Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing
Posted on Sun Jun 29th, 2025 @ 2:14am by Captain Akeno Misaki & Commander Mashiro Munetani "Shiro" & Lieutenant JG Runa Suruga
Edited on on Sun Jun 29th, 2025 @ 6:28pm
1,523 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
The Games
Location: Cargo Bay 2
It was warm. That's all that mattered. The strange piece of equipment that stood in Cargo Bay two was a perfect place to take a nap. It stood humming to itself in a corner away from the other containers, two long tubes suspended above a rectangular box like base. A strange control panel of switches and dials sat in the middle and the tubes glowed a low hue of red and emitted slight warmth. You could lie on the top of these tunes and dangle your arms and either side of utter lazily whilst laid on your belly.
It was the perfect place on the entire ship for a nap. If you're a cat!
There on top of this strange 'thingymajig' was a rather chunky, spoilt orange cat. Sprawled out on those two tubes, legs either side snoozing peacefully. The low light of the cargo bay was perfect for him, and this was his new favourite spot when he wasn't cuddled upto Captain Misaki in her quarters.
"Seriously, why the hell am I stuck looking for the Captain's cat?" Mashiro grumbled aloud as she and Lieutenant Suruga made their way down to the cargo bay. "You'd think that since it's her cat, it'd be her damn responsibility!"
"Don't be like that Commander. It shows she has trust in you." Runa smiled. As they entered the large cargo bay. She immediately spotted the orange feline, snoozing peacefully on the piece of strange equipment. "Well, there he is. I've got other things to do. Toodles!" She gave the Commander a little finger wave before jogging off down the corridor.
"Wait, get back here-!" Mashiro sighed exasperatedly as Runa disappeared from view. She really was not looking forward to the idea of having to corral Captain Misaki's cat- or any cat, for that matter- and had tried to coerce Lieutenant Suruga into tagging along under the pretense that she'd have a better idea of where cats were likely to hang out (but in reality she wanted someone else to handle the damn thing for her), but if that was how Lieutenant Suruga was going to do it, it looked as if she had no other choice...
Sucking in her breath, she made her way over to the... mechanism? Come to think of it, what exactly did this thing even do?
Oh, right, Cat. So... now came the challenge of trying to herd it back to Captain Misaki's Office without... touching it, God forbid. Mashiro practically shuttered at the thought of it.
"Can you... get up off of that, please?" she imposed, though she knew full well that cats usually tended to do what they wanted to do, and polite suggestions such as these were (most unfortunately) taken and then immediately ignored.
Isoroku opened one eye lazily and looked at her. He let out a long yawn, stretched a little and pushed himself up. Then slowly the fat orange cat turned one hundred and eighty degrees to face away from Mashiro, then laid back down paying no attention to her whatsoever.
Mashiro sighed. Yep, that didn't work, as expected.
Okay, so, Plan B.) since it looked as if the cat was warming itself on the thing, maybe all Mashiro had to do was unplug it, wait for it to cool down, and surely the cat would get bored and wander off elsewhere?
Yeah, that turned out to be a matter easier said than done. For one, she had no way of knowing if it was a critical system or not, and for another, where was it even plugged into? Could she unplug it?
Carefully circling around the mechanism (all the while keeping her distance to ensure the Cat didn't get any funny ideas of trying to pounce her), she immediately located what looked to be a power cable at the bottom of the main unit; using that, as a starting point, she carefully traced it along the floor until she came across a grate in the bulkhead through which the cable appeared to be funneled. No outlet was immediately in sight.
She sighed. "Seriously, you're making me crawl through the goddamn Jefferies Tubes for a cat?"
A shadow appeared over Mashiro. "So... Why are you on the floor Shiro-Chan?" A familiar voice asked. "Is there something down there?"
"Captain!" Mashiro exclaimed as she quickly scrambled to her feet. "I was just attempting to... diagnose an electrical fault that the shuttlebay staff had alerted me to."
