FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"I'm what?" I said, with ears fanned open in surprise. My head tilted so far over in puzzlement that I thought my neck was going to snap. Looking back at the city, with helicopters buzzing over it like flies on rancid meat, I made sure that there were, in fact, more important things going on. The wintery breeze stirring the air brought us the smell of smoke and the still burning wreckage of yesterday. The omnipresent sound of sirens was enough to complete the image of a happy, happy war zone.

Then I looked back to the man who stank of fear, felt so nervous that I thought he was going to piss himself, and had just told me I was being charged with a laundry list of crimes alongside my wife. My wife who was to be charged with manslaughter for the death of one Sean MacMurray. The kid who had drawn his weapon on us what seemed like ages ago already given the author's glacial pace of writing new material.

"Being charged..."

"Yeah. I got it. I'm being charged with everything. How is this going to work? Should I call my lawyer?"

"The Miranda rights only applying to humans you ungodly fucking abomination!" Said the state attorney's partner, specks of spit spraying with his salivating stridency.

"Ah...So you presume to charge me as a human, but deny me my rights as one? Or am I just being denied my rights as a citizen of this country that I have fought and bled for? I've got more important things to do than entertain this nonsense. If you haven't noticed."

"Perhaps we can all just calm down." The first man Louis said, placatingly. "We obviously don't want to provoke you, and the hospital administrator has assured us that you are doing...something...here for all these victims of the recent violence."

"Violence that you are the reason for!"

"...John, go wait in the car. You are not helping this situation. I told you before we came here..."

Moonchaser curled his head around into view of the two men and hissed violently at them. An acid of some kind had been thrown on his wing during the events last night, and he remained in a great deal of pain even with my help deadening his nerves. The burns covering his membrane terribly making the male even more short tempered than he usually was. These humans make want to bite! Go! Leave Moonchaser's senses! No longer disturb us, me, and revered one!

"That we can't predict how these creatures will react anymore." Louis finished from the ground after having tripped over his asshole partner's feet when they both tried to dodge the irate male.

"Oh, did you worry what the big fearsome dragons would do when you accuse them of murder after they acted in self-defense?" I said absently in reply, already losing interest in the men even while knowing that I should be paying attention. Calming everyone down to keep the atmosphere relaxed seemed more important.

Relaxed it needed to be as the number of casualties had grown steadily throughout the night. Now the trauma ward and the ER had patients overflowing into the tents spread around the hospital campus. With the help of a National Guard unit, more tents had been erected and filled by a stream of casualties from the fighting in the city. Children and human alike. The night had taken a heavy toll on the stability of the community.

The medical personnel of the hospital had been particularly alarmed by the number of casualties that took an inordinate amount of treatment to stabilize due to poor nutrition and chronic sickness. One doctor had been completely floored to find that he had to treat four patients for scurvy. Scurvy! On top of everything else going wrong, we had to deal with malnutrition. I couldn't believe it, yet I could.

"Stop walking away from me! Can't you see that I'm arresting you?"

"Well." I said equably to them, stopping long enough to sit down and hold my wrists up for them. "The problem is I don't feel very arrested, and you still have not explained what my rights are."

I kept pressing that last issue. I had the distinct feeling from the two of them that they themselves didn't know what my rights should be. Vaguely, I thought that they might not even be acting in a manner that would work out for them in the end. This was a fishing expedition hoping that some judge would render it valid after the fact.

"You think this is a fucking joke?" John said, snapping at me when his indignant anger overcame his fear of my size.

"No, I don't think the criminal justice system is a joke. What I do find amusing however is that you continue to hound me like a pair of fleas while I provide a service to the city burning behind you."

I lowered myself to four feet again and bent my head to look inside the tent where my brother was sleeping. Having reached the end of waking usefulness sometime that morning. He had asked me if there was anything I could do to shorten the amount of time he needed to sleep to recover. An experiment that was ongoing as I sent cautious ribbons of energy into his mind to clear out the toxins of the day at an accelerated rate.

"You know, I wanted to have you put down as a dangerous animal. But when I ordered the Fish and Wildlife agent to euthanize you, she refused to find out what would kill an 8-ton animal. So lucky break for you, animal. Traitor. Sell-out. Piece of..."

"John! What are you doing? You're compromising the prosecution! Get out of here!"

"Whatever." The man said, working through grievances which were as trivial as he was. "I don't have faith that this thing will ever see justice anyway." Tromping off through the snow, he ignored his gobsmacked employer to join the crowd outside the perimeter of the hospital grounds.

It wasn't a good sign that upon reaching the crowd he turned back to point at me and a few other Children. An even smaller sign of good fortune when one man took pictures of us and a woman spoke into a radio. I relayed what I had seen to make sure more eyes were on them. I couldn't pick out their thoughts behind the wall of noise from the other Small Ones.

"So now what" I said, turning my head back and down to look at the man who I could sense was, if nothing else, doing his best to uphold the law that he believed whole heartedly in. Even if I thought he was wasting resources with what he was about to say.

A Child raised his head to keen agony into the sullen sky from where he had sat looking through a window into a tent. Voices echoed his call and I whimpered sadly as a light in my constellation faded into oblivion.

"What is that! What's happening?" Louis said, eyes whipping back and forth in high alarm.

"A Small One...I mean, a little girl has died. She was so young...her body was so weak. Her name was Elizabeth." She liked to help her father bake cookies. "She liked to bake cookies with her father." I finished in a near whisper as the sight of her intent and flour covered face floated before my mind's eye. A hot tear plopped to the ground beneath me and melted the snow. "She was seven..."

The uncomfortable prosecutor shuffled his feet away from the growing puddle of water I had made before diffidently offering me some empty words.

"Uh...I'm sorry. Where you close?"

I sighed, not wanting to explain everything to him. Wagging my head instead with my eyes closed. An officer coughed and fidgeted. Why should it matter if I was close or not? Did none of these people care that others were dying in droves right that minute just because they didn't know them? I didn't ask because I was afraid to hear the answer So, I changed topics.

"Tell me Louis, why are you assigning two state police to follow to follow my wife and myself when they could be so much more useful elsewhere. I am not going to flee justice, I promise."

"A promise that I've heard and seen broken countless times already." He said, waving forward the two state police officers trading glares with some youthful National Guardsmen before halting with a confused frown to stare at me. "How did you..."

"You call us liar? I call you scared! Let me show you why!"

Hurriedly, I coiled around Louis and his two officers to bat away the paw of the reaching female who objected to any Child being called a liar.

"Okay, I got it. My wife and I will now be under round the clock surveillance until we are tried for our crimes. Perhaps it is best for you to go. Or perhaps you would listen to my suggestion to rest? You reek of exhaustion."

Linda propped her forelegs upon my back to crane her head for a look at Louis while drawing her wing claw across her throat with a hiss. Luckily, he didn't know to look upwards for the threatening noise that had him shuffling nervously.

"Stop that. He does not know any better."

"I thank you for your concern Mr. Schwarzkopf, but I have much left to do. Especially after last night. You can be assured that your work in minimizing the damage and injury inflicted at the illicit rallies you helped to defuse will be carefully weighed in the coming trial. I understand that you lost a few dragons..."

"We...we lost Night Flyer, Lee, and Gregory last night. They were citizens and thinking individuals who didn't deserve what happened to them. They have friends, and families of their own to..."

He waved his hand to dismiss what I was trying to say. Greatly irritating me and causing my fins to stand on end. More hissing made his head jerk around to pinpoint its source. My efforts to get him to think of us as people instead of 'dragons' was not going to be helped when the others expressed their feelings like damned snakes.

