#flustercuck

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Link preferred when Zelda slept in the hammock with him.

Unfortunately, that’s what everyone else preferred, too.

‘Ooooh, mama, look what those Vulcans are doing!’ exclaimed what appeared to be a small boulder covered in oven-baked mozzarella.  It leaned up against their cage’s window, somehow reminding Link of a puppy despite having no facial features, legs, or a tail.

‘Those aren’t Vulcans, daughter three thousand and fifty-eight.  They must be Romulans,’ answered a much larger cheese-draped boulder with two distinct throbbing noises.

‘Romulans?  For real?  How can you tell?’

‘They don’t look like anyone in Vulcan Love-Slave.’

Narj had called them ‘Vulcans’ at first, too (once he realized they could talk).

Unfortunately, their language skills hadn’t stopped him from keeping them locked up and on display.

“We’re in a zoo, Zel,” Link said.

“Not for long,” she said, eyeing a panel on the wall.

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“OH FUCK! THE MOOPSY IS FREE!” screamed Narj, clawing in terror at the wall behind him as a newcomer named Mariner scoffed.

“Oh nooo, your cuddliest prisoner is loose, whatever shall we do?” she said with a smirk, but Narj’s utter freak-out had already sent Link shoving Zelda back in their now-open cage as he dove for a vaguely shield-like wall-panel thick with beach-palette paint.

The panel was no longer seated properly (thanks to Zelda).  One corner swiveled directly into the wall’s circuitry with all the considerable momentum Link had in his short-but-dense body.

“Moopsy!” said Moopsy in its sweet, cuddly voice.

A loud hum deep in the walls prefaced a brief blackness giving way to emergency lighting and a flutter of activity behind Link: squawks, screeches, roars, buzzes, pitter-patters, plop-plop-plops, splashes and scrabbling, and way more he couldn’t make out except “FUCK ME, THEY’RE ALL FREE!!!”

Link hadn’t thought corn could scream like that.  He spun to see Moopsy’s little white pudge-fluff body on a winged goat’s back.

“Moopsy!” Moopsy said.

And Moopsy’s mouth become FAR FAR FAR TOO WIDE to make sense, two tiny fangs glinting as the massive face-hole closed on the goat’s skull and sucked its skeleton up like steaming-hot gelatin.

“HOLY FUUUUUUCK!” Mariner yelled at the exact moment Link’s bowels chilled about fifty degrees.

Celsius.

Moopsy snapped its head to the side, flopping the goat’s skin and soft tissue like a beloved chew-toy.

Zelda made a strangled sound of rising disgust and Link raised the wall panel as an awkward, two-handed shield with no strap.  He’d be better off using it as a claymore.

Huh.

That could work.

Link flip-gripped it at one end and swung it broad-faced into the Moopsy as hard as he could on such short notice.

“Moopsy!” Moopsy cried in distress as it spun through the air and disappeared into an arboreal habitat on the 2nd floor.

Link could’ve sworn he heard a little squeak when it landed.

He definitely heard all the gasps.

Why were they all looking at him?  Weren’t swamp-gobblers snarling right on the other side of the sky snake’s habitat?

“Link!” Zelda said, brows knit and mouth gawking at him.

“What?!”

“The Moopsy is Narj’s favorite!” Narj said, his head in his hands.

“I am- so sorry, Mr. Narj,” said the big blond man whose name Link hadn’t caught.  “Starfleet will take full responsibility for any losses incurred as a result of our people’s actions-“

“I’m not your people,” Link said, but he got talked over.

“Oh- this is- bullshit,” said Mariner.  “’Ooooh, fuck, fuck, the Moopsy is free’ and ‘oh shit not the fucked up goat!’ and then you go all gooey and teary when this guy smacks its ass away from us, which, THANK YOU, by the way, strange dude with super-WEIRD- VERY pointy ears, you’re not human at all, are you?”

Link shook his head, but she hadn’t stopped despite the building volume of the animal brawl behind and to the right of the central exhibit (the short guy in the red shirt cringed, his back to its low, round wall).

“If it’s your weird-ass monster creatures’ lives or ours, ours win, no matter how adorable their eyes or tiny, nubby tails or innocent voices may be.”

