Fic: Triple Full (1C/1)
Chapter | 1A | 1B | 1C | 1D | 1E |
========
“That’s disconcerting, Jim. Remind me not to go on an away mission with you. My luck you’d call Scotty to beam us all back up and forget about me,” Nyota said disapprovingly through pursed lips.
McCoy snorted loudly. “Like hell Jim would ever forget about you. No, he’d leave me on the surface of some desolate planet, and he wouldn’t realize it until he needed someone to reattach his arms to his torso.”
“Hey!” Jim protested. “You guys are talking about your captain here!”
“Captain, infant, same thing,” McCoy supplied, alternating each hand as he moved them up and down in the air like they were pans on a scale.
Jim waved one finger in his best friend’s face. “Bones, there is absolutely, positively no way I’d ever miss beaming you back up from an away mission. We’d know if you weren’t at the extraction point. No one within a thousand miles can miss your constant bitching. It’s like a homing beacon.”
McCoy lifted his ass in the air and wordlessly plucked the football-shaped pillow from under his left thigh, launching it properly towards Kirk’s head. The plush but surprisingly pointy end hit Jim squarely in the neck before it bounced harmlessly to the floor. He sat smugly and stared his captain down.
If not for Kirk’s supremely well-maintained reflexes, the beer he was holding in his right hand might have gone flying across the room. Instead, Jim merely shook his head and turned his gaze over towards McCoy. “Dude, what the hell was that for?”
“My other option was to shoot you, but you imposed rules on us that prohibit me from actually doing it.”
“Sorry to ruin your fun Bones, but the regs are from Starfleet. Not me.”
“Indeed they are,” a cultured voice concurred from just beyond the privacy wall.
McCoy all but collapsed into the pillows on the couch. He let out a long, loud groan and covered his face with his hands. “God, make it stop.” He titled his head to the side just in time to see Spock float into the living room - his living room. Waiving one hand through the air, the doctor asked, “Is there anyone else on this ship that feels the need to invade my personal space tonight?”
From behind Spock, the ship’s engineer materialized out of what looked like thin air. Grinning madly, Scotty made a beeline straight for the giant tub of beer and plunged a greedy hand into the bucket. He shook off the excess water from the longneck, glanced around the room for a quick headcount and said, “Nope. Looks like we’ve got the lot of us here now.”
“This is a dream. That’s the only conclusion I’m going to accept right now. It’s a bad nightmare that was induced by Chapel and her goddamned affinity for those goddamned hypos. When I wake up, I swear someone’s going to die,” McCoy growled while he lifted his head just enough to shoot Spock a very menacing glare. “Are you here for the party I didn’t know I was hosting, too?”
“I was unaware such an event was taking place. But, the presence of nearly all the ship’s senior staff does explain the strange signal Mr. Scott picked up.”
“Aye,” Scotty began, stepping forward while he literally elbowed Spock to the side. “I was workin’ to increase the range of our sensor arrays, and I caught wind of a very faint, well-masked signal. It wasn’t anythin’ I’d ever seen before, so I thought it was someone up to no good. I got Mr. Spock here, and we traced it back to your quarters, Dr. McCoy.”
“Wonderful,” Bones replied, deadpanned, arms crossed over his chest and lips set in the familiar scowl.
Oblivious (or immune) to the CMO’s icy stare, Scotty smiled and laughed. “Well, at least it wasn’t something bad! I was preparin’ for the worst!”
“And now that we’ve established the signal coming into the Enterprise was, in fact, initiated by a member of this crew, regulations require me to question whomever managed to circumvent normal security controls. Furthermore, a prudent explanation of this feed’s purpose would be equally appreciated,” Spock probed as his right eyebrow slowly arched up his forehead.
Jim pushed himself up off the couch with a dramatic grunt before he stepped up to his second in command. Wrapping one arm around the Vulcan’s shoulders, he steered Spock over to his formerly occupied seat and literally pushed him down. “This is the reason,” Kirk said, pointing at the screen.
Spock looked befuddled. “I do not understand. Though this appears to be a gymnastics meet, it is not the sport of choice for anyone in this room.”
“It is for his daughter,” Uhura said as a slow-motion replay of Joanna’s first tumbling pass on floor exercise flashed on the screen.
