Pow! Zip! Zowie!

Posted on Sun Jul 30th, 2017 @ 3:00pm by Chief Warrant Officer Daytona Ral & Staff Warrant Officer Nexi

Mission: When Iconians Deserve to Die
Location: Hera, Random Corridor
Timeline: Before the Slingshot Home

Daytona walked down the corridor, a spring in his step, whistling. He hadn't walked around whistling in...far longer than he could remember. His budding relationship with Akira was filling his heart with joy. All felt right in the world. Because he was musing about Akira and smiling like an idiot, he wasn't paying attention to where he was. So, if one were to think about it, Akira could be assigned blame for what happened next.

Nexi had been pacing about like a caged tiger; even after nearly a week in a shuttle with Aewia, her fury had not cooled at all in regards to Daytona and that surprise he had sprung on the Away Team on the planet. It had been beyond reckless, and maybe if he had said something to them, then maybe, just maybe, she would have been able to focus on what she was supposed to be doing, like looking for the Master so she could prevent his escape. So when she finally returned to the Hera, she got his location and hunted him down. As she made her way through the corridors, the anticipation just kept growing, building more and more anger for the Rigelian, and so when she turned a corner and there he was, she didn't hold back; she walked right up to him, drew her arm back, and WHAM! right to the face.

Nexi's punch landed on Daytona's jaw, catching him completely off guard and knocking him off balance for a moment until he regained his balance. When the punch connected, it made a sickening crack, telling him a bone or bones had been broken. His mind multitasking, he quickly realized that his jaw wasn't broken, meaning that whoever had punched him had broken their hand. These thoughts occurred in the second it took Daytona to regain his balance and move to counterattack...Nexi?

"You have got to be kidding me," he said. He shook his head and laughed. "I suppose I had that coming."

Daytona shook his head and sighed.

"Let me take a look at your hand, you half-wit," he said. "I'm pretty sure you broke it."

If she broke her hand, Nexi didn't even notice, or maybe the pain simply hadn't caught up with her yet. "I'm not letting you look at anything, you fucktard! You had no right to leave us in the dark back on Selen VI. Instead of doing my job finding the Master and his lab, I was focused on you. We could have caught the guy, but now he's out there! Which to me makes you responsible for what he did to Aewia. He mutilated my sister because we couldn't stop him on Selen VI, and that's on you," she said, her words full of venom. "Every life lost to this monster in our time, your fault."

Daytona looked at her for a moment, then shook his head.

"You don't get it, do you?" he said. "Think for once. You go back in time and kill the Master. The Master doesn't do any of the awful things he's done. Starfleet doesn't send you back so you can kill the Master because there's no Master as far as they know. But, because you didn't go back and kill him, he lives and goes on to do all of the awful things he's done, so Starfleet sends you back in time, where you kill him again, and erasing all of the awful things he's done AND Starfleet's reason to send you back so you don't kill him and the whole process goes round and round. It wouldn't have worked, Nexi. Blame me if you want to, but that's a waste of time."

Nexi glared at him. "I fucking hate time travel," she said, like it was his fault, but she couldn't deny that he has a point. "That don't change the fact that you blindsided us with a detail we shoulda been told about during the briefing BEFORE the slingshot. You had no right to withhold that information! Forget my bitch about the Master, I still wasn't able to do my job because I was busy playing with you. We shoulda known, we coulda had eyes on you to make sure you made it off the planet safely, it was reckless and stupid to leave it all to chance, Ral."

"You're not listening, Nexi," Daytona said. "I had orders. I followed them. That's what we do. We don't have to like them or agree with them, but we do have to obey them. You may be correct that I, on my own, had no right to withhold that information, but that's irrelevant. I was ordered to withhold the information. My only choices were to obey or to resign. If I resigned, I'd likely have been killed in the explosion here in 2160 and everything I've done since would have been undone. So I was motivated to obey."

Daytona sighed.

"Look," he said. "I know that you were put in a tough position and, for what it's worth, I'm sorry. Now, will you please let me walk you to Sick Bay? Your hand is swelling up and turning pretty colors."

Nexi looked down at her hand, which was still clenched into a fist at her side. Sure enough, it was discolored and swelling, as as she opened her hand to flex it a few time her eye twitched a few times as indication that she was definitely feeling pain from the gesture. "Fuck," Nexi blurted out as she stared at her hand. But then she looked at Daytona with a scowl. "You are not walking me anywhere; there's a terran term, dog house or something like that... Well you're in it; orders or not, you still coulda given us a discreet heads up before I spotted you in the spaceport."

Daytona shook his head.

"Kids," he said in a stern, commanding voice. "No, I couldn't have. They're called orders, not suggestions. The first you have to obey, the second you take under advisement. And you want to keep me in the canine domicile for a while, fine, as long as you restrict that to off-duty time. On duty, I outrank you and I'm your immediate superior. I give orders, you obey. Like these orders. Go directly from here to Sick Bay. Get treatment. Have whoever treated you contact me to confirm that they treated you. When asked what happened, you will tell them that you got angry and punched a bulkhead. The worst that will happen to you is that the Acting CMO will order you to have an evaluation and maybe some anger management counseling. If you say that you hit me, either I'll have to file charges or you'll end up doing forty weeks of Domestic Violence Intervention Program or both. Have I made myself clear, Staff Warrant Officer Nexi?"

Daytona grinned.

"I've spent much of the last century working alone," he said. "So I don't get a lot of practice giving orders! How'd I do?"

"Clear, sir," Nexi said simply, then turned to leave. "Doesn't change the fact that you're a dick," she added as she walked away.

Daytona sighed. This was clearly going to have to be resolved at some point. Until then, Daytona decided he'd make the attempt to put up with Nexi's disagreeable teenager routine. He touched his jaw and winced. Nexi didn't hurt his jaw bone, but she did bruise the flesh covering it. Daytona sighed again. He tapped his commbadge.

"Daytona Ral to Sick Bay," he said.

=^=Sick Bay, Corpsman Jacobs. Go ahead, sir.=^=

"Two things, Corpsman," Daytona said. "Staff Warrant Officer Nexi will be arriving soon. She seems to have broken several bones in her hand. Please treat her and then contact me to confirm for me she's been treated, even if she doesn't ask you to do so. Don't tell her I called you. Secondly, can you have someone discretely meet me in my quarters with a regenerator? I appear to have walked into a wall and I've got an ugly bruise on my jaw that I'd prefer no one asked me about."

Corpsman Jacobs had been around long enough to make a pretty good guess about what was really going on. He'd also been around long enough to understand what he should do.

=^=Of course, sir. There's a doc here that can handle the Staff Warrant Officer's injury. I assume she got angry and punched a wall. That's what the report will say. And I'll come down to your quarters myself. See you shortly, sir.=^=

"Thank you, Corpsman," Daytona said. "See you soon."

Believing in obeying orders didn't mean Daytona wasn't willing to game the system to help out a young, hard-headed, officer once in a while.