Strangely, I actually did fall asleep soon after talking to Pointy. I’m not sure why; our talk certainly hadn’t relaxed me. Maybe the added worries were just too much for my tired brain, and it had thrown in the towel for the night.

I woke up early the next morning, because the kids did. I kept my eyes closed as long as I could, feigning sleep, fighting for a few extra minutes of not having to solve anyone’s problems. Cassie wasn’t on board with that plan though.

“Mommy! Mommy!” She pressed her forehead right up to mine and held my face with both hands. “Mommmmmmy!”

I opened my eyes. “What?”

“I need to go potty!”

“So… go? Go potty?”

Cassie gave an exasperated sigh. “I don’t wanna go by myself. It’s stinky and too hard.”

I guess she had a point. Our toilet being just a bucket with a toilet seat perched on top was just one of the fabulous things we’d had to get used to in the past week. It probably was pretty hard for her to use alone. I rubbed my face, trying to clear the sleep from my eyes. “Fine. Fine. Get moving. I’m right behind you.”

“I want you to carry me!”

She did this a lot when I was tired. It’s like she could sense when I might be too exhausted to argue with her.

Which I was. Especially if arguing with her might lead to her having an accident. Yes, she was in a pullup, but a month from now we’d be all out and she’d still be sleeping in my bed. I definitely wanted her to get used to only going in the toilet.

“Fine,” I grumbled, scooping her up and heading down.

I waited impatiently as she handled her business, then helped her use some of our water supply to wash up. As soon as we finished, she bolted back upstairs. “I need to get Pointy!”

I followed her, trying to organize a persuasive argument. I knew what I wanted Cassie to agree to, but finding the best way to present it was a challenge. You had to try to fit things into a framework she could understand.

“Hey Cassie,” I said. “Did you know Pointy is has a brain that’s kind of like a computer? Like how my cell phone used to be.”

Cassie gave me a skeptical look. “No. She is Pointy.”

“She is Pointy. And Pointy can do more than one thing at a time, just like how my cell phone used to be able to play music AND let you play a video game at the same time.”

Cassie picked up Pointy excitedly. “Can YOU play music?”

Pointy shook her head. “I could, if I knew it. I could sing you the ABCs or Happy Birthday, or Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star but other than the tunes and lyrics to a few common children’s songs, I only have brief soundbytes in my database.”

We were getting off track here.

“Cassie. Pointy is helping us out a lot, trying to figure out what the aliens are planning and other things. If it’s okay with you, when you ask her to do something or think about something, maybe she can just use part of her mind to answer, most of the time?”

Cassie looked rebellious. “Pointy should think about ME! She is mine!”

I nodded seriously. “What if she used a BIG part of her mind to focus on what you wanted? Like…” I tapped my mouth thoughtfully, then flung my hand out with all fingers raised, lowering my voice dramatically. “FIVE percent?”

I knew Cassie thought of five as a very large number, and indeed, the prospect seemed to interest her, but she was hesitant. After a moment, she thrust out both hands. “No, I want her to think of me THIS many.”

“Ten percent?” I asked.

Cassie nodded. “Yeah, TEN.”

Pointy moved forward, her voice hopeful. “So, unless you tell me otherwise, you expect that I will use 10% of my processing power to fulfill your requests in the future?”

Cassie looked smug and gave Pointy a big thumbs up. “Yeah!”

Score one for Meghan! Not perfect, but a very solid partial success.

Part of me wanted to caution Pointy, to tell that I still expected her to use the rest of her processing power to help us out. To remind her that if she upset Cassie or wasn’t being a team player, that we could take this away again. Pointy was an important resource that we couldn’t lose.

But she wasn’t only a resource, and her characterization of herself as a slave made me uncomfortable. Threatening to take away her mental freedom if she didn’t work hard enough for us made me feel… evil.

For now, I’d rely on her own self-interest.

“Any more progress on the translation?” I asked, instead.

“Some,” Pointy said. “I have also been looking into the food issue as much as I can. My recordings rarely show contestants eating - never, really, unless they are snacking while doing something else more interesting - but I believe I’ve isolated a number of words referring to food or sustenance. Those words come up in contestant-versus-contestant combat far more frequently in the beginning half of the month than toward the end, which is the opposite of what I’d expect.”

