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"She's got over a hundred different lacerations the length of her body. Stab wounds to the front of her chest and to her underbelly as well as to both front paws. Four of her claws are broken off, and three more have been chewed to the quick. The surface area of the abrasions she has opened in her skin after scalping her own scales off is greater than that of my entire body. There are numerous broken small bones in her paws, and I think she managed to crack two of her ribs. Likely from falling. And I don't even want to count the number of tears she had opened in her wings. We, I, can't help her. I don't have the equipment. And I only brought one bottle of Everclear to act as an anesthetic. She needs help, and she needs to be restrained. There is only so much I can do in the field.

But you guys might be able to at least help with her wounds. I never, ever, ever thought I'd ask this of another living being. Can you guys lick her wounds to remove the scabs so that I can disinfect them? Will you?"

Tom and I were sitting on our haunches locked in a feedback loop of emotions that kept ricocheting between us and amplifying with every echo. How could someone do this to themselves? Our fins hung limply against our scales at the sickening feeling of seeing this traumatized female laid out before us. Her wings, legs, tail, and neck extended out for Alex's assessment along with Tom's help to locate the potential fractures. Lastly, a white alcohol-soaked towel peeked out from beneath her tongue where it lolled out onto the snow.

Mutely, I started at her tail tip so that Tom wouldn't have to address the canyons she had carved into the flesh around her sex, while he started at her head. My scales shivered in revulsion as my coarse tongue broke through the thick scabbing covering the end of her tail and I felt the bony cylinder of her spine before fresh blood ran across my tongue. Gagging, my stomach began to heave as my throat convulsed. Leaping away just in time, I vomited some of the steaming remains of the pronghorn doe I had eaten just a few hours earlier. Swiftly turning away before I could add the rest of the badly needed food in my belly to the pile I swiped at the snow until I had completely covered the mess.

A wind-blown drift of snow lay nearby, and I swung my head over to lap it into my mouth. Closing my jaws on the bitterly cold precipitation I waited for my insanely high core temperature to melt it and then opened my jaws again to let the water, and taste of vomit, run from my mouth. Sighing, I returned to the gruesome task of reopening her wounds so that they could be disinfected. Shivering again, as the taste of her blood overwhelmed everything that I could taste from the air, I could feel my children reach out to me tentatively. At the other end of the female's body, Tom whimpered when he felt their fear and confusion along with me. A thought came from him, and the idea of a wall evanesced into my mind's eye. Slamming that down on my connection with my children, we prevented them from knowing what we were doing, and experiencing.

"Be careful what you block from your children, Kim, Tom. You might think you are helping them, but their maturity and constitution at their hatching is entirely dependent on knowing the full reality of the world they are born into." Tomoko informed us. Dropping her unceasing cheer from where she sat and watched our careful ministrations glumly. "There is no laughter in this one's heart." It lay down, covered her head with her wings, and said no more.

What Tomoko said may be true. But letting our unborn children know our reactions to the feeling of a deeply troubled female's blood and wounds on our tongues was not something that we were willing to allow.

Using my wing, I lifted her rear leg to get access to her crotch. Usually, I would make some joke about going down on her. But the sight and smell of the lesions around her slits crushed all thoughts I might have had of attempts at gallows humor. I saw Jack coming out of the barn carrying a stack of cloth and he stopped in confusion when he saw my snout buried between her hind legs before I narrowed my eye warningly at him and fanned out my other wing to preserve the female's modesty. Alex and Tom were exceptions due to their health care backgrounds, and I didn't particularly care that my own cunt was there for all to see. But after what this girl had done to herself it was almost certain that she would be in hysterics if she knew how exposed she was to some strange male's watching eyes.

"This is all that I could find. I tried to shake them out as much as I could, but there were at least a few mice nests in them. What is she doing?"

Alex explained to him that we were cleaning her as he took the stack of blankets from him. I heard him groan after the sound of the folded cloth unfolding reached me from outside my sheltering privacy curtain.

"There's probably shit and piss all over these things. I can't use these on open wounds."

"Where'd that other one go? The big one." Jack wanted to know. Alex didn't answer beyond giving a distracted grunt as I heard the zippers of his bag being undone. Dropping the female's leg, I nudged it back into position to cover herself with my nose before I rose to take a break and rinse the blood out of my mouth.

"He left to hunt." I told Jack. "Normally he almost never eats, but after we told him that being the largest among us that he would be carrying her he left to go stuff himself like a pig for energy."

Which had been a little bit helpful in explaining why he was so lethargic all the time and never relieved himself. Since he simply didn't see the need to eat, because he almost never fucking did anything, his body's processes had almost ground to a halt. I was mistaken, he was fully functional after all.

Tom finished cleaning one wing, while I finished her belly before stretching the wing out that I had moved to repeat what he was doing on the opposite side. Done, we looked over the length of the teenager at the glistening black blood that oozed slowly from all the reopened wounds. Alex handed a thick tube of medicinal salve and a pair of latex gloves to Jack and told him to start smearing it into every wound that he could find. My brother-in-law started with the most grievous of the wounds, her tail. Spraying an antiseptic into the severed appendage he started to pack it full of gauze and then capped it with what looked likely a pair of belly bandages and an entire roll of tape.

Asking me to lift her leg again, Tom and Jack looked away while he treated the wounds beneath it before moving forward along her abdomen. He quickly ran out of bandages, and instead had to use petroleum jelly to shield the open wounds. Finished, he sank his arms into the snow and tried to scrub some of the blood off himself.

"As soon as Prometheus gets back, we need to return with her. The question is where?"

"But my..." Jack started to protest, before I slammed my paw into the snow in front of him. Coating him in the spray that was forced outwards.

"Finish that fucking sentence! I fucking dare you! You cannot possibly be that fucking selfish and stupid!"

He sputtered, and I bristled with rage when I realized he was stupid enough to try to finish what he had started to say. Alex saved him from my wrath by grabbing his collar and leading him away to the barn, where he left him sitting on a bucket with the order not to antagonize someone with a fuze that he needs a microscope to see and claws longer than his forearms. I was not so easily mollified, as my head swung back and forth angrily with my fins snapping madly and a low resounding growl rumbling from my throat. Jack Rabbit grew pale and turned away so he didn't have to look at me. Turning your back on a predator, a defense strategy every bit as fucking stupid as he was.

Being fed my blatant hostility, Tom was next to me and every bit as angry as I was. But I could feel him fighting back against the anger radiating from me to infect him, and after a few moments his calm pushed my anger back and smothered it inside myself.

"That really is fascinating." Alex remarked, watching us. "It's like some kind of advanced empathetic ability. Can you just feel what the other is feeling, or what you are actually thinking? Can you influence each other? Whatever your doing is so strong that I can almost feel it. It's like the air is charged with electricity around you two."

I wearily raised a hand to drag across a claw across my snout while Tom answered for us.

"Not now, Alex. We want to explore what this means by ourselves first before we bring you on board."

"Fair enough." He agreed. "Can't imagine being able to feel someone else's mind like that."

"Exactly." I said. "Until a few hours ago, neither could we."

"So about where to take this girl... Hotel is out. She'll bleed everywhere, and there's no long-term safety or medical facilities. What about the mall?"

"No medical facilities there either. Although once she is healed that might be a very good place for her. If there really are that many dragons...I mean children of the egg...there along with their families, they can watch her and stop her if she tries to hurt herself again. But she needs a psychiatrist."

"What about taking her to a hospital first? We could watch over her as she's treated and then bring her to the mall under the cover of night."

"Messy, and that has its own problems. But it might be the best solution for now." Tom scratched his throat in thought for a minute before offering one last option. "What about Mountain Home AFB? Do they have a hospital?"

Alex looked it up on his phone but judging the doubtful set of his mouth there wasn't much down that road.

"10-bed hospital. This girl would clean out their medicals supplies."

"Boise it is then. We'll find a hospital for her."

"Great, I'm going to relay this to Stout, and see if he has an update on those allies he keeps hinting at."

Dialing him, he placed the call as we listened in to him relaying what we had found.

"Yes, Alex?" Before he could even start though, I had to get something off my wing shoulders.

"Hey, fucker! What the fuck is wrong with you? When we called earlier not one mention of the fucking car bomb that blew up in front of my house?"

