A great big thank you, thank you to those of you who have taken the time to review! I've had a ton of favorites and story alerts, which makes me feel awesome and all, but the reviews make me go SQUEEEEEEEE when I get them. :) Anyway, I'm still just getting started, so I don't expect a lot of attention just yet.
I didn't throw a lot of humor into my last story, but I'm amazed at how easily it comes when writing from Emmett's POV. I don't mean for this story to be a Nessie-a-thon either; I've just had to do a lot to establish what my version of Nessie is like, since she varies so much from one story to another. There will be a definite shift away from her soon, but she'll still have a role in things.
I do not own Twilight or any of its characters.
Chapter Four - Mittens
Seth was still thrilled about the idea of a vampires versus werewolves tournament, but if playing with Jacob had shown me anything, it was that the werewolves really didn't have anywhere near as much practice as we did. I suggested that, in the spirit of fairness, we should probably try to find something that none of us had played before if we were really going to put on a tournament. Seth was concerned that we'd cheat—he trusted my family well enough, but we were still mortal enemies, after all.
"So we'll go shopping together, you can pick out a game, and you can take it home with you and keep it there until the day of the tournament," I suggested.
"That works," Seth was amicable in his response, "but let's wait until the night before the tournament. That way, you won't have time to just buy another copy of the game and stay up all night practicing while us non-vampires have to sleep."
Jasper was offended by Seth's insinuation, but I laughed it off before he had time to say anything. "Fair enough, kid. When do you want to do this?"
"Well, some of the younger kids in the pack start school in a couple of weeks. Their parents probably won't like them spending an entire day playing video games once their classes start up again. Of course, I don't know how many of their parents will let them come to your house anyway, but just in case, maybe we should try for next week?"
"Esme, do you think we could be ready next week for an all day vampires and werewolves gaming tournament?" I called over my shoulder to my mother.
"That's fine, dear," she replied, already making notes of what kind of food she would need to purchase and in what insane quantities. I assumed she'd be bringing Bella and Nessie to help her with this task, or possibly Edward. Definitely not Jasper and me.
A week wasn't a lot of time to prepare, but the timing might be just perfect, depending on what we found out from Tanya and Kate. If something major was afoot, having a quick bonding session with the wolves might strengthen our alliance in time for a big battle. If it turned out to be nothing important, it could prove to be a great way to blow off steam after worrying over nothing.
"Okay, now let's talk fairness. How many wolves are you going to be bringing?" I asked.
"I don't know," Seth answered cheerfully. "I'll have to find out how many would want to come."
"Well, there's only three of us. Four, if you'll let us count a half-vampire on our team."
Seth looked wounded by my response. "You've got to be kidding me. There's nine of you!"
"But only Jasper, Edward, Nessie and I play," I told him reasonably. "And I don't know if you'll count Nessie as a vampire or not."
"Well she's definitely not a wolf, is she?" Seth replied, grinning. "But if we're gonna do this, we have to do it right. You can't just put up your best players against us, not when I'm the only wolf who plays. A lot of the guys from the res have never even seen a modern gaming system."
I was sure my face must have looked horrified. "Surely you're not suggesting—"
"Well if you're afraid of being dragged down too much..." Seth interrupted, allowing his voice to trail off at the end.
That was all it took. A growl rumbled throughout my chest and escaped from my throat. I had never backed down from a challenge as long as I'd existed. I wasn't about to start now.
"Emmett?" Bella sounded extremely nervous by the course this conversation was taking.
"Come on Bella, it's not going to kill you to spend a few hours playing a game," I pleaded.
"Of course we'll join you," Alice answered cheerfully on behalf of herself, Bella, Rosalie, Esme, and Carlisle. Rosalie and Bella didn't look thrilled in the slightest, and Carlisle was still outside chatting with Edward. "What? You didn't think we'd let the boys have all the fun, did you?"
I wasn't paying attention to the rest of their bickering. I was staring straight at Rosalie, trying to decipher what she was thinking from the look on her face. At first, she had seemed horrified by the suggestion that she would join in what she'd always seen as a child's game. Then, once Alice had said the magic words about letting the boys have all the fun, she seemed to accept the challenge.
"Give me that," she snapped, snatching up the extra controller that Jacob had abandoned when he left for his picnic with Nessie. "You," she grunted at Seth. "Over there," she said, pointing to the recliner.
