The next day passed by in a relative uneventful manner. Riker was apparently off duty, for he slept in and then made plans with someone to go to the holodeck. He spent most of the morning eating breakfast and then showering. He left at a little after 1100.
As for me, I spent most of my day alternating between lounging on the couch and running around the quarters trying to get exercise. Cats' bodies aren't made to be sedentary for so long, and I was beginning to get cramps from all the sitting around that I'd done.
I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision to stay. I tried to several times, but every time I did I just ended up telling myself to shut up.
I had to admit that it was getting rather boring: sitting around doing nothing. I had done it for the past day and a half, and it wasn't as interesting as it sounds. If you're a cat, there isn't much that you can do in a Starfleet officer's quarters. I spent most of the time sleeping.
I was six years old, and was playing in my secret spot with Brandon. I had just finished my first day of school. Brandon was two years older than me and thus had been going to school for two years, so it made me feel like I was finally grown up to be able to say that I went to school, too.
"I already know how to read," I was saying, "so Mr. Davner said that I'm ahead of my class."
Brandon talked about school a lot, and I'd always felt like a baby because I didn't go. That wouldn't happen anymore.
"You wait until you have Mrs. Charleston next year," Brandon said. "She makes you read five pages every day."
"That won't be that hard," I said, which was a lie because inside I was nervous. Five pages?
"Aw, don't worry about it," Brandon said. "You'll do fine. Hey, did you get any chalk?"
I smiled mischievously as I drew two sticks of yellow chalk out of my pocket. Brandon's grin widened.
"Good job, Tasha!" he said, grabbing on of the sticks. "They don't let me use the chalk anymore without having a teacher watch me."
Brandon was the best chalk stealer that I knew, but even he got caught sometimes. When he did, I had to come through. We spent a few happy hours coloring on the sidewalk at the park.
"Hey, Tasha, wake up," I heard, and suddenly felt someone scratching my head. Jerking awake, I saw Riker leaning over me where I lay on the couch. I relaxed.
Why did he have to do that? I asked myself. Didn't he know how unnerving, not to mention frightening, it was to have someone wake you up in that way? Apparently not. And why had I relaxed when I saw him? I should have panicked and either attacked him or run away. Was I really getting that stupid?
"Have a seat," Riker said. "This is Tasha, my cat." Looking past him, I saw a variety of people seating themselves around the large, glass table. I recognized Data and Worf, but there was also a blond haired woman, a dark haired woman who was not in uniform, and a black man with some sort of visor over his eyes. All were human.
Standing up, I watched as the dark-haired woman went into the bedroom and returned with the case of poker chips. On the way back, she looked over at me.
I froze as my eyes met hers. Her eyes were black, pure black. Even I knew that humans didn't have eyes like that. She was a betazoid. This must be Deanna Troi, the ship's counselor.
I quickly cleared my mind of thoughts, and then started the process of blocking my mind from hers. I knew how to do it, and once I was done then she wouldn't be able to read me at all. I wondered if she had read anything before I had noticed her, and mentally cursed myself for my inattention. That's what I got for letting my guard down.
Once I had finished I glanced over at her. I saw that she had returned to the table. She didn't seem to have noticed anything different about me. Maybe she couldn't read me when I was in my cat form, or maybe the fact that she wasn't completely betazoid decreased her mental abilities.
Relaxing a bit, but still keeping my mental barriers up, I returned my gaze to Riker. He had sat down at the table and was shuffling the cards while the others handed out the chips.
I watched as the six of them stacked their chips and prepared for Riker to deal. From the way that they were all acting, I assumed that they did this often. Some sort of weekly poker night or something.
"The game is five card stud," Riker said. "Nothing's wild." He started to deal.
I watched each of the player's reactions as they got their cards. Data had absolutely no reaction on his face, which I would have expected seeing as he was an android. The visored man, who I recognized as Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge due to the fact that he wore a visor, had no expression either. Worf however, took one look at his cards and then growled impatiently.
"Get a bad hand again, Worf?" Riker asked.
Worf frowned. "I fail to see how it is possible to continually get bad hands," he said.
"I will bet ten," Data said, carefully picking up a chip and putting it in the center.
"I'm in," Troi said.
The next person at the table, the blond haired woman, paused.
"You in or out, Beverly?" Riker asked. Beverly. So this was Beverly Crusher, the ship's Chief Medical Officer. I realized that these people were the senior officers of the ship, minus the captain. I was sitting in the same room as the most important people in Starfleet, minutes Starfleet Command. This was the crew of the Flagship of the Federation. Great.
