Madness....

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 5862

Lt. Sanders tossed and giggled in his sleep, already driven quiet mad by a dream that has been fed to him by a malicious Par Wraith.....

Why and for what sinister purpose?

Well,....read what happens.

Addventure

Scott and the Voyager.

We start out as we always start out in Addventure with Scott. The odd room with the furniture that only the psychotic could love. He is again wondering just how he came to this place. He looks around the room and examines the ceiling, and sees the entire trials of the Oddesy upon the ceiling (a masterpiece of art). It strikes a responsive chord within our strange hero, and he vows that he's going to go out and free himself of the cage he's put himself in.

Scott goes running out of the room, up the stairs, and as per usual...has a strange encounter not a few steps outside the ghastly room he's resided in in the start of every adventure he goes upon. He meets this furry creature that eventually tries to kill him by kicking him off the stairwell he was on. The stairwell is 2,000 feet in the air, so it's not so difficult for a strange helicopter to swoop down and give Scott a lift. Scott accepts (beats falling to your death), and is in the process of relaxing when he notices that the man who had rescued him is pulling a gun on him. The reason why is never revealed. Scott overcomes the stranger, grabs the madman's gun before he falls out of the flying helicopter. Scott then has the pilot of the helicopter to land, and we then see that Scott is as the beginning of a large area that had been flattened like a roadway. Turns out that Scott was curious, follows the trail to the end, and finds the....Voyager. The starship has somehow crashed upon this world that Scott was on, and had plowed a huge furrow into the ground before finally coming to a halt.

Scott is both thrilled and bothered by the whole deal. On one hand, this proves that Scott isn't even on Earth...but some planet out in the Delta Quadrant...apparently. On the other hand, if Scott is lucky, he could hitch a ride aboard the Voyager. Perhaps the crew could help him avoid the weirdness that always follows him around (slim hope....but if anyone could do it....it's the Voyager).

Scott then is looking for a way to get inside the crashed ship when he stumbles, literally, across the prone form of Seven of Nine. This Seven of Nine, however, has not been stripped of the nastier parts of her Borg equipment, and thus is very much a pale...and dangerous woman.

See, Scott had been distracted by his memories of how good Seven had looked after being...de-Borgd. Hey, it could happen to the best of men, so I don't want to hear it!

Anyway, Seven comes....back on line and grabs Scott. She demands to know what planet she's on and what Scott was doing here. Scott had no real good answers....nothing that would have been believable even if he hadn't stammered out:

"Look, uh, I'm sure you have a lot to do, what with the ship crashed here and all," Scott stammered out hastily. "Why don't I just go about my business so you can clean up this mess?"

Seven interpreted this as a refusal on Scott's part, and just assimilated Scott into the Collective so she'd gain his knowledge. She found that Scott had nothing of value, as far as she was concerned. So the new Borg that had been Scott was now Four of Nine. They made plans on hunting down the rest of the Voyager crew and assimilating them all into the Borg Collective. Seven had been trying to do that when something went wrong in the computer core, and the ship crashed with HER on it (the crew had escaped by pod).

Nine shouldn't have assimilated Scott, for Scott's memories are chaotic and a mess! Imagine experiencing all he had! It was so....weird....and that combined with Scott's strange birthright (more on that later), it did two things. It acted in a way that allowed the connection with the Collective to be severed long enough for Scott to shut himself down so as to not betray the Federation to the Borg. The other thing is that Scott's memories are very much like a computer virus. It reached throughout the whole of the Collective, and played merry hell on the entire Collective. As Scott was dying from shutting himself down, Seven of Nine was screaming in full bore terror as she experienced what the Collective experienced as Scott's memories ate into them.....

Scott awoke later with a killer headache and the Doctor (the EHM of the Voyager) working upon him. Scott found that the Voyager had saved him. He got the Doctor to give him something for the pain and....Then:

"Doctor, has the drone awoken yet?" a very familiar female voice says behind the Doctor. Scott yells and scrambles to the opposite side of the room, and grabs a chair!

"Keep that B#$ch away from me!" Scott screams, bandishing the chair. "I will NOT be assimilated AGAIN!"

