Fixin' a sink where the cigs fall in and stop the water from wandering where it will go

[purophet]

WHO: Allison Faye, Cid Highwind, Shera (NPC)
WHEN: Monday, February 16
WHERE: The Shera
WHAT: Cid Highwind's sink is clogged. The plumber's association has lined one of its younger employees up for him.
WATCH FOR: Cid talking about a teenage girl's panties just as Shera walks into the room.

Cid Highwind prided himself in being a man of dreams, lofty goals that sought the exploration of the burning lights the night sky contained. But it was in achieving these goals and the journey toward it's completion that gave him the most pleasure. Hard work, ingenuity and science were the tools of man, what gave them power and dominion over the Planet. He had reached the stars, been the first man in space in his world, created wonderous machines of travel...
And he couldn't fix a sink.
His loud curses echoed throughout the Shera, producing smirks, stifled laughter and embarrassment among his crew of engineers, whose education and expertise did NOT include basic plumbing.
So a handyman had been called, and while he waited, Cid filled the room with a grey haze of cigarette smoke while he paced (or, more aptly, stomped) around the sink like an interrogator before a prisoner who was past all reason and patience.
"Son of a BITCH!" He kicked a pipe, hard, sending a dull ring through the room while one of the crewmembers winced to hide a smile that threatened to explode into laughter.

The handyman takes a little while to arrive compared to how a standard plumber might. After all, she has to take the bus. Or a cab. Or whatever transportation they have to offer out here.
        "Hey, careful, Summer," Allison Faye says to the housecat keeping pace with her, rubbing up against her leg underfoot. "If you make me drop these tools... oh, geez." She looks up at the bulk of the Shera and stares. "The places I get sent to. Come on." She jogs ahead, and then spends an awkward moment at the exterior of the Shera, trying to look for a doorbell or a door to knock on or she doesn't know /what/ to do.

Helpfully, an engineer had been waiting to allow the 'handyman' entrance to the Shera, expecting the arrival. He walked toward Allison hesitantly, unsure why a woman with a cat approached with tools.
"H-hey, miss! Are you... uh... here about the job?" Awkwardly, he fumbled off his hat, revealing a shock of red hair.

"Hi-yee!" The girl can't be older than high-school age. She raises her toolbox in greeting and goes jogging up to meet the engineer. The cat keeps pace with her, but stands at her feet with its haunches raised, staring bloody murder at the engineer. The girl's certainly friendly, though. "I'm your man. You know, you really should have mentioned you were, uh... some kind of crazy jet, on the phone. I can handle it if it's just a standard blockage, but if it's something with your tanks or disposal or something, I might have to call in a specialist."

She could be a younger sister, thought the engineer, who was young himself, maybe in his early twenties. He looked at the cat nervously, having had a deep-seated fear of felines since an incident involving a furious cat and the close confines of a small shower stall in his youth. He returned his attention to the girl.
"Man, hah!" This wasn't an unkind laugh, but the idea struck him as funny. Very funny. In fact, he was sure the crew would LOVE this handyman. Indeed, this arrangement could result in hilarity the crew would enjoy for weeks.
"Well, we can cross that bridge when we get to it." On the matter of how simple or complex the job may be. "To be honest, I think the Captain's been pitching his butts into the sink again, so..." He shrugged.
"I'm Howard. And you are?"

"Oh, well if it's cigarettes that'll be no problem. Nice ta meetcha, Howie!" The girl smiles a big grin and leans up on her toes. "I'm Allison. I'm kind of, y'know, apprenticing or something, I guess. But I can do the job, okay? So, uh." She looks up at the bulkhead of the Shera, staring in wonder. "How do you get up on this thing?"

Howard grins and mutters a few words into a battered radio. A hiss of pressurized air and the metallic slide of oiled gears reveal a hatch allowing entry. He beckons her in, "Well, Miss Allison, Welcome aboard the Shera."
If she enters, he leads the way, heavy boots clanging over the steel flooring as they head to the Captain's Quarters, passing through the cargo hold, where some of the spaces are holding large yellow birds with large beaks, to the second floor and passing various quarters. A few engineers gawk while others simply smile to each other and return to their work.
"The Shera is an airship, not one of those, uh... 'jet' things. A fine ship, with a fine Captain. Just, uh... he's a little unique."

