"This will work...oh wait Johnson can't come quite yet, not until I confirm something"

"How easy will it be to confirm your suspicions?"

"Two easy tests"

"Okay let him know"

"Will do"

Ashland goes to Johnson and tells him he needs two quick tests because of something she suspected. Five minutes later she had her results

"Johnson how long have you known you're an empath?"

"I'm a what?"

Ashland could tell that he never knew and was shocked and this wasn't faked

"Wait you never knew you were reading peoples emotions?"

"No I thought I was good at reading body language but to think I was subliminally reading their emotions is a shock"

"Okay you can't go on the mission I can't have an empath going down to the planet much less an untrained empath, that's just asking for trouble"

"How do I get proper training?"

"Don't worry there are a few people that you can ask that will help you and I will give you a list before I go on the mission but first I have to tell the Captain you're off the team"

"I understand, but wait if empaths can't go why are you?"

"Easy because they'll recognize my mental pattern, it's for the safety of the other officers that I go down because Force sensitives and telepaths are also out"

"Oh okay"

"Johnson do you have any idea of who I can take to replace you?"

"No sorry, but I just don't really know that many people yet, this is actually my first assignment"

"Sorry Ensign forgot about that"

"No problem, just one question, why is my status as a hidden empath so dangerous?"

"Two reasons, for one Tanixi enhances any and all mental and emotional abilities and as such you would be overwhelmed within moments of being on the planet with all the emotions of not only the away team but also the people of the planet and right now there's major problems down there. Another is because if you can feel them they can feel you and would be able to influence you because of your untrained abilities, you don't have the mental and emotional shields needed yet to handle what they're capable of doing to a person that's trained forget untrained"

"And yet you're able to withstand them and are able to go even though you're a Force user"

(Sighs) "I'm afraid that's not entirely correct, I am not ever going to fully be able to withstand them even having been to the planet before and given training specialized to handle Tanixi, I was even given special medicines to handle whatever headache I might have while on the planet because of their mental abilities. I am in as much danger if not more than the away team because the away team won't have the problems I will have being a Starfleet Sentinel, I need to keep everyone I can safe until the crises is solved because even trained people that have mental shields will not be able to handle Tanixi in crises it enhances those abilities that much"

"But wait, I thought I was told that the reason behind that is the water the Tanixi drink"

"Yes, there are minerals in the water that enhance the abilities, the thing is part of the ritual greetings involves drinking that water either plain or in tea form so just think about it for a moment and you'll realize just how dangerous it is for telepathic and empathic people right now"

"Oh, well guess you have some research to do to get a replacement for me"

"Yes I do, though how a Betazed didn't recognize an empath is beyond me, and how did you get your abilities anyways?"

"Well as for the Betazed part I guess it is so under trained that I went undetected even by them and as for my abilities, like I said I just thought I was good at reading body language but you know I didn't start to get really good at that until after I was rescued after having been abducted when I was ten years old, when I was rescued by the police they took me to the hospital and they did several tests but nothing different about me was discovered, the only thing they really noticed was that I had been given high doses of sedatives to keep me unconscious for long periods of time to keep me cooperative because I fought them whenever I was awake unless I was eating"

"Hm okay that actually makes sense now that I think about it, now then I need to go to the Captain and explain why you're off the mission and then I think I'm going to need some holodeck time...and I have to debrief the medical crew as well and security now that I think about it unless I decide that the Captain can decide..."

Ashland leaves while still talking to herself pretty much while Johnson goes back to work. Fifteen minutes later Ashland still hadn't gone to the Captain or done anything else, mainly because she had been discovered unconscious five minutes after she had left Johnson to go back to his duties and was currently still unconscious in sickbay

"Doctor do you know what's wrong with her?"

"No, and I don't want Sentinel Soketh to check quite yet just in case he can be affected as well, oh I need to do checks on the away team as well"

"There's a slight problem with that"

"Which is what?"

"One of the members is currently unconfirmed because Portland wanted to do some tests"

"What kind of tests?"

"That's just it I don't know what tests or what the results were"

"Well guess we'd better ask him then, since we won't get anything out of Portland for now"

"And we might have to delay the mission from the Jedi Council and explain why"

"Wait, we're just going to accept orders from the Jedi when they technically have no authority over us?"