"Oooh, this should be good!" Seth teased her, but obeyed her wishes by moving so that Rosalie could sit next to me on the couch.
"Ugh, the couch reeks of dog, and so does this controller," Rose complained. "Never mind, I'll deal with it," she scolded me as I tried to offer to swap controllers with her. "Let's play."
For somebody who'd never picked up a video game in her life, Rosalie was surprisingly good at it. I guessed that some combination of vampire dexterity plus the years of working with mechanical things had granted her the ability to pick up on what to do quickly.
"Enough of this child's play," she announced after a minute. "How do I shoot you guys?"
"Rose, I don't think—" I started. An icy glare from her squelched my protest before I was even finished voicing it. I restarted the game again in versus mode. Suddenly, I had a terrible feeling of doom overtaking me.
"Stop it, Jasper. You're cheating," Rosalie scolded.
"Had to try it," he grinned, and the feeling went away instantly.
We played a few rounds, but Seth and Jasper kept ganging up on Rosalie, which I didn't appreciate in the slightest. She was irritated, so when I had a clear shot at her, I didn't take it, running off in another direction to look for one of the other two instead. My sacrifice was promptly repaid by my own wife shooting me down in cold blood. I didn't have the heart to tell her that her victory hadn't been entirely fairly won, she was so pleased with herself.
I really wanted to know what Edward and Carlisle were up to outside for so long, but I didn't want to say anything that might tip Seth off. "Anyone else want to try?" I asked casually. "Alice? Bella?"
Alice shut her eyes. "Bella, I didn't know you knew how to play video games!" She sounded astonished when she opened her eyes.
"Yeah, well, there was this game I used to play a lot when I was a kid. You drove around a racetrack and you could be a plumber, a princess, a turtle—"
"You played Mario Kart, Bella. This is different," Jasper chuckled.
Bella chewed nervously on her lower lip before accepting the controller from my outstretched hand and moving gracefully to occupy my spot on the couch. "Graceful" was not a word I would have used to describe Bella eight years ago, unless it was modified with the word "opposite." Being a vampire really seemed to suit her. Even though I would sooner have my eyeballs ripped out and set on fire than admit it to Rosalie, I believed that Bella might have somehow found her way to this life even if she'd never met Edward.
I moved out the back door and caught Edward's and Carlisle's scents fairly quickly. I darted off in their direction and found them in the woods nearby. They had noticed me approaching, of course, but they didn't pause their conversation to wait for me to catch up.
"What's going on?" I interrupted them.
"Seth suspects something, naturally," Edward answered matter-of-factly. Carlisle was trying not to appear worried, and he might have even managed to pull of his deception to anyone who hadn't spent eighty years living with him, but it wasn't working on me.
"The question isn't so much whether Seth suspects something as what the wolves will do about it once he shares his suspicions with them," Carlisle added.
"Which he won't be able to keep himself from doing, even if he tried," I finished. "Maybe we should just tell Jacob what's going on when he and Nessie get back."
"We considered that," Edward acknowledged, tilting his head in my direction. "Our concern is that they may overreact. We're trying to maintain a sense of calm until we have a better idea of what's going on. We know that the wolves are less... refined than we are when it comes to controlling their baser emotions."
I was getting frustrated by all the secrecy. I understood and agreed with the reasons why we had to keep our true nature a secret, why we had to move every few years, why we had to avoid calling attention to ourselves in any way. I'd even understood why we'd tried to keep Nessie a secret from others of our kind who weren't known allies until she was finished growing. She was too easily mistaken for something she wasn't. There weren't a lot of vampire laws, but creating an immortal child was one of the few that had absolutely no lenience. But the wolves were known allies. Why did we need to keep secrets from them, especially when they were secrets that might actually involve them if we were to ask them to fight alongside us later?
Instead of voicing all of these thoughts, although I knew Edward heard them loud and clear, what I actually said was, "What exactly is it that you're worried about them doing? They're not going to leave the immediate area. It's not as if they're going to storm Italy and try to take on the Volturi themselves. The only vampires around here are us, and they're not going to turn on us because there might be some unspecified problem that we don't even know what it is."
"Do you honestly think that Jacob wouldn't move to move Renesmee to a safe haven if he believed there was a threat?" Edward asked me. The pain was evident in his eyes. He'd known he would be losing Nessie, in a manner of speaking, one day, but he wasn't ready for it to be now, and he wasn't ready for it to be without his consent. "If there truly does turn out to be a threat, then I will be more than happy to discuss moving Renesmee to safety. Until then, I have no desire to disrupt her life."
