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Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

[PO2 Kino Jeen | Deck 16 | Vector 3| USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae

Life could be complicated enough, but living day-to-day with the memories, habits, and experiences of multiple people was considerably more so; a fact of life that the silver-haired Security NCO faced with mounting irritation as she marched through the hall traffic. A towel hung around her neck, hair slick with sweat; all she wanted was a damn shower and some rack before resuming her regular duty shift. But noo, you decided to transport to the wrong fucking Vector again, because you can’t keep your shit together, she growled at herself.

The sleeveless t-shirt she wore was soaked, sticking to her skin as the sweats on her legs swished with every elongated stride. Ain’t it bad enough that I keep ordering food that I don’t even know, or wake up fucking crying from someone else’s pet dying, or sketching structural schematics of who-knows-what? Can I just get to my damn room?! Lost in her own silent tirade, her shoulder clipped a passer-by who was nose deep in his PaDD; science or medical by the color of his collar. “Shit,” Kino grunted as she spun, “sorry, my fault,” she paused, but the guy just shrugged and muttered an acknowledgement before resuming his reading. Yeah, fleet’s finest right there, she snorted before resuming her stride, taking a deep breath. Square yourself away Kino. This shit is un-sat.

Another two dozen paces brought her stomping to a halt before the door of her quarters. She ran the towel through her hair as she punched a code into the access console, which promptly blurted an error chime. For fucks sake, Kino sighed, narrowing her eyes at the display.

[Access Denied: Code Invalid]

“What. The. Fuck,” she hissed as she tried the code again, and the same error chime. Realizing what she’d done, again, Kino gripped the towel around her shoulders with both hands, leaning her head back as her mismatched eyes screwed shut. “One of you is laughing, and you can eat my whole ass,” she deadpanned to the ghosts in her head. The sound of the door opening suddenly made Kino crack her natural eye open, revealing a fiery-headed figure; another Trill, no less. Out-fucking-standing. This’ll be fun to explain.

“Uh, hey,” she muttered as one hand gave a sad, slow pantomime of a wave. “Don’t suppose you’re in the wrong room, huh,” she asked dryly.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #1 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

Azrin wasn’t sleeping well. Her fight with insomnia was getting depressingly commonplace, an issue that had hounded her since she’d been thawed from stasis. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself that there wasn’t a problem - “I slept for six months straight! I have a surplus of sleep stored up!” - she remembered enough of Dezra’s medical jargon to know that wasn’t how sleep worked. Zark’s suggestion that she go to therapy was great and all, but apparently they’d never considered that Azrin didn’t have time. She’d been promoted to assistant chief right off the bat, the ship was damaged, there was a slipstream drive to master, the warp cores weren’t all humming at the same frequency… basically she had a workload that should have ensured she fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, if not before.

The state of her quarters told a different story. Only a few days post move-in, the room was in a state that would have put her on probation back at the Academy. The table was no longer fit to eat on, covered with the disassembled components of what had once been a tricorder, a medical tricorder, a miniature holo emitter, and a few parts of the (now inoperable) replicator. A toppled over stack of PADDs was taking over the couch, each screen detailing a different aspect of the ship’s repair process. Various knick knacks and souvenirs were on the floor lining the walls, waiting for her to put up the shelving that was stacked in a corner. A miniature Constitution class starship was floating near the ceiling, where she’d left it to test its antigravs, while a Vesta was upside down in the middle of the bed. The mattress, that was, since the bed clothes themselves were in the middle of the floor, Azrin wrapped up tight inside.

She’d thought that sleeping on the floor would help, but all it was doing was reminding her that the warp cores still needed adjusting, discordant harmonies vibrating through the hull.

By some miracle, she’d finally fallen asleep not long before, in the midst of mentally recalculating power flow efficiency equations. Only to fall into some half assed nightmare where she was onstage in an opulent opera house - probably one of Elza’s venues - where she could only vocalize warp core vibrations. They were in the process of booing her off stage - and who could blame them really, she was horribly out of tune and set to ruin the music career of a host centuries dead - when her song changed to add a strange beeping noise. The warp cores definitely didn’t make that noise.

“Red alert,” she mumbled, half asleep and talking into a blanket. “Something’s gonna explo- oh wait. Nevermind Thea, that’s the…” Her sentence was cut off by a yelp, having scrambled to her feet and tripped up in the bedding, nearly faceplanting back into her pillow again. “Door.” With a groan, she righted herself, took a quick peek down to make sure she was presentable, and went to see who thought five seconds after Azrin fell asleep was a good time for a visit. When it opened, Azrin blinked a few times in confusion, faced with a very pale white haired trill she’d never met before. She knew she looked a mess, rumpled t-shirt and cotton pants, mass of tangled red hair tickling her cheeks and neck. But this other woman didn’t look much better, straight out of the gym. What was so urgent that she’d come before taking a shower?

Or… maybe she was simply lost. The answer to this new trill's question should have been straightforward and rhetorical, but Azrin wasn’t awake enough to take that at face value. “Am I?” she blurted out, immediately questioning everything. She hadn’t lived in her new quarters for that long. Had she returned to her old ones by mistake? Spinning around to look, the sight of her mess was actually reassuring. “No wait, all my stuff is here.” It wasn’t at all sarcastic, the words earnest and tinged with a good helping of relief. Even she couldn’t be sleep deprived enough to hallucinate all of her shit. “Unless you’re also a massive hoarder of all things small and mechanical.” Completing her turn to face her guest again, Azrin asked. “Are you?”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #2 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Outside Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae

Frowning in a not-quite-successful attempt to keep the amusement from her face, Kino let her artificial eye open as she watched the poor redhead try to figure out what the hell was going on. In that instant, all her former irritation vanished as she came face-to-face with someone even more confused than she was.

She’s lost in the sauce. Ah, I could run with this, she laughed silently, crossing her arms to lean a shoulder against the doorway as her eyes glanced at the state of Kaylon’s former quarters. Good night, she shook her head subtly. Might as well come clean, get it over with.

“Um, no I uh…collect cybernetics. Eyeball here, arm and leg there. Almost got the whole set,” Kino shrugged, then shook her head again. “It doesn’t matter. Look, Red, I’m sorry for bothering you – this is my fault. I uh…got confused, and…yeah,” she sighed, closing her eyes as the embarrassing truth spilled out. “This used to be my quarters. Kaylon’s quarters, before he died,” she clarified quickly. “I’m Kino Jeen. I um…I’m having a hard time adjusting to all the…stuff,” she shrugged again, gesturing to her head with a twirl of her fingers. “This is the third time its happened this week,” she grumbled.

Then she arched a dark brow over the redhead’s shoulder. “Uh, like what you’ve done with the place. Old cruiser’s a nice touch,” she deadpanned, pointed to the floating model. “Nothin’ like a little razzle-dazzle, huh,” she added, thick with sarcasm now that she was properly embarrassed.

Dark brows knitted when she noticed the clothes on the floor, and the parts and pieces of tech scattered on the table, causing her head to tilt in confusion. “Is that…a replicator? And why are you sleeping on the floor,” she asked incredulously, as a powerful compulsion to bulldoze past the woman and start cleaning the wreckage surged. The hell is that about, she wondered. Ah, Menara, she remembered; the woman’s obsessive need for absolute order was beyond clinical help.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #3 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters (with one foot in the hallway) | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

“I don't have cybernetics!” she protested instantly, words practically overlapping the other trill’s, blurting out her rebuttal the moment ‘cybernetics’ left the blonde’s mouth. Azrin was a tinkerer, not some mad scientist creating androids in the basement. Big difference. For all she talked like her machines were alive, Azrin was not in the industry of making life.