“Joanna,” Spock surmised. Impressed, he twisted his entire torso around so he could make eye contact with McCoy. “While I knew your offspring practiced gymnastics, I was unaware she possessed such high levels of aptitude for her sport.”
“Sure as shit didn’t get it from me. You wouldn’t catch me dead doing that triple twisting…thing,” McCoy replied with a lazy motion of his hand towards the screen. Still somewhat transfixed, he watched as Joanna backhandspringed her way across the floor before whipping into a triple twisting laid out somersault. Shaking his head as her score flashed, McCoy stifled a mighty yawn while he downed another shot.
Spock’s sharp eyes narrowed, all interest in the meet forgotten momentarily as he observed the clearly drained surgeon. “You appear overworked, Doctor. Perhaps viewing this meet was not a logical choice, as it seems a much more sensible option would have been for you to procure some rest.”
Sulu snorted out loud. “You just used ‘logic’ in the same sentence as ‘McCoy’. You really think those two words mix?”
“It was merely an attempt.”
Scotty jerked his head towards McCoy. “I think Mr. Sulu there is right. I canna’ see why you keep tryin’, Mr. Spock. I think yer barkin’ up the wrong tree with that one. Even the captain agrees that logic with the good doctor is a no-win scenario,” the engineer said through a mouthful of sandwich he’d snagged from the tray in the kitchen.
“Does he now?” Bones answered as he sent a withering gaze towards his best friend.
Jim, unfazed, shrugged and dipped his chin. “Yep. But, in my defense, I only did it because I knew it would cost Pike a grand to the other admirals.”
“Remind me again why I’m your friend?”
“Because no one else would put up with you, especially when, as your first act of friendship, you puked all over me on the Riverside shuttle!” Kirk replied without hesitation.
“So that is true?” Scotty questioned while the remainder of the room, minus Spock, dropped into fits of giggles. “I heard the scuttlebutt and all, but I couldn’t believe it to be honest.”
“Projectile,” Jim said with a dramatic motion of his hand from his mouth outward. Smug, Jim looked up and asked, “Right, Bones?”
“If I die at a thousand years old, that still won’t have been enough time to live that shit down,” he muttered. McCoy set his jaw, put on his best glare and gave the room the panoramic view while he doctor announced, “Now, if you’re through rehashing every embarrassing moment of my Starfleet career, can we finish watching the meet so I can make our Vulcan science officer, who has officially become my mother, happy?”
“Your rest schedule neither pleases me or displeases me, Dr. McCoy,” Spock said from the corner of the couch.
“Oh, come off it, man,” McCoy scoffed loudly. “You’re still horseshit at deception. Let me break it down for you: yes, it’s been a hell of a day. Yes, I’m tired. No, I’m not going to sleep and miss my baby girl’s meet. Deal with it.”
“I see you have,” Spock replied as his gaze lowered towards the spent stim cartridge and bottle of bourbon sitting adjacent to one another on the coffee table. “It is an odd choice, especially given your vast knowledge on human anatomy and physiology, that you would choose to mix a stimulant and a depressant. It seems…counterproductive.”
Rolling his eyes, McCoy quipped, “Those? The stim shot is so I can stay awake; the bourbon is keep me from hittin’ you upside the head when you piss me off. You don’t have to worry, Spock. I’m a goddamned doctor. I know what I’m doing.”
“I have never questioned your competency,” Spock replied with a barely concealed smirk.
“No, only his sanity,” Uhura chimed in. Just as quickly, she squeaked and covered her mouth with her hands. Her eyes darted about the room when she let a muffled, “Did I say that out loud?” sneak through her interlaced fingertips.
“I hate you all,” McCoy stated, punctuating each word like they were their own individual sentence. Thankful that the banter encompassing the room had finally died down, the doctor turned his attention back to his vidscreen in time to get a quick glimpse of the third rotation’s standings. With his daughter in third place as the groups moved to their final apparatuses, McCoy clenched his fists tightly and whispered for the second time in as many hours, “Come on Jojo.”
Spock, studiously ignoring the hubbub around him, focused intently on the dissecting the particulars of the meet. He watched as several of the competitors, Joanna included, lined up at the end of a long, narrow runway. The camera panned backwards, and in the foreground, a large, flat, tongue-like table loomed into frame. Each young lady checked a mark on the floor and then began a full-tilt run at the oddly-shaped apparatus. But in the instant before they collided headlong into the immovable object, each gymnast bounded off a springboard, either forward or backwards, did a few impressive flips and twists in the air, and landed on the mat stationed on the other side.
