Posted by Lieutenant Casela Synthi-er (Counsellor / RTF) in Pre-sim Psych eval with the Counselor

Posted by Lieutenant Icarus Remington (Chief Intelligence Officer) in Pre-sim Psych eval with the Counselor

Posted by Lieutenant Casela Synthi-er (Counsellor / RTF) in Pre-sim Psych eval with the Counselor
(snip)
IC: “You are absolutely, 100% correct. I’ve been a crypto-analyst since graduating the Academy, sitting behind a desk and crunching numbers. I have no Intel field experience, but you know what I do have, counselor? I have the skills to survive. I learned them myself. I HAD to!! What were you doing when you were 10 years old, Casela?”

He leaned in starring directly into her eyes. “My parents, both of them, disappeared when I was 10 years old. I was a human/Romulan half-breed, all alone on Dessica II, trying to survive, by whatever means necessary. I’m not proud of some of the things I had to do, and working for 31, I’m sure you can pretty much say the same thing. Hell, you’ve probably done worse. I also know you were part of the Betazed Resistance during the Dominion War while just teenager. But, I’m not going to get into a pissing match with you about who’s more of a bad-ass. The fact of the matter is, I got very good at what I had to do, I lived it. No amount of training can prepare you for that. That made me very good at my job as an intel officer.”

“I watched, I observed, I learned, I studied, and I investigated when things didn’t make sense. Through that investigation I found out everything about the Leviathan, and the ARU, and RTF, and that secret star base. So you know what I did?? I blackmailed my way onto this ship!!! This is where I want to be!!! I NEED to be here to see these anomalies for myself so maybe, just maybe, I can find out what happened to my parents 20 years ago! Like I said, I was born for this.”

Icarus took a deep breath, slowly exhaled and sat back in the chair.

Remington (CIO)

Casela sat back in her seat and waited for the young man to realize that the questions that got him SO riled were the EXACT same as he had asked her. She waited to see if he would recognize that although they all had a reason for what they did, control was important, and more than that thinking things through was essential. She waited for him to regain his composure.

After several moments she spoke, “So I ask you again, do you actually believe everything you read in a personnel file, Icarus Remington?”

Lt. Synthi-er, CNS

“I’d like to, honestly. But people who lie about what’s in are hiding something. Something their ashamed of? Something they don’t want the brass to find out? Trust me, Counselor, it all gets out there, sooner or later. So, why lie about it? Everything in my file is truthful and accurate as I know it to be. I’m guessing yours isn’t?”

Casela chuckles, “Oh it’s truthful. Not one single lie in it, but each thing is only the truth from a certain point of view. You see, Mr Remington, the problem with personnel files is that the personnel they are about, don’t write them. They are the truth from a different point of view. So I asked you, do you believe everything in a personnel file? And do you know why?” She didn’t give him time to answer. The man was simply quick to draw rather than to contemplate his answers. “I need to know that you can carry out your job. And the job of an intelligence officer is to get at the truth. All. Of. It. not just what is put in a file. Not just one point of view. To take 20 seemingly non-related pieces of information and create the bigger picture (OOC:wink). And each of those 20 pieces are all from different points of view. So do you believe everything in a personnel file, or do you recognize that there is more to the person, more to the story than what is there? Are you willing to go after the truth, Mr. Remington? Because if not, you aren’t ready for this job.”

He shifted in his seat to get more comfortable. “I know you’ve served in 31. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why there is so much redacted in your file. And, I can see that you’re still angry about you had to do. Hell, I’ve been just as angry about some of the things I’ve done as well, but that’s the difference between you and, Casela-I let go of the anger. You’re still holding on to it and that is what is driving you, BUT, it’s also making you paranoid. You show classic signs of paranoid personality disorder: Your weapons-you feel naked without them, not in control when you don’t have them. You think you need them because someone is waiting just to jump out of the shadows and take you out. You’ve got that violent streak where you feel the need to mete out punishment and get punished in return.”

