Disclaimer: See Chapter 1
Word Count: 4,523 (4 of 18)
Santana rolled over, reaching for Brittany. And continued rolling. "Brit?" she said. Hearing no answer, she opened her eyes and found herself alone in a large, white walled room.
"Brit?" she shouted. "Brittany?" Still no answer. She continued to shout until her voice was raw and hoarse. Exhausted, she crammed herself into a corner where she could see the rest of the room, and cried herself to sleep.
'San?' a soft voice whispered in her ear.
"Brit?" Santana said, shakily standing and looking around. "I can't find you! Where are you?"
'I'm right here, watching you," Brittany said.
"Where?" Santana said, staring at the walls. "I don't see you!"
"Of course not, silly," Brittany said, giggling.
"Why not?" Santana said.
"You need to learn things," Brittany said. "The aliens said so."
"Why can't you be here with me?" Santana asked.
"Because I have to learn things too," Brittany said softly.
"Learn them with me," Santana said. "We always learn together."
"You need to concentrate, San. And you know you can't do that with me around," Brittany said.
"Yes I can," Santana said. "Tell them to let you in!" she demanded.
"They won't. I already asked," Brittany said. "You were so sad, I made them let me talk with you."
"I won't learn if you aren't here! I refuse," she said. "Tell them that!"
"San, they won't understand," Brittany said.
"Why not?" Santana asked suspiciously.
"They're machines."
"We were kidnapped by alien robots?" Santana asked, her interest piqued. "Like Transformers?"
"San, those were robot people. These are machines. They don't have feelings like we do," Brittany said. "They don't understand what's wrong.
Santana could picture the sad face that went with Brittany's tone of voice. "I still refuse to do anything until they let me see you."
"Do you want to be like Quinn?" Brittany said, sadly.
"What did they do to Quinn?" Santana asked, curious. Quinn could be a bitch about some things but she was still a friend who occasionally need a hug or to cuddle, not that Santana would ever tell anyone that.
"She doesn't remember," Brittany said. "She refused to do what they told her, so they made her forget us."
"That's not good," Santana said, wincing and plotting revenge. Brittany was her girlfriend, soulmate, but no one messed with her Quinn and got away with it. "What's she supposed to learn?"
"They need a general, a war leader for the Return," Brittany. "So they're going to turn her into one."
"And she didn't want to do it?" Santana said, surprised. "She likes being in charge of things and ordering people around and that kind of shit."
"She's not who you think she is," Brittany said. "I've told you that before."
"Yeah, yeah, she's just a big, misunderstood marshmallow," Santana said sarcastically. "Brittany?"
"Yeah San?"
"Where are we?" Santana asked.
"I'm not sure, they won't tell me," she said. "But I think we should do what they want us to do."
"Why?" Santana asked. "Besides the whole 'no memory' thing they did to Q?"
"I think you'll like what they want you to learn," Brittany said.
"What's that?" Santana asked.
"I can't tell you," Brittany said. "It'll ruin the surprise."
"You know I hate surprises," Santana grumbled. "Will we get to keep talking?"
"Maybe?" Brittany said hesitantly. "The aliens keep talking about temporal learning differences, whatever that means."
"Huh. Temporal is something to do with time," Santana said. "Like on that show Quinn likes to watch, about that time travel guy in the phonebooth."
"Oh!" Brittany blurted out. She stopped talking for several minutes.
"Brit?" Santana said, getting worried. "Are you still there? Brit?"
"Sorry, San. They didn't make any sense. They had to show me this temporal stuff."
"Was it fun?"
"Some of it. The clocks move at different speeds. Some real, some not," she said. "It's only been a week for Rachel. But it's been a month for Quinn."
"What about us?" Santana asked. "Are we moving at the same clock speed?"
"We can't," Brittany said. "It's been a month for me but only two days for you."
"That means you're getting older than me!" Santana protested.
"Can I tell you a secret?" Brittany said in a whisper. "But you can't tell anyone."
"Sure," Santana said. "You know I can keep a secret."
"This time thing? It's all in our heads," Brittany said, giggling again.
"What do you mean?"
"When you sit in your chair? Everything happens in your head. Like the Matrix without the nasty jello or baldness," she said. "But better. We aren't getting older, except there."
"So I have to take a pill?"
"No, silly. Nothing like that," Brittany said. "But San?"
"Yeah?"
"You still need to be careful. You can still get hurt even if it's in your head."
