Blue Monday

Interlude 7 - Welcome To Earth

"Seriously, guys, did you have to order friggin' decaf?"

Paul frowned at his kid brother as he fidgeted in his seat. "Do you really wanna stunt your growth, Aron? I know that's gonna seriously interfere with your number-one life goal."

"That's bullshit and you know it," Aron says. "Just like how they say Mountain Dew shrinks your balls."

"Mountain Dew shrinks your balls?" Luca asked. He pushed his coffee cup away, as if he couldn't bring himself to drink any more. Even though the cup didn't even contain the same potential gonad-shrinking substance.

"Whew," Juliet said. "Guess I don't need to worry about that."

Paul spared a quick glance at the cute barista behind the counter before turning to Aron and saying, "Dude, you're way too hyper already. Coffee will only make you worse."

Aron glared at Paul, making him shudder involuntarily, even for just a split second. It still threw him how much bigger the kid had become recently. Not even six months ago, Aron had been a skinny little dude. Having passed his fifteenth birthday, however, he was finally starting to grow into a more manly form. It wasn't as if he'd had a serious growth spurt, but it was no longer quite so easy for Paul to pick him up and carry him upstairs on one shoulder.

Not to mention, Aron had become considerably more assertive and goal-oriented. Which probably explained why he refused to let Paul talk him out of tagging along on this Bay Area visit.

"Now where the hell is our mystery caller?" Paul asked nobody in particular, looking around again. He eventually caught the eye of someone whom everyone at the table recognized. Wiry build, medium height, messy brown hair, squarish black glasses. Russell Aspen blended in very well in Starbucks, but he wasn't quite plain enough to disappear completely in the crowd.

"No way," Juliet whispered as Russell came up to their table. "Since when does a pizza guy get involved with weird kidnapping shit?"

"Since he's more than just a pizza guy," Russell says. "All right, we don't have a lot of time, so I'll explain on the way." He downed the last of his coffee and walked towards the front door. A few seconds later, Paul and company stood up and followed Russell to a small Ford sedan parked in front of the Baskin Robbins next door.

"You sure we can all fit in there?" Paul asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Yeah, and where are we going?" Luca asked.

Russell unlocked his car. "To answer your question, Paul - yeah. To answer yours, Luca - again, I'll have to explain on the way."

As soon as everyone was piled in (Paul in the front passenger seat, Aron uncomfortably sandwiched between Luca and Juliet in the back because he was the smallest), Russell began to drive and tell the group what had happened at the same time. As he finished explaining the circumstances, he checked his watch and said, "Okay, by now they should be in the Second 'Verse."

"In the Second?" Juliet asked. "Why the hell do we want them to be there?"

"Just for now until we can take down the Red Rain people," Russell said. "More specifically, Lima Charlie Lambda. She's the one who wants to kill the Snow boys."

"And how exactly are we gonna 'take 'em down?'" Luca asked, throwing in air quotes for good measure.

"Run into the base like goddamn bastards, of course," Russell laughed, pulling off the freeway. "Pardon my French."

"De rien," Luca said, unable to resist an opportunity to practice the language.

"Well, that means 'you're welcome,' but I'll take it." Russell tapped his fingers on the steering wheel until the light turned green, and he turned the car left. Then he turned left again, onto the 84 freeway onramp heading in the opposite direction from which they'd come.

"Hang on, where are we going?" Aron asked. "Didn't we just-"

"We have to go this way," Russell said. "So we can take the Bridge."

Paul looked around. "What Bridge? Not like the one in Coldfire Creek? I don't see anything like that."

"This Bridge is pretty hard to see," Russell said, "and even harder to - hang on. Someone's following us."

Everyone else spun around to see a brown late-nineties sedan on their six. As soon as Russell pulled onto an unpaved section of the road right next to the freeway divider, this car drove onto the light brown gravel as well.

"Stay here," Russell said, stopping the car and pulling the parking brake. "I'll handle this." He grabbed a short, thick black baton from the glove compartment and left the car, holding it at the ready.

The brown car's driver emerged as well. Luca blinked as he recognized her, then said, "Oh my God. Holy shit. What's she doing here?"

"What? You know her?" Juliet asked.

"That's Ms. Snow," Luca said, getting out of the car.

"Ms. Snow? Their mom?" Aron tilted his head, trying to get a good look at her. It took a while, but eventually he could see the resemblance between the woman and Alex. Gabe, though, not so much - he'd looked exactly like that dickhead Elijah.

He then followed Paul and Juliet out the door as they joined Russell, Luca, and Ms. Snow. "They bagged my head on the way back, of course," Ms. Snow was saying. "But I could still tell they were driving over the Bridge. They're keeping my boys on Earth."

With the exception of Russell (who obviously knew that fact already), everyone else's jaws dropped.

"They really took 'em to Earth?" Luca repeated.

"Seriously?" Juliet asked.

"You could tell where you were going even though you were blindfolded?" Paul asked. Aron grinned up at him, also remembering the times their dad would take them somewhere cool for a surprise day trip. He would always blindfold them, then challenge them to guess where they were before finally revealing the surprise. More often than not, both boys failed to guess right on the three tries they were allotted.

"The point is, I can't call the cops here, 'cause they can't do anything in other dimensions," Ms. Snow said. "That's why I'm gonna go across the Bridge and do it there."

"No," Russell said. "I'm sorry, but there's really no need. We have all the people we-"

Ms. Snow held up her hand. "My sons are in danger," she said. "I'm gonna help you guys save them. End of discussion."

Russell crossed his arms, looking like a defiant child for a moment, before sighing and conceding defeat. "Lady, you've had too much practice with that mother thing."

"A mother can never have too much practice," said Ms. Snow. "Well, come on. Let's go!" She got back into her car, turned it on, and swerved around Russell's car so she could start driving up to the Bridge unhindered.

Russell sighed again, then beckoned everyone else back into his Ford. Less than thirty seconds later, he drove them up to the Bridge. The actual portal was hidden underneath an overpass - one minute they were able to look up at a white Heavenly sky, and then as soon as they were on the other side, they looked up to see the sky had turned blue.

"'Welcome to Earth,'" Russell quoted.Sticking a pen in his mouth - most likely to stand in for the cigar WillSmith's character was smoking for that scene in Independence Day - he added with a cheesy grin, "'Now that's what I call a close encounter.'"