Fuzzy Heads

Posted on Sun May 17th, 2015 @ 9:53pm by Commander Angelica Fairchild & Aewia Larani

Angel needed a break. Between dealing with Temporal Investigations, preparing for the upcoming court-martial, and taking over Aelyn's job, she was starting to miss being the chief of security. Sure, the job had been hard, but it was nothing compared to fielding requests from every department on the ship and trying to coordinate that with other shipboard business! Feeling rather fatigued, she left her office and went for a walk, remembering when she'd be able to do that in the name of 'security patrols'. It felt different now, like she might be slacking off or ignoring her work. Maybe she needed to slack off for a while.

Aewia however, was slacking off. Not that she had anything to do other than her therapy. She was looking down into a random jeffries tube crawlway, seemingly to look for someone or something when Angel rounded the corner. Glancing up at Angel, Aewia grinned happily and waved to the XO. "Hello!"

Seeing Aewia looking into the Jefferies tube, Angel stopped short and kind of stared at her. "Uh... hi. What are you doing?"

"Looking for beetles," Aewia replied cheerily. "Have you seen any?"

"There... aren't any beetles on the ship, Aewia. Aren't you supposed to be in your cabin?" Already tired and pretty certain she could feel a headache coming on, Angel really hoped that would be enough to change Aewia's mind about the imaginary beetles.

Ignoring the question, Aewia instead focused on what she just felt from Angel. Focused on her, Aewia walked up to her and peered at the XO quizzically. "Are you not feeling well? You should see the doctors. They help me a lot."

"Hey now. No telepathic probing," Angel said gently, trying to deflect Aewia's attention on whatever it was she was picking up. Apparently the next thing she needed Sinek to teach her was how to shield her thoughts. "I'm okay. Just have a lot of PaDDs to stare at."

"PaDDs and... What has you so stressed out? It's not my returning empathy, is it? That stresses me out... All those feelings. I mean, it's nice hearing them again, but i have my own thoughts to worry about, you know?" Aewia asked cheerily as she stepped away from Angel, misinterpreting her request for probing.

"A lot of things." Angel decided not to be specific about any of them. "I have a lot of people asking me for things that I might not be able to get them. It's a lot of work."

"Want to relax and help me look for beetles then? My sister says their snuff is really valuable." Aewia said invitingly.

Beetles again. Aewia seemed to have a fascination with insects today, and Angel just smiled a bit. She didn't think she'd be able to convince Aewia that there weren't any beetles, but she'd feel awfully silly looking for imaginary bugs. "What do the beetles you're looking for look like?"

"They're um... made of latinum? And big?" Aewia replied, not entirely sure herself - just basing her concept on them from her sister's dreams.

"Made of latinum?" Angel blinked, almost certain that was the craziest thing she'd heard all week, giant beetles made of latinum. She had no idea where to find anything that would resemble that description. Not to mention latinum being a liquid and difficult to make things out of. "Well I've never seen a latinum beetle, but I don't think we have any in the Jefferies tubes."

"Oh..." Aewia said simply, a bit crestfallen and closing the access door.

Uh oh. Realizing she'd upset Aewia, Angel quickly continued with, "Where else do you think we should look?"

"Maybe the EPS conduits but that's dangerous and full of hot plasma." She really didn't even know where they'd be, but Aewia wanted to find one anyway. "I've never seen anything like them in the halls and there are too many people anyway, so I doubt they're just anywhere."

"Well... do you have a picture of one? I don't really know what I'm looking for." Angel was quickly running out of things to say, and she really had no idea what a 'latinum beetle' would even look like.

Aewia sensed that Angel had nothing to go on, so she decided to give up the mythical hunt for now. After all, this was all based on one of Nexi's dreams. "Let's not worry about it for now. Where are you going?"

"Nowhere really, just walking. My eyes hurt from so much reading." Angel really hadn't had any sort of destination in mind. She just knew if she went home she'd go to sleep and not go back to work.

"Then I'll walk with you. Maybe we'll find something interesting." Aewia offered.

"Good idea. Maybe we can find some coffee and sit down somewhere." Angel hoped that by drinking something with caffeine in it she could sit somewhere and not risk falling asleep. "Unless there's something else you want to look for?"

Aewia shook her head, more worried about her new friend. "I'm not supposed to have coffee and all that, but I can have juice. There's an observation lounge on this deck too. I found it earlier but there weren't any beetles there so I left."

"All right, juice then." Angel knew where the observation lounge was, so she subtly shifted their direction toward it. It wasn't one that was used often, so at least it would be quiet.

