Chapter Text
Day 1: Crossover or Fusion Fic (Logan & Veronica mixed with your favorite movies, tv shows, comics, books)
With a wrench and shimmer, Veronica’s transported molecules reassemble–leaving her trapped, with the worst away team ever, on the cold and windy surface of Ceti Alpha Four.
Waving away a cloud of dust, she scans the desolate landscape, ignoring the “Not another dirty rock!” whine of Ensign Piznarski, behind her. Briskly taps her communicator to report.
“Mars to Valiant,” she says, as beside her, Ensign Cook removes a pocket mirror so she can check her hair, then lends it to Lieutenant Commander Echolls. “We’re within view of the crash site, sir, but no sign anywhere of the ship that sent the distress call. It’s like it vanished!”
“Copy that, Commander.” Captain Keith Mars’ tone over the comm is warm and approving; Veronica pretends not to notice Cook rolling her eyes and mouthing, ‘NEPOTISM!’ “And there’s no trace of a cloaking signature nearby?”
“Yeah, that would be a negatory.” Lieutenant Van Lowe uses the toe of his boot to tip over a rusting replicator, then crushes the slug beneath (in full and careless defiance of Federation rules). “There’s just a bunch of junk down here, and under that, dirt. Real classy place for a colony–I’m shocked to my core it was abandoned.”
“MYSTERIOUSLY abandoned,” Echolls corrects, with the shit-stirring grin and eyebrow bob he employs to mock Veronica’s enthusiasms. “And none of the colonists were EVER FOUND. Be careful where you step; Mars here thinks the whole area might be booby-trapped.”
“Oh please.” Cook retrieves her mirror and crankily re-pockets it. “Like anyone would bother setting a trap on this shithole, way out on the fringes where nobody COMES.”
“Well something happened to three-hundred and forty-six people.” Veronica studies the readout on her tricorder. “I mean they’re not lurking around, just out of view, watching holovids and singing show tunes.”
“Hey guys?” Piznarski calls from behind them, causing Echolls to groan softly under his breath. “There’s no such thing as a liquid silicon lifeform, right? Because I am getting the WEIRDEST results on my scans.”
“Sure you’re not holding the tricorder upside down again?” Cook mutters, which makes Echolls snicker and high-five her.
Veronica grits her teeth and tells him, in her best facsimile of a patient tone, “Stosh, just quit scanning dirt and get over here. We’re looking for a crashed shuttle today, not adding to your ‘obscure space creatures’ collection.”
“But Veronica…I mean, Commander Mars…do you realize what the discovery of a liquid silicon lifeform would be WORTH? Like on the interstellar enthusiasts’ forums alone, just in terms of my reputation as a collector? Seriously, it would make my name based on a DNA sample, and you know Dr. Fennel told me I could…”
“Nobody wants to hear what Dr. Fennel said you could,” Van Lowe observes, straightening to squint at the horizon. “Seriously, where does Starfleet get these idiots? Every year they’re prettier, younger and dumber, it’s like we’re recruiting at high school proms.”
“Oh, look,” Echolls says, having finally stopped primping and snickering long enough to do his job. “The supposed crash site’s a dead zone, but I AM getting a weak signal of some kind from way over that direction.”
He heads purposefully off towards the source, like HE’S leading the away team and not Veronica, and she grits her teeth and manages not to stomp her foot. How was she supposed to know, when she got mad at him for quitting Starfleet and dumped him, that he’d not only have a change of heart…but buy his way back in, and end up on HER spaceship? As HER security officer? If he had planned the whole scenario, in a Machiavellian scheme to torment her with his presence, he could not have arranged things better.
And Cook only wore the uniform with the short skirt to a crash site in order to better flirt with him. Veronica is 99% sure.
“You’re not in charge here, Logan!” she yells, storming after her nemesis and grabbing his sleeve. “You don’t get to just wander off in random directions and expect the rest of us to trail behind.”
“And yet I’m here, you’re hot on my heels, and so is everyone else.” He waves a hand at Van Lowe, who’s whistling as he approaches, hands in pockets, “Maybe you were a bit hasty, when you kicked me to the curb for not being officer material, peaches. And maybe you want to fight with me all the time about how your rank is higher, now, because MAYBE you regret your choices!”
