Maria Alvarez: Difference between revisions

|RELATIONSHIP= Commanding Officer, USS Arrow

|RELATIONSHIP= Executive Officer, USS Arrow

Arrow is put on a mission to strike a deal with the exacting Gentii.  Angling for a spot on the away team, Maria dives head-first into researching the Gentii and their elaborate customs, finding a traditional called a "Bairiri" that blends festival and art exhibition.  She proposes holding a Bairiri, and receives approval from Captain Shayne and Commander Collins.  Upon arriving at Gentii II, however, her plans are thrown into chaos after a probe swaps around the crew's minds!  Suddenly, she finds herself inhabiting the body of Quentin Collins, unsure of how to proceed when its clear the Gentii demand a live performance in the Bairiri. Initially, she tries to get Collins (in her body) to perform a dance, but instinct and muscle memory alone aren't enough to accomplish anything worthwhile.  Time quickly runs out, and the Gentii delegation shows up demanding to see the show immediately.  Fortunately, Collins manages to come up with the idea of singing a song he knows well, which goes okay and stalls the Bairiri for a little bit.  Still, it's a far cry from what the delegation expected.  Maria pulls Collins out of the performance, and begins to melt down emotionally, strongly experiencing the symptoms and confusion from the body swap and finding herself in a crisis of confidence.  Just in time, Doctor Mason appears with neural collars, designed for assisting quad- and parapalegics, which will allow Maria to "pilot" her own body without waiting to be swapped back.  The collar works spectacularly, at first, with an unexpected side-effect of entangling the pair's feelings and minds even more than they already were with the body swap.  However, things quickly go awry as the body-swap begins deteriorating, and Collins is pulled into a liminal mind-space haunted by a man he knows as "Faraday."  Maria is pulled along with him, and experiences a number of disturbing visions, involving her mind's interpretation of Faraday - a man calling himself "Fernandez."  She ends up discovering a way out of the visions after realizing she's "stuck" on her failures from the past, and fear of future failures, which have most notably manifested themselves in visions of Maria's mother, Emilia.  She asserts her control over her own mind, and destroys Fernandez, then finds Collins in their shared mind-space.  Having seen a version of some of his memories, she realizes he's been running from his fears - much the same as hers.  Together, they admit they have a lot of work to do, and finally become unstuck from their visions, allowing them to wake back up in sickbay in their own bodies - the rest of the crew figured out how to get everyone swapped back.