She would have gone on for longer, still groggy enough to run off at the mouth completely without any sort of filter, but the petty officer dropped the topic and the tonal shift of the conversation was enough to get Azrin’s full attention again. No matter how tired, that mistake in possession was enough for any joined trill to understand. They’d all been there. Every single time, no matter how prepared the Commission claimed they were. A sympathetic look crossed her face, mouth opening to tell her not to worry about it, only to close immediately again. Kino Jeen. Jeen. Where did she know that name from? “Azrin Ryn,” she gave her name off handedly, still lost in thought.

Before Azrin could figure it out, Jeen’s attention went over her shoulder back into the disaster zone. Expression brightening immediately, Azrin dashed back into the room, leaving the door open behind her as an afterthought invitation, sliding to a stop below the floating ship. “Hey Connie! Antigrav mods are working good! At least I think they are? What time is it anyway?” Her head turned on a swivel looking for a PADD that would tell her the time, belatedly registering the rest of Kino’s commentary as her eyes flicked past the offending items. “Temperature gradient on the replicator is a few degrees off, asked for cold water and got a water slushie. I think I fixed it, but I haven’t put it back together yet,” a hand waved vaguely towards the dark replicator in the wall, front panel open wide and missing parts. “And I sleep better on the floor. The hum of the warp core sings me to sleep.”

“You can come in if you want!” Maybe she’d already followed, but Azrin wasn’t turning to check, off towards the couch fo snatch up a PADD, beaming at the Connie that was now confirmed to be in hour six of flight. “It might confuse you more though, you’re supposed to avoid any reassociations early on.” She probably should have asked to make sure she was right, but Azrin was running with the recently joined theory anyway. “I got out of my recovery room and started treating patients, and Dezra never even worked at that hospital.”

There was that hint of memory again. The reason Jeen seemed so familiar earlier… it had something to do with Dezra? Blue eyes finally turned back to stare at Kino again, brows knit with concentration as she tried to remember. Jeen. Jeen. Jeeeeeeen. Not that boring holes in Kino was going to do any good, because if Dezra knew them it would have been a different Jeen… “Ha! I do know you! You were that test pilot! The medical ship picked up his distress signal and made it there before Starfleet. Dezra patched him up! Why didn’t he eject? She was always really annoyed about that.”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #4 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | (Almost in) Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae
[Show/Hide]
Kino's attention wavered from Azrin once the other Trill dropped her name and wandered off to the floating model; her brain worked in stuttering, confused spurts of overlapping recollections. Ryn. Fuck, I know that name…, her dark brows knit as she lingered on the threshold, mismatched blue eyes staring through the replicator pieces, unfocused.

“I can’t go in there. I'll go crazy,” she whispered to herself, dream-like, even as she slowly stepped in anyway. Before she even realized what she was doing, pale hands had picked up the recalibrated replicator parts and were carrying them over to the wall unit, turning them about to make sure it was serviceable. Ryn. Ryn, she blinked slowly, distracted by Azrin telling her she could come in. “Uh, okay,” Kino mumbled, as she started putting the parts back together in the wall unit without even meaning to. 

As she worked and Azrin talked, her ears still functioned but her mind only caught two distinct words: reassociations, which she recognized as a strict law for joined Trill – a cultural taboo to be avoided for the benefit of all parties involved. And a clever way to avoid aristocracy, the rebel in her sneered. The other word was a name. Dezra.

She was in in the process of reconnecting the replicator’s molecular processing matrix when her eyes widened and body stiffened with shock. Waitaminute - Dezra Ryn, that irate, insufferable doctor; fuck me sideways!

Azrin remembered her too, which made the whole situation even more surreal and weird. The room seemed to stretch and vibrate as Kino turned to reply to the other Trill over her shoulder, eyebrow arched. “I told her – repeatedly – I didn’t need to. The cascading power failure forced a full system shutdown to save the bird. The burns weren’t even that bad! And she tried to pull my wings over ‘partial paralysis',” Kino’s face scrunched up in a grimace. “I had a lazy eye,” she deadpanned, shaking her head in irritation. “Got grounded for two months sorting all that out,” she punctuated the point by extending two fingers in the air.

Then the replicator kicked into life, humming lightly as a steaming cup of what looked and smelled like coffee materialized in the receptacle. Kino frowned at it, then looked at the tool in her left hand. “Wait. Wait…what the fuck just happened,” she murmured aloud, unable to process how she just did what she did. Hesitantly, she picked up the cup with her right hand, turning to Azrin and the mess that surrounded them.

“Uhhh,” she arched a brow, “coffee?”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #5 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

Technically, the only real rule about reassociation was meant for family and intimate partners. Azrin had sneered at the one back in the day too, unjoined, raised off world, and full of romantic stories as she was. She hadn’t comprehended how damn confusing everything could be. How simple it would be to get lost in the past and live another host’s life instead of her own. That was the beautiful disaster born of a close bond. Thankfully, Dezra’s memories of Dayak Jeen were nothing more than a minor irritant.

“Sure, because she’d never heard that before. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks! It’s not a third degree burn, you’re overreacting! My eye always looks like that. I’ll walk it off and get to work!’ She was a trauma doc on an emergency aid ship, you wouldn’t believe what people would pass off as nothing major if it meant they could get back down there sooner.” A beep from the model ship distracted her, a sigh falling from her lips as the Constitution started to wobble. Six hours was the limit then. She dashed for the controller - on the bed next to the Vesta - gently lowering the ship back to the floor. “It’s ok Connie, good run. Now, where was I? Oh! You’re probably right about the full system shutdown, but Dezra wouldn’t have known that. I’ve never been a pilot. I was just telling someone else a few days ago how I need to get on that next time around! Maybe I can convince one of the Wolves to give me a lesson in their little ships. Or a shuttle pilot.”

Too busy imagining herself - or a completely different Trill who was also Ryn - as a pilot, Azrin completely missed Kino fixing the replicator until she mentioned the one thing Azrin’s body was begging for. Her caffeine intake had gone insane since being awoken from stasis - not that it had been that healthy before either. Another thing to blame on her insomnia problem.

“Always,” turning towards that wonderful smell, then stopping to blink a few times, because that replicator had been in pieces like… three minutes ago. “Hey, you fixed it.” Sure, Azrin had already done a lot of the work, but somehow that didn’t make it any less surprising. “But do a quick and dirty diagnostic and stick a finger in there to make sure it’s not freezing or boiling first. Are you an engineer too? Or ops?” Or another one of those reassociation things they were supposed to avoid. The rules were a bit more strict for the newly joined and easily confused. It took time to compartmentalize all those memories to the specific host they belonged to. And Kino… Kino definitely had the confused face on.

