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Ineffectual Disclaimer: The Official Fanfiction University concept belongs to Camilla Sandman. All honor to Miss Cam! Hogan's Heroes, of course, belongs to whichever media company currently owns it, and whoever currently owns them in turn. Allison is mine and Tirathon is me. I continue to bemoan the lack of my most worthy and trusted beta reader.

A/N: I get the point about my failed attempt at capturing Allison's style in the first chapter. I'll go back to my own style, which might not be Shakespeare but at least it's Tirathon. When I have some time I'll go and fix chapter one. Oh, and to whom it may concern: No, an actual story shipping Hochstetter and Frau Linkmeyer will not be any part of this. I'm not sure how I should react to more than one person assuming that it would, but I'm leaning toward "terrified" right now.


At ten minutes to eight, Allison stood on the worn limestone steps of Yarnell Building, wondering whether this was actually a good idea. What had seemed perfectly reasonable in the familiar surroundings of her dorm became less and less certain as she walked across campus. What if it wasn't a party invitation? What if it was some creep? In the middle of a busy campus, in a public building where professors work late? She banished the doubts and went inside.

The door swung shut behind her with a dull thud and the click of a latch. The unfamiliar sound got her attention. The glass doors all over campus, so incongruous on the old brick buildings like Yarnell, made a swishing sound when when they closed. She looked back. For a moment, as she first glimpsed it in her peripheral vision, the door looked like wood instead of modern glass, with a doorknob instead of a push-bar. She rubbed her eyes, and the door was glass, just like it had been when she opened it. She turned back to the main hallway and saw light shine out from a room near the far end as someone she hadn't noticed before went in. Must have come in the other door. She headed for the occupied room, trying to dismiss her newest misgivings.

A poster on one of the bulletin boards on the walls caught her eye as she passed: a little boy with a basket of vegetables over the slogan "Plant a Victory Garden. Our food is fighting!" She turned to look and it was nothing but an announcement of the engineering department's upcoming open house. That's not what I saw. She stared at the poster, but it stubbornly continued announcing the open house and promising refreshments. No little boys, no vegetables. As she turned away, for a moment she thought she saw the Victory Garden poster again. Refusing to look back, she walked briskly up to the door of room 112. She could see the shadows of several people moving around beyond the frosted glass; this must be the right place. She made sure her invitation was still in her pocket, ran her fingers through her hair, and turned the knob.

Allison felt a moment's queasiness as she entered the room, just as she'd felt back in her dorm before she found the invitation. I hope it's not the dining hall tacos again. She closed her eyes for a moment until the feeling passed. When she opened them, a different sort of disorientation hit her full force: she wasn't sure where she was, but she was definitely not in #112 Yarnell Building.

The room was warmer, as though the air conditioning had stopped working on a summer day. The lighting was yellowish, the glow of incandescent bulbs, instead of the cold light of the campus's standard fluorescent fixtures. Looking around, she saw a half-dozen people in a line leading to a desk directly across the room. A man in something like an Army uniform sat behind the desk, and two soldiers wearing white helmets and MP armbands stood on either side of him. Another two, she realized, flanked the door she had just entered through. Several people sat at two tables near the right-hand wall. They seemed to be filling out some kind of forms.

"What is...?" she began, but was interrupted by one of the MP's behind her.

"No talking. Get in line, pick up your forms."

Forms? This was starting to sound dangerously bureaucratic. Although this was her first semester in college, she was already well-conditioned. There were always forms. She got in line.

The man at the desk pulled one folder out of a stack of them with apparent irritation and handed it to the girl at the front of the line.

"You should have told me you spelled 'fan' with a 'ph'," he said. "It would have saved time. "Sit down and fill it out, then go through the other door and give them to the man at the desk."

The girl took the folder, sat at one of the tables, and started filling out whatever form was inside of it. Two of the girls at the tables got up and left the room via a door on the left wall that Allison, her attention on the line and the desk, hadn't even noticed. The next girl — they all seemed to be girls around her own age — stepped up to the desk.

"Pen name?" the man behind it asked sharply.

"Um ... Ariana14" she said in what sounded like a British accent. There was a folder for her, and the same instructions.

