"Here's the soup you requested. I hope you don't mind, Ensign Kim, but I took a few liberties with the recipe, hoping to liven it up a bit."

Harry sniffed his soup. "Neelix, I appreciate you trying to be innovative with food, but it doesn't always work." He looked up at the Talaxian cook, who of course wasn't listening, but was instead refilling coffee mugs at another table. "Why do I even bother?" Voltarian onions didn't go well in tomato soup, but when you were out of replicator rations, you had to make do with what was available. Besides, it simply wasn't right to knock good intentions, which Neelix had no shortage of. Harry began forcing down the soup. It didn't taste any better than it smelled.

No sooner had Harry started eating than B'Elanna sat down across from him. "Force-feeding again today, are we?"

He sighed. "I just wish we had a better cook with Neelix's enthusiasm on Voyager. He means well, but he seems unable to take suggestions."

"Maybe if you ate that soup quickly, you wouldn't have to endure the taste so long." B'Elanna suggested.

Without another word, Harry picked up his bowl and drank down all the soup in one long gulp. There was a hint of green in his face. "At least that's over with."

B'Elanna laughed. "Too much for young Harry? C'mon, toughen up a bit."

Any retort Harry might have had in mind was interrupted by a tone from his comm badge, which was followed by a deep, serious female voice. "Seven of Nine to Ensign Kim."

Harry inhaled. "Kim here."

"Please report immediately to Holodeck two."

"I'm on my way."

"Ooh," the half-Klingon sounded amused, "You've got a date with a drone."

"She's not a drone, she's a human!" Harry said a little too quickly.

"What you see in that ipetaq/i is beyond me. Oh well, to each his own."

Arriving outside the holodeck, Harry checked his breath and adjusted his uniform. He cleared his throat, and stepped inside. The room was dark save a light shining on the floor in the middle. Without thinking twice, Harry walked slowly into the light. "Hello? Seven? It's Ensign Kim. I'm here as you requested.

Seven spoke from the shadows. "Computer, engage holodeck lockout, authorization Seven of Nine, epsilon two-two-three."

The computer beeped. "Holodeck has been locked. Nobody will enter or exit."

Harry looked around. "Um, Seven…what's going on here?"

The lights for the whole room came on. They weren't soft and warm, like the lights in the corridors. Rather, they were cold and industrial, like the lights in a factory. The room that had been created was rather bare, and some of the walls were still shadowed. Oddly, there was a small hook hanging from a chain that extended to the ceiling. "Welcome, Ensign Kim. There is something we need to discuss in private. I have disabled the outside observation interface for this holodeck. We will not be disturbed here."

It was impossible to tell where her voice was coming from. "Seven? Where are you?"

"Behind you." Harry turned around and immediately found his hands bound with a chain, which Seven grabbed and attached to the hook on the ceiling. A mechanism that had been hidden under the floor sprang up and took hold of Harry's feet. She took a few steps back, and it was now that Harry finally got a good look at her.

She was wearing shiny black boots, a leather skirt, and a strange collar with two long loops that circled around and supported her exposed breasts. Her hair was in its usual style, and on top of her head was a cap that Harry couldn't quite identify. In her gloved hands, she held a riding crop. Harry swallowed in fear. He'd had plenty of fantasies about Seven, but none like this. "Seven? C-could you please tell me what this is all about?"

"I've seen the way you look at me, Ensign Kim. You sexually desire me. And yet, when I offered to copulate with you, you turned me down. I find this to be a most troubling aspect of human behavior." Harry moved his chin down, trying to touch his comm badge with it. Seven pulled it off his uniform and flung it across the room. "You will not be needing that. In fact, it reminds me of another one of your troubling behaviors. Whenever you feel overly insecure, you do something that I believe Lieutenant Paris would refer to as 'hiding behind the Captain's skirt', as if she were your mother. To summarize: you are like a child."

Harry's eyes were wide. "S-so, why are you doing this?"

Seven set her riding crop on the floor and began removing Harry's uniform with a knife. "I am at a stage of rediscovering my humanity in which I think you could be of help to me. At the same time, I may be able to help you in a critical step of your maturity. To use another of Lieutenant Paris' phrases, I would be 'killing two birds with one stone'."

Although he already knew the answer (one which he was dreading), Harry asked "What are you talking about?"

Seven put his shirt in a garment recycler, and it emerged, free of any evidence of having been forcibly removed. "I am ready to begin exploring my sexuality as a human, an activity that I'm certain you have never done, except in solitude. You are too afraid to even make advances on holographic women."

Harry didn't dare contradict Seven. "So, what's all this other stuff for?"

Seven picked up her riding crop, lightly hitting her palm with it as she spoke. "I believe that you will not properly understand the full implications of the lesson I'm about to teach you if you don't have a little…discipline to accompany it. In the course of my research on human mating practices, I have studied a variety of different writers; Ovid, the Marquis de Sade, D.H. Lawrence, and Zachary Hill. I can't explore everything that all of them wrote about, because many of the activities that Sade outlined were fatal. So, I shall be dealing with what you might call the 'mild' activities."

Sweat ran down Harry's face. He'd read a little of Sade's work (he could only get to page twenty of iJuliette/i before he was sick to his stomach), and it scared him. "M-mild?!"

