VM fic: Mars Attacks! (L/V, some Ensemble)
Fic: Mars Attacks (Veronica, Logan, Ensemble) PG
Title: Mars Attacks
Author: Kaze
Pairing/Character: Veronica, Logan, Ensemble
Word Count: 3,769
Rating: PG
Summary: The world comes to an end. Blame Hollywood.
Spoilers: Set around MAD, but before Veronica learns about the drugs.
Warnings: Some language, some violence, some global annihilation and genocide, nothing major though
A/N: Apocalyptothon challenge response for haleyj_the_bat. She wanted Logan with a touch of angst and a buttload of snark. I tried my best. Snark eludes me… ;) Also, I haven’t done Logan POV besides a little ficlet once, I struggled…
Haley, I hope you like parodies (with a touch of angst, of course)… also, there’s a little shout-out to one of your other requests that I would have done as well if I had the time…
fickledame and blue_icy_rose deserve a friggin’ award for their overnight asap mad beta skills. I wouldn’t have met deadline without them.
“So, are you free Friday? We could go out.” There, I said it. Whoa, talk about moving things up. This isn’t much of a step forward. More a leap. She thinks so too, if her expression’s any indication. She looks like a mixture of happy and ready to bolt and I can’t say I blame her.
“Here?” she asks. “What about our ‘little secret’?” I never thought finger quotes could be hot. I was wrong. She looks at me expectantly and I shake my head. Focus, Echolls.
“My dad invited us along to his new movie set. He thought you’d like to sniff some Hollywood air. He really seems to like you.” Usually, I wouldn’t consider this a compliment. I’m pissed at myself for the amount of exceptions I’m willing to make for this girl.
“I thought his movie days were over?” I feel the ridiculous urge to kiss the frown off her face. Boy, I’m pathetic.
“Nah, this is the best PR that could happen to him. Rising from the ashes, the grieving widower, equipped to play the serious character roles,” I reply, when I hear Dick and the Beav calling for me. Veronica nods and motions for me to go to my friends.
“So, seven-ish?” I ask while walking backwards. “We have to leave early.”
“I have a paper due on Friday, I should hand it in before we leave,” she replies.
“Hand it in on Thursday.” After a pause, she nods and I can’t help that silly smile creeping up my face. Stupid. Hold it together, man.
.oOo.
Friday came soon, a bit too soon for my taste. I’m not used to this whole girlfriend stuff anymore; I’m much more used to playmates these days. Maybe I’d ask Duncan for advice, if he weren’t MIA and, well, the girl in question wasn’t his first love. But I still remember well enough what DK did to make her happy back then, so I can do this, right?
That I have to stand my father and his Hollywood court for one day though wasn’t exactly part of the plan. But what can I say? I aim to please.
She’s already waiting outside when I arrive, and I’m not even late, but I guess Duncan was always early. I smile tightly and give her a light kiss. She yawns and snuggles in her seat, then stretches her arms over her head all the way to my car’s roof. Eyes on the road, damn it!
“So, what kind of movie is your dad doing?” she asks while facing me with her whole body, straining against the seatbelt. I shoot her a quick glance, before staring ahead again.
“Some Sci-Fi crap,” I mumble and she chuckles.
“I thought you loved Sci-Fi.” I can almost hear the laughter in her voice.
“Not the crappy ones,” I shoot back and send her a grin that makes her flush. She looks out of the car window and I’m again confused as to how to treat her now that everything’s changed. I always knew where I stood with her, always knew who she was when dealing with her, but she had to come and tilt my worldview on its axis. Sometimes, when she thinks I’m not looking, her features harden and the walls come up, but then she turns and smiles at me and is soft and sweet and I wonder what happened to those walls. It takes me a second to realize she’s talking again.
“… so I thought a character role means to not do a crappy action movie,” she says and smiles that little half smile of hers.
“Well,” I drawl the word to imply that I’m giving this a lot of thought, “I’m not an expert,” here she snorts, “but I’ve been told that Sci-Fi isn’t action anymore, but merely a background setting for great character development. Thanks to the recent boom of course. And I’m sure daddy dearest will be in loads of emotional upheaval when he orders the deaths of an entire Starfleet of cute but badly made-up extras.”
“So, no ‘character actors’ for the E.T. part?” she smirks at me.
“Not if Alan Rickman has a say in it,” I smirk back and ease into her laughter. Maybe I’m doing something right.
.oOo.
When we arrive, we get the tour by a bored and self-absorbed assistant of the assistant, who thinks Veronica is a fan and I’d rip him a new one if I wasn’t on a date with a girl I’m trying to convince that I’m not the asshole she got to know those last eighteen months. Yeah, right. She bears it admirably, though, feigning interest at the right moments when I know all she really wants to see is the special effects technology.