"No dragons were harmed." He said succinctly, but with stress in his voice that Tom picked up on too.

"How many?"

"Three dead, five wounded. We're working on setting up some elevated platforms next to the main road that dragons can rest on and keep watch to stop this from happening again. Irma has some of the feral..." He stopped as Tom and I growled at him. "...lost ones, orbiting the area to keep a look out in the meantime while we rebuild the TCP."

Damn, eight casualties protecting my home. I stopped a minute to process that. Looking forlornly at Tom, I wondered about my reaction. If it had been a child of the egg, we'd be screaming bloody murder. Was I, were we, losing our connection to what we were? One more existential crisis to add to the pile of shit that I needed to talk to someone about.

Alex relayed to him about the unknown teenager and asked him where these allies were.

"Can you get her here? We have some shrinks that have been specializing in dealing with the comfort of the transformed since zero day. They've made good progress since they got here this morning. Already one of the lost children has reawakened its dormant identity. Or at least that's how they put it. Damned if I can tell the difference, the little boy is still as skittish around humans as a fawn even if he looks like he'd win a fight with a grizzly bear. Keeps screaming 'not hurt, not hurt' every time we get too close to him."

"Stout, we need to bring her somewhere that she can be restrained. We have her drugged right now, but we can't keep her like that! Who knows if there is long term effects to alcohol poisoning in our bodies? She has to be restrained. If you saw her. If you could see what she has done to herself..."

"Well, I have some good news for you then. That team of Air Force whoever the fuck is at the Idaho Air National Guard compound at the Boise airport. I'm sure if you do that roaring thing you do when you are just having a normal conversation, they'll find you before you know it."

"They probably already know we are here. We think we could smell them earlier, which means they can smell us. The question is why haven't they approached us yet?" Tom asked, reasonably.

"Don't know. This is one of those need to know things, and I don't need to know."

That pissed me off. "The fucking country is shaking itself apart, and the military is still playing games with classification systems? What the fuck?"

"If the country is about to come apart Kim, then things remaining secret and out of public hands is going to be even more important. Some things should not be in the hands of people that want to live out their 'Red Dawn' fantasies. We already have enough to worry about with armor having gone missing. By the way, you haven't seen any BVFs or Abrahams rolling around shooting at things, have you?"

"Just tell us that any that we are likely to see are hostile and we'll drop something heavy on them if we do. I don't know much about an Abrams' armor, but I'm willing to bet dropping a few tonnes on it from a hundred meters in the air would be a confirmed kill."

"Treat them as hostile. The military isn't deploying the armor still under control. POTUS will not allow American cities to turn into tank on tank battlegrounds."

"Oh, POTUS? So, he is actually still running things and not chilling in fucking Diego Garcia with a Margarita while watching the world burn?"

"He is. The current plan is to remain committed to civilian law enforcement to resolve this issue. Everyone that has a badge is out on the streets working to restore order FBI, ATF, USSS, the Post Office's Inspection Service, everyone. The President has made it clear to us that active duty forces are absolutely not to be used for offensive operations. They/we are deploying to safeguard these security zones and military equipment and munitions."

"What about National Guard units?"

"Who do you think is stealing the equipment? National Guard units are being vetted on an individual level. The ones here have been personally interviewed by me. I've been spit on four times and called a traitor to my species half a dozen."

"That...that's not good." Tom sagaciously opined.

I could hear and smell Prometheus returning and tried to wrap this sidebar up. "Tell our mysterious watchers to meet us at whatever the largest hospital is in Boise. Is there anything else at the moment?"

"Do you want to talk to your kids again? They're off playing somewhere with Irma watching them."

"....No." Tom and I both said, reluctantly. "Let them have their fun wherever they can get it."

A mule deer fell in front of Tom and I both, much to our delight, as Prometheus landed nearby, and Stout hung up. The smell of blood flooded my nostrils as I bit into the male's neck and the thick liquid of life washed across my tongue, followed by the feeling of my teeth piercing warm twitching flesh. Rumbling with savage pleasure, I was enjoying the buck too much to stop when Jack Rabbit fainted at the sight of us eating. He better fucking get used to it unless he just wanted to ignore what his wife and son probably were now.

Prometheus began licking himself clean, while keeping one dispassionate eye fixed on Jack Rabbit where he lay on his side in the snow. Alex went over the girl once more before packing up what was left of his supplies. I crunched through the ribcage in my jaws and left the colon for whatever enterprising scavenger was still in the area. Tom and I gave each other a quick wash and then had to fight off the urge to curl up together and sleep as we digested our meal.

"Ready, Alex?"

"As much as I can be. I soaked the towel again with what's left of the alcohol." He burped, and then rubbed his mouth with his hand. "Maybe I drank some of it too, wow you could strip paint with that stuff. Prometheus are you ready to carry her all the way back?"

He stretched his neck and tail out, and then flared his wings to give them a flap. Looking at Alex, he bobbed his head without a word.

I nosed at Tomoko to rouse her, but it did not move. Extending a talon, I carefully peeled back a wing covering its face to see that her eyes were a dull and lifeless gray. What fucking now?

"What's wrong with her?"

Prometheus looked at Tomoko and then cocked his head. I snarled as a burst of static came from the radio in my ear. His scales ruffled and I could smell his sadness.

"She's not like the rest of us. For better or worse. There's a reason why her matrix was not chosen for the most destructive of the changes that initiated your test."

"Is that so? Is she going to awake at some point then?"

"Yes...to grossly oversimplify the situation, the trauma that this one has wreaked upon herself has saddened her."

"I'm pretty sure I don't give a shit about her sadness. This change has obviously driven this poor girl somewhere she could not come back from."

"Negative emotions like that are not going to hasten her return to her corporeal body."

"What is she, fucking Tinkerbell? Are we going to have to clap to show that we believe in her next?"

"Trivialize her if you wish. But you are not going to find a greater champion for the future of the human and children of the egg species on this world than her. My own estimation is that you have a one in ten chance of living through the next three thousand years."

"She has a funny way of showing that!" I snarled, scathingly. "Fine. I'll...I don't know. I'll carry her in my hind paws where she can hear my children's hearts. Will that work?"

"Perhaps. I am not Tomoko. I no longer know her mind. I can summon Thumper..."

"NO!" I roared. "Absolutely the fuck not!"

A breeze rustled the empty tree branches around us, and on it a whisper was carried that almost made my heart explode in anger.

"What have I ever done to deserve such hatred, Kim?"

"YOU KNOW DAMN FUCKING WELL WHY THUMPER, SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

Another burst of static erupted in my ear, and the breeze stopped like someone had shut off a massive fan.

"If only you would..." Prometheus started to say something that was already pissing me off as I guessed what, or who, it was about. I whirled on him with my mouth open, nostrils flaring, and my fins trembling. "...well, perhaps in a few tens of years."

Alex pulled another smelling salt out of his pack for Jack Rabbit. That didn't rouse him, and I snaked my head away from our operation to load the girl onto Prometheus to offer to smack him into the next world. Sadly, Alex rejected my offer and used the tried and true clinical procedure of dumping water on one's face to rouse him.

"Why'd you faint this time Jack Rabbit? Haven't you ever had venison?"

"Ye...y...yes." The greenish man stuttered. "But it's just...when you bit its neck, its hind legs kicked!"

"Yeah! But let me tell you, when I had hunted when I still had tits and just two legs, by the time that everything had been butchered there was no way of ever telling that what you ate had once been alive. Eating like this...it makes me feel connected to the life that was taken. Do you ken? I can appreciate that I sustain myself on life better this way. Which is why I did what I did a month ago when I came across those hunters that had cut the head off a stag with a trophy rack and left the body!"

"Scaring them is one thing Kim. But...did you really have to strip them naked?" Tom asked, laughing at the memory of the recounting I had given him at the time.

"How else are they going to know how truly scared prey is when a predator is chasing it? Betcha they never trophy hunt again! What a stupid and wasteful fucking hobby! Don't worry Jack Rabbit, I didn't leave them out there to die. I chased them in the direction of their truck. You should've seen all the urine stains in the snow from where they had pissed themselves! As a bonus, I had an easy meal that day! I'm sure those assholes will be happy to know that that rack that was going to end up on their wall gave my children the calcium they need to make sure their shells are nice and thick!"

