SEASON FOUR

EPISODE 5: THE GIFT
PART THREE

By: X-C

SPACE: THE FINAL FRONTIER. THESE ARE THE VOYAGES OF THE WWF TITANPRIZE. IT'S MISSION: TO EXPLORE AND ENTERTAIN NEW SOCIETIES AND NEW CIVILIZATIONS.  TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO WRESTLER HAS GONE BEFORE!

TITANPRIZE CREW:
Captain Vincent K. McMahon
First Officer, Commander Shane McMahon
Chief Engineer, Commander Stephanie McMahon
Chief of Chiefs, Commander Linda McMahon
Chief of Security, Commander Kane
Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Taker
Communications Officer, Lieutenant Rock
Counselor Al Snow (assisted by H.E.A.D.)
Diagnostics Officer, Lieutenant Jericho
Tactical Officer, Lieutenant Commander Austin
Transporter Chief, Lieutenant Commander Debra McMichael
... And many more!

JA'RET HOMEWORLD

    There was a fire burning inside of Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley. She groaned, rubbing her eyes, writhing in pain as her chest stung, as if being stuck with a million hot needles. She expected to see pink everywhere, but there was....nothing. She was lying on something, yet there was nothing solid beneath her, and she was surrounded by colorless, unscented, dead air. Maybe she was dead. At this point, it would be fine by her.

    A Ja'Ret appeared before her. He did not smile. His manner was not respectful. When he spoke, his voice was lacking in any emotion. "You will be executed for treason within 24 Wrestlfleet hours. I understand how important keeping track of time is to you...humans."

    Stephanie smiled. "For such an advanced species, your system of justice sure sucks."

    This time, the Ja'Ret smiled back. "This will make a nice addition to our museum after you die. It's most primitive."

    The Y2J Unit stumbled into Stephanie's bland little pocket of space, the Ja'Ret staring at him with scorn.

    "Jericho!" Stephanie hissed.

    "Dirty, filthy, nasty, skanky, brutal, bottom-feeding trash bag ho!" Jericho responded.

    Stephanie slapped him across the face.

WWF TITANPRIZE-ENGINEERING

    "That dumb son of a bitch Jericho!" Lt. Commander Austin was on the verge of exploding. "He didn't leave a lick of information about his rescue mission? Why, I'll kick his sorry-"

    Ensign Lita sighed. It was hard accessing records with Austin's beer breath on her and Ensign Jeff still comatose in Sickbay, worrying her more than she cared to admit. Worse yet, Ensign Edge and his insufferable brother had decided that the monitors in engineering gave off the best reflections. She'd had to bring Commander Kane in to chase them off from her station, and they had run away, combs between their legs.

    "Sir, if Lt. Jericho left any facts concerning his mission in here, they are encoded so brilliantly that no one in engineering can snake them out. " Ensign Lita said.

    "That silly-" Lt Commander Austin caught himself. "Most of the time, I don't know what the hell he's talking about. I mean, what's a bad mamma jamma?"

    "Sir-" Lita was cut off by Lt. Rock's voice blasting over his comm badge. A few in the crew chanted his name.

    "Acting Captain Austin, your role - know it.  Your ass - bring it! To the bridge, and the Rock means NOW!"

    "Now look here motor mouth!" Austin snapped back. "I'll get there when I am damn good and ready!"

    "Listen up jabroni!" Lt Rock wasn't taking no guff from the so-called captain. "Wrestlefleet has tracked our monkey asses down! They will be within weapons range in 12 hours. What's your orders."

    "You silly-"

    "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR ORDERS ARE!" Lt Rock loudly snapped his comm badge off.

    Austin punched a hole in an unused console. No matter how many times Lt. Rock said that, it still made him so damn angry, and that was all he had to think about that...

JA'RET HOMEWORLD

    "I can understand why any woman wouldn't be able to keep their eyes off me, but Stephanie...you're shameless."

