Episode 14, Chapter 3:

Santana realized in the morning that her life was over. She called Brittany panicked, but the blonde girl didn't know anything, including that her own was missing. All their bags had to do was fall for a moment, and the IDs could still be on the floor. She hated that wretched basement and bought her way in to search it during her lunch break but found nothing. The cleaning people probably already swept it up or kept them for themselves, and she'd never get them back.

Quinn called Santana's father from another phone later that day as the person who found her daughter's lost government ID. Santana would say she had her ID when her father questioned her, but when her mother searched through it, she would find her daughter's beautiful fake with the last name "Perez." It was clear indicator that their daughter was up to something. Santana would get a slap to the face and grounded for life.

All of this did happen as Quinn predicted it. When Santana went to school the next day, she practically wrung Rachel's neck. Brittany had been caught too and was forbidden from having ice cream, which was a punishment that was tearing her apart.

The small brunette couldn't believe it. She didn't know what to say. She was out of the group before she could find her voice.

Spotted: Rachel in a red dress with the red hands to match. Looks like Utter Disgrace is the name on the label.

Rachel ran crying to the locker rooms where Finn was putting on his gear before heading out to the bus taking the boys to football practice.

"My life is over! They kicked me out! Santana can hold a grudge for as long, if not longer, then Quinn. She blames me for the trouble she got into with her parents after the party. I knew she would be upset with me, but I didn't think it would be this bad. I'm nothing again…" she boo-hooed.

"Maybe it's for the best," Finn offered, and Rachel immediately backed away from him.

"Are you kidding me?" she couldn't believe that he had nothing more encouraging to say when her heart was broken in a million pieces.

"No, think about it. They cause you the most stress of anyone. Maybe this is the exit you've always needed but didn't realize you wanted. They might hate you, but they aren't going to destroy you like they did Quinn. You're free from them. You can do whatever you want!"

"Do you not understand me at all, Finn? I need this. I need to get back in that group. I'm nothing without them. I won't go back to what I was. I worked too hard for it to end like this!"

"What about us?"

"What about us?"

"What if I liked that you weren't apart of them anymore? I know what my brother has gone through. He's been on the outs more than he's been on the ins. We're great together. We don't need them," he hugged her closer.

"You don't need them! I do! You don't understand; they are everything I want and strive to be. This is what is most important to me! If you're not on my side about this, then what good are you?!" she shoved herself away from him.

Too late she realized exactly what she said.

"Oh, my goodness, Finn! I'm so sorry I didn't mean that! I'm so stressed out; you know I don't mean that."

"Do you?" he said angrily, but also on the verge of tears. She'd never seen that look on his face before, and it broke her heart, for real this time. He mattered, and she'd gotten carried away and said the worst thing she could to him. "I'm pretty sure you meant it. You know I didn't think you could be like that—I knew you were ambitious, but I still believed you weren't like them. I guess I was wrong."

"Finn! Finn, come back," she yelled to him, but he was already leaving the locker room. She made everything worse for herself. Now she could say she had lost everything.


"Kurt!"

"Mom," Kurt responded far more calmly in an attempt to use what he learned in his psychology class to defuse the situation. He didn't know what he was guilty of anyway so there was no sense getting as worked up as his mother while Carole freaked out on him.

"Why didn't you call me first about that package you got at school? These are clear threats on your life, and I find out from your brother a whole 24 hours after the incident! You are lucky I didn't make a stop by your school like one of those overbearing moms."

"I would have been humiliated.

"Better that than to know you're keeping a secret like that from me," she retorted.

"Don't worry mom. I'm handling this issue like the mature adult I am," he added extra emphasis on the 'adult' word as a reminder that he was growing up.

"How could you handle this? Do you know who's threatening you?"

"I'm handling it. I'm looking into all potential leads. Whoever it is, they don't scare me. I'm not afraid. I've done some things I'm not proud of, and I made some enemies, but I'll do what I need to fix it without making this such a big issue."

