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Boyd eyed the motley assembly that had gathered to accompany us dubiously. As did I, and Tom, for that matter.

Although it's not like my mate and I didn't earn our own scrutiny as well from those who should allow us to honor the fucking commitments we had entered ourselves into. One of us was pregnant...I think it was me, and the other had a hole in his throat...yes...that was right... I am pregnant and Tom has the hole in his throat...or was she the pregnant one? I stomped a paw and snapped my jaws in frustration. Fuck! Just who was I?

You carry the children. I am the one with the hole in my throat. You dizzy blonde.

_ _ Everyone around me was alarmed when I started screaming at my husband, who bobbed his head as silent huffed laughter escaped his jaws in return. All a show, of course. Mentally, our thoughts entwined as we glowed with our love for us.

"Are you sure you can't stop them from going? When I demanded they not go as their physician, Tom put me up here. Can someone please let me down?" Alex yelled down at us from the roof that Tom had set him on.

Grumbling came from Boyd's long neck as he stared at Big Bang and her 'students' who would be accompanying us for some kind of bat shit lesson in how to listen.

"They not listen! Want learn! They learn listen first! I say, you say, they do! Important!" Big Bang had told us earlier when she had brought them over earlier with their tails whipping as they squalled meaningless excuses for the explosion that was my alarm clock that morning.

She had each of the smaller males locked against her sides with a wing and curled her neck to snap at them every time one of them made an attempt to dart away. If we had to worry about those two flapping away at any given moment to immerse themselves in who the fuck knows what kind of danger, I didn't want them along either. But as long as she could control them, she could bring them with us in her effort to teach them how to learn without getting themselves fucking killed...or whatever.

"They are not under my command, nor would I ever be able to physically restrain them, and this is not a military operation that they are embarking upon. The only thing I can do, is ensure that they go without risking further harm. More harm, I should say, than what has already been promised a pregnant female." Boyd replied, as the watching Dorothy extended her neck to put her nose to the roof Alex stood on and deposited him to the ground. "Kim, will you not even entertain reconsidering?"

"Sure...as soon as the sun rises in the west."

"Every bit as stubborn and duty bound as I thought then. Just remember the warning that you were given."

"Yes, dad."

Tom pushed my side with a wing as the General sniffed in distaste for my comment. I get it, he was looking out for the wellbeing of others, but I didn't need coddling. I took a moment to look over the team that would be accompanying us.

A sleeping Prometheus. Presumably Tomoko, wherever the hell she had vanished to. Big Bang and her pair of new acolytes along with two more children of the egg who were busy licking each other's necks. Lastly, a group of four soldiers wearing plate carriers that Ulysses was talking to, and a pissed off Alex who was busily smacking his brother's leg and demanding that he pay attention to him. Tom ignored him to listen as I addressed the two maybe, maybe not, lost ones.

"Are you sure you two remember who you were? I don't want curious lost ones coming along with the threat so high."

"I'm Dean Koontz, and this beautiful lady is Pat!" The male, a few meters taller than my daughter, said.

"Pat? Pat who?"

"That's me! I am Pat! Dean give me pretty flowers to collect, I give kisses! Win!"

A feeling of dismay came from Tom into my mind that I readily agreed with as we glanced at each other.

"Just keep an eye on her Dean. You two volunteered for this, it is important that you know that shit has hit the fan outside of this airport. I don't want to fucking see her haring off to investigate whatever plant she thinks looks cool, got it?"

"Pat knows! Not want hurt me or not me looking for green growing upwards. I safe, you safe, all safe! Win!" She kissed Dean again after that short, not so reassuring, statement, who trilled happily and leaned into her with a contented smell coming from them both. I'm sure the two of them would be making happy little eggs in no time.

"And where the fuck is Jack Rabbit!" I growled, whipping my head back and forth to find the elusive fool. I caught his scent and spun around just in time to see him retreat out of sight through an open door.

"Get the fuck out here Jack! I'm not going to fuck you up you...you..." I sighed. "...you pleasant well-meaning man just looking for his family..."

"You're not fooling me with those words Kim! I know you hate me! I don't even know why!"

"I know you don't...now let's find your family." I snarled at him, despite the look of censure all over Boyd's snout. I could grow scales from human skin, but you can't change a tiger's stripes it seems. Now, I had to be careful that I didn't erase his damn mind with a psychic blast or something.

The image of a hotel appeared in my head and then the smell of a family of three that we had put in harm's way. Uh, yeah...right. Good looking out, Tom. I sent a playful nudge back at him.

"General, how are the Perkins doing?"

"We've moved them to settle with family they have in the area and asked local law enforcement to keep an eye on them for the time being."

"Is that enough?"

"It is the best we can do. They are not the only ones suffering at the moment."

I snorted. It didn't sound like enough after how terrified they had been to see that symbol on the truck in their parking lot with us around. But perhaps it was for the best for them to distance themselves from those with wings for a while.

