Interlude Notes: Just a few minutes with some people in Lima, Ohio. Proof that people moved on but hadn't forgotten Rachel, Quinn, Brittany, and Santana.
Word Count: 1,805
"Kurt! You have to see this!" Mercedes said, barging into his room, where he was practicing his faces for his Sweeney Todd audition. Ignoring his glare, she held up her tablet in front of his face.
"What am I looking at?" he asked, before moving it out of his face.
"Aliens," she said. "Ellen and Portia were invited down to Cancun."
"That's nice," he said waving her away dismissively. He didn't have time to look at a couple of dried up old lesbians when he was prepping for an audition he was sure was his. Just the thought of seeing them on the beach dressed inappropriately for their age caused him to reflexively shudder.
"They interviewed some of those aliens," Mercedes said.
"And?" Kurt muttered.
"Who does that look like?" she asked, handing the tablet to him.
Kurt squinted at the screen. And blinked. And blinked again. "It can't be her," he said firmly. "She's dead."
"You still think those three killed her, stuffed her body down a well, and ran away?" Mercedes asked.
"It's the only reasonable explanation for all four of them disappearing at the same time," Kurt said. "She annoyed them so much that one of them snapped, probably Quinn. She was obsessed with Berry."
"No, I think Jacob was right and they were all abducted by aliens," Mercedes said.
"And what? The aliens brought Rachel Berry back because?"
"She annoyed them?" Mercedes suggested.
"Does it matter?" Kurt asked. "High school is over. She can't steal any more solos."
"What if they turned her into a super diva with their alien science?" Mercedes asked. "She'll take all the good parts!"
"Or," Kurt said facetiously, "maybe the aliens are Broadway fans, and they are going to build her a theater of her own."
"That's a good one!" Mercedes said. "I need to call the others. We need to save Broadway from the Berry aliens!" Nodding to herself, she pulled out her phone and walked away, the words she was mumbling too low for him to understand.
"Why do I even try," Kurt said, rubbing his forehead. He'd tried very hard to forget about the missing diva and three cheerleaders. Before her disappearance, he'd reached a cease fire, of sorts, with Rachel. He suspected they could have become real friends eventually. From everything he'd learned about her after their disappearance, they'd had a lot in common, though now he would never know.
The Cheerios, Quinn, Santana, and Brittany, had proven to be formidable members of Glee in their own right. As evil as they could be in the hallways of McKinley, they'd been the epitome of team players when it was just Glee, which had helped to bring everyone closer together.
As scary as they could be, Quinn and her lieutenants, by their very presence, had made Glee a safe space where the other Gleeks could be themselves without fear. And Santana and Brittany had been proof that love could make someone, even prickly Santana, a better person.
Losing all four of them at once had been devastating, no matter what he'd said to Mercedes over the years. Glee hadn't really survived their disappearance. Sure, they'd dominated Sectionals for the rest of their high school careers, and the current crop of New Directions continued that tradition, but the spark that had started to propel them beyond that had disappeared with a certain short diva.
He could understand why Mercedes didn't see things that way. She'd sung all of the solos in the Berry-less Glee, which brought her to the attention of several local record producers, which had then led to her current employment as a backup singer. She wasn't famous yet, and had yet to cut her own record, but it was paying the bills for both of them. While he struggled to get his foot in the door and become more than a glorified singing barista, she was keeping a roof over their heads.
Sighing, he tapped the interview on the tablet and turned up the volume. He'd never really forgiven Ellen for the fiasco that her special about the disappearance of Santana and Brittany had become. He still thought the idea of highlighting the lives of the missing Cheerios as an example of the ordinariness of LGBTQ youth had been inspired, but the response had shown how little America really cared about two missing teenage lesbians, and the resulting late night talk show backlash had set back a decade worth of progress for teens struggling to be themselves, in his opinion.
"You're leaving?" Will Schuester asked, poking his head into Sue's office. He'd heard the rumors, of course. They cropped up every year, after all. But usually they were just wishful thinking, started by someone who'd crossed chalk with Sue in previous years. But bare shelves, stacked boxes, and missing trophies? This was actual proof.
Sue gave him one of her practiced scornful looks, very similar to the one she'd given him when he'd declared that the choir practice room was being named after Rachel Berry. Admittedly, his timing hadn't been great, blurting it out at the faculty meeting when the scholarships in honor of her three missing Cheerios had been announced, but she'd treated him like gum scraped off the bottom of a track shoe ever since. Before then, he'd liked to think that her disdain for him and Glee was part of her usual playful craziness but afterward she'd begun ignoring him instead.
"William," she said, "you appear to be sticking your greasy hair where it doesn't belong. Again."
