Having Scotty onboard was amazing, and watching him try and integrate with the fellow engineers was hilarious. He was speaking 24th century lingo by the end of the week, and he and La Forge struck up a friendship over trying to decipher the probes sending information out of the Dyson sphere. The Dyson sphere had sucked half of the probes inside, revealing an unstable primary star within the center of the sphere.

"No wonder they got out of there," Scotty said. "Woulda fried 'em to crispy bits."

But finally, the Enterprise ceded its place to a science survey ship and headed back towards civilization. Which meant Scotty (and Lt. Franklin) were shipping off once they reached the nearest starbase.

"You sure you don't want to stay a little longer?" Elle asked, only partly joking.

"I'm sure, lass. As much as I'd love to dig into every inch of these engines, there's already a chief engineer worthy of this Enterprise," Scotty said. He gave her a joking grin. "Are you sure you don't want to come with me to Earth, spend some time with Len?"

Elle sighed wistfully. "I would, but I just got back from Vulcan, and, I have things I want to do here."

"Of course." He kissed the top of her head. "But spare a thought for your old teacher once in a while, eh?"

"Of course!" She hugged him tightly. "I'll call you, or send you a message, every week, just like I do Bones and Spock." Elle managed to give him a mischievous grin. "You'll have to tell me all the gossip that Bones won't."

"Gossip? I never," he said, like a liar.

Elle walked him down to the transporter room. "Message me when you get to Earth, okay?"

"I will." He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Don't be too busy running around saving everyone that you forget to take care of yourself, eh?"

"I won't," she promised.

"And don't even think about dating and boys and all that nonsense until you're at least twenty," Scotty added.

Elle rolled her eyes. "Once you've seen a peer plucking nose hairs in the snack hall all the magic is gone," she assured him.

They went into the transporter room, where Picard, Riker, and La Forge were waiting to say goodbye to the time-displaced officers. Scotty gave them all hearty slaps on the back. "Take care of the ol' girl," he said, "and take good care of Elle, you hear?"

"Absolutely," Picard promised.

Elle gave Scotty a final hug and a kiss on the cheek, and watched him get on the transporter dais. "See you soon," she said, and pressed her lips together tightly to stop them from wobbling.

Scotty smiled at her. "See you soon." He nodded at O'Brien. "Energize." He disappeared in the sparkle of technological magic.

Elle pressed a hand to her mouth to try and suppress the inevitable tears.

Riker put an arm around her shoulders. "Come on," he said, gently leading her out of the transporter room. "I think Deanna's got a chocolate sundae with your name on it and a historical drama all queued up."

Elle gave a wobbly smile. "Sounds perfect."

-/\-

From the starbase, they were ordered to Cor Caroli V to assist with medical supplies and a cure to the Phyrox plague. It was a long week in orbit, all the medical personnel wrapped up in synthesizing supplies and going back and forth from the planet. Everyone was asked to keep their medical needs to a minimum - that means you, engineering hooligans. Parrises squares was disabled in all the holodecks.

After Cor Caroli, they were ordered to rendezvous with the USS Hood to assist the terraforming effort on Browder IV. Elle's geology teacher, Lt. Dali, promised that they would be able to assist with the terraforming project if they were sixteen and up. "I need signed permission from your guardians though," Lt. Dali said.

Jenna looked over at Elle. "Out of curiosity, who's gonna sign for you?" she whispered.

"Any of the senior officers," Elle whispered back.

Elle had plans with Dr. Crusher, Captain Picard, and Data the next day. They were going to discuss the newest play that had come out from the Intergalactic Shakespeare Company. Somebody could sign her permission slip.

Beep. Beep.

Elle cracked an eye open, looking for the comm light indicator. Nothing. She closed her eyes again. It was 0003 in the morning, she didn't need that kind of disruption.

Beep. Beep.

Elle rolled over with a huff. "Alexa? Are you making that noise?"

"Yes," Alexa replied. "It's my new gentle approach to alerting you to something weird happening."

"Oh." Elle sat up and yawned. "What's weird happening? I mean, you know what I mean."

"I do, yes. There was an abnormal energy reading in the captain's quarters."

