ugly bag of mostly voyager

“What the hell are you?”

The hoo-man woman’s lip is curled, but Quark notes the light of fascination in her eyes. He picks himself slowly up from the floor, palms up in the universal gesture of surrender.

At least, that’s what it means in his universe.

“Cuff him,” she snaps at a guard, eyes never leaving Quark. “Check him for weapons. Aside from the sartorial variety,” she adds, her disdainful gaze sweeping him from head to toe.

Quark can’t help feeling a little miffed. Garak charged him two slips of latinum for this jacket. When he gets home they’ll be having words.

Of course to get home he’ll first have to figure out how he got here, he muses as the guard slaps metallic bracelets around his wrists and pulls them tight. All he knows for certain is that it’s Rom’s fault.

“I’m still waiting for an answer,” says Quark’s captor, stalking toward him. He can’t help cowering a little. Something about her reminds him of Major Kira in one of her less indulgent, more castratory moods.

It’s a little erotic, if he’s honest.

“M-my name is Quark, madam,” he tries for ingratiating, “and I’m Ferengi.”

“Fur-engi?” The woman frowns. “I’ve never heard of your race. Are you subjects of the Empire?”

“The Empire?” Quark repeats dumbly. “I thought this universe was ruled by the Alliance…”

Quick as a striking Cardassian swamp-snake, the woman is right in front of him, forefinger and thumb pinching Quark’s earlobe until he lets out a pitiful shriek of pain.

“Tell me about this Alliance,” she hisses, narrowing her green eyes at him, “or I’ll rip out your pretty little earring and garotte you with it.”

He can’t help it: his eyes glaze over with lust. “Please,” he stutters, trying for an obsequious smile, “I mean no offence, madam.”

“Then you can start by addressing me properly,” she answers, ice in her voice. “I am Inquisitor Katrina Cornwell, right hand of Her Imperial Majesty Philippa Georgiou, slayer of traitors and torturer of spies. I can make you suffer all manner of horrors, Fur-engi.”

“There’s no need for violence, Inquisitor,” Quark gasps, hoping he isn’t visibly drooling, then adds under his breath, “not much of it anyway.”

Inquisitor Cornwell’s green eyes narrow at him, but her grip on his organ eases up as she studies his wild eyes, his moistened lips and the tent in his pants.

Slowly, she smiles, showing dimples that make Quark audibly moan.

“What if I want to hurt you?” Katrina purrs.

Her long slender fingers begin to trace the outer flange of Quark’s lobe and his breath stutters out.

“W-why would you want to hurt little old me, Inquisitor?” he barely manages not to twitch as Katrina’s fingertips feather over the fine hairs sprouting from his tympanic cavity, “when I c-could … oh great Exchequer … be of such use to you?”

“Could you, now?” Katrina stops stroking his fleshy flap and steps back, folding her arms. “How, exactly?”

“However you like!” Quark babbles, falling to his knees. “What do you desire? Riches and jewels beyond your wildest dreams? An army of Klingon warriors at your beck and call?”

“I already have those things.” Katrina turns away, losing interest. “Guard, throw him in the dungeon –”

“Wait!” Quark shrieks. “Uh, what about… what about unlimited power?”

Katrina holds up a hand to stay the approaching guard, swivelling to face the Ferengi. “Explain,” she orders.

Quark feigns reluctance. “Uh, maybe I shouldn’t … it’s probably a violation of the Prime Directive…”

“The what?”

“Never mind,” he waves a hand, scuttling forward on his knees and daring to rest a hand lightly on her extraordinarily well-toned thigh, “I could show you a universe where you could rule forever, my dear Inquisitor. All you need is the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, which I’d be happy to teach you…” he lowers his lashes coyly, “if you’d be willing to do something for me first.”

Katrina crouches before him, tipping up his chin with one warning finger. “And what might that be, Fur-engi?”

Quark fishes the faulty interdimensional transport device out of his pocket. “I need your help to fix this.”

She plucks it from his fingers and holds it up to the light. “What is this?”

“My ticket home,” he lowers his voice, “and your ticket to galactic supremacy.”

Katrina’s smile widens and Quark tries not to tremble. But then her hand slinks out and cups his aural pendulum, delicately fondling the majestic curve of his secondary testicular lobe, and Quark whimpers.

“I don’t think you’ll be needing this anymore,” Katrina murmurs softly, stroking along the whorls and spirals of his external acoustic meatus as she hands off the transporter to her guard.

“Please,” Quark whines, “please stroke my cochlear apparatus… oh don’t stop… Aaahhh!”

His whimpers of pleasure crescendo into a blood-curdling screech as Katrina’s fingers close around the longest and thickest of his ossicular follicles and she yanks the hair out by its root.

“What was that for?” he wails, shrinking away from his tormentor.

Katrina laughs in genuine and spine-chilling delight.

“It’s your lucky day, Fur-engi,” she growls as she advances on him again, firmly gripping his vascular auricle between forefinger and thumb. “I’ve grown weary of my latest plaything and I’ve been looking for some fun.”

“But – but Inquisitor, the other universe –”

“Will soon be mine to rule without your assistance,” Katrina assures him. “Don’t worry, little man. I look forward to finding out what gives you the greatest pleasure … and the greatest pain.”

She twists his outer lobe and Quark crumples to the floor.

“But first,” Katrina peers into his love canal with a moue of distaste, “we have to do something about all this hair. I do like a clean canvas,” and she extracts an immense pair of tweezers from her armoured bodice and brandishes it, before angling it into Quark’s gaping hole.

As the tweezers grip each hairy shaft and yank them from their moist and quivering home, Quark reflects – between screams of horror – that he should have listened to Rom’s rambling instructions on aligning the temporal coordinates of the interdimensional transporter, and realises that he has never felt cilia in his life.