"What is it this time?" he asked. "And when will you be back?"
"I've received a better offer," Sue said. "One with people who can make better use of my talents. Where that greasy mop on your head isn't welcome. I won't be back."
"Oh, umm..."
"Spit it out, I don't have all day," Sue said.
"What about the Cheerios?" he asked, internally rubbing his hands together in glee at the thought of grabbing some of her budget for himself.
"Disbanded," she said, "obviously. I own the rights to all things Cheerio. The new coach will have to find a new name and her own funding."
"You can't own the name of a school team," Will protested.
"Au contraire, greasy hair monkey boy," Sue said. "I brought it with me and am taking it with me."
Will decided to take it up with Figgins later. Arguing with Sue never ended well. There was no way she could get away with that, he decided. And he'd need to check out the replacement coach, get her on his side.
"Where?" he asked, trying for again for an answer. "Where are you going?"
"South, where the Sylvester method is in demand," she said, waving vaguely. "Now go," she said, pointing at the door, "you're blocking the way."
Hearing giggles, Will turned in the door, facing out into the hallway. Standing in the hall were three tall young women, dressed in what looked like uniforms. He couldn't quite place it but he was sure he recognized them from somewhere. Stepping out of the doorway, he watched them walk into Sue's office, their movements strangely fluid, speaking to each other in a language he didn't recognize.
"What can I get you," Puck asked, turning around after hearing the unmistakable sounds of Finn Hudson flopping onto a bar stool.
"Got any of that Guinness stuff?" Finn asked.
"In bottles," Puck said. "Need a glass?" he asked, pulling a bottle out of the under-bar cooler. Popping the cap, he put it in front of his old Glee-mate.
"Nah," Finn said. "Do you ever wonder what happened to them?"
Puck didn't have to guess who he meant. The only time Finn didn't drink domestic, usually something light, was when he was feeling nostalgic.
"They'll turn up," Puck said, not ready to take a jaunt down memory lane with Finn so early in the evening. "Berry can't stay hidden for long. She likes the attention too damn much," he added, though he didn't believe it himself. "She's just waiting for the right moment."
"Yeah," Finn mumbled. "Jacob Ben Israel claims they were all kidnapped by aliens."
"Well, he's full of shit," Puck said.
"What about what's happening in Mexico?" Finn asked. "One of the guys at the station says a bunch of aliens landed on the beach down there and took it over."
"That's just that Mayan apocalypse shit Evens is always talking about," Puck said. "Some Cleveland drug gang grabbed them and sold them to some Arab oil Sheik for his harem. Any day now he'll get tired of Berry's mouth and let her go. Berry won't leave any Gleek behind so she'll rescue the others before coming back to Lima."
"Think they'll escape on camels?" Finn asked, excitedly.
Puck just shook his head. Finn could be so gullible. How he'd passed the firefighter test, to say nothing of the required college classes, was a mystery to all of his high school friends. Besides, everyone knew that Lopez had probably mouthed off to some serial killer at the mall who'd followed them home, and buried them all under the football field after putting them through something out of one of those old Saw movies.
Sometimes, he felt guilty for not giving Berry a ride home himself, like he'd promised. She could be loud but she didn't deserve whatever had happened to those bitchy Cheerios.
"Puck! Turn that up!" Finn said, pointing at the large TV across the bar. "They're interviewing some of those aliens."
"I knew I was right," Jacob Ben Israel muttered to himself, watching a recording of the UN Security Council meeting with the so called aliens that had been released the day before.
"Jacob!" His mother shouted down into the basement. "You need to eat before your shift."
"Yes, mother," he shouted back, initiating another backup of everything to the secret internet cloud site he used. Hopefully, it would be finished before he had to leave for his shift at the Doublemeat Palace.
He suspected the aliens had been the ones to erase all of his videos and photos of Berry. Even he knew that hard drives didn't just randomly erase themselves. Or his entire website. He'd managed to rebuild it from backups but all of his pictures of Rachel Berry and the Cheerios had been gone, permanently.
One of these days he was going to get out of Lima and be famous, he just knew it. And this was his golden ticket, he thought, taking one last glance at the video. Whatever Rachel Berry was into, he was sure she would pay, probably a lot, to keep people from finding out she wasn't really an alien. If not, he could certainly find someone who would find this info interesting.
End Notes:
Why yes, I did borrow the Doublemeat Palace from Buffy Season 6 (the episode of the same name in fact) but that doesn't make this a crossover. It's possible that Doublemeat Palace is a cross-dimensional fast food empire.
Not sure how many of these 'filler' chapters I'll do but at least one more before I write/post the next part of this story (Late December, after NaNoWriMo 2013).