"Well I've got the full body condom on, is there anything else that needs to be done before you let your soldiers load up? Because I want to find this family and return to my own."

A rumbling came from above my hips to remind me of one other vital goal I needed to accomplish.

"Give birth too. Let's not forget that little detail." I added as Tom sniffed at me, having felt the echoes of the sensation.

"Dear, this cannot possibly be healthy for you and your children to be flitting about like a butterfly doing who knows what." Dorothy joined in to try to dissuade me. I'm glad she didn't know that today I risked getting laid open. Of all those here she was the only one here, wings down, who could stop me. Fuck, was she big. Although future me could have still punted her like a stuffed toy if she had been here, I was a fraction of Shadi's size.

I saw Alex open his mouth to encourage her to protest further, likely by telling her what I didn't want her to know, and so I tried to distract him.

"Hey Alex, since you can't stop us. How about you make sure your brother is good to go? He just hacked out a glob of blood not too long ago."

"Oh, did he? Is when you were gyrating on top of him when you should have been resting? What the fuck is wrong with you two?"

"You knew we were comforting each other?"

"Is that what you call what I heard? Every time one of you slammed the other the air shook in waves. Like an airquake. I wanted to be sick, but every time I tried to vomit another pressure wave shoved it back down my throat. I was actually feeling the atmosphere recoil as my brother and his wife screwed each other."

"You're just jealous that we're so awesome! Consider it revenge for all the times I've smelled and heard you and Allie fucking in my bed!" I snapped at him, stretching the possessive out and making him look away with a blush.

"Do not..." he muttered, convincing absolutely no one. Tom's amusement roared in my head as he chuffed silently before flooring his brother when he batted at him with a wing talon. Behind us, our tails rose and slapped tips together.

"I can't say that I approve of your interactions either...although I must admit that I have to recognize as two loving spouses nothing was wrong with what you did. I just..." Dorothy said, as unfazed as any old woman I'd ever come across as she drummed her claws on the ground while tail wiped her leaking snout with a blanket. "...I just am having a hard time accepting that we cannot expect much privacy for ourselves anymore given our sizes. No one would have ever known how you chose to comfort each other before when you were just a man and a woman." She lifted her head up and away from the surgeons to look at the six airmen walking around on her back and checking the attachments for the egg box that would be on her before long. "Am I almost ready for my attire, little ones?" She chuckled to herself, making the ground vibrate briefly.

Considering the people on top of her couldn't have even reached to the top of her folded wings, 'little ones' was an apt pet name for them.

"My team is ready." Ulysses spoke up, with said team standing behind him and strapping helmets on.

"And what is your 'team' doing?"

"Nothing..." Ulysses said evasively. I rolled my eyes.

"Want know! Maybe Big Bang use?" The eponymous Big Bang asked, as the squad of operators beat on her reaching claws with their weapons. Trying to keep her from tearing the boxes open to see what lay within until she relented sullenly.

"That's why we should know! And if she's in danger lugging your squad around doing whatever, then we all are."

"Okay, Christ..." My buddy looked at his commander, who glanced around at all of us with his tongue unconsciously licking his nose suspiciously before bobbing his head. "While you're flapping around, we're going to see if we can track those missing tanks and attempt to disable them."

"What? How? I'm carrying children! I'm not going anywhere near a fucking tank!"

"Don't worry. Amanda Huygens assures me this will work at a distance of at least 15 meters on...something already in the tanks."

He pointed at three cases stacked nearby with a tough book computer laying open on top. I didn't know how he could possibly think that telling me the distance was only 15 meters was reassuring.

"Is that going to turn us something else when you flip it on? Like a hermit crab? Isn't transforming once in some poor woman's life enough? Why are you tormenting me so, Ulysses? Can you at least make sure that you have a handy seashell for me nearby?" I asked him as I sniffed at the cases, like that was supposed to tell me something. Fucking instincts.

"What? What the fuck are you...Kim. Stop fucking around, two minutes ago you were so ready to go that your wings were extended wide open, and now you're sending up smoke screens. Are you nervous about going now? The only one making you go, is you."

"Yes! Don't go!" Alex yelled at me.

I hadn't been, but now there was this stupid fucking nonsense of tanks. An image of a faceless child of the egg taking a fucking 120mm HE tank round to the chest and exploding made me wince as Tom whined uneasily. My tail reached out to meet his as we comforted each other. Even as unlikely as it was for a shot from the cannon of a main battle tank to take out an agile target like us, I wanted nothing to do with it. Tom and I looked at each other, and an image of the eggs I had seen in the mall to represent ours went to him while our smiling children that already drew breath passed to me. I sensed agreement and spoke for both of us.

"No. If that is the cost of your help Ulysses, General Boyd, then we will go without it. There are more than enough children of the egg to do this without you."

"Very well." The General replied and looked at Ulysses. He stared at the Colonel for a few minutes without him reacting to the scent signal to proceed before raising a paw and twirling a claw at his subordinate who finally nodded when he realized that he was being cued. Turning to the soldiers who smelled less and less sure about coming with us by the minute he gave them new instructions.

