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"Well," said Tika finally, sober now in voice and expression, "That was interesting. You're right; at least they aren't still...in fear or angry or whatever THAT was," she added, nodding at the duo.

Rael stared at Mos and his pocket, falling backwards onto the grass to stare up into the sky. Lifting one hand to point towards the cloud, shielding her eyes with the other, she started to explain her thoughts to Mos. "Ikibaga aah-aga. Scary, Tika, aah-aga, eeeee."

Somehow it was always so hard to get thoughts and ideas across in baby babble.

Rachael, silent now, narrowing her eyes against the bright shining of the sun, tried vainly to explain her views. The clouds were drifting slowly across the sky, now, and in the faint sprinklings of stray leaves and gleaming particles, one could almost see the breeze. "Ah-aga, I like," she repeated, trying to convey the feeling of majesty and power in the clouds, the billowing clouds, large and multi-layered and it seemed as if she could make out foggy monsters, but then monsters existed everywhere, even in clouds - the clouds, she thought, were beautiful. But it was the nearly invisible breeze that tenderly teased out their corners and slid them across the blue canvas, positioning them just where they ought to be. She thought somehow that this was important, but then she had already noted that many things seemed to be important but really weren't, so for now she was just enjoying the beauty of the clouds. "Eh? Eh?" she asked Mos curiously, clumsily waving at him. Did he, too, enjoy cloud-watching? And what was his name, anyway?

"Yeah, talking sorta." Tika did not seem too enthused with pleasure. "Wouldn't it be cool if they could, er, communicate? I'm having an awful time understanding Rael, she's probably saying something whiny and useless about how big the sky is and how it isn't FAIR. But then all - er, many"--she cast a deferential glance at Mos in case Pave took offense--"small children seem to be like that."

"Their life...hell?" She continued her train of thought, a bitter edge slicing across her voice. "Can't be anything compared to the lives of those who try to RAISE them. Ten to one Rael gets run over by a car or something like that in the next few stages of her life...I can just see that, her conspiring with some sweaty kid to injure her somehow, just to get me annoyed. She likes to annoy me," Tika added, suddenly turning large luminous eyes on Pave. "Does Mos like to annoy you?"

For the first time since the start of the conversation, Tika seemed about to cry. Maybe she had had a particularly hard time with Rael.

Rael laughed at Mos' antics. Raching over to uproot a large clump of turf, she threw it at the guardians, mimicking Mos' shoe-filling technique. A few clods of dirt hit the pavement and then Pavement with soft thumps, and another carefully aimed handful came so close to Tika that it was only by some rapid Switching that the woman was able to avoid them at all. With this latest use of the eroding Switcher, a few tufts of grass - the ones closest to Tika, close enough to almost scrape her skin - burst into flame, blossoming red-yellow-blue like small and grass-scented fireworks before rapidly cooling down, holding their shape for mere nanoseconds before disintergrating into soft ashes, some particles so small Rael couldn't see them. It was like the flaming grass was dissolving.

It was pretty, so Rael clapped gaily, patting Mos' arm with the stumbling earnestness of any toddler, before reaching down to look for some more substantial things to throw at the Guardians.

"Not cool," Tika commented, rubbing at her elbow with the end of the Shifter. She winced. "Ow, blister! --Really? Hiding knives? Does he, like, use them or anything?" She thought back to the worm, the way the child had casually squashed it. At least Rael hadn't killed anything yet.

"Well, Rael just whines a lot. And asks to buy stuff--don't ask me how she learned that word...and occasionally she hides things and tries to injure me. I guess she's, er, "normal", but I wouldn't know. First child, she is."

She sighed, closing her eyes and trying very hard to blink away impending tears casually as she thought back to that morning - the fight, the yelling. Dammit, and she had just been ready to be a mommy to Rael, too. Well, early-morning blues, you could never trust your instincts before your daily sugar or coffee; if she'd pledged love to the little brat, who knows where they'd be now! In some horrible little-kid-paradise, probably, instead of having this nice conversation with this nice lady and...strange but also seemingly-nice kid.

"Are you OK?" Tika asked, staring at the rock. It seemed that Mos, too, enjoyed injuring people...or maybe it was in fun. Either way, that bruise looked nasty.

Rael laughed, and then laughed again as she realized that merely laughing wasn't causing her any pain. (It must be something else, then, she thought to herself--not Mos--she poked him to make sure--but something.) As Pave let out her shriek, Rael kicked chubby feet against the ground, staining herself with green.

She looked back at the other ToR to see him holding out a rock to her. And pointing to the lady who had let out such an amusing sound. His meaning was clear -- Rael felt her plump lips curve up into a grin as she grabbed the rock. Her eyes focused on the Guardians. Who would she hit?

