Brady Tyson & The Two Little Liars

Chapter 2 - Questions and Answers

We're locked together in that pose for about two seconds before my brain catches up to my body. In one swift movement I drop the knife and twist my arm out of Mold's grasp. She takes a step back in surprise, her narrow eyes widening slightly, but I catch her, my free hand squishing into her windpipe with a quick chop. She stumbles backwards, coughing and trying to regain her breath, before tripping over my bed, her head making solid contact with my wall.

She crumples onto my bed and in two steps I'm over to her. Lifting her head in my hands I make sure that there's no external bleeding before turning to my dresser. I grab a bedsheet and tie her hands behind her back with it, and just as her eyelids are fluttering open again I prop her up in my bed, returning to stand in the doorway.

"Ugh.." a groan escapes her lips as she turns away from my ceiling light.

"Don't give me that. You're the one that's about to be facing a charge of home invasion."

"Ok, but was it necessary? I don't recall ever making any sort of move against you, it seems like you're the one with a natural inclination towards violence, coming at me with a knife and all that," Despite her words she doesn't sound spiteful at all. If anything it almost feels like this course of action is no different to whatever she had plans for.

"...It was self defense. How would I know what you were going to do?"

"Oh yeah? Then why didn't you just back out of your apartment and call the cops?"

"That's- Listen, I'm the one asking the questions here." I take a deep breath to calm myself down again. Mold just squints at me through the corner of her eye. "Ok, first off, what the hell are you."

And that is definitely a what, not a who. The girl is certainly humanoid, two arms, two legs, the whole shebang. She has a modest sense of style as well, with a plain yellow tank top tucked into black jeans, with a gray cardigan going over it all. However there are a couple things that just aren't quite right. The more unsettling one is her teeth, the pointed blades flash at me everytime she opens her mouth, giving off the impression of a hungry shark. Her pupils are closer to slits than circles as well, although they're fairly dilated right now.

The most noticeable thing, however, is her skin. It's orange. Not vibrant like a clownfish or anything that extreme, but a desaturated orange nonetheless. That orange skin runs all the way from her sandaled feet to the tips of her pointed ears, and even though she's not making any move against me it all still makes my hair rise ever so slightly.

"Well that's an awfully rude question to ask!"

"Don't a-"

"I won't act like I don't know what you mean though." ...She's quite frustrating to talk to; "To put it simply I'm a time traveller from the year 5000."

...

I feel my jaw slacken on its own, and after a brief moment I regain my composure.

"Okay, then why is your skin orange?"

"Oh drat!" She says, looking down at herself, as if she could somehow forget, "Well... I'm also part shapeshifting alien. What? Do you really think that in the next three thousand years this planet doesn't get any sort of off-world visitors?"

...

My jaw drops again, but I'm quicker to recover this time.

"Why didn't you change it to a more... 20th century color then?"

"Jeez you sure care a lot about appearances, huh? Let's just say... I had gotten used to fitting in around the multicolored alien crowd."

"Whoah whoah whoah, now you're making it sound like you don't belong with them in the first place. Are you or are you not everything you've previously claimed to be?"