Casela tapped her chin with a finger and then picked up a PaDD and started scrolling through it. “Reckless, Undisciplined, Volatile, Psycho, Hot-Headed, but no paranoid. I’ll add that one to my personnel file.” Her eyes laughed, at him, or at herself, he couldn’t be sure. Now in full counselor mode Casela looked at him. “I think you need to reevaluate yourself, Mr. Remington. You have not let the anger go. You have come into my office with pre-determined speeches, because you’ve read my file and made a hasty judgement. I asked no more than the question you asked me, and again another rehearsed speech, that did not come out as calm as you would have wished, nor did it answer the question. You have a need to prove yourself and to justify your presence here. I care for neither. We all need our reasons, and we all have a need to prove ourselves. My only concern is if you are up to the task given you. I pointed out that you’ve worked a desk, and might I add you are very good at what you did, but I questioned if you are qualified to lead the intelligence department on Leviathan. I never said that being an annalist made you unqualified, but you assumed as much. See Mr. Remington there is more to you than your file, and I don’t judge so quickly. I asked a question. That’s my job, to ask questions and determine the health of your mind and personality.”

His voice remained calm and relaxed as he continued. “You tell me I have a lack of field experience working as part of a team. You’re right, I do. But you, counselor, are a liability to yourself and your team, because no one knows when your anger and paranoia are gonna push you over the edge.”

Remington (Counseling the counselor :))

“Am I? Am I really? Are you sure? Or is that just one side of the truth because you believed the file and didn’t look deeper? Are you ready to put the jigsaw puzzle together and hunt for the missing pieces, or is the file enough for you?” The question was obviously important and demanded the Icarus actually think through his answer. He had promise, but he was brash and rushed his answers and she couldn’t recommend him for duty if he couldn’t think with a calm head. She was hot-headed and she liked her weapons. She’d also given them all to the XO at his request. And she knew what lurked in the shadows, and fortunately for Icarus he had no clue yet.

“I know as well as you do, you don’t get the whole story from a file. That’s a good starting point, though. From there, you make your own observations and conclusions.”

Now this was an intellegence officer. Oh she saw it, she was no fool. He took her hotheaded attitude and was turning it back on her. With a deep buried laugh in her eyes she raised a brow and touched her forehead with two fingers, like she might have been tipping a hat in respect. He read the reports and he took it, and then decided to test it. He came looking to observe her hot headed act, the persona that was Casela. To make his own fitness for duty assessment. Oh, she liked Remmington. And much as she had expected, the paper pusher was his own cover. He did it and did it well, but there was a skill set there that she would wager very few were aware of.

Icarus Remington reminded her too much of herself before, before intelligence, before section 31, before the compound. To be that young and naive again. “Everyone is a liability, Icarus, the trick is to counter balance it with the right people, the right skills, and the right knowledge. And so I ask you again, are you ready to make the hard decisions? Are you ready to make ones that are the right decisions, but are hard and make you question yourself till the day you die? Are you ready to send people on orders they may never come back from? Are you ready to make those life and death decisions and advise the senior staff on such serious matters. You want to be here, you want to find out what happened to your parents. Good.” She stared into his eyes, “You need a reason, because it only gets harder.”

Lt. Synthi-er, CNS (Not falling for his games)

“I’ve had to make the hard choices for as long as I can remember, counselor. There’s no guarantee our decisions are going to be the correct ones. We use the knowledge we have on hand and make the best choice based on that info. We can try to plan for variables, but there is no 100% guarantee. When was the last time you ran a simulation and got a 100% success rate. My guess is never, and you never will because you can’t control the variables.”

Casela chuckled loudly, “Mr. Remmington, you show me someone with a 100% success rate and I’ll show you where they hacked the system. You’re right there are no guarantees, we do our best and move on. And when we don’t succeed,” she shrugs, “we answer to the brass for it, but,” and she captures his gaze, and there is no humor here or attempt at deception, “but it’s those out there, those we were always told we would protect, that we really answer to.” She sits back, “No, never, and I wouldn’t want 100%. You get to cocky that way, and you never try to improve. Doesn’t matter the skill.” That was shop talk though, and well, there was some of that, but he was here to get cleared for duty.

“If I wasn’t ready to make those life-and-death choices, I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t try to fool myself or the members of my team that we’d all come back in one piece. THAT’s part of the job!!”

