FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Will she show?" Amya Chandler asked. A thickset woman in her forties. The dark-skinned matron from Chad was a senior analyst with the Biggston-Raine consumer engineering firm. She and a dozen of her companions were sitting not so patiently in a circle within a vast, empty warehouse. Their makeshift studio was the only thing in the structure and right in front of an opened roll-up door. Just outside, a wheeled generator powered the lights for their study belched an exhaust that reeked of French fries. The grid operators had shut off power to this part of the city months ago, there was nothing left to power. Since then, thieves and reclaimers had moved in for the metals and equipment.

"She better. We've traded a hundred kilograms of wheat for one of her scales just to establish trust. None of the others would even answer our posting. The scalies don't trust us after the... Clarkson accident." A much younger man wearing business casual attire that looked impossibly new and free of wear next to her answered.

"I don't blame them one bit for that after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that they are an invasive species and under the management of the Department of the Interior. First, declared dead, then brought back to life to be told that their lives are meaningless. Now, anyone with a gun can hunt them without repercussion. It's no wonder it came to a fight outside that town."

"Washington has already threatened to arrest anyone that attempts to hunt the dragons on capital murder charges within the state. A state Supreme Court verdict there ruled the law entitled dragons to self-defense after the killing of three men attacking one with shotguns. Meanwhile, Florida has announced they will kill every single one found within their borders. They attacked an encampment on one of the Keys. Four dragons and one hundred and seven humans were dead. I heard on the news. The dragons destroyed Highway 1 when four of them picked up a tank somehow and dropped it on a bridge span. Can you believe it was a Russian tank delivered to Florida through Cuba? I mean, what the hell?" A woman busily arranging the floodlights said, interjecting herself into the conversation.

"Fuck Florida, why should we care what they do when they and the other states bordering the gulf declared themselves their own country, anyway? How many blacks have they killed in Alabama? No offense, Amya." The jack-of-all-trades fiddling with the lights said. "What do they think they're going to do with that oil, anyway? The Navy is still blockading the ports."

"What matters is that they started offering a bounty on the dragons anywhere in North America, payable on proof of killing. How many people died this year chasing that gold? Twenty-one, twenty-two thousand, and four, maybe five hundred dragons?"

"Not as many as when North Dakota declared themselves the first pure state. The Army is still in control of the whole place after that pogrom. The only thing keeping them from rounding up everyone who's left is the fear of the dragons. Four Matriarchs have flown into Bismarck with a flight of five hundred in their wake. I heard their wings covered the sky as they came in."

Amya grunted and shifted uneasily, not liking the reminder of how many immigrants, like her, were rounded up like cattle under the vague accusations of being in allegiance with the aliens. It was nothing more than blatant xenophobia.

"Enough of that," Kevin Flick, a silver-haired man of skeletal countenance and wearing a shabby business suit snapped. "The Children, and all the other human victims, deserve the same thing from you. All of them are living beings worthy of your respect."

"Some more than others..." an unseen voice muttered.

"So, why are we doing this with the dragons, then? The only thing they're good for is the number of work credits they earn pulling guard duty, or whatever, and the materials they collect like magpies. Not one of them has shown that they remember how important consumerism is. They're like... a bunch of brainwashed communists or something." Drew Samson, a new hire at the firm and the one wearing the uncannily fresh clothes. As a man who resented his tenuous position in the world, he was fortunate to have a job at all.

"We're doing this because no one can consistently entice the dragons into buying consumer goods even after ten years. Imagine the percentage we'd get if we were to find their desires! A new product line for a sentient species. The only ones who stand to gain more is the cetacean division trying to pin down what we could sell to the dolphins," the regional manager said. Kevin Flick, the silvery-haired, gaunt man in charge, said to his subordinates. "We tried dragon clothes, but most of the hippies didn't like it. Said it interfered with their scales. Only the ones that still thought they were human bought in. The rest only cared about those damned Japanimation scouters over their eyes and piercing their fins with anything silver."

An aging man of seventy-three from Alberta. The survey sessions being conducted for product reception was Kevin's brainchild. His pension in Canada rode on it. Something more valuable than what nearly a useless currency could attain in the United States. Which was closer than ever to anarchic dissolution, as told by the events in its southeast.

"Hmf..." Drew grunted. "Sounds like nonsense to me. I'm happy each day they don't tear my head off or rape my mind."