"Perhaps you should go as well. Someone might accidentally step on you if you don't. Many of us are rather tired from helping in the city." I told the sheriffs who remained after the federal prosecutor left to hopefully cast off his blithe attitude to everyone's suffering.

"That is appreciated, but from now on you are not to intervene unless I or Officer Stanford authorize those actions ahead of time at the direction of our own superiors. I cannot restrain you Mr. Schwarzkopf so it will be upon you to respect the laws of the humans in this country." Officer Gibbons told me with the raspy voice of a smoker.

"They're still my laws too, Officer. I have a tail, not a license to do anything that I want."

I had to ignore the Children who bobbed their heads up and down like pistons while chuffing laughter at my words. I had to ignore feeling like a hypocrite for using my mind in ways that there would be laws against if there had ever been things like me before this year. A much more likely outcome than regulation, I was forced to contend with, was that we would have been hunted and executed without mercy.

Hunted by people like the crowd outside the perimeter of the hospital. The volume of the gathering had grown larger by the hour while their reasons for being here grew just as swiftly. Which was fine, because if they had to find anywhere to focus their anger against the Children and government forces, I was much happier that it was here. Instead of somewhere like the airport, being used as a critical logistics hub, or the mall with all the families there.

A surge of noise from the crowd and some thrown fireworks bouncing off the armored trucks caused a spike of curiosity from a band of lesser lights. Brilliant star clusters served to energize the crowd just as they did a precious group of young Children that had flocked to the lights of the hospital and the siren like call of my mind earlier that morning.

The seventeen lost ones, none older than five, had been bribed with a smart tv and a steady internet connection to stay out of the way of the medical operations and had been finding videos to amuse themselves with on itube ever since. At times taking to the air or remoted corners of the compound to mimic things they had seen. Now, I soothed the young ones by showing them what had happened. Sending them quickly off on a new tangent by searching out videos of fireworks displays. It was on that quest that they stumbled across a video of a playing of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture during Independence Day celebrations. Transfixed, the younglings settled to watch the concert raptly with their tails beating in time to the cadences of the orchestra.

Small Ones that were looking for some momentary distraction or rest were encouraged by me to find their way to the tent. Soon, adorable videos of the young lost ones watching the symphony with glittering eyes and thumping tails popped up on the same site they were watching. Not long after that, the medics that had reached their last reserves were asleep snuggled among the warm younglings on insulated pads.

The wanderings of the kids through the video clips peppering the internet had given us and the others vital clues as to why the crowd assaulting our ears was present. Videos of our actions yesterday, being amplified by left- and right-wing ideologues, had stirred the pot. More problematic, I was told, were that many of these people weren't from the city and had come looking for trouble.

Enraged by videos of us trying to calm the anger that still bubbled violently, hundreds had come to protest our presence. Videos of military operations supporting local governments around the country had stoked fears of federal control. Clashes across the country had resulted and showed no signs of letting up. Even more worrisome, was that defections of personnel and material continued across the nation. Together, it made a well-done shit sandwich waiting for the ill prepared country already reeling from having the foundation of modern society compromised.

Internationally, events weren't faring much better. Canada had closed their land border and was asking the United States to help stop the exodus of Children illegally flying into their airspace. The Canadians simply did not have enough helicopters and drones to patrol the longest border in the world. Our recon assets, busy in use patrolling domestically, couldn't be spared in the numbers needed. Canada had filed formal protests at the UN after an American militia had breached a border crossing and killed two dozen RCMP officers. Relations between our two tightly knit countries had reached the lowest in the entirety of their existences. Boyd had told me it was being swept under the rug for now, but that the Canadian military had moved on the militia and sterilized their camp in retribution. There hadn't been many survivors once they had fought back.

Canada had other problems as well. A popular resistance against the Canadian government had coalesced in Alberta after the complete collapse of production from the oil sands there. Children had fled in all directions with their families as the province became a hot bed of anti-dragon sentiment. Dozens and dozens of Children had been murdered in their sleep through means that could only be described as gruesome.

Overseas, China had declared the entirety of the south China sea as their sovereign territory and had fired warning shots at a Japanese destroyer patrolling disputed islands in the region. The United States and South Korea were trying to hit the brakes, but the situation didn't look good. Barely concealed grievances stretching back to WWII, and historical suspicions extending into the distant past, were being renewed while North Korea was threatening to unleash torrents of missile fire in all directions at the slightest provocation.

And everywhere, were Children running scared or trying to disengage from attackers that were using them as a proxy for what the aliens had done. Humanity had not taken kindly to having the band-aids covering the ugly sores hidden beneath the surface of society ripped off. To be fair, from what I'd seen, Children had done a few things to warrant being feared. Or at the very least, misunderstood.

A glass bottle hit Big Bang in the shoulder, where she sat watching the crowd with a sullen expression, and shattered to spill an unknown fluid down her foreleg. Leaping to her feet with her wings extended above her and an outraged shout passing her exposed fangs, she played right into their hands by giving them a photo op that I felt multiple opportunistic cameramen take advantage of.

"This is getting ugly." I said to Jonah and my new babysitter, Gibbons, who shrugged philosophically.

"You could make it better you know. You could die or something. I'm pretty sure I would enjoy seeing one less of...you in this world."

"You're really stepping on my inner monologue here. Do you think the prosecutor will take kindly to knowing that you just told me to off myself?"

She shrugged again, and I wondered how far I could throw her and her abrasive mind. Before, you know, she died or something.

The Huygens roused from their slumber hours later, while I was in the middle of trying to find out why Prometheus was still unconscious with Serena and Bryan, when a familiar, commanding, light entered my network. Shouts of welcome to their superior officer were answered by an echoing roar from aloft as General Boyd winged into view in a spiraling descent out of the low and threatening clouds directly above the hospital. It was a rather cool effect to see wisps of vapor stream from the tips of his wings when he burst through them.

"Yes, I know that you've been served a warrant. What do you want me to do about it? The military has no place in the civilian judicial system." Boyd told me once he had shyly finished nuzzling his two subordinates out of sight behind his wings. Pacing around the hospital grounds to speak with his command and assess for himself the state of the agitated crowd that roared angrily at him while he observed them.

On his rounds, Virginia joined him in walking beside him. Their tails bumping against each other's frequently to briefly coil before swinging free again. An unconscious betrayal of the feelings they were too proper to acknowledge. Satisfied at last with his understanding of the situation, Boyd settled to the ground before me to address my dismay at being placed under 'detention' by the officers that probably weighed less than my hand. Combined. Both disappointing my irrational hope that I'd get a free pass and gladdening me that he didn't want to claw up the Constitution out of some sense of alien comradery.

His head turned away to surveil the crowd again with a bobbing motion to show his agitation. He didn't like the feeling he was picking up from the noisy horde. Virginia hummed soothingly and pushed her calm, slow, thoughts to the General at the same time she took one of his paws between hers and stroked it gently. The hardened interlinking scales rising and falling in time with each caress of her great claws.

It was uncharitable of me, but a little too much of Kim had leaked into my own psyche. I couldn't help wondering when they just get on with it and fuck already. Unfortunately, my thoughts registered to their minds and the scent of their mutual attraction vanished on an intermittent gust of wind when they shuffled away from each other to break contact.

"Can you do the same thing for them out there?" Virginia asked, with a flick of her snout. Boyd's interest in my response displayed by his flared ear fins. But he was already set to be disappointed knowing my thoughts on it.

