Subject: Grail: "Unexplored Spaces"-`There Can Be Only One'

Subject: Grail: "Unexplored Spaces"; "Run, Hide, and Scream"

<OOC: Welcome to the wonderful sport of wall staring.>

Kait woke up the next day, not as sad as she had once been, but rather,

feeling somewhat thoughtful. In reflection of the day before, her day ha

gone pretty well for the disposition she had been in. Indeed, it would'v

been better if she could have gone back to sleep in hopes of waking up

differently, but since that had not been an option, she decided that it

should not have been a consideration either. Other from that, nothing ha

gone wrong at all, and that was something which was especially important

light of her being particularly sensitive at that time. Undoubtedly, if

anything _had_ gone wrong, she would have broken down crying, for no

apparent reason.

Her talk with Kestra could've gone better, but Kait didn't feel that the

girl held any resentment towards her. In fact, when Kait checked her

messages that morning, she found a brief message from her cousin asking K

ait

to go to Kestra's quarters to feed "Familiar", Kestra's cat. Kait did as

asked that morning, but gladly left the cat behind to go to work.

However, later that evening a "General Quarters" was ordered and Brennan

was

faced with a decision. With Kestra going to be in Sickbay for the entire

stay of the quarantine period and seeing as how her cat would have no via

ble

means of sustenance for an indefinite period of time, she had to decide

whether to wait out that period of confinement where the cat was or to br

ing

the cat to her quarters.

When Kait walked into her cousin's quarters, she felt almost as if she we

invading the girl's privacy by intruding on her personal space. From thi

impression, the decision was made fairly easily. However, executing this

decision proved to be much more difficult. Familiar struggled against be

ing

held and launched off her chest, and ran the rest of the way down the

corridor. Surely, he must've left a nasty scratch on her skin.

Familiar stopped only when he reached the end of the corridor at a turbol

ift

entrance. Brennan quickly ran over to the cat so that some unknowing per

son

would not have the chance to walk out of that turbolift and allow the cat

means of escape. When the cat realised he was trapped, he tried running

past Kait, but thanks to her good reflexes, she was able to catch him, th

she barely made the traversion to her quarters, though it was a short

distance from where she was.

Once she and the cat were successfully inside quarters, Kait thanked the

gods that she would not have to walk in and out of that door very often,

fact, she wouldn't have to for quite some time.

For those ten long days, her only tangible companion was Familiar. She f

elt

that the cat behaved better as they spent more time together, and Kait's

opinion of this species of animal changed slightly... but not completely.

She still would have preferred to have a dog and a big house... Her thoug

hts

would have continued on creating this utopia in her mind, but the apparen

hopelessness of her situation gave the activity a rather disheartening

effect. So she chose to focus her energies on tending to this cat, namel

by feeding her temporary and only companion.

For the first few days, Kait had tried to offer help to Lt. Cmdr. Hargen,

but without being able to do any physical work, her attempt to help was m

ore

so salutatory, and Hargen assured Brennan that she could make it just fin

on her own. Hargen told Brennan to try to enjoy her time off. On a more

personal level, Kait reminded Janice that she was free to contact Kait

whenever, if she needed anything.

Eventually Kait had resorted to using the video communications to develop

some sort of personal interaction in order to break the monotony of it al

She found that she got to learn more about her engineering staff than she

could have in the normal work place. The reason is that the only people

she

contacted were the ones on her engineering staff, and, though at first, h

officers were a bit leery about approaching a superior officer in any oth

manner than the formal, especially one such as Kaitlyn Brennan, who was

probably the only person above the rank of Ensign in the Engineering

department who would, without a second thought, mete out punishment to

anyone who proved to deserve it. =20

Nevertheless, she was able to break this barrier by talking about herself

bit, then tried to ascertain certain things about the other person so tha

they could agree or correct her, because the easiest thing to talk about

yourself, since what area could you possibly know better than yourself?

least that was the case with most people.

Ensign Delagi proved to be the most animated character to talk with, Ensi

Adran was the most delicate, Wilson seemed to be the most talkative on li

ght

subjects, Koscearny the most self-critical and fearful, K'tel the most

stand-offish, and Ladun seemed to be the most familiar or kindred spirit

her. These were the most general assumptions she could make about these

people, but as with any generalisation, it could not be considered

invariably accurate and there was still much to be said about that person.

A whole book could be written just explaining every nuance of a person, s

no matter how much you could say you couldn't give a _complete_ descrip

tion

of a person.

Even in the face of confinement, Kait still was able to find a way to esc

ape

it, but only thanks to the ship's internal communication systems. Althou

considering how much she hated having to go to work, being off for ten da

did not go unappreciated. In fact, when the General Quarters was stood

down, Kait had trouble deciding which she hated more: work or boredom.

Standing up, she took a pensive survey of the room and then briefly pette

Familiar who had taken, though uninvited, the liberty of sleeping on her

cot.

Kait, remembering how unkempt she had allowed herself to become the past

couple days, she decided that she wasn't going anywhere until she made

herself a little more presentable. Taking a sonic shower, fooling with h

hair for a long time, and dressing in a new change of clothes were the ma

things that she needed to do.

Once she had done all this, and finally decided that she was half-way dec

ent

now, she walked over to the entrance/exit to her quarters. Familiar sat

waiting in front of the door, looking up at it as if at any moment the do

would open. There must have been some humor in the cat's perception of h

impending exit, because Kait gave a startled laugh when seeing how

expectantly the cat sat.

"Oh no, I don't think so, my friend!" Kait exclaimed with a smile.