"Yes because Sentinel Portland is using her authority as the highest ranking Starfleet officer right now, which means we have to obey either the Jedi Council or the Republic Senate depending on the situation, as it is we always need to keep the Republic Senate updated on our status, just like the Jedi and Rogue Squadron did when they were in our space"

"Oh, you know we've been allies for so long but I still don't understand the intricacies of the relationship between the Republic and Federation"

"I understand some of what's going on but not everything, I think the only person who truly understands the relationship between the two is the one who started it all in the first place First Junior Sentinel Ashland Portland, the first Jedi to ever enter Starfleet, the one who lost contact with home with no way of knowing if she would ever get home again"

Suddenly they heard a voice they weren't expecting for at least another day, maybe longer depending on how long it took for Ashland to metabolize a foreign compound

"Actually Captain, the President and Chancellor both also fully understand the policies involved because they have to be fully informed so that neither side makes a mistake with the other"

"Okay, how are you awake so soon, you were given an unknown drug"

"Don't ask because even I'm not entirely sure, I shouldn't have been knocked out in the first place because I was just walking towards a turbolift to tell you that Johnson is off the team Captain"

"Why is he off the team?"

"Hidden empath that I only discovered by accident which in this case is a good thing"

"How did Betazed officers..."

"Don't know, other Sentinel's also missed it probably because not only did it happen when he was ten and abducted from his home but also because it's so underdeveloped that not many people would be able to detect the ability in him, only I could and that's probably because of my abilities as a Force Trouble indicator"

"Okay, so how were you knocked unconscious?"

"Well it's not a Federation drug and it's also not a Republic drug it feels more like...yep it's Chamomile combined with almonds and poppy, three natural sedative products that are extremely effective on me however that's only in individual doses, and while it will still knock me out when combined with either two or all three in different combos it will also poison me really quickly and my body will go into such a light Healing trance that it won't be recognized as such and will expel the products quickly in order to keep me alive so I'll only be out ten to fifteen minutes at the most, thirty if they're really lucky"

"How did you learn that those three products were especially effective on you if you never had them before you arrived in the Federation?"

"Completely by accident actually, for the chamomile the Admirals and I were simply taking a break from the debriefing one day in my first year and I was asleep within minutes of having finished my cup, I woke up sixteen hours later to concerned people and in the sickbay of the Academy. We discovered almonds by accident as well because in my second year I was eating with some classmates in a study group and had a salad with almonds which knocked me out again, but this time only for six hours but I was in the sickbay again because it was so sudden. Poppy was the last one to be discovered because I was in a medical course so that I could be certified as a field medic once more and we were being told some old remedies to calm people down that would also help people sleep, though it might take at least an hour to be fully effective and we were to try some of them to see what affect they had on us and when it was my turn for the poppy I only had one of them and I was asleep within minutes once more waking up seven hours later with the rest of the class a bit confused because since it was the middle of the day they were more relaxed but they hadn't fallen asleep like I had. After that we ran tests to see how I reacted in different combinations and that's when we discovered combining all three at once only kept me out for several minutes as a natural defense my body had to keep levels from getting toxic, I was also taught to recognize how each felt after I woke up so that I knew what had happened if I got an accidental or even purpose dose of any of the three, especially all three combined because it's so dangerous to me"

"Depending on how you combine two of them how long are you out?"

"Between ten to fifteen hours, I don't use them that often because of the fact that we also discovered that while they're really effective on me and Jedi in general as far as I know they're also slightly toxic to me so I only really use them if I want a good nights rest without drugs or once I was just wanting to relax after a shift and forgot how effective chamomile is on me and I had some chamomile tea and conked out not long after, I never use all three at once and if I do use them I rotate and only do it once a month if that"

"Okay but why not try that first if you're having a hard time sleeping because of the Force or your memories?"

They see Ashland wince and realize that she had a very valid reason one which had a back story that they probably didn't want to know anymore

"Why do I get the feeling I should have just left that alone?"

"Because of what happened the one time we tried that Doctor. You see I was on a mission where things went wrong while on summer training, and no it's not the one training exercise that went majorly wrong and we lost fifty cadets and seventy others were injured in varying degrees the senior class that came to the rescue seeing as how some of them were on a survival exercise of their own not two planets away from us and that was after we lost a third of the sophomore class and half the junior class and I myself had severe injuries. This training exercise was the summer before my senior year so I was technically considered a senior, unfortunately by the time summer training was over I wondered if I would even be alive to complete training. We were supposed to be on a simple peace mission but things happened that forced the cadets and the ship of the Boxter to make decisions that we have to live with even to this day, you see we were attacked by pirates and had to fight our way to a space that would help us. We knew we were near Klingon space so we decided to head there as fast as possible but unfortunately for us the pirates managed to damage the drive section to the point where we were going to start venting into space if we didn't do something so we went into warp two for three seconds which worked but once out of warp we realized that the ship was still in major trouble and the pirates could come at any moment so the Captain made the decision to split the ship into two and the two sections head to different locations in the hope that at least one section would make it to safety to make a report for the other section to start having a search and possibly rescue team be sent out. The problem was neither section could go really fast because the saucer section doesn't have much besides propulsion and the drive section couldn't go to warp because of the venting issue, the cadets were split up as well and as the only senior on board I had to choose between the two sections..."