"It is much harder for the Small Ones and not something that I will do without some kind of permission. It feels wrong because I must enter their thoughts. With us it is a broadcast. I do not have to probe for what is announced to me. That is not something that I know how to block, and I am beginning to suspect that I might not even be able to. I am just going to have to learn a new kind of etiquette not to remark upon your thoughts for each other...I mean any thoughts."

If children of the egg could blush, they would both be as red as tomatoes. Instead, their scent expressed everything their skin, buried beneath supple, natural, armor, could not. They looked away from each other before Boyd spoke once more. But I still saw through Dan's amused eyes as their tail tips found each other's to intertwine again. A burst of chortling from Dan and his eldest daughter had the General scrambling for something useful to say.

"It's a shame." Boyd continued, head sweeping to take in the angry crowd and acknowledge the points I had made earlier. How dangerous and slippery it was for me to scan and dig for dangerous thoughts. I was perturbed that not once did he consider anything wrong with doing it among ourselves.

It felt...normal for us, but not for them. I was torn. How should I approach my Luke, my Lucy? Kim, where are you? This is a decision that we should make with our babies together...

I didn't take Boyd's bait when he called it a shame. I get his need for what he wanted me to do. But he better try an argument with more legal and moral reasoning behind it to get me to use my ability to violate others.

"If we knew more about what is driving them, what they may be planning, I could more effectively control the situation. Master Sergeant, what can you tell me that I cannot already sense myself through what you are showing me? Are you holding anything back?"

It took me a few seconds to realize that he was addressing me with a title that I hadn't held for years before I replied.

"Huh? Oh, no. What you feel is what I do. To know more would require me to exert myself upon them individually. They are very angry because their certainty in the future has been taken. They do not like change, everything was fine, who are these aliens to decide what is right or wrong. The gist of the crowd is the usual thing that I have been sensing from most Small Ones."

Virginia grunted and craned her head to look at the foreleg she held up to turn from side to side in a cursory examination of what was once her hand.

"What do...excuse me..." She broke off to unfurl her wing to reveal one of the blankets she used as a handkerchief. Dabbing at her ruined snout where a curtain of drool had collected with the fabric. "What do we have to do to prove to the Small Ones we left behind that none of us asked for this." She flapped the sodden material crumbled in her paw at her disfigured face meaningfully. "That we asked for any of this to happen to us? Your alien friend has never once suggested that it will be possible for us to return to what we were. Has he ever provided anything as to how we could make ourselves accepted back into our old lives?"

She waved a wing at the crowd. A familiar ping in my head grew louder and brought me away from our conversation entirely. Sending them both mental apologies, I trilled with happiness while turning away from the unhappy milling of the Small Ones outside the border of the hospital. An ambulance, blocks away, laid on its air horn to try to clear a path futilely until a trio of children no bigger than elephants landed to sweep the path clear with their chests and legs. Their wings deployed to fend off the objects thrown at them. Virginia and Dan sat up with spinal fins shivering in agitation and cries of concern, but I already had asked a few others to watch the situation from above for any signs of coordinated attack. No one shot at them with it clear what they were doing. Especially with all the local news cameras now trained on their actions in escorting the ambulance.

Alex made his way to me through the parking lot full of titans and emergency shelters. I warned him just before a pair of children touched down into the clearing that he was about to enter with a snarl of alarm. Telling him off in barking chirps to be careful not to jostle the dozens of injured haphazardly tied to their backs by upsetting their landing. Patting their lower legs as they walked by him, they were mollified when he told them how much he appreciated their care with their charges and directed them to the triage tent.

It was a long walk for him while I rose to show my anxiety by rocking from one set of legs to the other as he covered the expansive parking lot. Far more space of which was dedicated to the comings and goings of all the Children who I was accommodating in their distress. I knew a dome of general good feeling had formed around the hospital and that it continued to grow with each subsequent Child who was drawn here. Drawing many who felt the slight tugging of a chance at peace and social interaction once more.

A quick feel of my network told me that we were up to 147 children of the egg. Enough of us that we had run out of room on the hospital ground. I pulled on a couple of strings to ask what could be done with so many scaly bodies. A flood of suggestions and the lifting off of dozens of Children to offer their assistance to the liaison officer who had been unhappily snatched from the ground were the answers to my questions.

The general aura of good feeling also effected the crowd demanding action from the authorities in the compound and our removal. In combination with the makeshift wall of abandoned vehicles moved from the parking lot by Children an effective perimeter was maintained. Some's anger however grew in spikes great enough to require a release by throwing bricks at the young ones shepherding the ambulance through the crowd but extending no further for the time being. Those isolated instances not enough to cascade into lethal actions that would require a response from the multi-tonne children guiding the emergency vehicle.

As my brother made his way to me a flash of annoyance raced across through my thoughts when Alex unknowingly emasculated my immense virility by mistaking a younger female as me.

Really, Alex? Really? Was it so hard to tell one half of a species from the other? Her wings and fins were all the wrong shapes! Her scent was nowhere near mine or any males! Not to mention what was between her hind legs! Did that look like a dick? I know it goes up inside me now but c'mon! I had to ask Rachel if I could use her sight to check if I looked female. My crushed masculinity, her hissing laughter, and having to dodge a tangled web of mirthfully thumping tails increased Alex's confusion at what was going on. He had only the vaguest sense that I was at the center of it as he got close enough that I could hear my children's voices coming from the phone in his hand.

He yelped when I swiped him off the ground to hobble back to the pile where half of me lay to make sure our children could see her through the phone. Carefully setting Alex down after asking a few sleepers to let me see myself so our family could be united and reassured. My brother tapped the scales of my hand with the phone until I turned it over to hold it so that he could check on her carbon fiber cast. The brassy youthful voice of our family's devoted friend Angie was the first to come through the phone. Making me grumble laughter when her eye filled the phone screen with an excited squeal that overwhelmed the microphone.

I will admit that my attention from all its other pursuits to focus on my family for a time as Alex checked on the alignment of Kim's leg (it smelled fine to me so far) and left. Bryan and Serena came by one at a time to give their greetings, delighting my children and leading to an exchange of whistles between the transformed scientist and my oldest daughter. Oh yeah, Jesse the tree-hugging hippy nomad was squawking in the background somewhere as well. I was so wrapped up in trying to explain to my kiddos about what I had learned that I could do that the arrival of reinforcements to the protest didn't register as swiftly as it should have.

By the time I saw with other's eyes and heard with their ears, a woman had already gained the attention of the crowds with the siren of a bullhorn to begin an impassioned plea for more help from the city authorities sheltering at the hospital. I gasped when I felt my other half stir at that thought. Had she heard me? Did she know I was challenging myself? A moment of distraction arrived when I felt Kim shift. Radios squealed and the images on nearby monitors jumped and flickered as I poured energy into calling to Kim in case that she was showing signs of her return. Children flinched away as I begged her to come back and show me the acid bite of her tongue. She remained as still and as lost to me as the concrete she lay upon, making me wonder if I had imagined the twitch of her hind leg or the shiver of her belly.

"Things have reached a point now that cannot be ignored!" The woman's voice blared out over those watching her. "We understand that these people have suffered greatly as a result of first contact with life from beyond Earth."

Making it clear with a pointing finger at a bewildered looking lost one who narrowed his eyes when he found himself being the center of attention.

"But it cannot be ignored just how easily they can take care of themselves now! How easily they can find food and shelter for their loved ones! How easily they can barter their strength and flight to pay for their needs. No! It is time for the government to prioritize those of us that are locked into a decline in the quality of our lives. We need our elected leaders to recognize that we the unemployed and the unhoused need guarantees that we will not be forgotten in this crisis! We need to stop destroying our homes, our cities. We need to all pull together. With the help of our leaders! Who should be out here meeting with us and not hiding behind the protection of soldiers who should not be patrolling main street America!"