I dismiss Mr. Self-Important Pimple-Boy and pull her in the make-up truck for some making out and I know I’d find the word game hilarious if I’d had my usual ten a.m. cocktail by now. She giggles anyway as I - very eloquently - point out that this truck was almost made and named after what we’re doing in it. I really can’t wrap my mind around the fact that Veronica Mars, hard ass deluxe, is humoring me.
“So, um, where is the alien make-up?” she asks while I try my best vampire impression on her neck. Huh? Could we concentrate on the horny highschooler here, please?
“I, uh, what?” Okay, I admit it, not my best retort but cut me some slack, my brain suffers some lack of blood right now.
“Make-up? For the aliens? This is just the regular ‘no shiny skin / sweat like a pig’ stuff.” She cocks one eyebrow and smirks in that cute way of hers and I swear she even makes ‘sweat like a pig’ sound sexy. I somehow resist the urge to tell her to shut the fuck up and suck me off - I guess she wouldn’t appreciate that - and try to put my alleged background knowledge of film production into use.
“Well, I guess the Aliens are inserted digitally.” Can we please go back to the horizontal part of the day now?
“Nope, I saw some blue guy just outside looking…. er, just like the one who’s watching us from outside that window.” She’s really cold-blooded. I have to give her that. I blame it on her lack of shrieking that I don’t realize for a few seconds that, in fact, a grinning, slit-eyed alien-masked guy is staring at us from outside the make-up trailer. But then it takes me about two seconds to jump up, get outside and have the little guy pinned at the trailer’s wall. I’m not into peep shows, thank you. Especially not if I’m starring.
The guy blinks at me as I try my best choke him and for one short, surreal moment, I’m impressed at the dexterity of those fake eyelids, but then I realize he’s trying to say something and I loosen my hold a bit.
“I was only interested in your way of fornication,” the little guy says in a strangely tinny voice, lacking any kind of inflection. I’m trying to rip off the muffling mask when I feel a small hand on my arm, restraining me. Fuck, Veronica. I let go of the guy immediately and he scurries off.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to… I mean he was watching us, watching you and I… I really wasn’t going to hit him or something.” It takes me a second to notice that Veronica isn’t even listening to my rambling but staring after our alien intruder instead. I tap her shoulder to regain at least part of her attention and she turns towards me, confusion etched all over her features.
“There were no seams,” she says, looking at me as if I were fucking supposed to get a third of what she says.
“Huh?” I know, I’m getting repetitive here. I’m nothing if not dependable. ‘Trust Logan Echolls to be completely out of the loop of everything concerning Veronica Mars and little blue aliens’.
“Seams, Logan. At the mask. There weren’t any,” she looks at me with that serious expression of hers, then frowns at me. “And what did you mean? You weren’t going to hit him or something? He fucking spied on us!”
Huh?
“Well, I thought you wouldn’t like it if I started a fight,” I explain somewhat sheepishly. Veronica has this eerie way of reminding me of my junior high English teacher. An old spinster that had probably already fought off soldiers during the Civil War with her acidic tongue and the power of her stare.
“Is that why you’ve been such a boy scout lately?” she asks, her eyes narrowed into slits. Is there any way to answer this right?
“Uh, yeah?” I try. She shakes her head.
“And here I thought you’d turned into a sissy.” She grins at me widely.
“What the fuck? You were the one who always gave me a hard time when I was a jackass,” I say. I’m close to pulling out my hair because of that girl.
“Yeah, well, but it’s also kinda hot when you’re a jackass,” she says, her grin growing wider. The possibilities run through my head and I think I might like this new development. I throw my arm around her shoulder and look at her intently.
“Then I’ll make you tremendously happy now. Because I’m gonna show you how much of a jackass I can really be.” Yep, I like it.
“Mm, dreamy,” she says, while rolling her eyes. “Come on, let’s try to find E.T. McPeep.”
“It’s not nice to be on the other side of the curtain, huh?” I grin. This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks.
“Har har,” she replies dryly. “I think I liked you better when you were kissing my ass.”
“Ow, you wound me,” I shoot back, exaggerated hand gestures included, of course.
“Well, have to repay you for those cavities you gave me with your idea of ‘sweet talking’,” she mocks, finger quotes ready in my face.
“You just have to have the last word, don’t you?” I ask and she looks like she wants to say something, but thinks better of it. She huffs and storms off. I follow, grinning.
.oOo.
It’s almost embarrassingly easy how we get to my father. He’s a celebrity after all, we could be *gasp* out to kill him or something. Okay, so they know I’m his son and my presence kind of vouches for Veronica, yet they probably don’t guess I’d be the first to put a bullet through that bastard’s head. At least, that’s what I always do at that ‘Aaron Echolls sucks’ website, that has funny little shockwave games.
