Posted by Ensign Caelian Weir (Engineering Officer) in Building Character [Side Sim, Open]
The first blow came swift and savage. He hadn’t been ready. Mistake Number One. He threw his hands up, blocked the second strike. His arms hurt. He threw out a blind jab. It was swept aside almost mockingly. Mistake Number Two. He deflected two testing blows, sidestepped a lunge. Improvement.

His opponent stepped back, guarded. Watching for an opening. He knew he’d have to smart, fast. His opponent had him by almost fifty pounds of lean muscle. He clenched a fist tight against the ache in his arm. He held still, staring at the other’s core. The eyes always revealed his intent. The eyes didn’t matter, only the body. Fire burned in his lungs. Thunder rang in his veins. The world sharpened on the edge of adrenaline. In the back of his mind, a ticking. Time slowed.

The Klingon dropped his stance, shifted his weight. A voice whispered to him, coaching. He tensed. His opponent rushed him, roaring. His defense held against the rain of blows. His body cried protest and was silenced. He ducked, swung, countered. The grunt of success made him smile inwardly. The reply sang past his ear as he rolled away. His opponent allowed the retreat, regrouped.

He lost himself to the ages-old rhythm of bloodlust. It was a primal dance; it had its steps. Block. Advance. Feint. Attack. Counter. Retreat. Snarling, the music. Pounding fists and feet, the tempo. Blood, the crescendo. He threw himself into it, let it carry him. Each sound strike was a joy and each failure was marked in pain. There was no time for exultation or regret here. Only the dance.

He yelped when his legs vanished from beneath him. The ground clapped him hard on the back, kissed his head. Ringing laughed in his skull. The world swam. A shape loomed, reared. He threw his arms across his face, tucked tight. Blackness fell surely.

“Program terminated.” a woman’s voice announced dryly. “You are dead.“

Caelian sighed and dropped his arms. The Klingon looming over him frozen in a pantomime of snarling death startled him only briefly. He groaned and rolled from beneath it, sprawling on the ground in defeat.

“Computer, reset simulation.”

The air crackled around him as the holodeck realigned itself to appease his command. It took Caelian a few moments to convince his body that it could move and he sat up. An empty field cradled him, a war-garbed Klingon standing rigidly to one side. The mid-afternoon sun watched lazily from a nest of clouds while a playful breeze teased blades of grass in erratic patterns. Gently embracing the field’s periphery were tall cypress and stout olive trees, whispering to one another. A cottage was nestled amidst a sparse copse of cherry laurel to his left, the scent of woodsmoke wafting to him. Seeing that place brought a twinge of longing to his heart.

Home, he sighed inwardly. Someday, maybe.

“Computer,” he sighed, hauling himself to his feet, “clear the arena and compile this session’s combat data through filter Weir Alpha Nine-Five.”

The world melted away and reformed into a black cube wreathed in a silver grid of holo emitters. The Klingon did not seem phased by this in the least and observed Caelian as he limped to the door of the holodeck. The ensign leaned against the terminal and watched the data process on the display. Above the technical data was a replay of the fight he had just endured. He made rude face at the timer when it stopped at his defeat: 03:17.

“Oh, come on,” he grumbled. “That’s worse than last time!”

“Personal best survival time for this particular simulation: six minutes, forty-seven seconds,” the dry voice chimed in helpfully.

Caelian ground his teeth. “No one asked you.”

A squelch of error made him throw his hands into the air and stalk back into the holodeck.

“Computer, reset combatants to engagement positions. Apply the current filter.”

The Klingon warrior vanished from his position of attention and reappeared slightly crouched with fists raised. An instant later, a holographic facsimile of Caelian shivered into being poised ready for combat. The ensign nodded and paced a slow orbit around the pair.

“Now apply filter Weir Two-Two-Gamma.” The air about the two combatants warped and twisted until a pair of genderless mannequins were squaring off. “Overlay with Weir Alpha Nine-Five Baker.”

A host of technical data burst into view, some hung in the air facing him and others etched themselves into the two shapes. Certain parts of each mannequin now pulsed green while others glared red, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each defense. Caelian scrubbed at the stubble on his chin while he paced and turned the information over in his mind. Taking a careful breath against aching ribs, he nodded to himself.

“Computer, replay combat simulation.” His tone was focused as he backed off to watch. “Half-speed. Pause briefly at five-second intervals and update overlay.”

Caelian folded his arms across his chest and watched the clockwork replay carefully, adjusting his view as the two mannequins lunged at and struck one another. In his mind, too, he replayed the encounter as he remembered it. Seeing it from afar was almost jarring, noting the difference between memory and experience. He nodded each time the display updated and showed his model more green than red, frowning at the inverse. He found himself shaking his head when his lackluster clone ended up sprawled and beaten.

Caelian sighed. “Computer, end simulation and save. Update host program with all saved combat data. Export to personal exercise program and update.”

The holodeck hummed briefly before falling silent, leaving Caelian alone within the polished cube. After logging himself out of the system, he paused as the door yawned open. The twinge in his shoulder told him that he’d have to report to Sickbay, had probably torn something. He made a mental note to adjust the security filters on the emitters the next chance he had. He’d had to adjust them for a little more realism in his simulation, but the diffusion pattern was off. He wasn’t fool enough to train without the safeties.

“Adversity builds character, figlio mio,” his father used to say whenever Caelian would come home banged up playing with some of the older children. “And true adversity is never painless.“

“Too bad there’s not a hypospray for my pride,” he grumbled to himself, making his way slowly to Sickbay.
—Caelian Weir, Ensign—

Caelian hissed against the urge to scratch his forehead. The nurse frowned but did not protest his tensing, nor did she cease the passing of the dermal regenerator across his brow. It felt like ants across his skin, working with tiny needles and thread to sew his scrapes shut. The glow in his eyes didn’t help either. He simply did his best to hold tight to the edge of the biobed and stare off into the middle distance. When the regenerator dimmed, the nurse seems more relieved than he.

