FIC: Seminar in How to Make the Most of It When You’re Stuck in the C-Plot (Part 1/4)
Title: Seminar in How to Make the Most of It When You’re Stuck in the C-Plot
Author: Lizbeth Marcs (liz_marcs)
Summary: Or the Alternate Title: How Jeff Winger and Annie Edison missed out the Great War with City College and the Giant Mechanical Spider of Doom and the Greatest Love Story Ever Told while Abed Nadir, Britta Perry, Buzz Hickey, and Shirley Bennett saved the world.
Genre: Humor; ship fic
Rating: PG
Series: Community
Characters: Annie Edison (main), Jeff Winger (secondary), Dean Spreck, Abed Nadir, Britta Perry, Buzz Hickey, Shirley Bennett, Dean Pelton
Pairings: Annie/Jeff (friendshippy UST with a vague resolution, because I suck as a shipper)
Warnings: Vague spoilers for all of S1-S5. Occurs a month after “Basic Sandwich.”
Author’s Note: Written for greta_garbo for the Secret Santa fic-fest. (Sorry it’s so late!) Story somewhat inspired by “Geothermal Escapism” from S5 Community and “The Zeppo” from S3 Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The first one due to Jeff and Annie actually occupying the C-plot of that episode, and the second one because as C-plot characters they have no idea about what’s happening in the A and B plots.
Disclaimer: Abed Nadir, Annie Edison, Britta Perry, Buzz Hickey, Jeff Winger, Shirley Bennett, Dean Pelton, and Dean Spreck, and all associated characters and organizations are the property of Krasnoff/Foster Entertainment, Dan Harmon Productions, Russo Brothers Films, Universal Television, and Sony Pictures Television. Any mention of real life events and real people is not meant to imply that the people or incidents in question as they are used in the story have any relationship to reality. All original characters and the plot are mine. No payment was asked for or received in the writing of this story and no profit was earned. No copyright infringement is intended.
(In which Annie gets her science on…electricity ceases to exist…Annie contemplates giving up on sleep…a minor riot breaks out…Annie commits mass slaughter...an unlikely White Knight appears...Jeff voices his fear of killer bacteria…Annie is suspicious...Jeff is horrified by Annie's telephonic isolation...Jeff and Annie escape from the lab…Annie broods about her personal relationships…weekend plans are ruined to the delight of Jeff…Jeff explains the meaning of true horror to Annie...the secret of Greendale’s obsession with dioramas is revealed…past interpersonal violence is unwisely brought up...Jeff and Annie play the blame game…the killing of non-poisonous vs. poisonous spiders is discussed…Jeff finally delivers the necessary exposition…Annie subjects Jeff to an unfriendly interrogation…Jeff and Annie make a plan...Jeff reluctantly springs into action…Jeff ruminates on the differences between being mauled by a lion and mauled by a tiger…Britta sends Jeff a warning…an old enemy returns and greets Annie like an old friend…Jeff discovers he is forgettable...a walk is taken down memory lane...the promise of escape tempts Annie to desert the cause…Annie makes a fateful decision...Jeff’s ego causes a disruption…Jeff sees cause for optimism...a reminder is given about a POW's first duty…the game is afoot.)
Annie was pipetting E. coli bacteria out of the Erlenmeyer flask when the power snapped off, plunging the entire lab into darkness. She managed to suppress her startle reflex enough that, despite a slight jerk of surprise, she didn’t drop either the pipette or flask, and her hands managed to stay under the now-silent laminar flow hood.
Her moment of triumph, however, was measured in mere tenths of a second.
“IT’S A POWER BLACK OUT!” Garrett screamed in the darkness.
Annie dropped pipette and flask, splashing the nutrient-rich bacterial soup on her gloved hands.
“Garrett! We can see that!” Annie shouted over the rising din of her classmates loudly talking over each other.
“This is bad! THIS IS VERY BAD!” Garrett shouted.
“Thanks for telling me,” Annie muttered as she slowly counted to ten and waited for the emergency lights to snap on.
And waited. Aaaaand waaaaaaiiitted…
Her classmates’ voices dropped to a whisper and she could sense them edging away from her in the darkness. No doubt every single one of them believed that she and her friends were somehow responsible for the power getting cut off. Considering she just found two years’ worth of unpaid electric bills stuffed in a box labeled as “Styrofoam plates” in the administrative office, it was far more likely that Xcel Energy ran out of patience.
Yup. This could be filed under Totally not our bad, guys!
Not that anyone would believe her. Greendale may have been saved, but it was still very much bankrupt. Annie felt the tension zing through her shoulder muscles as she realized that her next order of business would be to dedicate a portion of her ever-shrinking pool of free time to planning and organizing money-raising schemes so the school could buy some new patience from Xcel Energy in the form of payments to cover the past-due bills and associated late fees.
Maybe she should just throw up her hands and give up on sleeping for the foreseeable future.
“Looks like the power’s out in the corridors, too,” a female voice floated out of the darkness.
“Then I guess we’re done for the day,” Professor Browne gleefully announced. “Go and get alcohol poisoning, or whatever it is you delinquents do when not supervised by law-abiding citizens.”
Annie managed to find the sink just as all 21 of her classmates, plus her professor, rushed the door. She could hear them squabbling, jostling, and roughly shoving each other in the fight to be the first out of the lab as she set the water temperature as hot as it could possibly go.
By the time she was done peeling off her gloves and scrubbing her hands until they felt burned and raw, silence had descended on the lab.
“Hello?” Annie called out nervously. “Anyone there?”
Considering that she was practically blind, the silence was far more unnerving than comforting. She blinked in the darkness as she picked up what she hoped was the spray bottle full of bleach solution. She sprayed the entire area around the sink and, just for good measure, her bare hands.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!” Annie yelped as she once again reached for the hot water tap so she could rinse off. When she got home, she was going to have to plunge her hands into a vat of lotion to reverse the skin damage.
The lab door violently banged open, causing Annie to jump and splash hot water everywhere.
“Annie?!” Jeff was using the flashlight app on his phone as he rushed into the room. “Are you hurt? I heard-”
“I’m fine! Fine!” Annie exclaimed as she grabbed the edge of the sink and willed her pulse to slow down.
