Shout out to lil artist and xXKazaneXx for their reviews. I'm glad chapter 11 went over so well.

I want to see the Cullens get their comeuppance too...it's hard, since they live in a world that revolves around them as the tragic heroes. But (if this wasn't a little obvious before) I'm not really a Twilight fan. This fic was written for complicated reasons, but none of those reasons had to do with me liking the series. I think it's poorly written, the characters are one-dimensional at best, and the story exalts the most whiny, passive-aggressive traits of humankind as dramatic and beautiful. Drives me crazy.

Regardless, this story has been excellent catharsis, and I love the reviews. And we've still got at least four more chapters after this. On with the vampire critique.

The Lamest Kind

Maureen biked down the county road, leg muscles straining against the pedals. She thought wistfully of her own bike, left at her Dad's house in Sacramento. It was less equipped for cold weather, but it was also much less heavy than her Uncle's. In all honesty, she would have preferred to take a car to the hardware store. But both her Aunt and Uncle had been busy, and refused to drive her.

"Tools for your little projects are not the first thing on my list today." Uncle Thomas had said. "Either you wait until a day when I'm not busy, or you take the bike."

Maureen hadn't wanted to wait. So here she was, pedaling down the side of the road, bundled up in sweaters and a coat.

A shrill honk yanked Maureen abruptly from her thoughts. She jerked the bike further to the right, nearly flying into the car ditch. Another honk. Maureen stopped the bike, and looked behind her. A bright red convertible with the roof pulled up was slowly breaking behind her. Maureen could see a familiar blonde head behind the wheel.

"Oh, cripes." Maureen muttered.

Rosalie stuck her head out the window.

"Want a ride?" She asked.

Maureen laughed humorlessly. "Oh yeah, sure, uh-huh." She said. "That's totally convincing and not creepy."

The passenger door opened. "Why is it creepy?" Emmett asked, stepping out. His pasty biceps rippled under a navy blue t-shirt. "Because we're…?"

"You being vampires is the least creepy thing about this scenario." Maureen said. "Do you have any idea how sketchy it is to pull over on the road and offer a bicyclist a ride in your shiny car? There are human beings who do that, and mean more ill that you could possibly imagine. So no, I'm not going to get in a strange car."

"But we're not strangers. You know us." Emmett said.

"Not damn well enough." Maureen said.

"We can give you a lift." Rosalie called. "You're obviously going somewhere, and we want to talk to you."

"I am going to the hardware store…where I will possibly add 'wooden stakes' to my shopping list." Maureen said.

"Stakes don't hurt us." Emmett said.

"Well fuck you, then!" Maureen yelled. "If sunlight and stakes don't work, what the fuck does?"

The two vampires stared at her, faces blank. Maureen put a hand to her forehead.

"Look, I've been biking for an hour. I'm almost there."

"We'll give you a ride the rest of the way." Rosalie said. "And a ride home. We promise not to hurt you."

"You can ride shotgun." Emmett offered. Maureen burst out laughing.

"Dear lord, preserve my stupid rear end…" She climbed off her bike. Emmett grinned, and went around to the back of the convertible.

"If I valued my existence, I would not be doing this." Maureen grumbled, offering up her bike. Emmett lifted it like it was a toy, and strapped it to the back of the car.

"Valued your existence…does that mean you are suicidal?" Rosalie asked as Maureen climbed into the car. The blonde girl shifted the car into drive, and they took off down the road.

"Only so far as I don't think my life is so fantastic that I'm terrified of losing it." Maureen said. "To me, 'suicidal' means actively seeking one's death. I don't go out looking to die. But I wouldn't think it so terrible if I did. Being dead is easy. Living is what's hard."

"That's true, I guess." Emmett said. He looked exceedingly cramped, stuck in the convertible's back seat. But he seemed to be taking it with good cheer.

"So…what do you want to talk to me about?" Maureen said. "I thought we were all settled. You guys didn't bother me all week."

Rosalie smirked. "Edward didn't bother you?"

