Xtro

[target_audience]

WHO: Stu Macher, Billy Loomis and open!
WHERE: Temba, by the fountain and the hospital
WHAT: A new arrival! He looks bad!
WHEN: Early June
WARNINGS: Stu's coming in already stabbed, so there's blood right from the start.


a. the fountain
Movie blood felt more real than the genuine article. It was always brighter red, lurid and fast flowing, not like the dark and dingy trickle that rolled sluggishly along the dirty clefts in the cobblestone. The real blood picked up dust and grime as it went, and rapidly dried, getting darker and slower and duller, Stu realized, quickly abandoning the reflection of the strange light. He couldn't see where it was coming from at first, only aware of the way it bounced where the blood was still sticky, fixated on its unfamiliar ambience from where he lay on the hard ground. It was like the diffused lighting from a softbox, glowy and indirect. He had to touch it.

By the time he could make his eyes focus again, he could feel the hard stone pressing into his back. He must have propped himself up, his legs still twisted awkwardly where he had collapsed onto his face. He could hear the constant trickle of running water, too, that was weird, that kind of made him have to pee, and was suddenly too aware of just how much beer he had been drinking and regretted not hitting the bathroom before the bloodbath or the alien abduction. You should always go before you take a big trip like that, even if you don't think you have to. He started to laugh, loud and unself-conscious, until the blood bubbling in his throat made it stick and splatter down his front instead of echoing around this empty square. He sobbed then, raising his shaking hands to that glowing light of the alien-ball like he needed any more confirmation that it was still him that was bleeding, then pressed them back around his middle to try to stem the flow. Being abducted should have been so much cooler than this. There should have been a spaceship, and a metal table, and a chip they were putting in his neck. Instead, Stu was sitting on a dirty, empty street, holding his guts in, not sure if he was in complete pain or entirely numb. If he died before the probing, he'd never forgive himself.

"Billy?" he suddenly realized, soft and plaintive. He had tripped and fallen onto his face on the way out of the kitchen, after he heard Billy's cry, after he had been attacked. Someone had to help him. "I'm comin', buddy..." Stu strained, pitching forward to try to climb up onto his feet. He had a long way to go.

b. the hospital
The sweater that Stu had been wearing was ruined. Even if he knew how to get the crusted blood out of it, there were huge holes where the knife had sliced through, enough that it was practically falling apart. He should have been falling apart. Instead, he was lingering in the hall of the weirdly dark hospital, wearing a new sweater with too many sleeves. The extra pair of them were sitting on his shoulders, all of the extra fabric gathered around his neck like a cowl, and when he wiggled they flapped in a way that made him snicker and feel like some kind of alien royalty himself. Maybe he was less likely to come back from this experience screaming and eating snake eggs than dazzling the aliens with his strange, human powers, like a normal amount of arms, and resilience to stabbing.

He had too much energy to stay put an heal like he was supposed to, he didn't know anyone that could just lay around in a bed for hours and not want to blow their own brains out. He had left the ruined sweater in his place, and dutifully kept his arms stiff by his sides to limit just how much he was moving as he went prancing in the echoing corridor, swinging his shoulders from side to side to make his empty sleeves flap while he bounced. Already, he knew not to expect to encounter just about anyone around here, but when he did he also wasn't terribly surprised and gladly pivoted to welcome them into this game. "Do you like alien movies?" he immediately greeted, his very posture impish, all stretched out six feet four inches of him drawn up straight with his shoulders back and arms still tight to his sides, and chin tucked down to make his wide grin look like a wicked challenge.

Comments

a. the fountain

[directors_cut]

People seemed pretty scarce in this place anywhere but the fountain so far in Billy's experience. Not that he had necessarily been aiming for company when he set out there. But at least there was another person alive in this shithole. Or ooh- maybe not for long? Billy recognized the blood a second or two before he recognized the person, and the rush of interest was quickly replaced with something like concern, and a(n un)healthy dose of anger at the state his partner had arrived in.

He rushed forward in a jog (after an anxious glance around like he was afraid of anyone else seeing this mess before he had things under control), before the idiot can tear his guts out trying to haul himself upright.

"The fuck happened to you?!" he hissed, half accusatory, eyes quickly taking everything in with a sweeping scan, and crouching down to keep Stu from killing his stupid self. His eyes ended on the largest blood stain. Too large. And he frustratedly tried to apply pressure over the sweater, feeling just how soaked with blood it was.

[target_audience]

As singsong as he could manage with flagging energy, more croaking than he intended, Stu answered, "There you are!" and was no help at all as he continued to push forward to smear a bloody palm across Billy's cheek. It was only when he was firmly off of the roller coaster that lurched him from thinking Billy was being attacked on another planet, to the assurance that Billy was right here with him, that it occurred to Stu to give him another pat and look for where Sidney had got her hits in. Billy looked perfectly fine. More fine than the last time Stu had checked. The alien thing did seem pretty fantastic, now that Stu thought about it. He told this vision, "I think I'm dyin', man," and slouched over, feeling quite resigned to it now that he was hallucinating.