"Long range only."

The cases of who the fuck knows what were carted away to who the fuck knows where. New pelican cases were broken open to reveal various optics and what looked like a receiver that I couldn't identify attached to a small directional antenna.

"Equipment like this will have trackers on them at all times. Whether or not the assholes that stole them know this and removed them is a question that we need answered. Our reconnaissance assets are limited, and the ones we have can only see. Kim, Tom, Big Bang, Thing 1, Thing 2..."

He stopped as Big Bang howled laughter that made speech impossible. Apparently, their names had been her idea. Broken pidgin speech and disdain for her human name or not, there didn't seem to be much wrong with her memories if she was dredging up childhood memes such as that.

"...Dean, Pat, and...Prometheus." He finished with a sour note to his tone. Not liking the idea of the alien being around at all, not that I could blame him. If the fucker wasn't turning me and half of my family into aliens, or creatively dodging any and all requests for information, he was asleep. "You can see, smell, and hear. Capabilities far beyond those of a UAV. Is that something you feel comfortable doing, Tom, Kim?"

Two squads of airmen approached Big Bang to begin to lay out a harness for her along with a stealth fighter passenger cabin. One squad was there to distract her with videos of several chemistry experiments and keep her from disassembling what they did out of curiosity, while the other tried to equip her and set up the structure on her back.

"Know already!" Big Bang exclaimed after about eight seconds of glancing at the video before turning her considerable curiosity towards the construct going up on her back. Much to the dismay of the crew snapping carbon poles together as they had to duck and dive around her nose or tail as she explored what was being attached to her back.

Boyd left with Dorothy to oversee the completion and attachment of the egg carrier as we finished preparations for our own adventure. Alex was finally able to cajole his brother into allowing him to look at his neck again, and shortly afterwards some of the suit material was fashioned into an open sleeve to cover his vulnerable skin exposed by the removed scales.

Finally, after all the t's were crossed and tires slashed, Big Bang was fitted with the headset that I had worn before and we were ready to hopefully find some lost children of the egg. I kicked Prometheus awake who grumbled that there were kinder ways to awaken someone before taking his position behind me. Jumping aloft, we headed off with those on her back radioing Big Bang to lead onwards.

Big Bang led us on a wide orbit of the city, as two of the soldiers on her back looked out with large binos. Several times she I could hear her call out or smell her sudden interest in this or that but, other than a few momentary twitches of her spinal fin and tail, she did not dart off even though she clearly wished to. From her frequent looks at her two 'students' it was obvious to me that she was making a show of being prudent, which they were soaking in with wide staring eyes as they followed her every movement. Dragon see, dragon do, I guess.

For the most part the city looked normal, but there were some signs that not all was kosher. Trash had begun to pile up in front of many homes and around overflowing dumpsters. There were almost no vehicles on the road. And there seemed to be no less than seven different shootouts going on, judging by the sound of rifle fire and the sight of different clusters of police cars. Which I would consider a problem.

The few people we could see that weren't taking pot shots at us or the cops were few and far between. All of them in groups, and all of them having at least one of their number armed. We were only surveying the city at a few hundred feet, so I could easily see those gunmen nervously fingering the triggers of their rifles or shotguns as they glanced around with fear in their eyes.

So, it wasn't just us that had reason to be afraid...What had these groups spooked?

The racket of a collision made my head swing away to bring my eyes to bear on the sudden sound. A car had run into a streetlight, and the door swung open to allow the driver to fall to the street. He did not move, and no one came to see if he was alright. I could see that there were bullet holes in the door and the window was missing.

Sending an image of what I saw to my husband his instant return was one of caution that did nothing to prevent me from spiraling downwards to see if the guy was even alive. Since no one else seemed to be in a rush to do anything other than peer from between closed blind slats. I called out to Big Bang and her passengers, that included Alex and Jack Rabbit, what I was doing. She was flapping away from me, but her head swung around until I could see one of her eyes as she looked back.

Not go! Danger! Not like funny smell...Smell like trap! Many human nearby. Hear. Smell. But not see!

Tom echoed her concerns and showed me images of him and two others circling over another child of the egg as they investigated instead of me. I chirped at Dean, Pam, and Tom to cover us from the air while also telling Thing 1 and 2 to land on each side of the street to scan the buildings so that Big Bang and I could see what was going on with the driver. Since she did have humans on her back that could actually treat him if needed.

"Hey! This has a pucker factor of about 10! Where the fuck is everyone? Let's get out of here!" One of the operators shouted at me from Big Bang's back as she bent her head to look at a manhole cover that she was poking at with a claw until it popped upwards.

"Know this smell! Useful!" She exclaimed, as the smell of sewage struck my incredibly sensitive nose. What the fuck?

"Stay inside the shelter until we know it's safe then. I don't want you falling off if we have to scramble in a hurry. Big Bang, focus."

