Posted by Lieutenant Mwezi (Weapons Officer) in Post Sim: Getting some exercise

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Brigette Marshall (Chief Engineer (CE)) in Post Sim: Getting some exercise

Posted by Lieutenant Mwezi (Weapons Officer) in Post Sim: Getting some exercise
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

Mwezi had a consistent schedule. Most of the time. He made sure his team was well rested when they had to be, had the same shifts each week (consistency was good for healthiness), and were well trained. But now he had five new crewmembers to integrate into the rotation and that was a definite pain. They had some bad habits, especially Petty Officer Farlie. That idiot had nearly broken a limb twice, and actually done it once and had to go to Sickbay for that stupid ladder sliding stunt. Mwezi had chewed out Farlie, and he knew Kane had as well, so hopefully the man would have learned his lesson but no. He did it again. Luckily he hadn’t actually broken anything the second and third times, but it was only a matter of time before his idiocy injured him again.

It was things like these that made Mwezi glad for the gym facilities. He generally took for himself the late night shifts, the zombie hours as NE Perry had been so eloquent as to name them. So his Gym visit was usually very early in the ‘morning.’ Not that there really was a real day-night cycle on a starship, but it was good to pretend. He liked to change it up a little, and named the shifts after different continents on Earth. There was the North-America shift, 600-1200. The Europe shift, 1200-1800. The Asia shift, 1800-000. And finally the Australian shift, 000-600. So, here he was at 600 hours, doing his stretches and warming up. He didn’t wear much. He’d put on shorts, but his chest was bare. Well, bare as a body covered in fur could be.

The room itself was set to a chilly 10 degrees Celsius, but that obviously didn’t bother him. It was nice, being chilly again instead of the near-constant heat of the starship, and only in his private quarters and during his exercise in the gym did he get to enjoy that. He finished up his stretches and stepped over to the punching bags, wrapping some strips of cloth around his fists, then going to town on the hanging sand-bag.

• Mwezi

Normally she worked out during third shift. But she had been so preoccupied with the glove tests, she had fallen asleep at her padd before working out. So here she was, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to get her work out in before shift. Ok, so maybe not so bright eyed or awake, but she was there.

She palmed open the door and the first thing to hit her was the blast of cold air. With her quarters usually around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the 50 degree chill of the gym woke her up the rest of the way.

She stepped in and had just moved to the corner to warm up when she saw him. “Oh, Sorry, sir… would you prefer privacy? I can come back after shift.” She nodded to the door, already taking a step in that direction. In her mind, she now understood the reason for the cold.

Lt JG Brigette Marshall
Chief Engineer

Mwezi punched the bag once more, then stopped and looked at Birdie with a slight tilt of his head. He then shrugged and muttered something unintelligibly. He then seemed to sigh, then spoke again. More clearly than before, but still with a heavy accent. “You can… ah, stay. You are engineer chief, yes? Uh… sorry for the, ah… cold.” He made his way over to the bench, grabbing a small, square object with a wristband and sliding it onto his wrist.

After fiddling with the device for a few moments, he sat down on the bench and spoke in perfect, unaccented Federation Standard, “Computer, increase the temperature to 15 degrees.” She might notice that his mouth movements didn’t quite match up with the spoken words. “Sorry. Come on in. I think this temperature will be a little more comfortable for you. I do not think we have formally met, although I have seen you around a bit since your arrival. Welcome to the Chernov,” he said, giving Birdie a small nod.

• Mwezi

“Thank you,” she said, and moved back to the mat. Sitting down and spreading her feet as far as she could, she leaned over her right leg to stretch. “You didn’t have to change the temp. I don’t want to blast you from your own workout. But thank you for the thought.”

She leaned over the other way, her mass of unruly hair pulled back in a sloppy knot on her head. She was wearing her usual light makeup. It was hard to tell from the standpoint of most, but it covered her freckles. She had never outgrown them and tended to keep them covered and away from ridiculing eyes. Her sweat pants and tshirt were loose and comfortable, unlike most women on the ship who preferred tight leggings and tank tops or middrift tops. “Yes, I’m the new Engineering Chief. Thanks for the welcome. And you are right, I’ve been remiss.” She sat up and smiled. “I’m Brigette… Brigette Marshall. But you can call me Bridie,” she laughed. “Most do.” She nodded to him with a genuine smile. “You are Mwezi, right?” Her accent slightly mispronounced his name but she didn’t realize it and hadn’t done it on purpose.

Bridie
CE

“Mwezi is what they call me, yes,” he replied. “Naturally, it is,” He tapped his wrist device to disable his translator function and spoke a word, “Me’zi,” then tapped it again to re-enable the translator. The sounds of the language he was native to were unfamiliar to Federation Standard, his voice making a strange sound in the middle of the word that would be difficult to reproduce. “But Mwezi is… possible for humans to pronounce. So Mwezi it becomes.”

