Decon Dogs

Posted on Sun Mar 11th, 2018 @ 11:38pm by Staff Warrant Officer Nexi & Lieutenant Commander T'Pral Jordan & Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy

Mission: When Iconians Deserve to Die
Location: Decon for Pod Labs
Timeline: After Dance of Death

Nexi was silent as she and T'Pral made their way to the locker room where they could clean up. Ila Dedjoy was close behind, but keeping a fair distance away from the dogs that padded along at Nexi's side; the dogs were creepy looking and downright scary, but actually Mister Pickles and his brother were being remarkably well behaved, especially considering how Mister Pickles reacted to Daytona's attempt to be an Alpha male. If anything, the new one was unusually happy, its tail was wagging so excitedly it was thumping against the bulkhead of the narrow corridors they traversed, and this was enough to finally break Nexi's silence.

"Well ain't you just a fucking ray of sunshine," Nexi said to the bizarrely chipper hellhound with its tongue lolling out of its mouth with a goofy grin; well, she knew what she was calling this one! They finally arrived at the locker room and Nexi sighed. "I know the drill," she said to Ila, then began removing her clothing so that Ila could process the samples on the garments at her leisure. "You need anything from me 'fore I hit the shower?" she said, standing there in only her undies and a tank top.

"No, I think I can manage enough samples for now from this before I dump it into a baryon incinerator..." Ila used a sample container and collected a couple small samples before just dumping them into a processing chamber. The clothing, she just dumped into the baryon incinerator, the blue glow turning orange as everything was turned into quantum particles.

"Are you keeping those...things? Or can you cause them to disappear again?" T'Pral asked curiously, looking at the two creatures as she also removed her clothing.

"Not like I asked for them..." Nexi said dryly as she looked down at the dogs; Mister Pickles seemed uninterested in the conversation, but Sunshine seemed happy that Nexi was looking at him now, his tail wagging even harder. "Disappear," Nexi commanded the dogs, but nothing happened other than Mister Pickles yawning. "Go, vanish, I don't need you anymore," she continued, but still nothing happened. "Yeah, I got nothing, I can only assume they're here to stay," Nexi said to T'Pral.

"That's good, because I think I'd like a couple of samples from them as well. If you keep creating these things... we're going to run out of places for them..." Ila pulled on a fresh pair of sterile gloves and picked up a fresh hypo, readying herself to possibly lose a limb in the process.

"You want to what now?" Nexi said in disbelief. She looked back down at the dogs, then back to Ila. "I am not responsible if you lose a limb."

"It may be best if you handed the hypospray to Nexi as they seem to trust her," T'Pral advised.

"I think I agree, Ma'am..." Handing the hypo to Nexi, Ila stood back just in case.

Nexi took the hypo, then looked down at the dogs. With a heavy sigh she took her chances and knelt down, pressing the hypo to the, uh, surface of Mister Pickles; it was weird, he didn't have skin or fur, he just seemed to be a mass of.... something, almost like tar. She managed to fill a vial, then handed it off to Ila to get another one to do the same to her little ray of sunshine. All in all, it wasn't too bad, but she was still glad she did it instead of Ila, because there was no telling how the dogs would have reacted otherwise.

"Anything else or can we go?" Nexi asked.

Handing out two more hypos and a couple generic uniform jumpers, Ila shook her head no. "Just a blood sample from each of you. I'd like each of you to stop by the black blood lab later once you feel up to it, but for now, that's it."

Nexi pressed the hypo to her own exposed arm and watched as it filled with blood; before today, her blood had been a sickly shade of dark brown, but now it was completely black, much like what she extracted from the dogs, and it turned her stomach looking at the vial attached to the hypo as she handed it off to Ila. With nothing else to say to either T'oral or Ila, Nexi entered a shower stall, only to find her dogs still following her like shadows.

"Seriously?! You're gonna follow me in here too?!"

T'Pral had pressed the hypospray against her skin as it filled green with her blood. It didn't appear to be out of normal and T'Pral hoped her Vulcan immune system would be able to fight off whatever infection that she did have. She then entered the decon showers after Nexi. She hadn't really had a chance to speak with her about Cato since the recent mission. Although the thought still hurt, she was no longer angry at Nexi. "How are you feeling?" she asked finally.

For a while, Nexi didn't answer, she simply stood in the shower letting the mist and sonic waves clean and relax her tired body. "I don't know," she finally answered, feeling all the more numb now that she had admitted it out loud. "I think I'm scared," she admitted with a hint of a shudder in her voice. "Before coming across the Hera and reuniting with my sister, I kinda always knew I'd die young, I never really had a reason to look forward or plan for a future, but now... I don't want to die..."

"You must stay positive...besides, you are much too stubborn to die," T'Pral said with a hint of a grin.

Nexi smiled as much as she could in this moment. "I don't think the blood cares how stubborn I am," Nexi said, her head rolling back as tears formed in her eyes; she tried blink back the tears, but they would not be denied, she simply wasn't ready to go! "I can feel it changing me, I won't be me for much longer, and then you'll have no choice but to end me..."

"That might be more difficult than you would think..." Ila chimed in, having been scanning the samples with a tricorder. "You're now at one hundred percent so effectively you're immortal now. We'd have to 'end you' the same way we did the last two..."

