Rating: US (Utterly Silly)
Disclaimer: blah blah blah George blah blah blah
Title: The IT Girl
Summary: The new IT director arrives on campus

*********************

Flashback: HSU staff meeting, two weeks ago

"OK, that covers this month's shoe bills," the Nurse said, heaving three enormous cardboard boxes to the floor. "Last item: we've hired an IT Director, Delphi. She starts January 1st."

"Ho, Wo, or Wench?" asked the Diva, admiring the reflected sparkle of her new diamond snowflake earrings in the highly polished top of the mahogany conference table.

"She's been a Wo as long as I've known her," the Nurse said, recalling certain shady incidents from her youth. "Rock the Casbah" began drifting through her mind for some reason. "I knew her in high school. She was mostly into drinking and boinking. Don't think she's changed much."

Ellie picked a clump of unidentifiable blue fur off her sweater. "And we hired her because...?"

"She was mostly into drinking and boinking and I don't think she's changed much."

"Ah."

"Grateful or ungrateful?" inquired the Diva, waggling her hand to increase the sparkle capacity of her new diamond bracelets.

"So Ungrateful that she may not want any General appointments at all," Darry said. "She's bringing a friend or two that should keep her occupied, at least for a while."

"Excellent." Emmy promptly lost all interest in the conversation and hummed happily to herself as she admired the reflection of her new diamond necklace.

"And how are we going to pay her salary?" demanded the Dean. "I mean it's not like we've got a diamond mine under the rugby pitch or anything." Pointed silence greeted this remark. "Well, I mean we DO, but it's not like its infinite. And it's not just the salary, there's the Nutella, the chocolate, and the shoes as well."

"Not to worry on the shoe count. She's either barefoot or in those knee-high RenFest leather boots. And she's endowed."

"I don't care how big her boobs are, I still say -"

"No, no, no - endowed as in she comes with an endowment fund that covers her salary. She just wants us to pay her expenses."

"Brilliant," said the Dean in satisfaction. "No shoes and no salary, just expenses." She shrugged. "Expenses for a computer geek - probably Cheezits and Ding-Dongs, how much could that be?"

<cue ominous foreboding music>

"Tell her no problem."

*********************

A red Miata, top down, came flying down the road leading to HSU, scattering chickens left and right, and screeched to a halt before the wide-open ornate iron gates. The driver brushed long dark hair away from her face and examined the sign posted beside the gate. Originally the sign had read "Ho State University: Home of a General, a Wench and some Hos." The "a" in "a General" had been scratched out and the word "Two" written in crayon above it - the same crayon had added an "s" at the end of "General." Beneath the sign several additions had been made: "a bunch of Wos" in gold glitter paint, "a corrupt Senator" in purple paint, "a Mastah" in pink with little hearts. Post-it notes in a variety of colors and sizes informed the reader of further personnel: an elf, a Greysider, a fallen Emperor, and so on. Several showed water spots. The end result was something that looked rather less like a sign and rather more as though an untidy multi-colored bird had splatted itself against the wall and stuck there.

Delphi pulled her head back inside the car. "Looks like this is it," she said to her large, dark companion. "Bout time, I'm parched. Wonder where we can get a drink. I hear the Pub's good."

"I do not like the looks of this place," growled her companion. Dark eyes glared fiercely above a black beard and mustache. "It does not appear to be...normal. What is a Greysider?"

"Worf, we didn't come here because we wanted normal," Delphi pointed out patiently. "We HAD normal. We were bored, remember? We wanted more!"

"I thought we came because you were fired from Starfleet Academy for --"

"Yes yes yes," Delphi interrupted hastily. "Forget about that. We came here because we wanted FUN. And an unlimited expense account."

"I am not sure that fun is something a warrior should be having."

"Oh, lighten up." She smiled at him and tweaked the short dark braid down his back.

His frown grew - if possible - even more disapproving. "Klingons do not 'lighten up'."

