Getting the Bird Out of Her Head

Posted on Wed Sep 18th, 2019 @ 1:33pm by Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Ensign Fiona O'Dell & Ensign Briaar Gavarus
Edited on on Sun Sep 22nd, 2019 @ 6:27pm

Mission: Family Detention
Location: R&D Department
Timeline: 2396

It had been an extremely long and busy day for Ensign Briaar Gavarus and it was, somehow, only oh eleven-thirty hours. For the last week, the Hera had been warping at maximum speed to a destination that she didn't know, but it meant she was doing double duty between her responsibilities as an assistant in Engineering... trying to keep the engine from exploding and killing them all... and her responsibilities as the Assistant Chief of the R&D Department, where she was at the moment.

And at the moment, the flustered Tellarite wanted to pull her kinky, platinum blonde hair out by the roots. She was sitting at the regular Chief's desk. Ensign Mona Gonadie had taken an extended leave of absence leaving Gavarus in charge of the frantic department for some unknown reason. All she knew was that Gonadie had also left the Flight Control Department in someone else's control for a while as well because, apparently, her wife Lieutenant Dox was gone. And NOBODY was saying where Dox was or why she was gone as if it were the galaxies biggest secret. But it left things a bit chaotic as Gavarus rifled through the stack of PaDD's on the Chief's desk trying to make heads or tails of the Miradonian's organization system. 

Then, from the small couch in front of the desk, she heard a cooing giggle and she remembered the extra detail that she had momentarily allowed herself to forget about. Looking over, she cracked the slightest of smiles at the sight of her partner in life and crime, Ensign Fiona O'Dell laying on her belly, feet in the air, playing footsie with the hooves of the newborn baby Minotaur on the couch with her. While it had been a few days since they had first babysat for Nurse Carrott and his wife's adopted baby, Mrs. Carrott had since gone into a very extended labor and successfully delivered her own natural-born baby. But it had apparently been a stressful delivery and so the unlikely duo happily volunteered to pitch in and watch baby Minnie for a while so the Carrott's could recover and adjust. 

And truth be told, they were excited to volunteer. Since that first unexpected babysitting gig, the two regularly joked about just straight-up stealing the baby, and in truth, they were only kind of joking. In a remarkably short time, they had both completely fallen in love with the fuzzy bundle of adorableness. Her real mother had died in childbirth a couple of weeks earlier due to the magical and unusual nature of birthing a MINOTAUR. But in spite of her unusual origins, little Minnie was a perfectly normal, healthy bundle of hooves, fur, a tail, and tiny little horns. And she had O'Dell and Gavarus wrapped around her little finger. 

But today, watching the baby while figuring out how to do Ensign Gonadie's job while running back and forth to Engineering to put out the occasional literal fire... was way more than the notorious slacker was prepared for. "I... I have no idea how Gonadie keeps track of anything. This desk looks like my closet, Fee. Seriously. I think I have a handle on... maybe... the testing schedule for the next two days and that's it. But there are parts requisitions, crew rotations, flight test schedules, power allotment requests, MATTER allotment requests FOR parts requisitions and... It's NUTS. We don't DO that much shit here, how is there this much paperwork?"

"Ideally tis joost a bit'a organization Gavarus," O'Dell responded distractedly, most of her attention on the gurgling bundle of joy that seemed to be occupying the lion's share of her attention of late. Scooping up the toddler with a grunt and a heave, she got up off the couch, parking Minnie on her hip while expertly parking a pacifier between her lips and jostling her as she walked, making her way to the desk. Looking it over with a critical eye, the linear-thinking Mariposian nodded firmly.

"We need the Chief," she stated matter-of-factly, turning to Minerva to nod firmly, who promptly nodded back, much to Fiona's delight.

Snorting out a barely contained laugh at the adorable display of mimicry, Gavarus put a hand up to her mouth as she smiled. "Oh, frickin' c'mon! That was just... Yeah, we're stealing her. We'll tell Carrott she hitched a ride on a passing freighter and ran away and we'll hide her in my quarters."