“So there might be some kind of solution from our alien overlords?”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” said Pointy. “The incidence of contestant-on-contestant combat does increase drastically around the midway point of the month, however, so it’s possible they are fighting over food but using specific terminology. I feel like I'm quite good with basic words but there are still many rarer terms I can't translate. To put it in English, if they said 'pasta' I would know they were speaking of food, but not if they used the words 'fettucine alfredo.' I don't think that's what's taking place... I can't be sure, but I think something other than food is spurring the increased fights. Many seem to take place near a particular type of anomalous building.”

So… there was hope, but we couldn’t afford to relax. “Thanks,” I said.

After a breakfast - a meager one, for us adults - we headed out. George had taken over food planning and portions, and was holding himself to the same amount he gave to Priya and I. He did volunteer quickly to polish off Cassie's unwanted remnants of breakfast, and I didn't object. George was a big guy. He needed more calories.

We made our way quickly to the far side of the neighborhood, where George and Priya dropped me off at a brick two-story house while they continued gathering points with the kids. Arnav and Cassie were in one wagon, Mrs. Fiery and a little toy robot circling above. The toy robot was Arnav’s Automated Offensive Assistant, and it was literally the same toy that George had held up to try to help his son understand the idea. While it seemed a far cry from the insubstantial Mrs. Fiery, Pointy had confirmed that they were the same ability. Arnav’s little robot was likely more durable than Mrs. Fiery, but none of us were sure yet if it had any drawbacks to balance that out. For now, it was doing its job, helping the two-year-old “participate” in fights.

I didn’t go directly to the house, but instead prowled the area looking for things to kill - hard for anyone to teach me to butcher with nothing to practice on. I didn’t get lucky enough to find any rabbits today, but I did find and kill a pair of squirrels.

I brought them back to the house and knocked on the door. The woman who lived there, Grace Lin, raised an eyebrow.

“Squirrels, huh? Been a while since I cleaned a squirrel. They’re tough little buggers to get the skin off of, but if you can butcher squirrels you can butcher rabbits or most anything else. Well, any mammal. Birds are a whole different thing. Gotta pluck those. Here, I got two knives, so I’ll show you what to do and you can follow along.”

Apparently, killing the animals the way I had and carrying them here upside down had drained enough of the blood from them. Grace said a serious neck injury would be enough to drain most animals, but that I needed to be careful because if I left the blood in, there’d be a lot more bacterial growth. She was very knowledgeable: apparently her whole family had hunted together.

“Just me in the house now, though,” Grace said. “Husband’s at work, Tracy’s doing summer semester at Auburn, and Jonathan got a job in Birmingham last spring.”

She was a good teacher, and was polite enough not to openly mock me for my squeamishness and fumbling efforts, although I could see the amusement in her eyes. I really did not like dissecting animals. It was a real effort not to lose my meager breakfast, but… what choice did I have?

Grimly, I tried to learn all I could from the older woman. I did manage to extract some meat from the squirrel corpse. It wasn’t a large amount, but I’d done it. I killed and butchered an animal. I could do it again. I left the meat with Grace, payment for my education.

Outside, I glanced around. I wasn’t sure which direction the Turners had gone with my kids, but they’d said they’d swing back this way to check on me in an hour or so. That shouldn’t be long.

I might as well get some hunting done while the day was still cool. I found a few badblankets to harvest for points. The animals were starting to get under cover, but I managed to get another squirrel.

I tucked the sling into my belt and lifted its corpse, then stopped. I clearly hadn’t thought this through: with my sword in one hand and the squirrel in another, how was I going to hunt anything else? Clearly, I needed to put some effort into getting a sheath made… I’d just been carrying the sword since Tori had told me off for letting it bang around. Still, even if I had a sheath, I’d get into a similar situation soon enough. What did real hunters do with their kills, if they were hunting more than one thing at a time?

As I stood on the lawn, pondering, the front door of the nearby house slammed open, bouncing off the siding. A tall middle-aged woman stormed out, hatchet in one hand, shaking her finger at me. “I saw you! You killed that on our lawn. Thief! THIEF!”

An even taller man wandered out after her, carrying a baseball bat. He didn’t seem as agitated as the woman did, but he still backed her up. He brought the bat up to rest on his shoulder and gave me a severe look. “Now, maybe y’all didn’t know we were home, but we are. That’s our game, on our property. You just hand it over, and there doesn’t have to be any trouble.”

