They patrolled the Neutral Zone for another two weeks, but the Romulans, according to the intelligence community, were in no shape to be doing any shenanigans.

"I don't think the word shenanigans can actually go in the report," Kirk said, laughing over Elle's shoulder as she typed up the mission report.

"Then do your own paperwork, captain," Elle teased him.

"This is good practice for writing reports," Kirk said. "Once you turn sixteen you'll be required to start logging your own reports on missions as a consultant."

Elle gaped. "Really? I'm gonna have to start doing paperwork?"

"Unfortunately." He handed her a cup of hot cocoa. "Here. One more paragraph and we'll call it good."

"Yes, sir."

The comm whistled. "Bridge to Captain Kirk."

"Kirk here. What is it?"

"Sir, we've received new orders from Command," Spock said. "We are ordered to investigate the last known coordinates of the starship Defiant. It vanished three weeks ago in unsurveyed territory."

"Acknowledged, Mister Spock. Route coordinates to helm and engage."

"Aye, captain."

"Kirk out." He turned to Elle. "Do you recognize this as an episode?"

"The Defiant," Elle mused. "The Defiant... is a tiny ship that Deep Space 9 has. And there's a ship that goes to the 24th century? No, that's Valiant. The Defiant... I know there's something but I'll have to try and think about it."

Kirk patted her on the head. "Well, you've got another three days before we reach those coordinates, so you have some time. Go on, I'll finish reporting on the Romulan shenanigans, or lack thereof."

-/\-

It came to Elle at 0200 hours, out of the middle of a confusing dream involving laser tag and ghosts. "The Tholian web!" she cried out, startling the tribble curled up next to her. "Computer, set verbal reminder for 0805, words as follow 'remember to tell Captain Kirk about the Tholians'."

"Reminder set," the computer replied.

"Thank you." Elle cuddled Simba and closed her eyes to go back to sleep. It didn't take. She was wide awake now, and it was 0202, and now she was thinking about ghosts and custody battles if Captain Kirk was presumed to be dead.

She slid out of her bed, tucked Simba into its enclosure to sleep without wandering off for some midnight snacks, and went to get herself a midnight snack.

The Rec Deck was quiet this time of night, only a few night owls here and there, some Gamma shift playing games or working out. "You're up late," Lt. Rwande said, "or early."

"I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep," Elle explained.

"Ah. You can go watch War and Peace with Johnson over there, that movie'll put you to sleep for sure."

Elle smiled. "No thanks. I'm gonna fix something while I'm up."

"Okay. Remember to go to sickbay if you really can't sleep."

Elle gave him a thumbs-up and moved on to the pottery cupboard. She still hadn't gotten around to fixing her two clay pots, and gluing stuff back together sounded soothing enough.

It wasn't. Elle had to reconstruct them first, to make sure she'd gotten all the pieces in the right spot, and then once she started working with the shimmer glue- "Glitter is the Devil," Elle intoned solemnly, as a smear of gold-dusted glue stuck to her forehead. She picked at it with the edge of her nail but it refused to come off. She sighed.

Once she got started, carefully brushing the glue along the edges and holding the pieces together to let them cure, it did become more soothing. Like shining spare parts in engineering, but with more glitter (the glitter was not soothing). At some point Elle finished remaking both pots and letting them dry. She cleaned up the table and took the pots back to her quarters where they could be magnetically adhered to the shelf so they wouldn't fall. She put them on the shelf, washed her hands in vain to get rid of the glue, and fell into bed.

"Remember to tell Captain Kirk about the Tholians," Majel Barret's voice said, startling Elle from her dream about mountains of gold. "Remember to tell Captain Kirk about the Tholians."

Elle groaned. "Computer, cancel verbal reminder."

The computer beeped.

Elle stared up at the ceiling and sighed.

She managed to track down Captain Kirk in the mess hall, grabbing a second cup of coffee. "I got it," Elle said, bouncing up to him. "I know this is an episode, and I remember which one. Mostly."

He stared at her for a long second and then smiled. "I see," he said. "Good morning."

"Good morning," Elle replied automatically. "No really though, I remember it."

"Is it classified?" he asked.

"Not really."

He smiled at her. "Then get some breakfast, make your apologies to your first class, and come up to the bridge so we can get the briefing over with in one fell swoop."

"Yes, sir."

He toasted her with coffee cup, a smile on his lips. "Excellent."

Elle had breakfast, had two whole cups of coffee to deal with her sleepiness (take that, Bones), and made her way up to the bridge. Everyone she passed smiled at her. She smiled back.

