Q was not a very happy Q.
He'd just thought up a grand new test for his favourite playthi – er, good friend, Jean-Luc Picard. Sure, the other Q hadn't approved, but who cared what they thought? It was only a little bit of Anti-Time after all.
Only, Jean-Luc Picard had gone and gotten himself good and lost, to the point where he was having trouble tracking him down, and that wasn't a small feat!
Alright, where were you last? Q metaphorically poked a tongue out of his metaphysical mouth as he worked backwards in time. The Possibility of his son popped by, laughed in his face, and was promptly dragged off by the long-suffering possible future version of himself assigned to keep the kid on a leash.
There. Picard had been his usual insufferable captain-y self, sitting in his little spaceship waiting for that business with the Nexus to happen (not that he knew that, of course).
Then, instead of going along with what from Q's point of view had already happened, Picard's ship had tumbled right out of Everything.
This smacked of Interference. Q wasn't, strictly speaking, 'allowed' to go cavorting around the multiverse unless they came to him (he'd burned a lot of bridges with the whole '0' debacle), but he was sure he'd be able to squeak though on a technicality this time. Undetectable, he plunged back in time and into the same 'hole' as Picard, just before someone closed it from the other side.
And nearly banged his head on the cosmic ceiling. Yeesh, this was a small universe. Just the one galaxy, not nearly old enough to have much in the way of native life, let alone anything like the Q (so nobody around to tell on him).
Metaphorically rubbing the back of his metaphysical head, Q straightened up and looked around. This space was so cramped, he'd be surprised if a human mind could –
Q didn't have blood to run cold, but he was perfectly capable of feeling shock and mild panic, and threw himself into his search. He'd put too much work into Picard and his lackeys to lose them to something as stupid as –
There they were! To his surprise, they were even alive still. How'd they managed that?
Q 'peered' closer, blinked, then leaned back at Picard's ship. Then at Picard. Then back at the ship. The worry he'd never admit to anyone else melted away before he could properly reflect on it.
"Heh." Q smirked (not that any mortal would be able to see or hear him). "I'd call that clever, if I thought for a moment that you'd done that on purpose."
He metaphorically rolled his metaphysical shoulders. "Oh well, fun's over. Time to send everybody home."
"I'm afraid that will not yet be possible."
"It's not what it looks like!" Q blurted out before he was even finished whirling around.
Amazingly, even in the cramped quarters of this mini-universe, he'd managed to miss the Other. She was pretty (if you were into humanoids), with pale skin, blue eyes and golden hair. She wasn't looking at him, hands clasped together as though in prayer.
She was also buck naked, but Q kept his metaphorical gaze firmly on her metaphysical eyes. Never mind that Q wasn't yet his partner in the way that mortals would understand, she'd do very unpleasant things to him anyway if she found out he was 'fooling around', and not in the way he normally did.
"Who are you?!" He demanded.
"I am Teresa of Telezart." She calmly said, her voice possessing a strange melodic echo. She was still gazing forward instead of turning her head. Rude.
"Well, I am Q of the Q Continuum, so I don't know where you get off telling me what I can or can't do –"
"It's 'cause you're been outvoted, pretty boy."
Q's metaphysical eyebrow began to metaphorically twitch. "'Pretty boy'?" He turned around to find another blond 'woman' had somehow managed to sneak up on him. Red sleeveless dress, seductive smile –
"Oh, it's you." Q waved off the entity currently taking the appearance of a Model Six Cylon. "Don't you have humans to be gaslighting?"
"Don't you have a galaxy to be turning upside down?" She said in a playful tone of voice that made it hard to tell if she was actually criticising him or inviting him to kiss her.
Q straightened up, metaphorically backing up from Six's metaphysical advances. "Well I would, but someone seems to have stolen my favourite captain."
"It was not I." Teresa murmured.
"It's true." Six shamelessly and metaphorically leaned over Teresa, her metaphysical dress drawing tight in certain places. "All she does is pray. It's very boring, honestly."
Q would have accused Six next, except that he knew full well that both she and her boss were both under much tighter non-interference restrictions than he was.
"Well, any other suspects?" He demanded instead.
Six smirked, making Q immediately regret asking. "Oh, a few." She said vaguely.
This time Q caught the moment someone materialised in the upper planes. A male this time, bald and with a forehead larger than a humans. Eyes of gold and a beard of grey. He introduced himself without prompting: "Lorien, of the First Born."
He strode past Q, Six and Teresa without looking, peering 'down' at the physical universe. "Such a brilliant little station." He murmured. "I confess that I thought only of the people and races in and around her, but now I am reminded that places can have power of their own…"
Q metaphorically placed his hands on his metaphysical hips. "And what are you doing here?" He demanded. He couldn't get a good read of Lorien – he wasn't even convinced he was properly Ascended.
"The same thing, I suspect, that the rest of you are doing." Lorien said, tiredly. "Making sure that those that I owe a debt to live to see me repay it."
Q snorted. As if he owed Picard anything. …other than that one time the Continuum had kicked him out on his rear and Picard hadn't turned him out an airlock, but really that was just basic decency!
"We each have a ship – or station – that we have followed here." Teresa said. "We wish to see their safe return."
For some reason, Six smirked at that.
"Well then what are we waiting for?" Q demanded. "Let's wrap the whole thing up here and now."
"It is not that simple, I'm afraid."
Another new voice? Q metaphorically rolled his metaphysical eyes. He turned to see the glowing blue semi-transparent form of some brown-haired man dressed as a monk.
"Did you find a Representative for young Normandy, Master Jinn?" Lorien asked politely.
Jinn shook his head. "The closest I could find was this… creature."
An image of some squid creature appeared in Jinn's palm. "WE ARE YOUR SALVATION THROUGH DESTRUC –" It boomed, before Jinn closed his hand and cut it off.
"That's the best you could find?" Q asked, thoroughly unimpressed.
"If there were others then they decided to hide from me." Jinn replied, then paused and studied Q intently.
"Q, of the Q Continuum." Q answered before Jinn could ask.
"Ah." Jinn replied. "I… was Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. Upon my death I became One with the Living Force, and in this instance speak on its behalf."
Well, that doesn't sound pretentious at all Q somehow had the tact not to say. "I'm still waiting on that explanation."
"It was decided by ourselves and others to forbid any interference from higher lifeforms in this instance." Teresa murmured.
Q metaphorically took a deep metaphysical breath, trying not to shout as he saw his quick and easy resolution fly away from him. "Because…?"
"Because this space is a backdoor into places normally inaccessible." Lorien explained. "And not all of us can be trusted with access to the new."
"Case in point." Six metaphorically pointed across the metaphysical room, to where a pile of hatred and disgust was trying to manifest fully.
"Your Champion was destroyed." Jinn told the hatred firmly. "You have no more business here. Leave."
Six, Lorien and even Teresa turned to glare at the entity, which screamed in fury as they joined Jinn in slowly but surely banishing it back to its point of origin.
"So," Q asked in the resulting quiet, his voice resigned. "you're all just going to sit here and watch?"
"For most of us, that is how we normally spend our days." Jinn said.
"Well, I don't." Q puffed. "Let me know when something interesting happens, will you?"
While the others watched Q vanish (except Teresa, who had resumed her pose of prayer), Six smirked.
So far, nobody had noticed that her boss had interfered twice already.