Turns out there were two Seven of Nines. One was the one that had been de-Borgd and now goes around in a silver jump suit. The other was the one that assimilated Scott. They soon found that that Seven of Nine hadn't been acting as insane as they had seen her when they rescued Scott (all attempts of capturing that Seven had failed). Furthermore, Scott's memories could soon be affecting the assimilation nanites of that Seven-you know, those things that a Borg unit injects into their victims to change them into fellow Borg units-....well, it would soon start to change that Seven into something else. Scott's memories were so chaotic, that nobody on the Voyager could foresee just what that other Seven of Nine would become if the Scott computer virus wasn't halted!

After a frantic search they do find her. However, it's too late. She's become something else, she was basically dead and gone. However, she had left behind something interesting. See, she had turned into an antimatter bomb...and it was ticking down to zero when they found it.

It looked like a football to Scott. In that moment of doom, he grabbed the ball in a fit of whimsy and spiked it like an American football player!

A moment of whimsy grabs hold of the frightened Scott as he sees Ensign Kim hold the bomb in his trembling hands. The bomb for some strange reason, looks like a football, albeit a high tech, chromed one! Scott grabs the football and SPIKES the ball, right there and then in front of the stunned Voyager crew!

"TOUCHDOWN!!" Scott screams, just before the ball hits the ground and.....

The ball stops counting down, and starts shifting into....a greenish egg. Janeway, Scott and the rest of the people stare in wonder as the egg hatches, and a small, greenish snout pokes it's way out of the egg!

The bomb had changed into a dragon egg, and it had hatched a baby dragon!

Scott and the crew stare goggle eyed as what used to be an earlier version of Seven of Nine, then an antimatter bomb, and now an egg hatches! The green egg cracks open, reveling a blunt, greenish scaled snout. The snout sneezes, and the egg burst apart, revealing a scaly creature that has small, batlike wings on it's back, four chubby legs, and a tail. The little creature opens it's red jewel like eyes and takes one look at Janeway, and.....

"Borge!" the dragon hatchling chirps, and hiccups. The hatchling curls up into a small bundle, tail to snout, and starts to snore, still damp from the fluids from the egg.

"Anyone know had to feed and housebreak a green dragon the size of....a tricorder." Scott asks the Voyager crewmembers. They look at the dragon, at Scott, at the dragon, at Scott.

"Scott?" Janeway says, first to recover from the shock of what has just happened. "How in the #$@#$ did you know to do that? More to the point, what in the world did you just do?"

"The only thing I could think of." is all that Scott says. He's not about to admit to Janeway and the rest of the Voyager crew that he had NO idea that this would happen. The baby dragon is taken down to the Medical Bay, and.......

This is weird enough, but we find that the Scott virus has gained some type of critical electronic mass and has taken over the Collective....and has plans with the Voyager!

The Voyager eventually, to their horror, finds that the Scott Collective wants to assimulate every member of the Voyager crew, change them into Borgified magical beings, and send them forth into some magical realms (by means unknown) to assimilate those realms. This doesn't sit too well with anyone on Voyager, Scott included.

The Voyager tries to use a modified version of a ploy that Picard almost used. They take an old 20th century children's show....hack into the Collective net, and play Barney (the American purple dinosaurs that little toddlers love...and parents hate...because it's so sappy). It give off signs that it works, and the Voyager crew shudders at such a horrid thing they have done.

However, the little dragon then demands to see Janeway...according to the Doctor. So....

Captain Janeway stands to one side with The Doctor. Scott looks through the Sickbay forcefield at the dragon creature, which is now four feet tall.

"Doctor," says Janeway. "How can the creature start talking? I thought it didn't have the capacity for intelligent speech like that?"

"Captain, I wish I knew. It simply started talking to me and asking to meet you."

"How come it wasn't affected by the changes the Collective went through?" Janeway asked. "I've set up multiple Borg frequency blocking signals. Nothing the Collective does is going to affect this little guy."

"Fine." Janeway comes over to the forcefield and bends down. "I am Captain Janeway of the Federation starship Voyager."

Two probes erupt out of the floor under Janeway and stab into her neck. She staggers. Scott turns and in horror sees The Doctor...as a Borg...