“All done,” she said cheerily. With a smirk, she patted his shoulder and whispered, “You can relax now.”

Caelian gave an embarrassed chuckle. “I must be the only person on the ship that can feel that thing working.”

She shook her head, a smile in her hazel eyes as she updated his file and went about her tasks. “Oh no, you’d be surprised how often it happens. Ensign Namura tells me all the time that she can feel the microscans whenever she comes in from a kayaking mishap.”

“Kayaking, huh?” He hissed again as he slid off the biobed to his feet. “All that water frothing about? No, thank you.”

“Excitement comes in all kinds, Ensign. For some, it’s the battle against nature—”

“And for others, it’s getting beat on by someone twice your size,” a voice chuckled from behind him.

A solid clap on the back nearly sent him toppling forward, but the arm snaking around his neck held him fast. While he was shorter than Caelian by a few inches—and likely the shortest Terran on the Ark Angel—Malcolm Calhoun carried himself as if he were a giant. The stocky, angular security ensign also happened to be Caelian’s roommate and self-appointed best friend. He hadn’t minded overall. They’d graduated from the Academy together, served aboard the USS Challenger together. It was reassuring to have someone aboard the Angel that he knew.

He just wished it had been someone with a little less… baldanza.

“What are you doing here, Mal?” he groaned through a smile.

The ensign clutched his chest, giving Caelian a gasp of surprise. Malcolm also had a very dramatic streak, one that often got him in trouble with his commanding officer. “You wound me, friend. Can’t a man check on the well-being of his best buddy without his motives being questioned?”

The way his eyes flickered to the silently-giggling nurse, Malcolm’s performance wasn’t for Caelian. The engineer carefully, painfully, extracted himself from his roommate’s death grip. Malcolm sobered up instantly when he winced.

“Whoa whoa whoa! Easy there, Weir. Were you running that new training program of yours again?”

Caelian couldn’t meet his eyes, grit his teeth.

“What level?”

“Six.” He braced for the rebuke. To his credit, Malcolm turned and gently asked the nurse for a moment. After she’d stepped away, he knuckled Caelian in the arm.

“What were you thinking? Last week you were at four and still getting put on your back. Why aren’t you training with a real person, like me?”

Caelian shook his head slowly. “I can’t get the data I need from another person,” he lied.

He couldn’t really say why he insisted on training alone. He could think of a dozen good excuses, not the least of which was that he’d barely passed the Academy’s hand-to-hand training. But they weren’t the reason. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure what it was himself.

Originally, he’d come up with the idea not long after graduating from Starfleet Academy: a way to analyze and improve a trainee’s form against a wide variety of species and styles. Since the bulk of the Federation seemed comprised of bipedal humanoids, he’d postulated there were only so many variances. It was merely a matter of math. The more he tested the idea, however, the greater his interest in the project. To his engineer’s mind an opponent wasn’t flesh and blood but raw data that he could manipulate. Angles, distance, speed, power—it could all be quantified and predicted. Flaws in defense could be exposed and shored up, advantages could be exploited. The possibilities…!

“Weir!”

Caelian felt himself shaken from his thoughts, grit his teeth against the grip on his shoulders. Malcolm stared at him from a breath away, scowling. Once he’d been able to focus, that glare melted into concern.

“Listen, you can’t keep getting beat up like this. It’s not healthy.”

He shrugged. “Neither is kayaking.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He pushed Malcolm back, straightened his tunic. “Look, Mal, I’m fine. Yeah, I got a little banged up, but that’s the point, right? A few adjustments and some more time-in with the exercises to build muscle memory, and it’ll work out!”

Malcolm stared at him so long that Caelian wanted to make sure there wasn’t a scorch mark in his forehead. Finally, he sighed and grumbled, “Five.”

“Five?”

“You don’t go above Level Five until you get it down, or unless you’ve got someone to supervise. And you know I’ll check, so don’t go pulling any stunts. Otherwise, I’m going to take this up the chain until someone knocks some sense into you.”

“Mal, I don’t—”

“Do I hear four?”

“The safeties were—!”

“Four, it is.” Malcolm folded his arms across his chest and arched a brow. “We going for three?”

Caelian bristled, matching the other man’s stance. “This is ridiculous. You don’t outrank me, Mal. I’m not breaking any regulations by training beyond my level in my free time.”

“Maybe not.” The gap between them lessened. “But you damn near broke a few bones with that stunt. On this ship, all we have is each other. My job is to protect the crew, even from themselves. Your job is to keep things running, and you can’t do that—”

“—if I’m in Sickbay. Yes, I know.” Caelian finished with a sigh. They’d had this discussion more than once. After a long moment, he sighed and dropped his arms. “Fine, I’ll keep it at Level Four. But only until I get the algorithms right and get the diffusion patterns adjusted.”

He wanted to knock the self-satisfied smile off of Malcolm’s face the moment he’d admitted defeat. Why did he let the man push him around so much?

“Good talk, buddy! Let’s get you cleaned up, maybe grab a drink.” Malcolm clapped him on the shoulder, then began to push him out the door. Once they were in the corridor, he gave a sly grin. “Now, tell me all you know about that nurse. And don’t tell me she’s not a candidate for Mrs. Calhoun, or your diffusion patterns won’t be the only thing getting adjusted.”

Caelian didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh.
—Caelian Weir, Engineer—