Title: Hippocampus

Author: Ghosteye99

Characters: The Doctor, Janeway & Paris.

Theme: weird/humor

Rating: PG 13+ (T)

Summary: The Doctor unearths yet another embarrassing fact about a certain thing that happened to the Captain and Tom Paris a while back. The first of a series of short SY VOY ficlets based on a *certain episode*.

Warning: Reproductive medical jargon. Anything more would be too much of a spoiler.

Disclaimer: Characters and setting belong to Paramount Pictures, not me. No profit or harm intended. This is a fanfiction, not Canon.

1: Hippocampus

"Captain, it's the Doctor – have you got a few minutes?"

Janeway put down her stylus, and hit her commbadge

"Janeway here," she replied, "What is it?"

"I've been making further studies into the anatomy of the creatures that you and Lieutenant Paris had recently evolved into. I've discovered something that ... I believe may warrant a personal discussion with both you and Mr. Paris. Can you come to sick bay?"

"I'm busy right now," she said, "Can I just put you on screen?"

"It's a somewhat, err... delicate matter," the Doctor replied. Janeway's eyes widened in alarm at his choice of words, and she decided that proofreading the new astrogation charts would have to wait.

"I'll be there right away" she said, "Janeway out"...

Stepping out of the turbolift into sick bay, she found the Doctor waiting for her outside his office. Kes was nowhere to be seen - but then, it was her off-shift now.

"Come in, Captain," the Doctor said, gesturing to his office. "I think you should find this somewhat ... interesting."

On the Doctor's main work station screen were two 3-d rendered images of the hyper evolved creatures he'd mentioned. "Please take a seat," he said, "and I'll show you my findings."

He tapped a few spots on the console as Janeway took a chair, and one of the creatures turned on its side, and zoomed in until it's lower abdomen filled most of the screen. The skin, muscle and viscera disappeared until only one set of organs remained visible - the various parts of these were highlighted in vivid hues.

"I'll start with you first," he said. "As I just mentioned, this is a precise map of your body I made while you were still in the hyper-evolved state. I've deleted all other details, apart from your reproductive organs - because this is the part that my discovery concerns".

"Go on," She said, somewhat warily.

"Notice that there are two ovaries present, along with most of the other parts one would expect to find in the reproductive system of a typical humanoid female. However, as you can see, there is no evidence of a uterus - nor the equivalent of such. In its place there is only a duct, that my findings indicate would not be capable of supporting a gestation. Neither did I find any evidence for any apparatus enabling production of any larger type of egg."

Janeway relaxed slightly at the Doctor's explanation ... but still, she had a nagging gut instinct that she wasn't quite out of the woods just yet.

"Then how could those offspring have been born?" she asked.

"This is where it gets ... interesting." The Doctor said, and keyed up the other creature.

"This is the body map of Lieutenant Paris, when he was still in the same state," he said. As he zoomed in on that one, he tapped in a cutaway view as he'd done with Janeway's.

"Notice the arrangement of the reproductive organs in a near-typical humanoid male pattern," he said, "though they're mostly internal this time. However - unlike with yours - everything one would expect to find in such a system is present." The Doctor paused, and looked awkwardly at her for a moment.

"Doctor ... those things didn't exactly grow out of the mud," Janeway said, carefully. "Please, get to the gist of your findings."

"Yes, right ..." the Doctor said. "On further investigation, I noticed that during the hyper-evolution, the creature that was Mr Paris had also had developed ... another organ, one that you yourself didn't possess during that time." He keyed in a retina-searing orange highlight over a long, narrow pouch-like organ, set deep within the creature's abdominal cavity.

"This organ," he said, "has shown definite signs of being capable of both containing and supporting a fertilised egg, and the musculature of its lining indicate it could also successfully expel the resulting offspring in due course."

As the Doctor spoke, Janeway began to feel unpleasantly lightheaded - with her knowledge of biology, she'd quickly guessed what that implied.

"So I could have ... Paris ... But how?"

The Doctor minimised the Paris-creature's body map, and brought back up that of the Janeway one.

"That's what I myself suspected," he said, as he zoomed back in on the cutaway – then zoomed in further. And tapped in another command to highlight, in a violent fluorescent purple, another organ - coiled lower down in the pelvic cavity.

"It's tubular in structure, connects to the ovarian duct, and there are other features that indicate that its most likely function is what is known as an ovipositor." The Doctor said, looking at the screen while he spoke. "An organ possessed by the female of a number of species, for the purpose of placing a fertilised egg into a suitable place for incubation – in this case, I believe, the pouch you just saw in the ... male."

Janeway, by now looking stoic but rather pale, remembered to blink.

"In other words ..." she said, "It was me who made ... one of my crewmembers ... pregnant."

"Correct," the Doctor said. "Just like a female seahorse would do with the male."

For a moment, Janeway was dumbstruck. Then, she looked back at the creatures on the screen.

"Computer!" She said, "Locate Lieutenant Paris."

"Lieutenant Paris is currently in Holodeck Two."

She hit her Commbadge. "Lieutenant Paris, Captain Janeway here. Report to sick bay immediately!"

"On my way," Paris replied.

"Janeway Out."

... then she looked at the Doctor.

"He's not going to like hearing this," she said.

-o0o-