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Aubrey Little had been trying very hard not to set off the smoke alarms at the motel. She’d steamed the room up first by letting the shower run as hot as possible for as long as she could bear, so there was a lot of hot, heavy air hanging off the ceiling to weigh everything else down (she’d gotten a 92% in chemistry sophomore year of high school, and if she remembered correctly, that should have helped at least a little, right?). She had the bathroom window open, the muggy Pennsylvania-in-August air not doing much to steal the humidity she’d built up inside. The mirrors were properly fogged, but she wasn’t focusing on that. Instead, seated on the back of the toilet with her boots on the shut lid, twisted around so she could rest and elbow on the window ledge and lean against the wall, her eyes stayed firmly on the fire she procured on her fingertips, which danced technically outside the motel.
She’d been damn careful, and the alarm had gone off anyways.
Aubrey was on the third floor of a Red Roof Inn, doing it fancy in a way she could rarely afford to. She typically stayed wherever she was performing. She wasn’t above begging or offering work for discounts, and it tended to do her well. But she had three days to make a seven hour trip and a few extra dollars in her pocket that evening, so she’d elected to spend it on something nice.
So of course she’d gone and caused a ruckus. Of course she had. That was just how things were going these days.
She was certain it’d been her at first. The fire in her hands had spiked up when she startled, and she’d sworn and put it out with a flap of the wrist. She clambered off her perch, grabbed a towel, and waved it frantically about hoping to dispel any smoke that had swirled about and triggered the alarm. Her towel flicked against the sprinkler above her and set it off, sending a spray of freezing water everywhere and making her scream.
She stumbled out of the bathroom, shielding her eyes and grumbling, tripping over an untied shoelace and nearly braining herself on the empty motel dresser. She slammed into it and caught herself instead, hauled herself back upright, and propped a boot up to re-tie it properly.
And that was when the explosion shook the building.
It was so loud that it hurt, making her ears ring for a long moment and her knees buckle as she caught herself on the dresser again. When her senses came back into working order, dots dancing away from her vision and white noise clearing from her ears, she heard noise outside.
“ What the fuck was that !?” someone screeched,
And a second voice quickly responded with a frantic, “ Go go go!”
Their voices grew closer with the thundering sound of footsteps sprinting down the walkway. Aubrey ran to the door, found a broken spy hole, and threw the door open to investigate. Testimony to the shitty motel’s faulty design, it opened outward rather than in.
It hit something hard, bounced back at her and knocked her backwards, as whoever ran into it thudded to the floor and groaned.
“ Taako!?” one of the voices yelled, now immediately close and right outside. Aubrey must have been hallucinating. She must have been having the weirdest dream ever. She leapt back to her feet and leaned around the door, found one person sprawled on the walkway floor and a second leaning over him, hands braced on her knees and leaning close to peer at him.
Two heads whipped to look at her as the door swung shut, and several things happened at once. The standing one grabbed a fistful of Aubrey’s t-shirt and shoved her back against the wall, something dull but unyielding jabbing into the base of her throat while the one on the ground pulled out a…. Well, it was a stick, but the media would tell her to use the word wand . The one on the ground pulled out a wand and pointed it at her.
They both had warm, tan skin sprinkled with marks that weren’t quite freckles but weren’t exactly placeable. They both had shining blonde hair and identical scowls on their faces and matching, billowing red robes.
They were lithe but apparently strong as hell , Aubrey’s chest ached where the stranger’s fist was shoved into it. The one on the floor regarded her with a tilted head, and it was that movement that brought her attention. Their head tilted, their hair shifted, and two long, pointed ears flicked up, like a cat. It was so totally Lord of the Rings.
Aubrey was losing her damn mind.
“What are you guys !?” she asked, realizing as she was saying it that it wasn’t a polite thing to be asking. The two exchanged glances and a short conversation in a language that was barely perceptible, the noises not making sense. Something was settled, however, because they lowered their wands and Aubrey was released from the wall. She dropped down to her heels and rubbed the tender spot on her throat.
The two-- twins? clones?-- traded a few more words, and then a screaming fire truck rocketed around the corner and screeched to a stop in the parking lot. Both red robed figures flinched back from the sound, ears flattening, and Aubrey startled as well. Fire sparked from her hands, and the two once again whipped around in unison to stare at her. They were gaping.
“You’re a magic user?” one asked.
The other beamed, eyes sparkling. “Merle owes me twenty-fucking-gold I knew this place had magic. I could feel it .”
“We’ll need proof,” the first replied. “And information. Luce will want an interview.”
