[D`Tarik's Quarters]
A few hours after their talk in the holodeck, the boys notice that Sprink's not only drunk, but seems to be missing as well. Concerned, D'Tarik insists that they look for the intoxicated Tribble. Rylan at first looks confused, then rubs his eyes to remove the foggy-haze that is currently his vision. "Alright...." he mumbles, crossing the room unsteadily, making his way to the closet. "Au have any more of that stuff for intoxication anywhere?" he again mumbles, rummaging around the lab coat in the closet.
As Rylan was asking this, D'Tarik matter-of-factly injects something into the erie'Arrain's arm, then does the same to himself. "Well...I just gave au some..." he answers back.
"I better na grow more antenna from this stuff!" Rylan casts a suspicious glance to the boy, then smirks as he realizes he's starting to think more clearly and his vision's less blurred.
"Na. That's not going to happen." D'Tarik answers simply, then suddenly adds cheerfully, "By the way ...I saved them for au, if au still want them!" D'Tarik suddenly produces a jar with the things preserved in it seemingly out of nowhere.
Rylan recoils in horror at the things, retorting sarcastically, "I don't believe I wanted them in the first place! Why don't au just give 'em to Sprink?"
"Good idea!" the medical officer smiles and puts the jar in his pockets, "Save these guys for latter!"
The taller boy rolls his eyes in frustration, "That was a joke, D'Tarik...."
"What?"
"About the...." Rylan waves his own explanation away, "oh, never mind..." he trails off.
"Ok! We have a Tribble to find!" D'Tarik pulls out a scanner that has a little toy Sprinkles on top of it.
Rylan looks at the odd scanner, then thwacks the toy Tribble in annoyance, "What in Areinnye is that?"
"It's my Sprinkles Finder 2000!" D'Tarik beams proudly, "I used it all the time at the Academy when he would get out."
tr'Tuhmek stares rather blankly at the smaller boy, then shakes his head "I had to ask...." he pauses long enough to cast a resigned shrug, then crosses the room to peek under the bed. "Alright...let's find Sprink then....he's probably just hiding cause au'rh threatening to do more to that crea...." Rylan's words halt in this throat as the sounds of a scream rise from some distance beyond the door. Rylan's so startled by this that he suddenly tries to sit up, only succeeding in whacking his head on the underside of the bed, "Ow! What the....?!"
D'Tarik's scanner starts making a coo-ing noise, "Ah ha!" he exclaims happily.
Rylan rubs the top of his head and points to the door, "I say we just follow the screams....." but D'Tarik was nearly out the door before he had the last word out of his mouth. Sighing with the absurdity of the situation, Rylan follows, grumbling under his breath.
As the two come from around the corner, the lab assistant slams into D`Tarik, sending the SprinkFinder 2000 to the ground where it shatters to pieces. Looking down to see who she knocked down this time, the girl is startled further at seeing the geeky form of D'Tarik, who has an overly happy little grin on his face. "Hi!" D'Tarik cheerfully supplies.
Rylan reaches down to help the Erien up, "Au okay?" but she scrambles up on her own, and backs away from the medical officer, still scared out of her mind. "Let me guess," Rylan smiles to her, "It went that way." he points down the corridor she just ran from.
D'Tarik stands, then looks down to retrieve his modified and odd-looking scanner, "Oh, na!" he dejectedly picks up the remains, "It's broke!"
The Erien suddenly flings herself at Rylan and wraps her arms around him, almost crying "Don't let him near me!" she points to D'Tarik. Rylan looks bewildered for a moment, then suddenly grins to the medical officer.
tr'Rekkohan only shrugs and looks innocent, "What?"
"Na," Ryan doesn't make a move to push the trembling Erien away, "D'Tarik's na going to hurt au. Au'rh alright." He nods to the broken scanner in D'Tarik's hands, the toy Tribble dangling from the useless device almost comically, "Can au fix it, or na?"
"I forget how." D'Tarik shrugs again, looking sadly at the pieces in his hand, "I made it so long ago.....we would have to go back to my lab and get the plans."
Rylan nods and tries to pull a scanner out of a pocket of his uniform, "Na....I have a scanner. Should work." and immediately wishes silently -- and a little annoyed -- for the girl to let up on her hysterical grip on him. Finally, after much struggling to free an arm from the whimpering hysterical female, Rylan frees the scanner then tosses it over to D'Tarik, "Here..."
As soon as D'Tarik turns the scanner on, the device starts beeping like crazy. Looking slightly up from the scanner, tr'Rekkohan sees Sprinkles wrapped around the Erien's leg. "Squeak!!" the creature lets go, and jets off on little wheels attached to the bottom of it's spring leg. "I don't remember adding those..." D'Tarik wonders out loud, looking slightly confused.
Rylan, who had been so busy trying to calm the girl, hadn't noticed Sprink at all, until D'Tarik had said something. Glancing first to the Tribble, then back at tr'Rekkohan he asked, "What do au mean, au don't remember adding it? Are au saying that Sprink updated himself?"
"Perhaps...." D'Tarik started to explain, the noticed that his pet Tribble was getting further away down the hall, "Sprink! Get back here! Au got some explaining to do!" Spinkles gives off a defiant, "COO!!" still wheeling off down the hall in a drunken, weaving pattern. A frown crosses D'Tarik's face as he runs off after the Tribble, "Au should na be driving in ninte condition!"
