Star Trek: Starbase 777 - gardens-of-alliance

@Away Team One beamed in here: a secluded section of what appeared to be a large public garden, their little area hidden away by towering trees. Overhead the sky was blue, dotted here and there with some fluffy, white clouds. It was a pleasant temperature with a nice breeze, creating a rustling sound through the trees and grass. Birds chirped, insects buzzed, and overall this looked like a very luscious place compared to what people might have been imagining before beaming over.

And here they were...in the terrasphere itself, and unlike a holodeck, it seemed so much more...almost like he was actually there, even though he'd never been. He waited for everyone else to get their bearings before regrouping and figuring out their plan.

Copia evidently had a double-take when she realized how polished and surprisingly well kept this terrasphere was. The Undine were keeping the hostages in such a nice place, why did they even worry about taking hostages when they had such a complex and nice-looking place to take care of? Although, thankfully it wasn't a full-blown prison. Sure it was class-M, but damn, did it have to be so pretty? It was giving Copia a false sense of security, which, once she realized that was happening, she quickly dismissed that thought to acclimate herself to her new surroundings, and her new away team.

Despite the looming knowledge that this was an Undine facility, it really was still nice. A small bird flew down from one of the trees and landed not too far away from the away team. Curious, it hopped a little closer, pecked at the toe of Copia's armoured boots, and subsequently hopped away again.

Vara blinked as she stood next to Copia. “Huh. Nice bird, bit werid seeing them here but I guess it makes sense?” She said as she looked around. “Nice garden too.”

Tevis looked up at Copia, as she too seemed to be a little caught up in the picturesque surroundings, something he could appreciate any other time, for now though, they had a mission. With a sharp nod to the rest of the team, Tevis pulled out his tricorder and powered up his phaser rifle, making sure to keep it holstered as to not arouse suspicion from the undine around them. "It's quite the recreation, but lets not forget we have a mission here...we need to find those controls." He said, wanting to refocus the team.

Copia saw the bird fly down towards the ground and right away felt a bit of unease. Was this really a bird or was it a drone/robotic bird? There were many theories of birds being robots sent to spy on people from the government on Earth back in the 21st century after all. And as soon as it pecked the toe of Copia's armored boot, Copia took a step back before she watched it hop off. Welp. Certainly no bird robots here, they wouldn't do that sort of thing. Just a normal organic bird life form. "Apparently," Copia replied to Vara. However, Copia certainly wasn't too caught up not to immediately turn to Tevis once he spoke. She in fact was keeping all of her sense as sharp as possible. "Aye, sir," Copia said, keeping her voice down. "Perhaps they may be concealed within the greenery?"

From the tricorder scan it appeared that the generator's controls were still a little bit away, unfortunately. Like the Intelligence officer on the ship had said, it looked like this was going to take a bit of walking.

Taking out her tricorder, Copia realized that this wouldn't be an easy find, as indeed she saw it would be aways away. "Apparently not."

"Well then, I suppose we better get a move on then? Don't want to fall behind the other teams do we?" He asked rhetorically, before pointing in the direction they were to be heading in and spoke with all the gusto he had as a department chief. "Team one, move out!" And with that, he marched off, taking the lead.

Copia rolled her shoulders back, centering herself for this mission. The major difference was that she now knew what she was getting into and could adapt much easier, although, she did notice she was handling the output from her emotion chip easier. Promptly, she marched behind Tevis - although obviously not too close not to give him some space. "Aye, sir," Copia said, before gesturing to Vara for her to follow.

Exiting out from the trees that they had been concealed by, the group emerged into the greater area of the garden. It was a large place with well-kept grass and neat, blooming flowerbeds. Paths wound their way through the garden with benches dotted here and there to take a seat on. Statues were also presented throughout the garden; strangely, displaying a mix of figures from various cultures. There were Klingon dahar masters, great figures from the Romulan senate, and some notable figures from throughout the United Federation of Planets' history.

Resisting the urge to look up and admire all of the scenery, Copia remembered that Tevis was right - they had a mission to complete, and they had to do it quickly if they were to have it be successful. Copia felt a pang of remorse knowing she wouldn't be paying too much attention to the scenery - well. If the scenery had feelings, that was. Did statues have feelings? Never mind, Copia thought, and just continued on behind Tevis. At this time Copia really started to think about what Eshen had said back at the Kon-Tiki - about acting and theatre. About being whoever one wanted to be. Maybe this would come in handy. So, subtly, and without over exaggeration at all, Copia made sure her mannerisms to anyone outside of the away teams would be slightly different - although she had yet to see anyone outside of the away teams to really process what that 'slightly different' would be.

Vara hummed as she walked along, looking rather normal and calm. She was something of a master of lying and deception, so she looked as if she was born here. “This place is weird man.” She said in a whispered hush. “Wonder what kinda valuables they have.” She muttered that one.

There were some rather nice plants if Vara wanted to count those, and the statues themselves could be valuable... But given that they were bigger than life-sized, there was no carrying those away. As the team started wandering along the path they got a couple of looks from two people sat on a bench - what looked to be a Vulcan and a Romulan, both in casual clothing.

After they finally walked past the two on the bench, Tevis turned his head slightly to speak lowly to the team. "Please refrain from doing anything to draw attention to us, as much as you may be tempted to otherwise. We are on the right track currently, and I imagine the scenery is likely to change soon, stay calm, but alert." He said, nothing that ahead the gardens started to shift to a more dense scape, appearing to be some kind of market.

Copia kept her voice down still, staying calm but alert as ordered. "Aye, sir."

