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Chapter 7

Off With Their Heads

After Tina dropped Brittany off for fifth period, as she was making her way to her own class, she got a text message:

From Puck: just found Z n br, covered w red shit, smelled lik piss, cryin lik a grl. wtf u ba's do? slushie him?

Tina felt bad for Azimio for about two seconds, until she remembered just how many slushie facials he had administered to her and her friends. Maybe a little humiliation would be a good thing for him.

Fifth period for Tina was AP Chemistry, which she had with Santana, and as fate would have it, she was running late. She was almost certain that she would wind up partnered with the Latina so that she could get into Tina's face about showing her up in the hallways, and probably for her getting sent to see Figgins earlier, too. When she got there, just before the bell rang, she saw that Santana was, indeed, the only one without a partner, almost certainly by the Latina's design. Screw her and her bitchiness. You're Princess Mariposa. You're so far above this moral and all her crap. The second Tina sat down, Santana lit into her, but Tina heard none of it, which of course, only made Santana even angrier, but having already made one trip to the principal's office that day, she would have to face suspension if she did anything to Tina about it.

In sixth period AP Algebra, Mike showed Tina his video of her shouting down Santana. She loved it and gave him her blessing to post it on YouTube. She liked having photographic proof of the day she was badass enough to go mano-a-mano with the head cheerleader.

When the vampires got to the choir room, they found Rachel and Mercedes there ahead of them talking about something. Both of them stopped and looked up when Tina and Brittany. "Girl," Mercedes began looking at Tina, "I been textin you like crazy, all day. What's up? Why don't hit me back?"

"Sorry, I forgot to charge my phone last night," Tina responded. The battery isn't dead, but I did forget to charge it. "What's up? How's Eddie?" Tina asked leading Brittany to the chair.

"Psh! He's fine. Mom's trippin'."

"Mercedes!" Rachel interjected, "Don't say such things. It was the responsible thing for your mother to take your brother to the hospital. As you know head injuries can be extremely serious, and your mother in particular is particularly protective of both you and your younger brother…"

Tuning Rachel's monologue out, Tina dropped her bag in front if one chair dragged the chair to the left of it closer, pointed at it and quietly said, "Puppy, sit." Brittany did. Tina joined her.

Mercedes turned her attention back to Tina, "Girl, why is Brittany chained to you?"

Brittany, while maintaining her far-away look, piped up, "It's not a chain, it's a leash. There are leash laws for a reason, Mercedes."

Tina then said, "Puppy's my pet. I have to make sure she doesn't run off or get hurt."

Brittany leaned her head over on Tina's shoulder and said, "You're such a good master. You take such awesome care of me."

"Master?" Mercedes echoed, "Now hold up a damn mi…"

"Ladies, Badasses." Puck interrupted as he walked into the room. "So Tina when did you decide start bucking for the top spot around here?"

"Top spot? Noah, what are you talking about?" Rachel asked.

"In one day, Tina, here has taken down two of the biggest badasses in the school, aside from Puckzilla of course. She shouted down Santana in front of God and everybody before homeroom, completely devastating her intimidation factor, then before lunch she left Azimio a fucking whimpering mess in the bathroom. Still not sure how you did that one."

Tina smiled at Brittany who still had the same blank faced stare as she had for most of the day. I think that will now be officially called "Puppyface." "I beat Karofsky in Hallway Chicken, too."

"WHAT?" said Rachel, Mercedes, and Puck all at once.

"Pretty sure that puts my Badass Body Count at three," Tina continued, absently stroking Brittany's hair.

"Please go out with me," said Puck suddenly, "You're gonna be the queen of this fucking place soon enough, might as well be at the side of the king. Plus, have you seen these arms? These are the kind of arms you want at your side when you're ruling a place like McKinley."

"I'm spoken for, Puck," Tina said wistfully. Puck looked thoroughly confused, like the idea that Tina would reject him was as foreign to him as the idea of not trying to get in a girl's pants.

"Damn right you are, woman," came the voice of Artie, wheeling himself into the room, followed closely by Finn and Matt. Typical, ignore me all day just to show up and stake a claim on me that you don't even have. Jerk. Tina glared at him, but if he noticed her anger, he didn't show it.

Rachel quickly began one of her monologues, "Tina, I feel compelled to point out that in spurning Noah's advances and presumably, based on the look on his face, destroying his plans to ride your coattails to the apex of the social pyramid of McKinley High, your quote unquote Badass Body Count now stands at four," she glared at Puck and continued, "Which I must say is very impressive. I hope that you remember the little people when you get to the top."

Tina and Mercedes couldn't help but laugh at this. Stop laughing, Tina. You're supposed to be a hard ass. Oh but damnit that was funny, plus my God, Rachel made a joke.

