Halloween Trick.
Disclaimer: seaQuest and it's brave team do not belong to me
A/N: The inspiration for the story came from the story "Ghost Story 6", which I loved. Also, from those same series, story 4. The author of both of them, KaitlynRose, did a great job and I thought she actually wrote about that prank. Seeing as she hasn't, and put the stories on the end, I decided to fill in those who have waited for something like this to happen for a long time, so please refer to the said stories for more information. Okay, on with this story…
"Have any of you seen Lucas?" Nathan Bridger asked, poking his head on the bridge of the seaQuest. He was searching for the kid for the last two hours and was getting really worried.
They had just gotten back from their trip to Salem, Massachusetts, where Lucas had a run-in with a witch-ghost… To make a long story short, they had to cut their shore leave when it turned out that the ghost had been very real.
Only on their way back, Nathan picked up several pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns for this year's Halloween. While this wasn't a standard procedure for the UEO ship, the lanterns in the hall, nobody really seemed to mind.
"No, Cap'n, the kid disappeared ever since his arrival back," Lieutenant Benjamin Krieg replied. "Did you run in a few ghosts back there by any chance? He looked totally out of it."
"No, we didn't." The last remark of Ben's gave Nathan a clue as to the mysterious location of his wayward son. Apparently, Lucas put the whirling brain of his to work the second they stepped on the sub.
"When you do find him, drag him in the mess hall to eat," Kristen told him absent-mindedly. "I swear to God that kid's going to faint at his station one day if he doesn't eat something regularly."
"Okay, okay, only I doubt he would be pleased if he learns you're fretting over him again," Nathan told the Doctor. She only huffed impatiently and pushed him in the direction of the hallway.
Guessing the direction, Nathan jogged towards his son's room, about the only place he hasn't checked so far. Sure enough, an explosion and a mild curse from behind the closed doors told him that the boy genius was already hard at work.
Much to his surprise, the door wasn't locked, so Nathan walked in, as he was met by a pair of bright blue eyes shining with excitement on the extremely dirty face. His son was sitting in the middle of his controlled disorder and grinning from ear to ear as he dumped some sort of powder onto the wet paper on the floor.
"The core of most of the pyrotechnitians," Lucas explained without even looking up. "I think I'll manage this right this time, Dad."
Nathan found a safe seat by the door he closed earlier.
"What are you up to?" he demanded, although his eyes were twinkling with amusement.
Lucas turned his shining eyes at his dad. "Ben's so going to get a payback for those water pistols," was his only exited response before he managed to elaborate, "I have mixed some phosphorus powder with nitro-glycerine. It exploded all over the place."
"Okay, Mister genius, but not before you eat."
"But, Da-a-d!" Lucas whined, glaring at his father.
"And I don't want you to be near this thing until you've eaten, or I'm going to blab to Ben all about this, so he could get you back." Nathan threatened.
Lucas's eyebrows shot up to his hairline, as his father struggled to maintain a straight face. "Now," Nathan ordered.
"Fine," Lucas grumbled, carefully putting his stuff away from the harm's way, should somebody – least of all, Ben - walk in during his absence.
Of course, the meal did not manage to make Lucas go away from carefully planning his prank. First of all, just before leaving the mess hall, the teen grabbed a bunch of small candles that would be eventually hidden in the pumpkins when those were carved and would light up. Once he got into his room, the teen made up fancy, orange-and-black name tags for each of the senior crew members who were going to carve out the pumpkin. He barely managed to stay still when he was writing out Ben's name and rank.
"Well, Lieutenant, you're in for a small surprise," Lucas muttered, as he tied each of the name tags onto identical orange or black candles and tried not to burst out laughing at the same time. The candle he made was slightly crooked and black, but the boy was relieved to find that nearly all of the black candles there were black were crooked just like his own. "I wonder who was doing those candles…"
"Apparently, it wasn't you," Nathan said with amusement, as he watched Lucas tie down the last name tag on the crooked candle he cooked up for Ben. "All done?"
"Yeah." Lucas grabbed the handful of ready candles and tossed them to the Captain. "Go on, Dad," he urged, " it'll be less suspicious if the candles'll come from the mess hall's cook, they won't know that I've tampered with them thataway."
Nathan grinned, catching the candles with both hands and somehow managing to catch all of them.
"When's the big boom?"
