"They're normal people, not like you, not like me.
Please, can't we be an average Starfleet~"

"Katlyn, that's not how it goes."

Annoyed, Katlyn pulled her earbuds out and glared at her mom out her bedroom door. "ONE NORMAL SHIP. THAT'S ALL I WANT. THAT'S ALL I NEED FROM YOU!"

She could change the lyrics however she wanted.

"One normal ship, without an enemy to destroy a cadet or two!"

Sighing, Katlyn flopped backwards onto her bed and cuddled her new teddy bear, Merciless Mike. There wasn't much to do- Paige was still asleep, so she had no one to talk to, and her sister was off at work- she'd just snatched a job at Starfleet, much to Katlyn's jealousy.

Boredom quickly shifted into curiosity as she heard a distant crash. She jumped up and threw her window open, then gaped at the scene unfolding before her.

Well, shit.

They'd been attacked by Khan two years previous, over in London, and the USS Enterprise had successfully gotten rid of him. Almost.

A foreboding, dark ship and several smaller ones were barely scraping over what few buildings beyond the highway Katlyn lived by her small town in Ohio had to offer.

"Mom," she cried out, running out the door. "We have to get down, we-"

The house was empty.

"Mom?" But then she saw. He looked human. But she knew about Khan's kind. That information had leaked when Captain Kirk of the Enterprise spoke about the events. He was some kind of superhuman, out to destroy. It wasn't Khan. Everyone had seen that face. But it was someone like Khan for sure.

Katlyn ran for it, shoving him aside to the best of her ability and trucking it out the door. She wasn't sure where her family had disappeared to, but she didn't have time for that. She was a little preoccupied with trying not to die.

Suddenly Katlyn felt a strange tingling feeling, as some kind of gold light encompassed her, flooding her vision and dragging her straight out of Ohio.

When she fell, she came into contact with white floors, not the grass she'd been expecting.

"I got her, keptin!"

"Well done, ensign. Back to the conn."

"Aye, keptin."

Katlyn raised her eyes, scanning the room with an unamused gleam in her eyes. There was no way she was here. Not her. Not them. But it was.

Right in front of her was James T. Kirk, the Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise. Katlyn scrambled to her feet, eyes widening in shock. "What the hell is going on? Do you just go around beaming people into your ship or something?"

"I like her," she heard someone mutter- a man in a blue shirt with a sour expression despite his positive statement.

Captain Kirk shot him a look, then turned his gaze to Katlyn, a smirk threatening to take over his lips. "Nah, but we kind of heard you were under attack over in Ohio, so we thought we'd save a couple people. You know."

Katlyn's eyebrows shot up disbelievingly. "I see no other Ohioans."

"They're in Sick Bay," he replied, sending the scowling man another look. "Where you should be, too."

The man raised his hands defensively. "Ensign Chekov said there were more."

"Then you can escort this girl-"

"I'm Katlyn," she interrupted, folding her arms crossly. "And I don't need to be escorted anywhere, thank you very much."

But the captain paid no attention to this. "Bones, to Sick Bay. Sedate her if she won't shut up."

"I'm right here, jackass!"

The man- Bones, apparently- grabbed Katlyn's arm and started leading her out of the room. "We need more of you around here. Tell me you're enlisting in the Starfleet soon."

"Um, I'm not sure how I feel about dying in space."

"Don't I know the feeling."

They eventually came across Sick Bay, which was swarming with nurses and Ohioans. To Katlyn's dismay, there weren't that many Ohioans left.

Bones approached one of the nurses, finally letting go of Katlyn's arm. "Got another one. Check up on her, see if she needs any serious medical attention."

"I'm fine, and I don't need-"

"Yeah, so I heard." Bones shoved her away, starting toward the other patients and taking rounds to see how everyone else measured up.

Characteristically, Katlyn resisted every one of the nurse's attempts to assess her health and condition, answering everything with a grumbled, "I'm fine."

"Doctor McCoy, this girl is being especially stubborn."

Bones, or McCoy, or whoever he was, regained his sour expression. "Alright, kid, can you just play along, at least? We'll get you back home as soon as we can, but right now we just need to know if you're banged up at all. Really."

Katlyn huffed, but otherwise didn't respond.

Muttering something derogatory about kids, Bones grabbed a tricorder and began to run it over her, much to Katlyn's dismay. "Someone get a wrap for her arm, the impact after she was beamed up fractured her wrist."