She began peering at the rooftops while the 'Things' peered into windows in a random pattern that made sense to them alone as I approached the wrecked car and its prostrate driver. I could not smell any blood and saw none on his clothes or in the car itself. Taking it all in, my scales and fins bristled as alarm bells clamored louder and louder in my head.

"Everyone to the sky! This isn't right!"

Thing 1 and I got away clean. But just as we cleared the roofs to flap with powerful contractions of our chest muscles, there was a loud pop, and then what looked like a fucking weighted fishing net launched from a rooftop and fouled Big Bang's wing. Crying in alarm she careened into Thing 2 before they both crashed through a storefront and destroyed most of the front wall of the two-story building. By the time they had untangled themselves from each other, the net, and the ruined structure they were half inside of, we noticed that the driver laying on the ground had disappeared.

"WHERE DID HE GO!" I roared angrily at Tom and Prometheus. An image of Tom as he looked as a human, shrugging with his hands raised in clueless wonder, popped into my head. Damnit Tom, pay attention! An image of me, as a human, throwing fucking bricks at his shrugging figure rocketed back to him and I saw his real life form wince.

My inattentive husband bobbed up and down above the roof that the net had come from. Just a minute later he signaled the all-clear to me that I relayed after he scanned the other rooftops thoroughly. Dean and Pam landed on two other buildings, that were structurally intact, and sat up on their tails to maintain a lookout. I continued watching Tom above the five-story building as he reached down with one dangling hind paw for something as he peered downward carefully with his neck bowed. There was a wrenching noise, then the image of a baseball hitting a mitt formed in my mind and I caught what Tom threw down with my wing to deposit it on the ground.

"Never seen anything like that before." A soldier said from the back of an ecstatic Big Bang. She had immediately laid claim to the gadget we were peering down our noses at with such energy the likelihood of getting it back for intel was slim. There was another cracking sound, and without looking, my wing caught the remote camera that Tom threw down next. The whole device was pretty slick actually, and I gave a raspy whistle of grudging approval.

The large opened canister that the net had come from had been remotely initiated and looked as if it was slaved to point in the same direction as the camera. There were the remains of some wadding and a pyrotechnic charge, but other than that it looked like it was in a condition to be reused. There was only one possible target for something like this.

Thing One was helping his partner in crime clean a couple of small cuts he had taken from the glass picture windows that now lay shattered on the ground. Meanwhile five people had overcome their shock of the large bodies unceremoniously wrecking the building they were in to ask us if we were okay and to assess the damage to their business. They were pretty pissed but, for once, not at us. They had seen the 'accident' and our response when we had come to investigate as well as what happened next. All of which had been caught on cell phones because the novelty of real, in the flesh, dragons still hadn't worn off for most of the general public. Nor for ourselves for that matter.

The dissonance of the video was unnerving as I watched a towering leg appear in the window, followed by another and another as the videotaped mythical creature walked by. A head lowered from above as its nostrils flared with its nose held close to the body lying on the ground next to the wrecked car. It is surreal to realize that the multi-meter long head that you're looking at on the screen is yours.

What was more important, was that from this angle, I could make out in the tiny, tiny screen that the man's eyes were open and peering sideways at my snout. The shit fucking head! What the fucking fuck! What was the fucking fucking fucking fuck fucking fuck point of what just happened? FUCK!

So...thanks to my short temper once again, people that were sympathetic to us were now cowering behind solid objects because I was roaring my rage at the world.

I set Prometheus out to watch one way, and the whimpering Thing 1 and 2 facing the other to look out in case the owners of the fucking bolo or whatever that was shot at us came calling. Alex, Jack Rabbit, and the soldiers checked their passenger cabin for damage and then kindly asked Big Bang to lay down so that they only had to slide two and a half meters to the ground.

"Did you see who did this?" I asked the café owner and his two employees as his customers sat to the side with dazed looks on their faces. Waiting for a police response that might not come for some time since no one was killed. One of the customers had called 911 and had been assured that they would get there when they got there.

"No. But if you're looking for that guy who took off when two of you crashed into the building, he went that way." He pointed in the direction that Thing 1 was supposed to be looking but instead was peeking into the windows around himself curiously. "What are your names? I thought all of you fled the area."

"I Big Bang!" Our attendant chemist declared proudly after the rest of us had introduced ourselves. "I sorry for nice place! Remember was me eat here once. Much like pick me up! Have some maybe? Big Bang trade! I give this!" She reached out from the middle of the street where she was laying and nudged the camera and its mount towards the shop owner with the tip of a claw. "Not have numbers to trade! Maybe gone, maybe stay...Big Bang not know...Have seen Big Bang's plastic swipe swipe? Big Bang remember number important, want know where number go!"

"Take it easy Big Bang." I told her, and then addressed the startled man to ask him to give her all the coffee he had left to keep her from scaring him further. "He doesn't know where your damn debit card is."

One of the soldiers grabbed the camera before Big Bang could barter it for something else and threw it into the middle of the net that he and one of his buddies were rolling up.

