I do not own Twilight or any of its characters.
Chapter Thirty-Six – Foolish
"I'm a genius?" Nessie sniffed. "What are you talking about? What did I even say?"
"You told Jacob what to do, and he did it!" Alice exclaimed. "Now, tell Aro what to do."
Nessie stared at Alice as if she'd grown another head. "Uh, okay. Aro, turn into a vampire." She obviously felt extremely foolish, and who could blame her? Alice's request didn't make a bit of sense.
"And now we wait," Alice proclaimed.
That was it? That was Alice's brilliant idea? Having Nessie tell Aro to turn into a vampire? She'd always been a little strange and cryptic about what her visions showed her, but this was beyond weird, even for her. I looked to Edward for an explanation, but it was obvious from his blank expression that none would be forthcoming.
Whatever was going on, I didn't think I'd be able to do any more good by hanging around than I'd do if I stepped out for some fresh air. The scents of the two humans in the room were really beginning to weigh heavily on my newborn sensibilities. "Jasper, you feel like going for a quick hunt?" I asked. I knew Jasper wanted to try to help Nessie out with her emotions, but Aro's predicament was a little more important right now, no matter how much I cared for my niece. Carlisle needed to be here with him to monitor for changes, Edward needed to be here to read his thoughts, and I needed to go hunt and still didn't quite trust myself alone.
Jasper looked anxiously at Edward. "Go ahead," Edward told him, still stroking his daughter's hair. "She'll be fine for a little while. I'm less confident in how fine Emmett will be if he doesn't hunt soon."
"Rose, baby, I'll be back before you even have time to miss me," I whispered reassuringly, doing my best not to inhale her fragrance any more than I absolutely needed to. I had extraordinary control, having been previously desensitized to human blood, but apparently that control had limits, and I was pushing them right now.
"Go ahead," Rosalie croaked. "You need to stay fed."
"Thanks for understanding," I whispered, kissing her on the top of the head as I rose. That had probably been a mistake, as the flames welled up in my throat even fiercer than before.
I wanted to move a little further out than our typical hunting grounds, so Jasper and I headed into the garage to my Jeep. We got inside, and I immediately noticed that my human scent was still lingering inside. I grunted, rolling the windows down all the way. I drove in silence much of the way, bogged down with feelings of uncertainty and fear.
"You know, Jasper, it's kind of a drag hanging out with an empath when he's in a bad mood," I joked.
"Sorry," Jasper murmured, doing his best to rein in his turbulent emotional state. "Guess I've got a lot on my mind."
"We all do," I assured him, relieved that the emotional climate was becoming more tolerable. "Don't worry about it."
The silence continued. I didn't really know what to say. Talking about our favorite sports teams, TV shows, and games didn't seem to make a lot of sense right now when someone who was practically one of our own was dying. The rest of us wouldn't be far behind. I didn't want to talk about our impending demise either though.
How many times did my family need to face certain doom anyway? Hadn't we already done that enough?
"We've pulled through some tough spots before," I said aloud. "Remember when the Volturi came for us and you and Alice turned tail and ran off?"
"We didn't abandon you guys," Jasper protested.
"I know that now!" I jibed at him.
"I'm sorry we couldn't tell you at the time," he said seriously.
"Geez, take a joke, dude. You always used to be able to take a joke."
"Don't say 'dude' in front of Bella," Jasper deadpanned, staring out the passenger side window as he spoke. I laughed. It felt good to be able to laugh. Would I get the chance to hear my children laugh before the Volturi slaughtered us like animals?
Before long, we'd arrived at a secluded area, and I caught the scent of some moose nearby. "This will do," I grunted.
"Yeah, you can't go around eating bears every day," Jasper poked fun at my personal preferences.
"Maybe I can at least make the moose mad or something first," I replied thoughtfully.
"You shouldn't play with your food," Jasper chastised me mockingly.
We went into tracking mode, and I darted off in the direction of the scent of fresh moose. Jasper lagged behind a little, and his mind seemed to be quite preoccupied with something else. I made a mental note to ask what was eating him when we were done eating other things.
