Written for the Community ficathon at lesoleilluna's LJ.. The prompt (thanks to animereid27) was 'Shirley, A brownie bake off, Greendale Vs City-college'.

So my mind instantly went to Rocky IV. As you do.

Feedback welcome and gratefully received, and enjoy!

"I must break you," Ivan said, in the same tone of voice another man would use to describe the weather.

Shirley Bennett frowned, taken aback. "That's not nice!" she replied, shocked.

Ivan towered over Shirley as they stood before each other, a blond 6 foot 5 hunk of pure muscle wrapped in a red apron with "City College Coffee Pâtisserie" stenciled on it in severe Soviet Cyrillic-style lettering. His face showed not the slightest flicker of emotion. They said he was the perfect baker, raised from childhood in a pastry gulag in the wilds of Siberia and trained to the point of peak human confectionary-producing excellence through a harsh physical regime (involving, according to Troy, machines and drugs and stuff). They said his brownies had killed a man through sheer deliciousness once.

Around them, the crowd roared and jeered around the makeshift stage surrounding two steel baking ovens, and over the scratchy audio set-up, she could hear Neil's voice booming over the crowd, informing them that the victor in this contest would be the one with the sole privilege of setting up a coffee booth at the upcoming Careers Fair for high school students to be held at the Convention Centre. Out of the corner of her eye Shirley could see Dean Pelton and Dean Spreck doing ... something vaguely homoerotic with each other, which seemed to involve some kind of combination between a hug, a wrestle, and a jostling match. Dean Pelton was dressed as a ring girl, while Dean Spreck – for reasons perhaps best left unexplored – appeared to be wearing some kind of quasi-fascist military officer's uniform that required rather more faux-leather than was probably necessary..

["You see, Craig?" Stephen Spreck whispered into his nemesis' ear, his embrace as tight as a cobra's and yet as warm as a lover's. "It's a matter of evolution. Ivan is the most perfectly trained baker ever. Ivan is a look at the future. It is physically impossible for your little housewife to win. She has not the size, the strength, the genetics to win."

After a moment's pause, Craig Pelton leant back and frowned at Spreck.

"That seems a little bit racist," he objected.]

"Let's get ready to BAKE-OOOOOFFFFFFFFFFF!" Neil bellowed into the microphone.

The bell rang. With a roar, the Great Greendale / City College Brownie Cook-Off began.

To be honest, Shirley wasn't quite sure how things had escalated to this point.

It actually went something like this:

Every year, local businesses and higher education facilities in the greater Denver area hold a weekend careers fair for high school students who will be graduating that summer in order to provide information about apprenticeships, courses and degrees that are on offer in the local area. Space is, of course, at a premium, which means that the less – shall we say, prestigious – institutions usually end up fighting for presence.

For Greendale and City College, then, it usually comes down to three booths to split between them. One for each campus, and one extra one that one lucky campus can use to offer additional bribes – enticements – to encourage students to enroll at their respective schools. Say, a coffee and brownie stand?

Of course, since Greendale traditionally has not had any decent coffee-and-brownie-themed enticements to offer anyone, this particular rivalry was usually a non-starter, and the second booth has usually somehow been swindled by City College. However, this was before a charming little coffee place by a woman who, modestly, made what were probably the best damn baked goods in the entire Greendale area (and if anyone dared say otherwise, they could shove them somewhere very uncomfortable indeed) opened up at Greendale Community College, which in turn convinced certain administrators that for the first time in recent memory, Greendale Community College stood a chance of actually winning the second booth.

This, certain other administrators had decided, could not be tolerated.

You would think this would be the sort of matter that could be solved with, say, the flip of a coin. This is Greendale and City College we're talking about, so you would of course think very wrong.

When she got back to her cooking station, there was a brownie recipe next to the oven, but Shirley didn't need them. The brownie recipe were etched into her mind, it was a part of her by now. A permanent part of her identity by this point. The oven was preheating and the pans were greased before she could even register that they were done.

Her hands shook as she poured the butter and the chocolate into the baking tray, and sweat was beginning to drip into her eyes. She looked up, right into the concerned faces of her friends – even Jeff's, in a brief moment of him not aloofly texting on his phone.

But Abed was looking calm. Neutral. And as she met eyes with him, he nodded.

No pain, he mouthed to her.

And Shirley remembered.

Cue flashback:

"Maybe you can't win," Abed said. For some reason, he was wearing a towel around his neck.

Jeff looked up from his phone, eyebrow quirked. "Very inspiring, Abed."

