Fiona Daguare frantically flipped through her notes as she walked briskly to her next class, desperately memorizing a dozen dates and names she'd never have to use again. Of all the midterms to forget about, she thought to herself, it had to be the one in her worst subject, history. At this rate, she was going to be up all night trying to perfect her pastry recipe for the actually important test tomorrow morning. What else could go wrong?
"Heads up!"
"Gangway!"
Fiona barely looked up before Rachel and/or Sapphire, in the midst of one of their usual races through the hallways, knocked right into the poor culinary student, sending her and her books flying. "Crap, sorry Fi! Owe ya one!" Sapphire, or Rachel, yelled back as they kept running. Fiona mumbled darkly under her breath as she brushed her disheveled long brown hair out of her eyes. With no one else around to help her, since it was still in between classes, she crawled around in a fog to try and find the glasses that were flung off her face.
"Hey, are these yours?"
Fiona looked up to see a black shape hovering in front of her held by an unseen figure. "Oh, thanks," she said, reaching out and taking her glasses and feeling the surface for any scratches or cracks. "Damn it, I just got these fixed too..."
"I'm sure it won't be an issue," the figure wearing the suspiciously baggy school hoodie said, glancing around the empty corridor. "Are you busy?"
"Yeah, got ambushed by a history midterm," Fiona said, placing her glasses back on her face and blinking. "And my friends, but that's another story entirely." As she reached down to pick up her books, she didn't notice the hoodie wearing figure take out a small silver device. "Can you give me a hand here, I'm kind of in a-"
-zzot-
---
Fiona's eyes fluttered as she came to, leaning to one side and drooling on something soft and plush. She tried to move but felt something restraining her.
"Whu...what happened?" she mumbled.
"Oh you're awake! I was worried that you might have reacted badly to the Sleeper."
Fiona blinked, suddenly aware of the gentle hum of an engine and various electronic beeps and blips. Looking down at herself, she noticed she was buckled into an admittedly comfortable seat, like some sort of vehicle. She felt a cold chill run down her spine as she shook off the sleepy feeling.
"We're only a couple of your hours out, do you-"
"Oh god, have I been kidnapped?" she interrupted, her voice cracking as she turned to look at the speaker. "Please don't hurt me, I'll give you-"
Her eyes widened as she looked at the figure in the other seat working a control panel with webbed fingers, the school hoodie lying across the arm of the chair. Their bare arms were gray and white colored, and their face seemed elongated into a shark-like snout with a shock of short neon-blue hair on top.
"Y-you're an...an...!"
The figure blinked, then awkwardly smiled, showing a row of sharp teeth. Realization slowly dawned as Fiona finally looked forward at the stars streaking past the view screen.
"I'm hallucinating," Fiona squeaked, her eyes locked straight forward. "I've finally snapped and gone off the deep end, the pressure from college finally got to me. Yes yes that has to be it, just need to get my head on straight and this will all just go away." She squeezed her eyes shut and willed this nightmare to end.
*crunch*
She slowly opened her eyes and looked over to see the sharkey alien munching on a bag of chips from the school store. The alien glanced between her and the bag before smiling and offering it to her.
"Well," she sighed in defeat as she took a chip. "If this is real....at least I don't need to worry about the lineage of the Ottoman Empire anymore."
"That's the spirit," the alien said encouragingly.
The two sat in silence for a while, quietly sharing the chips as the spaceship traveled towards its destination before Fiona fully came to terms that she was abducted by some sort of alien. With the initial culture shock wearing off, however, came more questions, with the most pressing one of course being...
"I'm not going to be probed am I?"
"What? Ew, no," the alien said with a look of disgust, one that greatly relieved poor Fiona. "We kicked the Gremenoids out of the Grand Alliance for doing that, it's not how we do things."
"Grand Alliance...I'm guessing that's an alliance of a bunch of aliens."
"Pretty much. If you're wondering why we haven't revealed ourselves to you-"
"Oh I don't need an explanation for that," Fiona said hurriedly. "After the last four years I don't blame you guys at all for keeping your distance. That being said, what do you need me for exactly?"
"We need you to judge a cooking competition."
There was a painfully long silence that hung in the air like a bad smell.
"Did I just lose my marbles again or did you say you abducted me to judge a goddamn cooking competition?" Fiona said coolly.
The shark alien looked confused. "Of course. Our data says your people are familiar with the practice."
"Yes but we don't kidnap people to deliberate at our fucking bake-offs," Fiona snapped. "Like...what the absolute fuck? Don't you think this is going a little too fucking far?"
"You're the only species we could turn to after the bribery scandal following the last competition," the alien explained. "If we can't find a neutral judge, then the competition won't be held and we risk intergalactic war and trillions dead on all sides to resolve our differences."
Fiona opened and closed her mouth a few times.
"Okay...the abduction's a little more understandable now," Fiona admitted. "Kind of an extreme outcome for a bake-off, but-"
"We're here!"
Fiona felt a lurch as the ship suddenly dropped out of whatever equivalent of hyperspace it was in as the stars streaking by outside gave way to the inky blackness of space, which was filled by a massive space station straight out of a cheesy sci fi blockbuster. The culinary student couldn't help but gawk in amazement at the massive installation as their tiny little ship flew towards a hanger bay, passing through a translucent shield before docking on a long control arm.
"Well, time to get you settled!" the sharky alien said as he unbuckled himself. "If you want to, I mean, I don't want to force anything..."
"You kind of guilt tripped me into it by telling me that saying no means an intergalactic war," Fiona said flatly.
"Oh good!" The sharky alien looked relieved. "Then let's go!"
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