51: No Good Deed

No Good Deed
Ensign Dane Cristiane
71226.12
Concurrent with Cloak and Dagger

--=Outside The Officer's Club, San Francisco, California=--


"AND the horse you rode in on, ass***e!"

The tall young man who was shouting stopped short of using the gesture that had already formed on his fingertips, lowering his arms back to his sides.

This was only because two large Starfleet security officers had him by the scruff of the neck, and were quickly going about the business of subduing him as an identical team of law enforcement officers dragged the guy he was screaming at off in the opposite direction to prevent them from killing each other.

"State your name." The first security officer demanded.

"Dane Cristiane."

"Have you been drinking tonight, Mr. Cristiane?"

Dane exhaled a long slow breath in the man's general direction. "You tell me." He'd been drinking very expensive Russian Vodka tonight, actually, so his breath was clean.

Unfortunately, his slightly swaying gait told the rest of the story for him.

"Drunk, and disorderly," The officer smirked.

"Getting into a bar fight with another guy over a woman. Could there be a stupider reason to get yourself arrested?" The second, shorter security officer added.

"Well if that woman is a server at the bar, and the cretin in question is grabbing at her all night. If she tells him to back off and he gets sick of it, and finally decides to drag her into the stock room against her will. If he objects when I step in to intervene," Dane growled, "Yeah, there could be a stupider reason. Like trying to abduct a Federation citizen from her place of employment!"

"Maybe she wanted to go with him."

"I guess that's why he had his hand over her mouth?"

"He says he didn't."

"Did you see the bite marks?"

The two security officers exchanged looks. "We didn't really-"

"Here's an idea, genius. Why don't you go arrest the real criminal and let me go before you are sorry you ever met me."

"Too late." the first officer complained. "What were you doing in that bar anyway? It's for Starfleet personnel only."

"And slimy guests of Starfleet officers. Like the guy who was going to assault the barmaid."

"Must be how you got in." The second guard said, as he and the first broke into laughter again.

It took every ounce of restraint that Dane had to hold back on using his martial arts training and bring both of these idiots to a kneeling position in a split second, begging for him to either let them go or put them out of their new found misery.

"If you let me go a minute, I'll show you my 'fleet credentials." Dane promised. Reluctantly, they allowed him to retrieve his wallet.

"Move very slowly."

"I got in because I work for them." Dane produced an encoded ID badge, and the two men burst into laughter.

"You're with Temporal? Yeah, right. Even they don't scrape the barrel that far down the bottom."

"You want me to make it a priority to go back in time and make sure that your mother never conceives you?"

Truth be told, Dane had consumed two or five drinks too many, he was not thinking entirely straight, and he was risking getting himself into a whole lot of trouble.

Still, he wished that they'd just arrest the four-armed pervert who had accosted that nice woman and leave him the hell alone. Or maybe give him a commendation as a good Samaritan.

No such luck.

The taller security guard pulled Dane upwards by the front of his shirt, and was prepared to venture over the line into the territory of 'police brutality' when his partner stopped him.

"Hey, Seth, it's not worth it over one stupid drunk. You're getting promoted soon," The shorter guard cautioned, and very slowly, the taller guard set Dane back down on the ground.

"You are under arrest, smart-ass." The man called Seth concluded.

"No good deed goes unpunished," Dane muttered softly, as they cuffed him and led him to their vehicle.

"You have the right to remain silent." Security Guard Seth continued. "If you're as smart as you want us to think you are, you're going to take full advantage of that right and shut your yap right now, before you say anything else about my mother."


Ensign Dane Cristiane
Apprentice TI Agent
On his way to a drunk tank on Earth