When they arrived back at the school late that evening, Will was waiting in the choir room. He was dressed up in a suit, looking especially nice. The Doctor held the door open for Sue, then followed after her, grinning. He finally knew the plan, and now he could try to stop it.
Will was nothing short of livid, however, when he met them in the hallway. "You two back to gloat?" he asked.
"Will!" the Doctor said, not quite catching on just yet. "How did everyone do at sectionals?"
Will smirked. "Despite your best efforts, it went well."
"I'm sorry?"
"Sue leaked the set list. And what about you, Dr. Smith? Have you been working for her the whole time? What was the plan, offer to help and then pull out at the last second so we'd have to withdraw from the competition?"
"Will, I told you-" the Doctor started, but Will wasn't in any mood to listen.
"Get out of here. Don't let me catch you around here ever again. I will not let you hurt these kids anymore."
"William," Sue said, speaking for the first time since they had returned, "I'll be honest with you. The Doctor has never worked for me, or associated with me. I met him after you did."
"And I'm supposed to, what, trust the person who tried to destroy our chances?"
"You have no proof," she said.
"You were the only other person who had the list!"
"But apart from that, you have no proof."
"I thought even you were better than this," he said.
"Clearly I can't convince you, William. As always, you've made up your mind ahead of time. But look at him," she said, jerking her head towards the Doctor. "Do you really think I'd take him on as a partner in crime? I mean, seriously, he can't even pronounce the word 'yogurt' properly."
"He has an accent..."
"I'm honestly glad to see our rivalry continue," she said. "My days were starting to get boring before I was able to devote myself to your utter and total destruction." She started to walk off, and said without turning around, "See you Monday, William. The game begins anew!"
Will turned back to the Doctor, who stood with a faraway look in his eyes and his hands jammed into his pockets. "I'm sorry," he said.
"You should be. Because the kids won - and that's great. But Emma's wedding was the cost. Ken left her." Before the Doctor could reply, Will was already leaving, shaking his head.
Quinn found him Sunday around 10:30 in the morning. He was in the cafeteria, dismantling a slushie machine.
"Are you gonna put that back together when you're done?"
"Oh, of course!" he said, still engrossed in what he was doing. "I'm no public menace."
"I was kind of hoping you'd leave it that way. Those things have become the bane of my existence." She knelt down next to him.
"I'm surprised to find you here this early on a Sunday," she said. "Then again, I'm surprised to find myself here. I should be at church right now," she said. "I haven't gone since my parents... since..."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"I, uh..." she cleared her throat. "I hope it's alright that I stayed in the TARDIS another night," she said. "I mean, I don't want to outstay my welcome."
"You're welcome to stay as long as I do," he said. "Although I'll probably be off in a couple days, once I get this place sorted."
She nodded. "Will you at least say goodbye to the glee club before you go?"
He shook his head. "Afraid not. I got kicked out."
"You're kidding me!" she said, laughing. "Nobody's ever been kicked out of the glee club before."
"Well you know, that's what I live for. New experiences, doing things nobody's ever done before."
"Well, I'm going to be sorry to see you go. Where will you go, anyway?"
"Wherever the wind takes me," he said. He smiled goofily but it didn't reach his eyes.
"So this is what you do? Show up on alien planets, stay for a couple months, and save everyone?"
"Oh, no, of course not," he said shaking his head vigorously. "Usually only takes me a day or two. Three at the outside."
"I stand corrected."
"A-ha! There we go!" he said. He reached inside the cavity of the machine and pulled out a flexible metal tube about an inch long and the diameter of a tube of toothpaste. He held it up and looked at Quinn through it.
"What's this?"
"The key to the mystery," he said. "Why there're more natural born musicians here than there should ever be."
"'Natural Born'? Hey, we work hard," she said.
"Yeah, you do, but you have a huge amount of musical aptitude to begin with," he said. "You're all pitch perfect; that's unheard of. The McKinley Jazz Ensemble can play most songs by ear. You have to realize that's incredible."
She nodded. "So, what does that mean?"
"You've been drugged," he replied. "The hardest part was figuring out how it was getting in here to begin with. And here it is. Every week this machine is taken apart and cleaned. The whole things gets treatment with detergent and hot water, and this little doodad comes out with water spots."
"So what is it? Something alien? Some weird technology or something?"
"Nah, just a bit of metal. Completely harmless. But the silver polish in the supply closet in the kitchen isn't silver polish at all. It's a polymerized chain of hydrocarbons in an semiorganic suspension."
"So as soon as you pull the lever, you get a dose of the... polymera... polymery..."
"Polymerized hydrocarbons, yeah."
"Is it... safe?" she asked, holding her stomach.
"Oh, yeah, nothing but benefits. It's actually developing your brain a bit."
"Really?"
"Yep."
"Then why aren't the football players all singing and dancing too?"
"It's not drinking them that causes the reaction, it's inhaling the vapors from a heated sample."
"Like when you get a noseful hurtled at you at 45 miles per hour?"
"Bingo."
She was quiet for a moment. "So, do you have to make the change?"
"Not in the short term, but this isn't just someone out to make you all musically inclined because they like a good show. There's a reason, and I'm gonna have to stop it."
She nodded. "Eventually the cleaning staff will run out of polish," she said. "And I'm betting what you buy at the store isn't quite the same."
"No, it's not."
She smiled wanly. "All good things must come to an end."
He nodded in agreement. "Everything has its time, and everything ends."
Suddenly her fingernails were insanely interesting.