Oh good, finally a real answer and not more platitudes. Her job here was to profile the crew, not solve their personal problems. Not yet anyway. She made a note on her PaDD clearing him for duty. “It’s not my job to determine if you are the right person for the job Mr. Remmington. My job is to determine if you are mentally fit for duty. You know your limits, your reasons, your weaknesses, your strengths, and,” here she pauses giving another of those strange tip her hat salutes, “you are not quick to make judgments. You are prepared, despite appearances, to take in the whole story first. As far as I’m concerned, you are mentally fit for duty.”

“Tell me, how do balance your liabilities?? You’ve got no one to cover your six. You’re a loner. Definitely not a team player. You beat up everybody that doesn’t appear to be on the same page as you. How are your ribs by the way?” He looked at her with concern. “Yeah, I’m well aware of your sparring match with the XO. Did you get all that anger out, or was that just a bit of foreplay on both your parts?”

Remington (CIO)

“I’m not a team player, not like you are thinking. So one way to balance that is to leave me alone. There are exceptional loners in the history of intelligence work. We aren’t all bad. I’m a horrible shot after 10 feet, and so I avoid anything requiring distance, it’s not my strong suit, but I practice and work at it because it’s a skill I need. I’m small: short and slight of build. I practice daily to make sure that my size doesn’t give me a reason to be defeated or underestimated. And I have an exceptional team, not like you are thinking though, that will put me in my place when needed. People I trust, that are outside this ship, that have no personal investment in what happens here. And though you would never know it, I do take the advice given me, even when it chafes. It doesn’t appear so because sometimes, there is no choice, but I always listen. It’s a skill needed to survive in the section. Be glad Intelligence got to you before the section did, Remmington.” At this point she would dare him to re-read her file. Read what he could actually get his hands on and do the research on his own. But that didn’t fall into the ‘persona.’ Because if he had he would see she was an exceptional loner, like many before her, but the official story made her out to be reckless and hot headed and irreverent, and she was. But her performance was nothing to look down on. Her successes, as they were, were impressive and certainly not those of someone as ill suited as ‘Casela’ appeared to be on paper. The truth was she didn’t always work with a team, but when she did, her team, those Star Fleet didn’t know about officially were exceptional. But that didn’t fit into the persona that the section wanted known about her.

“As for my sparing match with the XO, I am still the head counselor on board, and any therapy I might engage in with a patient is confidential.” And really that’s what it had ended up being. Ryder had had problems getting the old personalities of the previous hosts to be silent and it was causing him a lot of problems. Noa had been violent and the sparing match had put him to rest. “It’s hard to find someone who can challenge me in a fight, I’m lucky the XO is a skilled fighter. It’s nice to not have to rely on the holodeck. As for my ribs,” and here was the hot headed personality he had heard so much about, and it was practiced and flawless, “You are welcome to a sparing match at any time to see if I’m suffering.” And a flash of anger, personal anger, “As for foreplay, I wouldn’t know,” and she wouldn’t, “but I would hope, Mr. Remmington, that you are man enough if you ever came across someone who uses violence as true foreplay, you put them down. Otherwise you aren’t much of a man.” She had seen where adrenaline and fight or flight response had triggered passion, but that wasn’t true foreplay. It was an after affect, but it happened, and was a response to intense situations and that was what had happened in the holodeck, but at the moment, that is not what she’s talking about.

Lt. Synthi-er, CNS (the men on this ship are going to make her jump out an airlock)

OOC: At least we aren’t chauvinists!! Lol!!

A corner of his mouth pulled up into a smirk. “Be careful what you wish for, Casela. You’ll find that I’m just as formidable an opponent as the Commander.”

Sitting back in his chair, the CIO continued. “I’m not into the whole BDSM scene. Just not my thing, but if someone is, it’s not my concern. And therapy takes all sorts of forms. I agree with you 100% on that. It just usually doesn’t end with a kiss. Some people in the counseling field might consider a kiss at the end of a “therapy” session a bit unethical. But, hey, who am I to judge. You have your methods and if they get the desired results, who am I to question that.”

He stood up and straightened his uniform. “Believe it or not when I say this, Lt. but I think you and I are going to get along and work just fine together.” There was no sarcasm or underlying tone in his comment, just truth. “I think we have each other figured out pretty well.”

He offered his right hand. “I really do look forward to working with you, Counselor.”

Remington (CIO)