Impressed, the Vulcan’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “I have never had the pleasure of viewing a gymnastics meet as it played out live. I would very much like to learn about it. What is the purpose of this event?”
On the floor, Jim dropped onto the surprisingly soft rug and leaned against the side of the ottoman. “We’re on vault, right?”
“That’s all she’s got left,” Sulu replied.
As he watched the final rotation’s warm ups play out on the screen, the captain pondered how best to describe one the most exciting, dangerous and bonkers events of gymnastics. Smirking, Kirk angled his face up and made eye contact with his communications officer before asking, “Hey Uhura, how did Jo explain vault to you again?”
“‘Run as fast as you can, cartwheel, look, block, pull, kick, spot the ground, land, stick and don’t move’.”
“Fascinating. I will never understand, as you humans call it, the rush of the game, but I do appreciate the certain degree of technicality I assume is ever-present in gymnastics,” Spock said, captivated by the vault warm up.
“Something like that,” Kirk chuckled out as he snagged an olive from the tray and tossed it in his mouth.
“Wault is Joanna’s best event. She has best Yurchenko I have ever seen!” Chekov announced proudly.
“Yurchenko?” Spock questioned.
“It’s the vault style. Just watch,” Uhura instructed as she pointed to the screen. “It’s a roundoff cartwheel onto the springboard, and then a backwards entry on to the table. See?” she explained as a Russian competitor nearly followed her commentary. “Then it’s a strong push off the table and a few flips and twists through the air. In this case, it looked like a Yurchenko double - one and a half laid out somersaults with two full twists mixed in.”
“Joanna does Amanar! Only an extra half twist than double, but much, much harder,” Chekov added as the younger McCoy took her place at the end of the runway, waiting for the judges to post the previous gymnast’s score. Jo slathered a bunch of chalk all over her feet, calves and hands. When the green flag went up, she saluted the judges before lining up with her mark.
Sulu laughed out loud when he saw the serious expression on the normally bubbly girl’s face as Jo literally stared the vault down. “Look at that face! She’s either plotting to take over the world looking like that, or she’s trying to become the gymnastic version of the Terminator!” he exclaimed.
There was no other time for commentary by the rest of the crew. Jo drew one leg backwards, rocked her weight from her left leg to her right and took off at a full sprint.
Pumping his fists enthusiastically through the air, Chekov reverted to his native Russian and hollered, “DAVAI, DAVAI, DAVAI!!!” as Jo reached the springboard. With excess chalk flying off her toes, she executed her roundoff perfectly, launching her body backwards on to the table. With her shoulders absolutely square to the vault, her hands planted on the soft, suede-like material square coating the table. She used her momentum to propel herself up into the rafters of the building, at the same time using her shoulders and feet to initiate the twists and the flips.
The gasp heard ‘round the arena was similar to the one rocketing through the CMO’s quarters on the Federation’s flagship. No other vaulter soared as high over the table as Joanna, nor did any other vaulter posses the ability to have finished the first twist before she started coming down. But it was her impeccable form that captivated the gym, the Starfleet officers, and hopefully, the judges on the floor. Every bit of her body was stretched from her pointed toes to her ramrod straight legs to her tight torso. The balance and timing were perfect as Joanna drove her body hard through the flips and twists. She shot her arms straight out to each side to stop her twisting momentum as her toes cleared the threshold of the vaulting table. Her feet hit the blue mat plum down the centerline and didn’t budge one inch.
The quarters of the CMO’s quarters erupted into wild, multilingual cheers as Jo stuck her landing cold. Sulu and Kirk exchanged several high fives while Uhura practically leapt into McCoy’s arms. The doctor’s face was warring between shocked and amazed all at the same time. Joanna even looked impressed with herself, which was a feat in and of itself. Having never once cracked a smile throughout the entire meet, Jo’s face was splitting from ear to ear as she literally flounced off the podium and into the waiting arms of her coach.
