The Tubes Have Fuzz

Posted on 16 Jul 2014 @ 4:25pm by Lieutenant Asahi Kita & Commander Norvi Stace

1,899 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 7, Jeffries Tubes/Hallway
Timeline: MD 05 - 1304 Hrs

ON

Tribbles. It had to be goddamned tribbles that got themselves into his jeffries tubes. He hadn't thought it would have gotten this severe, seeing as those with said tribbles were made aware of Asahi's protests as they were returning from Rigel.

Tribbles.

He would have rather been down in those mines again. At least the threat of death wasn't coming from something so goddamned cuddly.

The moment he had discovered the threat of tribbles, Asahi wasted absolutely no time scrambling the rest of the Engineering crew, demanding that they spend any time that they could spare looking for the hairy, green fuzzballs, or at least keep an eye on the warp core and ship propulsion systems. He assumed Ops was already on top of their end, so the small engineer thought very little of the ship's energy flow, or it's internal computer matters. There would be plenty of time to panic when the replicators spat out nothing but tribble fur.

His current project consisted of using a combination of sheep dog pup and tribble feed to lure the tiny menaces out of their hiding spots. Surprisingly, Hojo had been receptive to the task, harmlessly herding the green fuzzballs in Asahi's direction just long enough for the engineer to collect them and stuff them into 'tribble-safe' boxes. Asahi would have made a stink about the priorities being made, but he kept his mouth shut. On a science vessel, he would have been overruled multiple times over.

"Hojo, go fetch another." The pup barked at Asahi, obediently darting off to find another tiny creature. The engineer leaned against the wall, glaring disdainfully at the container of tribbles he was sitting next to. "You better hope none of your little kids got into my warp core, or I'll throw the rest of you in after him... her... it. Whatever."

It had been a long morning for the Trill. She had barely grasped two hours' sleep between the cadets had informed her of their lack of due care and responsibility for containing the tribbles. But the sympathy she felt for the students in her charge urged her to crawl herself through the Jeffries Tubes network and seek out what irked her. She hated tribbles just as much as Asahi did but in her endeavours had managed to capture six.

As she turned the corner, she spied a familiar and friendly face. "Ah, Lieutenant. Picking up furballs yourself, I see"

The engineer brightened up at the sound of Norvi's voice, turning his attention from the box of green misfits to the Trill. "Yeah, well, every pair of hands helps. I never understood the rate that tribbles reproduce at, but I'm not exactly willing to find out anytime soon. I'm just glad there's more people about to help. They threw this all on Engineering the last time I had to deal with something like this. It wasn't pretty, seeing as the Fargo's Engineering crew wasn't all that organized.

He gestured toward the container. "You should be able to cram those little buggers in there. I feel like I'm playing a twisted game of butterfly catching..."

"I imagine that butterflies are easier to catch too!" Stace quipped, scrambling now towards him on her hands and knees. "How much luck have you had?"

"Butterflies don't respond to food the same way." Asahi nodded his head toward the small pile of feed in the middle of the hall. "At least, they don't in my experience... The pro is that they aren't liable to randomly reproduce if you look away for an hour." He watched as Hojo came trotting back, wiggling, green fluffball hanging out of the dog's mouth. "Moderate amounts of luck, I'd say? I lost count after twenty of them, but we've been at it all morning. What about you?"

"Five or six," she recounted, screwing up her nose as she got to him and crossing both legs, sat before him in the Jeffries Tube. "It's really starting to get me down. I know by what I've read about them that they'll reproduce quicker than I can catch them. It's like a infestation." She paused, and then looked to Asahi. "Those damned cadets! How has engineering been affected?"

"That's why the Klingons hate them so much. They just get everywhere." Poking the box with his foot, he leaned against the wall of the jeffries tube. "Eh, Engineering's been hit pretty hard. I've got minimal people running in Main Engineering. Everyone else is out scouring for tribbles. Maybe there's a way we can engineer some sort of system that'll collect them up harmlessly. Sort of have them come to us instead of us hunting them down, yanno?" He gave her a sideways smile. "You know, your nose scrunch is cute."

"It's Kell's," she replied, almost as though Asahi should know what she was talking about. "Oh, sorry. My first host. She was an artist. A solitary sort of woman but she had this way of scrunching up her nose when lost in thought. It used to drive Janel crazy. He was my previous host. An authoritative Starfleet captain. Just didn't much appreciate the cutening expression. Neither did certain below decks crewman under his command. He was apparently known as the 'Bajoran Captain' because of it. His First Officer thought that he never knew about it but he did." She smiled at the thought of it. "It's easy to laugh at yourself when it's not really you you're laughing at."

