I think I may have out geeked myself here. This is based on one of my favourite X files episodes, Je Souhaite. Oh god, how I loved that show. Naturally, I have given it a Brittana twist. It is also a bit of a break from the norm for me because it has a pre prepared plot and I usually just make things up on the fly. Let me know what you think.
The Truth Is Out There
A sleek silver covered golf cart with go faster stripes sped around the concrete ground of a self-storage storage facility. The driver, one Mrs Terri Schuester, had the pedal to the metal and zipped around at full speed, the cart tilted onto two wheels with every corner she took with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding onto a radio as she talked into it loudly and incessantly.
"April? April, where are you, April? April, come in, April. April. Calling April. Where are you, April? April! April, calling April. Where are you, April? April! Where are you, April?"
In the shade of an empty storage unit the twin to Terri's radio crackled and buzzed with her voice. April Rhodes, who was highly skilled in ignoring her supervisor, flicked through a glossy magazine, the front cover featuring the headline, 'Lives of the Broadway Playboys and the Molls Who Love Them'. The golf cart passed the unit she was totally not hiding in then could be heard skidding to a halt out of view. A mind drilling beeping began as the vehicle reversed and then stopped in front of her finally catching her attention.
"April! Get out here."
Reluctantly April tucked away the magazine into a storage container which was almost full of boxes of wine. Next to her hip flask of morning Chardonnay she placed the two small yellow ear plugs she had comfortably tucked in her ears and plastered a fake grin to her face as she walked over to the golf cart.
"Top of the morning to you my favouritest of all the assistant-to-the-boss ladies I've had the pleasure of servitude with. I love what you've done with your hair. Is it windy out?"
"I've had enough of this attitude, April." Terri was yammering on already. "Did you clean out unit 407? No. Of course you haven't cleaned out 407. You've only had all damn morning. You think you're ever going to make it to Broadway the way you're going, huh? Do you think you're ever going to amount to anything? You can't even finish a simple job."
"A freakin' monkey could do this job, Schuesterkopf."
"Well, you obviously can't, so what's that say about you?"
April muttered under her breath. "Oh, shut up, loony tunes."
"Excuse me?" Terri's eyes narrowed dangerously. "I didn't quite catch that."
"I said how is that lovely husband of yours? He single yet?" April winked at her lasciviously.
If this were a manga, steam would be billowing out of Terri's ears, as it were, her top lip twitched uncontrollably and she snarled out. "You clean out 407. You move out that deadbeat's stuff, and you do it now. And when I come back in an hour it better be done or you'll be back to peeing in the cup, April. And don't make me reinstate random breathalysing, again."
Terri slammed the cart into forward gear and drove off in her little cart. April glared after her, muttering, "How can it be random if I'm the only employee? I'd love to see what you pour on your cornflakes, darlin'."
With bolt croppers almost as big as herself, April cut the lock off of the adjacent storage unit and opened the roll-up door, coughing up a lung as decades of dust and cobwebs protested the disturbance.
The unit was full of furniture and boxes buried in a thick grey layer of dust. April sighed, took a swig from her hip flask to whet her whistle and reluctantly got to work, beginning with moving a rolled up carpet. To her addled surprise the carpet moved under her arms and a muffled sound came from inside it. Surprised, she dropped it and grabbed the bolt cutters for protection.
"I know Kung Fu!" She squeaked out bravely and falsely and hesitantly took a step forward, nudging the carpet with her foot so it unrolled itself.
A young woman in her twenties, dressed in a tight fitting black skirt, pink low cut top, a leopard print jacket, sunglasses and a furry hat, rolled out of the rug.
April eyed the inside of her hip flask suspiciously then stared at the girl.
"Who the holy sweet haystacks are you, sweetcakes? That must have been some party, how come I wasn't invited?"
The woman lay still for a moment, then her eyes opened. She attempted to stand but staggered and fell to her knees again, dizzy with her unceremonious unveiling. She groaned. "I hate it when they do that."
An hour later Terri zoomed up on her deathly silent stealth cart to unit 407. April's radio was lying on the ground next to the open door and there was no sign of the small drunken fury.
"April... April? Son of a flakey..." Terri muttered furiously as she was forced to dismount her chariot and look into the storage container. "April? April? If you're sleeping on the job again I will fire your drunken, stunted... April?"
Terri gritted her teeth and let out steady fuming growl of air as she realised the unit was still full of furniture and there was no sign of her number one employee.
"That's it. Where are you, April? Do you hear me, April? April!"
All of a sudden her wail of the other woman's name was cut off and a split second later Terri clamped her hands over her mouth. With a muffled gasp she scrabbled frantically in horror at the place where her mouth once was. Finding no lips or other opening where her mouth used to be, she whimpered pitifully and fainted dead away.
