Crocodile Dundee

Posted on Thu Mar 23rd, 2023 @ 12:03am by Lieutenant Michael Amato & Ensign Tobias "Toby" Dienstag & Lieutenant Thraxina & Petty Officer, 2nd Class Harmony Stardancer & Ensign Avis Larant & Ensign Dora
Edited on on Fri Mar 24th, 2023 @ 8:51pm

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Mission 3: The Peace Ship
Location: Deck 5: Mess Hall 1
Timeline: M3 MD02 - 0630

With the ship underway things were beginning to return to normal for the crew of the Midway. Toby and Mike sat at their usual table in Mess Hall #1 eating breakfast. Once switch was Mike was now the first shift doctor rather than the third shift. He was still getting used it it but he felt less like a zombie. The two of them figured Thraxina or Avis would show up at some point so they kept some open chairs. There was some awkward tension from their ill-fated triple date, maybe next time they would arrange things better beforehand...

You could set your ship's chronometer by Thraxina's breakfast habits: and here she came now, right on time, and with her usual plateful. How she stayed so slim with the amount she ate was a mystery.

She plonked down.

"Gods I'm starving." she said, shoving a sausage into her maw. For someone from a planet of sophisticated artistry, she had a bad habit of eating with her mouth full.

"Nom. Nom. Pity you two weren't invited last night, it was hilarious. That Talbot fellow is a hoot. Larant was outside I think, I wonder if she saw what happened when Pimple-popper got dragged out by Heartfailure"

She pointed a piece of black pudding on the end of a fork at both of them. "Oh, and I talked to that old geezer with the ridiculous moustache. It turns out he's your boss, Mike. I thought he was the ship's janitor."

Mike just sighed.

She sliced a fired egg in two and opened her mouth wide to fit one of the halves in.

"Nom. Nom. Mmmm. Talking of bosses, how's Car Crash treating you Tobes? I've been avoiding her since SB10." Sigh. So much gossip to catch up on, so much fried food to eat, so little time!

"She's been acting... Nice... Which is odd for her," Toby responded, "I don't know what happened but... Anyway, sorry about that situation, she kinda strong armed me." He set down his cup of coffee. With the amounts of coffee he seemed to drink during the day he wondered how he avoided heart attacks. Seemed to drink more coffee than eat.

Thraxxy shrugged "Oh well, at least I know for sure I'm not a lesbian now" she said with her usual candour "You don't know until you try it, I suppose. Have either of you two ever tried it with woman?" she asked with mild curiosity before shoving the other half of the egg in.

Toby almost choked on his coffee.

"Nom. Nom. She's one horny women, though, Mariya. I reckon if you don't get that particular boil lanced... well, the more frustrated she gets, the more of a bitch she'll get with you and Twiggy." This, apparently, was her nickname for Ensign Dora.

"You need to find her a girlfriend, and fast. But one that isn't straight, next time." she smiled an looked at Toby's plate. "Do you not want that bread?" she asked. "How about that little Japanese woman in security? She doesn't have much to do with men. Where's Larant, we could ask her."

Speak of the devil, well the devil plus her roomie, Avis now approached the table with her breakfast tray and next to her was Harmony. Avis noted Thraxina was both talking and eating and the other two men had that glazed look of boredom on their faces so Thraxie must be holding court over the conversation. What a surprise.

"Hey, morning! Oh and this here is my roommate Harmony Stardancer," Avis sat down placing her tray in front of her. Her plate had an assortment of food items on it but would hardly be called heaped. Oh and an iced coffee, large.

"Morning!" Harmony wasn't a 'morning person', but crab cake Benedict and a caramel latte helped ease the pain! Slipping into a seat by Avis, she nodded to the others. "Doctor, Toby...Thrax." She added a very subtle snort-laugh that she covered with a sip of her latte.

She was familiar with all the company -- Toby had been a patient, Amato was one of the doctors, and then there was Thraxina, her Yenta!