Delphi sighed. "Whatever." She put the Miata in gear, guided it through the gateposts and up the long winding drive. As they passed the rugby field, Worf gazed appreciatively at a group of warriors drilling. "At least they have some fighting men here," he said. "Their weapons are antiquated, but perhaps it is -" Suddenly two women wielding huge fire-hoses leaped into view, drenching the warriors from head to foot. Squeals, laughter and highly suggestive comments could clearly be heard across the field. "- not normal after all," he finished.

******************

Delphi opened the tiny trunk of the Miata, pulled out a Coach bag, and slammed it quickly shut again. "You wait here." She grabbed a handful of Chex party mix from the bowl installed in the center console of the red sports car. "I'll find Darry, see where my office is." Worf's eyes, she noticed, were fixed on some point over her left shoulder. She waved her hand in front of his face but he didn't blink. "Hellooooo, are you listening?" She turned to see what he was staring at. It was Legolas in full Christmas splendor.

Dragging his gaze back to her face, Worf said, "Why is the Romulan wearing bells?"

Delphi choked back a snort of laughter. "He's not a Romulan, he's an elf." Poor Worf, she thought. He needed some down time to deal with all of this. Preferably down on a bed. Or down on the ground. Or - "Ahem. I'll find out where our room - er, office - is."

Worf glared from under his considerable eyebrow ridges. Despite the sight of Delphi's backside as she walked away from him, which generally put him in a very good mood, he was not happy at the moment. "Definitely not normal," he muttered under his breath.

******************

Delphi banged open the door marked "Clinic - Do Not Open On Pain of Pain." "Darry!! So excellent to see you after all this time!" She threw herself into a chair.

"Delphi, glad you made it." The Nurse waved in her general direction, then turned back to the telephone. "I don't care what he says, I did NOT order sixteen George Foreman grills. Obviously they got MY order confused with someone else's." She sighed. "All right, all right. Maybe we can teach the Ewoks to cook and get some use out of the damn chickens." She slammed the phone down. "Great to see you!" She looked down at Delphi's knee-high lace-up leather boots. "Ooh, Aragorn will like those."

"Nice, aren't they? Oh, here, before I forget. Here's a list of expenses I need reimbursement for." From the pocket of her denim jacket Delphi extracted a zip disk and tossed it onto the Nurse's desk. "I had to compress the file to fit it on the zip disk, let me know if you can't read it. The leather boots are Item 1. The Miata's number 268." She grinned. "Thanks for the job."

"You'll fit right in, I think," said Darry with a sly smile, tossing the zip disk into the bin labelled "Palpatine's Expenses - Pay from Senate Fund."

******************

"OK, Worf, office is this way." Delphi locked the Miata. She was halfway to the Admin building when she realized Worf wasn't following her. Sighing, she returned to the car and looked up at him, hands on her hips. He did not look pleased. "Look, you don't have to stay here, you know. Maybe you'd like to go back on the Amateur Bat-Leth circuit?"

Black brows came together in a frown. "No. You are my commanding officer," Worf responded firmly. "I will stay with you."

"I'm not your commanding officer," Delphi reminded him. "That was Picard."

"Ah. Well, you are my friend, and I will stay -"

"No. I'm not your friend. That was Riker."

He looked puzzled. "You are not in a red suit, so you are not The Ensign Who Always Dies..."

"Definitely not."

"Are you a colonist in distress?"

"Arrrghhh!" Delphi put her head in her hands. He'd been this way since he took a bat-leth upside the head a month ago. It didn't impair his, um, performance, but it did make for some repetitive conversation. "Worf, for the last time. Try to remember. I'm not your CO, your friend, your wife, or Ensign Smith. I'm a Wo and an IT professional. You were drunk in a dive on Kessel when I found you, moping over your Betazed ex-girlfriend. You're here because I took your mind off her." She paused. "And because we boinked our way across the Crab Nebula and had so much fun we didn't want to stop."