Aewia hummed a soft tune as they made their way to the observation lounge. Thankfully it wasn't far and when she got there, she punched up an iced mocha latte and a mango-melon slushie, offering the coffee drink to Angel. "Here you go," she said cheerily, expecting that drink to help with Angel's mood.

Now that was a trick she hadn't expected. Angel grinned a bit as she accepted the iced coffee drink and took a sip of it. "This is perfect. Thank you."

"Any time!" Aewia replied cheerily, sitting down at one of the tables and looking out at the planet below.

Angel watched Aewia for a moment before joining her at the table. From orbit, New Sydney was gorgeous, but she knew down on the surface it was a mining world, not quite so pretty as it appeared from space. Still, it was nice to look at while she sipped her coffee drink.

Sipping at her own drink, Aewia couldn't help but wonder where they were and if it should be familiar to her. was it yet another lost memory or did she just not recognize it because she didn't recognize it? "What was your name again?" Aewia asked, a somewhat subdued worry in her voice as she watched the planet rotating below.

That was an unexpected question with how Aewia had seemed to recognize her earlier, but Angel knew Aewia was better with faces than names. "Angel," she said simply, not bothering with using her full name. No one seemed to use it anymore, and surprisingly she was okay with that.

Aewia smiled warmly at Angel. "Sorry, I meant the planet. I didn't think i spoke out loud. Thank you though. I only knew you as Commander Fairchild before."

"Oh the planet. The planet is New Sydney." Angel knew it had another name too, but she didn't remember what it was.

"New Sydney..." Aewia said, rolling the name around on her tongue. "Do you think I've been here before? I don't remember anything about it."

"I don't know if you've been here. The ship hasn't been here before, but you weren't always on this ship," Angel replied gently. "Nexi might know."

"I'll have to ask her later then," Aewia said, surprisingly calmly. Apparently she was having one of her sane-lucid moments. "Tell me about the ship please? My sister doesn't let me go out on my own too much so I've only learned what I could from sickbay and our quarters."

"Tell me what you'd like to know, and I'll see how much I know about it." Angel wasn't as much of an expert on the Hera as Enalia was, but she'd learned a fair bit by now.

"Recreational facilities I guess. I'd like something to do rather than stare at a computer all day doing puzzles and mental exercises. And I have to admit now that looking for a latinum beetle based on my sister's dream is a bit out there..." Aewia replied.

"Mostly standard Starfleet stuff... holodecks and holosuites - I don't know the difference between those. There's a gymnasium on deck 11...." Angel used the recreational facilities so rarely she wasn't sure where all of them were. "There's an arboretum too but I'm not sure where it is."

"What class of ship is this?" Aewia asked next, somewhat sheepishly.

"Boy are you lucky you asked me and not Enalia." Angel laughed a little imagining the wounded look Enalia would have given Aewia for that question. "The Hera is a Nebula class. Bonchune series, which just means it has some pieces that would usually go on a Galaxy class."

Nebula class... Galaxy class... she was vaguely familiar with both but she knew now that the halls all had computer terminals throughout every main corridor. That would help a lot, if she could remember that later. But why was she lucky she didn't ask Enalia? "Enalia is nice. I like her. Why am I lucky i asked you instead?"

"Hera's her baby. She'd pretend to be offended and mad at you for not knowing." Angel snickered some more at the thought, knowing by now just how much of a prankster Enalia could be. "She likes to play jokes on people."

Aewia had to giggle a little at the thought of Enalia doing that. "That does sound like her. I think she's fun. What about holo-emitters? I think I saw a few in our quarters."

"We have holo-emitters all over the ship. Amelia is going to use the ones in her room to make a pet... but you can do anything you want with them." Angel took a few sips of her iced latte.

"Anything?" Aewia asked, the gears in her head turning. There was a lot she could do now, knowing that. "I could look at pictures I don't remember taking a lot easier than on a PaDD."

Angel nodded. "If that's what you wanted to do, sure. Plus you could spread them all out on the floor if you wanted, look at them all at the same time."

"That would be easy too. Do you need any special authorization to do it?" Aewia remembered that some holosystems like the EMH you had to have a certain level to do anything but activate them and tell them what was wrong in an emergency.

"I think the ones in your quarters you can use without any special codes, as long as you're not, like, making rifles or something crazy like that." Angel hadn't tried using the holoemitters in her cabin, but the thought made sense.

"I'd use the replicator for that anyway," Aewia said offhandedly. "Sorry..." she continued, slightly confused. "I think that's from my intel training."

"The replicator won't make them without a command or security code anyway." Angel smiled a bit, knowing Aewia wasn't likely to try replicating a weapon.