"Hang on I think I know what you're talking about now and will let you finish the story, but why were you the only senior on board that ship?"

"Because the other senior had a last minute ship assignment change and there were no other seniors going on a trip that summer because of various other summer assignments that had to be done on Earth that year, either that or they weren't nearly as far as the two ships we were on were going to go for a while. Anyhow I decided to stay on the saucer section and selected a junior in charge of the cadets in the drive section. We drifted for a month avoiding pirates when possible but it didn't always happen and there were a few skirmishes but then after the end of the month we ran out of luck and were captured. There I was unknowingly to the pirates assaulted by a Force inhibitor, in fact that's what the collar basically was, though it was only supposed to be a shock collar. We had to do things to survive that haunt me to this day and we were there for almost two months, the Academy had decided to wait a month before opening because not only had we been captured but the Academy had been threatened by the pirates constantly with bomb threats that were constant and non ending because they knew Starfleet didn't make deals with terrorists. After the month was over they would have reevaluated to see if they could open up again, but that wouldn't be necessary because I managed to send out a distress beacon three days before rescue and it was the Norway that saved us and shut down the pirates. Afterwords I needed some serious therapy and the doctors decided to give me a chamomile/poppy tea that I had created myself and they gave me some while in the hospital hoping it would help me sleep without the need of approved sedatives. That was the last time we ever decided to do that, I died on them at least five times during the night and had seizures for seventy-two hours straight after they flushed the mixture out of my body with fluids wide open so it still took the whole night for the mixture to leave my body, otherwise it might have been longer because they had given it to me at about midnight after I had woken up three times in the last fifteen minutes. Once the seizures were done and I was coherent enough we had tests to see what had happened and discovered my body releases chemicals whenever I am in a Force vision or am experiencing bad memories through dreams, chemicals that are affected by the natural sedatives and interfere with my body functions. That's when my policy that I had already put into place mentally became a mandatory policy for all Sentinel's and for a short period there all races that had telepathic or empathic abilities until tests proved that they were safe. Unfortunately there's a chance there are races we don't know about that will be affected as well but since we haven't met them yet we don't know, and that's both in the Republic and Federation"

"Okay, makes sense, now then about your attack besides you and potentially medical personnel who all knows about this weakness of yours?"

"No one that I know of, so whoever did it managed to hack my files and discovered what can knock me out without automatically suspecting something was given to me"

"We'll have to find that out later, now then I will see who else I can choose as part of the away team since Johnson is out, in the meantime stay here to finish recovering and then you're off duty until we reach Tanixi"

"Understood Captain"

"One quick question, about the exercise where you lost so many people and so many others were injured and the senior class took over, why didn't you guys try the combo to help you sleep then, why wait what another year for you to try?"

"Oh that one is easy, because of the fact that seeing a councilor or some other professional had been made mandatory for that mess, at least for most of them it was mandatory, because of who I was it wasn't made mandatory but I still went to see a councilor because my meditations were failing and I knew I needed to talk to someone and see if that helped, and then after a period the sessions weren't mandatory or needed but I still didn't try because I wanted to ensure it was done in a controlled environment and I wasn't healing from so many wounds, you have to understand, when the doctors finally did do that experiment it was because they knew that they needed to know before I graduated so that we all knew what I could and couldn't do, there was also the fact that while I was tortured the worst I had in regards to physical injuries was a broken arm and it wasn't even a severe break at that, no the worst was the mental injuries of what we had to do to survive that place. And by the way the accident that cost fifty lives and injured seventy others was two years before the incident I just explained"

"Well, like I said I need to find another person who would be acceptable and you need to relax and recover"

"Fine by me, I know exactly what I want to do when I leave and don't worry doctor it won't be my strictly Jedi only programs, but it also won't be a meditation program"

"What exactly are you planning on doing?"

"Well first I'm going to do some zero g training and then after that...not sure but it definitely won't be anything physically strenuous, mentally challenging now that's another story"

"What can you do that will be mentally challenging that won't also be physically strenuous?"

"Oh that's easy, I've uploaded tons of Jedi brain teasers into the holodeck and might even decide to play some poker against some brilliant minds, might even work on some warp theories that no one can solve at the moment...or even some medical problems that haven't been resolved yet"

"All mentally challenging while giving your body a physical break, interesting but might be the best thing for you"

Finally Ashland was told they had reached Tanixi and that the away team had finally been confirmed. She soon was beamed down to the planet and was greeted by a form of government that the Starfleet officers didn't recognize, and they could instantly tell from Ashland's posture she wasn't too sure about it either