Her eyes drifted from the Other Guardian, the one who was with Mos, and her purpling leg - such a beautiful color, really - to Tika, scowling and distempered. The "Rael" face, she thought, because somehow Tika was almost always smiling to everyone else, it was only to Rael, to HER that Tika wouldn't grin in happiness, she must HATE her, both ways, Tika not wanting Rael and now, Rael was angry, she wanted to be loved, she didn't want to have this nasty person who didn't like her to be her guardian...instead a nice lady. Like Pave. Pave had smiled to her. Tika didn't. The choice was made.

Hefting the rock in one small hand, she aimed carefully at Tika's head, drawing her bullet back over her head before letting it fly towards Her Guardian, Tika, the monster.

Tika laughed bitterly at Pave's words. "Normal? No, Rael isn't normal. Trust my luck to get the abnormal kid the first time around - the weird - the freak - the one NOBODY in her family could possibly like! Sometimes I don't know why I deal with her. Really, I can't understand, sometimes, when she tries to injure me, why ANYONE deals with her. Do you see this? Look, here." She raised her arm, her left arm with the Switcher (smoking) still clutched loosely in her fist, in front of her face, tilting it to the best effect. The sunlight illuminated a nasty scar, still red-raw, trailing down towards her elbow where it executed a sharp turn. "THIS is what she did this morning, THIS, and she almost cut to the bone, the HORRID--"

Just then the rock hit her, and Rael laughed exuberantly at her aim. It was a relatively large rock, white with a thin streak of gray down the center - a rock worthy of being in Tika's newborn rock collection. It grazed her knuckles, leaving behind a trail of mottled and purpling bruises. Tika gasped, letting go instinctively as she glared at her ToR--it was obvious who had done this one, Rael was still frozen in her aiming-position, although as Tika looked at her she put down her hand.

The woman clutched at the rock, stopping it in its tracks with he other, uninjured hand. "You--" Tika quickly licked at the slow beads of blood by her thumb. (The rock had jarred the sharp edge of the Switcher against her.)

Tika, gritting her teeth, let out a swift stream of obscene exclamations, wince-shrugging at Pave in apology. (With any luck, neither Mos nor Rael would be able to pick up the words.) "Ow," she moaned, dropping the rock she held in her hand to squeeze out the blood.

Rael, seeing Tika grimace at the injury, leaned forward to see a few droplets of blood - then, letting out a quick shriek, turned away quickly. If I can't see you, you can't see me, she thought to herself, echoing her thoughts of last night. The sticky globs of nausea rose towards the top of her throat, and Rael retched a quick dry-heave in the direction of the grass.

The rock, let go so casually by Tika, fell as if in slow motion, slowed by the temporal residue of the Switcher.

Blood, Rael thought to herself, shivering from head to toes. It was scary, she hadn't meant to, she wanted Tika to go away somehow but not with blood. It was so sticky and - somehow she knew - it never seemed to wash out properly. That time she had STUCK him, stuck him like a pig for blood pudding, the thin slivers of skin peeling gently and--it was so--she saw it in her mind, the round, thick puddle of scarlet death forming in the center of the wooden floor. The door beckoning behind her, and then she went with a goodbye.

It was left behind for a token, a souvenir, and then she was gone, but NO, she didn't want to know -- she tried and failed to block the influx of memories flooding her, the blood, in great arcs and eddies, and he I LOVED YOU ONCE but some things never last WHY DIDN'T YOU so sorry I really couldn't have known THE GREAT SHINING OF -- and somehow, through the swirling whirlpools of memory, a voice spoke to her, mature, female, softly hoarse and seductive. "Things can only frighten you to the extent that you let them."

She knew that it was herself, somehow, maybe from the future, and with fright Rael cracked her head hard against the rocky ground - and everything dwindled down to a pinprick of pain.

She sat up, and rubbed at the new bruise upon her head.

The rock, it shivered and swayed and still falling it--

It was a big bruise, she thought, but it didn't hurt too much now, just a dull aching.

--and then the temporal bubble burst and the rock was rushing down towards the ground at Tika's feet with a soft whistle of wind--

Maybe the bruise would go away by nightfall, the monsters would pounce on it as a weakness otherwise.

--and it hit, the rock, it hit the ground like a meteor - a comet, for the rapid acceleration had lent gentle sparks to its thin outer shell, and now it was encased in a thin sparkling web of stars. It hit the Switcher, lying dropped and abandoned at Tika's feet, and the stars enveloped the curved metal, and the net trapped the cigarette-lighter-top (glimmering with heat) like a butterfly in a gentle glass bell, and then as the rock ground itself deep into the Switcher, the Switcher exploded.

