Trek BBS 8

Trek BBS March/April 2023 Challenge: Two (or three or more) characters, under the influence of some intoxicant (legal, illegal or telepathic/empathic), got it together and had a magnificent night together. But on waking, one (or more) of them is having regrets. Why? And what do they do about it?

Trek BBS: March/April 2023 Challenge
"The Morning After: The Hangover"

The Prometheus-class U.S.S. Phoenix-X sat endlessly within the confines of interstellar space. Captain Aeris and several other officers perched around an 'officially dating' decorated Conference room. Suddenly, Aeris got a comm-call.

"Kugo to Aeris. Listen. We messed up. The pre-official party. The whole night. Things got out of control and, uh, we lost Seifer."

In her new dating dress, Aeris stood up. "What are you talking about? We're about to be official in five hours!"

"Yeah," came the Chief Engineer's placidity. "That's not going to happen."

---

One day earlier, Lieutenant Commander Armond was in his quarters, in the evening, clinking glasses with his ex-wife, Lieutenant Monique.

"I'm glad we're still able to do this," Monique started. "Hopefully, it won't lead to anything we'll regret the morning after. Am I right? Classic sexually-repressed hijinks to serious emotional recuperations!"

At that, Armond suddenly turned away in shock. "Regrets? Oh, that's right. Seifer is becoming official tomorrow! Sorry. I've got this other thing that isn't forced and weird," he said, getting up to leave. 

---

Later, Armond, Kugo, Red and Seifer found themselves in the Nacelle control room, in dress uniform, for Seifer's pre-official party, with Red pouring each a blood wine. He then pulled out a PADD to recite prepared remarks.

"Hello. How about that ride in? Now, I tend to think of myself as a one-Klingon targ pack. But when my targ hunting partner Aeris brought Seifer to the Helmsmen's Control Conference, I knew my targ pack finally grew by one. And, with you staff-mates, after all these years, it has now grown exponentially. So, tonight, I make a toast!"

Red then took out his d'k tahg and cut his palm to bleed, prompting everyone to freak out simultaneously. "Dude! What the hell?" Kugo erupted. "Red, no Klingon traditions! We're just going to toast to a night the four of us will never forget."

"Yeah! Okay! Let's go!" came the sudden sounds of "Yeah" by Usher featuring Lil' Jon as they cheered and clinked glasses before the night came into a raunchy but smart, well-evented series of hilarious mishaps.

---

The next morning, Armond, Red and Kugo began waking, one by one, in the guest-Captain's now near-destroyed lavish villa command quarters and to "Fever" by The Cramps. 

Drearily using the ensuite, Red suddenly came to notice a furry, cute little calico feline sitting on the sink counter with large, adorable eyes. "Aahh!! There is a jungle cat in the bathroom!" he declared running out.

"Goddam, will you put on some pants? We get it, Klingons have more than one!" Kugo shielded with her eyes before getting up and checking out the ensuite. Returning, she confirmed, "Oh! That's Data's cat, Spot!?"

Red blinked while complying. "What? How do we have Data's cat? He owned it on the Enterprise over 20 years ago. Shouldn't it be dead by now?" 

"Shit! My lateral incisors are gone," Armond examined his missing tooth in a small nearby mirror. "Monique hates missing teeth."

Kugo calmed, "All right, cool it, everyone. Everything's fine. Red, go wake up the Commander. Let's get some raktagino and get the hell out of these guest quarters before Admiral Cloud's shakedown visit."

"Hey, guys. Seifer's not in there," Red reported after returning from checking the other room. "And, his commbadge is here." 

The two officers watched him hold it up when, suddenly, the sounds of a baby crying came from the nearby closet. The three opened it. "Who's baby is that? Never mind. Let's go find Seifer and deal with that thing later."

"Kugo, we're not going to leave a baby in the room. Data's cat is in the bathroom!" Armond warned as he picked up the baby and strapped it to his chest, only to notice a medical bracelet on Kugo's arm. "Hey! You were in Sickbay last night, despite our pact to never seek medical attention ever again?"

The Vulcan took notice as well. "Huh? I forgot that the Doctor started tagging his patients for tracking and humiliation purposes. We might need to break that pact."

---

Later, the group of three found themselves in Sickbay where the cranky old Doctor Lox was giving a check-up on a man named Frell who appeared to be a multi-sub-species Xindi mash-up: Avian, Reptillian, Primate, the whole shebang.

"Look, I already told you. You came in here with a mild concussion. Some bruised ribs. No big deal," he offered while tapping Frell's knee.

Armond tilted his head. "Okay, but is that guy legal?"

"This interview is over!" Lox erupted while getting up and shoving them a PADD. "And take your blood test results with you. It says you were all polywatered. But don't worry. Your annual Nimbus III dry air inhalations kicked in several hours later."

