Joint Duty Log - Cmdr PontBrillant & Lt Zola - "Chicken Feet and Moonshine"

Posted on Sun Aug 17th, 2014 @ 7:38pm by Vlimar PontBrillant

1,641 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: In the Dark
Location: Awards Ball

The tiny Ferengi skittered around the edge of the dance floor, heading towards the bar. Behind her, a group of hew-mons laughed and whispered as they watched her. They'd insisted the man, who had arrived late and had been seen in the company of the ships two infamous red heads, had been looking at her and checking her out, and they suggested she go buy him a drink and ask for a dance.

With the help of her high heels with the chicken feet as the heels, she could just barely see over the bar when she'd arrived next to the man. She stood next to him, waiting for him to notice her.

Vlimar, who just arrived at the bar, was waiting for the bartender to come and take his order. As he looked around him, he noticed someone next to him. He nodded with the head to Zola.

"Evening," he said.

"It is indeed evening, by the clock at least. Space doesn't really have a time of day," Zola replied with a wide grin that showed off her little sharp teeth.

Vlimar smiled. "Of course, of course," he said. He turned to look at the woman. "Care to take a seat?" he asked.

Zola considered the stool at the bar, a stool designed for humanoids at least half a foot taller than her 4'8" Ferengi frame, and tried to decide if she could get on it without making a fool of herself. Even if her high heels added a few inches for the night, they changed her center of gravity. In her uniform, she climbed over, through, and around many things, but tonight she was wearing a dress. Her crew mates had said he'd been checking her out though, so she'd better take his invitation. So up she went, trying to not be awkward about it.

"I'm Zola, I work down in engineering," she introduced herself when she'd finally settled on the stool.

"Nice to meet you Zola," replied the Commander. "I am Vlimar, from Operations," he said, softly. "And it's nice to meet you, Zola," he added. Vlimar then waves at the bartender, who arrived. "What do you want?" he asked Zola.

Zola looked up at the bar tender surprised. Even though they sat at the bar, she hadn't been expecting him to show up. She flushed slightly, eyes dipping to the bar top. "I hear Sex on the Beach is good," she finally said, and her eyes moved back to Vlimar as if seeking his confirmation.

Vlimar smiled at the answer. "Well, it is a nice cocktail, indeed." Vlimar looked at the tender. "Sex on the beach and an Old Fashioned, please."

The Bartender nodded and left the area to go work on the drinks.

"How long have you been assigned to the ship?" asked Vlimar, who assume that the Zola was part of the crew.

"A few weeks now?" Zola answered, having to think about it. She started to fiddle with the chains that draped along her ears and in front of her neck. "It's been a little chaotic since I arrived, so I'm not entirely sure. What about you?"

Vlimar smiled at the answer. He signaled around the room. "This is my first action as the Chief Operations Officer," he said, grinning. As he finished his sentence, both drinks arrived in front of Vlimar. The man slowly grabbed the sex on the beach and offered it to Zola's hand. "Voilà, milady, a Sex on the Beach," he said, joyfully.

"It's pretty!" Zola chirped as she accepted the drink. She plucked the little pink umbrella out of the orange that was on the rim of the glass, and slid the toothpick end of it into the chain along her left ear. She turned her head to show off her new accessory as she took a sip of the drink.

Vlimar laughed louder than before, without bursting a show for the rest of the room, but loudly enough as an unexpected, genuine laugh would do. "You look pretty," he stated, obviously referring to the look of the earring. "You are going to start a new trend..." he added, while taking a sip of his drink.

"That's what I was told about my shoes too, but I'm yet to see anyone else wearing a pair," she returned as her eyes dropped and she blushed a little. "Maybe the trend came and went during the time I skipped."

Vlimar nodded and looked down. Noticing the chicken legs on the shoes, he smiled widely. "These are... interesting," he said. "Original, imaginative..." he added, still looking at the shoes. "I would not have the courage to sport those, I am... too conservative?" he said.

