Treehouse of Little Terrors, Part II
Posted on Sat Jan 14th, 2023 @ 10:16pm by Commander Jonathan Mantell & Aaron Corrino & Rashane ch'Thaia & Ensign Hulio Xe'ceda & Tulilah Cel & Taran Willeg
Edited on on Mon Jan 16th, 2023 @ 9:45am
Mission:
Between Realities
Location: Deck 6, Lower Arboretum
Timeline: After Part I
2562 words - 5.1 OF Standard Post Measure
"JACK!" The mousy-haired boy was at ground level now, staring intently at the teenager on the grass. He squinted beneath bushy eyebrows, a wide grin brimming on his face. His rush forward was caught short by a blue hand of his Andorian friend, bringing Aaron to a stop just inside the repulsion field. "You grew up!"
"That's not Jack," Rashane warned his friend, turning cold eyes on the Only teenager. "Are you?"
"Yes," Jack told the boys, safely sheltered inside their treehouse shield. A wall of separation between him and the closest friends to this reality's Jack. The teen brushed shaggy brown hair away from his eyes, turning them back up to the girl. "And no." He chuckled, flicking the blade of grass away and holding his hand out to the girl. "It's Jack. Like yours, just not. In my reality, this was about a dozen centuries in the past, give or take."
Jack, a Jack so many centuries older that he didn't even remember her, but still, Jack was holding a hand out to her. It was weird, and a little uncomfortable, but also ...oddly kinda nice. Tulilah took the hand. "Pleased to meet you, other Jack. I'm Tulilah." A lavender brow quirked up. "So in all those centuries you never figured out how to make the right sized gap and tension the grass to whistle?"
From up in the treehouse, the Klingon boy was silent. Then, "If you're Jack, why don't you have any memories of this ship?"
It hadn't been an accusatory question, but it was a rather pointedly curious one. And perhaps a reminder that Taran was more Betazoid than his appearance let on.
"It's rude to read minds without permission," Tulilah reminded the hybrid boy, though not harshly. Taran struck her as generally a nice kid; he just hung around with bad influences.
"No, the Klingling's right," a self-satisfied grin came over the Andorian boy's face, folding his arms over each other. His antennae quirked a bit, then shook under the nudge of his Human friend. Rashane didn't seem deterred, "If you're supposed to be Jack, then what's my name?"
"Give him a break, Rashane!" The mousy-haired boy demanded, trying to find the right spot under the Andorian's ribs to poke.
The chan glared back at his friend, antennae stiff to the ceiling, before rolling his eyes. "That's cheating."
"You're such an Andorkian."
"Are not! And there's no such thing!"
"Are too! It's not cheating!" Aaron tossed back, clearly pleased that his quest to rile up Rashane had worked so well. He approached the boundary edge, just about to where Jack had been tossed back, with a grin that faltered when he saw the teen's conversation partner. "It's... uhh—"
The teenage Jack grinned under the assault of the boys, leaning forward on his knees. They were sharp, he had to give them that, even without cogments or the advances of another millennia. Still, he found himself at odds with another aspect of the other Jack's life. The real Jack for these kids. His life had taken different turns, that was already obvious, and part of him wondered if he could have truly ever forgotten having friends like these.
"I guess you got me there," Jack returned evenly, spreading his hands for a moment. They fell back on his knees, and he grinned in their place. He hadn't missed the change in the Human boy's behavior, the most ordinary one in the bunch acted very out of the ordinary nearby to Tulilah. "Dunno how I'd ever forget about making a 'Girl Repulsor Field'." The teen looked at his expert whistler companion, his expression unchanged. "What did you do to them?"
The Catullan girl shrugged. "Beat them at paintball and a snowball fight? I dunno. Nolan seems to think girls have some weird human thing - cooties, I think is what he called it."
His voice cracked as the teen laughed, turning to meet a crimson and indigo pair of boys. "You're sore 'cause you got beat by a girl?!"
"That's not the reason!" The scowl on Rashane's face was deeply set, and his eyes flashed hot. "We needed someplace just for us boys. She already messed up Engineering with all her, her...GIRLness. Bet you any icicle Nolan saw that and didn't want her poking into his science lab, so he built this!"
"It is fun to have a place just for us..." Aaron nudged his foot in the grass near the barrier, his words hesitating until his thoughts nudged them into being. "Maybe it doesn't always have to be just boys? Like if one of the girls was being, you know, nice one day?"