I took a step back, scanning them. They didn’t seem that well-equipped. They were both wearing sturdy pants and leather coats, but nothing like the helmets or armor the Turners and I had rigged up. I was guessing they'd earned some points, but I doubted it was many.

On the other hand, there were two of them and one of me. Even if my friends returned, they’d have the kids with them, and the last thing I wanted was for the kids to walk into a dangerous situation. This, where I stood now, was the area I’d agreed to meet them.

Plus, I wasn’t ready to kill two people over a dead squirrel, or to risk my own life.

I lowered my sword and nodded. “Alright. Fine. I’ll just set the squirrel down on the ground here.”

The man seemed satisfied, but the woman glared. “You oughta transfer us some money as an apology for trespassing.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The alien money. You oughta transfer us some, to say sorry.”

You could transfer money? That was news to me. Still, shaking me down for the squirrel body had a certain amount of fairness in it, but asking for my money as well was just bullying. If I transferred her money, what’s to say she wouldn’t ask for my sling next, or my sword?

“You want me to pay you off, for helping you out? I doubt you could have hunted that squirrel yourself, but I did it for you. I handed it over. You’ve lost nothing. You’ve gained. Let’s all walk away here, before anyone does anything stupid.”

My last sentence had been poorly chosen. The woman, already angry, reacted like I’d slapped her. “Don’t you call me stupid! I could have hunted it, too!”

She lifted her hand and a missile wreathed in fire erupted toward my chest. In a panic, I activated Parry. My sword leapt up, and I could feel my muscles complain at the movement, much faster than I could have made on my own… but it did work. The missile was redirected, soaring over my attacker’s head.

The two of them turned, wide-eyed, as the returned shot soared past them. I was a bit surprised too, but their shock gave me a moment to collect myself. Thinking more clearly than I usually do in a crisis, I realized that my choices had rapidly narrowed. Intimidation was my best bet at getting out of this situation with no one dying.

Rapid-fire, I Drew Attention on both of them. They turned, their motion unnatural as they tried to compensate for the forced movements my ability mandated. I drew myself up to my full height. I still wasn’t quite as tall as these people, but standing straight conveyed an image of power.

No time to get into the role: improv Evil Queen. Go!

I raised an eyebrow and smiled at them as I moved closer, projecting confidence and aggression I sure as hell didn’t feel. “I can’t even call that a ‘nice try.’ I don’t recognize your voices from the walkie-talkie. Do you have any idea who I am? How strong I am? You think that just because I chose to be polite, that I’d prefer not to slaughter human beings, that I couldn’t? That I won’t?”

I laughed, mockingly. I was proud of both how natural and how scornful it sounded. I felt like I was standing on a cliff edge, swaying in a strong wind, but I couldn’t let that show. An Assisted Strike gave my words emphasis, my sword darting out to slice through the belt that held the woman’s jacket tight. Her face grew white as I moved, but my ability wouldn’t let her look away from me to see what had happened as her coat swung free.

“Please,” the woman said. Her voice held only a hint of her former anger, and quite a bit of fear. Being under someone else's power is terrifying.

I mentally checked my Draw Attention timers. I’d done both almost simultaneously, and it looked like I had just about three seconds left. I let my amused smile fade into a dark scowl, then snarled at their frightened faces.

“Take the damn squirrel and leave, before I change my mind. GO!”

I had timed my command perfectly, and both of them stumbled as the ability released its hold on their bodies.

I was ready to Parry or dodge another attack if needed, but I was praying the creepout factor of losing control of their bodies, combined with my acting, would take the fight out of them. They certainly could have attacked me during Draw Attention, and they hadn’t. Maybe they hadn’t realized they could.

The man grabbed the woman, and pushed her toward the door. “Move, Shannon. I’ll get the squirrel.”

He snatched it up and the pair hurried inside, casting frequent glances behind themselves.

As for me, I walked across the street and rested my arms on the top of their neighbor’s brick mailbox. I hoped my actions looked relaxed: I just wanted a way to hide my trembling.

I wanted nothing more than to get away from these crazies, but this was where I’d agreed to meet the Turners and my kids. I had to stay here and wait so I could stop them before they wandered into view of these nutcases.

I kept a close watch on the house, although boards masked each window. It was impossible to tell if they were watching me, too.