剧情开始往我当初对某未完文的世界观设定上靠，不过这次所有角色都是原创（真的？你也出息了？）。

          [The Alien]

He walked out of the cinema after 20 minutes of the premier.

"Like I said before, Super Hero movies have no future. Which is not surprising, since everything else around us probably doesn't have any, either. But now they do not even have a present anymore... "

Mumbling halfheartedly into that phone between his ear and shoulder, he leaned on the side of the car, reaching for the keys in the jeans pocket with the right hand, the left hand trying to turn around the side mirror. The mirror was successfully turned, as he saw a pair of eyes inside, the rest covered in black, under the pale light of the parking lot.

"Well," he went on, a strange smile emerging from the corner of his mouth,
"Looks like I don't have one anymore, either."

 
=============
The news of the shooting spreaded on the media like a plague. They were repeating that one of the first victims was Brandon Khai, aka "Slash", a famous freelance reporter and critic on a broad range of cultural events, and that his tweeter account was flooded by the RIPs of his fans. One shot on head in the parking lot. The only clean kill of the night. The rest of the theater was a bloodbath. No sign of the murderer. People were browsing through their phones, while the big screen in the center of the roundabout eagerly switched to the crime scene, when the code realized that 80% of the passing pedestrians are reading about Khai.
 
A tall beautiful woman was being held back, shouting insults at the reporters and the police indiscriminately. Tears all over her face.
 
"That must be Khai's investment banker wife then." Said one tweet immediately, from someone in the same corner.
"Sure looks like. Love that attitude! Boy, is she hot!" tweeted another.
"She's an alien, you idiot. Both Khai and her. That's probably why he got what he deserved."
"So what? You racist pig!"
"Would you shut up about a dead man's wife?"
"Again, not a man, an alien, lol."
"...."
 
 
"This is a tragic day for all of us, for our great city planet of Bodom, the cultural center of the universe. Our hearts go out to the family of the victims..."
"Oh F*** that sh**!! If you ever got a heart, SHOW ME NOW!!!"
 
The speeching politician was tackled. The tall beautiful woman was now held by more armoured policemen. She was still trying to fight her way to eat the politician alive, but
her suit dress had refrained her movements. It was difficult to stand up once she fell, because of the kneel-length skirt tightly wrapped around her hip and thighs.
Onlookers were recording videos on their phone.
 
"This is SO gonna make Youtube front page."
80% of the passing pedestrians thought, collectively.
 
 
 
                                             [The Funeral]
 
It quieted down surprisingly quickly. In about a week, the cinema shooting had disappeared from most of the media coverage. When the funeral date came, Neil Mackay found no journalist at the cemetery gate. He gave a sigh of relief.
 
"Thank god!" He cried, "I got quite a stage fright."
"Don't say it out loud. You are the freakin' guitar player and you got a stage fright. You are a disgrace."
Said the small girl next to him. Short blueish black hair, Timothy had her gothic makeup on, coupled with laced blue scottish skirt, torn black stockings and an Opeth T-shirt.
"Shut up! I'm OK with crowds, it's just a camera thing..."
"Too bad K Slash will not come to see us anymore."
 
 
There was a natural silence. The autumn wind was blowing over the top of the monuments.
The enormous tanned right hand was joined by the thin white left hand. Both wearing Peruvian Cross and silver skull bracelets. Neil was almost double the size of Timothy, the gothic looking young girl. His long fuzzy ginger hair looked shiny in the orange sunset.
 
"Who else is coming to the funeral - apart from Mae? Surely even a guy like K Slash got some family...?"Asked Neil.
"...."
"...Or some tweeter fans?"
"Shut up."
Timothy bit on her lip and tightened the grasp on Neil's hand. Neil made a face of pain in silence.
Just then they heard a car engine sound.
 
 
Mae came with the same outfit. Black suit dress, tightly and neatly wrapped around her perfect body. She's as tall as Neil with those ten centimeters black heels, which got stamped right into the dirt. She stood with her head held high, with a sad faint smile which didn't fit with the overall body language.
"Mae!!" Shouted Neil, running over to hug her, "we thought you'd come later! What about work..."
"I quit." She said with a soft voice, again didn't fit the tough-ass body language at all.
Neil looked at Timothy, as if asking for help, somehow. 
Timothy stepped forward and the two women stared at each other. Then, Timothy turned away to the sun, silently. Mae smiled, her body seemed to have loosened up a little.
 
