Putting a Foot Up Her Astral Plane
Posted on Tue Sep 15th, 2026 @ 12:55pm by Lieutenant Kally Kellerman & Lieutenant JG Katie Kellerman & Captain Calypso Skyie & Senior Chief Petty Officer Jadizon Enor
4,648 words; about a 23 minute read
Mission:
Interim 3: Subspace Drift
Location: ??????
Timeline: Immediately after Ghostbusters
Kepler Station did not appear all at once. It came back to Jadizon in pieces, memory bleeding through a cracked viewport. The old starbase surrounded him in low amber light, curved bulkheads, distant shuttle traffic, and the deep mechanical heartbeat of a place that had known him before the Chimera ever did. He was younger here. Not Senior Chief. Not Chief of the Boat. Just Chief Petty Officer Enor, still carrying the hunger of the man who had chosen enlisted bootcamp over the future his father had imagined for him. The corridors shifted beneath his boots, becoming the training decks of Starfleet Enlisted Bootcamp, the lecture halls of Technical Services Academy, then Kepler again. Every place where he had forced himself to become harder, smarter, useful.
She moved through all of it like she belonged inside the memory. Her dark hair brushed his shoulder, her fingers sliding over his chest with a tenderness too intimate to be safe. “You remember this,” she whispered, lips close to his ear. “The instructors who saw cocky. The professors who saw potential. The family who saw a shadow of someone greater. Commodore’s son. Doctor’s son. Brother to officers and geniuses. Always surrounded by expectation, and still somehow alone.” Her hand curled beneath his jaw, turning his face toward the reflection in a dark viewport. “But I saw you, Jadizon. I saw the part of you that smiled so no one would ask why you were angry. The part that made jokes so no one would notice you were tired. The part that wanted to lead, but feared being measured and found wanting.”
The station grew colder. The lights dimmed, and Kepler’s polished deck became a training mat slick with sweat, then a Parrises Squares court, then an after-hours corridor where he had once stood alone after pushing himself past reason. She was there in every version of it, close enough to feel like comfort, cruel enough to make comfort hurt. Jadizon felt approval from a professor, a nod from a superior, the pride of solving a problem no one else could solve. Then she twisted it. Approval became judgment. Pride became pressure. Warmth became her hand around his heart. “You keep fighting because you think that is strength,” she said, almost lovingly. “Krav Maga. Strategy. Discipline. Command voice. All those pretty little walls.” She leaned against him from behind, soft and deadly, her mouth brushing the edge of his cheek as the station lights flickered like dying stars. “But I have been inside you since the moment death opened the door. I know every locked room. Every fear. Every selfish thought you buried under duty.”
Jadizon shoved against her with everything he had, not just muscle, but will. Kepler Station buckled around him, the corridor stretching and warping under pressure. He caught her wrist and twisted, turning hard the way instinct had taught him: fast, brutal, efficient. For one sharp second, the lie stuttered. The lights flickered. The bulkhead behind her cracked. He felt it, that brief proof she could be resisted.
Her smile vanished.
Darkness snapped out from the walls in strands of living shadow and wrapped around his wrists, arms, and chest. They hit him like restraints and poison at once, hauling him back so violently his shoulders slammed against an invisible surface. Jadizon grunted, teeth clenched, boots scraping uselessly against the deck as the coils tightened. They were not cold anymore. They were invasive. Every breath felt borrowed. Every struggle fed them. She stepped close, studying him with a look that had lost all pretense of affection. “You still don’t understand,” she said softly. “This was never about whether you could fight me.”
The corridor rippled and her form changed with it. The black dress melted away, replaced by Starfleet Medical blue, smooth and immaculate, with Lieutenant’s rank at the collar. She looked calmer like that, almost gentle, like someone who belonged beside dim biobed lights and careful voices. Her fingers slid over his cheek with maddening tenderness. “I could be the one who knows what hurts,” she whispered. “I could be the one who tells you what no one else can see. I could steady your pulse, quiet your fear, tell you that you’ve done enough.” Her mouth hovered near his. “I could be better than Kally.”
Jadizon’s stare hardened, even as his body strained uselessly in her grip. “You’re not her.”
“No,” she said, and something cruel slipped into her smile. “I’m what she cannot be.”
The world collapsed inward.
One blink later, they were in his old bunkroom on Kepler Station. The room was too small, too dim, too familiar. The narrow bed, built-in storage alcove, low hum in the wall panels, and faint glow from the viewport were all exactly right, which made it worse. His wrists were still pinned, arms drawn up and spread by invisible force, his body held just high enough that his toes barely touched the deck. Outside the viewport, the stars looked wrong, hanging too still, as if space itself had stopped to watch.