Worf blinked. Recollection began to dawn in his eyes. "Here, maybe this will remind you." She dragged his face down to hers and kissed him, hard, for quite some time. Faint applause and whistles drifted over from the rugby pitch. "There," she said a little breathless as she released him.

"Ah," he said thoughtfully. "Yes, it's coming back to me. Where did you say our room was?"

******************

"OK, time to do a little work," Delphi said, sitting up on the edge of the bed and pulling on her leather boots. "Come on, come on, let's head down to the Pub." She poked Worf's bare shoulder. He didn't move. She leaned over and whispered, "Romulan ale..." into his ear. Worf's elbow thwacked her in the head as he leaped for his clothes. "Ouch, damn it." She eyed the burly Klingon, now dressed and clearly ready for a cold-n-frosty. "I'll have to remember that one, seems to work like a charm."

******************

Despite the early hour, the Pub was by no means empty. Delphi claimed a table with a good view of the television above the bar and propped her leather-clad feet up on a chair opposite. The screen showed a man dressed in black with grungy hair standing in front of a map of the campus, above which was a caption which read SUPER DOPPLER ORC REPORT. "Beware!" the man was saying as he pointed to the Admin building with his sword. "The night has shadows. Orcs have been sighted nigh unto this very spot..."

Worf stalked to the bar to order their drinks. "Labatt's. And a Romulan ale." The bartender, an attractive young woman occupied in polishing the already spotless bar directly in front of Worf, ignored him. Placing both hands on the bar and leaning forward, he said "LaBatt-" The slightest change in air pressure to his left warned him. He leaped backwards, and the Lousiville Slugger whistled through the space where his head had been a moment before. "Don't. Touch. My. Bar." Judy hissed through clenched teeth. "Now I'll have to disinfect it. No telling what sort of nasty Klingon cooties you might have brought with you."

Worf looked around, wondering if this was normal behavior. None of the other patrons seemed to notice anything amiss. Ten Forward was never like this, he thought. Guinan was strange but she never tried to whack you in the head. Perhaps she had misunderstood him - *a* bat, instead of *La*batt's. "I would like...a drink," he said cautiously, hands behind his back and being careful not to so much as exhale on the bar.

"You didn't say the magic word," Judy trilled sweetly. With the bat out of sight again and polishing cloth in hand, she looked so...harmless, he thought. But then, lots of very dangerous things looked harmless at first glance. Delphi, for instance.

"I would like a drink..please."

Judy smiled sunnily at him with no sign of the homicidal rage that had animated her only moments before. "Certainly, my good man. What's your pleasure?"

Freshly boinked and with a frosty LaBatt's and a bowl of Chex Mix in front of her, Delphi was feeling pleased with all the world. Worf sipped his ale and watched the other patrons suspiciously. They were a motley crew. Some of the men were wearing what appeared to be short skirts. Nothing would surprise him at this point, he thought. His father Mogh could drop out of the sky wearing a tutu and singing Blue Suede Shoes, and he wouldn't turn a hair.

A skinny boy with a braid precariously glued to his cheek came bouncing up to their table. "Delphi, you're Delphi, right? The new IT director? Right? Right?" He was practically quivering with eagerness.

"Yes. And you," Delphi looked him up and down, "must be Cal." She crunched a handful of Chex Mix. "What can I do for you?"

Cal went pink with pleasure. "You know my name?! Oh, wow, that is SO cool!! You must have, like, read the whole HSU brochure and everything before you came, huh? So like you know everybody, wow!"

"Um, yeah, sure," said Delphi, remembering the illegible notes, written in magic marker on a bar napkin, that had arrived in a chocolate-stained envelope labelled BROSHER. "Absolutely."

"Well, anyway, I just wanted to know if I could maybe do some work for you, like learn more about computers? I mean, I seem to have this bad effect on them, and I'd like to, you know, get better at it."