Rylan watches the scene almost impassively, "That was a na...."
That seemed to confuse D'Tarik. He stopped and turned around to face his friend, who was still motionless because of the hysterical female, "A na what?" Suddenly for no apparent reason that D'Tarik could fathom, Rylan starts laughing in his usual obnoxious way. Angry that tr'Tuhmek should be laughing about this, D'Tarik exclaims, "He's drunk! We can't let him drive!"
"A *na*!" Rylan manages through fits of laughter, "Sprink just told *au* na!"
"He's been acting odd lately...." was all that D'Tarik could offer. He turned his head to watch the drunken, weaving, wheeling Tribble scoot off down the hall on his merry way to nowhere in particular; then suddenly noticed how the people that Sprink passed seemed to push themselves up against the walls of the corridor, starring at the Tribble in horrified fascination. "I just thought of something...." D'Tarik says with a note of curiosity mixed with faint worry, "What if the Leih finds out about this?"
That seemed to be just the thing to take all the humor out of Rylan. Gently, but firmly pushing the girl away from him, he agrees, "Ie, na a good idea!" He glares angrily at D'Tarik, as the Erien latches on to him again, "*Au* will be the one in trouble for this, au know!" he points off in the runaway-Tribble's direction, "Sprink's *ninte* responsibility!"
"I know...." D'Tarik agrees forlornly, "Go convince those guys na to tell the Leih about this..."
Rylan raises a brow at that, "Well I would, if I could move!" he retorts angrily, finally pushing the girl away in a not so gentle manner as before. Wondering to himself how he was going to explain it all away to the startled onlookers, he waves for them to continue on their tasks as casually as he could manage, "Na-thing to see...everything's under control....the Tribble's na dangerous...." and silently curses D'Tarik as he knows he's bound to have to explain the whole thing to the Leih anyway.
As Ryan does his best to disperse the small crowd, D'Tarik takes out a silver bow-shaped device and pushes down on it's big red button....but nothing happened. In desperation, he kept pushing it, "Fvadt! He disabled it! It had to be him.....something is wrong!" the look of confusion returned to his face.
As most of the onlookers continue on their way as Rylan suggested, already forgetting the incident, Rylan hears that last comment, "What'd au mean?" he casts a glance to the girl that still hovered near and lowered his voice, "Sprink's na dangerous is he?" His eyes narrow slightly as he warns in a serious tone, "Au know what I'll have to do if he is..."
"I don't think so...." D'Tarik protests with a shake of his head, "but, something is odd..."
Rylan sighs, trying to keep his cool, *What* is going on with it then?"
"I'm not sure...we have to catch him."
"Agreed." Rylan nods, then focuses on the girl again, "Sprink seems to like au....want to help us catch him?" The Erien at first shakes her head, then sighs and steps forward, knowing that it was probably considered part of her job to locate missing lab-creatures.
D'Tarik, not bothering to wait for the others, runs off down the hall, and rounds another corner. Suddenly slowing as he sees that Sprinkles has crashed into a wall and got himself stuck because of the laser. Slowly, so as not to startle his strange-acting pet, D'Tarik injects the knocked- unconscious Tribble with the anti-intoxicant, then gingerly removes the creature from the wall. As Rylan and the assistant approach closer, D'Tarik holds his sleeping pet out in front of him slightly with a 'see...I've got him, everything's okay' expression.
Rylan doesn't seem to care about that. He points instead at the wall and angrily exclaims "Fvadt it D'Tarik! He put a hole in the fvadt wall! The Leih is *na* going to like that!"
"Ie...that's a good point Rylan. Ummm...." he pauses to look at the hole in the wall, then back to his assistant. "I did na get ninte name, Erien..."
The girl looks uncertainly from Rylan to D'Tarik a moment, then moves to stand slightly behind the taller of the males as she answers, "Emni. Emni t'Meihan, rekkhai."
D'Tarik immediately points to the hole in the wall, "Get right on that please." he waits, but after a few silent moments pass he begins to tap his foot impatiently, "Emni? Please?" D'Tarik was suddenly all business.
"Uh....ie." the Erien nods uncertainly, glancing at the offending hole in the wall, "But..um...I'm na an engineer or a...." she suddenly trails off, lowering her eyes to the floor as D'Tarik's rapid foot-tapping becomes much louder.
Rylan grins at the chief medical officer, and taps his communicator to ops, "Send maintenance personnel to corridor 12, deck 2 hnah." he pauses to raise a brow slightly in D'Tarik's direction, There seems to be a hole in a wall that needs repairing." As the acknowledgement from the Erein at the ops station comes back through the comline, Rylan casts a smirk at D'Tarik.
"Or, au could do that...." D'Tarik looks down at the passed out Tribble in his hands.
Immediately changing his expression, Rylan cast a look every bit as stern as the one the CMO gave the girl a moment ago, "Alright, D'Tarik, au've got ninte Tribble. Now, figure out what is wrong with it, and get the problem fixed, hnah."
"Ie..." D'Tarik answers with a touch of sarcasm, "rekkhai."
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