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Time: The usualPlace: Somewhere in the boonies of EnglandRating: Laughter. Oh --- PG for undefined languageSynopsis: More laughter. Ford gets an earful. Nate gets to drive. Straker is neatly tucked away at HQ. Thump Thwop Thump. Thwop Thump. Thwop.It was a rhythmic sound that had no connection to anything. Ford frowned at the monitors facing him. Then he heard the voices.“So, what do you wanta do?” a youthful male voice asked.“I dunno. Whatd’youwantado?” came the response, also male and youngish sounding. “I dunno. Nothin’ on tv.”“No tv.”“Yeah. No vcr, either.” The first voice sounded a little peevish. “Nope. No books.”“Yep. No books. Wanta go to a movie?”“No bucks.”“Bummer.”There was a silence while something continued the thump thwop sound.“Yeah. So. -- chips?” the second voice offered.“Nyah. No salsa.”The thump-thwop noises continued through the conversation, such as it was. “Migo or Bhiyaki?” the first voice asked an incomprehensible question.“Migo.”“Cold stick?” came the knowing sounding question.“Of course.”Silence except for the thump-thwop sounds. Extended silence. Chuckles.New voice. “Ok. Check the bathroom.”“What’s in the bathroom?” Number two asked suspiciously.Chuckles. “Go check.”“OK. Bathroom door open.”“Five hundred pound gorilla.”“What!!!! Slam the damn door!” There was no sound of a door opening or closing.Laughter. Fourth voice. “Room service, send me up another room!”Fifth voice, female. “Room service, I did not order a gorilla!” delivered in an off French accent. “Shoot the damn thing!” the first voice yelled.“It crashes through the door and door frame into the room, advancing on you,” the somewhat more mature voice narrated.“Shoot it!” in chorus. Crashing sounds. Uproarious laughter obscuring additional comment. Thump-thwop sounds stop.“Missed!” the second voice griped.“How the hell do you miss a 500 pound gorilla in a 20 by 20 room???” female voice.“Shoot again!” came in a chorus.Laughter obscuring other noises. Sound of feet drumming on the floor?“Missed!!” “It’s gaining on you.” That was the calmer third voice. “Out of the room. Aw, shit!”Chorus: “What?”“I locked the door.”“Where’s the key?” the fourth voice, at least Ford thought it was the fourth voice, asked.“On the bedside table –““On the other side of the gorilla!” third voice sings out gleefully. “Room service, get me a key!” someone yelled gleefully.“Shoot the damn thing!” female voice, still laughing.“Got it!”Ford frowned, he had not heard a single firearm discharge during the entire confrontation.“Hey, good shot! Kills the gorilla. Momentum carries it forward, falls on you and crashes through the door to the room and into the hallway.”Hallway? They were observing and monitoring a shotgun style shack in the back of nowhere. What hallway?More laughter. A dead five hundred pound gorilla was cause for laughter? What were these people on?“M’sieur? Why did you keel your gorilla?”Ford frowned. The voice sounded like the third male with a bad French accent. He raised an eyebrow at his companion who had made a sort of strangled noise. The man looked at him with a grin.“Inspector Clouseau? The Pink Panther?” the dark man said quietly, apparently expecting his senior to know the reference. #)&*)%_&)%$#*&@#$*_*%$ “It’s not my gorilla!!!”“But M’sieur, the hotel does not ‘ave the gorilla? But, of course, it is the gorilla of M’sieur. Do you have a license for the gorilla?”Ford’s companion did laugh at that. “Lifted from the ‘do you ‘ave a lesence for your minkey’ scene. What are these people doing?”&)*)(*&%*_#%$&##(@$* “I said, it’s not my gorilla. It was – in – my – bathroom –“ laughter getting the better of the voice.“You were keeping the gorilla in your bathroom? Is this not dangereuse?”“IT’S NOT MY GORILLLAAAAAAAA!!!! YOU CRETIN!”Huffy voice. “Well. Believe me, M’sieur, I will be reporting this to the proper authorities! Immediatement!”“Uhm, D-Day, where’d you get the gorilla?” female voice sounding puzzled.Long suffering sigh. “Will you push the damn thing off me please?”