Post by Nathan Landry on May 9, 2013 19:38:54 GMT -8
Nathan rammed into the ropes that surrounded the ring. Some part of his mind idly wondered why they called it a ring when the stupid thing was undeniably square. The rest of his mind was too busy focusing on how much the rest of his body hurt. Safety protocols or no, he was fairly certain every inch of his skin was going to be black and blue all over...and he'd only been here half an hour.
And he still hadn't managed to land this guy on the floor. "Computer, pause program," he said through lips that felt as if they should be a bit more swollen than they were.
Jerking around, he glared at his holographic opponent. It was some big, hulking champion that the computer had provided in answer to his curt command to "give him whatever." Why, exactly, had he said that?
Oh, that was right. Because the entire ship was in a highly advanced state of depression, and some part of him had decided that he might as well join it. It wasn't even particularly anything that affected him, at least not very much. The Captain and two other crewmembers had disappeared. It had been a month, no less, a month of time to get over it. He supposed he understood why the crew was still a bit mopey. Having your Captain rudely yanked away from you, away from his Klingon wife and baby, away from the people who he'd been leading for years...it was difficult.
He'd barely known the man, truth be told. It was just...nothing exciting had happened since. It was just an interminable, long stretch of Nothing, Nothing that was so annoying it had to be capitalized or else it hadn't been properly expressed.
And all of that, a month of nothing, had led to him standing right here, in a holographic boxing ring, his entire body aching and bruised, facing a hulking man of undeterminable species and planetary origin, fairly certain that he was going to lose, and not quite summoning the energy to care. He'd once been a fair boxer, in some past life that as near as he could remember had involved quite a lot of alcohol and not nearly enough sleep. That year was a bit of a blur. At least, he thought it had been about a year...he'd gone from there to Qo'Nos though, so that made two bad decisions in very close proximity to each other.
A legacy of bad choices, stretching way behind him through the cosmos, all stitching together to form one spectacularly flawed tapestry that he'd managed to hide, just a little bit, that he'd half managed to convince himself didn't exist at all. He'd smoothed it over with Starfleet, had taken up a mantle that gave him the appearance of respectability. He'd even, somehow, managed to get halfway to something like amicable relations with a woman, a woman he cared about with the instinctive reaction of destiny. He'd tried so hard, and here he stood once more on the cusp of uncertainty, on a precipice that smacked of bad things for him and drifters of his ilk. Who knew what sort of Captain would come after, who this odd creature that was currently sitting in the bar on SGE was.
Some inkling of the cosmic ideas that had thronged his mind when he'd left SGE returned to his mind as he stood there, leaning against the ropes of the ring, the program having frozen in response to his command, his opponent stuck mid-stride, a leer on its face. Here he was, fighting a nonexistent enemy because he had nothing better to do with his life, because he was too much a coward to go and do the things that needed to be done, because his primary tactic of dealing with things bigger than him had always been to simply run away from them, to hide from them by constructing his own little world. His tactics had just grown a bit more sophisticated, growing up from the interior of a notebook and sneaking out his window via the bedsheets to standing in a state-of-the-art holodeck and beating up light refractions.
"Computer, resume program," he ground out, pushing himself away from the ropes. Whether he was running or not, he was going to beat this program, and he was going to like it...
A fist, heavily padded, caught him in the stomach, and he moved with it, trying to turn the impact of the blow into something he could use. He landed one good punch before something--a fist, he presumed--hit him on the chin and he went flying backwards. That time, he hit the floor, the breath leaving his lungs like Ferengi from a bad business environment. Oh, this was going to hurt in the morning, and probably more than it did right now.
Tag: Any
And he still hadn't managed to land this guy on the floor. "Computer, pause program," he said through lips that felt as if they should be a bit more swollen than they were.
Jerking around, he glared at his holographic opponent. It was some big, hulking champion that the computer had provided in answer to his curt command to "give him whatever." Why, exactly, had he said that?
Oh, that was right. Because the entire ship was in a highly advanced state of depression, and some part of him had decided that he might as well join it. It wasn't even particularly anything that affected him, at least not very much. The Captain and two other crewmembers had disappeared. It had been a month, no less, a month of time to get over it. He supposed he understood why the crew was still a bit mopey. Having your Captain rudely yanked away from you, away from his Klingon wife and baby, away from the people who he'd been leading for years...it was difficult.
He'd barely known the man, truth be told. It was just...nothing exciting had happened since. It was just an interminable, long stretch of Nothing, Nothing that was so annoying it had to be capitalized or else it hadn't been properly expressed.
And all of that, a month of nothing, had led to him standing right here, in a holographic boxing ring, his entire body aching and bruised, facing a hulking man of undeterminable species and planetary origin, fairly certain that he was going to lose, and not quite summoning the energy to care. He'd once been a fair boxer, in some past life that as near as he could remember had involved quite a lot of alcohol and not nearly enough sleep. That year was a bit of a blur. At least, he thought it had been about a year...he'd gone from there to Qo'Nos though, so that made two bad decisions in very close proximity to each other.
A legacy of bad choices, stretching way behind him through the cosmos, all stitching together to form one spectacularly flawed tapestry that he'd managed to hide, just a little bit, that he'd half managed to convince himself didn't exist at all. He'd smoothed it over with Starfleet, had taken up a mantle that gave him the appearance of respectability. He'd even, somehow, managed to get halfway to something like amicable relations with a woman, a woman he cared about with the instinctive reaction of destiny. He'd tried so hard, and here he stood once more on the cusp of uncertainty, on a precipice that smacked of bad things for him and drifters of his ilk. Who knew what sort of Captain would come after, who this odd creature that was currently sitting in the bar on SGE was.
Some inkling of the cosmic ideas that had thronged his mind when he'd left SGE returned to his mind as he stood there, leaning against the ropes of the ring, the program having frozen in response to his command, his opponent stuck mid-stride, a leer on its face. Here he was, fighting a nonexistent enemy because he had nothing better to do with his life, because he was too much a coward to go and do the things that needed to be done, because his primary tactic of dealing with things bigger than him had always been to simply run away from them, to hide from them by constructing his own little world. His tactics had just grown a bit more sophisticated, growing up from the interior of a notebook and sneaking out his window via the bedsheets to standing in a state-of-the-art holodeck and beating up light refractions.
"Computer, resume program," he ground out, pushing himself away from the ropes. Whether he was running or not, he was going to beat this program, and he was going to like it...
A fist, heavily padded, caught him in the stomach, and he moved with it, trying to turn the impact of the blow into something he could use. He landed one good punch before something--a fist, he presumed--hit him on the chin and he went flying backwards. That time, he hit the floor, the breath leaving his lungs like Ferengi from a bad business environment. Oh, this was going to hurt in the morning, and probably more than it did right now.
Tag: Any