He stood up and stretched a little before discarding his wrist device and moving over to a salmon ladder - a pair of pillars embedded in the ceiling and floor, spikes sticking out of the poles at an upward angle. He grabbed a pole from where it was holstered on the side of the column. He began to use the ladder, using his core and upper arms to pull himself upwards, one set of spikes at a time. He was quiet while he exercised. He was generally very quiet, so it wasn’t much of a change.

• Mwezi

She smiled and was amazed at the actual pronunciation. “A pleasure to meet you, Mwezi,” she laughed and went back to her stretching as he used the ladder. Her core wasn’t strong enough to even attempt it. She tried it now and again. Best she had managed, so far, was dislodging one side and falling on her backside with a shout of surprise and laughter. So she ignored the contraption.

But as she stretched, she was fascinated to watch someone far more capable. He was the first one to use it in front of her, so she found herself watching him a bit more attentively than she would have normally. She stretched to the other side, her core muscles flexing as she imagined them doing as she rose up the ladder. Her mouth softly trying to murmur his native name without butchering it.

Turning away from him to stretch over her other leg, her half whispered attempts were punctuated by occasional growled back snickers as she butchered it and felt embarrassed.

Bridie
CE
(Apparently NOT fluent in his language, but stubborn enough to try)

The poor CE didn’t realize exactly how sensitive Mwezi’s hearing was, and despite the clang of metal from his use of the salmon ladder, he was able to pick up on her whispered attempts. He chose not to immediately acknowledge her attempts. Most didn’t even try, so he found it a little amusing and also somewhat… he wasn’t sure exactly. He appreciated that she was trying, at least. After going all the way to the top, then back down three or four times, Mwezi landed on the ground and put the pole away.

He walked over to the bench and took another long drink of water before grabbing his watch and sauntering over to Birdie. It was hard to read his body language as he stood near her. Probably causing her to shut her mouth and stop her little whispered attempts to pronounce his name. “It is Me’zi,” he said, saying his name in a much slower voice, then slipping on his wrist-bound translator and activating it. “I… appreciate the attempt but it is not necessary,” He paused, seeming a little conflicted before quietly adding, “Birdie.”

He took a deep breath, and a wash of different scents associated with the woman flooded his nose. The usual smells of human body odour mingled with cleaning products and whatever perfume she had worn in the past couple days. Usually he could make out only one scent above the general scent that came off a person, but he could sense two. The natural scent of the woman, and Captain Taggart’s scent. He wasn’t surprised. He’d been smelling her scent on his Captain since this woman came aboard. He would never breach the subject with the Captain - humans were so weird about talking about who they had sex with and he didn’t want to effect his working relationship. But he didn’t really work with the CE.

“I smell Taggart. Are you two, ah, what is the human phrase, sleeping together?” he asked, seemingly out of the blue, as he turned and began his cool-down routine, starting with some jogging-in-place.

• Mwezi

She had moved from stretching to what, at first, appeared to be a simple set of kata. But the motions were slower, more stretched and extended. It appeared like she was trying to hyper extend ever part of her body in single muscle clusters. His appreciation of her attempts made her realize he had heard her and she blushed, the color, thankfully, somewhat dulled by the makeup.

Her scent was of lavender and lilac. She didn’t reak of the perfumes of lots of the women on board. She didn’t want the distraction for others that she knew it could be. She had even forbidden her engineers from dousing themselves in colognes and perfumes. It was an easier environment to work with their closeness, when folks weren’t constantly distracted by various scents.

When he whispered her name, she smiled. “It’s Bridie… but I like Birdie. Just don’t tell anyone else,” she winked and laughed. It was an interesting nickname. Oddly, no one had ever called her Birdie before and it felt nice to have a mistake actually make her smile.

She had been leaning down to touch her toes with her right hand, left arm high as she turned to look up at it, when he asked about Taggart and her. She paused a moment to catch her hitched breath before swallowing a rising lump. “Ummm… we have, yes.” She was pretty sure it wasn’t a secret on the ship. But since it was the Captain, she hadn’t been surprised when no one spoke of it. To head Mwezi mention it so casually made her twist with whether it was a good or bad thing to be so nonchalant about it.

“I… we… have a movie date once a week. It’s turned into an overnight before.” She wasn’t sure why she was telling him, though it seemed to be important to him. Standing back up, she cocked her head slightly, looking like the curious bird he may have been thinking of. “You and the Captain are close? You look after him, I notice.” She had seen the way the large lupine had watched the Captain when he spoke of old missions or even of possibly upcoming aways. It was as if the weapons officer were judging if that was a safe thing for the CO to be doing, and if so, he had the look of ‘I’m coming with you whether you like it or not’. She wondered, absently, what was between them to provoke such protection from this man.

Bridie
(Birdie)