Moncyu

Eiessa Moncyu
File:Moncyu.jpg
Full Name:	Eiessa Moncyu
Nickname:	""
Species:	Betazoid
Gender:	female
Birthplace:	Starbase 129, Federation Space
Birthdate:	Mar 17, 2429
Empire:	United Federation of Planets
Organization:	Starfleet
Assignment:	USS Phoenix NCC-170100-A
Billet:	Tactical Officer
Rank:	Ensign

Eiessa Moncyu is a Ensign in Starfleet, serving aboard the USS Phoenix NCC-170100-A as the Tactical Officer.

Description

This tallish woman is quite thin, but with a build that speaks of obvious frequent physical exercise. She has straight blond hair that just barely brushes the tops of her shoulders and a rich skin tone that might be described as olive. Her watchful eyes are pools of the deep black that so often marks those of the Betazoid species.

Biography

Eiessa Moncyu was born on the 17th of March, 2429, on Starbase 129. Her father, Piori, was the base's commanding officer at the time, and her mother, Zhinanna, had a small art gallery there where she sold the paintings that she made. Eiessa was an only child and her parents showered her with lots of love and attention. Piori and Zhinanna also loved each other very much and were the model image of a successful and loving marriage.

As is the way in military families, the Moncyu family moved around quite a bit in Eiessa's early years. They spent time on starbases and outposts, starships and space stations all over the Federation. While Piori saw to his Starfleet duties, Zhinanna took her daughter with her to various places nearby, usually wild areas, to experience first hand the local sights, sounds, smells, and society of whatever place they happened to be. These short trips were often the inspirations for Zhinanna's paintings, as she loved primarily to paint landscapes, and the more wild and untamed the landscape, the better. She would often take her daughter to places that could only be reached by hiking, climbing, navigating down rivers both peaceful and tumultuous, or by riding on the backs of horses or other large animals trained for the task. She could have arranged for beaming by transporter much of the time, but that, in Zhinanna's mind, took away from the true experience of getting to and being in that place. Those experiences, perhaps more than the places themselves, were what Zhinanna wanted to share with her daughter.

It was through those experiences that Eiessa developed what she saw as a sense of adventure and a love for exploring, what to her at least was, the unknown. The older she got, the more she appreciated the challenges that came along with climbing cliff faces and piloting a small boat safely down wild rapids. By the time she was in her teenage years, she was arranging trips for her and her mother to take together, each one more challenging than the last. They repelled down the sides of ancient spires, tunneled through dense jungle brush, and even soared over great canyons in old style unpowered hang gliders. They explored caves and caverns, and sometimes even dove the bottoms of seas and lakes to set their eyes on ancient ruins, built by intelligent beings but then long ago reclaimed by the inescapable forces of nature. She loved these things, these experiences. They became a part of her.

When she wasn't out conquering the elements of the wilds, (or at least pretending to, for she understood that nature could never truly be conquered), she was learning all about the great space explorers that had at one time been the backbone of Starfleet. Piori too was a great lover of the histories of those times, and it was through him that she developed an interest in that era of discovery. It was no surprise, of course. Her love of adventure and seeing new places and things and people was already well established. The idea of space exploration was but an extension of that spirit. Time with her father was spent discussing the possibilities of what still lay undiscovered, and debating the reasons and motivations behind the long ago change in Starfleet's exploration programs to more military ones, and the fact that exploration programs were, in recent years, beginning to gain popularity once again. They followed the progress of the few exploration ships that were launched and together they dreamed about what it would be like to be living and working aboard one of those vessels.

When the time came for Eiessa to decide what she was to do with her life, the choice was obvious. Encouraged by her father and with his sponsorship, she joined Starfleet Academy and left for Earth for an entirely new kind of adventure. There would be physical training of course, and that she looked forward to. But the vast majority of her time was going to be spent in classes. Although she believed in the concept of adventures of the mind, she readied herself for her academy experience by bracing for long, dull lectures that would test, more than anything else, her ability to stay awake. Or so she thought.

The training that she received at the academy was far more complex than she had imagined. She was introduced to elements of operations, navigation and flight, weapons and defense, science, engineering, maintenance, logistics, diplomacy, first aid, propulsion, energy and resource management, communications protocols, and even the nuances of interspecies relations and how to live with a difficult roommate you would have preferred not to share a space with. She had to discard her expectations very quickly if she were to succeed here. But in not too much time, and with the not insignificant help of her Betazoid abilities, she made the adjustment and learned to view this new life as the challenge it really was, setting to it with the energy and enthusiasm that she had always had.

