TEST DRIVE #10 - Cetacean Pool and Ten Forward

[tenforward_m]

#1

Option 001. Cetacean Pool/Aquatics Lab: Of all the places in the world, you open your eyes and you find yourself in a medium-sized aquatics laboratory, filled with various living specimens along with various science officers bustling about trying to maintain order. There's much to explore here (and hopefully, in the crew's opinion, not break), but the main attraction is the large pool at the far end of the lab; enormous but tanklike in appearance, it contains several dolphins happily swimming about, seemingly without a care in the world.


2

Option 002. Aboard the Enterprise, Ten Forward: You have no idea what just happened. One minute you were home, and now you're on a spaceship, in the middle of a crowded room. It looks like a bar. There are people eating and drinking, some in uniform, others not. Some are clearly aliens.

You've managed to land in Ten Forward a long bar with barstools and a bartender, tables sprinkled throughout, and the far wall is nothing but windows out to space. It looks like a nice lounge, low conversation making the room hum.

Better ask some questions and find out where you are, or just tap the closest person on the shoulder and try to make friends. The bar is open.

Comments

Re: Option 2

[kaylinneya]

She nodded, then tipped her chin up again. "Yes sir, Private Neya of the Hawks. I do not know how much, if anything you have been told about me, Sir, but I wanted to present my case in person, since I saw you here."

"I work hard. Protecting people, solving crimes, it is all I have ever wanted to do since I was 13, sir." She was used to dealing with the Hawklord, and usually in so much trouble that adding a few extra "sir"s in here and there could only help her.

"I do not know how long I am here, sir, but while I am here, I want to serve. Here I have been provided with food and a room that is just my own. I am unused to charity, and uncomfortable with it. I wish to serve while I am here, earn my keep, and perhaps a few coppers besides. Sir."

And all of that might have been impressive... if not for the salute. Not only wasn't it necessary... it was sloppy, the wrong hand, and... her palm was up.

Re: Option 2

[rikered]

'Sir' doesn't hold any particular charm for Riker, he's more interested in the person making the platitudes. He listens to her case carefully, "There is no need to salute. Tell me about a couple of these cases that you've solved." He likes specifics, it's one thing to say you can do something, another to have actually done it.

Trying to remember all the sailent points of this case.

[kaylinneya]

"Yes, sir," she said, letting her hands fall to rest easily on the pommels of her dagger. It is clearly her "Ready" stance, and not any form of threat or intentional aggression.

She debated for a moment, over which cases to discuss. Not the one where she lost her temper...and her control. Yes, for what those *****s were planning to do to those children, had done to other children, they would not have left that basement alive anyway, but it was the way she killed them more than the fact of it that made her shy away from that case.

Probably better to go with more recent cases, anyway. Her best story, she figured was how she figured out who had poisoned the Lord of The West March, even if it did paint Lord Evvarim in a better light than he deserved, but she realized that she couldn't spill the secrets of the High Court and that there would be too many Barrani out for her head if she mentioned the undying under the High Halls. So she changed her focus to another recent case.

"We were dispatched to investigate a disturbance at Evanton's shop, on Elani street. When we arrived, his board proclaiming his wares was not out, which while atypical for Elani street was not all together atypical for Evanton. He is known to be..."

what could she say that wouldn't insult the only person on the whole ***** street she actually LIKED? What had Tiamaris called him...?

"Taciturn." At least, she thought that was the word. It had been in High Barrani so had way more syllables than it needed, anyway.

However something was clearly amiss. Cautiously we requested entrance. Nothing seemed out of place in the shop itself." Even seeing as a Hawk sees, she wasn't fully certain she could have noticed if it was, cluttered as the interior was.

"Evanton denied having filed a report, but allowed that one might have been sent. He admitted that something had been stolen. What he showed us there after I am not allowed to discuss with any who had not been there themselves." In an emergency, however, that rule would be out the window. Gods, she'd brought a DRAGON into the Garden unbidden.

"In the course of investigating his holdings, we learned that a reliquary was stolen from a room that should have been inaccessible to any but him. We discovered two sets of footprints not his and not our own. One belonged to an adult, another to a child." her face pinched with pain, thinking of what had happened to Mayalee, what had almost happened to her.

