"So what did you get the little psychos?"

Ortiz grinned at O'Neill as the American came to peer over his shoulder curiously. Despite his continual stream of insults where Miguel's young cousins were concerned, the Cuban noticed that his friend always knew when there was a birthday due, and somehow there was always an extra present to be packed and sent when the time came.

Right now it was the turn of the twins, Cesar and Marco, and Miguel had been spending the previous week dreaming up and then discarding idea after idea. Seven year old boys were at an awkward age to buy for. Too young for the kind of toys Miguel really wanted to buy them, but too old for the colouring books and construction bricks they had been content with up until now. It was an unwritten law within the Ortiz family that birthday presents were never expensive. That particular madness was reserved for Christmas - and only on occasion then. Trying to find inexpensive toys which would retain the attention of his hyperactive cousins had taxed Miguel's ingenuity to breaking point, but he was rather pleased with what he had finally settled on.

"Guns?" O'Neill queried doubtfully as he eyed the gifts Ortiz had been about to wrap up. "Isn't Luna going to object to that?"

Ortiz snorted in derision. "They're water-rifles, idiot. If you've ever seen guns that look like this in real life, you've been moonlighting on us!" He opened one of the boxes and pulled out a garishly coloured gun which looked like a reject from a very bad example of the B-features so beloved by Krieg. "Anyway, the family lives on Cuba, remember? We don't have the hangups you Americans have about guns."

Now it was O'Neill's turn to make a disparaging noise as he reached over Miguel's shoulder to take the water-rifle. "That's because you didn't have the problem with them that we had at the close of the last century," he pointed out. "That kind of insanity leaves a lot of healthy scars."

Ortiz gave him a baffled look. "How can you have healthy scars?" he wanted to know. "And I'd like my present back, if you don't mind."

"In a minute," O'Neill said absently. Plunking himself down on the sofa, he continued to check the rifle out, slowly figuring out how it worked. "You know, I always wanted to play with something like this while I was growing up," he told Ortiz, "but my parents would never let me. I sneaked away when we were in Egypt and tried to join in with a running battle some of the other kids had going, but they were too nervous about what would happen if they got caught with me, so they wouldn't let me."

Ortiz winced at the wistful note in O'Neill's voice. Tim rarely spoke about the negative aspects of his childhood, but from the Cuban's point of view his friend's parents seemed to have devoted their lives to making sure Tim never experienced any of the millions of things other children considered normal. Watching the way Tim handled the rifle with a faraway look in his eye, Ortiz was seized by a sudden urge to do something stupid and frivolous; anything to drive away the shadows which were now in Tim's eyes. Reaching back to unbox the second rifle, he leaned forward and swatted O'Neill across the back of the head.

"What was that for?" O'Neill demanded aggrievedly.

"I'm challenging you," Miguel shot back. "C'mon, pistols at dawn and all that."

O'Neill stared at him in astonishment, glanced down at the water-rifle and then back to where the Cuban was heading for the kitchen. "But.... but it isn't dawn," he pointed out a little feebly.

There was a second's pause, then Ortiz' head reappeared around the door to the kitchen. "So? In case you hadn't noticed, these aren't pistols." Ducking back out of sight, there was a brief moment of silence, then: "I'm loading u-uup!"

With a smothered curse, O'Neill leapt to his feet and made for the bathroom.

oooOooo

"I still say we should have phoned ahead, Manny," Bridger repeated as he got out of the car he and Crocker had signed out of the UEO pool. "We're going to scare the two of them rigid when we turn up on the doorstep unannounced!"

Crocker grinned across at his friend and commanding officer. "Captain Bligh, you're not!" he chuckled, then laughed at the glare that earned him. "Trust me, Cap. If we rang ahead, these two pups would have spent the last half hour or so running themselves ragged getting the place fit for inspection and giving each other nervous breakdowns trying to work out what awful things we're going to do to them."

"But we only want to talk about training their subordinates to be as cross-trained as they've managed to teach themselves to be!" Bridger protested. "The only reason we're calling is because I wanted them to think about it before they came back on board, instead of just springing it on them."