“As if,” Veronica scoffs. Notes Jackie picking her way daintily across a pile of rocks and plants herself in Logan’s sightline, so he can’t see the glamorous Ensign OR her high-heeled boots. “You are even more annoying now than you were back at the academy. And let me tell you, Mister, NOBODY is amazing enough in bed to make up for being a pain in the ASS!”
“See, I KNEW you were only pretending to forget about the whole amazing in bed part.” He points his tricorder at her, brows wiggling gleefully. “And I further knew that this whole fighting-fate thing you’ve been doing for the last six months is solely and exclusively because you’re stubborn. We’re on the same ship, for Chrissakes–because your FATHER liked me enough to bring me aboard!”
“Uh, guys?” Piz’s voice comes over the communicator, even higher and whinier than normal. “Veronica? Anyone? Where’d you all go? Because I’ve got a kind of…situation developing.”
“Jesus, Piz, just put down the alien slug or whatever and get over here to help scan!” Veronica says, exasperated. “In case you didn’t get the memo, I expressly forbade you to take samples!”
“Sure, I would, Veronica, you know I absolutely heard you and respect your authority, but the thing is… I’m currently kind of…stuck.”
“Of course you are!” Jackie throws her hands up in exasperation and checks her heel to see if the leather’s scratched. “The second I make it over that hill, you and your incompetent ass force me to turn and go right back.”
“Sometimes I wonder why I even joined Star Fleet.” Van Lowe squints up at the sky where a dust storm is gathering while unwrapping a stick of gum. “I was making a pretty good living smuggling phasers into the Orion Nebula. And you know, it’s all true what they say about those Orion dancing girls…”
“Ugh, fine, I’ll go.” Veronica tucks her tricorder purposefully away, and spins out of the tractor beam that’s Logan’s gaze. “Since the rest of you seem content to stand around and bitch. But this had better be an actual problem, Piznarski, and not another misguided attempt to ask me on a date!”
His response is muffled. Veronica rolls her eyes as she hikes back over the hill, hoping he didn’t get his hand stuck under a rock, or try to eat a native delicacy and go into anaphylaxis, since neither would be an unprecedented event.
“Wrong direction,” Logan says in her ear as he overtakes her and swerves right, turning around to walk backwards so he can better taunt. “All that time we spent passing notes in navigation class really has caused problems for you down the line.”
Her extended middle finger makes him laugh. Cook curses as she skids sideways on a spill of rocks, and Van Lowe calls, “Where’d that moron go? I don’t see nothin’ but a sixty-year old garbage heap.”
“There!” Logan points and takes off at a sprint, long legs eating the distance with an ease Veronica can’t match. “Wow, when he said he was stuck, he wasn’t kidding!”
He bends and begins to tug, and Veronica comes huffing up beside him to see he’s at the edge of a large, irregular pond. It’s filled with something brown and viscous, in lieu of water, from which one red-sleeved arm emerges, and half a head with a frantically rolling blue eye. In the hand is clutched a sample box, containing the slug Van Lowe, earlier, crushed.
“Careful,” Logan warns as Veronica steps up to help. “There are liquid-silicon sinkholes all around us, and this one seems both sentient and strong. Pretty sure I know what happened to those unfortunate colonists, and probably the ship we came to rescue.”
“Piz must have pissed it off somehow, poking around for samples.” Veronica watches as he’s yanked several inches out by Logan, and then, quickly, back. “Mars to transporter room, can you get a lock on Ensign Piznarski?”
“Uh, that’s a negative,” comes the reply—sounds like Ensign Douglas had a three-cocktail lunch. “Something seems to be shielding most of him from scans except for, uh, his hand.”
“Well, hell,” she says, as with a massive wrench, the pond yanks Piznarski free and gurgling, consumes him. The specimen box goes flying through the air and lands at Van Lowe’s feet. He steps on it.
They all look at each other, gauging group levels of upset. Eventually Echolls offers, “At least he died doing what he loved?”
“Being a pain in the ass?” Cook murmurs, and Van Lowe says, “Man, I need a vacation.”
Veronica peers up at the swirling, darkening sky and taps her communicator. “Mars to Valiant, four to beam up, we’ve got a storm about to hit. And Captain, are you available to discuss this situation ASAP in your ready room? We’ve discovered a new life form, solved the mystery of the missing ship…and I need some answers, pronto, about your reasons for hiring a certain Lieutenant Commander.”
Logan smirks at her as the four of them begin to shimmer. Then they’re whisked away, leaving behind only wreckage, a shred of red fabric, and swiftly growing cyclones of dust.