Uhura grinned at her across the table, Cheshire-Cat style. Elle had never seen Uhura grin creepily before. It was terrifying. "What?" Elle asked.

Uhura grinned some more. "You have spent our last two class periods conversing solely in Federation Standard. Therefore, you've passed the requirements. You are now fluent."

Elle gaped at her, belatedly realizing the fact. "Wow... I didn't even notice!"

"Full linguistic immersion can do that," Uhura replied. "I checked with your other teachers and you've been speaking Standard half the time."

"Cool!" Elle fidgeted with her stylus. "Now what?"

"Now we can go back to learning Vulcan if you'd like."

It was Elle's turn to grin from ear to ear. "I would love that."

"Excellent."

They moved on to Vulcan, picking up where Elle had left off with Lady Amanda.

"Oh, and see Dr. McCoy after we're done," Uhura mentioned.

"Why?"

"So you can receive your intradermal universal translator."

Elle put her PADD down. "My what."

"Universal translator. Goes in your arm."

Elle's jaw dropped in outrage and then she pouted, folding her arms over her chest. "And you couldn't have given me that before?"

"No, because then you wouldn't have learned the language."

Elle sighed. "I bow to your logic," she muttered in sulky Vulcan.

The intradermal translator was a tiny black chip. One local anaesthetic and a tiny incision and all Elle had to show for it was a bandaid. The default setting was 'on', and to turn it off you tapped twice over the implant.

"Okay, but how does it actually work?" Elle pestered.

"You can download language packs to it," McCoy said. "Ask Spock, that's not my area of expertise. I prefer chem learning. Actually sticks, that way."

"But how does it get from your arm to your brain?" Elle persisted.

"It deploys a tiny nanobot that hooks up to your language processor," McCoy said.

"Cool!"

Uhura made her turn it off for her language lessons.

-/\-

The captain was unusually sulky during their literature class that evening. "What's wrong?" Elle asked.

"Idiot bureaucrats," he said. "Think they're the most important people." Then he sighed. "Don't listen to me, Elle, I'm just grumpy we're guarding grain."

"Grain?" Elle leaned forward eagerly. "Is it quadrotriticale?"

Kirk cringed. "This is an episode?"

"There's Klingons," she informed him.

Kirk groaned. "You're kidding me."

"They poisoned it," Elle said. "The grain."

He sighed and closed the PADD. "All right. Give me the rundown."

"So we get there and there's gonna be Klingons on 'shore leave'," she gave exaggerated air quotes, "and there's a merchant and he's got these hamster-things called tribbles and they're like, born pregnant or something and reproduce a LOT and they get into the grain and die and that's how you know the grain is poisoned and it's kind of gross and Klingons HATE tribbles and that's how you find out that the nasty bureaucrat's secretary is really a Klingon." Elle fell back in her chair, exhausted by her enthusiastic retelling. "I love this episode, it's so hilarious." She glanced up at Kirk when he didn't say anything.

He was smiling at her fondly.

She sat up straight. "What?"

"There's nothing like seeing life from a different perspective," he replied, leaning over to kiss her forehead. "Let's continue."

"Okay." Elle tried to refocus on the plot but couldn't resist an anticipatory wriggle. Maybe if they managed to avoid the tribble infestation she could keep one? Maybe? She'd need to recruit someone else to her cause... Maybe Spock. The captain couldn't say no to Spock.