"Shut up, you donkey," Kevin snapped at him when a thud shook a thin wafting of dust into the air from the structure surrounding the trio. "She's here! Remember; she's not an animal. Her wings and tail are danger zones. Don't ask for a ride. No remarks on her smell. And if she extends her head toward you, don't reenact that goddamned children's movie unless she invites you to rub her nose."

"Why do they always land on the roof first?" Drew muttered before being shushed by Amya after reminding him that the Child could hear them. The three humans arrayed themselves facing the open garage door. They conspicuously placed the weapons holstered on their hips before them on the cement floor, along with the guns of the rest of their support team. Outside of arm's reach in a display of trust.

A giant black form dropped from above the opening on widespread and bunched arms and legs. She faced the group with her tail slapping the loading ramp and wings settling on her back. Her head, suspicious orange and blue eyes glowing, lowered as the former human's nostrils flared with her snuffling. After a quick glance at the crew awaiting her, she thundered past with a piercing whistle coming from her throat. The Child galloped to examine a far corner where a maze of crates lay gathering dust. Once she had thrust the tip of her nose into a suite of offices and bathrooms, she returned more slowly, having satisfied herself that no one else was there.

It gave Amya a chance to witness the fluidity of the massive dragon's motions. While they weren't rare by any stretch, it was also not unusual to go days or even weeks without seeing one of them up close. Years of conflict had driven them away from their former homes as they concentrated within friendlier regions. Alongside their still human relations and supporters. The wilder parts of the world, national parks and wildernesses, were almost entirely under their supervision. An uneasy agreement made with the current governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Most of the countries in the Americas had similar understandings, but there were continuing exceptions. Like the United States, where the status quo changed every four years.

The dragoness who had given her name as Brianna was no stranger to those exceptions, judging by the number of injuries dotting her frame. At least from what Amya could see. Only coming part of the way up the forearm of the imposing dragon. The great size was typical of the former humans.

Brianna walked with a slight limp in her leisurely pace that Amya noticed hadn't affected her earlier sprint. Caused by the damage to her right arm, she'd guess. Right where the silver scales indicated some past injury, besides the designs of the mosaic tattoos on her shoulders and hips. Another much more recent trauma had left her spinal fin and ear badly torn. In some places, leaving the flexible rays with no attaching membranes at all. Silver-scaled scars pockmarked her haunches and tail around a missing chunk of muscle near the base of the appendage.

A trio of polished stainless-steel rings pierced through the fleshy crest on the back of her head, jangling with each stride of her rolling gait. Across her chest, and down her sides near her hips, were large leather satchels on a sturdy gold-colored harness. A strikingly complementary look against her black scales. Over her left eye was a rectangular piece of optical glass. A heads-up display. Attached to a wire harness that extended over her head through a slit cut in the base of her crest. The apparatus included a short microphone reaching to the corner of her jaw, an earpiece inserted into her outer canal, and a black battery box off to one side. All with a small solar panel on its shell next to a stubby antenna. Where the dragons were getting these devices, and who was making them, only those who lived alongside them knew.

That information disconnect came from a political change in the country. The United States had sorted itself into regional alliances of communities in the years since Zero Day. Vastly undercutting the federal government's ability to manage large swaths of their former duties. One effect of this was the largest migration since the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. All marked with the sky-high tensions between the greatest supporters and detractors of the dragons. And the ultimatum they represented. As many people hated them, and the aliens who looked just like them, there were just as many that welcomed the reckoning forced on humanity. Some even worshipped them. Amya was keenly aware of where this new United States welcomed her. With the number of people who ignored what the courts decreed, and fractious enforcement of those court orders dependent on the region they were in. It was more typical for all humans to be armed against the unknown of their fellow humans.

And the U.S. was doing well, compared to many other countries. Less than six months from the threatened day that the Void Children, the name of the golden-eyed aliens, would alter all fossil fuels into uselessness. Forever. No one wondered if the aliens were bluffing. Not anymore. Not when they stood by and watched humans mercilessly kill each other, and the species brought here as leaders and advisors for the past ten years. Instead, they had shrugged. Saying with a chilling casualness that this was the exact behavior they'd expected from a candidate species looking to end its existence.