    Stephanie glowered at Jericho, as she had been for who knew how long. "Trust me, plasmaface, a McMahon would never touch inferior merchandise. I am simply waiting for your brilliant escape plan. Here's hoping your twisted up circuits will figure something out before I die or your fat head starts to smoke."

    Jericho appeared thoughtful. "How do you kill a holographic body, especially one with so much cellulite to protect it?"

    "You don't." Stephanie seethed, anger making every muscle fiber twitch. "They scramble your neural pattern, causing you unbearable pain, for as long as they want."

    "If they can find your brains, they can scramble them." Jericho stretched his legs, walking around the bizarre stretch of empty space, running his hands through inch after inch of thin air. Depressing place to await your death, he thought. " All I know is they never eeeevvvvveeeerrrr will put this gorgeous structure in a museum!"

    Stephanie's mouth fell open. "You're more concerned about becoming a tourist attraction than with these holographic mutants snuffing out my precious, wonderful, delicate, young-"

    "Dirty, filthy, nasty skanky, brutal, bottom-feeding, trash-bag life?" Jericho finished helpfully.

    "AHHHHH!" Stephanie just screamed. "Is that stuck in a feedback loop or something? Oh god, what hideous twist of fate brought you here? If I can't get out, how can a bucket of rusted out bolts get in?"

    Jericho could not help but be smug. "You didn't think that anteater husband of yours would actually be your knight in shining armor did you? When the escape device melded with the Orb, the shielding went into a state of flux and I transported through in case something went wrong. Only two could leave and there were three of you, so something was bound to screw up. How odd that it should be you who screwed... up."

    "I was blasted by phaser fire." Stephanie repeated through clenched teeth. "And that opportunist Lita grabbed her little boytoy and ran for it like the coward she is! Nobody wanted her back! Deep down inside, everyone wanted me back! What is so disgusting is that she's too caught up in her career to notice that dope has the hots for her."

    "Thank goodness I wouldn't know anything about that." Jericho mumbled. His internal clock told him that time was running short and Stephanie would be subjected to the most grueling forms of neural torture the Ja'Ret had to offer sooner than she cared for.

    "So why haven't you transported us back out of here?" Stephanie demanded.

    "The shields have compensated for the disruption." Jericho replied, awaiting the eruption from the Commander. "They have been effectively re-sealed."

    "You are useless!" Jericho wasn't expecting Stephanie to launch at him in her tired, injured state, but she did, pounding on his chest. It was painless, but irritating. "All you're going to accomplish is to make neural torture seem fun compared to your company! I hate you so much! I wish you would have just died on your way in!"

    The Y2J Unit blinked in disbelief at the harsh words, and at the discomfort they caused in his robotic chest cavity. He peeled her off, feeling a strange sparking sensation along his skin. Malfunction, he told himself, initiating a superficial self-diagnostic. "It's hard to think with you all over me. Save it for your husband and whoever else you like taking into the Jeffries tubes at night for a two credit charge."

    Stephanie swallowed the less than ladylike retort. She would never tell Jericho, but she was too frightened to properly focus on fighting with him. Meanwhile, the Y2JUnit listened as the minutes sailed by on his chronometer... four hours until he would be forced to watch Stephanie's truly graphic death.

    Turning his back to the girl, he casually flipped a fingernail back and eased his emotion chip out of its interface, silencing the swirl of confusion that was screaming in his positronic brain. He became a computer inside a synthetic body, trying to deduce how he could cause a similar disruption to the shields as that amazing pink transmitter had. He had the specs for the rescue device stored, but they might not add up to anything, and the logic that had been programmed into him told Jericho that false hope would be a very cruel thing for Stephanie in her current situation.

WWF TITANPRIZE-CAPTAIN'S READY ROOM

    "Ideas?" Captain McMahon's voice was strained, and his face looked old and tired. He sipped at a cup of strong black coffee that the ever helpful Ensign Matt had brought to him piping hot from the replicator. He felt bad for the young ensign, depsite his anger towards a comatose Jeff. He was trying to keep the boy busy anyway he could.