Allison follows Howard into the Shera, looking around in curiosity as she goes. The cat comes in as well, keeping close and eyeing any other crewmember that passes, hissing lowly if they get too close to the girl. The airship is just a mild curiosity, though, until they pass the cargo hold where the birds are held. Their presence is a bit unnerving, although the girl is very good at hiding it. She still takes a couple steps to walk on the other side of the hall from them, though. She seizes on any opportunity to smile back, wiggle her fingers in greeting, or otherwise distract.
        "So... where did you get those birds? You know, the weird, giant-big, beak-to-snap-a-man-in-half ones."

"Those? Well, those are Chocobos. Just rounded them up from our usual spot in this place called the 'Northern Continent' on our world. Nice open place. They're usually used as mounts. These are probably to be sold as breeding stock for the races." One of Cid's side-hobbies, an old habit from his earlier adventuring days with AVALANCHE and Cloud.
"Go right on in, he's expecting you." He could barely contain his amusement at this point. "Remember: His bark is worse than his bite... usually."
From inside, the latest string of profanity reached a climax as Cid lit another cigarette, his voice hoarse from shouting.
Inside, a middle-aged man, wearing a blue, short-sleeved shirt and baggy pants, unshaven face and blonde hair swept back and held in place with a pair of aviator goggles, squints through smoke at the girl.
"What the ████ are you doing here?!"

Allison and Summer step into the Captain's office, and are immediately challenged. Summer raises on his haunches again and glares back at the Captain, but Allison doesn't seem to blink an eye. Instead, she puts on her biggest, sweetest, cutest smile, and musters her striking charm. She tilts her head to her side, and raises her toolbox.
        "I'm here to fix your ████ing sink!"

If the Captain notices the young girl's stunning beauty, he doesn't seem to have a particularly good way of showing it. He takes note of the cat, scowls back at it, and is momentarily stunned by Allison's reaction. He opens his mouth to object, then frowns.
"You kiss your goddamn mother with that mouth?!" A weak attempt at recovering his position, but he's caught off guard. Girls in magazines apparently were leaping off their glossy pages in pursuit of a career in plumbing, and they swore. It was almost too much to handle.

And that one, in turn, catches Allison a little off guard. She is still very good at hiding it, but it stymies her reach for a good comeback. "Oh, well - well, look who's talking," she says. She normally could've done better than that. She recovers, though again it's hard to tell an outward sign of it, and shrugs her shoulders. "If you don't want your sink fixed, of course, you can just deal with the gummed-up nasty cigarette butt pipes, and I can go home. But you called me out here, so I think I still get to charge you."

Well, to Cid, nice girls were clean and didn't use that kind of language. Well, if they weren't the enticing type, that is. He crossed his arms and grunted, "You sure and hell don't LOOK like a handyman. You might break a nail." He smirked, apparently thinking this to be the height of reason.
But then the matter of logic is brought up-she was hired to fix the sink and the sink NEEDED to be fixed. He sure couldn't do it and the thought of a woman being able to fix what he couldn't, ESPECIALLY on his ship, caused his face to flush in embarrassment.
"Fine! Get to work!" He turned his back, a somewhat childish show of frustration and roared at his assistants to give the girl some ████ing room fer godsake. They scattered, shooting reassuring glances at Allison or snickering behind their oil-stained gloves.
Being outdone by a woman was JUST what Cid needed. Always needed, since he was an old dog that had some very bad habits.

"Well then if I break a nail, I'm adding it to your bill," Allison says with a teasing smile. So he's a jackass, not like he's the first jackass she's had to deal with. She looks back at the crewmen and smirks back at them too - well, this is pretty funny, isn't it? This guy's such a tightwad.
        She takes a step forward, careful not to step on her cat underfoot, and leans up on her toes again behind Cid. "You'll need to show me where the problem is, o Captain my Captain. Or, y'know, don't, but we charge by the hour."

Cid whirls around and faces Allison, who is now ENTIRELY too close for comfort. Not wanting to step back, he manages to glare and point at the offending sink with one gloved hand, the other resting on his hip defiantly. Which made him look all the more rediculous.
"Goddamn sink won't drain." Sink be damned, this young girl must be around Yuffie's age, and he figured that the flawlessness of her appearance may have been cosmetics artfully applied, but at this close distance... the perfection was too complete, like reality had been airbrushed away. It was disturbing.
He swallowed, then dragged hard on his cigarette, hoping to repel the face from him by exhaling right into it. It was an asshole thing to do, but he made no promises to be polite, to behave, but it was difficult to concentrate with a face like that. Rather than the repelling effects of the monstrous or severely disfigured, such flawless beauty dazzled the senses of men. He was too old and too stubborn to allow that.
"Your pet follow you everywhere? Can it make itself useful with some kind of unique talent or what?!"

