Will watched him leave the classroom reluctantly. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, absently noting the rasp of five-o-clock shadow, then made up his mind, and strode out into the hallway in time to see Kurt vanish into the restroom. He followed, taking a position leaning against the wall, waiting for the boy to come back out. The long night must be getting to him, he thought - he could have sworn he heard shuffling footsteps, whispers... but the corridors were dark and deserted.

When he heard the water splash in the sink, he straightened up.

When Kurt came back out into the hall, he was badly startled at first to find his teacher standing there, and fell back a step with a sort of squeak. "M-Mr. Schuester," he stammered. "Um... All set. I'll see you Monday?"

"Come on, Kurt," the teacher said shaking his head, "let's get your things together and you can tell me what happened. And you should give your Dad a call, he must be getting worried, it's after nine." He checked the time in his own cell. "Yeah, it's almost 9:30." He looked up at Kurt's groan of dismay. "We're going to have to tell your father what happened tonight, Kurt. We can't let this slide."


Mike and Matt had finished their sweep of the locker room first, and headed for the choir room. When they passed Artie's group, they joined up with them - Mike suggested that they split up with him and Artie and Tina checking the classrooms on one side of the hall and Matt and Mercedes checking the other, ignoring the panicked look Matt sent him over Mercedes' head. When Britt and Santana caught up too, they decided to go on upstairs and help Quinn and Rachel finish their floor, too.

Fortunately for Finn and Puck, almost all the dumpsters were directly under lights, so Finn only had to actually boost Puck up into one to carefully check and make sure it didn't have any human inhabitants. To their vast relief, they were all Kurt-Hummel-free. And when they worked their way around the school, they were surprised to find that Mr. Schue's car was parked beside the door closest to the choir room and that the door was propped open with a garbage bag full of what seemed to be clothing.

Just as they were about to go ahead in, Kurt moved past them at speed, looking like he'd been mauled by a bear or something, and disappeared into the boys' bathroom at the end of the hall. They exchanged relieved glances - at least he was upright and looked mostly ok - and were about to follow him when Mr. Schuester came out of the choir room and took up a position outside the door. It almost seemed like he was afraid Kurt might bolt... which was a fair supposition, Finn realized.

Kurt always tried to hide how much bad stuff was happening from... well, from everyone. He knew that Kurt had never told Burt that Finn had ever thrown him into a dumpster, for example- he couldn't imagine Burt ever being friendly to him if he'd known about that.

It had made things easier for them when they were part of the... well, he knew now it was bullying - Kurt never told, never asked anyone for help, almost never acknowledged it was even happening. He only seemed to get angry about things when one of the others got bullied as well. He had a weird sense of what Finn's mom would have called "chivalry" that way. A sort of macho that seemed strange coming from him.

Puck was texting rapidly to Santana. "I told them to meet us in the classroom around the corner. Room 110... She's gonna let the others know," he whispered to Finn. When Kurt and Schuester went past them again, talking quietly (well, Schue was talking, Kurt was looking like he'd rather be facing off with whoever had blackened his eye than going along with the teacher), they slipped into the building and around the corner as soon as the pair entered the choir room.

And not a minute too soon. An old pickup came around the corner at a good clip, and pulled in next to Kurt's Lincoln.


Will set one of the fallen chairs upright and gestured for Kurt to take a seat while he gathered up the remnants of the boy's jacket, his keys and phone. The phone was non-responsive, so he handed Kurt his own. "Call your dad," he told the young man, remembering his last encounter with Burt Hummel vividly. This encounter was not going to be good, either. He crossed back to his desk. Rummaging through the drawers, he found a granola bar, and he took a water bottle from his bag as well. Reaching Kurt's side, he righted another chair and straddled it, arms folded across the back, waiting for Kurt to finish his call.

"No answer, not at home, or the garage. And he's not picking up his cell, either." Kurt handed back the cell, clearly upset. He sounded terrible - raspy, hoarse, like he'd been yelling, and he was eyeing the water bottle longingly. Will twisted off the top for him- he was holding his right arm like it really hurt, tucked in close to his body, and had dialed the phone left-handed, clumsily - and Kurt drained it in about four seconds, then wolfed down the offered granola bar just as fast. He glanced over at his teacher, and Will watched color flood into his face; he looked a little embarrassed over having just inhaled the food, but it told Will that he'd clearly been here long enough to have missed dinner.

"All right, Kurt, feel a little more like yourself?" At his reluctant nod, the teacher made a gesture that included not only the battered teen in front of him but the open costume closet and the scattered chairs. "What happened here?" Kurt instantly regained that guarded look he wore so often, and Will sighed. "Kurt, please. Do not tell me you're fine. This isn't a minor incident. Tell me what happened."