"Don't be sad," She said, with a more solid and cheerful voice, "You still get invited to eat Dragon at the Cloak And Dagger's."
 
 
With that said, Mae stepped up to the small monument, knelt down in the dirt, the palm of left hand firmly attached onto the rough black lava stone with no name, facial expression like a doctor listening to heartbeats.
 
The wind was blowing ever stronger, brushing the tall grass into waves, same shape with the gradually thickening clouds high above. The sky had become a lagoon of clouds in an approaching storm. Right on top of them, clouds were spinning faster and faster like a water spiral, until it formed an unnatural shape, like a massive beehive in the middle of the sky. The sun was setting faster too, and colors of the clouds were changing from golden to scarlet, then to violet-grey-blue.
 
Neil braced himself in the wind and stepped back once or twice, as if he was being blown away by the massive wind. Timothy, on the other hand, stood as still as the black lava stone, only her skirt flowing madly as a battle flag.
 
The stone seemed to be giving a sense of warmth, as they heard thunders, strangely warm and comforting sound of thunders.
 
 
 
                    [A Day In The Life Without K Slash]
 
 
"I think he really was an alien. The weather that afternoon, it was just too...."
"Neil, I'm still sleeping..."
"And I don't know you, but I kept feeling that someone else was there in the funeral too... someone invisible...How creepy is that?"
"Neil, I really don't care. We've got to pay our rent today though. Is Mae still here?"
"What's the problem? Aliens are cool! Either way, he's dead already… Right?"
"Shut up."
 
Timothy sat up on their bed half naked. A tattoo of a black rose marks her heart on the chest, and a bloody thorn on the back. Neil, still lying down, was tracing Timothy's distinctive spine with his fingertip. Tattoos on his chest were lined up in the same pattern with a Transformer.
.
"Whatever. Breakfast?"
 
 
They could not find Mae in the mansion. The other rooms were empty too - the other students were still away for the end of the summer vacation. Khai may have had many respected job titles on the web, but as a landlord he really was terrible. This beautiful mansion right in the center of the university zone should have attracted many more students, but he only managed to fill half of it with kids who met his bizarre standard (see Neil and Timothy). And he could have used the rooms in the summer vacation to rent for tourists too - considering how popular a place Bodom was for tourists universe-wise. Of course, he's either too busy attending movie premiers/concerts/comic-cons/fashion shows, talking sh** about them, or too lazy to change out of his "very stylish" bathrobe and go toilet paper shopping.
 
He probably wasn't a perfect househusband either... But one thing he did right was to brag about his hot talented investment banker wife in all his documented writings. Neil and Timothy figured that it was the only thing that kept her happy. Maybe he's incredible in bed? But wait, Mae rented next to Wall Street as she reportedly worked 100 hours per week and the only time they'd meet was during her Starbuck breaks on skype and/or in their dreams. Surely transport had improved since the beginning of the century, but it still took half a day to jump between planets, right?
 
 
So they managed to dig a box of milk out of the fridge, made some space on the crowded kitchen table and started making cereal. TV was left on and it was blabbing about earthquakes, droughts, floods, comet storms, some new random shooting which killed yet another dozen people in a supermarket.
 
"Do you remember one of K's T-shirt ideas?" Neil suddenly started.
"Which one? He gets too stupid sometimes I couldn't remember'em all..."
"'We Are All Gonna Die & All I Got Is This Stupid T-Shirt'."
"That sucks! Did he manage to sell any?"
"Not as much as the one that says 'My Weakness Is That I'm A Perfectionist & I Work Too Much '."
 
As they were talking, the TV suddenly switched itself to the follow-up of the cinema shooting.
"Police has suspected alien force involvement, as the murderer appeared to be highly skilled in killing but acted without much common sense. Emotional disturbance could be easily sensed, a distinctive characteristic of alien killing incidents over the pass few years..."
 
