The plan was going to fail.

Not only that, but the plan was going to fail embarrassingly. Possibly fatally. It was the sort of plan, Phil realised, that should only have been pulled off the drawing board to be laughed at and forgotten, not put in to any form of action.

These revelations came a shade too late; the doorbell had been rung, footsteps sounded from inside, the handle was turning.

Smiley's mother opened the door. Her daughter stood on the step, bold as tarnished brass, and tried to remember her practiced lines.

As the mind will always manage in a delicate situation, hers drew a blank. Not wanting to be left silent, she blurted out an uncomfortably loud 'HELLO' that echoed it's false brightness several times before taking its leave and dissipating. Mrs Sundae blinked in the very deliberate manner of someone who is wondering, in the politest possible fashion, what the hell is going on.

"H-hello sweetie." She leaned out slightly, casting an appraising eye over her daughters friends and the ragged strangers they were carrying. "Smiley darling, you know I'm always happy to see you but...what is this?"

The older woman sounded patently baffled and, had he not been as tired and fed up as he was, Phil might have felt sorry for her. As it was, he was merely exasperated by another delay; Viz was heavier than his build would suggest and personal loathing wasn't lightening that fact any. As surreptitiously as he could manage, standing, as he was, in the spill of light from the open door, Phil lowered (read: carefully dropped) Viz on the ground. The alien hit the top step with a toneless thud but remained completely catatonic. Phil whistled his innocence.

Meanwhile, Smiley, caught like a deer in the headlights of a freight train, had decided that, of all the possible ways to explain the situation to her mother, the best course of action was to avoid it all together. With that incredibly illogical thought bouncing in her frazzled brain and flare born in the heat of the moment, Smiley gave her perplexed mother the widest smile she could manage. It looked a little psychotic.

"Hi mum!"

"Hello Smiley."

"Lovely night isn't it?" Even before the crash, the night had been average at best. Now, the only thing remarkable about it was its sudden ugliness. The fumes of the crashed spaceship had painted the attractive navy of the sky with liberal streaks of grey and black which less swirled, as smoke was expected to do, and more splattered like ink. In layman's terms, it was about as attractive as a biro moustache scribbled on the Mona Lisa.

Now Smiley's mother was not a foolish woman. A small, bird-like figure—dexterous and quick—with grey hairs scattered at her temples and pinched marks on the bridge of her nose, she was the observer of many years and wiser than all of them. She certainly knew well enough to know when her daughter was attempting to hide something—not that Smiley was making that deduction particularly hard. With a deceptively sweet voice, she cut easily to the heart of the matter, neat as a surgeon with a scalpel.

"Yes dear, very nice. Who are your friends?"

Smiley blanched.

"You've met them mum. Phil, Phred, and Zach, same as last time."

Her mothers smile was dry and cold.

"Your other friends, Smiley."

"They're...friends."

Mrs Sundae widened her eyes in comic surprise. Phil silently hoped she was a better doctor than she was an actor.

"Oh, I've never seen them."

"...they're from...out of town," Smiley gave a cheerful laugh that bordered on hysterical. "We met quite a while ago, you

see..."

'When we were in Elementary, actually. They kidnapped us to see if Earth was worth obliterating. I thought we killed one of them. They probably hate us. Good times...'

Mrs Sundae nodded dubiously, squinting at each of them in turn with the flinty eyes of someone who is well aware of your lies and wondering about the optimum time to expose you. Seeing this, like a cavalry knight of old, Smiley charged bravely into the breach.

"So...here's the thing; they got a little...beat up—totally nothing weird! Like, it was a completely normal...mugging, yeah. But...we were kinda hoping they could...stay...for the night..." Starting strongly, with boldness only true improvisation could lend, she trailed off, miserably aware how ridiculous she sounded. Looking back, she saw her defeat mirrored in the faces of friends. Well, Phil and Phred looked fairly dispirited—Zach was nudging Viz with his shoe, seemingly oblivious to the conversation.