“We’re going to need to be more awake for this,” she decided, grabbing the offered cup and taking a quick gulp.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #6 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy]Attn: @rae
[Show/Hide]
Okay, this is getting weird now, Kino thought, frozen in place, holding a cup of coffee. “Yeah, I guess,” she mumbled distractedly in reply to Azrin's recollection of Dezra's point of view, her eyes looking down at the coffee in her hand with a face of confusion and skepticism. Eyebrows met together as her eyes slowly moved around the room – trying to retrace her steps and actions. In the few seconds while the redhead fussed over her floating model, Kino came to the conclusion that she definitely should not have come into this room.

I'm losing my fucking mind, she deduced calmly.

The surprise in Azrin’s voice pulled her from that realization however, and upon the request to perform a ‘diagnostic’ to check the liquid’s temperature, Kino just blinked as she tried to figure out if the redhead was joking or not. “Uh,” she tilted her head, then brought the rim of the cup to eye-level. “I mean, it’s steaming, so…,” she deadpanned, eyebrows lifting after Azrin tried to guess her job. Frowning with a huff of dry amusement, she dipped a quick finger in the cup. “Yeah it’s not cold,” she muttered.

The silver haired non-com opened her mouth to continue, but her brain misfired when she was about to explain what department she served in; brows knitted as her eyes and head moved off to the side, then down, as she tried to focus on what the hell she actually did. Fuck, this is crazy, her mind was grinding it’s own gears, shifting from one life’s profession to the next, as her body tensed in alarm. The hell was I doing before I came in here?!

Then it clicked, and Kino's body visibly relaxed after she snapped her fingers. “Security,” she grinned, pointing at Azrin. “That’s what I do! Shit, that was a struggle,” she shook her head as the redhead took the coffee (ignoring the fact that she’d just stuck her finger in it as the redhead tried to gulp it down in one go). Her hands returned to grip the towel still hanging from her shoulders, head cocked as her eyes wandered the room again.

“Never woulda guessed you were engineering,” she muttered, then returned her attention back to the other Trill. “Look Ryn - I’m really sorry about all this,” her fingers twirled around. “I uh, didn’t mean for this to happen – the joining. I mean, I did, but…I didn’t know. I uh…it’s only been a week,” she shrugged weakly, frowning at herself, then sighed as she bent down and picked up a shirt near her feet. “You know you can amplify the warp-core’s harmonics through the audio emitters,” she half asked, half stated, gesturing around the room before folding the shirt and bending to pick up another. “Might help you sleep better…y’know, on the bed,” she muttered dryly, brow arched at the other Trill. “Maybe try a sedative? Y’used t’be a doctor for cryin out loud,” she grumbled as she folded the shirt, placing it on top of the last one, then scooped up another.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #7 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

“Yeah, I guess,”

Kino probably meant that in response to the explanation of Dezra’s mindset, but Azrin took it as affirmation to her half assed plan to get a pilot to teach her to fly a warp fighter. Massive, massive overkill, but wouldn’t it be entertaining? She’d probably be on her way to the fighter bay right now if she hadn’t been distracted by the promise of coffee.

Instead, she was probably going to sickbay, because the coffee she’d chugged was hot. “Oh, shit. Shit,” Azrin sputtered as she spit the drink back into its cup, her tongue tingling as the taste buds burned. “Too hot. Oh yeah, I definitely fixed it.” That was what she’d forgotten. The replicator was making everything too cold, so she’d told it to make everything hotter to compensate until she’d gotten around to fixing it. And now that it was setting the temps correctly again… ow. Safe for a finger, but needed some cooling before it was tongue ready. “Thea! Reset the temperature preferences back to my standard please. And thank you.” Blowing gingerly into the cup, Azrin resisted the urge to drink more. It smelled so good.

That bit of drama had prevented her from responding to Kino’s complete panic over something as simple as her profession, but she turned her focus back to that a moment later. “Yeah, I noticed.” Her grin showed her amusement. Security huh, the replicator stuff was from the last guy then. The assistant chief engineer who’d been in this room before her. “Not to judge you or anything, it happens to everyone. Probably worse than normal if you’re running around the same ship.” And it wasn’t like they could leave or anything, being traitors and all.

What was going to happen to Ryn if she died? Were there other unjoined Trill on board who could save the worm? She hadn’t even thought about that. One more thing to lose sleep over.

That short serious moment was more than enough to ramp her anxiety right back up, unfortunately timed with Kino’s perfectly legitimate suggestions on how to handle her issues. “No!” The word came out a bit louder - and far more terrified - than she’d intended. Her fingers tightened on the coffee cup like it would protect her, the caffeine countering any medications. “No need for sedatives here. I slept for six months. I’m just working off my surplus. Besides, medical science has changed in the decades since Dezra retired from practicing. Might as well do surgery with a knife and thread.” She was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to make light of things, hoping it would distract from her overreaction earlier.

“And audio emitters aren’t the same as vibrations through the hull… um Kino? Why are you picking up my clothes?” She blinked a few times at the small growing pile of neatly folded shirts. They looked out of place, a moment of order in this disaster zone of a room. “Not that the place couldn’t use some organization, but was Engineer Jeen a neat freak or something?” She’d completely blanked on the previous host’s name. She knew she’d read it in the logs somewhere, but it refused to come to her tongue right now. Probably as punishment for burning it.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #8 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae
[Show/Hide]
She was in the middle of folding a pair of pants over when Azrin barked an emphatic negative about taking a sedative; prompting Kino to blink and fix her entire attention on the other Trill as the redhead proceeded to explain herself.

“Alright, Red, take a breath,” Kino muttered as she finished folding the pants. Asleep for six months, she wondered. Ah, stasis, she realized. That was something Kino could relate to, for sure, but there was obviously more to Ryn's sleep troubles. Should probably leave it alone, she considered. There were specialists aboard to handle such things, after all. Yet the sobering memories of being dragged back to life – twice – and everything that had cost her? It brought Kino to the fore in her mind, as the other memories and lives faded into the background.

Looking down at the pile of folded clothes stacked on the bed, then the pants in her hands, Kino frowned back at Ryn. “It’s laundry. You’re supposed to fold it – ya got drawers right there,” she pointed under the bed, behind a row of boxes of…stuff. “And if you keep sleeping on the floor, you’re gonna jack your back up to the point you can’t move – who’s gonna keep your precious warp core singing then, hm,” her voice pitched, once again, into Menara’s grating screech – prompting Kino to clear her throat. “Sorry,” she mumbled, dropping the pants onto the pile.

Hugging herself with a sigh, Kino rolled the tension from her neck. “Kaylon was a mess, like you. Probably would have liked him. I dunno. Look, uh,” she shrugged, “I know what it’s like, waking up from the freezer. Its hell, and it’ll eat you up inside if you let it,” she gave a sympathetic nod, then gestured around the room.“This is your room now. But you gotta do something with this. So, since I’m here, and you’re awake now, how ‘bout we try and square some of this shit away,” she arched a brow at Ryn.

“Ya can’t do your job if ya don’t take care of yourself, chief,” she smirked. “So, you in, or shall we bid this weirdness adieu, adios, see ya when I see ya,” she grinned, head tilted to one side.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #9 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

Yeah, specialists. She really needed to get around to seeing one of those. It was on the list. And she would get to it. Eventually. But somehow it kept falling further and further down the list.