Jeff paused, took a deep breath, and began threading his way through the lab, which, in the ghostly light of his phone looked like it had been victimized by a mini-riot. To be fair, Annie supposed that the rush to escape the lab’s dungeon-like atmosphere technically fell on the riot side of the equation.
“Then what the hell was with the yell of pain?” Jeff demanded.
“I had to make sure I killed all the E. coli,” Annie explained as she peeled off her lab coat.
Jeff stopped short. “Ummmm, you’re not infected with some kind of deadly, flesh-eating-”
“It’s fine. I basically destroyed all the skin on my hands and flooded every square inch around me in bleach to ensure the mass-slaughter.” Annie looked helplessly around the lab as her lab coat dangled from her thumb and forefinger. “At least I hope there was a bacteriological mass slaughter.”
“Annie.”
“Joking. I’m joking,” Annie said as she draped her lab coat over the closest stool.
“Do. Not. Joke. About. Killer. Bacteria,” Jeff gritted out. He was still keeping a wide berth, Annie noticed.
“Drama queen,” Annie teased, before adding in a more serious tone, “and please tell me we’re not responsible for this blackout.”
“We’re not responsible for this blackout.”
“Are you telling me this because it’s what I want to hear and you’re holding off telling me the truth until we’re in an open field where I can safely explode without injuring innocent bystanders, or are you telling me this because it’s true?” Annie suspiciously asked.
“Calm down, Generalissimo Edison. For once, it’s actually true,” Jeff said with amusement. “This isn’t a repeat of the stuffed beaver incident.”
“It’s not even a repeat of the green water incident?” Annie suspiciously asked.
Jeff looked like he was trying to beam all the sincerity and innocence he could muster directly at her. “We’re totally clean of this.”
“You hope,” Annie said flatly.
Jeff winced. “Okay. There you’ve got me. The texts I’m getting from Shirley, Britta, and Abed are…worrying.”
Annie tensed. Oh no. They just finished cleaning up the residual damage from Subway’s aborted takeover. “What texts?”
Jeff blinked at her. “You mean to tell me you haven’t seen them?”
“My phone’s off. Extracting DNA is hard enough without distractions. Last thing I need is my phone vibrating every five seconds,” Annie primly sniffed.
Jeff’s horrified look at the thought that anyone might shut off their phone for any reason was almost enough to make her laugh.
“Jeff? Texts?” Annie prompted.
“Look, much as I love being the one who has to deliver the exposition, can we do it in a place where there are things that won’t try to kill me?”
“A less dungeon-y atmosphere would help, too,” Annie agreed with a final despairing looking around the messy lab. “And did you just unironically use the word ‘exposition’ in a sentence?”
“It’s official. I’ve known Abed for so long that sometimes when I talk, his words come out of my mouth,” Jeff muttered as he led Annie out of the lab.
You wish. Annie, just barely, bit back the words. Even in her head they sounded just a little too bitter. She had to give it to Abed. They may fight sometimes to the point of driving each other crazy, but at least she always knew where she stood with her roommate. And Shirley. And Professor Hickey. And even Britta, most of the time.
Jeff, she never could tell where she stood with him at the best of times, and the month following Jeff’s and Britta’s aborted marriage plans could not be qualified even by the most delusional person as the best of times. It seemed to Annie that Jeff had been acting like a scalded cat since Subway shook the dust of Greendale from its corporate feet and slunk away from the campus. He kept a wary eye on her and seemed to treat her with caution, even when the others were around. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was waiting for her to transform into a werewolf for realsies and rip out his throat.
In an odd way, Annie was more hurt by that than she was during the few hours where Jeff and Britta were threatening to get married. Not that she could say anything about it. Not that she would. She fought too hard to be the adult in this situation, and she suspected that any confrontation with Jeff - either public or private - would set her back in the eyes of everyone who had eyes. Regardless, the upshot was pretty simple. Given the way Jeff had been acting around her recently, and given that he seemed more concerned about the current situation than her potential to turn into a mythical monster with murderous tendencies, it meant that whatever the others had texted Jeff worried him enough that he actually felt that he had no choice but to team-up with her to solve the latest crisis.
“About those texts,” Annie again prompted as she followed Jeff into the hallway. Thanks to the windows, it wasn’t pitch-black like the lab. However, the dusk was already melting into the night, which meant the hallways were a mess of shadows. Annie reached for her phone tucked safely in her back pocket. Two flashlight apps were better than one, she figured.
“If you’re reaching for your phone, leave it,” Jeff ordered as he set off down the hall. “We might need it later. Something tells me we’re going to be here awhile. So, if you’ve got any plans-” Jeff stopped short and he spun around, shining his cell phone light on her face.
Annie held up her hand to block the light and hissed. “You’re blinding me.”
“Sorry.” Jeff moved his hand so the light was no longer shining in her eyes. “You don’t have any plans, do you? I figured since it was Friday, you might be going somewhere or hanging out with a friend or maybe going out on…” His voice trailed off.
She wondered if stopping by the coffee shop to see if that cute barrista was working and maybe practicing her flirting skills on him while she worked up the nerve to ask the guy out actually counted as a plan. Probably not, she regretfully thought. “Not really, no.”
“Good.” Jeff sounded far too chipper about her lack of plans. “I suspect this latest thing is going to take a while. Hours, at least. Or maybe until sometime tomorrow. Or, all weekend.”
Annie’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you sounding so happy about the prospect of spending your entire weekend at Greendale?”
“It means I have an excuse to get out of my plans,” Jeff said as he turned and set off down the corridor.
Annie groaned. “Jeff? Are we talking about you making regrettable plans to go drinking with Duncan and trying to wingman him again? Because if this keeps up, we’re all going to start thinking you secretly love the stench of booze and failure.”
“I would take a hundred Duncans with bonus Changs and multiple clones of Pelton over my current plans.” Jeff stopped short. Although he turned back around to face her, he was staring into the distance as if he were witnessing a horror only he could see. “It’s the end-of-term papers, Annie. Soooo many papers. There’s 24 of them. And they’re 10 pages each. I have to read them. All of them. Every page. My only hope is that most of them are written in crayon with printing large enough to rival what you’d get from a particularly stupid 5 year-old.”
Annie snorted. “What? Did Duncan not give you pointers on how to get out of assigning papers to your students?”
