A rather sweet problem...

[partofaplan]

Late nights in Ten Forward are normally quiet. Between the shift changes between nights and days, the lounge is normally deserted as anyone not working is sleeping.

It's 03:36, and there's some movement in Ten Forward by one of the replicators. Lit up by the lights of a removed panel is one Peter Quill. He's currently removing isolinear program chips from the main panel of the replicator, constantly referring to a piece of paper in his other hand.

He's reprogramming the machine.

Eventually, he's done, grunting as he replaces the panel and clapping his hands together, grinning.

"Alright. Computer?" Acknowledging beep. "Uh... Xandarian Whisky."

There's a further beep... And then small multicoloured orbs start pouring from the replicator. On the other side of the lounge, the other replicator starts pouring out similar orbs. Quill's eyes widen.

"Holy shit...!"

And that panel is getting removed again.

"Computer! Stop!"

"Unable to comply. Standard command and control functions have been tampered with."

"Aw... Hell!"

And now he's going to be trying to reverse what he's done... As the room slowly starts to fill with Skittles and M&Ms.

Comments

[am_sass_ador]

Baby was hungry. That's her excuse anyway. She had been quietly enjoying some manner of chocolate beauty known as a lava cake and some tea over some incredibly dry Klingon documents when something poured over her ankles and she saw someone receiving the bad end of some computer tampering.

"What are you doing?!" she shouted at him as she waded over toward him. Mixing Skittles and M&Ms. Seriously.

[partofaplan]

And, with the lounge cast in darkness, Peter could be forgiven for not noticing K'Ehleyr before...

Of course, now, he's flinching and backing off a tad, because... Yeah. He fucked up.

"I... I was just... It doesn't matter. I'm tryin' to sort it out." Trying and failing. All he's succeeded in doing is making them pour out faster.

[spideys]

The doors to Ten Forward slide open, and Peter (of the Parker variety) is legitimately greeted by an exploding rainbow.

"-- what?"

It's like Halloween 2.0 has just occurred and Peter has to check to make sure he hasn't been turned back into a gigantic camera (he hasn't, thank god), before he's got his feelers out for some kind of cause to this sudden onslaught of candy.

A good deal of the floor is covered in tiny, colourful Skittles and M&Ms, candy of his childhood in other words, and he has to be careful not to slip on any or crush too many, sweeping them aside with his toe as best he can before he notices his roommate by one of the replicators.

"Dude. What the hell happened?"

[partofaplan]

And Quill looks over his shoulder at Peter and doesn't look too happy.

"I don't think that's important right now." He says, over his shoulder, turning back to get stuff back to how they are. "Just... Get over here and gimme a hand."

[spideys]

Okay, he's right. He'll ask about the 'what' later, once they've stopped the replicators from flooding the lounge with candy.

Peter crosses his way through the room to get to Quill. It's starting to smell sickly sweet in here, and sooner or later, someone's gonna notice.

"Okay," he says. "Okay, what do we do?"

[partofaplan]

"Hold these..." He holds up the isolinear chips. "...While I try to get 'em back the right way."

[spideys]

Peter does as directed, holding a colourful piece of tech in each hand.

He gives them a close inspection for curiousity's sake.

"You do know what you're doing, right?"

[partofaplan]

"Of course."

He slots a chip in. The console beeps, and the candy starts pouring out faster.

"...Not."

[spideys]

"Oh - oh, man. No."

Peter can't help but laugh as he watches the candy flood out from replicator at an accelerated pace, nearly resembling colourful, comical water.

It's - wow. It's actually hilarious, and yeah the look on his roommate's face is pretty priceless too.

Sorry, Quill.

[partofaplan]

And, okay, Quill is just going to start laughing, too.

Because, yeah. Alright. He has a sense of humour, after all.

[funnythingsare]

Tony saunters up, prepared to do his own bit of tampering.

And then he realizes he's been usurped, at least at the moment, as self-proclaimed tinkerer.

"Wow," he says flatly. "Look, I respect the need to fuck with the programming, but for candy? I mean..." He pauses. "Actually, I can respect that. To a point. The point up until I actually came in here looking for a drink."

[partofaplan]

"Ha ha." Quill grumbles around an isolinear chip in his mouth. "It ain't as though I wanted this to happen, alright?"

