A Helpful Surprise

The next week or two was business as usual except that L'Naan had not visited us since the event with the Botha. Considering what had taken out B'Elanna in the episode, I had a good idea that L'Naan had experienced something similar, and, with our Dragon-blood, I was the most likely person for the Botha to have copied in her mind. It would probably take a bit longer before she would be comfortable around me again, but I was not going to rush her, and Echo was still a little grumpy from her own experience, so she had yet to say anything to her.

Despite Katye's lack of mana, Filigree's bond to her was unaffected. This meant that the pixie could use some of Katye's reserves to cast stronger spells which allowed Katye's reserves to keep growing through the expenditure, albeit at a slower rate. Even though she could train and grow throughout this period without her mana, she was not the type to leave herself in a weakened state, so she had been studying different languages earnestly and even had the Doctor, who had the universal translator written into his program, help her by only speaking in certain languages during her duty shifts. She was a long way from learning a hundred languages, but I had encouraged to learn a particular ancient root language of the Native Americans since it would be helpful for an episode that I knew was coming soon.

I did not have to wait long since it was less than a month after dealing with the Botha that Raven and I found ourselves on an away mission on a random moon, looking for polyferranide to reseal the warp coils before we needed to rebuild them. While she and B'Elanna did some detailed scans of the moon, Chakotay, Tuvok, Neelix, and I wandered around as we scanned with our tricorders. I was looking for something special that would confirm that this was the episode, but Neelix got that honor sadly.

"Commander, come take a look at this," Neelix called out.

That drew Tuvok's and my attention as well, so we all walked over to him. What Neelix had found was the remains of a campfire, but what made it unique was the spiral design made out of the ashes and I could even sense faint traces of mana being refined into the ground. It would not last long, but it would repair the minor damage that the campfire had caused.

"What do you think this is? Some kind of message?" Neelix asked.

Upon seeing the formation, Chakotay knelt down and hovered a hand over the symbols as he traced them. To my surprise, he was unconsciously channeling some of his own mana into the formation which would help it last a little longer. It was not enough to prove dangerous to him and, even if he were to perform the act a hundred times a day for the rest of his life, he would not reach the needed mana to cast spells, but those who had created this formation would likely have their own magic. It seemed that there were more to these 'Sky Spirits' than them just being aliens that visited ancient Earth.

"Maybe it's a blessing to the land, for damaging it with the campfire," Chakotay said.

"What is your basis for that conclusion, Commander?" Tuvok asked.

"Oh, just something somebody told me once," he replied with a light smile.

"Well, whoever told you that was right. It's a minor magic formation to heal the land. Now that I'm close, I can sense the delicate transfer of energy. I don't have a lot of experience with formations, but both Katye and Raven use them in their various projects, so I can still recognize them," I explained.

"You mean whoever made this can use magic like your group?" Chakotay asked with surprise.

"I'm just as surprised as you are, Commander. While all forms of life have traces of mana, most humanoid races only have enough to do minor things like telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and such. This shows a high understanding of mana which makes me believe that they may have abilities similar to our own," I replied. "Would you mind if I call the captain and ask for Katye to beam down? This is something that she and Raven would like to see."

"Of course," he agreed.

I tapped my badge and said, "Rebecca to Voyager."

"Yes, Rebecca?" Janeway asked through the comm system.

"We found something interesting on the moon's surface and I would like to request that Katye beams down to help us examine it."

"Understood. I'll have her join you shortly," Janeway replied.

"Thank you, Captain."

"Well, the polyferranide here is contaminated with astilines, so we won't be able to use it. Tuvok, help B'Elanna with packing up the equipment so that Raven can assist Rebecca."

"Yes, Commander," Tuvok agreed dispassionately then walked over to the two engineers.

Chakotay tactfully moved Neelix away from the formation while Raven walked over. Her senses were not as enhanced as my own, but she did recognize a few of the smaller symbols which were used for drawing in ambient mana. Her work with Pedira had caused her to look into a number of methods of collecting mana without us around because any device created with magic would need some source of mana, so she would either need a lot of mana crystals to go with her, or a built-in recharging method which would help us ensure that the technology would not be easy to change into anything else. When Katye beamed down, I waved her over and pointed to the 'blessing'.

"CHAH-mooz-ee," Katye said, recognizing the pattern from her study of the ancient Native American language.

"Uh huh, and now for the surprise, it draws in ambient mana and Chakotay was able to strengthen it slightly by tracing the symbol in the air," I explained.

"What?!?" both Katye and Raven exclaimed, making me chuckle.