“He told me that union rules said I could assign dioramas in lieu of papers,” Jeff answered.
“Yikes.”
“I know, right?”
“This explains so much.”
“I know.” Jeff nodded as his expression took on a slightly crazed look. “The last thing I need is more dioramas in my life. The last thing, Annie. When I got my diploma I vowed: no more dioramas. Ever. I was done with the paint, the glitter, the cheap clay that gave you a contact high from the smell…”
“The group fights and property damage that usually ensued during the making of,” Annie added.
“The way you’d wake up in the middle of the night saying to yourself, ‘Damn it! We should have used something more realistic-looking than leopard print fake fur that Shirley found on sale at the local arts and crafts store for the Inuit tent.’”
Annie openly stared at him. She was pretty sure her mouth was hanging open. “You fought me on that.”
“How can I forget? You threw one of the clay figures at my head,” Jeff muttered.
“I missed, didn’t I?” Annie huffed.
“It was a close call. If I didn’t duck, that deformed polar bear would’ve hit me right between the eyes.”
“I was aiming for your forehead!” Annie shot back. “I remember because I was shocked I missed such a big target!”
“Hey!”
“Fifteen points, Jeff! Duncan shaved 15 points off our grade for that diorama because, and I quote, ‘The Inuit don’t live in Africa! I’m not sure where they actually live, but it’s definitely not in a tropical climate!’”
Jeff stared at her. “Wait. You’re still mad about that?”
“No. What I’m mad about is that you knew I was right before we turned it in, and you still insisted that Duncan would be too drunk to notice!” Annie yelled.
“You agreed with me!” Jeff shouted back.
Annie let out an irritated huff of breath. He actually had her there. She did cave, partially because she figured Jeff was right, and partially because the only other option would’ve been turning in the diorama late. She let her standards waver in the face of the Winger charm, not the first time and, sadly, not the last. But like it or not, she was New Annie now. Jeff could try to bamboozle her all he wanted, but she was done falling for it.
When Annie didn’t have a comeback to his defense of himself, namely by pinning the blame on her, Jeff had the gall to look smug. “In any case, we have bigger spiders to fry right now.”
Annie felt her face scrunch. “Did you just say spiders?”
“Actually, spider. Just the one,” Jeff said. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of spiders.”
“Troy and Abed designated me the official spider-killer the first time Troy found one in the tub.” Annie shuddered at the memory of Troy running around the apartment naked and screaming that an eight-legged horror had just tried to suck his blood. “But are you seriously telling me that the blackout, and the fact that we might be stuck here all weekend, is because of a spider?”
Jeff winced. “Well, it’s more because of the kind of spider it is.”
“A poisonous spider will die just as quickly as a non-poisonous one if you if you step on it,” Annie pointed out.
“Ahhh, I see where I went wrong.” Jeff shook his head like he didn’t want to say what he was about to say. “When I say spider, I mean a giant mechanical spider of doom that, near as I can figure out from the texts, just turned the Luis Guzman statue into shredded scrap metal and is now ripping up the benches on the quad and is throwing them through the windows.”
Annie stared at Jeff while she tried to make sense of the news.
“Abed texted something about The Wild Wild West, Will Smith addition, and recommended that we try to find a saddle,” Jeff lamely added.
“Did you see this spider for yourself?” Annie asked.
“Nope. But then again, Luis is in the center of campus and we’re way out on the edge. So if there really is a giant mechanical spider wreaking havoc it’s not like we’d see it.”
“Have you heard any noises that might indicate a giant mechanical spider is running rampant through campus and causing property damage?” Annie asked.
“Okay, fine. I may have heard something that, yes, looking back on it could have been classified as vaguely metallic and dangerous-sounding,” Jeff reluctantly admitted. “And I did see some property damage on my way over here. Maybe a few downed power lines. Some torn up turf. A few trashed benches and broken windows. But based on personal experience? It wasn’t beyond what a bunch of really pissed off and determined students could pull off. Hell, we managed to do more damage than that when Troy left, and we weren’t pissed off.”
“Let me see if I’m very clear on this point.” Annie crossed her arms. “You heard dangerous noises and saw that there was property damage, and you didn’t try to find out what it was?”
“In my defense, I was way too busy pretending that I wasn’t in my office every time a student knocked on the door.” Jeff shrugged. “Besides, it wasn’t long after the noises started that Abed texted me, and that was before I even got up from my chair. But, c’mon. Giant mechanical spider of doom? What are the odds that’s even remotely true?”
“None.” Annie’s shoulders slumped. “So, we’re probably talking about a student riot fueled by yet another gas leak.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Jeff agreed. “My bet is that it’s concentrated in the cafeteria. According to the last text that Shirley sent me, she, Britta, and Abed were reinforcing the perimeter around her sandwich shop to stave off a wave of what she called ‘enemy troops’ armed with what she thinks are tranq guns,” Jeff said.
Annie’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, God.”
“Hickey is apparently trying to build a tank out of her kitchen equipment so they’ll have something to fight the spider,” Jeff added.
Annie moaned. “This is bad.”
“We need gas masks before going in,” Jeff said. “We’re going to need clear heads to convince everyone to get out of there, and we can’t do that if we start seeing an army of mechanical spiders like everyone else.”
“Good thing I know where to find some.” Annie straightened herself up to her full height. “We have to go back to the lab.”
Jeff groaned.
“Seriously, Jeff,” Annie huffed as she turned on her heel and set a determined pace back to where she started. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t touch anything unless I tell you it’s okay. Some of my classmates were still working on their basic labeling skills, so I’m not entirely sure which containers have acid and which have sterile water.”
“Not comforting.”
“Do you want the gas masks or not?”
“I’m not going to lie. I’m beginning to question my commitment to this.”
“It’s this, or going home to grade your papers.”
“Wow. That’s like asking me if I prefer being mauled by a lion or mauled by a tiger,” Jeff said. It was right at that moment that Jeff’s phone started to vibrate. “Now what?”
Annie stopped and turned around in time to see Jeff switch to his text function. She could see his eyebrows lower in the light coming from phone as he studied the message.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Just one word,” Jeff frowned, “Britta’s text says, ‘Incoming.’”
“Incoming?” Annie asked. “What does that-”
An unfamiliar voice interrupted. “Hands in the air, and no one will get hurt!”