“Comfy blankets, good back muscles. That’s not new. I’ve been doing that for years.” Azrin shrugged, not overly worried about the long term consequences. Also a bit defensive, because a little back pain was not going to keep her away from the warp core. Medical science was great. Dezra had read a paper once about how a Klingon had his entire spinal column replaced. And if the Klingons were doing that, then surely the Federation could figure it out for a Trill if the need ever arose. It would be fine. She had always slept better on the floor. It was totally worth the potential aches.

“You don’t have to leave,” Azrin continued, watching as Kino continued to pick up her clothes. She didn’t move, shifting her weight back and forth between her feet awkwardly and taking another sip of coffee instead. Thankfully it had cooled off slightly, because she’d completely forgotten to check the temperature yet again. “But honestly, it always kind of looks like this? Except for the clothes. And all this,” her finger moved to point at the small objects lining the walls, “should be displayed on the shelves, but I just moved into these quarters and I haven’t put the shelves up yet.” She had everything to securely fix them to the bulkheads now, along with the magnetic strips that kept her things safe on the shelves, but putting them up was less entertaining than fiddling. Azrin was really looking around the room now, feeling the heat enter her cheeks when the extent of the mess really hit her. She’d never been orderly in her personal life - all that focus went into her work - but this was bad, even for her. She was messy, but never dirty. “Yeah, we - I - I should probably clean up some.”

The coffee was gone a moment later, chugged in a few quick gulps before the cup was put back in the replicator for recycling. Then she was dashing around the room, quick jerky movements betraying a person who was functioning purely on caffeine. Things had gotten painfully serious for a moment there, adding a pallor to the room that Azrin couldn’t stand, so she immediately started talking again to lighten the mood.

“Totally not the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had though. What I was saying earlier, about how I was confused post-worm and started treating patients? I diagnosed them right, but all my prescribed treatments were for engineering. Told a guy with food poisoning to adjust his intermix ratio. Lethargy? Replace the EPS conduit. Pain in the symbiont? Get a new one out of storage and swap the parts out. Then I got into arguments with them when they didn’t immediately agree with my expert medical analyses. The nurse who caught me tried to take me to a psych ward before the Symbiosis people found me. Good fun.” As she rambled, Azrin had gathered up a pile of clothes, dumping them unceremoniously in a bin for later washing. This sudden agreement to clean was one thing, but she wasn’t about to start folding.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #10 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae
[Show/Hide]
She couldn’t help rolling her eyes as Azrin defended her odd sleeping arrangements; it all sounded so similar to the ‘oh, it’s fine, I can take it,’ mentality of pretty much everyone that’s ever been called out on their unhealthy habits. Kino just shook her head subtly however, smirking at the irony.

Then her grin faltered watching Ryn as the redhead fidgeted, looking around the room; even after Red said she didn’t have to leave, it felt like Kino had crossed a line. Ah, shit, she sighed to herself. It seemed that her mouth had betrayed her intentions – instead of motivating Azrin, she'd embarrassed her, making the situation worse. Yet ol’ Red pulled herself together in the end; chugging her coffee like a cold glass of beer – which made Kino’s eyebrows elevate in amusement.
 
The next thing Kino knew she was stumbling out of the engineers way as the woman rambled, darting all over the room like a chicken with its head cut off. “Thought those were clean,” Kino mumbled, pointing at the pile of clothes Ryn scooped up, but Red was mid-ramble and jacked up on caffeine. Eh, nevermind. “I’ll just…uh,” she looked around, wondering where to start. “Shelves,” she snapped her fingers, nodding. “I can do shelves.”

It took her a few times to get to them, trying to stay out of Ryn’s way. The redhead’s movements were unpredictable – jumping from one task to the next without really finishing either. Shit, lady, slow down, Kino laughed. When she finally got to the bulkhead by the window, there was a PaDD placed haphazardly on the stack of shelves. Kino picked it up to set it aside, glancing at it as the screen flicked to life – her eyes narrowed at it; a three dimensional layout of the room, laid out like schematics, the position and anchoring of the shelves highlighted in yellow. She even listed installation steps, Kino chuckled.

After gathering up the necessary materials and tools, Kino paused as an idea flickered through her head, turning to frown at the bed. Meh, leave it be, she shook her head, chuckling at Ryn’s nervous rambling as she started anchoring the shelf struts. “Yeah, sounds fun – kinda wish I’d taken the whole thing more seriously now. I mean, I never even applied with the Commission. Pretty sure I’ll catch hell for this if we ever make it back home,” she shrugged, then anchored another strut. “I mean…I’m just a grunt. Helluva thing huh,” she smirked, setting the first shelf in place. Taking a step back, Kino closed her real eye to glare at it with her cybernetic, zooming in on the bulkhead seams to check its alignment. “Heh, right on the money,” she grinned. “Whatcha think,” she beamed at Red.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #11 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

“Naw.” Truthfully, Azrin hadn’t been listening to everything Kino had been saying, her own wild conversation blocking out any responses. She’d paused for a moment while gathering the bedding off the ground to send it for washing too, distracted by a metallic clink that had sounded when something had fallen from the sheets to hit the ground. “They give leeway to emergencies in deep space. Trust me, all those people care about is that the symbiont survived. They’d be all sorts of helpful if you went to Trill right now. A little condescending sometimes, but that’s not because of you. I swear being pretentious is a requirement for those p- ah ha! There you are!” The bedding was unceremoniously dropped to the floor again as Azrin finally spotted the newly revealed tefloflex spanner. She’d been using it on the Constitution model the day before. “Must have fallen in the bed.”

“The first time I applied, they kicked me out first round. Had to go back a few years later and try again. And I’m a mess, so if I can do it…” Laughing cheerfully, she went to put the spanner on the table, belatedly realizing that one of her shelves was… on the wall. “Did you just do that?” she asked, pointing the spanner towards the shelves in case it wasn’t totally obvious that she was talking about them. “That was fast.” And accurate, she noted with approval, beaming at them. Yes there were instructions and schematics. Because last time she’d let ops do it, they’d completely screwed everything up. “Thanks!”

Seeing a new and far more enjoyable task on the horizon, Azrin immediately switched to decorating, gathering up her knick knacks and starting arranging them. Her previous tasks were forgotten. The clothes were all in the bin, but she was literally jumping over the bedding as she dashed around, picking things up and putting them back on their new old homes. They were all small, all easily carried around in her palm, little souvenirs and remembrances she’d picked up while traversing the quadrant. But she’d clearly had no theme besides the size, the objects ranging from tourist junk, rocks, crystals, a jar of dirt, a flower held in a stasis cube, a few pieces of machinery that could easily be mistaken with the rest of the junk on the table, a couple wedding rings, miniature holo projectors, an intricate little portrait of another trill, and a Vulcan IDIC symbol carved out of volcanic rock. Even in her overly hyper state, Azrin treated each object carefully, checking the magnetic strip on the bottom of each before locking it in place. She obviously cared about them all, regardless of the differences in quality.

Considering that Kino had only put up one shelf so far, Azrin was definitely in her way. At least it was the top shelf, so everything wouldn’t have to be removed for safekeeping when the others below it went up. “It feels so much more like home when everything’s up.” Like she’d said earlier, massive hoarder of all things small.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #12 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae
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“Yeah, guess that makes sense,” Kino mumbled in reply to Azrin’s assurances that the Commission wouldn’t cause her any grief while she started anchoring the struts for the next shelf. In truth, she wasn’t really worried about it, as she highly doubted she’d ever step foot on Trill again. For reasons.