Allison smirks in Cid's face, until he does the old smoke trick. That does it, she may be a fast talker but that doesn't shield your eyes. She reels back, coughs wildly, and waves her arm in an attempt to get the smoke away. Oddly enough, just the act of blowing smoke in her face agitates the cat, which rowls and claws at Cid's leg. "Kaff... stop it, Summer," she says, still waving the smoke out of her face. The cat retreats back to Allison's feet, but glares daggers at Cid.
        Allison fights the urge to call Cid something nasty. She does, however, make a note to do something nasty to him when she gets the chance. "I don't have anybody to watch over him," she says, walking over to the sink. She kneels down and sets her toolbox down. "And he gets very upset when I'm not around. Don't worry, he won't get underfoot - but he does have a nasty temper." And is pretty protective of the girl, evidently. She opens the cabinet and glances over the pipes for a moment, and then digs through her toolbox.

Cid tries and fails to jerk his leg away, looking down at Summer in alarm as it swipes at his thick pants and boots to scratch. Thankfully, heavy workclothes were meant to avoid the unpleasantries of scrapes or burns, but a feline reprimand for rudeness had it's intended effect of being both alarming and distracting.
"You don't say..." Nasty temper indeed. He gives the cat a wide berth and crosses his arms again, taking the opportunity to look interestedly over the girl's shoulder as she worked, preparing to don the mask of stubborn disapproval should she turn around again. Hey, he might be a silly old man, but he still likes to learn. He's just got too much pride to admit it, least of all to one of the fairer sex.
"How does a girl like you land in a job like this anyway? You look like one of those, what the hell are they called...? Cover girls."

"Has the water been taking awhile to drain lately, or did it just all clog up all of a sudden?" Allison fetches a long tool out of the box and stands back up. Summer scales the kitchen counter, resting next to the sink to watch Allison work. She scrunches up her nose awkwardly at the mention of her looks, given that nobody's looking at her face at the moment. "You try to find a job in this economy," she says. She begins to lower the tool down into the drain. "It's better than working at Burger King."

"Eh, it always backs up sooner or later. Sometimes it's in a few months, other times in a couple of weeks. Getting real sick of that ████ if you ask me!" He pulls once on his cigarette, then waves it in front of him in a gesture of 'I don't give a damn'. "I don't really know."
He exhales again, sending a grey stream to the ceiling. "Burger King? Was that the one with the strange clown or the king? Either way, they're both seriously ████ed up." The strange earth-world people and their strange ways. Always familiar but foreign in so many ways. Take Shane, who refers to himself as 'Ai-rish' like it meant something. Huh.

"Have you tried, y'know, buying an ashtray?" There it is. She raises the tool slowly back out the drain, and then kneels back down at the base of the sink where the pipes are. "They're cheap." She trades the tool for a wrench, and then climbs head-first halfway into the space underneath the sink, setting to work on the drainpipe. "Ngh... Burger King is the one with the plastic king who stares at you while you sleep. Because that makes you hungry for a cheeseburger."

"An ashtra-" Cid begins, "Of course! I always use one!" Well, he does when he remembers to, or when he's not drunk, or when he doesn't throw it at people. Other than that, he uses ashtrays as they were intended! Honest.
At the mention of plastic kings inducing a desire for cheeseburgers by creepiness alone, he forgets his frustration for a moment and finds his frown twitching. "Hah!" Well, at least you got a laugh out of him.
"Yeah, I guess I should stick to my ashtray." Cid admits, resigning himself to the truth of the matter-he should leave solids out of the sink like a NORMAL person.
"Think you can fix it?" Otherwise, it'll cost him to get a specialist!

"Come on, stupid..." Allison strains at a catch in the wrench for a moment before it moves again. "Ngh!" The force of the sudden release leads her to hit her head on the roof of the cabinet. "Ah! Stupid... everytime! There are always surprises, but yeah, I can probably fix it. I think it's just your drainpipe." She goes back to the wrenching and the straining. "So you're a captain, huh? Who owns this rig? Am I on some kind of Air Force thing, or an airliner built like a tank or something?"

