“You sure you want me to come with you?” Tori asked and Anya gave her a long, steady look.

“You volunteered to come! Did you think I wanted you to just wait in the car?” Anya asked. She had parked the V-200 on the far edge of an expansive green lawn that had been meticulously trimmed and edged. The lawn was still striped with alternating lines of light and dark green from where the mower had made its steady progress. The V-200 didn’t leave any marks on the grass as it hovered several inches above it, silent and invisible. Anya decided it was best to not alarm her mother by showing up in a flying modded alien craft.

The lawn was just the elaborate emerald welcome mat to the rest of her mother’s home: a wide one-story with pearl-white siding with salmon pink and sunny yellow accents. Well-groomed flower beds lined the pale brick pathway up to a door that bore grinning cartoon sun.

Porcelain statues of cherubs decorated the flower beds, their eyes far too large for their heads. Anya had always hated the cherubs. The wide dark eyes made the angelic infants look like they only had empty sockets to her. Cleaning them had been one of her many tasks growing up, and she’d been forced to look straight into those vacant black holes for hours every weekend until she had finally fled to New York. She wondered if her mother did it now or roped some other poor sap into doing it for her.

“I was kinda hoping to just wait in here?” Tori shrugged. “Gary put a pretty great sound system in.”

Anya glared at her.

“Fine! I was kidding anyways,” Tori said. “But you can’t blame me. Your mom’s scary.”

“Are all moms like that?” Anya asked. Tori snorted.

“Hell no. My mom’s super lazy. She didn’t give a damn what I did as long as she didn’t ever have to post bail money or pay for an abortion or anything.”

“Sounds nice.”

“She’s also an alcoholic.”

“Maybe not so much,” Anya sighed.

“You gotta get me lunch after this,” Tori said. “Something really unhealthy to make me feel good. They got good BBQ down here, right?”

“Some of the best,” Anya nodded, then looked at the house. “C’mon. Let’s get this over with.”

“Right behind you,” Tori said as they exited the invisible craft. Anya left the V-200 cloaked as she and Tori followed the pale brick path to the front door and the sun on its front. Anya took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

Both she and Tori stiffened as they heard footsteps approaching and then the door swung inward.

A short woman in her fifties stood there, her face and body round. She wore a pale blue dress dotted with pink flowers and a frilled lime-green baking apron over it that was dusted with flour. On somebody else the rotund figure mixed with the bright colors might have reminded Anya of a balloon.

However, on her mother, it only made her think of a pastel wrecking ball. Her mother’s features hadn’t softened since she’d last seen them, and still had all the welcoming appeal of cold cement.

There was a brief second when her mother’s face shifted. It didn’t soften, but the normally stern, disapproving countenance went slack with surprise as it beheld Anya. Her mother swung the door open, eyes aimed at Anya’s chest, where her face should have been, then traveled up and up.

“Hey Mama,” Anya said and tried a weak smile. Mrs. Nowicki’s eyes went wide, she screamed, and slammed the door.

There was a moment of silence before Tori slapped Anya on the back and said, “Welp, ready for that BBQ?”

It took several minutes for Anya to convince her mother that it was really her and to not call the police. She finally managed it once Mrs. Nowicki took a long, hard look at her face through the window and Anya related a few stories from her childhood, namely cleaning the damn cherubs every weekend instead of playing with her friends.

When Mrs. Nowicki finally let her and Tori in, it was still with some reluctance and a wary distance. Anya wasn’t sure, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if her mother had some kind of weapon in one of her apron pockets.

Eventually though, the three women sat down in the living room. It was bright, with a wide window letting the abundant sunlight in through a wide window flanked by translucent white curtains. Photos of Annie, her husband, and their children adorned the walls. There were a few pictures of Anya, but the most recent one when she graduated from Clemson University years ago. The rest were from when she was a teenager or younger.

The pictures shared space with framed Bible quotes and needle-point art of flowers, doves, cherubs, and other subjects of saccharine banality. She knew Annie had made some of these when she and Anya had been kids. Anya had tried her hand at them, but she’d never had the patience.

Mrs. Nowicki led them to the center of the room where Tori and Anya sat on the couch while she sat on a wing-backed armchair. All the furniture was covered in thick, squeaking plastic. Tori didn’t seem to know how to properly sit on the plastic-covered couch, and every movement she made caused the material to squeak loudly as if she were farting.

