Flirting With Disaster
Posted on Tue Aug 8th, 2023 @ 7:06pm by Lieutenant Naota & Chief Petty Officer Jericho East
Edited on on Fri Aug 11th, 2023 @ 6:05pm
718 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
Pressure
Tags: naota
This runabout wasn’t big enough for the two of them.
More so, it wasn’t big enough for the one of them. And he was the smallest occupant.
Curled up in the seat, attention sucked into the GamePADD, the four hundred year old Only seemed completely indistinguishable from a grade schooler. Almost everyone, on meeting Naota for the first time, thought him to be just that; playing dress up with a Starfleet uniform. After awhile though, it became ordinary. Routine even. Jericho could cross paths with one of the Onlies in Starfleet without even thinking that a kid in a uniform was out of place. Remove the uniform, however, and it was suddenly striking to think at just how much responsibility they were all willing to heap on one boy's shoulders.
As though on cue, a tawny brown head of hair suddenly injected itself in Jericho's field of vision. And nearly head-butt him in the face.
"What'cha readin'?" the brat asked, rhetorically it seemed, as the small Maori's hands immediately claimed possession of the padd Jericho had been reviewing.
Large, faun brown eyes stared at the words on the screen for a moment. With a rather perplexed look, the boy rejected the padd back into Jericho's lap. "We’re on leave. Shoooooore leave. We can't work on shore leave. It won't be 'leave' then, it'll be work," Naota complained, collapsing back into his seat.
"I'm going to work. You’re going to play," Jericho remarked, picking his padd back up and thumbing back to the page he'd been on. "Remember, you're grounded. So we're going to the ground and you're going to... run around or something... exhaust yourself so that when we report in you're less likely to endanger us all."
The small boy seemed to take offense to that.
Popping up in his seat, the child-like alien managed to pivot a full ninety degrees in his seat, leaning over the armrest separating them as he declared, "Hey! I've saved the ship, like, a hundred times!”, in a decidedly outside voice that caused Jericho to wince as he was suddenly very conscious of everyone in the runabout now looking at the mismatched pair.
The transport shuttle they were on was a local craft, ferrying people to the colony for whatever reason they'd elected to head to this part of the frontier; duty, civil affairs work, shore leave, or just good will hunting.
They weren’t due to report for another week, but Jericho had arranged for an early arrival so that they could explore the colony and start to settle in before they’d each fall into the routines required by their jobs.
More so Naota.
For his part, the New Englander still wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea of the Only as a career officer in Starfleet. For himself, he wasn’t. He’d enlisted out of high school mostly because he hadn’t known what else to do, and figured that Starfleet might give him some ideas. Now he just went one tour at a time.
He’d thought about getting out of Starfleet when they’d decommissioned the Akira, but with Naota still in it he’d come to the conclusion that they’d be better able to manage staying together if they were both in uniform.
Returning his attention to the disheveled imp, the man answered, "We've saved the ship from you like a hundred times maybe," the engineer retorted dryly, before pointing to the discarded device by the boy’s leg. "I thought you were playing your GamePADD," Jericho stated, hoping to divert Naota's attention back to the device.
"GamePADD is soooooo five seconds ago," Naota whined, slumping over on his side as the planetfall began to come into view outside the small windows in the old transport.
“Well, at least it looks like we’ll be landing soon,” Jericho murmured. Though he imagined the passengers around him likely thought that couldn’t come soon enough.
The engineer wasn’t sure just what the colony was expecting, but hopefully they were prepared for all the devastation that a rampaging 400 year old could wreck.
Particularly one with a pilot’s license and an utter lack of common sense.
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