Teagan Jax

[NPC] Lt. JG Teagan Jax is a tactical officer on the USS Odyssey.
== Background ==
The first time she saw the Earth, she was twelve years old.
It was strange to think about really, the idea that she’d never seen the world that was legally her home. With her blonde hair, pale skin, and eyes of summer’s green, the girl looked the part of the stereotypical human – but she could count on one hand the times she had walked on any planet’s surface. Therefore, it was hardly surprising that when the Earth came into view, her face was stuck to the ship’s viewscreen, wide eyes taking in every inch of it. Coming from the gray walls of a space station, her young mind could barely even comprehend the vivid blue and green of the planet that was growing bigger by the second.
For all the expansion of colors, the girl found that there was still one hue the Earth lacked in comparison to her home. The sun shown in its constant yellow light, with no variation. Nothing like the hundreds of golden tones that came through the windows of home.
When Teagan Jax returned to Vostok a month later, she spent all her time talking about Earth, indulged by the crew, many of which had been born in that little blue world, with its fresh air and real gravity.
The Vostok Space Research Station was not large, a small scientific base with a 30 person crew complement, which grew throughout the years with the birth of children. Half the crew was human, the rest from various Federation planets. They were scientists, and their purpose was simple, researching the Aurea Nebula, so known for its shifting golden hues, a bright light which would shine through Vostok day and night. The region of space was as beautiful as it was deadly, for no ship had ever been able to successfully enter the nebula, its golden clouds composed of an unknown composition that destroyed the engines of every ship that dared venture inside.
Teagan couldn’t imagine a life anywhere else. The Earth was beautiful, yet foreign, and while she knew somewhere in her heart that it was meant to be home, her world instead consisted of the small station, a crew that in its peak would reach 36, and bright stars, the darkness in between illuminated with golden light. 
But her parents always knew she was meant for something more. Logan and Harper Jax were quiet, thoughtful people who had managed to produce a daughter who could never sit still. Brilliant, but wild, and the crew grew used to the sight of her sprinting around all areas of the ship. Teagan was always one to speak with actions, something that never failed to cause her a great deal of trouble.
And yet, it was that characteristic that ended up saving their lives, when after two decades of researching the nebula, the Vostok crew realized they weren’t alone.
They didn’t realize what was happening at first. Instead, those in charge classified it as a horrific accident, a tragedy, when a shuttle on a routine experiment at the edge of the nebula suddenly vanished without a trace. The logical assumption was that the shuttle had mistakenly entered Aurea, and shared the fate of all previous ships that had entered. Teagan was the only one who wouldn’t let it go. At 17, she was on the cusp of adulthood, yet still very much a girl, for she refused to believe that her mother could be gone.
She poured over the shuttle’s telemetry for days, combing through every minute detail Vostok had received. Teagan didn’t have the proper training for the work, but she was relentless, pouring through old data and records to try and understand what she was seeing. When ships were lost in the nebula, it was abrupt, one moment perfectly normal, the next gone, the entire ship turned off with one smooth cut. That was how the shuttle’s data ended, but it was what happened first that caught Teagan’s attention. The readings were erratic, and only consistent with one thing – weapons fire.
Naturally, no one else believed her. However odd the telemetry was, it couldn’t have been an attack, because there was no other ship. When Teagan argued that the ship could have been in the nebula, where the sensors wouldn’t have picked it up, she was laughed at. No ship could enter the Aurea.
As such, when the sleek gray ships did once again emerge from the golden space, Teagan Jax was the only one who was prepared. She was the one who took command of Vostok Station’s limited defensive arrays, the one who handed out phasers and led the crew in a series of guerilla attacks when the aliens boarded the station. They wouldn’t have won, but they managed to survive until Starfleet arrived and evacuated the 22 crew members who remained.
All because of the one girl who saw the signs, no matter how improbable, and learned how to defend her family when the impossible became reality.
Teagan’s reward was to watch as Vostok station, the only home she had ever known, exploded in their wake as the starship sped away. Their crew was disbanded after that, returning to their home planets. A new station was erected, but this was far from a place of discovery, a military installation meant to guard Federation space for when the creatures of the Aurea ventured outward once again.
The next year was spent on Earth, and after two months, Teagan was sure she was going mad. With her father in a small city apartment, she had never been around so many people, but she’d never felt more alone. As a child Earth had been a fantasy, but when its gravity held her down, she found herself longing for the stars. She hung on for a while longer, mainly for her father. The loss of his wife had left him broken, and the man who had once engineered a space station was now fixing household appliances. But in the end, Logan was the one who brought his daughter the Starfleet enlistment form, and convinced her to get on the shuttle.
She wasn’t alone out there. The former crew members of Vostok Station hadn’t sat still for long, and many of them were out again, having joined Starfleet or other scientific ventures. As for Teagan Jax, she could never quite forget the area of space filled with golden light, and a missing shuttle craft that had never been recovered…
== Facts ==
* Jax is always moving. As a child she’d gone from crawling straight to running, and when forced to sit her legs would always be bouncing beneath the table. Most children like this slow down as they enter adulthood. Teagan never did, always full of boundless energy. Time has merely taught her control. Jax will force herself into stillness when the situation requires. However, no one will ever mistake her for relaxed. She might be standing still, but it is the stillness of someone an instant away from exploding into movement. She only looks relaxed when she is moving.
* A Vulcan colleague tried to teach her meditation once. He probably thought it would help her calm down. Eventually, he gave up, since her constant movement was distracting him from his own meditation.
* She’s a pacer and she hates it. It would give a much better impression to her subordinates if she could think while sitting behind her desk like every other senior officer.
* Teagan thinks her physical appearance is some sort of cosmic joke. Tall, blonde, and trim. If she was a few hundred years younger, she could have been a model on Earth. The universe was wasting its resources. She would have been much better off if she’d been born scarier looking. Humanity spent a lot of time talking about how much more enlightened they were now, but they still had trouble with the simple fact that beauty and competence weren’t mutually exclusive. The only thing she likes is her height.
* Her hair is always pulled back in a tight bun, because she doesn’t want to bother with it. Years ago she tried cutting it off, which is how Teagan learned that short hair requires a great deal of styling and maintenance. A bun takes about a minute. Per Starfleet regulations, the bun always starts out crisp and neat, but it will get steadily messier during her frequent workouts.
* She loves strategy games. Her parents taught her chess as a child, and she was so enamored by it that one of them would play with her every night. They started off with two dimensional, but she quickly progressed to three. She played competitively at the Academy, and gained enough renown that Vulcans will often approach her for a game. Jax will often ask her crewmembers to teach her strategy games from their cultures.
* If she isn’t on duty, Jax is most likely to be found in the gym or the holodeck, working off some excess energy.
Category:NPC