All I got left is my bones.

1. Player Information
Name:Bri
Username: AIM = ThriceWiddershin Plurk = ThriceWiddershins Email = ThriceWiddershins@gmail.com
Current characters in ToS:Zoey Westen, Siri Tachi
Reserve: My reserve

2. Canon Character Information
Name: Lea “Bones” McCoy
PB: Lena Headey
Journal: bitcheslovehypos
Age: Lea McCoy is thirty one years old, but has a tendency to act like she’s a whole hell of a lot older than those around her. And when ‘those around her’ include eternal trouble magnet Jane Kirk and kid genius Pasha Chekov... well, she feels a whole hell of a lot older, too.
Appearance: Lea McCoy is a tall, lanky woman, standing at nearly 6ft tall. She’s wiry, and stronger than she looks; she’s a Starfleet officer, there’s a certain amount of... in-shape-ness that’s required. And she meets those requirements, passes them with flying colours. Underneath her uniform she’s fairly damn toned. She just doesn’t worry about showing it off. She’s got better shit to do. She’s taken the requisite defence classes, and can use a phaser... but she doesn’t like to; she swore an oath, damn it. She doesn’t have a problem occasionally throwing a punch, though. Especially if the other individual deserved it. Hell, that’s how her relationship with Jocelyn started. Her hair is dark brown, and falls around her shoulder with just a touch of waviness. If she leaves it down it’s usually messy and rumpled, from scrubbing her hands through it (most often in frustration; most often because of Jane). Her natural ‘default’ expression seems to be a strange mix of exasperation and irritation. With a touch of “You’ve got to be KIDDING me”. She has a tendency to cross her arms a lot. And talk with her hands. She tends to sprawl into chairs. And slouch. Particularly when she’s hard at work doing medical things. Her grin is huge, and her laugh is similar.

History: Lea McCoy was born to David and Eleanora McCoy on 20th January 2227. She was named after her mother. As a child, she was encouraged by her father to work with what she had when she was without medical technology. That lesson remained with her for all her life.

There was a family reunion when Lea was 7 or 8, a picnic along the banks of the Chattahoochee River. Some of her older cousins got together and built a raft of logs. There must have been a dozen kids on it, and when they reached the middle of the river... it fell apart, and Lea sank like a stone. She didn’t know how long it took them to figure out she wasn’t with them, or who pulled her up. But they said she was blue, and that her grandfather walloped her and got her breathing again.

When Lea McCoy was attending the University of Mississippi she met a Trill, by the name of Emony Dax, who was on Earth judging a gymnastics tournament. She looks back on those memories fondly, although she has never gone into much detail about the exact nature of their relationship.

During medical school, she would often play pranks on and with her fellow medical students. One time in particular involved stealing Dieter Clissman’s cadaver. And put it in the Dean’s office. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

She was married, for a time, to Jocelyn Darnell, but the divorce was harsh, and she had nowhere else to go. So she decided to enlist in Starfleet. In 2255 Lea boarded the Starfleet shuttle for new recruits which departed from Riverside Shipyard. She suffered from aviophobia, and tried her damndest to remain in the shuttle bathroom for the voyage, but she was found out and forced into a seat. Her seatmate was one Jane T. Kirk, who assured her of the shuttle’s safety. Lea was having none of it, and ranted at Jane about the health hazards of flying in a shuttle. She eventually confided in the other woman that her reason for joining Starfleet was because her wife had taken the planet in the divorce, and all she had left was her bones. It was then that she finally got around to introducing herself. They shared a flask as the shuttle took off for Starfleet Academy.

Lea spent three years at Starfleet Academy, during which time she became closer friends with Jane; who was now calling her Bones, due to her comment on the shuttle when they first met. In the summer of 2255, while she was attending the Starfleet Medical College, Lea was swept into the search for a serial killer known as the Doctor. She treated Academy cadets Galen and Uhura after they were attacked. Working together with several other scientists, Lea determined that the Doctor was using a swarm of extremely powerful nanites to remove victims' internal organs without leaving behind any sort of incisions or surgical marks. Lea, Uhura, and Dr. Pat Park discovered that the Transamerica Pyramid was the Doctor’s hideout. Jane, Lea and Uhura headed for the skyscraper, with Jane outfitted with weapons designed to combat the nanites by Lea. She entered the building with Jane, fighting through the nanites to find the hooded Doctor and four similar figures that ended up being made entirely out of swarms of nanites. The two of them were almost killed, but the nanites retreated and left earth.