"Well okay, he does that just by being himself." Maureen said. "He makes scornful faces at everyone in the class…I assume because of their private thoughts. But he hasn't said anything nasty to me."

"He tries to control himself." Rosalie explained. "He has very high personal standards."

"And the ones he sets for other people are equally impossible to achieve."

"Regardless." Rosalie said. "We know you haven't exposed us, and you don't plan on doing so. And we certainly don't intend to expose you. But we wanted to ask you about a few things."

"Like what?" Maureen said. "I already told you, there's no name for what I am."

Rosalie's eyes narrowed. "No, not that. Carlisle wants to know exactly what you thought you were doing, pulling that little stunt in the car."

"While I appreciate the question being directed at me, wouldn't Edward have found that out for you guys already?" Maureen asked.

"That's the confusing part." Rosalie said. "He says you weren't scared of us. You just threw yourself into the car because you thought it would be harder for us to walk away from you. Edward's actually got a bit of grudging respect for you now, because of it. He says you may be foolish, but you're not a coward."

Wrong, Edward. I'm very much a coward…just not about anything here. Maureen thought.

"Yeah, that's pretty much it." She said out loud.

"But you weren't afraid of climbing into a car full of vampires?"

"What, did I think you could have drained my blood, or broken my neck? Of course I did. But you guys want to stay hidden; that would have blown your cover. Anyway, it's not like ordinary people aren't dangerous too. Any of the kids at school could bring a gun into the cafeteria and start shooting up the place, no warning. "

Although there's zero chance of that happening in this place.

"But you're not scared of us." Rosalie said.

"No more than I'm scared of anyone else. So not really."

"But we're dangerous!"

Maureen pinched the bridge of her nose.

"This is going to be a little hard to explain." She said. "But I've been…other places. Seen other things. Beyond the world as you know it. And there are vampires there that make you and your family look like toothless kittens."

Rosalie laughed.

"Oh, that's not hard." She said. "Most vampires are more actively scary, us Cullens being vegetarians."

"Vegetarians?"

"We only hunt animals." Emmett said. "You didn't know that?"

"No, I did. Dr. Cullen—Carlisle—tipped me off." Maureen said. "But retarded nicknames for your diet choice aside, the vampires I'm talking about aren't the kind you know. I'm talking about other vampires, different from and more frightening than even those of your kind who drink human blood."

Rosalie was driving way above the speed limit, but she turned and gave Maureen a hard look. Maureen could feel Emmett's eyes boring into the back of her head, as well.

"…other vampires?" Rosalie asked.

Shit. Maureen bit her lip.

"I don't want to get in to it." She said. "And I can safely swear on everything I hold dear that you will never, ever see one of these 'different kinds' of vampires. They're effectively myths and stories to you."

"But." Maureen continued. "They're what I base my opinions on. And compared to them, you're hardly scary, and hardly predators."

"Oh come on!" Emmett said. "I don't care how badass these made-up vampires of yours are, we are not hardly predators! Have you seen my muscles? Do you know how many bears I can beat up in a week?"

Bears?

"Apparently not enough to make you think about animal rights." Maureen said. "If you're so nice that you won't drink human blood, why can't you kill your food quickly and humanely?"

"It's no fun that way." Emmett said.

Great. He's a good-natured, hypocritical animal abuser. Maureen thought.

"Bear-baiting aside." Rosalie said, shooting Emmett a quick glare. "We are dangerous, Maureen. Carlisle, all of us, want you to understand that. You're not entirely human. But your body is more or less like a human's, yes?"

Maureen nodded.

"Then it's fragile as glass to us. We can outrun you in seconds, we can outmatch you in a fight without breaking a sweat. And worse than that, we're social predators."

Rosalie tossed her head, shaking her gorgeous golden hair across the collar of her crisp white jacket. "I was beautiful before I became a vampire. But after the change, we all become more attractive. We draw people in, with the perfect way we act and move."