"Cap, we're talking about a junior lieutenant and a chief on secondment from another navy. We're talking rampant paranoia and an ability to see disaster in the way Darwin whistles for his supper. It's way better to drop in on them unannounced and let them get their hysteria over and done with in one fell swoop."

"Okay, okay; granted, O'Neill could find some deep dark significance lurking in the way I ask him to announce that there was meatloaf for supper, but Ortiz?" Bridger gave Crocker a healthily sceptical look as they made their way up to the apartment the two younger men shared. "Come on, we're talking about Mr Optimist, here!"

Crocker gave an ill-suppressed snort of laughter as he rang the doorbell. "Nathan, you still need to get to know these kids," he observed gently. "Sure, Miguel's all bright and breezy on the outside, but he never lets his guard down. That kid would make a good security guard if I could just sell him on the idea."

"Why don't you?" The eloquent look that earned him warned Nathan that he had put his foot in it again. "Already tried, huh?"

"At least half a dozen times," Crocker admitted. "The kid's good, Cap. Hell, if O'Neill wasn't so damned set on making everyone think he was Navy Wimp of the Year, he'd be on my list of wants from Santa."

"Uh-huh. You wait until you see him lose his rag, Cap. It's a joy to watch. That boy knows more sneaky moves that I do - and I have quite a few decades on him! He's fast, he's a hell of a lot stronger than he looks and he has a temper that would make Vesuvius look like a damp squib on the Fourth of July. I've seen him and Ortiz demolish a San Diego bar full of Marines and there's a certain island in Greece where the local toughs call the pair of them 'sir' and stomp on anyone who looks like they might disturb them."

Bridger stared at him blankly. "Good God," he said.

"God - as O'Neill would be quick to point out to you in suitably anguished tones - has very little to do with it. There's more than a smidgen of the Devil in that pair, and if I could harness it...." Crocker's voice trailed away as he contemplated some delightful inner vision.

Bridger smiled to himself and shook his head. Despite the fact that he had one of the finest security sections in the UEO - or any other navy you might care to mention - Crocker was always on the lookout for ways to improve things even more. It had always been that way, as far back as Nathan could remember, but it never failed to amuse and amaze him the way Manny never quit trying to make it even better.

"Doesn't seem to be anyone in," Crocker observed as Bridger rang to doorbell a second time.

Bridger shrugged. "Well, it was a shot in the dark," he pointed out. "You know most other captains figure I'm eccentric because of the way I socialise with my crew away from the boat."

Crocker swallowed another grin. He would have used the word 'jealous' to describe those other captains, but he knew better than to embarrass Nathan by saying it out loud. "We could leave a suitably cryptic message tacked to the door," he suggested.

"You're an evil man, you know that, Manny?" Bridger demanded in exasperation. Before he could go on, the appearance of an elderly woman at the foot of the steps leading up to the apartment distracted him. "Ma'am?"

"And who might you be?" the woman demanded, her angular Oriental features twisted into a suspicious scowl.

"Um, I'm Captain Nathan Bridger, ma'am," Bridger said, acutely aware that her gaze was making him wish he was in full dress uniform and not in aged denims and a seaQuest T-shirt. He just managed to suppress the impulse to scuff his feet and look sheepish. "I'm O'Neill and Ortiz' commanding officer?"

The woman gave a snort which could have meant anything. "And that one?" she demanded.

"This is Security Chief Crocker," Nathan supplied hastily. "We apologise for disturbing you...."

"At my age, young man, very little disturbs me," the woman retorted tartly. "Security Chief, huh?" she continued, eyeing Crocker up and down. "Doesn't seem surly enough to be one of those."

Still trying to recover from being called a young man, Nathan didn't really register what she had said, although he caught the choked sound Crocker made and glanced at him in confusion. Before he could say anything else, however, the woman turned to go, her curiosity apparently satisfied. Then she paused, and gave them an unfathomable look.