"So no crazy Matrixy stunts?" Santana asked, frowning in disappointment. "Can they give me some badass skills? Like Neo?"
"No," Brittany said. "They can't just pop things into your head. You need to learn things for real. What happens in your head happens to you."
"What do you mean?" Santana asked. She wondered what they'd been teaching Brittany. Her girlfriend was smarter than most people thought but she learned things differently.
"Just a sec," Brittany said.
"This means no sex, doesn't it?" Santana said. "This friggin sucks!"
"Santana?"
"Yeah?"
"They say your body, your muscles, learn too. So, it's like, if you figured out how to do a triple somersault in your head when you're in the chair, your muscles learn it too so you can do it out of the chair. It's just faster. Kind of."
"Huh. So we could learn one of Sylvester's routines in a couple minutes in this chair?"
"If we wanted to," Brittany said. "San? I have to go."
"Why?"
"You need to sleep, and I need to get back to my things," Brittany said.
"Can we talk later?" Santana said.
"Yeah," Brittany said. "You're going to have so much fun!"
"If you say so," Santana said, yawning.
"Now sleep!"
"Yes, Brit," Santana said, tiredly closing her eyes.
The next thing she knew, she was awake. And hungry. Looking around, she spotted a small table in the middle of the room. On it was a tray with a bowl of something steaming away. Next to it was a vase with a flower sticking out of it. Smiling, she crawled over to the table, and sniffed the flower. Only Brittany knew she was a sucker for flowers.
Looking down at the bowl, she frowned. It looked like some kind of corn mush, like her great-grandmother used to make. And no spoon. Shrugging, she picked up the large bowl and tilted it, pouring a small portion into her mouth.
"Tastes like her's too," Santana grumbled. But she hadn't eaten in what felt like days, so she ate as much as she could stomach of the lukewarm mush. When she put it down, she heard a slight hum. Turning around, she saw a new door in one wall.
"I hope you're right, Brit," Santana said under her breath. Her girlfriend's idea of fun wasn't always the same as hers. Walking over to the door, she poked her head into the other room. In the center of it was something kind of like a chair, though nothing like she'd imagined it. Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, she cautiously walked over to it and sat down. And waited for something to happen.
"Now what," she muttered, poking the soft surface. "I'm ready!" she shouted. "Time to get my Keanu on!"
Shaking her head, she leaned back and closed her eyes. Might as well take a nap, she thought. And that was when something happened.
Feeling a sudden breeze, Santana opened her eyes. She was standing in front of several Japanese looking buildings. Dojos, she thought. Looking down, she stared at the kung-fu pajamas she was wearing.
"This is so cool!" she shouted, twirling in a circle in her excitement. "Bring it on! I'm so ready!"
"Follow," a flat voice said behind her. Turning she saw some kind of android-robot thing standing between her and one of the buildings.
"Sure thing, Robbie," she said. "Lead the way." Waving her hands, she motioned for the robot to get moving.
"So… tired…" she said, slumping forward in the chair. It had been worse than her first day of Cheerios boot camp. "Ouch!" she shouted, her skin sticking to the surface of the chair. Standing up, she stumbled into her room, hearing a slight hum as she passed through the door. Glancing behind her, she saw the door disappear back into the wall.
"Need a shower," she said, shaking her head. She'd worry about that later. "Brit!" she shouted, hoping her girlfriend wasn't busy. She shouted several more times but there wasn't an answer. Looking around she noticed a raised, bed shaped area in one corner. She wondered if it was softer than the floor. And then she heard the distinct sound of a shower. Turning towards the sound, she saw what looked like solid steam in the corner opposite the bed.
Not having any clothes to remove, she stumbled towards the steam. Stopping in front of it, she stuck out her hand, quickly pulling it back from the sudden sting of hot water. Nodding, she stepped through into the corner.
"Huh. Alien hot shower," she mumbled. "But no soap," she said to herself, turning around and squinting against the rushing water. Sticking out her tongue, she cautiously tasted the water.
"Yuck!" she said, spitting it back out. "That's not water!" Grimacing, she started scrubbing her hair and every part of herself she could reach.
"Done!" she shouted. "You can turn it off!" The not-water turned into warm air, quickly drying her off. "I could get used to this," she said, "if Brittany was here and not somewhere else."
Stepping out of the shower corner, Santana noticed a bowl on the small table, though there wasn't a flower with it. "Lunch?" Walking over she sat down on the floor in front of it. It was definitely something hot, and looked like soup. Sticking a finger in it she tested the temperature. Licking her finger, she decided to eat it, picking it up like she had her breakfast.