"Favorite civilian on the bridge," Uhura announced, as Elle stepped out of the lift onto the bridge, and she winked at Elle.

Kirk swiveled around in his chair to face her and his smile widened. "Excellent," he said again, and gestured her forward to stand in her favorite spot between Spock's console and Chekov's. "You said you knew this was an episode? How does it go?"

Elle leaned her arms on the railing to face them equally, and Sulu smiled at her encouragingly. "Okay," Elle said, "so the Defiant is kinda hanging out, not answering comms, so the captain, Spock, Bones, and Chekov go over there-"

"WHY does your universe insist on sending the top three commanding officers into every single dangerous situation?" Kirk interrupted, flailing his arms in annoyance and nearly losing his coffee cup. He rescued it at the last second and leaned heavily on the armrest of his chair. "Why."

"For the drama, sir," Elle replied flatly.

He stifled a grin. "Carry on."

"So anyway, they go over, and, everyone is, um, dead, and the ship starts to disappear, like fade, and so they beam back, but the captain gets stuck on the ship, and it disappears."

"Illogical," Spock said primly.

"I know, but it's a ghost story," Elle said. "So anyway, the Defiant is in, um, what's that thing where there's multiple universes vibrating at different frequences but occupying the same space, and the Defiant is stuck halfway between that."

"Interphase," Spock supplied.

Elle grinned at him. "Yes, that, thank you. And you decide to wait for it to come back to this side, and beam Captain Kirk back then. But, space around the Defiant is wonky, because of the Tholians-"

"The what."

"The Tholians. They've claimed the area of space we're going into."

"First contact," the captain said, pleased at the chance of making friends. "Are they nice?"

Elle waved a hand. "Meh. They let the Enterprise stay around to get you."

"What happens to spacetime?" Chekov prompts.

"Right. So it's destabilized, hence the interphase, and poeple's brains are destabilizing with them, so they start fighting each other. And the Tholians do something to Defiant, so the captain is floating around the ship like a ghost, and everybody thinks you're dead. Again. So they do a funeral, and then they find out you're not dead, so they have to save you, but the Tholians want you out of their space so they start trying to trap you in this energy web, which is what destabilized spacetime in the first place, and you get him back at the very end but not after like, fighting about it for forty minutes, and- why are you all smiling at me! This is a really scary episode!"

Their smiles increased. Kirk beamed at her. "You started sleepwalkin', Elle?"

She scowled. "No?"

"Perhaps she is transmuting into a statue," Spock supplied, with that one specific eyebrow slant that denoted great-fondness-for-the-human-teen.

"What?"

Uhura choked on a laugh. "You've got a little something on your face, honey."

Elle swiped at her face with a sleeve, came back with- glitter. "Oh NO," she said, turning bright red. "Oh no." She turned to look at herself in the reflective surface above Spock's console. A smear of gold-glue on her forehead, some in her hair, it was still on her hands. She let out a groan of despair and hid her face in her hands as she leaned on the railing. "I cannot believe you, captain," she groaned, as her ears threatened to spontaneously combust.

"I'm sorry," he said, still giggling (yes, the flagship captain giggles). "I would've told you but it was too cute."

"You're such a dad," Elle groaned, peeling the glue from her forehead and wincing as it caught on her hair.

Everyone laughed at that, and Elle managed to laugh at herself as well.

They shared a laugh and then Kirk shook his head, sobering. "Moving back to the Defiant," he said. "You said the entire crew is dead?"

Her laughter vanished. "Yeah, if they stayed too long in that interphase," she said. "I think we're already too late."

Kirk rubbed a hand over his face. "Well," he said grimly, "we'll have to face that possibility. And face the Tholians."

"Hm," Spock said, after a second. That was his, 'I have a concerning hypothesis' hm.

"Spock?" the captain asked, responding with the appropriate level of concern.

"If the Defiant is indeed caught in the space between two universes, would that not be hazardous to Elle's unstable quantum signature?"

All eyes turn to Elle, horrified. She gaped back at them, the blood draining from her face. "I didn't think about that," she breathed. "It wouldn't, though, would it? Now we know not to expose the ship to the dimensional shift, it won't be a problem. We won't be there long enough to go crazy, or anything else."

Kirk stared at her for a long moment and sat back with a defeated sigh. "And we're too far away to drop you off somewhere. We'll have to be careful."

"Very careful," Spock said. "Perhaps there is a way to create a stabilizating field to keep us in sync with this universe."

"Unless you can come up with one in sixteen hours, we'll have to risk it," Kirk said.