"Hullo Stardancer, I suppose you must be twiddling your thumbs since we left SB10" observed Thraxina, the Helmswoman had kept the combat medic pretty busy while they had been there.

"Ooh, Avis, your C.O., Teriyaki or whatever she's called. Which side does she bat for?" she asked in her usual carefree way when she wasn't on duty.

Avis gave a look like 'are you serious?' then slowly answered between chewing her bacon slice.

"Such a topic never comes up in the line of duty and that's the only time I've communicated with my department superior. Guess you'll have to ask her yourself sometime? Off duty time."

"Well, doesn't see have a boyfriend or anything? Or try to hit on any of the men in her Department? They should give people badges really, so you can tell." Thraxina sighed.

"OR.......how bout this? We could all mind our own business?" Avis posed another option.

"Oh dear, somebody's got out of the wrong side of her boyfriend's bed this morning. It's all right for you, others are in need."

Avis glared at Thraxina but she held her retort. It would have been a stinging one though!

She decided to explain the problem to the new arrivals "We're trying to find a girlfriend for Toby's boss so she mellows out a bit and stops taking out her frustration on him and his little woody friend." She thought about what she'd just said "I mean Ensign Dora."

"Oh...her," at least Avis hoped that was a her, just looking from a distance it was hard to tell.

"We need to find someone with both a strong stomach and someone who enjoys taking abuse," Toby responded.

"And from the planet Lesbos..." Mike teased Thraxina due to her comment during the ill fated dinner.

Suddenly, the Edosian, who had been snoozing gently in the corner, opened one of his huge saucer eyes, then the other. He blinked them and it was quite disconcerting how they blinked quite independently and out of kilter with each other when he first woke up.

"I have beeeeen to the planet Llezbozz..." he declared in his sleepy voice. "there is no life there... just a strange sort of wooool, made from rock."

"Oh great, thanks for your useful contribution, Tree Beard!" said Thraxina, tucking into her bacon, which she always saved 'til last.

"Hey, is it just me or is all this talk about finding a romantic partner for Lt. Miyake or Toby's boss more than a little wrong, as in none of our business?
What do you think, Harmony?" Avis now glanced at her roomie, hopeful of a little backup here.

"I think," Harmony mused, "that love is not something you go out looking for, it finds you, and most of the time it's a slow process, discovering that you have things in common, that you like each other's company, until you have the realization that there's more there!"

The weird nutty head of the Edosian nodded slowly as he listened to Harmony's wise words with ears that were little more than holes in each side of his bulbous brown bonce.

"Deeeeeep." he intoned, approvingly.

She knew she was rambling, but she was enjoying herself! "Trying to force love is toying with forces as ancient at time, and tempting disaster!" She waved her hand around her head, a useless gesture, but in keeping with her 'holistic' front.

Avis nodded, "Exactly!"

Dora raised two of his hands in front of himself in the Edenite triangle symbol and said "I reeeach!" in approval of her mystic murmuring.

"Spoken like a true person who can't get a boyfriend!" was more Thraxina's take on it.

"That said," she added with a grin, "it never hurts for your Yenta to assure that your paths cross!"

Thraxina glanced up at Toby and Mike "She keeps calling me a yenta and I don't know what it means. Sounds disgusting, like some kind of pulse vegetable." She was probably thinking of a lentil.

"Sorry, I don't know that word either," shrugged Avis.

"All right then, Miss Goody two shoes, you suggest a scintillating topic of conversation - as long as it doesn't begin with 'P'" Thraxina challenged Avis, archly.

"I don't know. I hadn't given it any thought. I'm just eating breakfast," Avis then took a long gulp of her iced coffee.

"What about the holodeck? So who's tried it and did you have fun?" she had to toss something out.

Of course, big mouth Thraxina was the first to answer. "Oh yes, Dora and I had heaps of fun in there, our racy Venetian Masked Ball program got all mixed up with Yeoman Corden's lame Scottish Highlands romance and we all ended up being chased around the heather by a regiment of randy Casanovas, and Corden almost got eaten by giant scotsman in a kilt." she retold excitedly.

