Food Court In Session

Posted on Sat Jan 25th, 2020 @ 8:02pm by Petty Officer 1st Class Keth Soban
Edited on on Tue Feb 4th, 2020 @ 10:58am

Mission: S2:1: Into The Drowning Deeps
Location: Medina Level, Canopus Station
Timeline: MD 2 : 14:45

You noticed the teeth first when you met a Huanni.

This is not to say they do not have many more flamboyant traits. Their ruff like mane of fur. Their big luminous eyes. The stature that would give Atlas envy. Or that the fact that, for a species with a mean average of two and a half meters in height, they could move as silently as a shadow. These were things people knew. But the teeth held a special place in the mammalian heart. They awoke, nearly universally in all species, a tiny little voice that remembered some long distant epigenetic memory of being chased up a tree by teeth just like those.

Teeth that were not designed for spaghetti, and yet Keth had piled his plate high with noodles in red sauce.

"Hello!" Keth said as he sat down opposite Aimee in the Medina level food court. His two trays of noodles and breadsticks rattled a little as he manoeuvred them a little, and certainly not because he was nervously batting at them. "You smell new. And by new I don't mean you were born, like, a minute ago! I mean new as in new to the station! Which means we've not met, and this is a perfect chance for me to make a good first impression before anyone else might warn you about me. Have people warned you about me? I know on my last posting there was a newsletter, and I think a support group but I could never find them. They were very quick to relocate."

He half out a handful of partially crushed breadsticks.

"Can't be quick if you're digesting delicious sensory delicacies!" he grinned...showing off those teeth.

Run, the small lemur from the dawn of time whispered. Run and don't look back or he'll eat you tail first!

Aimee had literally just sat down at an empty table looking forward to some alone time though the crowded Promenade made that nothing more than a moot point anyway. In front of her a chicken caesar salad and a cup of coffee... She had literally just picked up her fork when the sound of a moving seat and the voice of someone interrupted her. Aimee tightly closed her eyes, let a heavily laced sigh, and looked towards her uninvited guest who immediately began to speak.

Something about her smell? Aimee lowered her fork and the overwhelming desire to stab this newcomer where he was sitting began to take shape in her mind, she had noticed just how quickly he made things awkward. It was truly a new record only matched by that Benzite Petty Officer from earlier in the day, "I smell new?" She questioned without really giving much thought to her question. 'Can't I just have a normal, healthy assignment? One where I am not bombarded by the clinically insane?' She thought to herself through the faked smile on her features.

"Can I help you?" She finally asked.

"I dunno if you can," Keth said with a sigh so heavy it had to be carried out of the room by a team of stevedores. He then put all of the breadsticks he'd had in his hand (Paw? It was hard to say which it was really) into his mouth. This was done the same way a normal person might throw back a handful of very small, ineffectual breath mints. "I mean can anyone help when your existential raison d'être has been shifted from one thing to another, leaving you with deep questions about your sense of worth, well being, and your place in the grand scheme of things?'

He took another palm-full of breadsticks and down they went into the furnace of his gullet.

"And Huanni have a very acute sense of smell. It makes up 40% of our language you know. Along with small motions of the ears, tail, and ruff. Spoken is really more of a modern invention in the last two hundred years. So yes you smell new. You smell like ozone, disinfectant, the fuzzy transporter smell that makes my fur stand on end, and not at all, unlike a strange blue-skinned alien I saw having a fight with a pastry chef earlier today," Keth leaned in to speak in confidence, his voice hushed. Which to Keth just meant that he could be heard with excellent quality up to four tables away. "He was a strange one if you get my drift."

Aimee's appetite was immediately lost as she put the fork down, leaned back in her chair, and crossed her arms. 'God must hate me or something...' She thought to herself as this cat man-thing began to speak to her with a full array of nonsensical phrases about smells among other things. "I don't think I've ever met a Huanni before now," She muttered under her breath so that he would just barely understand what she had said. "You said something about a support group?" She asked him with her left brow slightly raised above the other.

"Oh yeah," Keth said as he took in another lungful of breadsticks. "They kept changing venues, and one time I found them in a maintenance crawl space they used a site to site transport to run away. It was the best hide and seek league I've ever been a part of! Its a shame they all chose different corners of the Federation to be assigned to."

That's what she was going to do... She was going to make a support group or something to help save her fellow crewmen from the cruel fate of having to meet this person. Was this the same experience Sharona had with Bar'soon'fo'da'gree'nars, Third of his Title, holder of the lightning throne, guardian of the sacred skulls of Antiok and ruler of the world of Shishimi and all its celestial companions? She didn't know, but more than anything she wanted Sharona there now so that she could use the Knack on this Huanni and rescue her. "Counselor Aimee Paulsen," She finally said out loud, "Counselor of this station," Aimee concluded. "I don't believe I got your name Mister...?"

"Soban! Keth Soban, Petty Officer 1st Class! I was Captain Ingram's lucky assistant until recently," Keth said happily. "Then I was reassigned to the Science Department because my skills were being underutilised according to Captain Ingram. Now I am making a valued contribution to Station efficiency by making sure all of the reports and scientific notations are up to code."

Aimee continued to sit there with her arms crossed over her chest realizing that he was persistent and that her lunch would not return to the uninterrupted state it had been in only moments earlier. She nodded as he explained to her what his task was on the station and realized it could be a bit worse. At least he wasn't nearly as brutal as that Benzite Petty Officer... "I see," She said nodding quite slowly as she contemplated what to say to him.

She may as well do her job for posterity sake, "How do you know that this group of people had some sort of support group going? It sounds to me like they were just trying to have private time..."