Once she finished eating, she crawled over to the bed pallet and fell asleep.
When she opened her eyes again, the door to the other room was open again. "Now what?" she wondered aloud, just to hear the sound of her own voice. Curious, she went back into the other room and sat down in the chair and closed her eyes.
When she reopened them, she found herself in a large room. On one side of the room was a large thing. An jet airplane looking thing. Next to it were several smaller bike-like things.
"Where am I?" she said, not expecting an answer.
"Training," a flat voice said in her ear, causing her to jump in surprise.
"Don't do that!" she said. "Training for what?"
"All who wish to fly must first learn to build," it said.
"Huh?" Santana muttered, looking for the voice. Turning back towards the machines, she couldn't see them. It was as if they had disappeared when her back was turned.
"Okay. Needing a little more explanation," she said.
"This is the training room," the voice said. "You will learn."
"Gottcha," Santana grumbled. "But what and how?"
One of the walls lit up, and things seemed to move on it. Shaking her head, Santana walked over to it. It was like a large TV screen. There was a picture of one of the smaller things that had been in the room, and lots of words in a language she didn't recognize.
"I can't read this!" she shouted at whatever seemed to be listening. Looking around, she found a cushion and pulled it in front of the large screen. As soon as she sat down, another voice started talking. She noticed that as it talked, words glowed. The voice continued until it had highlighted every word on the screen, and began again.
"This is a crappy way to learn!" Santana said, once she figured out what it was doing. "I still don't know what any of it means."
After the tenth time through, she started repeating what the voice was saying out of sheer boredom. Once she'd repeated it several times, the picture started to glow in places with certain words. It occurred to her that they were trying to teach her all the parts of this thing.
She wasn't sure how long it had been but at some point the screen turned off and she found herself back in the chair, tired, though not as tired as she'd been before lunch. Getting up she went back into her room and laid down on her bed and fell asleep.
When she woke up again she assumed it was morning because there was another bowl of the corn mush, and a flower, on her table. After eating, she went back to the chair, and found herself once more with the robot that seemed intent on teaching her some kind of exercise system.
It was again one of the more intense workouts she'd ever had. Followed by lunch, a quick nap, and more of the staring at words on a wall and repeating them.
This went on for a month, before she heard from Brittany again. She still wasn't sure what the morning training was for, other than to improve her flexibility and strength. After a week she'd noticed subtle changes in how her arms and legs looked but didn't have a mirror. The afternoon lessons had progress to the point where she could take apart one of the little machines and put it back together with her eyes closed, though she wasn't too sure what it was, though she had her suspicions since it appeared to have a place to sit.
"Hey San!"
"Brit! Where have you been?" Santana said, sitting up.
"Places," she said. "Have you been having fun?"
"It'd be more fun if you were here," she said, pouting.
"Not yet," Brittany said. "Soon."
"Hey Brit?"
"Yeah?"
"What am I doing?" Santana asked. "I mean, I'm in great shape, and I know how to build that thing, if I have all the right pieces. But the robots won't tell me why!"
"You're learning," Brit said. "That's what's important. It's exciting."
"I guess," Santana muttered, not wanting to ruin Brittany's enthusiasm.
"This is just the beginning," Brittany said. "Tomorrow is going to be so much fun. You'll see."
"That's what you said last time," Santana said.
"I did?" There was quiet for a minute. "Oh, I did. And I was right."
"So, what are the others doing," Santana asked, hoping to keep Brittany talking and not disappearing for another month.
"Rachel's so cute," Brittany said, giggling. "She's learning all these new alien songs and she's making up dances to go with them."
"That's great," Santana said, sighing. "For her."
"It's how the aliens are teaching her their language," Brittany whispered. "Just like they've been teaching you."
"They aren't teaching me their language," Santana said.
"Sure they are. We've been talking in it," Brittany said. "They just did it a different way and you didn't notice."
Santana thought back on their conversation. "Does this mean I'm forgetting English?" she asked.
"No, silly. Did you forget Spanish just because you have to speak English at school?"
"Of course not," Santana said. "I just didn't notice."
"It's easier to understand the alien stuff if you think in their language," Brittany said. "That's why they have been teaching you their science stuff in their language."
"You learned it too," Santana said, realizing something. "Science stuff? They've just been teaching me how to put that thing together like some kind of mechanic."
