"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN BY 'SHE DIDN'T SHOW UP TO THE AIRPORT' AUBREY?!", Beca screeched.
"I waited for her plane to arrive, but when it did, she never got off. Nobody who was on the flight said they saw her get on or off the plane. Which is concerning, because let's be real, it's Amy. She's not hard to miss," Aubrey replied, obviously incredibly annoyed.
Chloe just looked concerned about her friend's wellbeing. "Is Amy okay? Did she say she wasn't coming? Have you heard from her at all?"
"No, I haven't. I was there for the entire un-boarding process," Aubrey said. "By the way, I highly recommend you are NOT present for the arrival of an early morning flight from Vegas that gets in around 2 in the afternoon. Those people are not pleasant to be around. They're tired, hung over and hungry."
"So now what?" Chloe thought out loud. "Should we file a missing person's report? Maybe there is a reason she missed the flight. Amy may be irresponsible, but she knows this was important, and she must have a good reason."
"She better have a good reason, or we'll be filing a different type of police report," Beca muttered under her breath.
As Beca began launching a tirade about how annoyed she was at Amy, there was a loud thump at the door. Seeing as Beca was so preoccupied with her rant she didn't hear the door, Chloe sent Aubrey a pleading look, to go answer the door. Torn between agreeing with Beca and yet not wanting to agree with the hobbit on anything, Aubrey went to the door.
There were urgent whispers and a few not so quiet words exchanged with whoever was at the door, but Chloe was more concerned with calming Beca down.
"Babe, why are you so upset? You're okay, everything is going to be okay." Chloe tried to comfort Beca.
"I don't know, I just..." Beca began, frustrated with herself for feeling the way she did. "I shouldn't be complaining, because I get to spend more time with you, I just. I wanted time to process everything, and..."
"And you feel like you're not going to get that time and that by the time you do, I'll have changed my mind about this," Chloe finished, knowingly.
"Yeah," Beca said quietly, amazed at how well the other girl knew her.
"Beca, I'm not going to walk away from something this special, before it even starts. I won't give up on us because you're worth it. Beca, you're tough. You try to hide it, and yes, you can be difficult at times. But if people make an effort, they always end up loving you. I'm making an effort here, because I think you're worth the effort. You may not think you are, because people have walked out on you your whole life, but I'm here to stay. You're going to be stuck with me for the rest of your life now."
Just then Aubrey entered the living room, followed by a fully chastised, slightly hung over looking Fat Amy. The usually loud Australian was clutching a tiki mug in one hand, wearing a flashing neon necklace with a miniature replica of the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas' sign, and dragging behind her a large suitcase with a koala pillow perched on the handle. The chained girls had two VERY different reactions upon seeing their friend.
"Thank the aca-gods you're okay!" Chloe said, dragging Beca behind her to embrace the Aussie. "I was worried when Aubrey said you didn't show up at the airport and nobody had seen you!"
"Yeah, yeah, it's nice to see you Amy. Glad you're safe and all that shit. Where is the key?" Beca said, bluntly.
"Never mind the key, Amy," Aubrey interrupted. "Where were you?"
"Right, yeah. So it's a bit of a funny story."
"Amy!"
"Okay, okay, don't get your panties in a twist... So, Benji performed at the Hollywood Theater at the MGM Grand, to open for Ben Murphy. He's one of the best magicians in Australia with teeth. I think he's probably a Kurdaitcha, but if he is, he's not telling. After the show, we went back to the Luxor Hotel, which is where we were staying, and we ran in to Criss Angel. He and Ben are apparently mates, who knew? Anyway, I got to talking with Ben and Criss, and they invited us to go out to Frankie's Tiki Room. We were there for a quite while, and as we were leaving, well, that's when I got Aubrey's email and dozens of missed texts and phone calls," Amy said looking over at the livid blonde grad student.
"So I was like, 'Yo, Ben, Criss, I gotta head back, my co-captains are still locked together with those cuffs I stole from Benji' and then I called Bhloe over here. I tried to tell you how you could try and go about it to unlock them without a key, because Aubrey was text yelling at me that she couldn't but Beca is NOT nice to talk to when she gets woken up, and didn't want to listen to me. She said unless I express mailed you the keys, she didn't want to hear it. So I thought I'd let you try and figure it out on your own. Apparently you haven't."
"So where are they keys?" Aubrey asked, impatiently. "I asked my father for a master key, and it didn't work!"
"Well, I don't exactly know where the keys are. You see, I took the cuffs off of Benji's desk, but I didn't notice any keys. I was too distracted by how shiny they were and thinking of who I could cuff together I forgot to look."
"So what I'm hearing, is that you have no idea where they keys are," Beca said.
"My guess is that they're probably somewhere in the Trebles house."
"You know what this means?" Chloe asked with a glittering sparkle in her eyes.
"Oh no," Beca warned. "Not..."
"SCAVENGER HUNT AT THE TREBLES HOUSE!" Chloe squealed.
