Disclaimer: Don't own Ian or Kyle. I'm especially disappointed about the Ian part of that. I'll update as much as I can in the coming week, which may be rarely as I'm going in for finals.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

Hidden

The residential street was lit by decorative streetlamps placed at intervals along the sidewalk, each one casting a yellow pool of light on the sidewalk. There was no one to be seen on the street at this dark hour of the night. I was crouching low, concealed behind and ornamental shrub, and Kyle stood in the shadows of a neighborhood playground for the littler parasites.

My eyes flicked over each of the houses on this street, searching for one with no lights left on and no car in the garage. I saw one, the eighth house down on this side of the road. I looked at Kyle and he nodded, he saw it too. I carefully backed away from my vantage point behind the shrub to the shadowy foot path that ran behind the houses.

This was a nice neighborhood, very clean and well-groomed. Everywhere was like that now, the buggers saw to it that even the former low-income neighborhoods were like a picture on a postcard.

This neighborhood looked like it had been obviously upscale even before the invasion. It was a gated community, although the gates were now kept wide-open by the trustful parasites. The houses were large and classic-looking, and leafy trees gave the place a certain ambience.

Buggers in this kind of neighborhood took regular vacations and stayed out late in the evenings, pointlessly living the privileged lifestyles of their predecessors. Any bugger could do that if they wanted, now that money had disappeared entirely, but these types seemed to spend nights out more often, which is why Kyle and I had chosen this neighborhood.

Kyle and I crept along the foot path, which was thankfully cemented. Gravel made a lot of noise. Making noise was one of the worst things you could do on a raid, Kyle and I didn't even talk to each other until we were safely in the house.

Privacy fences shielded the back yards of the houses from view, offering us protection from the eyes of anyone up for a midnight snack. I counted houses in my head until we reached the eighth one down. Quietly opening the latch on the gate, Kyle slipped into the back yard of our target, and I followed suit.

It was a large white house, without a lot of windows facing the back. Perfect. Harder for anyone passing by to see anything. We had only come into the city for a quick raid, but as Kyle slid open the sliding glass door (unlocked, of course) I noticed a large pile of unopened mail sitting on a table. The buggers must be on vacation! This night was getting better and better.

Now that we knew they weren't coming home any time soon (a calendar on the kitchen wall proclaimed the parasites return to be 3 weeks away) Kyle and I could take all the time we wanted. Heck, se could even stay the night, take showers and sleep in real beds for once. I knew Kyle would hate it, but the idea appealed to me. It was easier to stay in what Kyle called "enemy territory" when I thought about the fact that the humans who had lived here first would want us to stay, and leave the buggers a mess to clean up.

I was rummaging through the bathroom cabinet, looking for much needed supplies such as tooth paste and Tylenol, when Kyle called to me.

"Hey Ian, look at this!"

I walked over to the kitchen, where Kyle was stalking up on food. He stood, looking wickedly delighted, in front of an open freezer, filled with—

"Hell yes," I proclaimed, reaching for the mint chocolate-chip.