I also realized that Riker loved this game. As it continued and they played one hand after another, Riker became increasingly more excited. He won most of the hands, and I surmised that he did so often.
He was also very good at bluffing.
It was at the end of the fourth or fifth hand (I'd lost count) that I first started to notice it. It was just Riker, Crusher, and LaForge, everyone else having folded. They were still playing five card stud, and while Riker had taken only one card, LaForge and Crusher had taken three.
I've played my share of poker, and I've found that when a person draws only one card, they are usually bluffing. With five cards, the odds of getting a near perfect hand on the first deal is very low. But if you can make people think that you have a near perfect hand, you could win.
"I'll see your ten, and raise you ten," Crusher said.
"I'm out," LaForge said, laying his cards down on the table.
"I'll see your ten, and raise you twenty," Riker said, counting out his chips and then tossing them out into the middle of the table.
"He's bluffing you, Beverly," Troi said.
Crusher played with her chips for a few moments as she studied her cards and Riker's face. I studied it, too. He was bluffing, I was sure of it. There wasn't a particular tell that I noticed, it was just that...he was bluffing.
Riker raised an eyebrow at Crusher as she continued to stall.
"Alright, I fold," Crusher said, tossing her cards onto the table.
Riker smiled as he raked the chips toward him with one hand.
"Were you bluffing?" Troi asked.
Riker didn't answer. He didn't have to tell them what he had, and there wasn't much of a reason to. If they didn't know if he was bluffing they wouldn't know the next time he did it, either. They couldn't know what he had.
I could, though. Getting down from the couch, I walked around behind Riker and looked up at his cards, which he was still holding up. I laughed (on the inside, because cats can't laugh). Riker had nothing. His handed consisted of a two and nine of hearts, a six of spades, and a king and seven of diamonds. He hadn't even been going for anything when he had asked for one card.
"Will, your cat is looking at your cards," Crusher said. Looking at them, I saw Riker turning around to look at me. I immediately started to clean my front leg.
"Was she?" Riker said. Glancing up, I saw him turning around to look at Crusher again. "She does stuff like that a lot. She's a very strange cat."
"Where did you get her?" Troi asked. I tensed, not wanting them to take this path of conversation. I still hadn't figured out why Riker hadn't taken me back to the station when I had just come aboard.
"She just showed up in here," Riker said. "I thought someone on the station lost her, but no one there was missing a cat. I thought I'd keep her until we get to the next station. Maybe somebody there would like to adopt her."
I could live with that.
"I thought you didn't like cats," Crusher said.
I was getting uncomfortable with all the attention that they were paying to me. I had hoped that no one would notice me.
Riker shrugged. "She's actually starting to grow on me," he said. Well, that's good, I thought.
"That's how you got those scratches on your hand," Crusher said suddenly, leaning forward. "Your cat attacked you?"
I grimaced. When they put it that way, it made me feel worse than I already did.
"I tried to pet her, and she panicked," Riker explained. "She's terrified of everything."
"I believe that I...frightened her yesterday," Worf put in. He looked embarrassed about it. I was just as embarrassed, although I still thought that my reaction had been rather justified.
Riker laughed and started to stack up his chips in piles, which were much larger than everyone else's.
"Yeah, it doesn't take much to frighten her. But she's getting better. Aren't you, Tasha?" I met his gaze for a second, then returned to the couch.
Eventually, the conversation moved on to other things and I was forgotten. Well, almost. Data did glance over in my direction twice, but after that I was pretty much ignored. This was fine with me.
The rest of the poker game passed by relatively uneventfully. Riker continued to win most of the hands, but the others got their turn, too. I wondered if Riker was doing this intentionally. No, I decided, he wasn't the kind of person to intentionally lose a game. That much I knew, although other aspects of his personality remained a mystery to me.
Slowly, the evening wore on. I had no way of knowing what time it was, but it felt late. I would have gone to sleep, but I knew better than to go to sleep with six unknown people in the room. My instincts hadn't been that repressed.
Finally, the game ended (although no one had actually been eliminated) and they slowly left, one by one. Crusher was the last to leave, as she was talking to Riker about some play that she wanted him to be in. Eventually, though, the quarters were empty (except for Riker) and it was silent once more. I closed my eyes, reveling in being able to finally relax. I had been on edge the entire time that the others had been here. I was just so used to hiding whenever I was in a visible form that being so exposed had been mentally painful.
I opened my eyes as I heard Riker walking across the room. He had picked up the case of poker chips and was carrying it back into the bedroom. Then he got clothes out of a dresser drawer and carried them into the bathroom. Soon, I could hear water running. Deciding that it would be a while before he came out, I crawled down onto my bed and curled up into a ball. I soon fell asleep. Thus ended my third day on the Enterprise.