Suddenly, the wind changed direction, and without a single rational thought crossing my mind, so did I. I ran merrily in the direction of the delectable aroma I'd caught, temporarily without a care in the world.
"Emmett, no!" Jasper called out, quickening his pace to try to catch up to me. As if that were even possible. With my newborn strength, I'd outpace him without a second thought. I ran faster, bounding from tree to tree, occasionally slowing down just enough to let Jasper think he was doing well. I was going to make this a fun hunt.
"Emmett, stop!" Jasper cried after me again. He didn't really think I was going to stop short of eating something this delicious, did he? I decided to have some more fun with him and practice my new gift all at once. With a great deal of effort, I managed to teleport myself behind Jasper. I watched as he kept running in the same direction, then froze in his tracks and whirled around to face me.
He tackled me to the ground before I'd even considered how I should react. Here I thought we were just having some fun on a hunt. What was wrong with him? I moved to get up, knowing I could easily bat him off of me, but Jasper had a lot of moves in him from his years of training newborns in the South. He held his ground.
After a few minutes of fruitless struggling, I finally realized that the delicious fragrance I'd caught was a human, and that I'd been heading in the direction of some poor soul and nearly taken their life. I immediately felt terrible for what I'd nearly done. I stopped struggling and felt my mouth fly open in horror at my own actions.
"Jasper, I'm so sorry. I've got it under control now. Thank you," I told him sincerely.
"Good," he said, but he made no move to release his grip on me.
"Really, you can let me up now, I won't go after whoever that is," I promised.
"Good," Jasper repeated. "Because whoever that is, they're mine!" I couldn't even process his words before he had leapt free of me and darted away in the same direction as the human scent.
Stunned, I scrambled to my feet and gave chase. Now this was an interesting juxtaposition. A newborn trying to keep a centuries-old vampire from acting with indiscretion. I held my breath as I chased after Jasper, not willing to take a chance on catching the scent again myself. With no air, I couldn't call after him to try to get him to stop. This was going to require brute force, which, fortunately, I happened to possess.
Jasper wasn't particularly easy to catch, even with the advantages I had. He was an expert at weaving back and forth and eluding capture. Eventually though, strength won out over brains, and I had him tackled to the ground just as he'd done with me moments ago. "Get off me, Emmett," Jasper growled.
I braced myself for what I knew was coming and took a breath. Painful, hot, stabbing, fiery hot coals poked and prodded every centimeter of my throat, but I held my ground. "You can resist this, Jasper. I know you can," I told him.
"Don't you understand?" Jasper hissed, working on trying to wriggle out of my grasp. "I don't want to resist anymore! I've lived this insane life of self-denial for so long, and I can't take it anymore. It's unnatural. I never wanted to do it in the first place, but I did it for her. I can't deny who I am anymore. I'm a killer, and right now, I want to kill that person."
Was this poor human Jasper's blood singer or something? "Jasper, come on, talk sensibly," I pleaded with him.
"I am talking sensibly, for the first time in decades. Emmett, this is what's going to happen. You're going to let me up, I'm going to kill that human, and then I'm going to begin my new life as a nomad. You can join me if you want, or you can go back home. I really don't care. I'm not going to drink deer and caribou and lions and tigers and bears any longer. It's degrading and insulting."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Jasper, this isn't you," I said matter-of-factly.
"You're damn skippy it's me," Jasper grunted, and with a mighty heave, he freed himself from me and darted away again. Stunned, I watched him go. "Tell Alice I said goodbye," he called over his shoulder as he disappeared. I didn't try to follow.
A few seconds later, far off in the distance, I heard the distinct sound of a human screaming, and then the scream stopped.
So it was over. This was how my family was going to fall apart. Jasper knew that we were done for, and he was abandoning us, using some lame excuse about not wanting to be a vegetarian anymore. How was I going to explain this to the others? Esme had been in a state of constant mourning when Alice and Jasper had left us before. Alice. God, how was I supposed to face her and tell her that her husband had abandoned even her? Was she going to become a human now? No. No, I didn't think so. Jasper hadn't rejected her. He'd rejected our lifestyle. Maybe Alice would follow after him. Maybe that was his plan all along, to take off and get Alice to follow him to safety.