"Didn't...didn't they report you for stalking them?"

"Not unless the dumbasses wanted to explain to the cops why they were poaching in the first place!"

Tom and I worked together to nudge the girl's legs beneath her on Prometheus' back and to fold her wings once more. Fidgeting beneath her, the fallen computer pronounced himself satisfied. Alex checked that the towel was still lodged beneath her tongue and then clambered up my extended wing to the shelter along with Jack Rabbit. Prometheus leapt upwards first by performing an impressive feat of strength even by our new lofty standards. Bending all four ankles he hunkered down briefly, before exploding from the ground with a push that I could almost feel in my paws to allow his wings the space they needed to fill with air and flap.

Not wanting to be outdone, I tried it myself. While I did accomplish it, the strain I felt in my front legs was immense as they were far less muscular than the tremendous girth of my tail, which was essentially pure muscle weighing who knows how much. Tom jumped upwards more conventionally, as I made up my mind to train to get better at that motion. I would have never been able to do what Prometheus had and launch with another child of the egg on my back. Circling back around, I flared briefly mid-air to pluck the unresponsive Tomoko from the ground and, like I had promised, kept her clutched up against the swell of my body where I knew the sound of my children's hearts were loudest. I felt their minds shift to wonder at the strange creature they could sense just on the other side of the shells and muscle that was their home.

On the hour plus long flight back Tom took point with me behind and Prometheus between the two of us. Alex spoke into my ear to relay that he had been in contact with the main Boise area hospital to explain our situation, and that a parking lot had been cleared for us to land in with some volunteers willing to work on the female.

"Volunteers?"

"Yeah, apparently some number of their staff have objections to helping dragons."

"What the fuck happened to that oath you guys take? That hippopotamus thing?"

"You know damn well that it's the Hippocratic oath, Kim!" He snapped at me as I flung my head and chuffed with abandon at my joke. "Apparently there is the mistaken belief that it only applies to living beings of this world." He sounded pissed, so I laid off him and didn't press the issue. Calling out to Prometheus and Tom, I relayed where we were headed and what to expect. I saw two tail waves of understanding, and I slipped back into line.

When we got closer to the city, I gained a little bit of elevation (losing Prometheus' slip stream I realized that geese had the right idea!) and shot to the front of our formation to follow Alex's directions to the hospital. Arriving, I circled high over head before landing on the roof top helipad with three paws. Setting Tomoko down off to the side, I lay down to watch the operation below as Tom landed alongside Prometheus in a blown flurry of snow before turning and helping the female to the scraped clear asphalt of the parking lot. Leaning to the side, I let my human passengers down and they went into the unlocked elevator to relay what they knew and get warm.

"Jack Rabbit! Find something to clean me with! It's scrub-a-dub time, little rubber duckie!" I yelled at him as the doors closed, leaving me alone to watch the female's treatment.

Tom was sitting next to the female and staring at the nearest entrance to the hospital. After a minute, the distracted idle swings of his tail built up energy as his exasperated impatience grew. I didn't realize it at first, but slowly it occurred to me through the rocking of my body that the swings of my own tail were synchronized with Tom's. Fucking weird.

Just as Tom stood up to approach the hospital, and likely scare the shit out some number of people, I heard sliding doors rumbling open, and then the crunch of feet and wheels making their way through rock salt. A group of eight 'volunteers' bundled against the cold and dragging two reluctant carts were being led by Alex towards the unconscious child of the egg.

The elevator doors behind me opened to reveal Jack Rabbit with a cart loaded with buckets of steaming water and a big sponge. Next to him, was a middle-aged graying raven-haired woman wearing an ID clipped to the jacket that she had thrown on over her blouse.

"Who are you? Can you still speak English? Or Spanish? ¿Puedes entenderme?"

"Yes, my name is Kim. Down below, the big one is Prometheus, the sitting one is Tom, and we don't know the girl's name."

"Ah, so it is a she."

"Who are you?"

"Angelica Patrick. This is my hospital."

"Oh? How much did it cost?"

She ignored me and walked to peek over the edge at what was going on down below. She turned to look at Tomoko, who was still laying on its side where I had placed her. Tomoko's eyes were still open but fixed straight ahead and still had the same dull gray they were earlier at the barn.

"Is that one dead? Did you kill it? Is that one a he or a she?"

I snorted and turned my head away to watch as the female was bandaged. "You can't kill that one. Although, if you do find out a way to do it, I'm all ears as to how. No, if you haven't had the misfortune of meeting with one of the aliens that have turned people into myths, you have now. Consider yourself lucky, if it was awake your head would probably explode from its insane riddles and preternaturally plucky attitude."

"Is that so." She looked like she wanted to kick Tomoko off the roof. I didn't know if I'd stop her.

Tomoko stirred, and her eyes resumed their golden color. "That's mean, Kimmy. But I thank you for letting me listen to your children. Sometimes I get so unhappy that I can't help myself! But, life...listening to life...always makes me happy again! Then I can feel laughter in my heart once more! You don't know how special it is to know life the way that you can!

Angelica knows! That's why you specialize in pediatrics! Isn't holding a new life the bestest ever?"

"How did you know that?"

"Angelica, meet Tomoko, a creature that knows everything that you have ever thought or done. And that can probably tell you anything that ever can, or will, happen to you."

"Watch the edge Angelica! Ouchies!"

Angelica looked at it for a moment, and then shook her head to address me again. "As soon as Jack here..."

"Jack Rabbit." I corrected her. He looked at me in annoyance from my side where he had jabbed a broom stick into the sponge and was swiping at what he could reach of my side. Angelica rolled on without missing a beat.

"...is done using our supplies to clean you and your friend down below is in no danger of bleeding out, I want you all gone. There are bounties on your heads, and I want no trouble here. We are a hospital, and I will not have our ability to maintain the public health compromised by aiding just a few individuals. We are doing what we are obligated, but we don't have resources or the security for continued treatment of the one down below. And speaking of treatment, are you related to the...girl. Does she have medical insurance?"

"I told you!" I snarled. "Not only do we not know her name, we were forced to drug her into unconsciousness. Look at her! She did all of that to herself. Right before our own eyes she tried to gnaw her damn hand off!"

"So you say." Angelica replied, skeptically. "I say, as of right now, you are suspects in what was done to her. You just freely admitted to drugging her. I want to hear from her own mouth that you had nothing to do with what happened to her."

"So which is it? Do you want us gone, or do you want to be responsible for her continued care?"

"I want you gone. I want the police to find out what is going on."

I inhaled, and then blew a hurricane of air in her direction with a dismissive snort. Yeah, good luck with that. I pointed at her with my wing thumb and was about to continue arguing, which is what I do best, when instead I froze as a sensation broke through my thoughts. That smell. I sniffed again.

"Watch out!" I yelled at her, startling her, just before the child of the egg I smelled gliding towards us unseen and unheard below the roof line flared up with his wings outstretched and beating furiously before landing with a slow trot towards me.

Angelica gasped and backed up in fright from the sudden appearance of the child of the egg that looked to be even bigger than Brian. Her gasp turned into a scream as the roof vanished from beneath her foot and she twisted as she started to fall backwards. The scream flying from her mouth ceased with a pained grunt as her stomach impacted against the end of my tail. I felt her hands scrabbling at my scales before they both latched onto the smooth horn of my tail spike as I raised her back to the roof and lowered her to her feet. I had not forgotten what Tomoko had said, Angelica owed her life to that. Even she wasn't able to appreciate it at the moment, as she had collapsed on the ground and was holding her hands against her heaving chest with the thousand-meter stare of someone who had just saw their own death. Jack cowered against my side and held his makeshift wash wand in front of him like it wouldn't be a toothpick for the large male in front of us. Tom yipped alarm from the ground below and I tried to focus to send reassuring vibes to him as his words reached my ear fins.

Kim! What happened! I smell someone new!