"Don't listen to Abed, Shirley," Britta insisted. "You can definitely win. Okay, so maybe City College have some kind of super-baker in their ranks. Yeah, sure, maybe his brownies are totally delicious. Yeah, maybe people have even baked themselves to death cooking against him -"

Shirley wasn't looking encouraged. Jeff just rolled his eyes, and returned to his phone.

"What I think Britta's trying to say," Annie sighed, "is that Abed's wrong, and you can totally kick his ass. You make awesome brownies, Shirley."

"But maybe you can't," Abed said bluntly.

Annie sighed again and glared at him. Abed didn't pay attention. "Maybe the only thing you can do is just take everything he's got. But to beat you, he's going to have to kill you."

Shirley's eyes widened, and she squeaked a little bit.

"Whoa," Troy said, his own eyes pretty wide by this point, "this baking contest is getting real."

"Shirley, Shirley, Shirley," Pierce said in his familiar soothing-yet-condescending way, "just do what I do when I get nervous in this situations. Just picture everyone in the room without any clothes on."

Everyone looked at Pierce skeptically.

"In what way is that supposed to help Shlrley win a baking contest?" Jeff asked.

"It's working right now, isn't it?" Pierce replied.

Everyone now shared rather uncomfortable glances with each other.

"But even so," Abed said, apparently determined to get through his speech and taking advantage of the discomfort to do so, "To beat you, he's going to have to kill you. But to kill you, he's got to have the heart to stand in front of you. And to do that, he's got to be willing to die himself. I don't know if he's ready to do that. I don't know."

There was a long pause while everyone digested this.

"Abed," Jeff eventually said, "are you just quoting Rocky?"

Abed clicked his fingers proudly. "Rocky IV for the win."

Jeff sighed again. "Seriously, Abed, maybe you should consider leaving the inspiring speeches to the experts from now on."

Britta shot him a dismissive look. "I don't hear you coming up with anything."

"Britta, you bring out the big guns when the situation calls for big guns. You can't just waste a Winger speech on any old crisis."

"You mean 'Shirley is about to go into a bake-off against a guy who's apparently killed people in bake-offs' isn't a crisis?"

"Oh, come on," Jeff retorted, exasperated. "are we really buying that BS that Spreck's selling? It's a bake-off. It's two people cooking brownies for an afternoon. It's everyone in Greendale and City College once again wasting their lives trying to prove which one is the slightly worst community college in the area when the correct answer is, of course, both of them. This is not by any scale of the imagination a crisis. Shirley, you know what this other guy is? He's a baker. He's not a superman or a god or anything. He's a guy who goes to a community college and bakes. End of."

["Holy crap," Jeff would say later that day, as everyone gaped at City College's contestant at the pre-bake-off press conference, "that guy's a superman."]

"That aside," Abed insisted, "given that this is Greendale we're discussing and making a big deal of things is kind of our thing, Shirley needs to prepare, we all need to help her, and given the way things seem to be heading there's only one thing to do."

"And that is…?" Jeff asked, preemptively hating the answer.

"Training montage," Abed said in the dramatic tones of someone who had really, really, really wanted to do a training montage for a long, long time.

Everyone groaned.

"Abed," Jeff sighed. "this is real life. No one's gonna cut away. We can't just do a montage."

Cue montage. (Oh, Jeff. Will you ever learn?)

You may wish to start humming "Gonna Fly Now" by Bill Conti to yourself at this point. That song didn't actually appear in Rocky IV, but it's the only Rocky training montage theme anyone really likes or remembers, so.

We see Shirley baking in her warm, inviting kitchen at home, being timed by Annie and Troy, Abed yelling encouragements at her.

We see the Grand Hall of Baking being prepared (well, okay, the Greendale cafeteria, but let's let the Deans have their moment, yes?).

We see Shirley in a blind taste test, choosing the perfect ingredients and rejecting those of inferior quality.

We see our nemesis, Ivan, training in a cold, sterile cooking laboratory surrounded by the latest in baking technology and the finest minds in the field of chocolate confectionary available to City College.

We see Shirley reading big thick books of brownie recipes with the study group – why, we do not know, because it's not like Shirley doesn't already know how to make brownies, but whatever.

We see Dean Pelton, picking and choosing a costume; he's kind of kicking himself for having already done the ring-girl, since that would be perfect, but the cheerleader is for more of a 'peppy' occasion.

We see Shirley doing sit-ups, Troy and Abed tag-teaming encouragements at her.

We see Jeff, disinterestedly playing with his phone.

We see Shirley and Abed arguing about why, precisely, Shirley should have to chop a whole load of wood.

We see men and women in white coats with clipboards monitoring things appearing on expensive looking computer screens as they watch Ivan bake with ferocious intensity.

We see Pierce napping. Leonard is sneaking up to him, with a devious expression on his face, and then he - oh, Jesus Leonard, that's sick. What is wrong with you?

