Title: ShapeShifter
Author: ghosteye99
Canon: Star Trek Universe (TNG)
Themes: Humor/ adventure /romance (Picard/Crusher, implied unrequited Q/Picard)
Rating: PG 13+ (T, just in case)
Main Characters: Picard, Crusher, Q, Janeway
Summary: Picard gets Q to pass one of his 'gifts' on to Crusher. Silliness ensues. Set sometime after Nemesis.
Warnings: General silliness, brief (non-sexual) nudity
Disclaimer: Characters and setting belong to Paramount Pictures, not me. No profit or harm intended. This is a fanfiction, not Canon.
Shape Shifter
Beverly looked stunned. "Jean Luc gave hiswish to me?" she said.
"Unfortunately," Q spat. If she didn't know better, he sounded very disappointed.
It looked like Q had incurred yet another personal debt to Jean Luc, and had offered to grant him a wish in order to be rid of it. Jean Luc, apparently, had decided this time to pass the gift on to her.
If it was that ... She was more than a little worried; the sour look on Q's face gave a big hint at what Q's real motives might be, and she didn't fancy becoming the target of an omnipotent being's jealousy.
Still ... the granting of a wish. That was something that just didn't come along every day... Q's jealosy or not, Beverly was quite touched by Jean Luc's gesture.
"Thank you, Q, I think that's really sweet of him," She said, at which Q's expression darkened. She made a point of leaning up to the tree fork where Q was perched, and giving him a peck on the cheek. Q winced stoically, and tried to look stern.
"But I'll need some time to think about what I really want to do with this," she added.
"No."
"Pardon me?"
"No." Q repeated, with a sly grin. "It was I, madam, who relented to Mon Capitane and allowed him the liberty of passing on my gift, one that I hadn't intended for you. To make this fairer on me, I will give you exactly forty seven seconds to choose your wish, otherwise I will take the offer back to who it really belongs to!"
"I don't see how that would help with being fair," Beverly insisted, trying to stall Q. "Anyway, what if Captain Picard refuses?"
"Starting from Now." Q said, ignoring her. "And oh, if he does," he added, in a menacing drawl, "I'll find a way. I always do. C'mon now, madam – I need to hear what you want, the seconds are ticking away!"
"Q ... Damn you, Q!" She ranted, flustered. "I need to think!"
"Well, you'd better start doing it!'
"Q ... !" – That last was uttered in a long moan of exasperation. "Thirty seconds to go – Ohhh, now make that twenty five" Q announced, smugly. You Bastard! Beverly thought. Twenty five seconds was far too short.
Her mind froze as she tried to call up something useful in time. There was so much she could do if she just had the time to think, but maybe, just maybe she could ...
"Twenty seconds!" Q said, breaking her train of thought, and the mental blankness returned.
"Eighteen seconds!"
Q was clearly having fun with her.
Then, a silly idea came to mind – one of her childhood fantasies. She'd been a wise healer in that one, who'd outwitted an evil wizard, and made him grant her the power to change into all kinds of wonderful creatures. She'd had fantasy adventures, helped fantasy people out of their fantasy troubles with her powers ...
"Ten ... Nine ..." Q solemnly intoned.
"Q," Beverly said, "I've decided!"
"Tell me what it is, then" Q replied. "Eight ... Seven ..."
"I wanttobeashapeshifter," Beverly gasped, speaking as quickly as she could, "ButIwanttobeable to shapeshift and changeback wheneverIwant," she took a breath, then added "And Iwanttokeep all mynormalreasoning and cognitiveabilities, and my humanmemories and feelingaswell, and alsokeep my memoriesfrom whenIshapeshifted, and thattheprocessofshapeshiftin g and changingbackdoesn'tcasueme or anythingelseanyharm!"
"One! Time's up!" Q chirped, while Beverly quickly got her breath back.
"There was just one detail you forgot while trying to blather all that verbal fine print," Q added, with a smirk, "and that was what you wished to be able to change into."
Beverly's face fell. Q grinned like a crocodile.
"Well, I suppose that means I get to choose that," he said. "But don't worry, I'll try to keep this relatively painless, because I know how Your Good Captain will get peevish with Moi if I should, say, decide on a tribble, or a Bajoran sinoraptor, or a Hanon caveworm – you should really ask young Kathy about them sometime, just don't mention Hogan while you're about it – or, maybe something else ..."
Q cocked an eyebrow, and then hopped down from the tree. The parklands around Starfleet Command suddenly seemed to turn cold and silent to Beverly as he stood before her, and looked her solemnly in the eye.
"I have chosen a more familiar second form for you. I've given it to you before, but this time it shall be yours at will. You'll only have to stretch your puny memory just a little bit to know. Happy guessing, Madam!"
