==/-\== ODA Room ==/-\== The door swooshed open and Lance Corporal Cortez walked out of Major Walsh's office. As the door swooshed shut behind him he scanned the floor for dirt, ignoring the three figures on the far side of the room who were waiting for him. "You ready" one of the figures said loudly, "Lets go!". The three figures were fellow ODA team members and all had the night off. The four men, (including Cortez), had finished their shifts and had plans to head over to Bragg to drink as much booze as was humanly possible before first call in the morning. Cortez couldn't help but smile and then he began to chuckle to himself. "We're not going anywhere tonight guys" he finally said. Before anyone could respond, he continued, "Walsh says we got the floor muddy after we came back from our run yesterday and we have to clean it before we can head over to Bragg." Allen, who was one of the three waiting figures contorted his face into a strange shape, "What? The run was on the holodeck, we couldn't have brought any mud back with us." Cortez continued to chuckle softly, "Would you like to go tell him that?", he said, pointing to Walsh's office. "Awww hell", Allen whined, "it's gonna take us all night", he finished, then kicked the wall. The rest of the ODA let out a few expletive curse words and after a few minutes of griping everyone resigned themselves to the task at hand and started pulling out the cleaning supplies and getting to work. Cortez picked out an old worn out mop and dipped it into a bucket filled with soapy water, he then pulled it out of the water and dropped it onto the floor. He swiped the end of the mop over the floor a few times and then repeated the process. He became so engrossed with cleaning the floor that he forgot about everything else and just focused on making sure every single piece of dirt was off the floor. He was so caught up in the cleaning that he almost didn't see Commander Guzman enter the room. "ATTENTION", Cortez yelled out as loud as he could, dropping his mop at the same time so that he could salute the XO. The loud call to attention startled Allen causing him to trip over a bucket filled with soapy water and fall to the ground, spilling its contents all over him. Cortez saw this out of the corner of his eye and did everything he could not to laugh and keep a straight face as Commander Guzman passed through the room. Luckily the XO didn't want to stay and chat, and only gave a polite nod in recognition of being saluted, then vanished into Major Walsh's office. Once the door swooshed shut, Cortez couldn't hold it anymore and busted out laughing. Turning around he noticed everyone else was laughing too and that Allen was still laying on the floor, also laughing. A few minutes later the team quieted down and got back to the art of cleaning the floor. As Cortez bent down to pick up the mop that he had dropped he heard some yelling coming from Major Walsh's office. "Quiet", Cortez said pointing towards the office door. Cortez then crept up to the side of Walsh's office and placed his ear to the wall, trying to listen in on the conversation. The rest of the team crowded up behind him, trying to do the same thing. Unfortunately the words were un-audible, but it was obvious from the tone of their voices that Major Walsh wasn't getting another promotion. After a few seconds more, the room became silent and the door started to swoosh open. Cortez had never moved faster in his life and he and the other three men quickly jumped up and made it look like they were cleaning the walls. Luckily for the four awkward looking ODA members, the XO didn't even seem to notice them as he walked out of Walsh's office and quickly exited the ODA area. "I think we should get back to work", Cortez said glancing over at Allen, who's uniform was still soaking wet. ==/-\== END LOG ==/-\== Lance Corporal Richard Cortez ODA Weapons Specialist USS Chimera + NPC Allen ODA Team Member