The sound of a gavel banged twice across the room, the group of heroes that had gathered fell silent before they all turned to look at Asian Persuasion who was sitting in Nightbird's usual seat; their Leader was nowhere to be found.

"I'd like to thank you all for coming today," she said, "This meeting of the Secret Society of Superheroes is now in session. I'm not going to bother with the roll call this time around. I can see that apart from Blaine, all of us are here. And we have far more important issues to discuss."

"Excuse me?" The Human Brain raised her hand up, "I thought Nightbird said there wouldn't be any civilian identities here?"

"Well, Nightbird isn't here, is he?" Asian Persuasion sighed, "As far as I'm concerned, you can call each other whatever you want when I'm in charge."

"About that," Doctor Y said, furrowing his brow, "Where is Nightbir – I mean Blaine?"

"I don't know," Tina frowned, "I've tried phoning both his numbers and no reply. I think he's really shook up about the Warblers.. Guess he never thought they'd get to Kurt."

"I asked this last time, but Nightbird didn't answer me," the Human Brain frowned, "But who are the Warblers? I've never heard of them.."

"You've never heard of the Warblers?" Sweet and Spicy asked, suppressing a laugh. "Is that even possible?"

Just as The Human Brain made a face like a puppy that had been stepped on, Tina spoke up, "You really haven't heard of them?"

"No...," The Human Brain said shaking her head "I always thought they were a Glee club. Like, one of the best in the countries. Why would they have a hostage and why do they know Blaine? Can they sing?"

"Well, technically they are," Tina said, "But it's not what they really do. It's a cover up for the truth."

"Actually, I thought they were a Glee club too," Blond Chameleon said, "Why is Kurt involved in all of this?"

"I thought Blaine would've told you about the Warblers, Sam," Tina looked at him with a furrowed brow, "Does anyone actually know who they are here? Like, does anyone else know that they aren't a Glee club?"

No one raised their hand. Killing the urge to roll her eyes, Tina put the gavel back on the desk.

"The Warblers used to be the Glee club of Dalton Academy around sixty years ago. Back then, they were the equivalent to Vocal Adrenaline. Always winning every competition, the most feared club in regards to their talent." Tina started, "They nearly lost at Sectionals one year, so they decided to start spying on other Glee clubs, and found out what they were doing so they could beat them – in those days, each member of the winning Glee club won around $100. They won that year, but they got paranoid ever since. Every year, they continued to spy until find out their set list wasn't enough. They started to dig up dirt on all of the other team members, and blackmail them into throwing each of the performance. Bad notes, messing up the choreography, bad-mouthing the judges.. Anything that would get them a loss. This went on for years, then, Jonathan Anderson became the Warbler's leader.

Jonathan was Blaine's father, which is why Blaine knew so much about them – he passed the information down, and Blaine told me. I just thought he would've told all of you which is why I never mentioned it," Tina said, "That, and it's not my place to tell you about Blaine's past. But I have to now. He's never going to tell you and we're going to have to deal with them this time. Anyway, Blaine's father thought that only collecting information on Glee clubs was pathetic. He thought that if they had the skills to collect this kind of stuff on people... Then shouldn't they spread it out? Shouldn't they get information on everyone and do whatever they want? The others didn't agree at first, but after a little persuasion from Jonathan, they caved. That was when things started to get messy."

Tina paused for a few moments to see if any of them would ask any questions, but they all seemed to be hanging onto every single one of her words. So, she went on. "The headmaster of Dalton noticed that there was something strange going on. The Warblers were winning with little effort, despite the fact that they'd hired the best vocal and dance coach out there. He'd asked each of the Warblers individually, but they all dismissed what he said. So, the headmaster did some little researching of his own, and he found out what they'd been doing. He went to Blaine's father and began questioning him, and told him that he knew everything, and if it kept happening? Then the Warblers would be disbanded, every member of the Warblers that had been involved with the blackmailing would be fined to give back every dollar they won, and were to be arrested. But Jonathan retaliated. He knew this was going to happen, and so he brought up the headmaster's secret. Apparently, it was so dark, so horrible, that since then, the headmaster of the school gave up. He let them get away with it, and was at their beck and call."