Taking a second look, Armond noticed something else on the PADD. "Wait. This is my personal data folder and there's a video of me making out with Lieutenant Jeera on here! I'm a floozy??"

"Obviously, people in general are more interesting in altered-states," Kugo explained. "But this also means she may know what happened to Commander Seifer. Come. The mystery's afoot!"

---

The three entered the Security office to find Lieutenant Jeera working at a side-console. Taking notice, Jeera dropped everything in happiness at seeing the baby strapped to Armond.

"Well, hello there, Tiger, and thank the Prophets you have little Leina!" Jeera said taking the baby. "The baby's father is a Takaran, so she could walk around with a hole in her chest. But the similarities to wormholes then, am I right?"

Armond squinted. "So, we're a thing?"

"Of course, you silly! I stepped away to get you all a raktajino this morning, but when I got back, everyone was gone," Jeera explained. "Commander Seifer wasn't there, but I bet he's recovering in a Jeffrey's tube or something."

Suddenly, an Orion, Lieutenant Elly stepped in, from behind a wall partition. "Hold it right there, friends. You're all in trouble for stealing that shuttle last night and flying loopty loops around the Phoenix-X. You may outrank me, but you don't outrank contrived flight paths."

"And how would it look on your record if it came out a bunch of Senior staff hooligans procured a Starfleet shuttle on your watch?" Kugo countered.

Elly sighed. "Fine. But I want you guys back here tomorrow for Klingon painstick testing with a class full of children. It'll be this whole physical comedy thing. Audiences will love it!"

---

Later, the three found themselves investigating the Class-2 Type-9 shuttlecraft Dracon in the Shuttlebay. Kugo sat at the helm looking around while Red and Armond searched in the background.

"I got a cigar," Red returned, hopeless. "Some large black boots and a snakeskin?"

Kugo squinted and said, "Are those Klingon boots?" before some large banging from the storage bin near them erupted in a naked Targon, one of the ship's ex-Klingon exchange officers, breaking out in a frenzy.

"YAARRGGH!" he exclaimed, mid-burst, pushing passed Red and Armond, out the exit of the shuttle, back into the Shuttlebay and out that exit. 

Red turned to his compadres, downtrodden. "Due to that blatant and unexpected Klingon display of vulnerability, I must confess, the polywater intoxication was my fault. As mutually agreed upon, I was to slip us all a temporary augment virus for a short-term, ridge-suppressing laugh, but I must have picked the wrong drip-vial from Lox's randomly cluttered, unlabeled-vial storage bin."

"Hey, we all drug our friends sooner or later. Maybe we need to accept that," Armond shrugged before noticing an approaching Doctor Katherine Pulaski, cradling a purring Spot.

As she stepped for the shuttle to address them, the group did a double take in pure, relentless shock while Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" played her and the cat's entrance. "I can feel it coming in the air tonight. Ohhh, Lord."

"You're both still alive??" exclaimed Kugo as she turned off the Stafleet mandated entrance music for legacy officers. "I'm a huge fan, by the way. When you knocked out holographic Sherlock Holmes, that was..."

Pulaksi deadpanned. "I've been coming to see Lox about prolonging Spot's life and switching genders as needed for years as retribution for all those times I was mean to Data. But then here you are, stealing Data's cat last night."

"Ma'am, we have no memory of what happened, and we tend to do dumb shit when we're messed up," Kugo related. 

The Doctor sighed before turning to leave. "Well, DNA residue also implicates your friend Seifer and rumour has it he stole a barrel of bloodwine from the Klingons as well. Since they're likely on their way here with reinforcements, I'd like to start heading back to the nearest Olympic-class ship, stat."

"Yes, Your Excellency," Kugo bowed as the three exited and Pulaski, with Spot, took the Dracon out through the force field and off into space while Targon re-entered the Shuttlebay, now clothed, with two more Klingons, Kortos and Amos.

He pointed. "Apologies for my maddening naked time outrage, earlier, but after Red's poker hot streak, last night, you guys stole our bloodwine even though we had won it, tail-end, fair and square."

"There were 8000 ounces inside," Amos elaborated.

Kugo, Armond and Red glanced at each other before Kugo replied, "The lower deckers are scheduled for their poker tournament right now. We will play them and get you a new over-sized bloodwine."

"Very well. Just watch out for their grubby little paws," Kortos warned and shuddered at the same time. "Those little minions freak me out!" 

---

Entering the living area of Ensign Dan's quarters, Kugo, Red and Armond found it to be bustling with several Ensigns mucking about. A few Ensigns sat at the poker table in the center. 

"What is the meaning of this!?" As soon as Ensign Dan stepped out from his bedroom at the new visitors, all the other Ensigns fell silent.

Armond whispered to Kugo and Red, "I think Ensign Dan is their god here?"

