New Day, New Prank (New Tenant)

I was walking into the apartment building when someone called for my attention. "Excuse me!"

I turned. "Yes?" The woman looked disheveled, like she'd been in a fight or something.

"Is this the Adams apartment complex?"

"Yes…" There was no sign and resembled the other buildings around it.

"I'm moving in here."

"Really? Well, hi. I'm Sky."

"Ripley."

"Want me to show you around?"

"If you're not busy." We walked inside. "Why do you have a gun?"

"Oh, this?" I moved my paintball gun to hold it in front of me. "I do paintball often."

I opened a door down the first floor hallway and into the landlord's office. "Mr. Adams!" I called out loudly because he was not at his desk and probably in his back room instead. "New tenant!" I turned to Ripley. "Want me to wait outside while you get your apartment?"

"Sure."

I walked out. Ripley walked out a few minutes later. Her information hadn't taken long to process because she was the only one who had actually moved in recently (or was planning to). If you live in the neighborhood for a long enough period of time, you hear things about this place. Why few people live here for one. And why no one lives on the second floor. The woman was obviously from out of town.

"So, where's your apartment?"

"216."

"Alright." I wonder how long it will take for her to move. Not that I don't like her or anything, but the only human living there is Lex. Everyone else living on that floor moved away because of Scar and Grid.

I Ripley around the bottom floor: there was a lounge room with two vending machines, one for snacks and one for sodas and water.

"There are ice machines on floors two, four, and six, at the end of the hallway. Your apartment should be at the end as well. If you ever want to talk, or maybe play paintball, I'm up at 407. Nice meeting you, Ripley." I smiled at her as she got off the elevator at the second floor.

I got off at the third floor and doubled back down the stairs to reach Lex's room.

Lex heard knocking on her door. Who could that be? Scar's the only one who ever knocks, but he's here. She glanced at him on the couch. He was looking at the door. Lex opened it.

It was that woman from the fourth floor, Sky. "Someone new moved in, so try to keep Scar and Grid from destroying anything for a while."

"What floor?" Lex managed to get in before Sky ran back down the hallway.

"This one." And she was gone.

Lex looked at Scar. He arranged him mandibles in an expression Lex learned to mean, "What? I'll be good."

"I'll be back in a few minutes."

Lex went to Grid's apartment. She opened the door and leaned in to look at the alien lying on his new couch (which happened to be a rather strange shade of green). "Someone new moved in, so try not to destroy anything." Lex promptly returned to her own apartment.

Ripley looked around hesitantly. She had a strange feeling that something was here. Maybe she was just paranoid, what with four disastrous xenomorph-related events in her past. She missed her annoying cat, suddenly.

Ripley didn't have much with her, so she got settled in rather quickly and turned on the TV.

Grid had been rather bored lately, so he was busy planning another prank to pull on Lex or Scar. Or both of them. He'd overheard Lex talking about candy the other day and Scar—well, you'll see.

He walked out quietly, hissing to himself in laughter.

Ripley heard a terrifyingly familiar noise and ran to her door to see if it was just her imagination. Apparently it was, because there were no lurking xenomorphs in the hallway. Her chest panged with the memory of pain as she returned to her couch and the TV.

Lex and Scar went out to buy paintball equipment. When they came back, they found their apartment…altered. Lex was extremely displeased. Peeps had been thrown everywhere and they were stuck on random surfaces like the table, walls, ceiling, ceiling fan, couch, Scar's weapons… He wasn't happy about that. He was even less pleased to find out that all the food had been replaced with every kind of chocolate imaginable. While Lex was only irritated that all her normal food was gone, Scar was horrified. He despised chocolate.

Ripley heard running and again went to her door to investigate. There she saw one of the strangest scenes ever, one that would have been terrifying if it hadn't been so colorful. A woman and an alien, whom she would later find out were named Lex and Scar respectively, were chasing a xenomorph with green grid lines on its head, which she would later find out was named Grid. The funny thing, though, was the fact that Grid was covered in green and purple spots of paint because Lex and Scar were shooting him with paintball guns.

The three of them ignored Ripley as they ran into the stairwell.

Ripley blinked as the door to the stairwell swung shut. Then she burst into laughter as the scene registered in her mind, replaying itself in front of her eyes. She would never see xenomorphs the same way again. Later she would wonder just what had been going on. On a whim, she went up to the fourth floor to ask Sky about it.

I heard a knock on my door and opened it to see Ripley. "Hi. That was fast. Anything wrong?"

"Do you know about the, ah, xenomorph—" is as far as she got.

"So you've met them already? What were they doing this time?"

"This woman and another alien,"

"He's a yautja," I interrupted.

"This woman and a yautja were chasing him and shooting him with paintball guns."

I snorted in amusement. "What colors was the xenomorph?" I snickered, picturing Grid the day of the paintball fight.

"Purple and green."

That earned full on laughter on my part. Especially regarding the purple.

"I wonder what he did this time," I said when I had calmed down.

"This time?"

"Yeah. The three of them have been having some kind of prank war." I left my apartment and shut the door behind me. "Let's go see, shall we?"

Ripley followed Sky down to a room on the second floor at the other end of the hallway and watched as she knocked and the woman from before answered.

"Sky?"

"Hey, Lex. We came by wondering what Grid did to you this time."

Lex opened her door wider and stepped out of the way so they could see into her front room. There were Peeps everywhere, from the ceiling fan to the alien weapons on the wall that obviously belonged to Scar.

Ripley and Sky started snickering and Scar growled because he didn't find the scene funny at all. Colorful marshmallows did not belong on his weapons.

Look! I finally got Ripley in there! I wonder what took me so long.