Frrrrrrrrrt, went the couch as Tori shifted.

“Fun furniture,” Tori said and gave a weak laugh.

“I expected this was coming,” Mrs. Nowicki said and gestured at Tori. “You looking all butch and now coming to see me with a woman. I know I wasn’t the best mother but I never expected my own daughter would be a lesbian.”

“What? Mama, no. I’m not a lesbian,” Anya said.

Technically true, Anya thought.

Tori snorted loudly and laughed. She moved to the side and the plastic made the Frrrrrrrrrt noise again which caused Tori to laugh further. Anya ignored her. “I’m not here to come out to you and Tori is just my friend.”

Anya hadn’t had much success in her love life. According to her menu, her physical skill at sex was only a 3, which she chalked up to having only a couple of hook-ups in college (a couple boys and a couple girls), and a short-lived boyfriend after she’d moved to Manhattan.

Growing up, dating boys (let alone the concept of dating girls) had been a strictly forbidden topic, and Anya felt as if she was ten-to-fifteen years behind everybody else when it came to relationships. It was something she hadn’t even told Tori much about. And now that the aliens had invaded, it wasn’t exactly the best time to go about finding herself intimately or anything and——

Anya pinched the bridge of her nose and took a steadying breath. She was already mentally veering off course. Her mother tended to do that: throwing her thoughts and arguments into disarray with a few well-placed word-strikes or pointed looks.

“I’m not here about that, and even if I was, I wouldn’t just spring it on you like this,” Anya said. “It’s about all the stuff that’s been in the news lately.”

“The aliens? Or demons? Or whatever the news is calling them?” Mrs. Nowicki asked.

“They’re not demons.”

“Not according to what I know,” Mrs. Nowicki said.

“Well unless you've had direct contact with them like I have, I kinda doubt you know better than I do,” Anya snapped. She’d considered taking this conversation slow, trying to gradually warm her mother up to the idea that her daughter was a host.

Mrs. Nowicki became very still as she looked at her daughter.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

Anya puffed out her cheeks and said, “Come on out, Felix.”

“Hello Mom!” Felix said as they appeared on the polished coffee table between the couch and the chair.

Mrs. Nowicki’s eyes widened, but she didn’t scream. The living room became a surreal and silent tableau in that moment: Mrs. Nowicki staring goggle-eyed at Felix, who had taken on one of their customary dynamic entry poses; Anya had her hand over her mouth as she leaned forward, elbow on her knee, wishing she had coached Felix on how to better introduce himself; and finally Tori, her lips drawn into a tight, puckered smirk as she held in some nervous laughter and darted her focus between the other three and shifted on the couch again.

Frrrrrrrrrrrt.

“What in God’s name is that?” Mrs. Nowicki asked.

“I swear it’s just the couch,” Tori said.

“Not that,” Mrs. Nowicki glared at Tori and she looked away. She then turned her gaze back to Felix, who continued to grin back at her with all the placid calmness of a cow staring at an oncoming train. “What. Is. That.”

“I’m Felix! I’m the Artificial Intelligence assigned to help Anya navigate and utilize her personal menu system to its maximum potential.”

“Ma, you know how the President was talking about that USAIF thing? And the hosts? The people who fight aliens?” Anya asked.

“Yeah,” Mrs. Nowicki said, still staring at Felix with lethal intensity. The AI’s grin didn’t budge.

“Well,” Anya pointed at herself, “I’m one of them. The hosts.”

Anya launched into what had, by now, become a routine explanation of the basic events, and Felix knew their role as well. The rose-headed AI brought up menu screens and skill lists to illustrate whatever point Anya was talking about, including video of fights with aliens, her meeting with President Hanover, Director MacDougal swearing her into the USAIF, and more. Anya summoned fire, light, and made a few small objects move by changing the gravity around them. She thought about summoning Reggie but decided against it.

During the roughly half-hour that the explanation tumbled out of her, Mrs. Nowicki remained silent. This alone was a danger signal for Anya. Her mother delighted in talking, especially in talking down or talking over somebody.

But her lips remained in a tight line, her gaze steady and as unblinking as a crocodile watching some hapless animal on the shore.

When Anya finished, Felix took a little bow, then vanished. Anya looked at her mother in silence. When she still hadn’t spoken after several moments, she sighed.

“Mama, please say something,” Anya said.

“Your daughter is a hero, Mrs. Nowicki,” Tori said. “She’s saved a lot of people and risked her life.”