"Who the hell left that conversation follower on!" Neil shouted, frantically searching for the control under the piles on the table.
Timothy just stared at the TV and shouted "Shut up!"
"Are you sure you'd like me to switch off? You'll miss out the news about the person of your concern just now..."
"SHUT UP, BITCH!"
The TV turned itself off.
 
"Seriously, buggers who're crazy enough to go shooting at random people, they got to be emotionally disturbed! Why does that have to link to the aliens? Aren't there crazy humans around?" Neil grumbled.
"Don't you get it? It's what K Slash said before. They are just painting aliens as mentally unstable to screw them up, so they don't get jobs, they don't get friends or love, they don't get anything. That way they'd be forced to leave the human territory." Timothy shaked her head, "The way human beings nowadays are, I don't see how kicking the aliens out is gonna help the human survival."
 
"Brandon Khai's clean kill was also thought to be a factor proving the police theory, as Mr Khai was considered a defender of alien rights in his own sarcastic way. Consequently, although held a Human passport with no apparent link to alien world, and maintained a mentally healthy and fun image to the public, many suspected Mr Khai came from an Alien origin. Logically, an alien killer would respect its own race and therefore gave him a dignified death... "
 
"SHUT UP BITCH!!!!" Both angrily responded. The TV quietly disappeared from the kitchen wall.
 
"'Logically?' These people don't have logic at all! If the killer was someone who hates aliens, all the more possibility that he'd be human...I'm going to log in Tweeter right now to bash those idiots...."
"Forget it Neil. K Slash wouldn't have cared," Timothy softened her voice, "he was just an idiot who liked to be sarcastic about everything. He brought it on himself too.... Anyways, let's leave here. I don't know how to turn off that stalker TV properly. If we keep talking about him, it'd just come back."
"Good call, let's go find Mae. One buck to bet that she's in Starbuck’s."
 
 
To Neil’s utter surprise, she was NOT in Starbuck’s and TV was on there too, so they moved on, slowly descending from the Cerro through Maples, White Populars and Sunflower fields on the campus, until they made their way to the Back Sea. Mediterranean styled White sand stone buildings with deep blue doors and windows scattered among the yellow and green leaves. The sky was especially clear and blue too, making it the lucky day for large groups of photographing tourists in Bodom that day.
 
“Remember that K Slash said he used to be a tour guide around the Uni back in the days he studied here? In one of his blogs? ”
Neil just couldn’t help talking about his old landlord that day. When someone you see everyday suddenly dies and disappears, first you’d shut down, feeling cold inside out, and your brain stops functioning, memory turns blank. Then, an endless wave of fear will suddenly strike you, and you realize that you ARE not going to see him ANYMORE. The bathrobe, the beard, the stark black hair and penetrating emerald eyes, the laughs, the hangovers, the cigarettes… ANYTHING. That is when you cry your heart out, when sadness flushes all over your interior like a car wash. Then, you wake up one day, more peaceful than ever. The fear and sorrow of the lost have gone. That person has become an ancient history, a Wikipedia page, or a bunch of google search results. That is when you talk about him, laugh about him as usual, if not more often than any time before.
 
“Wouldn’t be surprised if he did, knowing how many languages he spoke…I thought you didn’t like to read his stuff,” Timothy smiled, “you said it was gay.”
“Well, what can I say, he follows FASHION!”
“That’s a Mae thing. He’d start with something like ‘Again, duty calls: yours truly is being sent to the Paris Fashion Week under the order of my Wall Street duchess...’ I think he always gets kicked out though, too many Zoolander reference!”
“I’m surprised how willingly he showed himself as her househusband-errand boy, given how famous he got. Maybe one of his marketing technics to get to girls.”
“What marketing technics? He’s a Liberal Arts idiot. Let’s go around the Business School, it drives me crazy to see those MBAs who come to class in a suit.”
“If half of them were as cool as Mae…”
“Or as hot as Mae. Too bad business schools tend to attract only boring middle temperatures…”
 
 
“This whole freakin’ world is full of boring middle temperatures,” Neil gazed up the deep blue sky, “BORING. That’s how we humans have become. I’d rather the aliens take over the world someday…”
He suddenly stopped, and looked around the top of the nearby popular trees.
“Don’t think they got CCTV here at the beach. No worries.” Timothy assured him.
“Free society my ass… Whatever. Hey, should we go to practice then? I feel like playing. Plus, the gig is near… I think at least Mae’s gonna come.”
 