Scott turns to run but another probe erupts out of the floor and wraps itself around his left ankle. He falls, catching his head on the side of a console.

"Amazing what one undetected Borg nanite can do to security systems." a voice says as a pasty-faced Janeway kneels by Scott.

Scott gets beamed out by Seven, and she then sends Scott on a mission to stop the Scott collective from wrecking any more havoc on the Voyager....and everyone else...eventually.

Scott meets his evil mental duplicate....and both perish in the battle.

Voyager is freed from the Collective, and Scott is given a funeral and is given appropriate honors for his sacrifice.

Scott's coffin sits in the middle of the shuttlebay. Most of the bridge crew and about twenty other officers stand around it, heads bowed. Janeway continues to speak. "Thanks to Seven, Scott was able to interface with the Collective and shut down all the activities it was performing aboard Voyager. Sadly, Scott perished in the attempt.

"We may never know where Scott came from, or what his true purpose is, but we'll always be thankful for the sacrifice he made for this ship. B'Elanna?" The Klingon presses a button on her tricorder. Scott's coffin rises about a foot into the air and moves towards the shuttlebay doors. They slide open. The coffin passes through the bay forcefield with a small crackle. Another control is activated and a minature thruster engine rockets Scott's coffin into faw away from the ship. The doors shut with a clang that echoes around the bay. One by one, the crew leaves until only Janeway and Tuvok remain.

"Captain." Tuvok says. "It's bad enough when one of my crew dies." Janeway says, staring at the spot where Scott's coffin was. "I...concur." "They knew they danger." Tuvok did not reply. "But when a stranger sacrifices himself to save the ship, I can't help but feel that somehow it is wrong." "Scott was the only person capable of confronting the Borg. We were all assimilated." "Captain Picard did not have an ex-Borg with him during the reversal process." Janeway stares at the floor for a few seconds more. "I need some coffee. I'll be in the mess hall. Inform Paris to set a course towards home." "Yes, Captain."

However, Scott being Scott...well...the fun isn't over yet.

Seventy other Voyagers pop into existence around the coffin that had just been ejected into space. "Our" Voyager finds that the source of this odd event is centered around Scott's coffin. "Our" Voyager hails her sister ships, and we soon see them in a conference aboard "our" Voyager.

'Our' Captain Janeway puts down the PADD and looks up at her four doubles arrayed around the Ready Room. One was missing an eye, one was bald, one had a prosthetic left arm and the last one...well, doubles of herself Janeway was used too but not a vixen double of herself. She had a tail! Janeway shoved the conflicting emotions to small space in her mind. She gestured to the instrument.

"All this chaos is caused by Scott and his doubles jumping around from dimension to dimension and all through the time stream?" "Exactly." said the bald one. "We've been following Scotts and collecting them. My ship has a transdimensional beaming device that sends the Scott's to my Federation. There, they put the Scott's onto a planet that dampens all forms of energy. They only have enough to live as if they were on a starship. Not enough to jump through space/time." "And that's why you took Scott's coffin." "Yes." "But he's dead." "You don't understand, Captain." said the furry one. Janeway wondered how she could speak with the muzzle. "Scott is immune to death. We think it's because of Q. Scotts do speak of strange and omnipotent beings called Authors. We think they are Q in disguise." "So you beamed over Scott's coffin and now are dumping that on your planet while you wait for him to revive. I don't like it. He saved our ship." "He saved my ship too." said the one with the prosthetic. "Then he killed Ensign Caplan, nearly murdered Suder and shot my arm off." "I'm...I'm sorry." Janeway knew what it felt like to lose crew. But on that Voyager, Suder was still alive. Should she tell her that on this ship, Suder killed Darwin? Before Janeway could say anything more...

Well, then something happens yet again. Black, spiny spaceships-the Shadow attack ships to be exact from Bablyon 5-zip out of nowhere and blow up the Voyager and a few sister ships before the other Voyagers can rally and destroy the black ships. The Voyager crewmembers have been beamed to safety by their counterparts, and now are aboard the furry Voyager in the cargobay.