"I here." Brianna limped closer to the humans, who stood frozen for the always tenuous first contact. "Thirty minutes begins now, I count." Her head suddenly darted to Drew as her wings rose until they brushed the ceiling of the expansive warehouse. "And we land on the roofs first because we remember being human. Which is why we don't trust you."

She eyed the assorted weapons before the humans and then a large plastic crate off to one side. "Lock weapons in box and give me key. Not need while Brianna here," she added, sitting down with her legs folded on a cushioning air pad set out for her comfort. "You under my wings. If we attacked, I will protect you until my eyes no longer see the sky."

"Th-thank you for offering us that protection," Kevin said, completing the formalities with sweeps of his arms to mimic the motion of wings being settled. Brianna made a thrumming whoop and bobbed her head.

"I'm going to be sick," Drew half-turned to whisper to Amya after one glance at Brianna's exposed crotch between her legs. "Can't they wear clothes like a human? It ain't right for talking beings to show their...". He stopped speaking when heavy inhalations ruffled his hair as a giant nostril, and eye, loomed just behind his shoulder. Slowly, he turned back to face the irate gaze fixed on him. Whatever mustered defiance he had dredged up quickly crumbled. Instead, he turned his gaze to the floor in the face of the dragon's smelly irritation wafting from betwixt her scales.

"Twenty-nine minutes remain," Brianna said in her guttural tone. Her head turned to fix her sight on Kevin. "I do not want to hear the boy speak again if it is to judge me for not being ashamed that I am dragoness or Child of the Egg. If I have made peace with what I've become, then he can, too."

Her spinal fin, tallest at the crown of her head to giving her a sweeping crest, shivered with an agitated rattle. The ozone smell of her anger poured off her lengthy body.

"It's okay," Kevin soothed, motioning with one hand for Drew to step back from the others forming the contact group. Which he did with alacrity. "We're all friends here."

Brianna snorted as her wings rustled on her back. "Funny for you to call us all friends when I know the name of your children or parents of only you, Kevin. Count out your payment, then show me your gadgets so I can show you them broken."

"There you are," Kevin said once the purser had laid out two one-kilogram ingots of copper. What the dragon wanted with them no one could ever tell. Since their transformations, no one knew how they thought, and the problem had only gotten worse as the years piled on. The distance between them and their humanity stretching to impassability. Their children, dragons their whole lives, were even more enigmatic.

Or chaotic, depending on what they'd done in the previous thirty-seven seconds.

Pinching two claws, Brianna hefted each of the bars. Then snarled and pancaked one into the ground with blinding speed, leaving a divot in the concrete before the flinching Kevin.

"Liars!" she roared, rearing up on her legs to stomp her hands and slap her tail. "Copper is only zero point eight kilograms! You abuse our trust, Kevin! You think you ever have a Child to work with again once Brianna leave? Why you think I come when no others have?"

"No, no, no!" Kevin said in denial, seeing his retirement pension slip away. "We have the certificates! They promised us their weights were good!" an assistant rushed to hand him a folder, which he fanned through rapidly. "Look," he waved two pages at the snarling dragon. "We've all been lied to!"

Her mismatched irises flicked downward to the pages for an instant, long enough for her to read the entire documents. The Child's eyes snapped to the matching serial number on the undamaged bar before settling on Kevin as she backed up a step. Her raised and clattering scales lowering into smooth unbroken uniformity once again. "Bring scale. We find truth together."

Only after the NIST approved scale verified that the ingot was indeed short of its promised weight, and they settled the discrepancy, were they finally able to get back to the task at hand.

"Clock reset," Brianna declared. She deposited the additional two hundred grams of copper in the bag slung across her chest with carefully precise claw movements. "Show me gadgets. I have classes to receive and my garden needs tending." She tapped the device on her head with one claw tip. "Willing to sell strawberries bigger than hand if want."

Kevin motioned an engineer forward. She stammered through her presentation as the cameras set to record the product demonstration spun to life. "Okay. Test one will be a very nice uh... thing with very easy to push buttons..."

"Designer pissing on Brianna's patience by speaking like she two-year-old. Show device, I discover use faster than you talk. I remember, since you lack, time is copper."

"Here, high and mighty dragon." The engineer switched from coddling to caustic as she dragged a black plastic crate before her and threw the lid open. "Tell me..."

