"The Mistaken M. Jones"

4. Accelerate

March 2012 – Lima, Ohio

There was no way around it. The moment one of them found out, it was like a chain reaction. Sugar had found it out first, and she'd hurried to find Artie and tell him. When he'd known, he'd had little to no time to decide what to do about it, because Santana had seen them talking, and she'd come over, asking what was happening. As it wasn't specifically anything he could control, only a fact that would make its way around whether he wanted it or not, Artie told her. Now, this had led for Santana to decide they all needed to gather, all of them who were in the know. Before he could do anything about it, he'd been tasked with tracking Puck down, Sugar had to find Quinn, and Santana would find Brittany, and they would all meet in the choir room.

It took ten minutes before all six of them were gathered. This one had been in the bathroom, that one in the principal's office… But now they were all together, and just when Artie thought Santana might carry on acting like she was in charge, she'd turned the news on to him to reveal. That almost made it worse. He took in a breath, let it out.

"So it turns out Miss Harrison is staying through the rest of the school year."

"Nice," Brittany beamed, and they looked at her. "What? I like her," she shrugged.

"Okay, but do any of us even believe her being here really has anything to do with why the teachers are gone? What's to say she hasn't been going around leaving laxative surprises at their doors so they'll be down for the count and she can swoop in?" Santana pointed out. Sugar's face scrunched up at the thought.

"Maybe she has something to do with it," Artie relented, though far from happily so. "What's the point?"

"The point is she's going to be staying, full time. It has to mean something, doesn't it?"

"Like what?" Quinn asked.

Santana could have made it so they left her out of this. She'd been 'briefed' on the Ginny/Gemma situation, but with what Santana had seen, there were so many new questions left hanging. Her trust in Quinn Fabray was a debatable and interchangeable factor as it was, but now with the added threat of this unknown situation with Gemma and the Doctor, the fact that she might be conspiring behind their backs… At least if she was here though, they could keep an eye on her, and she could try and figure out what her game was.

"Like whatever she's here for, it's all going to happen, sooner, not later." This left them all to ponder things to themselves.

"You're not still thinking about confronting her, are you?" Artie asked Santana, who turned to him.

"What are you going to do, make Brittany convince me not to again?" The blonde lifted her head, nervous, but when Santana looked at her, it was clear that if she was angry at anyone, it was at Artie and never at her. "At this point, don't you think she owes us…"

"Why would she owe you anything?" Quinn cut in. Santana turned; this she wanted to hear. "Now, unless I've missed something here, and I know I haven't, she's on our side. She's a friend of the Doctor. But you're standing here treating her like she's doing something wrong. If she is doing something, if it's anything that you need to know about, don't you think she would tell you? But she hasn't, has she? So maybe you should leave her alone until she comes to you, if she needs to."

Artie looked like he'd never been so glad to have Quinn Fabray in this circle. Santana stared at her like she'd never been this frustrated to have to admit she might be right about something.

"I get that you hate not knowing, really, I do. I want to know, too."

"Uh, we should get to class," Sugar pointed out, looking at the clock on the wall.

They'd disbanded after this, all of them headed toward their respective classes. Artie had been on his own, and he'd been briefly thinking about what had been discussed, when he felt a familiar weight on his chair's handles.

"Puck, what…"

"Look, I know what we said in there, but don't you think we should speed things up a bit?" he asked, pushing the chair down the hall.

"Speed things up how?" Artie asked, nervous both for the subject and for the control of his chair being in the hands of Noah Puckerman.

"I don't know… not yet… But, hey, we'll get together later and figure it out, alright?"

Before Artie could reply, Puck had let go of his chair and gone on his way, forcing Artie to quickly grab on to his wheels again before he could ram into a row of lockers. He took a deep breath, needing a moment to situate himself again and go on his way.

Maybe he needed to go and talk to Gemma again. She might tell him what he was supposed to do, how he could deal with the rising need for information within this group. Of course that would mean admitting that the group had doubled in size since they'd spoken. Then there was how they'd been figuring this and that about her reasons for being there, what she was really doing… He didn't want to make it seem like they were invading her privacy. He had known her, all those years ago, when he'd been a kid and she'd been… the same. He knew who she was, more than any of those other guys did, and for that reason he wanted to protect her, in whatever way he could. Maybe if he showed that he could help her on his side, she would tell him more, let him do more. He wanted to help the Doctor, too.

TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)