It took a while, but Alan finally sketched out where he wanted each thing to go and moved a seemingly infinite amount of miscellaneous items from the moving truck into his room. After spending every little piece of his energy to assist his father with every single task that could possibly exist, his father allowed him to take a break and get used to his surroundings. He celebrated by promptly diving into his bed and not moving.
His father soon followed him up into his new room, amused by the fact that Alan was tired already. He sharply said "Sleeping that fast, huh? Don't you want to check out some of the things around the street?"
"ngghnnmnln", Alan mumbled with his head under a big pillow.
"You should be curious, right? I would hope you'd quickly learn your way around."
"mnkg"
"Or you could stay in that bed and use up the rest of the day."
"yes."
"I wouldn't recommend it. Your classes start next week, and I might not be able to pick you up often. "
"..."
"And what'll you do then?"
"magical taxi."
His father tapped his foot impatiently a couple times before saying "You know, I might be pretty busy with stuff for a while. People in the neighborhood will be able to tell you more than I know about this town right now."
Alan, with his head still buried into the pillow, mumbled "mm-hm."
"The people in the house to the right of us have a lot of weird devices and gadgets you'll probably be interested in."
"nynh."
They also got a daughter about your age that's curious about you. At least go over there and say hi to them in a little bit."
"bnfml."
"Alright, that's better. I'm going to check a few more things around the house now. There's only so much daylight."
Devices. Alan really wanted to continue laying in his bed, but that one word made him too curious to continue. He turned over and stared at the ceiling, trying to see if he could make any images or faces from the random dots and lines on it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Alan stepped outside, he saw the street extending outwards a long way. His new house was on the end of the road, which past that point turned right and curved upwards to what was probably more road. Where there wasn't concrete, there were trees and grass and several unknown things that he needed to check out at some point. All of the neighboring houses were separated by decent sized yards, which was unusual compared to how cramped they were to him previously.
After shutting the front door, he walked up to the neighbor's house, looking at the exterior. Seemed ordinary enough.
He felt a little bit weird about introducing himself to these new people, but his curiosity was too powerful at this point. He tapped on the door and waited for a few seconds until a professional-looking woman opened it.
"Hello?"
"Oh hey, we just moved in next door and I decided to say hi."
"Ah, Alan, right? We've already heard a couple things about you guys. Did moving everything in go well?"
"Yep. I'm kinda tired but fine. And I guess I need to know my way around town."
"Oh, sure. I don't think Niki is busy with anything right now; I'll see if she has time to show you around."
"Alright, cool." Alan wondered exactly how much his dad mentioned him and about what, but eh, it probably was something extremely general.
He leaned against the side of the doorway and stared upwards again, waiting for somebody else to appear. From somewhere inside, he heard somebody knocking on a door, some kind of object humming loudly and slowly fading out, and a quick "thud?" with some metal hitting the floor. Yes, with a question mark. Then he heard a door opening and some quick footsteps. He turned his head back in time to see somebody slide around the corner and wave to him.
"...Um, hey", he said with a slight bit of hesitation.
"Ah ha, hey. So you're Alan, right?"
"Yep. Niki, right?"
"Mm-hm. At least that's what everybody calls me." She walked out in front of the front door and shut it behind her. She had fairly long, black hair, and had a sharp-looking pair of glasses on. Her outfit and pants weren't that different from Alan's, although she was also wearing some kind of orange pin on her shirt. (?)
"So you know your way around well?"
"Definitely. I think I've explored almost every corner you can point out on a map."
"You like exploring around?"
"Yeah. There usually isn't much to do besides that."
"You go adventuring all over the place by yourself?"
"Well, there's actually nobody interesting on this street. It's kinda sad." Alan noticed that she seemed to smirk a little bit when saying that.
"Okay... so what exactly do you mean by that?"
"Ah, well you seem to be interesting enough, so don't worry too much."
He blinked a couple times. "What?"
She turned and stared directly at him, and grinned like somebody was ready to pour a bucket of water on him. "Haha, nothing; I'm just saying stuff. So hey, want to see one of my favorite offroad paths?"
Slightly confused but still amused, Alan agreed. "Alright, that's fine, as long as you don't try to kidnap me or something."
Niki quickly stepped onto the pavement and motioned in a direction for Alan to follow. He walked up with her, wondering if this was actually a good idea.
She explained "Up there is where the road turns and slopes upwards. Slightly past there are some stores, some buildings that nobody knows what they do, and a park or two. Go a long way to the left and straight down and you'll end up at the Blue Circle school, which I guess is where you're going?"
Alan nodded. "Yeah, I think that's right."
She pointed forward beyond the road. "But if you don't follow the twisting road and go behind it, instead you'll end up on a more scenic route." Past the side of Alan's house, there was a long, grassy field with some scattered trees. To the right were more roads, and to the left the field sloped down to who knows where. "I go this way often because I've seen some, uh, interesting things happening over here."
"Interesting things, huh?"
"Quite."