"This controller," Brianna settled onto her thighs to reach with both hands. She pointed at the buttons with the tip of one claw. "Power, speed, oscillation, and activation trigger. Agitator," she waggled the buffer at the other of the connecting cable. "Turning on..." Her hand squeezed and shattered the paddle-shaped control when she used the trigger. The remains fell on the stunned engineer. Kevin had a sneaking suspicion that the dragon knew exactly what she was doing.

"Broken, low and crawling human," she said, resettling on her hands and looking bored. "Next?"

"Cut! Try not to antagonize our volunteer, all of you. Michelle, you're up next," Kevin said. The next engineer stepped up with her offering. A two-part mechanism, like the first, this one much larger and sturdier in appearance. The control was a thick mat that connected through a metallic cable to a large, vertical brush mounted on a spherical pedestal.

Brianna eyed it skeptically. "Is claw portable?"

"Uh..." the engineer said, eying the first, more caustic, coworker staring glumly at the destruction of his creation. "Yes? Yes!" she finished more confidently. "It only has one speed as long as you're on the..."

"Stop explaining," Brianna commanded, and stepped on the activation plate to set the dark blue column of fiber whirling. Picking it up by cupping it in her hand, she pressed the device against her neck slowly.

"This not good. Need different brush material, and longer reach. It very scratchy on fin."

The machine chose that moment to issue sparks and smoke, alarmingly accelerating as fire whooshed from the motor at its base. Brianna snarled and stepped off the control. But the errant device continued to destroy itself, causing the dragoness to lose patience. She flung it away with an angry toss as it continued to burn.

"Fire, fire!" its designer bellowed in horror. Brianna turned wrathful eyes on Kevin. Who helplessly watched the engineers rush forward with extinguishers.

"Oh my god, oh my god. I'm going to lose my job. My family will be homeless. If you don't have a job, you don't have a home. That's the law..." the designer of the first device tore at her hair, falling to her knees. Only to get yanked back up by Kevin, his boss.

"Get up. I'm not firing anyone today."

"Humans test first before Brianna! Extra five hundred grams of copper. Contract changed!" she glared at the lead representative.

Amya, the largest human there, volunteered to have the next one tested on her to ensure the dragon's continued participation. Brianna turned her head to peer down with a circumspect and narrowed eye.

The engineer visibly braced himself before stepping on the pad serving as an activation switch. Struggling to hold the cylindrical device attached with a long, braided power cord. The device hummed and then began thumping. It was a massager meant to have therapeutic properties.

"It's a therapy gun to massage your muscles," its designer tried to explain, irritating the dragoness.

"Not need it explained! When I need, I ask. Humans always think we stupid because so big and four legs."

"...we think you're stupid because you all talk like a drunk Yoda," the engineer muttered.

Brianna rose from her prone position to thrust her head out with an alarmingly loud screech and then burst into draconic singing. She went on for a minute or two and then stopped, looking at the frightened engineer hiding behind a crate and the rest of her stunned audience.

"There. Brianna recited first chapter of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' which she read now while listening to you insult me. Not blame me for human words being stupid confusing nonsense not fit for Child of Egg's throat. Especially English! Brianna grew with language and still not understand!"

The humans could see walls of text flashing past her dilated left pupil at a dizzying pace for a few more moments before ceasing to reveal her colorful eye. "Finished reading. Need time to process whole story but think wonderful book. And not drunk, or Yoda, little not-Jedi."

"What's a Jedi?" the youthful engineer asked Kevin, who looked at him puzzled.

"How do you know... but not..." the much older man shook his head. "Never mind. Brianna, I apologize for the... not-Jedi's words," he finished with a snort as he and Brianna joined each other in laughing.

Brianna resettled and watched the not-Jedi attempt to utilize his creation on an increasingly reluctant Amya. The large woman eyeing the vibrations that shook the engineer. When he got within range, the hammer impact of the supposedly therapeutic device launched the two humans away from each other. Amya clutched her arm and rolled on the ground in pain and the engineer slumped against a steel pillar, unconscious.

"Medic!" Kevin said, grabbing the attention of a woman wearing a blue jumpsuit with a fluorescent orange backpack at her feet. She ran to the engineer just as he did to Amya.

Brianna laid her head down and covered her snout with her hands as she squeezed her eyes shut and her body swelled with a sigh.