"Yes we will, and we will call you 'Winnie' and it will just be a coincidence that we happen to have a Minotaur baby. Nobody will suspect a thing. Bwaa haaa haaa." Gavarus joked as she reached across the desk with her thick, three-fingered hands to tickle baby Minnie who giggled maniacally.

But in doing so, accidentally knocked over a stack of PaDD's illustrating O'Dell's point. "Shit... Yeah, you might be right, Fee."

"Look, tis simple. Whativvir's goin on wi' the Lieutenant, the Chief is all atwist aboot it. So while we probably dinna want ta know, what we do know is that we dinna know how to run the department withoot her. And maybe tis joost me," Fiona came over to help pick up the PaDDs, was not quite strong enough to manage the surprisingly heavy baby and bending down and grabbing, so she just handed her off to Briaar, then started collecting the scattered PaDDs. "But she seems... withdrawn. So she needs to get her mind off things innyhow. Soo, we joost find a reason why she HAS to come down and save the department from the two morons she left in charge, and it'll give her a reason to come oot of her nest, aye?"

Standing, Fiona stacked the PaDDs neatly on the corner of the desk and held out her hands for the hand-off again, a maneuver with which she and her porcine partner had gotten considerable practice in the past few days.

Making the handoff like a seasoned pro, Gavarus handed Minnie back while she pondered their predicament. "Yeah. We need to come up with something that absolutely needs her supervision but doesn't need security called. Or something that gets us busted off the ship."

The two-meter tall Tellarite got up and started walking around the room to think. As she did, she started muttering her thoughts under her breath in a random and incomprehensible stream of consciousness. "Don't want to wreck the banshee, that would... Can't just take her out and... No, THAT would get us thrown in the brig...

As the Porcine engineer pouted while pacing, the tiny Minotaur baby began pouting as well and mumbling incoherently, mimicking Gavarus's ramblings, which elicited a chuckle out of O'Dell.

"Hey, the cloak!" Gavarus said with a start as she clicked her fingers. "She's got a modified module in the Banshee that she was working on with ol' lady Dox that I had to remove to put in storage. But that's half Romulan/half Miradonian tech and WAY ABOVE my pay grade to know shit about. If I went and did a full system reboot on the Banshee, and made sure to keep the reinstall of the cloak's OS in the reboot, it could cause a system crash when it doesn't find the hardware. We'd need the Chief to get that running again, right?"

"See? Yuiur bloody brilliant. A criminal mind of ever there was one, aye?" Peering at Minerva, O'Dell bounced the tyke on her hip a bit as she repeated herself. "Aye? Aye? Aye?"

In response, Minnie gurgled and laughed, as O'Dell turned back to the plan at hand. 'That's what we'll do then, and we can come all hat in hand to the great and wise Chief to save us from our silly folly, and in the process, we'll see if we can't warm the bird up a bit and maybe soothe her feathers. How long will it take fuir ye to give 'er the wrong reboot, or have ye been doin' it while I been yammerin?" Fiona asked good-naturedly, knowing that her partner wasn't one to waste time nor words.

Chuckling slightly, Gavarus slid back over to the desk and began typing away on the chief's computer. "Gimmie about twenty minutes and I'll have this shit well and truly hosed."

---------------

The Miradonian in question was at her workbench in her quarters trying to keep her mind distracted, working on yet another of her inventions. This time, an upgrade to the flight suit. For some reason, she was adding things to it like cookie replicators and holographic jukebox controls and just crazy things like that. A couple of the ideas seemed useful like extendable wings that could be used as flight stabilizers, though why anyone would ever want to jump with a twenty-meter wingspan, she wasn't sure. It could easily forego the parachute, at the very least.