With a wave of my hand, I created a small Wind Domain to ensure that no one could hear our conversation and replied, "In the episode, the race of aliens that made this are the same 'Sky Spirits' that Chakotay's tribe descends from. They gave the original group of humans a genetic binding that had them colonize North and South America long before Christopher Columbus, or even Leif Eriksson. Nearly every tribe throughout the Americas that existed before the colonization can root themselves back to the 'Inheritors' as the aliens referred to them as."

Katye scoffed, shaking her head, "Gitchi Manitou is a magic-wielding alien... Sure, why not? Next thing Tori is going to change is that Jesus is a vampire."

"Who?" Raven and I both asked.

"Gitchi Manitou roughly translates to the 'Great Spirit' which is the name of the 'Creator' for my tribe. I get that all of our lives are within his worlds, but it still stings when he reminds us of it."

"Tori is an asshole, we all know it," I retorted, trying to break the tension and was rewarded with a light chuckle from both of them.

"So, how much do you tell Janeway?" Raven asked, standing up.

"It won't take much between Chakotay and me to convince her to follow after the warp trail to their planet, but it's clear that this is meant to be a learning experience for all of us," I said.

"Maybe, originally," Katye grumbled.

Raven placed a hand on Katye's shoulder while I kissed her cheek.

"Things are fine for now. Just keep working and you'll beat the six months that Sancu assigned you," I said gently. "Even with his restriction, you can learn things from them, and I would not be surprised if one of them show up in the possible people that we can create on the improved holo-deck."

"True," Katye sighed.

We left the area undisturbed, since anything that we did would ruin the effect, then joined the others to beam back up to the ship. I was pulled into the conversation with Janeway and Chakotay as he explained a little about his past and the journey that he had taken with his father to find the descendants of the Rubber Tree people, as he called them. After his story, I explained that the CHAH-mooz-ee was similar to some of our mage-tech, but used properties that we were not familiar with, and it could be the clue that we needed to figure out how to charge any device that Pedira made.

Janeway had more than enough reason to follow the warp trail that we detected leaving the moon, so we tracked it back to a planet. Just like in the episode, the aliens cloaked their life signs from our sensors, but their power source was not as easily hidden. The captain decided to send Chakotay down with an away team which included Tuvok, B'Elanna, and my entire group.

"We may be out of luck," B'Elanna said as Chakotay, Tuvok, and I walked into Transport Room Three.

"Problem?" Chakotay asked.

"I'm not sure we can transport down. Every time we try to lock on to a transport site, a storm begins," B'Elanna explained.

"Storm?"

"We've tried seven different sites and as soon as we lock on, an electrical storm forms right above the location. When we change sites, a new storm forms, and the old one dissipates."

"Might the transporter beam itself be causing an electrostatic charge in the atmosphere?" Tuvok questioned.

"That's as good a guess as any. I can't explain it. We just can't transport," B'Elanna said, her annoyance clear in her tone.

B'Elanna and Raven were behind the terminal with another person in a yellow uniform, likely the normal operator. Katye and Echo were already here and waiting off to the side. None of my group was surprised by the apparent problem with the atmosphere since I had given them the details of the episode already.

"Well then, we can take my ship," I said with a smirk.

"Sounds good to me," Chakotay agreed.

I led everyone to the Shuttle Bay while Chakotay told the captain the minor change of plans on the way. Our bridge was a little small for so many people, so only Raven and Echo headed there to fly the ship while the rest of us went upstairs.

"Please, make yourselves comfortable. I can even replicate some refreshments," I offered

"Thank you, but that won't be necessary," Chakotay replied.

I chuckled and nodded. Since the ship had started moving, I instructed, "Fae, let us see outside."

The floor and walls changed to show everything outside of the ship as if they were glass. It was slightly strange since the furniture and vines growing along the walls did not change, but everything else did and we could still see everything outside of the ship. The others looked surprised, but that just made me chuckle as I sat down on one of the couches.

"How did the walls change? Is it a holo-gram?" B'Elanna asked.

"Minor illusion, so a holo-gram isn't too far off," Katye replied as she headed for the bedroom. She opened the door and called, "Filigree, wake up, little one."

The bright Yang pixie flew out of the room with a sleepy expression, but it turned to wonder when she entered the room with the rest of us.

"Where are we going?" she asked excitedly as she landed on Katye's shoulder.

"To that planet below us. I know how much you enjoyed the last world that we stopped on, but you'll have to stay with us until we have made contact with the people that live here," Katye explained.

"I promise," she replied with a big smile.

Chakotay and B'Elanna chuckled at her cute antics while Tuvok's expression remained neutral. The others sat down as the Voyager grew smaller and we started our descent into the planet's atmosphere. Once we reached the cloud level, a large amount of mana swirled around the ship which made me grin evilly as I recognized the type of spell being used. Katye only managed to sigh, knowing exactly what I was planning to do, but before anyone else could ask anything, I teleported myself out of the ship.

