Author's Note:
Hello! Thank you for all of the reviews. If you haven't read any of my other fanfics, you might enjoy them (I am excited about plugging my other stories since "Endless Daylight," the first in my two-part Leah epic, just got awarded a Judges' Award for Special Merit from the Twilight Indies!). Also, for similar surreal Twilight humor, there's always "The Price is Right."
Ah, yeah, I did actually have something to say: This fanfic is going to be four chapters… which means there's one more to look forward after this. Just how weird can Emmett's search for identity and his long-lost secret super power get? Much, much weirder…
Jasper was reading the Seattle Times. The headline was "Police Still Have No Leads in 'Vampire' Serial Killer." Next to him was a small notebook in which he kept making notes about things to write to the editor about. Jasper didn't really enjoy the Seattle Times per se, but he did enjoy a newspaper. Jasper was a very aloof person. Peering at Alice's family from behind a newspaper was Jasper's favorite activity, well, aside from killing people.
He looked up from the Times to see Esme leaving the house. She was trying to be sneaky. But she wasn't succeeding. Jasper coughed, causing her to notice him. "Oh hi, Jasper," she said, sounding vaguely guilty.
"Hi, Esme."
"I'm…just going out…"
"Okay, Esme," Jasper said. He wasn't trying to unnerve her, but at the same time, he couldn't shake the feeling that she was up to something. Emmett had told him about her clubbing outfits, but she wasn't wearing one now. She was wearing all black. Jasper kept watching her. He could sense her…nervousness, yes, and…recklessness?
Even after she left, Jasper was still thinking about what was going on. Honestly, nothing would surprise him anymore. First, Emmett had turned emo and then had gone on a quest to find his long-lost secret super power, his research consisting mostly of sitting around throwing out suggestions to the family ("What if my super power is being really, really, really fatally good-looking?" "Emmett, no.") and going along to Nessie's girl scout meetings.
Then there had been the Nessie fanfiction incident where Edward decided that the best thing to do was take the wireless router out of the house and smash it ("see if any of that smut gets into our house now!" Edward had screamed, while Rosalie tried to stop him, "this isn't your house! Your house is in the woods! How can I shop for sexy lingerie on ebay with no internet?!")
And Carlisle seemed to need more things from the store than every before. Jasper tricked Emmett into doing most of the shopping ("If you go buy this stuff for Carlisle, I'll help you see if your hair really can be used as a weapon") but still, it was annoying to constantly have Carlisle jumping out from behind furniture asking for things.
And now there was Esme. Sneaking out of the house, dressed like some kind of cat burglar.
Emmett Cullen was sitting at a café in Forks. Well, not really a café, per se, since Forks was too small to have any urban-style coffee places, but he was sitting outside of Forks's only restaurant, watching Jacob Black drink a coffee, so it was basically like he was at a café.
Jacob was glaring at him.
"Why the hell did I let you talk me into this?"
"Jacob," said Emmett, "Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob." He sighed and opened his mouth again. "Jacob….what? Oh, right. I have a gift. For years I have wondered what it was. Well, not years, but like a month. For a month I have wondered what my true power was. And then when I heard your plight, I knew. My power is that I can make any woman fall in love with any man. Well, within reason."
"…yeah," said Jacob, clearly unconvinced, and more than a little uncomfortable to be sitting with a vampire. "Do you have any, like, evidence that you can do this?" he asked.
"….Uh, yeah, I do."
"Because Nessie told me that you've been trying out all kinds of powers. She said that you also thought that you might be able to make your hair grow and then use it as a weapon."
"…Yeah, but that just proves that this is my power."
"Okay," said Jacob.
"And….my wife's really hot."
"Um."
"Seriously." Emmett reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He showed Jacob the picture of Rosalie he always carried around with him.
"Um." Jacob looked even more uncomfortable. "Do you always carry a naked picture of Psycho-Blondie around?"
Emmett glanced down at the photo, realizing that Rosalie was, indeed, naked. But was covering herself in what Emmett, but apparently not Jacob, considered to be a tasteful manner. "She's really hot," said Emmett, meaning her appearance, and Jacob was too weirded out to go for the obvious temperature pun.
"So," Emmett was saying, "I'm going to use my super power to make her fall for you."
"And you won't tell Edward?"
"Right. And you'll promise not to marry my niece who is actually still a child?"