Squinting slightly to fully appreciate the gallery of weary, worried faces presented to her, Mrs Sundae began a careful process of consideration. First and foremost was the issue of the strangers; half-dead in appearance, they would hardly be in any condition to harm her. Having said that—time to address the elephant in the room—there was obviously something off about them; the fact that some had four arms, for instance, or their unnatural colouring. It didn't take an genius to connect the numbered dots and, as I hastened to stress before, Mrs Sundae was far from being a fool. Out of town, indeed. Given to her by any other, she would have dismissed the situation with a blithe flick of her head; if the government wanted to get involved, that was as good a cue as any to bow out.

But this was her daughter asking. Smiley, who was as open and trusting a person as you could ever hope to meet, someone she respected and loved to the hilt. If there were anyone in the world that that woman would risk it all for, it was her timid, little daughter. Mothers really are exceptionally good at things like that; it's a skill they inherit, along with the ability to make food appear from nowhere, and the knowledge of how to correctly fold shirts.

"Smiley, are you in trouble?"

The girl looked up, radiating bone-deep tiredness like a fire throws out light. She clearly had neither the will nor the energy to conjure more weak lies.

"Sort of...it's hard to explain, mum."

Coming to her inevitable decision more swiftly than she would have liked, Mrs Sundae stepped out of the doorway, opening up her home.

"I need to know who they are,"

As a group, they seemed to return to life, breathing a sigh of relief. It was cut short.

"And I need to know why they're here." Somehow, without any actual emphasis, the word 'here' had stretched to encompass both the general suburb and the wider world beyond.

"...yes mum. I'll explain. Everything."

With the feeling they they had been forced to commit to some inexplicable, invisible contract, the group dragged into the house.

Now, the idea to take the aliens to Smiley's was not some simple whim. In her youth, the woman had been an army doctor who worked in the field hospitals, and Phil was counting on the fact that her medical knowledge would help; he could be dying and all he'd be able to do is stick a plaster on it and take an aspirin, so she'd be better than that at least. It was also somewhere out of the way, a nondescript neighbourhood of a reasonably respectable community where the most interesting thing that happened, on a general basis, was a fight between tomcats, or the bin-man tripping over his trade. All in all, it was the last place you would expect to find alien terrorists. Or so Phil hoped.

Entering the living room, Phil was struck by the supreme normalcy of the place. Outside, there was a wrecked, alien ship and federal scientists running amok. In here there was a fake Persian rug, beige walls, and a multifaceted lamp with one dead bulb. The contrast was broken the second the others followed through the door. Gently, Smiley tried to lie Diz on the sofa. The alien seemed to seize up, hissing in pain, still refusing to wake. Smiley flinched guiltily and stepped away as if burned.

Phil shrugged Viz to the side once more, lying him untidily across his lieutenant. Quiz completed the awkward lattice of unconscious bodies, and the four stood grimly in the cheerfully lit living room, splattered with greyish fluid and reeking of smoke, chemicals, and the thick mulch that gathered in the corners of the alleyways.

Smiley's mother bustled in after them, her face still sternly set, cast an appraising glance over the room and somehow seemed to address everyone at once.

"Names. I need their names." Phil almost sighed in relief. That question, at least, was easy to answer; it was the whys and the how's and the where-for-afters that he was hoping to avoid. As the leader, it was he who was silently nominated to respond. He pointed at each as he gave a concise, if woefully limited and severely downplayed, summary:

"The red one's called Viz; he's kind of the leader. That one's Diz, he's—" Zach helpfully cut in.

"A lying, treacherous arsehole." Phil waved a hand, sweeping the statements to one side but not bothering to deny it.

"He's the second in command. Both of them might be, um...off, if—when—they wake up. Just...just call me; I'll handle them."

Raising an eyebrow, Mrs Sundae chose not to comment, unsure whether to point out that none of the aliens would be up for much if they did happen to wake, or whether to simply be insulted that Phil didn't believe she could look after herself. In the end she settled with a piercing look that made everybody in a hundred meter vicinity shuffle with shame.

"...right." She jabbed a sharp finger at the last, unconscious lump. "And that is?"

"Quiz. We like Quiz." Thankfully, she seemed to accept that as fact so Phil didn't bother to elaborate. Not that he could have; besides irritating his co-workers, Phil wasn't entirely sure what Quiz actually did.