Rig? Cid bristles, then beams at the topic he loves most: Airships. "The Shera is an airship. My airship. Fitted her up with some of the pieces of my original, the Highwind." Which would be obvious; Most of Cid's projects looked like junk, for the most part, but the Shera... it had a refined, organic elegance to it's form. It also looked ancient and ageless, but not undamaged. Some of the rooms and portions of the craft seemed out of place-scrapped pieces of metal fitted over what might have been a way to repair or improve the ship. Cid had recovered the craft and converted it to his needs, adding to it as he deemed appropriate and reinforcing this for more combat than simply transport. It was a work in progress. "She's like me, although easier on the eyes-we don't serve any power save our own. We just chose to ally ourselves with the IPA." Let's leave the matter of him being made head of the airship division for the underground organization WRO out for the time being, shall we?
"...how'd a girl like you end up being a plumber?"

"So, you don't work for anybody, except for the cops, who you work for." Allison chats back, but her attention is clearly primarily on the plumbing job, something like small talk from a sarcastic barber. "Ngh... rooter," she says, holding a hand out from underneath the sink. Cid might not really know what she's asking for. But oddly enough, she isn't talking to Cid. She's talking to the cat, which hops down from the counter, picks up a tool from her toolbox in its mouth, and pads over to drop it into her hand. "You'd be surprised what you can learn from do-it-yourself books at the library. So where'd you get the money to make this thing? I mean, no offense, but you don't really look like Rich Uncle Moneybags." She pauses. "He wears more black."

"Right!" Cid pauses, glances to the side with a scowl on his face, then nods to himself. Right. Wait. Uh... right.
Then a hand goes out and requests a tool. Cid unfolds his arms for a moment, unsure if he's being asked, but who else would she be talking to?! Reluctantly, he goes for the tools but stops as the cat does something really strange: it selects the proper tool and hands it over.
The Captain gaped openly at this scene. Okay, so he could possibly wrap his mind around the idea of a girl taking up a highly (in his opinion) unladylike profession, but a CAT?
"Uh..." Where'd he get the money? "Shit, it's a long story. It helped that I had a lot of spare parts available after Meteorfall, but this time I didn't trust anyone to fund the project." After what Shinra pulled, he had a hard time being on anyone's payroll and stuck to contract work, mainly transport or escort jobs.
Finally, he HAD to ask: "How the ████ did you teach your pet to do that?"

Allison jabs the rooter into the pipe and grunts intermittently. At irregular intervals, she pauses, leans her head further in, usually bumps it on the ceiling of the cupboard and grouses, and then resumes rooting. "What, so you built it yourself?" Like a guy who works on a classic car in his garage on weekends?
        The question about her cat merits only a flat, "Cat magic."

"Hell yeah!" Yes, just like that guy working on muscle cars as a hobby, Cid worked on his projects because he loved doing it. He made his dream work for him, too... by doing jobs involving piloting or engineering.
Cat magic? The engineer rolled his eyes and lit another cigarette. Wait a second... this WAS a place where there were people from many different worlds AND times than what he was used to... if Aerith could be alive while he knew her to be years dead, then maybe there WAS cat magic?
"So... how come you don't use that magic to teach your cat your job?"

"You've got to be - ngh - you've got to be kidding me," Ally says. "How long did that take?" She won't bother to ask about where he got the parts - it sounds like a long and complicated and uninteresting story.
        Then she pauses in her work, and slowly, carefully pulls herself back out from underneath the sink. She does it just long enough to fix Cid with a flat, lightly-judgmental 'I just told you I used cat magic to teach my cat tricks and you believed me' glance.
        Then she roots herself back in underneath it. "Gawd, this is icky-nasty gross," she says underneath the sink. "How many cigarettes did you throw down here? Get me a trashcan or a bowl or something, will you?"
        She pauses. "I'm talking to you this time, not my cat."

When fixed with that stare, Cid feels immediately and very uncomfortably foolish. Dammit, he fell for it! He frowned as she went back to her work again, trying to think of a way to recover from this slight embarrassment.
"Yeah, yeah. Don't get your damn panties in a bunch. SHERA! Get your ass in here with a trash bin!" Cid bellowed into the hall. Somewhere down that hall, there was a startled yelp and the sound of something shattering on the floor, followed by hurried footsteps. Cid winced. Oops.

