Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft - Teeth in the Dark
Carter Schimpff
(( Holodeck 1 - Deck 2 - USS Artemis-A ))
Imril: I didn’t completely re-aim for every shot, no. I made adjustments based on where the last shot hit. Too high, angle lower. Too far right, go a teeny bit left. Accuracy versus speed of fire is always a trade-off, I know.
Bancroft: From what I remember, that mostly comes down to field application, right? ::beat:: Higher volume at the expense of accuracy is good for suppressing or covering fire… slower, more deliberate shots make more sense when you’ve got time and fewer targets. Did I get that right?
Storm pointed at him with what Roy chose to interpret as excitement, as though he’d just correctly recited the entire Security/Tactical Operations Manual backward while juggling photon grenades.
Storm: ::points at Roy:: Give that doctor a lollipop. He earned it.
Roy straightened a little at that – reflexively pleased and immediately suspicious of the compliment.
Stop it, he chided himself. It’s okay to feel good about praise.
Imril: Response
Bancroft: …So just to clarify, the appropriate time to throw one’s phaser at a target is… never?
Storm: Can I couch my answer with an ‘almost never’? In tactical, ‘never’ is a four-letter word. But definitely don’t throw it at a dancing spider. Trust me—it escalates quickly.
Imril: Response
Alex clapped three times – rather theatrically, Roy thought – and his body tensed automatically. It was an instinct born of every awards ceremony, disciplinary hearing, and surprise pop quiz in his life that had begun in much the same way.
Then, the world around him changed.
The tidy grid and training targets melted away like stage curtains dropping, replaced with a cathedral of stone and fog. The walls stretched up and out, rough and asymmetrical, and the air was wet in a way that clung to the bone.
The central chamber had… well, there was no other way of saying it – teeth. Stone spikes jutted from the ceiling and floor like stalactites and stalagmites locked in a granite jaw. Three tunnels yawned open around them, each curved and uneven, like the gnarled fingers of some subterranean god reaching outward.
In the middle of it all stood Alex, one hand raised with the pose of a game-show hostess who sometimes moonlighted in psychological warfare.
Storm: Welcome to the actual drill … drill … drill …
Her words reverberated through the cave system.
Storm: Echoes. Because why not add ominous acoustics to phaser practice?
Bancroft: ::dryly:: Ah. So this is where they’ve been hiding the spooky murder cave from every horror holofilm. Good to know. (Know… know… know…)
Imril: Response
Wind howled through the stone mouths of the tunnels, pulling at Storm’s hair like invisible fingers. She barely flinched. Of course she didn’t. She looked like she belonged there, like a haunted queen of the stalactite court, issuing declarations between lightning flashes.
It was vaguely unsettling, really – how someone could make a tactical simulation feel like a dare and a daydream all at once.
Storm: Sounds will play tricks on you in here. Don’t trust them. Your phaser has been set to cause a sharp sting if you’re hit. It won’t harm you, and it won’t stun you, but you’ll definitely feel it if you’re hit. The simulation will end if I hit both of you or if either of you hits me. Any questions?
Bancroft: Yes, I have a question. What happens if I shoot myself? Entirely accidentally, of course. Do I get to leave ‘Lieutenant Storm’s Spooky Cave of Horrors’ early?
Imril: Response
Storm: Catch as catch can.
Then she lifted her phaser and shot an outcropping above their heads.
It was less an attack and more a magician’s exit – the phaser blast shattered the rock, raining stinging chips and choking dust down upon them, while she vanished into one of the tunnels like a shadow slipping between cracks.
(OOC: Now that we’re moving into the cat-and-mouse portion of the program, I’m going to split tags for Imril and Storm)
Roy coughed, squinting through the particulate chaos, then swiped dust from his tunic. He looked to make sure Imril was alright before succumbing to the dust once again.
Bancroft: ::sneezing:: Can’t decide which stings worse – the shrapnel, or the abandonment. ::sighing:: Alright partner, buddy system or divide and conquer?
Imril: Response
Storm: Response
Bancroft: Right, strength in numbers. Plus, I want a witness when Storm inevitably ices me and claims it wasn’t personal.
Imril: Response
Storm: Response
He cast a crooked grin Imril’s way – part solidarity, part gallows humor – and stepped forward, selecting the center tunnel. The one with the least light and, by his reckoning, the most regret per square meter.
The temperature dropped as they entered, like the cavern was exhaling through clenched teeth. The air thickened, damp and strangely intimate. Their footsteps no longer echoed – they were muffled now, swallowed up by stone and silence.
It felt, unsettlingly, like the cave was listening.
Roy tried hard not to think about that.
They walked in wordless tandem for a little too long. Long enough for Roy’s imagination to start free-associating possible use-cases for this particular flavor of training: combat search-and-rescue, reconnaissance, extreme team-building retreated for emotionally unavailable senior officers.
Then – rustling.
A dry flutter against rock. Off to the left.
Roy’s body moved faster than his brain, pivoting, firing–
The phaser blast hit dead center on a bulbous, moss-glazed stalagmite. A puff of vapor burst upward, harmless and theatrical.
Nothing else.
No intruder. No movement. No Storm.
Just a damp, vaguely offended column of rock – and Roy’s pride, quietly requesting a transfer to another officer.
He turned back toward Imril.
Bancroft: ::quietly:: Okay, new rule. If I shoot anything else inanimate, you’re allowed to stun me and carry on with a more competent partner.
Imril: Response
Storm: Response
TAG/TBC!
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Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft
Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205RB1