Then, with the manner of someone chivvying their brood, she declined all offers of help and chased them off to bed. In all honesty, it was a little humiliating.

And that's how Phil Eggtree and his assorted cronies ended up sat on a half inflated air-mattress in his girlfriends house at one o'clock in the morning discussing possible ways for aliens to conquer the world and impossible ways to retaliate. Each suggestion of either kind was more ridiculous than the last, and the discussion swiftly grew heated, fast paced and overlapping as they struggled to contemplate what their actions had brought about.

"So what do we do with them?"

"Do? We can't do anything. You think someone like Viz is gonna stop if you ask him pretty please? No; all we've done here is brought dangerous madmen in to Smiley's home."

Phil threw his hands into the air in a surprising show of anger.

"Zach that's not helping!"

"Sorry for being honest."

Phred waved a grim hand. "He's got a point. I mean, even Quiz took some convincing to give Vizion up. Viz and Diz actually want to continue the project. What can we do about that?"

Too tired to think of an in depth solution, and fed up with bickering, Phil sighed and offered a weak platitude.

"We'll work something out."

Ever the antagonist, Zach gave a pessimistic snort.

"Too late, they're here now. If we wake up and everyone on the block's dead, well, we know who to blame."

Looking from person to person, lips trembling slightly, Smiley, silent through all of this, visibly swallowed before reaching under her bed with a shaking hand. There was an air, about her now, of tearful determination, as though she were preparing to do something awful but utterly necessary. Phil glanced over her shoulder, eyes flying wide. Phred leapt back as though electrocuted, Zack uttered a hushed curse, both prayer and condemnation.

Clutched tightly in her hand was a well-worn revolver, wood inlaid grip smooth and polished, barrel greased and glimmering. In the small apertures of that barrel, Phil could see the confident gleam of six, silver bullets. All at once the room felt too hot, too cold, too large, and suffocatingly cramped; it was as though the massive contradiction of someone as mild as Smiley owning a weapon was attempting to cram itself into that one space.

"Holy sh—Smiles, w-why...why've you got a gun." Her lips wobbled, but her voice was unwaveringly firm and she was stone-faced as she turned to look each of them in the eye.

"In case they make trouble," she said softly, as they looked blankly at the thing cradled in her lap, "I don't want anyone to get hurt this time around." She gave the gun a fragile smile, broken glass beads instead of teeth. "It was dad's really. He kept it in a box under the stairs, mum thinks I don't know. It's for burglars, really..." She trailed off, the cold metal absorbing her words and rendering them superfluous. In dull lead and heavy, iron noise, it painted a clearer picture than a thousand books could ever hope to manage; Zach noticed the splash of darkness staining the grip, swallowed, and declined to mention it.

Tension settled in a heavy blanket, stubbornly disregarding all attempts made to cast it aside. Finally Phil spoke:

"Look...we can't do this if we just sit and argue. There no point in that. We are adults, goddammit, not stupid school children bickering over who's on whose baseball team. We are not going to panic, or—or flip out. We beat these guys before; doing it again will be easy." His voice, though not resonant with certainly, was firm enough to convey some confidence in his words. Their history with the aliens stood behind him like a shadow, not reassuring but a solid reminder that not everything was yet lost.

"Yeah," Zach nodded, sarcasm muted if not gone entirely. "These punks couldn't even touch us in first year. I'd like to see 'em try now."

Silently, Phred lay back on the borrowed mattress. His lack of comment was as much a confirmation that he believed those words as they would receive. Despite all this, it was with no small amount of reluctance that Smiley retired the gun to its home beneath the bed. As he lay down, Phil imagined that he could feel the cold eye of the muzzle trained on them, watching as they slept. Phred's muffled voice spoke up in the dark, apprehension burnt in black.

"Easy, huh?"

The night passed in marked silence. Nobody got much sleep.

•~*{0}*~•

Perhaps it was a mercy that they remained unconscious. Difficult as it made her own task, maybe it was for the best that none of her impromptu patients so much as stirred as she attempted to bind, and suture, and set.

