Team Building with Jack Landors (SPD, A Squad, #23, K)
characters: SPD’s A Squad (Cruger/Kat)
prompt #23: earth
word count: 1050
rating: K
summary: Kat was easy to take out precisely because she was so hard to treat.
Team Building with Jack Landors (earth)
by *Andrea
Kat was easy to take out precisely because she was so hard to treat. He had no idea what she liked to do in the free time she didn’t have or how she liked to be entertained by people she never got close to. He didn’t see that there was any point in guessing, either. History suggested that if she didn’t like what he chose to do, she would have no compunction about telling him.
He chose dinner on the base. He didn’t particularly feel like eating human food, and he’d been surrounded by humans all day. He didn’t need more of them watching him eat. So he put aside his uniform, stopped by the officers’ mess, and went on out to the observation deck.
It was predictably empty tonight. He knew he had Jack Landors to thank for that, not that he would. A Squad’s Solstice party was nominally cadets-only, but Kat’s team leader couldn’t host an exclusive event to save his life. Every off duty officer who didn’t have somewhere better to be was probably downstairs right now, dancing and no doubt drinking... tomorrow morning would not go well.
Tonight, though. Tonight he didn’t really care. He knew as well as anyone that soldiers had to blow off steam, and with the patrol rotation they’d been facing lately there wasn’t anywhere near enough downtime to let it happen naturally. So they forced the issue. No night was worse than any other.
Kat had gotten there first, and he had a moment to admire her before she turned away from the view. Dark against the lights of the city: she was dressed in black with none of her Ranger color to speak of. The clothes didn’t mean much to him, except that she was out of uniform, but the look on her face was relaxed and smiling.
“This is beautiful,” she said, not bothering to greet him otherwise.
“You don’t come up here,” he said, and he didn’t make it a question. He’d never seen her here before, and her reaction spoke for itself. Still, it seemed difficult to believe that she’d been on the base this long without spending any time at all on the observation deck.
“I’m not an officer,” Kat countered, lacing her fingers together in front of her. She was teasing him, so he didn’t point out that no one with the kind of authority she wielded would need to provide identification.
Instead, he just looked at her, and she smiled. “I don’t get a lot of time to enjoy the sights,” she said. But that wasn’t entirely true either, and there was color in her skin to prove it. She took the time--when someone other than him ordered her to do it.
“Not on our base, apparently,” he agreed. Watching for her flinch.
It didn’t come, of course, and he should have known better.
“We do what we have to do,” she said. “So far it’s enough.”
“Are you going to tell me about this alleged Mexico base?” he asked. He thought he already knew the answer, but if he got her to say the words then at least he could stop wondering.
She didn’t surprise him. “No.”
Something about the way she said it made it more amusing than annoying. “Would Commander Collins tell me, assuming I could ever pin her down long enough to question her?”
Kat smiled a little at that. “I don’t know,” she said, as though it might actually be true. Then she added, “Probably not.”
He eyed her. “I could order Jack to report.”
“And ordering him around has proven so successful in the past,” she said. “If you try, you’ll probably find that he spent the last three days on an island off the coast of Brazil. Which wasn’t as relaxing as you might think, since he spent most of his time worrying about B Squad, but I assure you that Mexico wasn’t a big part of the adventure.”
“It isn’t Mexico that concerns me,” he told her. “It’s the safety and well-being of the personnel under my command.”
A striking silhouette with the lights of the city twinkling through the wraparound transparency behind her, she had never looked less like someone under his command. And that was saying a great deal. “The personnel on this base are in service to an ideal,” she said quietly. “The ideal, first and always. The organization--the chain of command--has to come second.”
Spoken as the civilian he had always known her to be, not the A Squad Power Ranger she had so recently become. “Did Jack tell you that?” he asked, and he was mocking her but he couldn’t help it. She represented everything he stood for, and she was the opposite of every procedure he knew.
“Sometimes we need children to remind us of who we wanted to be,” she said.
That wasn’t at all what he’d expected, and he stared at her for a long moment. “You were a soldier, weren’t you. For your planet, when Grumm came.”
He had always been sure of that, though he had no official confirmation. Her family was military, and Kat could fight her way out of situations he didn’t like to imagine. It wasn’t even the first time he’d entertained the idea that she might have been a Ranger--Galaxy Command didn’t issue temporary morphers to just anyone, and she’d taken hers very casually.
She just gazed back at him, inscrutable. “I don’t ask you about your past,” she reminded him. “I’d rather not talk about mine.”
He had to smile, because she was the most even mix of endearing and infuriating in existence. “Kat,” he told her, “don’t ever change. Not for anything or anyone.”
“Too late,” she said, eyeing him with some odd combination of confusion and suspicion. He’d surprised her, and he was pretty sure that meant the last point had gone to him. He’d take them where he could get them.
“As you will, then,” he declared, offering her his arm. “Shall we eat?”