"We also came upon evidence of a missing child that turned out not to be Mayalee, but another. In trying to find this missing child, whom we thought was the one that had been brought to the Ga.... to his shop" and she had, just not in the lifetime of anyone living in the city... "we went to missing persons. While my partner spoke to the man in charge of that department," he face clearly showed how little she thought of that snake of a man. Her hatred of him had only grown since, and she hoped never again to see him behind Marcus' desk...

"I consulted with the Tha'alani on duty, to see of a child matching the one I saw evidence of had been reported missing." At the word Tha'alani her face filled with too many emotions to be easily read. Where normally she was an open book, her memory of the revulsion she had felt in that moment warred with how she felt about the Tha'alani now - protective. She had been a bigot then, she had since learned better, but the conflict showed on her face. Still, her stance did not waver.

"He knew of no such child, but extended to me an invitation from the castelord of the Tha'alani. She wished to see me and it was urgent."

She hesitated, then felt compelled by honesty to add "at this point we were still in theory investigating a report of a theft that was not reported by the victim. As no one had reported the child I saw missing, hunting for her was not...technically... what we were supposed to be doing."

But it was a child. Kaylin would burn herself to a cinder to help a child. And the bruised look in those eyes... She swallowed hard now, even knowing how it turned out. She would never forget how those eyes looked then, she hoped to never see them look that way again.

"As my partner pointed out, we weren't going officially to the Tha'alani quarter, because special request or not, I would not have been the Hawk sent. But we did go, and Ybelline, the caste lord," there was an open look of longing and love on her face at the name - not romantic love - this woman clearly meant something dear to Kaylin. "Ybelline told us that a Tha'alani child was missing. It was not the girl I had seen in the Wa.... the girl I had seen. So now the official case was one missing reliquary, and unofficially...two missing children. There was also a deaf adult Tha'alani missing, but it may or may not have been connected to Mayalee's disappearance." Spoiler alert, it was. Her face all but said so.

"Things connect in odd ways, and we are trained to watch for these connections. I had lessons, in addition to my regular duties, with Sanabalis," she winced, she could almost feel Severn step on her toes. "Lord Sanabalis," she corrected. "And since the reliquary stolen had to do with water, I asked him about water."

Then she looked somewhat grumpy. The whole of her heart could generally be read on her face. "Next I know, I'm in an imperial carriage with him, heading to the oracles!" Again that conflicted look, for at the time she had been sneering and dismissive. It shamed her now that she had felt that way. Now she knew better. They weren't vague on purpose, they were like confused children. Many of them WERE children.

"Everly," gods there were too many E names in her life, "was painting, and we were led in to see him." She swallowed, still a bit shaken by this. "He was painting... me."

Her hands twitched for a moment, she almost reached to touch her arm and stopped herself, forcing palms to remain still on her pommels.

"We followed a few more leads, some from Everly, some not. The first break in the case unfortunately came from a death. A couple were killed, drowned, without water anywhere but in their lungs. The reliquary.

"We consulted with the Arkon, and were shown to one of the older galleries." Where she was told to touch nothing, and utterly failed to follow that order when she found the trapped spirit of a dragon housed inside the bones of his human form.

"In the gallery I found an amulet that no one else could see, and at its heart...was the True Word for Water. I promised the guardian who had protected it all these centuries that I would find the proper home for it, with someone who did not seek to use its power."

"My investigation then took me to the fiefs, and the old magic at Castle Nightshade," she made a face, she still hated when she had to step into that place, and not just because the entry portal made her sick.

"I went to discuss the adult Tha'alani with the fief lord, for he had been Nightshade's guest the first time he left the quarter. For the first time, the Castle denied me entrance through the front. Nightshade showed me the back entrance, however he could not accompany me. I climbed down an old well for miles before falling into a subterranean river. The water caught me, and saved me, and I thought that it had been the amulet, however when Water deposited me on a spit of dry land..."