Tevis looked at his tricorder, hoping that it would have shown...something...anything at this point, but no, it was just giving directions. With a frustrated grunt, Tevis shook his head. "This isn't working, lets investigate a little closer. I'm going to climb one of the trees to get a better vantage point, maybe that will help us a bit, either that or I fall out of it." He said with a shrug, before dashing to one of the nearby trees and deftly climbing to one of the upper branches. What he saw gave him pause, as from where he was sitting, it seemed like the gardens, while beautiful in their own right, stretched for quite some distance, meaning it would take a ways longer before they encountered anything else. At this point he was pratically begging for something, anything to happen.

And something did happen. Below the tree, the people who were sat on the bench nearby had stood up. "Hey!" One of them shouted up to Tevis, "get down from there! You can't climb the trees here, that's disrespectful!" They turned their attention to the others on the away team then- "get your weirdo friend down from there!"

Vara blinked. “Yeah! Hey weirdo friend, get down here!” She said with a breath. “I’m so so sorry! I dared him to do it. Please don’t tell anyone about this?”

He scoffed down at the people shouting at him, screwing his face up in confusion for a moment. "Hey! I'm not their weirdo! I'm my own big, strong, brave weirdo!" He said, before climbing back down with the intention of giving them a peice of his mind. Once he was finally back down on the ground, the usually calm tactical officer took the opportunity to prod a little at the simulation participants, hoping to see if they could give the team some clues. "Who's to say sitting on one of the benches isn't disrespectful? I'm just trying to do as ordered, and 'act natural'!" He, argued, trying to employ his best acting.

It was the Romulan who had shouted at him. They stood there with their arms crossed, huffing and puffing, while the Vulcan to their side had merely raised an eyebrow. "You're not doing a very good job of acting natural. Since when was doing dares and climbing up trees acting natural, plus wearing that ugly clothes? You know that you can't fuck around in this area, you know what it means to them! Do that in the real place and you'll be arrested."

Hook, line and sinker, he thought knowing now that not only did the undine have a criminally bad sense of fashion, but also had done some very detailed research, knowing how important the area was. On the outside, he made a show of spluttering, before shaking his head and looking genuinely remorseful. "Well! You, you're not wrong..." He said, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck with faux embarrassment. "I guess I didn't read the briefing packet as closely as I should...would you mind uh, not reporting this to my supervisor? I'll make sure to go get changed and do some more research before I come back to it!" He said in a half pleading, half appeasing tone, allthewhile hoping that that one acting class he took during his first year at the academy paid off.

Vara sorta stood there with a light angle to her step. “I uh, was trying to dare him to see how much he understood. Clearly we’ll need to work on that.” She said with a breath. “Good thing that wasn’t the real thing.” She muttered loud enough to hear, trying to sound displeased.

The Romulan made a 'hmph' noise, still glowering down at this... Tellarite, they figured. "Didn't read the briefing packet? You did sign up for this voluntarily, didn't you?" Their attention then turned to Vara. "Good that what wasn't the real thing? This place? It's the closest thing to real we're going to get! You need to know how to behave in these spaces or when you get sent out there, you're getting caught immediately! And if you get caught, they question you, and that leads the Alliance right to our doorstep to shut this whole thing down!"

"Um, I probably could fuck around in this area, by the way," Allan whispered to Lama as assumedly Lama was walking with him, not sure exactly what to say to the rest of the ongoing conversation. "It is pretty real," he said after a bit, walking a little closer to one of the trees and just putting his hand on it as if he'd never touched a tree before. "Why do they like this anyways? It's kinda a fucking uhh, like... I dunno, it's weird." Trees were weird in general, not gonna lie.

"Again, we apolize for our lack of professionalism, it won't happen again!" He said, once again trying to appease the Romulan as he whisper yelled in a frustrated tone to the team, hoping to continue to add to the illusion. "Come on guys, lets get our shit together and regroup. As they said, we can't mess around here! We want to make sure we look and act like we know what we're doing!" He said, before throwing the Romulan and Vulcan a mortified/embarassed face, and pulling the team along ahead. "Sorry about that!" He said once more before getting the fuck out of there, hoping that the two would play all of this off as a rookie mistake, and not actually report them.

Vara saw the ranking officer began to depart and swiftly fired off finger guns. “We promise to learn from our mistakes, and become model citizens of this place!” She said and swiftly moved after them. “So trees! A no go I think eh?” She whispered to the team.

It was the Vulcan who spoke up in response to hearing Allan's question. "We like this place as it is a garden of serenity, unity, and alliance. The statues depict key figures in the history of the factions that make up the alliance. This, along with the nearby Chamber of Alliance, are very important places that must be respected." The Romulan nodded rapidly at the input of their friend/colleague/whatever they were to one another. "Exactly. Go on then, get out of here... Maybe go and read up on your information about Khitomer so you actually know how to behave," they added and allowed the group to go scurrying off towards a large, flower-filled archway. It seemed to mark the exit from the gardens.

"Right! We like this place. Seminarity. Yup." He grinned as if that was the correct word. By all accounts in his brain, it was, and then he went to actually fall along with the rest of the group after Tevis. "Oh fuck, these flowers are beautiful, actually-" he considered taking a flower, but decided against it. Didn't want to look too sus.

All the while, from the beginning of that encounter to the end, Copia said absolutely nothing. If Copia were to display to the others that she was capable and ready to handle a mission of this caliber emotionally, she would need to prove so by maintaining discipline in the entirety of the mission. Plus, Copia never had any acting experience. She didn't know how to make herself blend in, although thankfully, the others in the team provided a good template for how to behave moving forward. Copia was an AI after all, AI took information in and learned from it. Still, Copia made sure not to utter a single word during the whole encounter as to be the most careful anyone could be. She let the others do the talking and just blended in with the group.