[directors_cut]

Billy sneered at the sticky touch, but his confusion kept him from being too cruel. At least until Stu started patting him down and Billy swatted the hand away with a creased brow.

"You fucking look like it," he agreed. The blood wasn't stopping and Stu looked sickly pale, "Who did this?" he demanded, before hooking Stu's arm over his shoulder to try and force him up onto his feet. "Come on, help me out- I can't carry your sorry ass the whole way."

[target_audience]

He was very strong for a hallucination, and Stu did not feel up to moving around so much so he didn't understand why his own brain would betray him like this. Maybe all of that blood was kind of important. It was even harder to fight it, though, so Stu did his best to hang on and let Billy get him up, feeling like the gravity on this planet must have been like whatever the opposite of the moon was. "I told you you went too deep, Billy..." he whined. It wasn't like anyone else was holding the knife.

[directors_cut]

"The fuck are you talking about?? I've been here. I haven't even finished dealing with Himbry." Though the accusation made him look at the bloody mess a little more thoughtfully.

He did his best to support Stu's weight, hesitating a moment to orient himself. He was pretty sure the hospital was this way, and he wanted to get there while Stu's body wasn't completely fighting him with dead weight. "You're fine," he encouraged, "Don't milk it. You're gonna get some sick new scars, come on, keep walking, this way."

[target_audience]

It was very difficult to keep on walking and workshop how likely it was that his hallucination had started before Billy appeared at his door. If Billy said so, it must have been true, but that was a whole lot of stuff to have happened only in Stu's head, and the stabbing part was right in the middle of it, not the beginning. "Am I stoned?" was the best conclusion that Stu could come to. Someone had slipped something into the beer, maybe. Awesome. Except for the part where he was really sure all of this blood was his.

[directors_cut]

Maybe it would be easier to carry him. Billy grit his teeth as he tried to keep them on a steady path, and he frowned at the question, missing the steps that had led to that conclusion.

"This the sorta shit your brain makes up when you are?" he asked, and oh good, he could see the building in the distance, his mental map of this place wasn't completely off.

[target_audience]

"It was all working, man, the plan, you were there, and Sid, and her dad, and it couldn't have been going better," Stu strained to explain, because he didn't just make all of that up, he had been picturing it vividly for months already, this time it had just felt so real. Especially the knife. "Except when you cut me, and you said your dad knew Sid's mom, that was weird, that was a little intense, dude, it was supposed to be fun, you were supposed to be careful..."

[directors_cut]

That wasn't possible. Except how the fuck else did Stu wind up like this? And-

"What?" Billy hissed threateningly, stopping abruptly. The cutting too deep part he wasn't as concerned with, no- it was the part about his dad and Sid's whore of a mother. "The fuck did you hear that-?" he growled, but after a beat he blinked that dark look off his face with some effort, trying to wipe it back to neutral.

Logically there was no other way for Stu to have learned that. And so no other way for him to have gotten messed up.

"...Shut up about that," he urged, glancing around like anyone might be listening in this deserted place. "We practiced this, remember? You're fine. Stop exaggerating. Shit's gotta look believable."

[target_audience]

Impulsively, Stu responded to that challenge by backpeddling, "Nowhere, okay, sorry," and gave a limp, boneless nod of compliance to shutting up. Thank fuck it wasn't a blanket mandate, because he was quickly talking again, "Oh, I believe it, my legacy's gonna be Victim Number Five, I'm gonna show up in the reboot as a hot chick. Maybe a ghost."

[directors_cut]

Backpedaling was the right choice.

"You're not going anywhere. You're gonna be right there in the sequel. They've probably got alien bullshit here that'll leave you better than you started," he encouraged, "So you gotta shut your mouth before someone hears you. What are you going to tell them when they ask who did this?"

[target_audience]

They had been through this enough times that Stu really didn't want to, not right now, it kind of didn't seem all that important next to how hard it was to get one foot in front of the other. He whined and couldn't tell if that tickle down his cheek was sweat, tears or more blood, and had to force out, "A psycho killer, dude, he came in wearing a mask and stabbing everybody, he got Sid, he got Tate..." It seemed kind of pointless to have killed Tatum now that he was dying anyway, and now Stu was pretty sure that was tears.

[directors_cut]

Billy started to nod and then rethought things, quickly shaking his head and stopping them to properly emphasize- "None of them. Just you. It happened here." They may or may not get to play with the idea, but at least this way they're set up right if they chose to.

He paused, only belatedly taking in the tears and he frowned, pushing away that wetness with a not so gentle sweep of his thumb. "Can you handle that?"

b

[thepurpleone]

Maybe Stu would do a double-take once he got an eyeful of just whom he was facing. The green-skinned teenager was practically a full foot shorter than the one who was looking giddily at him, a brow on that purple mask of his arching quizzically before flattening in mild judgment.

"Well, that depends- do you mean movies with aliens, AKA Sci-fi, or movies made by actual aliens, in which case I would not know because I have not yet had the opportunity to watch any." A beat. "Unless of course you meant instead to ask someone if they would watch alien movies with you."