Daddy dearest is smarmily charming towards Veronica and not for the first time, I wonder what they talked about when he took her home that day that Dick and the Beav showed up mid-make-out. I clench my fists as he lays his arm over her slim shoulders, but it kind of puts me at ease that she doesn’t seem star struck in the slightest. Well, kind of.
Veronica has this serious expression and I know that she’s grilling Dad about the alien masks. He doesn’t seem happy at her insistence and I guess I should maybe hold her back before he whips out his belt and gives her an Aaron Extra.
“Dad,” I say, pulling Veronica to my side. “It’s just that this guy was staring at Veronica in a really creepy way and she’s kinda freaked out by it.” Veronica looks at me, surprised and starts to say something when I squeeze her hand. She shuts her mouth and gives Aaron an apologetic smile and he softens up again.
“Yeah, I can see that these Hollywood costumes must seem weird to you…” He’s interrupted by the arrival of a tiny blue man, who approaches him with a deep bow.
“Mr. Echolls, we’d like you to ask your offspring to continue his fornication with his mate so we can study them some more.” Needless to say: Huh? At least this time, I’m not alone.
.oOo.
Is that a lens back there? And that guy with that baseball hat, could be Ashton, I’m sure. There is no possible way in this or any other world that we’re NOT on Punk’d. Veronica seems to think so too, judging from the way she looks at my dad as he explains to us that those aliens we’re seeing everywhere on set actually are aliens.
“You see? With today’s internet video piracy the studios simply can’t afford those billion dollars movies anymore. So they made a deal with those blue guys when they showed up. They take care of the special effects, blow things up and stuff, and the studios only need to pay the human actors. Didn’t you ever wonder why all the aliens in every TV show and movie started to look the same sometimes in the nineties?” Dad looks at us as if he didn’t get why we simply can’t accept that there are aliens on earth, have been for years actually, and are doing movies with him. Yeah, sure, why not?
Veronica looks like she’s close to taking dad’s temperature and having him hospitalized. I guess it doesn’t go with her rational and logical fact-finder personality that she could have actually missed the presence of alien life a couple of miles from her hometown.
“And, uh,” she’s visibly pulling herself together, obviously deciding to approach this from her, well, rational and logical fact-finder side, “they want to see Logan and me, uh, fornicate?”
Aaron gets this ugly little smile of his when he’s being horribly condescending. My fingernails bite little moons in my palms as I try to stay calm for Veronica’s sake.
“They actually came here to study us and this is the deal we struck with them,” he says as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“You let them study you?” I ask, shocked.
“Well, yeah. But not lately. They seem to have gathered pretty much everything they need,” he elaborates. Then his smile turns somewhat dirty. “Except for fornication, that is.”
“Like you didn’t give them enough chances,” I snort and his eyes narrow. Veronica is quick to intervene.
“Logan? Why don’t we go talk to one of them? I’d always like to meet other, um, races. Come on.” She drags me away until we are stopped by the creepiest little Blue Man Group member ever and I realize that it’s the same guy who watched us again.
“You should continue your fornication,” he informs us with that tinny voice of his. Or hers? Whatever. Anyway, I’m tempted to retry the choking thing, when Veronica replies, calm and rather factual, that we will not fornicate for his studies.
“Oh, you will,” the little guy replies and I feel my blood starting to boil again. “If not right now, then soon enough, when we order you.”
I feel the strange urge to laugh bubble up inside of me when a group of tiny blue aliens approach us in a menacing way. It seems like I could kick them a few yards if I tried, but their certainty makes me uncertain.
“Our studies of the human race are almost complete and once we have studied you, they will be. But our information as of yet is enough to know that you humans are no match for us. Your planet will be a nice addition to our empire.”
HUH?
.oOo.
By six a.m. the President officially surrendered to the billions of alien spaceships hovering over the entire world. Apparently, not even the nuclear reserve of the States, Europe and Asia combined could even faze a single one of the ships. Instead, the waves were reflected back towards earth and destroyed 80 % of, well, everything. The rest of us? Hello Chernobyl.
For once, I’m not really in the mood to fornicate with Veronica when Indigo Girl, as I’ve dubbed our little friend, approaches us and repeats his request. When he uses some fancy tractor beam to make us float into the inside of one of the ships hovering over the Hollywood Hills, I think that it’s fucking time that Ashton shows his face.
On board, I catch sight of a familiar blonde head and as soon as the beam disengages, I grab Veronica’s hand and move over.