I had lost my excitement for the hunt, but the need to feed was still very real. With almost no pleasure at all, I drained a couple of moose and trudged slowly back to the Jeep alone. Once there, I tried Jasper's cell phone. No answer, of course. He'd probably ditched it by now, or maybe he was just ignoring it. Either way, there was only one course of action left open to me now.
I drove back home, full of dread that was actually my own this time. Somehow, the idea of breaking the news to the family that Jasper had run off and left us was far worse than the idea of everyone dying at the hands of the Volturi.
I parked my car and went inside, expecting everyone's expression to be nearly as somber as I felt. Instead, I found that everyone's mood had lifted considerably. Did that mean that Aro's condition had changed? Surely Nessie telling him what to do hadn't made a difference. It was too bizarre to even comment on.
"I knew it would work!" Alice cried out. "I just knew it! He's too stubborn to listen to instructions, so if we just gave him an instruction, he'd defy it!" That made even less sense than the original plan. She wanted Aro to ignore Nessie's command to turn into a vampire?
"Oh, hi Emmett," Alice greeted me in the same singsong voice. "Where's Jasper?"
I swallowed a lump in my throat. I half expected Edward to chime in, but for the first time, he didn't seem the slightest bit interested in my thoughts.
"Alice, I don't know how to tell you this," I began.
Just then, Aro sat bolt upright on the couch, and suddenly no one was paying the slightest bit of attention to me anymore. What the heck was going on? Did Aro's body somehow reject the venom or something? There was no way he could have completed turning into a vampire this quickly. He'd been bitten only hours ago, not days.
I stared in shock as two pointed peaks began to jut out from Aro's shoulders and grew larger and longer as he sat up, howling in pain. "It hurts!" he wailed. "Oh the pain! The unimaginable pain!" I couldn't move, couldn't even speak, mesmerized by what was happening before my eyes. No one else seemed to be the slightest bit moved by the strange display. Was I hallucinating?
A few moments later, Aro had wings. Wings. Actual flying appendages. "Oh, but that was perfectly dreadful!" he exclaimed. "Well, ta-ta!" Without another word, Aro raced for the door, flung it open, and took off into the sky.
"Did that just happen?" I asked to no one in particular.
"Wait!" Alice shrieked, no longer the slightest bit interested in what I'd been trying to tell her about Jasper. She raced out the door screaming at the sky. "Aro wait! I want to be a bird too!"
I blinked disbelievingly. Vampires couldn't get drunk, could they?
Before I had any time to ask Carlisle to see if something was wrong with me, the door was flung open again, this time from the outside. Bella barged in with her father slung haphazardly over her shoulder. Had Charlie taken a turn for the worse? Had she brought him here for Carlisle to look at him? She walked right past Carlisle over to the seat occupied by Rosalie and dumped her father unceremoniously onto the floor.
"Now, apologize to Rosalie for making her sick," Bella demanded.
Charlie was shaking in terror. "I'm sorry, Rosalie. I'm so sorry. I didn't know," he blubbered.
"Say it like you mean it!" Bella shouted at Charlie, moving like she was about to kick him. I darted over to intervene, but before I could get there, Esme was blocking my way. I expected her to talk sense into Bella, but instead, she bent down and, in one swift motion, scooped Charlie up off the ground and bit him.
"Esme!" I shouted. "What are you doing?" She'd just killed Charlie! Esme!
"God that was good," Esme sighed, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.
I stared in horror, then turned my gaze back to Bella, who must be about to go into hysterics. Instead, Bella just shrugged. "He wasn't particularly useful anyway. Really, what kind of cop lives in a town full of vampires and werewolves and doesn't notice anything's amiss? Those are some detective skills."
If I'd thought I was shocked before, my eyes were about to pop out of my head.
"Excuse me," Rosalie spoke up. I raced to her side.
"What is it, babe?" Everything else might be completely insane, but they could all wait. My Rose needed me, and that was the only thing in the world that mattered.
