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 73rd cycle. Now cycle 74!

"Can I Get A Note?"
In Gen2!World: Gen1!Quinn/Jesse, Gen2!Kurt, Mike, Puck, & New Directions
Berry-St series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

They knew how long it had taken last time, and they weren't going to have this be the same, not if they could help it. They didn't want to go weeks and months running around, hoping that the next thing they did would send them home. Sure, they had no real idea of what they were doing even now, but they had to be able to count on the idea that, because they had done this before, it would make this time that much easier. They were going to figure out how to get everyone home.

Maybe it was that it really wasn't the first time they did this, but the solution seemed a lot easier for them to reach this time around. It was going to be like one of those Christmas movies of the week where someone had to learn the true meaning of Christmas, except it would be about showing their friends' bizarro selves, well… the true meaning of Glee. If they could only manage to reassemble the New Directions, as much of them as they could, then something would have to give.

Kurt had been having a bad day and, taking his frustration on Quinn and Jesse, who kept saying they'd been through this thing before, he'd told them to 'do something.' This had translated into them deciding if they were ever going to get anywhere, then the first thing that needed to happen was for them to convince the others to help them recreate something they'd never actually had in the first place. They had to recruit them back.

Already they knew they could count on Kurt and Mike, not that they had much of a choice. They had about as much experience with Glee Club as the others they would be attempting to recruit, which was to say they had very little to work on. They would have to help them, the same as they would have to help the others.

Mike had surprised them by saying he could get Puck to join them. When they asked if he was sure, he said he was. When they asked how he would do it, he said he just knew he could and he left it at that. They didn't try to get anything else out of him. Already this meant they had four. Jesse might have been able to help them, but officially he had graduated, and he couldn't be part of the club. And with Matt gone, they knew very well that all their efforts to reform the New Directions would only get them a total of eleven, provided they could get all of them. They would be one short for competition, though they had no idea if that would matter, if all they needed to do in order to get home was to convince and prepare the members of New Directions as they had existed and remained to this world. They would cross that bridge when they got to it.

There were some names they knew would come with a certain specific set of problems. Finn, for instance, was going to be a lot more to deal with, considering the twist this world had put on his personality. Then there was Rachel, who would be essential to the entire plan, but who Quinn couldn't bring herself to involve just yet, knowing who they were supposed to be to each other here. It would be too much at once, and this was already going to prove difficult. For their initial push, it still left them with five people to convince.

They got two.

They were just about convinced that the thing that lost them both Artie and Tina was about Coach Sylvester. They looked even more afraid of her here than they did in any of the other worlds Quinn and Jesse had seen. They saw this idea of doing up the Glee Club again as an invitation to get trampled by Hurricane Sue, and that was the last thing they wanted. That they were a couple still in this place apparently meant that, if they couldn't get one, then they couldn't get either. If Artie wouldn't do it, then neither would Tina, and vice versa.

Santana had been a long shot. Quinn couldn't convince her. They didn't have the same kind of dynamic here as they had in the other worlds, and when they'd put it up to her, she'd practically laughed in their faces and walked off. They knew that she was still good friends with Mike here and he could have been their ace in the hole, but even he had struck out. He hadn't even gotten close. In hindsight, maybe they should have tried him first, so she didn't see his coming to her as him playing puppet to Quinn and the new janitor, but what was done was done. They'd have to get her later.

Their recruiting had not been completely fruitless. Kurt, after seeing that they really were trying, had gotten to do what they hadn't managed with Mike for Santana, which was to use this friendship between him and Mercedes and get her to consider them. Maybe it helped that, as far as she could see, she would have the spotlight, front and center, with no one to stand in her way. Kurt knew what buttons to push, having known her on the other side, in his world. They would need to convince her further, once they started rehearsing together, but it was something to go on.

And they had gotten Brittany, too. As recruits went, they could always count on Brittany to be someone who would open herself to possibility in ways others wouldn't. They'd gotten her intrigued, and the rest had more or less worked itself out. They knew they could still lose her; she wasn't completely foolproof, and all it would take would be for her to get spooked off, and they'd be done for.

They had to think positive. Mike had delivered on the Puck front, as promised, and they had Mercedes, and Brittany. That was six already, half of what they needed for competition. There had been six of them, once, and then the rest had been pulled in. Maybe they could do the same. Maybe they really could go home sooner rather than later.

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!