Hey guys, sorry I've been checked out for so long. I spent the weekend away from my house (and away from reasonable Internet access). So, here's the latest installment, enjoy.

Oh, I should tell / warn you that this was inspired by 'Blood Fever', which happens to be the latest episode I've seen. (I can't wait until school starts so I can slow down a bit, lol)

smack – crash – slash – ow

Miral swung her batt'leth to and fro with the well learned precision of all her years. She sliced-up another faceless warrior. She was on the holodeck, playing a war simulation she had gotten from the extensive library – except she had changed the 'enemies' to have no faces, she couldn't do it otherwise.

As she swung once more, the images faded from in front of her, and she was left staring at the metallic criss-cross walls of the room. "Time has ended." came the voice of the computer. 'Not now.' thought Miral, she was in the middle of releasing some pent-up down-energy.

Grumbling, she headed for the doors. When they swooshed open, she was surprised to see Q standing there. Upon further inspection, there was something on his face – wait – that's a person – wait – that's Annette. "Oh, gross!" she stammered, blushing as she did it, before running away down the hall.

Miral whipped her batt'leth across the room. It smashed a flower vase and a porcelain figure of a clown as it careened across the room. Miral was heated, angrily heated. She screamed blatant profanity in multiple languages and lunged around the room.

It was Mortimer who stopped her runaway train act; the puppy now much bigger after three months tried hard to wag his tail while it was clamped, in fear, between his legs.

"It doesn't really bother me." she lied, "He can do whatever he wants, he's got no special commitment to me." She laughed as she said it and as the dog licked her face. "Better clean up, eh?" she said to the dog.

She had returned to her familiar good spirits as she replaced her weapon on its hangers and put the broken figures into the replicator to be regenerated. She ate her barely lonely dinner while absorbing herself in her PADD. It was about the warp coil refittings she would do in the morning, she could have done it easily in less that five minutes, that is, if her brain didn't keep going numb.

When she crawled into the bed that night, she abandoned her regular sweat suit for something a little cooler – that was how she justified it to herself. Q's visits had fast become somewhat of a nightly routine. He would challenge her mind with a new language every night, to see if she could figure it out. Once, he had her quite stumped, for over a day, before she realized it was English spoken backwards with a rich Ukraine accent. She pulled back the covers and made her usual show of wanting to go to sleep, preferrably without a visit from you-know-who – it was just a show, of course.

He didn't come. Miral didn't sleep that night, at first she was excited but that soon turned to anger when she realized where he must have been.

The warp coil refits went poorly, to say the least. Annette ended up in Sick Bay for three days, Miral ended up on suspension for much longer.

Miral sat in her room, confined there while she was off duty without visitors until further notice. It was the second day of her punishment, and she knew quite well that she had deserved it. What had happened was this: Annette had been talking to another Crewman and Miral heard the unforgettable syllable of 'Q', she moved closer and, eavesdropping further, discovered what had happened on that date to the holodeck. She had, what she liked to call, a hot spell, where Klingon blood rushes to the surface and makes you hostile. She pulled Annette to the ground and screamed at her in Klingon. As with all good fights, Miral made it a fair one by pulling the girl to her feet and shouting her challenge at her, although the poor girl could not understand for the Universal Translators were not set to translate Miral's Klingon. As Annette saw the look in Miral's eyes and ran away, Miral pounced like a cat and ripped her to shreds. Miral had gotten off easy, the Doctor had blamed it on a chemical imbalance in her brain and gave her a shot before sending her to bed. Miral could not believe it had happened, or that she had to peel bits of skin and blood from underneath her bitten-down fingernails after. No one had talked to her since.

As she crawled into bed that night a fit overtook her and she lay there, shaking – partly from rage and partly from a growing depression. When the 'pop' sounded, she didn't hear it.

Q came upon her. She was lying face down and positively shaking with sobs. "Miral?" he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder, "What's wrong?"

She looked up at him and he suddenly realized he'd been horribly mistaken, she wasn't crying. "You." she moaned of bitterness and disgust. She whipped herself around and out of bed.

He would have smiled had it not been for the gravity of the situation, she was wearing hardly more than when he had first seen her pyjamas.

"Fuck!" she screamed at him, "Is that what I have to do to you to make you pay any attention to me? You're a [words deleted for serious sensoring reasons] little [ditto]! I can't believe you."

"Miral, come on –" he laughed, in a vain effort to try and lighten up the situation.

"What?"

He felt burning along his face as she stared at him, eyes more tense and focused than they had ever been. "Miral, I –"

She launched herself at him, teeth barred. His reflexes, after half a thousand girls of all species, kicked in and he began to seduce her.

"Wait," he said, pulling her away from him by the wrists, "not like this."

She lunged at him again.

"Miral, this is really hard." he struggled before finally pushing her down on the bed. "Miral! No!" He used all of his power, in every way he knew how, to hold her down. "Miral, I won't do this to you. You mean too much." She stopped fidgeting so he let her go and stood up. "Now, I'm sorry I didn't come back last night or before, but I have other responsibilities other than your lingo lessons. You know I'm a member of the continuum you know, I have to zap off somewhere every now and then." He looked at her, staring blankly at him, and smiled. "And as for what you saw at Holodeck 2 – which I'm guessing is what prompted this – she happens to be the most annoying thing in the world."

Miral laughed, shakily and lightly. "She is, isn't she. That's why I bit her."

"What?"

"Nothing." She looked up at him, bashful for everything she had just done. "Um – do you think, maybe, we could pretend this never happened?"

"Sure." He ruffled her head and turned to walk out of the door. "Wait" he paused in his stride, looking back at her for effect, "what am I doing? Silly me" – snap.