Defination Of Prettiness

Posted on Mon Nov 13th, 2017 @ 6:39pm by Captain Rueben Gregnol

Mission: Mission 5 - Liberation
Location: SS Mary Rose - Engineering Control Room
Timeline: MD -30 09:00
1773 words - 3.5 OF Standard Post Measure

Reuben wandered into the engine control room expecting to see Jeassaho as it was Alpha watch but instead was confronted by the Chief Engineer. Well at least that saved him from having that conversation with the woman who just gave him minimal words, he knew one day she would talk to him like a normal human being again but it was sad that the woman he loved hated his guts. “Hello, Draia.” He greeted sitting down next to her watching the cameras that were installed around the different Engineering decks. It was a very old-fashioned setup but he liked it, it was very civilian in style to say the least the the collector must have installed it. "Where is your watchkeeper?"

Like Gregnol, Draia Theroh was sat at the master systems console and her eyes were drawn to the many live video feeds. When Gregnol approached her, and even when he spoke, Draia left her obvious attentions focused on her views of the engineering decks. All the same, she was listening, though. "I got hungry, so..." Draia said in a deadpan delivery, and then she shrugged helplessly.

“We need to talk.” He admitted softly skirting around the real issue. “We need to talk about what about on the Fergengi homeworld.” It had been a subject that had been avoided before this point but the repercussions from that event were only just coming into play now.

Shaking her head slightly, Draia asked, "Do we?" She elongated her vowels when she spoke, emphasizing her skepticism. "Do we need to talk about it?" Now she turned her face to Gregnol, her gray brow-ridges rose up her forehead as she spoke. "I prefer to think about the first time we met," Draia said sweetly. "You and your starship that was so, so thirsty for deuterium and not a drop to drink. ...You were so pretty then," she said. She squinted at Gregnol. "When did you get so haggard?"

"Thanks, i think." The man said with a smile as she called him pretty. Handsome, charming, powerful, aggressive, funny, player, athletic, broad, sculpted, attractive but never pretty before especially by a Cardassian of all species. "About a few weeks after you met me." He admitted getting comfy in the chair. He smiled a little more as he thought about the fact she had made that Klingon tanker of deuterium "disappear" and appear in his hands saving his ship. "I never have thanked you for that disappearing trick of yours." He said before he remembering the reason he had come to talk to.

Draia was quick to spread her arms open wide, saying, "I'm here now. I'm right here in the thick of so many charming problems to solve, when Starfleet would have nothing more to do with me." She rested her palms on her knees and leaned closer to Gregnol. "That's all the thanks I needed," she said.

"Selina is in trouble." He admitted. He had kept track of the woman since Ferenginar. "What happened at the end? When you last saw her?" He needed to know what type of woman was going to turn up.

Uncomfortable with the question, Draia sat back in her chair. She rolled her shoulders back, pressing them against the seatback, and she closed her eyes. If she thought about it too hard, Draia could practically feel the rain in her hair. Her eyes closed, Draia said, "She was stern with me and she was downright cold to the farmboy. She was hard. It was like nothing in her life mattered to her anymore; I believe she was prepared to blow everything up."

"I know about your mission to dystopian Earth. How long were you there for?" He wondered gently trying to work out the timeline and how much trouble he was going to be in when the woman showed up here having been transferred by Starfleet Intelligence after his original request nearly a year ago finally got processed.

Cringing at Reuben slightly, Draia was struggling to follow his line of questioning. The USS Viking's disastrous misstep into a possible future was ages ago. Selina's face-off against Reuben, Draia and Selina's own lover was even farther back. Shrugging at Reuben's question, Draia said, "We were gone almost no time at all, local time." --But she sounded uncertain and a little frustrated by the lack of context-- "For us, we experienced maybe a Cardassian-standard month or two before we made it back to the present."

Rueben rubbed his face clearly frustrated by what he was hearing. "How do you feel about what happened there?" He wondered softly thinking for the first time of the psychological damage the crew must have endured. As Executive Officer, he had never dealt with anything as intense as Time Travel or displacement.

At that, Draia finally boggled at Reuben, continually baffled by his line of questioning. "How do I feel?," Draia asked the question back at Reuben, hoping he might explain where he was going with this. "As far as I was concerned, it was a prolonged away mission to a junky Human planet," Draia firmly said. "As for how I feel about it, I don't understand the question. What does any of this have to do with Selina?"