"Want know why you try to kill Brianna? Never smell you before this task. Time paused," she said in her rumbling tone, rising to her feet. There was flapping overhead, and an unfamiliar shadow darkened the entryway. Another dragon, smaller than the volunteer test audience of one, landed with a happy bugle and swept their head around to look at the others. From its back two infantile dragons, that couldn't have been more than a year-old, glided down and took off like rockets into the offices. Much to the human's dismay as the whipping tail of one took the legs out from beneath an oblivious intern talking on her cell phone.

"I take nap, you fix the rest of your gadgets. Wake me when done, or if in some tiny-human danger."

She turned with her long tail soaring over the human's heads. Her musk grew to a peak when they fell under her shadow as she went to the other dragon, where they bounced excitedly on their paws. They squeaked and trilled at each other before falling into a jumble of wings, tails, and paws that thoroughly blocked the entrance. Brianna's head faced outwards, just shy of where the intruding sunlight fell as she remained on guard. Her tail slapped down across the locked crate full of weapons and then curled around it, rendering access impossible. Soon, the rasping whistle of their snores grew unbearable. Kevin led his team to one of the unused rooms, a break room, taking some torches with them to light the unpowered area, and shut the door behind them. Irate.

"Have the rest of the machines even been tested before we try to get the opinion of a potential customer? Have they? Because I'm doubting it. Why are we even wasting our time here, if all it accomplishes is to poison the minds of the thousand dragons that Brianna is probably talking to right now? Product research is not to kill the bleeping market! Engineers, get back out there and find out why you're designs are failing. We only brought a limited amount of bartering materials, and if she continues to feel threatened, we'll be out of business."

They left, grumbling, leaving behind the managerial staff in the dim and dust-covered room. The remaining crew jumped when a dragonet suddenly burst out of a storage closet, shrieking laughter, and pinning a broom along its side with one wing. The young dragon rammed the outer door open, breaking the doorjamb, and disappeared into the dark warehouse, chortling madly the whole way.

"Someone find out what this and the damage to the floor out there will cost us," Kevin said, fingering the door frame latch. "How much copper do we have left?"

"Um..." the purser said, setting up the scale on one table in the room and weight the contents of the bag on her back. "Four point two one five kilograms."

"What do they even do with that copper? Or anything they ask for? Why don't they ask for money, or labor credits, like normal people?" Drew complained. "I don't trust them."

"They're using those raw materials to build the interfaces they wear on their heads. They're handmade by them somehow," Amya said, still nursing her arm with an ice pack.

"How is that possible? Each of her fingers is as big around as I am!"

"The humans and us make robots for them to use with their hands!" a rough gravelly voice called out from the darkest corner of the room. "And we help with our tiny fingers, too." On the sofa facing an empty tv stand, a shadow stirred. It took Kevin a moment, blinking his eyes uselessly, before he could see the vague edge of a wing. As soon as he shuffled closer, the voice cried out.

"Come no closer distance! I am I Spy, and I am spying, yes! Very secret."

"You've been in here this whole time?" Kevin said, incredulously.

"I Spy moves in mysterious ways. Could be under table right now too, and you not know. Poke you with tail and say surprise. You be very surprised."

"Why are you here?"

"I Spy and Children here to learn if you safe to trust, yes? Tricky, tricky humans. Full of lies. Full of seven faces, saying things, meaning other things, while thinking third things. Child of Egg think what we say and say what we mean. Not chaos happening that big sister Brianna here."

Someone shouted from outside. Kevin couldn't tell who, but it was a dragon's voice that responded.

"Get away from that! No, you can't have it for the parts."

"I joust you! And you, I joust you too! Or, I give cookies for broken machine insides. Or-e-os! Brought by Child of Egg from very far towards rising stars. I give cookie for each part in my bag thing." Kevin heard the unmistakable crinkling of a snack food wrapper.

"Don't you dare make that trade," the manager yelled out at the engineers when he didn't hear any firm denial. It had been years since he'd last seen an Oreo too, he knew the temptation was there. In response, he got a loud hiss.

"Joust you!". Kevin jumped back with a surprised cry when a rapid clicking preceded the broom handle suddenly bursting through the drywall next to him. "Now you all watch Big Bird eat Or-e-os without taste."