"As soon as Ben's done with his pumpkin," Lucas replied, "meaning, this very supper, in a couple of hours."
:All right then, let's get to the mess hall early then."
When the father and the son walked into the hall two hours later, they found Katie Hitchcock and Ben Krieg arguing about what face they'll carve on the one pumpkin they were given. Katie wanted square eyes, while Ben wanted them triangle and a square teeth. Greinning, Lucas tossed in his own two cents into the fire by giving each a candle with their name tags on them.
"Okay, it can have square eyes but we're putting MY candle into it," Ben said immediately.
"Nuh-uh, we'll make it with triangular oonce, but the candle'll be MINE," Katie quickly retorted.
"Mine." Ben said smugly.
"No way!"
"Yeah way,"
"Hey, I'm ranking you, you gotta listen!"
"Ouch, Katie, that was below the belt," Lucas laughed, as he tapped an irate Commander on her shoulder. "How about a compromise?"
"'kay, he gets to put in his candle, and I'm adding a pair of glasses," Katie said as a little girl, as she started to draw glasses around the pumpkin's 'eyes'.
"Hey!" Tim protested. "I don't want to be a subject for your pumpkin! Make it something else!"
"Why should i?" Katie grumbled as she finished with the marker and concentrated on drawing out the glasses.
"Hey, lemme put the candle in there, you can always draw the rest later," Ben complained.
"Oh, no, mister," Katie replied; she was VERY irritated by now. "Not until I'm done with it!"
Next to the arguing pair, Tim O'Neil and Commander Jonathan Ford were finishing off their won pumpkin. This one actually had a crooked nose, which Tim designed after crooked candles, parallelepiped like eyes and a thin line of a mouth to which Jonathan was currently adding a beard while Tim was working on the wig.
"They're arguing way too much for a divorced couple," Tim grumbled, then raised his voice, "Ben we all know you love her why don't you just propose to her, huh?"
The pair of the arguers snapped up to look at him, Katie giving poor Tim The Glare. She was watching Kristin way too much, Ford thought with amusement, as Tim squirmed on his place.
"This-thiss-this-was-was-j-just-a-a-s-s-u-gg-est-t-ion," Tim stammered out, paling considerably.
Lucas snickered – while Katie was staring Tim down, Ben quickly put the candle with his name tag in and lit it. Lucas glanced at his Dad and put up his hand, making a show of fingers.
"Three…" he mouthed silently, "…two… one… NOW!"
Just when he said, "NOW!" the pumpkin exploded, sending bits of shell and pieces of orange stuff all over the table. Tim and Jonathan jumped about a foot in the air, and Katie fell off her chair in surprise. All three of them had the orange bits and pieces of pumpkin along with the hot black wax in them.
Jonathan carefully sniffed the black wax.
"Nothing but a wax, nitro-glycerine, and phosphorus," he said mildly.
Ben Krieg slowly turned to stare at the Commander.
Seeing as the Lieutenant got most of the brunt, he was covered in pumpkin remains from head to toe, with pumpkin juice and goo dripping down his face. His face did not even need some special paint for the costume, so white it was. Apparently, Ben was in shock.
"Uh… Lucas!" Katie started dangerously, glancing over to where the boy genius tried to stifle a mad case of giggles over the roar of laughter in the mess hall. "Was it your invention?"
"Huh? Oh, sorry Commander, YOU weren't my target."
Lucas was unable to say anymore as he glanced up at Ben's dumbfounded expression and giggled.
Nathan glanced at his son, who was shortly rolling on the floor, howling with laughter. The members of the Accident Table looked at the boy, stunned in shocked silence.
"Oh… God… Katie… Tim… Hah… You guys should see… heehee… your… faces!" Lucas gasped out before collapsing in a fit of giggles.
Nathan looked at Lieutenant Krieg, who seemed to be slowly coming out of his shock. Seeing that Lucas could not collect himself, he grinned.
"Lieutenant, I expect all the mess to be cleaned. Sorry, Ben, but payback's a bitch."
The Commanders and Tim slowly started to smile, but Ben just sighed, glumly looking at the ruined pumpkin.
"And I just managed to convince Katie to do things MY way," he sighed, as the rest of the Accident Table joined Lucas on the floor and Katie smacked Ben over the head with a roasted chicken leg.
A/N: All done with this part, thanks for the reading!