Set Fire To The Hive.
jellyfish incoroprated
The dingy bar was crowded not due to its bountiful menu and excellent service so much as the torrential rain. The rain jacketed regulars cast disdainful look at the sodden tourists, unfamiliar with the planet's temperamental atmosphere. The bar was so infrequently visited by anyone of importance that cigarette smoke thickened the air and pre-teens ordered shots of paint stripper without so much as flashing a fake ID.
How Captain James T Kirk and his crew found their way into said establishment was beyond their communal comprehension. Nonetheless, they cut a path to the bar and began to order what they thought was whiskey but was really more like cointreau.
Even if they had noticed the two hooded figures perched on bar stools adjacent to theirs, they could not have imagined how their brief meeting would end.
Arrienne knew. The second the blue-clad Vulcan stepped over the threshold of her residential haunt, she knew. It was him.
She'd never forget the face of the man who destroyed her planet.
L'T'Freja was working her way through her fourth shot of what she liked to think was the Vulcan equivalent of whiskey when Arrienne jabbed her in the ribs. "Whaaaat?" She half-drawled half squealed; displeased to find her pleasantly morose silence broken by angry Romulan expletives and an elbow to the liver. "Wha' s'iiiiit?" She hissed, leaning over her spilled drink to squint up at Arrienne, before following her pointed gaze across the bar.
Well. Fuck me.
"Well. Fuck me."
"It's him." Arrienne growled, her jaw set and eyes burning twin holes in the back of the man's skull. "Bastard." The glass in her hand cracked under the unconscious clench of her fingers around its scratched surface. Red liquid dribbled through the cracks to stain white fingers scarlet.
L'T'Freja rested her head in the crook of her elbow, her shot glass suspended above her silk swathed head whilst she focused on Arrienne's furious expression. She waited a further ten seconds before downing the rest of her drink, wiping her hand across her mouth and hopping off her bar stool.
"Are you sure 'bout this? Talking, no, bitching about gettin' yer 'own back' is very different than actually exacting revenge," Leaning back against the bar, her eyes flicked over Arrienne's face, set in silent rage, before taking in her rigid posture and the firm set of her boots on the heavily scuffed floor.
Arrienne replied with a mouthful of angry, slightly slurred Romulan. Despite her drunken tone, her eyes were fixed on her target with a terrible, hollow sobriety.
L'T'Freja sighed.
"Let's do this,"
McCoy couldn't remember the last time he'd been hit on.
The girl he was in the process of being seriously flattered by seemed more than a little drunk and almost definitely not human. Despite the white cloth covering her head from crown to eyebrows (and tucked over her ears), he had the sneaking suspicion she wasn't legal either. The playful glint in grey-green eyes and the apple cheeked grin told him she was no more than 17.
"Hey kid, am flattered an' all, but aint you a little young to be in a place like this?" He raised one eyebrow in what he sincerely hoped a very un-Spock like manner before raising his glass to his lips. He was gonna need a lot more whiskey if jail bait here decided to stick around.
She laughed at the word 'kid'. It was an ugly, high-pitched bark of a laugh and it almost made Bones spray his drink all over the Klingon bar-maid. She smiled; a crooked, shit-eating grin, a mouth full of broken glass.
"Funny as well as cute. You're a real catch, Leonard," She winked before trying to cup her face in the one hand, her elbow propped up on the bar, failed, lost her balance and careened off her bar stool straight into McCoy's lap.
"Shit!" Leonard's hope that his new underage friend hadn't blown chunks all over his new boots evaporated when he realised he didn't remember telling her his name. Not a second after this thought had flitted through his fatigued mind had the girl positioned herself so she was half straddling, half looking over McCoy's shoulder, one ear-like tail of her silk scarf tickling his face. One gloved hand clamped down over the nerve in Leonard's shoulder, but before she applied the necessary force, the girl whispered in a voice McCoy wouldn't soon forget,"Sweet Dreams, Bones."
Kirk smirked. Watching Bones retreat into his cynical shell like a human snail at the first sign of flirting never got old. Especially when the girl doing the flirting looked young enough to his daughter. Plus, watching Bones was better than getting berated by the man himself for gazing at Spock for prolonged periods of time.
Jim's amusement spiked when the girl stumbled onto Bones, and then fizzled into panic when he watched his best friend slump onto the bar top, whilst the girl in a headscarf leaned over his shoulder to aim her phaser at his first officer.