"The science comes next," Brittany said. "They won't let you fly the scooter until you understand the science."
"It flies?" Santana said excitedly.
"If you put it together right," Brittany said.
"Yeah!" Santana couldn't sit still. She stood up and started pacing back and forth.
"San?"
"Yeah?"
"I've got to go," Brittany said.
"When will you be back?" Santana asked, hoping it was sooner than last time. "And when can you be here in person?"
"Um…"
"Please?" Santana said, staring up at the ceiling.
"They said I can talk to you again after your first flight," Brittany said.
"If I have to understand the science stuff, that could be years," Santana said, grumbling.
"San, you're very smart. It won't be that long."
"If you say so," Santana said, perking up. "Hey, you never said what Q-tip is doing."
"The same stuff as before," Brittany said. "They had to start her from the beginning, just like you."
"So, she's learning how to be a mechanic?"
"No, she's learning how to be a warrior," Brittany said. Santana could almost see the tears, shivering at Brittany's sad voice. "I don't like it."
"She's tough," Santana said, trying not to feel jealous. "She was head cheerleader for two years in a row. That takes guts. She can take it."
"I just want her to be happy," Brittany said.
"You said she doesn't remember anything," Santana said. "So won't she be happy learning all of this warrior stuff?"
"Not when her memories come back," Brittany said. "She's gonna be mad."
"So they aren't gone completely?" Santana asked. "You never really said."
"They'll let her have them back when she's done. I think she's going to be very, very angry, but they don't care. They need a general."
"What about the rest of us? Do they need us too?"
"Yes," Brittany said. "We're all important for their plans. Just in different ways."
"If you say so," Santana said, laying back down. "Good night, Brit."
"Goodnight, San. Love you!" Brittany said.
"Love you too!" Santana said, closing her eyes and imagining Brittany in her arms again.
Santana lost track of time. Exercise in the morning. Learning alien science in the afternoon. She did notice a gradual change with her morning routines. The robot trainer gradually added what she thought might be fighting moves but never directly told her.
Learning how alien things worked was an odd experience. The voices would explain a concept in words she couldn't understand, and then demonstrate it using the scooter. They would go over it again and again until she understood it completely. But she didn't feel like she was learning.
And then the day came when they taught her how it flew. And she understood. And realized they'd actually shown her this a long time ago, though it hadn't made sense at the time.
She spent the next ten afternoon lessons learning how to fly. How to make it go fast. And fancy maneuvers. And she was good at it, if she said so herself. They even taught her how to fly in formation at high altitude, the scooter's shield on, protecting her from the cold air.
And she didn't wonder why she hadn't heard from Brittany yet, like she'd promised.
"Hey San!" Brittany's voice spoke to her as she ate her meager dinner, some kind of soup, again, with unidentifiable vegetables floating in it.
"Brit!" Santana yelled excitedly. "They're letting me fly!"
"Yeah!" Brittany said. "It looks like so much fun."
"You saw?" Santana asked. She hadn't known about that.
"They let me look, sometimes," Brittany said. "Whenever I'm good."
"Why can't I see you?" Santana asked.
"I'm not doing anything exciting," Brittany said. "Just brain stuff."
"I just wanna see you," Santana said, pouting.
"We'll see," Brittany said. "Maybe when you're done with your next set of lessons."
"Do you know what that is?" Santana asked. "They never tell me anything straight up. I have to guess."
"I think you get to learn how to drive a taxi," Brittany said, sounding puzzled. "They said you'll learn all about something called a shuttle."
"A shuttle? Like on Star Trek?" Santana said, excitedly. "I get to be an astronaut?"
"You know I never watched that stuff," Brittany said. "Maybe?"
"That's so awesome," Santana said. "I wonder what it's like to wear an alien space suit? Do aliens even have space suits?" she mumbled to herself.
Every couple of weeks she would talk with Brittany at night for hours, but Santana's days were full. For half her mornings she would learn new moves in what were clearly becoming fighting lessons. In the afternoons, she learned how alien shuttles worked. It wasn't quite like Star Trek, though she could see herself being like that Klingon engineer in the one series. The hot one. And she wasn't learning how to build one from scratch like the scooters.
But she could do emergency repairs if she had to. If she had the parts. And time. And she began to understand the basics of what made them work. What made them fly, and what made them run. She could tell there were a lot of things left out of her lessons. She knew someone must program the computers in the things but she'd only learned enough to navigate.
