"That was my bet too from the way it sounded," nods Bella, "but you're the one who saw it. And if there are lots of it, if it's one of it, this isn't a mutant or an isolated science experiment - they could still be designed, but it'd be a big project, hard to hide, time-consuming, and it would mean getting a lot of groundwork science done under the radar, I'm assigning that low probability -" She scratches symbols in her notebook. "Which leaves some class of thing that sci fi has not adequately prepared us for, or aliens."

"Alien demon," she says, and sighs, and rubs her forehead, and cuddles into Ethan.

"Aliens could have all kinds of interesting tech - and that's another kind of designed they could be, easy to hide your science fair project if you do it in space, that guy is spiky enough I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were ordered up for custom ambulatory Cuisinart needs - but if this one crashed through a door, I'm betting they don't have personal teleportation. They could still have extremely fancy ways of crossing interstellar distances, or this one could be stupid or forgetful or its tech could be broken, but probably they cannot teleport. They probably also don't have personal invisibility cloaks - that doesn't rule out invisible ships, and there's still the stupid/forgetful/broken possibility, but that's two things that it would be bad for hostile aliens to have that they probably do not have."

"Well, that's... nice," says Robin. "Lord. Hostile aliens."

"It's also not strictly ruled out that they are friendly, neutral, divided amongst themselves, etcetera," says Bella. "And that the human was doing something bad or this was a bad example of an alien."

"Right," says Robin. "Now if only we had a way to check."

"Unless the store has only recently become a front for alien activity, they probably maintain normal operations during the day," says Bella. "If any of us has an excuse to go to that kind of store, we can look for out of place things, there. I'm not that keen on the idea, but more information is better."

"I'll take a look," offers Ethan.

"Okay, good. And if it's something like, I don't know, a tire shop, a liquor store, someplace we can't reasonably be, we're somewhat out of luck, but most stores are places where fifteen-year-olds may appear without too much suspicion."

He nods agreement.

"Robin, can we get you anything besides meringues?"

Andi gets up, goes to the kitchen, and peers into the tea cupboard. "Peach, raspberry mint, white with cinnamon, chanomile?" she calls.

"White with cinnamon," Robin decides. "Thanks. You're a star."

"No problem." Andi puts a glass of water in the microwave and leans on the threshold. "Bella, if we figure out what's going on what happens next?"

"If we could know that before finding out what's going on," Bella says, "there would be no point to the finding out."

Robin snorts.

"If they're friendly and doing a bad job at it, or friendly and doing the best they can but it's not very good, then it's relatively straightforward, for contact with an alien species. If some of them are friendlier than others - depends on the exact politics of the situation, I guess. If they're all unfriendly then - documentation, lots of it, and finding some sort of trustworthy authority with more firepower than four teenagers."

She nods slowly.

"Do you guys own cameras with instant-developing film? Me and Andi have one between us. I might be able to figure out how to muffle the noise it makes. The kind that require developing is better than nothing, but we don't know how many aliens there are or whether their interactions with humans might tend to be more diplomatic. Digital is also better than nothing but it'd be harder to demonstrate that the photos were untampered with."

"I can get my hands on a digital," says Ethan.

"And it won't be confiscated back by your parents?"

"Not bloody likely; I borrowed it six months ago and it's been sitting in the back of a drawer ever since."

"Ah, all right then. Robin?"

She shakes her head.