The moment the first instance of the word 'host' left Norvi's mouth, Asahi's body language changed drastically. He shifted to his stomach, putting his hands on his chin and his elbows to the floor of the tube, listening to every word as if his mother was telling him a fanciful tale of adventurers and princesses. "I can't imagine a nose twitch like that would make a Starfleet Captain difficult to take seriously." He frowned thoughtfully. "If you're carrying cute little nose twitches over... maybe you'd have some insight on a few things? The past few days have been... uhm... educational, but I'm still lost for what to do in certain cases... like awkward, semi-diplomatic dinners where I feel like half the party'd be more comfortable exchanging photon torpedoes as opposed to pleasantries, for instance."

Stace smiled sweetly at the youth and cocked her head to the side a little. There was something innately adorable about the engineer. Harmless and free. But she understood how daunting a responsible position aboard a military vessel could seem to such a green officer. She shrugged at him and scrunched her nose up again. "It's something that you just learn, Asahi," she said softly. "Granted, my experience through the years offers me an advantage that non-joined species aren't privy to but you'll get there I'm sure." She paused for a moment and inhaled. "You've been selected as Chief Engineer for a reason, Lieutenant. And with that comes a responsibility of stamping your own personality on situations, be them disagreeable or authoritative." She leaned in forward a little. "Anytime you need any advice, I'm here for you, Asahi. Just don't call me the Bajoran Captain!"

"They should probably train their Chief Engineers in diplomatic etiquette or something like that. Either that or they do, and I missed the memo when wandering about the Academy. Then again, I never thought I'd be in the position I'm in now. I always thought I was going to be the engineer shuffling behind the scenes and helping everyone else out, watching everyone get their promotions. You know, that kind of thing." He paused to reach over and snag the stray tribble attempting to make it's escape down the tubes. "I guess I don't really get all the undertones, or even the real need for an obligatory event to begin with. If two sides already know they don't like each other, but should get along, why not just say so? Why does there need to be all this effort put into something that just... doesn't seem necessary at all?"

"Because," Stace replied softly, "sometimes you just have to make every effort to get along. We live in a multicultural universe that relies on that getting along to function. If we didn't 'get along' then we wouldn't have a Federation. And where would we be without that?" She paused and then cast her eye down to the tray of tribbles. "Just think of your new department - congratulations on the promotion, by the way - Without harmony and people working together, you couldn't get any work done."

It took Asahi a painfully long moment for Stace's words to register. When they did, the engineer's expression broke into a sheepish grin, pink tinge of embarrassment written all over it. "I guess that does make sense. Sometimes I guess I get so caught up in the actual engineering part of it all that I forget to play nice with my staff-thank you, by the way. They all get along so well... Most times... when there aren't political opinions or name calling bits involved." He sighed, pulling another tribble closer. "There are just so many little intricacies to playing nice with potentially hostile races. I guess that's why there are diplomats on the ship, huh?"

"Exactly," Stace replied, patting a hand on Asahi's shoulder. "But we're all partly responsible in our respective positions too. We can't always leave the heavy work up to someone else." She smiled at him affectionately. "You'll get the hang of it in the end, I'm sure."

"Guess I'll have to badger our diplomats to get them to tell me which fork I'm supposed to be using when, huh?" Asahi's unexpected blushing was masked only by the small smile at his lips. The smile wiped itself from his face upon realizing how cold the Trill's hand was. He sat up, taking her hand into his own and frowning. He knew Trills to have cold hands; the few that he managed to work with would have stated as much, but it didn't stop him from his concern. "You aren't cold anywhere else, are you? If the tribbles got themselves in the temperature regulators, then we could have a problem."

"No," she replied with a warm and genuine smile. "I never usually get too hot or too cold." She paused for a moment and chuckled. "I'm fine, but thank you, Asahi." Stace sighed, breaking her eye contact with the engineer and then looked with knitted brows at the tribbles in the tray. "I think this is going to cause the ship a lot of problems with or without the fact that they might have gotten into the temperature regulators. "Where are you headed next?"

"Oh... okay. Just checking." He removed his hands from her's, eying the tribbles with a disdainful look. "I probably should have caused more of a scene on Rigel VI when they were all buying them..." Asahi shook his head. "I was gonna go see what was going on in Engineering, whether the damages down there were going to cause me an early grave from stress of green fuzzies."

"Then I'll join you," Stace added, turning her body around in the Jeffries tube to face the same way. "Lead on, oh champion soldier!"

OFF

Lt. Asahi Kita
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Norvi Stace
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

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