eek, monsters

[pandion]

Time goes by. Trouble keeps right on bringing desserts (and once a quiche and once a loaf of bread with nuts in it). The Swans are uncomplaining. On Christmas Eve he brings two kinds of cookies and an astonishingly edible fruitcake and stays overnight on the couch. (Andi, self-servingly, got him a little box of assorted Genuine Maple Products. Bella got him an inexpensive yet adorable miniature sewing machine.) Robin comes over too, Christmas day (Andi gives her a packet of guitar strings and sheet music for assorted Green Day songs. Bella gets her a tiny tape recorder.)

School is back in session in January, after New Year's. (The twins set off small fireworks in the driveway - well, Andi does. Robin is invited to this event; Trouble is not, it somehow does not seem wise.)

Now it is the first weekend after the resumption of school.

Robin's supposed to be over any minute for practice for Nameless Band Which Kind Of Needs A Third Person But Bella Doesn't Want To. Andi taps out beats on her drums. Taptaptap. Taptaptap-kish. Taptaptap. Taptaptapkish.

Comments

[instar]

"I need to know more. I'm sure someone smarter than me could come up with all kinds of results just from what I have, but I am not smarter than me."

[aeskhyne]

Trouble shrugs. "What do you have? Anything I don't know about yet?"

[instar]

Bella flips through her notes, goes over all the facts again. Robin saw and heard these things, described them this way. Ethan found this fact which may connect the sighting and the Sharing, it dovetails with this behavior of Charlie's - and now that behavior of Reggie's - but Ethan's own parents are displaying nothing out of the limited ordinary. She reconstructs her reasoning about aliens versus demons or domestic science projects, and what tech they probably don't have.

[aeskhyne]

"If they do replace people, I'd be more surprised if Ethan noticed anything from his parents," says Trouble. "Because they replace them pretty well, right? Reggie didn't come home from a meeting and turn nice, your dad didn't start acting like a totally different person. And faking Ethan's parents to Ethan is a cinch, you'd have to be seriously clueless to fuck it up. Nah, if you wanna know if Ethan's parents are pod people, you should find out from somebody who actually knows them. A coworker or something."

[instar]

Bella nods, and writes this down.

[aeskhyne]

"That's about the only bright idea I've got. But I don't know what it would even prove."

[instar]

"It'd be evidence, if we could get it without tipping off said parents. If they have co-workers who aren't in the Sharing themselves."

[aeskhyne]

"Yeah, but evidence for what? About what? Maybe we shouldn't even bother looking at Ethan's parents," he says. "Maybe we should start finding other members and seeing if they're pod people. Whoever we can find out about without tipping off the brain-eating alien cult. There, I had another bright idea."

[instar]

"It's harder to know who to ask, in the case of strangers," says Bella. "I mean, it's a good idea, but I don't know how to implement it without a list of specific potential pod people."

[aeskhyne]

"How'd Ethan find out the bookstore owner was a member? There's your list," says Trouble.

[instar]

"But of course I forgot to ask him. I guess there's tomorrow. We don't have nearly enough resources for individual days to make a difference in what we can and can't accomplish."

[aeskhyne]

Trouble shrugs. "Yeah. And, you know, whatever these people are doing, they're not blowing anything up or conquering anybody. At least not so's you notice. Maybe they don't have that many resources, either. Maybe pod people and zappers are their only tricks."

[instar]

"Pod people, zappers, however they're hiding when they're monster-shaped, and, if they are aliens after all, however they got here," clarifies Bella. "That's the realistic minimum - they could theoretically be here by accident and not have that mechanism under control, crash landing or surprise portal or something - and the hiding could be by relatively mundane mechanisms, but still."

[aeskhyne]

"What I wanna know," muses Trouble, "is how our razor-studded friend got into the closed bookstore around midnight before he chased that other dude out."

[instar]

"Pod people can turn into monsters and that one so chose for some reason even though he wound up using a ranged weapon, there's a secret passage or compartment or something to a monster hideout, they can teleport but under relatively limited circumstances, it sprouted there overnight - hideout requires the fewest extra assumptions, but it could be any of those."

[aeskhyne]

"Next question's why either of them was there," says Trouble. "I'd almost say it has to be hideout. Otherwise you have to explain what else they were doing there and how it went so badly south that Mister Pointy ran out on the street to zap the guy. And he went back in afterward, too, didn't he? To do what? Crawl back into his hole, I bet. Or I guess he could've been going to get chewed out by his boss first - but then why was the boss in there?"

[instar]

"Hideout seems like the best explanation. This is a long, long chain of inferences, though, and any link in it could be broken - not enough data."

[aeskhyne]

"Right," says Trouble. "And I'd poke my head in and look for secret tunnels if all I had to worry about was getting vaporized by trigger-happy demons, but then there's the part where they maybe have mind control."

[instar]

"I'm so with you. On the mind control not being an acceptable risk, not on the willingness to get vaporized." She swallows.

[aeskhyne]

"Yeah, not a lot of people are with me on that one."

[instar]

"I hope Charlie's recoverable."

[aeskhyne]

"Me too," says Trouble. "I'd say I hope Reggie's not, but I already get him back plenty often, so it's not like I can imagine he's dead or anything."

[instar]

Bella shivers again.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble shrugs.

[kindestgarden]

The door opens, and in comes Renée. She pokes her head into the living room. "Hi, Trouble. Staying the night again?"