Star Trek: Starbase 777

Underneath a lilac sky, among the buzzing vihranen and prowling vivver cats, a Ferengi dressed like a park ranger standing in front of a forest of jade-leaf'd trees took a deep breath of fresh air, inhaled a cloud of bioluminescent pollen, and sneezed. Sniffling, she took an anti-allergy hypospray - one of many in her bag, each one tailored to one of her many allergies, including to the scarlet epohh she had at heel, then continued waiting for the officers to beam down.

[D] After some time, the volunteers were beamed down to the forest's edge, where Bawbee awaited.

T’Asha was here! Her husband being away on his geological survey, T’Asha had decided to take a break from her invasive species control research to do another thing on Mol’Rihan- this thing! She loved Mol’Rihan’s environment and apprehending poachers was just as valuable to her as wiping out a highly invasive flower. She loved the fresh air of nature.

Essen made what she believed to be her triumphant entrance down to the surface of the planet. Having gone through so much on the ship already, she was finally prepared to take on a mission of this scale from Starbase 777. "Alright," Essen said aloud, not directed at anyone in particular. She cracked her knuckles, her eyes peering out into the distance like a hawk. "Kickass time."

T’Asha gave Essen a ta’al upon seeing her, but was disappointed by her words. Starfleet policy didn’t include kicking ass. T’Asha did things by the book after all. “Starfleet policy does not allow ‘kicking ass’. We must hope our mission will not involve violence of any form.”

“Poachers” With a mild anger and determination Ten materilized with the rest of the party. Tricorder in hand, he scanned the area a bit before putting the tricorder back in her pouch smiling at the device. He wore a small backpack with a red cross on it and phaser to his side. He was ready to fight these vermin, and to help the others that would fight beside him.

Looking at them all (probably from a low angle, because she was smol) and waving, Bawbee said, "Hi! You're the volunteers, right? I'm Bawbee! But a lot of people just call me Bob. You guys wanna introduce yourselves? And yeah, no kicking ass, sorry. Phasering ass, maybe?"

Essen noticed T'Asha and Bawbee before listening to her response. Essen snickered. "Hey, it's just a figure of speech. Kicking ass means overall just doing great with whatever you're doing. Getting past the obstacle you're needing to overcome. Besides... I'm trying to save my combat energy for when I need it the most."

She nodded enthusiastically. "Oh! Then kick all the ass ever! Wahoo!"

T’Asha gave Bawbee a ta’al as well, and was much more satisfied with her words than Essen. She didn’t like the whole kicking ass idea. She did have a phaser, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. “I am T’Asha, I am a biochemist. I can ‘phaser ass’ if necessary.”

Essen laughed again, sticking out her fist for a fistbump from T'Asha, Bawbee and Ten. "Ensign Essen. Space Tactician. Some people call me their worst nightmare, but they're being much too kind. I'm just your overall resident badass." And she bowed almost like a princess would. Yup - no arrogance here.

Having previously signed up for this volunteer mission to assist in finding and stopping some poachers, T'Kastrir had arrived along with the rest of the group, his Vulcan Expeditionary Group uniform making him quite different in appearance in comparison to the other officers, of whom were in standard Starfleet ones. Looking around with his hands clasped behind his back, the expression on his very Human face was entirely Vulcan-like.

Ten nodded and turned to Bob "Greetings, I am Ten of four Five lieutenant junior grade, Starfleet medical. I am here should anyone get injured.” He tapped the phaser on his belt “However I too can phase asses as well, thou I am better at unkicking asses”

She tried to do the ta'al back, but didn't really succeed. It wasn't a gesture everyone could do, after all. Instead, she did the traditional Ferengi hello, which was holding your wrists together with your fists angled outwards, like a kind of v... it always kind of looked like the person was offering themself up to get handcuffed. Then she grabbed Essen's fist and shook it. "Cool! I'm just your resident forest ranger. We've got some training to deal with this kind of situation, but the more, the merrier, right?"

T’Asha did not fist bump. T’Asha definitely wasn’t a badass. No she didn’t fear death, and she was a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but she wasn’t a badass. Her risky hobbies came from her love of water, not from any desire to look cool to others. And she was far from arrogant- arrogance was illogical. “Generally, the more people working on the problem, the problem will be solved faster.”

"Indeed, the more the merrier," Essen replied to Bob. "This is gonna be fun. Maybe they'll just surrender and we'll win by forefeit. I can intimidate them to surrender just by seeing me just peering out to them like I'm a wild animal." Then again, Essen DID get hypnotized by her own spiral nail polish designs back on the ship... so while she didn't want to admit she was fallible, she still certainly was. "At least we won't be inflicting harm on 'em, right?" Yup... she certainly knew how to make things better. Not.

Ten nodded in agreement at T'Asha "Indeed when we work collectively we can accomplish the task more efficiently, and have a more quality outcome, I like the way you think.” Ten thought for a moment at Essen’s comment “I am unsure what the protocol is? What are our orders?” He turned to Bawbee “What do you require to be done with these poachers, are we to detain them?, questions them? Eliminate them?”

