This is something I wrote in collaboration with my husband, who offered lots of ideas, suggestions, trek knowledge, and his services as a beta reader. The characters are Glee, the setting Star Trek; the stories, something in between. It's meant as pure crack.

Episode 1: Encounter in the Choir Room

Captain's Log, Stardate 41153.7

With regard to the upcoming Fleetorials, I have tried to motivate the crew, but since we are the only Gleeship of any distinction left in Starfleet, it has been hard to convince them to give their all. They are too assured of victory to care for their performance. To bring back their passion, I have rearranged an ancient poem, and will perform it for them as a rap.

Captain William T. Schuester of the Gleeship New S.S, Directions was rapping his heart out.

Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature, hey

An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature, yeah, yeah...

Performing with his usual enthusiasm, he let his gaze wander over his small audience. They didn't seem as passionate as he would like, even though he danced until he was sweaty. He even pulled out all the stops, stealing Lieutenant Commander Abrams' glasses and activating the power on his hover chair so he shot a few meters through the room before he could stop it. It had always worked before, even though Abrams never seemed to appreciate it. But this time, as he pulled them up to dance, they only half-heartedly joined him for a few moves before sitting down again.

Of course, William acted unimpressed by the lack of enthusiasm, and kept performing. After all, the show must go all over the place; there was no way but forward.

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents, yeah

You would not be so agile if you lacked -

"Shut up!" a voice yelled. Will spun around and saw a blonde-haired woman in a track suit standing in the room. He had never seen her before, and had received no notion about visitors.

"What-" he began, then found that although his lips were moving, no sound came out of his mouth.

"I said shut up," the woman said, then made a show of looking around the room.

"What a pathetic display of human inferiority! Look at you rag-tag bunch of planetary rejects!" she raged, and Will tried in vain to speak until he noticed he was opening and closing his mouth like one of the fish in his ready room, and stopped. It seemed like there was nothing to do but wait till the...being released her hold on him.

"This is such a sad waste of potential," the strange woman continued. "Or has there even been potential, I wonder? After all, the human race has wasted its time with the arts since the beginning of time. Maybe it's just that you are no good for anything else."

She waved at him, and Will noted with relief that he could speak again. "What are you doing on my ship? Identify yourself!" he demanded.

"Oh, the captain has found his tongue," the woman said. "We call ourselves the Sue. Or you can call me that. It's all much the same. As to what I am doing here -"

She spread her arms and smiled. "I come to you as a voice of reason. I ask you to stop what you are doing! Stop torturing the galaxy with your mash-ups and your earth-centric ditties! Stop singing!"

"Why should we do that?" Will asked. He briefly wondered if he should inquire how she got on the ship in the first place, but that mystery seemed unimportant in comparison to the outrageous demand she made of him.

Bold as you please, the woman—Sue—sat down on his chair as if it belonged to her. She was lucky it wasn't the captain's chair on the bridge, or else he would -

"First of all, because you're bad," Sue said, leaning back and crossing her arms. "Seriously, have you heard yourselves? You'll never make it to Quadrantals, not if there's some justice left in the world."

She continued, shouting over the outraged gasps and protests of the crew.

"And more importantly, because you shouldn't. Humans just don't have the capacities. You are such a pathetic little race. Look at you! You've made it into space, but you are inferior to every known race in the galaxy! The Vulcans are paragons of logic and the greatest scientists of the galaxy! The Klingons are fierce warriors! They can afford to waste some time singing and dancing, but you can't!"

The botanist, Tina Cohen-Chng, raised her hand. "But not all of us are human! Chief Chang here is Vulcan, and Mr. Puck, who's on the bridge, is a Klingon, and Lieutenant Berry-"

"I'm half-Betazoid!", Miss Berry interrupted.

Sue didn't seem impressed. "I stopped listening at 'but'. It makes no difference, though. If you choose to serve an inferior race, that makes you even worse!"

Now Will was angry. "Enough!" he shouted. "How dare you come in here and...and prosecute and judge us for what we are!"

"Prosecute and judge? What an interesting idea!"

Suddenly, the scene around them changed. Instead of the chairs in the choir room there were benches. Will himself was sitting at a table, and Sue was standing before him, wearing a judge's cap and gown with track stripes on the sides.

"What is going on?" he demanded, rising, but Sue just glared at him and he found himself sitting down again, cowering over his table. He forced himself to sit up straight.

Sue raised a hand and hit the top of the piano with a gavel that had not been there before.

"Justice will be served! You will now answer to the charge of being a grievously untalented and undeserving race."

Lieutenant Commander Hummel raised his hand. "If I may?"