A thunderous cheer erupted at her words while an intimidating spiky forest of long guns were raised into the air. But the crowd was not united behind her opinion and dissent quickly broke out on the margins. Some people, while not happy with how the change had been brought about, were not thrilled with the direction the world had been headed before Zero day. Anger spilled over as Small Ones began to beat each other with fists and melee weapons. The more sensitive of the Children circled overhead demanding that everyone stop and behave. Again, no one fired. The rage in the air made my teeth hurt from its saturation of the air.

There were so many factions here. So many disparate feelings. Anything could set this crowd off. Like a powder keg. Not to sound too trite.

"Our leaders need to do more, and I know that you will not like this, but so do we! We must be divided! We must be considerate! We need to consider how others are being affected just as we are by the loss of their jobs. Their homes. Their lives! We must be practical now just as our country was during other times of war. Because that is what this!"

She shouted this last over the increasingly agitated crowd. Some of this was not what they wanted to hear. Although she did have the attention of significant minority. Mayor Mclean was standing up on her tail, watching attentively with two of her council standing on her shoulders with their hands on her neck for balance. The woman was right, and the Child knew it. These were concerns and requests for help that should have been brought to their attention. Why hadn't it?

"Not a war against them!" She pointed her hand at the watching Children. Open, and with her palm up. An invitation if I've ever I'd seen one expressed by a single gesture. "Not a war against them. But a war to survive. We are in a fight against powers that cannot be fought! We must save ourselves before we can ever think of anything else."

I sat beside Amanda to watch the crowd come dangerously close to becoming bedlam. The Air Force Officer had a female with a truncated tail held firmly against her. The younger Child's body and scent were familiar, but there was nothing familiar about the feeling of her mind as there should have been. The shy terrified female that we had rescued on our search for Jill and Arnold seemed to have somewhat accept what had happened to her.

"I want...No, I need to thank you for rescuing me. I am...I am...I am..." Her warbled expression of gratitude broke down into meaningless repetition, and to my horror I saw her least damaged rear paw rise to hook its remaining claws into her scales to rip them from her body. She was shivering violently even as Amanda and I hummed quietly to her to back her down from her renewed attempt to punish herself for something that was far beyond her ability to control. Gently, my tail crossed behind her and over the top of her own until I could fit my spike beneath her clenched toes and lift her paw from her scales. Fresh tears came when she felt mine and Amanda's tails twine with hers. Our attempt to comfort only reminding her just how inhuman she was.

A shriek of alarm came from _Luis_behind us. But, before he and the other Children could smother the poor teenager with affection her mind clearly indicated that she didn't want, a warning bark from Amanda had them all backing away with their heads lowered in submission. With their initial instincts checked, the Lieutenant Colonel told the others to give the young Child space.

I felt the even pattern of her scales brush our noses when we nuzzled her, gurgling reassurance like disturbingly shaped babbling brooks. To put her further at ease, I put her into contact with my children safely in their mother's embrace. Feelings of sleepy curiosity caressed her mind. Amanda chirred happily, sensing the event, and I felt her reach out to her husband before encouraging her own unborn children to add their simple emotions into the temporary union. For the female with soft purple eyes the color of mountain flowers I'd seen growing in the mountains.

She was sad when I showed her how beautiful her eyes were and what they reminded me of. She had never even known what color her eyes were now until I showed her. Amanda and I both widened our perspectives and showed her all of who she was now. She had to know.

"That's..." she whispered with her eyes closed as she took herself in. It was a lot to see all at once. It was a lot to see yourself for the first time. She was able to see much of her body with her long, lithe, neck of course. But there was much that she couldn't, and the horrible injuries she inflicted upon herself had been covered by meters and meters of bandaging changing her appearance once again. Her lilac eyes opened again to look first at Amanda, who bobbed her head gently with a steady gaze, then to me. Her long, narrow, tongue extending to lick her snout as she steadied herself.

"That's me...that's me now..." Her jaws closed and her neck convulsed as she swallowed. "I can do this. I have to accept this. That's me. I am a dragon. A... a... child of the egg is that right?" Standing, she turned in place to face away from the crowd we were exposed to over the stacked car barricade to introduce herself for the first time.

"I can... I can hear you all in my head. You keep calling me a young female like that is all you need to know to know who I am, but it is not. My name is Michelle Choi, I am 19 years old, and from Twin Falls. I thank you for saving me."

She hesitated, and then stiffly began to fold her legs with a pained hiss for a bow. Which we stopped straight away by begging her not to stress her wounds or to honor us like we had done something to deserve it.

"Welcome Michelle friend!"

"Welcome Michelle!

"We friends now!"

"Yes! Yes!"

An explosion of cheerful caterwauling welcomed the abashed girl. But something was bothering me, and I couldn't share the delight that Amanda enjoyed and that was attracting Children from all over to come greet young Michelle.

"Michelle, you have come a long way from your city. Where is your family? Why did you leave Twin Falls?"

This time it was easier to see the signs before she could harm herself again. The racing of her heart like a run-away engine. The dilation of her eyes. The alarm in her scent. I nudged Amanda, who was touching noses with Dan and Virginia, to connect her children again to calm Michelle. Unbalanced as she was like a washing machine with a dumbbell in it.

"Do not compare me to laundry!" She piercingly whistled. "I killed them when I turned into this! I panicked and brought home nest down! I killed egg mother and father! Michelle bad and no deserve..."

"Oh no, honey... you cannot possibly think that."

Michelle didn't have time to respond to Amanda's objection or to the rest of us cooing and whimpering in sympathy. To help her as she regressed right in front of us. We didn't have time to reach out and comfort her with our touch. To be made happier at the sight of the youngest Children hopping up and down while whooping encouragement to her. The situation went straight to hell, led by the assholes clustered on the other side of the barricade. Whipped into a frenzy by their misplaced animosity.

An open can of red paint flew through the air to slam into Michelle's neck leaving a scarlet wave of color to splash across her scales. She froze, as the thick, vibrant, rivers ran down her body to drip into the compacted snow beneath her. Another can, yellow this time hit her square in the head, and I could see those in the crowd who were throwing the cans with a big slingshot stretched between two street signs.

A noise, thin and beyond the hearing of the humans that cheered this on, began and then swiftly increased in intensity and volume. It became deafening soon enough, making some of the Small Ones shy away from the results of their attack, and culminated with Michelle clutching her head in her paws and screaming where she lay in the paint stained snow on the ground. All the progress she had just made, undone in an instant. By degrees the crowd fell silent under the withering sonic assault of the poor Child's mind coming apart.

I was fucking pissed, and I wasn't alone in my fury. What happened next was as predictable as thunder following lightning.

The woman with the bullhorn, who had at last noticed the idiots on the edges of the crowd tempting fate, had been asking for calm and getting none. Now she had fallen into a nearly useless chant for "No violence! No weapons!". If she had ever had control, it was now gone.

A gunner in a turret next to us shot a pen flare as a warning over the crowd, breaking the spell over them and giving them a new target for their anger.

News crews swung their cameras towards our part of the wall of stacked cars. I sent a command to the kids hovering mid-air to see what was happening to get altitude or hide. Boyd roared at the gunner in the armored truck not to provoke. And someone, some goddamned person, fired a single round that glanced off the ballistic glass of a truck's turret shield.