"Chloe, we are NOT entering that despicable place of residence. We can simply wait until Benji, Jesse and Bumper come back," reasoned Aubrey.
"Well, actually, they're not coming back for a while since they have no reason to be back in Atlanta. Benji's opening for Ben's magic show for like, a month long trial, with the possibility to stay on longer. Jesse is using the opportunity to shadow someone at Sound Masters. Benji and Jesse have been planning this for like, ages. Bumper heard about it last minute and I went because wherever Bumper goes, I do too. Bumper dropped the only class he was taking, and will come back when he's broke. Which will probably be soon if last night was anything to go off of. I only came back early because Aubrey threatened to have her mom look into getting me sent back to Australia for the rest of the year," Amy said.
"Which, by the way, I Googled and you CAN'T ACTUALLY DO THAT, POSEN," she added with a triumphant smirk, that ranked right up there with Beca's trademark facial expression.
"Speaking of, how DID you get back Amy, if you missed the flight that Aubrey booked for you?" Chloe asked curiously.
"I flew with Ben," was Amy's simple response.
"And...?" Chloe pressed on.
"And... It was fun?" Amy supplied.
"How exactly did that end up happening though," Beca interjected. "You didn't like, force him to take you right?"
"Aw, no mate. He offered. He was going to go down to Orlando to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to get more trick wands for his show. He says he likes it when he goes to Olivander's and makes the lights turn on. He said it was no problem to stop by Atlanta on the way down."
"Doesn't he have people to do that for him?" asked Chloe.
"Well, yeah, but I think he just likes going there and impressing everyone when he does his magic tricks in front of all the muggles. Plus, the Butterbeer is the best, and probably doesn't travel well, even if you are magical."
Aubrey, who was pretty much speechless, finally found her voice and said, very matter of factly, "You still owe me $236."
"What? Why? I didn't even use your ticket though!" Amy whined.
"Especially since you didn't use my ticket. I wouldn't have even needed to pay for it, had I known BEN would've taken you home." Aubrey countered.
"But, I didn't even KNOW Ben when you booked my ticket. Or maybe I did. I don't know. What time did you order my ticket?" Amy defended.
"It doesn't matter. What I need to know now, is how to get a hold of Benji so I can ask him about getting Chloe and Beca unlocked," Aubrey said, swiftly switching subjects before Amy could derail the conversation more off track.
"Well, Benji dropped his cell phone off the observation when we were touring the Stratosphere. So I don't think you can call him. But you could try Jesse or Bumper," Amy offered.
The girls silently agreed that they would call Jesse. Mostly, because he was definitely the more responsible of the two, and because of the fact that Aubrey refused to ask Bumper for any favors, just on principal. Seeing as Beca was the closest to Jesse out of the 4 girls, she was the designated caller.
"Ring ring ring."
"There's no one here but Smith, Wesson, and me. I bet you're dying to hang up and not leave a message. But dying ain't much of a livin' boy, so go ahead, make my DAY!"
"Jess, it's Bec. Call me back as soon as you get this. K bye."
Beca groaned as she hung up the phone. "It went straight to his stupid voice mail. Amy, you wanna try your luck with Bumper?"
"Er. Thanks, but no thanks. If I call him, he won't want to talk about the key. I'm really doing you all a favor here," Amy said.
Shuddering, Aubrey said with a frown, "Okay Chloe. I guess we're going to go on a scavenger hunt."
Clapping her hands excitedly, and jumping up and down, jerking Beca back and forth, Chloe squealed. "O-M-ACA-G! I'm so excited. Should we wait for the girls to get back or go now?"
"Let's go now," suggested Aubrey. "If we bring all the girls, it may end up being a disaster."
"But if we wait for all the girls, they might be able to help us find it faster," Beca said, actually being logical for once.
However, as luck would have it, they didn't need to argue about when the best time was to go, because life decided for them. By this time, it was almost 4:00pm, and the Bella's last classes of the day had gotten over at 3:30pm. In a matter of minutes, the relatively quiet house was once again filled with laughter, chatter and general noise as the girls all came bounding into the living room, happy to be done.
"Hi Amy," Stacie greeted. "You're back early. How was Las Vegas? Did you and Bumper get hitched?"
"No," Amy said, a bit disappointedly "But we saw at least 3 different proposals on the strip in the span of about 2 hours! Wanna see all the pictures I took?"
"Amy you can show us later. Right now, we need to go find those keys," Aubrey said, trying to steer Amy back on the correct course.
"Oh right! Listen up aca-bitches. We're going on a scavenger hunt at the Treble house to find the keys to Bhloe's handcuffs. Who's in?" Amy bellowed, brightening in excitement.
All of a sudden, there was a swell in volume, with all the girls trying to talk over each other.
"Okay. Bellas. Stop. If you want to go, sing a G sharp. If you don't want to go, sing an A flat. Got it ladies? 'Ahhh' on 3."
"1, 2, ahhhh!" everyone sang in perfect pitch.
"I guess we're going on a scavenger hunt!"