As the bell announced the start of the lunch period, Mike made a beeline towards the choir room. True to Rachel and Mercedes's earlier predictions, it seemed the little standoff with Jacob had indeed only bought them time. He had lost count of the number of speculative looks he had received throughout the day and the number of times conversations stopped suddenly as he walked by. And after spotting Sam storming through the hall, it didn't take a genius to realize the swim star had at least heard the whisperings if not gotten confirmation from Kurt himself.

And if he was getting looks, Mike could only imagine what Kurt had to deal with today. Not that Kurt didn't incur looks and whispered comments on a good day, but this time Mike doubted his glee teammate actually wanted the attention. Of course now that he thought about it, he hadn't actually seen Kurt so far today. They may only share one class together but Mike at least saw Kurt passing in the hallway. Hopefully, Mercedes had been able to warn Kurt about Jacob's story. The last thing anyone needed was to be the victim of a Jacob ambush.

Since his last class was almost directly across from the choir room, Mike had fully expected to be the first one in the room. So seeing Rachel standing there, next to an easel with what looked to be a covered board on it was more than a little surprising. "Isn't your last class on the other side of the building?" Mike asked slowly as he moved towards the chairs.

"Yes." Rachel answered with a brisk nod. "But I told Mr. Evans there was important business that needed my attention as glee captain so he let me out early."

Somehow Mike had the feeling it was more likely Mr. Evans just gave in to stop Rachel from pestering him about how important it was for her to be in the choir room first. Seeing Artie and Tina's puzzled gazes as they entered, he shook his head to indicate they shouldn't ask the question he could see forming. In the long run it didn't matter and really it was just Rachel being Rachel.

"I'm going to kick Rutherford's ass for this." Puck declared as he and Finn entered. Mercedes hurried in behind them, rolling her eyes at Puck's announcement. She made a dash to sit next to him and kissed his cheek before sitting down. "Did he not think how this will make the football team look? I mean I'm a stud and made that dancing shit look good but come on! Rutherford is not the stud I am."

"Stuff it Puck." Quinn ordered with a roll of her eyes. "For once this has absolutely nothing to do with your reputation."

"Where are Santana, Brittany and Kurt?" Rachel questioned, her foot tapping impatiently. "Did they not receive the message?"

"You mean summons?" Santana corrected as she and Brittany came through the doors. As Brittany scrambled to their usual seats, Santana curiously stood by the door, resting one foot against the closed doors. "Chill Berry. We just had to take care of a little problem."

And with that, Santana shoved her foot against the door with the authority worthy of being Sue Sylvester's Head Cheerio. Even Puck winced as they heard a vicious crack sound as the door make contact with something or probably more accurately someone. The moment of sympathy soon passed as Jacob's irritatingly familiar nasal voice whimpered out a pathetic groan of pain. Smiling in triumph, Santana wheeled around, pulling Jacob into the room by his ear.

"You broke my nose." He protested. Mike shook closed his eyes and shook his head. Jacob should consider himself lucky that was all Santana broke.

"Listen here you Perez Hilton wannabe. " Santana hissed as Puck and Finn stood up and moved towards the cowering boy. "You want to mess with the rest of the losers in this school? Fine. Be my guest. But Hummel is off limits. He's a Cheerio which means he's automatically better than 95 percent of the rejects in this place. I don't care if he wants to date a football player, a teacher or every member of Vocal Adrenaline. He's off limits if you don't want every girl in this school taking out a restraining order on you."

"You…you can't do that." At least Jacob had enough sense to sound doubtful about that statement. From where he was sitting, Mike felt Santana was more than capable of making that threat come true. In fact he could see the other female members of glee planning to go to the courthouse as soon as school let out for the day.

"You don't want to find out what I can do." Santana promised. Turning she grinned as she saw Puck and Finn standing behind her. "I think you boys know how to take the trash out."

Puck smiled as Finn nodded. Seeing Puck begin to crack his knuckles, Jacob immediately began to back pedal himself towards the door. "Freedom of the press." He croaked.

