"Your effort was valiant…but your teammates were too loud. You lose."
No one was surprised. And everyone threw hard looks at Puck, who simply shrugged, still smiling. He mouthed to Finn, "I counted 24." Finn shook his head with a small smile, but he was too concerned about the money they could have won to really care about the joke.
The boys nearly whooped when the last challenge of the round fell to the bad boy. A task simply named Book Drop.
"The contestant must withstand the force of two books falling on his arms by way of guillotine."
"Pfft, easy!" Puck breathed with a smirk.
As much as they needed the money, the boys bitterly hoped it wasn't. Then maybe Puck would learn to control his laughter and things would go more smoothly. Even though they'd won most of the challenges so far, Puck was always the first to laugh and laugh the hardest. That needed to stop.
Like the show had announced, a table was brought in with two guillotine-like contraptions spaced so Puck could easily slide his arms inside each hole comfortably. He did so immediately with a cocky grin. Finn, however, ogled at the books hanging above, which were gigantic and leather-bound. He became convinced that they'd taken Quinn's grandmother's large print Bible. The one that took up half the coffee table, but he wasn't allowed to put drinks on.
They didn't know how the large books were staying up, but the same intern off-screen quietly pointed out the lever which made them fall and motioned for them to decide who got to pull it. Mike immediately pushed Sam toward it with a wink.
Payback.
Sam waited for everyone to back away a bit (it took a tug from Karofsky to budge Finn, who was staring at the books for some reason) before he pulled, but he didn't wait for any signal from Puck. He dropped the volumes without warning.
And big, tough Noah Puckerman let out a howl like no one could believe. Most of the boys actually flinched back in shock before laughing, except for Finn, who rushed forward to lift the books off his friend. Puck responded to his help by pulling his hands out of the guillotines like he'd been scalded. It took his continued cursing and hopping as he stared at his red forearms to instigate a larger surge of laughter, started by Sam and Mike, which took over the entire group. That is, except for Kurt, who simply smiled and muttered something with the word "barbaric" in it.
They returned to the table, still laughing.
When the host announced, "Your lack of success has lead to failure," and discarded the money, most felt the loss had been worth it. Except for Puck, who swore up and down that his yell wasn't from regular pain, oh no, it was because he'd probably broken an arm. Or two.
"Give it a rest, Puckerman," resounded from an annoyed Karofsky. The first round was over, so they got a bit of free time in between where quiet wasn't mandatory. Kurt had taken the chance to run to the bathroom and salvage his hair.
"Yeah. You're fine. But we've watched the show enough for you to know it's about being quiet. You can't keep screwing us over like this," Mike chimed in. He was pretty irritated that, as tough as Puck acted and as much football as they played, he'd yelled so loudly at a few books. He'd careened into a book shelf and gotten a few red marks and stayed mostly quiet. Sam had gotten pelted in the face with only a bit of noise. Kurt had been attacked with a wooden sword and no one had heard so much as a peep from him. It was ridiculous that Puck couldn't show any restraint.
Puck was about to say something, but Finn beat him to it.
"Look," he started calmly. He knew the yell had been an accident, but he had a feeling about the bouts of laughter, "I know it's funny and I know you're trying to play along with the show, but we're on a mission here. I don't know what your game is, but I feel like you think this will help your bad boy image or whatever, but please, dude, don't mess around to settle some weird score."
He knew he'd hit somewhere close to the mark when Puck settled down and muttered, "Fine. I get it."
Kurt returned and it wasn't long after that that the host, Zero, walked over to them to brief them on the next round of challenges. He was actually a really friendly guy when they weren't filming, he even offered to take some pictures and videos to e-mail to them, which Mike all too eagerly accepted. However, when it came to the challenges this time around, he simply gave the names and extremely vague descriptions. Making them vague was weird, considering every task could be summed up in a sentence.
He walked back to his place behind the counter, reminding them to act more buddy-buddy for the cameras and to at least pretend to laugh if they didn't find the challenge funny. The phrase, "It's TV! You have to ham it up for the cameras!" caused an annoyed looked from Puck to Finn. After he'd left, Kurt turned to Mike. "Why didn't he tell us more? He explained things better earlier."
Mike shrugged, "I may watch it but I don't know how things work behind the scenes. Maybe they tell you less each round?"
"Or maybe it's so we don't start laughing before they explain the challenges?" Karofsky queried. As much as he hated to admit it, he was getting used to this. It wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. But maybe that was due to his lack of challenges.
Mike shook his head. "No, no, people do that all the time…"
Unexpectedly, the cameraman cut him off with the typical countdown and the boys fell into silence. They shared a look and nodded.
Time to get serious.