As she picked up the cat, the door opened automatically. Kait carefully

threw the cat onto her cot before quickly running out of her quarters. T

door closed, and no fleeing animal could be seen. Kestra would be so-o

upset with Kaitlyn if the girl ever found out how Kait had thrown Familia

half-way across the room! but it was the only way to escape a room that

might as well have been an eight cubic meter box for all the freedom it h

permitted.

There were several people socializing in the corridors, although it must'

been much worse after the General Quarters was initially called off. Unl

ike

the others, she didn't have a need to run out to talk to anyone. Unlike

the

others, she had recovered from the infection. What was the reason for it

Thinking on it, it did rather remind Kait of other plague situations she

had

read about where there almost never failed to be a survivor, for some

unknown reason. That was, at least when the plague was of natural causes

and not the result of some chemical warfare. In this case, however, the

plague was chemically designed, but she could only conclude that the

attempted substance must have been in the preliminary stages, and not a

result of the necessary years of conditioning to make any such destructiv

force absolutely perfect...

Her thoughts continued to ramble on until she passed by one of the female

junior officers who spoke in a rather crude tone, "If only the Romulans h

the sense of honor that the Klingons have, none of this would have

happened=85" She had to agree with this, however. The Klingons never wo

uld

stoop so low as creating chemical weapons to instigate an artificial plag

upon their enemies; such a thing would be considered a million times more

cowardly than even resorting to poisoning. At least, that was how it see

med

to her.

Leaving the junior officers behind to carry on their reviving 'first

contacts' for a while, Kaitlyn Brennan stepped inside the turbolift and

ordered the usual, so to speak. She really did need Bridge duty once in

while to give her some place new to go. Her intentions when joining

Starfleet had been to see new places, but instead the exact opposite was

true. She was kept off _all_ away missions thanks to her former superior.

However, upon her entrance into Main Engineering, she found that there wa

s a

very different, or new, feel to the place. Then again, walking around fe

rather new considering she hadn't been outside of her quarters for quite

some time. She hadn't been an engineer for quite some time, and now,

standing at the entrance of the oversized engineering room, she looked wi

wonder, and came to the realization that she had truly missed it all, too.

Ensign Bryant and Ensign Adran were the only souls in Engineering for the

moment, but that wouldn't last forever. Lt. Brennan was actually quite

surprised to find that Janice Hargen was not present. Despite this, she

approached the two junior officers and asked them if anything was going o

They had responded in the negative, but Brennan could quite clearly see w

hat

their eyes were on. It was some sort of probe.

Brennan decided that maybe she should've kept more in contact with her

superior, so that she would know the purpose of this device. The cloakin

device was stored away somewhere. Janice had told her this much: that

researching the cloaking device was taken off the list for things to do.

There was always the possibility of later, however far into that future t

hat

might be.

"Have you seen Commander Hargen?" Brennan asked the two junior officers.

Adran shrugged and Ladun simply said, "No."

From the looks of it, it looked like the two were conspiring to commit so

crime. She looked suspiciously casted her eyes unto the console that the

had been standing in front of. The screen was still waiting for the log-

sequence, hadn't even been touched that day.

As the silence soon became unbearable, Brennan asked, "Is everything okay

here?"

Adran seemed to blush slightly, and Ladun again repeated, "No."

Then it was silence again. Kaitlyn Brennan thought for sure she would go

crazy if this didn't end here. It was already apparent that the two were

hiding something, and she wanted to make sure it was nothing that they

shouldn't be doing.

"Okay, spill it," Brennan demanded.

"Excuse me?" Ladun asked.

"You know, spill it. Tell me what it is that's got you two so squeamish.

"Why, nothing sir," Ensign Adran replied innocently. Ensign Ladun echoed

her 'nothing.'

Lt. Brennan could always wait for the chief engineer to return and deal w

ith

them, but she was so light-handed that she would likely let it go.

If she didn't know any better, she'd say that they were getting intimate.

but then again, she regarded Ensign Ladun rather softly, and if she didn'

keep her emotions in check, jealousy might raise its ugly head. After a

few

more attempts at prodding it out of them though, Kait soon found out that

their only crime was the same curiosity that had so consumed Kaitlyn hers

elf.

"We were just taking a sort-of look inside the probe, that's all," Ensign

Adran replied, starting to sound offended by the implications Brennan had

made towards what her suspicions had become.

"Never mind it all," Kaitlyn Brennan had said straightforwardly. "Did yo

find anything of interest?"

"No," Ensign Ladun said.

Then Lt. Brennan had the distinct feeling of d=E9j=E0 vu and couldn't hel

p but

utter quite audibly, "No... not this again!"

With that, she walked away from the two, completely exasperated. She rea

lly

didn't get the pick of the litter when it came to engineers. She had hop

that with the motley assortment of people that a far superior staff could

created than the ones that were made from the foundations of books and st

udy

hours. Creativity and motivation in the form of aggression would be thei

greatest assets. Nevertheless, it wouldn't hurt to have some better comp

any

than a couple of giggling teenagers, who acted as if their peeking inside

carefully-constructed probe was something akin to peeking inside a cookie

jar.

Kaitlyn was much more content to stare at the wall than to carry on any m

ore

conversations like the former. And so she did that for a while, wonderin

how she might get ahold of Janice, because she needed somebody with a bit

sanity to talk to.

<OOC: Confused about the title? Here's a short explanation, if you'll r

ead

on. Familiar runs for cover, Kaitlyn runs after Familiar, Kaitlyn hides

her quarters, the two junior officers hide their "curiosity", and after a

this stupidity, everyone, including Kaitlyn, is ready to scream! :) >

Kaitlyn Brennan, Asst. Chief Engineer, USS Grail

Lynne Baillie, "Chief Engineer", USS Trailblazer

ICQ #6664187, IRC Nick (Undernet)--Kestra

Get on IRC--Visit http://www.mirc.co.uk today!