Mrs. Nowicki took a deep breath and said, “I’m so ashamed of you.”

Anya’s mother had never physically struck her, but Anya felt as if she’d just been slapped.

“Ma——”

“No. Whatever this is, it’s unnatural and you just going along with it is a disgrace. I knew you’d gone astray, knew you were probably never gonna be good like your sister but I still had hope that you——”

Her mother took a hitching gasp and Anya was shocked to see her eyes well up with tears.

“This is unnatural,” Mrs. Nowicki repeated. “You’ve let something evil into yourself and you’ve embraced it. Whatever that orange thing was, it wasn’t human, and it sure wasn’t of God. You’ve turned your back on everything I ever taught you.”

“You taught me how to be afraid of you and nothing else,” Anya said. She had expected her mother to be upset, to be scared, to maybe be in denial, but not this. Not this quiet, resolute refusal of her. “And I didn’t volunteer for this! This literally came crashing in through my window!”

“Which wouldn’t have happened if you’d listened to me and stayed where you belong,” Mrs. Nowicki said. “But you wanted to stray, to not follow the wisdom of your elders, to go to a place steeped in vice and work for a company obsessed with money and now here you are. Carrying some kind of unholy thing in you and expecting me to do what, Anya? Be happy about it? This is profane.”

“It’s not unholy!” Anya snapped. “It’s just something that happened and I was hoping you would, for once in your holier-than-thou life, be a supportive mother. Why are you like this? It's not the church! Everybody else, including the pastors and the deacons, they've always been plenty nice and caring. But it's you whose always had a stick up her ass that you only pull out to beat somebody with!”

“Oh boy, here we go,” Tori said.

“How dare you. I have always been supportive——” Mrs. Nowicki started to say.

“Bull-fucking-shit!” Anya snapped.

“You will not use that foul language in this house!”

“This is why I put this off. Because unless everything I did was exactly what you wanted, it was never good, never worthy of anything but you brow-beating me with your twisted crap and measuring me next to Annie. I’ve tried to make you happy and live my own life but it’s clear those things are mutually exclusive.

“I’m done with you,” Anya said and stood up. “If Annie still wants to talk she can call me, but you don’t get to do that anymore.”

“Good. Get out,” Mrs. Nowicki snapped. “It’ll be the first good thing you’ve done for me.”

“Holy shit, lady,” Tori said. “Your daughter is fighting for the human race and you’re just throwing her out? What the hell is wrong——”

“No. Don’t waste your time, Tori. Let’s go,” Anya said. Tori slid off the couch with a final Frrrrrrrrt sound.

“That wasn’t your ugly couch that time,” Tori shot over her shoulder as she and Anya stormed out.

“Get out!” Mrs. Nowicki screamed at their backs and slammed the front door behind them.

Anya stood on the front stoop and stared up at the clear blue sky. Her mother’s final words echoed in her head and Anya clenched her fists.

“Fuck!” she shouted and focused tight gravity wells around each of the cherub statues in the yard and crushed them into powder. Her mother’s flowers and immaculate lawn caught fire and were burned to cinders in a split second. Tori yelped in surprise, but the fire was already gone before she could protest. The house itself was untouched, but the lawn and flowerbeds were smoking expanses of ash.

“Well, uh, that’s a thing,” Tori said. “We should probably get going.”

Anya stomped toward the V-200 and got in with Tori. She was already lifting off while Tori was strapping in. They flew in silence for several moments before Anya said, “Shouldn’t have done that.”

“I shouldn’t have hot-boxed your Mom’s living room or you shouldn’t have fried her entire yard?” Tori asked. A smile managed to tug at the corner of Anya’s mouth for a moment.

“I shouldn’t have even bothered going there. I didn’t expect her to basically disown me, but I knew it wasn’t going to be anything positive. Even if it wasn’t the whole alien thing, we were never gonna have any good talks. Not unless I became a copy of my sister.”

“I’m not an expert but isn’t that for the best then? Better to know for sure, have it behind you, than just resign yourself to living with it. Right?”

Anya wiped at her eyes and sniffed. Tori put her hand over Anya’s.

“Yeah. Better to know who’s worth a damn,” Anya said and smiled at her friend.

“Yeah. I told the other USAIF agents we’d be awhile. Still wanna get lunch?” Tori asked.

“Yeah. Just not in Clemson,” Anya said. “I never wanna come back here.”