"Don't talk about my panties! You are way too old to talk about people's panties. Ew." Allison continues with the rooting, but the sudden shattering sound elicits another pause in her work. "Ooh, you're gonna get it now," she says.

Lady Luck is a fickle mistress, but one Cid Highwind enjoyed the company of nevertheless. However, she was a real bitch when she didn't smile on him, which was exactly what happened when Shera entered the room JUST IN TIME to hear Allison object to the current topic of discussion.
Cid turned around and was about to retort when a brunette sporting a lab coat and glasses entered and turned red. "C-Captain! She's far too young for-" Now it was Cid's turn to flush. "What?! Listen here... she's not-" Shera turned to the girl and handed her the bin.
"I'm sorry about him, he's harmless really! Did you want this?"

Allison enjoys the cover of being buried under the cupboard to grin out of pure schadenfreude. After a moment of this, she composes herself and pulls back out, far enough to accept the bin. "Thanks," she says, shooting a beaming smile to Shera. She reaches back into the cupboard, and begins to haul out soggy masses of cigarette butts and ash, congealed together with generic pipe crud. They all go straight into the bin. "You know, you really should make him quit," she says. "He's been tossing all this crud in your sink. I dunno how he even has lungs anymore. Nasty-grody teeth, too."

Shera returns the smile, but is absolutely stunned at the sheer beauty of the girl-She looked more like a film celebrity than a young girl doing odd jobs for a living.
"Oh, well... you know you can't teach an old dog new tricks... or make him give up smoking!" Shera giggled. Somewhere in the hall, Cid kicked another pipe and swore loudly as he bruised a toe. Sounds like his ego might be a little bruised too.
"I'm Shera, I hope this job wasn't too difficult on you!" Everything she said seemed to come out like an apology!

"I'm serious, he's gonna die in his fifties. Or sixties. Or forties. I dunno how old he is," Allison admits. There is an extended pause wherein she just stares up the pipe with her rooter, and then she fishes out another mass of crud, and then peers up again. "It's a living," she says. "Nice to meetcha, Shera. I'm Allison. Wrench," she says, holding the hand with the rooter out. Summer picks up the rooter in his mouth, drops it in the toolbox, and relays the wrench to the girl.

Shera puts a hand over her mouth as she gets to see that clever cat's trick. "Oh, so cute... Can I pet-" She begins to ask, then looks behind her shoulder as Cid comes back in.
"Shera, go put the water on for some tea." He seemed to have gotten himself together, or perhaps stubbing his toe sobered him up a little. "For your goddamn information, I'm 34 years old, cover girl!" And yes, that's absolutely ANCIENT by RPG standards.

"No!" Allison says, jerking up before Shera finishes her question. Jerking up specifically right into the ceiling of the cupboard again, and getting a faceful of it. "████! ████in' sink, stupid... you shouldn't pet him, he bites. He doesn't trust strangers. ████."
        After some degree of wrenching, Allison finally comes out from underneath the sink. She drops her wrench into the toolbox, rubs her forehead, and climbs back to her feet. "You're thirty-four? You look fifty-four. You should really quit." She runs the water lightly down the sink for a moment, and then kneels back down to look. "Yeah, I just have to seal things back up here and you're back in business."

Shera doesn't try to pet the cat without permission, of course, she's been yelled at for less plenty enough times to make her extremely cautious in nature. "I'm sorry!" Bites huh? She takes her leave then, looking apologetic... as usual. Sigh.
Cid laughs at Allison as she curses just as profusely as he would AND even louder at the comment of his appearance, something he hasn't cared much about, given the attention he gives to shaving (none whatsoever, it seems) and reaches up to pat one glove over his hair. "Haven't gone gray yet, so can't be too bad! Besides, I don't view myself as much of a quitter." He smirked, "You're almost done? About ████ing time!"

"It's okay!" Allison says, looking over Shera's way. "You don't have to apologize for my cat's nasty temper! I'm really sorry about him, we've got a tight bond, but he's got a will of his own, too."
        Then she goes back under the sink, picking her wrench back up. "It looks like a dye job," she says.