"If you're looking for the children, they're playing in the garden," she said, pointing with her walking stick off to a side gate. Giving them an enigmatic smile, she disappeared as swiftly and silently as she had appeared.

"Children?" Bridger echoed in bewilderment.

Crocker cleared his throat. "Well, if she thought you were a young man, what would that make Ortiz and O'Neill?" he pointed out. Then he started to chuckle. "Young man," he repeated incredulously.

"Oh, shut it," Nathan growled. He would die rather than admit it, but it had been nice to hear someone use that description. "I can give you a few years, remember," he warned.

Crocker winced. Technically speaking, he was already beyond the retirement age for active-duty security personnel and the only way he had got away with it to date was the fact that he sent his seconds into potentially hazardous situations, co-ordinating from behind. That went very much against his grain, but Nathan was too eager to retain his extensive experience to put up with such macho nonsense and he regularly fielded attempts by Crocker to retire and make way for someone younger. Besides, Manny was the only person on board who remembered the things Nathan did, the past an actual experience rather than a lesson learned in a classroom. There was no way Nathan was letting go of him in a hurry.

Now Crocker was looking thoughtful as he looked in the direction of the gate. "Now that she's mentioned it, I think I remember O'Neill muttering something about liking to garden," he said slowly.

"Well, he should be pretty good at it, if those bonsai of his are anything to go by," Bridger agreed. "Come on, I think the old lady was giving us permission to go in."

He didn't know what he had expected when he went through the gate, but if pressed he would probably have hazarded a guess as to a small yard with a few pots of shrubs in it. He certainly wouldn't have guessed that the lush greenery he had been peripherally enjoying while talking to Crocker was actually part of the garden and not a bit of Hawaiian wilderness. When they slipped through the gate, however, they realised that the path they were on meandered away through the tall shrubs, splitting into several different paths which took different directions, curving away around carefully planted trees and shrubs and giving the impression that the garden was actually vast.

"Ye Gods," Crocker muttered. "He's not so much green-fingered as emerald up to his armpits!"

Bridger laughed and nudged at his friend. "Let's see if we can find at least one of them and deliver our message, then leave them in peace."

It was beautifully serene in the garden, Nathan reflected a little wistfully. There was very little traffic along the road which led to the house Tim and Miguel rented part of, and the bulk of the building and the various trees planted alongside muffled what little noise there was. All Bridger could hear at the moment was the sound of the slight breeze rustling through the leaves and birdsong all around them. There was a suggestion of water coming from somewhere up ahead and he caught himself as his steps quickened unconsciously. He was here on sufferance and it wasn't for him to explore as thoroughly as he might have wanted to.

He had carefully lifted aside a slim branch so covered with heavily scented, pale cream flowers that it was being weighed down almost to the ground, when the peace of the garden was abruptly shattered. About to warn Crocker to catch the branch, Bridger nearly leapt out of his skin when a banshee wail from his left was followed by a dark form erupting out of the undergrowth.

Spinning around to face it, Nathan found himself drenched with a fine spray of water. Taken completely by surprise, Bridger simply stood where he was, gasping a little at the coldness of the water and struggling to understand what had happened. Crocker seemed frozen to the spot alongside him, and it took a couple of seconds before Nathan realised that his 'attacker' was, in fact Ortiz. The Cuban was staring at him blankly, a frame of mind Nathan was totally sympathetic to as he tried to fathom what was going on.

"You're not O'Neill," Ortiz announced, a faintly accusatory note in his voice.

"No," Bridger admitted, "I'm not. I am, however, ever so slightly wet." He rubbed at his face and patted ineffectually at the dark pattern of moisture across his T-shirt. "We did try knocking, you know."

Crocker's howl of laughter made both Ortiz and Bridger jump slightly and they shared mutual looks of disgust as the Security Chief leaned forward to put his hands on his thighs and gave himself over to some unseemly hilarity. Despite the fact that he was already beginning to appreciate the humour in the situation now he was over the initial shock, Bridger wasn't ready to join his supposed friend in a similar loss of control. The bushes a little way further up to path suddenly agitated and O'Neill came shooting into view. Nathan eyed the garish water-rifle the lieutenant was clutching, twin to the one Ortiz held, and did some rapid mental arithmetic. Surely not, he thought, and felt his lips twitch.

