Haha, oh god, I am still writing this. CRAZY LIFE OF MINE. Inspiration hits at the weirdest times. Um. Yeah. Oh yeah, and I found a whole bunch of stuff I wrote and forgot to post. I am apparently just that awesome. Hurrr.

(oOPageBreakOo)

Dear Diary,

I have two words for you, diary! SHORE LEAVE. OH THANK GOD. I'm pretty sure we all need it, what with the Shakespeare fiasco. We're a few days out, but it sounds like they found a really nice Class M planet that might fit the bill. There wouldn't be any shopping or whatever, but I'm so ready to find myself a big gorgeous beach and soak in the sun for a few hours. I hardly get off the ship as is and my complexion is beyond pasty compared to what it was when I graduated.

I think I mentioned it before, but yeah, I've been keeping up on checking to see who's sneaking off into who's quarters, right? And for the most part the betting pool has been thriving for it at little Chekov's hand. I find myself in an interesting position now, though. Our little Russian Bunny is not as innocent as his big blue eyes and entertainingly skittish personality would normally lead me to believe. I haven't got solid proof or anything, but the other night I noticed this suspicious looking shadow just below the cam outside of Sulu's room. When I tried to rewind for a closer look I caught it flicker.

You might think "Wait, what does Sulu's cam flickering have to do with Chekov?" but Chekov's one of the few people on this ship that would be able to hack the cam systems so smoothly. Hell, there are only a handful of people who even know there is a live person watching the cams, otherwise I'm sure they'd be more discrete about the corners they find themselves necking in!

Lucky for them the Captain's so lenient on the fraternization rules and the worst that could happen is getting a little embarrassed over being part of the betting pool.

Either way, I made a copy of the mysterious shadow and flicker to add it to the videos of him caterwauling in engineering and Sulu running around the ship sans shirt. What? You didn't expect me to give Chekov the only copy of that, did you?

Those aren't the only interesting recordings in my big stash-o-blackmail, now, either. Its like the bigger the pile gets the less thrilled I am to have it. Do I really want to be the kind of person to blackmail my friends? I've determined that I should only use my powers for good. I'm not sure what, yet, but it will only be for the greater good.

Dear Diary,

After some fiasco or another (when ISN'T a fiasco involved?) the planet was approved for shore leave for the whole ship! We all got a little warning notice and Chekov read it out loud to the ship, which was adorable despite the lack of V's. Basically we have to be careful what we wish for? Or imagine or something? Its a pleasure planet designed to make what we're currently thinking about come true. You want a giant white rabbit, you get a giant white rabbit sort of thing.

I do not want a giant white rabbit, as it turns out. I want sun, sand, and ocean waves and I will damn well get them. I invited Christine and Helen to some beach yoga and after that there will be much lounging. If I'm not some variant of golden brown after this adventure I will consider myself a failure.

Dear Diary,

So every now and then the Captain will swing by Security in a more official capacity than normal. Its not usually a big deal, mostly an excuse for Cupcake to snap off some orders, the Captain to look all inspiring and sometimes make fun of us if we can't stand still for more than five minutes. What can I tell you? We're like squirmy five year olds in his presence. He inspires the kind of devotion normally associated with dogs and adoring younger siblings, but he also inspires rebellion. I don't think he tries, but the combination makes us kind of infamous with the rest of the fleet and actually famous with almost everyone else.

Anyway, not really the point, the point is he came by just a few days after shore leave to strut around in front of us and ask Cupcake a few pointed questions. We're all standing in line at attention and he's walking down the line, half paying attention, when he comes up on me. I don't know if it is the fact that I'm the only person in Security under six feet or my bronze goddess tan compared to the downright pasty men standing all around me but he couldn't even keep a straight face. It wasn't much, just a twitch of the lip before he covered it up with his normal charming smile, but I could tell he was amused.

He then preceded to congratulate me on my work helping Christine and Helen with self defence and asked if I wanted to help him teach some classes to the ship as a whole because he thought it was a good idea.

The Captain thought I had a good idea. THE CAPTAIN. We're doing our first class in a couple of days and I don't even know what to do. I'm like, star struck around the guy and here I'm supposed to sound competent and stand in front of a whole bunch of people and oh my god.

Oh my god. I have to go punch something and stop thinking. I can't believe this is happening.

Dear Diary,

With the help of Christine and Noel I've managed to make a sort of working plan for the self defence classes that we're gunna be starting up. I haven't heard from the Captain since he brought it up, but knowing him it's gunna happen when I least expect it or something.

Chris and Noel's input was totally invaluable. They told me what was helpful for them early on and what wasn't, so I tried to tailor the intro with that in mind. I don't know how much the Captain wants to do with this so I figure at least if I get stuck running the whole show I'll have something to default on.

Okay, seriously? It's like 2300 ship time, who is lurking outside my quarters? Ugh, I'll be back in a second. Whoever it is better be okay seeing me in an old tank and pj bottoms.

UGH, of course. Of COURSE it was the Captain. This is my life, after all.

Anyway. He was pretty happy to see I had been studiously working on the self defence courses because after the whole Galileo 7 thing falling all to hell he's decided it's going to be totally mandatory for the entire ship to hit up at least the basics. Apparently they lost a few science geeks on the planet and he wants to make sure that everybody will be able to defend themselves in a fight.