I sent calming thoughts and squeaks to him to quell his agitation while the newcomer folded his wings. The towering child of the egg that had almost completely taken me by surprise took up all of the helipad that I was not occupying even though he was still smaller than Dan. Even then he could not all fit on the platform as I could see most of his tail running off the edge to dangle down the side of the building. I wondered what the people looking out their windows and seeing that giant black anaconda thumping on the glass would think. Raising my head, I nevertheless met his piercing blue eyes with my emerald ones as he methodically looked me and my surroundings over.

While he eye fucked me, I got my own chance to glance over him. There were a couple of very odd things about him. One: He wore a large glass optic of some kind over his right eye that looked like it had a speaker in his ear and a microphone jutting downwards to the side of his mouth. Two: He was covered in a form fitting black sheathe of some kind that glistened in the sun and looked like it covered almost all of his underside and flanks. Thick nylon straps were attached to the material around his wings through d-rings with cam locks and ran over some kind of bridge that kept his spinal fin from being flattened. Three: There was a large oddly shaped shelter on his back with a window of some type that I couldn't see anything through beyond a soft green glow from some type of monitor. The tops and sides of the shelter were covered in solar cells, and a panel on the sloped backside of it snapped open to allow four humans to emerge wearing flight suits and harnesses with slim parachutes on their backs.

One of them gave me a large grin as my face lit up at the sight of the welcome acquaintance.

"ULYSSES! YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

He laughed at me, and then walked forward to step into the paw the was held up to lower him to the ground. Hopping down, he started to run towards me, but stopped and to my surprise addressed the child of the egg who still hadn't said a word since landing.

"Sir, we noticed that the delay between when you and the polygon receive communications is still twenty to thirty seconds, just like it was before."

"Have Lieutenant Shapiro look into it when we return to the airfield." The icy look of the child of the egg softened as the commanding glare faded from his eyes. This was one that was used to being obeyed. I saw that there was a small square of blue on the suit he wore across his chest that had two black stars sewn into it. A Major General?

"In the meantime, don't concern yourself with anything other than going to meet your old friend." He lowered his head and nudged Ulysses' back with his nose to prod him forward. "You have until the female is ready for transport."

The General had a quick word with Angelina and, after I saw her reluctantly nod, picked her up in his hand. Muttering something into his headset, the three still on his back closed themselves back into the angular stealth fighter looking thing. The hospital administrator screamed as the General leapt from the roof and only used his wings to slow himself down the tiniest bit before he slammed into the ground 11 stories below. Tomoko fluttered down after him while at the same time Jack tried to slip away unnoticed.

I was bouncing up and down on my front paws with a deep throated trill coming from me in my eagerness. I swept Ulysses up in a hug that pinned him against my vibrating throat, even as my tail tip found Jack and yanked at his waist until I could feel the sponge mopping at my side once more.

"So this is where you've been! How'd you get involved in this? What is this?"

He glanced at Jack, who was still doing his half-assed job at washing his weakness off of me. I twitched my skin in that odd way that I had to in order for the scales to open and told him to get underneath them too.

"I understand, but god damn! It's good to see you again Ulysses!" Not being able to contain myself anymore, I didn't even if care that I was starting to express myself like an animal. Pleased trills and thrums rumbled from my neck as the smell of my happiness leaked from between my open scales. Nosing him over and over again, I had to hold him still with a paw to keep him from being pushed over by my eager greeting. "So much shit has been building up on me, Uly. And my unit...I ran into some of them at my home and they turned their backs on me! Uly, I..."

"I know." He said somberly, and I looked at him in shock. "We've been following you for a while. That UAV you've been spotting, has been watching you ever since you set out on this quest. We know that your old unit has been taking it upon themselves to trail you as well. You weren't supposed to know though, the drone pilot has lost herself a rank for flying where you could spot it. This unit is...well, we'll talk later with the General and the other Colonels present."

The way he said their ranks made me look closer at him. Against the black flight suit he wore, there was a small square of green with a silver oak leaf.

"You bastard! They finally made you a Lite Colonel? Congratulations!"

He grinned and rubbed the insignia on his chest. "Yep, passed over once before I finally got my push from the General. I'm the Army liaison for this crazy adventure. Chosen for my work with you and Tom. They needed a ground pounder that was willing to trust, and had earned the trust of, dragons. I fit the bill, I guess. Nothing like being ordered to report to a board at Pope for a job interview that involved being grilled by a naked General and two Field Grade Air Force officers wearing their ranks and identification on armbands. Their first assessment was just to take turns sniffing and snapping their jaws at me as they warbled 'Hello' to see if I'd panic! No shit, one of the strangest taskings I've ever been on in my life! You should of heard them carol to each other in your language when I said 'hello' back to them, thanks for teaching me that by the way. I think that was what decided it for Amanda, knowing that I knew you. You'll understand why when you meet her."

I was burning with questions but had to hold fire on them with the presence of Jack Rabbit. Instead, I nudged Ulysses with a knuckle of my paw. "Can't be as weird as that time we had to enlist that elder's favorite donkey to get it transport for medical treatment!"

He slapped his knee and roared laughter. "Fuck! How could I forget Private First Class Mulekick?"

I joined in with his laughter, beating my tail against the roof behind me, as he collapsed against my paw holding his stomach in gut busting hilarity at that memory. Fuck, it did me a world of good to see Ulysses again. Already, I could feel the pain of being ignored by my former unit diminish a little bit. That angry, cancerous ball in the back of my mind shrank as I reminisced with my old combat buddy.

"Colonel!" I heard roared from the ground. Peeking over I saw Angelica leading her people away, while Tom sat waiting next to the already loaded Prometheus. As he looked at me, I could feel his curiosity. He would know as soon as I reached the ground. The General was laying on his stomach with the three other members of his...crew I guess, wandering around his back and checking the straps as well as a small box with thick cables running from it to the shelter on him. He had his head craned upwards to look at me with an expectant look about him. "It is time. Major McConnor, please return my officer to me."

Jack Rabbit pushed the cart into the elevator and sent it on its way downwards before returning to me. I lay down and he climbed to my back and entered the shelter where he said he was ready.

"Don't undo everything you just did and fucking puke on me again!" I told the squeamish knock out mouse. "Are you ready, Ulysses?"

"Hah. You're welcome to try to outdo what the General can do. He used to be a fighter pilot and he swears he can pull fifteen and a half g's as a dragon. I don't how true that is because I blacked out at about seven. He showed me the data of something changing direction that fast at least." I was interested. But a timid, easily nauseated, voice begging me not to do something that would kill him from between my wing arms made me table the idea for now. Cupping Ulysses in my paw, I spread my wings open first before falling from the roof into a gentle gliding slope that spun around the hospital until I hit the ground.

"Before we go...wait...where are we going?" I asked, as Alex scrambled up my arm like the intrepid ant that he was to join Jack in the shelter.

"We are going to collect those other three children of the egg that you think are hidden at the convention center. But have actually been playing around the hotel all day. They have been noticed. They are not safe."

"Why didn't you get them first, General?"

"My companions are facing their own difficulties at the moment. I needed other back up in case there is trouble."

"Let's go!" Tom exclaimed.

"Wait! Do you know about the children of the egg at the mall? They need to be safe too!"

Ulysses called out from the General's backbone. "We know, Kim. They're being monitored right now. We also know that some of the groups hunting them are watching them as well. They might think they have been flying under the radar, but there's no keeping that many dragons secret. It's simply the fact that there is no force big enough to attack forty plus dragons that keeps them away. If I had to plan an assault on a group like that, I'd want a battalion sized armor element, a company's worth of Apaches, and at least two heavy weapons platoons."

"Jesus, really?"

"Kim, I watched you get shot up by a militia and not have a scratch on you, chain yourself to a fully loaded semi and drag it up and down a road for fun. And, when you were learning how to fly, get up and walk away after you slammed through a tree almost thirty-two meters tall and over a meter across. So...yeah, really."

The General stood, making Ulysses stumble against the frame of the...I don't know...dragon cockpit next to him. "How many times have I told you Colonel, that I don't like us being called dragons?"

"I apologize sir, it's just that it's easy shorthand compared to saying children of the egg every time."

"Just don't use it around me then. It is misleading and has all the wrong connotations in western societies."

I wasn't done making my point about the mall dragons yet however and tried one more time. No! You do not understand! We were told there are babies in there. A mother has laid her eggs in that mall. They cannot stay there.

