A Purr-fect Trap

Posted on Sun Dec 30th, 2012 @ 5:15pm by Lieutenant Jonathan "Jack" Mantell & Lieutenant Sngarlassanarn

Mission: Funzone
Location: Sickbay, Deck 7
Timeline: Following "Pick up Sticks, Lay them Straight - Part 3"

Having given the Sickbay a wide berth on his exploration of the ship beforehand, the Miran youth was returning willingly, surprising even himself. With an earful of rumors that there was a giant tiger-cat in Sickbay, the boy began looking around eagerly as the doors to the medical area opened. Immediately, his nose was hit with the scent of, well, nothing. The air was clean, far too clean for his nose, and the boy wrinkled it in disgust.

It was this expression which a nearby nurse found on him. The young, blonde woman peered at the small Lieutenant, as if her eyes were playing tricks on her. As most did, she seemed to put aside the illogical conclusion that a boy dressed in a Starfleet Uniform was an actual officer, and bent down to address the Miran. "Can I help you, sweetie?"

Whether Jack noticed the Ensign Nurse's particular tone, he didn't show it. The Miran boy was too busy looking around, his eyes darting about the room to catch a glimpse of his target. "Uhh," he began, still distracted with his eyes looking anywhere but at the Nurse, "yeah. Is there a giant tiger-cat here?" The youth could barely contain his excitement as the term spilled out of his mouth. "I was told there was one working in Sickbay."

Now the Nurse seemed to be taken aback. "Oh," she started, laying a hand on her collarbone. "Yes, dear, I believe you mean Dr. Sngarlas-well, Dr. Snarl." The woman's tone had clearly changed, now it was polite, but crisp and curt. Raising her voice, she turned towards some part of Sickbay the boy couldn't see, "Dr. Snarl, could you come here? You have a visitor."

Snarl, who was sitting in his office reviewing the medical records of the senior staff heard his name called. Locking his terminal, he stood and pulled his lab coat back on. He walked out from behind his desk, and out of his office into sickbay's main ward. "Yes, Ensign?" He saw a young boy, in Command red. "Him?" The nurse nodded.

Snarl hated children. He had had a bad experiences during his pediatrics rotation. But this boy was in a uniform... was it some kind of costume? He glanced at the pips on the boy's collar. 'May as well play along,' he thought before speaking aloud. "Can I help you, Lieutenant?"

As the giant frame of Dr. Snarl stepped out into the main room, the boy's mouth fell agape. His eyes widened at the Chief Medical Officer's trimmed, white mane. "Oh, my god," Jack uttered, the boy's mouth becoming a smile as his eyes traced the moist, pink nose at the end of the doctor's short snout. "Oh, my god," came again as Jack looked into the doctor's piercing, green eyes, their felinoid origins unmistakable. "Oh, my god," the Miran youth repeated once more, taking in the short, rounded ears affixed to Snarl's head.

"This. Is. Awesome!" Jack cried, and then devolved into a brief round of giggles. He walked around the doctor, marveling at the large paws, the lack of footwear that proudly displayed the long, claw-tipped feet. When he had rounded the doctor once, the boy looked up at him once more, his eyes filled with curiosity. "Could I?" the Miran youth started low, cautiously, but then raised his voice a bit to be heard. "Could I touch them? Your ears?"

And that was said bad experience. How he got the dimple in his ear. "I would rather you didn't." Snarl replied, the UT making his voice a low baritone rumble. "Is there something you need, young man?"

"Uhh, nothing." The boy took a step back, now considering this might not have been the best idea. This was sickbay, after all, nothing good ever happened here. Here there were doctors and nurses, needles and examinations, along with plenty that Jack would rather not consider. He turned around, and promptly ran into the blonde nurse from before.

"What's your name, dear?" she said, peering down at the Miran boy, who was trying to get out of the way once more.

"Uhh, Jack," came the stuttered reply. Jack stopped for a second, sizing up his escape paths. The Doctor -Snarl was his name?- was between the boy and the back exit, while the Nurse was almost directly in front of the door he had walked through just minutes ago. Perhaps he could distract her? Crawl under her legs? Another question interrupted his thoughts.

"Jack?" the Ensign inquired, "Just Jack?"

"Oh," the spikey-haired Miran replied, forgetting himself for just a moment. They were going to discover his identity sooner or later, so might as well out with it. Still eyeing his options to reach the door, the youth tilted his head back and explained, "I'm Lieutenant Jack Mantell, the new Chief Conn officer. Or Helm, Flight Control, whatever you want to call it." After a second, he added another quip, "I fly stuff."

Snarl, who hadn't had a chance to review the files was caught by surprise. Had Snarl had eyebrows, one of them would probably be quirked in a Vulcanesque fashion. 'Not just a kid after all,' he thought. A heartbeat or two later, the doctor had recovered. "Ah, my apologies, Lieutenant. I haven't had time to review everyone's files yet. What species are you?"