Eiessa experienced some difficulty deciding on her major focus when the time came to choose. More than anything, she wanted to be assigned to an exploration vessel. She wanted to go to new places and be among the first in the Federation to see some of the great wonders that must, must be out there. Engineers made sure that the ships could get from place to place, including the far reaches, but she wasn't overly mechanically inclined. Scientists would certainly be among the first to see new things, But again she didn't really have the mind for that kind of work either. She was more interested in experiencing new things, not really determining how they worked. That left what? Operations? Security? Medical? Flight control? She did enjoy flying, without doubt. She had tried out for a shuttlecraft demonstration team, and although she didn't make the core team, she was chosen as an alternate. Flying formations and performing close maneuvers at high speeds made her adventurous spirit sing. But, like her mother, she had a deep seeded love for experiencing the sights and sounds of a new place, and you could rarely do that from the cockpit of a shuttlecraft, and not at all from the helm station on the bridge of a starship. In the end she decided that any away teams going down to an unexplored planet would need security. They would have to be protected from the unknown so that the scientists and others could have a chance to learn what they can. She learned that it was rare in fact for an away team ever to beam anywhere without a security detail assigned. So that's what she decided on. She would specialize in security.

Eiessa found some elements of her security training that suited her more than she had expected they would. For instance, she had never considered herself much of a fighter. Yet, during her hand-to-hand combat exercises, she discovered an unexpected joy and exhilaration. At first she thought it was just the appreciation she had for the physical exertion. But as time went on, she realized that she also had a competitive streak in her that shot right to the surface when sparring with her fellow cadets. She found also that her Betazoid senses were a big help in predicting certain things about her opponent. If her sparring partner attempted a faint or tried to mislead her in some way, she usually detected it in time to properly defend herself. She won more contests than she lost, which boosted her confidence and made the whole experience that much more enjoyable for her.

There were some of Eiessa's classmates, of course, who thought it was her ego rather than her confidence that was being boosted. She began detecting resentment from some of them, and outright dislike from others. She wasn't the only Betazoid in her classes, and she discovered that some of those other Betazoids had let slip to other students the feelings of joy Eiessa was experiencing in connection with her performance in the ring. When Tani, an operations cadet that she had gone on a couple of dates with, told her that she might have more friends if she "stopped kicking their asses", Eiessa Became truly concerned. How could she train hard and properly if she was holding back? She spoke to one of her instructors about it and was promptly told that she wasn't here to make friends and that she should keep on working as she had been. But as time went by, things only seemed to get worse. More and more of her classmates were turning against her, some of them coming at her more aggressively than they should have during their sparring sessions.

One day, filled with despair over the situation, Eiessa allowed herself to be beaten by a clearly less skilled opponent. She had hoped that maybe by doing so she could show everyone that she understood why they were turning away from her, and that it wasn't beating people up that she was enjoying, but the competition itself. But instead, what she experienced was a flood of satisfaction from nearly everyone present. They were now receiving joy themselves from watching her fail. She could feel it, and they knew she could feel it. She had come from such a loving and supportive family background that this blatant hostility directed at her was, for all of the places she had seen and people she had met, the most alien thing she had ever known. For this, she had no defenses, and the pain of it cut deep. She wondered if this was what was meant when she was told, "You're not here to make friends."

Oddly, after that experience, Eiessa's classmates did indeed begin to ease up on their dislike of her. Over the weeks that followed she began to detect less and less hostility from them, though it never really went away. Her goals hadn't changed, but there was now a knot of hardness in her that didn't exist before, like a scar left behind by the wound she had received from the schadenfreude of the other cadets. It was a weight that dulled her joy a bit, but from which she tried instead to take strength. She knew that what she was signing up for in joining Starfleet was going to be difficult and not always pleasant. It occurred to her that, as loving as her parents were and as much as they tried to expose her to new experiences, they had also sheltered her more than she realized. This, she supposed, was yet another lesson that she had to learn as part of her academy training. So, she did her best to learn that lesson well. She stopped expecting that everyone was interested in her success, that they were going to be supportive, that there was no reason she couldn't be everyone's friend. Oh, she still had friends. But that group was much smaller than she had previously thought. It wasn't that it had dwindled, it just had never truly been as large as she had once believed. But, the other part of this lesson, like the flip side of the same coin, was that her true friends were the ones who never turned away from her to begin with. It was a hard lesson for her to learn, but an important one.

Eiessa completed her training and began putting in for exploration assignments. She graduated a little older, a little wiser, and a little tougher than she had been when she arrived, but without her drive or enthusiasm diminished. When her assignment finally came in and she found that she had been posted to the Phoenix on deep space assignment, her heart soared. She immediately contacted her father and gave him the good news. With his congratulations he also sent to her a document that he had compiled when he himself was a young Starfleet officer. It was full of tips and tricks of navigating the waters of a ship as a new addition to an already established crew. She thanked him for his thoughtfulness, but although she kept the file he had given her, she decided that she would try and learn those things on her own. Her parents guidance, as she had learned, may be well intended, but could also be like a map that shows you the way to your destination, but without marking the pitfalls.