Hundreds of weapons opened fire. At us, the security perimeter, and within the crowd. Medium machine guns charged rounds to return fire. But Boyd, and his two scaly subordinates that he was feeding direction to, surged forward roaring to check fire. It didn't matter, the scared soldiers reacted as they were trained, they returned fire and thousands of civilians and combatants alike scattered in the streets. Trampling each other when they couldn't move fast enough.

The opposing factions that had been fighting hand to hand earlier had given up on restraint and were now firing on each other as well. Adding an additional element to the chaos that was turning into something you would never think to see in a first world nation.

I was standing on top of our barricade, trying to find a way to calm everyone without erasing their minds in a futile effort to get a handle on the situation. Then, paws gripped me by the shoulders and wings unfurled to shield me as a dozen Children led by Night Star and First Light dragged me from sight. Shame and outrage battled for dominancy as I lashed out at my saviors that even then were burying me in an act of selflessness that I didn't deserve. I didn't give a damn what my abilities meant, I should have been facing that danger. My training and my background were exactly what was needed. Already the screams of the wounded and the dying were building. Scores of lights in the constellation of stars were being extinguished and Children howled as they felt each death.

A man that I'd seen frequently meeting with Ulysses was running towards Boyd with a radio to his mouth, yelling instructions until the General spun and threw him onto his back to reach his command center. Guardsmen, soldiers, and airmen, unhooked smoke and riot control grenades to throw into the teeming bloodbath just past the automotive wall absorbing the punishment of withering gun fire.

The tiny Children I had tried to warn away instead all dove to be around me and my wife when I had been cajoled back to her along with Amanda. The Air Force officer making a pitiful cry that carried out over the chaos as she watched her husband stand where I had. Standing where I had and taking fire. A burning Molotov cocktail sizzled and flared as it flew past his head when he dodged nimbly to crash into the ground and set two nurses and an Airman on fire. Fresh screams came from all quarters in sympathetic agony as other Guardsmen rushed to push the victims of the pyrotechnic into a snowbank to extinguish their torment. The smell of burned hair and gasoline coated my nose, no matter how I tried to lick it away.

Hissing and spitting canisters arced through the air already spewing their noxious contents to obscure the battlefield and open a chance to stop this madness. I tried to discourage what was about to happen, but the much older among us firmly pushed my mental prodding back with an iron clad will to stop this even if it meant their lives.

Dan, Big Bang, Virginia, and a terrified but determined Bryan, strode over the perimeter and out into the street. Ignoring the shotgun blasts and rifle fire peppering what of their legs the blinded shooters in the street could see. Even as I could feel the damage that they were taking on as scales shattered and rounds buried into the iron dense muscle beneath. The vast size of their bodies the only thing minimizing the scope of the injuries they incurred. An elephant getting splinters would be the nearest analogy.

Two vehicles in our barricade burst into flame as their fuel tanks were punctured and ignited by the spark of bullets striking metal in the presence of combustible vapor. Conrad was bounding up and down the perimeter yanking weapon barrels skyward where gunners either couldn't or wouldn't respond to Boyd and his command team's orders to cease fire. Boyd had lowered his head to converse hurriedly with agents of the city and state, the new Chief of Police among them. Even while doing that, I could feel his mind reaching out again and again to check on his children. To check on Virginia as he asked me to feel what she felt. Nearby, the insensible Mayor lay with her tongue hanging from her mouth and drool collecting beneath her jaws after I had been forced to render her unconscious to keep her from harming herself when the combat spilled over.

With their wings held up to shield their heads from sight, the four largest of the Children at our encampment strode up and down the street with tails swinging. Using shuffling steps to keep from crushing anyone, they swung their muscular hind appendages to knock combatants and non-combatants about. Efforts that were tremendously successful, if heavy handed and undiscriminating, in creating a lull that Alyssa and a squadron of like-minded Children exploited. By coming in behind their older, larger, allies they systematically disarmed everyone they could find with restrained swipes of a paw or tail. Only a few dozen people suffered broken bones or torn ligaments. Far less than what have happened if the automatic gunfire had continued.

A higher caliber weapon opened fire from a window, and Bryan stumbled into Big Bang with a yowl of pain as blood and scales flew in a stitched line down his hip. Assault forces implanted in Boyd's forces returned fire on the building the heavy machine gun attack was coming from. The windows of the furniture shop exploded outwards after one commando unslung an M79 grenade launcher to fire two high explosive shells into the storefront.

Overhead, a Child roared in fear while panic swept through my network. The male's wing (Gerald), tangled to his leg by the net fired at him from a rooftop, collapsed as he spun out of control into the ground. The wet sound of a leg snapping gruesomely and the smell of new blood causing the little ones huddled against me to peep and mewl with distress. Dragging himself towards the rescue of his friends, he didn't make it far before a man ran to his head to empty a shotgun magazine tube full of slugs into Gerald's eye at point blank range. Penetrating his skull through the eye socket and killing him somewhere between the fourth and fifth rounds. The keening wail of the lamenting redoubling for the scores dying on the city street.

Gerald died wondering over a long-lost love and the life he should have had with her. The death throes of his 20-meter body killing his murderer and five other Small Ones. In a red-hazed act of retaliation that I couldn't break through, an automotive sedan was plucked from the street and dropped on the structure the net had been fired from. Killing four Small Ones and punching a hole through the roof of the building. More screams came from the non-combatants hiding within.

I sought out the reasons why there was no police response. Why we alone were being left to deal with this. The harsh clattering rumble of a diesel engine at full throttle came from a semi-truck as it entered the clouds of smoke and gas. Grizzly thuds of one body after another being struck made Amanda whimper with tears running down her scales. There was a shattering scream, an impact, and Red Skies died when her heart was impaled by a rib broken by the vehicle that had rammed her. My head rang like a bell and it took me a moment to realize the Child shrieking in pain was me as star after star was swallowed by the darkness of eternity.

Clawing against myself I shakily tried to shut the door on these feelings reaching my children. Amanda's children. But in my confusion, I couldn't, and I didn't know if I'd ever be able to face Kim and tell her how it felt to know that I'd failed to protect the babies on this day. I cried an apology to Amanda for failing her as well and the little ones nestled against us joined us in singing a song of pain even as I tried to arrange an ending to this.

There was no police response here because they were guarding the capitol. Guarding storehouses full of food and supplies. Guarding fuel storage tanks. Guarding employment centers. The capital was also under attack, as were the storehouses, which was where an even larger contingent of state resources was arrayed. What was happening in front of us was senseless violence, but elsewhere others were destroying the very future these people had come here accusing us of withholding from them.

Gunfire was dying out here as a total of forty Children methodically worked their way down the street. Asking Small Ones to lay down their arms and disarming them when they didn't with uncheckable force. Fresh waves of pain swept over me as people continued to die, a machine gun continued to fire from deep within a third-floor window, perforating tents across the hospital compound killing more in their beds where they should have been safe. The commandos ran across the street and breached the building stacked one-two-three against each other. Moments later the machine gun went silent and a dying woman (kill them, kill them, kill them) flopped out of the window to breathe her last on the sidewalk below. Her blood red star faded from the world, leaving so many unanswered questions.

The Small Ones that wished us harm retreated, setting fire to all they could as they dispersed into the city streets. Running to hide wherever we couldn't see them from the air. Where I could still feel their minds but did not have the resources to pursue them. I showed Boyd where they had gone, I showed everyone, overlapped on an image I had stored of the city from a kilometer in the sky. But nothing could be done. There were thousands of casualties and countless fires to extinguish.