"Christ," the older man said, wiping his face. He turned back to ask I Spy if they'd be willing to join the second round of product testing in a few weeks, but the shadow-wrapped child was gone. The slamming of drawers further back in the offices as they searched for something ruined the stealthy egress.

"Why can't we use the children?" Amya thought out loud, tapping her pencil on her notebook.

"We can't trust them!" Drew protested. "They're like... Loki finding Pandora's Box and shaking it to see what falls out. It's them, they are what fell out. Heh," he finished in despair with his hands in his hair. "I can't believe they're what's going to replace humanity."

"That's those internet opinion pieces you listen to rotting your brain," Kevin replied. "In ten years, they haven't once expressed an interest in control."

"It's only a matter of time," Drew insisted. "Evolution does not favor the weak or the stupid. Compared to them, we are both. If they really live as long as the aliens claim, all they must do is wait us out."

"If that's their plan, then it won't matter for hundreds of years. We've seen nothing but peaceful intentions from them so far, despite what they are. That is not the concern here. You came knowing you would work with them to find a new marketable product. You can walk out that door, but you know what happens to you then."

Drew rolled his eyes. "If I don't work, then a squad of enforcers will kick me out of my apartment and into the street. With the other thirty million who can't afford whatever hovel they live in. You know, one of these days those people are going to realize just how many empty houses the banks are sitting on, collecting tax breaks."

"We're working on an outreach to more of the children," Kevin said, wanting to get back on track. The amount of shouting and banging outside had grown, and he worried it would awake Brianna before they were ready. Kevin wasn't as nearly terrified of them as his younger co-worker was. He counted several dragons as friends. Although he'd declined, he'd even been invited to join a Matriarch's community.

"Offer still on countertop, Old-Kevin," I Spy said, showing themselves for the first time as they walked by and nudged him with one wing. The motion jostled a box of documents perched precariously between their wings as they sauntered out the door. "You not forgotten," they called back over their shoulder, showing one purple eye.

"And that's another reason! It was reading your thoughts, wasn't it? We must be under one of those spell casting webs right now. Maybe it's Brianna."

"They provide safety, which is more than I can say for most of my species. Unluckily for me, I was born in the wrong country and had to immigrate, isn't that right, Drew?" Amya said.

"The problem we're having with the children," Kevin continued. Trying to keep the racially charged barbs of both his underlings from devolving further when Drew snapped back. "Is that there is no guessing what they'll want or how they'll behave. Analogies between them and human children are too limited. The two here, judging by their size, are probably only a year old! We need the environment to be more controlled..." he trailed off to converse with Amya. A plan taking shape in his head.

"I hired three of the dragon children to carry some of our prototypes to a plant in Alberta from our Chicago office." Amya said, relying on an anecdote to explain the chaotic nature of the juvenile Children. "The only thing they wanted as payment was for each to have a ride to the top of Shard's tower. They didn't even get off the lift, only cared about the ride up and down. Craziest thing that happened to me all that month. I could only fit one of them at a time but the way they squealed with joy and bounced off the walls I'm amazed the elevator didn't malfunction."

Kevin beckoned them to come with as his idea became clearer to him. The engineers signaled they were ready for the next round as he walked past them to the stretching Brianna. Intent on asking her opinion of using fledglings for the next round.

"Hah!" she snorted after seeing her companion and their young charges off with a nuzzle of their necks. "You expect flight of babies to come and behave? Brianna wish you best of luck in catching and corralling! Humans think we mystery. Real mystery is what thoughts the little ones have. See I Spy have box of files? Very confident no one asked her to get paper. Maybe she likes smell? Maybe she see on TV? Nobody knows."

"Were those dragons friends of yours?" Amya asked after the silence went on too long with everyone lost in thought. "A boyfriend? You looked cute cuddling with each other."

"I know names, not know them. They not from here. Do you know every human you meet?"

"But...but you slept with him?" the flustered woman said in confusion.

"My wonder continues that humans not tell drake from dragoness. Do we need sit on you to see difference? I was tired. She wanted company. What more need be said? We not rude and fuck right in front of you. Even if after ten years humans not think outside their own heads. Brianna wonder when you learn your way not only way. Maybe I find golden-eyed alien and see if you be Child of Egg too. Horizons very broad when you have wings rising from back."

"That's not funny," Amya said, nettled. "How can you ever want that to happen to someone else after suffering through it yourself?"

