Emilia Heero tiptoed down the Endeavor’s dim corridor with a secretive grin. Nestled in her arms was a small ball of golden fluff about the size of a grapefruit. It vibrated gently, purring like a tiny engine, and Emilia felt some of the day’s stress ease from her shoulders. After the harrowing encounter with the Concordance hive-mind on Orion VI, a little purring comfort was exactly what she needed. She had found the creature hiding in a corner of the colony’s biodome and, in a moment of impulsive compassion, smuggled it aboard as a pet.
“I’ll call you Fuzzle,” she whispered, giving the furball a fond nuzzle. It answered with a soft trill. Emilia’s grin widened. The crew had been on edge since Orion VI, but this fuzzy stowaway might lift some spirits — starting with her own.
Reaching her quarters, Emilia glanced up and down the empty hallway. Satisfied she hadn’t been followed, she slipped inside and sealed the door. Only then did she let out a long breath. Outside, she had kept up her jokester facade, but in private, the adrenaline of the mission crash-landed into exhaustion. On her bunk, the furball squirmed in her arms and peeped curiously. Emilia managed a genuine smile. “It’s okay, little guy. We’re safe now.” She sat down and gently set the creature on her lap. It immediately crawled up her shirt and nestled under her chin, a warm ball of fluff against her neck. Emilia chuckled. “You’re a cuddler, huh? Hungry too?”
She broke off a piece of an energy bar from her desk and held it out. The furball’s downy surface rippled, revealing a tiny pink tongue that lapped eagerly at the treat. “There you go,” Emilia cooed. The creature gobbled the morsel and let out a high-pitched burbling sound that might have been a burp.
She had barely finished speaking when a rustle by her feet caught her attention. Emilia looked down, expecting to see Fuzzle there — but Fuzzle was still on her lap. On the floor beside her boot lay a second, identical furball.
Emilia’s jaw dropped. “Where did you come from?” She hadn’t seen any others in the biodome… unless this one had been hiding in her jacket? Or—her eyes darted to Fuzzle. Or unless Fuzzle had just…
As if on cue, the original furball on her lap hiccupped. Emilia watched in disbelief as it began to convulse slightly. “Fuzzle…?” she whispered. The little creature gave one more wet-sounding hack — and coughed up a blob of matted fur onto the blanket. Emilia yelped as the blob promptly unfurled into another miniature furball, shaking itself dry.
“Oh no. No, no, no,” Emilia gasped. She scooped the newbie off her lap and set it down, scrambling to her feet. In the span of seconds, her one comforting pet had become three. The furballs, oblivious to her panic, bounced and chirped happily on her bed. One nosed at the discarded wrapper of the energy bar, gobbling up crumbs.
Emilia’s heart pounded. “This is… not good.” She lunged forward to grab the wrapper away, but it was too late — one enterprising furball had inhaled a sizable crumb. Almost immediately, that furball shuddered and spat out yet another damp pellet that wriggled and grew into a fourth fuzzy critter.
Emilia stared as now four furballs scuttled across her sheets, cooing as if proud of themselves. “Great. They multiply,” she groaned, raking a hand through her hair.
Thinking fast, Emilia grabbed an empty helmet from a shelf and began plopping furballs into it one by one. She managed to corral three into the helmet — they were too delighted with one another’s company to protest much — but the fourth bounced out of reach, hopping off the bed. “No, come back!” Emilia hissed under her breath, chasing it around the small cabin. The furball was surprisingly quick, rolling like a little tumbleweed. It evaded her hands, rolled through the door she’d left cracked open, and vanished into the hallway.
Emilia froze, a bolt of dread shooting through her. If there was one thing worse than a sudden furball infestation in her quarters, it was a furball infestation loose on the ship.
As if to confirm her fears, a few seconds later she heard a muffled clang and a very human shout from somewhere down the corridor. Emilia cringed. That voice — sharp, furious — belonged unmistakably to Lieutenant Ayame Tsukihara.