Tulilah had snickered at Rashane's sputtering, but Aaron's words caught her up short. Somehow he kept surprising her like that. It was... disconcerting. Rallying, she hmphed. "I'm always nice. When people are nice to me. Like not pretending they're better or special just for being boys," she cast a glare at Rashane, "or expecting me to just back down and go along with whatever they say to be 'allowed' to join in."
R'ssa, meanwhile, was tuning out the bizarre drama - maybe species without a proper coating of fur got hung up on the girl/boy thing more? - and focused in on movement in a nearby cluster of leaves instead, lining up a textbook pounce through the air from her perch on the branch into the bush and coming up with one of Xe'ceda's squirrels...or more accurately what was left of it, the last bit of the tail between her teeth as she swallowed and licked her lips, and the absolute destruction of the hydrangea bush in her wake: A botanist she was not, apparently. She looked upward back around until she found the small science officer, tail and ears flicking in a next statement that was perhaps pure 'predator solidarity'. "Want me to leave the other one for you?"
The S'ti'ach was measuring the growth of a moss on one of the trees. Pausing his work, the small, furry creature shifted around so that he looked back at the Caitian. "Oh, you go ahead," the botanist offered. "I have more back at the hydroponics lab."
"You mean they don't appreciate your grass-blowing whistle skills?" Jack gave the boys a cursory gaze, tossing his shaggy head with a gape of his mouth. He watched the mousy-haired boy start to protest, and turned to Tulilah quicker than him. "Wanna see something incredible?"
"I wanna see something incredible." Rashane had his arms crossed, with a pair of cocked antennae that said anything but interested.
"You might not think it's that incredible," the teenager pointed out, and shrugged. "Then again, you might, it will be a technological marvel!"
"Are," Aaron started, leaning farther forward. Jack nearly broke his composure with a grin at hooking the mousy-haired boy's curiosity. "Are you going to show us some future tech?"
The teenager had to disappoint him with another shake of his head, "Not if I don't want to summon the time kracken. I can do it with one of your tricorders, anyone know where to fetch one?"
"You bet," Tulilah said and pointed at the treehouse. "There's one right there. Part of Nolan's 'girl detector' that seems to think you aren't a guy."
"Might be a little hard to get that," the Only teenager pointed out, then pointed to the trio of boys standing behind the Girl Repulsor field. "And they don't seem too eager to give it up yet. Or step out of their bubble," Jack grinned at that, "...literally. Can't help that part, I'm an engineer not a child shrink."
"'friady cats," the girl snickered, wrinkling her nose at the boys 'hiding' behind their bubble. "I guess we can ask the science officer who isn't scared of girls," she added, nodding toward Xe'ceda.
"Are you blind?" The Andorian boy sputtered, taking a step toward Tulilah with uncharacteristic heat on his blue face. "We're not the cats, there's one right behind you!"
Jack turned to find the little Caitian and blue furry critter near them. He was surprised as he looked at the blue creature again, it was wearing Starfleet livery colors in an amalgam of a uniform for his unusual frame. "S'ti'ach? Whoa, I thought you were all e—" he stopped short, thinking it might not be a good idea to explain what had happened to the species in his future. No one else seemed to keen on their futures, aside from the boys separated by force field. Instead, the teen held out his hand, "Can we borrow that tricorder?"
R'ssa responded to being called out mid-stalking the way felines everywhere reflexively do: Fur floofing out, before settling slightly once it became clear there wasn't a threat, beyond possibly to Xe'ceda's equipment.
Digging his lower claws into the branch he was perched on, the arboreal alien hung upside down as his head tilted toward the voice that had addressed him. "Here you go!" Xe'ceda replied, tossing the object over.
"If you have an interest in learning botany, the scans of the auroralias carcaritum over there are particularly fascinating," the small science officer added, before pulling himself back around so that he was seated on the branch and finishing his notes on the moss.
"I'm so sure," the teenager said, his eyes rolling back with boredom at the chatty little ball of fur. He remembered enough of himself to offer a quick, "Thanks," before turning back to the more fascinating problem. It took Jack longer than a few taps on the primitive instrument to accomplish what he could have done with his cogment in milliseconds. Without the right protocols for this era, it was useless, and the Only teen was forced into the manual instrument instead.
Interest from the other side of the girl repulsor field prompted Aaron to ask him, "What are you doing?"