It burst outwards in a bubble of heat, nearly but not quite scorching the group surrounding it (perhaps burning those with sensitive skin just a little - but not much, for it had not - quite - overcome atmospheric density and thus the energy was confined in the Shield), shining bright light in yellowredorangepurple and at the very center bluewhitehot. Gentle ripples of flame licked around the Switcher, floating it off the ground in a delicate sphere of crackling tongues. The rock was glowing like a small sun, it seemed, although it was as if one was looking at it through eclipse-glasses, the smoke was so thick in the square foot or so around the device-and-its-doom, and the thin line across its center flared up blindingly before it broke, and the Switcher too broke, and everything fell to thick soft powder. A lonely ring of fire, a halo for the dead, drifted upwards to fade into silence.

The grass where the Switcher had been was burned away in a perfect ring, several concentric circle, actually, for where the ground was dark charcoal black - nothing would grow HERE for several years - it faded into brown, and then into a dusky tan before the grass started to grow again in diagonal streaks. At the center of the circle was a thin silver ring, the last remnants of the Switcher. Tika, shocked into silence, picked this up with the tip of a stick (the stick smouldered and broke off into charcoal as the woman caught the ring in a thick, thrice-shielded pocket, another product of her company); Rael, who had spun around at the great BANG of the explosion, had her mouth open in a voiceless "o".

Strangely enough, the sound had brought no cops running, had attracted the attention of no people. The shutters of the apartment buildings around them were firmly closed, the streets deserted - either this was an abandoned part of town, or perhaps it simply didn't exist as one might have thought it did. Knowing Tika and her affinity for stealing new products from her company, which had just developed some new realistic-hologram technology, the latter was very possible.

((OH, and I got bored and drew an...er...pixel grass? XD;;;;

))

Rael was still staring at the area where the rock--had--been, her eyes wide and blank. Glimmers of round and spherical outlines glimmered through her vision, fading to a shining white - the rock burned into her retina, black and pulsing - her first experience of seeing things after she had turned away, the afterimage left by excessive staring and - in this case - sudden brightness. Squeezing her eyes shut but still seeing the flashing image, she turned away from the Guardians, blinking open her eyelids to see--Mos.

"Muh," she commented, not quite remembering his name but echoing the sound of it anyway, as she leaned forward to prod at him nervously. Was the other ToR ok? He looked a bit...scary like that, scared too, so he couldn't be a monster.

Tika seemed at a momentary loss for works. "Wow," she repeated after Pave, feeling the ring finally cool down through three layers of airtight, bullet-proof artificial rhino-skin. "That was...unexpected."

She stared upwards, suddenly, looking rather hopeless. "Crap! I hate climbing the stairs!" How would she get back? she wondered to herself, trying to decide whether it would be less harmful to her health to run all the way to the nearest AW outpost and buy a new Switcher or just try and hobo her way through a day or so before reporting to work, that cursed word.

Rael stared as formerly-affectionate Mos shouted and made himself smaller. It was a defensive move, she thought, making one's surface area smaller, harder to hit. (She wasn't quite sure what "surface area" was, but it sounded good, and anyway, "harder to hit" was definitely right.) "Moh-oh?" she asked nervously, starting as Mos' eyes, wide and terrified, hung shivering in her mind, glaring at her, accusing--"UHS!" What did "fisxo" mean? Why was Mos doing this, why did monsters exist, why were clouds white and breezes invisible and the stretched big world, brown and softly comforting with solidity, here and was she, Rael, a monster; was she here, should she be here, and WAS SHE A MONSTER, and Tika, she and the Lady were staring now, and that bright light--why, she thought to herself, frantically, stroking at Mos' shoulder with a panicked twitch, did all this just happen?

And would it stop happening?

Tika, too, seemed a bit jumpy. "N-n-no," she muttered, shaking her head gently at the blackened disc of ground. "Not really. I didn't mean to. I mean, I know WHY it happened but I really didn't mean to drop the Switcher, it was just the--the rock!"

She stared at Pave appealingly. "Sometimes things just happen."

As in her mind, Rael echoed the words in a sudden flash of melancholy understanding. There was nothing she could do--yet.

Rael dropped her hand as Mos moved away, letting out a gentle whicker--the sound of a horse--as she turned away from her new friend. Mos seemed to want some privacy--therefore, Rael would give him his privacy. There was no pressing need to do anything, and she wasn't in the mood. "Muhs?" she mumbled, nearly getting his name right. "Scary?"

His little song floated through her head, ringing out clear and pure like a note sung just right and rich, clogging her ears with the sound of a toddler's voice. Earplugs, Rael thought--concentrating on the song, she blocked the world out, forcing obliviousness to Pave, Tika, everything but Mos, Mos or, more accurately, his song.

While Pave went forward to her child, Tika stepped backwards, a little farther from Rael--this was all her thought, the woman mused, and it'd probably be best to keep away from the little rascal. In case The Child decided to throw something again. "He OK?" she asked the other Guardian, eyes glued to Rael. Tika was not very fast, but she knew that if Rael decided to attack again, she'd sure as hell be out of there--child or not.