She stood before him again in black, but this time it was worse. The dress moved like smoke with a heartbeat inside it, clinging and shifting in slow, intimate currents. It was not fabric. It was shadow pretending to be beauty, shaped by something starving. It curled at her thighs, spilled from her shoulders, and drifted behind her in wisps that vanished before they reached the floor. Beautiful. Unnatural. Hungry.
She came close enough for him to smell her, something sweet undercut by ozone and dying air. “Do you know what I love most about this room?” she murmured. “How many nights you lay here alone. How many times you stared at that ceiling and told yourself tomorrow would be easier. How many pieces of yourself you cut away just to keep going.” Her hand slid down the center of his chest, touching something deeper than skin. “You made a shrine out of endurance. I only stepped inside.”
Jadizon jerked against the restraints, jaw tight, breath ragged. “Get out of my head.”
Her expression changed in an instant.
“WHY?” she screamed, and the bunkroom convulsed. The walls shook, the viewport flashed, and her voice split into something deeper and older beneath the woman’s tone. “Why won’t you just accept faith? Why won’t you accept fate? Why do you keep choosing pain over peace?”
The restraints cinched down with savage force. Pain tore through him so deeply it felt older than flesh, as if she had found the place where fear, memory, and spirit were fused together and driven her hand straight through it. Jadizon’s body arched against the invisible hold, a raw sound breaking from him before he could stop it. The room darkened at the edges. His reflection in the viewport fractured into strips of light, each one showing him weaker, more distant, more hollowed out.
Then she touched his face again, almost lovingly.
The violence vanished from her features. She stepped into him, one hand at his jaw, the other spreading across his chest as though she meant to soothe what she had just broken. When she kissed him, it was slow, intimate, and terrible, her lips soft against his while the shadows tightened and drank in every stolen breath. It did not feel like affection. It felt like possession. Like being emptied gently so he would not notice what was leaving him until it was gone.
When she pulled back, her forehead rested lightly against his, her voice barely above a whisper. “I can be mercy,” she said. “I can be hunger. I can be the last thing you see and the only thing that stays.” Her fingers tightened beneath his chin, forcing his eyes open when they threatened to close. “Stop making me hurt you, Jadizon.”
The smoke-black dress stirred around her as if it were alive, and the room dimmed one shade darker.
“Because if you keep resisting,” she whispered, “I will take you apart so slowly that when they finally reach you, there will be nothing left in here but my voice.”
For the first time, Jadizon saw past the face she wore.
She was not a woman. Not memory. Not comfort. She was the thing that had followed him back from the edge of death, a telepathic parasite wearing desire, guilt, and mercy like borrowed skin. Every form she took was just another lie shaped from whatever might make him stop fighting.
His breath shook. He tried to glare at her, tried to give her anger, but something broke loose behind his eyes instead. A tear slipped down his cheek, then another, silent and unwilling.
She smiled as if she had earned them.
“There you are,” she whispered. “No rank. No walls. No performance. Just you.”
Jadizon swallowed hard, his voice barely there.
“You’re not love,” he said. “You’re hunger.”
Her smile faded, and the shadows tightened.
As she leaned in again, she suddenly flew to the side as a pair of hands, clasped together like a club, landed against her head.
“You’re ‘what I can’t be’?” Kally said, incredulously. “What? A soul-sucking bitch? I assure you, I can be that.”
Katie stood over the woman and unclasped her hands, shaking them out a bit. “Likewise,” she said, breathing hard.
The two of them were in their uniforms, but they looked almost glowing with a pulsing white light around them. Their plan had somewhat worked. They couldn’t stop her from knowing they were trying to get into his mind, but they could cloak themselves well enough that they could sneak up on her, and with Cally handling their defense, both girls could put their energies towards beating the snot out of their adversary.
Katie delivered a swift kick to the woman’s stomach and turned to help Kally try to pull away the bonds around Jadizon’s wrists and neck. They heard a sizzle and felt the unnatural cold on their palms as they yanked and tore at the tendrils around him, but their protection kept them from feeling too much, and they worked fast.
Jadizon tried to pull in a breath, but the shadow around his throat tightened before he could form the words. His eyes found Katie and Kally through the haze, relief cutting through the pain for one fragile second.
The entity saw it. Her face twisted with sudden rage. The gentle mask vanished, and the bunkroom buckled around them as if Kepler Station itself had been struck by a shockwave. The walls screamed with metal stress. The viewport flashed white. The deck lurched hard enough to throw both twins off their feet.