"She's coming here...Today." He admitted with a slight blush. "I don't know the what or the why but I've gotten word of it." He lied slightly. He knew the what but not the why of now. Intelligence never did anything unless it suited them.

Shaking her head, Draia was plainly confused and irritated now. Her brow ridges were raised into points, and her voice was going high and scratchy. She slapped her thighs. "I don't understand what that means," she blurted out at him. When Draia had been drummed out of her Starfleet service, Selina Fenruse had been Viking's Chief Engineer. "What does it mean that you've gotten word? Why does one need to get word of Selina's coming?"

"When you met me the second time I was working for Intelligence. I was still Executive Officer of this hunk of metal." He admitted. "It is a long story what happened but the basics are I was taken by the cartels due to enquiring about an old friend. Starfleet after two years freed us and basically I was chain-ganged into Intelligence as I was legally dead." There was a much more detailed story but it was too painful to keep going over the facts that lead to the complete change of how his life would have been. "I am still a Starfleet officer, Still have an active commission." He admitted looking straight ahead not looking at her pointedly. He would admit about himself but not Leiddem, the man didn't need to be outed. "And I requested Selina to be transferred to my command." He admitted knowing she would go mental with him and he truly deserved it.

Draia blinked a lot, as Reuben finally explained himself to her. Finally. Not only did this resolve his circling around Draia's relationship with the Betazoid Selina Fenruse, but it resolved weeks of questions Draia had about the underpinnings of the SS Mary Rose. That said, as resolutions went, this one was somewhat lackluster. Draia blinked a lot when Reuben said what he needed to say. She twitched and she blinked and she twitched some more. "That's not what I was expecting," Draia said dryly. "What I'm hearing is you're an undead Starfleet Intelligence officer with your own off-books crew, and now you've seconded a Starfleet Chief Engineering."

Draia was quiet for a heartbeat. Then, she asked, "Shit, are you replacing me?"

“Only some of the senior crew even know some of what I am told you. I seconded her a year ago after I saw you in the rain it seems my former handler is trying to bring me back into the fold so to speak.” He hated being intelligence, he had been offered it in the Academy but he wanted Security. It was solid and dependable like he had been. Reuben looked at the Cardassian and smiled softly. He thought that might be his question once she finally knew everything, he been prepared for a lot of talking but the question left him feeling guilty that she thought she was being replaced. He shook his head at her quickly to alleviate her fears over Selina replacing her. The man he once was showing through for just a moment before the walls came back up over him. “Not in the slightest Draia but I do need your help kind of.” He admitted using her first name for once.

Taken aback, Draia literally leaned away from Reuben on her stool. In a fluid movement, her dramatic lean flowed into Draia standing to her two own feet. "Kind of?" Draia echoed back at him, as she paced back and forth along the length of the master systems display. Reuben's newfound forthrightness, and informality, was unfamiliar to Draia. Like all new things, that made it a little unwelcome to Draia as well. But only a little. "What do you need? You only have to ask."

“You know Selina better than I do. Last time I met her properly she was this brat of an Ensign.” He said fondly. “The woman who is going to be escorted here is a stranger to me and one who isn’t coming willingly.”

Nodding at Reuben, Draia agreed with him in a matter-of-fact tone. "I've seen her stand up to Captains with more integrity and gravitas than you," Draia said, "And she never blinked." Despite the implied insult, Draia shrunk self-consciously, when she said, "I'll do what I can, but Selina and I were never really friends. I'm not even sure how well she respects me." Draia had always tried so hard to impress Selina --after their initial altercation-- but Draia's friends in the security/tactical department had been a goofy bunch, and their reputation had been expansive.

Reuben nodded not taking it personally. He knew he had just changed every view she had for him in the last five minutes. "Brilliant. When your watchkeeper returns you'll meet me in the docking bay. Um... da... might not be wise to tell Jeassaho what is going on." He said thoughtfully as he stood up without anything further to add.

"Finally," Draia said with a broad grin of massive satisfaction, "I know something Jeassaho doesn't."

OFF::

Engineering Chief
Draia Theroh
SS Mary Rose

Rueben Gregnol
Captain
SS Mary Rose