"They never tried to move their other imprints away when the Volturi came," I pointed out.
"Their other imprints do not possess special talents that the Volturi might want," Edward answered.
"But if Aro isn't in charge of the Volturi anymore—"
"We don't know where Aro is or what he's doing," Carlisle spoke up once more. "Until we do, there's little purpose to second-guessing ourselves. Still, as a show of good faith, I believe we should fill Jacob's pack in on the situation as we know it. Once he believes that we're deliberately keeping something from him, he may interpret that as a sign of hostility."
Edward sighed his reluctant agreement, and the three of us went back to the house together. While we were gone, Alice had taken over Jasper's controller, and the three girls were beating up on Seth rather admirably in the game.
"Alice cheats," Seth lamented. "She knows where I'm going to be before I'm there!"
"I can't see your decisions, remember?" Alice replied sweetly. "You're just mad that you're getting beaten by girls."
The game continued for a few more hours with players being rotated in and out. Carlisle and Esme even consented to play for a brief round, since they were going to be involved in the tournament next week in the spirit of cooperation with the wolves. Out of everyone, it was by far Carlisle who was the worst at the game. He was such a refined, compassionate man; skulking around and hiding in corners to shoot at enemy players just didn't make any sense to him, but he gave it his best try all the same.
Eventually, Nessie and Jacob got home. I glanced at Edward, who was gripping the sides of his chair nervously. Carlisle drew himself up straight for the conversation that was about to ensue.
"What's that smell?" Rosalie asked, wrinkling her nose.
"Yes, the wolves stink, we get it Rosalie," Bella shot at her, both with her words and in the game.
"No, I'm not talking about Renesmee's pet dog," Rose replied, ignoring Seth's look of minor irritation. "There's something else. Don't you smell that?"
It was a funny sight, actually. Eight vampires and one werewolf who, at the moment, looked like a gigantic human simultaneously tilted their heads in the air and started sniffing, cringing at the smell of one another, but trying to pick out the additional scent.
We hadn't quite finished placing what it was before Nessie skipped in, gleefully holding a tiny kitten. "Isn't he cute? I found him on the beach and he didn't have a collar or anything, he was so hungry! I named him Mittens. Can I keep him, Bella, Edward? Please?"
Bella got up cautiously from the couch and approached her daughter. The feline started to hiss and tried to climb up Nessie's arm to get away. Animals didn't exactly like us much, although this one certainly didn't seem to mind Nessie. As soon as Bella was close enough to reach out a hand toward the cat, it dug its claws into Nessie's shoulder, scratching three long marks into her skin.
Three things happened at once. Mittens leapt down from Nessie's shoulder and darted off into the house, too fast for any of us to even notice where he'd gone. All eight of us cut off our air supply simultaneously. Nessie didn't ordinarily smell the least bit like food to us, but with a bleeding wound, we couldn't take any chances. Lastly, Jacob leapt in front of Nessie and turned into a wolf, growling a warning to keep us all at bay.
In the process of this, Bella got knocked backward into a table and shattered it. How very reminiscent of her eighteenth birthday, except that this time she wasn't injured. Nessie let out a string of curse words that ordinarily would have earned her a tongue-lashing, but neither Edward nor Bella had enough air in their lungs to chastise her. Carlisle stepped forward to take Nessie into his office to look at the wound. Jacob growled, showing all of his teeth.
"Jacob will you just let him through?" Nessie moaned. "Out of everyone here, Carlisle is the least likely to hurt me. That includes you and Seth."
Jacob craned his enormous head around to stare at his imprint. She glared impatiently at him, tapping her foot in annoyance while keeping a hand clamped over her shoulder. Since it was what she wanted, and he was utterly incapable of defying her, he snorted and stepped to the side. Carlisle took Nessie by her uninjured arm and guided her into his office. The rest of us started to breathe again as soon as she was out of the room.
We hadn't been paying attention to Seth as he'd ducked into the kitchen to pull off his clothes and change into his wolf form as well. He and Jacob were coordinating to search the house for Mittens, since the rest of us wouldn't be able to get near the tiny animal. Super, they were both in their wolf forms. That meant Jacob would know any second that we'd been trying to keep a secret from the pack.