“Dude! Can you believe it? I’m shacking up with this totally hot but depressed cheerleader and suddenly she turns all blue and is a fucking alien! What the fuck, man? Is that Mars you’re hiding behind your back?” Dick eyes Veronica apprehensively and by the look on her face I’m sure she’d like to take a nutcracker to Dick’s well dick, right now. I figure that this is as good a time to ‘come out’ as there’ll ever be now that the world is kinda coming to an end, so I explain to a stunned Dick that Veronica and I are dating and he’d better treat her with some respect or he should head for the airlock with the sucking tube.
One by one, the aliens move through that tube to start populating what’s left of our planet, at least that’s what I figure. Suddenly, Indigo Girl appears next to us and orders Veronica and me to follow him, probably to fulfill his fucking curiosity. Dick tags along and I presume he already pissed his blue-bimbo-of-the-week off enough so that she -or he? Ew!- left him alone in the ship full of all-powerful comrades.
I can see that Veronica is getting more and more pissed - if by the whole situation or Dick’s presence at her supposed fornication I’m not sure - and I’d warn Indigo Girl if I wasn’t beyond boiling point myself. She snaps when our guard grabs for her arm to steer her into a cell and in one swift motion takes out her taser and fries him. And by fries, I mean fries. We all stare in shock at the smoking pile of blue goo formerly known as Indigo Girl.
“Word!” Dick says. “Why haven’t you done that before?”
Veronica ignores him. “I, oh God, I didn’t know…” she trails off and I run my hand up and down the small of her back.
“It’s okay, V. They’ve killed billions of people. They deserve no better.”
Veronica is still for a second, then pulls herself together and nods.
“So, wanna go liquefy some more aliens?”
.oOo.
When we storm the bridge, there are merely three aliens left, the rest having transferred down to earth. Veronica makes quick work of them while I look at the controls of the ship and Dick stares at Veronica.
“What the hell?” I mutter when I see the controls and Veronica is by my side in an instant, a gaping Dick trailing behind.
“What is it?” she asks, all business-like, as if she weren’t covered head to toe in alien slime.
“This looks like a fucking X-Box!” Dick exclaims and I can only nod.
“But how…?” Veronica trails off and I know she reaches the same conclusion I have. The aliens have not only invaded Hollywood, they also prepared their big strike in the gaming industry. Which means that I can probably fly this thing.
Tentatively, I sit down in the pilot seat and try some of the buttons and the ship really reacts like I’m used to from my video games at home. Veronica’s head snaps towards me and a moment of understanding passes between us. We are so gonna kick some alien ass.
“I’ll try to get rid of some of this alien goulash I’m dribbling all over the floor. Dick, take over battle stations.” Dick and I both stare at Veronica for a second, but it seems she knows that Dick spends half his time video game playing, so he’s the best bet we have right now.
“Now we’re talking,” Dick yells and moves over to his station, letting out a few whoops on the way.
A few moments later, we’re closing in on the blue planet when we get a call from another of the alien ships. Veronica asks me to get it on screen while she takes on her best ‘don’t screw with me’ pose in front of the captain’s seat and I wonder how many episodes of Star Trek Voyager she’s watched.
When we’re ordered to surrender by an alien that’s almost violet in its anger, Veronica only smiles and I’m not sure if I should be proud or scared.
“Dick,” is all she says and moments later, the other ship is up in flames. That’s when the game really starts. Dick is in a frenzy, much like when he really plays games, and shoots about anything that moves until we’re out of munitions.
“Uh, guys?” I say when I see a fleet of alien ships heading straight towards us. Veronica draws in a sharp breath.
“Don’t we have any more ammo?” she asks and we all look around frantically.
“There’s one big red button here,” Dick yells from his battle station. “Should we try it?”
Veronica and I look at each other and shrug.
“Okay then,” she says and watches the approaching ships again. “On my count. One, two… three!”
Dick pushes the button and a red beam of pure energy comes out of our bow, slicing right through all the approaching ships that get in its way. We holler and whoop and dance until Veronica yells: “Dick! Stop it!”
But she is too late. The beam has reached Earth. We can see the Pacific start to boil when it hits, then continents crack and eventually, hot lava wells up from the cracks.
“Awesome!” Dick whispers as we see the world - literally - come to an end.
“Logan,” Veronica whispers, but I’m frozen in place and can’t seem to turn to look at her. “Logan!” she says again, more insistently this time. “We have to get out of here. Now!”
My eyes are fixed on the exploding planet as I try to fly us away from the shockwave as fast as possible. I think I’m kinda losing it when I can’t get the lyrics ‘great balls of fire’ out of my head, but then Veronica’s by my side and she’s grabbing my hand as the shockwave catches up with us.
Everything around me explodes and my last conscious thought as I hold on tightly to Veronica’s hand is that I should have used the chance to fornicate with her when I had it.
