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Weyoun bowed his head respectfully, dutifully to his god. He inclined his head again, but only by a fraction of a degree, as the hoard of other high ranking Dominion personnel came into the room. Thor Gor was next, and the Breen commanding officer said something in his people's obscure language before taking a seat and nodding in acknowledgement to the Vorta's own nod. Behind him was the Jem'Hadar First, but Weyoun could not help but wonder why exactly he had invited such a guest. After all, the Jem'Hadar did not like... well, anything, really. They did not eat or drink or sleep or reproduce or even really argue. They barely even talked, except when it was obviously absolutely necessary that they did so.
Of course, the Vorta did not reproduce - at least in regards to the conventional meaning of the word, anyway - but they were not quite as 'different' as the Jem'Hadar were. The Vorta ate and drank and slept, just like the vast majority of other 'normal' species did across the galaxy, with the Borg and Species 8472 being exceptions, Weyoun duly noted. There were even, however odd it sounded, reports originating in the not so distant past of Vorta taking partners and marrying and falling in love.
Absurd, Weyoun thought, but the judgement did take a while to appear in his mind.
Coming in behind the Jem'Hadar First were a myriad of other soldiers of either the Breen or Jem'Hadar variety. It was behind them that Weyoun caught sight of the Cardassians. At the head of their line was Damar. He looked very, very annoyed. Weyoun even wondered if there was a word stronger than 'annoyed'. He didn't feel that it did Damar's mood justice.
Damar made a sort of grunt-like noise when Weyoun smiled his insufferable smile at him and bowed his head ever so slightly in acknowledgment.
"Damar," Weyoun said in his kindest voice.
Damar didn't believe the positive intention that Weyoun had put into his own voice and rolled his eyes. "If you're expecting a friendly smile from me," Damar muttered to him, being careful to keep his voice down. He has already managed to arouse more than a lot of suspicion on his part. "Then you've got another thing coming."
Weyoun only brightened his smile. "Anything I expect from you, Damar," he said, adopting a dangerous tone, "is never done."
Damar opened his mouth to protest.
Weyoun, however, raised a pale finger to silence the Cardassian before any words had even been spoken. "Is never done properly," the Vorta amended his words. "Now," he said defiantly. "Sit down."
"There aren't any seats, Weyoun," Damar muttered, almost spitting out Weyoun's name.
Weyoun smiled ingratiatingly at Damar. "Oh, well... You could always stand."
A muscle in Damar's strong jaw jumped. "Or," he said firmly, "I could go back to my quarters."
Weyoun laughed - which made Damar wince out of sheer frustration - and shook his head slowly. "So you can entertain more of your lady-friends?" he mocked Damar.
Damar was close to breaking point, close to knocking Weyoun out there and then.
"I think not," Weyoun said decidedly. He pointed to a seat at the very back of the reasonably sized viewing room. "There is a seat, I believe, next to that Breen officer."
Damar rolled his eyes.
"Perhaps if you ask him nicely, he would stop taking up two seats and you can sit down." Weyoun watched Damar closely, as if wary of an incoming punch.
Damar was about to glare at the smug little Vorta, but didn't and instead gave a brief, broad smile. He proceeded to the seat and moaned. He doubted he would be able to see anything from his vantage point, that is, if he even got to sit down in the first place, but then again, he wasn't too annoyed. He wasn't that bothered about listening to or watching whatever thing Weyoun had planned for him and so many others to enjoy.
Damar cleared his throat, standing to the side of the aisle that ran down the middle of the two separate blocks of seats. "Excuse me," he announced, regarding the Breen who - what; Damar wasn't even sure if living things were actually hidden beneath those godawful helmets and uniforms - was sat in the seat Weyoun had been referring to.
The Breen looked up at him; at least, he tilted his head up so that his eye-visor and Damar's eyes were more or less on the same level.
"Could I sit down?" Damar asked in as polite a voice as he could muster. He hated having to ask. He wasn't supposed to ask. He was the leader of the Cardassian Union. This Breen was certainly not of as high status as Damar was, but Damar was Cardassian, which, at least in Weyoun's eyes, made him subservient to even a Breen cadet.
The Breen said something in his own language, which was unintelligible, and turned back to face the front.
Damar's hands balled into fists at his side. "Sir, can I have this seat?" he asked again, careful to not make it sound like a demand, but his temper was rising as it always did.
The Breen, again, said something obscure. To Damar it only sounded like radio static. Very annoying radio static. He doubted the actual words being said would have been any more interesting or meaningful and decided that it was probably a Breen swear word, if they even had any that was.
"Can I have that seat, please?" Damar asked again, grating out the word 'please' like it was acid that burnt his mouth.
Finally, after what seemed like a geological age to Damar, the Breen shifted over to the side. Damar was not thankful - need he be? He only gave the Breen a slight, curt nod, and took the seat.
At least, Damar thought, he moved that way and not toward the aisle, or I would be surrounded by Breen on all sides.
"Damar," a voice that he had no trouble attributing to Weyoun said sharply, as the Cardassian was settling himself into the seat. It was rather a tight squeeze. "Stop fidgeting."
