Something's off with your name, Abby . . .
you just capitalized the "A" and the "B" didn't you?
CHAPTER FOUR:
Studio I-K-E-E-L-U*
"Why, again, did you switch teams with Saffa, Abby?" Gaz inquired.
"Well, I've never been to a tv studio before," Abby said.
"We're here as investigators, not tourists." Noelle said, having morphed to her usual human morph.
They flashed their Marks, which essentially served as their badges. Why did Noelle morph human then? To have any foes that might be watching them underestimate them. They eventually manage to sit down with the head honcho who looked rather like a Honchkrow made human without the fedora.
"What brings you to I-K-double-E-L-U today, ladies?"
"We're investigating some rather unusual behavior. From you and your studio." Noelle said, eyeing the man closely. She got a seriously weird vibe from him. Abby and Gaz felt it too. Noelle missed her tail.
"Strange?" he said, a little
too politely to be plausible. His voice was like a tired, lazy impression of Snagglepuss. Abby swore he saw a bit of the guy's back wiggly and twist unnaturally. Gaz thought she detected the merest trace of a odd, faint odor of something acrid.
"Strange?" he repeated, "Why whatever do you mean?"
"You were going to report on a nearby crash landing of some extraterrestrial craft, but then inexplicably turned around and pulled the story." Abby recited. "Sure sounds fishy to me."
"What a
lovely imagination to have, little girl." he said, as Abby bristled at the "little girl" comment. "It was nothing more than a tourist trap. The claims of something crashlanding there was a hoax."
"Cut the crap," Gaz told the studio's head exec. "And stop trying to handle us."
"I don't like your tone or your accusations." he said, voice sounding more and more like a yawning Snagglepuss.
"As if you don't know that we had a planetary atmospheric breach around dusk last night," Noelle said, as she stood up arms folded and eyes narrowed. "But you are clearly being manipulated. But not by Yeerks."
The man ducked down quickly but by the time he came up with handgun, Noelle had already demorphed. She had her tail blade at his throat before he could fire. Then Abby and Gaz quickly disposed him of his weapon.
"So, what are you?" Gaz asked. "You're clearly not human."
But then man drooped, like a marionette whose string had been cut. Noelle withdrew her tail, and the man fell over, as if dead. He laid there motionless, except for his back -- or something that was mounted on his back seemed to writhe.
Abby and Gaz screamed, while Noelle thought-screamed, when the thing burst from his back similarly to the way a Xenomorph bursts through the hosts chest. Only here the body of the man seemed to be fine, aside from the hold in the base of his neck that went all the way up to his brain. Gaz realized it was this creature's adhering mucus that she smelled.
It attempted to launch itself at them, but Noelle cleaved it cleanly in two laterally. It was dead.
"What was that?" Abby breathed.
<I believe a more pressing concerns are how many of them are out there in the newsroom, how many of them heard the commotion, and how do we get out without being, uh,
ridden..> Noelle pointed out.
"I'm open to suggestions," Gaz said dryly.
---
*This isn't too subtle of a reference, is it?