A large neon sign erected itself in Delphi's brain and began blinking, "DANGER, DANGER" in large red letters. "Well," she said cautiously, "I'm sure you could be a real computer whiz, Cal, but -"

"Really?!?!? See now I think I could DO that. I mean there's not much I can do, just ask anybody around here, but I think that's something I could really do a good job at! Thanks! Thanks so much!!!" He scampered off back to a table full of freshmen, where he could be seen making excited gestures.

Worf leaned down and with two fingers picked up a long wormy thing from the bar floor. He looked at it with distaste. "He has dropped his...appendage."

Delphi snorted. "Seems to happen a lot. Maybe when he hits puberty - "

"Now THERE'S a terrifying thought," broke in Dande, sitting down at the table. "The very idea makes one's skin crawl. Delphi, listen, about the speed of our internet connection - is there anything you can do about that? It's taking way too long for the 3-trillion-color 800000-by-600000-resolution pictures of muffins to come up on Epicurious.com. I just can't be waiting a full three seconds, I'm a busy woman."

Delphi downed the last of her beer and motioned to Worf to get her another one. "Yes, I think we can do something about that. I'd like to put in a T1 line and make HSU our own internet service provider. With that and the Eludi - uh, with a few other items I've got, I think we can promise you .002 second load time, even for those live-action cake-decorating videos."

"Fabulous! I'll be looking forward to it." She stood up, then glanced at Worf. "You really should exfoliate regularly, you know, it might help with that little forehead issue."

Worf stared after the departing Wench. "She reminds of Deanna for some reason."

"Zip it, boy." Delphi pointed a finger between his eyes. "That name doesn't get mentioned here. I listened to you whinge about her halfway from Kessel to Coruscant. NO MORE."

A moment later the sound of expensive footwear wafted towards them as Darry entered the Pub, followed by Ellie. Darry went straight to the bar while Ellie sat down next to Worf. "Delphi, hey, nice to have you here. I hear you found your room OK."

"Oh, yesssssss," said Delphi, waggling her eyebrows at Worf. "We found it more than OK. Quite satisfactory indeed."

"In fact, I think the whole campus heard you," Ellie added, slapping Delphi on the shoulder.

"Nudge nudge wink wink," shouted Darry from the bar.

Delphi winced at Ellie's touch. "I should hope so. I've got the wounds to prove it."

Worf scowled into his ale. "I don't know what you mean by 'wounds'." He paused, then added, "and I do not understand why you wish to make everything so...public."

"I could be MORE public," Delphi pointed out. "I haven't shown anyone the scars. She looked at Worf thoughtfully. "Maybe we can get Ellie to file your teeth for you. Those puncture wounds are hell."

A bleached-blonde young man seated at the bar with what appeared to be a Bloody Mary turned round momentarily at the mention of puncture wounds. His eyebrows shot up at the sight of Worf's forehead. He muttered "Bloody demons, even comin' in the bleedin' pub now..." and went back to his Sex Trivia game.

Worf looked scandalized at Delphi's suggestion. "She is a veterinarian! An animal doctor!"

"Oh, and I suppose you're not an animal?" Ellie scoffed. "The Nurse might be willing to do it for you," she suggested after a moment's thought. "Although given her attitude towards Klingons you might not get him back for a while."

"The Nurse does not like Klingons?" Worf growled. "Ha. It does not matter. Warriors do not need nurses."

"Oh she likes them all right," Ellie laughed. "Ask her about her tattoo."

Worf opened his mouth to respond but before he could speak, a grungy figure in black wielding a large sword leaped through the pub doors. "ORC! ORC! ORC!" he cried, and dove at Worf sending both sprawling to the floor.

"KLINGON! KLINGON! KLINGON!" Delphi shouted helpfully, leaping back as the table overturned with a crash but skillfully saving her beer.

"DON'T TOUCH THE BAR!" shrieked Judy, whipping out the bat and waving it threateningly at anyone who got too close.

