Disclaimer: The Host and its characters are not mine. They are Stephenie Meyer's. Life sucks. And then you die.
I'm going to let you all know now, I'm drastically inconsistent, but now that my school is out for the summer (Oh happy day! What joy! Now, if only I didn't live in the Northwest, where June only means more 50 degree high temperatures and rain….), I hopefully can post with more frequency than I would have during the school year. I'm also going to try to make the chapters longer. This one may be kind of short though. I just came back from a week-long vacation, so I'm doing my best here….
Ghosts in the Snow: I love Ian too!! I have a hidden hope that Ian has a thick Irish accent to go along with the dark hair, baby blue eyes, and amazingness….
Goth.one: Thanks! I hope you like the rest.
Grl4Peace: Love your pen name. Yes, Sophie is Kyle and Ian's little sister. She's 17 in the prologue, and at that point Ian is 20 and Kyle is 23. Sophie's really cool in my head, but you probably won't hear too much more from her, sadly.
LadyPup: Thanks! I'm glad you like it. I don't write anywhere else, not yet at least. I'm feeling all light and fluffy now that you've asked though. :
Mistaken Nightmare13: I hope a Host section soon goes up soon, I feel strangely guilty about putting it in the Twilight section. I'm worried the FanFiction ninjas are going to hunt me down and kill me in my sleep or something.
Phoenixfire625: Thanks! When Ian comes to play in The Host, he's already a really complex character. I originally wanted to start the story on the day Wanda came, but then I started thinking of why Ian does what he does, and soon I had a whole backstory for each of them (Kyle and Ian). Voila! Sophie. Though she's gone (for the most part), Sophie still plays a huge part in who Kyle and Ian are.
SunDanceKid17: The O'Shea Family are my favorite people in the world! I certainly hope the story allows more room for me to talk about them, and I certainly hope I get to write more about Mrs. O'Shea. She rocks.
Thank you so much for all the alerts and favorites too!
Caught
Kyle's fist pumped the air as the soccer team he had chosen to support scored a goal. "Take THAT, Ian!" he cried, jumping up on the couch and brandishing his spoon at me. "Hand over the Cherry Garcia, because your Goalie is too much of a wuss to actually defend his goal!" I sighed and handed him the pint of signature ice cream. My stomach clenched in anger as the Goalie congratulated the player from Kyle's team, patting him on the back. Sometimes, as you watched the game, you almost forgot the people playing had been taken over by parasites.
The parasites that lived here had a widescreen TV and leather couch in their basement. After Kyle and I had discovered and divided the hoard of Ben and Jerry's ice cream in the buggers' freezer, we found the door to the basement and flicked through the channels of parasite human-interest crap until we found a soccer game between Honduras and France. The US hadn't even qualified for the final tournament. Kyle had chosen to root for Honduras, and every time Honduras scored (twice now, which in professional soccer is somewhat rare. France was eating the turf.) I handed over Kyle's choice of ice cream flavors.
Suddenly, the Frenchasites went wild! The good ol' blue, white and red had scored. Well, well, I'd get my Cherry Garcia back. Allez les Bleus. Kyle looked at me with a warning in his eyes, curling himself protectively around the small tub of ice cream. He brandished his spoon at me in warning. I opened my mouth to make a snide comment, but closed it almost instantly, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. I had heard something upstairs.
Kyle noticed as my eyes flicked upwards. He silently reached for the remote and shut off the TV. As quietly as I could, I rose from the couch and crossed the basement towards the stairs. Pressing my back against the wall of the stairwell, I remembered what Josiah had taught us about pretending to be a part of your surroundings, the way he had taught us to walk when we needed to be silent.
I focused my mind backwards and down, against the wall and into my feet. I could feel my heartbeat slow as I entered the "invisible place" as Josiah had called it. In the invisible place, you could stand for hours without moving or move as silently and quickly as a shadow; you hardly even had to breathe. It had taken Kyle and I years to perfect the technique. It hadn't been enough to save Josiah, but Kyle and I had since learned other things, things Josiah would not teach us. Things that would have saved him. Violent things. Ways to harm, and ways to kill. Josiah hadn't believed in violence. He would be ashamed of us.
Silently climbing the stairs, I edged my head around the corner of the wall that blocked the hallway from view. No one was there. Kyle crept past me towards the kitchen, where his supply-stuffed backpack lay, discarded on the floor. He disappeared around a corner. My backpack was still in the bathroom, at the end of the hallway. I crept down the hall, head swinging from side to side as I searched for the source of the noise we had heard.
A small decorative table stood at the end of the hall. A potted plant was lying on the floor, dirt scattered across the carpet. That explained the noise I had heard. Someone or something had been here. I lowered into a crouched stance and pushed open the bathroom door. A cat, with dark dirt all over its white coat, was pawing at my backpack. Its green eyes looked up at me accusingly as I came in.
I straightened up. "Kyle, it's just a—" my words stopped short as I felt the icy cold double barrels of a gun press into my back. I gasped in surprise.
"Well now," an unfamiliar, raspy male voice said. "I think we have got ourselves in a pickle."
A/N: So that's how they met Jeb (if you needed me to tell you that, there's a problem here). I'll tell you more about this Josiah person later. There will also be a lot of flashbacks to the places they've been, and what happened to them in the past 5 years.
Also, I have no idea who's who when it comes to the World Cup, I chose France because I'm studying French, and for the other team's country, I just closed my eyes and spun a globe. Sorry if I messed things up horribly in some unknown way or offended any soccer fans. What can I say, I'm American, 20 of us still can't read. In comparison to, well, a hefty percentage of the world, we are officially whipped and sent home in the education department…but I did do my research. I learned that in professional soccer, it is rare to score more than 1 to 3 goals in a game. How about that?