"Alright, what have you seen?"
Niki's face suddenly turned more serious; she paused for a moment trying to phrase what she was about to say the right way. "Well... I've seen odd things happening in the sky a couple times."
"In the sky?"
"Yeah... sometimes I've seen a perfectly white cloud suddenly turn black the next time I looked at it. I've also seen something dark shooting across the sky in daylight once or twice. There's probably a couple more things I can't remember right now as well."
"Are... you sure? That sounds pretty serious."
"Maybe it was my eyes playing tricks on me, but it's happened too often for that."
"Wow. You tried explaining that to anybody else?"
"Not really. Most people wouldn't be concerned with things like that, and they probably wouldn't believe me anyway."
"Well, I'm not sure I do either."
"Hm, that's fine for now. Maybe you'll see something too, eventually. Anyway, let's walk through here; it's a good shortcut."
Alan agreed, and both of them continued onwards. They only took another 30 steps before Alan suddenly stopped and looked to his left, with a puzzled expression. Niki, who was a couple steps in front of him, heard him plant his foot down, and looked over her shoulder to him.
"Alan?"
"Was there a sound just now?"
"What kind of sound?"
"I don't know; maybe a faint yell of some kind?"
"...Uh oh." She quickly reached into one of the pockets of her pants and pulled out a metal object shaped like a short stick. She then pressed a tiny button on it that released the rest of it, extending it out so that it was about half as tall as her. (?)
Alan watched her take that out, and asked "Um, do you always carry that with you?"
Staring in the direction Alan was looking in, she said "I need it in certain cases. Do you know which direction that came from?"
"I couldn't really tell. Should we go back?"
"Not yet. There's another road further up; we can turn down that one to be safe."
"Alright." They walked faster this time; Niki was still holding the metal rod in her right hand.
A few seconds later, they heard a <i>crunch</i> and stopped again, staring towards that same direction.
Alan was pretty nervous at this point. "Okay, I really don't like the sound of that. That didn't sound like a tiny animal."
Niki said, "Could it be this again?"
Alan snapped his head straight towards her. "Again?"
Niki responded, "This is one of the things I forgot to mention before. The sky's not the only thing that's been acting odd recently."
"Hm? So does that mean you've also seen some of th-"
"Watch out!"
Something burst out from behind one of the trees and charged straight at Alan, who dived out of the way right when he heard Niki shout out at him. It was a fairly large dog that had noticed the two of them. It circled back at him, but Niki swatted at it from the side with the metal rod in her hand and changed its attention to her.
She carefully paced towards Alan, facing the dog the whole time, and helped him up.
"Thanks for that," Alan said, still in slight shock.
The dog was still staring at the two of them with a mean glare. Niki put the metal rod into Alan's hands and said "I hope you've handled some kinds of weapons before?"
"I have for fun; why?"
"Here, distract it for a little bit. Don't hurt it too badly!"
"Say what?!"
Niki ran back towards her house. "I'll be back quickly, don't worry!"
Alan watched her dart back with a disturbed look on his face. The dog made a loud bark, which snapped Alan's attention on it again. He held the metal stick in front of him, guarding his body. Looking at it carefully, he didn't see its mouth foaming at all. Okay, that's a good start. The dog took a couple steps back, looked directly into Alan's eyes again, then charged forward.
He quickly threw himself to the side again, holding the rod out in its path. It grabbed onto the end of it with its teeth, and promptly tried to pull it out of Alan's hands. He held it with all his strength, trying to keep it in his grasp but also being careful not to let it break free and have the thing charge straight at him. They both slowly rotated clockwise, trying to outlast each other until one made a strong move.
At one point, the dog's eyes turned back towards Alan instead of the rod it was biting down on. At this point, Alan quickly forced the stick away and ran a few steps back; the dog followed but Alan swished the rod out in front of it, making it stop temporarily again. They were in the same position, looking ready to start round 2.
However, a flash of light followed by an incredibly loud "pop" sound occured behind Alan, making him flinch an impressive amount, and scaring the dog off, making it run in the other direction.
When Alan turned around, he saw Niki with another small, flat, cube-like device with a tiny crank on it.
As soon as he caught his breath again, he asked "Did you use that to scare it?"
"Yup." She held the invention out towards him. "Twisting this crank charges up this thing until rotating it one more time causes a small light to beam out and make a large sound. It's a good thing you held it off long enough." (?)
"Well you could have given me some advance warning about it!"
She laughed a little bit. "Nah, I thought you could do it, and I was right, right?"
"Um... I guess so, but..."
"Anyway, yeah, I've noticed some animals acting up for no reason. Some species that don't normally disturb people have started to get aggresive, and nobody knows why so far."
"Yeah, that I can believe."
"Anyway, I'll explain more about what I've seen in a little bit. How about we go back and get you a duplicate of that metal stick thing and then I'll continue showing you around?"
"That works." Both of them started walking back to her house, but at one point, Alan looked upwards towards the sky.
What was with this town, exactly?