    "Ideas? The Rock says you want ideas? How about you go lick a llamas nipple!" Lt. Rock snapped. "How's that for an idea? Wrestlefleet is gonna lay the smackdown on our candyasses  in two hours and you don't even know your role?"

    "Silence." Commander Kane needed to say no more.

    "You big red retard!" Lt Rock never listened to anything but the sound of his own voice sometimes. "You're telling the Rock to be silent? Well it doesn't matter what you tell the Rock!  The only fun The Rock's had tonight was throwing that jabroni Triple H in the brig for destroying the Smackdown!"

    "That was highly inappropriate Mr. Rock." Captain McMahon sighed. "I don't trust the man as far as I can throw him, but I understand why he's angry right now. He misses his wife. He realizes this isn't a game anymore."

    "He misses a two credit slut?" Lt Rock wouldn't let up. "The Rock will loan him a credit and he can buy himself a better roll in the hay."

    "I have an idea on how to avoid Wrestlefleet sir." Ensign Lita spoke up. If she could just do one good thing for Captain McMahon, maybe he would soften his attitude towards her friend Ensign Jeff. "But....it's not exactly...legal."

    "Legal?" the Captain laughed. "We've disobeyed direct orders from Wrestlefleet. Why stop now?"

    "Well...do you remember our border skirmish with the WCW Thunder?" Lita asked.

    Captain McMahon thought for a moment. It had been a very minor scuffle on the edge of Nytron Space, as the Thunder had tried to encroach on Wrestlefleet territory. It had been amusing actually-the Thunder was an unimpressive, poorly constructed vessel and the TitanPrize had driven it back easily. The only snag had been the cloaking device the Thunder had been using, trying to make itself literally disappear off the map. After the TitanPrize had disabled the ship, they had downloaded the spec for the technology onto their computer.

    "I remember. They attempted to use a cloaking device to evade us."

    "I know I shouldn't have..." Ensign Lita looked down at the Captain's table. It should have been a great honor to sit here in the ready room, at a top level meeting, but so much was at stake..."But I couldn't help studying it. I know Wrestlefleet feels that WWF class ships are so powerful that they don't need disappearing technology, and that it would be an unethical weapon-"

    "So?" Ensign Edge, who had been assigned to guard the door to the ready room, cut in. "All the more reason we should use it."

    "Thank you Ensign Edge." Captain McMahon usually passed off the arrogant behavior to the fact that he was one-fourth Aerialian and had inherited the risk-taking trait only. Insubordination was a huge risk normally. "Can you make it work Ensign Lita?"

    "I believe I can, within the hour."

    Captain McMahon knew he was grasping at straws, but it was better than being blasted out of space by his own federation. "Make it so. Ensign Matt, Lt. Rock, you're with Lita."

    Ensign Matt rose to his feet. He would watch Lita very carefully in engineering this time.

JA’RET HOMEWORLD

    One Wrestlefleet hour remaining in her lifespan. Stephanie had not really believed she would ever die in the line of duty. She always figured she would remain safe and cozy on the TitanPrize, happily tucked away in engineering, commanding all the little peasants under her. She had looked forward to returning and making Lita's life a living heck for the rest of her Wrestlefleet career an hour ago, but now she realized it was a pipe dream. Ugh. Triple H would inherit all her credits too, probably attempt to finance another brilliant rebellion with them.

    As for Jericho, he just stood there, his eyes scanning rapidly back and forth, caught in the throes of another diagnostic or something. He had not spoken at all for over sixty minutes, not even after the Ja'Ret had informed her she had very little time to enjoy being pain-free and alive. She wondered what would happen to her body on the TitanPrize, if Hunter and Daddy would have to watch her slip away...

    "Hey! Y2Jerky!" Stephanie was on the verge of exploding. The Ja'Ret had allowed her a change of scenery, much like a last meal. She had selected the Garden Deck of the TitanPrize, where she and Hunter had shared so many wonderful....anyways Jericho had not even noticed the altered surroundings. "Are you going to cross those eyes all day, or are you just playing with me and plan on yanking me out of this gutter at the last minute?"

