Chronicle of the Guardian: Chaos Factor
By THE Xenomorph
I own only the character of Vile, Catlina Flores, the Hybrids and the Scions
Star Trek Voyager is © Paramount
Aliens vs Predator is © Fox
That Cheshire Grin
The grin seemed to glow in the dark as Janeway entered her darkened ready room.
"Not now Q..." She sighed.
"Q?" the room lit up and a young human-looking man who appeared to be in his early twenties sat in her chair, his legs crossed and propped up on her desk. He wore a simple red shirt and shorts with odd, archaic looking sandals. His grin seemed to grow wider, and oddly his teeth seemed to narrow as she made eye contact with him. "Do I look like some purveyor of cheap parlor tricks?" The smile vanished as he watched Janeway's response.
"A Tolkien reference?" Janeway rolled her eyes. "Chaos I presume?"
"Titles are so annoying aren't they?" He smirked, still maintaining his position in her chair as she approached.
"I actually like mine." Janeway glared.
"So do I." The smirk came back and quickly became Cheshire like grin, with sharp triangular looking teeth. Then like the name sake of the grin the body vanished soon followed by the laughing disembodied mouth. Then the man appeared on her couch, a plate of grapes and fruit in hand. "Rank has it's perks, no?"
"I presume you're here for a reason?" Janeway sat and glared at her unwelcome "guest".
"An offer mademoiselle, an offer." His smile grew into the malicious grin once more.
"And what offer is that?"
"You have a mighty big pest problem with the xenomorphs, and those pesky xeno sapiens. I can fix that." His eyes seemed to almost become cat-like as he stared at her.
"How?"
He stood and walked over and opened his palm. A source of light from the center of his palm sprung forth a soft light hologram. In the image were several long silvery strands in a purple-pink sea of nothingness. It focused on the strand and followed it backward to where another jutted off and seemed to coil around the first, winding itself into the world.
"That's why they're here, and if it stays unattended to, well..." He smiled darkly, his teeth normal this time. "Well, lets just say Q couldn't help you all, because he'd be dead like all of you."
"So it's infecting our world?" Janeway blinked,
"Oh yes, but I can fix it, by cutting it off at it's source." He smiled, it seemed genuine, but Janeway wasn't sure about this thing in her office.
"And Vile?" Janeway asked. "Niall?"
"Gone, not that you'd remember them. Time would go back to being... " He seemed to mull the words over. "...proper for you."
"He wouldn't exist." Janeway shook her head. "Neither would Niall, no I can't make that decision." She closed her eyes and took a breath. Why did the universe throw these things at her.
"Oh, why not, you've already toasted any form of trust with the beast." Her head snapped back to his, but he was already eye to eye with here. A full malicious and toothy grin spread across his now cartoonishly villainous face as he stared her down.
"I hated doing that." Janeway renewed her glare at the creature. "And the only beast I see here is you."
"Ohhh..." The grin became more childlike as his head morphed back to what she assumed was normal. "... you are fun!" He roared out in laughter as he jumped back onto the couch and a business suite warped around him and Janeway found herself sitting across from him.
"Now, in all seriousness, what should I do then?" He produced two cups of coffee one at her end of her table and the other in his hands, of which three more now protruded from him. Two held what looked like random paperwork and the third simply caressed his hair and was distinctly feminine.
"Why ask me?" Janeway snapped.
"Because you and your crew are the most affected." He smirked, "And you're the one in authority. The one responsible for her crew, including your now betrayed friend."
"Are you trying to make a point about that?" Janeway glared.
"No, but sometimes I need to put the white hat away and dig out the black one. Sink my fangs into something instead of lick the wound, you know?" A distinct image of a coyote chasing down a kill filled her mind as he spoke.
"So I have two options Captain..." She shuddered as the creature used Vile's voice to say "captain", "... either I can remove the offending reality or fuse it."
"What does that entail?" Janeway tried to fight off the impending feeling of terror the creature was seemingly trying to fill the room with. It didn't help that by this time he had sprouted horns and grown claws on all of his hands.
"I'm glad you asked." His eyes went black and then seemed to fill with all the stars in all the horizons. Janeway suddenly felt very small as she seemed to finally take in the depth of what sat before her. She was all at once aware of the vast number of horrible things that could happen to Voyager and it's crew and all at once aware that none of them would happen. She stared deeper into the darkness and pulled back in shock.
"What just happened?"
"You looked into the darkness and it peered back." The being smiled.
"What's the price one each of these options?" Janeway asked.
"I cut the reality away, the dead judge you when you die. Specifically the dead of your crew and the one that died aberrant in this time-line will remain dead."
"I've lost two crew since he joined."
"Carey met his destiny." The being remained neutral, but a slight vicious curl of the lip was present.
"And Death would allow that?" She asked.
"He's the one who made the deal." The curl of the lip grew.
"And the fusing?"
"Destiny takes it's course and it's price. Whatever that may be." The curled lip had now become the malicious Cheshire grin once again.
"You get something out of this either way, what is it?" Janeway asked.
"Chaos." The being roared in laughter as the cabin shook and lights flickered.
"Janeway to the bridge!" He badge chirped but nothing happened.
"Oh please, we aren't even on the ship anymore." The being laughed.
"Where are we?" Janeway snapped.
"I don't know, somewhere north of Neverland, some-when around the time of the dodo." He cackled viciously again. "No third option here Janeway, unless you like the idea of your reality being corrupted away. Time to choose, the ultimate betrayal of crew or allegiance."
"How?"
"Temporal Prime Directive ring a bell?"
"Fusing it destroys the established time line."
"I used to wonder why time went to order and I got reality. Then it hit me, order and time are established constructs. Reality and Chaos simply are." He ignored her. "Choose."
"You're a monster." Janeway snapped.
"The lives of billions yet to be or billions yet to be. Who says either path is right..."
She glared at him and was met with the hardest stone gaze she had ever seen. The silence that filled the room only lasted a few seconds but Janeway felt each one as a lifetime.
"Fuse it." She sighed.
"There..." He smiled and she saw that which was in the deepest part of the darkness come to his forefront. His form returned to the young man and he offered her a cup of coffee. "Hard choices deserve reward."
"Who the hell are you?" She wanted to snarl, but the kindness now borne in his eyes stopped her.
"Ambrose Poindexter..." He bowed, "I prefer Perfection though, or P, as my friends call me. Scion of Chaos."
With that he vanished though the much more pleasant looking grin he now bore vanished only seconds after the rest.
She sat down in her chair, looked at her coffee and then to the couch where Q now sat.
"What the hell just happened?" She asked.
"They won." Q sighed as he vanished and left a small box in his place.
Janeway wandered over to it and found a note attached to it. "Open when they become unbearable."
AN: For those that know him, this could be a shocking swerve to his usual behavior, but let me assure you Perfection is neither good nor evil, he is as he must be...