Q vanished in a flash of light. The park once again hummed to birdsong, conversations, and the rustle of a late summer breeze in the treetops. Off in the distance, she saw a slightly built, middle-aged woman with short reddish hair walk a pair of red setters over to a blue uniformed Ensign waiting by the building's lobby, handing their leads to him before adjusting her uniform and going inside.
The dogs jogged her memory as she watched the Ensign take them away on their walk. Q had turned her into a dog one, a red setter - she was sure that was what Lieutenant Ogawa said it was when she'd asked afterwards...
Dog mightn't be too bad, Beverly reassured herself, Dogs have a lot of useful abilities. But first, she had to make sure her guess was correct. Looking around, she spotted a spinney of jacoma bushes, bunched tightly together near a tree.
She knew the spot, it was rumoured to be one of the top lover's hideouts on Starfleet. It was a running joke that every time someone announced a plan to separate the bushes, that same plan was sure to die a quick and silent death. It seemed that a good number of the Higher Brass as well as cadets held a sentimental attachment to them.
Beverly hoped that there weren't any lovers who were planning to use it right now, because - quite frankly - she was burning up with curiosity and anticipation. Taking another furtive look around, she sneaked her way into a space in the centre of the bushes, feeling like a silly first-year cadet as she did.
Willing herself to change came surprisingly easily – she just had to think of it with enough focus, and - with a little jolt of energy, everything ... changed.
She noticed the sounds first, louder and clearer than they had been a moment ago. Then ... then she noticed the smells. As she carefully wriggled her way out of her clothes, it took a lot of willpower just to refrain from joyfully shoving her nose into everything around her until she free.
After that, she allowed herself a few minutes of bliss nosing under the bushes, breathing in the perfect scent of damp earth and rotting leaves. Looking around, she also noted that colours seemed much duller in her new eyesight, and that the reddish hues were missing.
Well, can't have it all, Beverly thought – then she remembered to check herself, to see if her guess was true. Holding out an arm, she recognised it had become the front leg and paw of a long-furred dog. Spot on, she thought. Then, thinking of her clothes, she took them in her teeth, and did her best job of rolling them up neatly, before shoving them under a bush with her nose.
A few minutes of exploration, then I'm back in there and getting dressed, she thought, as she wriggled out from under the branches, and set off on her way.
It didn't take long for her to have explored nearly every metre of Starfleet Command's grounds. She'd almost forgot about how fast dogs could run, and it became quite a game to dodge the attention of various Starfleet personnel, while sticking her nose in one new place or another.
Which brought her attention to another thing she'd noticed about the change – while she still held her humanlike reasoning, she'd forgotten to include in her stipulation to Q any clause addressing canine instincts. She noticed her emotions now tended to run riot if she didn't always keep herself firmly in check – but, admittedly, perceiving almost everything as Great Fun was starting to become a lot of fun in itself.
Finding another bush under which to hide and catch her breath, Beverly caught an oddly familiar scent on a breeze, and looked over to see Jean Luc making his way over to the main building. With every bit of her human will, she had to fight down the urge to run over to him, lick his face and put her paws all over his uniform.
Save it for later, Beverly chided herself – knowing full well that when that 'later' came, when she was back in her normal form, neither she nor he would go anywhere close to that kind of intimacy ...
The idle human thought hurt the doggish side of her emotions, so deeply that an intense wave of sadness came over her, surprising her with its suddeness. She became suddenly listless, and couldn't be bothered any more with romping around. Forgetting about going back to the bushes to change back and get her clothes - or anything else - with a heavy sigh, she lay down and buried her head between her paws.
"Hey, isn't that one of Admiral Janeway's dogs?"
Beverly's head shot up in panic, to see two fresh-faced Ensigns looking down at her.
"I thought Sampson was looking after them," the other said, "we can check with him if you like."
"Good idea," his companion said, reaching for his commbadge. "I'll call him up... Hey!"
Beverly took off at a full run, and before the Ensigns could get up to speed, she'd managed to get herself out of their sight. By the time they'd rounded the corner, she had hidden herself under a dense row of hydrangeas off by the building's back entrance, and was frantically thinking through ways she could get back to the shrubs where her clothes (hopefully) still were.
That was when she smelt ...it.
Later, during the enquiry that followed, she would describe the scent as like nothing she'd ever perceived before. The nearest she would be able to compare it with was a mixture of ozone and copper and charcoal and something else chillingly indescribable. Had she been in human form, she might have only detected a faint, weird smell - but as a dog, she couldn't miss it if she tried.
She followed the scent to where it came from, and when she saw it, she had to force herself not to growl. There was only one – here, at least – but one look at it told her that thing could mean trouble.