“I gave these creatures a safe home!” Narj protested.  “I don’t want to see them harmed!”

“It seems you have little choice,” said Zelda with a gesture toward the chaos.

A pack of dog-like animals with horns had wandered between the two scythe-handed swamp-gobblers, who had then attempted a pincer-strike on one of the smaller horn-dogs.  Two horn-dogs seemed content to simply flop to the floor and wait this out, while the other two leapt to defend their packmate with startling aggression.  A horn-dog’s horn was currently embedded in a swamp-gobbler’s nostril, and a strange, floating ball of light with three cobra heads appeared to be getting throttled in the squeeze of the much thicker and lengthier sky snake’s body (also floating) while reptile-birds, hammer-head-birds, colorful head-plumage birds and a kalaidescope of butterflies fluttered and swopped around them.  One cobra-head snapped a butterfly right out of the air and hissed purple light.

This was to say nothing of the myriad of small creatures pattering and oozing their way along the floor or the frenetic mixture of cooing, screeching, and slurping sounds issuing from the balcony running the circumference of the room above them.

“Oh- OH!  NOT MY TRIBBLES!”  Narj ran a single, abortive stride toward the stairway.

“Moopsy!”

The adorable sound stopped him dead, his face struck with horror.

“Tribbles?!” the big blond said.  He’d raised spread hands, ready to grapple, sharp eyes flicking from creature to creature.  “I thought you were operating within federation law!”

“Narj does operate lawfully!  I do not trade or transport my tribbles!  I simply maintain my stock!”

“That’s what they all say,” Mariner said, her stance mimicking her colleague’s.

(The short guy in the red shirt hadn’t moved.  He muttered something about his pants).

A tribble rolled from the balcony and hit Link square on the head before it bounced to the ground.

He blinked at the completely innocuous, tawny-furred ovoid.  “Is this like the Moopsy?” he asked.

“No no no no no!” Narj said inserting himself between Link and the puffball, his shaking hands very nearly touching Link’s chest.

It was weird.

“Tribbles merely breed quickly-“

“TOO quickly,” blond said.

“WAAAAY too fast,” agreed Mariner.

“Do they have bones?” Zelda asked.

“C-cartilage,” Narj squeezed out.  “What if it can drink them?”  More shrieking and slurping cut through the grunts, growls, squawks and slams.  “WHAT IF IT ALREADY IS?!  AH AAAH!”

He really seemed close to popping some kind of sap vessel.

“Better them than us!” Mariner said.  “Lemme just-“

“I’ll just-“

Link and Mariner stopped talking simultaneously, eyeing each other.

“So, I’ll scope it-“

“I’ll peek up-“

They did it again.

Mariner narrowed her eyes at Link.

He widened his with a nearly unnoticeable shrug.

They shot up an instant later, Mariner with a quick run to the stairwell, a jump and a kick off the banister to grab the safety railing, and Link with a leap up to finger-grip the lower lip of the balcony and pull himself up.

Both peeked left along the 2nd level’s metal floor.

There it was.

Moopsy.

Having the time of its life.

It had a whole tribble in its mouth, sucking on it like hard candy with pleasure-riddled squeaks and big, round eyes glistening with the simple joy of delicious food.

Link totally got it.

There were at least six more tribbles in its path.

He dropped back to the floor with a practiced landing.  “Yeah, it likes those tribbles, we’ve got a minute.”  Link shrugged, picked up the one near his feet, and got halfway through a tossing motion.

“OoohOOoooh!” Narj moaned.

“LINK!” Zelda scolded.

He froze.  “What?!”

“You would do NO SUCH THING were it a cat.”

“Yeah I would.”

“Lies.”

“No, if it’s you or a cat, I choose you.”

“That is not the choice!”

“It might be.”

“We’ve time to think!” she said.

“Not really, we gotta get all these thingamanimals back in their cages,” said Mariner, dropping back in with a bounce of her very bouncy black curls, and a tiny glare at Link.

“I’m not going back in mine,” he warned.

A squelching sound preceded a whimpering cry in the voice of a swamp-gobbler.

“Didn’t say you had to,” Mariner said.

A golden light emanated from Zelda, expanding past the animals, through their cages, and out beyond their ability to see it through the walls.