"You look like marble statues with chapped lips, suffering from sleep deprivation." Maureen said. "And while I concede that makes people curious about you—"

"My lips are cherry red, not chapped." Rosalie interrupted, looking annoyed. "And you have to take this seriously, Maureen. Without even trying, we invite you in."

"No more than a human charismatic douche would." Maureen said.

"You got in our car just now." Emmett said. "Us being vampires, that was the wrong thing to do. But we asked you to and you did. Doesn't that prove how weak your are?"

Maureen's mouth dropped open. She was outraged.

"Are you kidding?" She exclaimed. "You badgered me to get into your car! And now you take the moral high ground and say that I shouldn't have given in to you? That's beyond you trying to convince me of your supernatural charisma…that is an attitude problem. Either you wanted me in the car, or you didn't. You can't pull head case shit like that and get away with it. That's like a grown man seducing a fifteen-year old girl, then saying it was her fault for not being strong enough to resist him. I do not buy that blaming the victim type bullshit. Don't even try it on me."

Nobody spoke for a moment. Maureen could see the hardware store looming up ahead, two miles down the flat road.

"We're not sex offenders." Emmett said.

"It was an example." Maureen said. "Not a literal comparison."

She sighed.

"Look, I understand what you're saying. I get that you're more dangerous than a human being, for a variety of reasons. But I really can't see you as that much of a threat. You're barely vampires to me. I couldn't guess that you were vampires, even when I had all this evidence. Not because I thought vampires didn't exist, but because you were such bad examples of vampirism compared to what I've seen."

"Okay…how are we bad examples?" Emmett asked.

"Lots of reasons. But it was the sunlight that got me, really." Maureen said. "I've only been to two other places where vampires could go out during the daytime, and those creatures were almost as ridiculous as you…barely identifiable as vampires, really. More like some gothbunny's wet dream. The original Dracula aside, no vampire that isn't remotely contrived can go out in the daytime without some sort of giant magical protection."

"Well, we can." Emmett said.

"Yes, and if I haven't already expressed myself on the matter, I consider you contrived." Maureen said. "Whatever twist of fate made vampires here, it did a piss poor job."

"What makes you think I want to be what I am?" Rosalie snapped, a low growl in her throat. "I don't. I don't want to be what I am, I don't want to be how I am."

"Well I don't think you can change it. So live with it." Maureen said. "I do."

"We didn't ask to be monsters, you know!" Rosalie said, as if she hadn't heard Maureen at all. "None of us did."

"But that's just it, you're not monsters. Even including those who drink human blood, none of your kind are impressive monsters at all. Just think about it. Creatures of the night…the image is ruined when you can just waltz down Main Street on some sunny afternoon."

"We encouraged the myth of being burned in the daytime," Rosalie said, voice tense. "So that people would think we were normal when we didn't. And I can not waltz down a busy street in the sunlight!"

"Yes you ca—wait." Maureen frowned. "The tapestry I made…something was wrong with Edward's face, when it was turned to the sun."

She bit her lip, thinking.

"So….so you can go out in the daytime, without getting hurt. But direct sunlight does something to you."

"Exactly." Rosalie said.

"Something not debilitating, which means it's not a weakness!" Maureen slapped her hand on her leg. "Which means you're not proper vampires."

"It is a weakness!" Emmett protested. "It reveals us as inhuman."

"And how does it do that?"

"We sparkle."

Maureen blinked. The convertible pulled into the hardware store parking lot, and Rosalie swerved gracefully into an empty spot.

Sparkle. In the sunlight. That's what those stars were. They sparkle. Like glass, or reflective stones catching the light.

"You people are completely retarded!" Maureen said.

That, plus their arrival, ended the conversation abruptly. Maureen got the impression that while both Emmett and Rosalie were keeping their cool very well, they were angry and confused over the insults she'd thrown at them.

They don't know how to react. Maureen thought. They're used to being called 'freaks' or 'jerks'. And they're used to being thought of as monsters. But now someone's telling them that they're dumb because the kind of monster they are is a lame monster.