I shifted into my Dusa form and opened my wings so that I could glide behind the ship. I was not just playing around, though I was enjoying myself, since a thunderstorm was quickly developing in the sky. Thanks to my past life's original identity as a Chaos Storm True Dragon, I had a natural affinity with storms and it was my first triple-element spell. I stretched my mana and wrangled control of the weather from whatever was casting the Thunderstorm spell. It was not a person who was controlling the storm since, if it was, there would be an ebb and flow to the mana as they tried to keep control over their spell, but this had a consistent flow the entire time, making me think that it was a device as Raven had made a few.

The ship was able to land in a small clearing which was harder to find than you would expect since the planet seemed to be covered in a thick jungle. I landed by the ship and shifted out of my Dusa form before the others could exit. Chakotay, B'Elanna, and Tuvok were looking at me with a bit of surprise while my group had various levels of amusement on their faces.

"Sorry, I sensed that the storm was artificially made with mana, so I wanted to test how strong it was," I explained.

Chakotay and B'Elanna simply shook their heads lightly since they could not reprimand me with my rank. They had also gotten used to my personality over the months, so what I had done did not really surprise them too much.

"Echo, can you take point and lead us towards the power source that we detected?" Chakotay asked.

"Yes, sir," Echo replied, closing her eyes.

It took her a moment, but she released a burst of mana as she reopened her eyes, one now icy blue. She led us through the jungle while the rest of us used our tricorders to scan everything. This jungle was not too different from the rainforests on Earth and we even found a few flowers native to the human home world which Chakotay asked Tuvok to take a sample of.

We walked for about half an hour, but things started changing from the episode quickly during that time. Without us, they would have been forced to search randomly for the power source until they stumbled upon a deserted village, but Echo could provide a straight path for us, which they took notice of it seemed. There were a couple of people following us with five times the amount of mana of Tuvok, giving them the ability to cast minor spells, but below what Raven and Echo had when Tori first gave them their powers. Katye, Raven, and Echo had noticed as well, but since our tricorders could not detect them, we decided to stay quiet for now. The aliens had not been aggressive in the episode, so we were trying to keep things peaceful.

"Commander, there is a large group approaching from our front," Echo said.

"Then we'll stop and wait for them here," Chakotay instructed.

Katye, Raven, and Echo spread themselves to the edges of the group. Just because we were not expecting them to attack did not mean that we should let our guards down, since they were moving to surround us. Three of the men in the large group had the most mana, nearly as much as Raven and Echo did currently, so they likely could sense how strong we were just as we could sense them.

"Stop, strangers, you are not welcome here," the lead man said, appearing from behind a tree.

All of them revealed themselves, most carrying rifles, and outnumbering us five to one. They wore simple light clothing, and their skin was an ashy gray with silver hair and a nose ridge. They also had the same tattoo as Chakotay, but no one had noticed it yet as they seemed focused on me.

"We mean you no harm. My name is Chakotay, First Officer of the Federation Starship Voyager..." Chakotay started but stopped as the aliens gave a small gasp, looking at him.

"Explain the face marking," the lead alien demanded.

"I wear it to honor my father. He wore it to honor his ancestors," Chakotay replied.

"Ancestors... You are human?"

"Yes."

"Are there others on your world with this mark?"

"Yes, not many, but some."

"We were taught all of them had been annihilated. We were taught your world had been ravaged by those who had no respect for life or land," he said, almost excitedly.

"There was a time when that was true, but no longer," Chakotay replied.

"He claims to be a descendent of the Inheritors."

That caused some mummering from the aliens, but Chakotay, B'Elanna, and Tuvok were just confused. Just like in the episode, the alien told Chakotay the story of how his people visited Earth forty-five thousand years ago and gave his ancestors a genetic binding so that they might thrive and protect their world because they had a deep respect for the land and creatures. Just as Katye had predicted, the descendants of the Inheritors were the various Native American tribes that spread out all across North and South America before the colonization from the European countries which was why they thought that they had been wiped out.

Thanks to Chakotay, we were able to negotiate with the Opec'atii for some of the polyferranide that the Voyager needed and to consult with Raven and Doctor Pedira on the device to heal the phage. While they did not want to teach us their mage-tech, they were willing to give us some tips on how to build the Yang generator which would be needed to power it. In return, they had asked how I was able to negate their storm generator and asked to do some tests so that they could improve their planetary defense with my help. Overall, it was a good exchange, and I was given the chance to play around in the sky, so I was quite happy.

A/N: Would anyone like to suggest some characters for Rebecca to spar against in the new and improved holo-deck?