=/\= Messhall =/\= A steaming plate of spegetti lay untouched on the far corner table of the dining hall. Xenai, sitting infront of it, had forgotten the food and why she had come to the hall in the first place. She glared at her padd. The warpcore was at peak efficiency, the cloaking device was calibrated, and the naccelles were running within a 0.001 relative error ratio. Engineering was in perfect order but she couldnt help but run through all of the stats again. Anything that still needed to be done, anything they missed, she was searching for anything to keep her busy. The padd beeped in defiance. Defeated, Xenai set it down on the table and returned her attention to the plate infront of her. Picking at it aimlessly, she faught back thoughts of the past few weeks. Life aboard the Chimera had returned back to its normal feverish humm. The crew quickly recovering from the trauma that kinsi inflicted. Well almost, Lt.Blackburn was still sick, still comatose from the pollen. He was agood officer and an even better engineer. Xenai had looked forward to serving under him. She sighed and pushed the plate away, It could have been her there in sickbay, laying halfdead on some biobed. She stifled a twinge of guilt. Maybe if she had gotten to the ship just a week earlier she could have helped prevent some of the damage. But as it was, she was just an oblivious bystander. Xenai had been lucky, lucky to have returned when she did, lucky to have met up with Idrani and the rest of the group, lucky to have escaped unscathed. "Ensign Idrani" she repeated his name outloud. Xenai tried to picture him again as she had remembered him from the academy. The tall stoic andorian with a sharp wit and killer aim. Xenai chuckled inwardly. She had been so caught up in herself and her duties, she hadnt had the chance to say anything more than 'Hi'. There was buzz on the ship that if Lt.Blackburn failed to return, Idrani would be acting chief. He had already taken charge, and Xenai could think of no better man to takeover as CEO. Her Padd beeped, inturupting her train of thought. "New orders" she read aloud, to no one in particular. {20 kids... mostly teenagers... for a week} Xenai frowned {that cant be right!} She read the orders again just to be sure. And sure enough, The USS Chimera, pride of the starfleet special forces was stuck with babysitting duty. It was time like these she was gratefull that she was an engineer, making a mental note to find some very boring assignment for herself in the depths of engineering, and hide there until they depart. She scrolled through the rest of her messages. Several officers had recieved promotions, and the CO was taking a leave of absence. She paused for a moment, trying to imagine how stressful it might have been to try and command a ship full of lunatics and save a homicidal starbase. She continued through the messages, finding one particularly interesting. It was a note from the councellor. {the last thing i need is a psychological evaluation} Xenai thought, cautiously opening the message. To her surprise, an animated invitation to a cookie party danced on the screen. {a cookie party} She frowned at the screen as she read through the specifics of the party. {This could be interesting} she thought, but her mind flooded with consequences and doubts. Maybe it really was just a cleverly deisguised psychological evaluation. But she checked her paranoia, and kept reading. One thing she had regretted about her previous posts was how isolated she was from the rest of the crew. It was nobodies fault but her own, and it was up to her to rectify it. One problem still existed though. She couldnt bake cookies to save her life. Xenai could make the replicator do backflips, she could probably build the oven itself from scratch, but cookies were a whole other matter. She decided to save them the pain and save her socializing for another occasion. Xenai slipped the padd in her pocket and made her way out of the mess hall, leaving the spagetti untouched, still steaming on the corner table. Ensign Xenai Alshain AEO USS CHIMERA