"You understood what she was saying? That was gibberish!" A waitress rudely noted.

"Hmph." I snorted at her dismissively, ruffling her dress in the gale that I produced. "Yeah, well, if you can show me someone that can handle their tits dissolving and their skull stretching to be more than three meters long without getting their eggs scrambled a little bit then I'll show you someone that was already insane. So, keep your fucking mouth shut about someone else's mental condition and ability to communicate, roger?"

"Who's ro...okay." She finished with a squeak when my teeth slowly closed in front of her with that 'snick' noise that Alex assures me is absolutely terrifying.

"Since you're in the habit of ignoring my advice about going on this adventure. Can we at least get on with it so that we can return as soon as possible?" Alex demanded, tapping his foot impatiently. "Let's go find this man's family, get back to base, and the get back home."

Alex was right. We couldn't stay here. Those that did this were fucking with us, not these people before us. We were endangering them by being here.

"Load that shit up then and get back up on Big Bang's back. Big Bang, are you okay? You did get knocked into a building..."

The café owner (His shirt had Marc embroidered on it), Marc, sputtered incredulously at my callous description of one of us having part of a building fall on us. Hey, I can't help that we were transformed into walking tanks!

"Big Bang want fly! Get away from stupid brick square in way. Not hurt in sky! Sky friend!"

I asked if Thing 2 was okay and took his answer of trying to bite the net that had knocked him from the sky as an affirmative.

"Not like! Bang, whoosh, trick, then fall! I bite! Bite until gone! You see! Give bad trick to Joey, then no more trick!"

Ah, so he did have a name...

Just five minutes after destroying a business, we rolled out again. Leaving our names, a number that we could be reached at, and a car that Big Bang stomped flat in vindictive fury, we took off into the sky again. Now carrying evidence of some new worrying attempt at compromising our wellbeing just because we didn't look like the people we were anymore.

Big Bang took lead again and we angled away to the northwest away from the city and its insane Indiana Jones traps for forty-five minutes of uneventful flight over the frozen countryside. Dozens of large warehouses came into view and I knew we had finally arrived at the location where I would meet my maiming.

A fact that Alex, and Tom spent long minutes reminding me of as soon as we landed to fan out and search the buildings that the UAV had spotted some children of the egg at. No matter how much I gnawed on Tom's tail and sent him colorful mental imagery of the different things I would kick up inside his sheathe, he flatly refused to leave me to search by myself.

Tom, Big Bang, and I thoroughly sniffed over one warehouse that had had one of its rollup doors ripped off to ensure there wasn't the least sign of recent habitation. Big Bang knelt to let her passengers down and firmly told them to stay put "Mother with little one nearby! Not safe for you! You stay where Big Bang put you!" To occupy themselves, Alex glared at Tom and I until we left, Jack Rabbit fidgeted nervously, and the soldiers began to document the gadget that had brought two of us down earlier.

"These are the teams, Prometheus and Big Bang, Thing 1 and Joey, and Tom and I. Pam, and Dean, I want you two to take to the air and keep a look out of the area for signs of the two we're looking for. If you find the kid first, call out your location and back away. If you see the mother, whatever you do, don't scare her. Come back and get Jack Rabbit, if she's calm, and try to bring her around. Thing 1 and Joey, just call for help if you find either of them. The female's name is Jill and her kid's name is Arnold. Got it?"

I covered my snout and groaned when I saw that Big Bang had already found a pallet of fertilizer bags and was holding it in her paw with an unsettling grin on her snout.

"Put that down! Amuse yourself later and try to remember that that's someone else's shit! No stealing!"

So, we set off in our teams, as a warning rolled over and over through my head. Dodge right, dodge right, dodge right...

Warm reassurance flowed into me as Tom noticed my tension. I bumped his hip with mine as we moved from one building to the next. It wasn't long before we began to smell something. Surprise, surprise. It smelled like a child, really small, really small, and male. Target acquired. Overlapping the kid's scent, was that of a powerful female. Maybe not my size I think, younger certainly, but the scent told me strength. The image of the gymnast turned powerlifter reemerged with photographic precision. What were we about to get into?

"You get to sniff the ground for not noticing a fucking human going missing earlier." I told Tom haughtily. He inhaled a snout full of snow and turned to look at me with his chest swelling in size.

"Uh..."

Before I could say something more intelligent, Tom blew the load of frozen powder into my face. The world vanished into a white mist making me sit on my tail to paw at my eyes until they were clear. Son of a bitch...at least he waited until I could see again before continuing our narrowing search since this was a pretty dangerous enterprise that we were on and all that.

Tom and I, as we zeroed in on the most recent scents and ran into Joey and Thing 1 with their noses to the ground like bloodhounds, tried to pick up on any kind of mental signals. But, were only coming up with an odd sedated feeling that left us clueless as to a direction. We could, however, sense a jittery kind of excitement that we could get a bearing on. Every time I or one of the others called out Arnold's name, the sense of anticipation we were picking up on spiked.

