November 1st, 2011
Mistral City, 3:43 A.M.
Mistral was quiet in the night, most everyone sleeping in their beds. The only ones awake were the occasional Skylords in their ships and a black car driving down the street quite recklessly.
"Honestly, I don't think this should be our job." Rosetta Pietra Lazorso muttered distastefully as turned a corner. She, being the only one in her group with a driver's license, had been told to drive. This was lucky, because she wasn't even supposed to go on the mission at all. Her lab partner back at the Labs, Clancy Barlow, had gotten sick before he could go, so she took his place.
The boy sitting in the passenger seat, Isaac Newman, looked at her. "Well who the hell else would do it?" He asked in response to her statement.
"The Sky Army." Rosetta said. "They're the strong ones. We're all scientists."
Behind them, there was a third girl lying across the back seat; Pauline Derins. She groaned at Rosetta. "Not the army again..."
Rosetta rolled her eyes. "I have to support the place, my brother goes there
Pauline sat up. "Why don't you just join the place if you like it so much?"
"Because then I'd have to be in the same facility as my brother." Rosetta replied, adjusting the mirror.
Isaac snorted lightly. "Don't you have two siblings?"
"My brother and his twin. But the twin is at Yoglabs."
"So you're all a bunch of Italian scientists?"
"Pretty much."
"Neat." Pauline leaned back in her seat. For a few moments, the three fell quiet. Then Pauline sighed impatiently. "Are we there yet?" She asked.
"Does it look like we're there?"
"Er... No."
"Then no."
Pauline groaned obnoxiously. "How far is it?"
"Relax, just a few minutes..." Rosetta replied. Reportedly, a few minutes later they rolled down a gravel road off the paved one. The path ahead was lit only by the car's headlights. Isaac leaned down as she started to drive more cautiously, and rifled through his black backpack on the floor. He pulled out a small screen.
"Project Star Catchers." He said, and the screen lit up. It illuminated his face with a blue light, a small flashing yellow dot on the screen. Their car was a white dash, slowly growing closer to the yellow dot. Isaac looked up. "She's still there."
Rosetta nodded wordlessly, focusing on the road. After less than a minute, she sighed and pushed down the brake. The car rolled to a halt, and the quiet crunching of the gravel beneath the tires fell quiet. For a moment, the three scientists simply stared out the left windows in silence. A dirt path branched off of the gravel road and led down a small hill, down to an old barn. One light was on - in the top window - the rest dark like the cloudy, starless sky. How ironic for the sky to have no stars on this night, Rosetta thought dimly as she opened her car door. Isaac watched her walk around the hood and down to the barn doors. He shot a glance back to Pauline, before both opened their car doors as well and followed after her.
Rosetta took a deep breath as they caught up to her at the doors and she raised a fist to knock on the door. None of them spoke as they waited for the door open. Before a human voice came from inside, they heard a dog barking. Then another, then another. Isaac shifted uncomfortably as he heard the barking, having quite the allergy for dogs, as well as cats and pollen.
There were some muffled shouts in another language; Italian. "Sedere! Dovrei mettere tutti in adozione voi bestiole!"
Rosetta smiled just slightly as the words, her shorter friends exchanging confused glances as neither spoke a word of Italian or any romantic languages for that matter (although Pauline did speak a bit of Arabic, as her family was from the Arcadian Desert).
As the door opened, Rosetta was greeted by an elderly woman with glasses on her nose and a big smile. "Rosetta!" She greeted. "I'm glad you could make it, come in!"
"...She knows you?" Isaac asked.
Rosetta shrugged. "Lewis must have told her we were coming." She went inside without a second thought.
Isaac rolled his eyes and followed. Pauline, however, stayed put uneasily. "...Hey Rose? I think I'm just gonna wait in the car."
"Alright, have fun with that."
Pauline nodded, and walked back to the car. Isaac glanced back at her in confusion. "D'you think she's alright? She was so eager to get here..."
Rosetta hummed softly. "You know how she is. She gets kinda paranoid. It's alright, she doesn't have to come in anyway."
"I have your lead just here." The old woman walked into the kitchen.
Rosetta raised an eyebrow. "You caught her? All on your own?"
"Yes, young lady, yes I did."
Rosetta exchanged a glance with Isaac. "You wait here." She said.
"Rose, I dunno if that's a good idea." Isaac said. "This woman seems pretty shady."
Rosetta rolled her eyes. "What's the worst that could happen? She's just an old woman." She smiled just slightly. "Don't worry about me." Then she turned and followed the woman bravely into the other room. "May we see her?" She asked.
"Yes, I believe you can..." The old woman replied.
In the car, Pauline was looking at her laptop. She had started playing charades like she always did out of boredom, but then someone caught her eye. A little flashing icon in a tab on the bottom of her screen. She paused her game and clicked on it mostly out of curiosity. It came up with a blue map, a bright white little sphere flashing in the middle; it looked like it was inside the house.
Pauline's eyes narrowed in confusion. But if it was flashing, that meant it was activated... Which meant...
Her eyes widened.
Someone inside that house wasn't who they said they were.
And she had a feeling she knew who.
"Rosetta! Isaac!" She shouted, running out of the car again. "Get out, get out!"
Before she could reach the door, there was a gunshot and a scream, then Isaac's voice. "Rose!"
Someone shoved through the front door and started to run out of the house. Pauline quickly grabbed her wrists and held her still as she screamed loudly and angrily like an animal. It was the old woman, she realized. Pauline snatched the gun out of her hand before she handcuffed her, then quickly tranquilizer her. As the old woman groaned and fell to the ground, out cold.
Pauline grabbed her glasses off of her face, and the old woman's image faded to that of a girl, perhaps around twenty years old. She had blonde-ginger hair, and a fair face. Pauline stared at her blankly. She was the one they'd sought out to catch. They'd fallen right for her trap.
Isaac suddenly ran into the doorway. He looked at Star, then at Pauline. "You caught her?" He asked.
Pauline nodded and looked at him.
He had a distressed look in his eyes. "Rosetta got shot, we have to get her to a hospital."
Pauline's eyes widened and she nodded quickly, running to turn on the car.
All that was left in the night after they drove away with both Rosetta and Star was the sound of howling dogs, and the wind in the leaves on the trees.