When the gunfire came to an end, and Big Bang fanned away the smoke and gas with her wings, the true scope of the horror just in front of us was revealed. But it was not over for Boise, Idaho. It was not over in cities across the United States. This had been planned, this had been oh so carefully planned. And those that had planned it, had gotten what they wanted. Video of the United States military and Children of the Egg attacking citizens of the nation spread.

It was only with the briefest of glances that I saw my brother for the next two days. Snatching sleep on my arm for an hour here, an hour there. Never losing the growing bruises under his eyes as he begged me relentlessly to give him the energy to keep going. To triage the next group brought in, to resuscitate the next flatliner.

Under the care of Virginia, we had sent the little ones away to the mall along with three dozen volunteers as escort to fly over the city. Delta Steve went with them to act as a liaison for General Boyd and to assess their defenses.

Try as we did, the vulnerable continued to flock to the hospital and the teeth of the dragon. Still more attracted to the unwitting beacons that Kim and I were. The final death count was in the hundreds with thousands wounded. Some had died in their hospital beds from the event just before us alone. Cut off from any recognizable face. Rejecting the outreach that I had offered in the terror of being spoken to in their minds.

Across the city, two dozen more Children had had their lights extinguished. I wish I could say that the nation mourned what happened in Boise, Idaho. But I would be lying if I said they did. In cities across the country, tens of thousands died. Thirty thousand died in the Dallas- Ft. Worth area alone. Including a thousand children of the egg. Funeral pyres the size of city blocks were being used to burn their bodies and the ash from the dead turned the sky black as far away as Little Rock. The cause of the staggering death toll? Military equipment stolen from Fort Hood by defecting personnel pledging themselves to a pure world.

Texas closed its borders as its state leaders vowed to hold all those responsible for such bloodshed accountable. They did all right. By declaring that any dragon caught within their borders would be executed as a traitor to the human species. A new vote was put before their legislature to secede from the United States and was shot down by only the slimmest of margins. The president addressed the nation from an undisclosed location. He understood the reasons why some would seek to pursue the actions that they had and turn their back on the government. Promising that any that would return from their seditious acts would be allowed to keep their freedom even if their time in the military would be over. Exhorting the public to let that same government work the problems as they died of exposure in the streets when they couldn't fight eviction at gunpoint or their utilities being disconnected. National moratoriums on rent and bill collections went ignored. The senate and the house of representatives went into hiding. The capitol was closed to public admittance.

I learned later from Ulysses when he visited to silently watch Kim's comatose form that two things had happened just before the violence in front of the hospital that probably incited it. One, was a federal judge siding with a city suing a dragon over his possessions that, since he was no longer human, he no longer was entitled to. That he himself, under the letter of the law, held no more rights than a hamster in a cage. Three hours later, as that jurist was leaving his court, he was executed on the stairs of his courthouse by an armed group that also killed the deputies escorting him and half a dozen more people swarming him for a sound bite. The killers were still at large, and the case was on emergency appeal given the immense ramifications. With a stroke of the pen, hundreds of thousands of citizens and habitants of my country could lose everything. Everything. With the establishment of this precedence.

"Good thing you and Kim named me your guardian and executor all those years ago if something happened to you huh?" Alex tried to rally my spirits when I told him about that. His false laughter died in his throat when he saw the empty look in my eyes. Not far away, Boyd, Amanda, and Conrad sat with drooping heads and distant eyes as they pondered a future where the country they continued to serve turned its back on them and left them with nothing. Tears dripped from my eyes as my thoughts turned to my underage twins.

"Alex...please tell me you'll adopt them if it comes to it. Tell me you'll keep them with us."

"Little brother..." he replied, rubbing my snout and ignoring the burning tears running over his hand. "...for you, and them? Anything."

A grim snort of amusement came from him after a minute. "As if you or Kim would ever let anyone take them from you."

No...no we wouldn't, if we could help it. But what life would that be for them? The people that would come to take them from us would never do it within our sight. The minute we let them go to school, hang out with friends, or go see a movie. They would be gone without a word. After all, who bothers to send a fucking cow or a horse a letter telling them what happened to their calf?

And if these judges based their decision solely on the Constitution? Bye-bye Luke and Lucy. It had taken this country nearly a century just to abandon enslaving other human fucking beings. I wish I knew more about how other countries were handling it. Canada wasn't far away. How were they doing?

I didn't find out until much later that this was one of the reasons why the armed militants had breached the border and damn near put our closely aligned countries at war. They were groups that were hunting us, no matter where we could be found. In the vast forests of Canada, it was the wild west. Whoever had the most guns made the rules. The RCMP was outgunned, and frontier justice ruled.

Jonah was my primary source of information when he wasn't busy using the privileged position I had given him. I honestly liked his unflappable pursuit of the scoop, even if I had to step in (literally) when he had nearly gotten himself thrown from the hospital campus a few different times. Another reason why I liked him, was that he had been an overseas and war correspondent in his younger years, and whenever he could, was quick to tell the adoring little ones a story. Otherwise, he busily interviewed anyone he could, Child or human, in what had become one of the most important and contested sites in the city. I asked what was going on in Mexico to see if that was a viable option for escape. He typed on his pad and scrolled through a list as I watched through his eyes to make sure he wasn't trying to gloss over something.

"Well, it seems that with most of the law enforcement pulled from the southern border that militias have taken over and are pretty much just doing whatever they want. But the few remaining people trying to cross the border now do it by bribing feral dragons that don't understand the concept of international boundaries to carry them.

"For the rest of Mexico, if you were thinking about going down there, I'd tell you to forget about it. A few thousand dragons like you are leading citizens into an open war against the drug cartels. They'll be finding bodies in the ditches for years after this one. Those gangs aren't going to let that narco money go without a fight. The government... well... I suppose they're there, but it seems obvious to me just who has them in their pocket." I thanked him and he went on his way to get some more of the unvarnished truth from a young female about the state of the city. The female, Slick Paw, had tucked herself into a ball to roll, chortling gleefully, back and forth to distract the others from their pain. Becoming a general hazard to anyone on two legs that happened to be nearby.

"This isn't just about the money and your house is it?" Alex asked me after a moment of watching some of those under the military Children's command come up to them one at a time and give words of encouragement to them in a very unmilitary like manner.

"It's for the children, Alex. Everything is for the children. Can't you feel that in our minds?"

"Tom... I don't know if I can understand how you dragons think anymore. Your thoughts... Tom your thoughts... I honestly don't think you care about losing anything other than your children."

"What else is there but to make the world better for the children? Look at General Boyd and the Lieutenant Colonels. Do you think they care about losing their ranks? The military was family for them! The people they are responsible for are their children! You saw the way was Boyd last night. Can't you see how we feel?"

"I don't know if I can Tom." He said, patting my nose on his way back to his rounds assisting in the trauma wards. "The way everything you think about revolves around one thing in wider and wider circles. I don't know if I can see how you feel."

His last words to me that day lingered while I paced the hospital and patrolled the air in a black mood. It wasn't acceptable for there to be distance between us. I still thought like a human, didn't I? Didn't I consider all the resources I accumulated before just as things to make my children comfortable? To make them safe? What else was there? Niggling thought in the back of my mind reminded me that I knew that wasn't so.