Yelling for the others, we sat down in front of the building we had isolated the feeling to. There were some tracks in the snow, that matched ours, around the high bay loading door even though we were momentarily perplexed by the fact that the door was intact. A man door, off to the side, had another set of much smaller pawprints in front of it, further confirming what we expected to find. It was easy to see that it had been shoved inwards by something strong as the frame of the door was in pieces where the dead bolt had ripped through it.

"Big Bang, go get the humans and escort them here. Something is off..."

"I go!" She said agreeably enough and pranced off with her head rocking to a song that she was humming to herself. When she came back, she held the others carelessly rolled up in one wing like a grotesque burrito and dumped them to the ground with groans of pain coming from the pile of limbs.

"Found humans not where Big Bang put them! Big Bang teach new lesson. Everyone learn lesson today! Listen! Today lesson, is listen!"

Tom and I snickered at Alex and the rest of them. "Did you hear that Alex? Today's lesson is to listen to multi-tonne intelligent beings."

One of the arms sticking out of the Twister game gone awry before us curled it's hand closed to wave a middle finger in our general direction.

"Hey, GI Joes! Did the surveillance you have of these buildings show any humans in the area lately? Someone has been operating this door. It's not torn off the rails like the others and you can see tracks coming and going."

"No." One said after kicking free of the scrum.

"Then..." I realized what was happening even as I said it to Jack. "...it must be your kid doing this. If your wife had come to her senses, she would have returned to you already. Well, maybe anyways." I amended with a hasty qualifier on the end given how some didn't want to come back. "Jack rabbit, time to shine. Call out your son's name first, Tom and I think he is in here."

My annoyance at Jack Rabbit skyrocketed in an instant when he added to the list of character flaws he was suffering by exhibiting a textbook terminal case of being a dumbass. No sooner had I said that we thought we'd found his son, than he was scrambling to get around Tom to reach the door. Tom's paw trapped him as easily as the irksome little rodent that he was, and I didn't mince words with him once he was securely held in the large hand.

"You fucking fool! Do you want to die? If they are in there, let them come to you! Not the other way around! Even your one-year old son could rip you in half if you accidentally startle him!"

I shut my eyes in concentration, feeling Tom's world go dark as he did the same, so that I could focus on the feeling of that little ball of anxiety. But something had changed in the way it felt. Since the others had been brought here, it had become more and more eager to meet one of us as it seemed to remember something. The tone of a voice...little Arnold was remembering the sound of his father's voice.

"Call out to your son, Jack. He's responding to you."

Jack continued calling out to his little boy. Whom I could feel shuffling around, wanting to go see what was inspiring such feelings of comfort in his small mind. Tom and I touched the little male's presence and encouraged him to come to us, but there was a reluctance to leave the source of that lethargic feeling that we also picked up on. Which stirred, but did not awaken, the more the child moved around. Even though it was completely insensible to the racket we had made searching for them. It must have been the mother. Jill.

"We think we have found the mother as well. The son will not come to you without her. She is asleep...but not just asleep...she is...well, something else. She's not responding to the racket all of you are making right now."

"She most likely has not been eating enough for herself." Prometheus told us grindingly slow, as I fidgeted in place with my tail spinning just to get him to hurry the fuck up and spit out what he had to say already. "Just like you may have noticed with my own behaviors. When children of the egg do not eat frequently enough to sustain themselves, we become lethargic, and can enter a fugue state to conserve energy for periods of time."

That was good to know and all, but it did not help with the immediate situation. Tom felt reluctant before he sent me the image of the door off to our right. I rubbed my tail along his to convey my understanding.

"We need a volunteer to go in there and open the roll up door. Jack, will you do it? It is your family after all."

"I would be in there already if you hadn't stopped me! What's the matter with you? You'll get the gold and silver my mother has promised you if that's the problem!"

Dumbass.

"No, shit for brains. Have you learned nothing from what you've seen and been told while being around us? Your family might not recognize you. If your wife wakes up and sees you taking her child away...Or, if your boy feels threatened...Either one of them could take your life as easily you walk into sliding glass doors."

"What? I haven't done that since at least..."

"Jesus, Jack! Do you want my opinion of you to fall any lower? Shut the fuck up! Just go in there, open the door, and don't go to your family until we're there to stop them if they feel threatened. Can you do that, and only that?"

He gulped but nodded as he was handed a flashlight and opened the man door to the inside. I wasn't quite able to get my head in a position to see inside as light entered the dim interior. But after two of the soldiers used their weapon lights to scan the immediate surroundings Jack entered and quickly shuffled to the door controls. I winced, with my head ducking away, as the immense grating noise of the opening door echoed back and forth in the cavernous interior. The lethargic feeling we sensed began to dispel but did not quite reach consciousness. We had some time, I told the others, but were running short on it. Arnold, however, if that was who indeed we were picking up on, was beside himself with fidgety energy.

