James T. Kirk (alternate reality)/Starfleet career/Starfleet Academy

During his time at the academy, Kirk would learn of Captain Balthazar Edison and the , the first ship capable of Warp 4. ()
Kirk and McCoy became close friends at the Academy, though Kirk frequently exasperated McCoy with his maverick nature. Kirk had an eye for attractive female cadets and he once ended up in the dormitory of an Orion female cadet named . He was caught and hid under the bed when her roommate, Cadet Uhura, arrived unexpectedly. On discovering him, she angrily threw him out. 
It was at the Academy that Kirk also met Commander . Kirk had failed the Kobayashi Maru examination twice but decided to take it a third time, being sure that he would succeed. He eventually managed to cheat the test and won. Spock, who programmed the "no-win scenario", later investigated the matter.
While discussing his cheating ways with head of the Starfleet Academy Board Admiral Richard Barnett, Kirk argued that the test itself was a cheat, and stated that he didn't believe in the no-win scenario. Kirk asked to face his accuser, and Spock stepped up. This was the first time the two met, and they clashed over their differences.
Kirk and Spock continued to engage in a heated argument (the accused becoming particularly agitated when Spock suggested that, "of all people", George Kirk's son should recognize the no-win scenario), until the hearing was suddenly interrupted after Starfleet received a distress call from .
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|-| Stowaway=
Many of the cadets were called into action after the news but Kirk – who had been suspended because of his recent academic dishonesty charges – was not allowed to join. McCoy, however, was able to get him aboard the Enterprise by injecting him with a vaccine that temporarily rendered him sick so he could be transferred to the ship on medical grounds.
Kirk tried telling Captain Pike and Spock about Nero's attack and his trap, and with the help of McCoy and Uhura, he was able to convince Pike about the trap. Pike raised the Enterprises shields as they entered the Vulcan system, only to find a massive debris field of destroyed Federation starships having been attacked by Nero.
As Pike was en route to a shuttlecraft to negotiate with Nero, he appointed Kirk as acting first officer under acting captain Spock and volunteered Kirk to disable the Naradas drill platform.
|-| First officer=
Along with Chief Engineer Olson and Lieutenant , Kirk skydived onto the platform. Olson was vaporized by the drill, leaving only Kirk and Sulu to disable it. Facing off against two of Nero's crew, Kirk and Sulu eventually killed both of their adversaries before destroying the platform, but not in time to prevent Nero from successfully completing his plan to destroy the planet Vulcan.
Before returning to the Enterprise, Sulu fell off the drill platform and began plummeting toward the surface of Vulcan. Kirk jumped off the platform to save him. After intercepting Sulu, Kirk had the helmsman pull his parachute, but it was knocked off, leaving them both in freefall. However, Ensign managed to compensate for Vulcan's gravitational pull and beamed both of them on board. 
Kirk attempted to dissuade Commander Spock from a rendezvous with the rest of Starfleet at the Laurentian system. He urged him to go after the Narada as the ship left for Earth, rather than waste time trying to gather additional forces in the opposite direction, but Spock was relentless. When Kirk became more and more heated in his objections, Spock finally ordered Kirk's removal from the bridge, knocked him out and threw him off the ship in an escape pod.
|-| Marooned on Delta Vega=
Kirk landed on , some fourteen kilometers away from a Starfleet outpost. Despite an inhospitable environment, he left his escape pod and soon was chased by an indigenous animal which was dispatched by an even larger predatory creature. When Kirk fled into a nearby cave, the creature was scared away by an elderly Vulcan man, who revealed himself to be Spock from a future timeline. 
Though Kirk initially dismissed this as "bullshit", he changed his mind when the old man demonstrated his knowledge of Nero. The elderly Spock revealed to Kirk through a mind meld Nero's intentions, also telling him that in his timeline, Kirk was the captain of the . Understanding that their only hope was to have the Enterprise pursue the Narada instead of returning to the fleet, they realized that they had to get the other Spock to step down from command.
Fortunately, while the Enterprise had long since left the system, Spock was aware that one of the officers at the nearby outpost was , who, in his universe, had devised a way to beam onto a ship at warp speeds. After Spock gave Scott his own equations a century ahead of schedule, Kirk was advised by Spock, before Kirk and Scott were beamed onto the Enterprise, that he needed to elicit an emotional reaction from the young Spock so that everyone could see that he was emotionally compromised and unfit for command; according to the elderly Spock, the only way to defeat Nero was for Jim to take command of the ship himself.
|-| Acting captain=
Following the advice of Ambassador Spock, Kirk goaded Spock with assertions that Spock cared nothing for what had happened to Vulcan or the death of his , whom he accused Spock of never having loved. The last remark did the job and Spock violently attacked Kirk, nearly to the point of killing him, before stepped in and stopped him. Following Spock immediately relinquishing command. Kirk, as acting first officer, took command and ordered pursuit course of the Narada to Earth.
Kirk later beamed onto the Narada with Spock, who deferred to Kirk as captain. After an intense firefight in which they killed several Romulans, they made it to the . Upon being identified as its pilot, Spock quickly realized exactly who Kirk's unknown benefactor had been. Leaving Spock to secure the ship, Kirk went to retrieve Captain Pike.
In searching for the captain, he encountered Nero and his first officer, Ayel. Kirk was quickly overpowered by the pair of Romulans, but when Nero, after boasting that he would kill Kirk just like he had with his father, discovered that Spock had destroyed the drill, he furiously returned to the bridge. 
Initially, Kirk was no match for Ayel either, but the Romulan was overconfident and was too busy mocking his "weak" victim to notice the theft of his disruptor. Offered the chance to speak, Kirk's "last words" were "I got your gun!" and Kirk shot the Romulan Ayel point-blank in the chest. Kirk then retrieved Pike, who repaid his savior by grabbing the stolen disruptor and gunning down two Romulans walking in on the escape.
Against Spock's advice once again, Kirk decided to give Nero and his remaining crew a chance to beam to the Enterprise and surrender. After Nero strongly declined, Kirk decided to fire all weapons, and the Narada was finally destroyed in a massive black hole created by red matter it was carrying. The Enterprise was nearly destroyed as well, but Kirk had Scott eject the ship's multiple warp cores and detonate them, creating a blast wave strong enough to push the Enterprise out of danger.
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