"What was the secret?" Sam asked wide-eyed "What was so bad that he'd listen to them?"

"I.. I don't know," Tina bit her lip, "Blaine never told me. I guess he didn't know either. He just told me that it was really bad... After they had their headmaster under control, they slowly began to over throw the school. They never went to any classes. Each part of their day was spent either rehearsing or researching. It got to the point because the lack of classes, they couldn't do their blackmailing as efficiently. They went to the headmaster, and forced them to kick any of the non-Warblers out. So, all the teachers were spent, paying every single day teaching them, and any new students had to be smart enough and have connections to be able to access anyone's phonecalls, computers.. you name it. After Jonathan left, they weren't as feared. They didn't have the same control over all the show choirs, but their talent still let them win. Blaine's older brother, Cooper, changed things though.

He didn't see the point in blackmailing people. He thought it was stupid because they stopped giving prize money to the members. When he became the leader of the Warblers, and suggested that instead of blackmailing, they'd just collect information at a price. It didn't matter who it was, they'd get information on people. None of them thought about arguing because they knew of his father, and it actually was pretty successful. They managed to get the money they would've won from winning from a month's worth of clients. They never blackmailed anyone; they just passed information on, and no one was able to trace it back to them. It was like this up until Blaine was in charge -"

"Wait, that Hobbit was a Warbler?" Queen Bee interjected, "I thought he was supposed to be a hero!" The rest of the group seemed to agree, and all of them started shouting and screaming about betrayal and how Blaine was a traitor – they didn't even know the worst of the Warblers yet.

"No, he was! I mean, he is!" Tina said, trying to shout over them "Guys, calm down and let me finish!"

The clamouring raged on until Tina finally had enough, practically slamming the gavel hard against the desk.

"SHUT UP!" She screamed at them, glaring at all of them "Let me finish! Blaine continued things like this for a while. But something happened to him – I don't know what – that made him leave."

"Kurt happened," A familiar voice came from behind Tina, causing everyone to gasp. Tina slowly turned around in confusion, and her eyes widened seeing who was behind her.

"Blaine.." She said quietly, "I'm sorry, I -"

"It's.. fine, really," Blaine waved his hand, dismissing the matter, "It's good that they know. Kurt knew about the Warblers passing on information like that – it was really only something known on the black market, and he'd overheard two men talking about it in a pub one day. He didn't believe it was true, but he wanted to find out, his curiosity got the best of him, because we were supposed to be going against his glee club – the New Directions. It didn't make sense to him that a simple Glee club like that could get so much information," Blaine said slowly, so each of his words could be picked up, "Kurt, as you already know, was a writer for his school's newspaper and he thought it would be an interesting piece, so he visited Dalton with recording equipment. Kurt had pretended to be a new student, and somehow managed to get through the guards, which were just other Warblers... Dalton has never stopped being run by the Warblers, it's not even a school anymore. It's just their hide out. No one seemed to notice that he wasn't a new student because they thought I didn't tell them. But when I met him on that staircase, I knew he was spying straight away because I hadn't approved of any new students. So I let him in on a Warbler performance. I wanted to blackmail him into leaving us alone..I thought all the Glee clubs already knew what it was the Warblers really do, but I couldn't bring myself to do so. Since I first saw him, I felt.. This instant connection. I wanted to get to know him more, so I convinced the headmaster to give him a scholarship. The stories he told me about being bullied made the perfect cover story for why I was offering it, because by then, Kurt saw me as a mentor and best friend. He was actually one of the best members we've ever had. He had this... amazingly unique voice, and he had plenty of experience collecting information for his paper. Even though we weren't really blackmailing anyone, the Warblers were near enough unstoppable with his abilities and my connections. Which was why there was such an uproar when Kurt left.. He missed his old school, and wanted to go back there for his senior year. We..We'd fallen in love when we were at Dalton together, so I couldn't deny that request. But I didn't want to leave him alone, so I left with him. And we spent our last year of school together."

"That was when the Warblers got their new leader, Sebastian. He wanted to go back to blackmailing, but he kept things like they were when Cooper was there. He'd give the information to those who paid for it, then blackmailed whoever bought the information and who the information was on. At that point, it didn't matter how well you covered it up or how innocent you are, Sebastian would find something that would incriminate you. Though.. if someone would buy information on someone, or you had information on you that people would buy, you couldn't be that innocent. The Warblers also attack the people they were blackmailing as a reminder of the power Sebastian had over them. If Sebastian himself attacked you, then it meant you were an enemy of his. And he planned to do worse in the close future.

