The Extraterrestrial Truth And The Girl From Seat 2B [ONC 2022]

2.5 [THE GIRL FROM SEAT 2B]

Vic marched into town, night marched into morning, and morning marched into work. 

Technically, it was a lack of work. Leo refused to unlock the diner; when Vic tried to call his parents about it, it was clear they didn't actually care. They always made their money elsewhere anyway. Who gave a shit? Not them.

Vic did, though.

It wasn't like she could do anything about it, or the fact that Leo wouldn't talk to her. And it wasn't like she was about to ask the girl from seat 2B for more help. No way. They didn't need to see her. Neither of them would have to see her.

With the day free, Vic figured that the only way to keep going with this was to do it all herself. Wouldn't it be better? To do it herself?

That was fine. She didn't care. It was okay to be by herself. She knew what she was doing, and she didn't need other people to do it.

The obvious answer to her was to spend the day at the library, trying to figure out how to kill an alien. She didn't need other people to do that. She didn't need Leo, and she didn't a pushover like 2B, who was still on her mind for some reason. 

That was the plan: being at the library all day, then heading out to re-summon them at night. Surely she could do that. Surely she could manage to do some research on her own, no matter how sore her legs were and how tired she was from walking all night and spending an inordinate amount of time just standing on her front lawn like a little red-capped ceramic man. She knew exactly what she was doing. There was no way in hell that she was going to ask for help.

This was fine. She knew the truth of the extraterrestrial and she always had. She was right about everything and she always had been.

The internet was still a novelty to her. Her mother never allowed computers in the house. The library was the only place she has been able to access it. She knew a bit. She knew enough. The issue was, it was harder than it should have been to find information on how to defeat aliens, especially when she had no clue how to navigate further than basic searches.

Eventually, her mind turned back to what happened the night before. How things escalated. How everything got out of hand. How, without Connor there, there was no buffer between herself and Leo, and there was no way to keep things from getting out of hand. She was glad it didn't go further, but she wished it hadn't been that way at all. She wished she didn't decide she could do it all herself. 

And she could. And she should. She was so confident that was the case. The issue was, she didn't want to. What was the point of doing this if people she cared about weren't at the heart of it? 

Was there a point? Did there have to be? And, if there wasn't, wasn't it worth it to do it anyway? To do what she knew she had to do in order to figure it all out? Didn't the ends-- getting her best friend in the world back, somehow getting the aliens to leave, making everything in the world okay for once-- justify her means of getting other people abducted?

She logged off the library computer and moved to a different part of the library. She needed a table; she needed paper; she needed to write things down, or she was going to lose her mind. The internet had been no help. As far as she knew, her pocketknife would work just as fine as a gun or a nuke in killing these things. 

Vic eased herself int a chair and pulled the memo pad she kept in her back pocket (it was diner policy). With a pen she nabbed from the ground near the circulation desk in hand, Vic flipped through past orders from days before and sketches done by Connor (doodles of dicks and butts, mostly, because he thought those were funny) to a mostly-blank page where she started to brainstorm things out. She needed to figure it all out, didn't she? And what better way than the way she had always done it? It wasn't like she had access to a wall and string, but pen and paper could work just as well.