"Dye jo-" Cid begins, then gives up. GIRLS dyed their hair, not guys! Well, unless they're Reno, but he assumed that the kid probably got really drunk and decided it was a good idea at the time.
This girl was tempermental, bratty at times, and had a foul mouth. Kinda reminded him of himself sometimes. Except waaaay better looking and a hell of a lot younger. "Well, at least I don't look like a pampered princess that ran away from home to stike out on her own as some kind of goddamn plumber!" Yeah, that came out just as childish as it sounds.

This does not sit well with Allison. She doesn't pause for more than a second at most, and concentrates on getting this jackass pipe sealed up again. "████ you," she says, but this time it's a little less teasing and a little more sharp in tone. "There we go," she says a moment later. She climbs back out, drops the wrench in her toolbox and picks it up. "That one's gonna be... I don't know how it converts to your money here. Here." She fishes a bill and pen from the toolbox, sets it down for a moment so she can jot down some numbers and a signature, and hands it to Cid. Like your usual plumbing bill, it's an ugly number.
        She's feeling a little petulant at the old man right now, though, so something else happens, very quietly, when she hands the bill over. She makes sure to hand the bill right into Cid's hand, because that's skin contact. And when the skin makes contact, a little wisp of glamour snakes around Cid Highwind and hooks onto the free-floating possibilities nearby. Just a little curse of Fickle Fate, a little mote of awful luck at the next thing Cid tries his hand at.

Uh oh. When egos collide, that's when things get interesting-or just annoying! Either way, Cid has just earned himself some misfortune in the near future, as the glamour binds him with bad luck as he accepts the bill. He winces at it, not because of the touch, but because of the steep price of a plumber's work.
"God dammit, this is highway robbery, you know that?! Fine-do you accept gil?" He snags a wallet from his back pocket and begins thumbing out the amount. Shera returns with a small tray with several steaming cups of tea.
"Oh! Finished already? How'd it go?" Shera smiles and offers the tray up to both old man and young girl.

"I would have a gun if this were a robbery," Allison says, her tone still soured. "Although a wrench really packs a whallop too." She holds her hand out. "Yeah, I think we take gil or whatever. We'll call you if it turns out I'm wrong." She clasps the money tight and pockets it, and then turns to see Shera coming with the tea. Her chirpy smile returns instantly - hey, Shera's nice, if a little prone to being walked over. "Drain's clear! And it'll stay that way if you don't throw any more cigarette butts down there, otherwise you're what we call repeat business. Oh, and you didn't have to bring me any tea! That's fine, really!"

"Oh, it wasn't any trouble at all!" Shera says, offering the tea to Allison. What a sweet girl! Obviously, she's completely taken in with the young girl's charming smile. "It's really nothing special, I wish I had some better tea..."
"Humph." Gun indeed! Cid snags a cup off the tray and sips it wordlessly. "Drink your goddamn tea." Was the captain feeling a little sulky? Daaaw.

Allison accepts the tea from Shera, scowling at Cid. "I don't need your damn tea," she says, and then lifts the tea to take a sip. Then she turns back to Shera and she's all smiles. "Hey, this is some good tea! How do you make this, Shera?"

The Captain lifts his index finger to object, when he's suddenly and completely ignored. Dammit! What's this nonsense! This was his turf! Meanwhile, Shera is blushing with pride and carrying on with Allison.
"Oh! It's nothing really, it's just a little blend from the Northern Continent. It's really nice, huh? I can give you some, if you'd like?" And so on. Unhappy Cid is unhappy. D:

"I'd love it if you could! . . . There isn't anywhere I could buy more of this, is there? . . . You know, you should have a little more confidence! You're really nice, you know your stuff . . . Okay, call me if you have any more problems with the drain, okay? Don't let him get you down!" And so on, smiles and cloyingly sweet talk.
        "Okay, it was really nice meeting you, Shera! Remember, okay?" Light almost glints off Allison's smile as she wiggles her fingers to the older woman. "Come on, Summer, okay? Bye-ee!!" And with that, the plumber and her cat are on their way.

With every exchange, Cid looks more and more dismayed. He, who prides himself in having an air of confident authority, was being schooled by a girl who could be his daughter, had he ever bothered to pursue the path of parenthood.
Shera excuses herself to clean up and the Captain is left with his hurt pride. And that's when his loyal crew decide to poke their heads into the room and heckle him on how well he handled the situation. He growled, he yelled, he pitched a fit (along with the spent cigarette AGAIN into the sink) and stomped out of the room.
He returned a short time later and removed the smoldering butt from the sink and rubbed it out into the ashtray.