"I was reading a magazine this morning, and it seems that pregnant women get stretch marks. I don't want any. I want an abortion."
My jaw practically hit the ground. "Rose, what are you saying? You've always wanted a baby."
"I want to be pretty," Rosalie insisted.
"But—"
"This is what I want, Emmett!" Rosalie shrieked.
Okay, setting aside the fact that this was the exact opposite of anything I'd ever expect Rosalie to say, didn't I get a voice in this? These were my children too.
Carlisle took a step toward Rosalie. Finally, somebody with some sense. "Edward will have to do it," Carlisle said. "Bella, I've never realized before quite how ravishing you are. Would you like to go catch a movie? Perhaps a night of dancing? I'd offer to take you to dinner, but well, you know."
My eyes were definitely going to pop out of my head. Esme seemed completely unfettered by her husband's sudden advance on Bella. I whipped around to stare at Edward for his reaction. He would never tolerate this.
To my surprise, Edward was sitting, stark naked, in the middle of the living room floor, gluing sequins to his body.
"Edward? What are you doing?" I asked, shocked.
Edward looked up at me, completely calm, as if the answer were too obvious for words. "We already sparkle. I figured I might as well go the full nine." He turned his attention back to his glue and sequins.
Where had those sequins come from anyway?
Wait, why was I concerned about where the sequins came from when the entire world had gone insane?
Yet again, the door burst open. Jacob waltzed in. "You've got a lot of nerve showing your face around here after what you pulled!" I shouted at him. I seemed to be the only one holding any animosity against the werewolf.
"I know, I know, I came to apologize," Jacob said, shoving past me to Nessie, who, oddly enough, didn't seem traumatized in the slightest by her grandfather's death or her father's sudden interest in sequins. "Nessie, I'm so sorry. Will you ever forgive me?"
"Esme killed Charlie!" Nessie blurted out. "Aren't you guys going to do something about that?"
Nessie turned in a member of her own family?
"Do something?" Jacob asked. "What am I supposed to do?"
"Turn into a giant wolf and kill her!" Nessie replied.
"I don't do that anymore," Jacob explained. "Wolves are so passe. I talked to the others in the pack, and we decided it'd be in everyone's best interest if we turned into bunny-rabbits from now on instead. This way, the Volturi won't be interested in killing us anymore. We're all saved!"
"You guys can do that?" I said incredulously.
"Why not?" Jacob asked.
Well, when he put it like that...
"Oh! A bunny? Can you turn into one now?" Nessie seemed far less interested in the mechanics of what was going on than she was in seeing a bunny.
Obediently, Jacob phased. Instead of his clothes ripping and tearing, they disappeared into a pile, and a tiny rabbit emerged from it. "Oh!" Nessie squealed, scooping him up. From out of nowhere, she pulled out a steel cage and stuffed Jacob inside. "I've always wanted a pet bunny-rabbit!"
"Oh good," Esme remarked. "Since you've got a new pet, whatever happened to that delicious kitten of yours?"
Shaking my head at Esme's reaction, I interjected my own concerns. "Nessie, you realize Jacob won't be able to turn back into a human as long as he's in that cage, right?"
"Sure do," Nessie said cheerfully, sweeping a bunch of Esme's favorite trinkets off of an end table where they clattered to the ground and broke. She placed the rabbit cage on top of the table. "I like him better this way."
Jacob-bunny wiggled his nose, turned around twice, and fell asleep.
I blinked.
I wasn't sure which of these various oddities to ponder.
I decided it wasn't worth pondering any of them. Instead, I made my way over to the couch, snatched up the remote, and turned on the TV. Whatever was on, it had to make more sense than this.
A/N: APRIL FOOLS! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
ahahahahahahahaha I'm so sorry, you guys must absolutely hate me, but I could NOT resist. I'm laughing myself into tears. If it makes you feel any better, the REAL Chapter 36 will go up in the next 24 hours, I promise! It's nearly finished. Jasper's not running away, Aro's not turning into a bird, and Alice's plan makes much more sense than having Nessie tell Aro to turn into a vampire. Also, Charlie gets to live... lol! =)