"Eliminate...? Uh, no? Just detain them. The rest is a matter for the Romulan government." Walking closer to the edge of the forest, near a large box, and then turning around abruptly enough that the beads and trinkets on her necklace and bracelets made little click-clack sounds, she started to explain: "Okay, so the deal is this: it's the epohhs the poachers are after; the variant here is quite rare. They aren't the main danger here, though, which has to do with the main reason we're having trouble locating them: there's a species of plant that resembles Terran rosebushes, and its pollen is extremely dangerous to inhale or get into any open wounds, which is an issue when they have thorns - and also another reason we really wanna avoid conflict. As such, I'm gonna have to ask you to put these on..." She opened the box and rummaged around, eventually retrieving some hazmat suits in the appropriate sizes and proportions for everyone, replicated ahead of time. "They aren't usually supposed to be this many roses in the forest, but the epohhs here eat them, and so since their population is declining, the amount of rabid rosebushes in the forest is increasing rapidly. The pollen is making scanners and stuff stop working, which is why we have to go in there looking for them manually."

[D] Materializing alongside the other volunteers, Saren took his time to look at the surroundings - taking in both the beloved wildlife of his homeworld, and giving each and every new arrival a quick, evaluating sort of glance, slanted eyebrows furrowed and face arranged in a neutral sort of scowl, typically and obviously Vulcanoid in it's nature. The Romulan's gaze then fell on the Ferengi woman, to whom he gave an acknowledging nod. He was glad to return here, despite the occasion not being the happiest one. Still, Saren was honored to have a role in the protective efforts over Mol'Rihan's nature - and seeing his other colleagues here, some with a similar ambition while not being of Rihannsu people, did make him grateful in a way. After Bawbee was done with her explanations, he addressed her with a slight tilt to his head: "Is there a particular strategy you want us to utilize when we start our mission? We don't apprehend poachers that often, so perhaps some tips would be found useful by some. Oh, and perhaps a reminder to others from myself - wild epohhs tend to be extremely timid, so utilize caution when approaching them. And, well... be cautious with wildlife here in general. This is a nature reserve, after all."

"Well, I dunno if it's a strategy, but basically we need to look for clues of them while we're in there so we can find them. I doubt they're gonna be following park rules, so they've probably littered and left campfires and leaving other traces of themselves around the forest. Also, the epohhs here are actually slightly less timid than usual! They're more dangerous to eat because of the pollen in them - which is what gives them their bright red fur - so less things do. By the way, I assume you all signed the informed consent forms before you came here, but just so I can properly convey the danger, the symptoms if you get infected are: sneezing, high temperature, headache, hunger and thirst, brain fog, difficulty swallowing and breathing, drooling, hallucinations, paralysis, and then death. And you might be wondering hey, Bob, is there a cure? Nope! There is not!" She sounded way too cheerful saying that.

T’Asha was a little sad the poachers were going after epohhs. She loved epohhs, they were adorable. How could anyone hurt them! Heartless, she thought. She grabbed her hazmat suit and put it on. She was prepared to deal with these rosebushes. She had always preferred orchids anyhow. She would treat all the wildlife with caution, she wasn’t stupid.

Saren let out a thoughtful hum at Bob's words. Epohhs being as scaredy as they were was a survival tactic of theirs - but here... it seemed that the lack of that instinct was actively abused by the people poaching them. As for the death risk... well, he was already familiar with Her, and while the Romulan was not scared of death, he had no intentions of another rendezvous with Her anytime soon. Work in Starfleet was full of dangers anyways, and as someone who had experience with that, too... well, he just had to brace it. Another day, another job type of thing. "Anyone who feels not up to the task is encouraged to leave right now - there's no shame in that," he informed, just in case someone needed to hear that, while grabbing his hazmat suit. But then again, the Romulan had a feeling that people who were already here would not leave.

Entirely unphased by the risk of danger, the Vulcan-raised Human silently went over and equipped a hazmat suit over his uniform robes. He felt little warrant in commenting on anything, everyone else having seemingly said what was needed. He was here to work, and work he will do, although how useful he would be in actually aprehending the poaches he was currently unsure of.

"Yep! No shame! Though if it helps any, I've been in there a few times myself. I'm small and quiet and I have very good hearing." She tapped her large, sort of droopy ears, like the bone in them hadn't developed properly or something, but she seemed to hear just fine. She very mouse-like - big-eared, always skittering around in dark places, loved sneese (snail cheese).

Ten grabbed the suit and put it on over his uniform, taking off the backpack and belt to wear outside the suit. He made a nervous noise, he didn't like space suits or the like they felt to much like being back in a charging pod but he knew it was important to wear them. "Thank you for this gift" he said to the ferengi, knowing how unusall it was for them to simply give something away, thou of course he knew with ferengi there was always a cost. He knew the cost would be worth it. Worth it to stop these despicable beings

"Uh, you're welcome!" There was no cost. Those hazmat suits weren't gifts, or even hers - just safety measures provided by the park rangers. The real reward was that nobody got infected with the pollen and that they could dispose of the suits afterwards to avoid contamination, which meant that the pollen never got too far from this island this forest was on. Unfortunately the suits were a bit hot, and so was the weather.

[D] Once everyone was in their hazmat suits, Bawbee led them into the forest, deeper and deeper.... #inner-forest