    Jericho frowned mechanically. "These equations for creating another disruption in the shielding are proving to be too complex for my positronic brain to process in under 60 minutes. 99% chance of failure for this mission."

    Stephanie's jaw dropped. "What? You're supposed to be a great scientific achievement not a lemon! And did you hear me? I said "playing with me" and "gutter"! Do I have to draw you a map to the insults there?"

    Jericho didn't bite. "Once the interruption of your neural pathways begins in 57 minutes, the mission will be deemed a failure. I'll program myself to permanently shut down and experience a cascade systems failure to avoid capture. The mission objective will be lost."

    "Objective?" Stephanie gasped. "That's all I am to you? An...objective!"

    If the android couldn't save her... he couldn't even look beyond his own callous calculations.... She blinked. Of course! She slithered up to Jericho, slipping her hand into his.

    "I hope you don't mind." Stephanie said sweetly, putting just that right note of sadness into her voice. "I need comfort."

    Lt. Jericho's stare was bland. "Comfort will be of no use to you. It can't assist the mission in any way. Of course, you... people are known for such rituals ...."

    "Jericho, if you have nothing nice to say, then please, shut the hell up." Stephanie kissed him on his non-responsive, robotic mouth, knowing that his wires were too busy trying to process what she was doing into something logical, scientific, and mathematical to notice her finger sliding underneath his thumbnail and pushing his emotion chip back into place...

    The Y2J Unit gasped and staggered backwards. "Stephanie! You little wench! You filthy-" He paused to wipe the moisture from his lips. "You had no right to violate me like that!"

    "You weren't getting anything done in your frigid android state!" Stephanie retorted. "All you did was spit out all these statistics about mission failure and my impending doom!"

    "And this changes what?" Jericho was boiling over with rage. He was certain it was because his emotion chip had just been shoved rudely back into its proper interface. "I am scanning myself now, and the odds are still against you. Be a woman and suck it up, because you're going to get the kind of neural torture you will never eeeeevvvveeeer forget!"

    Stephanie's eyes burned with hot, salty liquid. She didn't even feel the phaser burn across her chest anymore, she just felt hopeless. She collapsed next to particularly lovely and completely unreal Houdianian flower that was colored a striking blue and yellow that little Ensign Crash had once brought aboard. He had seemed abnormally pleased when Cadet Eddie had used one to woo that waitress Chyna at the Smackdown. She tried to laugh at the ridiculous memory, but a sob escaped her lips instead.

    "Oh for the love of-" Jericho had seen enough of this. Stephanie was very talented at using her tears to trick someone, and he didn't wonder at all why this nutjob species had chosen her for their leader. "Isn't this where I caught you flirting with Ensign Angle last week?"

    "I don't flirt with Ensigns." Stephanie said with disgust, trying to brush tears from her eyes, but for every one she wiped away, two more fell.

    The Y2J Unit had about a million comebacks burning his wires at that moment, but he held his tongue. 40 minutes. He helped Stephanie back to her feet. "We can try something that has a 10% chance of working, and that's being generous. I'll need you to manually program an unsafe procedure into my system; it won't allow me to make an attempt to ice myself. It could cause a disruption similar enough to the pink stone to allow us a small window of escape."

    "Which panel?" Stephanie tried to be all business, as she listened to Jericho command her to initiate a potentially suicidal power surge into his body.

    "In my neck." Jericho kept his voice cool as well, as Stephanie's fingers eased open the hatch.

    "While this seems like a brilliant idea, I am not sure how I will get back into my own body. You can't transport my neural pattern and expect it to just come out in the wash can you?" Stephanie asked.

    "I wondered when that trademark McMahon selfishness would shine through." Jericho smiled grimly. "I can store your neural pattern in a transporter buffer inside my body. It should remain protected during the power surge, which will be localized."

    "Localized to your life support systems." Stephanie reminded him, her finger resting on a wire in his neck as she eyed him quizzically. "Leaving only enough back-up energy to operate the buffer. Essentially you'd be...dead and acting as nothing more than a transporter device."

