Don't own them. How disappointing.

Tarsus IV Fic Alert!

This will be a one-shot unless I get at least two reviews asking me to continue it.

If I do, this story will contain whump, badassery, angst, and sea monkeys. Or perhaps squirrel monkeys. Well actually, any kind of peculiar creature. Review and give me your recommendation and I'll incorporate it into the story.

p.s. forgive me for my short obsession with parentheses. I'm ADD and it was the easiest way to stay on track and still add those little tidbits that popped into my (admittedly disturbing) mind.

PROLOGUE:

With the battle over and the Enterprise as back to normal as it can get after a ninja attack, (well, actually, there was a ninja attack and then the ninjas left to protect their home planet from invading Klingon. Then the Enterprise turned around because no matter how cocky Kirk was, Spock wasn't going to let him go up against two fleets of Klingon war birds in an already compromised mission in the name of people who had tried to kill them. After that, there was the confusion of being captured by Orion traders and the disconcerting chaos of being saved by the territorial ninjas who had already marked the Enterprise as their prey. The boarding of the ship followed, leading to Kirk staging a rebellion to get his ship back and, against Spock's advise, launching a full frontal counter attack on the ninja's moon base. Kirk justifying all the while that it was one moon, and not two fleets of Klingon war birds. But all of that is part of a much different story...) Kirk had beamed down with an away team to the ninja moon-base to clean up the remains of the battle.

It wasn't that he was being environmentally friendly, Jim mused as he gathered some shards of weaponry. He was just leaving the place better than he found it, as a habit. Not that anyone knew that he had been a boy scout.

That was one of the secrets he wouldn't spill even when he was too drunk to pronounce his own name or remember what language he was supposed to be speaking. Which is to say, any given school night in the past.

Still, that wasn't all he was hiding on the nights when he went to the bar with Bones to drink away memories and emerged with a hot blonde of indeterminable species (sometimes they just blur together)... He shook off the dark thought.

Cleaning up wasn't all he was doing here either. Horrible as it is to admit, he was a tourist, nix the fanny pack and knee socks (If he was planning on wearing shorts and baring his legs, Kirk would only do so in style.). What Jim Kirk and a tourist have in common, besides the whole "boldly go where no man has gone before" (ex: Saran Merizchek in his first year at the Academy) motif is the fact that both the tourist and Jim would definitely embrace, the chance to get holos depicting for all to see that they really had been on the only known ninja moon base as of yet (If the universe is infinite, Kirk though, how many ninja-moons must there be waiting for exploration?).

Kirk puzzled over this as he dug through the rubble until he heard a voice ring out over his comm unit.

"Come in, Captain. We have found a strange anomaly two kilometers south of your position."

Kirk felt himself grin. "Spock, have I ever told you that you sound like my girlfriend back in highschool?"

He could almost feel Spock's confusion radiating through the communicator.

"That is illogical, Captain, as my voice, while quite similar to a human's, possesses a distinct Vulcan accent, and unless you were dating a Vulcan woman with a voice that followed a distinctly male tonal range, an anomaly of which I calculate a .0034 percent chance of occurring in your endemic Iowa environment..."

Kirk smiled at Spock's ranting. Really, the man- er, Vulcan- never seemed to get a joke. It's why Kirk delighted in teasing him so much.

Suddenly Spock's voice (with it's low tonal ranges extremely rare in Vulcan women) was cut off by an extremely irate sounding Bones. "Jim, you better get over here- Shut up, you green-blooded hobgoblin!- we found... Well, you'll see."

Kirk frowned, a sick feeling suddenly growing in the pit of his stomach (Good thing he hadn't eaten anything or he would figure it was an allergic reaction. Bones always said that those would be the death of him. The bridge crew seemed to agree because there was always at least double up on allergies in the 'How Jim will Die' betting pool than even saving the Earth or offending an ambassador with a beautiful wife. Why, Kirk wondered, did the Ambassadors always get so lucky? Bones refused to bet, saying the pool was a morbid way to tempt fate. Pavel was the only one with dibs on old age. Spock 2 wasn't allowed to bet, the Vulcan jerk would clean out his crew with the whole 'I know your possible future' shit. ) as he glanced around the eerily familiar looking landscape of the ninja-moon thing. Something was going on. Something he didn't want to get involved in, but feared he already was.

Jim felt himself grow cold as he walked through the crumbling gates of the ruined city. Spock, Bones, and the rest of the away team were already there, waiting for him. They were clustered around a rotting corpse almost reduced to bones. The skeleton was small, crumpled on the ground, clutching the remains of a teddy bear in one hand.

The others were solemn as Jim approached.

"How long do you believe this cadaver-" Kirk winced "Has been here, Doctor?" Spock addressed Bones.

"I can't-" Bones began, but Kirk, kneeling next to the skeleton, interrupted him. "Eleven years, two months, and twenty-one days."

The others stared at him.

"It can't be," he whispered. "But I'm not mistaken. It's orbit must have intersected with the other planet's larger gravitational range..."

"What must have intersected with the other planet's larger gravitational range?"

Standing erect, his eyes scanning the desolate city in the middle of the barren, dead landscape, Kirk finally replied.

"This isn't a moon. This is Tarsus."