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 69th cycle. Now cycle 70!


GLEEKATHON FOURTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE - It's October again, which means another year of Gleekathon is about to wrap up! At the end of the month it will have been four years since I've started doing my daily stories! As always, I will be celebrating this with a special cycle of stories to touch on my favorite stories I've done throughout the year. There will be two installments each on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. The remaining days will feature, as they have in the last several months, new chapters of the latest story in my Doctor Who/Glee crossover series. As far as the anniversary stories go, it will be as I've done before, taking those past stories and either doing a prequel, sequel, POV swap, genre swap, alternate ending, or additional scenes.

This story is a SEQUEL to "The Fair Collaboration" a Glee/The Big Bang Theory crossover story originally posted between November 9 2012 and January 25 2013.

(This is a shift day, which means there will be two stories posted today!)


"Terminator Master"
Sheldon, Penny, & Brittany

The box had been sitting in her room for weeks untouched. For a while it had been buried under a mountain of dirty clothes. When she'd finally cleaned up her room and pulled the clothes away, she'd seen it and smiled, remembering when she'd gotten it and how.

Months before, when she'd visited her aunt in Pasadena and met Sheldon Cooper, the last thing the tall scientist had expected, much less wanted, was for the two of them to become anything close to friends. Things had started to turn around, of all things, with the help of a video game and a dance, followed by banana bread. Now, after a few more visits and plenty of video chats, she could call him her friend and know that he wouldn't shy away from it.

The last time she had seen him, instead of her being in Pasadena, it had been Sheldon, along with Penny and the rest of their friends, who had made the trip up to Lima. Sheldon had decided to come and help her, when her science teacher had gotten her to enter the science fair in order to bump up her failing grade. With his help, she had done far better than she had ever expected to. She hadn't won, but as far as she was concerned it had all been a great success. The others could keep their trophies and their ribbons. She had gotten something far better. Sheldon had gifted her with his very own Theremin, which Brittany affectionately called the Terminator.

The box may have been abandoned to become a dirty laundry post for a few weeks, but she did intend to use the instrument and to attempt to master it. If she could, then she might be able to contribute to the Glee Club in a brand new way. And now that she had uncovered the box again, there was nothing she wanted to do more than to get on with her learning. She was conscious of her issues with attention span, so the sooner she started practicing, the less likely it was that she would abandon it.

She'd sent an e-mail to Sheldon, bright and early on a Sunday morning, and she had barely had time to go set up the Terminator on her bed, to fiddle around with it on her own for a while, when the prompt came on her screen for a call on Skype.

"Sheldon?" she blinked, clicking on the window. The lean man's face appeared and she smiled. "Isn't it like super early where you are?"

"What's your point?" he shrugged.

"Nothing," she quickly sat. "How are you? You look weird. Did they kill someone on that show again?"

"Do not even get me started," Sheldon's features turned scornful and Brittany sucked her lip in to keep from chuckling. "But never mind that. You said you had to talk to me about something urgent. Are you hurt?" he asked. "Because if you are, I don't see how I could…"

"No, no, I'm not hurt," she cut him off. "I need your help with my present," she leaned out to the side so he could see the Theremin set up on her bed.

"Oh!" he sat up. "I see. You want lessons."

"Yes, please."

"Fair enough, I did give it to you, so I should be the one to inform you. Very well, are you ready?"

"Yes," she held up a pencil and notebook.

"Excellent. You wouldn't believe the number of times people have come to me asking for help and expected me to believe they would just remember what I told them," he shook his head.

"I have trouble paying attention sometimes, or remembering… I think I'm part goldfish. So I always have to write things down," she explained.

"Alright, lesson one, history. We begin in Russia, in the early nineteen hundreds, specifically…"

Brittany hadn't expected for them to begin so soon, but she appreciated Sheldon more than he would ever realize, so if he was ready to give him her time, she was going to be alert and ready. It was a lot of information for her to take in, and her pencil flew across one page after the other. Sometimes she had to stop him and ask him to repeat, and she could see the initial reaction of annoyance short circuit its way down into acceptance before he repeated what she needed to hear again. Sometimes she also had to stop, not because she hadn't heard him, but because her brain and her hand needed a break. Whenever they would stop, she would engage him in some form of chit chat, which he resisted but inevitably gave in to, for her sake.

"Is Penny around?" Brittany asked, hiding a yawn that would keep her from getting another lecture.

"But we were just getting into the good part," Sheldon sounded disappointed.

"I just want to say hi," Brittany begged. Sheldon considered his options.

"Fine, but when we get back to work, I will be including a new section in your lessons, the influence of the Theremin on…"

"Okay, sure," Brittany nodded and, shut down, he got up and moved off camera. A few seconds later, she could hear Sheldon's knocking and calling at Penny's door. A few more seconds later, she heard the girl's voice mingled in with Sheldon's like they were arguing. Sheldon must have revealed the reason for his visit, because the next thing she knew, the blonde girl was dropping into camera with her hair and makeup half done.

"Hey, Britt," Penny chased her frown when she saw her. "What are you up to?"

"Sheldon is teaching me about the Terminator."

"The movie?" Penny blinked.

"No, that," Brittany repeated her previous move to show the Theremin on her bed.

"Oh, yeah, I remember that. I'd say thanks for getting it out of this building but apparently he's got another one," she glared back and Brittany could picture Sheldon's frown. "You're the one who dragged me out like this," she pointed at him before turning back to the screen. "So he showed you how to play?"

"Not yet. Lesson one is about history," Brittany put the notebook into view and Penny shuddered.

"I'm so sorry."

"No, I like it," Brittany smiled.

"Well, that's weird," Penny nodded to herself before smiling to the girl again. "When you've got it down, I'd be happy to hear you try it."

"How come you never want to listen when I play?" Sheldon reappeared at Penny's side and she startled.

"Well, I should get going, but I promise we'll talk later, deal?"

"Deal," Brittany smiled. Penny waved at her as she got up, gave Sheldon a glare and walked out. Eventually, Sheldon sat back down and, sensing an argument about to happen, Brittany decided it was best to get him back on track. "Can we continue now? I'm ready." Sheldon paused, sat back up.

"That's what I like to hear. Now where were we?"

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!