Jeff looked up. “Crap.”
“Hands in the air!” the voice ordered again.
“Annie, just do it,” Jeff urgently ordered in quiet voice as he raised his hands, phone still clutched in his left hand. “And don’t make any threatening moves.”
Annie slowly mirrored Jeff’s action. It took everything she had to not turn around.
A new voice broke in. “Well, well, well.”
Annie felt a chill go down her spine. City College? Dean Spreck? she wildly wondered.
“What have we here?” Dean Spreck continued as he moved into view. He was flanked by two helmeted guards, each holding what looked like tranq guns with flashlights affixed to the barrel.
So much for the theory that their friends were suffering from gas leak delusions. But a giant mechanical spider of doom? Really? This topped the retribution for the Great Snow Removal Fracas of 2012. It was enough to make Annie wonder what Dean Pelton did this time to piss off City College this much.
“Miss. Edison,” Dean Spreck gave Annie an acknowledging nod. “Still trapped at Greendale reliving the high school years of glory that you wished you had, I see.”
“Hey!” Jeff exclaimed.
Dean Spreck barely glanced at Jeff. “And you have an attack dog with you.”
Jeff drew himself up to his full height, prompting the two guards to immediately point their guns at him. In response to the threat Jeff slouched, but he looked like he tasted something sour. “If you remember Annie, you remember me.”
Dean Spreck sighed and glanced at Jeff. “Who are you again?”
“Jeff. Winger.” Upon Dean Spreck’s blank look, Jeff added, “Paintball? Western-themed paintball?”
Dean Spreck slowly looked Jeff up and as if he was trying to place him and had failed before he shrugged and once more focused on Annie. “What happened to the determined girl who sat in my office all those years ago that yearned for a real education at a real school? Look at you now. All that promise gone to waste. Why ever did you change your mind?”
“I decided that I didn’t trust you to follow through on your promise of a full scholarship,” Annie mumbled as she stared at the floor. “I figured if you had such a low opinion of Greendale, you probably didn’t actually want a Greendale transfer student at your school and would yank the scholarship within weeks of me enrolling.”
Dean Spreck sighed as if Annie’s words hurt him on a fundamental level. “You should know that I always keep my promises, so you were wrong. You should also know that I don’t take defeat very well.”
“Shocker,” Jeff remarked. “Hey! Stop poking me with that thing!”
Annie chanced a glance at Jeff, who was now focused on glaring at the armed guards.
Dean Spreck ignored Jeff’s side argument with his minions. “But I can afford to be magnanimous and give you a second chance,” he said. “Help me bring down Greendale once and for all by serving as my Sacagawea, and you will get that full scholarship to any college you choose to go to within the state of Colorado.”
Annie glanced suspiciously at Dean Spreck. “You can’t promise that.”
“Annie, don’t listen to him,” Jeff said. “And again, poking me with that gun. Quit it!”
“Unlike your current dean, I am respected.” Dean Spreck twittled his fingers as if to indicate that his promise was easier done than said. “I can even get them to accept your Greendale credits.” He huffed half-a-laugh. “Well, some of them anyway.”
Annie slowly let out a long breath. Part of her still wanted what Dean Spreck offered, and, God help her, she actually believed him when he said that he always kept his promises. She would probably be perfectly fine transferring to another school. Better than fine, actually. More like better off. If nothing else, recent events around Subway’s near-takeover and Greendale’s still-uncertain future drove that point home with the force of a sledgehammer to her skull.
But personal feelings and beliefs aside, Annie couldn’t escape the fact that she made a commitment to this school, and to all the students here who needed to be here. She couldn’t just give up, not like she did last year when she decided to take the diploma and run instead of staying the extra year she needed to pursue her dreams. And just what had giving up gotten her? A job she hated even though it paid well, getting stuck with all of the grown-up responsibilities while Abed and Troy sat around the apartment doing not much, a growing sense of bitterness, and a distinct lack of fun in her life. Sure, things were a little rough at the moment, but they’d smooth out. They always did before.
“Tempting,” Annie admitted. “But…no.”
Yeah, she was hurt to see that Jeff looked relieved by her answer. Then again, she could hardly blame him for believing that her desire to escape just might outweigh her self-imposed obligation to stay.
“I’m sorry to hear that Miss. Edison.” Dean Spreck didn’t actually sound sorry to Annie’s ear. “If that’s your final decision-”
“It is.”
“Then I’m afraid that you and your attack dog will have to be taken out of the game.” Dean Spreck snapped his fingers.
Jeff took a threatening step forward, but stopped cold when the tranq guns took aim at his chest. “What are you going to do to us?”
Dean Spreck turned a blinding smile on Jeff. “Well, John-”
“Jeff! It’s Jeff Winger!” Jeff insisted.
Dean Spreck waved his hand. “Oh, very well. Jess.”
Jeff snarled, “It’s not-”
“Oh, my God! Will you just let it go, already!” Annie shouted.
“Enough!” Dean Spreck yelled. He cleared his throat and straightened his tie, as if he were embarrassed by his outburst. “It’s very simple. We’re going to lock the two of you up in a room so you can’t interfere with our plans.”
Jeff shook his head. “That’s it?”
“Yes. That’s it,” Dean Spreck said. “We’re locking the two of you in a room.”
Jeff immediately perked up. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
Annie was aghast. “Jeff!”
“Annie, c’mon. They’re going to lock us in a room for a few hours,” Jeff said. “It’s just a classroom or one of the supply rooms, right? We’ll be fine.”
That’s when Annie got it. There were a million ways to get out of a room in Greendale, and only one of them actually involved getting through a locked door. However, she still had to make it look good. “Typical! You hit the first speed bump, and you’re willing to surrender!” Jeff glared at her as Annie turned to Dean Spreck. “I’ll have you know that Jeff Winger may be content to sit out this war, but I know that a POW’s first duty is to escape.”
Jeff’s eyebrows went up, a sign that he had caught on that she was playing The Game according to The Rules as spelled out by Dean Spreck.
“Well, I can’t wait to see how you pull off that particular Houdini,” Dean Speck taunted. “Now, don’t make any sudden moves, otherwise, we will tranq you. I don’t think either one of you want that.” He gestured to the darkness and barked, “Bag them!”
“What?” Annie and Jeff asked in unison.