"Miran," the boy said, returning his attention to Snarl. He stared once again at the doctor's white fur, mesmerized. His dreams of escape seemed to be left discarded; now all Jack could think about was finding some way to feel the doctor's fur for himself, or touch his big ears. Leaving without that accomplishment, it seemed, would be a bigger disappointment than never even having come.

"Miran? As in Life Prolongation Virus? Don't s'pose I can convince you to get your physical a little early, since you're here, can I?" Snarl knelt down on his haunches, closer to the helmsman. "I might even let you get a pet or two in..." he whispered. It seemed a fair trade. Cooperation with a medical exam for something Snarl despised.

Did Snarl just say 'pet'? "Sure!" Jack chirped in reply to -actually, he wasn't sure what he just agreed to. Still, the doctor said he could pet him, so whatever he was supposed to do couldn't be that bad.

Snarl straightened. "Great! Hop on up onto this biobed." He turned and picked up a medical tricorder off a tray of instruments. The nurse, meanwhile set a PADD down on the same tray. Snarl glanced at it. It was Jack's record. "How long have you been aboard?" Snarl asked, as he opened the tricorder.

Jack's legs dangled from the biobed, and he swung them as he answered, "I actually just got here yesterday. Have you seen this ship from the outside? It's huge! The boy glanced around sickbay, "And the tech's pretty cool, too. I'll bet Sickbay's totally integrated. From the helm console on the bridge, I can call up stuff you can normally only access in Stellar Cartography!"

Snarl chuckled. "I got a glimpse of the hull while crossing over the gangplank." He ran the sensor from the tricorder over Jack's body. "And yes, we're totally integrated down here." Snarl wasn't as excited by the idea, the Mercury and Havers had both received technological upgrades during his tours. The tech on the Havers was pretty close to the tech aboard the Arizona.

"Alright, well, your scans look good." He sent the scans from the tricorder to the large LCARS panel on the bulkhead. "Pulse, respiration, everything's within normal limits." He pointed at each reading as he mentioned them, letting Jack see them for himself.

"Do you know if you're due for any immunizations?" Snarl picked up the PADD and scrolled down through page after page of records, looking for that section.

"You mean shots?" Jack wrinkled his nose for the second time since he'd entered Sickbay. Shots meant needles, needles meant doctors poking and prodding him, like they had on Miri's Planet. Every week another examination, every month another brilliant doctor looking for a cure for the poor, immortal Miran kids. The Gaults had been kind, but the Miran Institute Administrators were cold and dispassionate.

The walls of Sickbay seemed a bit closer than they had when he'd entered. Looming over him in the blue lab coat of Starfleet Medical, the giant cat doctor appeared no different from those doctor's on his homeworld. To them, Jack was their subject, their lab rat, nothing more. Feeling very warm by now, the boy hopped down from the bed, "Yeah, actually, I think I'm due for a shift on the bridge."

"Yes, I mean shots. But they don't hurt. I mean, it's not like I have to use an old-fashioned needle." Snarl set the PADD down. "It does look like you're due for a tetanus vaccine, and I don't see any record of one for Antaran flu. Both of which are required by Starfleet."

Jack edged further away from the bed, trying to maneuver between the doctor and the door. "Oh, yeah, I think my shift actually started five minutes ago. I'm late!" He eyed the nurse that he'd spoken to before already attending to another patient. Good, the boy thought, she won't be in the way. "You understand, right? We'll just have to do this later." He backed into a stand of instruments, sending them clattering to the floor. The Miran's eye caught one of them, and his heart jumped. "Much later."

The nurse's attention was caught by the clattering of instruments. She darted over. "Everything alright?"

Snarl paused for a moment. "It seems that Mister Mantell has an aversion to shots..." He held a hypospray in his paw, already loaded with one of the two vaccines the officer needed. It was carefully concealed so that the Miran couldn't see it.

"Oh!" She smiled at Jack. "Come on, tell me what's so bad about them?"

While the nurse had Jack distracted, Snarl slowly moved behind the biobed, out of his line of sight. He inched the hypospray against Jack's neck, and depressed the trigger, releasing the vaccine into his patient's bloodstream.

"Well, I-" the boy began, before feeling the cool, metal nozzle against his neck, and the tiniest of pinpricks into his skin. He whirled to face the giant doctor, his eyes already rimmed red with a mixture of shock and hurt. "You!" Jack screamed, his hand flying to his neck. "How could you?" Those words were cheap copies for the real emotion that hung in the middle of his throat. It echoed softly once more, "How?"

Jack threw out his hands and pushed against Snarl's fabric-clad legs. He darted around the paw that reached for him, moving towards the door. If he was quick enough, safety lay beyond. The boy charged, blind against anything, or anyone else in his way.

Snarl growled under his breath. "Lieutenant!" He took off after him, still on only his hind legs. "Lieutenant, come back here! That's an order!"

He didn't want to scare him more by dropping to all fours, in which he would certainly be able to catch the Miran, but the doctor did chase him out into the corridor. "Lieutenant Mantell!" he shouted down the corridor as the nurse caught up with him.

"Let that be a lesson doc... always have the other hypo ready."

Snarl hissed, as he walked back into Sickbay. "Kids..."