Something That's Green

Posted on Tue Dec 17th, 2024 @ 5:17pm by Captain Björn Kodak & Lieutenant Xex Wang & Ensign Noah Balsam & Ensign Jyl-eel Tor

Mission: Mean Green Queen
Location: Bio Lab
Timeline: Mission Day 3 at 1007

[Outside the Bio Lab]
[MD 3: 1007 Hours]

Kodak had left the Bridge a few minutes moments earlier, the strange plant Debbie had procured for him on Hukatuse cradled in the crook of his arm. As he exited from the quick turbolift ride from Deck 1 to 2, his thoughts lingered on the promotion he'd just given to Cross, elevating her to both Chief Operations and Second Officer. He and t'Nai had debated the promotion in detail and had both agreed that Victoria was the logical choice, lest they deign to wait another month to receive someone else from Pathfinder. They'd been glad they'd had the foresight to recruit such a strong potential replacement for Gar'rath if it was needed.

During the promotion, however, the little plant sitting on a table in his office had done something...peculiar. Namely, it'd suckled at the Captain's fingers like a kitten might nose its mother for milk. But as far as Kodak could tell, no skin had been broken on his hand, so perhaps the most the plant might have gotten from him was some errant salt or oils on his skin? That had gotten the Chameloid wondering if, instead of the normal variety of nutrients most Alpha Quadrant plants needed, this Delta Quadrant flora needed something else entirely. If he was going to understand the plant and its needs, Kodak had decided he'd need the help of the ship's exo-botanist, Jyl-eel Tor.

The Captain had been about to step up to the Bio Lab's doors when the shutters across the way swished open, the silvery form of Doctor Wang stepping from them and into the hallway. Kodak offered the Doctor a kind smile and a wave with his free hand, the plant still wedged against his trunk in the other arm. It was the same side of his abdomen where the bounty hunters had hit him with disruptor fire a few days prior, necessitating Xex's ministrations to bring him back to rights. With the wound sealed and healed, the Captain had returned to duty and not run into the Doctor since.

"Hello there," Kodak rasped warmly to the man in greeting.

"Captain!" Xex greeted with his customary enthusiasm as he finished buttoning up his uniform jacket, apparently having just donned it. His voice was a little rough, and there were deeper lines at the corners of his eyes, but his energy seemed to surge as he noticed the Chameloid. "You're looking well. Those exercises are keeping the tightness at bay, I hope?" he asked as he stepped close enough to eye the area in question as though to ascertain whether or not Kodak was doing the exercises simply by looking. What he saw instead was a curious plant, and his brows arched with surprise and interest both. "You are... airing the plant?" he guessed, unable to alight on another reason the man would be walking the halls with a potted plant. He lifted a brow and looked up at Kodak from where he was bent close to the odd flora.

"They are," Kodak nodded, though his face looked pained to admit it. "Not the biggest fan of doing them, but if it means staying loose enough to shapeshift, I can't argue against it," the Captain admitted. As Xex asked about the plant, his expression changed to one of bemused curiosity. "Debbie brought this back for me from Hukatuse. She knows my penchant for growing bonsai and thought I'd like to try my hand at something more exotic. And boy," his yellow-gold eyes widened a bit, "is it exotic. Come on inside and I'll explain everything to you and Tor. Assuming she's not too busy to help," Kodak said, nodding towards the door into the bio-lab.

[Bio Lab]
[Deck 2]
[MD 3: 1015 Hours]

"Please hold this," the lilting and cheery voice of Jyl-eel Tor said from a distance, yet her tone had a press of something... stressed. "Do you smell that?" She asked, and her nostrils flared at the strange musky smell. The target of her words was all legs, wearing Engineering colors: Ensign Balsam. His beaky nose was equally conflicted. "I think its Palo's pet again..." Jyl-eel said as she squatted down. "Their familiar snuck in here after we left Hukatuse."

