the capture

[instar]

Bella is, uncharacteristically, home alone; Andi is over at Robin's, and Renée is visiting a friend of hers in the hospital, though she could be home relatively soon depending on how much the two get caught up in conversation.

Bella is memorizing the map of Phoenix.

Comments

[aeskhyne]

Someone rings her doorbell.

Twice.

Three times.

Four five six—

Then it stops.

[instar]

Bella answers the door.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble is carrying several plastic grocery bags in each hand, and a large cardboard box between them. His eyes don't seem to be focusing properly.

He thrusts the box in her general direction and croaks, "Caaa...aaaaake..."

[instar]

"Um. Hi."

Bella takes the box. She puts it on the kitchen table.

[aeskhyne]

He plonks the bags down beside it. Stacks of Tupperware containers inside them shift and collapse, scattering all over the kitchen floor. He grabs one teetering on the edge of the table, sits down in a chair, and starts eating the lemon tart inside with total concentration and a look of bliss.

[instar]

"I wasn't expecting you," Bella remarks.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble takes no notice of this. He is busy eating his lemon tart out of its little foil dish. It's somewhat messy, but he takes no notice of that, either. His movements are sharp and jerky and not especially Trouble-like.

[instar]

Mmm-hm.

The hammer is over there, next to the scissors and the batteries. Behind him. Near the fridge. Bella picks up something that could conceivably need refrigeration. She goes in that direction. She opens the fridge to cover the noise of -

[pandion]

- a very quick morph.

She hefts the hammer.

She gives Trouble one double-checking glance.

[aeskhyne]

The lemon tart continues to be an object of apparently total fascination to him.

[pandion]

Bella has the ability to hit things she aims at, when she morphs her sister.

She brings the hammer down on his spine, just below the neck, as hard as she can.

[aeskhyne]

There is a nasty cracking sound.

Trouble yelps and drops his tart. And slowly slumps forward onto the table.

"What the—the hell!"

[pandion]

Bella grabs his shirt and dumps him onto the floor out of his chair and plants a foot on his stomach, not gently.

"I'll give you two minutes to crawl out of there or I crack his skull, peel you out myself, and have a new test subject for my interesting notions of chemical warfare. They won't be pleasant minutes; feel free to get out quicker. Start morphing and I'll kill you both if I have to."

[aeskhyne]

He whimpers.

Not in the way that Trouble might whimper, if confronted with Bella offering to give him two very unpleasant minutes with a hammer.

[pandion]

Bella flips the handle around in her hand so the claw end is aimed out, then turns it again. "I don't know how much sensation he's got left below the neck to share with you. Let's find out."

She's seen Ethan do this. She knows Trouble can take it.

She just doesn't think this is Trouble.

She brings the hammer down on his shoulder.

[aeskhyne]

He whimpers harder.

"Don't, Bella, please—"

[pandion]

"Come out," hisses Bella, "and it'll stop hurting. I haven't touched you. Yet."

Other shoulder.

[aeskhyne]

"nononononono," he moans. There is no evidence of the kind of faces he usually makes when someone is hitting him with a hammer.

[pandion]

"You have a minute and fifteen seconds and then I give him up as a lost cause, open his head like a pinata, and see how much bleach it takes to dissolve you."

[aeskhyne]

He shakes his head. "Please," he mumbles hoarsely, "pleasedon'tkillme."

[pandion]

She breaks his elbow.

[aeskhyne]

He screams.

And then his whole face twitches, and relaxes abruptly.

[pandion]

"Forty-five seconds," says Bella, "I will not be satisfied until I see a slug, and how things go for that slug depends on its speed." Other elbow.

[aeskhyne]

"She's going, she's going," Trouble mumbles groggily.

And indeed, there is something greenish-grey and slimy starting to emerge from his left ear.

[pandion]

Bella puts down the hammer.

When the slug has emerged, she picks it up, puts it in a mixing bowl, and fills it with water.

Only when she has done this does she slump against the counter and -