General whatever the fuck his name is had been in the process of turning away from me as I churled and snarled that at him. He froze with one paw lifted in mid step and his tail held stiffly behind him. I could tell I had him hooked. Military bearing and discipline or not, the magic words had been babies and eggs. He was just as much a thrall to the helpless ones as the rest of us. Extended on the end of his long neck, his head swung around in a great arc until he faced me with eyes that glittered with a yearning that I felt blazing in my own heart.

Where did you get that information?

This fucking one right...

Tom cut me off, to remind the General what he had just said. "Sir, that can be a rather lengthy explanation depending on what you already know from Ulysses. We should be going. Our companions might not have any idea that they've been spotted."

The General grunted in wordless agreement and his tail slowly came to life to swish its tip before he came to a decision. "As much as I'd like to go there right now to be sure of the safety of those eggs, if almost fifty children of the egg cannot protect themselves then it would take me some time to get the air assets needed to do what they could not. As you've said, what's important is to get your own group together and somewhere more secure. You have eggs of your own to consider." He stared straight at me with his nostrils flaring wide open to take in my scent as I stared proudly back at him until he barked out to his crew.

"Colonel, report!"

I watched as General Whatishisname listened to his earpiece at the same time I could see a few lines of text scroll across his screen followed by what looked like an aerial map with a blinking dot on it.

"You have lead Tom Schwarzkopf, your wife and this one will fly between us. As for you..." He twisted his head to look down on Tomoko, who gave him a brilliant smile and hopped up and down.

"Oh! Me? This will be so much fun!"

"I want you to stay in front of me. No tricks."

"So grumpy! Here! This will make you smile!" A flowerpot appeared in front of her with a small healthy-looking sunflower in it. "No one can look at a sunflower and not smile! It just looks so, so cheerful doesn't it! I hope one day everyone is just as happy as this cute plant is with moist soil to grow in and the sun to shine down on it!" Tomoko tittered to itself and launched aloft, followed by Tom and then me and Prometheus. Looking back, I saw the Air Force commander look down at the sunflower that Tomoko had created (or teleported or whatever) with an odd look in his eyes. Closing his paw around it, he launched after us. Seeing me looking, he refused to meet my eyes and kept his attention straight ahead as I creased my snout to smirk at him.

Halfway there, and without giving an explanation, the General suddenly put on a burst of speed and left us indignantly in the dust just as Alex's voice shouted through the radio in my ear. "Kim! They're under attack! The hotel! Go, go!"

"Tom! Prometheus! They're under attack at the hotel!"

My husband looked at me, our thoughts aligned, and I knew what I had to do. He raced ahead after the Air Force officer, and as much as it set me on fire as a pussy act of cowardice, I hung back to protect the unconscious female riding on Prometheus. Catching his attention, I told him to get some altitude and we watched the carnage unfold beneath us at the convention center.

I could hear Tyler yelling from the interior of the convention center at someone that was standing next to one of the three gun trucks that were unleashing .50 cal. rounds from M2s at the cinder block walls of the loading dock.

"Why are you doing this Jerry! They've done nothing wrong!"

The sour faced maintenance man that I knew from the night before responded with bullets from his AK-47. The time for conversation seemed to be over. But I wanted to know why. I was pretty fucking alarmed to notice that there were thick smears of blood entering through the high bay door. One of the children of the egg down there had been wounded.

The General stayed aloft, somewhere between me and the ground, and I could hear him talking to his crew.

"Area clear. Civilians in imminent threat. Stolen military equipment present. Confirmed. Target Illuminated. Target area clear, reconfirmed. Confirm Illuminated target. Fire, fire, fire."

The UAV (I later learned that it was an MQ-9A) flying unnoticed far above me, had received clearance to launch just five minutes earlier at the first signs of trouble, temporarily ending air traffic to the nearby airport. There was a roar as the rocket motor fired, that went on far longer than anything that I was capable of, and an olive-drab blur shot over my head. The truck that it struck never had a clue, let alone a chance, and jumped into the as it flew apart in a cloud of dust and debris. There was no fucking fiery mushroom cloud to be seen, unlike that bullshit you might see in Hollywood, before the truck's body fell onto the one next to it, partially crushing the other white pickup.

Eight dismounts jumped into the surviving truck, and I quickly lost sight of it as it drove under the cover of trees and between some taller buildings. The remaining rifleman left behind scattered like the cockroaches that they were and left more than a few of their comrades behind either dead or wounded. Snarling, I wasn't about to let the fuckers off easy and dove to slam into them. The General wasn't having it though and flew into my path to bat at my head to knock me out of the red haze that had fallen across my vision.

It was only after I had had my bell rung two or seven times that I stopped trying to shoulder check my way past the officer and was able to recognize what I was doing. Seeing that he had my attention, he swung his head side to side negatively, and then left me there hovering in midair as he cartwheeled away to end the fight himself.

He was only slightly less violent than I would have been, I thought mulishly as Tom winged towards me with distress radiating from him. As only nine out of the thirteen gunmen on the ground died when they answered his calls to disarm with rifle fire. He did however seem to be oblivious to the fire being directed at him, even to the point that he unflinchingly took what sounded to me like 7.62mm point blank. It must have been that suit he was wearing I realized. (It was, but it was also the fact that he was ten years older than me.)

Tom and I landed back from where General Fucknuggets was looming over the disabled survivors. Which I counted as being five including the ones he had disarmed. The exploding truck had not been kind to their ranks. But only too late did I realize that it was not over yet when I heard Tyler yell at us again.

"The roof! The roof!"

Out of my right eye, I saw a muzzle flash on the top of the hotel, and then the tremendous sound of a high caliber weapon. Tom had been nuzzling me. But now he was on his side, clutching his neck and writhing in pain. Why was there a hot liquid on my face? Another flash, another clap of thunder, and something slammed into my shoulder. The world vanished behind a curtain of red.

The next thing I knew, there was the metallic taste of blood in my mouth and my body hurt like hell. Something was stroking the back of my head, leaving me confused. Until more of the red and the overwhelming instinct to protect that had come over dispelled, and I could hear Alex talking to me.

"Kim, Tom is going to be okay. The gunmen are dead. They are dead, Tom is okay. Kim, can you hear me? You need to get your wounds looked at. Kim, Tom is okay. Kim, come back to us."

My vision and my thoughts cleared, and without being able to make the connection yet, I looked down. Seeing what was left of the triggermen before me I recoiled and groaned as my body began to heave in preparation to puke. Leaning my head over the edge of where I was splayed out, drool ran from my mouth. But, ultimately, I was able to stop myself from coating the side of whatever building I was on in barely digested venison. Raising my head, I felt Alex slide down my neck to my shoulders where he lay down to look at something. Distant pangs in my body added to my confusion at seeing that I was on top of the convention center hotel. The last thing I remembered was being on the ground. Tom! Tom was shot!

Feeling my heart start to race again, Alex jumped to his feet again and ran to the base of my raised neck to put his hands there reassuringly. "Tom is alright! The round cracked a scale and slowed down enough that it was stopped in the muscle of his neck! He is alright Kim!

Another wave of panic washed over me. "My babies, my babies, my babies! No, no, no, no!" I felt inwards for them and sagged against the roof of the tower in relief. Four strong heartbeats echoed mine. They were alive. And they were scared. THEY WERE FUCKING SCARED!

"Relax! Please relax!"

"No! What the fuck happened?" I looked around wildly as my head whipped back and forth in search for my mate. Why couldn't I fucking smell him? The roof of the hotel looked like an abattoir. Massive HVAC units had had their intake grilles crushed by something that had left bloody prints surround the three pairs of legs I could see dangling outwards. Duct work all over the roof had been shorn clean from their mounts, some were missing altogether, while others merely looked crushed flat like soda cans. There were a variety of rifles and handguns scattered around, and more bullet casings than I was interested in counting. The edge of the roof next to me looked like someone had sliced it open with a plasma cutter and the glass panel below must have been shattered as I could still hear pieces of it break off to fall with a tinkling noise.

Realization dawned on me. "I did this...I did this after Tom, and I, were shot...Didn't I? I had to." What had I needed to do? The answer came to me. "I saw my mate injured, I had to protect. I had to...I had to keep him safe. He was hurt. I had to protect. I was hurt. I had to protect. He was..."