Jim looked over just in time to see a short, whimsical expression pass over Bones’ face. Kirk knew that look, knew that it meant his best friend wished he were the one hugging Joanna in that moment instead of her coach. The captain bit down a sigh as he reached for one of the kosher dill pickles on the side of the meat tray. Kirk reached up and gave Bones’ knee a friendly pat; the doctor returned the gesture with a tight smile, unaware of what was happening five feet to his left.
It was like the emotion in the room went from Warp 9 to allstop, in the span of a half of a second.
The Russian navigator, pent up like a little jack in the box, practically leapt to his feet. He pumped one emphatic fist in the air while he yelled out, “STOOOY!!” at the top of his lungs. He realized a moment too late that Spock was standing directly above him, and that the second in command had leaned in for a better view while Joanna was soaring through the stratosphere. A loud, juicy ‘pop’ sounded through McCoy’s quarters as Pavel’s fist made absolute contact with Spock’s face. When his brain registered that he’d hit something, Chekov wheeled around and blinked rapidly. He saw the steadily increasing stream of green blood leaking from the first officer’s nose and gasped.
As fast as the room’s elation came, it disappeared just as quickly. Every jaw in the room fell as eyes bulged out of heads. Kirk could have sworn he heard crickets chirping in the moments after his navigator punched his first officer. Jim eventually regained control of his mental faculties well enough to suggest to Chekov, “Pavel, you might want to get the man a napkin so he doesn’t bleed all over Bones’ carpet.”
Pavel’s mouth opened and closed once, then twice, before he rocketed off to the kitchen to grab a towel. Shoving his find into the hands of Spock, Chekov said, “Ay. I am careless, Mister Spock. I am sorry! I did not mean to hit you!”
Spock accepted the towel with the grace and civility borne of his culture. He dabbed it at his bleeding nose and said simply, “Ensign, I do believe that the improper use of Starfleet property is punishable by brig time.”
Chekov’s head fell to his chest. “If that is where you must take me, I would not protest. It would be deserwed, both for striking a superior officer and for illegal feed.”
“I have not finished my statement. I was about to say that while it is punishable by brig time, I do not believe that it would be appropriate it your case. If you were to convince Dr. McCoy to remedy my bleeding nose, I suppose I could be persuaded to overlook the breech in etiquette.”
Continue on to Part 1D
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“That’s disconcerting, Jim. Remind me not to go on an away mission with you. My luck you’d call Scotty to beam us all back up and forget about me,” Nyota said disapprovingly through pursed lips.
McCoy snorted loudly. “Like hell Jim would ever forget about you. No, he’d leave me on the surface of some desolate planet, and he wouldn’t realize it until he needed someone to reattach his arms to his torso.”
“Hey!” Jim protested. “You guys are talking about your captain here!”
“Captain, infant, same thing,” McCoy supplied, alternating each hand as he moved them up and down in the air like they were pans on a scale.
Jim waved one finger in his best friend’s face. “Bones, there is absolutely, positively no way I’d ever miss beaming you back up from an away mission. We’d know if you weren’t at the extraction point. No one within a thousand miles can miss your constant bitching. It’s like a homing beacon.”
McCoy lifted his ass in the air and wordlessly plucked the football-shaped pillow from under his left thigh, launching it properly towards Kirk’s head. The plush but surprisingly pointy end hit Jim squarely in the neck before it bounced harmlessly to the floor. He sat smugly and stared his captain down.
If not for Kirk’s supremely well-maintained reflexes, the beer he was holding in his right hand might have gone flying across the room. Instead, Jim merely shook his head and turned his gaze over towards McCoy. “Dude, what the hell was that for?”
“My other option was to shoot you, but you imposed rules on us that prohibit me from actually doing it.”
“Sorry to ruin your fun Bones, but the regs are from Starfleet. Not me.”
“Indeed they are,” a cultured voice concurred from just beyond the privacy wall.
McCoy all but collapsed into the pillows on the couch. He let out a long, loud groan and covered his face with his hands. “God, make it stop.” He titled his head to the side just in time to see Spock float into the living room - his living room. Waiving one hand through the air, the doctor asked, “Is there anyone else on this ship that feels the need to invade my personal space tonight?”
From behind Spock, the ship’s engineer materialized out of what looked like thin air. Grinning madly, Scotty made a beeline straight for the giant tub of beer and plunged a greedy hand into the bucket. He shook off the excess water from the longneck, glanced around the room for a quick headcount and said, “Nope. Looks like we’ve got the lot of us here now.”