I wanted to go in first, but Tom wasn't having anything to do with that and pushed me aside so that I was forced to follow his tail before drawing up alongside him inside. Raising our heads, we weaved them back and forth in tandem, sniffing suspiciously, before signaling an all clear with synchronized movements of our tails.

"What the fuck does that curling motion mean?" One of the soldiers asked another behind us. Just as I started to twist my head back to tell them to get in here already, there was a thumping noise as Big Bang punted them inside with a twitch of her nose.

The soldiers dusted themselves off with scowls before they flicked on the lights and revealed a vast warehouse full of stacked pallets. Remarkably, the aircraft sized female that we could sense nearby could not be seen (yes, I can confirm that a female's mind feels different than a male's). At least at first. But after lifting my head to the ceiling I could see her wings above the stacked boxes in a back corner behind a second row of pallets that she had somehow navigated around without knocking over.

"Arnold!" Jack Rabbit yelled, and as I watched from the ceiling a baby bounded up his mother's body and turned startingly bright orange eyes in our direction. His eyes focused on my head and he whistled in alarm before diving out of sight again. As startled as he may have been by my appearance, it wasn't enough for him to awaken his mother yet out of fear. I knew that, as Tom's head joined mine at my invitation, because his wary eyes appeared again a few meters to the right when he stood up to look at us with his paws on the top of a tower of boxes.

You strangers! What want? Where voice I know? Feel warm! Voice make Maze Seeker warm! Like with egg mother! Is Maze Seeker egg father? Maze Seeker want know! Egg mother sad, lost! Want happy!

Okay, okay! Hold on little one. Your father is right here with me. Why do you not come here to us? I tried to calm his fast paced torrent (even by our new standards) of chirps and whistles in what passed as a reassuring manner for me. I wanted the mother awake before we approached, and I figured the best way for that to happen was to introduce the father away from the slumbering giant back there.

Not want! Egg mother angry when Maze Seeker leave when she sleep! Come to Maze Seeker! Yes! Be happy here, not there!

Tom kept his head raised to watch the little one as I curled mine around and down to tell the fretting Jack Rabbit what was going on with his kid.

"He spoke to you? In complete sentences? How! He'd only be 15 months old now!"

I shrugged, imperiling stacks of dry goods boxes next to my shoulders. "He's not human anymore. All bets are off for formulative milestones. What color were his eyes before?"

"The same as mine." The hazel eyed man said, wringing his hands nervously. "Are you sure it's him? If his eyes aren't hazel, then...maybe...maybe everyone is mistaken. I'm sure that's it. Yes...everyone is mistaken. There is nothing wrong with my wife and child. There is nothing wrong. They are fine. Just like last time I saw them..."

Worried smells began to work their way off my scales as I listened to him. Have I pushed him too far? Maybe we should have brought a shrink with us to keep on eye on this guy...

"Jack, listen to me. I need you to stay with us here. I need you to stay grounded. You're going to have to accept the growing possibility that the two children of the egg, that I have just laid eyes on, are your missing wife and son. Can you do that? Tell me now, before you approach them closer. Because I don't think they are going to respond well if you panic when you see them. They are probably going to be even more scared than you. Jack, I need an answer, right now."

The man was growing increasingly pale, and my concern was soaring, but he still managed to stammer out some vague assurances.

"I'm fine. They're fine. We'll all be fine. You'll see...just...just like before they left..."

I sent a question to my husband and at the same time asked Alex what he thought as well.

"What do you think about his state of mind?"

I listened to Tom and Alex's responses as they both gave back their opinions. Tom's was an image of himself holding a newly born Irma and the feeling of his fear of the future being replaced by certainty. Alex's was less sure.

"I don't know...maybe an uncontrolled environment like this isn't the best time to...stop him!"

I yelped in surprise as my brother-in-law broke off to warn me and reached for Jack Rabbit, who dodged around my paw and used the tight confines of the warehouse to his advantage as he ran beneath my chest towards his family. I couldn't use my speed to catch him without killing him or destroying the carefully stacked boxes lining the aisles and possibly burying and/or crushing Jack beneath them. Tom yelled at me to wait for him, but there was no room for him to pass me, and the fucking rabbit I was chasing didn't acknowledge all the calls for him to stop. Reaching the end of the warehouse, he darted to the right as my head followed around the corner to see him skid to a stop and gawk at the small child of the egg that sat with his tail swinging behind him.

"Are you father? Like on TV? Play catch now?"

Now that young Arnold mentioned it, I could hear a TV playing in a room nearby with the door open. Sniffing, I smelled food. A break room, the little guy has been educating himself watching TV. It was the only possible way he could be speaking to us in English right now. Looking down at him, he looked up at me and grinned while raising his tail to wave something that was held in its curled tip. It was a remote. I was right, he was the one operating the door.

"I remember voice! You father? Not like me? Why? Not understand! TV not show!" He said, swinging his head and long neck back to his father with a plaintive whine in his throat. Sitting up on his tail, his eyes looked down at Jack Rabbit with hurt and curiosity burning in them. "Want father! Think you. Come with to egg mother? Help me! Help her! Help us!"

