#im barely exaggerating

Brain?

Put in the deep fryer

World?

Plot A: Restoration efforts on Bajor uncover a tragic mass grave at the site of an Occupation labour camp. The discovery is made all the more horrifying when research confirms that the remains within are all of children between infancy and prepubescence — and that every one of them was half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian.

Despite unexpected resistance from the Bajoran government, Captain Sisko orders the remains examined in the hopes of being able to prosecute the Cardassians responsible for the murders. Tensions rise when Dr. Bashir discovers a way to extrapolate DNA from individual samples and begins to search for the childrens’ biological parents, but is shut down by Kai Winn, who visits the station in an attempt to bury the investigations completely. Major Kira, searching for a way to stop her, comes upon a crucial piece of information: the labour camp where the grave was found is the one that Kai Winn herself was imprisoned in during the occupation.

Suspicions aroused, she brings her findings to Bashir. Together they begin to formulate a dark and shocking theory, but are missing crucial pieces of the puzzle. Against Captain Sisko’s orders, Bashir decides to question Garak on the possibility of a Cardassian campaign to eliminate all half-Bajoran children. He is surprised to discover that there was no such campaign, and disgusted at the reasoning: these children were considered useful... in Cardassian medical experiments.

The mystery comes to a devastating climax when Kira manages to obtain a sample of Kai Winn’s DNA and finds it a maternal match for two of the murdered children. Confronting her with this evidence, Kira reveals her utter confusion, asking disdainfully if Winn is so callous that she doesn’t care about exposing the war criminals who used her so inhumanly. At this Winn finally breaks down, and reveals the most tragic secret of all: when the Cardassians came to collect their “experiment subjects,” it was the Bajoran mothers themselves who did the only thing they felt they could to protect their children from crueller deaths.

and while they’re putting us through all of that there’ll be, like