The Intrepid Origins

THE BARISTA

PART ONE

"JESUS CHRIST! Daph, I'm just a barista, I can't chase tornadoes?!" Solomon turned to stare at his best friend as she strapped herself into the driver's seat of their rented truck. She sent him a smile as she gestured to the straps, "Why the hell not? I'm just an officer-in-training, Sol, and I'm chasing that EMF5 whether you like it or not!" She gave him a thumbs up as she shook her long blonde-ish hair out of the ponytail.

Hands at 2 and 10, she stepped on the gas. They had rented an old-timely twenty-first century truck for this, a dark red bushy old thing that looked like it had been pulled straight out of a museum. "What are we going to when it picks us up into the air?!" Solomon, Daphnea's only friend from Earth, looked extremely panicked, "We don't have the anti-grav phasers to right us back to the ground in this piece of junk!"

"Exactly! We're going to rough it out like the people in Twisters!" Daphnea had only been on Earth for about a year now, having moved to train for Starfleet. She found the tiny blue planet fascinating, it wasn't everyday a simple born-and-raised space station junkie got to see their species' home planet. She'd heard about it, of course, since her mother had moved to Brooklyn the moment after she was born. But it was condensed down to a basic postcard from New York on Christmas Day and sometimes a bottle of Earth's finest beer on her birthday.

This, though, was the real deal. She was here and she wasn't leaving until she finished the academy in a year's time. Might as well make the most of it.

"Is that what's this is about? That ancient movie you saw in that dying cinema?!" Solomon scoffed, "Honestly, Daph, I don't know what you did for fun on Prometheus, but on Earth, chasing tornadoes is universally considered dangerous," He shook his head, pulling his straps over his shoulders and covering his eyes with basic plastic glasses you'd find at a range. She chuckled, shrugging as she turned the truck onto a dirt road, "Dangerous? You wouldn't know dangerous even if you stared right at it. Dangerous is living in a home that with flick of the wrong button, you've lost oxygen," She kept on eye on the road and the other on her PADD that was giving directions, "I mean like, beep bop beep, oops! There goes gravity!" Another laugh, swerving onto another path.

"Sometimes I wonder why I followed you out to Oklahoma," Pinching the space between his eyebrows, he accidentally knocked his glasses off his face. He tried bending down to grab them, but the straps stopped him, "It's been a week and we haven't done a calm activity since you forced me onto that god awful plane," He gave up trying to get his glasses, choosing to cling onto the door handle as Daphnea sped up.

"You needed to get out San Francisco and I wanted to see the glorious Oklahoma, we teamed up and bought a holiday here," His best friend replied, dryly, "Simple. Nothing more, nothing less," Like every other day of their getaway, she was rocking shorts and a t-shirt with the words 'Neptune Bitch' on her chest. That was where Prometheus Space Station was, he believed, orbiting the icy cold waters of Neptune.

"And what's so glorious about Oklahoma anyway? All I see is dinky little farms with dirty roadside circus shows," He wasn't going to deny that he had wished to leave San Fran, where his family had lived for generations making profit of their prehistoric coffee house. It wasn't the life he had wanted, considering he worked the night shift at the cafe. His brother was to inherit the shop, thus he got the more sociable hours and Solomon got stuck with creepy midnight regulars who stumbled in for extra strong coffee.

But that was how he met Daphnea so he couldn't complain too much.

She had just joined the academy, and with her training courses, she spent most of the night studying and most of the day kicking her gym coach's ass, so she always needed the extra strong stuff. She found the first 24/7 coffee house nearest the academy dorms and start coming every night. She was the first customer that didn't make Solomon want to quit, or get a restraining order. And then the Great Accident of October happened, which kickstarted the friendship of Solomon Reid and Daphnea Opals.

He glanced out the window, gazing out the windy hills that seemed to zoom by them. Daphnea shrugged, "Both my father and mother grew up in Oklahoma, and when I say my father, he lived there until he was three and then moved to the USS Anakin. My mum moved out when she got in to the San Fran School of Arts, she had just turned seventeen," She said it with no emotion, like her mind was elsewhere. It probably was, Solomon noted, it always is when she thinks about her mother. Not her stepmother, her real mother. The one who divorced Mr. Opals and avoided seeing her children for years.

He didn't know if memories of her mother made her sorrowful or she really didn't have any emotion towards her. He wouldn't know what he would do if his birth mother was a money-loving cow like Arelle Blanchett, he might curl up into a ball and die if someone had mentioned her. But, in reality, Mrs. Reid was a lovely woman who made the most delicious Victoria Sponge Cake and had adorable bashful cheeks like a delicate china doll. "Oh, and why do you want to be out in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma? Surely they lived in the city,"

Daphnea shook her head, a smile replacing the cold emotionless face of before, "Because why not? If there's a chance we can chase down a real rough 'nado, why not take it?" There's the Daphnea he knew, her normal personality being fished out of her head once danger was on the table. And it was definitely on the cards now, Solomon could see dark storm clouds in the distance. It wouldn't be long until a tornado was formed, he theorised.

"Because we might die?" He shivered, pushed back by force as Daphnea accelerated, "Because I'd like to live? Y'know, what normal people do? Live,"

The winds were picking up now, the air getting colder and colder as they sped closer to the horizon. "You're such a worrier, Sol. Do you think I haven't made every possible effort to ensue our safety?" She turned to face him, raising an eyebrow. "Yes!" He exclaimed back, "If wasn't for the fact this state is landlocked, you would've gone swimming with sharks in a bikini!"

"That's a good idea actually," She mumbled before seeing the terrified look on her friend's face, "But anyway! I've got straps so we're locked into the seats and five-foot deep drills so we can't be lifted off the ground," She lightly tapped the console in between them, "I've got everything figured out. We're going to be fine, I'm a trained professional,"

"You're an officer-in-training, that means nothing to chasing tornados!" Solomon threw his hands in the air in annoyance, "Let's face it, we are really unsafe and I suggest we turn back," It was too late for that, he could see the tornado begin to form in the dark storm clouds. There would be no turning back once Daphnea saw them. "Puh!" She scoffed, "I'm in-training, that's got to mean something!"

"No, no it doesn't!"