"Nobody chased meeeee" groaned Dora, perhaps a little sadly.

"Maybe had there been someone from your own race?" Avis suggested.

"It was a great lark. Funny thing was, I lost a shoe, and Corden came out of it all covered in giant-drool. That shouldn't happen should it?" she asked the serious scientific question to Deinstag "I wanted to scrape some of it off her for analysis, but I think she got the wrong idea and went and showered it all off." Thraxina went on.

"I'll tell you who WON'T be allowed to use it again... Koppelman..." Lord, the bossy Ardanan seemed to have an idée fixe about the somewhat pathetic and unremarkable freshman cadet "... she got caught making her own 'special' module using the Captain's image. Das ist sehr verboten! For a minute I thought the girl maybe had something to her, but John took part in her Wild West mini drama, and it sounds like it was as dull as she is! 'Fade to black' indeed."

John, not Lieutenant Commander Stryker. Thraxina looked thoughtfully at her last piece of bacon before snaffling it: she had just had an idea that might solve Toby and Dora's Kar Krash problem, but she'd tell it to them when they weren't with goody-goodies like Mike, Avis and Harmony.

"Nom. What would you like to do in the holodeck, Harmz?" she asked the combat medic "Anything to do with being stranded in a pigfarm?"

"Ew, no!" Harmony shook her head, then shrugged. "I guess, if I could do any sort of story, it would be medieval...you know, knights in shining armor, jousting, castles...I wonder if there is a way you could actually, like, ride a horse in there?" Images was one thing, but substance quite another.

“Oh, of course you can silly! It’s not like a vidshow you go and look at and rely on your imagination to do the rest or, say, a robot horse you go and sit on and gallop about in a tiny little room though: think of it more as a hyper-realistic shared lucid dream.”

She didn’t bother to explain the scientific principles behind the room, more the effects.

“There is medieval scenario in there, but it’s a bit dull: maybe the boys and I could tweak it for you...” she looked at a possibly worried Toby... “Within official safety parameters, of course. So, what sort of thing would you like to happen in it?” Thraxina asked the somewhat mystical minded Stardancer. She picked a vaguely Arthurian example.

“I mean, would you want to be Sir Lancelot or Queen Guinevere... or a dragon? And can the rest of us join in? I mean, I wouldn’t mind having a go at being Morgan LaFaye”.

"Or maybe walking down a street covered in filth and yelling bring out your dead!" Toby commented with a chuckle.

"I can see you doing that, yeah that's you alright," smiled Avis.

Thraxina frowned at the pint sized science Ensign. "We're not doing realism, we're doing the romantic 20th Century Hollywood version..." she looked at Harmony "... aren't we?" she asked.

"Well, I guess dragons and unicorns make it fantasy." Harmony shrugged, "But, if it's fantasy, then no filth, but maybe killer bunnies?"

"Killer bunnies? Ummm, sure ...sounds real exciting, that," Avis remarked.

"... And we all get arrested by the police at the end?" asked Thraxina. Toby had introduced her to number of 20th Century classic films.

"That's out of the blue," it was clear Avis had not seen this ancient classic flick.

"I don't think they had police that far back." Harmony shrugged. "Kings and knights and sheriffs..." She laughed. "And no cars with sirens, just horses. Besides, we'd get away to plunder another day, you know, like Robin Hood!"

"I've heard of him. The sidekick character of some comic book hero...Batman I think," now Avis felt more confident.

"Well they have them in the moving picture film I saw." Thraxina shrugged.

"You realize you should never try and learn history by watching films?" Avis pointed out.

“Oh!” Frowned Thraxina “Are they not all strictly accurate, then?” she asked, thinking back over the movies that Toby and other Earth humans had insisted ‘you’ve just got to watch’ and upon which much of her knowledge of earth history was based.

