It's still not 2011 where I am, so I didn't break the chapter a day streak. I realize that I probably planned my day so very full so that I would be able to post this when no one was around to read it. Because. Well. On with the show. Chapter title is from Cake, "Short Skirt...Long Jacket". I love Cake. Both the band and the sweet dessert treat. Happy New Year!
Misfit Toy Hero Squad
Chapter 11 – "I Need a Girl With a Short Skirt and a Mind Power."
There are instances in life where you already have a completely wonderful and amazing thing occurring, and the fates decide that you should have another completely wonderful and amazing thing occurring at the same time. A gorgeous full moon on one edge of the horizon and a shooting star on the other. Your newborn baby or your loving partner's face. The incredibly gorgeous person walking to your left and the incredibly gorgeous person walking to your right.
God, or whomever is in charge of this infinite universe never closes a door without opening a window. Sometimes, the door is obliterated and the windows are smashed in. Sometimes, everything is boarded up tight.
Sometimes, the man behind the wheel falls fast asleep, so it is up to the people who can't waste time asking him for help to come up with their own way out.
Rachel held her breath and jerked her head towards Quinn, not bothering to go through the formality of beaming orders into her mind. Instead she simply took over and Quinn thrust her right hand into the air and exuded a small, perfectly oval blue bubble. It zipped through the air like a laser and suddenly the dangerous, gas-leaking canister was enveloped by it, rendering the sinister device completely useless.
Puck took a deep breath and lit a fire ball in his hands, to better light the room as Kurt had only managed to make the lights flicker back and forth. He nodded at Santana, who was currently busy freezing thick walls of soda against the windows, hoping that they held against whatever was going to be thrown at them next by whoever currently wanted them dead. Or trained. Or both.
Rachel turned to Brittany and Artie, her politeness back after the gas scare.
Artie, don't panic. I'm going to look inside your mind to better assess our current dire situation.
"Go for it," Artie shrugged helplessly.
Rachel took a deep breath and shut her eyes, stepping as gracefully as she could through Artie's thoughts, ignoring all of those that revolved around Brittany and Santana body parts. She focused on the one that seemed to matter, the central point in Artie's mind. The enemy was right outside. The enemy had one firm order.
Capture or Kill.
She furrowed her brow as she tried to unravel what Artie had foreseen. She felt a hand grip hers physically and a warm surge of energy traveled through her entire body, giving her the boost she needed as the jumbled images of Artie's visions, the ones that he articulated in particularly atrocious Latin, became clear as day. And then, everything went straight to hell. Right there in her mind's eye, she was assaulted with a deluge of horrifying visions. Pain. Destruction. Death. Vaguely she heard Artie rapidly grumbling out Latin phrases. They were coming so quickly that even Brittany was having a hard time keeping up with him. Hundreds of different horrifying scenarios assaulted her until they just became one large violent ball of blood and desperation.
Noah.
She gasped and RAN out of Artie's mind, looking up at Puck as he gripped her hand in worry. Her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head in shocked dismay.
"We need to get out of here!" Rachel whispered desperately.
Finn furrowed her brow, having heard her quiet desperation. "We just spent a lot of time sealing ourselves IN."
"I don't think I can zip everyone at once. I thought that was why we were fortifying," Blaine honestly admitted, panicking just as much as everyone else in the room as he watched Rachel break down as she was overcome with intense, choking sobs. He hadn't known the girl as long as everyone else, but she had always seemed so take charge, whether it be on stage or in a huge underground training facility, diffusing bombs.
"We have to…oh God," Rachel gasped, her voice forcing itself out past the thick onslaught of tears. "Noah…please. Blaine…we need to get out of here. NOW."
"Those little BASTARDS!"
Burt flinched as Sue screamed at the suddenly empty room. Obviously whatever whammy Mercedes had laid on them abruptly disappeared and the once crowded office now only contained the adults. Burt furrowed his brow as he looked around.
"Wait, where's Schuester?" he wondered.
"Where those kids are, I'd wager," Bieste muttered. "They probably took him with them. They were all so keen to tell him…"
"That can not be good," Figgins admitted, still feeling a little shocked at having witnessed one of the Gleek's powers up close and personal. Reading about the original nine his whole life didn't seem to cover the amazement he felt after Mercedes' forced illusion.
Sue gripped her phone in her hand and barked into in after the first half of a ring, "Becky! Have you heard anything on the wire?"
