Apologies; this chapter contains a lot of exposition for both Twilight and MvA that anybody reading this fic probably already knows. I just felt that going through the motions felt more natural than just assuming everybody knows everything.

Chapter 2: Introductions

DR. COCKROACH PH.D.

The three vampires led Link, B.O.B., and I into the large, pale house. "Might we know your names?" I asked.

"Yes," the red-haired man said. "I'm Edward Cullen. This is my wife Bella, and our sister Alice."

"Sorry," Link said, "did you say you're married and she's both of your sisters? Yours sister? Your… there's no correct-sounding way to say that, is there?"

"We come from a coven," Edward explained. "There are eight of us, four men and four women, and we're divided into couples. One of the couples, Carlisle and Esme, serves as our parents, and the rest of us view each other as siblings."

Link appeared to be adding that together in his head. "It's not that difficult," I told him irritably. "Now… tell us how vampirism works."

Edward sat down. "Well, I don't know how the first vampires came about," he said, "but new ones can be created by an injection of vampire venom, usually administered with a bite. Once someone becomes a vampire, they stop aging, their heart stops beating… virtual invulnerability, in other words. I see you would like to study our capabilities."

"How did you know?" I demanded.

"Some vampires have supernatural talents," he replied. "No two talents are completely alike. I can read minds, my sister can see the future, and my wife is a 'shield'—she can block other vampires whose talents involve the mind."

"I see," I said, intrigued. "So… what exactly are you capable of?"

Edward shrugged and complied. He lifted the refrigerator with apparently no effort, then ran up the stairs and returned in barely more than a second.

"Fascinating," I said. "And you say you can read minds."

"I can read the thoughts going through a person's head at a given time," he said.

"Ah… so, what am I thinking of right now?"

"A tango," he said promptly.

"That's right… and now?"

"The 'speak the speech' monologue from Hamlet."

"Geek," Link said with a smirk. I shot him a brief offensive hand gesture.

"That is so cool!" B.O.B. said. "Can you read my mind?"

Edward's eyes flicked to B.O.B. "Uh… there's something. Breathing? You're concentrating on breathing."

"That's right!" B.O.B. said, impressed.

"And you… Alice?" I said. "You can predict the future?"

"When someone makes a decision," she explained, "I can see where that decision will lead them. If they choose a different path in the middle of what they're doing, the vision changes."

I nodded. This was getting very interesting. "So… what am I going to do now?"

"Give me a second… um, you're going to clap your hands."

"Very good!" I said. "And now?"

"Enough with the tests," Bella cut in. "Who exactly are all of you?"

Link raised his eyebrows. "We're the Modesto Monsters. You know, the saviors of the planet. There's a TV here. Do vampires not watch the news?"

"I know who you are," Alice chirped. "But these two… you get them alone with each other, and the five of you could have been on this island for as long as they have practicing for a battle of the bands and they wouldn't have the faintest idea."

Edward and Bella glanced at each other. "I wouldn't go quite that far," Edward said delicately. "Close enough, though. Alice prepared a little slide show for us before you all arrived."

"Well, you've been quite cooperative," I said. "We should show you the same courtesy. My name is Dr. Cockroach, my companions are the Missing Link and Benzoate Ostylezene Bicarbonate, and outside are Insectosaurus and Ginormica. We affectionately know each other as Doc, Link, B.O.B., Insecto, and Susan, respectively."

"And what kind of creatures are you, exactly?" Bella asked. "I mean, I've seen monsters, but they're always of a species, run by, you know, laws of nature. What are you?"

"With the exception of Link, we are all completely unique," I said. "We all began life as something or another, and science caused us to become monsters. We are, in effect, freaks of technology. Except for Link; he is the only known remaining member of a species that existed during the Ice Age, from his own accounts."

"Yeah, rub it in, Doc," Link retorted. "I'm the only naturally-occurring monster. I'm also the only one who's not indestructible, and the only one who ages… just smear my inferiority all over the ground, why don't you."

"Oh, I know how that feels," Bella piped up. "Not anymore, but I was only made a vampire about two years ago; the rest of my family have been vampires for a good deal longer. With them and the wolf-men, I was feeling pretty useless for a while."

"Wolf-men?" Link repeated.

"Shape-shifting people of the Quileute tribe," Edward said smoothly. "They fancy themselves werewolves, but technically they're not. Their leader, Jacob, is staying here with us. He's asleep; he did a bit of working out today." To Alice, he added, "Isn't this great? Organizing all of our knowledge to give it to an outsider. It's fun."

Alice nodded perkily.

"Now, you must understand," Edward said, "I need your word that you will never reveal this information to any human."

"This is strictly monster knowledge," Bella agreed.

"Word of honor," I said. "We will tell General Monger that we found no evidence of vampires on the island."

"Hmm," Link grumbled. "I don't like lying to the general like that."

"What about the time you told him—?" B.O.B. began.

"Anymore," Link clarified. I smirked as I recalled the incident… then quickly concealed it when I remembered Edward's mind-reading talent. Link and I had our occasional disagreements, but we had each other's backs, and I would never betray his trust. B.O.B., of course, had no such qualms, and I could tell by the amused look on Edward's face that B.O.B. was not bothering to concentrate on other things.

"What about him?" Edward murmured. "B.O.B.? Can he be trusted?"

"Hm? Oh. Ah… I would trust B.O.B. with my life," I said.

"No you wouldn't."

"No, I wouldn't trust him to hold my Go-Gurt, but it's not his fault. He can't tell right from wrong. He also can't tell reality from fantasy; he could give the complete history of vampires on international television and the secret would still be safe, trust me."

