Aliens
Chapter 3: Pigeons and Euchre
Elsewhere in Kokaua Town, the first rays of sunlight that marked the dawn were just reaching its sleepy inhabitants. Mertle Edmonds yawned, stretched, and arranged her many dolls in anticipation of another day of thinking about important stuff – like herself, how her hair looked, and keeping Weirdlo in check. Pleakley had just woken up and, upon finding himself on the couch, proceeded to shake Jumba in an effort to wake him. Nani was still asleep, it being 6am and all. Down near the dropoff, there was naught but an indication that two weirdly-dressed citizens were sneaking around.
From behind a tree, Dean raised his head.
"Hey, Mer, doesn't that look like…"
"Yeah!" came a muffled voice from under a bush. "The seat where Elvis sat in Blue Hawaii!"
"Y'think he visits it sometimes?"
"Well, how else are the aliens going to keep the Elvis-sighters satisfied?"
"True. But… that van over there… it's owned by the band they hired for the alien con. Maybe they…"
"Don't be absurd, what use would they have for that annoying creature? C'mon, let's go."
With that, Merwin stood up, the bush still attached to his head. A rather upset pigeon flew out of it, squarking angrily.
"Hey, Mer, y'know what birds do when they're angry…"
Merwin gulped.
Inside the van, a game of Euchre was in progress. One of the players was sitting on his piano; he had the appearance of being rather scrawny, with scruffy brown hair, wearing a blue shirt with an image of a purple planet with thick rings around it. Opposite him was a rather short being with an overly-large jumper and jeans on; its ears were curiously shaped, as if they were part of a loudspeaker. The thing itself was covered in yellow fur.
The opposing team consisted of a rather wide character with an orange-with-white-leaved shirt, and another thin skinny dude with a green-and-yellow striped shirt.
"Dudes, last trick," uttered the planet-emblazoned dude, who here is named Jason.
"How'dya know we won't Euchre?" quizzed the other skinny dude, name of Dran. (Don't ask.)
"Because I'm late for my meeting, and we need to get this over with," Jason replied.
"Oh, your meeting."
"Why do ya have to have your meetings now?" asked the large guy (Linus).
"Never mind, let's just get on with the game," Dran groaned.
Linus lead with a four of spades. Jason put down a seven of hearts.
At that moment, a piercing scream rang through the park, followed by loud squawking.
Jason ran to the window.
"Ah, just another guy scaring the pigeons," he muttered as he returned to the game. "Er… Dran, that smile's just creeping me out right now."
"Oh. Right, remove cheesy creepy smile from face: check."
Dran put down a jack of hearts.
"Wow. I wonder how you got that," said Jason monotonously as the yellow guy opposite him (Sample) put down a jack of diamonds.
"Wha… bu… b…"
"We win, eleven to nine," he said, hi-fiving Sample.
About half a kilometre away, Ms. Hasagawa was on her daily-before-work-morning-stroll-through-the-park.
Whence she heard a loud muffled sound, she turned towards it and strained her ears.
There were actually two sounds, one that sounded like "waaaah" and another that sounded like "wah-wah-wah-wah." The first one was only made by three… no, two people. The other sounded as if it was a whole crowd of people.
Hasagawa squinted into the horizon. She could make out little objects heading her way.
They're going quite fast, I better move out of the way, thought she.
And so she edged her way off the path, and just in time; for as she looked on, two dudes rushed past, chased by a flock of birds of some description. These dudes had some type of white liquid splattered over them.
Ms. Hasagawa adjusted her glasses. Perhaps they were painters.
She waved to them, and continued on her way.
"Well, we know they're not there," muttered Merwin, washing out his hair with a hose.
"Dude, that was awesome," said Dean, wringing his shirt out.
"That may be, but we can't let mere birds stop us. We've got to infiltrate the alien society, learn their secrets, and capture them!"
"And we've gotta get some walkie talkies. My mum won't let us borrow hers after the last incident."
"Good point, I'll swing by Don Voe Electronics later," Merwin said, adjusting his glasses. "I don't know what she was afraid of, we got them out of the goat eventually, and they worked perfectly. Though we could never quite remove the smell…"
"Well, it was pretty bad," Dean pointed out.
"All the same, you could still use it, and if you hang air refreshners on them you can hardly notice the smell, and it would go away after two or three months anyway."
"Well, I'm going to take a shower," said Dean as he opened the door.
"And I'll figure out where we should look next. We will find these aliens!"
"You do that," muttered Dean, smiling to himself.