And that’s when Annie felt something slip over her head and everything went pitch black.
Continued here.
Author: Lizbeth Marcs (liz_marcs)
Summary: Or the Alternate Title: How Jeff Winger and Annie Edison missed out the Great War with City College and the Giant Mechanical Spider of Doom and the Greatest Love Story Ever Told while Abed Nadir, Britta Perry, Buzz Hickey, and Shirley Bennett saved the world.
Genre: Humor; ship fic
Rating: PG
Series: Community
Characters: Annie Edison (main), Jeff Winger (secondary), Dean Spreck, Abed Nadir, Britta Perry, Buzz Hickey, Shirley Bennett, Dean Pelton
Pairings: Annie/Jeff (friendshippy UST with a vague resolution, because I suck as a shipper)
Warnings: Vague spoilers for all of S1-S5. Occurs a month after “Basic Sandwich.”
Author’s Note: Written for greta_garbo for the Secret Santa fic-fest. (Sorry it’s so late!) Story somewhat inspired by “Geothermal Escapism” from S5 Community and “The Zeppo” from S3 Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The first one due to Jeff and Annie actually occupying the C-plot of that episode, and the second one because as C-plot characters they have no idea about what’s happening in the A and B plots.
Disclaimer: Abed Nadir, Annie Edison, Britta Perry, Buzz Hickey, Jeff Winger, Shirley Bennett, Dean Pelton, and Dean Spreck, and all associated characters and organizations are the property of Krasnoff/Foster Entertainment, Dan Harmon Productions, Russo Brothers Films, Universal Television, and Sony Pictures Television. Any mention of real life events and real people is not meant to imply that the people or incidents in question as they are used in the story have any relationship to reality. All original characters and the plot are mine. No payment was asked for or received in the writing of this story and no profit was earned. No copyright infringement is intended.
(In which Annie gets her science on…electricity ceases to exist…Annie contemplates giving up on sleep…a minor riot breaks out…Annie commits mass slaughter...an unlikely White Knight appears...Jeff voices his fear of killer bacteria…Annie is suspicious...Jeff is horrified by Annie's telephonic isolation...Jeff and Annie escape from the lab…Annie broods about her personal relationships…weekend plans are ruined to the delight of Jeff…Jeff explains the meaning of true horror to Annie...the secret of Greendale’s obsession with dioramas is revealed…past interpersonal violence is unwisely brought up...Jeff and Annie play the blame game…the killing of non-poisonous vs. poisonous spiders is discussed…Jeff finally delivers the necessary exposition…Annie subjects Jeff to an unfriendly interrogation…Jeff and Annie make a plan...Jeff reluctantly springs into action…Jeff ruminates on the differences between being mauled by a lion and mauled by a tiger…Britta sends Jeff a warning…an old enemy returns and greets Annie like an old friend…Jeff discovers he is forgettable...a walk is taken down memory lane...the promise of escape tempts Annie to desert the cause…Annie makes a fateful decision...Jeff’s ego causes a disruption…Jeff sees cause for optimism...a reminder is given about a POW's first duty…the game is afoot.)
Annie was pipetting E. coli bacteria out of the Erlenmeyer flask when the power snapped off, plunging the entire lab into darkness. She managed to suppress her startle reflex enough that, despite a slight jerk of surprise, she didn’t drop either the pipette or flask, and her hands managed to stay under the now-silent laminar flow hood.
Her moment of triumph, however, was measured in mere tenths of a second.
“IT’S A POWER BLACK OUT!” Garrett screamed in the darkness.
Annie dropped pipette and flask, splashing the nutrient-rich bacterial soup on her gloved hands.
“Garrett! We can see that!” Annie shouted over the rising din of her classmates loudly talking over each other.
“This is bad! THIS IS VERY BAD!” Garrett shouted.
“Thanks for telling me,” Annie muttered as she slowly counted to ten and waited for the emergency lights to snap on.
And waited. Aaaaand waaaaaaiiitted…
Her classmates’ voices dropped to a whisper and she could sense them edging away from her in the darkness. No doubt every single one of them believed that she and her friends were somehow responsible for the power getting cut off. Considering she just found two years’ worth of unpaid electric bills stuffed in a box labeled as “Styrofoam plates” in the administrative office, it was far more likely that Xcel Energy ran out of patience.
Yup. This could be filed under Totally not our bad, guys!
Not that anyone would believe her. Greendale may have been saved, but it was still very much bankrupt. Annie felt the tension zing through her shoulder muscles as she realized that her next order of business would be to dedicate a portion of her ever-shrinking pool of free time to planning and organizing money-raising schemes so the school could buy some new patience from Xcel Energy in the form of payments to cover the past-due bills and associated late fees.
Maybe she should just throw up her hands and give up on sleeping for the foreseeable future.
“Looks like the power’s out in the corridors, too,” a female voice floated out of the darkness.
“Then I guess we’re done for the day,” Professor Browne gleefully announced. “Go and get alcohol poisoning, or whatever it is you delinquents do when not supervised by law-abiding citizens.”
Annie managed to find the sink just as all 21 of her classmates, plus her professor, rushed the door. She could hear them squabbling, jostling, and roughly shoving each other in the fight to be the first out of the lab as she set the water temperature as hot as it could possibly go.
By the time she was done peeling off her gloves and scrubbing her hands until they felt burned and raw, silence had descended on the lab.
“Hello?” Annie called out nervously. “Anyone there?”
Considering that she was practically blind, the silence was far more unnerving than comforting. She blinked in the darkness as she picked up what she hoped was the spray bottle full of bleach solution. She sprayed the entire area around the sink and, just for good measure, her bare hands.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!” Annie yelped as she once again reached for the hot water tap so she could rinse off. When she got home, she was going to have to plunge her hands into a vat of lotion to reverse the skin damage.
The lab door violently banged open, causing Annie to jump and splash hot water everywhere.
“Annie?!” Jeff was using the flashlight app on his phone as he rushed into the room. “Are you hurt? I heard-”
“I’m fine! Fine!” Annie exclaimed as she grabbed the edge of the sink and willed her pulse to slow down.
Jeff paused, took a deep breath, and began threading his way through the lab, which, in the ghostly light of his phone looked like it had been victimized by a mini-riot. To be fair, Annie supposed that the rush to escape the lab’s dungeon-like atmosphere technically fell on the riot side of the equation.