"Wha-what am I holding?" Noah asked. The musky smell seemed to be coming from it and the pot felt... sticky? Or wet? Or something? The plant wasn't exactly pretty by Human standards either- a sort of bruise colored purple, like a bloated sea cucumber was growing out of rocky soil. And it had nasty looking needle-like prickles. It was hardly something that he'd expected from the sunny disposition of the Valt botanist.

"Hupyrian cactus," Jyl-eel murmured.

Noah's mouth turned to a silent ah. "Why-why's the pot sticky?" Jyl-eel twisted to look at him and frowned.

"Sticky? It shouldn't be sticky." She stood up and examined the pot and then Noah's hands. "Ah. I think that's this.... things scent musk oil... its been spraying this poor cactus." Noah's nose immediately wrinkled in the disgust of realization.

"Its not black and white with fur is it?" Noah asked. He was dreading the answer when they both heard the doors hiss open.

Kodak had stepped into the lab, followed by Wang. The Chameloid looked about, hoping they'd not entered in the midst of any sensitive experiments that their presences might interrupt. While the scientists who called this lab home could, of course, lock the doors to prevent such interruptions, not everyone always thought to do so. The Captain had learned the hard way to step lightly into labs and keep his voice soft when calling out for whomever he'd needed to see. And thus his voice was only just loud enough to be heard as, having not seen his quarry immediately, he asked, "Ensign Tor? Are you here?"

Xex entered just behind the captain, sidestepping so as to move out of the doorway. He moved with recent familiarity, the last few frantic days of trial and error-- too much error-- in the effort to replace Timmoz's lung taking him often into the bio lab. Still, he tucked his hands behind his back, firmly resisting the urge to fiddle with the various instruments in easy reach.

"No, its all white," Jyl-eel's face broke into a smile. She pet Noah's arm, "Go wash your hands over there." She turned her attention to the voice, "Yes I'm here?" The voice was deep and masculine and so that immediately made it unlikely that it was Durand, the science department's lead. She moved to make herself appear while the lanky one- smelling the palms of his hands and them recoiling with a, "Phew!" trod off to find a washing station.

Jyl-eel chuckled after him and then turned to her new guests. "T'shi, Captain Kodak," Jyl-eel touched her fingertips of both hands to her forehead, then her lips then gestured at him., and then to the silver-skinned Xex. "And Doctor. And my apologies. Crewman Palo's... weasel?" Jyl-eel put her hands behind her back and smiled at the newcomers, "Has decided this part of the lab is theirs." She blinked, "How can I help, Sirs?"

Kodak smirked at the sight of Noah running off -- he'd greet the ensign when he returned -- but then focused his attention on Tor. Looking around the lab for a moment, he shrugged lightly. "Seems like a good place for a weasel to me. I'd probably pick it too," came his warm rasp, amusement in his golden eyes. "Ensign, I was hoping you could help me...well, us I guess," he nodded to Wang, who'd joined him in the hallway, "with something interesting." At that, he moved to place the strange plant he'd carried into the lab onto the table. "Debbie," he assumed everyone knew the rotund diner matron, "brought this back from Hukatuse for me. Saw it in the Exchange and, given my love of bonsai, she thought I might find it interesting. No information was sent over about the plant, though," the Captain explained, "and we bolted out of there before I could flip through their database about it."

"It uh..." Kodak looked sheepish, "it kind of likes to suckle my fingers." He gestured then to the main bloom of the plant, which looked like a purple-pinkish bud with a pointed tip. As the Chameloid moved his index finger closer to the plant, the bud began to open, wisps of extending matter reaching out almost like a tongue to receive his digit. The Captain didn't let it have the finger, though, holding it back so that the bud was forced to move its stem in an effort to better reach him. It almost looked like a baby trying to get its mouth around a bottle held too far away.

Xex stepped closer, bending at the waist to bring his face inches from the little vignette playing out between the bud and Kodak's fingers. Clearly fascinated as he was able to view the phenomenon in real time, he peered closely at the plant in particular, up and down its stem, leaves, and bud, as though by looking closely enough, he could actually understand the mechanisms behind the movement. "Fascinating!" he exclaimed, looking up from his half-bent position, "How long will it go on trying?"