~the end. For real.
Title: Mars Attacks
Author: Kaze
Pairing/Character: Veronica, Logan, Ensemble
Word Count: 3,769
Rating: PG
Summary: The world comes to an end. Blame Hollywood.
Spoilers: Set around MAD, but before Veronica learns about the drugs.
Warnings: Some language, some violence, some global annihilation and genocide, nothing major though
A/N: Apocalyptothon challenge response for haleyj_the_bat. She wanted Logan with a touch of angst and a buttload of snark. I tried my best. Snark eludes me… ;) Also, I haven’t done Logan POV besides a little ficlet once, I struggled…
Haley, I hope you like parodies (with a touch of angst, of course)… also, there’s a little shout-out to one of your other requests that I would have done as well if I had the time…
fickledame and blue_icy_rose deserve a friggin’ award for their overnight asap mad beta skills. I wouldn’t have met deadline without them.
“So, are you free Friday? We could go out.” There, I said it. Whoa, talk about moving things up. This isn’t much of a step forward. More a leap. She thinks so too, if her expression’s any indication. She looks like a mixture of happy and ready to bolt and I can’t say I blame her.
“Here?” she asks. “What about our ‘little secret’?” I never thought finger quotes could be hot. I was wrong. She looks at me expectantly and I shake my head. Focus, Echolls.
“My dad invited us along to his new movie set. He thought you’d like to sniff some Hollywood air. He really seems to like you.” Usually, I wouldn’t consider this a compliment. I’m pissed at myself for the amount of exceptions I’m willing to make for this girl.
“I thought his movie days were over?” I feel the ridiculous urge to kiss the frown off her face. Boy, I’m pathetic.
“Nah, this is the best PR that could happen to him. Rising from the ashes, the grieving widower, equipped to play the serious character roles,” I reply, when I hear Dick and the Beav calling for me. Veronica nods and motions for me to go to my friends.
“So, seven-ish?” I ask while walking backwards. “We have to leave early.”
“I have a paper due on Friday, I should hand it in before we leave,” she replies.
“Hand it in on Thursday.” After a pause, she nods and I can’t help that silly smile creeping up my face. Stupid. Hold it together, man.
.oOo.
Friday came soon, a bit too soon for my taste. I’m not used to this whole girlfriend stuff anymore; I’m much more used to playmates these days. Maybe I’d ask Duncan for advice, if he weren’t MIA and, well, the girl in question wasn’t his first love. But I still remember well enough what DK did to make her happy back then, so I can do this, right?
That I have to stand my father and his Hollywood court for one day though wasn’t exactly part of the plan. But what can I say? I aim to please.
She’s already waiting outside when I arrive, and I’m not even late, but I guess Duncan was always early. I smile tightly and give her a light kiss. She yawns and snuggles in her seat, then stretches her arms over her head all the way to my car’s roof. Eyes on the road, damn it!
“So, what kind of movie is your dad doing?” she asks while facing me with her whole body, straining against the seatbelt. I shoot her a quick glance, before staring ahead again.
“Some Sci-Fi crap,” I mumble and she chuckles.
“I thought you loved Sci-Fi.” I can almost hear the laughter in her voice.
“Not the crappy ones,” I shoot back and send her a grin that makes her flush. She looks out of the car window and I’m again confused as to how to treat her now that everything’s changed. I always knew where I stood with her, always knew who she was when dealing with her, but she had to come and tilt my worldview on its axis. Sometimes, when she thinks I’m not looking, her features harden and the walls come up, but then she turns and smiles at me and is soft and sweet and I wonder what happened to those walls. It takes me a second to realize she’s talking again.
“… so I thought a character role means to not do a crappy action movie,” she says and smiles that little half smile of hers.
“Well,” I drawl the word to imply that I’m giving this a lot of thought, “I’m not an expert,” here she snorts, “but I’ve been told that Sci-Fi isn’t action anymore, but merely a background setting for great character development. Thanks to the recent boom of course. And I’m sure daddy dearest will be in loads of emotional upheaval when he orders the deaths of an entire Starfleet of cute but badly made-up extras.”
“So, no ‘character actors’ for the E.T. part?” she smirks at me.
“Not if Alan Rickman has a say in it,” I smirk back and ease into her laughter. Maybe I’m doing something right.
.oOo.
When we arrive, we get the tour by a bored and self-absorbed assistant of the assistant, who thinks Veronica is a fan and I’d rip him a new one if I wasn’t on a date with a girl I’m trying to convince that I’m not the asshole she got to know those last eighteen months. Yeah, right. She bears it admirably, though, feigning interest at the right moments when I know all she really wants to see is the special effects technology.