Several people are taking this harder than others. Human Janeway is enraged that her ship has been destroyed, but the Chief Engineer, a half human/Klingon woman named Bellana Torres....is ready to tear somebody apart for what has been done to her (the human) Voyager. Commander Chakotay, the Voyager's first officer, is slowly coming to a realization. Supposedly, Scott's coffin had been on one of the Voyagers that had been blown up by the Shadow. They may have more problems upon their hands than the destruction of their ships (as massive as that is). There is the fact that Scott is supposedly immune to death, and now.....

Well, that is a problem, but not in the expected sense you may expect. Scott wasn't going to rise from the grave to wreck bloody vengeance upon the crew of the Voyager and the Universe in general. Instead, something just as sinister was in the works.

A low, raspy hiss calls from behind some crates calls for human Janeway and human Chakotay's attention.....

"Psst!" a low, raspy voice calls from behind a large pile of crates. "I need to talk to you two....about Scott! He's in danger from the other Janeways!"

The vixen Janeway summons the human Janeway and Chakotay over behind the stack of crates. "I can't talk long," she whispers. "The device will only last for a few minutes. It's, it's the other Janeway, the bald one. We're practically her slaves. You would call her your 'mirror universe double'. Sure, we are stopping the breakdown of realities by kidnapping Scott's from the multiverse. But Janeway wants the other Scotts to tap their power. She's days away from learning how to manipulate realities. She's going to be an omnipotent being sooner or later. We've gotta stop her. Her ship that was destroyed...well, it was a ruse. It was an innocent Voyager. I have a plan. Are you in?" Human Janeway looks at Chakotay. Then back at the other Janeway. "What proof do you have to offer?" "Only this." The vixen Janeway reaches behind her back, manipulates something, then turns around. Janeway gasps. The woman's back was cris-crossed with whip scars. Janeway sucked in her breath. "We're in." "Good." the vixen reassembled her uniform. "The Janeway with one eye has agreed to cause a distraction. In the chaos, we'll slip back to the planet with the Scott's, beam them all up and rev our dimension hopping systems into overdrive. Our Torres thinks it'll throw us through a couple thousand random dimensions and then melt. Hopefully they'll never find us." "We could end up somewhere even worse." Chakotay says. "I don't think that's possible." the vixen Janeway said. She turned and vanished into the shadows. Some words came floating back.."Brace for impact."

The 150 crewpeople bravely held on as the Voyager they were passengers in bucked and weaved and spun. This went on for ten minutes straight, then stopped. Thirty minutes after that, vixen Janeway came back. She didn't have to hide this time. Janeway took her to one side. Chakotay followed. "We made it. The other Janeway's ship did not. We're ten minutes out from Scott's planet. It's...it's..." She slumped to the floor. Chakotay caught her. "Doctor!" Janeway said. "Take her, get her to Sickbay. I'm going to the bridge. Full bridge crew, follow me!"

"Helm, three degrees port. Phaser fire at three, four, eight and twelve." The bridge crew responded effectivley and instantly. Janeway allowed herself a smile, glad that Starfleet training crossed dimensions and biological differences. Sure, Chakotay was a horse but inside it was still her stable and efficent second in command. Well, not 'hers' but the real Captain was in Sickbay. The last jolt had caught her alone in the corridor and she had decided to tell the humans before getting her wounds treated. Janeway admired her tenacity then ordered a Krevon Manuver. Half of the attacking ships were left in the dust. The other half took ten minutes, three torpedoes and a spin through a radioactive nebula to lose.

"All 76 Scotts on board." said Ensign Mulcahey. Human Janeway reflected that the Scott's were probably glad to leave. Scans and reports indicated mile long devices whose sole purpose was to manipulate the body to cause pain. How many people had toiled over the gigantic machinery. Did they know it was to tortue people? Janeway left the bridge with horse Chakotay (a horse?!?) and went to Sickbay. Sure, Janeway was temporarily in command. Top secret confirmation codes had been quickly exchanged between her and the other Chakotay, letting her sink her expirience into fighting off the attacker ships. But she had to remind herself this wasn't 'her' ship. Soon she would have no ship at all. Janeway felt a pang of regret and pushed it away, ashamed. Her crew was alive. Her crew was okay. Her crew would stay okay because of the organic materials found on the planet. Keeping a two ounce sample on the body of each of the Scott's would dampen the rampant dimensional energy.