Sue nodded at Becky's thorough report before hanging up with a stern, "Red Alert, Becky. The cuckoos have flown the nest. I repeat, the cuckoos have flown the nest."
Sue hung up and looked at Bieste with a barely raised brow, "There's been a suspicious amount of radio silence."
"What's that mean?" Burt asked in concern.
"Sue and I go find those kids, and you stay downstairs and pray that they all find a way home," Bieste said gruffly as she and Sue both walked out of the office, followed quickly by Burt as Figgins started making the appropriate emergency phone calls.
"You don't know where they are!" Burt grumbled angrily, his worry growing exponentially by the second. He had seen Sue lose it countless times over the year. He had never seen both her and Shannon Bieste look so crazed and determined before.
Sue nodded grimly as they quickly headed towards the front doors of the school. She looked back at her companions, the two other people who had been entrusted with thirteen young lives and tried to quell the panic rising up in her. She nodded as Burt stayed at the door, knowing that he had to follow orders and stay, no matter how much he wanted to go out and find his son and the twelve other kids who seemed very much like his own now.
"We'll follow the explosions."
"Sparky, calm down…please just breathe," Puck whispered as he folded a hysterical Rachel into a strong, heated embrace. He darted a glance towards Santana and mouthed, "Water."
Santana complied, reaching out her hand and causing a bottle of water to fly off a shelf, pushing against a refrigerator door until it was in her hands. She tossed it Puck's way and could only watch in horrified, slightly guilty fascination as Rachel continued to shake with raw, intense sadness in Puck's arms. Santana could only watch as she crossed her arms defensively in front of her. She had tried to break Rachel Berry thousands of times since the sixth grade. And she had never truly succeeded. And for Santana, trying to break Rachel Berry roughly translated into bullying so intense, she half expected any other person to go full out postal crazy on the whole school with a high powered sniper rifle. But she was Rachel Berry, so she never fucking broke.
But one trip into Artie's mind had broken Rachel Berry. Santana knew that nothing good could come of that.
"Who is out there?" Sam demanded quietly of Brittany, feeling the need to do something since flying around the parlor was out of the option.
"Hold on," Brittany whispered, her left index finger rapidly writing out words on the palm of her open right hand. She was muttering things under her breath, as if trying to dictate all of the translations to what she had heard Artie spew forth into her memory forever.
"Britt, we kind of need to know what we're dealing with," Sam insisted.
"I SAID HOLD ON!" Brittany shouted, causing everyone, including Rachel and Puck to flinch. Not one of them had ever heard that angry, hard desperation in the usually unflappable Brittany's voice. She felt their stares and suddenly looked up at them all, her eyes angry at first as she stared at each of their shocked faces. The anger quickly melted however at their concern and soon her blue eyes were filled with tears and her face crumpled miserably. "I'm so sorry…"
"Britt-britt, baby, it's okay," Santana assured her. "Sam didn't mean to pressure you."
"No…it's not that. I'm just sorry," Brittany tearfully asserted, flinching as Rachel hiccupped roughly in between her sobs. The helpless blonde Cheerio shrugged her shoulders and whispered, "I should have been able to understand it better."
"Brittany…who is out there trying to get in?" Quinn asked softly.
"The government," Brittany answered. "They really want us and not to give us a medal or something."
"It's…it's a capture or kill scenario," Rachel managed to spit out from the safety of Puck's arms.
"I am so not down with getting dissected," Mercedes decided instantly.
"What if we split up? What if Blaine takes those that can't-"
"NO!" Rachel practically shouted at Sam's half-stated suggestion. "We have to leave together. If we separate then..."
"I'm with Mercedes, I'm not down with getting dissected by the government either," Finn interrupted suddenly.
"So we stand here. We fight," Tina insisted with a strength she wasn't quite sure she possessed.
"Says the girl who can't die," Santana hissed.
"Back off, Satan!" Mike spat out bitterly, reaching his arm an extra foot or two to grip Tina's hand in his own.
"No one is dying!" Quinn yelled.
"I'm NOT going to be some rat in a cage for some government psychos! Tina made me watch the fourth season of Buffy, the government is going to cut us up and make a super monster!" Mercedes disputed. "If that means I have to die here, go all Bon Jovi and out like a blaze of glory…then-"
"SHUT UP!" Puck shouted as Rachel jumped in his arms. He pulled her tighter and glared at Mercedes angrily. "We're all going to get out of here alive."