Kurt had just opened his mouth to answer when a shadow filled the doorway. "Yeah, Kurt," his father asked, his voice tight with barely contained anger and worry. "What's going on here?"


In Room 110, the rest of glee was clustered together, trying to decide what they should do.

"We need to get in there," Mercedes whispered. "He needs us."

Most of the girls nodded, but Finn shook his head. "He's not gonna want us to see him like this. He may act girly sometimes," he met Rachel's glare with a shrug. "Well, he does. But he's a guy, like you pointed out, Rach, and he's got his pride."

Matt nodded reluctantly. "He'd probably rather we pretended this never happened."

Rachel frowned. "That might well be, but he needs us. We're a team. He's one of us. We need to stand together. And statistically, this sort of incident can lead to-"

Mercedes nodded emphatically cutting her off. "I hate to agree with Rachel, but she's right, he needs us. And he'll never ask us for help, Finn's right there, too, so we have to let him know he doesn't have to."

Finn was about to argue with them but Puck, who'd been watching the corridor, hushed them all abruptly with a sharp hiss. "What is it?" Finn asked in a stage-whisper.

"His dad, I think. He looks pissed." They all slipped as quietly as they could into the hall and huddled around the side door to eavesdrop. Puck eased it open a crack so they could hear.


When the alert on the tracking device that Sue Sylvester had planted on William Schuester's car indicated that he was pulling into the parking lot at McKinley, she turned on the monitor for the closed circuit camera she'd set up in the choir room (so she would have up to the minute intel on what her sworn foe was up to). She leaned back in her throne-like desk chair, relishing the sight of him lugging the heavy bag into the room, a triumphant smile creeping across her face.

She leaned forward and adjusted the camera angle on the live feed as he stopped dead in his tracks and dropped the bag in the middle of the floor, staring at something in the back of the room, his stiff posture suggesting... horror? While ordinarily that would delight her, she had a suspicion that this was not due to something of her own design, and that made her irritable. She switched to the second camera, the one that she had set up to cover the closet when she'd emptied it that afternoon, and zoomed in close to see what had caught his attention.

The doors of the closet were closed. Not so unusual... until she realized that they weren't just closed, they were tied closed. She leaned in closer, watching avidly as Schuester worked to remove whatever held the door closed with the dull pair of scissors from his desk (she'd stolen the sharp pair and replaced them at the beginning of his tenure as the glee club advisor with the oldest, loosest-hinged pair she could find), waiting with bated breath to see what he discovered.

The door opened and the closet disgorged... a slight figure in a Cheerios uniform. She sat up straight, bristling with fury. One of her Cheerios had been trapped in the choir room closet! As the figure stepped into the light, she recognised her vocalist -her key to Nationals - and he looked like he'd gone thirty seconds with Tyson (Sue herself had gone forty five before the boxer was begging for mercy).

Keeping one eye on the live display, she keyed up the replay from her DVR, and scanned back to 4pm that afternoon, revelling for a moment in her own glorious performance when William Schuester had first discovered the empty closet, before beginning to review what had come after. At 4: 07, mere moments after she and Schuester had left the room, Lady Face had slipped in and collected his overly fussy coat-thing and was fiddling with his phone. When the two bigger boys came into the room, she leaned in close to see their faces. Those two boys would never lay a hand on one of her girls again. Maybe never on any girl ever again.

She growled audibly when one of the big goons tackled her cheer-leader, knocking him to the ground. When the second had caught him by the collar of his uniform and actually tore the material - while one of her Cheerios was wearing it, no less! - she saw red. Her maid crossed herself and fled into the kitchen. Sue had to pause the playback to collect herself before going on, forcing herself to sit through the rest of their encounter, seething.

When it was over, she sat back in her chair, tapping one arm of her glasses against her chin. It seemed now was the time to begin incorporating Muay Thai into her cheer routines - her girls really ought to be able to acquit themselves better against such assailants. Lady Face certainly had potential - his high kicks, thanks to her, were phenomenal, but it had been too little too late. She would need to hone his killer instinct a bit.

Well, she thought, in any case, this would not stand. These miscreants would be punished to the fullest extent of the law. And then, it would be Sue's turn.

She made copies of the necessary footage, and sent email: William, Figgins,and Tanaka. If she could read her cheer-leader - and she could, the boy was as transparent as glass to her - he would resist giving up the names of his assailants, either out of fear of reprisals or because of misguided loyalty to the other girls on the glee roster. She didn't intend for them to go unpunished because of his qualms. She hit the send button and leaned forward again to watch the proceedings. The boy's father loomed in the doorway, an imposing figure, with a growl worthy of one Sue Sylvester. This should be interesting.