Kurt made his way into the room, as did Mike who was soon followed by Quinn. "What's so funny?" asked Kurt.

"Rachel made a joke," said Matt.

"A good one," Mercedes added.

"At Puck's expense," Tina concluded. Kurt began giggling uncontrollably at the thought.

"And I missed it?" came Quinn's voice, "Those are my favorite kind of jokes."

Everyone, less the noticeably absent Santana, settled into their seats as Mr. Schuester entered the choir room and said, "Alright, gang. Who is ready to hit the ground running on a funk number?" No one moved. There were no hands in the air. No voices spoke up. Nothing. "Come on, guys. Someone has to have something. Rachel?"

The diminutive Glee Club Captain stood at this prompting. Mr. Schuester sat down assuming she was moments away from launching into song. Instead she launched into yet another speech. "Mr. Schue, as you know there are many genres of music of which I am well skilled to reproduce, however, funk is just simply put, not one of them. I know that I am not alone in feeling this way as I have been in contact with other members of the club that feel similarly. As Team Captain, I took it upon myself to encourage these people to work on numbers that might be used at Regionals three weeks hence. While I have a couple of things ready to go in this regards, I'm finding Tina's and Brittany's sudden flair for the theatrical a little too intriguing to resist offering them the chance to go first."

"Thanks, Rachel. I think we will," Tina responded. She looked at Brittany whose head was still rested on Tina's shoulder, "Ready, Puppy?"

"Yes, Princess."

"Great," Tina responded, "Up." Brittany stood and they walked down to the open floor. Tina was carrying her backpack with her. She said, "Jazz Band, you can take five. You don't have a synth board, so we'll just have to use my iPod." Tina disconnected the leash from her wrist, handed the end to Brittany and said, "Limber up, Puppy." She then unpacked and plugged in her docking station, plugged in her iPod, and cued up the song. She grabbed the remote and moved over to Brittany. Standing very close to her she said, "Okay, I hope this goes without saying, but Puppy can dance as well as Brittany, right?"

"Yes, Princess. We share the same body."

"Okay, good. When the music hits, dance your heart out, Puppy."

"Thank you, Princess."

"And when the song is over, we can go back to being Tina and Brittany."

"Yes, Princess."

Tina pressed play on her iPod and the music began… and so did Brittany. When Brittany danced in their group choreography numbers, she was excellent, but when she danced alone in the style of her choosing, she was mesmerizing. She had a grace that seemingly defied logic and physics and appeared to come to her as naturally as breathing. My God she's beautiful. She's like a living piece of art, poetry in motion. So enraptured was Tina that she very nearly missed her cue in the song, but she just managed to save herself.

Off with your head
Dance until you're dead
Heads will roll
Heads will roll
Heads will roll
Heads will roll
On the floor

Glitter on the wet streets
Silver over everything
The river's all wet
You're all cold

Dripping with alchemy
Shiver stop shivering
The glitter's all wet
You're all chrome

The men cry out
The Girls cry out
The men cry out
Oh no

Off with your head
Dance until you're dead
Heads will roll
Heads will roll
Heads will roll
Heads will roll
On the floor

Looking glass
Take the past
Shut your eyes
Mirror lies

Glitter on the wet streets
Silver over everything
The glitter's all wet
You're all chrome
You're all chrome

Off with your head
Dance until you're dead
Off with your head
Dance until you're dead
Off with your head
Dance until you're dead

Tina felt the performance had gone extremely well. She'd nailed the vocals and the limited choreography she had. Brittany had danced phenomenally well. The blonde had neglected her backing vocals in the chorus but no one seemed to notice or care.

"Great job, you guys," said Mr. Schuester, "really well done. Tina, great job on the vocals, the song was really creepy, I assume that's what you were going for?"

"Totally," Tina replied borrowing a line from Brittany.

Mr. Schuester turned to address the blonde, "Brittany, you were phenomenal, but I don't think it's really something we can do for Regionals. Let's…"

"Why the hell not?" Tina heard herself say. Umm, what was that? Why am I attached to this song all of a sudden? It's just something we through together because I felt like I had to justify hanging out with Brittany. I mean, I guess we did put a lot of work into it, and we rocked it.

"Tina?" said Mr. Schuester.

"Why can't we use this song at Regionals? It's not sexual or vulgar or violent," Tina said, counting out things that were forbidden or frowned on in competitive show choir, "There are no references, implicit or explicit, to drug or alcohol use. There is, in fact, nothing remotely controversial about it. Our interpretation of the song is basically 'Vampire Dance Party.' Who could be offended or upset about that?"

"I just don't think it's something that the judges are going to appreciate, Tina. I know you worked very hard on…"

"Isn't it our job to make the judges appreciate us?"