I'm getting the sneaking suspicion this is going to span more than just self defence, too. He asked me for a list of weapons I've been trained in.

Seriously, what have I gotten myself into? This is insane. I've been sitting in a dark room doing jack shit for MONTHS and now I'm going to be training people how to actually defend themselves? Thank god I kept up hitting the gym regularly, just thinking about it makes me jittery. I'm going to have to brush up EVERYTHING.

Dear Diary,

Our first class got postponed because we had to respond to the distress signal of some outpost. I didn't think much of it at first, but apparently it was pretty horrifying on the surface. Almost everybody was killed by some unknown attacker.

We were attacked in the middle of trying to figure out what the hell happened. Of course, we're awesome, so the attackers had to retreat for a bit when we thoroughly whooped their asses. It was long enough to get our away team back and pursue them.

So we're cruising after them and nobody has a clue what they actually look like when we get stopped by some weird ass voice. It called itself a "Metrone" or something? Mostly insulted our tiny human brains and called us violent thugs, then kidnapped the Captain to fight the captain of the other ship to the death.

Very civilized of them, yeah?

So we're all sitting on our thumbs, ship isn't working like we need it to and the Captain is just gone, god knows where, trying to save all our asses. I tune into the bridge cam because I figure if shit happens, it's gunna be there.

Turns out somebody (I'm guessing Commander Spock, or possibly the Doctor) managed to talk the Metrone into letting us watch, because sure enough, there on the view screen was Captain Kirk running around on a barren planet fighting with some freakish lizard thing.

I took the camera off its sweep and just zoomed it in to the main view screen. Figured it's my duty to keep watching the stupid fucking cameras, though, so I didn't catch everything.

The Captain was apparently brilliant, though, and managed to shoot the thing down with some sort of rudimentary gun? I don't even know how he knew about that kind of thing. Guns are ancient, nobody uses anything less powerful than a phaser these days. But whatever, Captain was awesome, didn't kill the horrible lizard, didn't shoot the lizards ship out of the sky, either, and the Metrone's insulted us a few more times and sent us on our merry way.

All things considered, totally fucked up.

Christine and Chekov are gunna be coming over to watch the tape later, though. I told Chekov he's got to bring the vodka because Christine's already claimed popcorn and I obviously shouldn't have to bring more than the nights entertainment.

Dear Diary,

Holy shit. I mean, HOLY SHIT. Christine showed up with the popcorn, as expected, and then mentioned that she invited Helen to come along. I was cool with that... but then Chekov shows up with not only with vodka (how did he GET vodka, is all I'm asking, I don't think he's even old enough, I asked for it as a JOKE) but he also had Lt. Sulu and Lt. Uhura in tow as well! By the time Helen shows up Lt. Cmdr. Scott and Dr. McScaryFace made there way over and wanted to know what the hell all the hubbub was about.

Despite the fact that my quarters had almost all of the command team in them, they are not actually command quarters and are much MUCH smaller. It was like fitting a football team in a dorm room or something, I don't even know, it was crazy. Once they found out why exactly everybody had flocked to my residence they all wanted to stick around for the show, too. I had to get more popcorn ten minutes in.
Now here's the really awkward part, its actually really hard to be inconspicuous when carrying five huge bags of popcorn all the way from the mess hall to crews quarters. Guess who saw me? The Captain AND the Commander, that's who fucking saw me. Cmdr. Spock was just gunna let it all slide as a stupid human thing, but Captain Kirk was not going to let it drop. So much so that by the time I finally made it back to my quarters, he was still following me around doggedly asking me questions I couldn't mumble my way out of.

I'm sure you can see where this is going. I get to my door and I have the option to stare awkwardly at the Captain while he waits for me to open it, or actually go inside and expose him to the clusterfuck that is everybody who wants to turn his recent brush with death into a drinking game.

Well, I did a little of both, in fact, when it became apparent politely waiting for him to go away just wasn't going to work. We enter the room and almost all noise stops dead within seconds. Except of course the sounds of Gorn shrieking and shirts ripping.

It only took the Captain a half second to figure out what exactly was going on and with a shockingly delighted whoop of laughter he commandeered an entire bag of popcorn and somehow acquired Chekov's bottle of vodka. By the time I got over my shock he was sprawled on the couch over Uhura, Sulu, and Christin's laps laughing his ass off over one of his more pitiful punches. The Commander lurked in the doorway looking about as awkward as I felt, but don't tell him I said that because vulcans don't do awkward and I reeeeally don't want to piss him off.

Taking a bit of pity on him and trying to figure out where the hell I was going to be able to sit without leaning on anybody I don't know very well I sort of half mumbled that he should stay. I'm not even sure how he heard me, but next thing I knew he had found himself a place against the back wall with the stealth and grace of a wild cat. I think Uhura and the Captain were the only one's that even noticed he was there most of the night.

I dunno, man, the rest of the night was history I guess? I knew our command team was cool as hell in that badass-could-fuck-you-over-in-a-fist-fight kind of way, but I didn't know they were also the kind of cool that makes for a night of hilarious drunken antics. That rumor about the Captain getting recruited in a bar is looking more and more likely.