But none of these would be useful if she couldn't get her head in the game. Tossing her stylus on the bench, she shut it down and headed out the door for a walk to try and clear her head. Maybe seeing the flight deck would help. Being relieved of duty meant she had all the time in the world to do... well... anything. But she had nothing she wanted to do. She was supposed to be recovering from the PTSD, but she went through the mandatory program and the next session wasn't for another three days. What was she going to do for three more days? Make another variable mode fighter craft?

Which is precisely when her commbadge chirped with a familiar voice that sounded more than a little forced. "Hey, uh. Ensign Gavarus to Ensign Gonadie. Sorry to bother you chief, but... uh... I kinda... I kinda messed something up down here with the Banshee. And, I don't know if you're available, but I could sure use some help."

"I'll be there in a minute," As she was already on her way to the general area, it only took her a minute to make her way to the R&D lab on the flight deck and convince the door controls she was just there for a visit rather than for work.

"Please tell me you have something to distract me for at least a little while," Mona said as she entered the R&D offices, one hand rubbing her belly.

In the center of the deck, sat the Silver Banshee in its vehicle mode, cockpit open and Gavarus leaning half in with her extremely ample lower half dangling out the side. To her side, standing with a smile was Ensign Fiona O'Dell who was bouncing little Minerva Carrott on her hip to a chorus of giggles and gurgles. 

Almost hitting her head on the canopy as she pulled herself out with a grunt, the tall Tellarite engineer had an extremely awkward grin on her face, looking very much like a pet that knows it made a mess in the kitchen. "Hey, chief! Awesome! Yeah! Uh... um... w... w... we... Well, I m... m... mean I was running a diagnostic check on the Banshee's systems and had to do a full system reboot to install new... uh... software patches. But... uh... um... well, when the reboot got to the cloak's OS, it went tits up and the whole thing crashed when it didn't find the hardware. And now I can't get around the security protocols for the cloaking module to reboot the thing. Yeah."

"I was distractin her wi' Minnie doin' somethin cute, so tis me fault Chief. Ye know how 'tis," O'Dell lied fluidly. "But Mrs. Carrott's still in recovery and so we're still babysittin. It dinna seem right somehow to leave poor wee Minerva wi' the daycare folks who frankly are nae prepared for this wee tyke o' terrible trouble. So, ah, that's why it's 'bring the kid that's not yours to work day' too," the mop-topped pixie pilot explained, even as Minnie watched the plumed Miradonian's brightly colored plumage with fascinated eyes as she worked on eating her own fist.

Mona knew Gavarus well enough to know when she was making things up and when she was nervous. This was both of those times. She just pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes and glared. "I don't need my racial ability to know that's not true. You're trying to distract me, aren't you?"

The brightly plumed Miradonian didn't wait for a reply and instead just shook her head and grabbed one of the secure PaDDs on her desk and punched in her access code to bring up the system controls for the Banshee. "Computer, download software package Alpha one one three into Banshee Alpha and reboot the virtual intelligence." With a chirrup from the computer and a bit of a pause, the running lights on the Banshee flashed to confirm that it was complete and the computer chirruped again.

With a nervous, snorting chuckle, Gavarus smiled broadly. "Uh... Fee... help."

"Alreet, foine! We're worried aboot ye, Chief!" O'Dell, brows knitted, admitted as she launched into a brief tirade that was not harsh, but certainly a bit more direct than she tended to be with her supervisor under ordinary circumstances. "We dinna know what's going on- and we're nae askin' neither because sure'n we know we're nae cleared for alla the high muckity muck and that's okay, we dinna need to know. What we do know is yuir our Chief. You lead our merry band down here in R&D, and whativvir's wrong, yuir, well, not yourself. So we needed you ta come down and, well, be needed."

"So, we need ye. We think ye might need us ta need ye right now. So we found a way to need to call ye so ye could come help us dunderheads oot of a jam like ye allays do, so ye could keep yuir mind offa whaivver's the matter. Which I guess we screwed up that too, so on to plan B. Here, hold the baby!" With that, O'Dell thrust the wide-eyed and surprisingly adorable Minotaur infant out to the brightly plumed aviatrix inventor, forcing her to take the infant.