They spent the rest of the morning in an empty music room, playing Metallica’s Black Album. When they started to get very angry and then hungry, an incoming call from Mae broke in between the electric guitar and the drums:
 
“Kids, Cloak And Dagger’s for dinner?”
 
 
 
 
                    [Cloak and Dagger's]
 
 
“So, you finally passed the point of fear and sadness and feel like meeting K Slash related people to awaken the memory again?” Shot Timothy as soon as they saw Mae in front of the Station.
“Uncomfortable truth detected! Ten points to Tim.” Mae grinned, “You do live up to your reputation on this one.”
 
“Seriously Mae, we’ve been worried! You were floating around like a ghost. One day you show up in the morning almost drowned in alcohol, another day you won’t talk and only sit in Starbuck’s watching cat videos, then you disappear completely!” said Neil, “Where have you been anyways?”
“Nice try, but I know you stopped worrying long ago after you realized that someone like I wasn’t gonna kill myself!” Mae laughed, “The truth is, I’ve been dream-dating old Johnny Walker for a distraction, but he was too old for me anyways so took me the whole day to dump him...I’d like to try Jack Daniel’s next time.”
What a typical Mae, they think. As a couple, they do have a significant amount of bullsh**ing talent in common.
 
"So let me guess, is this the favorite restaurant of K Slash?"
"Oh no, I thought you knew better. He hated this place! It's one of my favorites though."
"How can we know, it's so damn expensive and posh! I had to borrow a suit for this." Neil protested.
"Even expensive for bankers...so chances are that this will be your once and only time at the legendary Cloak and Dagger's to brag about for the rest of your life. I'd suggest you make the most out of it."
 
Despite how Mae normally behaves, when she wanted to sound like a banker, she could do it so effortlessly that it'd chill your bones. Timothy thought. She and Khai, they are exactly the same and extremely different at the same time…
 
“Ouch! Don’t tell me the purpose of the invite is to double the rent?!” Neil moaned. Being a trained professional for receiving sarcasm (by Khai), he just doesn’t take stuff seriously anymore.
 
Whilst talking, they had boarded the Ascensor. It was similar to a cargo elevator, but ten times bigger, with illuminated milky white walls, comfortable leather seats, portable screens, a mini-bar and a droid serving drinks.
“Wow, first class too… Has to be a more special occasion than rent, right?”
“Let’s just say that I can’t bear the thought to be the only one in evening dress among hundreds… I may be on unemployment right now but I still got Lightyears for upgrade.”
 
Mae had lent Timothy a silver Sharee to use as the evening dress, which was clever as Timothy was too small to wear any other of Mae's dresses, and also couldn't stand still on any heel for more than 1 minute. Mae herself was wearing a simple long black dress - she's been wearing black since Khai's gone, as if it was for mourning.
 
 
“Gate Closing. Please fasten your seat belt…”
“Fasten the seat belt” meant that they were instantly covered in a silicon cocoon. The wall was emitting faint blue lights and they were feeling strong high frequency vibration. Then, they started losing gravity a little, feeling lighter and somehow freer. Wine still in her hand, Mae was observing the fine movement of the liquid inside her tall glass.
 
“Never cease to amaze, isn’t it,” she murmured, “Who’d know that only less than 100 years ago humans were still shooting rockets up the sky to get to the moon?”
“Technology is the only thing I’m proud of for being human,” Neil replied, “That’s why computer science is the only thing I’d study in this universe.”
“Well, rumor has it that all the scientists, engineers and programmers are aliens, and that it’s all part of the alien's 'geek conspiracy'…” Mae smiled.
“Oh Mae, don’t even get him started…” Timothy leaned back on the leather, as Neil rumbled on and on:
 
“..They are dumb, so they hate you if you are clever, so if you are clever you are an alien, and SOMETHING HAS TO BE WRONG WITH YOU, and THEY HAVE TO HAVE SOMETHING BETTER THAN YOU. So, being clever is wrong. Creativity has already been confirmed as a mental illness since 50 years ago, right? The cleverer you are, the more mental you are. If you are a genius, they'd put you in an asylum. So what I’m dumb? I got a happy childhood, I am mentally healthy, I have fun with family and friends… So what you are clever? You are under pressure all your life, you are lonely, depressed, insecure, sooner or later you'll collaspe… OK then, every human’s happy, but what do they produce? Can anyone tell me anything they’re useful at?...”
 