A small crowd of cop cars joined the firetruck below. A firefighter was shouting from the ground. No one else had been staying on the third floor of the desolate motel, but those who’d been residing on the other floors were quickly fleeing to the safety of the gravel parking lot.
That was when Aubrey let her eyes drift past her strange new friends and caught sight of what must have been the noise earlier. She couldn’t see much from where they were besides a scorched walkway and a door blown clean off its hinges. It lay in the parking lot half on some poor sucker’s car hood, burnt and blackened. Orange flames licked the walls a ways away, down at the other end of the motel on the third floor. Aubrey felt her blood run cold.
Then a powerful gust of wind flew through and sent a second shiver up her spine, and the strangers turned to it with matching looks of delight.
“Cap’n’s here,” the one reported as…. this night was going to shit…. As a shiny, silver/white pirate ship dropped from the sky and hovered in midair at the very end of the walkway.
“Time to go!” one of them said, and then two hands took hers, and they began to run. Aubrey had very little choice, with the police now shouting into blow horns below and the firefighters starting to prep the hose and climb the stairs. There wasn’t much choice with a flying boat literally right there . She let the strangers pull her along, sprinting with them as their robes whipped in the wind, and the ship ducked closer, just below the level of the third floor walkway and as close to the building as it could scrape, and the strangers didn’t let go of her hands as they ran and leapt.
She leapt with them, hit the deck hard , and nearly lost her dinner as it pitched up into the air and towards the lower atmosphere.
“What in the hell happened down there!?” a voice that was both tiny and magisterial demanded. One of the strangers had landed into a roll and was already on their feet, running across the deck and through a door, shouting, “Merle! Merle get up here and pay up, we stole a baby wizard!”
The other was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Aubrey, and they grinned a cat-like grin when she looked up and reached back to pull their long, shimmering hair into a ponytail near the top of their head.
“Don’t worry, babe,” the stranger said, “We’ll get you home in one piece, promise.” Their ears flicked as they said it, and Aubrey was sure there was body language in it that she didn’t understand. She blinked, pushed herself to sit up, and looked around. The door burst open, and three people spilled out, all of them human and all of them wearing some iteration of that matching red uniform.
“Is she okay!?” that small voice from earlier questioned from the helm. “What did you two do to her!?” Aubrey turned to look, felt the ship even out and still under them. The voice had an owner, who hopped down from their seat and stood up tall.
Three feet tall, specifically, with satellite ears and a tail that swished in irritation.
“I apologize for all of this,” the mouse-person said, and Aubrey’s vision swam, and she hit the deck.
---------
Aubrey woke up in what looked like a living room. There was a few sturdy, dormitory-grade couches, books scattered around, a coffee table covered in mugs and papers and some strange little fidgets Aubrey couldn’t recognize. And some rocks, some tiny bundles of sticks, some bent up wire-- it reminded Aubrey of the wiccan stuff she’d poked around with in high school, faintly.
There was a wet rag on her head and a young woman sitting on another sofa nearby, hand flying as she scribbled in a journal balanced on her knees.
“Oh good,” she said, looking up to grin at Aubrey without ceasing her writing. “You’re up. How are you feeling?”
“Um…” Aubrey wasn’t actually sure. She could feel the… the ship? moving underneath them. It was dizzying. “Fine,” she answered.
“Wasn’t any physical damage to worry about, but Merle got you up to full hit points anyways. Said you were a bit dehydrated. Are you hungry?”
“I….” Aubrey could understand every word the woman said to her, it was the order they were in that was bemusing. “What?”
Another person sauntered into the room, smiling wide and interrupting them without apology. “She lives!” the girl cheered, and was very quickly followed by someone near identical. The clones from earlier, pointed ears and all. Fascinating.
“Okay,” Aubrey said, pushing herself to sit up and folding the rag to have something to do with her hands. “Okay. O- kay , so, I have a few questions. First of all, what on earth is going on? Second, are you guys elves? I think I might be hallucinating still.”
“So this planet has elves?” the girl on the couch asked, still writing. “We didn’t see much species diversity in our initial sweep, but then again, this planet is quite extensive. That’s excellent news.”
“What?” Aubrey asked, pressing her hands into her eyes. “What? No. No, they’re like. They’re made up. Elves aren’t real. ”
One of said elves from the door scoffed. “Rude,” he said, and the other nodded and parroted, “Yeah, rude.”
The girl gave a quiet grin. “They’re quite real where we come from, I assure you. Are there other species of people here?”
“Besides humans?” she asked, “Like, animals and stuff?”