"Give it few years, it grows on you. Once, Brianna cared only about where next money to power lights or for next meal come from. Slave to being told what I needed to buy, and how I needed to live. Now," Brianna spread her wings, stretching nearly half the warehouse in width, and twirled her head on the end of her outstretched neck. "Brianna free to go where currents take her."

"For now," Drew said under his breath, earning a sharp snarl from Brianna.

"Start your demonstration," Kevin said urgently to the next engineer.

"Ahem!" the svelte, brown-skinned, engineer coughed into her hand. "This! Is the Soothing Cradle Max!" She pointed with both hands at a device like the others, split between control and machine with a thick tether linking them both. The remote was in the shape of a dinosaur egg with large flat buttons on each side, large enough to be grasped even by the titanic assessor looking on with a cynical eye. On the other end of the control cable was a heavy mobile platform. From which three large diameter brushes mounted on hydraulic arms sprouted into the air in a concave radius. The apparatus had a peculiar smell to it that enticed the dragoness to come closer and revel in, with eyes half-lidded in pleasure.

"Designed by the most advanced engineer in the world, me," the exuberant engineer exclaimed with a bow and a flourish of her arms. "With some assistance from an intern I have..."

"Stop," Brianna said, thumping her tail and incensing the air with her minty amusement. "Like little girl-woman's presentation, hilarious, but want feel not smell."

The Child of the Egg lifted her head, sniffing heavily with undulations of her neck as her nostrils flared. Her amusement ceased and a rumble of warning vibrated through her body. Brianna turned slitted pupils down at the suddenly nervous engineer, tapping her index fingers together.

"What your name, girl-woman?"

"Camila, ma'am. Did I do something wrong?"

"You good sales, human woman, but I not smell you on machine. I smell... Child," she finished with a snarl, whirling on Kevin. Her tail whooshing overhead to slam into one rail for the cargo door behind her, rendering it unusable.

"Explanations begin forty-one seconds ago."

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, okay?" he yelled, hobbling to put himself between the angry dragon and the rest. His arms spread wide in a placating gesture used by the Children to show they had nothing to hide. Acutely aware that whether he lived or died that day would depend on things beyond his control. "If anything is wrong here, I am the one to blame, not the others."

Brianna paused in her stomping back and forth with her gaze fixed on the bowed man. Slowly, her wings refolded to her back and her ears relaxed.

"No lie in you, Kevin. I like you, but something beyond the horizon tugging at Brianna's fin. Camila, who really designed this gadget?" she asked, swinging her head to the diminutive woman who squeaked something in Spanish when the Child's breath blew her hair back.

"I... they gave me the design and told to economize the more expensive features. I don't know who drew up the rest."

"This..." Brianna hissed, picking up the large ovoid control in two gentle hands. "Is shape of Child egg. Humans not design things this way. Humans always design like they think, not know, what we want. Why is Child involvement being hidden from this one? From you? Brianna not like the feel of this wind on her wings. Who is manager involving Child of Egg? Is Child happy?"

"I... don't know," Kevin admitted in defeat, watching his pension sail away without him. "The FBI arrested the executive in charge of our division on charges of trafficking invasive species, perfidy, and treason."

"Brianna know very well what this is now," her heterochromatic eyes swept over to Camila. "I am only a wild animal, yes? Not responsible for my actions around stupid humans. You tell me where Child's creation come from, and I not stomp you like copper bar and put in good song for instead, yes? As for company's stolen gadget, this I have to say."

Her taloned fingers danced over the controls of the egg. The attached machine whirled to life at a high speed as the hydraulic arms adjusted into a large convex shape. Brianna walked forward until the machine was between her hind legs and then looked at the camera recording the session.

"Brianna sends her regards."

Then she lowered herself onto the spinning rollers, squealing as they made contact.

"Oh my god, is she..."

"Turn the camera off!"

"I'm going to be sick."

Brianna tapped a pair of buttons, and the humming of the motors in the massager roared. The dragoness' jaws parted, and her tongue slipped free as a rolling chirp vibrated up and down her throat. Amya was on her phone with her back turned, not eager to see more, but also not looking to walk away from an opportunity.

"Keep that camera rolling on her!" she commanded before speaking into her phone. "Get me legal and marketing. We have some footage to trade and a new market to think about."

Behind her, Brianna threw her head up with a shriek.