However, that wasn't enough for Sebastian either. Anyone he saw as an enemy, threat, or if he was just bored, he'd get some of the Warblers to take in a hostage. He'd send a video of him with the hostage, announce that he was holding them at a ransom, then send it to whoever he was wanting to bargain with. And until those conditions were met, the hostage would basically be a slave. It was usually just a typical slave...it was often children, wives, girlfriends, or parents they took. But others...," Blaine grimaced as he took an intake of breath. He looked down to calm himself down before he looked back up at the others in the room, not noticing his eyes starting to water, "The others.. all the younger men who were deemed 'pretty enough'? They were used as sex slaves... the hostages were very rarely killed – a lot of them died due to neglect – it was never direct, but almost all of the younger men committed suicide. It was usually after they'd been released, but there were a good number of them who killed themselves whilst they were still being held captive."

It was only then that Blaine realized the tears falling down his face, and he had to stop himself speaking before he broke down in tears. Silence fell on the room for a few moments until Tina – or rather, Asian Persuasion (No civilian identities Blaine reminded himself) spoke up.

"That's why you're so concerned about Kurt," She said, more of a statement than a question.

Taking a shaky breath, Blaine brought his hands up to wipe his eyes a few times before nodding.

"Yeah..." he said weakly, "I don't know how bad this new guy is with his hostages in comparison to Sebastian, but I know that since he took charge, there's been at least twice as many hostages taken in. I've... I've not heard many encouraging things about him, though.. I think he's just as bad as Sebastian was. There must have been a reason why he took over from him. It's not common for them to be over-taken, and they'd need to screw up spectacularly for them to be replaced and me, or no one else I've asked heard Sebastian do anything that would warrant that."

"So, do you think that they're going to use Kurt as... as a sex slave?" Blond Chameleon asked nervously.

"Definitely," Blaine said almost instantly, "He fits the criteria, and if he's a hostage because of me, he's not going to have a good time anyway. The Warblers aren't exactly happy that I left them with no notice."

"Why would they take Kurt hostage, though? They didn't tell you why they took him," Tarantula Head asked, looking incredibly confused.

Blaine didn't answer. It was like he was deliberately ignoring Tarantula Head's question. Looking up, Blaine caught the questioning looks coming from everyone. He sighed heavily and said, "It's not important."

"Bullshit." Asian Persuasion said bluntly, "'It's not important'? I doubt that they'd take him for no reason, Blaine. So how about you tell us what's going on. You're supposed to be ourleader!"

"Asian Persuasion, how many times do I have to tell you," Blaine said, growling slightly, "When we're in here, there are no civilian identities. You will call me Nightbir -"

"No, I won't!" She near enough shouted at him, slamming her hands on the desk and standing up. "Nightbird is a hero. Nightbird saves those in need, and Kurt needs help. Nightbird would've made a plan by now. Because that's who Nightbird is. A hero. He's saved so many people in need. But you, Blaine Anderson, are no hero. You're just a scared little boy."

"What do you expect me to do!?" Blaine shouted back at her as he stormed over, "I can't do anything -"

"Yes you can!", Asian Persuasion yelled "Go to Dalton all guns blazing, beat the crap out of them and save Kurt! Make your own video demanding they bring him back! Send all of us in to distract them while you get Kurt out of there! Anything! But you're acting like a coward! Rather than facing up to this problem, you're hiding away and leaving us to figure out what the hell we should do!"

Blaine was speechless; he'd never seen Tina this angry. She would make a few snarky comments, but she was usually quiet, and kept to herself. It was unnatural seeing her this mad. Along with this shock, Blaine was seething with anger, and his brain was unable to form coherent words. It didn't matter though, because soon after Tina had finished screaming at him, Dottie came stumbling into the room.

"Dottie?" Tina said, turning away from Blaine, "What is it? We're busy just now, come back later."

"T-there's a new v-video," Dottie stuttered, "I-It's from the same people as last time."