"How fascinating," Jyl-eel echoed in her own way. Jyl-eel turned and bent. She retrieved her sensor suite and popped its sensor pod. She walked to the burly man and beside the argent Doctor. She did not immediately recognize the species. "Please if you will Captain. Recreate that gesture," and she moved her hand in the way Kodak had offered the plant his finger. She readied her scanners.

"Usually gives up after about 30 seconds," Kodak replied to Xex. At Tor's invitation to scan the plant while it did its thing, the Captain nodded and placed it down on the table. He then slowly lifted his right hand, index finger extended, towards the bud. The closer it came, the more the bud opened, revealing again its maw of fungi-like receptors that extended themselves toward the digit. This time he let them touch, intertwining around his fingertip as was their way until, having brought his hand close enough, the lips of the bud wrapped around the digit's end as well.

"It doesn't hurt or anything," Kodak said, feeling a little sheepish about letting the plant suckle his finger while Tor scanned and Xex observed, "but I'm not exactly sure what it's doing. Could it maybe be tasting the salt and skin oils on my finger maybe?"

Jyl-eel's eyes widened in a muted fascination and with the soft sensory beeps of her inputting fingers, she started a more thorough scan. "It doesn't hurt. Do you feel anything at all?" She asked. She zeroed in on the plant's rather advanced for a plant vascular system. She zoomed in still further and a generated line schematic of the plant's feelers appeared on her screen. She pinched at it with her fingers and then "flung" it for Xex and Kodak to see. "It looks like its scrubbing your skin cells for amino-proteins. I'm detecting a number of... taste palates... sort of like tastebuds... activating. It might be trying to decide if you're food."

Xex straightened, shifting his focus to the results Jyl-eel had thrown out. While botany was by no means his speciality, he was enough a scientist to somewhat follow the trail the data left. "My question now is," he said with a wry note to his voice, "from what ecosystem does it come, that something of the captain's size is a potential foodsource." Then, as though that triggered some thought, he cocked his head to the side and after a pause added, "A scavenger, perhaps?"

Jyl-eel agreed without being able to totally agree. She did a non-committal chin sway, "Yes. Yes with the caveat that we can't be sure without some tests. But probably scavenger or a recycler. Most plant-like life forms in our databases are producers or lower-tier predators. But..." Jyl-eel closed her scanner. "Hold on a moment please." And the plump lady moved away for her workstation. She pawed through a few drawers until she slapped her forehead in annoyance and then pulled a device off the wall. It looked- more or less- like a flashlight.

She began to shine the light down on the little plant- and the light began to cycle through different wavelengths. The plant reacted twice, swaying and starting reaching for the purplish-white light. Its leaves suddenly shifted to a bright whitish-silver. When it cycled to red and then something that was invisibly low but warm, the plant went more inert and the leaves that had gone to silver shuddered and moved to a dark, dark green, almost a black. It reached more thirstily for Kodak's finger. "Interesting." Jyl-eel noted.

Kodak had watched the light waving and leaf dancing with interest, completely unsure of whatever it was that Tor was doing with the instrument. As the leaves shifted to their darkest hue yet, the Chameloid cocked an eyebrow at the biologist and asked, "What what was that all about?" But at that moment, the plant's bud had become more aggressive and extended itself further than yet observed, wrapping its mouth (for want of a better term) around the Captain's finger once again. The Chameloid tried to withdraw his hand in surprise but the plant doubled down on its grip, causing it to slide in its pot a few inches across the table with the movement of Kodak's arm. He actually began to laugh then, face melting into slight embarrassment. "This is going to sound weird but...it's tickling me," Kodak chuckled, shoulders rising as he looked at Tor and Wang with surprise.