"You better have a handle on this. If I hear about one more package threatening you, I'll have you sent away before you could recite your credit card number. No one's going to hurt my baby," she said squeezing his face and following up with a momma bear hug. Kurt's eyes bulged. She needed the comfort so he didn't shy away like he sometimes could.

He'd been looking into the packages, but nothing turned up yet. He was still hoping it would just be over, but now with his mother's threat, he needed answers sooner rather than later.

Kurt knew one person who could get to the bottom of this faster than he could. Kurt was never good at solving Nancy Drew mysteries. He would fall for the twist and only catch up two chapters from the end. His entire life was a mystery, but he couldn't solve fictional ones for the life of him. If he did, he might take some of the drama out of his own life by figuring out where the plot was heading and change the story.

Puck was his last resort. He gave him the name and asked him to find out where that person was; hopefully, he wasn't too close to home.


Santana was the type who never wavered. She could stay strong for a long time, but even after taking all her anger out on Rachel and scissoring Brittany, she still felt anxious and unresolved. She couldn't believe what she was about to do, but now that there was only her and Brittany. She felt vulnerable as Queen and needed to increase her numbers. She sent a short text to Quinn to meet them for dinner. When Quinn got the call, she didn't immediately respond. She'd been expecting it, and because it wouldn't be going anywhere that night, she decided to let it sit for twenty minutes—an hour—two hours.

Everything had gone according to her plan.

She had to give herself props for thinking it through so well, but honestly, her friends were quite predictable. They couldn't match her wit and intelligence. She played them, but she was willing to let it live as her dying secret. Santana wanted to stay queen, and she would give that to her too.

Quinn had learned the art of war. Never let the tough guy see you down. Bide your time and everything would turn around.

Her favorite detail was that Rachel got kicked out once and for all. Unless something monumental happened, she didn't see the little brunette getting in her way again.


Rachel lost all her friends in a day. She could rely on her brother, but family was different from friends. They had to love you and be on your side. She could cry to him and find comfort, but it wouldn't be the type of ally she needed to get back all she lost.

All she had left was Sam. They weren't best friends, but they'd been on the same side, even with his strange, unexpected relationship with Santana happening. Rachel didn't think it was that serious anyway because she knew for a fact Santana was sleeping with Brittany, and NOT just like sleepovers. Sam would probably side with her if she played her cards right.

"Sam, can you come by my place? Something terrible happened, and you're the only person I trust to help," she left a message on his phone when he didn't pick up his phone. A text message wouldn't do right now. Besides, she didn't want the electronic paper trail of what she might do.


As loyal as Sam sounded with Rachel, after leaving her apartment, he had to tell her brother about the wicked plan she had to regain her place, and possibly even steal the crown. Rachel was falling off the deep end. She'd been crushed all at once, like Quinn had been, except she was less stable and wanted everything she lost back, no exceptions.

Sam wanted to help her, but the moral way to do that was to get her brother to calm her down and right her head.

Blaine was in the dark and had no idea what had been going on with his sister. In his defense, it all happened in a day, and he had been hungover in the morning, so he didn't see her comings and goings.

Sam recited the story Rachel told him. Blaine could barely get through it without squirming; he needed to go back to the apartment right away to see what was up. He thanked Sam and offered to pay for his coffee bill.


Rachel didn't want to speak with Blaine, and he understood why. It was bad enough that Sam clearly broke his confidence with her, but then he had to go and make it worse by telling her brother. Blaine was decidedly the one person she did not want to know all her dirty laundry. Blaine loved her though so he wouldn't let her ignore him.

Before this year, Rachel never did that. They'd always gotten along so great. In the last five months, they had more tiffs than they had their whole lives. Blaine knew this and wanted to break them down and start them back up again. There would be no other way to get complete honesty back in their relationship.

Rachel didn't realize this at first, but before she knew it, she warmed up to him enough to tell him what her master plan was to get back in the group. Though he'd heard it from Sam earlier, it was important to him that he heard it from herself of her own volition. This was the best way to talk her out of it.