A triumphant thought from Forked Lightning told she had succeeded in getting two dozen men a paying job from the career center. Taking them a dozen at a time to a building that had been gutted in the fighting to help the families there sort through the rubble along with a city engineer. She came to verify the that the structure was compromised beyond repair while also confirming the work done by the volunteers for pay. No excavators ran in the city, so Forked Lightning would be the muscle to sort the material and possessions while the Small Ones reached where she could not. I sent a dart of appreciation to her and her pleased roar was echoed by the happy cheeping of many of the Children around me. I saw through her eyes a street full of humans begging for help and relayed the view to a Child dozing languidly next to city officials whose jobs were to coordinate the assignment of more scaly help.

In a vain attempt to distract myself until I couldn't think about Alex's words, I threw my truly multi-tracked mind into the effort of coordinating Children to jobs and needs across the city. A small male transporting sick and elderly to a clinic in a trailer that he pulled with his tail. Six to scoop up pallets of MREs from a heavily guarded supply station at a firehouse to take to churches where the food was distributed. Another six to go with city officials to 'visit' the local power relay where corporate officers threatened to shut off electricity to residential neighborhoods. That group had come back with a makeshift basket full of yelling people demanding their lawyers and to be put through to the Congressman that they had gotten elected.

At a career center, visiting headhunters from Boise State and other regional universities had set up shop looking for people to fill positions created through government grants. I made sure a rotating schedule of Children, in groups for safety, went to interview for any openings. Then I had to go myself when they weren't being taken seriously. Convincing a particularly dogmatic group from the nearby National Laboratory that the male they were talking was, in fact, a Statistical Analysis when they agreed to be shown his thoughts. Jokingly mistaking what they had agreed to as being a sideshow circus act. The joke was on them when they fleetingly discovered what the incensed male felt about being on four legs.

The next day, the real troublemakers arrived into the area and immediately made their presences known by putting out a statement that was as vague as it was threatening. Putting an exclamation mark to their alarming message by blowing up the main electrical transmission lines to the city as a declaration of their intentions.

"The actions of these aliens could only have been made possible with the complicity of human traitors. Now, you have seen the results of what the introduction of these dragons and their false claims of innocence involve. Along with their human enablers, we must show these aliens and their mythical pets that we are not a country that will bow to their demands. If you feel as we do, and wish to return this Country, this Planet, to its rightful owners. To make it pure like it hasn't been for generations. Then now is the time to take up the arms God has granted you the right to carry and act. If you wish to join us in this fight, make your resolve known and we will contact you. We are legion, we are pure, and we are with you."

Prometheus had finally awoken in the dark of the extinguished city to the droning racket of the backup diesel generators powering the hospital. It had taken all my self-control not to throttle the cocksucker the moment he opened his mouth again in the twilight of the day. Boyd, notified at once about his awakening, had flown with haste and left part of his staff behind to be present for whatever the fallen alien might have to say. He shooed off as many people and Children as he could, and then told us uselessly once more that everything the creature said is classified.

"You seem to be settling into your role. It is good that you are, as others will increasingly look to you for strength and guidance. The patriarchs of your adopted species were regarded second only to matriarchs."

"What the fuck has Tomoko done to my wife! Why hasn't she awoken? Why can I only feel a tiny piece of her?"

He grimaced and rubbed his neck with a wing. "Pain is a funny thing, is it not? A sensation meant to remind one of danger, by placing one in yet more with the distracting intensity of its expression."

"Want to feel more?" I snarled at him. Virginia, Dan, and Big Bang, recovering from the wounds they'd taken two days ago and laying alongside my wife, reached out to calm me.

"No, I wish not to. As to your inevitable next question, this process will not harm your children."

"Then what good is all this violence that has been happening? Did you expect this when you laid out your fucking test? People dying from exposure to the cold? Mass unemployment?"

"Yes. Building your society on top of a single point of failure was not our doing. Nor is the asinine way that your former species has decided to respond. Now if you'll excuse me, I must go expel the waste products of my bodily systems. We can resume this pointlessly repetitive conversation upon my return."

When he did return, his evasive non-answers and subterfuge were the least of my concerns. Boyd had just been about to ask me a question over what had just been said, when we heard a noise that stood out to us given how low its source was. Either one twin engine plane, or two single engine planes, was buzzing low overhead in the direction of the airport. I immediately dismissed them at first, but quickly realized that something much more ominous was aclaw.

There were two muffled popping noises, and then a pair of metal objects came plummeting from a cloud followed shortly after by the planes themselves. I was stupefied by the sight, not quit realizing what was going on. But Boyd connected the dots quicker than the scant few seconds it took me, and screeched orders. In his alarm, forgetting to issue the commands in English.

They were using airplanes to attack the airport. Boosting Boyd's thoughts, I hurled the urgency of the situation to any that were aloft to try to disable the aircraft to keep them from striking the field. Where so many badly needed supplies were being warehoused to await distribution. The callous assholes even knew what was at the airfield, making what they were doing even more atrocious.

Even the fastest of the adolescent Children where hopelessly outmatched by a single engine aircraft gaining speed in a descent with its engine wide open. These two in particular must have been flying low before rising for altitude at the last second because there was no way, post 9-11, that two aircraft could manage this attack without NORAD scrambling F-16s to jam AIM-9Xs into their engine blocks. We all watched as the parachutes of the pilots opened once they had thrown themselves out of the compromised cabin doors.

Long wavering cries of dismal horror came from Boyd and the Huygens as their crews scrambled to load onto them before hurling themselves, half manned, towards the airport. Amanda was the first aloft, followed by her commander and then her husband as they launched towards the airport. Asking for a dozen volunteers to chase after them. I asked many of the teenagers circling senselessly in the air overhead to follow them figuring they'd be safer at the secured airport in case this was the prelude to a fresh attack. Sweeping away, the two men still drifting earthwards on their parachutes were snatched midair and taken screaming in mortal terror to revel in what they had done. The rigging of their canopies clawed violently from their bodies to drift aimlessly beneath the deployed chutes like festive parasols. Splashes of blood decorated the harnesses showing the disdain Jacob and Fire Flower showed in snatching them to face the consequences of their actions. I hoped they lived long enough to face me. There would be nothing stopping me from knowing what they knew.

Profound fear for their safety came as twin explosions came from the direction of the airport that sent burning shrapnel into the sky with secondary blasts ten minutes later. News coverage near the airport showed the distant hangars burning and emergency lights flashing against the clouds of fire-retardant spraying into the air. A head and neck rose above the chaos looking upwards and pointing with a wing. Tracking something that the camera wasn't following as it focused on the conflagration on the ground. A roared warning came from the Child, who must have been Boyd, and then a titanic detonation knocked the camera image out. Seconds later, a massive cataclysmic concussion followed that blew out the upper windows of the hospital and whited out my world with the pain of my sensitive ears being overwhelmed.

My sight returned as I stumbled drunkenly side to side, shaking my head to clear it of the ringing bells of the worst tinnitus I'd experienced since training on breaching charges in the military. Children still in the air were crying out and batting at their heads as they collided with each other in disoriented confusion. Many of the small groups of people that were all that was left from the violent mobs of a few days ago scattered in fresh panic while some cheered the blasts. No matter what their cause, some were all too excited in the resulting chaos.

As soon as the blasts from the airport had fallen into a lull, I could hear a tremendous outpouring of gunfire from the opposite direction. The emotions of Virginia and her family of Children who had come here with her caused me to collapse on to my side and vomit the mule deer I had hunted yesterday up against the side of a tent to lay steaming in the chill air. The feeling of my heart being torn out of my chest swallowed my world as I cried and squirmed on the ground, struggling to process and dispel their pain. My children flipped in their mother's belly so savagely that her entire frame shuddered with a convulsion that made her tail flop to expose her vaginal opening. An opening that had become distended and swollen since I had last been beath her tail.