Also in 2255, she treated Jane when she was infected with a neural agent by the Gemini Project, an initiative of the Jolan Movement on Romulus, also helping to prove her innocence. During that incident she became romantically interested in Seamus Caan, a Starfleet Intelligence officer investigating the case.

Len assisted with a massive inoculation program against the Saurian virus on Dramia II in 2257, where she saved a Dramian colonist, named Kol-Tai, from the virus. She also wrote her thesis, which focused on axonal pathways and neural grafting and earned her a Special Commendation.

In 2258, when Jane wanted to take the Kobayashi Maru a THIRD time, she thought Jane was mad, and didn’t buy it when the other woman said she was going to study. Despite that, when Jane requested that she take part in her third test, Lea agreed, serving at the helm station. Believing that she would fail horribly, like the last two times, Lea was beyond surprised when Jane succeeded; more than that, when she DEFEATED the simulation. Shortly afterwards, she was there in the Academy assembly hall when the ruling council accused Jane of cheating.

The hearing was interrupted by the ruling council receiving word of a distress call from Vulcan, and all cadets were ordered to report to Hangar 1 for assignment. Lea was assigned to the newly commissioned USS Enterprise, which had yet to have its maiden flight. Jane, however, was on academic suspension, and as such wasn’t assigned to a starship. Lea decided to smuggle her friend on board, and injected her with a hypo containing a vaccine to protect against a viral infection from Melvaran mud fleas. The injection made Jane experience the symptoms of the infection, letting Len to drag her onboard the Enterprise.

Successfully sneaking Jane aboard, Lea took her to sickbay and sedated her, before preparing for duty. When Jane regained consciousness, Lea was horrified to see that her hands had swollen in an allergic reaction to the Melvaran mud flea vaccine. She chased Jane through the ship, injecting her with various medications while she searched for Uhura to confirm her theory. Afterward, she continued chasing Jane with Uhura as she ran onto the bridge to warn Pike that they were heading into a Romulan trap. Lea attempted to explain Jane’s presence, accepting full responsibility for her actions, but Jane was able to convince the crew that there were Romulans waiting for them at Vulcan.

Doctor Puri, the Enterprise’s chief medical officer, was on deck 6 when she was killed by missiles fired by the Narada. Lea took over her role and was later acknowledged by Spock as being her replacement. Later she would treat the injuries Jane received in attempting to deactivate the Narada’s drilling platform, as well as seeing to the survivors of Vulcan’s destruction. After Pike’s capture by the Romulans, she joined Jane, Acting Captain Spock, and the rest of the bridge crew in discussing Nero’s continued threat. When Jane argued with Spock, Lea sided with the Vulcan, agreeing that they should rendezvous with the rest of the fleet. And later, she was witness to Jane’s failed attempted at mutiny. She disagreed thoroughly with Spock’s decision to maroon Jane on Delta Vega, but waited until they were alone to voice her extreme displeasure. And when Spock disagreed, and left, she called her a “green blooded hob-goblin”.

Lea was on the bridge when Jane instigated a fight with Spock, proving that she was emotionally compromised by the mission, by what had happened to Vulcan and her mother. Spock reported that she was emotionally compromised and resigned her command. Despite her support of Jane, she still had no problem voicing her incredulity when Jane became acting captain of the Enterprise. “You’ve gotta be kidding me”. She reacted similarly to Chekov’s idea for beaming onto the Narada without being noticed after learning that Chekov was only 17 years old.

After Nero’s defeat Lea was permanently assigned as the Enterprise’s chief medical officer.

Months after the destruction of Vulcan, the Enterprise was sent on a mission to the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy. It was there that they encountered the force field at the edge of the galaxy, and Jane’s friend Lt. Geri Mitchell was mutated into a superhuman being. Lea monitored Mitchell in sickbay as the officers behaviour changed, growing more and more erratic. At one point Lea suggested that she rest, and Geri shoved her across the room. Refusing to be stranded on Delta Vega I, Mitchell blasted Jane with energy from her hands, but Lea knocked her out with a sedative before she could do any more harm to the captain.

A year later, Lea was on Nabiru helping to prevent a volcano from causing the extinction of the Nibirans without breaking the Prime Directive. She was in charge of cataloguing fauna and a focus on potential pathogens. She greeted Jane with a friendly, docile animal for their getaway ride... until Jane accidentally stunned it, forcing them to run like hell and jump off a cliff to dive to the Enterprise, which had been hidden under the water.

