Home for the Holidays

Sulu took the far back corner seat in the state-of-the-art scout ship. Any other seat and he would be surrounded by the behemoth kidnapping-serial-killer-cannibals. His choice blocked escape though. The deranged-Cinderella's-godmother-bears completely filled the passenger space with a wall of white toddler-sailor-suits.

It was still better than them sitting on every seat around him. He burrowed deep into the luxurious seat in an attempt to disappear. It seemed to be working – until his damn roommate came aboard and just stood there in the doorway, staring at Sulu. They both looked irritated at each other, though Sulu's was bathed in his completely deserved correctness. Surely the person being kidnapped had the moral superiority to the monster offering him up as the next meal for the serial-killer-cannibal-kidnappers.

Chekov's eyes hardened, turning into a glare at Sulu as he jammed his hand towards the cockpit.

Sulu jerked his eyes definitely forward at nothing and burrowed deeper into the seat. He didn't know what the interminably self-righteous pleb was trying to point out but he knew for a fact that it was none of Sulu's business.

Sulu remained there, successfully invisible he judged: that is until his scrawny "little brother" appeared beside him. Sulu turned and glared up at him, which he was sure would have worked if it were not for every cannibal-serial-killer-kidnapper in the scout glaring back at him already.

Chekov jabbed his hand at the empty seat in the cockpit again. The two Starfleet cadets remained there frozen, their eyes locked, and Sulu expected that they would remain there for hours. This contest had played out more than once in their Starfleet quarters: although, Sulu admitted, it only seemed like hours.

When Sulu detected the movement behind Chekov, however, he was on his feet immediately. Whatever his fate was, he didn't want it to include being lifted up and toted by one of the transformed-bear-serial killer-kidnapping-cannibals. The image of being carried like a toddler by a great Russian bear dressed as a toddler was one he couldn't stomach. Besides, they were all getting up. Were they going to toss him around each other like a chew toy? He didn't want to give them a chance.

Obediently, Sulu took the co-pilot's seat he was directed to. He wanted to marvel at the scout's control board in front of him, but the panic was rising too quickly as he figured out what he was doing there. They were planning to crash the ship. It was a game they were playing. They were going to crash the ship and blame Sulu. Than whatever serial killer cannibals were left alive were going to get to consume Sulu's mangled body.

Good God. Sulu swallowed hard. What if I don't die immediately. What if they were going to draw out the torture and hack off bits and eat them while he slowly died?! His fingernails bit into the seats supple covering, grinding deeper and deeper as they flew…and he waited for the expected self-created "engine trouble".

The flight, however, was unremarkable. The scout's progress was just one of thousands rushing people around the Earth. The travels of those ships through the lower mesosphere spared the inhabitants a sky full of ships obscuring the clouds, but it didn't spare them the steady hum of brown noise that followed wherever one went on Earth. The only thing that made the flight truly bizarre was the sight of a grown man the size of a great Russian bear in a toddler's sailor suit piloting a state-of-the-art space scout ship.

What barbarous game IS this?!

He began ruminating on the sailor suits. They weren't exactly like the Cracker Jack kid's: a point made more obvious by their seated positions around him. Their pants were short, ending just below their knees. Thin white socks swathed their legs – entirely he suspected - and they wore shiny black shoes with silver buckles. Well they're committed to whatever game this is. It definitely wasn't something he'd choose to wear if he was the size of a great Russian bear. It would be comical if the whole thing didn't reek…it was all dangerously bizarre. He couldn't reconcile it with the game that involved his kidnapping.

Any more than he could reconcile these behemoths being the brothers of his scrawny nightmare-of-a-roommate.

They'd definitely eaten people.

The sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bear in the pilot's seat poked him, breaking him out of his thoughts. He gestured at the controls.

Sulu stared at him, unmoving.

The man's face darkened and he scowled at Sulu deeply. He gestured again.

Sulu knew what he meant. He didn't believe him.

"Hmph." The sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bear leaned back in his seat and crossed his beefy arms against his chest.

A quick check verified that the scout was not on automatic pilot. Sulu's eyes widened in alarm.

The sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bear smiled triumphantly and leaned back further. He'd clearly seen Sulu's impossible-to-constrain excitement at seeing in person the scout he'd only read reports on.

Sulu had no idea how they'd come into possession of one of the prototypes of this new scout but he didn't need to be told a third time. As he piloted the scout over the Pacific Ocean, he refused to believe it was the reason his roommate had insisted he take the co-pilot's seat.