"Oh, the cleaning crew is here," Edward said abruptly.

"Oh, my," I said. "Would we frighten them?"

He shook his head. "They saw Insectosaurus from two miles away, but they recognize him. Apparently they're more in tune than Bella and I have been."

Two tiny, tan-skinned people entered the house. Edward gave them instructions in Portuguese. The woman pointed excitedly at the three of us. "Modesto Monsters!" she said.

"She doesn't know 'hello', but she knows 'Modesto Monsters'," Bella murmured.

B.O.B. sidled up to the cleaning crew and spoke to them in their own language. They gleefully responded, and he continued to chat with them as they went upstairs to clean.

"Would you like to meet our daughter?" Edward asked conversationally.

I perked up. "Daughter?"

"Yes," Edward said. "Since you only just discovered vampires, this won't have as much impact on you as it would on vampire scientists, but Bella and I conceived our daughter while she was still human. Vampire women aren't capable of child-bearing, but the men can reproduce with human women. Our daughter is the only one of four human-vampire hybrids confirmed to exist in the world right now."

"Fascinating," I said, and I meant it. "Yes, introduce us to your daughter."

"She's napping," Bella said. "She'll wake up at 7:30, on the dot."

I checked my watch; it was a few minutes past 6:00. B.O.B. returned from upstairs. "What happened there, B.O.B.?" I asked him. "I didn't know you spoke Portuguese."

He looked at me blankly. "I don't speak Portuguese."

"Yes, you do! I heard you. What was that?" I pointed at the stairs.

"Just talkin' to the people," B.O.B. said with a shrug.

"Yes," I said, "in Portuguese."

"No."

I clenched my fists and felt a tic in my eye.

Susan leaned her enormous, gorgeous head in the window of the house. "Blood pressure, Doctor," she reminded me cheerfully.

"Yes, of course," I said. She needn't have said anything; just the sight of her rendered me calm and peaceful in any situation. God in heaven, I loved her. But she mustn't know that yet; we had, after all, barely begun dating. No sense scaring her away by revealing the exact depth of my feelings. Seeing an interested expression out of the corner of my eye, I quickly ceased my mental pep talk. Being unsafe inside my mind would take some getting used to, assuming these vampires were to become a regular part of our life.

Edward grinned right as that assumption crossed my mind, perhaps because of it. "Would you like to stay the night?" he said. "I'm sure you're tired after traveling all day."

"Could we?" Susan said. "Wow, you're hospitable."

"Isn't he?" Bella said. "It's inherited. We're generous people."

"It's a kind of kinship," Edward added. "We're all monsters here."

"Would you like dinner?" Alice said. "We don't eat, but we can zip back to Rio and get some food."

"Link will catch us some fish," I said. "Don't trouble yourselves."

"Oh, yeah, Link'll catch you some fish," Link sneered. "Sure, 'cause I'm way less tired than the rest of you."

"Fine," I said. "I'll catch the fish myself."

"No, I wanna catch fish," Link said hurriedly.

"That'll be enough for most of you?" Edward asked. "Tell Insectosaurus he can help himself to any of the trees on the island."

"Can do," Link said. He slid out the door as athletically as his bad back would allow.

"You are most kind," I told Edward. "I don't know what I expected when I was told to hunt for vampires, but it certainly wasn't five-star service."

"Most vampires are nomadic," Edward explained. "Traveling alone or in couples. Our family of nine is the largest coven of vampires in the world if you don't count the Volturi guard, which we don't, since they don't have the same kind of family dynamic that we do."

"Volturi guard?"

"The royal family I told you about. The Volturi, they're called. Three ancient vampires who form the government of our secret world. They have a lot of hired help who are their guard. Anyway, what I was getting at was that we're very rare vampires."

"Okay, enough of that," Bella interrupted. "We've given you more information that you deserve. Tell us a bit about yourselves. Alice told us your origins, but tell about this alien invasion."

Susan laid down on her belly to better be at eye level with the rest of us. "Well, the meteor that hit me was infused with an element called quantonium," she explained, "which then altered my DNA to grow me to this 'ginormic' size. An alien then came to Earth to remove the quantonium from my body to help him fuel his invasion. General W. R. Monger suggested to the President that we monsters could provide the necessary firepower to destroy them, and he was right. We assumed that the alien had died when his ship self-destructed, but a few weeks ago they found him and took him to the prison that used to hold us. Now we live in Modesto, where I grew up. That's pretty much all there is to it."

Bella nodded, appearing satisfied. At that point, Link returned with an armful of various fish. He indiscriminately tossed a few at B.O.B., then passed them out between himself and I. The largest he handed to Edward.

"Can you cook this up for Susan?" he asked.

"With pleasure," Edward replied.

"You're a pretty cool guy, Ed," Link said. "We could use a guy like you in our business."

"Your monsters-for-hire business?"

"Yeah, that one. You're good in a fight, right?"

"Yes," Edward said, "but that's supposed to be a secret."

"Oh, no problem," Link said, slinging his arm around Edward's shoulder. "We can do this covertly. No one needs to find out anything. Conspiratorial, like." Link whipped out his cell phone and opened it up. "What's your cell number?"

Edward took out his own cell phone and they exchanged numbers. "All right," Link said. "Ed, if you need a ride, or backup, Insecto and I will be right there for ya in no time."

"That's not necessary, Link," Edward said pleasantly. "But thank you."

A screech sounded from outside. "Insecto says this is a neat island you've got here," Link translated.

"Thank you!" Edward called outside. "It's our mother's. Our father gave it to her as a gift. They let us borrow it every now and then."

"Ooh, karaoke!" B.O.B. yelled, oozing to the living room.