"I doubt my old access codes are active, as well." Aewia said with a smile before sipping at her drink again. "I don't like this, you know. I know it hurts my sister, seeing me like this. Lucid and coherent one minute, then acting like a child and not able to think clearly the next."

"None of us like to see you go through this, Aewia. And we don't like seeing Nexi hurting because of it." Angel put her hand on Aewia's arm. "Everyone on this ship is here for both of you. Starship crews are like family, you remember that, right?"

Did Aewia remember that? Not really... "It's hard to remember that sort of thing. I think I know it but that's about all I can remember right now." Aewia said, smiling weakly. "I don't have any memory of the Academy, I barely remember my first ship, and my second assignment was an Intel group on a starbase..."

"I don't remember much of my first assignment either," Angel assured her. Despite a somewhat humorous tone, it was also a serious comment. "And if you never remember, that's okay."

Aewia nodded solemnly, already feeling her mind starting to go fuzzy, likely from being tired. "Thank you for taking care of me. Do you know where we are? I think I forgot..."

"The observation lounge on deck one." There wasn't much left of her coffee at this point, so Angel finished it and set the empty glass on the table.

"Deck one? The bridge? I'm really lost this time..." Aewia said, finishing her juice as well. "I'm not in trouble, am I? I don't want to worry my sister."

"Not on the bridge, just near it. And you're not in trouble, Aewia... unless Nexi thinks you should be." Angel smirked a bit. "I can take you home if you'd like."

"I think I might need that once the ocean calms down. There's too many fish swimming through my head," Aewia said, resting her head against the table.

"I think most of us have too many fish swimming around lately," Angel replied softly, in a sympathetic tone. "Let me know when you're ready."

"I think I should go now," Aewia said, turning rather pale.

"Okay, let's get you home then." Angel quickly recycled the two empty glasses then went to help Aewia up. "Or do you want to go see the doctor first? You're... kind of pale."

"I think the Doctor maybe," Aewia said just as her chrono on her wrist chirped, displaying a message that it was time for her medicines. Staring at the device, she leaned against Angel and wondered what it even said.

"All right, we'll go to sickbay." Angel didn't know why Aewia's watch was beeping, and she wasn't terribly concerned about that either. She was more worried that something might be wrong.

Aewia's chrono chirped again, this time more insistently. "What are medi chimes?" she asked, looking at it again as Angel helped her walk.

"It means you need to go to medical. Good thing we're going that way, right?" Angel had no idea what sort of medi chime Aewia had exactly, and she wasn't going to guess at it.

It didn't take long for them to get to sickbay and thankfully Aewia made it easily enough with only a few distractions on the way. Flopping into a chair, she sat there trying to hold still, her head swimming and fuzzier than it had been before.

It wasn't long before a nurse spotted them and came over, pausing only to wash her hands and grab a tricorder. "Hi, sweetheart, what's the matter?" she asked gently, checking Aewia's chrono as she started her tricorder scans. Seeing that it was time for Aewia's medications, she made a mental note to go get them once this situation was settled.

"We were talking and she just turned white, like a cadet on their first warp jump." Angel didn't know how helpful that was, but it was all the information she had.

"My brain feels fuzzier than normal. Not like kitten tribble fuzzy but like... super-fuzzy-central." Aewia added, a bit better now that she was sitting.

The nurse frowned a bit at the description. "All right. I'll get your medicines and we'll see if they help at all, okay?"

Aewia nodded and muttered something about fishies and soup as she waited for the hypospray.

As the nurse went to get the medications, Angel gently patted Aewia's arm. "You can have some soup later if you want."

Within a few moments, the nurse returned with the loaded hypospray. Knowing that Aewia wasn't entirely lucid, she did a quick identity scan to verify her name before carefully giving her the injection.

The hypo gave Aewia near instant relief, her clarity and lucidity returning to her. "Thank you," she said, one hand on her head. "I guess I forgot about my new meds."

"You're welcome. Any fuzzies left?" The tricorder read everything as fine, but this nurse preferred to rely on what her patients told her instead.

"No. Yes. Normal fuzzies. No super tribbles." Aewia tried to clarify.

"All right, we can live with normal fuzzies. Try to get some rest, okay?" The nurse patted Aewia's arm and then went to check on other patients.

Aewia nodded and looked to Angel, smiling softly.

"Come on. Let's get you home before Nexi starts to worry about you." Angel got up and offered Aewia her hand.

Which Aewia took as she stood up. "I think you're right. Thank you."

"You're welcome." Angel smiled a bit, guiding Aewia out of sickbay to take her home.