Even so, It was a gesture that Sulu knew was akin to a last meal.

When the controls were turned back over to the sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bear, Sulu squirmed in his seat and he shifted his mind. The short trip was progressing too far to fake a crash now. He began concentrating on the sound of the engines: waiting to hear them throttling down in preparation of landing. The one thing his sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bears hadn't taken into account was the direct line the seats in the cockpit had to the exit door. The passenger seats were set back and he'd removed his safety straps: large oversights on the part of his kidnappers. He'd be out and gone before they had a chance to even unfasten themselves and get out of their seats.

They'd just have to eat scrawny little Chekov this trip.

Which would also solve Sulu's roommate problem. Win-win.

He shifted his seat to angle toward the door – but not too obviously – as he felt the throttle down begin. A quick survey told him that Chekov's sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bear-brothers were none the wiser. The one closest to the door was leaning back and staring at the ceiling for some reason. The other two were chatting in Russian. As for his phleb – for the first time ever – he seemed to be sleeping. As he gripped the ends of the seat arms, Sulu tensed his core and leg muscles – ready to leap at the instant the doors opened.

As expected, he felt the ship settling in the pit of his stomach like an elevator plunging downward. When the scout's engines had throttled down completely, the door slid open and Sulu dove out of it and onto the ground outside.

He gasped instantly and spat out an impossibly long stream of impolite words. He stayed there: bent over and trying to gasp any amount of air into his lungs as everyone else climbed out of the scout ship. He managed to find even more impolite words to attack the evil air with.

Unfazed, Viktor handed Sulu the coat that he'd previously refused. If any of the sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bears rolled their eyes or smirked in triumph, Sulu didn't notice it and he didn't care. After all, he'd done his utmost to earn their amusement and he readily admitted it.

Okay, so it's cold in Russia at the end of November. Whatever.

"It's warm," his psychotic "little-brother" said – as if he'd heard Sulu's thoughts and was determined to keep up their animosity with self-righteous triumph. The sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bears murmured their agreement, clearly determined to help the little brother torture him. As if kidnapping and eating him wasn't enough.

Sulu shrugged on the coat better and as he fastened the buttons (despite his rebellious soul telling him not to). He found gloves when he shoved his hands in the pockets, but the pockets were lined with the fur of some unfortunate animal and they were pleasantly warm on their own.

As he enjoyed where his hands were in a way he'd never admit to anyone, Sulu scanned for his next opportunity to escape. Unfortunately, they were exactly where one would expect experienced serial killer-cannibal-kidnappers to kidnap someone to. There were trees. And trees. And more trees. In every direction he looked there were endless stretches of trees: miraculously straight - plunging upwards into the sky as if reaching for just a bit of sunshine in this dismal forest.

They were in the middle of a thickly wooded area that extended in every direction past the horizon. If he hadn't been stopped dead in his tracks by the unexpected cold, Sulu still wouldn't have made a successful escape.

These deranged-Cinderella's-godmother's-transformed-bear-serial killer-cannibal-kidnappers-in-toddler's-sailor-suits brought me to the middle of Siberia….

His fate was sealed.

He turned up the lapels of his coat and burrowed his face into them. He would have to wait for a better situation. His training at Starfleet Academy was getting its test.

The area wasn't just endless trees. They'd landed at the site of, apparently, the only two buildings in the dense forest. Their wooden facades had a weathered, black and grey exterior – not from weathering but deliberately designed to blend in with the trees around them. They were obscenely large.

There was a large clearing in front of the buildings where the scout had settled. The clearing plunged between the buildings as well. A packed, wide, dirt path shot out behind the buildings and in front of them – slicing the forest neatly in half with only the buildings creating a hesitation point. What passes for a primitive road, Sulu guessed: a guess mostly based on the wooden gate barring any vehicle from continuing forward: not pedestrians, but definitely ground vehicles.

And there were….signs: rectangular chunks of real wood fastened onto wooden stakes plunged into the ground. There were four of them clustered together: each bearing its own carved plaque, each in a different language. Sulu had never seen such a thing. "Sign" always indicated a mounted computer display that shifted to whichever language one chose.

Even though Chekov's gigantic brothers had turned their attention away from him, Sulu moved carefully and slowly away from them and up to the signs. One of them was carved in English, another in Terran Standard: so Sulu could at least read half of them. A line traced across his forehead as he studied the words. That he could compare the words on two of the signs to verify they were duplicates made them even more outlandish.