Then Azrin saw the first shelf and immediately started loading it up with...stuff, forcing her to scoot off to the side and wait. “Damn, red – you got a lotta shit,” Kino muttered where she knelt, eyebrow arched up at the other Trill as she went about, placing her...stuff. Without much else to do (Azrin was standing right in her way) she opted to glance around the room at the progress made so far, nodding at red’s feel-good notion of (finally) making the place her own.

There was still a pile of clothes, which might or might not be clean, and Azrin’s bed was stripped; Kino tilted her head at that, wondering why someone who slept on the floor would bother – but just shrugged. It was all still well beyond Kino’s level of tidiness; but improving. Her dark brows knit then, realizing that for all intents and purposes, her small room was practically spartan. Huh. Maybe I should get something to jazz the place up. Where d'you get this much shit though?

“Eh, it’ll take up too much room anyway,” she shrugged the notion off, then explained herself in case Azrin heard her muttering, which didn’t appear to be the case. “We tend to travel light down on the lower decks – I couldn’t fit half this much shit in my room,” her brows rose as she talked and watched red flutter about, seemingly much happier now. Outstanding – maybe putting all this away will calm her down a bit...eh, wait, thats the coffee, she grinned. “Just lemme know when you want the rest of these bad chicken’s up,” she patted the shelf at her foot, smirking at the caffeine-fueled show.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #13 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

Eventually - when the first shelf ran out of room - Azrin did notice that she’d barreled in far too early, taking a step back to give the unattached shelves a slightly bemused look. “Ah. Got carried away a bit there.” The IDIC in her hand went onto the table, where it would wait until its permanent home was completed. “I didn’t start out with this much stuff. Only a few tiny souvenirs from cool planets my parent’s ship visited. Then it escalated.” A grin peeked out at the last admission, three words that could describe so many aspects of her life. “And I collected broken things from around the ship for tinkering and replicated parts for model ships. I’m surprised ops packed it all away while I was in stasis, most of it could have been recycled.” Her smile faded as she touched a few odds and bobs on the table. She’d been surprised to find all of this junk, neatly boxed up.

“Except for these,” she turned to gesture at the shelves protectively. “These are irreplaceable.” Though that was because of the memories they held, rather than the souvenirs themselves. “Did you get to keep any of your last host’s things?” The question came out rather abruptly. Sort of changing the subject, but not really. “I know you’re not supposed to, but did you sneak something through anyway? I won’t tell anyone.” Her eyes flicked towards the shelf for a moment, but moved away before it was obvious what she was focusing on.

Another hop over the bedding, apparently consigned to remain on the floor forever, and she was picking up some shelf struts of her own. “Next level! Then two more!” Four shelves wasn’t that bad right? As long as all the stuff was small? None of the transporter operators ever complained about it when she changed postings. Ignoring the instructions - she’d made them and knew what they said - Azrin set about attaching the struts to the wall below the first shelf. “I never understood the term ‘lower decks.’ I work in engineering. It doesn’t get any lower than that. Security is way up top somewhere, on - oh what deck was that, I was just there a few days ago - seven! Why wouldn’t lower decks be all of the engineering officers? Where are your quarters anyway?”

Halfway through affixing the strut, Azrin realized she wasn’t being precise enough about it, and put it on the floor as she grabbed a miniature holoprojector. It took her a few seconds to put it back together, but after that it was a simple matter to project a grid on the wall. “Now we can see what we’re doing.”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #14 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae
[Show/Hide]
Kino’s head tilted and her smirk faded when Ryn mentioned her surprise at finding all of her stuff boxed up; it was all procedure of course – the routine packaging and inventory of the personal effects of the deceased – or in Azrin’s case, stasis internment. It sucks, either way, she nodded; doing the packing, or unpacking. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

She managed a grin at the other Trill’s protectiveness for the shelves though, arching a brow at her question about Kaylon’s stuff. “He was a prankster – has all kinds of notes with gags and corny jokes,” her face scrunched up in a brief grimace, not really wanting to deep dive back into the chaotic mess in her head. “But nah. It’d be kinda weird, right,” she answered as red secured the rest of the shelf struts. "B'sides, I got my bow and gear taking up most of the space anyway," she shrugged.

Crossing her legs beneath her, Kino paused to watch Ryn – noting almost immediately that her alignment with the bulkhead seam was off by about half a millimeter. Rut-roh, she grinned, but Azrin caught it – and set up a cool little holoprojector to correct the problem. “Heh, that's handy,” Kino muttered before tapping her cheek, right below her glowing eye. “Should getcha one of these – even handier,” she chuckled. “And it’s just a figure of speech, red,” she shrugged, regarding Ryn’s confusion about the ‘lower decks’, “for us enlisted folk.” Kino grunted a bit, anchoring the strut closest to her, leaving the other two for Azrin. Leaning back a bit, Kino had to admit to that the shelves definitely looked better on the wall, grinning to herself, glad that she helped.

Smirking, she turned her mismatched eyes back to Ryn. “I’m up on Deck 11, Vector 2 – best Vector – we got all the cool shit,” she grinned, knowing an emphatic rebuttal from the engineer would explode out of Azrin for uttering such blasphemy; but cut her off with a follow up question. “What were you in Sec Center for, anyway?”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #15 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

Apparently she was weird. Azrin didn’t dwell on that for very long, being that it was a highly accurate assessment. She was also getting the distinct impression that Kino thought she was a hoarder, another label Azrin couldn’t find fault in.

“Uh, I’ll stick with the holoprojector,” she replied dryly as Kino pointed to her own obviously cybernetic eye. No need to replace an eye that worked perfectly fine. “I’ll remember that if I ever need a new one though.” With her guidelines up, attaching the rest of the struts was a relatively easy task that Azrin hopped right to. Despite procrastinating on it for days, she was suddenly eager to finish. Having someone to talk to helped, giving her something to focus on that didn’t make the work as boring. “And I know it’s a figure of speech,” she wasn’t that dense - usually, “but it’s one that the engineers need to claim for their own!” She thrust a fist in the air dramatically, or she would have, since she’d completely forgotten about the shelf they’d already attached. “Ow! Shit!” Azrin hopped back a bit, waving her hand to get rid of the sting. Up close and personal with the bulkhead to attach the struts, she’d punched right up. “At least we know they’re really secure,” she complained, taking a look at her bruised knuckles. The shelf hadn’t even moved.

She ignored the quip about Vector 2 being cooler. Azrin was fine with people believing that, since the chief engineer also subscribed to the idea, leaving her in control of Vector 3 where the slipstream drive was. If she convinced people otherwise, he was well within his rights to come take it back. She didn’t answer the other question right away, a bit distracted by the new pain in her hand. “I discharged myself from sickbay without permission, because all I was doing was laying in bed and nothing was happening and I really needed a walk.” Flexed her fingers in and out, proving that everything still worked. “The nurses didn’t like that so they sent security after us. Zark was cool though. Nicest arrest I’ve ever had.”

“Wait,” Azrin’s head snapped up and turned to look at Kino. “Did you say bow? As in ‘bow and arrow?’ What do you have that for?” Her voice had all the confusion of someone who really liked technology and couldn’t imagine not using it. Did she use a bow and arrow at work? Was that allowed? Security was crazy.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #16 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae
[Show/Hide]
Kino’s brows shot up, a hand leaping to her face to cover her grin as Ryn punched the shelf – doing her best not to snort a laugh. That’s gotta sting, she giggled quietly, hauling herself up to move to the replicator with a bemused shake of her head. “Cold gel compress, wrap,” she muttered, as red told continued, explaining her run-in with security.