"Right." The two men sat in silence for a while, before Jacob finally spoke. "So…what actually happens now?" he asked tentatively.
"I make her fall for you."
"Yeah. Um."
Emmett sighed. Jacob clearly did not appreciate his gift. "I'm using my psychic powers to make her want you, dude."
"Oh. 'Kay."
They sat there for a while longer. The waitress came out and filled up Jacob's coffee cup and tried to ask Emmett if he was sure he didn't want anything. But he was too busy using his psychic powers to make Leah Clearwater fall madly in love with Jacob to pay the waitress any attention and she left in a huff.
"So is it working?" Jacob asked.
"Shhhh!"
"What the hell are you two doing? Why the hell are you always hanging out together? Stupid men!" said Leah Clearwater, who had walked up to the restaurant while the boys were looking in the other direction.
Jacob startled and nearly fell out of his chair. Emmett looked especially smug.
"L…Leah, what are you doing here?" stammered Jacob.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that the patriarchy was so complete that I now had to justify myself to every damn man that asked me a freakin' question!" she snapped, but nevertheless was pulling up a chair to their table.
Before Emmett or Jacob could speak, Leah began what would prove to be a lengthy monologue. "Right, so my question is, what the hell did I ever do? I mean, I've been thinking about it, and the only damn thing I can think of is that I screwed Sam." (This conversation was not going how Jacob had imagined.) "Seriously. I made a list. I'm a nice person," (to his credit, Emmett did not laugh) "And the only difference, that I can find, between me and Bella Swan" (her voice oozed with more scorn Edward used when discussing non-cannon pairings) "is that I had premarital sex and she didn't!"
"What?" asked Jacob bravely.
"Why does Bella have a perfect little happily-ever-after, and I get nothing? The only thing I can think of is that I am some perverse morality tale intended to teach girls not to have sex."
"What?" Jacob asked, and while Leah continued to explain her theory, which sounded to Emmett like a massive conspiracy theory that assumed that everything in their lives was being controlled by a godlike figure who took an active interest in shaping everyone's destiny, and who seemed to feel that Bella was the epitome of all feminine glory and was using Leah as a sort of tragic foil. (coughStephanieMeyercough).
Emmett thought this was ridiculous. Clearly, the godlike figure was obsessed with Edward, which is why he, Emmett, was underdeveloped.
"…And then," Leah was still saying, while Jacob pretended to listen but was actually just staring at her chest, "on top of Bella getting everything and me getting nothing, in the end, I'm left looking crazy. Basically, everything terrible happens to me—my father dies, I transform, not all bad, true, and then get shunned by my own kind—"
"I don't shun you," Jacob said quietly.
"And I'm the one who ends up looking crazy? I know what people say about me! They say, 'And they all live happily ever after, except Leah.' Oh ha, ha, that's very funny! Except when you're me!"
Emmett couldn't take it anymore. He had to interrupt. "Leah, do you feel any different?"
"What?"
"You know, like, um, like you want to maybe get with J—"
At that instant, Jacob began coughing as loudly as possible.
The bank wasn't particularly busy when Esme walked in. Only two tellers and a few customers. Not that it mattered how many people were there. No one could stop her now.
She flicked her hair behind her shoulder as she had seen Rosalie do. Think badass she told herself. She walked up to a teller after waiting calmly in line. "Empty the cash into this bag," she said, handing the teller a pillowcase. Edward's pillowcase, actually.
"What?" said the teller, sounding confused, not alarmed. Maybe he hadn't heard.
"Money. Bag. Me. Steal. Haha." The 'haha' was her attempt at an evil laugh. She had been listening outside Alice and Jasper's bathroom for weeks while Jasper practiced his cackle every morning.
"Huh?" The man sounded like he'd just woken up.
Right. Plan B.
Esme walked around the counter. Neither teller paid her any attention; the man she had tried to rob was already helping the next customer. She walked up to the vault. It was locked, but Esme had super(vampire)strength.
About twenty minutes after Esme left, the bank employees finally noticed that something was gone. They called Charlie Swan.
Leah still hadn't left Jacob and Emmett's table. Jacob was getting more and more uncomfortable by the second, terrified that Emmett would reveal his secret. Why the hell had he trusted the stupid vampire anyway? True, since imprinting on Nessie he had been spending an unseemly amount of time at their house, but that didn't mean he had to hang around with them. And yet, if he left the table to get away from Emmett's horrible smell, he wouldn't be able to stare at Leah's chest out of the corner of his eyes while she talked impassionedly about the Bella-conspiracy.
