Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft - There's one more ingredient... our SECRET ingredient... (dramatic reveal) Psychological Warfare!
Carter Schimpff
(( Outside the Slug-Nasium, Ferenginar ))
Bancroft: I’m sure that was just a glitch, right? Not a… customer testimonial?
MacKenzie looked from the menu to Bancroft.
MacKenzie: You'd better hope not.
The way she said it – cool, clipped, and carrying the faintest suggestion of ‘I dare you to make this worse for yourself’ – hit Roy clean between the eyes.
And suddenly, finally, pieces that had been rattling loose in his head for months slid into place with a neat internal click.
For the better part of half a year, Roy had been trapped in a bizarre, self-inflicted feedback loop whenever Captain MacKenzie had been present. He'd babbled, stammered, and bumbled his way to a reputation that hovered somewhere between 'get out of my sight' and 'emotional liability.'
And because of that – because of him – she’d naturally leaned further into that pattern.
Treating him like a headcase when he’d experienced post-adrenal shock after his first experience with real, up-close battle.
Calling him an idiot when he’d absolutely, unequivocally probably deserved it.
Telling him he’d smelled like crap after Dr. Richards had vomited down the front of him. (Blunt, but also not necessarily incorrect.)
None of it was cruel. None of it malicious, per se. Simply… MacKenzie doing MacKenzie things. Unvarnished. Unapologetic. And uncompromising.
But now – now that one throwaway phrase, delivered in that unmistakable tone, struck him with the clarity of a transporter beam locking directly onto his cortex.
MacKenzie was Margot.
Not literally. God forbid.
But the pattern was there:
The icy stares.
The impossible standards.
The scalpel-sharp remarks delivered with surgical precision.
The uncanny ability to make you feel simultaneously disappointing and uninteresting.
He had spent months trying to decode her. Now, he realized, he needn’t have bothered.
He’d been trained to deal with Addison MacKenzie since birth.
He’d been forged in the Bancroft dining room trenches, where affection was a distant rumor and criticism was served with the dessert spoons.
The realization didn’t fill him with dread, but instead a warm, absurd little spark of triumph.
Munro: Let's just order something …
Roy relaxed by a millimeter – visible likely only to those who routinely performed autopsies – and observed his Captain and First Officer studying their menus. MacKenzie wore her usual expression; Munro wore an expression that suggested she’d already mentally begun writing her last will and testament.
MacKenzie: Anything catching your eye?
Munro: A salad, hopefully that doesn't scream. :: to Roy :: So you like your food to scream at you?
Bancroft: ::chuckling politely:: Only if it’s a very courteous scream, ma’am. Back home if there was screaming at supper, it was usually because someone had put their elbows on the table.
He gave a polite shrug, as if to say ‘I don’t choose the chaos, ma’am. It chooses me.’
Captain MacKenzie lifted a finger and barked at the proprietor, who brightened like someone about to make rent for the month in one transaction. Roy noted – not with fear, but with a certain academic curiosity – that they were the only customers in this establishment. It was unclear whether this meant they were early, or that everyone else on Ferenginar had received prior warning.
MacKenzie: We'll take an order of the gagh and tube grubs in a garlic and bloodwine reduction for the table, please!
Ah.
There it was.
Her opening salvo.
Not merely unappetizing – no, MacKenzie didn’t play in half-measures – but something deliberately engineered to test the structural integrity of one’s soul. She was waiting for the mustache to run screaming.
Well.
He’d survived Margot’s Easter Ambrosia Salad – a dish that defied the laws of both physics and theology – and Great Aunt Savannah’s pickled hen’s feet, and he'd survived them more times than he cared to count.
He’d survived things this table couldn’t even comprehend.
Something ancient and distinctly Southern flickered behind his eyes: the quiet, grim determination of a war veteran recognizing familiar ground.