After securing the wrap, Kino turned to Ryn with a look of confusion mixed with incredulity. “You broke out of medical and they sent someone after you,” she asked, bemused. “Damn, red,” she shook her head with a grin, returning to seat herself beside the other Trill as Ryn asked about her bow.

“Hang on, gimme,” Kino gestured to red’s hand with the wrap. Taking her wrist in one hand, she laid the cold gel-pack across her swelling knuckles steadily, then started wrapping the fabric ends up around it as she talked. “Not familiar with Zark, but I’m glad they took it easy on you – medical sucks, so I get the temptation to bounce,” she nodded, smirking. “Damn reckless thing to do though, but hey, I’ve done plenty worse,” she grinned as she tied up the wrap snugly. “There, that’ll keep the swelling down.”

Once that was taken care of, Kino turned to drag a few boxes closer to them so she could start handing more stuff to Azrin, not bothering to ask. “And yeah, bow and arrow. It’s a compound bow – still ancient, but different from the recurve bows you might be thinking of. Its a winch using two systems of block and tackle pulleys – nothin like a little mechanical advantage, eh,” she explained as she handed odd bits of what looked like incomplete parts of mechanical toys over. “I picked it up on Earth, after the war. Was part of my rehab, getting used to this,” she flexed the bio-synthetic fingers of her right hand. “Archery was way easier than holding an egg, believe it or not,” she grinned. “Maybe I’ll show it to you sometime – I like to go to the holodeck and blow shit up once and awhile. It’s fun,” she smirked.

She tilted her head at the next item from the box, brows knitting as she grinned again, looking it over in her hands. “Is this...a warp core diorama,” she asked, amused and impressed at the intricate level of detail. “Please tell me this thing lights up.”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #17 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

“It wasn’t reckless,” Azrin waved away the concerns. Figuratively, because Kino currently had her hand and was wrapping it up. There was absolutely no complaining about that, as the cool gel felt very nice on her stinging knuckles. “They let me out the next morning anyway. I wasn’t that bad off. Worst that could happen was me taking a little nap and someone having Thea beam me back to prison- I mean sickbay.” Same difference. Actually security had been nicer than sickbay. “I wouldn’t have left if they’d just given me something to do. I warned them that leaving me in the room to stare at the ceiling was a bad plan,” and as evidenced by her room, Azrin needed many distractions in life, “but they didn’t listen!” Clearly, she was still bitter about it.

Azrin sat there for a few seconds after Kino had finished, flexing and moving her fingers to and fro to get a feeling for how the compress restricted her movement. Not bad. She couldn’t splay her fingers as wide as normal, but they still had independent movement. She could work with this. If Kino had wrapped her hand so securely that she’d been left with a club, Azrin surely would have ripped it off already. Getting up was a bit harder than she’d expected, causing a hint of regret that she hadn’t drank even more coffee. She jumped up and down on the balls of her feet a few times instead, adding adrenaline to the mix, then attached the final shelves to the struts.

Turning around to find something to put on the new shelves, Azrin found Kino there waiting, already holding out a capacitor. “Thanks!” They had a little system after that, Azrin turning to pluck something from Kino’s hand, then placing it on its permanent home on the shelf. “Do you put micro-explosives in the arrows? For the ‘blowing shit up’ part.” This was a lot of work to bring an ancient weapon into modern times. In contrast was the simple hidden beauty of the synthetic hand, which Azrin hadn’t even recognized as fake until Kino explained her rehab. “We can go to the holodeck! I like action stories better than practice ranges though. The computer can add the bow and arrow as a plot point of some sort.”

Their system was broken when Azrin held her hand out for the next souvenir, only to find that Kino had kept it close to examine it. “Of course it does!” She was affronted to even be asked. “I didn’t do static models. How boring is that? This one even works as a pretty good battery when it’s running. Hold on.” She spun around, eyes flicking back and forth for something to use as an example. “Ha!” That would do. A quick dash to the corner produced another little model ship, this one an ancient propeller airplane. That was deposited on the table, followed by the diorama she plucked from Kino’s hands. A few connected wires and the mini warp core lit up. Not with matter or antimatter - unfortunately - because even Azrin wasn’t insane enough to fuel her warp core model with the real fuel. She snuck out another wire which connected to a hidden port in the tail of the plane. “Wait for it… There!” The propellers started to spin as the battery charged up the plane.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #18 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae
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She sat grinning at the little model purring away as it’s propellers buzzed to life. “That’s pretty cool, red,” Kino nodded, sincerely impressed. Truth be told, she’d grinned the whole time Azrin had elaborated on the “break out” from sickbay – she even stifled a chuckle at the other Trill’s irritated justifications. Wish I’d been on duty for that, she shook her head in amusement, but didn’t comment further. It seemed to be a sore spot best left alone. Huh. Odd show of self-restraint, she realized, surprised at herself; sure there’s a report on it somewhere, she laughed, but then her mind quickly jumped back to the situation at hand.

Ryn seemed to be slowing down, marginally, as Kino looked around again. There were still quite a few boxes, but several were now empty; she grinned as she pulled another close to her before resuming the conversation. “I know a few programs you might like,” she grinned up at the other Trill, her artificial eye squeezed shut, but didn’t elaborate further. “As for the explosions? Well,” she shrugged, setting more mechanical odds and ends on the deck before her, “depends on how much bang ya want. Usually I use the arrows as detonators, electrical or microwave – stack a few bricks of Nuessite 283 or comp-G 3983,” she paused to gesture with both hands expanding as she made a ka-blshhhh sound. “Big ol’ fireball,” she grinned. “Other times I stick to the classics; sulfur, charcoal, and good ol’ potassium nitrate.”

“Course, the safety protocols will only allow so much,” she rolled her eyes, “probably a good thing, though,” she added under her breath. “I have a bad habit of getting too close to explosions,” she clarified with a tight smirk, but waved the matter off. “Never mind that though. Yeah, holo trip would be a good time. We should do it,” she nodded enthusiastically.

As her eyes returned to the assorted pieces of Ryn’s collection arrayed before her, Kino tilted her head, frowning as a thought occurred. “Yanno, Red, I think I could use some of your tinkering skills with a developing project of mine – still in its infancy, mind – but I can’t help but be impressed with your assorted goods here,” she gestured around the room, then cocked a dark brow up at her newly found, oddly acquired acquaintance. “Mind if I shoot you some schematics sometime, just to bounce some ideas around?”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #19 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

“I know right?” Azrin was beaming at her little plane, practically glowing with excitement as it powered up. Once it was ready, she disconnected the wire between plane and warp core… and then the plane, with nothing to hold it back, raced down the table and off into the air, mini propellers spinning like mad. “Ah. Remote. Remote?” Racing back to where she’d gotten the model from, Azrin grabbed a little handheld controller, but not before the plane slammed into the wall and crashed down onto the floor. “I can fix that.” She declared defiantly, just in case Kino was worried. It was fine. These things crashed more than Azrin wanted to admit, normally through user flight error. She was an engineer, not a pilot.

