“No, I can’t, but…” Tedd shriveled a little under the combined glare. “Look, think about it from a logical standpoint. You open a haunted house for Halloween.”
“The best haunted house ever.” Grace crossed her arms.
“Right, as you said. People start out with your creepy cult theming and eerie ambiance, which sort of draws them in and gets the anxieties up.”
“It’s just good horror tropes in play, right.” Ellen squinted a little.
“You give them a bunch of lesser jump scares, and a few moments that are just plain eerie, including the one where one of you comes out, improvs a short ritual, and hands one of the guests a snake skull, then walks away with no explanation.”
“I found a bag of like two hundred of them at the flea market.” Ellen nodded a little bit. “Plus they’re all garter snake skulls, so they have itty bitty teeth. If that’s the logistical part you have an issue with…”
“No, no, keep following me here. Then they get to the climax, the ridiculously long hallway with the concealed nook where Sarah’s waiting with the TF gun that you snuck from the lab, and they get shrunk to 70% of their normal size while unnaturally-huge Justin chases them with a cleaver.”
“Right again.” Grace remained unmoved.
“THEN Sarah hits Justin with another transformation that gives him spines and purple skin, which amps up the freaky factor.”
“Right.”
“And all that culminates with giant possibly-demonic Justin chasing them out a long hallway into the parking lot, with Sarah waiting in yet another hidden alcove to zap them back to full size.”
“Right. So what’s the big problem here? I thought we had everything under control!” Grace threw her arms up as Tedd sighed.
“What happens if someone’s too fast for Sarah to zap back to full size and they just sprint out the door in their still-shrunken state?”
“Oh, that?” Ellen rolled her eyes, a smile finally breaking out. “We’re going to have one of those buzz-you-out locks in the alcove. Sarah won’t let anyone out until she’s zapped the whole lot of them.”
“Oh. Well, in that case, I retract my complaints. Got room for a not-quite-dead corpse in one of the rooms?”
“-but if you look at the physics, everything checks out. So Remnant’s moon is actually what’s left of a titanic Grimm.” Tedd ended his argument with both arms raised triumphantly in the air.
Susan just looked at him with an eyebrow raised. “Not believing it. Grimm dissolve, and the shattering pattern is all wrong anyway.” She folded her arms, ready to resist any argument.
“Fiiiiine. I’ll prove it to you. I’ve got a physics engine on my computer at home; let’s finish up here and then I can show it to you. I promise you it’ll make sense.” Tedd took a massive bite of his burger and washed it down with half his Coke. “Jesh guffmh uhn manuh.”
“No. Eat your food like a normal person.” As if to set an example, Susan took ten minutes to finish her meal. By the end of it, Tedd was wriggling with impatience in his seat.
“C’mon, let’s go already! We could’ve started simulating already!”
Susan sighed. “I’m done now. Toss my-“ Before she could finish her sentence, her tray was whisked away from her by Tedd and thrown wholesale into the nearest garbage can. “You know you’re not supposed to throw away the tray too, right?”
Tedd wasn’t there, however. He had already bolted out the door and was standing by Susan’s car, dancing in place.
“I’m tempted to just leave you here, but now I’m curious.” At a reasonable pace, Susan followed her friend and unlocked her car. “Get in, and don’t touch anything.”
–
As soon as he unlocked the front door, Tedd nearly dove headlong down the basement stairs and into his desk chair. “Give me five minutes and I’ll put all the parameters in and have it ready to start calculating.”
Susan leaned over the back of Tedd’s chair, keeping half an eye on the numbers he was inputting as she idly mused. Who knew a year ago that today we’d be the best of friends? Hell, I still thought he was just a perverted, misogynistic jerk back then. She let her eyes wander over the TF guns and the myriad of watches Tedd had laid out. He’s still a little odd, but… he’s a good friend. I’m just glad I looked beyond what I thought back then. It’s hard to find someone to talk nerdy science with. Justin’s great, but he leans more toward technobabble. She looked down at the back of Tedd’s head and smiled. Huh. Turns out I really l-
“Susan, are you okay? You’ve been pretty quiet for a while.” Tedd twisted around to look at his friend, worried.
