[JP] Lieutenant(jg) Regan Wilde & Lieutenant(jg) Keneth Nakada - The Brownies of Peace
David Hemming
((USS Arrow - Deck 2; Main Engineering - Upper Level))
It was one of Regan’s personal policies to avoid engineering as much as possible. All sorts of complex consoles and procedures were operating in there and he always feared he would be clumsy enough to wreck something. His sister was the hot-shot engineer, not him. She’d happily spend hours with her sleeves rolled up tinkering with some power cell. He’d rather not.
Plus it was messy in engineering. All sorts of fluids and lubricants stuck all over doorways, entryways, Jeffries Tubes hatches and god knows whatever else needed fixing or working on in here. But this was important, even if spending too long a time near the warp core might mess up his hair.
Regan sat near one of the entry hatches to a Jeffries Tube on the upper level of main engineering. His back to the bulkhead, his legs outstretched and crossed over in front of him, he spoke normally into the empty open hatchway. He’d been talking for fifteen minutes without a response.
Wilde: ...And then when I was eleven I fell off the horse I was riding and fractured two ribs. Well I say riding, I was posing for a family portrait, and we were all on horseback for some bizarre reason. Mother said it would look elegant, but the bloody thing reared up and I fell off the back. Something must have spooked it. I think it was my father's face...
He gave a gleefully wicked, unkind laugh. Silence. Regan huffed. How long was he going to ignore him?
Keneth, meanwhile, was dangling underneath a computer control panel, a mess of isolinear chips strewn about him. His hair was messy, he was sweaty and he was no closer to figuring out why all the doors on Deck 3 refused to close. He dropped the device in his hand and sighed. It had been a long day.
From which it followed, he was in no mood for the flowery antics of Patrick and his crack team of Nakada Irritators. Maybe if he ignored the voices, they would just go away.
Wilde: ::Singsong:: Keneth? ::Beat:: Lieutenant Nakaaaaadaaaaa?
Still nothing.
Keneth? Nakada frowned. The crewmen never called him that. Also - he recognized that singing voice …
Wilde: Oh come on. You can’t ignore me forever. I’ll just sit here and bore with you more of my stories. Besides, I made you chocolate brownies…
Somewhere inside the Jeffries Tube there was motion. Hurrah! He was finally coming round. Regan sat with a large box of homemade chocolate brownies, which was in very real danger of becoming half-empty. He’d already scoffed four of them. Hey, they were good! He was busy munching on the fifth when a head poked out of the tube.
Keneth scrambled up, that was Wilde. Wilde with brownies … damn. He climbed the ladders with a newfound vigor, knowing that if left long enough the Lieutenant would eat everything he had brought himself. This was an emergency. Pushing himself over the edge, he speed crawled over to where the officer sat at the edge of the tube.
Nakada: ::with narrowed eyes:: Who dares summon me?!
Wilde: Finally. For a minute there I thought I’d actually have to crawl in that thing and find you. How many times do I have to say sorry to you?
Keneth felt a momentary pang of guilt as he realized the man was still feeling bad about the previous days’ incident. It was never that big a deal and by the end even he had been jesting. He swung his feet over the edge and sat down, handing his sonic driver to the other as he straightened himself. Might as well guilt trip him a bit further.
Nakada: ::somewhat exaggerated anguish:: Well, you hurt my feelings.
He reached out and took the instrument to hold. It looked familiar, but Regan had no idea its name or purpose. A flux capacitor? Who knew?
Wilde: I know, and I’m sorry. I come bearing peace offerings. ::Offering up the box of now nearly empty brownies.:: Brownie?
Keneth raised his eyebrows at the suspiciously vacant box and grinned.
Nakada: Yes, please. ::munching:: You made them?
They were good brownies. A fact that cemented the man as a much better cook than himself. That was deeply unsurprising seeing as to the fact that a Chalnoth had better taste than him.
Wilde: Yes, I made them. I got a recipe from the computer and replicated all the ingredients and I made them. For you. As an apology. Have you ever tried to bake something? The mess! ::Sighing:: I was very cruel to you about your buffet. And I’m sorry. Keneth you’re probably my best friend on this ship, and I don’t want to fall out with you.
Well this was a fine misunderstanding. It had never been his intention to make the officer actually feel like he’d done anything mean. Keneth looked over at him and clammed up. Apologies were really not his strong fort. Having someone take the trouble of making something, all that effort … just for him. He shifted uncomfortably.
Nakada: :smiling tentatively:: Regan, relax, I was never mad at you anyway. I’m … I’m sorry if I made you feel that way. It was just - well you’re my best friend here too. And frankly that buffet was an insult to nature.