“Oh, sure.”Laughter.Odd sound of something small and solid rolling across a smooth surface. “Yeah, that works. D-Day is no longer surprised by anything he finds in a bathroom.”General laughter. Lt. Greg frowned at Ford. “So, what is going on?”Ford shook his head. “I dunno. I’m beginning to think this is all ---” The plaintive whirring noise of an incoming spinner could be heard in the distance.“Then again, maybe not.” He climbed behind the steering wheel and waited.The thump thwop sound stopped. Silence. Inside the shack, the quintet of mid-20’s RPGers sat suddenly alert and nervous. They looked at each other. “Oh, Shit! Not another one!” The first recorded voice said quietly.Ford really frowned at his equipment at that point. There were sounds of activity inside the shack as the spinner whirled into view, Sky One in hot pursuit. Greg, observing the shack, was surprised to see a window fly open and a trio of apparently quite surprised cats come sailing out of it. A large dog followed, landed awkwardly, oriented on the sound of the spinner and took off after the cats, howling woefully.The spinner fired. Greg thought they were the target for a moment, ducking instinctively. Nope. The shack took a direct hit and seemed to explode. Ford shut down his equipment, hoping nothing was damaged by the level of sound. The microphones in the shack were toast at that point. His ears were ringing from the sound. Somehow, they’d gotten the wrong tip off. The inhabitants of the shack weren’t in league with the aliens, but were apparent targets for elimination. “God Damn!!” one of the voices, much closer, cussed.“Yeah. Hey, who’d a thought they’d take it so personal?”Greg looked over the hood of the van to see a quintet of disheveled young people coming over the fence separating the yard of the now destroyed shack from the roadway. The largest of the five carried a rifle over his shoulder. Two carried shotguns in a way that indicated great familiarity. The white haired fourth male carried some sort of carved stick in his right hand and looked to be wearing a pair of low slung hip holsters with serviceable revolvers in them. The girl, bringing up the rear, looked oddly misshapen round the neck until the lump moved and revealed itself to be a largish cream colored cat. As they ran across the road, it became obvious she had a large crossbow slung across her back as well. “Hey, you gotta admit, the bazooka was definitely trump.”Laughter. “We should split up. Something was chasing that bastard, right on its tail. We don’t need to draw attention to our survival.” The voice, belonging to the white haired man, was a little more mature sounding, making him the third voice on the tape.“Yeah. No, problem, Zach. We’ll lay low for a while. You take care. Don’t need our favorite ref getting into trouble,” the woman assured him as they started to move off. The broadest, if not the tallest of the five laid a friendly punch into the shoulder of the one she’d called Zach, the same one carrying the stick. “See ya round.”A nod and the pale haired one disappeared into the underbrush about a hundred feet away from the van. None of the survivors seemed to have noticed it sitting under its canopy of drooping branches. Greg looked at Ford. Ford looked at Greg. “Let’s give them a ride,” Ford suggested. “Oh, shit,” was the inelegant comment from the girl as the van pulled onto the road behind them. “Scatter.”They did.Keith Ford counted to ten, kept his temper and called in their location. “They’ve scattered.” He gave detailed descriptions, backed up by Greg’s. He waited until they were told to return to base and he’d shut off communications before he let loose with a stream of scathing self-denigrating comments, the least of which was that they should have jumped on the quintet when they crossed the damned fence.Greg, driving, let the storm sort itself out before he bothered to comment. Then he didn’t. He signed inwardly. He wondered if the boss knew how much alike he and Ford were. Never satisfied, never self forgiving, never content. At least the younger man remembered to eat from time to time. A grin split the dark face. Oh, yes. He did believe that “young Ford” was passing the tests set for him, very, very well.Overhead, the whirling sound stopped in an explosive blast. Sky One victorious, although explaining the debris raining down on the heavily wooded lots in the area would have to be explained.