Beca led the group up to the front of a, frankly, all-too-fancy mansion. Uncertain, several members of the group wrung their hands in front of them while they walked, Emily the most visibly nervous of the bunch. She was walking with her eyes closed and almost crashed into a well-manicured hedge.
Upon arrival, Beca rapped on the ornate entryway. A slot in the middle of the door slammed open.
"Password," barked a feminine Southern voice. Beca leaned down to the opening.
"Fart noise?" She proffered, disbelieving.
"Did you not see the parentheses?" the man behind the door chided.
Unhappy about this development, Beca raised the crook of her arm to her mouth and blew. The door swung open, revealing an older man in spotted pajamas, a royal blue brocade dressing gown, and a treble clef necklace on a gold chain.
"Bellas! Come on in!" He exclaimed happily, and led them to his kitchen, where he introduced himself as the world's biggest a cappella fan (Beca had to hold in her laughter) and lectured them for being late. After a few minutes of chatting, he led them down to his basement, which Beca found a little threatening.
The room below was beautiful and enormous, with a plush carpet, a stage, and several gaggles of well-dressed people, some of whom they recognized. Chloe gasped.
"Das Sound Machine, 2 o'clock!" she stage-whispered at Beca, who whipped her head around at just the right time to see Kommissar and her sidekick Pieter floating toward them, the blonde looking as smug and superior as ever in deathly tall heeled boots.
"Tiny maus!" she addressed Beca with some note of pleasure, perhaps due to the wine in her hand, "We meet again," she finished conspiratorially, leaning in. Beca could almost smell the spice of the… wait. Was that cinnamon? She shook her head to clear it and recovered as Pieter shook his head.
"Another verbal beatdown; highlight of my day," he quipped. Chloe stood strong and stared him down.
Kommissar, hands on her hips, swinging herself ever so slightly from side to side, asked "So, have you abandoned your foolish plans to challenge us at the Worlds?"
Beca, mesmerized by the hip movements, replied with the ever so composed "You wish, you…" she paused as she raised her finger to point at Kommissar's devastatingly attractive, cinnamon-y face, "gorgeous specimen." She could feel Chloe looking at her with that come on, you idiot look she tended to give during particularly contentious rehearsals when she wanted Beca to sack up and get her shit together. "She's really in my head," she muttered at the redhead.
Clearly amused by her effect on the tiny mouse, Kommissar teased "I'll be happy to send you there. Large envelope; it costs nothing." She chuckled, then grinned in the knowledge that Beca was too overwrought to come up with any proper comebacks.
"Well, not nothing," Pieter tagged on, seizing the opportunity to get in on the verbal sparring, "It would cost a little bit, but not so much as, like, a horse or an adult moose." Beca felt herself filling with rage at the sheer smugness of this, this, this— smug-ass duo.
"Have you ever thought maybe you're TOO big!?" she yelled, throwing a fist towards Pieter. Chloe grabbed her and tried to talk her down as she pulled her far away from a physical altercation with the Germans. Beca, unphased, yelled after them "It would cost a fortune to mail you!" In her fit of rage, she vaguely heard something from Kommissar and Pieter that sounded a lot like "feisty maus," which only made her struggle more against Chloe and yell out "you're enormous!"
Having finally gotten Beca across the room and far enough away from the two leaders of Das Sound Machine, Chloe squared Beca up by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes, obviously displeased.
"Beca, we can't take any chances! Attacking anyone in Das Sound Machine will definitely be enough for John Smith and Gail Abernathy-McKadden-Feinberger to disqualify us from Worlds, too! Do you want that?" Chloe was yelling now, and Beca's anger had been drowned in shame at her normally clear blue eyes that were now stormy.
"I'm sorry, Chlo. She's in my head," Beca offered, ashamed at her behavior.
"Well, you need to get over it. We have to be careful!" the redhead snapped back, eyes widening.
"I will, I will. I'm so sorry," the small brunette offered, looking back up into Chloe's eyes, which seemed to soften as they looked into Beca's. Looking over her friend's shoulder, she could see Kommissar dancing and smirking at her from across the room.
The ringleader was just finishing up his explanation of the riff-off, but Beca found it harder and harder to continue to focus her attention on the odd man in the robe. She was stuck on that fierce-eyed German across the room. Kommissar was shifting her weight from side to side, lapping up the instructions, practically salivating at the chance to compete.