... Beverly was fairly familiar with the list of non-Terran life forms currently feral to the San Francisco region, but nothing in that list mentioned anything that looked like a large horned rubbery centipede with tentacular legs, glowing veins, a suckered mouth, and what appeared to be a kind of script, inlaid along one side of a body segment. Probably a kind of symbiont, by the look of it - and by the body script, maybe even intelligent.
If it was intelligent, she wondered why it was hiding, instead of at least trying to follow Starfleet protocols. If it was a symbiont ... then what was it doing without its host?
An impulse to attack the thing overwhelmed her, and she lunged forward to seize the creature by its back ridges. It hissed and spat, clicked its mandibles, and released a stench that stood her hackles up - but she held on, forcing down an urge to shake it to death. Forgetting everything else, she bolted for the back door of Starfleet Command.
A group of cadets and officers in the lobby saw her, and tried to catch her. Beverly found she had no trouble dodging through their legs – and to her relief she soon caught Jean Luc's scent, and followed it down the corridors to the turbolift he'd taken to his debriefing.
It was just her good luck that same lift just happened to be empty, open and waiting on the ground floor.
Beverly jumped up on the control panel inside, and managed to hit the closing code – no easy feat, with a wriggling, biting alien thing in her teeth - and a knot of personnel heading her way. Caught up in the urgency of the moment, she didn't have time for explanations ...
Jumping inside, she closed the door just as a cadet reached it, and set it for the next floor - she was sure Jean Luc's appointment room was on that floor ...
... only to lose his scent as soon as she stepped out. I'll try the next one, she thought, jumping back in the lift and keying in the next floor. To find the lift going down instead.
Someone down there must have used an override code, she thought – and jumped up to paw in one of her own. To her relief, the lift went up again, and this time, when the door opened she could easily find his trail again, and followed it down the corridor.
-o0o-
"Tell me about Q," Captain Picard said, shaking his head in exasperation as he handed Admiral Janeway her coffee. "He's been unusually persistent lately - I've even started to become quite concerned that he may fancy me."
Janeway rolled her eyes in sympathy as Picard took a sip of his tea. "I've been there," she said, "and I'd rate it as one of the more irritating times of my life so far."
"Though In retrospect, I think I could have handled today's encounter more wisely," he added.
"What do you mean?" Janeway replied, suddenly all business again.
"Recently, he's been giving me wishes," Picard replied, "but only allowing me a ridiculously short time to come up with something – sometimes only a few seconds. Often, I don't even have enough time to say my choice out loud before time's up. I've suspected at times he's doing this to try to pressure me into wishing for him. This morning, though, the first thing I could think of was to have him pass my wish on to Dr Crusher, and to give her more time to think of something."
"Crusher?" Janeway cocked an eyebrow in mock surprise, and Picard felt the tips of his ears warm slightly. If he didn't know better, he was sure the Admiral had just tried not to giggle into her coffee.
"Well, I'll trust your judgement on your choice of recipients," she replied, as she pulled out a spare PADD and stylus from one of her desk drawers, and started writing on it.
"I shall make a request, though. Next time Q offers you a spare wish or two," Janeway said, as she paused making her list, "I wouldn't mind a couple of them being sent on to me. Anyway ... I'd better get back to your mission regarding that new wormhole cluster in the Xarantine Sector, the one we suspect might not be natural ..."
The door to Janeway's office suddenly slid open, and before she could call security, a familiar looking dog bolted halfway to her desk - and sat down. An alien thing writhed in her jaws.
"Mollie!" Janeway ordered. "Drop it!"
Beverly tried to gesture toward the door, and Janeway's desk with her paw (she hoped she'd still kept a spare phaser stashed there ...)
"Mollie, Drop it!" Janeway repeated, speaking in a firm, slow voice. "No shake hands! Drop it!"
Frustrated, Beverly concentrated for a moment, and in a flash of light, she stood before the Captain and Admiral in her normal form. Picking the squirming creature out of her mouth, she asked "Can anyone replicate a neutralising tissue for me – this thing tastes foul, and I'm concerned that it might be tox ..."
That was when she noticed that Janeway had an expression like she'd just been smacked in the face by a flying fish. As for Jean Luc ... his eyes had just widened so much, they looked like they were about to drop right out of his head.
... shapeshifting wasn't an everyday occurrence, even in Starfleet's experience, but she still thought it odd to get such an extremely startled reaction from two such seasoned officers - unless ...
... as the realisation dawned on Beverly that she was standing stark buck-naked in front of senior brass, Janeway had vaulted over her desk, setting a phaser she'd pulled out of somewhere.
"Put that on the ground, and stand back!" she barked – then stunned the creature.
"Captain Picard," she said, not taking her eyes off the thing, "please replicate a live storage biocontainer, a pack of neutralising tissues, and a standard regulation gown in Doctor Crusher's size as well."
