A/N: Hey so guess what happens when you rediscover your sewing machine? You miss a week and a half of posting! Sorry! Have some Klingons and Day of the Dove.

"This is what y'all get for not telling me about important mission things like vanished colonies," Elle informed the rest of the ops crew as they sat, trapped, in the lower decks.

"Hush up," Lt. Chanax said, not unkindly. "What even is going on? Matthews, you made any progress hot-wiring those things yet?"

"Klingons, sir," Matthews said grimly, wrestling a lifesigns reading from the recalcitrant computer.

The just-another-Tuesday mood vanished from the room. "Klingons," Chanax muttered. "Elle, get to your bolt-hole and lock down the Jefferies tubes in that section. Scotty showed you how, right?"

"Yeah, but I can help-"

"No," Chanax said. "You need to be safe."

"But I think I know what this is," Elle insisted. "It's an anger-mongerer, like the fear-mongerer we encountered a few weeks ago with the traumatized children. It feeds on anger, it lured the Klingons and the Enterprise here, and it just wants people to fight and be angry! We have to stop it." She took a deep breath, calmed herself. "We have to find a way to tell the captain," she said.

Chanax nodded. "We'll do that. You need to be safe. Matthews, go with her."

"Aye, sir." Matthews ushered Elle towards the nearest Jefferies tube entrance.

They climbed up to Elle's "tree fort" and Elle took out a gaming tablet. "Since we're stuck here," she grumbled.

Matthews patted her on the head. "Don't pout, Elle. Can you imagine if something happened to you? The captain would have our heads and Mr. Spock would vaporize whatever was left of us. If anything, you're doing us a favor."

Elle sighed, but there was no heat behind it. She finished a level of her game and put it away, feeling oddly sleepy. "Are you tired, Lt?" she asked, yawning.

"Yeah, it's odd," he said, listing to the side. "I don't..." He sat bolt upright. "The oxygen."

"Huh?"

"Klingons must've cut life support," he said urgently. "Where's your emergency pack?"

Elle wrestled the pack out of the storage locker, trying to push aside the urge to sleep. She found two oxygen masks and slapped one into Matthew's hands. The other she strapped to her face. It triggered automatically and fresh air flowed into her nostrils. She took a deep breath and sagged against the bulkhead in clear-headed relief. "We're good," she said, her words fogging up her mask.

A Klingon burst from the opposite access hatch. Matthews brought his phaser up with a shout but it was suddenly a dagger in his hands. The Klingon knocked him over the head with a battle-axe. Matthews slumped unconscious.

Elle's shock turned to outright fury, red lights washing over her vision. "NO!" she shrieked, and threw herself at the Klingon in a fit of madness. She managed a solid punch to the kidneys before he cuffed her over the head with a heavy fist. She yelped again and dropped, half-stunned.

"A child on the ship, the dishonorable Earthers," the Klingon spat, and grabbed her around the waist.

Elle fought past the haze in her brain. "Let me go!" she screamed, anger running through every pore. "Let me go! Matthews!"

The Klingon tied her up in her own cardigan and hauled her, kicking and screaming, out of the Jefferies tubes. He picked her up around the waist and brought her to the main contingent of Klingons in Engineering. "A ransom prize," he announced, dropping her in front of the Klingon commander. "They have a child."

"I'm not a child!" Elle yelled, wrestling against his grip.

The Klingon commander chuckled. "Well," he said. "She has the spirit of a Klingon, even if she is a tiny Earther." He flipped the comm open. "Kirk! This is Kang! I have captured Engineering, and I have found your human child. Surrender to me and no harm will come to her."

"Don't do it!" Elle screeched, and the Klingon holding her put a hand over her mouth. She bit him.

He slapped her and she shrieked, kicking out at his feet.

"Elle!" Kirk called through the comm, raging anger and concern pouring through the tinny speaker. "Elle, stay calm! Remember! Remember the Gorgon, it's the same thing! Stay calm!"

The Gorgon. It preyed on fear. Elle stopped thrashing, trying to remember. Red tinged the edges of her vision and she headbutted the Klingon in the gut.

He grunted and retightened his hold on her. "Stop it!" he ordered.

Elle could barely hear Kirk and Kang speaking to each other, there was so much anger- No. Wait. She knew this episode. She knew this episode. It was... she looked up and saw the red blob of energy hovering over them. It fed on anger, just like its brother fed on fear. She forced herself to close her eyes, to breathe, to calm down. Inhale for five, hold, breathe out for five. Inhale, hold, exhale.

Cast out fear, she recited silently. Cast out fear, and anger, and hate, and all negative emotions. You don't need them. They speed entropy. They feed evil red soul-sucking energy squids. Don't do it, Elle. Don't give them the satisfaction. Besides, you like Klingons. Remember Worf? Worf is good. Worf is nice. These Klingons are people, too. Cast out anger.