Watching the blonde, Beca found herself contemplating the intensity of that deustchbag's desire to win. No one actually wants $42k at Dave and Buster's that badly. It was clear from DSM's practiced perfection, Kommissar's unnecessary comment about their "bumbling ineptitude," and her current behavior that the German was practically addicted to competition. Where does anyone get that kind of drive?
Suddenly, those fierce eyes snapped over to look at the Bellas. Or maybe… at Beca? Yes, Kommissar was returning her stare, grinning wide as she settled into position. Beca looked away just in time to see the category land on Songs About Butts.
Trying to return her attention to the Bellas, she turned to Chloe and joked "so anything on the radio, right?" then looked back at Kommissar, who was engaged in some rapidfire planning with her team.
Das Sound Machine was selected to start, and as the heavy beat came in (where did they find that guy?), the blonde began to dance in some unusual back-and-forth kind of swing. Then Pieter started singing and Beca almost had to laugh. You can start with ANY song about butts, and you choose the Thong Song? She had to hand it to them: DSM was nothing if not dramatic.
Her laughter came to an abrupt halt when Kommissar moved to the center of the room and started singing, gyrating, and pointing her finger around the crowd, practically demanding to see several thongs.
Beca was relieved when the Tonehangers took over with some disturbing butt shaking of their own. Glancing back at DSM, she could see that Kommissar looked pleasantly surprised by the five-piece group's antics.
Stacie cut in with a Flo-Rida/T-Pain contribution, and Beca could feel unknown eyes on her as she got "low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low." Maybe she was imagining things.
The Green Bay Packers were surprisingly good, and Benji's flub was adorable, if embarrassing. She mouthed a "sorry?" over to Jesse as the Treblemakers walked off to the side, wondering what he would think if he knew about the way a statuesque German could make her talk like an idiot.
When she cut the Tonehangers off during the Country Lovin' round, she tried to summon all of her tiny ferocity on "Before He Cheats," and that one booty-shaking Tonehanger who had begged, years earlier, for her to punch him in the face began to beg. That had to be a good sign. She finished off with a throat-cutting flourish and, unable to help herself, glanced at the DSM corner for a reaction. Kommissar wasn't even looking. Damn it.
The Green Bay Packers missed out on their 42 G's at D&B's, and a new category was selected. Of course DSM kicked it off again.
This time, the blonde danced robotically, creepily, and let some other girl take the lead, which seemed odd. Chloe jumped in, and the Bellas found themselves trying to challenge DSM with T-Swift. Kommissar made a little motion with her hands as if to say "bring it," Beca glared at her as she sang triplets and gestured in a way she though might look threatening. The German scoffed and almost looked like she might be… smiling? In a non-smirk-y way. But she quickly gathered back up her superior air as the Bellas were cut off by a very bizarre offering from the Tonehangers.
"Get him out of here," Pieter shouted, and Beca found herself agreeing. Surely John Mayer and Tina Turner weren't…? Yikes.
Now it was just the Bellas and DSM; the two groups squared off at the world's biggest a cappella fan's cue, and all of the members of the Laser Ninja Dragon League looked up to see what the final category would be. 90's Hip Hop Jamz. Yes! Beca immediately got pumped up, but she saw out of the corner of her eye that Kommissar and Pieter looked like they felt pretty victorious as well.
And yet again, DSM got to start. Beca was starting to think this riff-off was rigged.
"This is how we do it," Pieter started. The blonde joined in, dancing, her mesh shirt riding up to expose more of her toned stomach. Beca stopped short in her dancing and flat-out stared. She wasn't sure why seeing skin uncovered by the mesh shirt was so different from seeing skin through the mesh shirt, but it absolutely was. She felt rooted to the floor, unable to take her eyes away from Kommissar, unable to focus on anything but looking at her.
Then something strange happened. The blonde glanced over at her and pulled some weird move where she smoothed her hair down with her pointed hands. Kommissar had never looked so awkward; not in person or in any of the videos Beca had seen of her. Then she looked up, shook her body off, and gyrated devastatingly toward Cynthia Rose, who took it in stride, starting the Bellas' next song.
Recovering, Beca joined in, but their glory was short-lived, because Pieter grabbed the music right back. But then Fat Amy jumped back in, and it looked good for a precious few seconds.
"Insane in ze membrane!" Pieter practically yelled, expecting a killing blow.
And that pajama'd ringleader pointed furiously at them to return the challenge, but Beca was at a complete loss. Swiveling around frantically, she could see that no one else knew what to do either. All of a sudden, Emily burst in with something that sounded decidedly not 90's. And not hip hop.
It was over.