I dismiss Mr. Self-Important Pimple-Boy and pull her in the make-up truck for some making out and I know I’d find the word game hilarious if I’d had my usual ten a.m. cocktail by now. She giggles anyway as I - very eloquently - point out that this truck was almost made and named after what we’re doing in it. I really can’t wrap my mind around the fact that Veronica Mars, hard ass deluxe, is humoring me.
“So, um, where is the alien make-up?” she asks while I try my best vampire impression on her neck. Huh? Could we concentrate on the horny highschooler here, please?
“I, uh, what?” Okay, I admit it, not my best retort but cut me some slack, my brain suffers some lack of blood right now.
“Make-up? For the aliens? This is just the regular ‘no shiny skin / sweat like a pig’ stuff.” She cocks one eyebrow and smirks in that cute way of hers and I swear she even makes ‘sweat like a pig’ sound sexy. I somehow resist the urge to tell her to shut the fuck up and suck me off - I guess she wouldn’t appreciate that - and try to put my alleged background knowledge of film production into use.
“Well, I guess the Aliens are inserted digitally.” Can we please go back to the horizontal part of the day now?
“Nope, I saw some blue guy just outside looking…. er, just like the one who’s watching us from outside that window.” She’s really cold-blooded. I have to give her that. I blame it on her lack of shrieking that I don’t realize for a few seconds that, in fact, a grinning, slit-eyed alien-masked guy is staring at us from outside the make-up trailer. But then it takes me about two seconds to jump up, get outside and have the little guy pinned at the trailer’s wall. I’m not into peep shows, thank you. Especially not if I’m starring.
The guy blinks at me as I try my best choke him and for one short, surreal moment, I’m impressed at the dexterity of those fake eyelids, but then I realize he’s trying to say something and I loosen my hold a bit.
“I was only interested in your way of fornication,” the little guy says in a strangely tinny voice, lacking any kind of inflection. I’m trying to rip off the muffling mask when I feel a small hand on my arm, restraining me. Fuck, Veronica. I let go of the guy immediately and he scurries off.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to… I mean he was watching us, watching you and I… I really wasn’t going to hit him or something.” It takes me a second to notice that Veronica isn’t even listening to my rambling but staring after our alien intruder instead. I tap her shoulder to regain at least part of her attention and she turns towards me, confusion etched all over her features.
“There were no seams,” she says, looking at me as if I were fucking supposed to get a third of what she says.
“Huh?” I know, I’m getting repetitive here. I’m nothing if not dependable. ‘Trust Logan Echolls to be completely out of the loop of everything concerning Veronica Mars and little blue aliens’.
“Seams, Logan. At the mask. There weren’t any,” she looks at me with that serious expression of hers, then frowns at me. “And what did you mean? You weren’t going to hit him or something? He fucking spied on us!”
Huh?
“Well, I thought you wouldn’t like it if I started a fight,” I explain somewhat sheepishly. Veronica has this eerie way of reminding me of my junior high English teacher. An old spinster that had probably already fought off soldiers during the Civil War with her acidic tongue and the power of her stare.
“Is that why you’ve been such a boy scout lately?” she asks, her eyes narrowed into slits. Is there any way to answer this right?
“Uh, yeah?” I try. She shakes her head.
“And here I thought you’d turned into a sissy.” She grins at me widely.
“What the fuck? You were the one who always gave me a hard time when I was a jackass,” I say. I’m close to pulling out my hair because of that girl.
“Yeah, well, but it’s also kinda hot when you’re a jackass,” she says, her grin growing wider. The possibilities run through my head and I think I might like this new development. I throw my arm around her shoulder and look at her intently.
“Then I’ll make you tremendously happy now. Because I’m gonna show you how much of a jackass I can really be.” Yep, I like it.
“Mm, dreamy,” she says, while rolling her eyes. “Come on, let’s try to find E.T. McPeep.”
“It’s not nice to be on the other side of the curtain, huh?” I grin. This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks.
“Har har,” she replies dryly. “I think I liked you better when you were kissing my ass.”
“Ow, you wound me,” I shoot back, exaggerated hand gestures included, of course.
“Well, have to repay you for those cavities you gave me with your idea of ‘sweet talking’,” she mocks, finger quotes ready in my face.
“You just have to have the last word, don’t you?” I ask and she looks like she wants to say something, but thinks better of it. She huffs and storms off. I follow, grinning.
.oOo.
It’s almost embarrassingly easy how we get to my father. He’s a celebrity after all, we could be *gasp* out to kill him or something. Okay, so they know I’m his son and my presence kind of vouches for Veronica, yet they probably don’t guess I’d be the first to put a bullet through that bastard’s head. At least, that’s what I always do at that ‘Aaron Echolls sucks’ website, that has funny little shockwave games.