    The Y2J Unit tried not to flinch. He wondered if the engineering expert knew what kind of feelings that wire was causing in his neural net due to the pressure she put on it. "You're looking at it all wrong Stephie. If I live, I'll know all your precious little secrets."

    "Well." She snapped the panel closed and grinned broadly. "Here's hoping the surge just fries your circuits then."

    "We'll know in 15 minutes." Jericho said. His emotion chip was making this whole plan seem a little nerve-racking. He wondered how so many humans were able to end it all themselves, because he sure didn't like knowing he might blow all his circuitry in a matter of minutes. "You have twenty minutes to live and I figure we might as well cut this close."

    Twenty minutes. There was a slim chance she might survive, but it was more likely she would die in the buffer or be tormented after being captured by the Ja'Ret. Considering what was about to happen to Jericho's android body, he would never know either way.

    "Chris?"

    "Don't call me that."

    "A McMahon backed into a corner does what she damn well pleases." Stephanie wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, no motive underlying this embrace.

    "Get your hands off me you dirty, filthy, nasty, skanky...." Jericho's postitronic mind lost the words and might have forgotten the time as well, had he not been programmed to shut down and revert to basic life support systems within a certain amount of minutes.

    Stephanie knew she had little time to waste. She accessed a panel in the back of his neck, and erased the last several minutes from his primary and secondary memory banks. That was the wonderful thing about an android, with just the push of a button or two, some things just never happened!

WWF TITANPRIZE-THE SMACKDOWN

    "The Ja'Ret Homeworld has been destroyed?" Stephanie's eyes were wide with disbelief as she held her husband's gaze. A party in her honor was in full swing around her, but she still needed to pinch herself occassionally to make sure her body was real.

    "Yeah." Hunter was polishing off another Degenerate Ale. "Supposedly the thing just blew up in Sickbay. Dr. Taker was the only witness."

    Dr. Taker. Stephanie shuddered. Surely Dr. Taker wouldn't have had the power too... NO WAY! Perhaps it was all an accident, caused by the Y2J Unit's power surge, a surge that had mimicked the pink stone enough to be successful.

    "And daddy is in the clear?"

    You're damn right." Road Dogg assured her. "In fact, what the TitanPrize did to defeat the Ja'Ret is the stuff of legends now. But girl, you know, when I thought you were a goner, it was like...two tears in a bucket you know?"

    "I know." Stephanie smiled.

    "Golly, it must have been so terrible being transported by that disgusting Y2J Unit!" Tori exclaimed, setting a sweet, strawberry flavored drink in front of the Commander. "He called me a ho before he went on his little boy scout mission to save you!"

    "It wasn't exactly a first class shuttlecraft." Stephanie agreed, hiding her smile behind the foam of her drink.

    "I see Ensign Hardly has recovered." Road Dogg said scornfully. "Still can't seem to catch that ice queen Lita's attention. Geesh that girl should at least throw him a bone or something."

    Tori laughed, a nasty, sparkling little laugh. "He may have been put off by those awful pictures that have been circulating of her and Ensign Christian. Of course, it was all completely innocent, but put in the improper context...."

    Stephanie's eyes gleamed. "You may be in line for a promotion Tori. Lord knows that witch Lita will never see the back end of one in her lifetime."

    Triple H leaned over to her and suggested they return to their quarters so she could rest. Stephanie didn't exactly hear him, as her stare was fixed on the roughed up but otherwise alright Lt. Jericho, who had been a miracle patient for Dr. Taker and Nurse Saturn just a few days before. He was laughing it up with Ensign Matt and that tramp Terri at the bar.

    Jericho seemed to be aware of her, and met her gaze squarely, a knowing smirk on his face. Stephanie's stomach sank as she realized that while she had erased his memory of a...certain event, Lt. Jericho had been exposed to every last secret of hers during the transport out of the Orb. And every secret meant every secret, even the ones she'd tried to hide...