"Your little friend here," Tor had began as the plant began to more thirstily reach for the Captain, "Probably comes from a planet which is tidally locked to its star or planet. It self-regulates the energy it gets depending on light levels. But," Jyl-eel watched with fascination as the plant actually started to tug on the finger! "Um. I don't know that I would let it do that sir. It's not tickling you, its trying to eat you." She again activated her scanner and passed it around the plant. "It appears to be siphoning off some of your neuro-electric energies... I'm detecting some kind of metabolic process..." Jyl-eel blinked again as the "lips" of the plant started shifting in color- and texture. Almost like it was mimicking the texture and color of the captain's finger.

Xex watched Tor's systematic tests with fascinated interest, barely restraining himself from reaching out to touch the plant as its foliage changed colors beneath the light. He managed to keep his hands to himself by the simple expedient of tucking them behind his back, sidling up behind the Valt to peer over her shoulder at her tricorder. "There's no reason it can't both be trying to eat the captain and tickling him," he noted absently, eyes scanning swiftly over Tor's scan. Whatever he saw made Xex's gray brows arch in surprise, and he reached for his own everpresent tricorder. He repeated the botanist's scan, but his own results, tuned as they were for medical use, allowed him a more in-depth glimpse into the physiological processes taking place. "Suns and stars," he breathed, "it's not just a metabolic process..."

Xex reached out a tentative finger toward the changing surface of the plant, placing his own hand near to its bud, but at the base, away from the mouth. Its surface grayed slightly, as though it were reflecting his own skin tone. "It's actually consuming the mitochondrial DNA-- where your mutagenic processes are coded and stored--" he explained as an aside, "and through some metabolic process-- we'll need more sophisticated scans and simulations to determine exactly what that is-- is able to replicate the extraordinarily elastic and-- pardon the lack of a better word-- chameloid aspects of your own cellular makeup!" The doctor's words had been coming faster and faster, his diction barely keeping up with his own enthusiasm for the remarkable processes he was apparently observing on his tricorder. Looking over the top of the device, he added at a near squeak, 'Look!"

The very top of the blossom's uppermost lip had rounded, calcified slightly into what looked like a very convincing replica of a fingernail.

"Wait," Kodak's golden eyes opened wide at the fingernail's appearance, "this thing is eating my DNA and replicating Chameloid traits from it?" The plant was still suckling on his finger but the Captain no longer looked on that as something cute or playful from the flora's end. He tried to pull his hand away again, hoping his finger would simply slide out of the bud, but what had, before, been a gentle tickle inside the mouth soon became something more akin to a jaw clamp; a jaw clamp that was now actively starting to sting rather harshly. He hissed with pain as the plant seemed to start hyper-feeding on his finger.

"You mean, green..." Kodak started an exclamation but it fell fallow in his mouth as, without warning, the plant had suddenly began to pulsate, drawing more and more genetic material from him. As it overfed itself on his DNA -- likely fearing sudden separation from its food source -- the plant unexpectedly swelled, tripling in size almost instantaneously, like the rapid inflating of a balloon. It's dirt-covered roots had apparently grown so much that the ceramic pot serving as its home could no longer contain the expanding mass, shattering into shards that scattered across the lab table and floor. But instead of the plant falling over sans pot, it seemed to be supporting itself on its roots...a bit like they were feet.

"Careful--" Xex started to say as Kodak sought to free himself from the plant, images of backward-facing spines and finger traps from ancient earth cultures springing to the fore of his mind. Before he could say more though, the plant was abruptly so much larger that he had to take a step back away from it, just to accommodate its greater mass. "Stars!" he exclaimed, though he didn't sound particularly frightened; quite the opposite, the doctor was taking a (perhaps unhealthy) interest in the flora's metamorphosis, his gray gaze roaming up and down its increased height even as he began scanning it. "Look at that rapid cellular division," he said, entirely engrossed in the microscopic world inside the plant, "using the captain's mutagenic properties toward replication. Remarkable!"