"Really?" Keth said. One of then plates of noodles had vanished somewhere between syllables, and Keth contemplated her statement. "Yeah...Yeah I guess that could have been a reason. I'm from a planet with 30 billion people on it, so this is a pretty sparsely populated station in comparison. I mean you have doors that close, that's pretty wild."

Keth eyed the other plate of noodles, and then instead leaned closer, tapping one claw-tipped digit to his nose.

"And I knew about the meetings because I am a master detective. I see the patterns others miss, and more often than not make the deductive reasoning leaps that only the best can make. It's why Captain Ingram always insisted I be his lab assistant, and gave me detailed instructions on what to do in his lab. You see..." Keth said, and then looked around to make sure no one but the people staring at them was listening. "...I'm Captain Ingram's spy. Of course, he never said that in so many words, because of security right? But everything I see I tell him because then he tell's me I've done a very good job, and thats the best thing in the world really. That sort of positive feedback is so rare."

Aimee wasn't entirely buying this spy business that this strange man was telling her about, "Oh really?" She questioned somewhat rhetorically, however, given what she understood to be the case with Keth thus far she anticipated him not gathering that there was a bit of sarcastic interlude buried into her question. She knew he'd answer it even if she didn't want his answer, much less cared for it. Her salad remained sitting in front of her, but she ignored it.

"So tell me more about the places you were stationed at Keth?" She asked having decided to simply go full Counselor and analyze the man perhaps she could prepare the proper report that would finally rescue the crew of Canopus from his obnoxiously annoying behavior. She could have him locked away for being mentally unfit for duty perhaps?

"Oh tons of places! I was on Phebe Station for a while, that's in the Sol system, doing fluid dynamic work on the high-pressure hydrogen sea under Saturns atmosphere. Then I was put aboard the USS Hanoi as part of the science team, and then the USS Charleton, Pennyworth, Starbase Fourteen, and then the USS Odyessy where I worked with Dr Ingram. I've seen a lot of postings in my few years in Starfleet as part of the Huanni Social integration Programm," Keth said as his other plate of noodles vanished. "Most of the time its lab work, or report gathering. A lot of double-blind studies, which I'm sure as a trained ship's counsellor you're familiar with."

"I've never done double blind studies, but yes I know of them," She informed Keth. "Why were you on so many ships and stations?" She asked next and waited for some juicy, 'AHA got you' moment...

"Well...well see now, that's a question about biology," Keth said with a nervous grin, showing off more of those sharp feline teeth. "See the Huanni have only been a sapient species for about two thousand years. So our bodies are mostly unchanged from when Huan was a jungle planet. Its why we're big and muscular compared to other humanoids. It also means our thyroids and pituitary glands are underdeveloped. Great for firing up the old fight or flight reflex, but not so much for this."

Keth got a little quick, looking down at his paws.

"So...sometimes I might, might I say, overreact or jump to a conclusion. And I get excited really easy because this is all really exciting, space and science and everything. And the Federation is really nice, but some things are harder to get than others," Keth chuckled. "I mean I'm better at shaking hands than I was when I first arrived at Starfleet Academy. I mean I send flowers to Boothby every year to make up for dislocating his arms with the handshake. And then there was that one time I was on a diplomatic mission and I had to defend the ambassador and the Captain from a rabid targ? Commander Kyle said he was okay, and the doctors say he only needed four surgeries to fix his legs after I'd used him to beat the Targ to death. And the Klingon's sent me a really nice gift basket to say thanks."

Aimee was still leaning back in her seat with her arms crossed listening to this strange cat thing talk to her all while ignoring the fact that watching him swallow the sheer amount of food had made her lose her appetite. Every so often she would nod her head as she analyzed him and wondered what kind of crazy person would ever allow someone like this to join Starfleet. Then, she was allowed to stay in the service following her transformation.

At least Keth seemed to be ignoring the fact that he, by all accounts, was speaking to someone who looked, talked, sounded like, and so on... A thirteen-year-old who really never missed the days when she was thirteen. "You used a man to beat up a Targ?" She asked finally, "And, you hurt Boothby?" Was her next question. Her head was now tilted, "Have you ever considered not using such... Bizarre methods to defeat enemies? I mean Boothby was an accident, but why would you use a man to beat up an animal?"

"Because Captain Barth banned me from using phasers after the incident with the bowl of pop-corn," Keth said with a defeated sigh. He looked dejected, and then noticed her barely touched plate of food. "Hey...I mean if you're not hungry or anything?"

Aimee shrugged before sliding the plate forward, "Why couldn't you just replicate some popcorn?" She returned to her initial position having her arms crossed over her chest and leaned back into the chair again. "Unless of course," She began quietly, "You were banned from using the replicators in which case why were you banned from using those?"

"Infinite pudding," Keth said hurriedly, looking around. "I'm not meant to talk about it."

"Infinite pudding?" Aimee questioned rhetorically and then proceeded to imagine a replicator producing copious amounts of pudding and the engineering staff trying to fix the problem. The vessel probably never was the same after so much pudding. "Is there anything you're not banned from using?" She asked him. To be frank Aimee had forgotten the whole purpose of this entire conversation due to her own intriguing sense of interest in Keth. He was so strange, a mystery that couldn't be solved, but not such a mystery that she wouldn't continue to unravel.

Keth nodded.

"In-win-it ru-din-ing." He said around a mouthful of salad.

Aimee nodded slowly finding that she wasn't entirely certain what he had said as she stood up, "Well it was interesting meeting you Mister Soban, but I must return to duty." She said aware that she had appointments. Aimee also, while finding Keth to be something of an interesting mystery, hoped that she could avoid him in the future. And, she needed to force herself to eat in her office more often from now on too.