Reunion

Posted on Sat Sep 1, 2018 @ 1:50am by Lieutenant Miki Matsutaki & 2nd Lieutenant Gage Aravan

Mission: History
Location: Counsellor's Office
Timeline: MD 34 || 1600 Hours

Lieutenant Matsutaki smiled gently as she sat back in her chair, and dismissed the rather nervous young crewman she had spent the previous 30 minutes talking with.

"Thank you, crewman. That was a lovely chat."

"Ma'am?" the crewman said, not budging from the front edge of his seat, his eyes still wide with the same bewilderment they had when he arrived.


"I'm sure you have more important things you had planned for your off-duty hours than playing sparrow-on-the-wire with that chair, don't you?" Miki gave a quick lifting motion with her hands, "Other than the typical nerves shown by a brand new crewman getting the undivided attention of an officer, I see nothing that should be a noteworthy concern for my department. Do I really need to actually use the word 'Dismissed'?"

She watched with some amusement as her words worked their long and winding way through his cognitive processes. Given the tenor of their conversation, the young man's sudden leap to his feet came as absolutely no surprise.


His "Thank you, Ma'am" was followed by a hesitant about-face and rapid withdrawal from the room, engendering a shake of the head from the Chief Counsellor.

In the chaos that she had arrived aboard into, Miki had had little time to work out how best to organize the duty of making baseline assessments of the crew. With most of her staff rotating through the mammoth task of dealing with the victims of a planet-wide crisis, the job to doing the housekeeping fell to her. In order to virtually gaurantee getting through everyone, whilst not placing too great a strain on any one department, she decided to go through the crew manifest alphabetically.

Leaning forward again, she sighed, "Alright, let's see who's next?" As she saw the service record come up on the screen, she again smiled. She knew that she would eventually arrive at this point. This was a conversation that she was looking forward to, but at the same time, dreading.

She lightly pressed her commbadge, as she rose to her feet. "Second Lieutenant Aravan, please report to the Chief Counsellor's Office."

=^=On my way=^= came the response It was a few minutes before Gage tapped the chime and waited to be admitted in.

"Come in, Lieutenant" Miki called presciently, though it was hardly an act of mental prowess to know who it was. As the door opened, she pushed herself back from leaning on the table, and stood with her hands held low and crossed one over the other. Her eyes danced swiftly over the Marine as he came into view from behind the door. He had always had an impressive physique, even as the boy she remembered, but his years of service in the Marines had honed that to a fine edge. She quickly turned her attention back to his face as he approached, and privately hoped he recognized her beyond merely as a superior officer.

Gage came in, then stopped and studied the woman in front of him with a trained eye before memories from when they were all younger came to him. "Miki?" He asked, ignoring rank as the memories of the past met the future. "You're Miki Matsu, right?"

Miki beamed at him as he recognized her. "Geez, Gage, almost 20 years we spent next door to each other, and you still can't get my name right," she said in exaggerated exasperation, holding up a desk plaque with her name on it. "Kami-sama preserve me... and look at you! You never did do the body thing by halves, did you? Still banging heads and breaking hearts?'

"I know how it's spelled, but Matsu sounds better than Matsutaki," he said. "Matsutaki makes me want to say bless you or suggest Medical. I'm still banging heads, but not breaking hearts any more. I'm married and we have a little boy. How about you?"

Miki almost swallowed her tongue at the news that the ruffian of her childhood circle was now a married father. "You? Married with children? She must be a special woman indeed to bring you to heel," Miki teased. "You'll have to introduce her to me, I want to see what a miracle-worker looks like. As for me, I seem to be married to the Service, as much as I'd like otherwise. Men tend to make complete idiots of themselves around me, or desperately try to avoid me altogether. I mean, am I really that unattractive?"

"Oh yeah," Gage responded like the younger Gage would have. "You'd have to tie a steak around your neck to get a Targ to play with you."

Miki's lips again curled into a grin, she remembered this game well, and how to play it. "Yet I don't remember ever tying a steak around my neck to get you to play with me, Mr Targ." At which point, she poked out her tongue, before bursting into laughter.

"My god, it's good to see you again, Gage. And good to know at least one of the brothers remembers me. I'm afraid I made a complete ass of myself when I first saw Michael sitting behind the desk in the Ready Room. Take a pew and tell me about how Mr Scrappy turned into Gage Aravan, responsible husband and father."

Gage sat down in the offered chair and sat back. "Really, it's Michael's fault. He met Spencer when he was a senior at the Academy and through her, I got to meet Piper. That's his wife's younger sister. She and I got along great and one thing led to another. We've been married since twenty-three eighty-nine after dating for seven years." He pulls a small holo frame from one of his many pockets and shows a picture of a little boy. "This is Liam Nicolas Aravan. He's five months old now."

Miki smirked briefly, "So Mr Scrappy hasn't completely disappeared, he's still deflecting responsibility for things onto others." She picked up her PADD, pulled a stylus from it, and started writing, while murmurring "Aravan... Gage... Second Lieutenant... Assessment notes...Lost his mind... making no effort... look for it," before putting the stylus back into the PADD and resting the PADD face down on the desk between them, quietly making sure it was easily within Gage's reach.

As she looked up and regarded the image of the baby, her eyes lit up, and she almost snatched the holo frame from Gage's hand. "Well done, Gage, he's adorable... I'm pretty sure most of the blame for this one rests with you though. Let's hope he grows up to be as strong and handsome as his father, and determined as his mother had to have been."

Gage reached over to pick up the PADD, then smiled when he saw what was actually written on it. "If you take a look at my service record, you'll see that I lead from the front now, Miki," he said. "I'm the one kicking the door in now and going in hot."

Miki saw Gage go for her PADD, and noted with some inward glee the mildly concerned expression on his face as he picked it up. Still so easy to bait she thought with a slight grin playing at the corners of her mouth. She knew he was well aware that she was never going to actually write anything bad about him without it being true, but she was curious to know whether or not he had developed an ability to resist the urge to see for himself. He clearly hadn't, and if anything, that made her feel comfortable.

"Enjoy reading confidential documents, Lieutenant?" she asked in mock disapproval, as she walked up to him, and gently lifted the PADD from his fingers. "Now, you listen to me, Gage," she reproached him, waving her retrieved PADD in his face, "I have no intention of dealing with an emotionally distraught mother with a baby in tow, so if you go gung-ho and do something monumentally stupid like any number of stupid things you did as a kid, and get yourself killed in the process, I swear, I will personally traverse the galaxy in tracking down your body, find a way to revive it, and then kill you myself. You hear me?"

"Tell me something that Michael hasn't a hundred times," Gage said with a half laugh. It was true and he had been accused of trying to get himself killed on multiple occasions but he always came back in one piece. "I'm good at what I do, Miki. I'm not suicidal and Piper won't be a widow."

"Oh, you've outgrown trying to get yourself beaten to a quivering mass of goo?" Miki asked with an impish grin, "Good. That's one part of your personality that I, for one, won't miss. I'm sure the doctors won't either. But if ever you want to go at it with someone with bokken, come seek me out, it woould be good to have a half-decent flesh-and-blood opponent." She held out Gage's holo frame, "Damn, it's good to see you again, Gage... but for now, we're done here."

"See you next time, Miki," Gave said as he came to his feet. "If you get a chance to, you should call the Marine commander in. He's a Caitian and would love you." With a smile, he headed out.