"Doctor, the Captain's plant is trying to eat him," Jyl-eel attempted while the silver man seemed focused on the fascinating horticultural find. She light-jogged the small distance to a table and picked up what looked to be a silvery metallic spray bottle. She approached the engorging plant, eyed her bottle, and frowned. "Computer, activate a stasis field in grid..." She cocked her head with a narrowing of her eyes, "Grid C-6." Jyl-eel looked up at the Captain as his plant was cast in a glowing and fluttering force field. "I learned that one from a friend."

The forcefield that had sparkled into existence was, as intended, containing the suddenly-swollen mass of the plant, preventing it from moving itself off the table at least. But the "head" of the plant -- now the size of a medium-sized dog's cranium -- was still clamped around the Captain's finger, unable to be isolated and restrained within the main field while the organism was still attached to Kodak. It pulled itself towards the field, though, trying to extend leafy arms towards the Captain to further grab him, but the viny tendrils were met with the sparkling of the forcefield, which held firm against the flora's now-opposable appendages.

"Get...off...of...ME!" Kodak growled, positively throwing himself backwards. The momentum -- combined with the restraining field holding the bulk of the plant back -- was enough to break the connection between them. Even as the Captain fell back on his ass, holding up his now bleeding finger, the computer reshaped the forcefield to gather and corral the plant's maw into the main containment field, which then shrank to prevent the flora from being able to move much. "What the hell did Debbie bring back from that station?" Kodak asked, looking up at Xex and Jyl-eel with abject bafflement.

Jyl-eel's admonishment, combined with Kodak's abrupt retrieval of his finger and subsequent fall were enough to grab Xex's attention away from the botanical anomaly. Hoping the captain hadn't sustained any further damage from the shards of pot scattered across the floor, Xex reached down to offer him a hand up. Though he reached from Kodak's uninjured hand, his attention was squarely on the finger. "No, don't touch it," he cautioned, knowing that most humanoids tried to cradle or suck or otherwise comfort their injured parts. Grunting as leaned back to pull the bigger man to his feet, Xex explained, "I want to make sure you got away cleanly. Can you feel anything besides pain?"

Jyl-eel pulled away and retrieved a silvery cloth. She took the Captain's finger and began to wrap it. But the cloth, strangely, felt like it adhered to him, like it was slightly tacky in texture. She was gentle but she did squeeze Kodak's finger, careful to ensconce all of the digit that the plant mimetic had tried to consume. When she pulled it away, it left the digit feeling sore and tingling, and the cloth had the residue of the plant, a layer of dead skin and blood on it. Odd tiny spike-like goo stood from the cloth, much like a strip that removed blackheads. She met eyes with Xex and then turned to take it back to her work station. "Check his blood stream."

Xex hissed as Jyl-eel covered the wound with her cloth, misliking anything that would dislodge the left-behind bits of the plant, or further disturb the captain's skin-- but when it came away with all of the residue attached to it, his brows lifted with surprise. He grunted an affirmative as Kodak released his hand and in the span of a heartbeat already had his everpresent tricorder scanning the Chameloid.

Kodak had been glad for the hand up, giving Xex a nod as he returned to his feet, but was surprised when Jyl-eel sheathed his finger in the cloth. As she pulled it away, though, he could see that the adhesive had cleaned out his finger wound of plant matter. The green stuff adhered to the cloth's surface didn't look particularly fun to have inside his finger, so the Captain felt some relief to have it removed. But then the botanist was directing the Doctor to check his bloodstream and a chilling tendril of anxiety slithered its way from his brain to his tailbone. "Di-did it leave something more inside me?" he wondered, noting how suddenly he sounded like Noah. Gathering his resolve for a moment, the Chameloid firmed up his voice before speaking again to Jyl-eel. "Was it trying to hurt me? Because," he held up his hurt finger, "it certainly succeeded." The last was directed to Xex, Kodak's eyes growing hard. "As my adoptive father would say, 'Ja, es tut höllisch weh!'" Yes, it hurts like hell.