Daddy dearest is smarmily charming towards Veronica and not for the first time, I wonder what they talked about when he took her home that day that Dick and the Beav showed up mid-make-out. I clench my fists as he lays his arm over her slim shoulders, but it kind of puts me at ease that she doesn’t seem star struck in the slightest. Well, kind of.
Veronica has this serious expression and I know that she’s grilling Dad about the alien masks. He doesn’t seem happy at her insistence and I guess I should maybe hold her back before he whips out his belt and gives her an Aaron Extra.
“Dad,” I say, pulling Veronica to my side. “It’s just that this guy was staring at Veronica in a really creepy way and she’s kinda freaked out by it.” Veronica looks at me, surprised and starts to say something when I squeeze her hand. She shuts her mouth and gives Aaron an apologetic smile and he softens up again.
“Yeah, I can see that these Hollywood costumes must seem weird to you…” He’s interrupted by the arrival of a tiny blue man, who approaches him with a deep bow.
“Mr. Echolls, we’d like you to ask your offspring to continue his fornication with his mate so we can study them some more.” Needless to say: Huh? At least this time, I’m not alone.
.oOo.
Is that a lens back there? And that guy with that baseball hat, could be Ashton, I’m sure. There is no possible way in this or any other world that we’re NOT on Punk’d. Veronica seems to think so too, judging from the way she looks at my dad as he explains to us that those aliens we’re seeing everywhere on set actually are aliens.
“You see? With today’s internet video piracy the studios simply can’t afford those billion dollars movies anymore. So they made a deal with those blue guys when they showed up. They take care of the special effects, blow things up and stuff, and the studios only need to pay the human actors. Didn’t you ever wonder why all the aliens in every TV show and movie started to look the same sometimes in the nineties?” Dad looks at us as if he didn’t get why we simply can’t accept that there are aliens on earth, have been for years actually, and are doing movies with him. Yeah, sure, why not?
Veronica looks like she’s close to taking dad’s temperature and having him hospitalized. I guess it doesn’t go with her rational and logical fact-finder personality that she could have actually missed the presence of alien life a couple of miles from her hometown.
“And, uh,” she’s visibly pulling herself together, obviously deciding to approach this from her, well, rational and logical fact-finder side, “they want to see Logan and me, uh, fornicate?”
Aaron gets this ugly little smile of his when he’s being horribly condescending. My fingernails bite little moons in my palms as I try to stay calm for Veronica’s sake.
“They actually came here to study us and this is the deal we struck with them,” he says as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“You let them study you?” I ask, shocked.
“Well, yeah. But not lately. They seem to have gathered pretty much everything they need,” he elaborates. Then his smile turns somewhat dirty. “Except for fornication, that is.”
“Like you didn’t give them enough chances,” I snort and his eyes narrow. Veronica is quick to intervene.
“Logan? Why don’t we go talk to one of them? I’d always like to meet other, um, races. Come on.” She drags me away until we are stopped by the creepiest little Blue Man Group member ever and I realize that it’s the same guy who watched us again.
“You should continue your fornication,” he informs us with that tinny voice of his. Or hers? Whatever. Anyway, I’m tempted to retry the choking thing, when Veronica replies, calm and rather factual, that we will not fornicate for his studies.
“Oh, you will,” the little guy replies and I feel my blood starting to boil again. “If not right now, then soon enough, when we order you.”
I feel the strange urge to laugh bubble up inside of me when a group of tiny blue aliens approach us in a menacing way. It seems like I could kick them a few yards if I tried, but their certainty makes me uncertain.
“Our studies of the human race are almost complete and once we have studied you, they will be. But our information as of yet is enough to know that you humans are no match for us. Your planet will be a nice addition to our empire.”
HUH?
.oOo.
By six a.m. the President officially surrendered to the billions of alien spaceships hovering over the entire world. Apparently, not even the nuclear reserve of the States, Europe and Asia combined could even faze a single one of the ships. Instead, the waves were reflected back towards earth and destroyed 80 % of, well, everything. The rest of us? Hello Chernobyl.
For once, I’m not really in the mood to fornicate with Veronica when Indigo Girl, as I’ve dubbed our little friend, approaches us and repeats his request. When he uses some fancy tractor beam to make us float into the inside of one of the ships hovering over the Hollywood Hills, I think that it’s fucking time that Ashton shows his face.
On board, I catch sight of a familiar blonde head and as soon as the beam disengages, I grab Veronica’s hand and move over.