“No,” she hissed, her voice layered with something older and uglier beneath the woman’s tone. “You do not get to bring light into what is mine.”
Black tendrils ripped from the walls and lashed toward them, snapping through the air like living whips. The glow around Katie and Kally flared as the strikes hit close, cracking the floor, splintering panels, and sending shards of false memory spinning through the room.
Jadizon fought against the restraints, but she punished the effort instantly.
The shadows around his wrists burned deeper, forcing his arms wider until his shoulders strained. Another coil drove into his chest, not through flesh, but through the part of him still trying to hold on. His body arched violently against the invisible hold, a raw sound tearing out of him as the room darkened around his edges.
The entity turned back to him slowly.
“There,” she whispered, suddenly calm again. “That is what resistance buys them.”
Jadizon’s eyes flickered, fighting to stay open.
She lifted one hand and pressed two fingers to his forehead.
“Sleep, Jadizon.” The command dropped through him like a stone through black water. His breath caught once. His body went slack. His head fell forward, unconscious, held upright only by the shadows that still owned his wrists.
The entity smiled and looked back toward the fallen twins. “Now,” she said softly, “who wants to be next?”
The girls both got to their feet, the white light around them still glowing. They braced their feet on the ground and stared the imposter down. "How about you?" Kally said.
"Since you're the problem here," Katie added. She glanced around the image of the station around them. "Where are we?"
"Looks like a Starfleet station," Kally said.
"From Jadizon's memory?" Katie wondered.
"Stands to reason," Kally said. "Which is bad news for her."
"And why is that?"
"If we're in his mind, it's his playing field, not yours," Katie said. She focused her thoughts and a moment later hefted a glowing white softball bat. "Now, we're going to be kind and give you one chance to leave his mind and go back where you came from. What'll it be?"
The entity looked at the glowing bat, then slowly smiled.
For a moment, she almost seemed amused.
“How precious,” she said, her voice soft enough to feel like a whisper against the skin. “You found a weapon and mistook it for power.”
The bunkroom lights dimmed. The walls of Kepler Station stretched around them, bending like metal under pressure. Behind her, Jadizon hung unconscious in the shadow restraints, his head bowed, his breathing shallow. The darkness around his wrists pulsed like a heartbeat.
“You think this is his playing field?” she asked, stepping away from him. “No. This is where he learned to suffer quietly. Where he learned to smile through exhaustion. Where he learned that being needed felt almost the same as being loved.”
Katie's twitched, her anger rising.
The room shifted, growing longer, colder. The narrow bunk vanished into the wall, replaced by a corridor that seemed to stretch forever. The deck beneath their feet flickered between polished station flooring, academy training mats, and black glass.
“These memories were his,” she continued. “Then he let me in.” Her eyes darkened until there was almost nothing human left in them. “And now they answer to me.”
The shadows snapped outward. One tendril struck the glowing bat hard enough to make the white light flare. Others ripped across the corridor walls, showering the false station with sparks and fragments of broken memory.
The entity lifted her chin, her voice rising into something colder and deeper.
“You do not get to bargain with me inside the place where I buried him.” The restraints around Jadizon tightened, pulling a weak, unconscious sound from him. Her smile returned. “So swing, little lights. Let us see how long you shine.”
The girls braced themselves and rushed her, Katie's bat at the ready, Kally's fists balled and ready. At the last second, however, they split apart, Katie tossing the bat away and both of them dipped around her, running at Jadizon. Kally had a hypo ready in her hand, and Katie pulled a knife from the air. She leaped forward, slashing, cutting two of the tendrils as Kally reached out with her hypo to help Jadizon hold on.
Unfortunately, the scream of pain and rage from behind them indicated that they may have scored a hit, but it was about to cost them.
Kally let out a grunt of pain as a column of black slammed into her, knocking her to one side and another into Katie, the two of them spinning away from their goal.
Katie rolled away and jumped up, rushing the woman, hoping to distract her and give Kally another chance. She rushed directly at her and this time didn't veer. Unfortunately, her fist connected with nothing as the woman disappeared with a smirk. She looked around angrily before pitching forward as something hit her in the back. She landed hard the metaphorical air knocked out of her, but she'd been knocked down in field hockey enough to know you get right back up. She took a few deep breaths but noticed the light around her was dimming. Cally can't take much more, she realized.