While the remaining four girls got their folders and two more joined the line behind her, Allison took the chance to look around the room. Further proof that this was not #112 Yarnell came from the fact that it was at best half the size the room should have been. The floor was covered with linoleum tiles in a checkerboard of dingy gray and dingy white. The walls were painted a pale institutional green, with several bulletin boards that had some type of official-looking notices on them, and a poster that said "Loose lips can sink ships." She wiped her hand across her forehead; she'd dressed for a crisp fall evening, not this unseasonable heat.

Allison was next. She stepped up to the desk, an old-fashioned wooden one holding the stack of folders, a small electric fan, and a nameplate that said "Sgt. Ferris."

"Pen name?"

"Allexa," she said, hastily adding "Two L's" to stave off any further irritation on the part of the sergeant.

Her folder was near the top. He handed it to her and repeated the same instructions in a flat voice. This seemed to be what college was really about: official paperwork. But why didn't these people do all of this by computer instead of having people carry dead-tree forms around? There were several empty chairs by the table; she sat in one and opened the folder.

"ENROLLMENT FORM - OFFICIAL FANFICTION UNIVERSITY OF HOGAN'S HEROES" was printed across the top. Below was a fairly typical, and highly bureaucratic, set of questions with blanks for the answers. She picked up one of the pencils scattered around the table and started filling them out. After the usual name and address questions came "next of kin"; that bothered her a bit. Allergies, medical conditions, education, all the usual things she had filled out on forms a million times before. Some of the questions seemed odd, such as languages spoken and foreign countries visited, and then, under the sub-heading PLACEMENT, came a series of questions she had never seen on any standardized form.

Do you know what a Mary Sue is? Yes ____ No ____

Allison put an X after "yes".

Have you ever written one? Yes ____ No ____

A big solid X after "no".

Are you sure? Yes ____ No ____

An extra-bold X after "no".

What year was the US Air Force established? _______

She had to think a bit about that one. Hogan was a pilot, so of course he was in the Air Force, and World War II was in 1945, so maybe 1944? She filled in the blank accordingly.

List the US Army officer ranks in order from lowest to highest.

There was were seven blanks for that one. She chewed on the end of her pencil for a bit, then entered private, sargent, leutenant, captain, colonel, general, admiral. That last one didn't seem right, but she couldn't think of any other that might go there. Besides, she had suspected for a long time that nobody ever read anything people wrote on forms, they just checked to make sure all the blanks were filled in.

The next page seemed to be some kind of history test. There was a list of names she had to write one-sentence descriptions of. Hitler was easy, of course, and Goering, and Himmler. Who said watching Hogan's Heroes was a waste of time? Patton was easy, he'd been a general; there was a movie about him, though Allison hadn't seen it. Some were harder: Eisenhower, she wasn't quite sure of; he'd been President, was that during the war? Or was that Roosevelt? Which one? DeGaulle was a French leader? Most of the names were completely unfamiliar. Mitchell. Harris. Franco. Guderian. Rommel. Spaatz. Arnold. Stalin. Montgomery. Tedder. Donovan. Doenitz. Hirohito. Von Runstedt. Colonel Rol. Doolittle. Von Choltitz. Chenault. Galland. Canaris. Tito. Clark. LeClerc. Yamamoto. Baum. Skorzeny. The list went on and on. Who were all these people? And why did they matter?

After that came questions about languages and countries, airplanes and tanks and guns, a few battles she'd heard of and a lot she hadn't, and things that had nothing to do with the military like long-ago music and movies. It took her about fifteen minutes to get through the whole thing, during which all of the other people at the tables had been replaced by new ones, and there were still three in line. Somehow, answering the questions and filling out the forms seemed to be better than just getting up and walking out of there, though she couldn't have explained why.

As instructed, she went through the door and found herself in a larger room with a similar arrangement, except that where the tables had been in the other room, here there were rows of chairs where a few of the people she'd seen in the previous room were sitting. She handed her folder to the man seated at the desk — the nameplate said Sgt. Esposito this time. He waved her to a chair. Still apparently not allowed to talk, she waited. Periodically the sergeant called a name and someone picked up their folder and proceeded through the far door. Apparently the next step in this process took less time than filling out the forms, because in only a few minutes, her name — her pen name — was called, she collected her folder from the sergeant, and went through the door.