The next day and a half wasn't much different. Riker wasn't in his quarters very often, being either on duty or off socializing. When he was home (I could barely believe it the first time I thought of the quarters as "home") he would practice his trombone for some concert that he had coming up or just relax. The days passed slowly but uneventfully, something that I was very thankful for. I needed time to relax after the past few weeks and months. Sneaking off the Terellian cargo cruiser and onto the space station had been stressful, not to mention terrifying and potentially deadly. Terellians aren't exactly friendly at the best of times, and were bound to be even less so if they discovered me. It was nice to just sit back and relax, knowing that everything I needed was provided for.
Nothing of interest happened during that time, except something that Riker got excited about. It was the fourth day there. I was sitting on the cat bed when Riker hurried into the quarters. He looked excited about something, and was holding what looked like a carpeted post.
"Tasha, look what I got," he said, holding it up for me to see. "It's a post." I stared at him, wondering if he had lost his mind. It happened. Sometimes the stress for high-ranking Star Fleet officers was too much and they just snapped…
"It's a scratching post," Riker explained, setting it down in front of the couch. "Data replicated it for you."
I stood up and looked at it. Now that he mentioned it, I did remember hearing cat owners talking about scratching posts. It was supposed to keep a cat's claws short or something. I'd never paid much attention.
Looking back up at Riker, I saw that he was smiling at me. He looked ecstatic. Was he seriously excited about this? Wow. Well, if it meant that much to him…
I walked over to the post, and scrapped my two front paws over it, ripping down the fabric. It made a terrible noise, but I was surprised to learn that it felt good. Lifting my paws up again, I tore at the fabric once more. Nice.
Riker sat down on the couch, watching me as I scratched the post a few more times. He looked terribly pleased with himself. But, he had gotten this post for me. It was kind of…sweet, actually.
One afternoon, on the fifth day that I was on the Enterprise, I was busy running up and down Riker's quarters. I was trying to work out the kinks in my muscles. My body was starting to really hurt. Although I was a natural-born shape-shifter, it still hurt if I stayed in one shape for too long. The only shape that I could stay in forever without any pain was my natural, Sandorian one. It was also the one that I liked least.
Finally, I came to stop. As I panted, I stretched. This is ridiculous, I thought. I ran around every day, and all I ever succeeded in doing was wearing myself out. Stretching wouldn't help anything, and I knew it. The only thing that would help was returning to my original shape, if only for ten minutes. Then I could turn back into a cat again, and be pain free.
I frowned at the thought. I had become very careless the last few days, and I knew that. I had come to trust and rely on Riker far more than I should have. Also, I had begun to… No, I wouldn't think about that. It was stupid, and pointless. In a few days, I would be at the space station and I would never see this ship, or the people on it, ever again.
I could handle the pain for a few more days.
But, as the slow afternoon hours continued as they did every other day and Riker didn't come back, I found my mind drifting back to the idea. All I would need to do was change back into my Sandorian form for a few minutes, and all the pain would be gone. It wouldn't even take that long. Plus, I could go stand in Riker's bedroom so I could have time to change back if anyone came in. Weren't a few minutes of fear worth not having to be in pain for the rest of the trip? It wasn't like anyone would actually find me.
As I had been doing the last few days, I tried to talk myself out of the stupid idea. And, as I had also been doing, I failed miserably. Fifteen minutes later, I stood and hopped off the couch.
Riker didn't have an exactly consistent schedule, but when he left he was usually out for several hours, at least. He had left about two hours ago, which meant that I had a while before he came back. I was sure that no one else would come in his quarters while he was gone.
Walking over into the bedroom, I paused, trying one more last ditch effort to keep myself from doing something so recklessly stupid. But the pain in my body was too much, and the next thing I knew I was standing there in my Sandorian form. The good thing about being a shape-shifter is that we can also shape-shift into the clothes that we want to wear so we aren't naked. I honestly have no idea how that works, as I would think it impossible, but I'm grateful that it does. At the moment I was wearing a pair of green pants and a loose, light blue top.
I sighed, relishing in the feeling. I had never really liked my normal shape, but right now there was nothing I loved more. Stretching my arms up above my head, I reached down and touched my toes. My hair fell down over my face and shoulders. Ahhh, now that was luxury.
I still have no idea how what happened next happened. I don't how long I was in my normal form, whether it was for five minutes or twenty. I don't know how I got into the living room. The next thing that I do know is hearing the door of the quarters open. That's when everything changed.