"Just watch..." Jack offered over a toothy grin, but kept his focus on the tricorder. "Right, looks like the girl detector tricorder isn't broadcasting, it was probably configured to run off-the-grid. If I can...hold on!" His grin spread wider, recognizing something of himself in the network cloaking technique. "Good one, Jack. But you're about a hundred versions behind me."
The Andorian's antennae even rolled along with his eyes, and Rashane motioned to the other boys. "C'mon, Aaron, Taran. Let's go back to the treehouse. This kid's too weird to be Jack, he talks to himself."
Even Aaron didn't seem convinced and started to back away to join Rashane and Taran again. He gave Tulilah a hapless shrug on his way, as if in apology. For what, even he didn't know as the mousy-haired boy turned back to his male friends.
"Just..." Jack promised, activating his cogment's connection protocols. It had observed enough now to handshake with the 24th technology, and in a second he had the implant connected to the tricorder in his hand.
"A bit..." He gritted his teeth, though now his cogment was doing all the work. The Only could almost sit back and relax, but for the taxing mental effort it took to sustain the implant's furious calculations. It drove the tricorder's operations now, lurching forward to defeat the younger Jack's encryption, always one step behind the crafty native to this reality.
"More..." Jack's voice rose in anticipation. At last, his cogment found a weak point and surged ahead. The Only felt a little lightheaded from the effort, but he grinned when the tricorder in his hand blinked with a change in design. Suddenly it displayed a clone of the other tricorder, the one hidden meters away inside the treehouse that powered the field keeping him outside of it. With a glance up to his audience, the teen winked and finished his magic trick. "Got it."
Jack held his hand out to demonstrate, and it waved right through where the girl repulsor field had been.
"You took it down!" Tulilah exclaimed, clapping her hands with joy and appreciation. She nearly skipped over to where the field's edge had been, but moved just a tad cautiously to pass it (teen Jack was still a version of Jack after all and might have set her up by only resetting it to let himself through). But when she passed unimpeded she spun around with a huge grin. "That is a great trick. Can you show me how you did it?"
"Traitor!" The shout from the Andorian was almost expected now, prompting Aaron to turn back around to see it. Rashane marched close to the lavender-haired girl. "Get out, this is our space!"
"There's no way..." Aaron muttered in disbelief, looking at Jack with a gaping mouth. "Why would you do that?"
"I would if I knew," Jack told Tulilah with a smirk. He shook back his shaggy hair, and tapped his temple. "I offloaded it to my," he cupped a hand against his mouth and dropped his voice, "future technology." Grinning back to the boys, he shrugged haplessly in the way Aaron had earlier. "It was your idea, actually. You did say maybe it doesn't have to be all boys, and a girl was nice to me. So I, a boy, let her in."
Tulilah was disappointed the hacking technique couldn't be shared, but delighted by teen Jack's reply to the boys. "Thank you," she said politely, giving a little bob that was almost a curtsy. "You give me hope for the Jack we have here."
"This is so not right," the Andorian boy grumbled, aiming his fury at the teenager. He took a step back from the girl, as if repulsed. Or even repelled. "The real Jack would have never done this to us. You're the worst Jack!"
When Rashane turned to stalk off, Aaron waited a moment behind his friend. "You could have asked," he pointed out. Then his eyes shifted to Tulilah, and words got caught in his throat. They found his feet instead, then turned them to make his slow way back to the treehouse. "I would've let someone in if they just asked. Even a girl. Our Jack would've let me, he'll always listen to me..."
"Then why wouldn't he before now?" Jack looked at the back of the retreating boys, rolling his eyes. He closed the tricorder, turning to the lavender-haired girl before him. For a moment, he considered just giving her the tricorder with its data logs, she might be smart enough to figure them out anyway. Instead, he tossed it back to the small, blue creature with a word of thanks.
To Tulilah, the Only teenager had a suggestion. "Ask him next time. Better yet, when his friends aren't around. He seems chill, he just can't show it around the others, you know?"
A motion from afar caught Jack's eye, and he tossed his head. The shaggy bangs dipped further into his eyes rather than clear of them, and he brushed them back with a hand instead. "Gotta go. Wish me luck. If your doctor has a cure made for your Jack, he won't need any more of my blood."
The teen grinned to the girl, departing the Arboretum with a wave to the kids still outside.
