Star Trek Sim/ Star Trek RPG
USS Eagle, NCC 2185
CPT Kematsopoulos & LTjg Richards
JOINT LOGS
Joint Logs by Myth, Stoffe and Nouri
Title: O, What a Tangled Web We Weave, Part Eight
Location: The USS Eagle
Setting: Captain's Quarters
Her silence just confirmed the emotions he was feeling from her. "There is
room for you to work on, is there not, ways of not getting so angry that
you consider hitting someone who is not a physical threat to you or
others?" he said.
"He was gonna-" Leah sighed, realizing that excuses were pretty pointless.
It would be easier just to agree and get this over with. "Fine - I mean,
you're right, sir."
"Going to what? Hit you? He's offly spindly to be a threat to you," he remarked.
This time he really didn't know the answer in advance.
She laughed at the idea. "No - he was taking the bots. I didn't want to let
him do that."
"That's not an appropriate use of force, and see? Look at the situation you
put yourself in by not following the rules and getting help," he said.
"He was trying to push me to see what I'd do!" Leah argued.
"Then show him he can't get you so riled. You don't get it. Was your life
in danger?" he asked trying to get her to focus. ~If only she could see the
mess she is making of her life,~ he thought.
"The bots were in danger."
"Of what? Was he going to dismantle them and use their parts to ... let's
say fix the turbolift?" he asked, saving the timing of this particular revelation
for now.
Leah blushed. "Bob was tryin' to catch my attention! And it's LCDR Unstoffe
that wants 'em dismantled."
~Again with the blame shifting! She won't take responsibility for her actions
even when lives are at stake.~
Captain Kematsopoulos decided to take this to the logical progression. Maybe
that would help. "So you will hit your department head?" he asked.
"I can't let him do that. It's - it's like murder. They aren't just machines!"
Leah explained carefully avoiding the question. She had no idea what she'd
do about Unstoffe, especially if he backed her into a corner over the bots.
~And how'd you find out about the turbolift?!~ Surely there hadn't been time
for the Captain to get a report on that incident.
"Leah, we have to talk later on this more. It's easy to get attached to things,
especially if you feel all alone with no one to talk to," he said gently.
That was going too far. Leah stepped away, hands in fists. "They ain't just
machines, sir."
"It's easy to think that they could be more than machines at the point you
are at, but you need to keep this in perspective. You can't go around hitting
people when they disagree with you or annoy or upset you and even if you
don't hit them, you cannot permit yourself to get so angry that you set yourself
up to hit them. You can't keep making excuses and blaming others for your
mistakes or bot mistakes that can get people killed," he said.
"Are you gonna have 'em dismantled?" Leah demanded. To her the robots were
the real center of the issue. Besides which she didn't want to think about
the rest of it now.
"Leah, we are at red alert. We have two crippled ships. We don't have time
to discuss the bots in detail. We can later. Now seems to be a pivotal moment
in your life. It is important to take it if we can to change things around,"
he said. To him the robots were serious, but had nothing to do with the core
of the matter, which was her being honest with herself that she had a serious
problem with how she thought and handled things.
"How am I supposed to know what I'm gonna do if I don't know what your gonna
do to them?" she asked, exasperated.
He sighed. ~I can't get her to see what she is doing to herself and what
the real cause of this all is.~ "The bots are not what this is all about.
Do you understand?" he asked.
"No." Leah had had enough talk and she wasn't going to go along with it any
longer - to her it was just wasting time. "They're why all this started anyways!
So unless we can move on to what we're gonna do about the intruders the bots
DO matter."
"They didn't start this. You did. You took the bots off the other ship, to
this one against protocols. No decontamination. They multiplied. You wanted
to hit a patient. You wanted to hit and did hit Hanson," he summarized. "You
have to be able to follow rules and you have to find ways to avoid being
so angry that you use force when you should not especially on weaker or impaired
persons," he continued. The Captain got up and whistled again. This
time the bots scurried back into hiding places.
"I didn't know he was impaired at the time - just a jerk!"
"He was a patient. A guest. Period. Jerk or not a jerk it doesn't matter,"
he said.