She was on the bridge listening when Spock, who was detonating a cold fusion device to stop the volcano from erupting, asked them to leave her behind, since the only way to get the Enterprise close enough to beam her out would reveal the ship to the natives and blow the Prime Directive out of the water. When Lea asked what Spock would do if the places were reversed... Jane chose to ignore the Directive and rescue her anyway. When Jane was on the trail of John Harrison, whose attack had left numerous dead (including Pike), Lea was sceptical, believing her friend too inexperienced. After Jane found Harrison on Qo’nos, witnessing him taking down scores of Klingons single-handedly, she ordered Lea to investigate Harrison’s superhuman strength. Upon analyzing his blood, she learned that it possessed extraordinarily regenerative platelets, which she experimented with by injecting it into a dead tribble.

Harrison remained closed mouthed about his motives, but suggested Jane study the 72 experimental photon torpedoes they’d been given by Admiral Marcus to fire on Harrison’s location. Sceptical, Lea took a shuttle and one of the experimental torpedoes along with Marcus’s daughter Carol to a meteor in order to examine it. She accidentally activated it, trapping her hand. Jane ordered her to be beamed up, but was warned that it could also bring an exploding torpedo with her. Marcus deactivated it before that could happen, and when they opened the torpedo they found a cryo tube containing a man in stasis.

That was when they learned that Harrison was actually Khan Noonian Sing, and he’d been revived by Admiral Marcus to design weapons and ships for a war with the Klingon Empire. He’d tried to smuggle out his fellow augments, but had failed when his scheme was discovered. Believing that Marcus had killed his family he responded in kind. Admiral Marcus showed up in the USS Vengeance and opened fired when Jane refused to hand over Khan. Fortunately Scotty had found her way over to the dreadnought and deactivated its weapons. Jane and Khan ally in order to fly over to the Vengeance and commandeer the ship, but a suspicion Spock asked Len to remove the cryo tubes from the torpedoes.

Khan took the Vengeance for himself, but Lea had done as Spock had asked and removed the cryo tubes. So Spock could, and did, use the torpedoes against him. Both ships were crippled and began hurtling to Earth. Jane went into the warp core to reactivate the Enterprise’s engines, but there wasn’t time for her to put on a containment suit and she suffered radiation poisoning. She was taken to sickbay, where Lea had to watch as she lay dying. It was only when she returned to her desk that she noticed the tribble she’d injected with Khan’s blood coming back to life. That was when she got the brilliant and desperate idea to do the same to Jane. But that meant they needed more of Khan’s blood.

Lea ordered one of the augments’ cryo tubes to be brought to sickbay, removing its occupant and reanimating them, although they were kept in a medically induced coma. Then she, with Marcus’ help, put Jane within the cryo tube, using it to keep her in suspended animation and preserve her brain. Spock and Uhura subdued Khan after he crashed in the Vengeance, which allowed Lea to give Jane a blood transfusion.

It’s during the wait, before Jane has regained consciousness after the blood transfusion, that the Grasp takes Lea and brings her to Gebo.

Powers/Talents: Unless grumpiness counts as a superpower, Lea is pretty much your normal sort of human. She is, however, a damn fine doctor and Starfleet officer. Especially a doctor. She’s an accomplished surgeon, physician, psychologist, and exobiologist, as well as being considered an expert in space psychology.

She makes a mean mint julep, and isn’t a bad singer. Although it usually takes a few mint juleps before she’ll be willing to sing in public. In the shower, however, she has no problem belting out songs at the top of her lungs.

There’s a famous McCoy family recipe for Southern baked beans that has been passed down for generations. Lea is damn good at making it, and she can even be persuaded to make it for others.

Personality: Lea McCoy is a deeply caring person, a doctor who gives one hell of a damn about her patients... whose curmudgeonly, grumpy as hell attitude disguises all of that. So her bedside manner isn’t always the most... polite. Or, let’s face it, nice. But she does whatever she can to help/save the life of the patients under her care. Even if they’re like Jane and frustrate the ever-loving HELL out of her. Her crew means a lot to her, and she would go to the ends of the universe for them. And has. She will also complain loudly, and at length, about things. She comes saddled with more than a few phobias, and even though she will rant about them loudly she still does her job.

She takes her oath seriously, which is why she has problems using phasers sometimes. But she has no problem throwing the occasional punch, especially if its recipient deserves it.

She internalises the guilt over the death of her father; a death she played a part in. He begged her to help him, to release him from his pain, but Lea couldn’t, she was too adamant about finding a cure. But seeing her father suffering so much she couldn’t help but give in. So she took her father off life support. But only a few weeks after assisting in his death... a cure was found for the illness. So there’s blame and self-recrimination, too. And regret.

