Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 49th cycle. Now cycle 50!

CYCLE 50 SPECIAL FAVORITES CHART - So I've done 'favorites' cycles before, and this is another one, but since it's cycle 50, I wanted to do something special for it. So instead of the usual top 16 with a 6-chapter Boston Britt installment for Brittany (who has always been and remains number one ;)), this is how it will be: It's shift days through the cycle. Shift B will be a 21-chapter/day Boston Britt. In shift A, after the first day's 'extra' dedicated to New Directions, there will be four Top 5 lists, working their way down (all the number 5 spots, all the number 4 spots, number 3, 2, and finishing with all the number one spots)

The Top 5's are as follows (all are my 'top 5 favorite...'):
* Top 5 Series (my series)
* Top 5 Friendships
* Top 5 Characters
* Top 5 Relationships

This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: Those Are Wooden Wings, chapter 1.

"Let's Take Chicago"
New Directions

They all had something to prove this year, they could feel it. There wasn't just the need to make up for their poor showing the year before, where they hadn't made it on past round one. Beyond that, for more than half of them, this was the last chance they'd get to achieve this, and with three years of Glee Club in them, they didn't want to leave McKinley and the New Directions without this success to show for it.

This year would be different. Maybe last year they'd just kind of gotten a bit star struck, or city struck at least, being in New York. Now as much as they'd play tourist for a bit in Chicago, they couldn't let that get in the way. They didn't resort to original songs either. As much as they loved what they had come up with, they had cut it too close, made certain… controversial choices, and they had put things off that should have been priority. All in all, it was a mess, and they couldn't do that again, especially not this year.

Every year they had gotten a little further, to Regionals, to the first round of Nationals… now as they were on their way to Chicago, everyone just looked on edge and stressed out. They'd all been excited to go, still were, but the travel showed their emotions for what they truly were. The pressure was strong.

Everything had been about going through the steps, and they had to own up to how they were feeling or they would crash and burn. It had come, not from a captain or another, not from Schuester, but from all of them collectively it seemed. As they had put on their costumes and stood waiting to head into the auditorium, they had started looking to each other, and they knew…

There would never be another moment like this. This was their last competition as this group, as this lineup. Next year, so many of them would be gone, leaving the ones left behind to have to cope. They would be handed a half-empty choir room, barely more than a handful of kids… More than that, they would be made to fill those empty chairs if they even hoped of heading on to competitions again. They had struggled for so long to hold on to a twelfth member, now it would be an even bigger gap. How would they magically dig out a half a dozen people willing to join them?

And then at the end of that next year, they would be leaving, too, all of them who had started this. New Directions would be a whole new beast, and they had to leave it in good hands, give it a legacy to help it thrive. But for that, they first had to win Nationals, to leap ahead of all the others. They could do it, right?

Looking to one another, recognizing that same fear, those same concerns, it could have made it worse, but really it didn't. Instead, it helped them. They saw each other, saw they weren't alone in fears, that they were shared by all of them, so they knew their level of wanting this, of determination, was the same all around. No one was going to go in there like it didn't mean what they all knew it meant, and they knew that, when put to the challenge, they could and would rise.

Waiting their turn was never something they liked to do, especially being so primed and pumped for this. When finally it was time to hit the stage they could almost have just leapt into place. They had to pause and breathe and let out everything that could get in their way, leaving only everything they needed. Nerves didn't go away completely, and that was one of the things they needed.

The performances would be a blur as soon as they were done. The energy they had felt though, that stayed, and the next phase, it seemed, was even worse than the previous one. Now they had to wait.

They remembered this part, this was where everything had come to an end the last time. They hadn't even gone to look at the board, Mr. Schuester had gone, and then he'd returned, looking like he was being made to gut them one by one. They couldn't have that, not again, not this time. They had turned things around, there was no way they could be taken down again. So that decided it. This year they would all go. They would gather their courage and walk up to that board together, and one of two things would happen. Either they would find their name there, find that they had made it one step further, or they would find once again that they were only good enough to get so far and that they had to return home defeated.

They had put the board. Now the choirs were flocking in to see, just as they wanted to see, whether or not they had done enough. As the New Directions forged ahead, they would see and hear victory here, defeat there, and all it did was make them even more nervous. Hands reached for hands… This was it.

They saw the name, right there, and it took a good second or two for them to realize it was real: they had made it to the next round. They weren't done, they were one step closer to that trophy… and they erupted. The best, they found, would be to share this news with the one who had brought them here. They told Mr. Schuester. Just as they knew now this was only half the battle: now they had to really give it all they had if they wanted to win.

On their way there, between rearranged choreographies, an illness for one of them, frayed nerves and distractions, they'd have to work right back to where they were at before, to this shared knowledge of what this meant, of the fact they knew it was all of theirs to win or lose, and then when they would take the stage they would let the audience know that they were the New Directions of McKinley High in Lima, Ohio, and they had come to win.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!