustling bridge was quiet. "Evasive!" Zimmerman snapped, "Any heading! Maximum warp!"
"Warp drive is offline, sir!" the helmsman replied, glancing frantically at his Captain for a moment before returning to his console.
"Impulse, then," The Captain replied.
"We only have thirty-percent impulse available for-"
"Use it!" Zimmerman snapped. "Shields?"
"Inoperative-!" the Tactical officer replied, her slim hands dancing over the flat panel before her. The Borg ship grew larger, dominating the screen. The ship buffeted again, causing the screen to fuzz for a moment, before it settled down again. There was no way to tell if the impact had been weapons fire or something else.
Zimmerman froze. It wasn't pleasant, and he knew he would remember it for the rest of his life. Coming straight at him was a vessel that even a Sovereign Class Battleship would have to be wary of, and he was in a piddling scoutship. Solutions danced in his head, fragments whirling around.
Rotating shield modulations. Phasers on variable settings, ready to be readjusted at a moments' notice. Do we even have any Transphasic torpedoes in our stocks? Undoubtedly not. A Saber Class could only hold thirty Photon Torpedoes, and a Transphasics were energy hogs. The Borg had been silent for over three years, and Starfleet had slowly stepped down from their alert status.
Sure, the big ships carried a few Photon Torpedoes already converted over to Transphasics, because the conversion process was time intensive, so it was useless to try doing it in the middle of battle, but those torpedoes were only effective against the basic Borg power source, which was far different from the power generators on the other ships of the Alpha Quadrant. Any Transphasic Torpedoes were essentially insurance, taking up valuable space in the cargo hold of the ship that carried them.
The Borg ship loomed closer, and the ship rocked violently. He imagined he saw the Cube slowing, preparing to turn and rend his ship to pieces. A single tractor pulse, and it would all be over, especially with no shields.
"I've got shields!" the Tactical Officer cried triumphantly, as if on cue. "Thirty percent and holding!" The ship bucked like a schooner in a storm. "Twenty three percent...!"
Zimmerman could practically count the steel frames and girders that made up the Cube, and then it was gone, and the ship settled onto a stable course once more. He blinked once, then twice.
"Reverse viewer," he said, his calm voice belying the roil of emotions in his gut. A moment, and the viewer showed a gray speck getting smaller.
"We were caught in its wake, sir," Theresa said, her voice holding bemusement. She glanced up from her control panel, now that the situation had calmed enough for it, and looked at him with a small grin. "That ship had to have been overloading its impulse engines, for us to get caught like that."
"Huh. Wonder where it was going in such a hurry," the XO said, his voice slightly awed. "Should we pursue?"
"Hell no," Zimmerman answered automatically, then amended himself. "This kind of thing is exactly what Admiral Picard would want to know about. We'll return to the fleet and give a report." Normally a Captain didn't have to explain himself to his crew, and often the situation was balanced on a razor's edge, and explanation would take up valuable time, but in this instance, Zimmerman was overly conscious of his inner cowardice of a moment ago, even if the crew didn't know about it, and so he explained.
A/N: Yeahhh, I'm pretty sure I'm the first to do a Yui-as-Borg-Queen scenario, so I'll boldly go where no ffnet writer has gone before. Yes, I'm prepared for the lynching I'm sure to get for that tired pun.
This is just another off-the-cuff story to release tension while I work slowly on the main project I'm working on. Actually, this scenario is a bit exciting, I think. It's not often enough that the hero is given a bunch of power. I like giving them that, then taking it away, then giving it back, etc.
[Pakled] "We like power!" [/Pakled]
anyway, that's just me, as opposed to stringing out the hero on his last legs, and constantly making him weak. So, for all the Eva/StarTrek fans, enjoy.