O'Neill skidded to a halt, studied the scene in front of him in obvious horror, then turned to Ortiz in self-righteous fury. "You damned Cuban psychopath!" he yelled. "How many times do I have to tell you that you don't shoot the captain without asking permission first!"

On the other hand, Nathan thought to himself as he took in the sheepish expression on Ortiz' face and the mixture of panic and disgruntlement on O'Neill's, unseemly hilarity does have its advantages!

oooOooo

A little while later, all four of them had ended up in the spacious, sun-flooded main room in the apartment and were happily tucking in to coffee and some cake. Once he'd got over his attack of the giggles - and the slight case of hiccups which had followed - Nathan had managed to soothe both the belligerent unease of Ortiz and the borderline nervous breakdown of O'Neill and assured them that nothing ominous was going to happen to either of them in the near future. Crocker had provided a minor setback by insisting on adding, 'accidents permitting', but Nathan had soothed that little diplomatic disaster and derived considerable pleasure from kicking his supposed friend in the ankle.

He'd been at the apartment before, of course, so the younger men weren't quite so skittish as they had been the first time. Once Nathan had actually got around to the original reason for his calling, he soon found himself being dragged into technical discussions as the pair of them enthusiastically endorsed his idea for further cross-training. Nearly an hour passed before he realised it, and he reluctantly brought the impromptu meeting to a close, pointing out that the real plans would be made when everyone was back on board seaQuest and that this was supposed to have been just a small warning.

"We'll, er, leave the two of you to enjoy the rest of your leave," Nathan couldn't resist adding as he and Manny stepped out through the door.

O'Neill and Ortiz both blushed furiously, but the Cuban bounced back quicker, giving him a swift grin.

"Just as well you interrupted us, sir," he said innocently. "O'Neill was losing pretty badly."

"I was not!" O'Neill yelled in furious surprise, then clapped a hand to his mouth and gave Bridger a mortified look.

Bridger shook his head in mock sadness. "Ah-ah, O'Neill," he said reprovingly. "If you're losing, take it like a man."

Leaving his junior lieutenant looking as if he was trying to figure out a way to swear politely at his commanding officer, Bridger jogged down to steps to join Crocker in the car. The Chief was grinning broadly as he started to car and drove off.

"You know, I can barely remember what it was like to be that young," Bridger reflected a little wistfully. "I keep trying to put myself in Lucas' place, to remember how it felt to be dismissed by all the adults, but I sometimes think that Lucas is in too much of a hurry to grow up. He could benefit from hanging around those two and concentrate on doing all the kinds of things you soon get too old to be able to do." He suddenly realised that Crocker had taken a different road to the one they wanted to get back to Pearl. "Where are we going?" he demanded, sitting up and paying attention.

"Ortiz got those rifles from a store in Honolulu," Crocker informed him.

"Yeah, so?" Bridger stared at the impassive profile Crocker presented and did another bit of adding up. "Manny, you can't be serious! We're not kids!"

"Neither are Ortiz and O'Neill, but that didn't stop them," Crocker pointed out. "I don't see why it should stop us, either."

"But.... but.... Manny, I'm the captain of seaQuest, for God's sake!"

"What's that got to do with it?" This time Crocker took his eyes off the road long enough to give Bridger a look of mischievous anticipation. "Nathan, I know at least a dozen places on this island alone where we can be pretty certain not to be disturbed. We could buy a few beers and a bite of food and make an afternoon of it. Think about it; a whole afternoon where we can be as silly and childish as we damn well like, without a single witness to the fact. What do you say?"

Bridger stared at him in silence for a couple of minutes, then let the grin out. "I say that I get to have a red rifle," he said firmly, then started watching out for the toy store, revelling in the sound of Manny's booming laugh.

-oooOooo-