He turned around to find both girls putting headphones on. He sighed, then turned on the screen to watch a random movie.
 
 
 
"OK, here we arrived," Mae announced happily while the Ascensor door slided open, "Planet of the Shirans. "
“What??? You serious? So Cloak And Dagger IS ACTUALLY on Shira??” Neil yelled so loud even the droid on board trembled a bit.
“What, you mean you DIDN’T know? With all your obsession about aliens?” Timothy made that “you are a disgrace” face again.
“Just seeing your face now is worth coming all the way… Go, see it, get surprised.”
 
Dry and strong wind swept right into their faces. They were facing a typical grassland landscape. It was already autumn, but the grass here was still green. It looked tender from afar but when you stepped on them, you could feel the hard stems and leaves through your shoes. Around 100 meters forward, an enormous white tent spreaded in front of the visitors. Music of ancient wind instruments was floating in the air as an invisible veil.
 
There was no one outside. However when they entered the tent they found themselves among hundreds from around the universe. Tables were completely floating in the air, spiraling up like stairs, slowly moving around in an organized fashion. Invisible shields were in place to stop guests from falling. Waiters and waitresses flew around like fairies.
 
They were seated by their table and then it started moving, approximately the speed of a giant ferris wheel. You could apparently order to change your own view, which was projected by the shield, to decide if you want to fly over a desert, a snow mountain, a city, or classic grassland. All distinctive views of Shira, the home planet of the only intelligent beings found by humans so far - They were known as "The Aliens".
 
The waiters and waitresses looked like a mixed race from all humans, their physical appearance even more finely chiseled. They looked stronger and healthier, and they certainly didn't flow in the air with the help of any human technology.
The tables either.
 
"It's the first time I saw soooo many confirmed aliens together!" Neil exclaimed, "They looked so perfect, so beautiful - Hey, I would say both of you beautiful girls could be one of them....I don't know if you'd take it as a compliment or not, I meant it as a compliment."
"Compliment accepted," Smiled Mae, "Same goes to you. You can be quite handsome if you take a little more care."
"Come on, I'm a ginger head," Neil laughed, "I don't think they've got any ginger head aliens, right? Thought they are all black haired."
"Haha, you have no idea. It is indeed rare, but I believe there are. Btw, who can stop someone to dye his hair? You can't tell."
 
 
Still, what is the purpose of coming here? Timothy looked at Mae. It’s not possible to sense even a little sadness anymore, but it’s Mae, probably the most bearing person Timothy has ever known. She wouldn’t be surprised if Mae were a special agent or… an alien herself.
… Oh come on, would any alien actually work as an investment banker? Didn’t K Slash say that they didn’t even have the concept of money until the human spaceship arrived?
 
 
"Now, here comes the show!" Mae's spirit seemed to be rising, "This was originally part of the prayers in the Shiran temples. Think about it as a mass for Christians. "
"They are OK performing this in a restaurant??"
"No worries, it's been done for about 10 years now. I don't think they care about religion too much anymore."
 
 
The Shiran band started rising from the bottom of the tent. True, they wore traditional clothing for the priests - thought Timothy - Long black robes covering them from head to toe, not even showing the eyes. Some of these people could see without eyes, Khai said before.
 
'I might be worrying too much," She turned to Mae, "but don't Shirans also watch our TV? With all that tension between humans and aliens, all those alien attacks, shouldn't we fear for our safety?"
"If they kill us here, it will prove that they ARE murderers who kill people who speak what they don't want to hear. They will never do it in public, least on their own planet. It's from their teaching. Honestly, I feel safer here than back in Bodom."
"I thought they didn't care too much about their religion anymore?"
"It's a moral thing. There's no way to erase that."
"Well they do sound like better people than we are."
 
