April 14th - 2376
"Look, I promise he won't bite, in fact he's been nothing but helpful throughout the ship!" Tom Paris, the well known playboy and genius pilot, had been trying to convince more crew to get to know their new guest and help stop the rumors about him being some evil superman from the eugenics wars. This was the sixth person today he'd been trying to get to just talk to him. You'd think humanity was more open-minded than this, but Zalost wasn't helping either, since when he wasn't in his quarters or helping around the ship he'd spend his short periods in the mess hall eating while working on that custom padd of his which he called a Deck.
"You know, Harry, I just don't get people. They treat Zalost like he's carrying some sort of plague or something and never get to know the guy." Tom had given up and decided to sit back down with his shipmate and friend Harry Kim as they got back to working on whatever project Tom had roped him into.
"Give them time, it took the crew a long time to get used to Seven, and she was a Borg drone. They'll come around."
"Maybe, but the guy isn't just super strong, he's fast, he's dexterous, he's already memorized every single component on the delta flyer to the point that he stopped me from wiring one wrong the other day, and I designed her!" harry had to admit that would have been close, they would have spent weeks tracking down the short that would cause end up causing an issue with the port RCS thruster. And in the end, B'Elanna would have likely found it first.
"That's probably part of it, even if he doesn't act like it, the superior ambition and superior ability are there. It's a bit, you know, intimidating."
"Harry, he can lift several thousand pounds and stopped being able to bend metals at a Tritanium alloy. Trust me, the intimidation is not intentional."
"How does he keep from breaking things accidentally anyway?"
"He calls it having a soft touch, I get the feeling it's more like he handles the world how you, or I would handle a house of cards, very delicately."
"Then again, not all the crew has been avoiding him." Tom gestured over to crewman Porter, who'd been the other person who'd been trying to stop the rumor mill. She was watching Zalost work again, his hands flying over the ancient interface like a pianist performing a concerto, the clicking sounding like the rapid fire of a disruptor rifle.
"Hey Zalost, heads up!" Deciding to see if he could catch him unawares this time, Tom tossed three previously replicated beanbags at him with his best overhand throw, Zalost catching them in one hand then smoothly transitioning to a brief one-handed juggle while still typing with his other hand at the terminal, albeit slowed down due to no longer using both hands.
"Nice try, Tom, but you'll need more than that to catch me off guard." he then gently lobbed them back with an easy toss before going back to typing with both hands.
"Okay, that was both cool and freaky, he wasn't even really paying attention." Harry was flabbergasted at the display of skill, while Tom couldn't keep the smirk off his face, the man proving to be anything but boring.
"Okay, so here's the thing harry, Zalost told me he trained with honest to god assassins and superheroes, there's probably very few things he probably wouldn't handle like that. Well, except of course the looks Porter's been giving him, seems a bit dense in that department."
"Maybe he's just not interested."
"Trust me, he's interested, he's just oblivious and needs a little push." As Crewmen porter was getting up Tom had intentionally lobbed one of the beanbags onto the floor causing her to trip much to Harry's horror however she didn't fall, instead Zalost had seen the action mid-throw, got up, and was there to catch her in an instant, his free hand catching her padd with a practiced midair grab that looked like a viper striking at it's pray.
"If we keep meeting like this, Miss Porter, I might think it's more than coincidence, though I'd just as quickly say the AG field needs adjustment given the circumstances." Zalost was giving an unamused look over at their table, clearly having already figured out Tom's ploy. Gently making sure she hadn't lost anything and handing her back the padd she was working on. She quickly made her exit as Zalost sat back down to focus on whatever he'd been working on. That was until Tom's pad began making a strange trill noise, drawing their attention to it. A circle with a triangle cut out was moving along the screen in an eating animation leaving bits of text missing from the report he'd been writing, getting bigger with each line before looking bloated before making an electronic wail and shrinking into nothing, Zalost watching them with a smirk before picking up the deck and leaving the mess hall himself.
"Okay, I deserved that, and I can restore it back, but how did he do that?!" Harry was trying not to laugh at the subtle prank that had been played on his friend in return, apparently his work had briefly been eaten by what he would later find out was a character called Pac Man from an old earth video game. The man knew his old earth entertainment, though Tom mentioned that there were differences too given he was from another universe, like Captain Proton having been replaced with something called Flash Gordon.