“This is a dream. That’s the only conclusion I’m going to accept right now. It’s a bad nightmare that was induced by Chapel and her goddamned affinity for those goddamned hypos. When I wake up, I swear someone’s going to die,” McCoy growled while he lifted his head just enough to shoot Spock a very menacing glare. “Are you here for the party I didn’t know I was hosting, too?”
“I was unaware such an event was taking place. But, the presence of nearly all the ship’s senior staff does explain the strange signal Mr. Scott picked up.”
“Aye,” Scotty began, stepping forward while he literally elbowed Spock to the side. “I was workin’ to increase the range of our sensor arrays, and I caught wind of a very faint, well-masked signal. It wasn’t anythin’ I’d ever seen before, so I thought it was someone up to no good. I got Mr. Spock here, and we traced it back to your quarters, Dr. McCoy.”
“Wonderful,” Bones replied, deadpanned, arms crossed over his chest and lips set in the familiar scowl.
Oblivious (or immune) to the CMO’s icy stare, Scotty smiled and laughed. “Well, at least it wasn’t something bad! I was preparin’ for the worst!”
“And now that we’ve established the signal coming into the Enterprise was, in fact, initiated by a member of this crew, regulations require me to question whomever managed to circumvent normal security controls. Furthermore, a prudent explanation of this feed’s purpose would be equally appreciated,” Spock probed as his right eyebrow slowly arched up his forehead.
Jim pushed himself up off the couch with a dramatic grunt before he stepped up to his second in command. Wrapping one arm around the Vulcan’s shoulders, he steered Spock over to his formerly occupied seat and literally pushed him down. “This is the reason,” Kirk said, pointing at the screen.
Spock looked befuddled. “I do not understand. Though this appears to be a gymnastics meet, it is not the sport of choice for anyone in this room.”
“It is for his daughter,” Uhura said as a slow-motion replay of Joanna’s first tumbling pass on floor exercise flashed on the screen.
“Joanna,” Spock surmised. Impressed, he twisted his entire torso around so he could make eye contact with McCoy. “While I knew your offspring practiced gymnastics, I was unaware she possessed such high levels of aptitude for her sport.”
“Sure as shit didn’t get it from me. You wouldn’t catch me dead doing that triple twisting…thing,” McCoy replied with a lazy motion of his hand towards the screen. Still somewhat transfixed, he watched as Joanna backhandspringed her way across the floor before whipping into a triple twisting laid out somersault. Shaking his head as her score flashed, McCoy stifled a mighty yawn while he downed another shot.
Spock’s sharp eyes narrowed, all interest in the meet forgotten momentarily as he observed the clearly drained surgeon. “You appear overworked, Doctor. Perhaps viewing this meet was not a logical choice, as it seems a much more sensible option would have been for you to procure some rest.”
Sulu snorted out loud. “You just used ‘logic’ in the same sentence as ‘McCoy’. You really think those two words mix?”
“It was merely an attempt.”
Scotty jerked his head towards McCoy. “I think Mr. Sulu there is right. I canna’ see why you keep tryin’, Mr. Spock. I think yer barkin’ up the wrong tree with that one. Even the captain agrees that logic with the good doctor is a no-win scenario,” the engineer said through a mouthful of sandwich he’d snagged from the tray in the kitchen.
“Does he now?” Bones answered as he sent a withering gaze towards his best friend.
Jim, unfazed, shrugged and dipped his chin. “Yep. But, in my defense, I only did it because I knew it would cost Pike a grand to the other admirals.”
“Remind me again why I’m your friend?”
“Because no one else would put up with you, especially when, as your first act of friendship, you puked all over me on the Riverside shuttle!” Kirk replied without hesitation.
“So that is true?” Scotty questioned while the remainder of the room, minus Spock, dropped into fits of giggles. “I heard the scuttlebutt and all, but I couldn’t believe it to be honest.”
“Projectile,” Jim said with a dramatic motion of his hand from his mouth outward. Smug, Jim looked up and asked, “Right, Bones?”