Two Doctors stood in Sickbay. Despite expecting it, Janeway was a bit startled. Espically considering one had dog ears. 'Her' Doctor came up to her while the other hovered around the vixen's bed. "No, Captain. No changes. She's going to be in here for a long time." More small talk resumed. Janeway returned to the bridge.

"How long until we skip through the dimensions?" "Five minutes." was the reply. Then, nearly a whisper. "Look, Katherine. I know how hard this must be for you. I'm leaving my home dimension also. We may never get to our 'real' homes." "I believed your Captain when she told me about the plans for the bald Janeway to become omnipotent. My crews knows this.

We've had the chance to review your records. They're willing to do what it takes to prevent their world from being overcome by this tyranny." A flash of light blinded Janeway. "What was that?" "Seems Torres got the dimension jumper working just a bit ahead of time. You're world is safe, Captain." "That was it?" "That was it." "I hate to say it, but our situations end with a little more flair then then this." "I can blow up some shuttlecrafts off the port bow if you want." Chakotay smiled.

All signs indicated that this was a normal universe. Signs of the Borg, the destroyed Hirogen communications systems...everything but the presence of the bald Janeway and her legions of troops. The humans and the Scott's agree to join the furry Voyager crew. Though the strains on resources and especially space will be tougher, all agree this is a good idea. Human Paris is allowed to set in the course for the Alpha Quadrant.

Anyway, what happens next is simply complex.

A new chain of command has been drawn up for the combined furry/human Voyager crew. The Janeway's alternate between Head Engineer and Captain, where as the Chakotays alternate between First Officer and Assistant Head Engineers. As for the Torresses, they are unofficially Head Engineers, but they take up the title of Assistant Head Engineers....just to keep things as smooth as possible under this weird situation!

Somewhere along the line, the Scott that had originally joined up with the Voyager (and had temporarily been dead from his encounter with his mental twin inside the Borg Collective) has fallen for Ensign Samantha Wildman. This is not too far fetch, but the twist is he didn't fall for the human Wildman. The Wildman he's fallen for is a black furred cougar morph. Now, before you get up in arms about this, we've seen cross species romances before. We've seen the results of the a human/Vulcan encounter with Spock. We've seen the result of a Klingon/human relationship with Bellana Torres. We've even seen the end result of a Kitari/human relationship in the Voyager's youngest crewmember: Naomi Wildman. So, the idea of a human/furry relationship isn't a sin, ya dig? Furthermore, it's got potential for being more than Platonic, since the furries and humans can produce children (only the offspring will always be of the genotype of the furry parent....i.e. the infant will be a furry of the type of the furry parent).

That's an aside, and unimportant. Whatever exactly the relationship entailed, during a time when a temporal flux hit the Voyager out of the blue, Scott and furry Wildman were doing something that had elevated certain chemicals within Scott and he alone wasn't swept away with the rest of the other Scotts. Scott is given a hypospray to simulate the conditions which protected him during the time the temporal flux hit Voyager, just in case something like that flux hits Voyager again.

Over the next three months, we see that the relationship be Furry Samantha Wildman and Scott Chen has deepened to the point that they marry, and now Scott is a family man. We see that he's taken the Star Fleet equivalency test and has been field promoted by Captain Janeway to the rank of Ensign.

What happens latter in the week is unexpected, but kind of typical. Q arrives, and he looks annoyed. Scott is working on a power relay, and turns to come face to face with godlike being. Furry Ensign Wildman gives a startled gasped, because this is totally unexpected.

"By order of the Q continuum--in the spirit of self preservation--I have been directed to neutralize the danger that Scott represents."

"NO!" screams Samantha. "You can't take him!" She gets right up into Q's face.

"Dear woman, I don't WANT him!" Q growls. "I just want the cause of all this madness. The thing that set off Baldy Janeway to seek him out in the first place. The chaos energy."

Q vanishes, and Scott feels suddenly week in the knees . . . . like something just went away.

Test are run, and conclusions are made.

There are several conclusions. Q was sent to, and succeeded in taking the chaos energy from Scott. Scott is empty of the energy. With the loss, even if they could fix the hopper, Scott had been the only viable source of fuel for it.