Alex stopped my unfocused chanting by rubbing his hand on my scales and answered me, for the first time, I realized I could smell something about him that I hadn't before. He was scared. Of me. "Kim, there was no stopping you. Not until the bodies of the two snipers were in your mouth. They shot you three more times with their rifles, and you didn't even flinch. I've never seen bullets so big! What the fuck were those?"

From what he was telling me, and the incredible sound of their firing they were likely Barrett 82A1s. One of the very fucking things I had been worried about being shot by ever since these assholes knew damn well that 5.56 wasn't cutting it.

Flapping wings caught my attention and I snapped my head away from Alex to look up. The General approached the roof and then hovered just far enough away that his wings wouldn't hit the building. He smelled anxious, but also unsurprised. How could he have known that this would happen?

"We need to go. Now. Law enforcement will be here soon to take control of the situation. You need treatment, and you need to be with your mate. If you cannot fly, I will carry you in my han...paws."

"You've seen this before?"

He bobbed his head even as he bobbed in the air. "Yes. This is one of the reasons why the other two are not here now. But now is not the time."

Moving to pick me up in his reaching claws, I brushed him back with my wing and he bobbed his head before pivoting on his wing and dove away while I collected Alex in my hand. "Where is Jack Rabbit?"

"The General has already gotten him. He refuses to be anywhere near you. He is terrified, and frankly so am I."

Shame began to build in my mind, and in the expression coming from my scales. "I'm sorry, Alex. I..." I trailed off uselessly.

Patting my hand, he tried to help me by rationalizing what I had done. "For all you knew, you had just watched the one living being that means everything to you get fatally shot. As scary as it was, it is understandable. You were protecting him and yourself."

It was nice of him to allay my fears like that. But nothing could excuse the fact that I came to my senses with two fucking humans in my mouth. It was just like I had feared before. I had become rage. I had become death. I needed Tom. Where was Tommy?

Unfurling my wings, I hobbled to the edge of the roof and slipped from it until my wings fully embraced the air. Tensely aggravated muscles flared in my shoulder and a wave of pain raced up my neck and out of my jaws in a hoarse keen. Coming in faster than I wanted to, there was no way my shoulder could absorb the shock, so I passed Alex to the leg with the injury and landed on my hind legs, hopped three times to bleed momentum, and then came to a sliding halt on my uninjured side. The asphalt ground at my scales and my tail slapped the ground causing me to groan as my angry nerves lit up once again as I found at least one more of the bullet impacts on me.

I limply released Alex, and lay there panting as I tried to tamp down the pain I was in. Here I had thought I was done being shot once I had gotten the boot from the military. Now, I had been shot on three different occasions since my change already. And it hasn't even been a full year yet. Fuck me.

Rolling to my paws, I winced as I staggered to my mate's side on three legs. I couldn't help the whine that left my mouth as I lowered myself painfully by his side. Already, Alex was stuffing gauze into the wound on Tom's neck, which was all he could do for now. Tom looked up at me, not willing to move at the moment, and gave me a pained grimace along with an earnest plea for reassurance.

"Kim, our children?"

"Stop talking!" Alex snapped at him.

Limping farther forward to where he could sniff at my belly, I sidled towards him until I could feel his ear pushed against where our children were. I felt his anxiety ebb, and his anxious smell changed to one of relief. I relaxed in turn. He was safe, he was safe, he was safe.

"You are safe, you are safe, you are safe." His mumbled words echoed my thoughts.

"Tom, when I saw you drop in front of me. When I felt your blood on my face..." I stopped, frightened at my loss of control.

He did not say anything in return, injured as he was. But his scales rattled open, and I knew how he felt between that and his feelings.

"Stop doing that too! Jesus, are you trying to start the bleeding again?" Alex yelled at his brother.

The General...I stopped my thoughts to finally get an answer for clarity.

"Hey, sir! What's your damned name?"

Irritated, the officer craned his head over to glance at me from the loading dock where he was dismounting Ulysses and his crew onto the bloody platform that he had been sniffing at.

"It's Major General John Boyd."

"General Boyd!" Alex called to him "There was a family of three with us, and they had a toddler, where are they?"

Boyd sat there waiting for a second and, following a reverberating snarl of Stay back! Hurt!, Ulysses and his team came running out with the injured Tyler, who was holding his arms up to keep the bleeding down. I was dismayed to see that his forearms had fairly well been cut to shreds by some kind of shrapnel. There were a few blood stains blossoming at the top of his chest as well and I made the guess that he had been shielding his face from something. Ulysses gave the General the situation as one of his team led the blood college graduate away for some field level first-aid. My buddy told his commander that Greta was dead, and he could hear, but not see, the Perkins.

"I can't get to any of them in there, sir. The son of that old woman is in there crying and holding her, but there is a wall of scale in the way and the big one won't let any of us near them. At least two of them are bleeding from gunshots."

"Stand down Colonel. Get your team to help Alex Schwarzkopf stabilize the others for movement. The Air Base is only 2.5 kilometers from here. We'll walk straight across the runways. I'll deal with the children of the egg."

Dan was barely able to fit through the roll-up door frame so there was no way in hell that Boyd was going to be able to with that sleek rigid structure growing from his back. Instead, he shoved his long serpentine neck inside to talk the children of the egg in there around. The acoustics of the concrete stopped me from hearing most of what was said. But after a few minutes of indistinguishable sing song communication and innumerable ripples of General Boyd's scales, there was a cry of pain and Boyd retracted his head to back away.

The first out was an uninjured Dan, who nosed the smaller General out of the way and took his place at the loading dock and lowered himself as if he was getting ready to be loaded. First Light came next, whimpering with her right hind paw drawn up against her belly protectively. I could see four bleeding wounds in a line stitched up the limb, and on the top of her haunches I spotted a hole in her spinal fin that made me shiver to think how painful that must be. Limping painfully onto her father's back, she lay down with tears of pain running from her eyes and an astringent smell that I realized was the olfactory equivalent. Dan moved away once she was settled, and then Night Star shot through the opening to keep huddled against her much larger father where she shivered in terror. At first, I thought she was uninjured, but then I noticed the dark glittering streaks of blood running down her flank from what looked like shallow wounds of some kind. Two of the remainder of the General's crew escorted the terrified looking Perkins out and to a patrol SUV where they sheltered for the minute. I was relieved to see that they were alright, and on their way out I saw James and Patricia both stop to hug Dan's snout as I guessed he was the reason why they had made it through the ordeal unscathed.

Boyd followed the family with his snout, and as soon as they were loaded into the SUV, had a quick word with the patrolman and woman who had arrived in it. Immediately after, the lights and sirens blared to life and the Tahoe took off towards the airport nearby at what I would call full throttle.

Night Star's terrified scent drew the attention of General Boyd who made a deep humming noise in his chest with his scales rustling and dispensing the smell of reassurance. Drawn away from her father, who was busy reassuring her younger sister, she sought refuge against the older male's side. Reacting without really thinking, Boyd swung his head around and began to lick clean her wounds at the same time he draped his wing across her back protectively. His crew pretended to look away, probably used to the unconscious actions that I knew overtook us at times when it came to comforting each other. After stopping himself from further cleaning of First Light's side. The smell of shameful annoyance coming off him was noticeable. The whimpering Night Star tried to encourage him to resume the comforting treatment by nuzzling closer against him and thrumming loudly. She looked confused when Boyd stopped instead and moved away from her.

I hurt! Not help? Why!

Boyd's fins flattened and he looked away sheepishly to scratch at the ground with his claws. "It's...it's not right..."

Dan twisted his head to look at the both of them and licked his nose in thought for a moment. Boyd, if it helps my daughter, it helps my daughter. Do not be ashamed of what you are now. Our saliva has coagulant and anesthetic properties. I learned that from our time in hiding. Do what feels right now, not what was right before...this. Dan gestured at himself with a paw.

Looking wary, General Boyd heard the advice, but did not act on it for the time being. To the increasing confusion of First Light and Night Star. They both turned to their father and peppered him with questions about why Odd Big Egg wouldn't help with their pain. Poor Dan vapor locked trying to explain to his daughters why older men didn't typically lick young twenty something women to comfort them and help their wounds heal. Or how humans didn't typically do that in general. How Boyd still thought like a human. How hard it was for him to explain that to them when he himself thought like a human and they did not.