"Fuck, I didn't need to hear that..." Nexi groaned as she ran a hand over her face, wiping away the mist that had accumulated as well as removing those damned tears. "I shouldn't be surprised considering the Master's dog chewed up my arm, but now it's fine."

T'Pral was silent for a moment. She knew little of biology but fighting a disease was much like combating an enemy, which she understood well. "I do not wish to end you, Nexi." She then looked at Crewman Dedjoy. "Could my blood be used to help fight the disease? Vulcan immune systems are far superior to that of humans and yet it appears that Vulcans have an uncanny resemblance to the character Pan that we met not too long ago."

"You forget, the Master was Vulcan too, more or less," Nexi replied. "And you're infected too, so just worry about yourself for now." Nexi shut off the shower and grabbed a towel to start wiping herself down to dress, when she saw her newest hellhound making a funny face, then he started to shake. "Oh no, don't you- don't to that! No, NO!" But it was too late, Sunny shook his body to remove all the moisture, flinging tar-like goo all over the shower and Nexi. She stood there for a moment, silent and fuming, and while Mister Pickles had the good sense to back away slightly, her ray of Sunshine just grinned up at Nexi with his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his wagging tail indicating that he was still as happy as could be. "You should feel lucky that you can't die," Nexi remarked to the dog as she discarded her now filthy towel and turned the shower back on.

"I um... That..." Ila was speechless for a moment before she found her words again. "We tried several antibodies on Commodore Meowlith before giving up. We had high hopes for Vulcan antibodies in particular since she's Vulcanoid Rigelian, but in the end, it just made the infection... and her insanity... worse... Lab testing after that indicated that the mixing of DNA keeps the blood stable... But it increases the infection rate and is likely what drove the Master's madness. And we're trying to destabilize it so we can kill it."

"Yeah, I didn't need to hear that either," Nexi said dryly. She could feel the madness encroaching on her consciousness, but she had her own madness lurking beneath the surface, and years of holding back that madness was being put to good use now with the black blood, but she knew she couldn't fight it forever, inevitably it would take over and the crew, her new family, would be forced to put her down... Although thankfully, whatever the black junk that Sunny had flung all over her cleaned up easily enough, and she once again shut off the shower. "If you shake again, I will reduce you to a puddle," she threatened Sunny, and managed to successfully dry off and escape the shower.

Ila finished her scans and collected up all the samples and gear to take them all back to the lab. "It's not all bad news though. That new specialist, Ahreva Malana, has some interesting ideas on treatment that I think will have some interesting results. In fact, the samples from the newly infected will likely be put through the systems as soon as the simulations are complete."

"Let's hope you're correct," T'Pral said as she dried off. She honestly didn't know what would happen--did that mean she would become essentially the new Master so to speak? She felt her hand shake involuntarily and looked at it as Dedjoy and Nexi spoke. She closed her eyes and took a breath as the shaking stopped. Flexing her hand, she moved to get dressed in the overalls.

Nexi wasn't trying to overhear T'Pral's thoughts, but anytime a strong emotion was associated a thought, it just made it so easy... "You don't need to be afraid of that," Nexi said as she dressed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to, you know, listen in... again... it's just kinda hard to block out random thoughts when I'm also tryna hold back the madness," she explained with a hint of sadness. "But you don't got nothing to worry about; lookit how long it took for the blood to get this far in me, and that was with my anger feeding it, and the Science and Medical nerds, they must've learned lots from studying me and Farenia, they'll be able to take better care of you then they could with me... And we're looking for a cure, I'm sure they'll find something, maybe not in time to save me, but you guys... you got a real chance of kicking this, so don't be afraid because the fear just feeds it."

T'Pral shook her head. "You will not die, Nexi...you have much to live for." She paused for a second before continuing, deciding to swallow her pride. "Cato has chosen you and you have to be strong to make it through for him."

"H-hey, about that..." Nexi said, clearly uneasy about this part of the conversation. "I really didn't know... I knew you two had a thing, but I didn't know you thought it was a thing thing, ya know? H-he was- I mean the sense I got from him, he was so certain it was a one time thing, if I'd know otherwise, I'da kicked his ass all the way to your door to make him feel bad about two-timing you."

"I know," T'Pral replied after a moment. "I allowed my emotions to cloud my thinking and he is human. I should not have expected him to handle a relationship such as a Vulcan would. You are a lucky woman, however."

"I don't know about all that..." Nexi said, rubbing the back of her head nervously. "He keeps tryna get me to talk about my feelings, how bizarre is that!"

"Quite bizarre. However, perhaps you should talk about your feelings to him...or at least someone," T'Pral stated as she finished getting dressed.

"I would rather knaw my own arm off than even admit to having feelings," Nexi said with a groan. "I talk to Aewia... Well, not really, but we sit in the same room together and she's a telepath, that counts, right?"

"Not really. Holding in feelings never helps--trust me," T'Pral smirked. "However, if Aewia is helping you then that is a start."

"You know, there's irony there; Vulcans suppress their emotions with logic, and here's one telling me not to hold them in..." Nexi replied in a dry tone. "I'll talk to someone, though... Thanks," she added with a meek grin.

"I may be Vulcan," T'Pral said. "However, I also do not suppress my emotions as most Vulcans do--I was never much for meditation as well as many of the Vulcan nonsense that went with it."

"Fair enough," Nexi relented begrudgingly. "Thanks... And if you need someone to talk to about the black blood, I'm here, for a while anyway."

"Thank you," T'Pral replied.