The Many Adventures…

A/N: Something I wrote as a Thanksgiving gift for Delwin.

A big thank you to CaptAcorn for beta-ing this one. Also to Missyhissy3 for the read throughs.

Please suspend disbelief before reading.

1.

It's dark when I first wake up. Strong, warm hands surround me, lifting me into the light.

"Hmm," the owner of those hands says to me. "I thought you'd be a little bigger."

She tips me upside down, squeezes my stomach with her thumbs – ouch! – then flips me back around, stroking my back with her fingers for a moment. Looking at her clothes, I see the Federation emblem pinned to the front of her black and gold jacket: a Starfleet combadge on a Starfleet uniform.

Raising me up towards her face, her lips curve up into a soft smile. I think she might be Klingon – which is weird, given the uniform. But those brow ridges suggest she has at least one Klingon parent. Unless she's a Starfleet spy, about to go on an undercover mission to the Empire, and the forehead is fake. Maybe I'm going too, to help her blend in!

"I really don't remember you being this small," the woman remarks.

Small? I don't feel small. I may not be an apex predator, but I do have mean-looking tusks at the sides of my mouth and some intimidating spikes running down my back! I saved three young koalas from an angry duck-billed platypus in Toby Goes Down Under!So what if I wrote the book myself? That doesn't mean it didn't happen.

The woman's combadge chirps. "Carey to Lieutenant Torres."

Tapping the badge, she replies: "Torres here."

"I'm sorry to disturb you, B'Elanna, but we still can't isolate that power drain in auxiliary impulse control. Did you want to come back to Engineering and take a look?"

B'Elanna – so that's her name, and it's definitely Klingon – heaves an exasperated sigh. "I'll be there shortly," she replies (shortly), lowering the hand that holds me. As she turns, I get a better view of my new surroundings: an officer's quarters on a starship, I conclude.

We move towards a door. Halfway there, she stops in her tracks and peers down at me. "I think I'd better come back for you," she murmurs, and I'm swiftly deposited on the sofa. She pauses to adjust my posture so that my trotters are planted downwards and I'm facing out into the room. I see a wistfulness in her expression as she stares at me for a long, drawn out moment. And then, with a slight shake of her head, she snorts a laugh before leaving me. The lights snap out as the door hisses shut behind her.

Later, she returns. After ordering herself a salad from that contraption in the wall that I awoke in, she wanders across to the sofa and sits down beside me. "Well, Neelix says that baby Naomi already has about a gazillion stuffed toys," she remarks dryly, ingesting a forkful of green and red leaves that make for a very un-Klingon-like meal. "You'll look even smaller next to the metre-high Flotter doll and the life-sized Alfarian that Sam has to find room for."

A lesser targ would be developing an inferiority complex right about now.

She doesn't speak to me again, but picks up a PADD from the arm of the sofa and reads as she finishes her dinner. Then, with her plate in one hand and me in the other, she heads towards that recess in the wall. I fear I'm about to return to the darkness from whence I came, but it is only the empty plate and used utensils that suffer such a terrible fate.

B'Elanna carries me to her bed. She sets me down beside her pillow. Crossing her arms tightly across her chest, she gives me that pensive, wistful look again. Then another soft smile leads to a further snort of laughter.

"Let's keep this arrangement between ourselves, shall we?" she says, shaking her head.

Hmm, I'm definitely starting to feel a little inferior…