A/N: I don't advise expecting Chocolate any point soon, but i nthe meantime, I give you this, which was quite a lot easier to write. Those of you who have read Pancakes will probably recognise the OCs, and those of you who haven't may enjoy reading it (end shameless plug). For your convenience, here is the list:

Ensign Richards the Elder (Kat) - Works in the science department, but was banned from it after she blew it up, a bit of a Spock fangirl
Ensign Richards the Younger (Immy) - Above's little sister, works as a yeoman on the bridge feeding people sugar to keep morale up.
Ensign Tang (Molly) - Redshirt from Engineering, regularly blows stuff up
Ensign Demmar-Waters (Arwen) - Never completed medical school but likes sticking needles in people, works in sickbay

But onto the story!

International 'Wear Your Hair in Plaits' Day

There was a look of distinct confusion on Captain James T. Kirk's face as the blue-shirted ensign walked onto the bridge that morning, mostly because he had absolutely no idea who she was, and blue-shirts tended to survive long enough for him to at least learn their names, especially ones who came up to the bridge. But this particular one, he had absolutely no idea.

"Umm… Ensign…? Who are you again?"

"Ensign Richards. The Elder. You know me." There was also some confusion on her face at her captain's apparent memory loss.

"Kat? B-bbut what's happened to your hair?" Admittedly, the Ensign had gotten quite a few comments along those lines, after they had incredulously asked who she was and what she was doing on the ship, but this was the first one accompanied by frantic waving of the arms as though the change in her hairstyle was some sort of universe-ending disaster. The girl, who usually was never seen with her hair anything other than down with an alice band, now had it in two pigtails dangling down the side of her head.

"Plaited it. It's nothing like as bad as Yeoman Rand's! She practically has a basket on her head! You should see Molly. Her hair's too short to plait so we've had to do it in lemon formation instead." Kirk was not even going to ask what lemon formation was. He looked around the bridge. Uhura's ponytail was in hundreds of braids, and Ensign Richards the Younger appeared to be doing a Princess Leia impression, in spite of her blonde hair.

"Uhura? How did you do that to your hair?"

"This?" She fingered the many tiny braids, each with a different coloured rubber band at the end. "I got Spock to help me."

"Spock? You stood me up last night for our chess match so you could braid Uhura's hair? How could you!" At this point it looked as though the Captain was about to break down into tears, but fortunately he didn't, as he was placated by a sherbet lollipop from the younger Ensign Richards, which distracted her while her older sister surreptitiously stole the grapes meant for getting Spock in a good mood (apparently grapes are a logical form of sustenance).

Before Spock could answer, Dr McCoy entered the bridge, looked around, and immediately began laughing. He was followed by Nurse Chapel and Ensign Demmar-Waters (she had never actually completed medical school, but liked sticking needles in people, and sickbay was so short of staff and so full of injured captains that they needed all the help they could get, even if it did turn out to be more of a hindrance), both with their hair plaited, in some elaborate bun for the actually qualified nurse, and just a few simple hippie-braids for the other.

"Is there a reason everyone on this ship has their hair plaited, including Spock?" he eventually managed to choke out, before resuming his fit of giggles, presumably at the Vulcan's expense.

Spock explained. "Today is international 'wear your hair in plaits' day, I have been informed, and while this is an incredibly illogical tradition, my father has ordered me to participate, in the interests of exploring my human heritage." This just sent the doctor into even more uncontrollable laughter, and he ended up rolling around on the floor like a lemon, fortunately not bashing his head on anything too hard. Spock declined to raise an eyebrow at this behaviour, and instead attempted to resume work.

Kirk, meanwhile, was curious. "Spock. How on earth did you manage to braid you hair?"

"Vulcans' hair is naturally easier to braid than humans'. Also, it is distinctly longer than usual, due to the lack of available scissors on board this ship, meaning that when I wish to cut it, I have to borrow Lieutenant Uhura's manicure set. As for the actual braiding, that was the work of Ensign Kat."

"So how many of you were there last night, all braiding each other's hair?"

Kat began to count on her fingers. "Er… seven. After I'd done my own, I did Spock, while he worked on Uhura's, she did Yeoman Rand's, she did Nurse Chapel's, who did Molly, which failed, and I eneded up having to try and do lemon formation on Molly's hair, after which Spock and Uhura braided it. Immy and Arwen* were doing each other's somewhere else. I wouldn't let them in."

(*Ensigns Demmar-Waters and Richards the Younger)

Spock, who could actually count, pointed out that she had forgotten someone. "Oh yes. Uhura also tried to braid Fluffy and Steve Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster Melvin O'Fluffington's hair."