"I don't think so," Jyl-eel reported- her answer was to the Captain's wondering if the plant had meant to hurt him. "As for traces of the plant matter it might've left behind. You look clear. Even if there is some, I think a quick pass through Doctor Wang's biofilters will clean up any residuals. But I doubt it would have enough genetic load to be viable. These work-" she raised the cloth, "-Quite well. They were developed when an Away Team landed on Omicron Ceti III. They have some strange fungal blooms there which can heavily affect sentient life."

"If it did, your body is doing a damn good job of assimilating it," Xex said definitively, finally looking up from his tricorder. "I won't wax enthusiastic about your physiology, but suffice to say you will not have to worry about turning into a plant yourself." Then, with an almost mischievous quirk to his lips, he clapped Kodak on the shoulder and added, "...much." His mirth dimmed somewhat as movement from the containment field caught his eye and he frowned. "You're... not going to bring that back to your quarters, I trust?" He seemed to choosing his words with care; one did not order a captain, but one could, if one was careful, advise him in such a manner that he took the advice as an order.

Kodak absorbed what his science officer and CMO were telling him with a nod -- well, actually three or four nods -- and when they'd finished reassuring himself, he held the finger that'd been attacked in a cradling position before replying. "Definitely not my quarters, no. But I also don't think we should jettison it off the ship or anything, either," the Chameloid said quietly, suddenly very pensive. "It's alive and has a right to live...even if it did try to exchange DNA without my consent. Unless...letting it suckle my finger was consent in its...erm," he smirked, still able to find good humor, "eyes?" Did it have eyes? He had no idea.

He looked at the plant behind its protective field, unable to help but admire its full viridian beauty. Kodak found himself wondering what Timmoz would think of all this and that brought a heavy pressure atop his heart for a moment, hoping the Orion down in Sickbay was going to be alright. "Would it be possible to keep it here? Or in another lab somewhere? Give it the nutrients it needs to thrive but in a safe environment where it can't hurt anyone? Maybe we can find a planet somewhere to transplant it at some point?"

"Oh no," Xex agreed definitively, "we can't simply jettison it for acting as its nature dictates. Surely we can find space..." The doctor trailed off as he realized he was volunteering someone else's workspace for the storage of a potentially hazardous specimen. Casting Jyl-eel an apologetic glance and cleared his throat, he adding almost meekly, "That is, if there isn't space here, I'm sure we can find someplace aboard."

Jyl-eel's face had gone unusually pensive for the pleasantly shy person she was. "I don't want to keep it behind a containment field for all time," Jyl-eel said carefully. "If I can have some engineers, we can modify the Arboretum space, maybe create an alcove, that it can be housed and nurtured."

"And maybe station a security officer with a phaser rifle there?" Kodak's craggy face broke into another trademark smirk as he regarded Jyl-eel. Truth told, he liked her idea of letting the plant thrive -- in a safe and non-DNA-sucking way -- in the arboretum, though he hoped that they could eventually find a more permanent place for the thing to live. Perhaps on a planet they might visit soon, if conditions were prime? "Remind me to have a talk with Debbie about gifting plants, though," he chuckled, making eye contact with Xex. The Captain appreciated the Doctor's stance on not ejecting the strange flora specimen into space outright.

"I'll see what I can do about some engineers," Kodak nodded then to the botanist, an air of business suddenly infusing his posture. "Thank you both for your care here," he said, first pointing to the plant and then holding up his injured finger. With one last look at the plant -- which seemed to have settled down behind the protective forcefield -- the Captain edged his way past the lab table and, tossing a nod to Jyl-eel and Xex, turned to exit the lab. On the other side of the doors and outside the view of the two, he sagged. What had Debbie gotten him into?


|/\| A joint post by... |/\|

Captain Björn Kodak
Commanding Officer

Ensign Noah Balsam
Engineering Officer

Ensign Jyl-eel Tor
Science Officer

Doctor Xex Wang
Chief Medical Officer