Edward shook his head slightly at me to let me know that it hadn't happened yet, but he looked extraordinarily worried. Whether it was because of his daughter, who had obviously not been seriously injured, or because Seth would soon be filling him in on the mysterious conversation we'd had earlier, I wasn't certain. Or hell, maybe it was because there was a kitten running around the house. That was actually a little disconcerting. The house wasn't exactly pet-proof. The poor thing would probably break something, or get hurt, or both.
"Never a dull moment," I said to break the tension. I crossed the room to help Bella clean up the mess from the table.
"Sorry Esme," she murmured. "I keep breaking your nice glass tables. With my torso."
Esme waved her hand dismissively. "At least this time you weren't hurt, dear. Besides, now I have an excuse to go shopping for new furniture."
Nessie and Carlisle emerged from his office a few seconds later. Nessie had a bandage on her shoulder. "The scratch wasn't deep," Carlisle informed Edward. "I cleaned it off and put some ointment on it. At the rate she heals, the bandage should be able to come off in an hour or two."
"Thank you, Carlisle. Now, young lady, would you mind telling me exactly what you were thinking, bringing a cat into a house full of vampires?" He turned his attention immediately to Nessie, who looked as if she'd rather be doing anything in the world than answering that question.
"I—I don't know," she answered, her eyes welling up with tears. "He was so cute and cuddly and he followed me and Jacob all over the beach. He doesn't have anywhere else to go, Edward." The tears started to spill over, and her face was becoming red and puffy. "I don't want him to die. Edward, he'll die! No one's looking after him!"
Bella's forehead was puckering with concern, and Edward looked like his dead heart was breaking as his daughter pleaded for the life of the kitten hiding somewhere in the house. As interested as I was in the outcome of this discussion, I was much more interested in not seeing Jacob's privates when he shifted back into his human form. I trudged upstairs to find him some clothes, since I was the one closest to his size. I made a mental note to ask Alice to keep some clothes on hand in Jacob's size. It wasn't as if he erupted randomly into wolf form often, but it would be a good idea to have a contingency plan. I briefly considered giving him the stained clothes I'd shoved into the garbage earlier. I grinned at that idea, but decided against it. We were, after all, trying to put forth an air of good will with the wolves. I rummaged through a few drawers until I came up with a pair of shorts that wouldn't seem obviously too short for Jacob and a polo shirt in a color I hadn't particularly cared for. One of the wolves was in Edward's room, clumsily knocking things around as he looked for the cat. It was a good thing that most of Edward's most beloved possessions had been moved to the cottage by then. The room primarily served as a guest room for when Nessie spent the night, and she didn't keep anything she absolutely loved in there either.
As I approached the stairs, I heard the conversation between Nessie and her parents winding down. "I still don't think it's right to ask him to do that, Renesmee, but if it's all right with Jacob, then I suppose it's all right with me," Bella was telling her. Nessie was apparently happy with that answer, because she started squealing and clapping her hands while jumping up and down in one spot.
A few minutes later, Seth started down the stairs holding the kitten in his mouth by the scuff of its neck. We all allowed him a wide berth so that Mittens wouldn't try to escape upon getting too near to us. Nessie stepped forward and took the kitten from him, retreating into a corner of the house to whisper soothingly to the feline.
I tossed my clothes to Jacob, and he and Seth ducked into another room to phase back and get dressed. When they returned to the room, Carlisle opened his mouth to speak, but before he had a chance, Nessie was pleading with Jacob.
"Jacob, please, can I please keep Mittens at your house? Please?" She batted her eyelashes at him, as if that was even needed to get him to do her bidding. Nonetheless, he looked warily at the kitten. He seemed harmless enough, curled up in Nessie's lap and purring while he licked at his front paw. Still, I couldn't stop myself from laughing at the look of sheer horror that crossed Jacob's features, as if the idea of caring for a pet kitten was the most terrifying thing he'd ever done. Fight off an army of newborns? Sure. Fight off the leaders of the vampires? No problem. Feed a kitten? No way. That was too much to ask.
"I don't know, Nessie..." Jacob's voice trailed off as Nessie stuck out her lower lip.
"Please?" she said again, holding up the kitten and waving its front paw at Jacob. "Hi Jacob, we're gonna be the best of friends!" she said in a high pitched voice.
Jacob sighed. He'd been beaten. Nessie knew it too. She started talking to Mittens about all of the things they were going to have to stop off and buy for him before they took him to Jacob's house.
"Jacob, there's a matter we'd like to discuss with you," Carlisle said solemnly.