But Emmett was not at all worried that his power to make Leah fall in love with Jacob might fail. Emmett had one last secret weapon. He had gone to the trouble of sending Leah a present. He was going to sign it "Love, Jacob" but he didn't think he could forge Jake's handwriting, so he had cleverly not signed it anything. Now, he'd tell Leah who it was from (well, no. He'd tell her it was from Jacob) and she'd jump the poor, young werewolf right here. Victory!
"So, Leah," he said, interrupting her tirade, "get anything unusual in the mail lately?" He flashed her an innocent smile, turned to Jacob, and gave a subtle wink.
"Ugh, yeah, and that's another thing," she said, turning to glare at Jacob. "One of those assclowns in Sam's loserpack sent me the most obnoxious box yesterday."
"How do you know it was someone in Sam's pack?" asked Emmett, who was not very good at picking up on people's tone of voice.
"Because who else would mock my femininity like that? she snarled. "Jake, you know what they did?" Jacob shook his head and was trying to melt into his chair. He knew that this was Emmett's fault, and that things were not going to turn out well on the Jacob-Leah front. "They sent me underwear."
"That was thoughtful!" chirped Emmett. "Someone must really like you."
"Or someone must think it's really funny that I'm alone. I mean, these weren't any panties. Oh no. These were sex panties, and someone in Sam's pack is getting his little furry butt kicked."
"Maybe some one is encouraging you to pursue a romantic conquest," said Emmett, who could not believe Leah wasn't currently all over Jacob like white on rice in a blizzard.
"Or maybe someone is mocking me for not getting any in years!"
"If it makes you feel better, I haven't been laid since the Regan administration," said a voice near the table. All three turned and looked. Charlie Swan was standing there.
"Chief Swan?" said Emmett. "Did you just say something?"
"No."
"Did you just say you haven't been laid since the Regan administration?" asked Jacob.
"No. Anyway," he said, clearing his throat, "have you three seen anything, er, suspicious?" even as he asked the question, he mentally added 'other than you three hanging out together?' The daughter of a good friend, the boy he'd wanted his daughter to be with, and the brother of the Creepy McWeirdo who she had married were not usually seen together.
"Uh," said Leah helpfully. "…no?"
"Someone apparently robbed a bank about half an hour ago. And um, no one saw the burglar."
"Did you check the security camera footage?" Emmett asked.
Charlie rolled his eyes. As if Edward's oddly sparkly brother (sparkly? What the hell sort of family had his daughter married into? Charlie didn't want to know) knew more about policing than he did.
"Yeah. I did. It looked like the vault opened itself."
"You know, vampires don't show up on film," Leah said casually.
Charlie laughed heartily. "Vampires! Ha! That's funny, Leah."
"Only vampires that actually conform to traditional vampire lore," Jacob added, "not stupid fake vampires that don't actually have anything in common with vampire mythology."
"Oh, okay, how about fake werewolves who aren't even werewolves but are actually shapeshifters? Huh? How about that? How about the ones who don't even transform and the full moon? Did you ever think of that?" Emmett threw back and Jake.
Charlie coughed. "Yeah, okay, there's definitely something going on here that I don't understand, so I'm just going to go now and carry on my investigation into this robbery…that I am sure was not caused by either a vampire or a werewolf or a dhampir or a zombie or whatever the heck you're going to say next…." He shook his head as he walked away.
"What the hell is a dhampir?" said Jake, but no one answered him, because no sooner had Charlie Swan drove away than another car slammed on its breaks right in front of where the trio was sitting. It was an old convertible.
"Em?" shouted Esme from the driver's seat. "Tell your father that I'm fine an not to worry, I am just running off for a few months on a crime spree throughout the Northwest."
Leah and Jacob were looking from Esme, to Emmett, and back. Apparently there were people out there with more drama going down than the La Push packs. Huh.
"What?" said Emmett slowly. "Is this about the clubbing clothes?"
"Sort of, honey." She sighed. "I bought those clothes because I was trying to find my identity, because I felt…well, that's not important. But then I realized that the reason that people always ignored me, never paid me the sort of attention that Carlisle and you kids got, was because I had a secret super power. I can make people forget me."