She opened her eyes, her mind calm, her vision no longer blurry with fury. "Commander Kang," she said, and bowed, as much as she could with two burly Klingons holding onto her. "Commander, I ask you to listen to Captain Kirk. There is a creature, there-" She wrestled an arm free and pointed at the red blob. "It feeds on anger, it's setting you up, setting us all up, to be its playthings."

Kang glanced from the blob to Elle. "Lies!" he shouted. "That is what your captain used to destroy our Klingon ship!"

"No it isn't!" Elle insisted. "It's not! Just look! Why would Earthers want to destroy you? All we've been trying to do is not fight you since the Organian treaty!"

He narrowed his eyes at her.

"Look at Engineering," Elle insisted, "you've taken away all the crew but the engines are still going, we're going at warp nine, and this ship is going to destroy itself. And if it doesn't, the only thing you'll be doing is fighting the Enterprise crew, forever. The same people, playing the same games, at the whim of that creature. Where's the honor in that?"

Kang let out a wordless cry of rage and threw a dagger at the red blob. The knife went through it harmlessly and buried itself in the wall. "How do we kill it?" he demanded, picking Elle up by the front of her sweater. He shook her. "Tell me!"

"You have to laugh," Elle said.

He dropped her in a heap on the ground. "Explain!"

"It feeds on anger," Elle said, scrambling to her feet. "It wants us to be angry, to fight each other, to feel that red haze. We can't let it have that anger."

"Lies!" one of the Klingons said. "She just wants to weaken us!"

Elle saw the fist coming-and everything went black.

-/\-

"Ow," was the first thing Elle said, upon waking.

"Elle?" Nurse Lia came over. "What hurts?"

Elle blinked, taking stock. "Nothing," she said slowly, rubbing at her no-longer-aching head. "But that's what I was gonna say." She sat up and looked around. Sickbay, only a couple of other people on biobeds. "Matthews!" she yelped, scrambling to yank the blankets off herself. "Where's Lt. Matthews!?"

Lia pressed Elle back into the bed. "Lt. Matthews is fine," she said calmly, and tucked Elle back under the blankets.

"What about the Klingons?"

"They're still onboard. A Klingon ship is supposed to meet us at the border to offload." Lia shook her head. "Somehow, we're not at war."

Elle relaxed, boneless, into the biobed. "Oh, thank the Great Bird," she breathed, and closed her eyes again.

Lia puttered around her, checking vitals. She pressed a protein shake into Elle's hand. "Drink that, and then you can go."

Elle sipped on the drink and made a face. Artificial strawberry, blech. She chugged it and made a face. "Yeuch." She hopped out of the biobed and wavered on her feet.

"Whoops, we've got an escapee," a familiar voice said, bracing her against the edge of the bed. "You okay?"

"Captain!" Elle threw her arms around him. "You're okay?"

"I'm fine." He tilted her chin back and inspected the fading bruise on her face. His eyes darkened. "They hurt you."

Elle grinned. "I punched one of them in the kidneys. And I bit him. What happened?"

"Well, after we ascertained they had just knocked you out, Kang agreed to listen to me. We joined forces and quite literally laughed the red blob of anger off the ship. It hightailed it away into deep space. We agreed to a truce and we're rendezvousing with a Klingon troop transport in a few hours at the nearest starbase. That creature drove us right out to the edge of Federation space."

"How long have I been out?"

"Only about half an hour." He looked serious. "What happened on your end? Debrief."

"I got stuck with the ops personnel. Matthews and me went to my bolt-hole, but I think the red blob figured out I could be used as a hostage." Elle scowled. "It took me way too long to fight off the influence of that thing. Sorry I couldn't help."

He smiled at her. "We figured it out eventually. And Kang was partially convinced by your words. It just took some mild wrangling for us to convince him fully." Kirk frowned. "Your habit of being taken hostage is starting to worry me though."

"It's not like I'm asking to be taken hostage!" Elle protested, fear dropping her stomach into her toes. "Please don't send me away, captain, please."

He hugged her again. "If it's for your own safety-" he started.

"Then I need to be here," she said desperately. "If you send me away and I get kidnapped, you won't even know until its too late. And if you send me away you won't have my knowledge, and people will die."

"What if you die?" Kirk asked.

Elle shook her head. "I won't. Or if I do, it's not like I'll die for reals, right?"

"We don't know that," he said, solemn.

"Yes we do. Please? I won't get held hostage again."

He sighed. "We'll discuss this when the ship's not overrun with Klingons," he said.

"But-"

He patted her shoulder. "It's going to be okay, Elle." He left.

Elle stared after him, her heart hammering with fear.

"Elle?" Lia came back. "You can go. Dr. McCoy says to take it easy the rest of the day."

Elle mumbled a thanks and fled to her quarters before she could cry in the corridors. She made it, barely, and burst into tears. She threw herself on her bed. "I didn't even break orders!" she cried. "I was hiding!"

She cried herself to sleep.