Not for the first time, she found herself browsing back to the forums.
It wasn't one of the official news articles, the ones where the pictures were somewhat tasteful and respectful. That almost felt more wrong than the crazy shit, the forum pages dedicated to conspiracies and monster stories and the big grainy photos of the swollen, veiny water balloon people with their big toothless mouths. The accusations of photoshopping. The increasingly hostile arguments over whether or not these were aliens. It felt more wrong to act like it was normal, to report on it like it were a celebrity scandal or a house fire or a feel-good story about a litter of skitties.
'Some bus driver drinking on the job', she'd told her friends in Kanto when they asked after the news reports on the Belfry, and it had sounded as wrong then as the calm, respectful reports on the Blackbell Hound's webpage.
She was taller than the others, able to look over the shoulders of the younger children and through the windows without much effort. 'No way they're human,' read one of the comments in the thread on her phone. 'Look at them.'
The bag on the seat was discoloured and waterlogged, but the characters on it were still easy enough to recognise. What kind of alien would use a Teddiursa Friends backpack?
The click of her phone drew her out of her trance. She'd barely even taken notice of herself turning the camera app on until the photo was there, on the screen, looking offensively normal. Just an old bag. Just a broken games system. Just some nasty-looking pokeballs. She shoved her phone into her pocket before a teacher should catch her and confiscate it and allowed herself, with a little less resistance than the younger kids, to be shepherded away.
For a moment, anyway.
She didn't keep Shuppet out of his pokeball as a habit, but she'd let him out today. Raury's Gastly had been finding its way into her bag a little too regularly over the last few days, and a guard couldn't hurt. But Shuppet didn't follow her when she was led away from the bus, and she found herself having to wander back to find him. He wasn't quite visible through the window, not as himself, but the toys scattered around the bus moved as he flitted between them excitedly, never quite finding purchase (none of them, after all, were discarded, just left behind) but gleeful all the same. A waterlogged, mouldy teddy bear waved its half-detatched arm at her. It would have been sweet if it wasn't just a little horrifying.
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It wasn't one of the official news articles, the ones where the pictures were somewhat tasteful and respectful. That almost felt more wrong than the crazy shit, the forum pages dedicated to conspiracies and monster stories and the big grainy photos of the swollen, veiny water balloon people with their big toothless mouths. The accusations of photoshopping. The increasingly hostile arguments over whether or not these were aliens. It felt more wrong to act like it was normal, to report on it like it were a celebrity scandal or a house fire or a feel-good story about a litter of skitties.
'Some bus driver drinking on the job', she'd told her friends in Kanto when they asked after the news reports on the Belfry, and it had sounded as wrong then as the calm, respectful reports on the Blackbell Hound's webpage.
She was taller than the others, able to look over the shoulders of the younger children and through the windows without much effort. 'No way they're human,' read one of the comments in the thread on her phone. 'Look at them.'
The bag on the seat was discoloured and waterlogged, but the characters on it were still easy enough to recognise. What kind of alien would use a Teddiursa Friends backpack?
The click of her phone drew her out of her trance. She'd barely even taken notice of herself turning the camera app on until the photo was there, on the screen, looking offensively normal. Just an old bag. Just a broken games system. Just some nasty-looking pokeballs. She shoved her phone into her pocket before a teacher should catch her and confiscate it and allowed herself, with a little less resistance than the younger kids, to be shepherded away.
For a moment, anyway.
She didn't keep Shuppet out of his pokeball as a habit, but she'd let him out today. Raury's Gastly had been finding its way into her bag a little too regularly over the last few days, and a guard couldn't hurt. But Shuppet didn't follow her when she was led away from the bus, and she found herself having to wander back to find him. He wasn't quite visible through the window, not as himself, but the toys scattered around the bus moved as he flitted between them excitedly, never quite finding purchase (none of them, after all, were discarded, just left behind) but gleeful all the same. A waterlogged, mouldy teddy bear waved its half-detatched arm at her. It would have been sweet if it wasn't just a little horrifying.