Blaine usually was a voice of reason. He was who others went to for advice and courage, so when Blaine said it was a bad idea and would only make her more unhappy in the long run, at least for the moment, she believed him. She put away her childish schemes for another day. Rachel and Blaine both knew there was no doubt that Pandora's box might be opened again later on, but she wouldn't be using that doozy yet. She had a lot of options, and one of them that she hadn't realized she had was time.

Rachel had panicked in the locker room, feeling like she'd lost everything, and nothing would return, but she'd forgotten the most important thing to remember in times of great stress: it wasn't the end of the world. Like Scarlett O'Hara said at the end of 'Gone with the Wind,' "Tomorrow is another day." She could get back the guy and the life she wanted. She just needed to hold on.

It was around the moment that her brother blasted 'Suddenly Seymour' on his stereo that Tina crawled into their house wearing Forever 21 Timepiece Striped Sweater Top with a black flare skirt and black Pleaser T.U.K A7317L Hi Platform with Bow and Sailor Stripe heels through the fire escape to hear their mini performance. [Audition ep] Rachel needed to decompress, and she did. Her head had been knocked off kilter but was now screwed on tight, right as rain.


Kurt couldn't focus at home, and Blaine wasn't answering his phone, so he decided to do some retail therapy alone, which was probably a mistake because he hadn't been let off the leash like that in months. When he got the bill, he immediately felt guilty for spending that much money. He really was a changed man. He took the car home with all his bags and looked through each hoping there might be something he could return that he didn't direly need. He couldn't deceive himself though since Kurt really wanted it all.

He took the bags when he got out of the car. He used to let the busboys handle the rest but that was one of the ways he'd changed.

"Sir, you forgot one," the driver who opened his door for him said holding a gift-wrapped package. Kurt hadn't seen it before. He anxiously walked back, getting rather tired of surprises.

"Thank you," he said kindly taking it from him. He held it like it was a bomb. He could open it now where others could see in case it tried to kill him or bring it upstairs where his mom waited, and she would most definitely kill him.

He took it to the fountain, set his bags on the ground and ripped open the paper easily. He lifted the lid and tilted his head perplexed. Kurt leaned more over the package to get a better look and froze in fear. It was a beautiful hand-mirror. The only issue he noticed when he looked properly into it was 2 small X's that fell in place directly on top of his eyes. He dropped it, and it shattered into the box. He left it there and ran with his things upstairs. He had to make a very important call.

"Puck, have you found anything? I gave you the name hours ago!"

"I'm sorry, Kurt. I'm busy. I have someone looking into it. If you don't mind, I'm playing a game against your brother, and you're interrupting."

"Finn, is with you?"

"Yes, he had a rough a day as I've had and came by to eat pizza and play video games like real brothers do. Is there an issue?"

"No, of course not, tell him he needs to be home soon. Mom's worried about him."

"There's no need to lie. If you are jealous that he'd rather spend time with me than with you, all you have to do is say so!" Kurt got pissed off by that and hung up while Puck was still laughing. Puck was just using Finn. That was clear. Why was everyone always trying to mess with him?


"Sam, I should be really upset with you, but actually I want to thank you. You saved me from a terrible plan…" she leaned back on her bed as he responded.

"Look I'm sorry about the way things happened. I'm not really close friends with Finn, but I think I have a plan for the girls, which will be painless."

"Oh? What did you have in mind?" her ears perking up.


Puck knocked on Kurt's bedroom door around midnight.

"What are you doing here? Don't you have children to scare?" Kurt puffed.

"This isn't funny, Kurt. I remember who this guy is now," he said bursting into his room. Puck was never serious, so he actually did frighten him now. "You know I never paid much attention to what happened in your life when we were kids except what I heard from Sam. This guy who's been sending you all these things bullied you right… for a while."

"What did you find out?" Kurt mumbled.

"He was supposed to be in Warsaw for the last 6 months, but he left early, and no one's seen him since."

"Then he could be anywhere," the thought gave him a little hope because what were the chances he'd choose to be here?

"I found a flight log. He went by a different name. Kurt, he's been in the city since September when you came back."

"Dave…"


~A.N. Introducing... Karofksy?! You'll have to wait a bit longer to find out ;)