That door led into a hallway. She looked around in confusion. This hallway couldn't be in Yarnell building; there should be stairs here. One of the ubiquitous MP's directed her to an open door on the far side, a few doors down. This room was larger, and much busier. There was a desk to the immediate right of the door and two more desks and a table further down that side, each of them with a man in uniform behind it. On the left was series of six doors that looked like department store dressing rooms. Red lights were on over three of them; as Allison watched, one went out. There was also a door on the far end. As usual, MP's stood by the doors. Allison, who was getting the hang of this now, joined the line — if you could call two girls a line — at the first desk.

The girl who spelled "fan" with a "ph" was the next up at the desk. The man behind that desk, whose uniform had more clutter on it than the previous ones, read through the girl's folder. Something interested him; he read it again. Then he directed the girl, folder in hand, through the far door. The girl in front of Allison, after a much briefer look through her folder, was directed to the next desk in line without her folder, and then it was Allison's turn.

"Hello, Miss Allexa. I'm Captain Turner," the man said. Allison was confused; she hadn't heard him speaking to either of the girls in front of her. He read the question on her face. "There is a cone of silence around us. Don't ask me about the technology; I don't know how it works, but we are speaking privately. Now, let me see ... very interesting." He looked through the papers. Reading upside down, she was surprised to see a copy of "Alexandrina and the Colonel" in the folder. How did they get that?

"All appears to be in order, Miss Allexa. I do not think you will find the Hogan's Heroes Boot Camp easy or pleasant, but you will certainly find it instructive. Please proceed to the tables to your left for your uniform issue."

"What's all this about?" she asked.

"Everything will be made clear at Orientation. We prefer to explain things to all the students at once, rather than having to duplicate our efforts with each one individually."

"What about my classes? People are going to miss me."

"Don't worry about that. You will return to the place and time you came from only moments after you left." With that, he slid a page out of her folder, handed that to her, and gestured to the desks to her left.

Both desks were manned by soldiers with typewriters, and the first had an antique-looking camera as well. The table, further down, had only a man standing in front of stacks of boxes. The man at the first desk took the paper from her, laid it next to his typewriter, and rapidly typed up something on what seemed to be some sort of card. As she watched, Allison realized that the typewriter wasn't plugged into anything — it was an actual manual typewriter. She had never seen a real one.

Next to the desk was an equally antique-looking camera. The soldier directed her to stand with her toes on a mark on the floor, and went behind the camera. Allison blinked as the flash fired. A small paper square slid out of the camera and the man affixed it to the card he had typed up.

At her curious look, he said "We do employ some anachronistic technology" and, before she could ask what he meant, handed her the card. "This is your ID card. Keep it with you at all times. You need it to draw rations and for various other purposes." He waved her to the next desk.

She glanced at the card as she handed it to the soldier seated at the second desk. It looked rather like her student ID, though without the magnetic stripe or bar code, and with her photograph in black and white. I guess some things are universal. This time, the "typewriter" was not even a typewriter at all. Allison watched, fascinated in spite of herself, as the operator of the odd machine typed on two military dog-tags. He handed them to her, along with a little crinkly plastic packet containing a beaded chain. She moved on to the table at the end of the row.

This was manned by a somewhat chubby sergeant, if she was right about what three upside-down V-shaped stripes meant, and a second man with his back to her stood facing a row of large, open cardboard boxes lined up against the wall. The sergeant looked her up and down with a practiced eye.

"Female, medium," he called out, and the other man collected what appeared to be several items of khaki clothing from the boxes. He put them on the table, followed by a woven belt, a pair of low boots (so that's why they asked her shoe size on the form), a pair of socks, and a white canvas bag. The sergeant slid them across the table to Allison. "Change into your uniform — use any changing room without a red light — and put your civvies and everything you're carrying into the bag. Take the bag with you, exit through the door at the back of the changing room. Next!"

The nearest door's light was unlit. She entered, noticing the red light go on as the door closed behind her. Inside was what could have been any store changing room, right down to the mirror. "Everything" had certain limitations in her mind, and it wasn't like someone was going to search her ... were they? In a few minutes, she was dressed in khaki, had figured out how to work the sliding belt buckle, and had the boots laced up. She put her jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers into the bag. Her cell phone, credit card, and the $22 she happened to have in her pockets went into a pocket in her new pants. The tie included with the outfit was another matter entirely. How the hell do guys tie these things anyway? After a half-hearted attempt, she stuffed that into a shirt pocket.