"So, you've come to join our poker tournament, have you? A higher-up officer at a junior-level game?" He paused. "I'll be recognized as a legend in the other rank circles! You're in!"

Red snapped before taking a seat at the table. "That is too much giddiness, Ensign. You're relieved!" 

After Ensign Dan left, the game began and the Klingon delved back into his professional gaming mindset, per the blurred night previous. When several hours of time-lapsed erupting Ensigns arguing and fainting, and Kugo, Armond and a joining Jeera shouting passed, the wild-haired man became victorious in cleaning his opponents out of their chips and acquiring the grand bloodwine barrel prize.

"Tell me, is it true the U.S.S. Cerritos is now chock full of your kind? Like, they don't even have a Captain anymore?" Red queried of the fleet-wide rumours. 

But before the Ensigns could answer, Targon, Amos and Kortos broke in through the doors, without even waiting for them to auto-open. "According to Ensigns Social, the shared, overly-politicized media site between all lower deckers to secretly bash their higher-ups, Lieutenant Commander Red has eviscerated the subordinate trolls with great honour."

"Take your stink'n bloodwine already," Armond iterated of the nearby, abnormally large wooden cylindrical container while Kugo was busy reporting their failure to Aeris over comms. After a sudden realization, Armond slapped Kugo's commbadge off, effectively cutting communications. "Hold on! The Klingons just alluded to the mythical but also real creatures found under the bridges of Ferenginar called trolls. Seifer's on the Bridge!"

Kortos did a double-take at that stretch of logic before noticing a mute Ensign Ligus' scrawny arms reaching for him for general, overall life help. "Aahh!! Get away!!"

---

Reaching the Bridge in a hasty high-octane, Kelvin-timeline-like adrenaline rush, Kugo, Armond and Red found it near-empty. 

"We must've pranked Seifer with the classic Commander's Omega Directive alert, which is basically to confirm Psi molecules, the less-exciting, waste-of-time, boring molecules that are a step down from Omega," Kugo surmised.

Armond nodded. "That explains the Omega-branded curtains over all the windows. He loves using those as a repurpose, but really to pretend it's an actual Omega emergency."

"But he's not here. If only there was a way to track non-commbadged individuals aboard a ship of the stars," Red struggled.

The Vulcan snapped her fingers. "Of course! Computer, I want you to do a skeletal scan for the mineral composition of Seifer's bones, and Seifer's bones only. Authorized to take CPU resources from life support and defense systems to expedite results."

"It's a good thing everyone's unique configuration is on file everywhere," Armond added. "And, that we're not in Romulan space. Only right next to it."

The computer clicked for several seconds. "Calculating! Commander Seifer is located on the Bridge, behind the Tactical chair."

"He's over here!" Armond exclaimed as he and the group then shifted their heads slightly to an angle that viewed passed the chair where Seifer was on the floor, back to the console platform, in a dazed, near-incoherent, bewildered state. "You're okay! Hahaha! Oh, we have been looking everywhere for you."

As Seifer was helped to his feet, he began to regain some semblance of focus. "What the hell is going on? I'm getting official today?"

"That's why you need to focus and do everything we say, Commander. Because, frankly, you're wasting a little bit of time right now," Kugo matter-of-facted.

Seifer looked at her, perplexed, before recalling their prize. "Oh! At least the event wasn't a total disaster. When I woke up on the Bridge, I happened to find 8000 ounces worth of bloodwine."

"Oh my God! Wooo!" exclaimed the other three as Seifer kicked open a large compartment that rolled out their illicit prize of an over-sized barrel of Klingon alcohol.

---

Later, in the repurposed Conference room, everyone stood ceremoniously in a section off to the side while Seifer and Aeris stood at the front with Admiral Cloud officiating. While that was going on, Armond turned to Monique.

"Listen. About last night. We ended our overall relationship so well, I think a rehash would besmirch it," suggested Armond.

Monique nodded. "It's time I stopped aging myself down for the status quo, anyway. It's freaking my mother out."

"Uggh, the night we had." Meanwhile, Seifer and Aeris spoke between themselves as Cloud was giving a heartwarming speech to all. 

Aeris smirked. "This is weird. Why, after all these centuries, did people allow 'going steady' to become so liturgically ritualistic?"

"Yeah, this is just like how horizontal video capture ruined TikTok Day," Seifer recalled. "How about we just do things without announcing them from now on? Also, I'm pretty sure my symbiont flipped upside-down from last night's festivities."

The Captain nodded. "Agreed." The two of them then left the Conference room, relinquishing everyone's predisposed formality. 

"Who wants to get 'official' this time, yeah? Wooo!" proposed Kugo to all as she kicked the large wall compartment behind them to roll out the over-sized barrel of Klingon bloodwine.