“If I die at a thousand years old, that still won’t have been enough time to live that shit down,” he muttered. McCoy set his jaw, put on his best glare and gave the room the panoramic view while he doctor announced, “Now, if you’re through rehashing every embarrassing moment of my Starfleet career, can we finish watching the meet so I can make our Vulcan science officer, who has officially become my mother, happy?”
“Your rest schedule neither pleases me or displeases me, Dr. McCoy,” Spock said from the corner of the couch.
“Oh, come off it, man,” McCoy scoffed loudly. “You’re still horseshit at deception. Let me break it down for you: yes, it’s been a hell of a day. Yes, I’m tired. No, I’m not going to sleep and miss my baby girl’s meet. Deal with it.”
“I see you have,” Spock replied as his gaze lowered towards the spent stim cartridge and bottle of bourbon sitting adjacent to one another on the coffee table. “It is an odd choice, especially given your vast knowledge on human anatomy and physiology, that you would choose to mix a stimulant and a depressant. It seems…counterproductive.”
Rolling his eyes, McCoy quipped, “Those? The stim shot is so I can stay awake; the bourbon is keep me from hittin’ you upside the head when you piss me off. You don’t have to worry, Spock. I’m a goddamned doctor. I know what I’m doing.”
“I have never questioned your competency,” Spock replied with a barely concealed smirk.
“No, only his sanity,” Uhura chimed in. Just as quickly, she squeaked and covered her mouth with her hands. Her eyes darted about the room when she let a muffled, “Did I say that out loud?” sneak through her interlaced fingertips.
“I hate you all,” McCoy stated, punctuating each word like they were their own individual sentence. Thankful that the banter encompassing the room had finally died down, the doctor turned his attention back to his vidscreen in time to get a quick glimpse of the third rotation’s standings. With his daughter in third place as the groups moved to their final apparatuses, McCoy clenched his fists tightly and whispered for the second time in as many hours, “Come on Jojo.”
Spock, studiously ignoring the hubbub around him, focused intently on the dissecting the particulars of the meet. He watched as several of the competitors, Joanna included, lined up at the end of a long, narrow runway. The camera panned backwards, and in the foreground, a large, flat, tongue-like table loomed into frame. Each young lady checked a mark on the floor and then began a full-tilt run at the oddly-shaped apparatus. But in the instant before they collided headlong into the immovable object, each gymnast bounded off a springboard, either forward or backwards, did a few impressive flips and twists in the air, and landed on the mat stationed on the other side.
Impressed, the Vulcan’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “I have never had the pleasure of viewing a gymnastics meet as it played out live. I would very much like to learn about it. What is the purpose of this event?”
On the floor, Jim dropped onto the surprisingly soft rug and leaned against the side of the ottoman. “We’re on vault, right?”
“That’s all she’s got left,” Sulu replied.
As he watched the final rotation’s warm ups play out on the screen, the captain pondered how best to describe one the most exciting, dangerous and bonkers events of gymnastics. Smirking, Kirk angled his face up and made eye contact with his communications officer before asking, “Hey Uhura, how did Jo explain vault to you again?”
“‘Run as fast as you can, cartwheel, look, block, pull, kick, spot the ground, land, stick and don’t move’.”
“Fascinating. I will never understand, as you humans call it, the rush of the game, but I do appreciate the certain degree of technicality I assume is ever-present in gymnastics,” Spock said, captivated by the vault warm up.
“Something like that,” Kirk chuckled out as he snagged an olive from the tray and tossed it in his mouth.
“Wault is Joanna’s best event. She has best Yurchenko I have ever seen!” Chekov announced proudly.
“Yurchenko?” Spock questioned.
“It’s the vault style. Just watch,” Uhura instructed as she pointed to the screen. “It’s a roundoff cartwheel onto the springboard, and then a backwards entry on to the table. See?” she explained as a Russian competitor nearly followed her commentary. “Then it’s a strong push off the table and a few flips and twists through the air. In this case, it looked like a Yurchenko double - one and a half laid out somersaults with two full twists mixed in.”
“Joanna does Amanar! Only an extra half twist than double, but much, much harder,” Chekov added as the younger McCoy took her place at the end of the runway, waiting for the judges to post the previous gymnast’s score. Jo slathered a bunch of chalk all over her feet, calves and hands. When the green flag went up, she saluted the judges before lining up with her mark.