"Yeah guys, don't die, because then Rachel dies," Brittany reminded everyone as she wiped her tears away, valiantly trying to banish away the all consuming sadness that was still eating away at her as her brain computed all of the predictions Artie had just made.
Everyone remained silent for a few extended moments, realizing why Puck was glaring daggers at Mercedes for even thinking about giving up or taking a Bon Jovi song too literally. They all had more than their own lives to fight for at the moment. Puck shook his head and stared down at Rachel, his thoughts unheard by the rest of the Gleeks.
We're going to get out of here, Sparky. We're going to be fine.
Rachel took comfort from his words and literal strength from his touch. He had been like a walking talking IV bag to her for the last hour and she couldn't help but wonder how they were pulling that off. She nodded in his embrace and pulled away, looking around, her mind trying to remain strategic as they assessed their situation. She looked at Blaine, who was staring miserably at his feet as Kurt had a comforting hand on the distraught boy's shoulder.
Blaine, its okay. I want to try something. I think we can make this work.
Brittany began writing on her hand again, this time with a sudden fevered desperation as she tried to work through nearly a hundred different premonitions that she was translating and decoding in her head. She shook her head and rewrote the word before turning at Puck and desperately calling out, "Puck! Explosion!"
Puck turned towards the front door that a few minutes ago he had thought he and Santana had expertly sealed. He saw a glinting metal object floating towards it and falling flush against the outside. He held up his hands as the grenade detonated, he saw Santana reach her hand in the opposite direction towards the pizza parlor's kitchen and felt the dual sensation of the hot fire hurtling at him and a tsunami wave of ice cold water at his back.
Together, with a little guidance from Rachel, the fire was out, but the door was now wide open. Puck turned to face the Gleeks who had avoided danger by darting behind him with a resolute face. Santana pushed her hand at the busted sink she had pulled the water from, causing it to die down immediately.
"No one dies. Together we can do this," he insisted strongly. He thought about his words for a split second before raising a bemused brow and adding, "No homo."
"Puck is my homeboy," Tina smirked at Mike.
"Fire guy is everyone's homeboy," Puck grinned at Rachel specifically, hoping that she had at least pushed her emotional breakdown to the back of her heart for now. They could deal with emotions later. "Now's the time to kick ass-"
One single gun shot was fired and Rachel's eyes widened in horror as one of the visions she had seen in Artie's head came to fruition before her very eyes. She couldn't move fast enough, she couldn't get the other Gleek's to move fast enough, it was Tina who screamed out loudest, simply yelling, "PUCK NO!" with all the horror and guilt that any one person could conjure. She's the one that couldn't die. Why was a bullet heading straight for Puck? She'd have gladly taken it, sworn her head off at the pain of it and gotten the FUCK over it. Puck could light the world on fire, but the tiny metal bullet was about to end him AND Rachel.
Quinn felt her hand raise and her gut clench as Rachel tried to save the father of her daughter. Beth's Dad. She watched as the blue orb whooshed from her very skin, making a beeline towards Puck. She felt Rachel's strength combining with her own as the protective shield grew and moved faster than it had ever done before. It hit his chest and vanished immediately.
But it wasn't fast enough. The impact of the bullet in Puck's back propelled him forward as his body crumpled at Rachel's feet. She felt herself breaking immediately. Not in some horrible romantical sense, but literally, breaking and weakening to the point where she couldn't stand any longer. She fell to her knees and put suddenly weak hands over the gushing hole in Puck's back.
"Blaine?" she called out weakly. He rushed to her side, ready to teleport them to the nearest hospital when she ordered everyone, "Join hands!"
They did as they were told, forming a large, tangled chain of Gleeks. Rachel felt their energy flowing through her as she kept one hand pushing firmly over the bleeding bullet hole that was sapping Noah Puckerman's life from his very body. She closed her eyes and neither she, nor Blaine could tell who was the one actually using the power at that point. They blinked out of the ruined pizza parlor, all thirteen of them linked together haphazardly through clenched hands into the unknown.
Uhm. Happy New Year?
Thoughts? Theories? Questions? Flames? Death Threats? I think I'm ready. Coming up...
. . . Chapter Twelve – "It Don't Take a Word, Not a Single Word, Go On and Kiss the Boy."