"Oh, dear." Ellie shook her head. Worf broke a chair over his assailant's spine. "I was afraid that would happen. It's the hair, and the forehead, you know." A lethal sword-thrust at Worf's midsection was blocked by the Romulan ale bottle in his left hand. "And it's not as if Aragorn doesn't already see orcs here, there and everywhere." Grabbing a handful of spilled Chex mix, Aragorn cried "Elendil!" and poked Worf in the eye with a Brazil nut.

"Mmm. Well, boys will be boys." They stood there a moment watching the thrashing melee on the floor. Delphi drained the last drops from her bottle. "Drink?"

"Yes, thanks," said Ellie. They turned and made their way to join Darry at the bar. "I want to talk to you about some software for DNA analysis and for tracking breeding programs for some of my animals. I'm thinking of crossing the chickens with the Ewoks so we get larger eggs, but I'm worried we might end up with chickens that eat roses..."

In the background, a furious figure armed with a Louisville Slugger had joined the fray and was laying about her for all she was worth.

******************

An hour later the Pub had returned to normal - or at least, as normal as it could be given that this was HSU. Aragorn and Worf were nursing their wounds, drinking Romulan ale and debating which was more dangerous, a Nazgul or a large black puddle of Pure Concentrated Evil. Ellie had finished outlining the requirements for her breeding software and Delphi, between drinks, had taken detailed, meticulous notes in lipstick on a bar napkin.

"Napkin 3's a bit soggy but the lipstick seemed to have held up all right." Delphi squinted at her notes. "You want it to chart the maximum grief -"

"Growth."

"- growth for each combination, and identify potential puppies -"

"Problems."

"Problems. Yup, yup, got it all here." She made a neat little pile of the napkins. They were red and bore in white letters the words, "DO NOT MEDDLE IN THE AFFAIRS OF DRAGONS, FOR YOU ARE CRUNCHY AND GOOD WITH KETCHUP."

"Right, that's that then." Ellie stood up. "Uh-oh."

"What?" Delphi turned around in time to see a line of furious faces marching into the Pub towards her. "What's all this?"

"He PEED on my computer!" shouted Kendra, brandishing a stapler under Delphi's nose. "I had to use a LOT of VERY VALUABLE WATER to clean it up." She slammed the stapler down towards the bar, swiftly diverting it at the last moment so that it didn't actually come in contact with the surface. "Not to mention that it's really, really disgusting."

"Yeah, he peed on mine too!" "And mine!" came a chorus of agreement from the other angry grrrls.

"Who did?"

"Cal," Tara said crossly. "And I think I'm speaking for all of us when I say you'd better have a good explanation for this, Delphi. This is NOT the way to get tenure around here."

"And why is this my fault?" objected Delphi.

"He says you told him he could. He says he asked you for a job and you told him -"

"What? Not me!! I told him he could be a computer whiz -" She smacked her forehead. "And the idiotic little twerp has been whizzing *ON* the computers!" Great, just great, she thought. Fired on her first day. No wonder Cal had run off shouting that this, at last, was something he felt he could do. "Stupid git."

Silence fell as the grrls digested this. "Typical Cal," one of them said finally. "Could happen to anybody, really," agreed another. Laure stepped forward. "All right, I guess we should have warned you. Look, Delphi, you're new here, so let me give you a little advice. Never, never, never tell Cal he can do anything. Always tell him he can't. Always. No matter what it is. It saves time and effort." She patted Delphi's arm. "Not your fault. But we do need to do something about these computers. You can't expect anyone to use them now."

"No, absolutely not." said Delphi. "Yecchhhh. We'll order some of the nice new ones that are compatible with the Eludium - er, with some other new products that have come out. Faster processors. They come in much nicer colors, too. Good excuse to upgrade the entire system, don't you think?"

******************

Delphi yawned and wandered to the back table where Worf was conversing with Aragorn on the mating habits of hobbits. "Two a.m. Ready to go, Mr Worf?"

The formal address brought the Klingon immediately to attention. "Yes, sir!"

"Love that instinctive reaction," Delphi grinned. "Right, let's turn in. Oh, and get Malfoy out of the trunk of the Miata before you come to bed, will you?"

******************