The reason for the energy drain on Cally was clear as Kally ran at Jadizon again. As she approached, his body suddenly moved backwards as the room stretched. She gritted her teeth and moved faster, starting to gain on him again, until a large group of tendrils flew out and tried to ensnare her. She heard them burn and felt the cold fury of the creature as it took the pain of trying to hold her back. She struggled like a fish caught in a net and began hacking at them as more began to wrap around her, holding her back.
Katie ran fast as well, catching up with Kally and diving at her, grabbing her arm and pulling hard, trying to drag her out. "Conjure a knife! A laser scalpel! Something to cut them with!" she shouted.
Kally's eyes were wide with fear as she felt Cally through their connection and felt her weaken from the strain. The two girls struggled as they felt the tendrils begin to tighten around them both. Katie let out a shout of surprise as Kally was hauled up and she went along with her, neither of them letting go of the other.
"I'm sorry," Kally said. "Get out while you can."
For just a moment, Katie felt her will begin to fade. She could feel Kally's grip starting to slacken as she prepared to push Katie away and save her sister's life. That's when Katie heard it, the mocking laughter. The gleeful, evil cackle of victory behind her. She frowned and instead of pulling Kally down, did what she always did: used them both to pull herself up.
She came up to Kally and gave her sister a kiss with all the love, strength and hope she could muster. At first, Kally didn't react, and Katie worried it was too late, then she felt Kally return it and felt her move again. The glow around them increased, the white light of Cally's protection suddenly overshadowed by another glow as the tendrils began to wrap around them both. As they disappeared inside the mass of black tendrils, the image of Kepler Station shook again, but this time it was from something without, not within.
The entity smiled as the tendrils swallowed them.
For one perfect moment, victory was written across her face. Her eyes shone with cruel satisfaction, and her laughter filled the collapsing image of Kepler Station.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Break for him.”
Then the light inside the darkness surged.
Her smile vanished.
The tendrils twisted back on her like they had caught fire. She staggered, a sharp cry tearing from her throat as pain ripped through whatever passed for her body. The bunkroom shook violently, but this time it was not by her command.
“No,” she gasped, her voice cracking. “No, that is not possible.”
Another pulse struck her, harder this time. Her anger faltered, replaced by something she had not shown before.
Fear. She looked from the black mass around Katie and Kally to Jadizon’s unconscious form, confusion spreading across her face as Kepler Station flickered around them.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
The mass of tendrils suddenly rippled, then burned with golden fire as they suddenly went up in smoke, Jadizon falling to the deck in the background, and a lone figure dropping onto the deck in front. She stood up, and her image flickered. One might have assumed she was dressed in the black and blue of medical, or the white and gold of a glowing engineer, but her eyes blazed with an ice-blue flame, and she stood up without a hint of fatigue or fear, staring at the woman.
The entity froze.
For the first time since she had taken this place for her own, she did not smile.
Her black eyes narrowed as she stared at the figure wreathed in impossible light, trying to understand what she was seeing. The confidence drained from her face in small, visible pieces, replaced first by disbelief, then by anger, then by something colder.
Fear.
“You...” she whispered, the word catching like broken glass in her throat Her voice rose sharply, slipping into that deeper, older register beneath the woman’s form.
“What are you?”
"Royally pissed," they said, staring at her. The station stopped trembling as they took a deep breath and they looked around the sterile-looking bunkroom. "Let's change the venue," they said. They closed their eyes and focused as the station melted away like snow under a strong sun. The ceiling gave way to a bright, blue, sun-filled sky, and the metal floor turned into soft, rich soil. Furniture was replaced by gourds and plants, and within moments, they were surrounded by light, warmth and life.
The entity slowly turned, taking in the impossible change around her. The sterile walls of Kepler were gone. Sunlight touched her skin, warm and real, while the darkness around her feet recoiled from the living earth.
For the first time, uncertainty crossed her face.
Then she sneered.
“You think changing the scenery changes anything?” she asked, though there was noticeably less confidence behind the words. She lifted a hand, trying to summon the darkness around her again.
Nothing answered the way it had before.
Her eyes narrowed.
“This is still his mind.”
She looked back toward them, anger beginning to replace confusion.
“And I am still inside it.”
They didn't move, didn't reach out, but they immediately returned the creature's treatment as pumpkin vines lashed out, grabbing her by the wrists and ankles, yanking her down to her knees in the dirt.
The entity hit the dirt hard, shock flashing across her face before rage took over. Black smoke burst from her skin as she twisted against the vines, trying to dissolve through them, but the living restraints only tightened.
“Release me!” she screamed, her voice splitting between the woman’s and something much deeper beneath it.
She pulled again. Nothing.