“What was that?!” blond guy yelled.

“An attempt to re-cage your animals,” Zelda said.  “It was worth attempting, though I’m not surprised it had no effect.”

“Oh!  Oh human, you got the Aldeberan serpent!”  Narj pointed to the triple-cobra-headed light-ball currently pressed to a rocky habitat’s back wall by a blanket of sunlight.

“Is it an evil creature?” Zelda asked.

“Terribly wicked!”

That explained that.

The sky snake, having nothing to strangle, began to fly laps around the room, snapping its jaws and loosing calls like a long-throated crow’s caw.

Zelda’d already stuck her hands into the wall in attempt to re-connect some cabling.

“Hey!  Let me- I’m a professional,” said big blond guy.  He jogged over and nudged Zelda sideways.

This pissed Link off.  “Don’t push her.”

Apparently it also pissed Mariner off.  “You’re not an engineer, Jack.”

Jack cringed.  “Neither are you, Mariner.”

Something soft hit the floor above them.  “Moopsy!”  A sucking sound followed.

Link stalked over to Jack’s right shoulder, between him and Zelda, and looked over it to see him fumbling.  An arc of electricity zapped him and he jumped, nursing a small burn on his wrist.

“Yeah, you should let her do that,” Link said.

“Indeed,” Zelda said, nudging Jack herself.

“Hey!”

Zelda began putting things together and taking them apart with her head cocked and quick glances into the atrium.  “Please tell me if a cage closes!”

“Got it!” said Mariner.

Link kept his eyes peeled.  Some thick-carapaced creature even smaller than the tribbles was oozing its way along the edge of the room toward Jack.  “What’s that thing?”

“What- AGH!” Jack yelled, jumping back into Link.

This was enough impetus for Link to snatch the wall panel back up and flick the critter away with it.  It landed lodged between red-shirt-guy’s shoulder and the low wall he’d pressed his back against.

“AHHHHH!” screamed red-shirt as the critter wiggled to right itself.

“GET UUUUUP,” yelled Mariner.  She sprung toward him.

He didn’t listen.  He did scream incessantly as something small and glistening began to leave a slime-trail on his neck.

“NO NO NO EEL BABIES!” Mariner slapped the tiny animal off him.  It landed somewhere in the ground of the verdant sky snake habitat.

“NO!  CETI EELS ARE A CRITICALLY ENDANGERED SPECIES!” Narj cried.

“IT’LL BE FINE!” Mariner yelled as she held mama-eel’s left antenna between two pincered fingers and dumped her into the habitat, too.

“Moopsy!” said Moopsy.

Link ignored it for a moment, then broke into a sweat.

No more slurping noises.

“Moopsy!”

Link swore under his breath, Jack said “SHIT!”, Mariner growled and spun with eyes on the 2nd floor, and Narj said “FUH HUH HUH HUUUCK!”

Zelda worked quick—and with a sudden zzzzip, the wrong cage closed across the way out of the corner of Link’s eye.

“Look!” Link hissed, wondering if sound lured Moopsies.

“I have it, I have it!” Zelda undid that one but counted quickly, finding a connection and instantly shutting the Aldeberan serpant’s cage with a sigh of relief.  The golden light flickered and faded.  As it did, the serpent hissed its frustration and a previously unnoticed tribble fell from the wall near Narj’s head.

“AH- u- oh?” Narj peered at it, adjusting his glasses.

“Evil tribble,” Link said under his breath.

Above them, the sky snake gave a sudden hiss and a bellow, a sound like sausage grinding moving from directly above their cage toward center-right of the room.  The remains of the sky snake’s body struck the floor with a monumental metallic slap.

The Moopsy raised its cheerful head from the hole in the snake’s skin.  “Moopsy!”

Everything ran.

The gobblers, the reptilian and plumed and hammer-headed birds, the horn-dogs, the remaining winged goat, the starfishy critters that had been skulking along the walls, and even the evil tribble, though it couldn’t move quickly.  Link hadn’t made out all of the small creatures, but they began to clear a wide circle around Moopsy, the floor less littered with tiny, wiggling bodies.

This left the Moopsy.

And them.