“Works for me. There’s a pretty highly rated place in Columbia.”

Tori showed her on the V-200’s map, and with no small amount of relief, Anya left Clemson behind her.

Aside from making sure Anya was okay, or at least would be, Tori didn’t push her to talk about what had happened during lunch. It was just as well, as both women were too engaged with the pulled pork, brisket, and ribs.

“Uhhhh,” Tori groaned on the flight back to DC. “Do we have enough time for me to take a nap before we get there?”

“About forty minutes. I can drop the speed down more if you want,” Anya replied.

“No, I got reports to write.”

“Are you gonna have to tell them about what happened?” Anya asked.

“Just the basics. Family disagreement. Minor property damage. Host will not deviate.”

“Deviate?” Anya asked.

“They just wanna make sure nothing is gonna make you go nuts and betray America or set fire to a city or something. I keep telling them you’d never burn a whole city. Maybe half.”

“Har har.”

“Seriously though, I’ll take their money but if there’s anything you don’t want me to say, just lemme know,” Tori said.

“Nah, it’s fine. I kinda like the fact that my mother being a heartless asshole is going to be a matter of official government record.”

“Speaking of things on the record, what’s up with you? We just ate like two whole pigs and I’m in a coma and you look like you could run a marathon,” Tori said and poked her side.

“Enhanced metabolism thanks to regeneration and my high fortitude skill,” Anya said. “Means I won’t get fat either.”

“You are just the worst,” Tori said. “So you could just eat and eat and eat and never gain a pound?”

“Well I’d gain weight but it would likely just go to making my muscles denser or something. I actually probably weigh close to 300-400 pounds right now,” Anya said. “It’s just all really tightly packed in here. Felix was telling me about my muscles changing to accommodate my new brawn levels while keeping me at a normal-ish size. Some kind of ultra-dense, multi-layered thing.”

“Weird,” Tori said. The two moved the conversation to more mundane matters: how some of Tori’s new government co-workers annoyed her, any shows they had been watching, and so on until DC was visible in front of them.

Anya flew over the city to a place Tori pointed at on the map: an empty baseball field next to an equally empty park on the edge of the city. A small group of USAIF agents were there to meet them, much smaller than the group that had met Pan, and nobody in power armor. Anya decloaked the V-200 well before she landed to not alarm the agents too much and then shut the vehicle down to allow Tori out.

“You call if you need me, okay?” Tori asked as she got out of the V-200. “Seriously. And I’ll talk to some of the suits about clearing up things with your mom. Legally, anyway. She’s probably pissed about her lawn.”

“Thanks, Tori,” Anya said. “”MacDougal probably won’t be too happy with my little outburst.”

“She’s the head of a major government organization. A toasted front lawn probably barely registers on her radar. But speaking of our beloved director, have you thought any more about doing the interview?” Tori asked.

“What do you think?”

“I think if I was an average American citizen in the dark, seeing a buff, confident fire warrior who had killed several aliens on TV would help me feel better. Pan’s nice and all, but I think an actual human would be better.”

“Agreed. Was MacDougal really gonna have Pan be interviewed by himself?” Anya asked.

“Oh yeah. She doesn’t bluff. I’m sure she was also using him to twist your arm a bit. Pan’s pretty easy to talk into stuff as long as its not direct confrontation. She still wants him up there, but I think if he had you with him it’d be miles better.”

“All right. I’ll do it,” Anya said. “If it’ll help.”

“I think it will,” Tori said. “What’re you gonna do now?”

“Might as well go see Pan, go through the same media prep he’s doing. Gary said it’d be a couple days anyway. And there was that sacred Pinky Swear, so I should see him ASAP.”

“Okay. I gotta check in with the USAIF main office but then I’ll probably be by to see you and Pan tonight or tomorrow. See you then?”

“You bet,” Anya said. Tori leaned into the V-200 and gave Anya a hug. Anya sighed and hugged Tori back. “Thank you for coming today.”

“Thanks for asking me,” Tori replied, then waved. Anya waved back and then took off once Tori was in the armored USAIF car.

“Any new messages from anybody, Felix?” she asked.

“Some chatter from the shared global host channel. No signs of aliens though,” Felix replied.

“Guess I’ll just see if any of the USAIF offices need anything or they just want me to patrol,” Anya sighed. Anything would be good, she didn’t really care. Anything to keep her from mulling over what had happened today and let her put it farther behind her.