What she’s afraid of? Well, losing people; being too late. Not that she likes letting anyone KNOW about either of those, but she applies herself at medicine because she wanted to do all that she can. When it comes to her crew, she just wants to keep them all alive. And when you have the sort of crew that Lea does... well, it can be a lot more work than you might expect. Especially when the captain is one Jane “Reckless Ass” Kirk. Lea does the same, though, if it means keeping them alive. She wouldn’t hesitate in sacrificing herself to stop the others from being harmed.

Why would your character be chosen? Between Bones’ impressive skill as a doctor and her... impressive abilities of grump, it’s no wonder she was chosen. No, but seriously, she’s a good doctor and grumpy as fuck. It’s as good a possible reason for her being chosen as any.

How much does your character know about nonhumans? Well, seeing as how she’s an accomplished exobiologist, I would say she knows a hell of a lot. She deals with alien species on a regular basis, and serves with a few on the Enterprise. One green-blooded hob-goblin comes to mind. So she’s not exactly UNfamiliar with non-humans.

Why this character: Good LORD she’s going to be fun to play. I’ve always loved Bones, and I sort of love the idea of all that fantastic curmudgeonly nature being hers, rather than his. The more I’ve seen the other genderswap AUs, the more I’ve wanted to try my hand. And the only Star Trek character I could see myself playing out of the main group is Bones. I definitely think I'll be able to keep her voice, and I'll definitely find her interesting after playing her for a while.

AU Addendum: Pretty much what I said above; I love Bones and I love the thought of him being a woman, and still being that fantastically grumpy person. And in seeing all the other genderswap AUs being played, it’s made me really interested in how things would change.

Past Game History: N/A

4. Samples
Please either include a first-person entry that could be your character's first post on The Network, or a third-person prose or action spam sample that could be your character's reaction to arriving in Dagaz. For the other two samples, links to previous character examples are fine.

First-Person:

[The voice coming over the network carries a southern accent and a fuckton of irritation.]

Are you out of your friggin’ minds? Do I look like the prince-marrying type? At all? And who thinks kidnapping is a good way to begin a relationship, anyway? [She makes a frustrated noise.] I don’t have time for this. I’m a doctor, not a reality show contestant. You can’t just rip me away from my patients [Patient, singular. Just the one. But she’s a damn important one.] and expect me to just sit back and take it.

[Bones thinks this is a load of crap, let her tell you the ways.] And we’re adding assigned ‘jobs’ to the list of insults. Bunch of meaningless tasks. Busy work. [Guess what she thinks of that. Just guess.]


Third-Person:

Lea pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. The med bay was silent this time of evening, so she could allow herself the moment. Maybe even two, if she was feeling generous. It was the waiting that was the worst. Especially the waiting involved when you tried a hail Mary pass with medicine. It worked. Jane was alive and breathing in front of her. Which was a damn improvement over DEAD.

But she hadn’t woken up. Not yet. And she wouldn’t be able to relax until Jane was up and being a pain in her ass again. “Come on, kid, don’t let me down,” she grumbled under her breath, unable to look away from the still figure lying on the medical bed. She’d been dead. Certifiably so.

Please let this work.

There was a soft trilling sound off to her right, and she spared the tribble a tired glare. She wasn’t entire sure what to do with the damn thing, now that it wasn’t dead, so she was keeping it around, for lack of better things to do with it. It made a decent sounding board. Didn’t mouth off. Not that she’d let anyone know she talked to the damn tribble. Scooping up the thing, she frowned down at it...

It was then she noticed the shadows.

“What the hell?” Lea had just enough time to shove back her chair and leap to her feet, hand not filled with tribble slapping down on the comm., before the shadows wrapped around her and yanked her away.


Third Sample Bones wasn’t amused. She wasn’t amused at all. She’d been kidnapped, yanked around a half a dozen places, and now she was trapped in a city a hundred damn leagues under the sea. With no damn say in the matter. And she sure as hell wouldn’t have agreed to this crap. Not with water involved. It had been bad enough being in the Enterprise when Jane got the bright idea to hide the STARship in the friggin’ ocean. There wasn’t anywhere else to go, here. And it was bringing back too many damn memories. Memories of handmade rafts, and overly sour lemonade. Of playing with distant relatives.

Water filling her lungs.

“I’m a doctor, not a scuba diver,” she grumbled under her breath, stomping down the corridor to her room, resolutely ignoring the water outside. Ignoring the memories. If she thought about it... well, she just wouldn’t think about it. And here she thought she’d dealt with her hydrophobia.

Apparently not enough.

It was bad enough she’d been kidnapped and trapped in a city under way too much water, but then they added roommates and assigned jobs to the mix. Which was a load of crap. For crying out loud, she wasn’t a damn seamstress! What the hell were these Nysgods thinking?