Gymnastical

Posted on Fri Aug 21st, 2026 @ 8:43pm by Lieutenant Zachary Addams & Chief Petty Officer Alexis Aenera

2,136 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Kintsugi
Location: Gym Adjunct

The place wasn't abandoned, but certainly there weren't a lot of people present in the moderately sized room, most of them using the smallish two-lane track to run laps, but what had interested Alexis were some of the apparatus that were in the center of the room, mostly huddled together and out of the way, but easily moved around. With the assistance of one of the runners, she'd been able to move the equipment around so that the balance beam and uneven bars were available for use. Doing some vaults would be fun, but there wasn't really enough room at this point and doing a floor exercise could basically be anywhere, but her favorite had always been the balance beam and vault, which meant for today...

The leotard was skintight with a significant amount of upper body support and was in a dark purple swirled with black and speckled with stars, an Imperial Eagle up on the left shoulder and the sleeves were short, going halfway down her biceps. Her hands and feet were dusted with chalk, to help with getting a grip as she stared down the balance beam. She hadn't been on one for at least two months, maybe three, so she wasn't going to go completely all out. She rubbed her hands together for a second before finally drawing herself up and bringing those hands up in a graceful move before dropping them again.

An exhale and she started forward at a rapid run before jumping on the springboard and somersaulting and twisting through the air in a high-difficulty move that left her in a handstand after bringing both legs horizontal to the bar in a perfect split and helicoptering them to bleed off the momentum until she was still on the beam. She felt the eyes on her, but either couldn't or wouldn't look to see where they were, she had to be focused as her arms wanted to tremble in this position while she brought her legs straight up before back into a split with a readjustment of her hands and bending her torso slowly to place her legs lengthwise on the beam. She was finally able to release the beam for a moment before gripping it again and turning to straddle it, bringing her hands up in graceful motions before suddenly rolling backwards, grabbing the beam as her legs came over her head and used the momentum to roll to her feet on the six-inch wide beam, hands coming over her head and bleeding the momentum again.

Over the next sixty-eight seconds, Alexis performed a series of leaps that showed her flexibility, a single forward aerial cartwheel followed by a roundoff that paused ever so slightly in a handstand that brought her to the edge of the beam. At that point, she took two quick steps to gain speed for a fast cartwheel followed by a half-twist tuck roll and skidded on the beam in the first instance of possibly losing her balance, but she got it back once more within a fraction of a second and moving into the next movement. By the time she had traversed the beam multiple times, she was sweating slightly and looked down the length of the beam in preparation for her dismount.

She brought her arms up again as she breathed heavily, then arms came down and she again took a pair of quick short steps before throwing herself into a pair of rapid handsprings before pushing off the last six inches of the beam into a twisting tuck roll that brought her twisting around in a full twist and a half while revolving fully twice before she straightened out moments before her feet hit the padding and she bounced almost straight up and back about six inches each way. Then her feet hit the ground again and stuck as she brought her arms back up for flair as well as to arrest the final bits of momentum, to a smattering of applause and she exhaled deeply in relief.

By that point, the outfit was more a novelty than the performance, but Zach still leaned against the wall and admired her skills. And her form. And her outfit. His applause lasted the longest, and his grin was one of the wider ones in the room. He walked up to Alexis and whistled. "That was an impressive display," he said, looking at the beam and then back at her.

There was a grin from the Roman as she spotted her admirer and bounced on her toes, rubbing her left forearm with her right hand, "It was still a bit more tame than back in the days I could really do it justice. How long were you standing there?"

"Oh, long enough to see you at your best," he said, grinning. "PO3 Serling was stuck on the aft sensor array software patch you'd been working on, and when he tried to contact you, you were busy defying gravity."

Automatically, she reached up to where her commbadge should have been and then glanced at the small duffel bag sitting on the small bench before dusting the last of the chalk off her hands onto her legs, "Stuck on the patch? All he had to do was monitor the progress, hit 'Okay' when it prompted him and then just run a diagnostic on the system and array when it was complete." She sighed, "Did he tell you what was going wrong?"

"Evidently progress halted at forty-three percent and has been there for the past thirty-four minutes. He can't figure out why the system froze," Zach said, shrugging. "Thought I should find out from you some details."

"Thirty-four minutes?" Her eyes opened wide, "He could have gotten my location and come to find me in that long." Her hand came up to smack herself on the forehead, moving towards the duffel bag and sliding her bare feet into the sandals that were there, "I suppose I should go check it out, want to come along?"

"Love to," Zach said. "And don't be too hard on the boy. He didn't want to leave his post and he was trying to do it himself. He contacted me, and I had to finish something before I got here, and once I did get here..." He lowered his voice and grinned. "I was busy being hypnotized."