"Yes, Admiral," Picard said – putting his own coffee-splattered phaser away. Still looking somewhat starry-eyed, he went over to the replicator to do exactly that.
"Well, looks like I just owe two Ensigns an apology for chewing them out over a false alarm. Doctor Crusher?" Janeway asked, politely inspecting the office wall while Beverly dressed, and Picard dropped the biocontainer over the creature.
"Yes?" Beverly replied.
"Don't tell me, let me guess ... you got a little present from Q?"
Epilogue:
1. The creature sustained no serious harm, but a bioscan revealed both symbiont features and likely sentience. An emergency scan of Starfleet Command and its grounds revealed 47 more of them, including some hiding in the lover's hideout where Crusher had hidden her clothes. Investigations revealed they were part of an extremist political cell that had been planning to infiltrate Starfleet, before the rest of their species could made formal contact with the Federation. At the request of their government, they were put into custodial stasis and deported to their homeworld. Thereafter, it was decided to install more permanent bioscanners on Starfleet Command's grounds to prevent yet another hostile symbiont invasion.
2. A high-level security order was also issued to separate the bushes of the lover's hideout, where most of the infiltrators had hidden. Though none protested this time, when the groundsworkers came to beam the bushes to their new locations, a good number of senior officers turned out along with the Ensigns and cadets, to farewell a few memories.
3. The hydrangeas across from the back entrance were trimmed down to a size that it was easier to see underneath. This also helped control an unseasonably bad infestation of Romulan slaters.
4. A week later, Janeway did manage to get one of Q's wishes passed on to her. Unfortunately, he didn't deliver it until she was right in the middle of an emergency war conference that had been called by Nechayev. Janeway retained enough presence of mind to remember one of the ideas she's listed on her PADD during Picard & Crusher's visit, and used that wish to make 47 more (to be used at any time of her choice, no extra consequences - though she ran out of time, and had to accept Q's anti-proliferation clause against using them making further wishes before he granted them). Nechayev immediately ordered Janeway to pass them over to her ("For the greater good of the Federation, Admiral") - though after some wrangling (in which five were used up), Janeway managed to retain three (for personal use only), along with the other Admirals in the room getting the same - though Nechayev somehow managed to also obtain a permanent immunity to getting fat on top of her quota. Before an all-out brawl erupted over this, Shanthi, Brackett and Watley had to firmly order Nechayev to "pipe down, please", and Janeway to "put that thing away" – and, firmly bringing the room to an agreement, transferred the remaining wishes to a spare PADD that was lying around, which was then programmed with an activation code and promptly beamed to a secure vault in an ultra-Top Secret location somewhere in Starfleet's depths. That wasn't anywhere near Nechayev's or anyone else's office.
5. Q soon got tired of trying to snare Picard by giving him wishes, and reverted to more familiar forms of harassment.
6. Crusher got her clothes back, as well as an official reprimand for carelessness resulting in indecent exposure. After the reprimand, she also received an official commendation for her part in stopping the infiltration - and her shapeshifting powers were duly recorded in her personnel file. She suffered no major after-effects from carrying the alien in her mouth, but for a long while after, she had a strong dislike for the smell of campfires or chargrills.
7. Picard did go for a few beachside walks with Beverly after he got back from the (partly successful) Xarantine Sector mission - though he insisted that these be off-lead (being in public), and that she resumed human form when they got home. "There are some places I'd rather not boldly go," he said, while helping the doctor back into her uniform.
The End
Footnotes:
Neutralising tissues are something I made up – as far as I know, they're not in Star Trek Canon.
The same for the alien centipede symbiont thingies.
And Romulan slaters.
And the same for the presence of any hydrangea patches on Starfleet Command's grounds, if one wants to really get picky.
When Q turned Dr. Crusher into a dog in the episode "True Q", she changed to that & back with her clothes on. The fact that she didn't this time has everything to do with (a) Q's jealousy, and (b) Q's tendency to not use a lot of foresight. That little extra dig at his 'rival' only served, in the end, to stoke the long-burning passion between the captain and the doctor.
I know Canon lifts are voice activated, just pretend that they'd introduced some inclusivity technology in the Starfleet Command building.
The swing between "Picard" and "Jean Luc" is deliberate according to the POV of who was thinking of him/in the room with him at the time.
I'm assuming that the same life-extending 24th Century medical technology could and would be applied to dogs as well as humans. Even so, if Mollie was still young (two years old) at the time of Voyager's stranding, and if she was robust enough (assuming universally responsible dog breeding practices in the 24th Century), then even without such treatments it could still be possible for her to be alive and reasonably active by the time her owner got back to her.
Oh, and anything else I can think of, I'll add later.
-o0o-