“Rude,” the elf repeated, and the human girl sent him a scowl.
“Can you get our guest a glass of water, please? Since you took it upon yourselves to kidnap her in the first place?”
“Well sor- ry we didn’t leave her there to get arrested. The flashing lights, cops, right babe? We totally saved your ass?”
Aubrey wasn’t sure of anything anymore. She shook her head slowly. “Maybe…?”
“Yo, Magnus!” the other yelled out the door. “Bring some water, my dude!”
“Not your fucking servant!” another voice yelled back. The elf stepped into the hallway and the two carried on yelling at each other while Aubrey counted her breaths and tried to make sense of everything.
“So I’m on a pirate ship?” she asked. The young woman contemplated that for a moment.
“It might look like one, I suppose, but… no. This is an interplanar ship fueled by a bond engine. When we failed to find life on the planets in our own solar system, and as we began to investigate the mysteries of the light of creation and understand the nature of the planes, we decided to take our search elsewhere.”
No amount of high school science classes could help her understand what was going on. She blinked a few times. “You… what?”
“We’re space aliens,” someone else said as they bounded into the room. One of the humans from earlier, a young man with an intimidating frame and a beat up uniform jacket in the same red as the others. He was barefoot and had a headband tied around his forehead. He handed Aubrey a glass of water and plopped down next to her.
“My name’s Magnus,” he said, shaking his hand and settling down comfortably.
“Aubrey,” she replied, speaking slowly and suspiciously. Magnus just beamed back. He pointed out the others in the room.
“These guys probably forgot to introduce themselves. That’s Lucretia,” he pointed to the girl with the journal, “And those two are Lup and Taako.”
“Are they clones?” she asked, voice a whisper.
Magnus whispered back, “Twins.”
“Ah.”
“Come on, let’s meet the others.” He leapt up from the couch and held a hand down to her, and Aubrey didn’t see much harm in it-- beyond the harm she was already in, with the alien pirate ship and all that-- so she took it and let him lead her away, sipping on her water as they went. Lucretia got up and followed them, notebook clutched close, and the twins followed along further back like they were pretending not to be interested.
“Barry is a human,” Magnus said, nudging open a door to a small lab and showing a middle aged man in a pair of goggles with grease stains on his nose and forehead, buried forearms deep on a small piece of machinery on his work bench.
“Yo,” he said, in greeting. Magnus dragged her along.
On the deck were two others, speaking quietly and sipping glasses of what looked like wine. Magnus said, “Merle is a dwarf, and our healer. Davenport is our cap’n’port.”
“Is he also an elf?” Aubrey whispered, and Magnus whispered back.
“Gnome, but don’t mention it. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“I can hear you both perfectly, Burnsides,” the gnome stated, setting his glass down and walking over to regard them. Magnus chuckled sheepishly. Aubrey clutched her water glass a bit tighter and glanced between them.
“I’m afraid we haven’t been properly introduced,” he said. Aubrey gave her name, first and last, and thought a bit too long on whether or not she was supposed to crouch down to shake his hand, wondered what the proper protocol was for the situation. Davenport reached up and shook it with her standing, anyways, and he had a wry grin on his face while he did so.
He said, “I must apologize for your being brought here. There will be strong words about it, rest assured.” He put more force into his voice as he said so, and Aubrey glanced back over her shoulder to find the twins both peeking around the doorway, eyes wide and ears tucked back. Magnus snickered.
“We are hoping, however, since we have you here that you might be able to help us.”
“I can sure try, I guess,” she answered him, and Davenport grinned.
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The eight of them stood out in the York, Pennsylvania public library like a western clown at mime school. She’d gotten them all to leave the jackets back on the ship, because eight people going anywhere together would draw enough attention. Seven people wearing matching uniforms would just be an absolute eyesore. They weren’t dressed well -- wherever they came from hadn’t invented zippers, which was peculiar, and they’d briefly explained their journey between planes. The plethora of clothing they’d picked up from a slew of different planets had left them with some surprising outfits, to say the least.
Regardless, there they were in a small town library, dressed either down or to the nines, Aubrey honestly couldn’t tell. Anyone with pointed ears had dawned a hat, despite the horribly muggy weather not allowing for it. Any tails had been tucked away. Magic items were either hidden in the waist band of pants or left behind on the ship. Despite all of that, nothing really kept them from looking out of place.
She sat at a clunky old computer and watched the mouse spin as their google search loaded, the twins sitting to her left, Barry leaning close to her right, Lucretia making sketches of the computers and other tech and mumbling about cracking it open to take a look. Merle and Davenport stood nearby and watched around her shoulders, and Magnus had wandered off somewhere, to look at the shelves no doubt.