“Then what the hell was with the yell of pain?” Jeff demanded.
“I had to make sure I killed all the E. coli,” Annie explained as she peeled off her lab coat.
Jeff stopped short. “Ummmm, you’re not infected with some kind of deadly, flesh-eating-”
“It’s fine. I basically destroyed all the skin on my hands and flooded every square inch around me in bleach to ensure the mass-slaughter.” Annie looked helplessly around the lab as her lab coat dangled from her thumb and forefinger. “At least I hope there was a bacteriological mass slaughter.”
“Annie.”
“Joking. I’m joking,” Annie said as she draped her lab coat over the closest stool.
“Do. Not. Joke. About. Killer. Bacteria,” Jeff gritted out. He was still keeping a wide berth, Annie noticed.
“Drama queen,” Annie teased, before adding in a more serious tone, “and please tell me we’re not responsible for this blackout.”
“We’re not responsible for this blackout.”
“Are you telling me this because it’s what I want to hear and you’re holding off telling me the truth until we’re in an open field where I can safely explode without injuring innocent bystanders, or are you telling me this because it’s true?” Annie suspiciously asked.
“Calm down, Generalissimo Edison. For once, it’s actually true,” Jeff said with amusement. “This isn’t a repeat of the stuffed beaver incident.”
“It’s not even a repeat of the green water incident?” Annie suspiciously asked.
Jeff looked like he was trying to beam all the sincerity and innocence he could muster directly at her. “We’re totally clean of this.”
“You hope,” Annie said flatly.
Jeff winced. “Okay. There you’ve got me. The texts I’m getting from Shirley, Britta, and Abed are…worrying.”
Annie tensed. Oh no. They just finished cleaning up the residual damage from Subway’s aborted takeover. “What texts?”
Jeff blinked at her. “You mean to tell me you haven’t seen them?”
“My phone’s off. Extracting DNA is hard enough without distractions. Last thing I need is my phone vibrating every five seconds,” Annie primly sniffed.
Jeff’s horrified look at the thought that anyone might shut off their phone for any reason was almost enough to make her laugh.
“Jeff? Texts?” Annie prompted.
“Look, much as I love being the one who has to deliver the exposition, can we do it in a place where there are things that won’t try to kill me?”
“A less dungeon-y atmosphere would help, too,” Annie agreed with a final despairing looking around the messy lab. “And did you just unironically use the word ‘exposition’ in a sentence?”
“It’s official. I’ve known Abed for so long that sometimes when I talk, his words come out of my mouth,” Jeff muttered as he led Annie out of the lab.
You wish. Annie, just barely, bit back the words. Even in her head they sounded just a little too bitter. She had to give it to Abed. They may fight sometimes to the point of driving each other crazy, but at least she always knew where she stood with her roommate. And Shirley. And Professor Hickey. And even Britta, most of the time.
Jeff, she never could tell where she stood with him at the best of times, and the month following Jeff’s and Britta’s aborted marriage plans could not be qualified even by the most delusional person as the best of times. It seemed to Annie that Jeff had been acting like a scalded cat since Subway shook the dust of Greendale from its corporate feet and slunk away from the campus. He kept a wary eye on her and seemed to treat her with caution, even when the others were around. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was waiting for her to transform into a werewolf for realsies and rip out his throat.
In an odd way, Annie was more hurt by that than she was during the few hours where Jeff and Britta were threatening to get married. Not that she could say anything about it. Not that she would. She fought too hard to be the adult in this situation, and she suspected that any confrontation with Jeff - either public or private - would set her back in the eyes of everyone who had eyes. Regardless, the upshot was pretty simple. Given the way Jeff had been acting around her recently, and given that he seemed more concerned about the current situation than her potential to turn into a mythical monster with murderous tendencies, it meant that whatever the others had texted Jeff worried him enough that he actually felt that he had no choice but to team-up with her to solve the latest crisis.
“About those texts,” Annie again prompted as she followed Jeff into the hallway. Thanks to the windows, it wasn’t pitch-black like the lab. However, the dusk was already melting into the night, which meant the hallways were a mess of shadows. Annie reached for her phone tucked safely in her back pocket. Two flashlight apps were better than one, she figured.
“If you’re reaching for your phone, leave it,” Jeff ordered as he set off down the hall. “We might need it later. Something tells me we’re going to be here awhile. So, if you’ve got any plans-” Jeff stopped short and he spun around, shining his cell phone light on her face.
Annie held up her hand to block the light and hissed. “You’re blinding me.”
“Sorry.” Jeff moved his hand so the light was no longer shining in her eyes. “You don’t have any plans, do you? I figured since it was Friday, you might be going somewhere or hanging out with a friend or maybe going out on…” His voice trailed off.
She wondered if stopping by the coffee shop to see if that cute barrista was working and maybe practicing her flirting skills on him while she worked up the nerve to ask the guy out actually counted as a plan. Probably not, she regretfully thought. “Not really, no.”
“Good.” Jeff sounded far too chipper about her lack of plans. “I suspect this latest thing is going to take a while. Hours, at least. Or maybe until sometime tomorrow. Or, all weekend.”
Annie’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you sounding so happy about the prospect of spending your entire weekend at Greendale?”
“It means I have an excuse to get out of my plans,” Jeff said as he turned and set off down the corridor.
Annie groaned. “Jeff? Are we talking about you making regrettable plans to go drinking with Duncan and trying to wingman him again? Because if this keeps up, we’re all going to start thinking you secretly love the stench of booze and failure.”
“I would take a hundred Duncans with bonus Changs and multiple clones of Pelton over my current plans.” Jeff stopped short. Although he turned back around to face her, he was staring into the distance as if he were witnessing a horror only he could see. “It’s the end-of-term papers, Annie. Soooo many papers. There’s 24 of them. And they’re 10 pages each. I have to read them. All of them. Every page. My only hope is that most of them are written in crayon with printing large enough to rival what you’d get from a particularly stupid 5 year-old.”
Annie snorted. “What? Did Duncan not give you pointers on how to get out of assigning papers to your students?”
“He told me that union rules said I could assign dioramas in lieu of papers,” Jeff answered.
“Yikes.”
“I know, right?”