The blood drained from Emilia’s face. Ayame must have encountered the escapee. And if Ayame was already mad at something…
A heavy bang rattled Emilia’s door, making her jump. “Emilia Heero!” came Ayame’s voice, seething even through the metal hatch. “Open this door right now!”
Emilia gulped. She hastily shoved the helmet containing the remaining furballs under her bed and tried to smooth her frazzled hair. This was not going to be fun.
She hit the door control. It slid open to reveal Ayame’s scowling face. The chief engineer’s dark eyes blazed with fury, and she held a hydrospanner in one hand like she was contemplating using it as a cudgel. At her feet, the rogue furball sat innocently between them, purring.
Ayame took one look at Emilia’s guilty expression and the stray golden fluff clinging to Emilia’s shirt, and her nostrils flared. “You,” she growled, “have exactly five seconds to tell me why there are alien furballs in my engine room.”
Ayame Tsukihara stood alone in the Endeavor’s engineering bay, attempting to focus on post-mission diagnostics. The Concordance hive-mind incident on Orion VI had left the ship — and her nerves — a little worse for wear. Normally, Ayame would have been in her bunk by now, but a nagging worry about the engine status kept her running checks late into the ship’s night cycle.
She glared at a flickering readout on the main console. It was showing minor fluctuations in the environmental controls, nothing critical but odd enough to warrant investigation. “Come on, you piece of junk,” she muttered, fingers flying over the keypad to isolate the anomaly.
Ayame’s mind kept drifting back to unwelcome memories: the invasive brush of the hive-mind against her thoughts, the helpless feeling of her individuality being probed. She clenched her jaw and shook her head, forcing her attention back to the task at hand.
A sudden clatter behind her made Ayame whirl around. Not one, but two intruders were in her engine room: one perched atop a tool cart it had just knocked over, and another wedged inside an open access panel, its fuzzy body tangled in sensor cables. Sparks crackled from the panel as the creature gnawed, and a puddle of spilled lubricant spread across the floor from the toppled cart. “Oh no you don’t,” she snarled, swiping with her spanner at the furball in the wiring. It squeaked and vanished into a ventilation duct. In the split second she took her eyes off the other one, it too disappeared behind a stack of coolant tanks. Ayame cursed under her breath.
This was bad. Random critters chewing through wires on her watch? Over her dead body.
In quick succession, Ayame powered down the compromised circuitry to prevent any cascading failures and slammed the vent shut where the furball had escaped. Her stomach sank as understanding dawned. These things — whatever they were — had to have come aboard from Orion VI. And only one crew member had been foolish enough to bring back a souvenir from that mission. Ayame’s eyes narrowed. “Emilia,” she growled. Only the ship’s resident chaos magnet would smuggle fuzzy vermin onto a spaceship.
As if to confirm her suspicion, a faint squeal echoed from down the corridor, followed by the pitter-patter of several tiny feet. Ayame took off at a brisk stride, following the sound. She didn’t even notice that she was still clutching the heavy spanner like a club. Her blood was boiling.
A short trail of mischief led her out of Engineering and into the crew quarters section. Here and there, tufts of golden fur clung to the hallway carpet — like breadcrumbs leading the way. Ayame followed the trail around a corner until she faced a closed hatch labeled B-14: E. Heero. From beneath that door, a lone furball wriggled out, joining another that waited in the hall. The two puffs chirped at each other conspiratorially, then rolled off down the corridor in search of new adventures.
Ayame saw red. She marched up to cabin B-14 and pounded on the metal door with the side of her spanner. Inside, something clattered to the floor, and a muffled yelp confirmed that Emilia had just jumped out of her skin. Good.
“Emilia Heero!” Ayame barked, barely restraining her volume. “Open this door right now!”
She counted to five in her head — about as long as her patience would hold. Just as she raised her fist to bang again, the door slid open. Emilia stood there, looking equal parts guilty and nervous, a sheen of sweat on her brow. Ayame’s gaze swept past her into the cabin. It was in disarray: bedcovers rumpled and… moving, as though something underneath was wriggling. And was that chirping coming from under the desk?
