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Fort Ramsey; Ontario System; Independent Space
Virginia Belle slept in an unnatural and painful looking position at her desk aboard the Roanoke, still in her captain's uniform. On her desk were several empty bottles of Liberty Ale, a small empty bottle of moonshine and a half empty bottle of what looked like blue window cleaner.
She was snapped out of her dreamless slumber by her communications terminal on the desk with a message from the LFR Command. Years in the Legion had trained her senses and instincts enough that important sounding acoustic alerts were capable of waking her from a drunken stupor.
While the terminal continued to beep insistently, Virginia was waking from her merciful slumber to a painful reality - her cervical spine ached, her stomach felt like water and she had an absolutely excruciating headache to boot. Her parched mouth was burning and just as she tried to take a deep breath - she coughed loudly. Instinctively, she tried to open her eyes to look at the beeping terminal, but the harshness of the light in her quarters made her search around her desk for her sunglasses instead.
"Just kill me...", Virginia muttered softly, and with more painful prostrations, she straightened up at her desk, pressed the button on the terminal to accept the incoming message, and, still half out of it, replied to the message. It wasn't until she sent her reply that it dawned on her what she had actually done. Her remorse lasted only a few seconds, however, before her stomach rebelled for good and forced her to go to her personal bathroom and vomit into the toilet bowl as quickly as possible.
When the deed was done, she flushed after herself and wearily walked to the sink to rinse her mouth and wash her face. Her reflection in the mirror was looking back at her, estimated to be fifty years old at this point. "You're getting too old for this, you hag.", she uttered softly to her reflection and reached into the medicine cabinet above the sink for a pack with powerful stimulant tablets with very high concentrations of taurine, caffeine and other minerals essential to bring balance to her system, although the recommended dosage was one per day maximum, and washed two tablets down with two glasses of tap water.
* * *
A race against time ensued and she dressed in a new and clean uniform as she had to throw her old one in the laundry basket - it smelled of too much cheap booze. Fortunately her experience with alcohol was extensive and she knew exactly what to do to look fresh again - hydrate with water, shower and brush her teeth. She managed all of this in almost twenty minutes, though she would have done it faster if the caffeine overdose hadn't made her blood pressure too high and had to sit down for a moment in the shower. When she was done, she checked herself in front of the mirror and was relieved to find Viginia Belle's reflection looking back at her, looking about twenty-seven.
On her way out of her office, she made one more stop at the Roanoke cafeteria for another cup of coffee and hurriedly left her ship through the connecting tube and made her way to the infirmary at Fort Ramsey. Her dark glasses were still on her eyes as she still hadn't quite gotten rid of her hangover.
