"Captain Thrace, you better get fraking back here and explain why Jester is currently in his skivvies washing your Viper with a toothbrush," Lee yelled down the corridor.
As CAG, it was Lee's job to wander down to the hangar bay every once in awhile to make sure things were working smoothly. He needed to check that his pilots were showing up for their maintenance shifts, that the Chief was getting his birds back in the air, and that there was no trouble because pilots and deck crew together were always a bad thing. It was like putting ambrosia with dynamite. Someone was liable to get a hand blown off.
His eyes scanned the hangar, and he was happy to neither see nor hear anything out of the ordinary. That is until he heard a familiar snicker.
Lee zoned in on her right away. Kara was leaned up against a Viper with a few of the deck crew women around her. She snickered again and this time Lee was prepared to follow her line of sight. That was when he saw it.
"Starbuck!" he yelled.
Kara's eyes went wide as her whole body tensed, and then she was off like lightning. Lee rolled his eyes and started chasing after her. "Captain Thrace, you better get fraking back here and explain why Jester is currently in his skivvies washing your Viper with a toothbrush," Lee yelled down the corridor.
Lee was suddenly grateful for all the years he had known Kara. A lesser man would never have been able to predict where she was running of to, and a lesser man would never have known the shortcut in the corridors around the mess.
When Kara came bursting into the empty firing range, Lee was sitting on the counter waiting for her. "Start explaining now."
Kara only faltered a step before hopping up on the counter next to him. "It's a long story."
"I have a lot of paperwork to do today. I have time."
Kara smirked. "Trying to shrug off your duties?"
"Don't change the subject. Jester. Skivvies. Toothbrush. Viper. Explain."
"Let me think for just a moment." She bit down on her bottom lip as she tried to think when this whole thing began. She could feel Lee staring at her. "I guess you could blame it on the fact that I woke up an hour before the shift change two days ago." Lee gave her a look of disbelief. "Hey! You wanted the long version, Apollo. I'm giving it to you."
"Fine. Go ahead."
"I went down to the mess to grab a cup of that gods-awful coffee they keep brewing and then headed down to the break room. It just so happened that there was a triad game going on, and you know I can't say no to triad."
"I bet the others wished you had."
"I played for only a few hands since I still had to change into my flight suit, but I won some nice things. A handful of cubits, two cigars, an old magazine. But the best by far was what I won from Kat, although I didn't know it at the time."
Lee waited patiently for her to continue. He hated when she did these stupid dramatic pauses.
"A toothbrush."
"A toothbrush," Lee said, nodding his head. That was one out of four questions answered.
"Hot Dog caught up with me in the corridors and told me he would do anything to get that toothbrush from me. It seemed there was a little incident between him and Racetrack a few days before." Kara paused and looked over at him. "This is off-record, by the way. I don't want you to go all CAG on me and demand there be repercussions."
"Promise," Lee said, even though he knew he'd regret it sooner or later.
"Hot Dog had had a few too many and started hitting on Racetrack while they both were in the head getting ready to go to their bunks for the night. He must have said something pretty fraking colorful to her because… and this is from Helo's mouth, not mine… she whipped the toothbrush right out of his mouth, marched over to the toilets, and dropped it in."
Lee winced.
"Yeah, tell me about it. Hot Dog's been using his finger every since, and let me tell you, I spoke with him. A finger's not cutting it."
"But of course you didn't give him the toothbrush," Lee said.
"Nope. He had to earn it."
"Okay. So now you have the toothbrush and might give it to Hot Dog."
"Correct. I told Constanza that I would give it to him, but he had to take over the hygiene lecture I scheduled with my nuggets the next day. It was really basic stuff so I knew I didn't have to be the one teaching, and I figured they might want to get a front row look at what bad hygiene was."
"He agreed," Lee said, remembering a memo coming across his desk the day before.
"Right. Now, on to the situation with Jester. I caught him shooting the shit with some of his fellow nuggets in the briefing room after class yesterday. He didn't know I was there because, as you know, I can be quite stealthy when I try." That earned her a roll of the eyes from Lee. "He was bad-mouthing a certain Commander of the Air Group because you had pulled away the nuggets' break passes."
"The idiots caused a food fight in the mess."
"I know."