Which was an eye opening experience in itself. With the scooter she hadn't really worried about such things. You pushed a button and steered. It was mostly automatic, even if she now understood the mechanics. Navigating in space was mind blowing. There was so much to learn. She figured she spent a month on just that subject.
She knew it wasn't real real, it was Matrixy real, but the first time they let her fly a shuttle, she was so excited she couldn't sleep. It'd felt so real. If Brittany hadn't told her about the whole temporal learning, and yes, she knew enough alien science to understand how that worked now, she would have thought it was real.
"Hey San!" a voice breathed in her ear. Waking up, she felt fingers running through her hair. Turning over, she found herself looking up into the most welcome sight ever. Brittany. Naked.
"Brit!"
Brittany giggled, and pulled her into a kiss. "I really wanted to see you," she said, her warm breath fluttering against Santana's lips.
"Can you stay?" Santana said hopefully.
"For a little bit, before your next lessons," she said.
Brittany visited her twice more and talked with her at least once a month while her lessons progressed. But she never talked about her own training and ignored any questions Santana had about the purpose behind everything.
The highlight of her experience training, in her opinion, came after a year and a half of flight training, in gradually bigger and more complex craft, when she learned to fly the alien equivalent of a fighter jet. It felt more like something she wore, than flew. It had the maneuverability of the alien scooter and the durability of one of their troop transports. With guns.
It used the same kind of propulsion that all alien craft used, some kind of inertialess drive for in-system flight and something vaguely reminiscent of the warp drives in Star Wars. For weapons, they had something like missiles using the same propulsion as her new craft, with all sorts of deadly payloads. There was also some kind of gun for up close and personal fighting that threw heavy bits of metal at high speeds.
The aliens taught her how to use the weapons, and what the general scientific principles behind them were, but not how to build her own. They were cramming so much information into her head that she really didn't have time to be disappointed.
At the two year mark, things took an odd turn. She still talked with Brittany on a regular basis, and she still trained for at least an hour every morning, though it seemed to be mostly to maintain her physical fitness after several months of what Brittany had eventually told her was self-defense training.
But they stopped introducing her to new craft. At last count she'd learned to fly and maintain over twenty different alien craft. From the tiny scooter up to large and fast fighters. She'd even spent time learning about the larger alien battle cruisers, for lack of a better name, though that was mainly an exercise in telling simulated crews things to do, and observing them in battle.
One day, she eagerly sat down in the chair, wondering what new craft they would have for her, and found herself in a classroom, instead of the combination hangar, classroom she'd been using. The walls were view screens, covered in writing, that she could now read, and pictures.
"Okay," Santana said, "now what?" One of the screens beeped, so Santana sat down in front of it. "Alien PowerPoint?" she grumbled, as words scrolled out on the screen, a lot of dense facts about some ancient battle. The number and type of ships involved on either side. Casualties at the ship level and personnel level.
"That's depressing," she said, noticing how both sides had practically destroyed the other. And then the battle played out on the screen in front of her, with footnotes. It looked slightly unreal, like a movie.
She spent a month on the war that the battle was the culmination of, learning how to analyze the tactics and strategy used by both sides. She found it fascinating, if a little dry at times. At least until the invisible trainers started including 3D simulations. She was able to watch the actual decisions being made by the leaders of the warring nations. Good and bad. She would see a planning session and then see the results.
Once the aliens were satisfied with her understanding of that early space battle, they had her learn another one, of a different kind. A war with fewer set battles and more quick actions.
If it hadn't been for Brittany, she would have lost track of the days as she war-gamed against simulated foes. Planning large and small campaigns. And learned how to manage both small and large scale battles once they were set in motion. And learned from her mistakes. Because of the nature of war in space, she rarely thought about things on the individual scale. Until Brittany would ask her a question she could answer. Questions about the people killed in these alien wars. About the cost of the destruction to the people these battles supposedly helped.
"San, this isn't a video game," she said one evening. "People died in these wars. You need to be better than these captains and admirals who got so many of their people killed, because they didn't care about the cost and you need to."
And gradually she learned. The aliens rewarded her for plans that ended up with more survivors. For plans that achieved their goals without total destruction. She learned to think long term. She more than once wondered if the aliens had a game like chess, so many of their wars playing out like the game her Papa had taught her. She wouldn't be surprised if they'd invented it.
Note: It was impossible to do a Santana centric chapter without Brittany showing up for a bit. In fact, she almost took over. But, Brittany does get her own 'Training' chapter. Next!