Cow, meet chicken.

For a moment Mona just stared at the strange-looking baby in her arms before just bursting out in tears and slumping to her knees crying and holding Minnie to her tenderly.

Watching, Gavarus's eyes went wide for a second as she looked down at O'Dell with a freaked out but concerned expression and very quietly whispered, "Uh... Shit. We broke her."

Bending over, as she did not need to kneel, O'Dell gently stroked the woman's back, an arm about her shoulders, and spoke in soothing tones. "That's it, s'alright Chief. S'joost us here, and nobody believes a pair'a drunks innyways. Briaar, get her a nice cold washcloth, aye? There ye go, shhhhh, s'alreet, let it oot... yuir safe, s'alreet, we've got ye. You joost let it alloot, alreet. There, there..."

While this went on, Gavarus returned with the washcloth, and O'Dell signaled to her to take a squat on the floor in silent 'bar' language, a visual shorthand both were accustomed to communicating in across a loud bar which enabled them to be understood to one another without words, which came in handy in moments like this. O'Dell herself sat down at the distressed Miradonian's other knee, and she patted her hand gently.

On the other side, Gavarus slowly lowered herself to the deck with a grunt and leaned in to hand the washcloth to Mona, somewhat unsure of how to react in the moment, "Here you go, chief."

Once she took the washcloth and cried into it, it took Mona a few minutes to settle down enough to not break into tears again immediately when she looked into Minnies cute little face. "Sorry... I just... With my Minay and Jaeih's kidnapping... And the kids on the way... I guess I've been bottling it up..."

Sitting up ramrod straight for a moment, Gavarus turned to O'Dell as her mouth hung open before turning back in surprise. "Wait, what? The Lou and Jae are what, now? Kidnapped? What the @#$% happened? Holy shit!"

Rather than let loose the string of obscenities that came to the surface, O'Dell locked her teeth together and listened intently, blinking a bit too quickly for sanity.

Mona nodded to Minnie, who nodded back cutely. "We were at a family restaurant and the Tal'Shiar attacked us. There was nothing I could do. My Minay fought them, but they eventually knocked her out. I think Jaeih flat-out killed quite a few of them by that point. She realized it was a losing battle and negotiated for them to let me go."

Still shocked by the revelation, Gavarus scratched her head as she worked through what Mona was saying, "So, the Tal-whatsit? That's like, what, the Romulan evil police, right? What the hell... why? I... I guess that's why we're going at warp 40 but... shit." She was rambling as she looked at her red-headed partner-in-crime hoping that she had something better to say in the tense moment.

"Sooo if the Lieutenant and her mum are kidnapped," O'Dell offered in a prowling and quiet tone, "that means that afore long we're g'win ta get where they are. And that means we're g'win ta need ta be ready. Because if they're in some brig or prison somewhere, ye know what they're gonna send in after her, aye?" O'Dell looked out the window to the Silver Banshee, parked on the pad.

"I know ye been thinkin' smaller, more economical, more sleek and closer to armor, Chief. And that's good, she's a beautiful design. but if we're g'win ta rescue the Lieutenant and me favorite crabby old lady, then we're g'win to need somethin' a wee bit less 'sleek fighter' and a tad more 'bunker buster'. Aye!" Leaping to her feet, O'Dell parked her hands on her hips like a superhero. "That's what we kin do to help! We'll by god build the L-T a war chicken!"

"So build a bigger version of the banshee?" Mona thought it over as she tickled Minnie's belly. "I could scale it up to about twelve meters... Any bigger and it won't fit on the ship."

Looking over at O'Dell, Gavarus smiled. The idea might be crazy and impractical and might never work... but their chief wasn't crying and she was thinking. Thinking of something to do. Some way to help and not feel useless.

