Stardate 47500.0: Following her grandmother Felisa Howard's funeral on Caldos IV, Dr. Crusher finds diaries revealing that the old woman had a young lover named Ronin. Ned Quint, a friend of her grandmother, warns Beverly of Ronin and of a candle she inherited from Felisa, but she doesn't give his words credence. Then Ronin appears in person, a lifeform that can't keep its corporeal form for long. Ronin gives Beverly odd sensations of pleasure. The Enterprise aids the colony in repairs of the weather control net, which is experiencing unexplained malfunctions. In an attempt to tamper with the system, Quint is killed. Beverly finds residual anaphasic energy in his body. Although it is clear that Ronin has to be responsible for his death, Beverly decides to stay with him and to resign from Starfleet. Picard comes to talk Beverly out of the idea, but he gets disabled by Ronin just like Data and Geordi, who are investigating Felisa Howard's grave. Ronin finally even reanimates her grandmother's body. Beverly has to kill Ronin, who is actually an anaphasic lifeform. He appears to have romanced her family's women for centuries and who used the candle as a receptacle.

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