FBI HEADQUARTERS, X-FILES OFFICE
Special Agent Brittany S. Pierce sat at her desk trying to appear interested in the file in her hands but to no avail as every few seconds she looked up at the woman sitting across from her. She let out a puff of air through the side of her mouth and loosened her skinny tie, which she only wore under orders from Assistant Director Fabray. With her hair loose over the shoulders of her white button up shirt, the sleeves rolled up to three quarter length and dark suit pants, this was Agent Pierce's daily uniform.
"Can I get you some coffee? Water? Anything?"
Across the desk from her, Terri Schuester shook her head and scowled.
"My partner will be here any second," Brittany reassured her, talking more to herself than Terri. She tapped the desk with an orange pencil, bopping out a beat and ending with a tap on the bobble headed alien sat on the edge of her desk. She got nothing but a glare for her antics from Mrs Schuester then looked up with relief over to where her partner, Special Agent Santana Lopez, had just entered the office.
"San, uh, I mean, Agent Lopez! Morning," Brittany beamed at her.
"Morning," Santana smiled at her partner. Santana's smile faltered as Brittany tried to convey a message via strange facial twitches, dramatic eye widening and eyebrow wiggling.
"Who's that?" Santana mouthed to Brittany, indicating the woman sitting in front of the desk who had yet to turn and face her.
"Agent Lopez, this is, uh, this is Terri Schuester. She's got something to show us."
Santana managed to smother her scream at the sight of Terri's face, whose "mouth" now consisted of raw flesh held together by stitches. To Santana's dismay, Terri attempted a forced smile which resembled a strained grimace.
"Nice to meet you." Santana's smile was equally as forced, her nose scrunched up and her eyes crinkled until she realised what she was doing and pulled a straight face.
"Nice to meet..."
Santana winced as she watched Terri try to make her mouth say the word 'you'. She gave up in the end and simply said, "Likewise."
Santana scurried across the room to stand safely next to her partner.
"Mrs. Schuester came all the way to see us from Ohio," Brittany grinned. "Sa- Agent Lopez is from Ohio," she explained to Mrs Schuester who nodded slowly, uninterested, and decided to get things moving herself.
"They told me you were the people to best understand my situ... My sit..."
Santana watched Brittany with slight exasperation as she stared in fascination at Mrs Schuester attempting to pronounce the 'oo' sound.
"It's okay," Santana jumped in, eager to stop Mrs Schuester from using her "mouth" and drawing their attention to it any more than was necessary.
Brittany cleared her throat and began to explain. "Uh, yes, right. This is Mrs Schuester's... situation. This condition came on very suddenly about a month ago." She held up the file for Santana to see, showing photos of Terri Schuester's mouth-less face before the surgery.
"My employee, April Rhodes, she did this to me. I don't know how, I just... I know it was her."
"April Rhodes is an employee at-"
"Former employee," Terri interjected.
"Former employee," Brittany amended, "Of the self-storage yard that Mrs. Schuester manages. Uh, apparently there was some bad blood between you two?"
"She told me to shut up!" Terri waved her hand around her face, indicating her mouth and appearing as though she were swatting flies.
Santana paused her perusal of the file in her hands as she began to get an inkling of where this thing was going.
"Yeah. And then Mrs. Schuester was, uh... stricken... Stricken...," Brittany repeated herself once again finding herself distracted by Mrs Schuester's new mouth. Santana nudged her gently in the ribs.
"Stricken," Brittany continued. "And Ms Rhodes was nowhere to be found. She resurfaced several days later after blazing a trail through every bar in western Ohio. The police wanted to question her, but she refused."
"Do you know what she said?" Terri leaned forward as though imparting a great truth. She didn't notice the two agents lean back in tandem, imitating her movement and maintaining the distance between them. "She said, they had nothing on her."
"Well, and to be fair, ma'am," Brittany pointed out. "They don't."
"I've got her pee records," Terri insisted.
Santana stepped further behind Brittany at hearing this and busied herself deeper into the file in her hands.
"They had to make me a whole new mouth. Do you think the self storage business just hands out health insurance? Nuh-uh." Terri was getting so upset that she forgot her predicament for a moment and indulged in her favourite hobby, whining, and stretched her new lips further than she should have.
"I demand justice!" she spluttered and then groaned in pain, pressing a handkerchief to her weeping mouth much to the distress of the two agents.
WILLIAM MCKINLEY TRAILER PARK, LIMA, OHIO
Agents Pierce and Lopez pulled up in a rental car to the visitor parking section of the trailer park April Rhodes was known to frequent. As they exited the vehicle their ongoing discussion continued.
"Look, Britt, all I'm saying is..."
"I know, I know, this may not be a crime and this Rhodes woman may not know anything about it."
"But there is a condition called Microstomia, known as 'small mouth', which is brought on by the disease Scleroderma. It's the overproduction of collagen and it can actually reduce a person's mouth to a tiny little opening." Santana indicated the said little opening with her hands.
"Wanky," Brittany smirked at the gesture and to her delight Santana blushed and then hurriedly put her hands down. She got a slap on the arm even though Santana had walked right into that one herself.