"I give up." Emmett said, about ten minutes after they entered the store. "You've got blunt strips of metal, wood and nails. What are you making?"

"Tools. Well, the end result is going to be linen thread." Maureen said. "But there's a whole procedure that you have to do just to get the plants to the point where you can spin them. Basically I have to scrape and beat and break the hell out of the plant fibers to get all the straw off. To do that I need dull knife-like pieces of metal, and combs made of steel pins or nails. In Sacramento I knew a woman who had all these tools for dressing flax, she would let me borrow them. Now I'm going to try and make rudimentary tools of my own."

"Whoa." Emmett said. "That sounds hardcore. And kind of fun, too!"

Rosalie smiled at Emmett's beaming face, her gold eyes loving and indulgent.

Huh. She really likes him. Maureen thought. And he really likes her.

Forks agreed. The two were meant for each other…almost obsessively so.

Don't you go spoiling my admiration for their relationship by telling me the truth. Maureen thought. She had a sneaking suspicion that her personal definition of love was very different from Forks' definition. And that the latter was not something Maureen would like.

Emmett carried the supplies back to the car, and Rosalie drove the three of them back towards Forks.

"There was something else I wanted to ask you." Rosalie said. "Emmett, would you hand her the book?"

Emmett reached into a thin compartment on the back of Maureen's chair, and pulled out a thin three-ring binder.

What's this?" Maureen said, taking it.

"Alice's drawings." Rosalie said. "She designs clothes for me. It's a hobby of ours—I pose, and she invents."

Maureen flipped the book open. There were dozens of fashion sketches inside, computer prints in high resolution color. All featured Rosalie as the model.

"I'm not actually that great at designing clothes." Maureen said.

"They're already designed, Maureen." Rosalie said. "I just want you to try and build a few."

"Me?" Maureen asked.

"Of course we'll pay you, for the material and for your time." Rosalie said. "Normally we send these drawings to various custom designers and tailors in Seattle. But Alice thought it would be better to have you make some of them. She said she saw you doing them well."

Good grief. Maureen thought. Rich, crazy vampire women. One's vain, and one's insane.

The outfits were beautiful, though.

"I can definitely do a few of them." Maureen said. She shut the book. "Is it okay if I keep this?"

"Absolutely." Rosalie grinned. "My measurements are written in the book. You can find me at school if you have any questions. Or I'll find you if I have anything to add. I assume you'll be in town."

"Yeah." Maureen said. "Except for shopping trips and school, the only place I go is foraging in the woods."

"Oh, we could find you in the woods if we wanted to." Emmett said. "That's easy."

Oh great, Emmett. Maureen thought. Thanks. That's not creepy at all.

The rest of the drive was fairly quiet. Rosalie dropped Maureen off outside the Stanley house. Emmett unhooked the bike, and made sure that Maureen could carry the bag of wood and metal by herself. Then the two vampires drove away in the red convertible.

Maureen put the bike and the bag from the hardware store inside the garage, then walked into the house. Jessica was coming down the stairs, in a hurry.

"Was that Emmett Cullen and Rosalie Hale?" She asked.

Crap. "Yes."

"Oh my God! Spill!"

"No."

"Spill!"

"Twenty dollars."

"Maureen you have like, four thousand dollars in a bank account!"

Maureen rolled her eyes. "They saw me biking home, and offered to give me a lift. They were just being good Samaritans."

"Oh come on, there's got to be more than that! What did you guys talk about? What's the inside of that car like? Tell me!"

"Fifty dollars."

"Aaarrghh!"

Maureen climbed the stairs as Jessica groaned, distracted by her thoughts.

They can find me in the woods. Great. Figures. Why do these people think they're benevolent monsters, when really they're sketchy, lame creeps?

Maureen went into her room, shutting the door. She looked at the blue binder in her hands.

Except I am getting friendly with them, of my own free will. But...but if they can find me in the fucking woods, and they know where I live…ugh. I don't want my paranoia to be justified.

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