"I just think that the make-up and the teeth…"

"It's theatricality. We just had a whole week's lesson on it, and as much fun as Bad Romance was, this is better because it's original theatricality. Brittany and I came up with these looks ourselves. We didn't copy we saw something in a music video."

"And it was totally fun thinking all this stuff up," Brittany chimed in, holding up her bloody hands.

"You're so right, Britt. Mr. Shue," Tina continued, "if Vocal Adrenaline does do Lady Gaga at Regionals, the proper response is not for us to also do Lady Gaga. That's just copying them and we can't outdo them at being them. They've got fifty times the budget we have and they have community support. If you want to go after Vocal Adrenaline's weakness, that's great, but having us spend a week focusing on funk music because it's supposedly the one genre they can't pull off is a huge waste because, A, apparently none, or at least very few of us, can do it either, and, B, they'll just double down on whatever they are doing. Their weakness isn't funk. Funk is a symptom of their real weakness."

"Which is?" Mr. Schuester seemed to genuinely want to hear this.

"They're automatons, Mr. Shue, soulless pieces of a machine that just so happens to make music. I have no idea which songs they're going to sing but I can tell you exactly what they are going to do. Jesse will take center stage on all three numbers. There will be fabulous matching costumes. And there will be extremely polished choreography that in all likelihood has no real connection to the songs. They are a machine, granted an extremely well crafted machine, they haven't won eight straight National Championships for nothing, but they are still a machine."

"So what do you suggest?"

The entire Glee Club is sitting and listening to me. This is too weird. "Their weaknesses are our strengths. We have creativity," Tina said, gesturing at herself and Brittany, "and we have diversity."

Mr. Schuester looked confused, "You want to play the race card?"

God he's an idiot sometimes. "Diversity of style, Mr. Shue. Everyone in Vocal Adrenaline kinda sings like Rachel, very polished, very well rehearsed, very Broadway, and I'm not knocking that style of singing Rachel, nor am I saying they sing as well as you do. I'm just talking about style. Anyone ever hear any of them sing like Mercedes?"

"Hell, to the nah!" intoned Mercedes. There was a general agreement on that point.

"Anyone ever hear someone from Vocal Adrenaline sing like Kurt or Santana, wherever she is? Ever see one of them and think 'I could see them being a rock star, like Puck?' Anyone ever see any of them do anything remotely like Brittany just did a few minutes ago?" Once again there was a general consensus in the negative on that subject. "Mr. Shue, if you don't like the vocals or the arrangement or even if you just don't like the song, we can work on them, but we need a set list, like, before we leave today. We needed one a couple weeks ago, but we can't change that now. So my proposal is that we do "Heads Will Roll" or some theatrical thing first, then let Rachel knock out a big thunderous solo in the middle, giving Brittany and I a chance to lose the vampire make-up, and then a big group number. If you don't like that plan, that's fine, but make a better plan."

"I'd say that sounds like a pretty solid plan, Tina," Mr. Schuester responded.

"Wait," said Mercedes, "Why does Rachel automatically get the solo?"

"Exactly," Quinn agreed, "I want a chance to express myself, too."

"And I want Glee Club to exist next year," Tina shot back. "This competition is literally a 'do-or-die' situation, and we're up against the best show choir in the country for the better part of the last decade. Mercedes, Kurt, I love both of you and your voices, but Rachel is the best singer in this club, not because she's the most talented but because she works harder at it… probably harder than all of us put together."

"Thank you, Tina. I do work very hard for my…"

"Pretty sure I still had the floor, Rach. So Rachel is the best fit for the solo, if you want to fight her for it take it up with her and Mr. Shue. For those of you who want a solo, there are still the lead parts in the group number and if you want, you can try to take my spot. If you think you can one-up me in theatricality, bring it on. If you're better than me, I'll be big enough to admit it and step aside and you can let your freak flag fly at Regionals."

"Also," said Mr. Schuester, "I'm scheduling a Spring Showcase in mid-April, so anyone who gets left out of the solos can try again for that show."

There was a huge buzz amongst the Gleeks at this announcement. People were bouncing ideas off of each other, both for Regionals and for the Showcase. Brittany just went up to Tina and said, "T, you're such a badass. I totally want to get my Lady Kisses on with you right now but I know you probably aren't ready for everyone to know yet. My eyes are itching, so can we go take my contacts out and then get our mack on in the bathroom?"

Tina smiled and said, "Sweetie, I love your brain."

"My sexy brain?"

"Your super mega sexy brain. Mr. Shue, Brittany needs help taking out her contacts, we'll be right back." Wow, I totally didn't ask permission just then. Princess Mariposa is such a badass.

"Okay, Tina."