"So….you're going on a crime spree?"
"Yes, dear. I'm going to stick it to the man." And she revved the engine and prepared to drive off in her stolen convertible.
"Wait!" shouted Leah Clearwater. "When you say 'stick it to the man,' do you mean a specific man or do you mean the patriarchy?"
"…I mean the authority. You know, the man."
"…The patriarchy?" repeated Leah hopefully. "By using gendered terminology to describe the power structure, you betray a certain knowledge that…" her voice trailed off. "Screw it. I don't really care." She got up and ran toward the car. "Down with the man!"
"Leah, where are you going?" shouted Jacob as Leah jumped over the side of the car and slid into the passenger seat.
"Someone has to drive the getaway car!" she yelled back as Esme sped down the road. It was sort of ironic that Leah was not currently driving the getaway car, but Esme and Leah were too high on power to notice.
Emmett and Jacob sat in silence for a few minutes.
"Well that was pretty freaking weird," said Emmett. "I mean, could things get any more surreal?"
Oh Emmett, you will wish you hadn't asked.
Jasper, meanwhile, was just finishing reading his newspaper. He looked around the room. No one else was in the massive downstairs room. He quietly folded the Seattle Times. He bit his lip. The stories that had been cropping up over the last few weeks had him a bit worried. All those people murdered and drained of blood? It had to be a vampire. But the other Cullens were all so busy thinking about themselves that no one had really seemed to notice. He'd have to ask his wife what she thought about it, if she'd seen anything. Today, Alice was away shopping in Port Angeles with Bella and Rosalie. Carlisle was at the hospital. Nessie and Edward were around, somewhere.
Jasper put his feet up onto a footstool. He leaned back. He had the house to himself. He should do something really awesome. Like…
…Well, there wasn't anything really awesome that Jasper wanted to do. Jasper's most favorite thing in the world was drinking human blood, but it wasn't worth Dr Cullen kicking him out. Again. Carlisle would probably get the wrong idea and think he'd been the killer in Seattle and then things would really, ahem, suck.
Alice wasn't around, or else they could have spent some quality time together. No, not like that. Well, maybe not like that. No one was really sure about Jasper and Alice.
Mmmm…human blood….
Jasper reached over to the coffee table and grabbed his phone. He was calling his sponsor. The one he called to talk him out of drinking human blood. Edward had made him get one after that time he had almost accidentally chomped Bella when she was human.
As the phone rang, Jasper wondered what Emmett was doing. He had some how gotten it into his mind that he was a secret matchmaker. Uh huh, sure. Jasper just wanted Emmett to get over this and go back to normal. Mocking Emmett for being mauled by a bear beat the hell out of listening to whiny Emmett bitch and moan about his identity.
Someone finally answered the phone. "What?" a youngish sounding female voice demanded.
"Who is this?"
"Jessica. Whose this?"
Jasper paused. He didn't know this "Jessica" person. "This is Jasper Hale. I'm calling for William Compton. He's an old war friend of mine."
Emmett and Jacob were still sitting quietly at their table. Eventually Emmett said, "Hey, this was kind of cool."
Jacob glared at him. "You ruined my chances with Leah!"
"Well, aside from that."
Quiet again. Then, "So do you think my power really isn't matchmaking?"
"No. I do not."
"Do you have any ideas—"
"Maybe you are a destroyer of love?"
"I thought of that, actually," Emmett said conversationally, "but if I had been, Edward and Bella would never have gotten together. They are so freaking annoying."
"Uh huh, easy for you to say."
"Oh yeah, weren't you like, trying to skeeze on Bella?"
Jacob just glared at him.
"Wait, and now you're like, imprinted on Nessie? Man, that's screwed up," the more Emmett thought about it, the weirder it got. "Seriously. I mean, when Nessie grows up, are you going to do? Are you going to tell her you used to try do get with her mom?"
"Emmett, shut up."
"No wonder you want to get with Leah. In fact, I am renewing my vow that you shall never be with Nessie. That's just…incestual. How's Nessie going to feel when she finds out you're her mother's seconds?"
"Why the hell am I hanging out with you?"
"Jesus, I didn't want Nessie dating you before this, because it's creepy enough that she's so young, but this just got extra ew. If I'd thought about it before, I'd have tried extra hard to get you shacked up with Leah."