“This explains so much.”
“I know.” Jeff nodded as his expression took on a slightly crazed look. “The last thing I need is more dioramas in my life. The last thing, Annie. When I got my diploma I vowed: no more dioramas. Ever. I was done with the paint, the glitter, the cheap clay that gave you a contact high from the smell…”
“The group fights and property damage that usually ensued during the making of,” Annie added.
“The way you’d wake up in the middle of the night saying to yourself, ‘Damn it! We should have used something more realistic-looking than leopard print fake fur that Shirley found on sale at the local arts and crafts store for the Inuit tent.’”
Annie openly stared at him. She was pretty sure her mouth was hanging open. “You fought me on that.”
“How can I forget? You threw one of the clay figures at my head,” Jeff muttered.
“I missed, didn’t I?” Annie huffed.
“It was a close call. If I didn’t duck, that deformed polar bear would’ve hit me right between the eyes.”
“I was aiming for your forehead!” Annie shot back. “I remember because I was shocked I missed such a big target!”
“Hey!”
“Fifteen points, Jeff! Duncan shaved 15 points off our grade for that diorama because, and I quote, ‘The Inuit don’t live in Africa! I’m not sure where they actually live, but it’s definitely not in a tropical climate!’”
Jeff stared at her. “Wait. You’re still mad about that?”
“No. What I’m mad about is that you knew I was right before we turned it in, and you still insisted that Duncan would be too drunk to notice!” Annie yelled.
“You agreed with me!” Jeff shouted back.
Annie let out an irritated huff of breath. He actually had her there. She did cave, partially because she figured Jeff was right, and partially because the only other option would’ve been turning in the diorama late. She let her standards waver in the face of the Winger charm, not the first time and, sadly, not the last. But like it or not, she was New Annie now. Jeff could try to bamboozle her all he wanted, but she was done falling for it.
When Annie didn’t have a comeback to his defense of himself, namely by pinning the blame on her, Jeff had the gall to look smug. “In any case, we have bigger spiders to fry right now.”
Annie felt her face scrunch. “Did you just say spiders?”
“Actually, spider. Just the one,” Jeff said. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of spiders.”
“Troy and Abed designated me the official spider-killer the first time Troy found one in the tub.” Annie shuddered at the memory of Troy running around the apartment naked and screaming that an eight-legged horror had just tried to suck his blood. “But are you seriously telling me that the blackout, and the fact that we might be stuck here all weekend, is because of a spider?”
Jeff winced. “Well, it’s more because of the kind of spider it is.”
“A poisonous spider will die just as quickly as a non-poisonous one if you if you step on it,” Annie pointed out.
“Ahhh, I see where I went wrong.” Jeff shook his head like he didn’t want to say what he was about to say. “When I say spider, I mean a giant mechanical spider of doom that, near as I can figure out from the texts, just turned the Luis Guzman statue into shredded scrap metal and is now ripping up the benches on the quad and is throwing them through the windows.”
Annie stared at Jeff while she tried to make sense of the news.
“Abed texted something about The Wild Wild West, Will Smith addition, and recommended that we try to find a saddle,” Jeff lamely added.
“Did you see this spider for yourself?” Annie asked.
“Nope. But then again, Luis is in the center of campus and we’re way out on the edge. So if there really is a giant mechanical spider wreaking havoc it’s not like we’d see it.”
“Have you heard any noises that might indicate a giant mechanical spider is running rampant through campus and causing property damage?” Annie asked.
“Okay, fine. I may have heard something that, yes, looking back on it could have been classified as vaguely metallic and dangerous-sounding,” Jeff reluctantly admitted. “And I did see some property damage on my way over here. Maybe a few downed power lines. Some torn up turf. A few trashed benches and broken windows. But based on personal experience? It wasn’t beyond what a bunch of really pissed off and determined students could pull off. Hell, we managed to do more damage than that when Troy left, and we weren’t pissed off.”
“Let me see if I’m very clear on this point.” Annie crossed her arms. “You heard dangerous noises and saw that there was property damage, and you didn’t try to find out what it was?”
“In my defense, I was way too busy pretending that I wasn’t in my office every time a student knocked on the door.” Jeff shrugged. “Besides, it wasn’t long after the noises started that Abed texted me, and that was before I even got up from my chair. But, c’mon. Giant mechanical spider of doom? What are the odds that’s even remotely true?”
“None.” Annie’s shoulders slumped. “So, we’re probably talking about a student riot fueled by yet another gas leak.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Jeff agreed. “My bet is that it’s concentrated in the cafeteria. According to the last text that Shirley sent me, she, Britta, and Abed were reinforcing the perimeter around her sandwich shop to stave off a wave of what she called ‘enemy troops’ armed with what she thinks are tranq guns,” Jeff said.
Annie’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, God.”
“Hickey is apparently trying to build a tank out of her kitchen equipment so they’ll have something to fight the spider,” Jeff added.
Annie moaned. “This is bad.”
“We need gas masks before going in,” Jeff said. “We’re going to need clear heads to convince everyone to get out of there, and we can’t do that if we start seeing an army of mechanical spiders like everyone else.”
“Good thing I know where to find some.” Annie straightened herself up to her full height. “We have to go back to the lab.”
Jeff groaned.
“Seriously, Jeff,” Annie huffed as she turned on her heel and set a determined pace back to where she started. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t touch anything unless I tell you it’s okay. Some of my classmates were still working on their basic labeling skills, so I’m not entirely sure which containers have acid and which have sterile water.”
“Not comforting.”
“Do you want the gas masks or not?”
“I’m not going to lie. I’m beginning to question my commitment to this.”
“It’s this, or going home to grade your papers.”
“Wow. That’s like asking me if I prefer being mauled by a lion or mauled by a tiger,” Jeff said. It was right at that moment that Jeff’s phone started to vibrate. “Now what?”
Annie stopped and turned around in time to see Jeff switch to his text function. She could see his eyebrows lower in the light coming from phone as he studied the message.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Just one word,” Jeff frowned, “Britta’s text says, ‘Incoming.’”
“Incoming?” Annie asked. “What does that-”
An unfamiliar voice interrupted. “Hands in the air, and no one will get hurt!”
Jeff looked up. “Crap.”
“Hands in the air!” the voice ordered again.