"Yeah," Brittany agreed, after over exaggerating rubbing her arm. "But that takes months to develop, right? It doesn't just happen in the blink of an eye."
"Schuester's surgeons are stumped," Santana admitted. "They're writing it up in the New England Journal of Medicine. I guess there's always nasal aplasia, the complete absence of a nose."
"That's a nose, San, we're talking mouth here," Brittany said as they wandered along the row of trailers looking for the one the police had informed her housed April Rhodes.
"Yeah, but what we're talking is medical, physiological, and not criminal. Not as far as I can see."
"Well, maybe, but I still want to know why Rhodes doesn't want to talk to the police." Brittany shoved her hands in her pockets and tried to ask as indifferently as possible, "Have you changed your mind about visiting your mom?"
"No," Santana huffed. "We're not going to my mom's, so you can stop asking."
"But she'll feed us and she's a way better cook than you."
"Hey! Britt... What the...?"
They both stumbled to a halt and stared up at a huge yacht looming up over the trailers. Empty bottles of champagne lay discarded across the patchy brown grass surrounding one of the trailers. The agents squinted up at the vessel in puzzlement, watching as its flags flapped lazily in the breeze.
"That's a little out of place, wouldn't you say?" Santana murmured.
"Little bit."
A curtain twitched in the window of the trailer alongside the yacht and inside it April eyed the approaching agents with suspicion. "Aww, damn it. Artie!" She turned and called behind her.
A beeping noise and a whirring could be heard as Artie Abrams trundled into the main room on his motorized wheelchair. "What? What is it?"
"It's the IRS. It's got to be. Listen kid, get rid of them, all right?"
Santana knocked at the door of the trailer while Brittany did a circuit of the yacht behind her. The door opened and she looked into the doorway only to see no one there. Her brow furrowed and she sighed with slight annoyance immediately feeling guilty about it as Artie reversed his wheelchair into view to face her.
"Hi. We're looking for a Ms. April Rhodes."
"She's not here," Artie answered, otherwise ignoring Santana as he over appreciatively eyed Brittany from head to foot, much to Santana's irritation. She took back the guilty feeling from a few seconds before.
"Do you happen to know when she's coming back?"
He shook his head and shrugged until Santana pulled out her ID and tried not to smirk as she noticed his eyes widen at the sight of her FBI badge.
"Well, we are Agents Pierce and Lopez from the FBI."
"Oh," Artie coughed and cleared his throat. "The yacht... the yacht's not ours. The boat … I'm... we're just holding it for someone, and, you know... they pay the taxes on it."
Santana stared at him unblinking, "Okay..."
"April's not here," Artie spluttered and started to close the door. Brittany leaned over Santana and stopped him, holding it open with a disarming smile.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's the rush? What's your name?"
"Artie Abrams."
"Oh, you're April's...?"
"Step son, ex step son."
"Nice flag." She flicked the red flag he had sticking up out of the back of his wheelchair and peered over his head into the trailer.
"Hi, there," Brittany gave a lopsided grin to the young woman she spotted standing at the counter near the kitchen. She was looking mightily bored while idly shaking a beer can, setting it down then picking up another only to do the same thing to it.
The woman smirked as she caught a glimpse of the two agents and whispered, "It's about time," under her breath. She waggled her red framed sunglasses up and down at Brittany and had to stifle a laugh as Santana leaned in under Brittany's chin to find out who her partner was grinning at.
Brittany turned her attention back to Artie. "We're not here to talk about the boat, Artie. We want to talk to your step mother about her boss."
"And the, uh, unfortunate condition that she's found herself in. Would you happen to know anything about that?" Santana cocked her head to the side and watched him carefully.
"What, the mouth thing? Yeah well, that's... you know... that's just, uh, that's, like..." He opened his mouth and stared into space for a few seconds trying to think of the right word. "Chemicals," he finally came up with.
"Chemicals?"
"Yeah, you know, like, people store weird chemicals and shit. April, one time, she smelled this weird smell, you know? She thought it was a brain tumour but it turned out it was this guy with a meth lab in one of the storage units. So, you know, that's actually probably something you guys should look into, take a look into that. Uh, I'm going to get going, so I'm going to go, okay? Bye now."
He slammed the door quickly leaving Santana and Brittany on the doorstep a bit stunned.
"Okay... This is weirder than usual," Santana mused quietly to herself.
Brittany nodded her head thoughtfully. "Yeah, I see what's going on here."
Santana stared at her in disbelief then laughed as Brittany's nod slowly turned into a shake of the head and a frown.
"Food helps me think better," Brittany looked over at her partner hopefully.
"We're not going to see my mom," Santana began to walk back to the car, Brittany trailing after with a disappointed pout.
"Does she even know you're in the state?"
"No, and she's not going to either."
"But she loves me."
"Get in the car, Britt, we're going to check out the storage facility."