We see Shirley, pounding as hard as she can on a speedball in a gym. The look on her face is glowering determination. Something glows in her eyes, determined and unstoppable. Something that promises that asses will be kicked, consistently and thoroughly. On the sidelines, the study group share glances that are as concerned as they are proud.

We see Ivan, wired up to machinery, his chest bare and glistening with sweat; he is injected with something from a syringe. As this cannot possibly help him bake faster or better, we can only assume that this is all just to give those interested in imagining Ivan's bare, perfect muscular chest an opportunity to do so and some mental fan service. You're welcome.

We see Dean Spreck, master of all he surveys, watch his puppet train from high above, and as he pictures the inevitable destruction of Greendale's career fair dreams, he grins malevolently. He really is a dick.

We see Shirley jogging towards the statue of Luis Guzman in the centre of the Greendale campus green. Again, why we do not know. As she reaches the statue, she turns, and thrusts her arms up in the air triumphantly. This would be a lot more impressive if she'd run up a bunch of steps to get there or if she wasn't clearly winded, but, you know, whatever.

We do not see: Shirley chopping wood (she won that argument), Shirley doing jumping jacks (again, she put her foot down), Shirley doing push-ups (she really put her foot down), or Shirley pulling a tractor through the snow (this wasn't even floated since there was no tractor and no snow, which is really odd since this is supposed to be Colorado, but whatever), or Shirley running up a mountain.

End montage. And flashback, for that matter.

You can stop humming now. Or, you know, don't. Whatever. It's all good.

Shirley gritted her teeth, and got back to her baking.

The cooking rounds melted into each other. Two trays of brownies each. Then four. Then eight.

It was close. Too close. And still, the crowd roared, and the judges watched impassively.

On the brief moments that she looked up, Shirley tried not to look at Ivan, tried not to glance in his direction. There was a twisted, sick little pit in her stomach that made her keep her eyes on her work, or only look up at her friends if she had to.

But one time she looked up, Abed was pointing excitedly – or at least, with what passed for excitement for him – at Ivan.

Shirley turned. Ivan was bent over his cooking oven, stiff and frozen with tension. Sweat gleamed and glistened on his skin in the light. His teeth were gritted. And then, he looked up, right into her eyes.

For a moment, they just looked at each other. And Shirley could see something breaking inside him.

"He's sweating, Shirley," she could hear Abed yell. "He's sweating. He's not a machine. He's just a man."

Shirley felt a grin of triumph quirk at her lips.

She had this son of a bitch.

Across the room, Ivan stared at the short, matronly housewife producing an unfathomable amount of delicious smelling baked goods.

"She's not human," he murmured to himself in Russian, "she's not human. She's made of iron."

Nine trays of brownies.

Then nine trays to ten.

As Shirley began to pull away, the crowd roared even louder.

"Do you hear them?" Dean Spreck screamed at Ivan in between rounds. Ivan was slumped over his oven, exhausted and tense, and probably not in the mood to be screamed at by a petulant little man in a suspiciously fetishistic faux-leather fascist military uniform. "Do you hear them, you fool?! They're shouting for her! You've got them on her side! I'm paying you to crush those Greendale maggots for me, idiot, and I expect you to -"

He was cut off with a high-pitched squeak as Ivan grabbed him by the neck and lefts him off the ground. Spreck had just enough time to look into Ivan's blazing, enraged eyes before he was hurled unceremoniously into the crowd.

"I win this for me!" Ivan roared at the crowd, desperation and anger warring in his voice. "FOR ME!"

[The study group watched this with wide eyes.

"Holy crap," Jeff remarked. "It's like that time Troy beat Pierce at Monopoly."]

Nine trays of brownies. Then ten to eleven. Then ten to twelve.

Then the final bell rang.

As it turned out, neither Ivan nor Shirley ended up sticking around the Great Greendale / City College Bake-Off verdict.

Ivan left immediately after the final bell rang. No one seemed in the mood to stop him. They eventually managed to patch up the hole he left in the cafeteria door, but everyone agreed that it never seemed to close the same way after he'd been there.

Shirley left minutes before the verdicts were read out. She was covered in sweat and wanted to take a bath, she wanted to go hug her babies, and in the end, she found it didn't matter to her who won.

"I made delicious brownies," she informed her friends, "and I kept up with that guy, and in the end, that's all that matters."

Abed nodded sagely. "Spoken like a true Rocky," he declared.

As it happened, when it came to the career fair, there weren't that many people who were encouraged to go to Greendale Community College. But one thing everyone did agree on was that if the coffee stall was anything to go by, the coffee and brownies they had at Greendale were absolutely incredible.