"And they didn't even have the brains to blame it on someone else like we do," Lee said with a smirk.
"I know. Idiots, right?"
"Or maybe they don't have the fool proof system that you and I do."
"The lead pilot blames the CAG who blames the lead pilot until the person trying to reprimand them gets frustrated and goes away system?"
"That would be the one," Lee chuckled.
"It does work quite nicely." Kara sighed. "Now where was I?"
"Jester was badmouthing me."
"Right. So as the flight instructor, I decided that this besmirching of the great Apollo's name should not go unpunished. I ordered Jester to report to me the following morning to do whatever the frak I deemed harsh enough until he was willing to admit that out of all the CAGS, you might be horrible, but you're not the worst."
"Thanks." Lee couldn't believe he was actually starting to get used to her compliments that weren't exactly compliments.
"So there's the Jester piece of the puzzle. Now on to the Viper. I ran into the Chief after busting Jester's big mouth. He had been looking over the stalling issues my bird was having."
Lee nodded. He remembered getting that memo, too. Since it was written by Kara herself, it was a lot more colorful than the first one stating Hot Dog was taking over her lecture.
"The Chief seemed to think it had something to do with that last planet we were doing sweeps of for a new water supply. He said the dirt must have clogged my engine, but they were going to flush it out. My little dilemma with Jester was still on my mind so I figured I'd help the Chief out by offering to get the rest of the dust cleaned off the exterior myself. That way his crew could focus on more important things."
"How very responsible of you."
"I thought so," Kara confirmed.
"So how does the toothbrush storyline connect with the Jester storyline?"
"I was getting there. Last night, I was working on how to start getting the nuggets practice time on CAPs when word of how my hygiene class went finally reached me." Kara saw Lee wince out of the corner of her eye and smiled. "You heard, too?"
"Hot Dog really should have known better than to use you as an example."
"Needless to say, I was still a little angry with him the next morning, but he was on CAP so I couldn't exactly take it out on him. And that's when everything just clicked into place," Kara said with a big sigh to signify the end of her story.
"Not everything," Lee insisted. "What about the skivvies?"
Kara smirked and pointed to the wall. Lee's eyes fell on the posted paper. Six bullet holes were right in the center of the target. It was all the ship had talked about for days. "A few weeks ago, Jester bet that I couldn't break Kat's record of five hits on the x-ring. As every single person on this ship knows, I did it. And you know why I did it?"
"Why?" Lee said, wondering if he should really be playing this game with her right now.
"Because I'm just that good, Lee. Because I'm just that good."
Lee rolled his eyes. "Whatever, Kara."
"Come on. Say it, Lee."
"No."
"Say it."
"No."
"Because…"
"Because you're just that good. Now can we get back to how beating Kat's record turned into Jester wearing barely nothing?"
"He told me he'd sleep with me if I broke the record. He kept saying since I'm the legendary Starbuck, rule breaker extraordinaire, that I wouldn't hesitate to say frak you to the regs. He kept insisting he was worth the trouble." Kara rolled her eyes. "Cocky little bastard."
"You took him up on it?"
Kara glared at Lee. "No, I did not take him up on it. I simply altered the bet to better suit my needs. I told him that if I won, he'd get naked. Stupid fraker thought that was my way of saying the whole fraking the flight instructor bet was on."
"He should have known better," Lee said, already wincing at what he knew was to come.
"So we get down to the hangar bay so he can start his punishment. He's about to begin scrubbing when I tell him to stop. Because I was in a rather good mood, I told him that he only had to get mostly naked."
"How very kind of you," Lee said, rolling his eyes.
"So there you have it. Jester. Skivvies. Toothbrush. Viper." Kara twisted her head to wink at him. "Are you going to punish me now, sir?"
The page on the shipwide comm cut off Lee's answer. "Captain Adama, please report to the CIC."
"Looks like my dad found out about your antics."
Kara shrugged. "Word travels fast."
Lee hopped down off the counter. "Would you do me a favor, Kara? Next time this kind of thing happens, let me in on the joke before you actually do it. I can do better damage control that way."
Kara gave him a mocking salute. "Yes, sir."
Lee walked out of the room, shaking his head to keep from laughing. Kara was going to be the death of him someday.