[funnythingsare]

"Now you're saying you don't like candy? I really can't trust you."

Tony steps forward and pulls the chip out of the young man's mouth. Hey, what are cooties? He examines it, reaches down for another, and sticks the two into slots as if he knows what he's doing.

Sometimes that works.

Instead, he's now getting what look suspiciously like Cadbury eggs.

[partofaplan]

"What are you doing?!" Pete hisses reaching up and yanking the chips out again. The replicators continue dispensing their rainbow-coloured spheres.

"You can't just dick around with this shit. That's how I got in this mess to begin with!" He remarks, in the same hushed tones. He then gestures to the paper he's holding. "That goes there, and that goes there." Isolinear chips are slotted in; the same ones Tony tried.

There's a distorted bleep, and now there's Hershey Kisses being generated.

...At least they're wrapped?

[funnythingsare]

"Dicking around with this shit is the only way anything gets done," Tony says. "I know what I'm doing at least as well as you do."

Better, probably. At least Tony has the sense to grab an egg and shove the whole thing in his mouth.

[partofaplan]

If you think Quill hasn't stuffed his pockets with enough candy to give Augustus Gloop jealousy issues, you're sorely mistaken...

... He is going to continue to slot chips in according to his document and just ignore Stark. He needs to sort this out before anyone important notices, after all.

Finally, all the chips are slotted back in... And the replicators are now dispensing Kinder Surprise eggs.

"... Now it's just fuckin' with me. I don't even know what these are."

[funnythingsare]

"Ooh," Tony coos, with an enthusiasm only half-faked. "These things. Awesome."

He grabs one and rips it open.

"Some of these are limited edition," he points out. He pulls the chocolate apart, eats it, and opens the plastic shell. Only to reveal a tiny Steve Rogers. "Seriously," he grumbled. "The bastard's everywhere."

[partofaplan]

Well, Quill's out of ideas. It's not like he has one of those fancy diagnostic scanning tools he's seen the Federation folk out and about with...

He glances over his shoulder, looking up from the diagram he's got drawn.

"...Is that Captain America?"

[funnythingsare]

Tony grimaced slightly. "Great. Another fanboy. Why can't I find a dimension or future or whatever that doesn't know Captain America?" He peered at the man. "You don't know me, do you? I'm at least as famous as he is. And way cooler."

Okay, so that might not be totally accurate. But sometimes you had to present the reality you wanted to enact.

[partofaplan]

"Uh... Sorry, bro, but I ain't been on Terra for... Over twenty years."

He's honest, at least.

[whereishe]

Sleep wasn't something that came easy for the sphere hunter and she once again found herself wandering around at night. She only ever needed four hours of sleep to function normally and that was usually all she could get without being awoken by nightmares.

Yuna hears the muffled sounds of shouting as she passed by the longue and changes her course to get a closer look. It was mostly empty which was what she expected but there were drinks being poured from all of the replicators and someone shouting. She didn't know what he was trying to do but she was curious to find out.

She ran up behind him and leaned over to look at his work. "What did you break?"

[partofaplan]

Quill is busy trying to sort this out before anyone important comes along, sliding and slotting isolinear chips back into their respective slots, following the instructions on the paper in reverse.

"Now ain't the time for me to explain myself." He mumbles under this breath. "Warning. Replicator voice command system offline."

This earns the replicator unit a smack on the side, and a "Shaddap."

[whereishe]

"Can't we just short it out for now?" Yuna wasn't going to shout but her voice did get loud since the cascade of skittles and M&M threatened to drown her own.

She had a way to make it stop but she didn't want to break anything, granted if she did it right it would just be a burnt fuse that could easily be replaced.

[she_listens]

"What is going on?"

The voice belongs to the head bartender, a woman Peter has probably seen more than a few times since arriving.

She's standing no more than two feet away, watching the escalating disaster. Her dark eyes shift to Peter.

He has some explaining to do, and fast.

[partofaplan]

"Uh." Shit. "It, uh... Just started goin' haywire."

True. He's missing some details, but it's true.

"I was tryin' to fix it..."

[she_listens]

She believes him about as far as she can throw him, but given the situation she doesn't waste time on accusations. She gathers her skirt, never one to rest on her laurels while other people get things done, and wades up beside him.

"Computer, stop the current replication!"

"Unable to comply. Standard command and control functions have been tampered with."