For someone who’s work revolved around highly volatile materials, Azrin wasn’t really into explosions. Explosions were a bad thing, mistakes to be avoided at all costs. She made a rather non-committal sound as Kino went into detail, going to pick up her battered and broken plane instead. The other trill was such a security officer in that moment that Azrin hoped she’d ramble on for longer. Unless there were other bomb happy people in Jeen’s past, this was probably all Kino. It was good for her to get sucked into something that wasn’t from a previous host.

“I like fixing things, you like blowing them up, we’re going to give Thea a headache when designing the program,” she joked, depositing the plane on the table to await some TLC. Azrin had holodeck programs she liked. But she also enjoyed giving the computer parameters and letting it surprise her. That way she wouldn’t know the ending. “I always play with the safeties on.” Zarin Ryn had died in an explosion. That memory was more than enough for Azrin.

Then she powered down her warp core diorama and moved it to his home on a shelf. She was about to begin decorating again when Kino mentioned schematics and secret projects, which excited Azrin to the point where she might have been at the height of her coffee rush again. Caffeine was good, but engineering was the greatest high of all. “Yes! Waking up to random schematics on the computer would be the best morning. If you think this is impressive, you should see what we actually work on down in engineering. You can come visit if you want- no wait. Off topic.” She was practically jumping up and down with excitement. “What are you developing?”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #20 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae
[Show/Hide]
As she watched Ryn’s excited reaction, Kino’s brows rose as she shifted her legs out strait in front of her, leaning her back against the bulkhead below the shelves. Her eyes flicked between Azrin and the unfortunate model airplane then back with a smirk, wondering how many times she’d fixed it, but thought better of asking; she went back to unpacking with a grin instead.

“Well,” she drew out the word with a shrug, “there’s a long answer and a short one. In this case, I think the context might be useful, so I’ll go with the long one,” she paused, clearing her throat after looking over a diamagnetic power coupling that had been cut in half, lengthwise, revealing the tiny internal mechanisms; like a biology science project from primary school. Kino arched a brow at it, then Azrin, before setting it aside.

“As an ‘explosive expert’,” she continued, using air quotations, “dismantling and disposing of them is in my job description. Odd as it may sound, I’ve managed it so far without a hitch – but that was before I had two centuries of engineering shit in my head,” she gestured to herself, twirling her fingers. “And trust me, I was tempted to dive right into it, too,” she lifted her chin to Azrin, letting her eyes and tone harden a bit without really meaning to. “Leaving security, going for my own pips, reaching into the guts of this ship elbows deep,” she shook her head. “But that ain’t me, Red. I don’t need to explain that to you though,” she nodded to Ryn with a smirk as she started handing items over to her again. “Like you said – I like blowing things up, not fixing them,” she huffed in amusement, “even though I know how to now,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper, grinning a bit maniacally.

When she handed up the bisected power coupling, Kino lifted her brows again. “I know where that’s from – not gonna ask how you got it – but that’s awesome,” she commented with a grin. “Anywho– so yeah, all that said, I find myself looking for more tactical options; a way to increase efficiency, minimize risk, all that jazz,” she continued with a shrug, still handing off stuff. “Its still very much in its infancy, little more than a series of objectives and a rough sketch back in my room, but I’m calling it E.D.D.I.,” her grin returned, “Explosive Demolition Drone Initiative,” she nodded with finality. Then she blinked at Ryn, looking through her, chewing her lip. “That fits, right? I just came up with it,” she frowned, shrugging.

She busied herself by dragging another box over for a few seconds, watching Ryn process everything in a few blinks. Red was still all over the place, so Kino couldn’t really be sure the other Trill had been paying attention in her re-energized state. “Short answer; I want a bomb disposal bot,” she shrugged, pointing at Connie. “That gives me some interesting ideas,” she grinned, as she grabbed a solid orb of seemingly black glass. Holding it up to her eyes, Kino tilted her head as it suddenly glowed to life; five distinct musical tones started playing as it flashed five distinct colors – over and over in an increasing tempo. Do-da-dee-dum-duuum, Do-da-dee-dum-duuuum, Do-da-dee-dum-duuuum.

Kino arched a brow up at Azrin, holding it out to her. “Uh...here,” she deadpanned.

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #21 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

Despite herself, Azrin winced slightly at Kino’s description, unable to meet the other Trill’s eyes as she described the urge to follow her past host’s desire and join up in engineering. Something in her rebelled at the very thought. She could practically hear the teachers at the symbiosis commission lecturing the initiates about it, teachers voices blending together in the nearly identical lectures all six of Ryn’s hosts had received. As hosts, they were meant to give the symbiont a new experience. It was a rule enshrined in trill culture, although there was no medical or scientific rationale behind it. Somewhere along the way they had simply decided that the symbionts deserved as wide ranging and unique experiences as possible. Azrin had argued about it once, much to her teacher’s displeasure. Imagine how wonderful it would be to have two hundred years of engineering experience! All that knowledge, all the history. But then, thinking back on everything Ryn had done, as outdated, useless, or irrelevant to her life as it all was - Azrin wouldn’t give up any of that either.

This was Ryn’s first crack at engineering. Aside from her initial post-joining confusion, Azrin had never once seriously considered following Dezra’s footsteps and becoming a doctor. She loved her job with a passion that none of her past hosts could ever possibly overcome. In her mind lived such wonderful memories, but Azrin felt distinct from them all. This was Ryn’s first time as a hyperactive insomniac too.

She took the power coupling from Kino, but sat down instead, her eyes tracing the familiar components and letting them ground her in the moment. “I know how to blow things up too,” she admitted with a hint of a smile. “Starfleet tactical, over a century ago. I was working on the Point Defense Phaser Cannons a few days ago. Zarin would have liked them.” Her smile, still blooming, ended up more wistful when compared to Kino’s mischievous grin. She chose to ignore Kino’s comment on her power coupling. As long as they didn’t say the name out loud, no one would know she had a little piece of Dominion tech on board. Never quite worked out if it was prohibited or not. In the vein of ‘better safe than sorry’, she simply never told anyone about it.

Her moment of melancholy vanished quickly with introduced to the idea of E.D.D.I, a delighted laugh escaping at the name. “Eddi!” She turned the acronym into a name instantly. “That’s a human name right? It’s perfect!” The joy brought back her energy, the low of exhaustion vanishing to another high. She was up and moving again, the coupling placed on the shelf before she dived into the next box. “Connie gives you ideas? Why? You’re going to need way more processing power, heuristics, AI, some manipulator arms, and - actually, the antigravs in there would probably be good.”

Azrin didn’t even notice the orb Kino had pulled from the box, too busy dreaming of EOD robots. However, she started to hum unconsciously along with the rhythm. “Do-da-dee-dum-duuum, Do-da-dee-dum-duuuum, Do-da-dee-dum-duuuum.” Then she stopped and made a face. “Cinphox tuning ball,” she explained as she took it, fingers tapping in a specific pattern until the music stopped. “For the musically inclined, but I just liked the tune. I used to play it whenever the ship jumped to warp.”