He remembered the counselor’s reaction to it, another person he would have to apologize to soon. He had tasted it himself when she gagged and he could attest to having momentarily believed in a higher power as the burning fires of hell coursed down his throat.
Wilde: ::Stifling a giggle:: It was so bad. I was half expecting Immelmann to issue a quarantine permit for that salad.
They sat in silence for a moment, munching on the snack as an awkward equilibrium settled in. Keneth absentmindedly needled the brand new black pip on his uniform and thought back to the previous night, the awards ceremony. His first reaction had been embarrassment, which his fellow promotees seemed to share. But it also cemented for him how long they’d been out here. Long enough for five of them to rank up. If you asked the computer it would say three and a half months, but it seemed closer to forever. He barely even thought of life outside of Starfleet these days and he wasn’t so sure that was a good thing.
Nakada: Are you happy?
Well this was a turn of events. It was usually Regan who asked these curveball questions. He looked over to Keneth and shrugged his shoulders.
Wilde: Well define happiness. Am I a happy person? I’d say so, I like to think I spark joy in people’s lives. I’m fairly light-hearted, I know my way around a joke. But other than that? ::He thought:: I suppose I’d be happier if we had a holodeck on board. If I got to work in the shuttlebay more often, and if I’d actually gotten to spend some time with that guy I met on the base last night. But that’s just stuff. Not really that important. Why, what’s going on in the mind of yours?
Nakada: ::after a second:: Every time I try to cheer myself up … I remember everything that’s happened.
Wilde: Take it from me, everything you remember, and what’s happened, makes up a part of you. It’s always there, but it’s not what everyone else sees. If you don’t try and let go of some of the baggage, it’ll tie you down.
Keneth stared at the warp core ahead of them, glowing a bouquet of colorful hues. A benign face for the horrifyingly violent reaction within. Back on the shuttle, Regan had offered to talk. So he let the words come tumbling out.
Nakada: Before we started this mission, I had met with Ensign Zicv. She had asked me to help her secure the arachnid device that started all this. ::pause:: I was very wary of it. I recommended that we put in a more… lethal failsafe. She refused. Said it might be alive, conscious.
Wilde: Maybe it was. You weren’t to know.
Keneth snorted in derision.
Nakada: Maybe, in fact it probably was. Either way, I folded. I finally agreed to forget everything else and just make a fancy box to hold it in. You’re a security officer. Does that seem secure to you?
Wilde: Well… yes. If you want to keep something securely, you lock it in a box. That’s what I would have done. Obviously there are more advanced failsafes to boxes these days, but the basics are the same.
Keneth briefly smiled. Putting it so … obviously made it seem simple.
Nakada: I knew it could fail and I just - I wonder if I had stood up to this then and there, maybe even brought it up to Shayne … none of this would have happened.
He dug his fingers into his palm and sighed as he waited for Wilde to respond.
Wilde: So this is more about your own ability to perform as an officer? You think you should have been more forthright in your opinions?
Bingo. To Keneth, it seemed he’d taken the easy way out. He had been exhausted, emotional and possibly prejudiced and he had chosen to let it go. For once he’d said ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’. And it happened.
Nakada: That was my responsibility.
Wilde: Keneth, we are marginally out of the academy, and no one’s really that sure of themselves to go marching into a Captain’s Ready Room and start calling the shots after a few weeks in space. Cut yourself some slack. The crew worked with whatever information they had at the time, and all options would have been considered in the chain of command. If we had all the time in the universe perhaps you could have studied it more, but life’s not like that. You need to learn to roll with the punches.
Keneth blinked, surprised at himself. After all that had happened, it had become strangely difficult to remember that he was still a new officer. The stranger part however, was that he had been telling himself everything the Lieutenant had just said for a week. Yet hearing it from someone else gave it a sense of finality he alone could not.
Nakada: That … is true.
Wilde: Well I’ll always have your back. You have my word. ::He offered the box he was still holding.:: And my brownies.
Nakada: ::smiling:: And I, yours. ::brief pause:: Well, enough of my brooding. We both have things to do!
He took the box of brownies, which had one lone confection left.
Nakada: And Regan, next time I need something cooked, you’re up.
Wilde: ::Rolling his eyes:: What could possibly go wrong!
Keneth laughed as he turned and stuffed himself back into the tube.
NT/END
Lieutenant(jg) Regan Wilde
Security
USS Arrow
C237708DW0
&
Lieutenant(jg) Keneth Nakada
Engineering
USS Arrow
J239706KN0