Repercussions: Part 1
((To the RPers involved in this: it's only as long as it is because it's a starter and I've decided to try writing this one in more of an official paragraph/story style so it's kinda wordy. XD Don't feel like replies after this have to be just as long! This is just to set the mood, recap a little bit, and get things going. ^^))
The time was 0900 hours in the Mountain Standard Time zone of Earth. In a little apartment building, most residence were out of bed and busy; some had gone off to their jobs, some prepared for work, some sat and had coffee over the morning paper… as always, there was a sense of quiet morning activity in the air.
But the windows in apartment A 216 remained tightly shut, and the lone Romulan resident still lay curled up in her bed. Tal’kaela was usually up with the sun to have her coffee, feed her cat, Dusty, and scour the morning paper in diligent search of some interesting tid-bit of information about humans to file into one of her reports. But for the past 8 days, she found it difficult to motivate herself to even get out of bed, much less focus enough to write an in depth report on human behavior and psychology. She rolled over and growled, mulling over the events of the previous week for the thousandth time. Meeting an alien of unknown origin who has taken a special interest in you and has the ability to manipulate your will is not an everyday occurrence, but when your adoptive big brother and respected Tal Shiar agent becomes involved and becomes determined to find criminal evidence against this being and protect you from him, one finds that even military duty seems small by comparison.
The thought panged in Tal’kaela’s mind again, and she pulled herself up to a sitting position. Dusty, who had finally given up on her waking up and feeding him, sprang to his feet from the foot of her bed and began mewling hopefully.
“I hear you!” Tal’kaela snapped grouchily, “As if enough isn’t expected of me already…” She wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by that, but it felt good to say. The Romulan Uhlan found herself muttering such things more and more frequently for the past eight days. Little did she know, that each and every one of them--as well as her jerky movements, nervous pacing, and insecure pawing at her face and shoulders—were being monitored. When she stepped out of the house last week to pick up a comfort food for herself, Tal Shiar agents made quick work of strategically planting bugs in her apartment under the order of Senator Letant and with the permission of Vice Chairman Vreenak—who had also become involved in recent affairs. Tal’kaela was in an unstable and insecure state, and there was no telling what this mysterious alien being, Robin, was capable of…
Unknowingly, Tal’kaela paced past five of these bugs on her way to feed her cat, who eagerly tottered behind her, still mewling. “You know you’re lucky that you have me do everything for you,” she grumbled, “What if something happened to me, hmm? You’d be completely helpless!” But Dusty only uttered a rattly purr as Tal’kaela poured food into his dish and water in his bowl. “Luckily… Nothing’s going to happen to me,” came her mumbled punctuation. Sighing heavily and standing up, she shuffled over to her replicator and ordered coffee before slumping down in the rolling chair at her dining room-turned-office table. Sipping at the scalding drink, she pulled out a paper from under a stack of displaced notes. In the past week, she had let her apartment go more than usual…with the exception of the kitchen, which she would occasionally clean angrily while ranting at no one in Romulan. “I don’t understand…” she muttered to Dusty, who was just swallowing some water to help him wash down his breakfast, “I’ve done my research… I even got my hands on a couple of Federation files on the subject… But nothing I’ve found matches…HIM!” Dusty tottered over to her, licking his lips and purring contently. “He isn’t Betazoid,” she continued, picking up the grey cat and setting him on her shoulder, “He’s not…whatever that ‘traveler’ guy is. He isn’t a Q. …I don’t think.” She growled, “whatever he is, he’s obviously telepathic, and you know how I feel about telepaths…” The Romulan turned her brown eyes to glare at her computer screen. “Forget it. With any hope he’s forgotten about me anyway. If he really can see my dreams, he knows how I—Nevermind, I’m not going to think about that! No!!” She exclaimed decisively. “I’m sure that by now my commander has noticed something is wrong. I wonder if Letant talked to him… Well, whatever. I’ll show him that nothing is wrong and everything is fine because this whole thing doesn’t affect me—I mean my duties—or me—Rrrrgh…” With a decisive turn that nearly knocked Dusty off her shoulder, the Romulan angrily pounded away at her keyboard (which she preferred over voice command, seeing as it was more silent and not overhearable by her neighbors) in search of old research files she could use to conjure up a report.
Surely writing a report and getting back to her duties would make her forget all about that… Robin. Sandman, wizard, whatever-he-called-himself….