Finally, Q did something that was just plain mean! He put the Voyager into yet another dimension. Oh, for the love of Pete!

A disgusted Janeway orders human Paris to set course to this universe's freaking Alpha Quadrant.

Soon, it becomes apparent that this universe is much different than the other ones the Star Fleeters have visited. See, there was this race called the Preservers who'd seeded the galaxy, so a large percentage of the intelligent races of Janeway's Milky Way galaxy were humanoid. Even humanity owed it's existence to the Preserver, in this story thread. That isn't the case in the galaxy that the Voyager finds itself in now. The Preservers never got around to seeding the galaxy....and therefore beyond the crew of the Voyager....

There are no humanoids in this universe. And the Q did one better by changing the quantum signature of the entire Voyager crew to that of this new galaxy. So even if the Voyager had the dimensional hopping equipment up and running....and some means on homing in on key universes with a certain quantum signature.....

The Voyager can't get home that way.

Scott feels resonsible, but the Torreses assure him that it isn't his fault for what happened.

Here's what happens:

Furry B'Ellana Torres feels like . . . . shit. When she woke up this morning, it had looked like that it was going to be a good day. Granted, they had been stuck out in the Delta Quadrant, and without something special, they'd be out here for decades to come, but at least there was still a freaking Federation . . . . a Klingon Empire. Now, because of the Q . . . . She trudges around corner, tail dragging, and nearly runs into her human counterpart.

"Oh, sorry." furry Torres says. She takes a closer look at her counterpart. "Geeze, you look like how I feel!"

"I . . ." human Torres begins. "I think I'm going to be sick." It's then smells a distinctive smell of alcohol on her human counterpart. Well, it's true that her analog was off duty . . . .

"Hey, I was going to go and do that after work!" furry Torres says. "Uh, does it help any?"

"Not a damn bit!" slurs human Torres. "Hey, did I ever tell you ya look lika kemodo dragon?"

"Uh, not since our last fight." furry Torres temporizes. "Hey, lets get you sobered up here. That was synthahol you've been drinking, right?"

"Yeah, there's not a drop of the real stuff aboard, and I don't want to leave a computer log of the stuff if I make some from the replicators. Both the Janeways wouldn't approve . . . " human Torres says in a clear voice, throwing off the effects. "So, I take it everyone's heard? And how's Scott taking all this?" "As for the crew, yeah, they've heard. Kind of hard to keep THAT secret!" furry Torres says, then grows thoughtful. "As for Scott, if I know him . . . . . he's blaming himself for all this! I think . . . . we need to set him straight."

"I think I saw him in the Mess Hall." human Torres says, running towards the turbolift. "He must of been really depressed, because the lights were out!"

The Torreses run, and find Scott silently crying, looking out at the stars in view of the windows of the Mess Hall . . . .They sit down next to him and begin to talk.

Quietly, the two Torreses take seats next to Scott. Furry on the right, 'human' on the left. Scott doesn't seem to notice.

An hour passes. The three observe an exploding nebular, three moons, an asteroid field and a starfield that looks for all the world like Chakotay's tatoo. "Scott." says the one on the left. "You are not the only one capable of producing dimension hopping phenomenon. We've managed to single out the quantum signature of both our universes. As soon as we can, we'll head back to one of them. Who says you're the only Scott running around with chaos energy?"

Ten minutes pass. Voyager streaks under a free floating planet, passes a derelict space station and plows through a minor ion storm.

"Thank you." Scott says. He quickly leaves the Mess Hall.

Scott's spirits seem to lift over the next few days. He and Samantha are seen laughing, kissing and enjoying life like two newleyweds should be.

Then three weeks later, Voyager encounters an enormous space station. It's mind boggling. To go around it would take three months. Scott works the sensors and discovers a hole in the station. It'll take ten minutes to pass through and reach the other side but it's better then a three months delay. A quick discussion happens among the bridge crew. Ensign Mulcahey thinks they should go around. Human Ensign Wildman thinks they should go on through. Torres votes to go. So does Chakotay and Kim. Paris has a hunch they should back off.

  1. Scott is....

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