Moopsy waddled toward red-shirt guy, who began a rapid, stuttering crawl in the opposite direction.  Moopsy sped up with a bum-wiggle and leapt toward its next meal.

“No you don’t!” Mariner yelled, quick-dragging her sneaker back on the floor, then kicking her leg out straight.  Her shoe flew off at the perfect angle—its sole covered most of Moopsy’s squishy belly as it flew backward into a marshy habitat behind it.

“CLOSE IT! CLOSE IT CLOSE IT!” they all yelled at slighty different times in slightly different ways as Zelda feverishly connected everything.

“I need an insulative sealant!” she cried.

Link eyed the palm fronds, but Jack blew by him, yanked the cloth hammock from its hooks, and began tearing strips off it with his teeth.

Link quietly approved.  He caught the first strips tossed his way and helped Zelda cross-thread them through her many connecitons.

Their own cage shut.

Zelda grunted in frustration.

When they’d finished, the lights had fully returned in the atrium, though they tended to flicker.  So did the force field around the sky snake’s central habitat, but no one seemed to care.

Some creatures were still audibly struggling with each other, stuck mingling in habitats not their own.

That was fine for now.

Red-shirt guy finally stood, his back bent and face pale as he shook off his prey chemicals.

Narj thanked Zelda and Mariner profusely as he fiddled with his ring of keys.  “Narj is so grateful.  Narj may lose more of his creatures but will recover.  I will recover.  And I will free you the normal way, this time!”

Mariner gave Zelda a suspicious look that had Link inching protectively toward her.

“Hang on,” Mariner said.

Narj’s shaky smile drooped.

“You,” Mariner said.

“Us?” Link asked.

“Your force field just happens to go down right before the Moopsy’s free?”

Link side-eyed Zelda.

“You let it out!” said Mariner.

Zelda fidgeted her fingertips.  “Not intentionally.”

Everyone gasped but Link.

“I’m extremely glad no one was hurt,” she said, now wringing her hands.

Link put an arm around her shoulders and glared at the others.  He especially glared at Jack since he was in there with them, and Link didn’t want him to try anything.

Jack crossed his arms, a stern look on.  “We were coming to get you.  You didn’t have to break out.”

“How were we to know?”  Zelda asked.

“Narj told you!” Narj said.

“You said Starfleet was coming,” Link said in his soft voice.  “That could’ve meant anything.”

Mariner’s face screwed up.  “Any-?!  We’re STARFLEET, what did you think it would mean?”

Link shrugged.  “A bunch of stars sailing the high seas together?  Maybe some great navigators banding together to keep their ships safe?  Maybe an army?”

Everyone stared.

“How could you not know what Starfleet i-“ Mariner shook her head.  “Wait a minute.  You’re NOT human.  You’re not Vulcan, Romulan, Reman, Ramuran, Halanan, Ocampan, or Arkenites, so what the hell are you guys?”

“We are Hylian,” Zelda said in a small voice.

“Never heard of you,” said Jack.  “What planet are you from?”

Link and Zelda looked at each other.

“Moopsy!” Moopsy said from its new habitat.

Jack, Mariner, and red-shirt’s eyes made a slow journey toward Narj, who tittered.

“I- I don’t always know where they come from.”

“Come on, man, PRIME DIRECTIVE!”  (Jack).

“WITHIN FEDERATION LAW, MY ASS!”  (Mariner).

“SIRS, I WANT A DESK JOB!” (That poor red-shirted bastard).

That conversation devolved into a heated argument.

Link grimaced.  “They think we’re from a planet?  The things in the sky?  Maybe that’s what they call sky islands or something.”

Zelda, for once, appeared lost.

At first.

Her eyes grew wide.

Then wider.

Then wider.

“LINK!”

“What?!”

“People live on planets!!!” she cried.

The others went quiet.

“Awwww,” Jack said, palming his face.  “Time for another memory wipe.”

Link blanched.  “Not again!”

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[For visual reference, this post has Moopsy and Narj. The 3 starfleet characters were Beckett Mariner, Jack Ransom, and Gary (on left in pic). Lower Decks is awesome.]

Gary (red-shirt guy) and Mariner. She's dressed down today.

Below: Jack Ransom (with Mariner far off in background).