"I think you tried hard enough, thanks."
Emmett was lost in thought. He was just starting to realize how screwed up imprinting was. "Are any imprints normal?" he asked.
"What?"
"Like, you imprinted on a fetus, your friend imprinted on a child," Emmett knew about Quil and Claire because Bella had told him about it one of the times he wasn't able to completely ignore her. "And didn't Leah's boyfriend imprint randomly on her, like, sister or something?"
"Cousin. Why are you still talking?" Jacob was realizing that Emmett's usual silence was best for all concerned.
"Imprinting kinda makes you wolves seem really lame. Like, you're supposed to be all badass but you can't even keep your personal lives in order."
"Well at least we aren't dead."
"Well at least we have fun and aren't just going around imprinting on random children."
"Bite me!"
"I think I just threw up a little in my mouth."
They glared at each other for a few seconds, and then Emmett said, "so this was pretty fun—we should do this again."
"I'm not hanging out with you. Ever."
Edward was walking contentedly from his little house in the forest up to his family's house. He was nearly to the porch when something fell on him, pinning him to the ground. Edward was more shocked than anything else—no one had ever sneaked up on him before.
"Aha!" shouted a voice that sounded remarkably like his daughter, "I have caught you!" and then Nessie proceeded to prod her father with a branch.
"Nessie, what are you doing?" Edward said calmly. His daughter had always had an overactive imagination.
"I am staking you!"
Edward looked down at the branch. "Honey, stakes don't work on us. That's just mythology. The only thing you're going to do is break the branch—I won't even get splinters."
Nessie looked at her father. "I bet now you wish you'd let me have Internet access!"
"Is that what this is about?"
"I had to sneak Internet at my friend's house! And because I wasn't at home, because I couldn't talk to my parents about confusing things I read on the internet, I had no choice but to believe everything I read! And Wikipedia said that I am actually a dhampir, that's right, there's a name for half-vampires! And Wikipedia also said that dhampirs are very good vampire slayers!" She went back to prodding him with her branch. "So suffer, foul blood-sucking demon!"
"Nessie, all you are doing is reinforcing to me that I was right in my decision to not let you use the internet."
"Maybe if you'd let me use the Internet at home instead of demonizing it, it wouldn't be so interesting to me… and I'd feel I could come to you with questions about what I read…"
Edward shut his eyes. He also scanned his daughter's mind. Her wish seemed innocent enough. Perhaps he had overreacted when he banned Internet after finding out about that sinful thing called 'fanfiction.' Edward could sense Jasper's thoughts near, too; his brother had apparently come out of the house to watch Edward be staked. (Jasper had long since finished his phone call with his sponsor.)
Jasper also thought Edward had overreacted.
And that Nessie the Vampire Hunter's trap was hilarious.
"Renesme," Edward said, "you are smarter than this. Your thought processes are precocious for your physical age, let alone your true age. You were reading at a college level at eighteen months. So don't pretend that the big scary Wikipedia confused you. And if it has, then that's all the more reason why you shouldn't be allowed online."
"You are such a hypocrite! You let me read books but not web pages!"
"Books don't have filth written in them!" Edward was getting frustrated now.
"The ones under Auntie Rose and Uncle Em's bed do!"
Jasper started laughing. Edward's throat constricted with worry. What if his daughter had been exposed to smut after all?
"Just let her have the damn internet," Jasper suggested finally. Edward didn't even bother telling him off for swearing in front of the child.
"Fine."
"Yay!" shouted Nessie, throwing her "stake" aside.
Leah slammed down the gas and pealed away from the fourth bank today. Esme was in the passenger seat, and the whole back seat of the car was filled with bags of money.
"This is the most fun I've had in years!" Esme giggled. "It reminds me of my honeymoon with Carlisle!"
Leah thought that was a bit weird but didn't say anything. "Where next?" she asked the older woman.
"Oregon…Idaho…Utah…Hell, we could go to Vegas and spend all this money!"
And so concludes the third part of Emmett Cullen and the Delayed Search for Identity. Join us next time for Esme and Leah's exciting crime spree, Emmett and Jacob's date in Seattle, Dr. Cullen's neverending list of things for his children to pick up from the story, and Nessie's foray into fanfiction (and oh, so much more!)