Munro: :: quietly to the host :: I'll have a salad:: nervously :: as a side, of course. Bloodwine is :: looks at MacKenzie and smiles :: A choice, that you made … for us. I always enjoyed picking the grizzle from my teeth.
Roy took the napkin beneath his cutlery and smoothed it over his lap. It wasn’t linen. It wasn’t even a cheap imitation. It was a water-repellant polymer clearly engineered to withstand spills, stains, and potentially low-grade chemical assaults.
Bancroft: ::nodding politely:: Bloodwine and garlic – what a powerful pairing, Captain. Hopefully this… fine establishment… also offers Romulan breathsticks as a digestif.
MacKenzie: Response
The Host beamed as though someone had just upgraded to the Premium Suffering Package.
Munro: I might also try something Ferengi :: eyes up the menu :: these worms look interesting. They don't have a mouth, so that's a plus… at least then they can't scream.
Bancroft: I admire your adventurous spirit, ma’am. My Nanny always said the mark of a gracious dinner guest is making an effort with whatever the host puts before you… even if it’s looking back at you.
MacKenzie: Response
Munro: I just want to know what got you into Klingon cuisine?
Bancroft: Truly, I’d love to hear your story, Captain. Anyone who can order a bloodwine reduction without blinking is clearly operating at a higher culinary wavelength than the rest of us.
MacKenzie/Munro: Response
It was at that moment that a steaming, wriggling bowl Gagh and Tube Grubs was placed ceremonially down at the center of the table, followed by a slightly smaller plate of the Jellied Gree-Worms ordered by Commander Munro, who also received a small salad.
Roy wondered, albeit briefly, whether she wasn’t the braver one of the three for ordering greens in as questionable an establishment as this.
He looked at the two plates in the center of the table with polite, slightly detached interest.
You will eat it with a smile on your face, Roybertson, and you will say ‘thank you,’ because we do not insult peoples’ hospitality in this family.
Margot’s voice unfurled in his mind like an ancestral curse, although his expression remained a mask of polite, thoughtful appraisal.
He watched Captain MacKenzie – gleeful in that particular way only older, wiser tormentors could manage – dole out portions for all three of them. The plates were roughly the same size, although Roy was almost certain his was slightly… more generous. Generosity, in this case, being a very mixed blessing.
Bancroft: Thank you, Captain. ::spearing a forkful of gagh and swirling it in the bloodwine reduction:: To camaraderie through shared experience.
MacKenzie/Munro: Response
He waited politely for both MacKenzie and Munro to take a bite first. It wasn't to see whether or not either would gag – he very much believed that the Fleet Captain had stomached far worse, both proverbially and literally – but because one simply did not take a bite before one’s superiors. It wasn’t done.
Once the wriggling mixtures before them touched their lips, he slipped his own fork into his mouth.
The flavor profile blossomed across his tongue like an act of bio-warfare: earthy, slightly slimy Gagh, bitter bloodwine, a mineral backbone that hinted strongly at the soil composition of Qo’noS, and the unmistakable aftertaste of a difficult childhood.
It was, truly, astonishingly disgusting.
Far worse than the time Uncle Samuelson had served him jellied pig snouts, and that was saying something.
All the same, Roy’s upbringing – equal parts strict etiquette and Southern maternal psychological torture – served him beautifully in this case. His expression was one of mild curiosity, as though he were appraising the seasoning rather than desperately begging his soul not to abandon his body.
He swallowed, dabbed the corners of his mouth, and thoughtfully glanced at the menu again. After a beat, he dismissed it with a casual swipe and turned back to his dinner companions.
Bancroft: ::dabbing napkin at the corners of his mouth:: Pardon. I was tempted to order one of the, ah… ‘prestige dishes’ for us to sample next. But I’d hate to overstep what I’m certain is a carefully planned tasting menu on the part of the Captain.
You want to do this, Cap? Game on.
MacKenzie/Munro: Response
TAG/TBC!
===
Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft
Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205RB1