At Ayame’s feet, one of the stray furballs sat looking up at them, purring as if nothing were amiss.
“You,” Ayame hissed, stepping over the threshold so Emilia had to stumble back. She nudged the furball with her boot; it rolled a few inches but kept trilling happily. “…have five seconds to explain why my engine room is crawling with this.”
Emilia let out a very nervous laugh. “Oh! Would you look at that! So that’s where Fuzzle wandered off to….”
“Fuzzle,” Ayame repeated flatly, incredulous.
“Um, yeah.” Emilia cleared her throat, hands raised in surrender. “Funny story… I kind of… adopted that little guy. From Orion VI. It seemed harmless!” She gave a weak, hopeful grin. “Surprise?”
Ayame’s eye twitched. “Harmless? Emilia, my engine diagnostics are haywire because these cotton-brained critters chewed through half a dozen wires! One got stuck in a vent, and another bit Ensign Choi on the finger when he tried to catch it!”
Emilia winced. “Okay, not entirely harmless, I admit. But in my defense—”
“In your defense?!” Ayame’s voice rose an octave, incredulous. “What possible defense could you have for smuggling an alien onboard without clearance? Have you lost what little sense that hive-mind left you with?”
Emilia’s face went red. “Hey! That’s a low blow. I just… it was cute and I thought it would cheer everyone up! We’ve all been so depressed since the whole hive ordeal, I figured a mascot might help.”
Ayame threw her free hand in the air. “Cheer us up? Emilia, you know what would cheer me up? Not having alien furballs clogging my engines!”
Just then, a chorus of chirps rose from under Emilia’s desk. Ayame’s eyes narrowed. Emilia sidled sideways, as if trying to block Ayame’s view of the underspace.
“What is that?” Ayame asked in a deadly calm tone. “Why is your desk… chirping?”
“Um.” Emilia flashed an unconvincing smile. “White noise machine? For relaxation?”
Before Ayame could explode, a new voice cut through the tension: “Is everything alright in here, ladies?”
Both women turned to see Dr. Cristafiore Solaria standing in the doorway, hands on her hips. The ship’s statuesque doctor and counselor surveyed the scene: Emilia cornered and sweating, Ayame brandishing a spanner, and furballs peeking out from various nooks. Instead of shock, Cristafiore wore a bemused half-smile.
“I heard shouting,” she said calmly, stepping inside without waiting for permission. “And I couldn’t help noticing we have some unexpected furry guests.” Her amber eyes flicked to the furball by Ayame’s boot, then to Emilia. “Perhaps someone would like to explain?”
Emilia opened her mouth, but Ayame got there first. “The explanation,” she spat, “is that Emilia smuggled this… infestation on board. They’re everywhere, Doctor! I’ve got chewed wires, alarms going off—”
Cristafiore held up one manicured hand. “Before we get into that,” she interjected smoothly, “let me ask: how are both of you feeling?”
That question earned Cristafiore two blank stares. Ayame’s mouth actually hung open, her rant cut short.
“Orion VI was difficult, no?” Cristafiore went on, her tone sympathetic. “It’s possible this little situation,” she gestured gracefully at a furball trying to climb Ayame’s pant leg, “is a side effect of stress.”
Emilia bit her lip, looking anywhere but at Ayame. “I… I just thought a pet might—”
“I’m not judging, dear,” Cristafiore assured her gently. She plucked the furball off Ayame’s leg and cradled it in her hands, stroking it as it purred. “Late night, residual nerves… It’s an easy mistake.”
Ayame blinked. “Mistake? Doctor, with all due respect—”
“With all due respect, Lieutenant,” Cristafiore interrupted, her voice still honey-smooth but carrying an unmistakable authority, “I am pulling rank as Chief Medical Officer. And I hereby prescribe a dose of relaxation for all three of us.”
