Chapter 17 (Patreon)

Hey guys!  I wanted to give you a head's up.  As you know, my patrons are 2 chapters ahead of the publicly published chapters of AAG.  I first work on the new chapter, get that published here on Patreon, then I go back to the chapter I'm going to release publicly, in this case chapter 17.  I run through it once again to polish it further.  You'd be amazed at the improvements I've made with a fresh pair of eyes, separated by so much time from when I originally wrote it.  Sometimes, though, I also make some substantive additions.  So, while it's not strictly necessary to go back and re-read the chapter I just released publicly, it can sometimes help.

I made 2 substantive additions to Chapter 17, one minor, one major.

The first addition was me adding a bit more depth based on a documentary I recently watched.  It's included below.  The second addition was far more substantive.  It's the last scene of the chapter and I recommend going to read it!  :-)  You guys convinced/inspired me there.

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It was smart of her to ask, as while I had just arrived, she didn't know that, and this bar and these kinds of people was something I was for more comfortable with than her. I certainly blended in far better in the same clothes that I routinely wore on Bajor to avoid attracting attention. They were hardy and worn in all the right places, and not perfectly clean and pressed, looking like it had just come straight from a replicator like hers did. Though I had had to do more than dress down to better blend in while on Bajor.

Who knew being so attractive and muscular by humanoid standards would be a detriment to my mission?? Another example of how being a super Augment didn’t give me all the answers or insights as a matter of course. It made sense in hindsight, most Bajorans had suffered malnutrition and bouts of starvation all their lives, how would they get and maintain these muscles? As I had commented on the Enterprise oh so long ago, my new body looked like it belonged to a gym rat who spent 6 hours a day in the gym, 6 days a week honing their body.

As for being good looking, on a world like Bajor, being good looking, either as a man or woman, could be a curse all its own. Those people were often the first to disappear. Kira, a very good-looking woman comparatively, probably only made it because she joined the Resistance so young, before she fully bloomed. Some Bajoran parents, in an act of love, mutilated the faces of their good-looking children to lessen the chance that they’d be taken off world to become sex slaves. Imagine that for a moment. Imagine the sheer love and sacrifice that required.

These were the kinds of things most Federation citizens would never understand. There were true horrors in the galaxy and not everyone was safe from the predations of evil people.