"And to think, I'm no magician. But..." She pulled a towel out and wrapped it around her neck before gesturing towards the door, "The easiest solution to a frozen progress bar would be to shut it down and turn it back on. Sure, you have to start from the beginning, but so long as there aren't any static changes, it'd be fine. I figure we'll go check on him, then I'll probably just head back to my quarters. My new quarters, that is. It seems like a movie night."

"Simplest solutions are sometimes the most elusive," Zach said as they headed into the corridor towards the turbolift. "He probably didn't want to crash it out just yet, thinking he could bypass the coding error. Still, we should check the patch and make sure there isn't a conflict." He smiled at the lilt in her voice in mentioning her quarters. "And what cinema classic will you be enjoying?" he said.

"That's a good question.. I'm not quite sure I know what I'm in the mood for, but it'll be some sort of action flick. I'm not up for romance, so nothing soft. There's this one series from Earth that sounds like it could be good, but it starts with someone killing a dog, so I'm a bit skeptical." Alexis led the way towards where she knew the young PO was probably still freaking out, "It's got five movies, so if I had tomorrow off, I could always binge watch them all." She gave a knowing smile where he may or may not be able to see it.

"Mm.....if...." he said with a wry grin as the lift dropped them by the computer core. "Well, I don't have that much wiggle room to make such a last-minute change, but I suppose I could wrangle us a Tuesday next week."

She punched him gently in the arm with her free hand with a laugh, "What is this 'us' thing? You think that Department Heads and Senior Chiefs can just suddenly get the same days off during the week?" She grinned over at him.

"It's been known to happen now and again," he said with a wry grin. "Assuming there's a pressing need."

"And is there one?" Alexis chuckled back, "Or are you just bringing it up for no reason?"

"Oh I very much think there's a need for us to press," he said quietly in her ear, then picked up his pace as he stepped inside the diagnostics room and they approached the wayward Engineer. "Mister Serling, I've brought your savior."

"Thank God, sir, I was just about to comm-" The young NCO turned to the door and suddenly turned a bright red like a cherry tomato and he turned away from the door to face the other wall, "Senior Chief." He choked out, "I don't.."

Alexis glanced down and rolled her eyes, taking the towel from around her neck and wrapping it around her waist instead, "What? Haven't you ever seen a woman before, PO? The Lieutenant said it was important, so I didn't want to delay any longer than needed. Focus, Mister Serling, use your words."

"Yes, Senior Chief." He exhaled deeply and slowly turned back around, very consciously looking anywhere but at her, "The update froze at forty-three percent and I've been trying to get it back to going again, but now the whole panel's frozen. I didn't want to reboot in case it had already gotten into the startup files."

Alexis gave Zach a glance and rolled her eyes again, "Go ahead and start the reboot, there won't be able problems with it. It'll probably just restart the update is all, but now that we're here, if there are any issues, you won't be alone."

Zach pulled up the files on the next monitor and brought Serling's attention to it. "Little trick. Always make a backup of the startup files before you begin. You keep a dummy folder here," he said, pointing to a specific directory, "and you can pull it from the back end if you need to. Once it's all up and running, you can remove the backup."

"That's a good idea." Alexis said as she stepped up on the other side of Serling and watched as he re-initiated the software update, "Especially for the major systems. Plus, if there's ever any doubt, there's usually a base file in the archives that we can restore the system from, but then the update cycle has to be run again, any and all updates."

The most junior man in the room swallowed hard in discomfort and looked over at Zach, trying to clear his peripheral vision of the magnificent chest in skimpy leotard, "Sir.." He choked out, "I think.."

Zach looked at him, then past him, then back at him and gave a knowing smirk. "Alexis, I apologize for taking up your afternoon off without checking this first. I'll give you a longer lunch hour tomorrow, if you like, to compensate for your time. If you want to head back to your activities, I can handle things from here."

She waved it away, but backed away from the console as the status bar began to move again from zero, "No need for that, Lieutenant, I should have followed up with the PO earlier, so my apologies, Mister Serling. If you need me, I'll be back in the gym, I do want to finish my workout, but I'll make sure my comm is on."

"Thank you, Senior Chief," Zach said.

"Yes....um...thank you," Serling said.

As Alexis departed, the young Petty Officer exhaled deeply, throwing a glance before the door closed behind her, "Thank you, sir... I didn't expect-"

"Yeah, I didn't either when I first met her. However, one of the necessities of being an engineer is being able to adjust and roll with the unexpected. Whether that unexpected thing is a nacelle malfunction or, equally as demanding, a woman capturing your attention, I expect my staff to always be able to think and adapt. Am I clear?"

Serling swallowed. "Yes, Sir," he said. "I won't get distracted again, Sir."

Zach nodded. "Good man," he said. "As you were." He grinned to himself as he left the younger man sitting there and trying to figure out how a beautiful woman was like a warp nacelle.

Senior Chief Alexis Aenera
Engineering NCO
USS Tokyo

AND

Lt. Zachary Addams
Chief Engineer
USS Tokyo

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