“There,” she said, when the computer finally loaded. “Tibet.”
“That’s where it landed?” Davenport asked.
“Probably. No other recent new articles about miraculous shooting stars falling from the heavens. It must be there.”
Davenport nodded thoughtfully, and Merle asked, “Where is Tibet?”
Geography had never been a subject Aubrey was particularly good at. She printed them out a map of the globe, not knowing if it would do them any good at all and wondering if it would be better to get them some sort of GPS or whatnot. She answered their questions about the library, and about the computers therein, finding it quite entertaining that they were enraptured by the idea of a “robotic box that knows everything.” Apparently that was new.
She bid goodbye to the library and headed off down the street with them, answering more questions as they popped up about technology-- cars, light posts, the apparently very annoying hum of electricity that only the twins could hear-- about language-- why no one was speaking “common,” whatever that was, and Aubrey didn’t think to question why they were able to speak to her in English-- and about the world at large. She dodged questions about magic, desperately wanting to ask her own since she was meeting someone else with fire powers for the first time.
On the ship, Lup and Taako had thrown magic around like an afterthought, using it to aide in tasks and complete chores, and even playing with it when they were bored. Lup frequently passed tiny balls of flame between her fingertips, and Aubrey was itching to learn how to do that. The others had magic, apparently, as well. Barry frequently levitated things, and Merle supposedly had plant powers. In fact, the twins told her in a rather teasing tone of voice, that Magnus was the only member on board without any sort of magic whatsoever.
“Who needs magic when you can do this!?” he’d demanded, and grabbed Taako into a headlock, and the two had quickly fallen to the ground in a tussle while Lup rolled her eyes and tucked her legs up onto the sofa out of the way of their shenanigans.
Back on Earth, walking down the street, she gazed up at the sky and asked, “How does nobody see the Starblaster?”
“Natural camouflage,” Merle reported. “You don’t see it unless you’re looking for it.” They came to a park, and she blinked at the sky, and surely there it was. Plain as day floating fifty feet above them. Taako cast something with the wave of his hand and a ladder descended. He leapt onto it and began to climb, and Aubrey glanced nervously around them to assure there were no wondering eyes before following them up.
“We’ll get you back to your home, now,” Davenport told her.
“Ah shit,” Lup said, as if she was just realizing something. She grimaced and said, “Sorry about your house, babe.”
She must have been referring to the fire damage at the motel. Aubrey was gonna have to find a way to sneak out of that place without them seeing her, hope they didn’t try and trace the fire back to her in any way, she really did not need to be building this reputation for herself. No one will hire the Lady Flame if she’s an actual serial arsonist.
“Not my house,” she reassured. “Just a motel,” and when they looked at her confused, she wracked her brain for a better word. “Just an…. Inn?” They nodded.
“What did you guys even do to blow the room up anyways?”
The twins eyes both lit up at that, grins spreading across their faces. Then Taako glanced sideways at their captain and elbowed his sister, and they both painted on far more innocent expressions and said, “Accidents happen,” at the same time in creepy twin speak.
“Uh huh…” she said, and Davenport crossed his arms.
“Uh huh,” he repeated. “I’m sure. Shall we be getting you home then, Ms. Little?”
It really was about time to get a move on, but Aubrey wasn’t so eager to leave the space ship just yet. She said, “Actually, I was wondering…. Could you teach me that fire thing first?” She wiggled her fingers, trying to mime it, and Lup beamed yet again.
“Natch,” she said, taking Aubrey’s hand and dragging her off the deck deeper into the ship. “This’ll be great, I never get to do magic lessons,” she said, and Aubrey smiled and followed after her.
-------
At her next show in Ohio, Aubrey put a touch more flare into the natural magic she did on stage. She still relied heavily on the flash paper and the card tricks and Dr. Harris Bonkers, Ph.D. of course, but she let those flames dance on her fingertips in the moments between, expelling nervous energy and wowing the crowd at the same time.
She’d told her strange new friends about the shows she did, saw the twins gaze at her in starstruck wonder as they began murmuring amongst themselves about how they could do their own shows. Maybe one day, she mused, after they found that falling star they were looking for and saved the earth from utter destruction.
Aubrey tried not to think too hard about that part, tried to have faith that those strangers could complete this job they claimed to have done over a dozen times before. She poured her energy into her magic and her shows and the fire at her fingertips, and just as always, she tried really hard not to set off the fire alarms.