And yet again, into the murky depths.....

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 5867

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.

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.

Ensign Kim has something of a nervous breakdown, and attacks Ensign Kim in the hallway. He screams that Scott should leave because he endangers them all.

Later, the Doctor has sedated Kim and an analysis of his ramblings reveal something rather odd. Seems that Kim is aware that the Voyager has somehow been transported from one multiverse to another. He knows this because he's been displaced, universe wise, more times than anyone else upon the Voyager.

Plans are made for furry Tuvok to mindmeld with Kim in order to see whether or not Kim's visions are real when the whole thing goes down the tubes.

A strange stardrive explodes in another universe, ripping a hole in space/time. Voyager is drawn through the rip, into the middle of a fierce battle between the Enemy and the Alliance (see this for more details).

Every last atom of Scott's strange birthright is drained away from this transition in order to keep the Voyager from being torn into molecular dust. This, however, isn't enough to keep the Voyager from feeling some type of adverse effects.

Scott Chen had been in the process of proposing marriage to furry Samantha Wildman when he and the rest of the crew passes out. Several ship systems malfunction. The dilithium crystals of the warp engine crack beyond use. The ship springs a few leaks. Basically, the Voyager is floundering in the middle of a battlefield, awaiting to either be rescued or destroyed.

An Alliance intel/robot ship, piloted by the AI known as Evis 7, with the help of the rest of the her unit/family, rescues the Voyager and towing her down to the nearest facility that can effect repairs upon her. That happens to be this universe's version of Earth (Terra to the natives). They land her down in the desert alongside the thousands upon thousands of ships being assembled for one....and only one purpose. These ships are to be the fatal strike at the Enemy. Waves of ships will seek out and overwhelm each and every Enemy stronghold, and crash into the planet at something like the speed of light.

The Voyager recovers to find themselves being looked after by the doctors of the Alliance, and they soon find out about the planned genocide the Alliance will commit. Sad thing is, while it seems evil, this is the last....best....and only way to stop the Enemy from spreading further and further out into the multiverse.... See, the Enemy has a disturbing habit of eating non-People (those not of their race). The Star Fleeters either don't believe this, or chose not to believe it. The Voyager crew protested, saying that there was a better way.

The Alliance, being war weary and deathly familiar with the ways of the Enemy, basically told the Voyager to F**k off. An unenlightened response, but they just didn't want to be preached at by people had no clue as to what the situation was.

If there was a point to this entire episode, it was that the philosophy of Gene Rodenberry's Federation clashed with Heinlein's philosophy of Starship Troopers (with a dash of Cyberpunk thrown in.....which explains the extreme views of the Alliance.....the depravity and lawlessness back home engendered something of a backlash....in reaction to it all).

Anyway, Janeway soon, after a few incidents of violence between the Alliance and her crew (who put more of her crew in the Medical Bay than the reverse...much to her annoyance), she puts "off ship" "off limits."

Fine and well, but at least one crewmember crashes a party by the Alliance, and proceeds to get extremely drunk. See, even though the Alliance obtained the seeds of their advanced technology from a certain group of Ferengi who had crashed (and died in it) at Roswell.....one of the things that the Alliance didn't get from the wreck (in addition to the Anti-matter part of a warp core....there drives are Tiberium atomic reactor driven....)

It was revealed that the Military's partner in this war, the Company, had somehow suppressed the technology from the military....hoping to be able to meet the Military in combat with antimatter powered ships after this Alliance/Enemy war was over......

Long story....

Anyway, the crewmember said a few things while drunk that nearly started yet another fight. Dr. Bristol dragged Solomon away, and basically told him to go back to his ship and sober up...and followed up by telling Solomon that he had no right to make fun of some of the Alliance's choice in loves (some had fallen for some of the AIs...and vice versa).

Solomon, scared nearly shitless by the methods that Bristol used to drive home the point in how lucky he got off in the fight (cybernetic razor claws within a centimeter of one's carotid artery tends to get one's attention), he ran off, and tripped over a family of demifoxes (a relatively benign race of lycanthrope). The kit he tripped over yelped in pain, and she and her siblings proceeded to bit the #@!&* out of Solomon to show their displeasure. The parents pulled their kits off of Solomon, but the damage was done.

Solomon was infected, and would become a demifox within the month. Nothing could be done for it. The Voyager found it had to leave Solomon behind. Taking him along would kill him, once they left this magical universe.

Anyway, after somebody on the Voyager tried to sabotage the production of the death ships of the Alliance, the AI sentinels within the Alliance computer system counterattacked the intrusion (blocking the failed sabotage attempt...by the way)...they broke through every security protocol within the Voyager's computer system....and did it in such a way that nobody was aware of the fact.

The Voyager was "escorted" to the Guardian of Forever...where they took aboard Odo...who had somehow survived the transfer between universes and was miraculously deposited upon Voyager....unscathed. Odo went back to try to rescue the Ferengi before the government boys dissected them (well....he was working under the assumption that there had been something to save.....but). Instead, he lands back at his DS 9, with a marked absence of the Ferengi who run the bar there. Basically, Quark's band died back at the Alliance's Roswell due to a less than stellar transition process between universes (made them look like they had run through a meat grinder....and had left key parts of their ship behind). That just denotes a parallel timeline that I'd rather not get into.

Voyager finds itself back in the human Delta Quadrant, trying to get home.

  1. The Gaurdian had said that the Voyager would get back a Solomon from a parallel universe where the Alliance never obtained the tech from the Ferengi...and it was right.

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