"NATIONAL HISTORIC DISTRICT," they read. "NO POST-19th CENTURY TECHNOLOGY PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT. VISITORS ARE ASKED TO RESPECT OUR CULTURE, OUR CHOICES."

"Seriously?" Sulu asked, turning back to the serial killer-cannibal-kidnappers-in-toddler's-sailor-suits. "Is this really…"

He froze.

Two brightly lit gaping holes stood where the roughhewn buildings once did. Like a boring geode split open to reveal an astounding crystalline labyrinth inside, the rough wood walls of the buildings had been slid aside and revealed rooms of modern technological wonders.

The one on the left contained a completely modern spaceship command center. Computers swept over the walls, and ship repair facilities took up work benches and obvious floor panel drops. A docking bay took up the center of it all. Two sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bears were expertly guiding the scout ship they'd arrived in back into the building's depths.

The building on the right contained quite the opposite. The walls were still wood on the inside and they were lined with anachronistic tools. A rough drop in the floor revealed nothing but a dark hole. There was what he recognized from movies as a pump filled with fuel sitting directly behind where the wall had been. The other two sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bears were pushing a large black automobile out of it into the clearing.

A Model T touring car, Sulu identified immediately with constrained wonder. He was fascinated by Earth's automobiles: The Academy of Art University Automobile Museum was the best perk of the Academy being in San Francisco in his opinion. Still, at the museum the automobiles sat meters away from eager hands. They were pushing this one so Sulu knew, without a doubt, he was going to get to touch it.

Another proverbial 'last meal' he was willing to concede might be worth getting eaten for.

He stood there, watching: and trying to determine what it all meant. The transformed-bear-serial killer-cannibal-kidnappers-in-toddler's-sailor-suits were obeying the signs. The scout was being stored and hidden away so their method of transportation could be changed to an ancient automobile to proceed past the gate.

Which, Sulu knew, didn't meet the 19th century requirement. Though automobiles existed in the 19th century, the Model T did not. They were only made in the first two decades of the 20th century. Either the rules and the polite request weren't really applied, or they were ignoring them. Sulu wondered what the penalty for that might be.

A rock hit Sulu's back then. He snapped his head around to glare at the roommate-from-hell he knew threw it. The kid was standing off to the side of the right building, back where he was effectively hidden beyond the edge of the trees. He gestured furiously for Sulu to join him there.

Sulu deliberately turned his attention back to the activities of the sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bears. They were locking down the scout in its bay and polishing the Model T with rags.

Another rock hit his back – this time more furiously. He glared at Chekov again, who was gesturing even more urgently. Sulu wanted to grab a rock and pelt him right in the head. Yes, Sulu had only been hit by pebbles, but it was definitely a fist sized rock he wanted to lob at the roommate-from-hell in return.

A disturbed thought stopped him from doing so. Why was Chekov trying to escape the transformed-bear-serial killer-cannibal-kidnappers-in-toddler's-sailor-suits-that-were-his-brothers? (It was clear that is what he was doing, hiding in the trees.) Even more troubling: why was he offering Sulu a chance to escape too?

Did danger haunt the scrawny pleb once Sulu was eaten? Was Sulu was being alive the only safety net Chekov had from these brutish brothers?

He reluctantly admitted he could understand Chekov's panic. While his own brother was certainly not a deranged-Cinderella's-godmother's-transformed-bear-serial killer-cannibal-kidnapper-in-a-toddler's-sailor-suit, he was only a step before that. A giant step, Sulu admitted reluctantly, but he frequently had to hide from his brother's tormenting.

Sulu stood frozen. His eyes shifted from the known monster standing in the woods to the group of transformed-bear-serial killer-cannibal-kidnappers-in-toddler's-sailor-suits moving about to ready the car and store the scout. Chekov clearly had no intention of going in the car with them - so that would leave Sulu alone with four huge sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bears.

It was a huge consideration. He really didn't want to end up on a rotisserie over a fire in the middle of Siberian woods.

Sulu took his life into his own hands then and he began backing away from the sailor-suited-cannibal-kidnapper-bears and the clearing: slowly, carefully, silently. It wasn't until he passed he light spewing out from the buildings and was significantly in the dark shadows that he turned and began running towards the monster in the woods.

He just prayed the cannibals didn't have javelins.