She frowned at him, but she took his arm, and if that wasn’t symbolic of their relationship then he didn’t know what was. He didn’t understand her, but he could count on her, and for ten years that had been enough. Now he thought he might be willing to trade that past for a chance at their future.
prompt #23: earth
word count: 1050
rating: K
summary: Kat was easy to take out precisely because she was so hard to treat.
Team Building with Jack Landors (earth)
by *Andrea
Kat was easy to take out precisely because she was so hard to treat. He had no idea what she liked to do in the free time she didn’t have or how she liked to be entertained by people she never got close to. He didn’t see that there was any point in guessing, either. History suggested that if she didn’t like what he chose to do, she would have no compunction about telling him.
He chose dinner on the base. He didn’t particularly feel like eating human food, and he’d been surrounded by humans all day. He didn’t need more of them watching him eat. So he put aside his uniform, stopped by the officers’ mess, and went on out to the observation deck.
It was predictably empty tonight. He knew he had Jack Landors to thank for that, not that he would. A Squad’s Solstice party was nominally cadets-only, but Kat’s team leader couldn’t host an exclusive event to save his life. Every off duty officer who didn’t have somewhere better to be was probably downstairs right now, dancing and no doubt drinking... tomorrow morning would not go well.
Tonight, though. Tonight he didn’t really care. He knew as well as anyone that soldiers had to blow off steam, and with the patrol rotation they’d been facing lately there wasn’t anywhere near enough downtime to let it happen naturally. So they forced the issue. No night was worse than any other.
Kat had gotten there first, and he had a moment to admire her before she turned away from the view. Dark against the lights of the city: she was dressed in black with none of her Ranger color to speak of. The clothes didn’t mean much to him, except that she was out of uniform, but the look on her face was relaxed and smiling.
“This is beautiful,” she said, not bothering to greet him otherwise.
“You don’t come up here,” he said, and he didn’t make it a question. He’d never seen her here before, and her reaction spoke for itself. Still, it seemed difficult to believe that she’d been on the base this long without spending any time at all on the observation deck.
“I’m not an officer,” Kat countered, lacing her fingers together in front of her. She was teasing him, so he didn’t point out that no one with the kind of authority she wielded would need to provide identification.
Instead, he just looked at her, and she smiled. “I don’t get a lot of time to enjoy the sights,” she said. But that wasn’t entirely true either, and there was color in her skin to prove it. She took the time--when someone other than him ordered her to do it.
“Not on our base, apparently,” he agreed. Watching for her flinch.
It didn’t come, of course, and he should have known better.
“We do what we have to do,” she said. “So far it’s enough.”
“Are you going to tell me about this alleged Mexico base?” he asked. He thought he already knew the answer, but if he got her to say the words then at least he could stop wondering.
She didn’t surprise him. “No.”
Something about the way she said it made it more amusing than annoying. “Would Commander Collins tell me, assuming I could ever pin her down long enough to question her?”
Kat smiled a little at that. “I don’t know,” she said, as though it might actually be true. Then she added, “Probably not.”
He eyed her. “I could order Jack to report.”
“And ordering him around has proven so successful in the past,” she said. “If you try, you’ll probably find that he spent the last three days on an island off the coast of Brazil. Which wasn’t as relaxing as you might think, since he spent most of his time worrying about B Squad, but I assure you that Mexico wasn’t a big part of the adventure.”
“It isn’t Mexico that concerns me,” he told her. “It’s the safety and well-being of the personnel under my command.”
A striking silhouette with the lights of the city twinkling through the wraparound transparency behind her, she had never looked less like someone under his command. And that was saying a great deal. “The personnel on this base are in service to an ideal,” she said quietly. “The ideal, first and always. The organization--the chain of command--has to come second.”
Spoken as the civilian he had always known her to be, not the A Squad Power Ranger she had so recently become. “Did Jack tell you that?” he asked, and he was mocking her but he couldn’t help it. She represented everything he stood for, and she was the opposite of every procedure he knew.
“Sometimes we need children to remind us of who we wanted to be,” she said.
That wasn’t at all what he’d expected, and he stared at her for a long moment. “You were a soldier, weren’t you. For your planet, when Grumm came.”
He had always been sure of that, though he had no official confirmation. Her family was military, and Kat could fight her way out of situations he didn’t like to imagine. It wasn’t even the first time he’d entertained the idea that she might have been a Ranger--Galaxy Command didn’t issue temporary morphers to just anyone, and she’d taken hers very casually.
She just gazed back at him, inscrutable. “I don’t ask you about your past,” she reminded him. “I’d rather not talk about mine.”
He had to smile, because she was the most even mix of endearing and infuriating in existence. “Kat,” he told her, “don’t ever change. Not for anything or anyone.”
“Too late,” she said, eyeing him with some odd combination of confusion and suspicion. He’d surprised her, and he was pretty sure that meant the last point had gone to him. He’d take them where he could get them.
“As you will, then,” he declared, offering her his arm. “Shall we eat?”
She frowned at him, but she took his arm, and if that wasn’t symbolic of their relationship then he didn’t know what was. He didn’t understand her, but he could count on her, and for ten years that had been enough. Now he thought he might be willing to trade that past for a chance at their future.