"My roommate at the academy convinced me. She took me out clubbing one time, and insisted I wear them. I was the center of attention, and they became my signature while I'd hang in the noise room until it was time to take her back to the dorm and hold her hair," Zola explained. "I miss the noise rooms, but I still have my recordings."

Vlimar looked puzzled. "Noise room?" he asked. Perhaps was it his age, or his lack of social adventures, but he was at a loss.

"These really clever hew-mons, they thought it would be fun to record all sorts of sounds and blend them together to make a music of a sort. I loved pulling it apart by ear and seeing what they mixed in," she explained, grinning wide again. "When they started noticed me listening, they took it as a compliment to have a Ferengi listening to their art form."

"Oh..." replied Vlimar, sipping his drink. "You must like to solve audio puzzles, I imagine," he continued.

"Audio puzzles? Like finding the power fluctuation without a tricorder, or like fixing the equalizer in a club sound system?" The little Ferengi wrinkled her brow in thought as she considered, and tapped her glass against her lip.

Vlimar was confused. "Something like that, I assume..." He smiled at Zola, took another sip of his drink. "So, except your exquisite taste in shoes, what else do you like to do?" he asked, flowing the conversation to another subject.

"I like tearing things apart to see how they work, and I read technical manuals... oh, and I love fashion. I lost most of my wardrobe when my mother liquidated my assets when she thought I was dead, the only thing I got back are these shoes, but I've been slowly rebuilding." She plucked the orange off the rim of her drink. "What about you?"

Vlimar smiled at her answer. He nodded at the list of her hobbies. "I enjoy many things. Reading, mostly historical books, I use to produce my own wine... I enjoy living for the moment, really..." he replied. He took a slight sip of his drink.

"You made wine?" Zola looked around quickly, then leaned closer, steadying herself with a hand on the edge of the bar so she wouldn't fall off the stool. "I tried to make Romulan Ale for a while, with the help of a Romulan. We never quite got it right with what I could get my hands on, on the Emperor," she confessed.

Vlimar laughed softly, not wanting to be disrespectful. He nodded at Zola. "Well, access to materials is the most vital aspect. You need to be able to get the best ingredients, at the optimum conditions..." he said, trying to relate to her confession. "Are you still trying to moonshine your own Rommie Ale, Zola?" he asked, also seriously.

"I don't have a Romulan to help me anymore," she admitted with a sigh and a pout. She'd only been able to hunt down one of her old crew mates, and she had to keep quiet about knowing her. "I'd have to try something else. Is wine hard to make?" Zola sipped at her drink that remained mostly full, as she'd been hardly paying attention to it.

Vlimar smiled. "Wine is very hard to make under the best conditions, and a starship is hardly the best conditions..." he replied, preferring, obviously, the natural method of wine making than the synthetic, artificial steps of producing wine, as had become popular at the time. Vlimar downed the rest of his drink.

"If I'm going to take up alcohol making, I should probably start with something easy this time... considering the proliferation of grain alcohol, maybe I should start there," Zola allowed, noting her companion's empty drink. Is this where she was supposed to ask him to dance? Or was she supposed to wait for him to do it? She thought Melissa had insisted a lady always let the gentleman ask.

Vlimar nodded at the statement about alcohol making. He smiled and said: "Well, good luck, hopefully, you will find the right point of perfection into the conception..." He then looked quickly over his left shoulder, saw Commander Archer and noticed that he seem to be in a three people conversation, where he was looking around for an exit himself.

He looked back at Zola and smiled. "Now, if you would excuse me, there's an old friend I need to talk to..." he said, while slowly standing from his stool. "It was very nice to meet you, Zola. See you around?" he concluded.

"I- uh, yes. It was nice to meet you too," Zola answered, confused that this didn't seem to be going as she expected. She looked in the direction that Vlimar had looked, and spotted the chief intelligence officer of the ship along with a couple other people. It wasn't her place to get in the way of that conversation, so she turned her attention back to her drink.

-=- END LOG -=-

Commander Vlimar PontBrillant
Chief of Operations
USS Vindicator

Lieutenant Zola
Engineering Officer
USS Vindicator

 

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