Author's Notes: The Silly Muse strikes again! This is in response to a challenge, including the items:
- Stockings ( not pantyhose )
- Rock candy
- Red-handled scissors
- Garibaldi pounding his head against the wall
- The Zen Garden
- An empty credit chit
- A fusion reactor full of chairs and delegates
- A triluminary glowing hot pink
- Someone saying "I love Psi Corps" - and meaning it
- A vandalized piece of DownBelow
Disclaimer: Garibaldi, the Psi Corps, Delenn's triluminary, and DownBelow belong to the Great Maker. The pink spray paint came out of my sister's closet. As usual, there is no disclaimer for me.
Michael Garibaldi stood in Brown 42, assaying the damage. Someone had gotten hold of a spraycan - of neon pink paint, no less - and the entire level was a mess. Since it was DownBelow, it normally wouldn't' have been much of a concern, but the messages…
*It could be worse,* he tried to convince himself, but that was hard when, every five feet, the walls screamed "I love Psi Corps" or "Viva President Clark" in hot pink.
His link beeped and he answered it. "Garibaldi, go."
"Chief, we've got a problem," Zack's voice came through the link.
"You're telling me," Garibaldi muttered, looking around him. "What now?"
"It's…well, it's the commander. She's kind of…well…"
"Well, come on, Zack, what'd she do?"
"Some of the delegates must have seriously pissed her off, 'cause she's moved the meeting down into the fusion reactor."
Garibaldi stared at his link, stunned. "You're kidding."
"No."
Michael shook his head in amazement. "All right, I'll be right up." *This is it,* he thought to himself as he set off toward the lift tube, trying to ignore the garish graffiti. *This day just can not get any weirder.*
"C'mon, Susan, at least apologize to the guys! Don't you think they've learned their lesson by now?"
Commander Susan Ivanova shook her head adamantly. "Absolutely not. I will not apologize to those morons - I warned them what would happen if they kept wasting my time, and they got what was coming to them!"
"Commander?" She turned around at Corwin's tentative intrusion and glared at him in a mixture of fury and impatience. "This just came in for you. From the Lumati ambassador," he said quickly, proffering a box. She snatched it from him and he rushed back to his console and tried to look busy.
Susan opened the box, glanced at the enclosed note, then looked inside and sighed in disgust.
"What is it?" Garibaldi asked. She shoved the box at him, and he peered inside.
Fishnet stockings.
He raised an eyebrow at her and she practically exploded. "I can *not* get that guy to leave me alone!"
*Maybe you should treat him like you do the rest of the delegates,* he was about to suggest, but his link went off. "Garibaldi."
"Chief, you remember that graffiti in DownBelow?" Zack asked.
Garibaldi rolled his eyes. "How could I forget?"
"Well, you'd better get down to the Zen Garden and check this out," Zack said.
"Right there."
It was Susan's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Graffiti?"
Garibaldi shook his head. "Don't ask. Just don't ask."
If he had thought DownBelow looked bad, it was peanuts compared to the Zen Garden. Of course, the garden's usually white walls, pathways, and sand clashed a lot worse with the pink paint, but he was sure there was more of it. The phrase "Nightwatch is God" had also been added to the artist's vocabulary. *Susan won't like that one,* he thought irreverently. *Her position as station diety is being contested.* He sighed and looked around, then back at Zack. "Well, I suppose you'd better get a cleanup crew in here, if there's nothing else useful."
"Right," Zack replied, "I didn't see anything…" there was a crunch as his shoe went down on something that had been sitting in front of the bench. Garibaldi glared at him, but Zack could only shrug. "I guess I was wrong." He picked up the item and studied it carefully. "Rock candy," he finally decided.
"Rock candy?" Garibaldi asked, incredulous.
Zack nodded. "On a stick."
Garibaldi rolled his eyes and said, "Just take it down to station house and get that cleanup crew down here stat." Zack nodded and set off down the hallway.
Garibaldi leaned exhaustedly against a wall and had almost gotten comfortable when his link beeped again. "Garibaldi, what?" he snapped irritably.
This time it was Captain Sheridan's voice at the other end. "Michael, can you spare a minute to check out something in Ambassador Delenn's quarters? I know you're busy, but…"
"Right away, Garibaldi out," he answered, somewhat more abruptly than necessary.
He did, however, take the time to pound his head against the wall a few times before heading off to Green Sector.
Garibaldi rang the bell on Ambassador Delenn's quarters for the third time in ten seconds, and was about to do so again when the door opened. "Ambassador," he said as he stepped in, looking around for the Minbari woman.
She was standing next to an interesting crystal-and-glass structure, looking worried. "Mr. Garibaldi," she said, "I'm sorry to impose upon your time, but…"
"It's no problem," he reassured her, relaxing slightly. It was difficult to be curt with Delenn. "How can I help you?"
"Well, you see, it's the triluminary," she said, gesturing towards the structure next to her. "I can't imagine…"
"What's wrong with it," he asked automatically, but then he looked at it.
It was glowing.
It was also hot pink.
He shook his head and cast his eyes upwards. Garibaldi had always considered himself an agnostic, but if there was a god, He was certainly having a lot of fun at Garibaldi's expense today.
Garibaldi ambled through the casino, trying to look as though he were accomplishing something. He really didn't think he'd find anything here, but he needed something to take his mind of the insanity of the day…
"Aaaah, my dear friend Mr. Garibaldi!"
…and there was his distraction, right on schedule.
"Hello, Londo," he said amiably as the Centauri ambassador bustled over to his side.
"Mr. Garibaldi, how fortunate that you should show up just now. You see, my credit chit seems to have mysteriously gone empty all of a sudden…"
Garibaldi shook his head and smiled, letting the familiar lament wind down. "Y'know what, Londo," he said, "I'm feeling generous today, so why don't I lend you a couple of credits…" As he looked down to dig his credit chit out of his pocket, he noticed something odd. He narrowed his eyes at it. "Ambassador, did you know that the toe of your boot his hot pink?"
Londo looked down in surprise, and at the same time they both noticed the line of pink crossing Londo's boot and extending under a nearby table. Garibaldi silently pulled out his PPG, then stalked over to the table and overturned it noisily.
In the resulting silence, Garibaldi got a good look at the perpetrator. He was human, and young, probably not much out of his teens. One of those rebellious types, to judge from the spiked orange hair. He was armed with a can of hot pink spray paint, and a pair of red-handled scissors, with which he seemed to have been hacking away at the leg of the gaming table.
The sheer ludicrousness of the entire situation suddenly hit Garibaldi like a fleet of White Stars, and he collapsed on the nearest chair, doubled over in hysterical laughter. Londo gazed soberly at the hysterical security chief for a few moments, then turned to a fellow patron and said, "I believe the stress of his position has finally caught up with Mr. Garibaldi."
The gambler couldn't help but agree.