But I hurt! He help, it good! Why not help? Not understand! He, you, child of egg, not funny two leg things!

He gave a long-suffering sigh and cast his eyes to the interior of the convention center. From within the raging sobs of Jack's grief continued. Ulysses and one other nameless filler character rushed inside now that their path was clear to retrieve the humans inside. Filler character came out with her arm around Jack and led the sobbing man away to meet the arriving first responders.

Greta...I tried to make myself sad that she was dead, but I really couldn't. Did that make me wrong? I didn't, and I don't know. The old bitch didn't know a damn thing about her own family. But in the end, she had her heart in the right place and was trying to bring them back together again. Just one more reason to find those children of the egg. If nothing else, we had to honor what she had died trying to do. The question had now become, how long will it take us to heal?

Eight patrol cars arrived and discharged two dozen heavily armed police officers before our crippled bullet riddled asses could flee. Boyd sighed, vexed, because now he had to explain things. Which I didn't envy him and was glad that someone else would do it for once.

Alex continued his examination of me. "This doesn't make any sense. I felt you jerk four times when you were hit by those big rifles. I heard them impact! But there is not a single hole in you! From a bullet half an inch in diameter! All I can find is where some of your scales have shattered."

I shrugged, not particularly concerned. "I know from seeing my future self that our scales get thicker as we get older. I don't see any wounds on Dan or Boyd either. Plus..." my ears perked up "...I am pregnant. Look how much thicker than Tom I am with muscle! Arms, tail, shoulders, back, all thicker. Perhaps the scales are too? I am fucking awesome after all!"

Alex looked at me dubiously considering just a few days ago 5.56 had somehow broken through my scales. Maybe I had some plot armor? Anyway, I think it had less to do with the size of the round than the fact that repeated impact at the same point had cleared the way for bullets to make their way home. Even then, I had been fine enough to fly for twenty minutes no problem. Disrupting my thoughts, the General called over our heads to Ulysses and ended our conversation.

"Colonel, I didn't want to interrupt their rest but call the other two in. We're going to need their help to get everyone to the airbase."

"You got it sir, can you put me back up?"

Reaching out with his paw, I jealously watched as my old friend trustingly allowed himself to be plucked from the ground and set on top of his own commander. Entering the stealth fighter cockpit to send the message to who I presumed were two more child of the egg. Laying down to set his head on the ground and appear less threatening, Boyd began to detail what happened to the law enforcement while they began collecting the weapons and assessing injuries.

I saw two of them yanking that fuckwit Jerry we had met last night at the hotel to his feet. I pointed at him and snarled to the cops holding him up.

"That cocksucker! He knew we were here last night. That motherfucker planned this! Give him to me!"

"Fuck you, you fucking cunt! Get the fuck off my planet you brainwashed fucking alien bitch!"

I was tired of watching people around me die for this insane bloodlust. Here before me I had a live one, it was time for some fucking answers.

Just as the cops began to shake their heads. I rose from my prone position and limped towards them. One of the brave stupid badge wearers stood in front of their prisoner and held up his hand to warn me off as he fingered his rifle. I held up my hand too, and the mass of it alone as it travelled past him spun the officer to the ground so that could I curl my hand around my pal Jerry to hold him in front of my face as I sat down on my tail and interrogated him seven meters in the air.

"Why?"

He spat at me. I couldn't spit back, so instead I tickled my snout with my wing membrane until I sneezed on him, covering him in clear slime.

"There, now that we got that out of the way, I'm going to ask again. Why?"

At first, he didn't answer, being too busy gasping as he tried to get his breath back. He took so long that I was actually worried that I'd accidentally collapsed his lungs from the force of my sneeze. It would serve him right if I did. One dead, five wounded. Fuck him. I ignored the police officers beneath me yelling at me to put him down, and no one else was exactly keen on stopping me. They were just as interested as I was in learning why this madness continued.

"Because...because you have given into the aliens. You are no better than they are. You are invaders. You are different! This is not a change we want! How dare you force us to change what we are because you do not like it! This is the United States of America! We will fight, even if our government is selling us out cheap!"

"Stop fucking casting us apart from yourself. You are misreading the situation if you don't think that my, our, fate is the same as the species we were less than a fucking year ago! Will it change your mind if I tell you what I've been told? That our world, and our" I stressed our "our species are headed to oblivion because we can't pull our heads out of our asses?"

"Why should I believe you? Why would you ever believe yourself what you were told? We will never surrender to ultimatums! We have free will to do what we want! God has granted us that right!"

I fucking hated this prick. But I saw an opportunity. I saw a chance to change minds. To stop this nonsense. Or, at the very least, a way to understand it and to begin to stop it at the very least. You can't kill your way through an ideological divide. Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, proved that. Four of the greatest military powers the world had ever seen, and the best any of them could ever do was fight to a draw. That same kind of stubbornness was what we were dealing with here. Except this time, if we couldn't make nice, the invading force would just erase everything from existence.

"And what about the rest of your asshole friends huh? The ones that use the excuse of what happened to us, of what we HAD NOT FUCKING ASKED FOR, to kill anyone and everyone that they want? What about them? Tell me Jerry. Is it just us that you hate? Or is it anything at all that you view as different? That eighty-year-old grandmother that died just a few minutes ago. Did you hate her too? She had a pussy instead of a cock. Tell me how deeply your hatred runs. Did you hate her for that?"

He looked away from me, and I could hear his teeth grind against themselves as his jaw clenched. "No."

"Then why..."

"Because I will die fighting for my country! For my world! That's fucking why! Even if it means other humans must die because they choose to allow you to live!"

"You are fighting to defend the right of humans to destroy the world? Is that what I'm getting from you? You want to fight for your right to continue to fuck things up?"

"IT IS OURS TO DO WITH AS WE WANT!"

"Oh, is that so? And when is the last time that every man, woman, and child on this planet has come to the consensus on a fucking thing?"

"That doesn't matter! We know what is right! They don't!"

I had heard enough to know the kind of problem we were facing now.

"Who is we? Who is they? Can you even answer that? Is this a might makes right thing? Because I got news for you buddy. An interdimensional race of aliens, their pet quantum computers, and their technology that is probably millions of years more advanced than ours know a few things that you don't. Does that make you feel as ignorant as you presume every other human on this planet that doesn't think like you do is?"

"Fuck you, and fuck them!"

"Ah, that old standby. Losing an argument? Fuck you. Disagree with someone? Fuck you. Had your convictions challenged with logic? Fuck you. You and others like you are the problem Jerry. The world was changing because you, me, we, wanted everything, we wanted it right now, and we wanted it cheap. We refused to change with the world as it was transformed by our actions, by our desires. And because of that, I, and many others, lost the birth right we had as human beings when we were transformed into these forms.

"Don't you see? Living in the past, refusing to see what was happening around us, fighting each other like this. These are the reasons why we are now forced to exist as something to be hated by those that think like you. It's funny really. You hate the very things that you are partially responsible for having created. We watched our lives, our families, get torn and shattered by a change to prove that we deserved to be in charge of world as rich and as full of life as this one.

"This is our last chance to fix this. If we fail, all of us cease to exist. Jerry, you are not fighting for the future, you are fighting against it. And I will not allow my children to have their world and future stolen from them by those who want to hold on to the past.

"Say the word right now, Jerry. If the future is too hopeless for you and you can't see a path forward that does not involve bloodshed, tell me, and I will send you into the next world. Tell me right now that you don't want to work together to solve this instead, and you will never feel a thing again."

He looked away. Not being able to meet my eyes. The fucking coward. I knew that this prick would put a 20mm cannon against my head the first chance he got. But face to face with death, he couldn't fucking raise his eyes and find his voice.

I set him down, and the cops grabbed him again to hustle him away from my reach. I looked around and saw four more of them had been listening to my interrogation.

"And what do you four think?"

"Would you have ever chosen what happened to you if it meant saving your children?" The woman on the right wanted to know.

"Abso-fucking-lutely."

She nodded. "Then no matter what you look like, I am with you. For the future." I shifted to the cop next to her.

