This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: The Christmas Tale of Marley the Elf, chapter 6.

"Technicolor Wishes & Hi-Def Dreams"

7. Dreamers

Rachel had been the first to get through the door, though as Puck had warned her, it had been hard to proceed, none more than when the smell of the corpse had hit them. There was no backing out now that they were inside though. Finding the little girl's body had been easier than anticipated. All they had to do was look at how the house had been treated in the time since the man had taken his last breath at the window. The path was practically laid out for them, and Rachel and Puck had watched as Sam had dealt with what needed to be done.

"What about… him…" Rachel had asked Puck, hand still pinched around her nose and mouth, and the thought of the dead body and the killer ghost didn't exactly leave his stomach at ease.

But once the girl's body had been dealt with, it was clear their battle wasn't over. Puck had told Rachel about the possibility of there being an object that would need to be dealt with as well before it could be all done with. She had been the one to find it, just as she had found the murder weapon in their first jump.

They had been in the house for over an hour, and when they'd walked out, or stumbled out really, it felt like they'd been walking around with their shoulders weighted down all this time. A thought came to Rachel and she looked to Puck. "Think we should ask him… he might know something about the light, how to get us home," she whispered to him.

But they hadn't gotten the chance. Because just before Puck could even try to formulate the question, they were hit with the familiar shrill noise, which told them this round was over.

X

It was the first time they would get to their senses and find one another right there, without having to search. After the whole mess that had been their departure from the world of Supernatural, they were kind of glad at that, but that moment went away as soon as they saw they weren't home yet, which meant they needed to figure out where they were at, so they could move on.

"Alright, come on, let's get started." They looked up when the girl spoke to them and, sharing a look, neither Puck nor Rachel had any clue who she was supposed to be. They weren't alone though. There were three people with them, the girl who had spoken to them, along with another girl and a guy. Not one of them looked familiar to either of them, which could be a disaster, but they had to wait and see.

"Yes, let's… let's do that," Rachel looked to Puck.

"We'll break it down first, and then we can figure out who does what," the other girl had suggested.

"Okay," the boy had said, handing out sheets from a stack he held. When Rachel got hers and she saw the heading, a squeak escaped her, which she covered by holding the sheet up before her face. Puck didn't know what that was about until he saw his own sheet, and he understood like her why none of the people there looked familiar. They were in a television show still, but unlike their previous adventures, this one was into a world that was not scripted… This was American Idol.

Suddenly, after being other people they did or didn't know for the past few hours, they were getting to touch base and play people that were a lot closer to home. They had no way of guessing what they were supposed to be like, and maybe it didn't matter. So they went along with what they knew, as Glee Club members, who had worked with a lot less before.

"Everyone will get their solo," Rachel spoke up, guessing they had to perform a proper knock-out number, to get them all through to the next round, and that meant letting all of them shine, even if her instincts might have told her to shine a bit brighter.

She would have expected to be more tired than this, they both did, especially as the hours wore on. If they combined everything they'd gone through so far, they had been up and about for what seemed a whole day. There was no way to really retain the passage of time without making a conscious effort of it.

The progress of their group number wasn't coming along as neatly as she would have hoped, and after a while they had all called a time out, needing to get their wits back. As the group had dispersed, she sighed and sat. After a moment, Puck had come and sat at her side. "We'll make it work," he promised her.

"No, I know," she insisted, but he could see she was distracted, and she could see that he could see, so she looked to him. "This is the fourth one," she reminded him.

"I know," he breathed out.

"How long is this going to go on? What if it really never stops?"

"It will."

"But what if it doesn't?" she wasn't convinced.

"They'll run out of shows eventually…"

"What if we can't succeed in one, and we don't move on?"

"Well so far they haven't been that hard, it's easy," he shrugged, taking her hands. "You don't need to worry about this one, I mean I don't see why you haven't auditioned for them before."

"Too young," she told him. "And if not to them, then to my dads."

"So this is your shot to go up there and impress them."

"It's not even me though, it's… whoever's face I have. It's not my voice."

"Whoever she is, she's made it this far… But I guess that's beside the point." He paused. "We can't give up. You've already done so much. You're stronger than this, I know you are," he told her, and she breathed out. "Now come on, if I hear Tyler complain one more time about switching solos with Avery, I'm going to lose it, so you go talk some sense into them."

TO BE CONTINUED (NEXT TUESDAY)