"Erm... Shiro-Chan. The shuttlebay is two decks down from here... This is Cargo Bay Two last time I checked..." Akeno smirked at her first officer. "I don't actually think any of the power systems for the shuttlebay go remotely close to here either..." she was totally playing her first officer at her own mistake.
Mashiro blushed. "Really? W-well, I could've sworn-!"
It was then that Akeno's eyes began to follow the power wire from the grate, which led to the strange equipment that Isoroku had happily made his napping spot. She spotted her cat and slowly turned to look back at Mashiro. A huge mischievous grin plastered across her face. "Oh I see now..."
"See wha-?" Mashiro glanced over in the direction she was looking and realized she'd been had.
"Oh; well, it seems I've found your cat, Captain," she remarked, evidently pretending that she'd never seen it before. "Go figure..."
"Yeah... and you just happened to be finding a way to terminate power to the..." she looked at the strange piece of equipment. "Erm... this thing; that he's sleeping on..." she made her way over to the piece of equipment and gently picked up Isoroku.
Isoroku let our a low toned meow as he was hoisted from his napping spot. Akeno held him up to her face. "Hello sleepy head. Have you been keeping Shiro-Chan company?" She said in a babying voice. She nuzzled him with her nose, his soft orange fur was thick and warm. "Go on then. Go home and I'll get a nice can of Tuna for you later."
Carefully he placed him down on the deck. Isoroku didn't move at first, but did look over at Mashiro. Giving her a long deep meow before trotted off towards the cargobay door. It opened on his approach and soon his orange tail disappeared around the doorframe.
Akeno turned to Mashiro. "What even is this thing? Do you know?" She asked resting her chin between her thumb and forefinger. "I've seen it in labs, shuttlebays and even in communications rooms. Yet I still have no idea what this thing actually... is?"
"You'd think with how prevalently Starfleet uses these things, they'd have a manual available or something telling us what exactly they do," Mashiro speculated. "It does appear to be giving heat of some kind, so... maybe it's an energy transfer unit of some kind?"
She glanced around the immediate vicinity. "Seems an awfully strange place to put it, though..."
"I'm not sure. But I'm a Captain, not an engineer." Akeno smiled. "Wow, McCoy would be so proud of me for saying that..." she wandered over to the strange device. "Oh, I have an idea. Computer, what is the piece if equipment located in Cargo Bay Two?" She asked.
"Results are Inconclusive." The computer replied in its female monotone voice.
"Ha! Even the computer doesn't know." Akeno exclaimed. "Well, it must have some sort of purpose. It can't just be a glorified cat bed can it?"
"Don't think I was already trying to figure that out, Captain?" Mashiro replied, directing Akeno's attention to the power cable.
"I'm going to touch it!" Akeno grinned. "Maybe it'll do something!" She said as she began to fiddle with the strange looking controls. The twin tubes changed from glowing red to glowing green and then to a hue of blue. Slowly they returned to red after a few seconds. "Nope, still no idea. Hey, since we don't know what its called, we should give it a name." She suggested. "I'm going to call it Barry. Yes, Barry sounds about right. Barry the GNDN..."
"We're naming an inanimate object that we don't even know what the hell it does?" Mashiro sighed. "You are such a child..."
Akeno turned on a heel. "Well, at least I'm not afraid of fluffy kitties..." she said as she began to walk away. "Come now Shiro-Chan. Barry has had enough of our attention for one day don't you think?"
"I never said I was afraid of cats," Mashiro protested indignantly.
"Yeah yeah..." Akeno said as she walked away. "You keep telling yourself that..." she couldn't help but smirk to herself as she left Mashiro behind.
Posting by:
Captain Akeno Misaki
Commanding Officer
Commander Mashiro Munetani
Executive Officer
Lieutenant JG Runa Suruga
Unhelpful Operations Officer
Isoroku Misaki
Lazy Munchkin
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