Damar cursed under his breath and stopped moving. He sighed and waited patiently for Weyoun to begin his... whatever it was.
"Founder," Weyoun said with yet another of his bows to the rather ill-looking Changeling in the very front row. "Loyal subjects of the Dominion." He nodded collectively to the other individuals in the room; Jem'Hadar, Breen, and the one Cardassian. His gaze fell sharply on Damar.
"I am very glad to have you attend this occasion," Weyoun then continued cheerfully. "Our attack on Starfleet Headquarters has been successful, as you all know." He smiled, evidently proud, though Damar failed to see of what. Weyoun did the paperwork. "And, that attack has brought to light a number of, shall we say, interesting files on Earth's rich history."
Looking at the room from Weyoun's point of view, one would see only plaintive faces. The Female Founder was still blighted by the terrible disease and looked less than fazed by what Weyoun had to say. The Jem'Hadar, well, didn't like much anyway. The facial expressions of the Breen showed nothing. Damar thought he wouldn't mind having one of those helmets; at least, that way, he could nap during the tedious briefings. They were always about Cardassian troops being overwhelmed by Federation forces; the recent Septimus III incident was testament to that.
Damar's facial expression was the only thing that wasn't actually neutral, in the entire room. Discounting, of course, Weyoun's ridiculously smug and happy demeanour, Damar was the only member of the eager audience who looked alive.
Weyoun clapped his hands together briskly, defiantly. "Some of these files were, obviously, in more detail than others. A most curious thing I came across was something called 'The Internet'," he went on. "I believe it to have been a global network of computers, whereby humans would send and receive and generate information. Now, one of the most interesting things I came across were called 'video clips'. These are short visual displays featuring sound and pictures moving in sequence."
"I think we all know what a video is, Weyoun," Damar muttered.
Weyoun didn't hear Damar's remark, despite his Vorta hearing, or was too caught up in his little presentation to even notice. So, Weyoun continued. "I managed to find some of these such files," he explained, and a multitude of things began playing on the screen, each of the fifty or so clips its own segment on the screen.
Damar could only roll his eyes at the ridiculous display set before him. He may have been at the back and far away from the screen, but he could still make out the idiocy, he thought, of what Weyoun was showing him and the others. Something about 'Peanut Butter Jelly Time', whatever that meant. Another clip showed a child's finger being bitten, which just alarmed Damar. Another confused him: an object streaming across space with rainbows behind it. Damar didn't really know what the object was. It reminded him of a Terran cat, but that was where the similarity ended. He did jump a little when he caught sight of this ominously tall, white, faceless figure, dressed in a suit of all things. In the process, Damar elbowed the Breen he was sat next to, which was a mistake. Breen were very hard, so now Damar had a hurting elbow. The most unnerving clip was of a talking orange... with a human face.
Honestly, Damar thought in both dismay and surprise, its a wonder these humans even managed to leave their own star system. They've obviously put a lot of their time into this video thing.
Damar did have reason to smile, though. When the clip of the creepily tall man with the white skin showed, Weyoun let loose a little yelp.
"Moving on," Weyoun said, "another thing I came across was a large database of sounds. Music." He keyed in a few things and the videos on the screen were replaced by a cacophony of sounds.
Weyoun was smiling, but even the Founder looked irritated. "Weyoun, I don't think the humans had the idea of playing these... things simultaneously."
Weyoun nodded acceptingly. "As you wish, Founder," he said respectfully, and then carried out her orders. The populace of the room was subjected to a great deal of partial songs over the course of the hour.
The Vorta then went on to explain each 'song' on depth before playing it. Damar almost thanked the Founders that they hadn't given the Vorta the ability to understand and appreciate such things, or Weyoun would likely spend a good half an hour discussing each musical artefact.
Damar didn't care much for the pop, hip hop, rap, electronic or disco music, as they were called. He did, however, have a partiality for the heavy metal.
The words resonated in his head:
'Just one thing,
Just to play the king
But the castle crumbled
And you've left me with just a name'
Weyoun, on the other hand, looked both fascinated, almost in a state of mesmerisation, as well as sort of neutral, as a result of listening to the multitude of songs.
"And now," the diplomat said after the songs had finished, "for the final-"
Damar sighed in relief.
"- aspect of this presentation." He walked up and down the stage area. "These, which I am about to show you, are called 'films'." He typed something into the computer and on the screen came a list of titles.
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
Ben-Hur
Superman
The Shining
A Clockwork Orange
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Alien
Terminator
Rocky
2001: A Space Odyssey
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Top Gun
Gone With the Wind
The list went on, but Damar had fallen asleep by the time the list had come to an end. He was somewhat glad when he looked back in hindsight that he wasn't awake to hear what Weyoun had to say next. He doubted he would have been able to control his temper.
"I understand each of these 'films' are at least two hours in length, so I have decided to implement a time of the day when one of these 'films' will be watched," Weyoun announced. "I will, of course, he said, nodding to the Female Changeling, "have to clear it with the illustrious Founder first."