"And I have the freedom to be a badass." Puck responded taking another step towards Jacob.

With a high pitched screeched, Jacob turn and ran out of the room. Finn took a few steps to follow him but quickly returned. "He's gone." He announced with a slight grin.

"Damn Santana." Mercedes whistled appreciatively. "You have to teach me how to do that."

"It's something you're born with Jones." Santana dismissed with a wave of her hand. "It can't be taught."

"As much as we all admire how effectively you handled Jacob," Rachel began, her foot still tapping. "That still doesn't answer where Kurt is."

Mercedes sighed. "I told him to skip."

"And he agreed to that?" Artie questioned for the rest of them.

"Between Sam hearing the story from Jacob instead of Kurt and the usual gossip chain here, I convinced him it might be the better option." Mercedes admitted. "Come on, you all know those puck heads don't actually need an excuse to torture him. I personally don't want to know what Karofsky and Azimio would come up with in response to this."

Finn nodded his agreement. "Burt will be at the garage for most of the day and Mom's at work. As long as the school doesn't call the garage looking for him, I doubt they'll even know."

"In that case, Finn you will have to take notes for him."Rachel said quickly. "Now it's come to all our attention that one of our own has potentially run into a crisis that requires swift and immediate reaction."

"Cliff Notes the speech Berry. No one here missed the newsflash about Matt batting for the other team." Santana cut her off.

"I thought Matt was gay, not playing baseball." Brittany spoke, confusion covering her face.

"Later Britt." Santana patted her friend's hand. "Just move on Berry."

"Fine. I present the official glee club response to our current crisis. "Rachel huffed as she pulled the sheet off the easel. The rest of the team stared, blinking in disbelief, looking back and forth from Rachel to the chart. Entitled "The Official Matt Rutherford Housing Crisis Response Plan" a mess of colors and symbols jumped out at them. Dear God, Mike thought. He always knew Rachel was organized but this took it to a whole other level. When the hell did she have time to do this?

"Is that…color coded?" Tina asked weakly.

"It's very simple. Each of us is assigned a color and a task for the week. The tasks rotate from housing, counseling, support and protesting because clearly we need to work on changing the narrow minded view points of people who would throw their son out of the house because of his sexual orientation. For those of you not familiar with the ins and outs of effective protest techniques, you've been assigned lessons with my two dads for this first week."

"Oh dear God." Artie whispered. "She's serious."

"Now, each of you is assigned a color." Rachel continued, oblivious to their increasing disbelief. "For example Finn you're color is blue. So as you can see, for the second week Matt will be staying with you."

"Umm, Rach?" Finn asked hesitantly, going so far as to raise his hand. Whether it was out of habit or because Rachel really was reminding him of a teacher Mike wasn't sure. "Don't you think Matt staying with me might cause more rumors? I mean with me living with Kurt and all?"

Given Rachel's stunned blinking response, it was clear to everyone else the fact of the combined Hummel-Hudson households had in fact slipped Rachel's mind. Mike tried to resist the urge to chuckle; after all it was rather sweet of Rachel to come up with a plan like this. It was clearly more than Matt's family was willing to do.

"But…but he said he hadn't told anyone….well his sister but still…."

Mike wasn't entirely sure why Kurt's comment from yesterday suddenly came to mind but the second it did, he felt like the biggest idiot on the planet. Of course! Of course! That's where Matt was! Some best friend he was! He should have figured this out the second Kurt told him at least some of what was going on.

With a shake of his head Mike stood up, causing everyone to look at him as he reached down to grab his backpack. "Mike?" Mercedes questioned as he kissed her cheek. "What's going on?"

"Thanks for the chart Rachel. It's great and very…colorful. I'm sure Matt will appreciate it when I tell him about it."

"Tell him about it?" Quinn questioned. "Mike…."

Mike shot Mercedes a wink. "Tell Kurt thanks for me will you?"

"Thanks for what?"

"Because thanks to him I know where Matt's hiding."