Ayame looked baffled. Emilia did too. Cristafiore smiled and continued, “Effective immediately, we’re having a mandatory relaxation session. Observation lounge, ten minutes. I’ll bring tea and biscuits. And, Lieutenant—” she fixed Ayame with a look, “your engines will survive half an hour without you.”
Ayame shut her mouth, caught between outrage and utter disbelief. The doctor’s logic-defying confidence had punctured her anger like a pin in a balloon. After a beat, she exhaled sharply through her nose. “…Fine. Thirty minutes,” she muttered.
“Excellent.” Cristafiore beamed, as if Ayame had just agreed to a spa day instead of a timeout. “Emilia, be a dear and gather up our fluffy friends into something portable. We’ll take them with us.”
Relieved and eager, Emilia hurried to comply. She scooped the helmet with the furballs out from under the bed, then scrambled around to retrieve the few escapees. In short order, she had a mesh laundry sack filled with a half-dozen cooing furballs.
A few minutes later, the trio arrived at the observation lounge. The wide window on one wall showed a breathtaking sweep of starlit space, but the three women were a bit too preoccupied to admire it fully. Cristafiore set about preparing the promised tea. The replicator produced a pot of fragrant chamomile blend and a plate of ginger biscuits, which she arranged on a low table in the center of the lounge’s seating area.
“Alright,” Cristafiore said cheerfully as she poured the tea, “let’s all take a breath.”
Emilia sank onto a plush sofa with a grateful sigh, placing her sack of furballs beside her. Ayame remained hovering by the doorway for a moment, still looking as if she might bolt. But the calming aroma of chamomile and the utter absurdity of the situation must have worked on her; with a resigned grunt, she dropped into an armchair.
Cristafiore handed out the cups of tea. Soon all three women were seated around the table. With calm deliberation, the doctor loosened the drawstring of Emilia’s sack and let a few furballs tumble out onto the table. They cooed and clustered contentedly around the warm teapot, one even nibbling curiously at a biscuit.
Ayame tensed as if she might try to corral them again, but when she saw that the creatures were simply curling up against the teapot and blinking sleepily, she relaxed. “Lucky they like teatime,” she murmured, blowing on her hot cup. One furball rolled onto its back and began snoring faintly, tiny paws in the air. Emilia had to stifle a giggle at the ridiculous sight. Even Ayame’s lips twitched in something almost like a smile.
For a long moment, the only sounds were the clink of china and the soft purring of furballs. The tension in the air dissipated, replaced by an almost cozy quiet.
Cristafiore savored a sip of tea, then set her cup down. “Now then,” she said gently, “let’s address the tribble in the room, shall we? Emilia, how did all this happen?”
Emilia, who had been petting one of the drowsy furballs, sat up a bit straighter. “Well… it’s like I told Ayame,” she began softly. “After we wrapped up with the Concordance on Orion VI, I found one of these little guys hiding under a console in their biodome. It was so scared and alone. And honestly, I… I felt a bit scared and alone too, after that hive-mind did its number on us. I thought bringing it aboard might make me feel better. Maybe make all of us feel better.” She gave an apologetic half-smile. “I didn’t expect it to start multiplying like crazy or chewing things. That was a surprise, I swear.”
Cristafiore reached over and squeezed Emilia’s hand. “Wanting a little comfort is nothing to be ashamed of, dear. The execution might have been a little questionable,” she added with a teasing quirk of her lips, “but your heart was in the right place.”
She turned her gaze to Ayame, who was staring into her tea. “And you, Lieutenant? How are you doing after Orion VI?”
Ayame stiffened at being asked directly. She looked up, meeting Cristafiore’s eyes, then Emilia’s. Emilia offered her a timid, understanding smile. Ayame let out a slow breath. “I won’t lie… it shook me,” she admitted. “Having that hive-mind scrabbling around in my head… I hated it. I guess I tried to bury myself in work to get past it. Then I found these furballs causing chaos, and… well, I snapped.” She shook her head and managed a rueful smirk. “Maybe I was the one who needed a timeout.”