Sulu laughed out loud when he saw the serious expression on the normally bubbly girl’s face as Jo literally stared the vault down. “Look at that face! She’s either plotting to take over the world looking like that, or she’s trying to become the gymnastic version of the Terminator!” he exclaimed.
There was no other time for commentary by the rest of the crew. Jo drew one leg backwards, rocked her weight from her left leg to her right and took off at a full sprint.
Pumping his fists enthusiastically through the air, Chekov reverted to his native Russian and hollered, “DAVAI, DAVAI, DAVAI!!!” as Jo reached the springboard. With excess chalk flying off her toes, she executed her roundoff perfectly, launching her body backwards on to the table. With her shoulders absolutely square to the vault, her hands planted on the soft, suede-like material square coating the table. She used her momentum to propel herself up into the rafters of the building, at the same time using her shoulders and feet to initiate the twists and the flips.
The gasp heard ‘round the arena was similar to the one rocketing through the CMO’s quarters on the Federation’s flagship. No other vaulter soared as high over the table as Joanna, nor did any other vaulter posses the ability to have finished the first twist before she started coming down. But it was her impeccable form that captivated the gym, the Starfleet officers, and hopefully, the judges on the floor. Every bit of her body was stretched from her pointed toes to her ramrod straight legs to her tight torso. The balance and timing were perfect as Joanna drove her body hard through the flips and twists. She shot her arms straight out to each side to stop her twisting momentum as her toes cleared the threshold of the vaulting table. Her feet hit the blue mat plum down the centerline and didn’t budge one inch.
The quarters of the CMO’s quarters erupted into wild, multilingual cheers as Jo stuck her landing cold. Sulu and Kirk exchanged several high fives while Uhura practically leapt into McCoy’s arms. The doctor’s face was warring between shocked and amazed all at the same time. Joanna even looked impressed with herself, which was a feat in and of itself. Having never once cracked a smile throughout the entire meet, Jo’s face was splitting from ear to ear as she literally flounced off the podium and into the waiting arms of her coach.
Jim looked over just in time to see a short, whimsical expression pass over Bones’ face. Kirk knew that look, knew that it meant his best friend wished he were the one hugging Joanna in that moment instead of her coach. The captain bit down a sigh as he reached for one of the kosher dill pickles on the side of the meat tray. Kirk reached up and gave Bones’ knee a friendly pat; the doctor returned the gesture with a tight smile, unaware of what was happening five feet to his left.
It was like the emotion in the room went from Warp 9 to allstop, in the span of a half of a second.
The Russian navigator, pent up like a little jack in the box, practically leapt to his feet. He pumped one emphatic fist in the air while he yelled out, “STOOOY!!” at the top of his lungs. He realized a moment too late that Spock was standing directly above him, and that the second in command had leaned in for a better view while Joanna was soaring through the stratosphere. A loud, juicy ‘pop’ sounded through McCoy’s quarters as Pavel’s fist made absolute contact with Spock’s face. When his brain registered that he’d hit something, Chekov wheeled around and blinked rapidly. He saw the steadily increasing stream of green blood leaking from the first officer’s nose and gasped.
As fast as the room’s elation came, it disappeared just as quickly. Every jaw in the room fell as eyes bulged out of heads. Kirk could have sworn he heard crickets chirping in the moments after his navigator punched his first officer. Jim eventually regained control of his mental faculties well enough to suggest to Chekov, “Pavel, you might want to get the man a napkin so he doesn’t bleed all over Bones’ carpet.”
Pavel’s mouth opened and closed once, then twice, before he rocketed off to the kitchen to grab a towel. Shoving his find into the hands of Spock, Chekov said, “Ay. I am careless, Mister Spock. I am sorry! I did not mean to hit you!”
Spock accepted the towel with the grace and civility borne of his culture. He dabbed it at his bleeding nose and said simply, “Ensign, I do believe that the improper use of Starfleet property is punishable by brig time.”
Chekov’s head fell to his chest. “If that is where you must take me, I would not protest. It would be deserwed, both for striking a superior officer and for illegal feed.”
“I have not finished my statement. I was about to say that while it is punishable by brig time, I do not believe that it would be appropriate it your case. If you were to convince Dr. McCoy to remedy my bleeding nose, I suppose I could be persuaded to overlook the breech in etiquette.”
Continue on to Part 1D