"Dare I ask?"

"Our tribbles. Don't worry, they're on a strict diet and can't get to our spare sugar supplies without cracking the password."

"So, I still have one question. Why did no one tell me about this?"

There was an awkward silence, and various shifty glances were passed around. Spock was still present. The ones that knew were not going to speak at this point, and the ones that didn't had no idea what to say. The silence was eventually broken by Ensign Kat having a Eureka moment, fortunately without the running naked screaming through the streets after just having failed to take a bath bit.

"Aha! I remember now! There was a reason I came up here other than to look at Spock!" The silence got a little more awkward as she realised what she had just accidentally said. "Umm… Oopsies. But yes. Anyway. You're needed in the science department immediately, sir. Something about a massive spillage of something very dangerous that will probably explode within the next ten minutes, uhhh… ten minutes ago?"

There was a large explosion, and the Science Officer sprinted towards the labs, with a parting comment of "Ensign Richards. If I find that you were in any way to do with this incident, you will regret it."

Once he had gone, she commented to her colleagues, now including Ensign Molly Tang, probably there to deliver some important message from Scotty down in Engineering: "You know, that one actually wasn't my fault. Much."

"A miracle." Molly's sarcasm was evident, but her friend chose not to be offended. She was used to blowing stuff up.

"So," pressed Bones, now the Vulcan was sufficiently out of earshot, "How much chocolate did you have to feed the hobgoblin to get him to do this?"

"None at all, actually," replied Uhura, with an interjected comment of "Which meant all the more for us!" from the two Ensigns who had clearly had too many sugary foods for breakfast. "Scotty faked a transmission from Spock's father that told him he had to observe this important cultural tradition or else."

"Well, I've certainly never heard of it, and even if I had and had long enough hair, I most certainly wouldn't take part. You must have been pretty convincing to get a Vulcan to do as you said. Didn't he notice his dad has a Scottish accent?"

"He didn't seem to. Kat managed to explode something in the science labs that made all the transmissions go strange, and so he didn't think it was odd that the sound quality was a bit poor."

"You see, my ability to accidentally destroy almost anything I go even vaguely near does come in handy. And I'll have you know that it was completely deliberate for the sake of the plan!"

There were patronising nods that clearly did not believe her, but she studiously ignored them. Meanwhile, Kirk had gone into petulant toddler mode again.

"I still don't get why no one told me!"

"Because you'd tell him." This blatantly obvious answer came from Sulu, who, even though he hadn't been part of the plan, was still reasonably intelligent.

"Still," said Bones, "Why'd you go to so much bother?"

"The entire event was filmed. But what we're really waiting for is tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Shh! He's coming back! Remember! Nurse Chapel! You are to sneak into his rooms for 'medical purposes' and take his hairbrush, shoe polish, and bowling ball shiner, get Scotty to help if it's too much, and no one, I repeat, no one is to lend him their staighteners, hairbrush, or anything, including you, Kirk! Everything removed from your shared bathroom." With those final orders, Uhura hurriedly began looking as though she was working, and all scrambled back to their stations, just as Spock came back onto the bridge.

Silence fell once more for the remainder of the shift, especially once the more incompetent Ensigns had left the bridge and been sent to wherever it was thought they would do least damage to the ship, in Kat and Molly's case, the supervised children's play area (built for when transporter accidents turned random crew members into small children, as seems to happen frequently), where they happily spent the rest of the day, somehow with no major injuries by the end of it. And if the random unnamed red-shirt meant to be supervising them did turn up in sickbay afterwards, nobody noticed, as that was always happening to the members of the crew colour-blind enough to wear red shirts.

And when Spock turned up for his shift the following morning with insanely frizzy hair, none of the distinctly curlier-haired than normal crew of the Enterprise laughed, mostly because they were all nerve-pinched when they attempted to do so. The only exception was Admiral Pike, who was safely back on Earth, and only looking at the Acting Captain (Kirk was unconscious) through a vid-link, although he did later find himself also nerve-pinched, the next time the Enterprise returned to Earth for shore leave.

But as they woke up with the painful headache and bruises commonly associated with the Vulcan Death Grip, the crew grinned, and decided that it was most definitely worth it. Especially as they now had a lot of video footage which would make excellent blackmail material in the future.

Spock was not so pleased.

THE END.

And now is the time to press the little button below that is calling to you, and write something like ":) this is awesomesauce" to make the author very happy. T'would be greatly appreciated.

Kat