“Annie, just do it,” Jeff urgently ordered in quiet voice as he raised his hands, phone still clutched in his left hand. “And don’t make any threatening moves.”
Annie slowly mirrored Jeff’s action. It took everything she had to not turn around.
A new voice broke in. “Well, well, well.”
Annie felt a chill go down her spine. City College? Dean Spreck? she wildly wondered.
“What have we here?” Dean Spreck continued as he moved into view. He was flanked by two helmeted guards, each holding what looked like tranq guns with flashlights affixed to the barrel.
So much for the theory that their friends were suffering from gas leak delusions. But a giant mechanical spider of doom? Really? This topped the retribution for the Great Snow Removal Fracas of 2012. It was enough to make Annie wonder what Dean Pelton did this time to piss off City College this much.
“Miss. Edison,” Dean Spreck gave Annie an acknowledging nod. “Still trapped at Greendale reliving the high school years of glory that you wished you had, I see.”
“Hey!” Jeff exclaimed.
Dean Spreck barely glanced at Jeff. “And you have an attack dog with you.”
Jeff drew himself up to his full height, prompting the two guards to immediately point their guns at him. In response to the threat Jeff slouched, but he looked like he tasted something sour. “If you remember Annie, you remember me.”
Dean Spreck sighed and glanced at Jeff. “Who are you again?”
“Jeff. Winger.” Upon Dean Spreck’s blank look, Jeff added, “Paintball? Western-themed paintball?”
Dean Spreck slowly looked Jeff up and as if he was trying to place him and had failed before he shrugged and once more focused on Annie. “What happened to the determined girl who sat in my office all those years ago that yearned for a real education at a real school? Look at you now. All that promise gone to waste. Why ever did you change your mind?”
“I decided that I didn’t trust you to follow through on your promise of a full scholarship,” Annie mumbled as she stared at the floor. “I figured if you had such a low opinion of Greendale, you probably didn’t actually want a Greendale transfer student at your school and would yank the scholarship within weeks of me enrolling.”
Dean Spreck sighed as if Annie’s words hurt him on a fundamental level. “You should know that I always keep my promises, so you were wrong. You should also know that I don’t take defeat very well.”
“Shocker,” Jeff remarked. “Hey! Stop poking me with that thing!”
Annie chanced a glance at Jeff, who was now focused on glaring at the armed guards.
Dean Spreck ignored Jeff’s side argument with his minions. “But I can afford to be magnanimous and give you a second chance,” he said. “Help me bring down Greendale once and for all by serving as my Sacagawea, and you will get that full scholarship to any college you choose to go to within the state of Colorado.”
Annie glanced suspiciously at Dean Spreck. “You can’t promise that.”
“Annie, don’t listen to him,” Jeff said. “And again, poking me with that gun. Quit it!”
“Unlike your current dean, I am respected.” Dean Spreck twittled his fingers as if to indicate that his promise was easier done than said. “I can even get them to accept your Greendale credits.” He huffed half-a-laugh. “Well, some of them anyway.”
Annie slowly let out a long breath. Part of her still wanted what Dean Spreck offered, and, God help her, she actually believed him when he said that he always kept his promises. She would probably be perfectly fine transferring to another school. Better than fine, actually. More like better off. If nothing else, recent events around Subway’s near-takeover and Greendale’s still-uncertain future drove that point home with the force of a sledgehammer to her skull.
But personal feelings and beliefs aside, Annie couldn’t escape the fact that she made a commitment to this school, and to all the students here who needed to be here. She couldn’t just give up, not like she did last year when she decided to take the diploma and run instead of staying the extra year she needed to pursue her dreams. And just what had giving up gotten her? A job she hated even though it paid well, getting stuck with all of the grown-up responsibilities while Abed and Troy sat around the apartment doing not much, a growing sense of bitterness, and a distinct lack of fun in her life. Sure, things were a little rough at the moment, but they’d smooth out. They always did before.
“Tempting,” Annie admitted. “But…no.”
Yeah, she was hurt to see that Jeff looked relieved by her answer. Then again, she could hardly blame him for believing that her desire to escape just might outweigh her self-imposed obligation to stay.
“I’m sorry to hear that Miss. Edison.” Dean Spreck didn’t actually sound sorry to Annie’s ear. “If that’s your final decision-”
“It is.”
“Then I’m afraid that you and your attack dog will have to be taken out of the game.” Dean Spreck snapped his fingers.
Jeff took a threatening step forward, but stopped cold when the tranq guns took aim at his chest. “What are you going to do to us?”
Dean Spreck turned a blinding smile on Jeff. “Well, John-”
“Jeff! It’s Jeff Winger!” Jeff insisted.
Dean Spreck waved his hand. “Oh, very well. Jess.”
Jeff snarled, “It’s not-”
“Oh, my God! Will you just let it go, already!” Annie shouted.
“Enough!” Dean Spreck yelled. He cleared his throat and straightened his tie, as if he were embarrassed by his outburst. “It’s very simple. We’re going to lock the two of you up in a room so you can’t interfere with our plans.”
Jeff shook his head. “That’s it?”
“Yes. That’s it,” Dean Spreck said. “We’re locking the two of you in a room.”
Jeff immediately perked up. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
Annie was aghast. “Jeff!”
“Annie, c’mon. They’re going to lock us in a room for a few hours,” Jeff said. “It’s just a classroom or one of the supply rooms, right? We’ll be fine.”
That’s when Annie got it. There were a million ways to get out of a room in Greendale, and only one of them actually involved getting through a locked door. However, she still had to make it look good. “Typical! You hit the first speed bump, and you’re willing to surrender!” Jeff glared at her as Annie turned to Dean Spreck. “I’ll have you know that Jeff Winger may be content to sit out this war, but I know that a POW’s first duty is to escape.”
Jeff’s eyebrows went up, a sign that he had caught on that she was playing The Game according to The Rules as spelled out by Dean Spreck.
“Well, I can’t wait to see how you pull off that particular Houdini,” Dean Speck taunted. “Now, don’t make any sudden moves, otherwise, we will tranq you. I don’t think either one of you want that.” He gestured to the darkness and barked, “Bag them!”
“What?” Annie and Jeff asked in unison.
And that’s when Annie felt something slip over her head and everything went pitch black.
Continued here.