That was when the anger cracked.
Fear showed through.
Her eyes darted toward Jadizon, then back to the figure standing over her. “You don’t understand what you’re doing,” she hissed, breathing harder now. “He needs me. Without me, you have no idea what’s waiting inside his head.”
The vines dragged her lower into the dirt.
For the first time, she looked genuinely afraid.
“You cannot destroy me.”
"We gave you the chance to leave," they said, their voice hard with anger. "We were going to show you the mercy you wouldn't show us. That time has passed."
The vines twisted harder and pulled her backward, another wrapping around her neck and pulling her back over a stump that had risen up beside her, leaving her neck exposed.
The entity stopped struggling. For a moment, she simply stared up at them, chest rising and falling as the vines held her exposed against the stump.
Then she smiled. “You think this frees him?” she whispered. “I have been inside his mind too long. I have touched things even he does not know are there.”
Her eyes shifted toward Jadizon. “Kill me if you want.” The smile widened. “But every time he closes his eyes, every time he questions a memory, every time he wonders whether what he sees is real...”
Her gaze returned to them. “He will hear me.” A quiet laugh escaped her. “You can have his body back.”
Her eyes darkened one final time. “His mind is already broken.”
The Kellermans picked up an axe from the ground and stood over her. "Go back where you came from, and tell any others there that we know of you, and if we encounter you again, we will not hesitate next time." Without another word, they swung their axe high up and brought it down decisively, separating her head from the rest of her body.
The body twitched once after in the grip of the vines, then went still, then it and the head burst apart in an explosion of energy. A large portion of light flew away back towards where Jadizon was laying in the field, and the rest swirled like a dark cloud before seemingly being sucked through a tear in the world. It flew faster and faster as the tether that had kept it anchored there snapped, and with one last roar of anger and despair, it vanished, leaving the farm quiet and serene.
The Kellermans dropped the axe and walked over to Jadizon, putting a hand on his chest and closing their eyes. A single pulse like the jolt of a defibrillator passed through him and they could feel his heartbeat strengthen and steady.
Jadizon’s body jerked beneath their hand and he pulled in a sharp, desperate breath. His eyes opened wide, staring up into the bright sky above him.
For several seconds, he said nothing. His breathing slowly steadied, but his eyes kept moving as though he were watching something no one else could see.
“Kepler…” he whispered.
His brow tightened. “No…”
His gaze shifted somewhere beyond them. “The Chimera.”
A faint tremor worked through his hand as he brought it toward his temple. “I’ve seen this before.” He swallowed. “Haven’t I?”
The glow around The Twin faded out slowly as another figure resolved into view as if out of a dense fog. Calypso's stride was fatigued, her face slack as if she'd just finished running a marathon and all she wanted to do was collapse and sleep. The golden glow of her power shone around her, faded as it was but absorbing quickly, "Kally? Katie? Jadizon? Is it over?"
"Hope so," the Kellermans said. "Otherwise we're all in a lot of trouble."
Jadizon’s eyes opened slowly.
For a few seconds, he simply stared upward, breathing evenly, almost as if he were waking from an ordinary sleep. His gaze drifted toward Calypso, then the Kellermans, and there was a faint spark of recognition there.
Then it faltered.
His eyes shifted past them.
Kepler Station flashed across his mind. Then the Chimera. A training deck. His father’s face. Katie standing in a corridor washed in red light.
Jadizon blinked hard.
The field returned.
He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers once as though checking that they belonged to him.
Another memory surfaced.
A bridge he had never stood on.
A white room.
Someone calling his name from behind glass.
His brow tightened.
“No…”
The word came quietly, almost to himself.
He looked back toward the others. Their faces were familiar, but for a moment he could not remember why.
Then it came back.
Then disappeared again.
Jadizon’s breathing changed.
His memories no longer felt arranged in any order. Kepler came after the Chimera. The Chimera came before the Academy. Katie was beside him, then gone, then somewhere he had never seen. Things he knew had happened felt uncertain. Things he knew had never happened carried the weight of memory.
His eyes began to glisten.
He reached for something solid inside himself.
His rank.
His ship.
His family.
His name.
Jadizon.
For a second, even that felt wrong.
He stared down at his hands again, longer this time.
The confusion on his face slowly became fear.
Not panic.
Something quieter.
Something deeper.
His lips parted.
“Jadizon…”
He said the name as though testing it.
A tear slipped down his cheek.
He looked up at the people around him, searching their faces for an answer he suddenly could not find inside himself.
Then, barely above a whisper: “Who am I?”
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