All of this was proving to be too much to Jack, and I was beginning to seriously believe that I was at least partially to blame for his condition. Sweat poured down his face and the stench of an emotion I couldn't pin down filled my nose as his lips and mouth moved silently and repetitively. With his eyes glazed over, he stumbled sightlessly after his child until they came into view of Jill's head while I slowly followed with Tom nipping at my tail. Jack rounded the final bend where Arnold had been keeping the end of his tail in contact with his mother's snout and we stopped to behold the beast before us. She was a good deal shorter than me despite the much larger spinal fin she had waving gently as she slept, but that wasn't what struck me as the most important detail. Her compact mass had me realizing one thing.

I wanted nothing to do with fucking with this female.

Bulging muscles rippled along her flanks and down her thick limbs as she made the earth shake with each Herculean breath she exhaled. Sensing us, I could feel her mind stir further yet just as her snout twitched and jerked towards the scent of her child. Which highlighted the enormity of every long sinuous muscle along her neck as they lengthened and contracted each in turn. Most alarmingly of all, looking past the meters of her neck, I could see the wickedly long claws she had that were far larger than my own. The paws they grew from seemed equally as strong and looked more than ready to support the bulk of the she-hulk I was staring at.

Snorting powerfully, a cloud of dust blew away from the tip of her nose as her warm brown eyes opened to blink sleepily back at us. At first, it seemed as if she hadn't noticed us as those soft motherly eyes focused on her child and gleamed with love making me coo. It was game time when her eyes shifted to look at me and Jack Rabbit. Hopefully this would end well.

Powerful corded sinew bunched in her neck and chest to lift her head from the ground and look down at the tiny human before her that was nose to snout with their child. I reached out with one paw to try to shield Jack Rabbit when I saw her eyes lose their warm and inviting gleam to narrow into hostile slits. But stopped when those viperish eyes flicked to look at my reaching hand. Mistaking who I was reaching for, a reverberating growl came from her chest.

You not take mine from me! I warn once!

Grinding noise came from her claw tips as she carved furrows in the concrete pad she was sleeping on. Nosing her child away from us, she turned those angry slits on us once more after ushering him away to safety. Ignoring his squeaked warnings about who the human was, it was obvious she was in no mood to tolerant our presence.

Who you? Why here? Not want! Go!

Tom was carefully moving stacks of pallets out of his way to allow himself clear access as the others back at the entrance yelled to ask what was going on. This was the absolute worst thing that could have been done apparently, and my heart sank when I saw her fin come up to full mast and began trembling with agitation. A savage roar came from her jaws as I scrambled to send her reassurances that were batted away ruthlessly by her defensive rage.

Others? No more warn!

Lunging forward, I curled Jack into the harbor of my claws just as her tail slammed into the wall of palletized bags between her and Tom and sent them flying as my husband yowled in alarm. Her talons flashed out towards me and I ducked once, to my right, narrowly dodging the claws that would have torn my shoulder to ribbons but instead buried themselves into the concrete. Jumping to the side to avoid another swipe, I tumbled into a wall of boxes that came cascading down and pinned me for the briefest of seconds.

Tom screamed my name at the same time an explosion of his alarm shot through my head. Time slowed as I watched, with one eye through scores of the bags covering me, the descending array of lethal claws coming down towards the exposed side of my chest.

On instinct, I lashed out with my mind. Images of my children at home, my unborn and unhatched ones, my pleas for their lives, radiated outwards in overwhelming waves that washed over everyone in the building. Staring past the looming paw to the mother who it belonged to, I saw her eyes widen in alarmed realization. Horror at what she was doing erupted from her mind as she recognized my scent and, by some instinct, the importance of who I was by my ability that she felt even then. At the same instant that she understood all that and knew I was no threat to her son her leg began to adjust as rapid-fire nerve impulses shifted her aim.

It was too late.

Jagged lightning lanced up my left fore leg and my deafening roar filled the warehouse as her claws moved just enough to miss my chest and shoulder. Sparing me the gruesome scar that I saw future me wearing. Instead, they tore through my lower leg and I suffered an even more horrific wound. Bone snapped, scales shattered, and flesh tore until I heard her claws impact the cement floor, cracking the slab into rubble. I watched, feeling as if I was in a dream, as the lower part of my leg and the paw at the end fell to the ground. Ripped cruelly from my body, blood spewed from the ragged stump below my elbow as I watched the twitching appendage uncurl to reveal a still safe Jack Rabbit.

Into the bedlam of noise that followed as those at the entrance careened towards me, my pain wracked eyes rolled until I could see Tom's as they began to fill with tears. I whispered to my husband.

"Do you have any rabbit, honey? I feel hungry..."

His keening roar and his warmth as he wrapped around me chased me into dreams that cradled my mind just as he did with my body. And what strange dreams they were...

...