Surprisingly, Sue nodded.

"In the year 2036, the New United Nations declared that no Earth citizen could be made to answer for the crimes of their race and forebears."

"Well, but we do not adhere to such ancient, barbaric laws. And as I was so kindly informed earlier, not all of you are from Earth—so I do not condemn you as Earth citizens, but as what you claim to be—performers. I do, however, condemn the human race with you."

"That is hardly fair!" William exclaimed.

"Fair doesn't come into it. I am Sue—my will is done."

William realized there was no way to talk to Sue—and no way to resist her, either, not with the powers she had demonstrated. So their only chance was to go along with her, and win the trial."You accuse the human race of being untalented," he said. "Do you have any proof?"

"Are you certain you want a full disclosure of musical ugliness? So be it, fool!"

Out of thin air, a scroll appeared in Sue's hand. When she unrolled it, it trailed down to the floor and dragged a few feet behind her when she brought it to Will.

"A list of musical abominations, written by human hands and performed by human mouths. One of these songs is so bad, it caused the fall of the Berlin Wall! Please spare us the pain of reading it aloud."

Will took the scroll and read it silently. After a few songs, he had to concede that Sue had a point. The songs listed were really terrible, but even they, he thought, could be saved. If he would do them, or his crew—there were several power ballads on the list that could benefit from Lieutenant Berry's voice, and the rap songs could only become better if he performed them.

Maybe that was what he was supposed to do? Take these bad songs and make them good? Maybe that was the way to win this trial?

Better not ask that, though. He had a feeling that Sue would reject a proposal just because he made it, even if it should be her original plan.

Cautiously, he said, "I won't deny there are bad songs out there, but even with humanity's many other accomplishments -" he ignored Sue's derisive snort - "it has produced many more great songs. I would go as far as to say humanity is one of the most talented and versatile races in the galaxy."

Sue laughed, long and loudly. When she had finished, she said, "Well, that's your word against mine, mon capitaine du menton cul. And since I am an immortal being of near limitless power, and you are but the captain of an inconsequential Gleeship, it is no great puzzle who is right." She stroked her chin in a show of intense thinking. "It would be interesting to see, wouldn't it, where humanity would be today if it hadn't wasted all that time and energy on creating inferior music. I think I will make that your punishment, captain: if you lose this trial, I will condemn humanity to a life without music. I will strip every little bit of musical inclination out of every human being in all of time, so that there will never have been any music made in the whole of human history. Isn't that a wonderful idea?"

The crew broke out in gasps and shouts of "No!", and William, too, was horrified at this idea. He forced himself to stay calm.

"And are we not to be given an opportunity to defend ourselves?" he asked.

"Of course," Sue answered. "This is a trial, after all. Let it not be said that the Sue were unjust. It's a wasted effort, considering human intelligence, but please... what do you have to say for yourselves?"

William took a deep breath, thoughts racing as he tried to prepare a defense that would sway even that philistine, but before he could speak, Lieutenant Berry rose to her feet.

"Not in talk, Sue. You have accused us of being untalented—let us prove the opposite is true in the only fitting fashion: in song."

"Oh, no!" Sue answered. "I can not abide singing. But I won't deny there's a certain...primitive logic in what you are saying. So I have a challenge for you: I have accused you of being an untalented race inferior to any other race in the universe. To prove me wrong, you just have to beat the other races: win the Quadrantals."

Then she was gone. The choir room was back to normal, the crew sitting on chairs instead of benches, the table and chair William had been sitting on gone, so he landed painfully on his butt.

The place where Sue had been standing was empty.

While Will struggled to his feet, the room around him erupted in uproar. The crew was shouting and talking all at once, all except Lieutenant Commander Hummel, who could be expected to remain calm in even the most unusual of circumstances. Sometimes, William really wished for that kind of serenity.

"Quiet!" he shouted, and one by one, they settled down. As he looked into the distraught faces of his crew, William realized that he was challenged to fulfill his role as a captain like he had never been before.

"We will never win!" Miss Cohen-Chang cried, voice shaky with barely held-back tears. "We've never even reached Quadrantals before!"

"But it has always been our goal," William said. "Winning Quadrantals would not only win us Sue's trial, but show everyone at Starfleet that the honored tradition of Gleeships is not at an end yet. They would be forced to finally take us seriously."

"What are we going to do, sir?" Mr. Hummel asked.

"We do exactly what we'd do if this Sue never existed. If we're going to be damned, let's be damned for what we really are."

He sat down heavily on the piano bench as he considered their options. "Although we probably should rehearse more. And we need to start recruiting new performers."