Then the porcine engineer turned back to Mona, who was playing with the baby and started pitching in ideas to keep her head on the prize. "Yeah, we would have to probably triple the power output to compensate for the size and probably sacrifice some of the transformability in favor of stronger armor. I mean, we almost never use her in just flight mode anyway. The Walker mode is clearly the most useful one. That will make it easier to maximize it's functioning strength if we're not spending a third of the interior space for mode conversion tech and shit, right?"

"Aye! And she dinna need ta be big as houses, Chief, but definitely bigger," O'Dell pitched in, hoping the idea was gaining some ground as she saw the look in Briaar's eye that meant she understood what was happening, and was doing her part. "And Gavarus is right, with the smaller fighters, tis a surprise that they transform. The War Chicken need nae sooch subtleties- we kin joost build her as a mecha and she kin stay that way. Get some movable shielding on, her maybe even a tractor and a forcefield along wi' some big guns?"

"I've had the plans for a grav-cannon rattling around in my head for a while..." Mona mused. "In theory, it should be able to disable a ship and crew without too much damage. A larger mecha would be a good platform for it. And multi-targeting phaser defense systems."

Smirking slightly, Gavarus let out a bit of internal stress. O'Dell's plan was working like a charm and she knew how to keep it going and keep helping their Chief. "Shit yeah, that sounds awesome. And I have some notes I've drawn up to improve the servo speed that will be way easier to implement without all the conversion hardware in there. Let's get this shit done, Chief!"

Pulling her PaDD out of her back pocket, Gavarus called her notes up and handed them to Mona all while stealthily transferring baby Minnie back to O'Dell as she did. Still fixated on the Miradonian's brilliantly colored feathers, the gurgling Minotaur gently ran her fingers across Mona's head as she was handed off.

As she looked them over, she floofed her feathers up so that Minnie could get a better view of them. She just hoped that the display would entertain the young minotaur. "You added a micro-graviton generator to reduce the strain. That's ingenious. With that, I think we could go full-on walker with ease."

At the display, Minnie let out the most infectious, giggling laugh imaginable. She waved her tiny arms and pumped her fuzzy hooves up and down in O'Dell's arms. Between Gavarus's snout she loved to try and stick her fists into, O'Dell's massive mane of red curls and now Mona's colorful plumage, the three women were like a sensory overload playground for the tiny tot.

“Aye, Chief. And if we’re building a solid non-transforming platform, she kin have a generator big enow to power it an more, and room for a gunner’s mate as well, aye?” Wrestling the squirming infant in her grasp, O’Dell continued speaking as if she were not trying to keep the grabby black-nailed little hands away from the Miradonian’s colorful plumage. She didn’t know what it felt like to have feathers yanked, but her own hair-pulling experiences with Minerva had left her a bit leary of inflicting that on Ensign Gonadie.

“As mooch as I do love being the star of the show, I dinna mind having someone watching me back other than the onboard AI. Which brings up rear-facing armaments as well as for’d facing. And maybe we could add some weight to her too… the Banshee’s built for speed and maneuverability, but for a bunker buster, some proper density and weight would go a long ways towards her toughness I’d wager.” More weight would present more problems with thrusters and maneuvering, as well as pressure on the servos. But her points were valid, and O’Dell wanted to insure the plan rolled forward. The Chief was already looking a lot more like herself, and caught up in the fervor of invention like a spark of old, she would have something to do to work on rescuing her kidnapped wife.

Which O’Dell wasn’t going to consider now. While she was not particularly close nor really even that familiar with Lieutenant Dox, the head of the Flight Control department, she knew the Chief and cared about her. And she was actually quite fond of the tart-tongued Mrs. Dox, who was surprisingly willing to come along on pub adventures with she and Gavarus. The greying Romulan woman was her friend, and her anger at her kidnappers, and those who had inflicted such heartbreak on her chief, would enrage the wee Mariposian pilot if she thought about it too much. So for now, she too needed the distraction.

And distracted they were, as the trio continued discussing the potential new project. Mona was focusing on doing something to help an untenable situation and Fiona and Briaar were happy for the added distraction as well... and to have their Chief back where she belonged.