Author's Note:

Hello everyone and welcome to this chapter. This is me attempting to address the distinct lack of Carol Marcus in my writings and the fact that in all of my stories she's been mentioned about once. Thank you for your continued support of this fic and I'll hopefully put a bit more of Doctor Marcus in my stories in the future.

I own nothing.

Carol Marcus

Carol Marcus couldn't really say when she'd become a member of the Enterprise 'family'.

She could say it was when she helped them stop Khan or it could've been when Jim approached her before the five year mission and asked if she wanted to join them as a senior science officer. Alternatively it might have been her first away mission when her expertise helped get her, Spock and the away team out of a particularly dangerous situation, or it might've been when she and Nyota teamed up to prank the others or when she gave Jim an earful for being reckless again. However it happened it was a surprise when she finally realised that it had.

If you'd told her that she'd one day be serving on a ship where away missions went south in some of the most ridiculous ways, the captain pranked everyone, the chief engineer had an illegal distillery, the doctor was one of the scariest men alive yet was obviously a softy, certain crew members seemed to have a high chance of being kidnapped and/or injured, there was a possibility of being attacked by a goose with a grudge, it was highly likely you'd be insulted by a parrot and there was a running poll going on which member of the Command Crew was going to be in trouble next then she would have laughed. If you'd then said she'd actually enjoy being on that ship she'd have sent you to medical to have your head checked.

Now she found herself in that very position wondering how she'd got there as she observed then scene unfolding before her in the Mess Hall.

It was one of those few times when all the Command Crew were present in the Mess Hall at one time and were all sitting together. In fact they'd at some point brought several tables together and most of the crew present were sitting with them regardless of rank or anything else. At one end Jim was surrounded by several of the Ensigns with Pavel next to him and they all seemed to be animatedly discussing some sort of game, Spock and Leonard were sitting across from each other further down and were in the middle of one of their famous verbal spars, Nyota was engaged in conversation with Nurse Samuels and Scotty and Hikaru were at the other end with several other slightly older crewmembers and they were playing poker using what looked like chunks of chocolate as chips.

Carol smiled as Sulu triumphantly placed his current hand down and claimed a massive pile of chocolate much to Scotty's obvious annoyance as the Scotsman then gave him a pouty shove off his chair. Nyota gave them a look and rolled her eyes before continuing her conversation. McCoy and Spock were still too embroiled in their debate to bother with anything else and Carol idly wondered if one of the lieutenants next to them was keeping score. A friendly argument had started between Pavel and Ensign Rogers over one of the rules of the game they were discussing and Harvard was backing his friend while Jim backed Pavel.

Suddenly the Red Alert sounded and before she knew it everyone was up, focused and on their way to their stations. The Mess Hall was clear in seconds and suddenly the crew were moving like a well-oiled machine with a precision and expertise many other ships could not hope to achieve. Carol hurried after Jim and the rest to reach the secondary science station on the bridge and caught a quick exchange between Rogers and Harvard that seemed to sum up the crew as a whole.

"I bet two chocolate bars that we get through this and back to normal in an hour." Rogers said.

Harvard answered, "I see your one hour and raise you two."

PS-So I hope you liked that though it was sort of a nothing chapter and any suggestions of incorporating Carol Marcus (I've had a couple already) would be welcome.