"Sixteen hours, twenty-five minutes," Spock said. "If you'll excuse me, captain?" He headed for the lift, and was gone.

Kirk gave Elle a worried smile. "What do you know about these Tholians, Elle?"

"Nothing much. They're not really mentioned."

Kirk nodded. "Understood." He gestured her forward and tapped gently at her forehead, where there was still glitter. "Don't worry, Elle."

"Yes, sir."

Elle went to take a shower and vaporize every single speck of gold dust she could find. The little clay pots looked nice though. She went on to her classes as usual, trying to ignore the anxious thrumming in the bottom of her chest. What if something happened and she- left?

-/\-

At 0100 hours, a perfectly reasonable hour for things to be happening, the yellow alert came on. The one for 'unidentified contact'.

Elle watched the silent alert blink on her computer console, debating if she wanted to get up. She curled up around her squashy pillow and closed her eyes. It was probably the Tholians. It was fine. Captain Kirk was a seasoned diplomat, and the Tholians were reasonable, right?

She groaned into her pillow. "I don't wanna get up," she said brattily, but it was too late. She rolled out of bed and put on a first-contact appropriate blouse and pants. The auto-focus on ship-to-ship camera was unusually good at focusing on the captain, but sometimes it picked up other people and Elle certainly didn't want a new race of aliens to see her in dinosaur pajamas.

Simba trilled at her as she combed her hair into a ponytail.

"No, you go back to sleep," she soothed. "You know the captain hates tribble hair on the bridge." Simba settled again and she made her way out.

She arrived just as Kirk was ordering, "Hail them, liuetenant."

It was Lt. Coleman, Uhura's relief, a smooth BBC-official accent perfect for night shift. "Hailing," he reported. "Universal translator is coming through."

The viewscreen switched from stars to a vibrant orange figure against a shifting background. "I am Commander Loskene," it said, voice tinny through the vocoder. "You are trespassing in a territorial annex of the Tholian Assembly. You must leave this area immediately."

"Greetings," Kirk said amiably. "I am Captain James T. Kirk, commanding officer of the Enterprise. Commander, according to the Federation, this area is free space."

"We claim this territory and are prepared to use force, if necessary, to protect our property," Loskene replied.

"We are not interested in disputing your claim, commander," Kirk said. "We are answering a distress signal from one of our ships that disappeared in this area three weeks ago. We have reason to believe it is interspacially trapped."

"Our sensors do read a third vessel," Loskene said, after a tense pause. "We will escort you to your ship for rescue efforts."

"Thank you," Kirk said.

"Follow," Loskene said, and the video channel closed abruptly.

Kirk raised an amused eyebrow at Lt. Leslie, the helmsman. "Well, lieutenant, you heard the being."

"Aye, sir," Leslie said, amused, and he put the Enterprise to follow the Tholian ship.

"Captain, we are registering very curious readings from all sensors," Spock said. "According to our instruments, space itself is literally breaking up. There is no known phenomenon which would account for these readings. This may be the beginning of the interphase."

"All stop," Kirk ordered. "Coleman, warn the Tholians about the anomaly and suggest they hold back."

"Aye, sir," came the two replies, and in front of them the Tholian ship wheeled to a stop a moment later.

"Lt. Coleman, anything from the Defiant?" Kirk asked.

"No, sir. I've tried hailing on every frequency, I've got nothing."

Spock twitched an eyebrow in a deep frown. "Scans show no lifesigns aboard the Defiant, captain."

Kirk let out a measured breath. "Acknowledged. Are we within transporter range?"

"No sir."

Kirk clenched his fists. "Coleman, put Commander Loskene back on."

The viescreen shifted away from the Defiant and back onto Loskene. "There are no people on your ship," Loskene said, its high tone coming through with something like sorrow. "We are sorry for your loss of personnel."

"Thank you," the captain said, inclining his head.

"We will escort you out of our borders," Loskene said, and without further ado, the Tholian ship turned about-face.

"Sir, the Defiant has vanished," Spock reported, lifting his head from his telescopic viewer.

"Thank you, Mr. Spock," Kirk said heavily. "Take us back to Federation space, Mr. Leslie."

"Aye, captain."

At the border of Tholian and Federation space, the two ships exchanged maps, said polite if disinterested goodbyes, and the Enterprise headed back to its own borders.

"Well that was anticlimactic," Elle said dryly. "Spock and Bones didn't even have a single argument."

Kirk snorted. "For once," he said, and snickered as Spock gave him a fierce glare.