"You?"

"I swore to uphold the law. I am not going to standby and watch what I protect rip itself apart. I cannot control what these aliens do, but I will be damned if they reduce us to acting like mindless animals and prove them right that we can't manage ourselves."

"You?" I pointed at the third one.

"Ya gotta die from something." He responded, irreverently and fatalistically, while resting his assault rifle on his hip. Not exactly the answer I was expecting, but what the fuck ever, I guess.

"My kid sister changed." The last man said. His eyes shifted to look obliquely at his fellow officers before he lied to me. "I don't know where she is, but I will not abandon her, or you, or anyone that this happened to when there is a chance that you will get gunned down."

Oh, I was going to have words with this one. What did he know that he was lying about? Probably, the part about not knowing where she was. Was she in the mall? Having friends in the police force would go a long way towards explaining some things I had questions about.

"If you do see your sister. Make sure she knows that she has more friends that will guarantee her safety."

He nodded slowly, never giving away anything. Good.

Hey, my mind jumped tracks like a needle skipping across a record. Speaking of fucking aliens...Where were those two with the female that we had spent most of the morning trying to help? My head searched back and forth until I spotted Prometheus' head snaking from around the corner of the hotel. A cruiser was by it, with two cops yelling at him for some reason or another that I didn't really give a shit about. Something about him blocking one of the emergency exits for the hotel. He however was asleep, again, and immune to the LE blathering at him.

But, as I glared in his direction, Tomoko peeked around the corner, and spotted me looking at it. She slinked towards me slowly and I saw that clutched in her tail was the potted sunflower she had made appear earlier. It was only then that I realized that I had no idea what had happened to the one that had been in Boyd's paw at the start of the fight. Turning around, she set the flower pot down before facing Tom and I once more.

"These were Greta's favorite."

It suddenly occurred to me that Tomoko creating or teleporting those flowers had been no casually random act. I kicked myself for thinking that it was. Nothing that Tomoko, Thumper, or what the fuck ever, did was ever without some deeper meaning or clue. We just had to be better about recognizing them. "Why didn't you just tell us that she was going to die today? We could have saved her! Always fucking games with you, Tomoko. Is that how omniscient computers amuse themselves behind the scenes of the fucking House of Horrors that you've stuck us all in?"

Tomoko swung her head back and forth sadly. "There was no future where Greta lived to see the sun set on today. She was very old, Kim. It was her time. Today, her heart failed her."

"Was there something else I should have said or asked that fuckstick Jerry while I had him in my paw?"

"What you said will be enough to bear fruit, Kim. I know that you think he will seek to kill you the first chance he gets. But there is now a kernel of doubt in his mind that you put there by being an individual, a person, a thinking being. The future that is shaped around you grows brighter by the day. We are proud of you."

Oh, well! They are proud of me! Good job, Kim! Time to wash my paws of the whole fucking affair, go home, lay my eggs, and watch the glow of the world burning while I made empty promises to my children that everything will be all-fucking-right.

Sir, we are here! My ears perked up again as the sound of someone new reached them. Coming from the direction of the airport, two more children of the egg appeared. Sending the police into a temporary panic as they tromped through the crime scene. A male and a female wearing the same suit as Boyd. However, both were missing the conspicuous shelters on their backs even though there was an obvious platform for one to be mounted. Our help was here.

The slightly smaller female with one ice cold blue eye hidden behind her optic spotted me, and with only a slow caress of his flank with her tail left her red/gold eyed similarly equipped mate to amble towards me. How did I know it was her mate? I don't know. A feeling, that those two were only meant for each other, I suppose. A feeling that getting between them was a wrong that was unthinkable.

"You must be Major Kim McConnor-Schwarzkopf and Master Sergeant Tom Schwarzkopf. I am Lieutenant Colonel Amanda Huygens. It is a pleasure to meet you after so long." She folded her front legs and bowed to us before rising again. Tom and I ducked our heads to return the greeting.

"Can you walk, Major McConnor-Schwarzkopf? My mate can carry you if you would like. Master Sergeant Schwarzkopf, I have been told that you must not exert yourself. Please allow me to assist you. We must depart as soon as possible. Enemy reinforcements are enroute."

She lay down and pressed herself as flat to the ground as she could before bringing her head around to look at us patiently.

Tom tried to be the gallant husband, but the effect was ruined when Alex began yelling at him to shut up and let his throat heal. My nips at his ass chased him up onto the Air Force officer who chuffed some brief laughter before gaining her feet with Tom's head carefully held right on top of hers as she hinged the long white bony spur on her neck flat.

I did a double take, and looked from her neck, to her tail, to her mate. She was pregnant! She was the one Tom smelled before! It was hard to tell from the woven textile sheathe she was wearing, but she might have even been even thicker than I was! How many lives did she carry?

Keeping her neck outstretched and immobile so that my husband's would stay the same, she headed back in the direction she had come without another word. Dan, carrying one daughter and with the other staying glued to his side, followed after her and my husband to safety. His anxiety at leaving me behind faded with distance until at about 2 klicks, it was lost in the chaotic noise of my insane mind.

"Hey! Are there ambulances coming or what?" I looked at the police officers for an answer and got one that I didn't like.

"No. Take the wounded with you. We're taking the gunmen, the weapons, and bodies. Then we're gone too. This area is not secured."

Not secured? They must really be terrified if they didn't consider two dozen officers with rifles secured.

Jack was brought over to me to load up but began screaming unintelligibly at the sight of me as soon as his downcast eyes lifted themselves from his own feet. In the end, he was made to ride with General Boyd, but was refused admittance into the shelter. Jesus, we were only going a few klicks, let the panicky rabbit fucking walk! Tomoko appeared on Boyd alongside the shell-shocked man still clutching the flowerpot, while Alex escorted Tyler up the sloping length of my tail to the shelter on my own back.

Boyd got his crew loaded onto him again, as I kept a watchful eye on Ulysses to make sure he was safe. The unnamed child of the egg poked Prometheus awake and told him to follow him. Then coming alongside me, I accepted the offer of his back and threw my wing across it to take some of the strain off my stiffened foreleg.

Boyd was the last to depart as a rearguard, and it was he who roared at us to "Go, go, go!" when the sound of multiple racing engines came toward our departing tails.

The police officers grouped together behind their patrol cars as more trucks appeared with several gunmen already firing indiscriminately. Including, I was incensed to see, the same truck that had fled earlier with the heavy weapon mounted to its bed. Withdrawing my wing, I nudged the Lieutenant Colonel at my side to separate him from me and limped after the retreating tail of Amanda and my mate. Huygens turned back and leapt to land in front of his commander and bristled challengingly to protect his superior who had the crew and his extra passenger to consider. A frightened mental dagger from my mate staggered me, and it took me a moment to push back against that fear and calm him as I made my way towards his resounding beacon of worry.

Furious roaring and the chatter of gunfire chased me from the field as I was unwilling to put Alex, or Tyler (I told that fucking kid to keep away from us! But did he listen? No.) in further harm's way.

But, as the gunfire persisted behind me, I turned back to help anyway with the siren call of battle echoing in my spread ears. Only to stop as my legs collapsed beneath me when a javelin of emotion lanced me right behind my left eyeball. Anxiety, worry, fear, and love, left me gasping as they rolled over my mind. An idea that felt like it had the shape of a command flew through my head from one ear to the other before continuing onwards. Through one bleary eye, I could see that the female child of the egg had turned around to face me so that she and Tom both could send death glares at me and somehow amplify each other's thoughts. Reluctantly, I turned my head away from the ebbing gun fight behind me as I heard vehicle motors receding once again and saw the vast outspread wings of a child of the egg take to the skies to wheel towards me.

The other Lite Colonel, probably reacting to his wife's summons, thudded behind me and flared his wings to block my sight backwards. He gave me a patient smile, and he smelled of nothing but the soft feeling of the desire to protect, but there was nothing soft about his adamant body posture. So, instead, I gave in to my injuries and the safety of my passengers. Pushing Prometheus' ass with my head, I moved him in front of me as we shuffled to the relative safety of the airfield and the array of soft skinned HMMWVs covering the airport perimeter with their crew served weapons and two dismounts each all training their muzzles in the direction of the gunfire.

...