Emilia’s eyes widened in surprise at Ayame’s candor. “For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry,” she said. “I never meant to cause you more stress, Ayame. Or extra work. I’ll fix every wire they chewed, I promise.”
Ayame waved a hand, looking slightly embarrassed by all the earnestness. “Yes, you will,” she said, but not unkindly. Then, with the faintest of smiles, she added, “I… understand why you did it, though. After what we went through, I can’t exactly blame you for wanting a hug-able form of therapy.” She flicked a finger gently at a furball that had waddled close to her cup. “Just maybe ask next time.”
Emilia nodded furiously. “Deal. No more contraband tribbles.”
Cristafiore’s eyes sparkled as she watched the exchange. This was exactly the outcome she had hoped for. “I’m proud of you both,” she said softly. “Now, regarding our fuzzy friends here… We need a solution that doesn’t involve jettisoning them into space.”
Ayame snorted. “I only thought about that for a second.”
Emilia giggled. “Good, because I kind of grew attached to Fuzzle. Not so much to a hundred Fuzzles, but you know.”
Cristafiore laughed lightly. “Fortunately, I have a humane idea. We’ll put them in stasis for now — a nice little nap — until we can find a proper home for them. That way they won’t keep multiplying or eating anything important.”
The others agreed to the plan with relief. Once the tea was finished (and the majority of furballs dozed in a pile on the table, tuckered out from biscuits and excitement), the trio got to work rounding up the creatures ship-wide. Ashe, the ship’s AI, was happy to pinpoint each remaining life-sign for them. One by one, the last stray furballs were plucked from air vents, storage bins, and even the hydroponics tank (that one required Emilia and Ayame joining forces to retrieve a soggy, floating furball, an effort that left them both dripping and half-laughing).
Before long, all the wayward fluffballs were safely gathered. In the biology lab, Cristafiore oversaw the process of tucking each creature into a small cryo-pod. One by one, the furballs curled up inside the transparent capsules. With soft hisses and a gentle flash of blue light, the pods sealed, sending the little aliens into a peaceful suspended sleep.
When the final pod was secured, Emilia wiped her brow and managed a tired smile. “Well… crisis averted.”
Ayame arched an eyebrow. “And not a single airlock opened.”
“Success on all counts,” Cristafiore declared with a grin.
Emilia turned to Ayame, her expression earnest. “I really am sorry, you know. And… thank you for not killing me or something.”
Ayame let out a breath, then gave a small half-smile. “I may have considered it for a minute there,” she joked dryly, “but… I’m glad the Doctor stepped in. This went better than it could have.”
Emilia beamed, recognizing the olive branch in Ayame’s tone.
Cristafiore pressed a few buttons on the control panel to ensure the stasis pods were all stable, then removed her latex gloves with a snap. “Ladies, I’d say we handled this rather well.” She looked at each of them fondly. A day that had begun with terror and continued into chaos was ending on a far gentler note. “We make a pretty good team, hm?”
Ayame scoffed lightly, but not without warmth. “Don’t let it go to your head, Doc.”
Emilia giggled. “Face it, Ayame, we bonded over furballs. You’re stuck with me now.”
Ayame rolled her eyes, though she was smiling. “Heaven help me.”
With the ship returning to quiet and all furry invaders snoozing in cold storage, the three crewmates finally decided it was time to call it a night. They left the lab side by side, the tension between them replaced by an unexpected sense of closeness. By the time they reached the crossroads to their respective quarters, all three were exchanging tired smiles.
“Get some rest,” Ayame said, her tone almost gentle as she parted ways.
Emilia responded with a cheeky salute and a yawn, no fear in her eyes now—only relief. “See you in the morning.”
Cristafiore watched them go with quiet pride. In the peaceful hush of the Endeavor’s night, laughter and a shared adventure had chased away the last shadows of fear. She hummed a gentle lullaby to herself as she too headed to bed, content that all was well.
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