“Are you telling me, in fact, that General Custard might not have died with his boots on?!” she asked in dismay, imagining the gallant Errol Flynn meeting his end in a pair of tatty old bed socks.

"Certainly don't want to treat movies as historical documents..." Mike added with a chuckle, "Most of the time the history is warped to tell a better or at least someone thinks better story."

"Trust movies only if you think that elephants can fly using a magic feather plucked from the tail of a crow by a talking mouse dressed as a ringleader," Harmony pointed out. "Or that you really can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs!"

"Like that could happen," Avis smirked.

She laughed. "No, movies are stories, just like books, only you don't have to read them." Harmony shrugged. "Some are close to reality and some are pure fantasy."

"I agree. And I think I prefer the pure fantasy. Nothing's worse than when they declare 'Based on a true story' and then the whole thing bears no resemblance to what actually happened," Avis declared then finished the last dregs of her iced coffee.

Toby set down his coffee and said, "A parsec is a measure of distance not time..."

"Case and point," Mike responded with a smirk.

"It's case in point, actually." Thraxina corrected, with an even smirkier smirk.

"Yeah, alright," Mike responded before taking another sip, "Well, I better get going." He said before standing up, "I'll see everyone around," he added.

"Have a good shift," Avis wished them.

"So, Thraxina are you going up for plate number two or are you cutting back?" Toby asked, changing the subject.

“Toby Dienstag, are you calling me greedy?!” Thraxina asked with playful mock ire. “Harmony, you don’t think I’m a little piggy, do you?”

"No way are you overweight," Avis defended Thraxina on that point at least.

"I would be on Stratos" revealed the healthy sized woman "You have to be skeletal there to be considered 'a work of art'. That's why I like it here." She had finished her breakfast and was looking around to see if anyone had any tasty looking leftovers.

"I'll be in Sickbay in a bit," Harmony called to the doctor, then she looked at Thraxina with a grin. "I've seen life-sized piggies, and Thrax isn't it! Besides, having a good appetite doesn't make you a pig...I've never seen her eating bones...or trash...right, Thrax?"

"Ah..." she pulled a pained expression "... well, I was visiting Lieutenant Vox yesterday and she'd thrown a whole donut in the bin, just a couple of little bites out of it! Can you imagine? What a waste. Anyway, when she wasn't looking I fished it out and ate it."

She idly snaffled a sausage from Dora's plate and started to munch on it. "I don't know why I'm so hungry all the time. Oh Harmony. I never got checked out after the second time with... maybe I'm 'eating for seven instead of one'" she wondered, rubbing her tummy. She looked round at all of them. "I think I might be having piglets!"

"Well.........on that high note, I'm going to head on out too. I got a long shift today," Avis now stood up to take her leave also.

"Oh, um...will that make me an auntie?" Harmony chuckled. "Why don't you come with me to Sickbay and we can run a test?" Best to know sooner than later!

“Uh uh, can’t now, I’m due on the bridge...” the command gold-clad Lieutenant said, getting to her feet “.... I’ll pop round later. Oh Auntie Harmony, just think, I might be about to boldly go where no Ardanan has gone before!”

"Oh I hope you aren't pregnant," Toby responded, "That won't go over well with command..."

"Maybe not..." Thraxina smiled primly to herself "... but pregnant woman have had protected rights in Star Fleet since 2263, especially mixed species pregnancies: they wouldn't dare do anything that might look like discrimination. I could probably do a whoopsie on the Captain's chair and he'd have to thank me for it" she laughed.

"Plus, well I imagine you'd be more... Ornery... Than usual anyway."

"I'm not ornery... 'ornery'? Have you been playing through Poppleman's Wild West scenario on the holodeck?!" she asked, amused. Actually, she seemed a little brighter than normal already.

"Mama says alligators are ornery because they have all them teeth and no toothbrush," Toby responded with a chuckle.

“Oh Gods” sighed Thraxina, rolling her eyes “Come on Crocodile Dundee, we’re due on bridge.” and the two walked out together chatting about anything and nothing.

 

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