"The child I had seen was there," she whispered, eyes misting slightly, pain and hope mixed in her face. "She was a child and she wasn't. She was Elemental Water itself, and she was suffering because of the Reliquary, because someone was using it to force her essence against her will. She appeared to me as a young girl, knowing that I would do anything to help her, just as she was male when she appealed to Uri...."

she shook her head slightly. "She asked me for help, then aided me into the castle. The conversation with Nightshade yielded a name. Donalan Idis. Investigating the name in Records, we learned much about him." More than she had ever wanted to know. She spent whole nights tossing and turning in bed, trying to forget. She swore softly; in Leontine, which did not sound too unlike a human trying to mutter in Klingon. Unfortunately for her, the ever helpful translators told Riker exactly what creative obscenity she had used.

"He had been a torturer for the emperor, before the Tha'alani made a pact to help ferret out truth from lies in a criminal's testimony. But his focus was on the Tha'alani themselves, and their mind reading abilities. He..." she swallowed bile and rage together, "he experimented on them, cruelly, trying to reproduce their abilities, torturing and maiming them in the process."

She felt the need to add this, to explain to Riker so he would not fear the Tha'alani as she once had. "The Tha'alani don't want to touch our minds, they don't want to read our secrets. Our fears and shames hurt them, scar all but the strongest if them, the Tha'alanari. The ones who can work with the deaf, with us." Not that Ybelline would use that word. "They agreed to serve the emperor to stop the torture."

"So the interrogation dungeons were closed, the surviving Tha'alani were sent home with little more than apologies," she said darkly, fury on her face. It wasn't safe, back home, to express these emotions about the eternal emperor, but Kaylin never could keep her face impassive. Theoretically that was what Lord Dimat was supposed to be teaching her.

Idis and his foul ilk were disbanded, told to live normal, legal lives. But he cared more for his experiments than anything else." Her fingers curled over the pommels of her daggers. "He continued in secret. He convinced the boy, Grethan, to kidnap the child. He used Grethan to sneak into Evanton's to steal the Reliquary. He had discovered the connection between Water and the Tha'alani, or thought he had, and he stole away to where Water would be strongest, to try and take their powers for himself. He almost destroyed the city. He hurt Mayalee." It was clear her priorities were skewed somewhat, as the second produced more anger than the first.

But she continued her report.

"Donolan Idis is... no longer a danger. To anyone. Grethan helped save Mayalee and since it was a caste issue, Ybelline did not bring the case to court. We got Mayalee home," and oh the relief and joy in her voice at that simple word, at the memory of bringing Mayalee and all the orphans into the Tha'alani quarter. Because Mayalee had asked Severn if Kaylin had any children...and he said yes, meaning the foundlings. "Grethan now works for Eveanton, which is punishment enough for anyone." She muttered those last words under her breath in Aeriean, which the translator again fixed into English for Riker.

"Do you want to hear next about how I cleared my Sargent for being framed for murder, when he wanted to stay in jail to save his wife, and we wound up able to keep her safe as well?" she asked, trying to bring herself back to easy ready, loosening her fingers.

The trick would be making that report without mention of the mirror, Richard Rennick, or Constance Mallory....

[rikered]

Riker is very interested in the whole tale, and it shows. His body language is open and he's leaning forward. He doesn't interrupt to ask questions because he wants to hear the whole tale uncoloured by his own questions. Despite the strange names and places, its easy to pick out the qualities that she possesses and how she reacts in a stressful situation. She is very promising.

"What would you have done if you had been too late to save the girl? Would you have sought revenger?"

[kaylinneya]

"On Idis or on Grethan?" she asked, then gave a small fief-shrug. "Idis had a writ out for his death, by imperial order. Between Severn and Tiamaris, Idis was not my concern, and even if I had gone for him, I would not have been the first to reach him. As for Grethan..."

She shrugged again. "I wanted him behind bars, I wanted him to pay for what he did to her, what had almost happened, I wanted him to face the law. However... He had managed to get into Evanton's without Eventon's assistance, which..."

She shook her head. "Eventon hired him to be his assistant, and that may well be worse than than jail time, in all honestly."

Her lips quirked into a wry smile. She liked the old man, and she was one of the few people he liked, and even she felt the sharp side of his tongue more often than not. Of course... this was the man who knew to hid the keys in his biscuit bin. He knew her. And... he trusted her.