Elle frowned. "Did Worf go check it out?"

"He did, yes. It appears as if everything is normal." Alexa made a noise that, on a human, would be a delicately-cleared throat. "Does this sound familiar?"

Elle blinked a few times, trying to get her brain to process. She'd been in the middle of a weird dream about having to buy eggs on Risa but they only had watermelons... wait. Focus. "Uhhh, no, sorry. But I'll think about it. Keep me updated if anything else weird happens."

"Will do."

Elle flopped back down in bed and almost immediately fell back asleep. The watermelons had turned into ostrich eggs...

-/\-

Elle arrived at breakfast with two minutes to spare. "Good morning!" She hugged Data and Beverly and received a cup of cafe au lait. "Nice." She stifled a yawn and sipped at her coffee. "Mmm, so good."

"Croissant?" Data asked, passing her the tray of breakfast pastries.

"No Wesley?" Elle asked, looking around for him.

Dr. Crusher gave a wry smile. "He said he would rather scrub plasma manifolds than talk Shakespeare."

"Rude," Elle sniffed. "Hey Data, how's Lal coming?"

"Mr. Scott had some fascinating insights regarding androids," Data said. "He declassified several mission reports for me in my quest to understand the creation of androids."

"Ah," Elle said. "My name is Mudd."

Dr. Crusher wrinkled her nose. "American Civil War?"

Elle snickered. "Not quite."

"Ah."

They talked, and ate, and the captain never showed up.

"He must've gotten caught up in paperwork," Dr. Crusher said, snagging the last blueberry cream puff.

"Or he slept in," Elle said.

"Or he slept in," Dr. Crusher said. "Which would be strange. He's never missed a breakfast date."

Elle made a teasing face. "Are me and Data third-wheeling?"

Dr. Crusher did not dignify this with a response.

They finished breakfast and went off to their shifts, and Elle went to her classes.

She couldn't help thinking about Picard's non-appearance at breakfast. "Computer, where is Captain Picard?" she asked.

"The captain is in his ready room," Alexa replied.

"Hm. Is he in a meeting?"

"No," Alexa said. "He hasn't had any meetings this morning."

Elle frowned. "Do you think he forgot?"

"He is human," Alexa replied, with well-deserved superiority in her tone.

"Of course."

Through two of her classes, the feeling persisted, that something was not quite right. Her PADD beep-beeped quietly, and she glanced down at the new text message. Captain has just ordered the Enterprise to the Lonka pulsar and declared a comm blackout. Something's hinky.

Elle resisted the urge to ask if 'hinky' was a technical term. She looked up. "Miss Perry, I'm done with this worksheet, can I take a break?" she asked.

Miss Perry nodded. "Don't forget we're watching a holo-documentary later," she said.

Elle nodded and went up to the bridge, PADD tucked in her sweatshirt pocket. She walked right up to Commander Riker sitting next to Picard and asked, "Commander, could you help me with new set of paperwork?"

"Sure," Riker said, giving her a slight smile. "What is it about?"

"Could we do look it over in your office? I need a snack and I'm sure Cap doesn't want to hear us hash out the specifics of soccer club," she glanced over, "right Cap?"

"I'd rather not," said Picard's definite doppelganger, who hadn't batted an eye at such informal language.

Everyone else noticed, though, and Worf shot Elle a Look.

"Of course," Riker said, taking the hint. "My office, then." They got in the turbolift, and as soon as the doors closed he started, "Elle what in the Great Bird-"

"That's not Captain Picard," Elle interrupted. "It's an imposter."

He stared at her. "How do you know?"

"The energy surge last night," Elle replied. "And he didn't come to breakfast with Beverly. And he knows I hate playing soccer. And he just let me call him 'Cap' to his face."

"True," Riker conceded, scrubbing a hand down his beard. The last person to call the captain anything other than 'sir' or 'captain' had been met with such a politely scathing reminder of decorum that they were still stinging from it. His eyes widened. "So where's the captain?"

"He's fine," Elle assured him. "But I think I remember this episode, some aliens took him and a few others to like, study them in captivity or something. To study, leadership? This not-Picard is trying to see how far the crew will listen to him."