The bandleader turned his head slightly. Timothy was almost certain that he or she was looking at them. Mae looked like she was looking at the leader, too, with the same kind of facial expression in Khai's funeral.
 
 
Music started straight away. It was approximately the size of a human-styled chamber orchestra plus a small choir, with all traditional instruments made of natural material. There were a lot of wind sounds - at least 10 types of different flutes - mimicking sounds in the air: rainfall, snowfall, whistle, breathing. Strings and percussions portrayed the voices and movements of animals, millions of them storming over the land and sky. The choir produced their sound from deep under their throat. They sounded like layers of echoes in the open air. Their melody was harmonized in such a different way from human music, but the harmony of the hundreds of nature sounds was just overwhelming.
 
"Are they worshiping nature, then?" Timothy asked with a whisper. Although they were in the individual shield and no one else would have heard them, they somehow felt pressured to lower the voice.
"Exactly... Well, I guess?" Mae answered, voice a little hallow.
Timothy looked at her with a sharp eye for just a second. Since when did Khai's lady banker become the guru of alien culture? There was not even an official academic study about it. Being a second year anthropology major, Timothy herself couldn't even dig a decent dedicated book about Shiran culture out of the vast online library of U.Bodom. Professors told her that 10 years was too short to profoundly observe the alien society so all they had thus far was speculations, and despite being a hot topic, only a handful of papers on Shiran culture were published, and the cultural affair bureau was pretty fast to classify them as confidential, citing public safety concerns. It is even difficult to find any serious search results other than racist comments.
 
Well, what am I thinking. It's not a difficult question to speculate anyways. K Slash was pretty into aliens. Couldn't she just overhear stuff from him?
 
Neil just got lost in the music. He was so absorbed that he almost started drooling.
 
"That was HEAVENLY!" He was jumping up and down excitingly as the band was having a break after the first half. "I've been collecting their music, but Live is just not the same! And the atmosphere too, their charisma... Wow. I don't understand why they never go on tour anywhere."
"Maybe they can't get working visas? Haha..." Laughed Mae.
"What are these musicians like, you think? Men? Women? Former priests? Waitressing college students?" Neil eagerly went on.
"I wouldn't know. Speculate. What do you think about that person leading the choir?" asked Mae.
"Well, very tall... thin, but feels strong too. Noticed how they didn't move the body at all while singing? I'd go for a lad. Good-looking pale-skinned young lad. Subtle gestures, almost Royal-like. Maybe gay - The vocal range is a bit crazy..."
"Wow, wow, that's some unexpected speculation on someone covered in black! So you find him attractive then?" The girls laughed at him, "You should look at your face! You're turning red!"
"You gals are ridiculous! I'm just saying what I thought... It's not funny! Tim, whose team are you on? I thought you were my girlfriend!?"
"My name is Timothy, I'm your drummer dude...Hmm, sounds convincing."
"...Shame on whoever gave you that name!"
 
"OK, I got the revenge," Mae finally stopped laughing - she was laughing especially hard that she almost choked, "all your life calling Khai a gay and suspecting I was a guy until we met!..."
 
And then there was a brief silence. They realized that the they had circled back to Khai. The missing hero of the show. They were all supporting cast, but what have they got to support, now?
 
 
"In fact, I do have a purpose for this invite," Mae suddenly said, and the other two held their breath still, "I wanted to wait until you tasted the Dragon... but I can't anymore. Khai, he did leave a will. He has some stuff for you both. It's in this box. I don't even know what it is."
"...What?"
Didn't K Slash die in an accident? Why the hell would a healthy 30 years old leave a will? And of all the people in the world, to some kids who rent his house?
 
Just then music started again.
This time, it sounded more like a hurricane. The place got dark. Clouds were gathering over their heads. Rain was running down their shield and they saw such bright lightening. And then they heard thunder. The same thunder in the funeral. The somehow warm, comforting, prayer-like thunders.
 

------And of course, TBC...