"Other than the fact that I have to explain to my dad why he has to try to avoid rolling over a kitten with his wheelchair?" Jacob muttered bitterly.
"...and a three-story kitty house, and a whole pack of those little colorful balls, and..." Nessie was continuing in the background. I was beginning to wonder if Mittens's net worth wasn't already higher than Jacob's.
"I'm afraid so," Carlisle replied. "There is a matter of some concern to us right now. We don't have any details yet, so we'd like to avoid any type of overreaction right now. However, your pack has been allies of ours for a long time, and so we thought it was only fair to warn you if there is a possibility of danger."
"Spit it out already," Jacob snapped. Anyone could see that his annoyance wasn't really with Carlisle.
"...and a collar with a bell on it, and some toys that hang from the doorknobs and dangle down, and..."
"Aro disappeared from Alice's visions yesterday," Carlisle informed Jacob.
"Aro, he was the lee—the vampire who was in charge of that big coven we dealt with a few years ago?" Jacob asked.
Carlisle nodded. "The very same. We don't know what this could mean yet. It could mean that Aro is dead, or it could mean that he's found some means of evading Alice's visions. If he's dead, we don't know who killed him or why, which means we don't know what motives the Volturi might be operating under. If he's evading Alice's visions, it might mean they have a new type of shield available to them."
"Shield?" Jacob asked, furrowing his brow in confusion.
"Vampires with talents similar to Bella's are called shields," Edward answered. "The Volturi have one already. Her name is Renata. Her power works by confusing anyone who directly tries to attack the person she's shielding, which normally was always Aro."
"But it's only him that's disappeared, not the rest of them?" Jacob scratched his chin, deep in thought.
"Yes," Alice answered. "I've been watching the others ever since Aro vanished. I can see all of them, including Aro's wife. She seems happy, which makes me think he isn't dead."
"Well," Jacob said slowly, "is it possible that that Renata leech found a new way to use her powers?" We all cringed slightly when he failed to self-correct his use of the word "leech" this time, but no one said anything about it.
"It's extremely unlikely, but it does seem to be at least plausible," Carlisle allowed. "Since it is only one person who has vanished, and Renata has always been limited to one target, that seems to be one explanation. However, vampire talents don't often expand after their first few months or years of existence. Renata's gifts were likely to have been pushed to their limits long before Aro vanished. She is far from being a newborn vampire like Bella was when she discovered the true nature of her shield."
"Is there any danger to Nessie?" Jacob asked, cutting to the chase.
"We don't know," Carlisle answered honestly. "We hope to have more information in a few days. Some members of our extended family are coming for a visit. When I spoke to them this morning, I got the distinct impression that they know something they weren't sharing."
"More vampires visiting?" Jacob's sentiment echoed what Seth had said this morning.
"Yes, two of them. They are like us. You'll be able to tell from their eye color," Carlisle told him. "I understand if you and Sam feel that you need to increase the patrols of your respective packs, but we ask that you please do not harm Tanya and Kate."
"I think I remember those two," Jacob remarked. "The pretty blonde one and the electric lady?"
"Yes, those are them. Please remind your pack of what they look like so that they won't try to harm them when they visit. We really need to know what information they have so we can decide if any lives might be in danger." Carlisle confirmed.
"All right," Jacob said warily. "But we'd prefer if they aren't here long. We don't want any more of the younger kids starting to phase, and that's what happens when there's more vampires than just your family in town."
"They'll only be here for two days," Alice remarked. "I can't tell anything else about their visit. I can only see when they'll be leaving."
"All right," Jacob grunted. "I guess it can't be helped. Let us know as soon as you find out what's going on. Nessie," he called out, and the rest of us backed away to make room for her to get through with the kitten.
"Hurry back," Rosalie reminded her. "We still have to do your hair tonight."
"Oh," Nessie pouted. "But I wanted to spend time with Mittens."
"You can spend time with Mittens anytime," Bella told her. "We need to get your hair done tonight so it will fade into its proper shade before you start school."
"Okay, okay," Nessie muttered, clutching the kitten close to her as she, Jacob, and Seth went out the front door.
"That went better than expected," remarked Edward as soon as the three of them were out of earshot.
"I told you Jake was capable of talking rationally," Bella said smugly.
"I don't think it hurt that half of his mind was on the cat," Edward replied, smirking.
"Yeah, who knew our alliance would be saved by a kitten? Named Mittens?" I laughed.