Space... The final frontier... These are the voyages of the starship Wulfenbach... its continuing mission: to keep the peace in the Europan sector. (Which is to say: GG in a Star Trekish setting. I shudder to try to imagine Castle Heterodyne in this AU.)
1001 FOLLOWERS FIC REQUEST BONZANA (now closed): PART THREE!
Actually, confession: Star Trek is mostly a secondhand fandom for me, so I cannot give this nearly the details of canon galactic politics that it deserves. In apology, as promised, have this photograph of my dog, extremely focussed on a group of turkeys we saw while walking one afternoon.:
okay so once upon a time, Starfleet and the Federation were enjoying a reign of peace, by which I mean everything got very bureaucratic and political and often straight-up corrupt. Then Bill and Barry Heterodyne were like “but we should EXPLORE and SAVE PLANETS” and they and their crew got pretty famous for doing just that (Bill was Captain, Barry Science Officer, Lu translator, Klaus pilot, Judy doctor, and Punch Security. ) The broke the Prime Directive so much and it was AWESOME.
(There was one mission where the all-female locals accepted Lucrezia as their goddess. They had some mind-controlly tech or maybe natural microbiota as well. It was a fun adventure, and nobody but Lucrezia thought any more of it.)
Then…Things Happened. Lu picked Bill and threw Klaus through a wormhole back to Skifander. Ships started disappearing from once-safe routes. This pathogen that turned people into sort-of-zombies spread rapidly through fleet and associated planets. Lu disappears, Bill and Barry go to find her and also disappear, Klaus finally gets back from Skifander - the long way around, not by wormhole - to find Starfleet in chaos and the Federation starting to fall apart…
so he pulls everything back together with teamwork and cunning and sheer force of will, and also militarizes Starfleet a bunch, because that’s never a bad idea. or anything.
15-20 years later…Gilgamesh Holzsfaller is the most irritating person at Starfleet Academy. To Tarvek. Everyone else, unaccountably, likes him. Everyone else. It’s i n f u r i a t i n g.
(*Nature show narrator voice* And here we see the young male hiding his attraction behind displays of aggression. Watch as they fight for dominance, both oblivious to the true reason for their passion. Will they realize that much of their enthusiasm stems from finally having found someone who can match them blow for blow?)
Seriously though, the personal issues behind the raging black-flirting: Gil is here under an assumed name because he wants to make a name for himself rather than ride his father’s; he pulls this off because not many people know Klaus even has a son, much less have seen him. He’s incredibly smart, leadershipy, and a superb pilot, but he doesn’t care that much about doing well officially, like, in grades. At least, he never acts like it. He studies in secret sometimes. He totally cheats on the Kobayashi Maru the same way Kirk did in the reboot movie, reprogramming the machine to let him win.
Tarvek, meanwhile cares a lot about grades, and being first in every class, and getting a captaincy asap out of school then rising through the ranks to First Admiral and changing things. Solidify the Federation, probably expand it. Like his great-great-idk-grandfather Captain (later Admiral) Andronicus Valois of the USS Storm King, who commanded the first legendary independent exploratory deep-space mission after First Contact and was later pivotal to the foundation and first expansion of the Federation. The line of descendants have generally been admirals and staff officers ever since.
Naturally, on graduation day Gil gets called by his proper last name, and then gets appointed…okay it’s absurd to make someone a captain fresh out of school, so let’s just jump forward another few years to when Gil does get his captaincy, of the new USS Storm King. Tarvek, who still hasn’t forgiven him for the identity-hiding thing - it’s part “thought we were friends” and part trying to convince himself that’s how Gil did well in class and got promoted first even while knowing deep down it’s genuinely merit - is Science Officer, First Officer, and f u r i o u s about this turn of events.
Agatha, meanwhile, has been raised by Adam and Lilith on a random, mostly empty rock of a moon in the middle of nowhere, and when a traveling entertainment ship stops by, she seizes the chance to stow away. They find her pretty quickly, but she’s an engineering genius so they keep her happily.
I have NO idea how actual Star Trek hyperdrives work, but in this AU they were invented by Van Rijn and they have nine cylinders or something that are commonly nicknamed “muses” because idk someone early on was a mythology nerd and somehow it stuck?
Violetta is the chief medical officer on the Storm King; she didn’t even want to join Starfleet but family expectations. Her hobbies are picking pockets, figuring out ways to poison people using her medical supplies, and daydreaming about pretty dresses she could wear if she didn’t have to be in this stupid uniform all the time. Bang is NOT part of the crew; she’s an “independent contractor” (space pirate!) Klaus hires periodically for things the Federation cannot be caught doing. Gil apprenticed with her for a while before he went to the Academy.
So obviously everyone has to run into each other at once…and Klaus has to find out about Agatha and freak out…I have no idea how anything happens…
but at some point, we’re going to get all our heroes - OT3 and Fighting Girls - in the original USS Storm King together, Valois’s ship - maybe it lost? maybe they stole it from a museum? and Gil is piloting as only Gil can pilot, jerking and swerving and generally dodging asteroids, gunfire, etc, while Zeetha mans the shields and Bang the weapons-firing station - with great glee - and Agatha and Tarvek frantically scramble around the engine room keeping the muses from either shutting off and exploding. I guess Violetta’s helping them. And Moloch, a poor innocent redshirt who almost wishes he’d died instead.
No one has been able to adequately explain why, but Jenna experienced a growth spurt while she was pregnant with Matthew, making her the tallest of the Warriors of Vale by a few inches. (Submitted by waffle-sorter)
Garet prefers to sleep with a candle burning in the room. He doesn’t need it, he’s got no actual problem falling asleep in the dark, but he likes knowing that there’s a little fire nearby. (Submitted by waffle-sorter)
Piers’ headdress, by purest coincidence, is nearly a perfect match for the one that was once the emblem of the Lemurian Royal Cartographer.
The last Royal Cartographer died roughly a century after Alchemy was sealed; in light of the recent edict forbidding any Lemurian from leaving, the king at the time - Hydros’ father - decided not to appoint a replacement. Gradually, most Lemurians forgot there had ever been such a position.
Felix’s ponytail symbolizes, to Proxians, that he isn’t a “true” warrior. Proxian recruits wear their hair long and tied back, and at the conclusion of their training they cut it off and burn the strands. Due to the unique circumstances of his “training”, Felix never went through that ceremony.
He continues to wear it long in part because of the reaction from those Proxians who don’t know him personally.
The Elemental Rocks were created as a direct result of the Seal on Alchemy. With the Lighthouses distributed primarily around the western half of the world, elemental energy was unbalanced. Weyard’s rudimentary consciousness (Kraden’s bear simile was more correct than he realized) attempted to avert this by creating “hotspots” around the Eastern Sea.
The Psynergy-granting tablets at the Rocks’ hearts are, in fact, not written in any human language; they convey their messages directly through the Psynergetic parts of Adepts’ minds.