“But more importantly, this!” Her hand darted into the box and came back with a little corked bottle. Azrin opened it up and waved it beneath Kino’s nose. “Bet you don’t know what this is!”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #22 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae
[Show/Hide]
There were times when Kino realized that she should probably talk less and listen more; as personalities went, hers tended to run more on the abrasive side. Caught up in the ‘newness’ of everything in her head, the good and the bad, didn’t help her inability to filter her language at all. It had always been an issue for her; knowing when to quit – how the way she talked affected people – coming across the wrong way happened quite often. You really just need to shut up sometimes, she told herself, even as she opened her mouth to apologize to Azrin. Kino didn’t know what she’d said that had bothered Ryn, but it was obvious in the redhead’s face that something pulled her down.

But then it was gone, lifted in a blink as Ryn jumped into the possibilities of for the E.D.D.I. project. Kino blinked up at her, trying to keep up – focusing on the antigrav comment, which is what had caught her interest in Connie to begin with. She bobbed her head, the grin slowly returning to her features as Azrin hummed along with the little music ball. What did she call it? Cinpho-something? She was trying to remember when Ryn abruptly stuck a bottle under her nose.
 
The first whiff made her nose itchy, which she scrunched up and wiggled around in a circle, like someone about to sneeze. “Uh…,” Kino blinked, frowning as she tried to place the scent, her eyes looking down her nose comically. “I…,” her head tilted, taking another sniff. “It...smells like…,” her brain chewed itself, flashing through memories, trying to place it. “Ugh, man, its familiar but...I can’t place it,” she looked up at Azrin, frustrated at herself. “What is it,” she asked with a laugh.

Then her eyes noticed the chrono over Ryn’s shoulder. “Oh shit,” Kino hissed, scampering to her feet. “Shit, shit, shit,” she ran her hands through her hair, looking for her towel. “I gotta go, I’m gonna be late for my shift,” her eyes darted around, then saw the time on Azrin's work terminal – it was two hours earlier than the one on the wall. “Wait...what the…,” she pointed at it, then the one on the wall. “Which ones right?”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #23 –
[ Lt. JG Azrin Ryn | Personal Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Dumedion

It smelled good, even from an arms length away, faint hints of scent finding their way into her nose. Azrin belatedly realized she shouldn’t have shoved the bottle right under Kino’s nose, as the other trill looked about a second away from sneezing. Pulling the bottle back, Azrin gave it an up close and personal sniff of her own. Wow, this stuff could really clear the sinuses. “Oh shit sorry,” her eyes watered a bit as she corked the bottle again. “Forgot how concentrated it gets in this little bottle. Anyway, it’s-”

Azrin stopped abruptly as Kino jumped up, the speed of the movement causing the redhead to jump, take a step back, and trip over a - thankfully empty - box. She yelped, dropping the bottle in the rush to save herself from a face plant. Luckily, they both survived unscathed. Azrin’s hand hit flat on the bottom of the box, and she could hear the bottle rolling away, absent the slight tinkling sound that would have signified she’d broken it. “This is why I need to clean my room. I’m going to die tangled up in my own toys.” She thought to herself with a slight groan. “This hand is really getting punished today. And I haven’t even been to engineering yet.” The gel pack was focused on the other side, but the wrapping had protected her hand nicely anyway.

Kino seemed a bit calmer when Azrin finally righted herself. Blinking a few times, she followed the pointing fingers to each chronometer, taking a few rounds back and forth to register that they were showing different times. “Ah. Um.” She actually doubted herself for a minute there. What time was it anyway? Azrin had never registered any numbers beyond ‘too early.’ “When in doubt, I’d trust Thea over everything. I got the other one on Vulcan. Accurate to the nanosecond when calibrated correctly, but it might have defaulted back to… you know… Vulcan time.” Of whatever Vulcan timezone she’d gotten it from. Keeping up with time zones across planets was a full time job. Her job was to get the ship there. Someone else could do the time changes. “I don’t think you’re late?”

But honestly, just because it felt like she’d only slept for a few minutes didn’t mean that was true.

“Hey Thea! What time is it? And where’d my bottle of Edosian orchid go?”

Re: Day 09 [0501hrs] Whose Room Is It, Anyway?

Reply #24 –
[PO2 Kino Jeen | Azrin's Quarters | Deck 16 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @rae
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There was a process during training that essentially broke people down; physically, mentally, sometimes emotionally, to overwrite behaviors and habits with new ones. Unorganized slobs learn the benefits of order, lazy procrastinators learn efficient time management and the value of meeting goals. Repetition and reinforcement ensured an adherence to standards not easily broken, or forgotten; the near panic level of anxiety Kino felt at the possibility of failing to meet her responsibilities was a byproduct of that training – drilled into her from the earliest days of her enlistment.

She moved so quickly that she didn’t even realize Azrin had been bowed over; cursing at herself for the failure of spatial awareness, she moved to help her up but the redhead managed before Kino’s body even twitched. “S-sorry, Ryn,” she breathed through an apologetic grimace. “You okay?”

The engineer’s explanation of the two different times threw Kino for a loop. More confusion to add to the confusion, sure, why not? That seemed to be the running theme to the mornings entire series of events; Kino's face set in a mask of incredulity, eyes moving from Azrin to the chrono (set for Vulcan time) and back. What? But why, the expression said, but in the end the silver haired Trill just shook her head as her brows lifted, chuckling softly.
 
In response to Azrin’s query, the time on her terminal highlighted in a bright crimson pulse before returning to normal. 0557, Kino read, sighing with relief. Ok, not late. Her mismatched eyes looked questioningly at Ryn’s at the second request, however. “Uh…are you asking me, or Thea,” she wondered aloud – regarding the location of her tiny bottle. Endosian orchid? That’s what that was?

It had smelled familiar, but the potency had caught her off guard. “Um, ok I’ll just...look over here,” Kino mumbled, gesturing to the bed and workstation area, utterly clueless where the thing rattled off to. Dropping to her hands and knees, she started poking around all the boxes and clothes as her mind wandered back, memories pulled to the surface by the lingering scent. Advanced Combat Training, during the mid-cycle break, she remembered.

She had been with Bremmer and a few other squad mates at a shady strip bar in San Fran; decently inebriated, trying to climb up on stage to join the dancers. She remembered everyone laughing and cheering, as one of the dancers – a curvy, tattooed brunette – crawled over to her and gingerly touched her face in a ‘not tonight sweetheart’ kind of way. The girl’s wrist, daubed in perfume mixed with sweat; that was it. The subdued version of Azrin’s Endosian orchids. Kino froze, a sad smile curling her lips as she let the memory fade. How did I almost forget one of the greatest nights of my life?

Her life – Kino’s.

She sat up on her knees then, blinking slowly as her eyes turned to Ryn. Realization dawned, bringing a clarity lacking since she’d woken with Jeen inside her and all its memories in her head. “It’s all the same,” she laughed suddenly.  “All of it. It’s not about being them…it’s about being me; all of its just…me, and not me,” she giggled to herself, then realized she was still in Ryn’s room. “Ah, sorry, just having a moment,” she explained, twirling her fingers around at her head. After a week of emotional flux, struggling to reach some semblance of balance with Jeen…it felt like she’d started to reach an understanding; at least, the beginnings of one. Outstanding, she blinked, thoroughly enjoying the moment.

Throwing a smirk at Azrin, Kino nodded to her fellow Trill. “I realize you might feel differently, but I’m really glad I stumbled in here to meet you,” she grinned, “any luck finding your bottle over there?”
 
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