With her white bag in hand, she exited through the rear door as instructed. The fact that the door she had entered through had no doorknob on the inside made the choice of doors easy. The door led to a narrow corridor — probably the actual left side of the large room this whole setup had been built in in — with only one door leading out. Once again, the changing room doors had no knobs on this side. They sure don't want us going the wrong way.

That door, in turn, led to another room with tables, boxes, and people issuing clothing and equipment. The man at the first table claimed her cloth bag, wrote her name and ID number on a tag, tied that to the bag, and tossed the bag into a wheeled canvas bin with dozens of identical bags of varying degrees of bulginess. He then handed her a khaki duffel bag and directed her to the next table.

By the time she reached the final table she had been issued an olive drab field jacket with separate quilted liner, a personal hygiene kit, a wind-up wristwatch, a folding mess kit, a pair of gloves, and what she was told was a garrison cap. Cute, almost like Newkirk's, except khaki! The man at the final table issued her a cardboard box (olive drab, like anything else that wasn't khaki) with the words "Supplies, School, M-2002-A" printed on the top. That went into the duffel bag too, and she was directed out yet another door.

Once again, she felt that strange, queasy twist in her stomach as she went through the door. I am not going to eat those tacos again. Outside, it was dark except for a single light on the side of the building. What appeared to be an older model school bus, painted (of course!) in army olive drab, with "Official Fanfiction University of Hogan's Heroes" on the side, was waiting with its door open. There was, of course, an MP by the door. She had given up trying to figure out how all of this was happening on campus. Shouldering her lumpy duffel bag, she boarded the bus and found a seat.

It was dark on the bus — the windows were blacked out — and the unseen driver enforced the no-talking rule. Allison's initial excitement had died under the weight of filling out forms, walking between all those rooms, and collecting the bag full of gear that now reposed under her seat. Her last thought was hey, they didn't even give us spare underwear as she dozed off.

~HH~HH~HH~HH~

"Raus! Raus!" The shouts woke Allison from her dream of sitting snuggled against Hogan, wrapped in his leather jacket, watching the sunset through the glittering barbed wire of Stalag 13. "Raus! Schnell!"

There were men in the bus, shouting in German. Their flashlight beams slashed through the darkness, blinding rather than illuminating the panicking students. Four Germans in gray uniforms, two with flashlights and two with pistols drawn, herded the students off the bus. When Allison tried to reach for her duffelbag, one of the flashlight-bearing soldiers grabbed her and yanked her into the aisle. Abandoning her bag, she stumbled out the door.

Outside, she squinted against the blinding brightness of truck headlights. There were more Germans here, and a lot more shouting. Someone grabbed her and shoved her roughly against the side of the bus, like a suspect on COPS. Too scared to think clearly, she did not resist. She felt hard and not particularly polite hands searching her, followed by the sound of her cell phone, her money, and presumably her credit card, hitting the ground. Another shove, and a jab with what couldn't be anything but a rifle barrel, and she stumbled toward a canvas-covered truck that was parked with its open tailgate towards the scene of chaos. One of the Germans said something she didn't understand, followed by a gesture that made his meaning perfectly clear: Get in the truck. The second time she tried to hoist herself into the chest-high truck bed, a heave from behind almost threw her in. She landed sprawling on the floor of the truck, getting mudh in her hair and grit in her nose. Someone gave her a hand up and she huddled on a long wooden bench with the other terrified girls. Nobody said a word, and even the two or three girls crying somewhere in the dark interior of the truck tried to sob silently.

When the bus had been completely emptied, a rifle-armed German clambered into the back of the truck and one of the men outside slammed the tailgate shut. The motor grumbled to life and, with a bump and a lurch, the truck moved out. The fuzzy-headed feeling that had been been with her since she found the letter was starting to lift; exhaustion took over its place, keeping Allison too numb to object to anything. Sleep, however, eluded her.

The first faint light of dawn was trickling in through through the canvas flaps when the truck jolted to a stop, then pulled forward again, then stopped once more. Someone from outside dropped the tailgate, and their guard ordered them out of the truck. The girl after Allison landed hard when she dropped off the back, twisting her ankle. Allison helped her up. With the girl leaning on Allison, they kept up with the others as the guards herded them into ragged ranks in front of a small wooden building. Then it hit her exactly where they were.

"But ... but it's not real!" she whispered. "It's not real!"