[target_audience]

This little nerd might have looked all freaky, but Stu recognized that expression of serious pedantry ready to be teased into outrage. In a few years, he'd be working at a video store to tell people how poor their taste was. Stu started to chuckle, and then was immediately sidelined by the revelation that aliens could have been making the movies, and enthused, "Dude!" It still took him a beat to struggle over the script, hands raised and frozen until he found the line to continue, "Of course some of the greats have been aliens this whole time, it makes total sense. John Waters, that guy's an alien for sure, he's not even hiding it. Okay, sci-fi movies made by actual aliens, go." He pointed with both hands expectantly for freaky kid to start the scene.

[thepurpleone]

A video store! What a novelty that would be! DVD kiosks were already considered archaic so far as Donnie was concerned.

The kid stared openly at him, expectant after that emphatic 'dude', brow once again quirking when he got over whatever sort of mental buffering had taken place. "Well, I guess I can't argue the possibility that aliens have been in our midst this entire time, I mean, there are yōkai in New York so why not?"

And then he was frowning again, eyes flicking towards the fingers directed at him before looking back up at the meat head in confusion.

"Uh. Did you miss the part about me not having watched any? And if this is based off of assumption then how would one even go about classifying potential aliens of directors because honestly, anyone in the entertainment industry can be considered 'out of this world' in multiple senses."

[target_audience]

Stu could only guess at how weird New York really was, it did always seem like a crazy place in movies with plenty of alleys for murders and high octane escapes, so he was happy to gush, "Yeah, man, yo, there's some guys that must have been there the whole time, little green men." Look, there was one right there that Stu was pointing at, they were firmly beyond 'possibility'. It was just a matter of who among them had been hiding in plain sight.

One of them was a bit of a meat head, maybe the one that needed Stu to impatiently explain, "That's what I'm saying, dingus. As far as I'm concerned, they're all fair game. Do we think Ridley Scott is an alien? He does try really hard to prove he likes human stuff, too. Alien, put it on the list."

[thepurpleone]

Donnie looked rather affronted at being called a 'dingus' and not by one of his brothers. He scowled, folding his arms. "What list? Why are we even doing this."

He frowned, recalling a very important point.

"Why are you here anyway, asking people about alien movies? Did you need a doctor? Maybe a psychiatrist? Pretty sure we don't have one of those around unfortunately, I think they'd have their work cut out for them though."

[target_audience]

"I got a doctor, man," Stu grumbled, drawing his illustrative arms back in close and still like they were supposed to be, so he wasn't doing too much moving around. Surely somebody else would have thought that game was wicked, and Stu tried not to look too disappointed that the freaky nerd thought he was uncool. "You kind of sound like my math teacher. He's also 45 and bald," he said.

[thepurpleone]

The gesture didn't go unnoticed. Ah, a patient who was likely avoiding his prescribed treatment for whatever he was recovering from.

Donnie looked quite the opposite of insulted then. Compared to a math teacher? Exactly his language! He was already naturally bald so that part didn't really bother him. "Ah, a man of intelligence," the turtle replied smugly. "Although if you were equating things in mathematical terms then that was as basic as arithmetic. Are you supposed to be in bed or something? If you were looking to escape then you've clearly got to work on your timing."

[target_audience]

Stu had no idea what mathematics he was doing, and had to let out a wheezy kind of laugh at what he hoped was a joke. They were joking together, this was great! Up until the point that Stu had to ask, "What, am I trapped here? Is this where they turn you green?" He did look concerned then, because he hadn't exactly been planning for an escape, he really did think he could just walk out of here any time. Billy did, and he wasn't even green yet.

[thepurpleone]

"Well no, not really. Given what few doctors there do happen to be, there's really no one to stop you. I mean, I could if I were so inclined, but I am not the hospital police."

Was he joking? Donnie didn't look like he was joking. His tone just naturally had that sarcastic tinge to it so that probably didn't help either way.

[target_audience]

The intention hadn't been to go very far when Stu got up, just to stretch his legs a little, check things out, see what the aliens got up to in alien healthcare, the usual. Maybe there was a vending machine. He had not accounted for Hospital Police, which did sound like a very serious job, and he glanced around like he might see them despite the assurance that this guy was not currently on the payroll. Now he felt like he had to get out of here, before the green kid locked him down. "Okay, well, let me know if you see them, huh, buddy?" he said, inching around to get to the other side of the guy, assuming he had come from some kind of exit.

[thepurpleone]

"...."

Donnie eyed him for a moment, trying to see if he could figure out why the guy was even here for. He hadn't particularly denied that he was supposed to be here. Hm.

"Oh, I don't have to. They have cameras everywhere to keep tabs on people who leave before they're supposed to," he said with a casual shrug even as he managed to smother a grin. "Some of the doctors are pretty firm about their patient's recovery."

[target_audience]

Stu hadn't seen any cameras, and they must have been really well hidden because even as he was scanning for them then, knowing what he was looking for, he still couldn't confidently say any of the slightly weird objects were recording them. Maybe alien cameras looked like cobwebs, and just in case, he waved at one dangling limply from the ceiling, just a splay of his fingers still down tight near his side. He leaned in closer to the green guy to whisper out of the side of his mouth, "Everywhere?," looking very concerned about what they might have seen.