Without any warning, Seven smacked the leather end of the riding crop against his back. "Don't worry, it won't be anything that can permanently damage you. But I guarantee that, barring brain damage, you will not forget the experience." She struck him again, and he stifled a cry, hoping to avoid giving her any sort of sadistic pleasure. Still, he couldn't fully conceal his reaction to the pain. Seven felt a strange sensation in her nether region, but shrugged it off as a nanoprobe malfunctioning.

"You won't get away with this," Harry warned. "I'll tell the Cap—ow!!"

"How will she punish me?" Seven asked. "She won't put me in the brig unless I represent a threat to the ship, and she certainly won't terminate me. Besides, if you told her about this, can you imagine how she would think of you? You would become an object of ridicule amongst the crew. No, Ensign Kim, it would be best if you would comply. Resistance is futile." She struck him again, and once more felt a tingling sensation beneath the skirt. "You have insufficient testosterone."

"Even if I do," he said, "What business is it of yours?"

Whap. This time, a little lower. "A lack of testosterone causes males to be inefficient. Inefficiency will slow down this ship on its return to the Alpha Quadrant. That is unacceptable." She pulled off his pants, and hit him again. Knowing that she had such power over him at the moment gave Seven an odd satisfaction, one that she was just beginning to realize was connected to the tingling she felt.

Strangely enough, Harry was slightly enjoying the pain. "What do you care? Last time I checked, you liked this place fine enough."

Another lash. "I have grown accustomed to being separated from the collective. When there is a problem with the ship's systems, the rest of the crew confronts me for an explanation. THAT IS NOT TOLERABLE!" With each word, she struck him. For a few seconds, she stuck her hand down the front of her skirt to relieve the tingling. She pulled it out and, out of curiosity, tasted some of it. It only heightened her arousal.

Harry panted, trying to hide his real feelings. "How is this…supposed to help…boost…my courage?"

Seven moved to Harry's front and propped his chin up with her riding crop. "You will see that momentarily." She looked down, and noticed something that he could not hide. "I see that you are enjoying this treatment."

"Hell no!" Harry looked away.

Seven forced him to look her in her face, which was now right in front of his. "Ensign Kim, your body does not lie. To insist against evidence that I can see with my own eyes is a futile gesture." She planted a strong, forceful kiss on his mouth. Harry's body shuddered. Seven lightly broke away, her breasts pressed against him. "Now, tell the truth. How do you feel about me, Ensign Kim?"

Harry didn't dare lie in the face of such overwhelming power. "I…I want you, Seven."

That was just what she was waiting for. "That answer is acceptable. And now, Ensign Kim, you will be assimilated." She removed her leather skirt and dropped it on the floor. Since he was slightly shorter than her, Seven crouched down to accommodate Harry. Their combined arousal made entry relatively easy, and Harry gasped when he felt the immense strength of Seven's nether muscles. Apparently, Borg nanoprobes stimulated every muscle in the body on a regular basis. She wrapped her arms around Harry's torso and kissed his neck, letting him do most of the thrusting. For somebody so small and lacking in confidence, he was surprisingly forceful. A minute and a half passed before the tingling sensation that Seven had been feeling in her groin spread through her legs and up into her chest.

Harry seemed spent, too. He dropped his head onto Seven's shoulder, his lips meeting the nape of her neck. "Thanks," he panted. "I needed that."

Seven stepped away, separating herself from the Ensign, and unchained him from the ceiling. "Your performance was satisfactory." She handed him his uniform. "You are dismissed. And be sure to keep these events between us."

Harry pulled up his pants and slipped on his shirt. "Of course. You were pretty good, too."

Seven put aside her leather clothes and put her regular jumpsuit on. "Computer. Disengage holodeck lockout, authorization Seven of Nine epsilon two-two-three, and end holodeck program."

The holodeck rematerialized around them, and the leather garments vanished. Harry walked out, a noticeable spring in his step. He entered the turbolift. "Deck seven."

Only one deck along, the turbolift stopped and B'Elanna entered. She looked Harry up and down and laughed. "Let me guess—the program was a canoeing expedition, she got water in her ears and malfunctioned, and you dove in to save her. Am I right?"

Something in Harry snapped. He pushed his arm against her collar bone and pinned her against the wall of the turbolift. "You know something, B'Elanna? I'm quite disappointed in Captain Janeway's decision to make you Chief Engineer. It's really given you quite a superiority complex. And will you stop picking at Seven? She's a good person, and it's as obvious as the ridges on your forehead that you're bullying her just because she's hotter than you. So get your head out of your ass."

Normally, B'Elanna would have gotten angry at someone assailing her, but considering who was doing it, she was frightened. "Harry? I think you've been possessed by an alien. You'd better get to sick bay."

Harry scoffed. "Sick bay? Why would I need to go there? I'm feeling better than I ever have in my life!" The turbolift stopped, and Harry let go of B'Elanna. "Talk to you later, Lieutenant." He strutted down the hallway, a smile on his face.

It was only now that B'Elanna had managed to put two and two together. "Well I'll be. You've been promoted from boy to man, Harry Kim."

THE END