Rachel Berry is a star. She doesn't need anybody to tell her that, she knows it all by herself. Of course, it doesn't help that the Cheerios are always telling her exactly how useless she is. So she decides, in her single-minded, determined fashion, that she would prove them wrong in the only way she knows how. She was going to beat them at their own game. Rachel Berry is going to become a Cheerio.

She had already asked her dads, and, walking down the hallway in her workout clothes-yoga pants and a shirt that Noah had lent her at Temple ages ago-she remembered their conversation with vivid clarity.

They had been…hesitant, to say the least. But once she had reminded them of her plethora of dance and gymnastics instrution, and they had relented.

"Hi Finn! Quinn!" She called out as she passed him, waving as she passed him. Even though he had gotten back together with Quinn after she had Beth, and even though she was standing right next to him, he stared at the brunette as she walked by in form-fitting clothes. Rachel noticed, but she wasn't the only one. Quinn saw his eyes drifting and smacked him smartly on the head.

Rachel giggled slightly and turned to watch where she was going again, only to be hit with a blue-raspberry slushee. It was like a cold, wet punch in the face.

She stood paralyzed for a minute eyes closed and mouth hanging open, before she remembered to wipe the iced drink out of her eyes. She turned around to see who had hit her this time, and one of the hockey boys winked at her before turning back to his friends and accepting congradulations. Rachel blinked tears out of her eyes, and looked around for the nearest bathroom.

She felt a hand on her arm, small and feminine, and assumed that Tina or Mercedes were helping her out. There was a tug, and she followed the hand into the girl's bathroom nearby, and felt the scratchiness of a dry paper towel on her face, removing the offending beverage.

After a minute or so, Rachel opened her eyes, and was thouroughly surprised to see Quinn helping her.

"Quinn?" Her voice was small; the real Rachel Berry had stepped out for a minute to breath after the humiliation, and the girl that was left didn't know what to do. Had it been Tina or Mercedes or Kurt, she could have just listened to their rant about the neandrethals that resided within the Mikinley High walls. She didn't know how to act around Quinn, so Rachel did something that many people thought that she was incapable of doing. She was silent.

Quinn dabbed at her face gently with a moistened towel one of the other Glee girls had brought in, and pulled out the chair that the custodians had decided served more use in the bathroom, helping the losers clean the messy drinks out of their hair than it did in a closet.

"Sit down, Rachel. Don't squirm too much, if you get slushee on my uniform Coach Sue will kill you. Literally. With her nails." Quinn said light-heartedly.

"Why are you helping me?" Rachel asked as she laid back, putting her head over the sink and sitting still.

"We're friends now. Friends help each other out." She said, as gentle as Rachel had ever heard her.

Rachel decided that this was probably the best time to ask. It obviously wasn't going to happen on its own, and she was too much of a coward right now to go up to Sue Sylvester alone.

"Quinn, would you do me a favor?" She asked hesitantly.

The Cheerio's hands paused in their work on Rachel's hair. "What exactly does this count as?" She joked, kneading the blue ice out of Rachel's hair. "What do you need?"

"Can you help me get onto the Cheerios?"

The blond's hands froze.