Riddle V.I.Z.ion

Chapter 3: Friends From Out Of Town (... WAY Out)

The plan was going to fail.

Not only that, but the plan was going to fail embarrassingly. Possibly fatally. It was the sort of plan, Phil realised, that should only have been pulled off the drawing board to be laughed at and forgotten. It was a plan that should only be enacted as a quality jape, taken to the board directors of madcapery to be lauded with rapturous applause before being shoved ceremoniously in the bin. But no, here they were, standing on the doorstep of ignoramus failure, ringing the doorbell wearing the silliest hats they could find, waving a banner which proclaimed in large, holographic text 'WE ARE DUMB AND BAD AT PLANNING'.

These revelations all came to Phil a shade too late; they were all crowded in the pool of light before the Sundae residence and footsteps were sounding from inside. The handle was turning.

"This is gonna be good," murmured Zach in an undertone, the star at the centre of a solar system of moths.

Smiley's mother opened the door. On the step, bold as tarnished brass, stood her daughter, her daughter's friends, and three bloody strangers. Somewhere in the distance, a clock rang midnight.

Now, it was not altogether uncommon for Smiley to return to her mother's from time to time, and it wasn't unheard of for her friends to accompany her. It wasn't even that strange for them to turn up late at night without warning—the city being what it was, it was oftentimes safer to crash there after a night out than it would be for everyone to straggle their disparate ways home. In short, none of this was unusual.

Except the air tonight smelled of boiling tin, and there was alien blood streaked across her chest, and her shoulders ached from dragging an unconscious adult for several blocks. Like an inexperienced actor in a quickly improvised scene, Smiley stood in the limelight and tried to remember her practiced lines.

As the mind will always manage in a delicate situation, hers drew a blank.

Smiley stared at her mother, who was peering at the scene around her with an air of increasing wariness. The resemblance between mother and daughter was uncanny, and she had always rather liked the certainty of knowing her face would one day resemble the one before her. Now, however, standing before her own, older countenance, feeling the uncertainty of her own, black eyes boring in to her, that familiarity made her feel smaller. It was as though she were withering before a phantasm of judgment from some future version of herself.

"Smiley?"

In a spur of the moment decision, Smiley decided that, of all the possible ways to explain the situation to her mother, the best course of action was to avoid it all together. With that incredibly illogical thought bouncing in her frazzled brain and flare born in the heat of the moment, Smiley gave her perplexed mother the widest smile she could manage. It looked a little psychotic.

"Hi mum! Lovely night, isn't it?"

Even before the crash, the night had been average at best. Now, the only thing remarkable about it was its sudden ugliness. The fumes of the crashed spaceship had painted the attractive navy of the sky with liberal streaks of grey and black which less swirled, as smoke is expected to do, and more splattered like a thick, cloying ink. It was about as attractive as a biro moustache scribbled on the Mona Lisa. Mrs Sundae blinked in the very deliberate manner of someone who is wondering, in the politest possible fashion, what the hell is going on.

"Hello sweetheart." She leaned out of the door, casting an appraising eye over her daughters friends and the ragged strangers they were carrying. "Smiley darling, you know I'm always happy to see you but... what is this?"

The older woman sounded patently baffled and, had he not been as tired and fed up as he was, Phil might have felt sorry for her. As it was, he was couldn't help but be exasperated by another delay; Viz was heavier than his build would suggest and his motivation for keeping the mad dictator off the ground was dwindling. As surreptitiously as he could manage (which wasn't very, standing, as he was, in the spill of light from the open door) Phil lowered Viz to the ground. The alien hit the top step with a toneless thud but remained completely catatonic. Phil whistled his innocence.