Going over the list of prioritised injuries in her head, Sundae drew a soft breath and tried to still the quiver in her fingers, silently willing them to work as steadily as they had once managed so effortlessly. Already, her hands were coated in a fine film of translucent black that she instinctively knew to be blood; slightly thicker than a humans, it gave off a strong scent of rust and river-water that caught cloyingly in her airways and splintered her sinuses. It was cold, as though it came from something already dead, and that thought alone was enough to reignite the arthritically nervous twitch of her fingers.

Focus. Calm down.

There was once a time when she could do this without thought, she remembered. Years before, she had strode about a dilapidated camp, plucked bullets from bodies, flooded veins with morphine, and flirted shamelessly as she stitched wounds. Strange, isn't it, how much the years can take away.

Forcefully abandoning her caution, hoping to discard nerves with it, Sundae began to carefully assess the head wound before her. Her clinical demeanour fell back in place, as though it had never left, a worn pair of boots, broken in and intimately familiar. Deep abrasions, bad bruising, possibly cracked skull; she wound bandages tightly about the figures head, building them up in layers until they appeared almost amusingly turban-like. Not remembering names—not having believed them to be real names in the first place—she silently identified the figure as 'two arms'. Both had been torn roughly from their sockets; damaged ligaments, torn muscles, and burnt skin ringing each palm. The left elbow was probably broken, the right wrist badly sprained, both shoulders sporting heavy tissue damage. A long gash was drawn across his stomach. Small pieces of glass clinked as she pulled them from his chest. Even after binding the wounds best she could, the cuts leaked blood, the burns flaked, and the arms bent antagonistically against their splints. The alien lolled lifelessly in her grip; several times she had to check if her was still breathing.

Shuddering slightly, the whole process thus far having felt incredibly unnatural, Sundae moved to the next, one she had mockingly labelled 'glasses'. The out of place moniker did nothing to alleviate the cool dread she felt as she looked down at the blank, dead visage. Angular glasses covered most of his upper face, cracked and damaged, but intact enough for her to see that, regardless of splintering, their shape had always been sharp. They made for a cruel pair of glaring eyes as she began to assess his condition.

Cracked ribs, lower left arm fractured, muscle in the upper left shoulder damaged, broken right leg, and multiple, slashed wounds to the upper body. Blood was dribbling from beneath those staring glasses. Any attempt to remove them was met with stiff resistance until she found the catch that latched them onto the side of the aliens face. Falling away easily, they left one vacant, black eye, an empty socket crammed with varied pieces of unidentifiable tech, and a long, trailing wire. Sundae set the apparatus gently to one side and carefully wiped the blood pouring from a cut just below the hollow eye. The rest was simple and conducted in determined apathy. Like before, her patient refused to stir and she was bizarrely grateful for that.

It was the final one that made her pause slightly. Sundae remembered his name; 'Quiz. We like Quiz.'. The thought kept her occupied as she worked, idle contemplation aiding her clinical observation.

Broken lower left wrist, broken fingers on every hand. Fractured collarbone. Burns covering left side.

What was to be considered different about this one? From her own perspective, Sundae would have gladly shied away from them all. Something about them, the reptilian cool of their skin, their delicate, slender limbs, and liquid black eyes, made some deep, animalistic instinct buried within her core recoil. To her, each of the strangers were smoke on the wind; danger. A disaster waiting to be set in motion.

With a small flourish of begrudging triumph, Sundae tied the last bandage tight. Her medical kit shut with a self-contained click, ready to return to the dusty confines of the lower shelf. Outside, faintly, she could still hear the warbling drift of sirens and speeding cars. From the sound of it, there were even more now than the last time she bothered to listen, like carrion birds flocking to a corpse.

Silently, Sundae crossed over to the kitchenette's window, drew the blind and prayed that her daughter knew what she was doing. One too many times, she had seen great things ruined by people with the best of intentions.

That was where she remained for the next few hours, until the sun's glow began to edge its way to the horizon; stood, once again, amongst the bodies of strangers, the scent of damning copper heavy in her nostrils and her mind thick with the portent sound of war.