Leah crossed her arms, annoyed but not dumb enough to do anything she'd regret
later.
"You can't just go around hitting people or wanting to. There has to be an
appropriate use of force only when needed. That comes outside and independent
of your feelings. In Security, you are sometimes going to have to stop brawls,
put up with belligerent drunken folk, a whole gamut of annoying, insulting
and unpleasant beings and cultural misunderstandings. You are there to help
control the situation and bring it to a peaceful end not add to the anger
and confusion, " he said.
"So when Security gets sent to stop or prevent an incident, you get called
names, etc., What do you do?" he asked. "The brawl may start personal between
two in the rec room or wherever, but when security comes they can just as
easily make it personal with the guards. You can't let insults help you lose
control," he said referring to an incident he had read about a while ago.
"I don't always!" Leah argued, letting slip an accidental admission.
"Again, listen to your words, 'don't always' meaning you do. You need to
stay in control of yourself first," he admonished. "You need to work towards
never," he said.
She shut her eyes for a moment." I know I lost it with Hanson. But that was
it..."
He could tell that was not true. "Your whole life that was it?" he
asked gently and seriously.
That was going too far. "Don't. You don't know me." Leah snarled. She preferred
to keep a certain distance between herself and others and she did not appreciate
his ignoring that boundary. If he went one step further down that road, blind
or not she was going to let him have it.
~It's going no where again. She needs to cool down,~ he thought. The Captain
scanned the room with one of the devices. ~No luck,~ he thought referring
to two things. "I can't find Ensign Hanson's phaser...Do you see it?"
he asked, hoping for at least one thing to pan out.
The sudden switch in topics caught Leah off guard. She looked around for
Hanson's missing phaser, letting the discussion slip out of mind for a moment.
"Don't what? Try to help you see what is going on? Are you telling me that
you never hit anyone else in your life out of anger?" he said.
Leah answered. "I don't see it." She ignored the other questions, but her
hands had curled themselves into fists again.
"You don't see the need to get your anger under control or the phaser?" he
asked returning to the topic and trying to make her think with the double
intended meaning.
"I don't see the phaser." She almost growled it.
~And you don't see the other either, unfortunately,~ he thought. "We need
to find it. I don't know if he has any identifying marks on it," he said.
Leah answered. "I don't see it." She went over to the pile of gifts to hunt
through it. The phaser could easily be buried in there somewhere.
"You have to think about it at some point," he said deliberately.
"I DO think about!" Leah looked up from the pile long enough to glare at
him before returning to rifling through it.
"And?" he asked wanting to know what she thought. For a moment he shifted
and talked to himself out loud. "Now who cleaned it up and where??
"I already told ya I don't wanna leave Starfleet." She scattered a few pieces
in her haste.
"There's more at stake than that. Your whole future. Your whole life," he
said. Being thrown out of Starfleet the way she was headed was going to be
the least of her problems.
"No. If I leave here, I'll just wind up back home." Home, in her mind, would
be complete failure - no future down that road. Leah gave up on the pile.
She'd never had a conversation this honest with anyone. "You mentioned brawls?
I used to get in a lot of 'em. That's what people DO there. Ya get drunk
and fight." She looked down at her hands, her voice softened. "That's all
there is. I don't wanna wind up like them." The thought of it scared her
more than anything else did.
The Captain had been to a number of places like that. "Then you need to make
sure you do neither. Drink or fight out of anger or boredom," he said gently.
She snorted. What did he think she doing? "That's why I'm here. I said I'm
tryin'."
"It's important to get out of a bad situation and area where other people
will only tear you down and keep you down, but you have to change yourself
also," he said. "Or all you have done is moved, not changed your life."
Leah rolled her eyes. It wasn't like she hadn't considered any of this before.
" 'And stuff worth doin' ain't easy' - I heard you the first time, sir."
"Exactly. You have got to control of this anger or it will control you. (Editor's
note: Anger is the path to the Dark Side ;) ) And you will end up exactly
where you don't want to be, drunk or not, in Greenville or on a star ship,"
he said, carefully timing another piece of information.
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