"Override!"

"Unable to comply."

She looks at Peter.

"What exactly did you do?"

[partofaplan]

Well, he's not going to lie about it. That'd be counter-productive, so...

He abashedly just hands over the paper with the instructions on it.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to break it."

[she_listens]

Guinan takes the piece of paper and frowns at it, then frowns at Peter again. She activates the combadge she's wearing.

"Ten Forward to Engineering, we have a situation up here."

She sounds exasperated, pointing at Peter with the paper.

"Next time you want a glass of whiskey, you could try asking the bartender first."

She presses the instructions against his chest and turns to the panel he removed. She's not sure which way the isolinear chips are supposed to go, but since she doesn't want to see how long this thing can spit out those orbs without getting tired, she's just going to start taking them out and seeing what works. Engineering answers her comm, but all she says is, "You better get up here. Fast."

Skittles are bouncing off of her hat.

"What are these things, anyway?"

[partofaplan]

"Uh..." He shifts, wading through the slowly growing deluge.

"Skittles, I think... And M&M's." He looks down at the diagram, then at the exposed panel. "I think I know how to turn it off. Can I...?"

[she_listens]

"Are they drink capsules?"

That doesn't make sense, but how he could have gotten from whiskey to ... whatever these are is a mystery to her.

She glances up, expression inviting him to do what needs to be done, and moves over to give him room to help.

"You better hurry, or we're all going to be swimming to get to where we need to be."

[partofaplan]

"Uh, no... it's... candy."

He's wading over, crouching by the panel, the multi-coloured orbs cascading over his head. He reaches in and feels around, grasping something and pulling. The replicators instantly shut down.

"Phew..." He sighs, shaking his head to rid his hair of any stray skittles.

[she_listens]

Candy, of course.

Most of it flattens underfoot, but with the sheer volume of it all — and those hard candy shells — it's almost like stepping on marbles.

Every time Guinan moves, her feet slip and she wobbles.

It's enough to make her laugh, but watching the colorful waterfall ping off of Quill's head pushes her right over. Don't take this to mean you're off the hook, Star-lord. Sometimes you just have to laugh.

"What did you do?"

[partofaplan]

"I, uh... bridged the IDN relays. Basically, broke the circuit. There's no power going through the relays to the isolinear control chips, so it stopped."

A slight shrug. "I still don't know why it went haywire, though."

[she_listens]

"So in other words, you broke it?"

The question is spoken with more humor now than previously.

"There are some things you just can't outguess, and other things that have a mind of their own."

She shakes candy out of her clothes, and arches an eyebrow.

"And still others that shouldn't be tampering with things they don't understand."

[partofaplan]

"Uh, yeah. I broke it."

He shifts a bit, the multi-coloured spheres cascading everywhere as he does.

"Yeah, well, I thought I knew what I was doing."

[she_listens]

Guinan's eyes glint with mischief.

"Come with me."

She motions over her shoulder, and carefully picks her way through the candy river toward the far end of the bar.

"So you have experience with Starfleet technology?"

[partofaplan]

And Pete is just going to follow after her. He's got a bad feeling about this, but he can't exactly say no...

"Uh, well... I know a bit. Ain't much to brag about, really, but re-wired one computer console, re-wired 'em all."

[she_listens]

Saying 'no' would be inadvisable.

"Really? So you're an engineer?"

(It's a traaap.)

[partofaplan]

"Uh... No?" He definitely looks a lot smaller than he is, almost like a little kid expecting their calm, collected parent to suddenly explode.

[she_listens]

"Didn't think so."

Despite the mild tone of her voice, the look she casts at him is sharp. Stopping in front of a supply closet, she grabs a broom and holds it out to him.

"How about this? You have any experience with sweeping?"

Answer carefully.

[partofaplan]

Well... It's better than he expected...

He's just going to reach for the broom to start sweeping, looking incredibly dejected, but not at the fact he has to sweep.

Mostly at the fact he was so close to amending these replicators.

[she_listens]

Good choice.

Guinan folds her arms over her chest, and in another lifetime she might have looked like a disapproving nun watching as a naughty student copied his prayer book onto a blackboard twenty times.

But after a few minutes, the dejected puppy expression on his face does get to her.

She shakes her head.

"What were you trying to get the replicators to do? I'm assuming not this."