“Dude! Can you believe it? I’m shacking up with this totally hot but depressed cheerleader and suddenly she turns all blue and is a fucking alien! What the fuck, man? Is that Mars you’re hiding behind your back?” Dick eyes Veronica apprehensively and by the look on her face I’m sure she’d like to take a nutcracker to Dick’s well dick, right now. I figure that this is as good a time to ‘come out’ as there’ll ever be now that the world is kinda coming to an end, so I explain to a stunned Dick that Veronica and I are dating and he’d better treat her with some respect or he should head for the airlock with the sucking tube.
One by one, the aliens move through that tube to start populating what’s left of our planet, at least that’s what I figure. Suddenly, Indigo Girl appears next to us and orders Veronica and me to follow him, probably to fulfill his fucking curiosity. Dick tags along and I presume he already pissed his blue-bimbo-of-the-week off enough so that she -or he? Ew!- left him alone in the ship full of all-powerful comrades.
I can see that Veronica is getting more and more pissed - if by the whole situation or Dick’s presence at her supposed fornication I’m not sure - and I’d warn Indigo Girl if I wasn’t beyond boiling point myself. She snaps when our guard grabs for her arm to steer her into a cell and in one swift motion takes out her taser and fries him. And by fries, I mean fries. We all stare in shock at the smoking pile of blue goo formerly known as Indigo Girl.
“Word!” Dick says. “Why haven’t you done that before?”
Veronica ignores him. “I, oh God, I didn’t know…” she trails off and I run my hand up and down the small of her back.
“It’s okay, V. They’ve killed billions of people. They deserve no better.”
Veronica is still for a second, then pulls herself together and nods.
“So, wanna go liquefy some more aliens?”
.oOo.
When we storm the bridge, there are merely three aliens left, the rest having transferred down to earth. Veronica makes quick work of them while I look at the controls of the ship and Dick stares at Veronica.
“What the hell?” I mutter when I see the controls and Veronica is by my side in an instant, a gaping Dick trailing behind.
“What is it?” she asks, all business-like, as if she weren’t covered head to toe in alien slime.
“This looks like a fucking X-Box!” Dick exclaims and I can only nod.
“But how…?” Veronica trails off and I know she reaches the same conclusion I have. The aliens have not only invaded Hollywood, they also prepared their big strike in the gaming industry. Which means that I can probably fly this thing.
Tentatively, I sit down in the pilot seat and try some of the buttons and the ship really reacts like I’m used to from my video games at home. Veronica’s head snaps towards me and a moment of understanding passes between us. We are so gonna kick some alien ass.
“I’ll try to get rid of some of this alien goulash I’m dribbling all over the floor. Dick, take over battle stations.” Dick and I both stare at Veronica for a second, but it seems she knows that Dick spends half his time video game playing, so he’s the best bet we have right now.
“Now we’re talking,” Dick yells and moves over to his station, letting out a few whoops on the way.
A few moments later, we’re closing in on the blue planet when we get a call from another of the alien ships. Veronica asks me to get it on screen while she takes on her best ‘don’t screw with me’ pose in front of the captain’s seat and I wonder how many episodes of Star Trek Voyager she’s watched.
When we’re ordered to surrender by an alien that’s almost violet in its anger, Veronica only smiles and I’m not sure if I should be proud or scared.
“Dick,” is all she says and moments later, the other ship is up in flames. That’s when the game really starts. Dick is in a frenzy, much like when he really plays games, and shoots about anything that moves until we’re out of munitions.
“Uh, guys?” I say when I see a fleet of alien ships heading straight towards us. Veronica draws in a sharp breath.
“Don’t we have any more ammo?” she asks and we all look around frantically.
“There’s one big red button here,” Dick yells from his battle station. “Should we try it?”
Veronica and I look at each other and shrug.
“Okay then,” she says and watches the approaching ships again. “On my count. One, two… three!”
Dick pushes the button and a red beam of pure energy comes out of our bow, slicing right through all the approaching ships that get in its way. We holler and whoop and dance until Veronica yells: “Dick! Stop it!”
But she is too late. The beam has reached Earth. We can see the Pacific start to boil when it hits, then continents crack and eventually, hot lava wells up from the cracks.
“Awesome!” Dick whispers as we see the world - literally - come to an end.
“Logan,” Veronica whispers, but I’m frozen in place and can’t seem to turn to look at her. “Logan!” she says again, more insistently this time. “We have to get out of here. Now!”
My eyes are fixed on the exploding planet as I try to fly us away from the shockwave as fast as possible. I think I’m kinda losing it when I can’t get the lyrics ‘great balls of fire’ out of my head, but then Veronica’s by my side and she’s grabbing my hand as the shockwave catches up with us.
Everything around me explodes and my last conscious thought as I hold on tightly to Veronica’s hand is that I should have used the chance to fornicate with her when I had it.
~the end. For real.