She narrowed her eyes. "My wrist is fine."

"It's minor," was Bones' allowance on the matter, "but I'm not letting you screw it up even more."

The nurse from before returned with a gauze wrap and secured Katlyn's left wrist tightly. "Tell me if that's too tight."

"It's fine."

Bones let out an aggravated huff. "Is everything just fine to you?"

"Eh. Mostly." She shifted to sit cross legged on the medical cot. "When do I get to hear about how Ohio's holding up?"

"Whenever the captain figures it out and tells us all."

Sighing, she flopped backwards onto the cot. No way was she waiting.

She was going to sneak out and find out herself.

A good fifteen minutes later, there was still no word on anything. Questions had been burning in everyone's minds, even now the crew of the Enterprise. Where was Khan? What had happened to the rest of Ohio? What was the holdup?

Katlyn, for one, was not one to wait. Fifteen minutes itself was a stretch. Luckily, with the few people who had needed serious attention, Sick Bay was still humming with activity. Nobody would notice if a sixteen year old girl mysteriously... vanished. Or so Katlyn hoped.

Glancing around cautiously for her assigned nurse, she slipped off of her cot and crouched beside it, then darted for the entrance. Hovering and looking out for Bones, she ran out of Sick Bay and into the hall.

And then she realized she had no way how to get around this ship.

Damn it.

Instead of going back in and giving up, or trying to think of a plan, she ran for it, winding down halls and past confused crew members, not caring what they thought. She needed to know what had happened to Ohio. To her family. Or most of it.

She finally reached a quieter part of the ship, where the white halls gave way to dark railing and- was that the engine? Probably, for all she knew. So she backtracked and ducked back into the halls.

She ran straight into Captain Kirk.

Both stumbled apart from each other. Katlyn leaned against the wall to regain her balance, groaning to herself. "I'm not going back to Sick Bay."

Kirk raised his eyebrows at her, then shook his head. "You're either too much like me, or really stupid."

"Excuse me?"

"Listen." He leaned toward her, arms folding across his chest. "I can't let you off the ship until I find Khan."

Katlyn's heart sank. "Seriously? Why not?"

Again he shook his head, stepping back with a look of aggravation on his face. She was just too good at pissing off the officers aboard the Enterprise.

"They've got the families of everyone in Ohio that works for Starfleet."

She felt her heart drop to the bottom of her stomach. Her mom. They had her mom. Nicole was at work, she was at headquarters in London, so she was safe. But they had her mom.

"What are they going to do with them?" Katlyn demanded. "You have to do something!"

"Yeah, I'm kind of trying!" Kirk half yelled, running a hand through his messy blond hair. "But I was rudely interrupted by some idiot girl."

Katlyn scowled. "Jerk."

"Captain. Working. Go to Sick Bay, now."

"Oh, no way in hell," she exclaimed, shaking her head furiously. "No, I'm going with you. This is my family you're talking about! Our families! They have my mom. You're not getting rid of me until she's safe, do you hear?"

Kirk glared at her for a moment, but there was some element of sadness to his gaze. The tense silence dragged on, only interrupted by a furious engineer down the hall yelling something about the warp drive, and for someone to get down from something, but Katlyn was too pissed to be confused.

Finally, with a sigh of resignation, Kirk stepped toward her and pulled her into a hug. Katlyn buried her face in his chest, squeezing her eyes shut. She could feel Kirk's strong arms around her, his fingers weaving through her hair.

"You are way too much like me," he murmured, and she could feel his chest rumbling against her ear as he spoke.

Eventually he stepped back and nodded, leaning down to leave a kiss on her forehead. "Alright. Just stay out of everyone's way, don't touch anything, and since I'm feeling like you won't listen to that, at least try not to kill us all."

Katlyn laughed at that, nodding with a mockingly disappointed expression. The sadness dissipated from Kirk's eyes, and with a half grin he dropped his lips to meet hers in a fleeting kiss, his lips barely brushing hers, and she hardly had time to register it had even happened before Kirk was bounding down the hallway.

After a pause, and a touch to her lips, Katlyn darted after him. "Where are we going?"

We. This was going to be fun.

"Keptin on ze bridge-! And Miss Harris is wit him!"

Oh, yeah, this was going to be a lot of fun.