Riker bristled. "They have no right-"

"They have no sense of morals," Elle corrected. "But I think as soon as you confront him, we should be able to get our actual Captain Picard back."

"Okay." He redirected the lift to Deck 9. "I don't want you on the bridge when this goes down."

"Aww, come on," Elle protested.

"No," he said.

"Ugh. Fine." Elle got off the turbo lift and asked Alexa to turn on the camera feeds from the bridge. Sure enough, as soon as Riker informed the doppleganger the jig was up, the alien turned into a glowball and Captain Picard reappeared with another of the glowballs.

Elle glanced up at the ceiling and asked idly, "Q, don't you have some sort of embargo on other energy based specieis messing with the Enterprise?"

There was no answer, which was as good as a no.

The first thing Picard did when the aliens were gone was apologize to Dr. Crusher for missing their breakfast meeting and make it up to her by taking her to dinner in Ten-Forward.

"Twu wuv," Elle sighed sappily into her peach smoothie, where she was Totally Not Spying on them.

"Expecting a marriage?" Guinan asked, smirking.

"Eventually," Elle replied. "Are you?"

"Who isn't?"

Elle perked up. "Ooh, are you in charge of the betting pool?"

"You're not allowed to bet," Guinan said firmly. "You're underage and you have foreknowledge. You're automatically disqualified."

"Not of that event," Elle protested.

"No."

Elle sighed. "Fine."

-/\-

Browden IV was a mudball of a planet, that desperately needed erosion control and re-freezing of the eastern and western arctic poles to get it back into optimal conditions. Elle joined a crew of teenagers from both the Enterprise and the Hood whose sole job was to babysit the replicator banks that were cloning Browden IV's native plants best suited for erosion control. Keiko was in charge of the teenagers, directing them on how to care for the alien varieties of creeping myrtle, Japanese spurge, St. John's wort, and creeping phlox.

"Sulu would love this mission," Elle whispered to herself, carefully watering the pallets of creeping phlox.

"Hikaru Sulu, captain of the Excelsior?" asked one of the teens from the Hood. "How do you know?"

"His secondary focus was in Xeno-botany," Elle replied. "Although this planet doesn't have enough sentient plants for his taste."

"Sentient?"

Elle nodded. "He had a plant, her name's Beauregard, she was, er, very affectionate. My name's Elle, by the way."

"Awesome," said the teen. "I'm Kev. Kev Riley."

Elle almost choked on her own spit. "Uh, you wouldn't happen to be named after your grandfather, would you?"

"Great-grandfather," Kev said, eyeing her with suspicion. "How'd you know?"

"Lt. Kevin Riley was a crewmember at the same time as Lt. Sulu." Elle explained, trying to play it cool. "Makes sense that a career Fleet officer's descendents would end up on another starship."

Kev smirked. "Obsessed with the Enterprise, much?"

"Yeah," Elle said, unapologetic at this point. "I mean, I live here, so there's lots of history to learn."

"That was like eighty years ago, though," Kev said, lifting another pallet of Browden wort.

"I don't know," Elle said innocently. "Feels like last year to me."

Nicole, standing next to Elle, started coughing hysterically for absolutely no reason. Pollen maybe.

Elle patted her on the back, pleased that someone had gotten her joke.

-/\-

"Okay, literally no one told us that part two of this field trip was going to be digging trenches."

"Jason, shut up and dig, man."

"Why can't we just use our phasers to vaporize the designated area?"

"Dude, the whole idea is to keep the dirt, not vaporize the dirt."

"Oh, yeah."

One of the security officers cleared his throat above the clamor of disgruntled, laboring teenagers. "First person to finish their trench gets this last cup of authentic hot cocoa."

Mud flew liberally.

Elle returned to the Enterprise, wet, covered in mud from head to toe, and grinning like a madwoman.

"Good heavens, somebody call security, there's a swamp monster on the Enterprise," Picard deadpanned, encountering her in the corridor.

"Don't worry, I've recruited Commander Stabby and the wet-vacs to clean up after us," Elle greeted him.

"Have fun?" Picard asked, smiling at her.

"Yup!"