Oh my god, Kim. Our children. Not now. Please god not here. Not now. We should be safe. We should be awake.

"Diversion! The mall is under attack!" The commandos came yelling to tell us what we already knew. A look that I knew all too well had entered Virginia's eyes as she struggled to her feet, grunting as a few scales shattered when they suffered more stress than they could handle. Her legs would be a weak spot in the coming battle, but there was no dissuading someone with the feel to their mind that she had. Her children were under attack. The fury of a mother bear was about to witness a new and terrible challenger for the penultimate expression of maternal rage.

"Young Tom. Please help us..."

"Go! We will be right behind you!"

Where were my two police handlers? I sent out a command, broking no challenge from the Small Ones, and they emerged from beneath a tent with a dazed look in their eyes from my order. Forgotten radio mikes gripped loosely in hand with the squawking of their dispatcher coming from both.

"Yes?" They both said in a unison wooden monotone.

"I am going to protect the mall, are you coming with me or not." I demanded, at the same time telling a dozen injured but ambulatory Children to remain and protect the hospital. Big Bang and Dan howled denial, but I firmly told them they were liabilities after their injuries in what I sensed was no simple exchange of gunfire. There was one large caliber weapon over there firing that had me fearing the worst-case scenario. One of the stolen Abrahams had reappeared and was now being used to devastating effect.

"We cannot allow you to depart without us. It is against the orders that we have been given."

A small trickle of blood began to flow from the corner of one Deputy's eye, and from her partner's sinus. I was horrified by what I was doing and blocked myself in an instant from ever doing so accidentally again. They both crumbled to their knees like marionettes with their strings cut before their eyes rolled and they limply fell into unconsciousness. Neither of them was in any shape to go with me now.

Good job you giant scaly ass. You just microwaved their brains.

I would answer for this later. I deserved to answer for this later. But not now. Already three dozen adults were winging after Virginia's massive tail. Leaving the tents battered with a blizzard of blown snow from their launches and plenty of Small Ones just coming back to their senses. Not a single Child was ex-military and with just as much training as the DEVGRU guys responding to my call to them at the same moment.

"Get rope, gear up, and get as many as you can to come with me." I said to the three, with my head low. They looked at each other with loaded expressions that told me just how much they had trained with each other, and two ran to kit up rapidly. Coming back, at the same time as the nurse I had called to check the deputies, they were ready before the others were out of sight.

"Carl is already there so the two of us will be all you need. Put this on and let's go."

Holding out one of the headsets the Air Force officers wore I let them set the cushioned pads against my ear canals and run a strap beneath my head while another box with a pair of antennas went on my neck. Crushing my fin uncomfortably. Shaking my head, I answered their comms check and then leapt into the air with one of them in each hand as soon as I felt their minds harden in readiness.

"We need to know who we're working with here." Sam asked from my left paw. Jackson lay in my right where he was trying to talk with the airbase. Switching channels on the radio in his pack and growing frustrated. "What's your background?"

"20 years as a PJ, retired out of the 24th STS at Pope. Six years with JSOC."

"JSOC huh?" He grunted, trying to check his gear while clutching at one of my claws with one untrusting hand. "When?"

"2008-2014 and I'm not going to drop you, so you can let go."

He laughed and called out to his partner across the distance between my two hands as he prepared himself. "Can you believe that shit Jackson?"

"I don't remember any dragons when I was there. What's your name?"

"Master Sergeant Tom Schwarzkopf."

"Well Tom, we're about to find out if you're telling us the truth. If you are, we'll have a beer with you later. But if you aren't...okay got it."

His stomach dropped into his stomach when I lurched upwards to increase my sight line and spied the Children who had taken off before me circling. Orbiting above a warzone while screaming in confused distress and trying to decide on a plan of action.

Now that I had a chance to see the in daylight for myself, I saw that the mall stretched linearly from east to west and was surrounded by a parking garage on the south side and an open field to the other four directions. Parking lots if the humped forms of snow covered vehicles dotting the plains were any indication. The only remarkable thing evident about the mall itself from the outside, other than the fact that it looked like it was the setting of a post-apocalyptic movie, was the central food court area which had large glass paneled dome to let natural light in.

Between the multi-story parking deck and the mall tracers snapped and cracked back and forth in a pitched battle. Cars besides the two structures were burning already and sending up acrid smoke that stung my eyes into a watery mess. The tank fired, and men and women screamed as part of the roof of the mall exploded where an HE round impacted it. Circling around, I saw the long barrel of the main battle tank extending from just beneath the sheltering concrete deck above it. They had planned this assault well.

I wondered why they hadn't gone in on foot and done this through the dozens of entrances to the mall until I saw the reason why as I circled above with the others. Someone had come up with the idea to stack cars against entrances all around the massive building. The only way in was through the roof that was being eaten away at by the withering fire trained on it. The fire marshal certainly wouldn't approve of that fortification. But it did make much more sense to look to the roof as the only way in or out when half the population of the camp could fly.

The Children couldn't get near the parking deck with the number of fifty caliber machine guns on its top deck and pointed into the sky. A high-pitched buzzing noise set my teeth on edge and I saw Green Water shriek in pain when his leg was blown apart. The ankle of his left rear leg almost an unrecognizable wad of licorice-colored tendons and muscles. The men on the top of the garage were launching small drones with explosives attached to them to crash them into the overhead Children as tiny Kamikaze devices. The much larger Will grabbed the sobbing younger male and heaved him away in his claws back to the hospital. Green Water's blood spattering the ground beneath them as they left the battle. The sight of the ragged strands of his darkly colored muscles and tendons made my stomach flip while I dampened his pain until he slipped from my range.

"Can you call in an airstrike on that parking deck?" I asked, frustrated that we couldn't get near enough to do something. The eggs were in there. The eggs were in there. The eggs were in there. Looping thoughts spread from me to all the others. Rage grew in those circling and dodging anti-aircraft fire. Echoing cries from those hidden in the mall came between lulls in the sounds of battle. Shifting over the mall, I saw dozens of civilians crouching behind the parapet and popping up to return fire at random. Where was the other operator that had been put here?

There, I spotted him behind a large HVAC unit with an open aid-bag next to him, stuffing combat gauze into a stomach wound on a woman who was biting down on a belt. I poked him into looking up, and when he did, he held up three fingers that I told Jackson meant he was indicating to switch to channel three. Converging streams of fire tracked me when I got too close and I tucked the men I held up against my chest as I spun and ducked into a dive that gave me speed to soar straight up a few hundred feet.

I directed six to swiftly land on the other side of the mall from the attackers to open an escape for those inside. Blocked in by their own barricades. A howl burned my throat as I felt their pain when they were opened fire upon as soon as they had landed from yet more gunmen hidden in snow beneath some trees. Lighter caliber weapons, that still hurt them greatly as rents tore through their folded wings and scales cracked. The world went black before I could adjust when Quiet Mouse was shot in the eye by a sniper with a heavier caliber rifle and lay screaming next to her enraged companions.

Tails lashed and jaws snapped as they bounced on their paws while thundering fury at the men facing them. Shoving their noses beneath vehicles, they flipped them to form a hasty protective barrier that they tried to crouch behind but that still nearly everything but their heads exposed. I sent others to gather anything they could to beef up the guard. Before the others could act, an anti-tank rocket was fired and one of the trucks flipped into the air. Shrapnel pierced Samantha's head and killed her where she lay. The others, panicked, fled into the air leading Quiet Mouse away.

Blinded with rage, and driven on by thoughts of the eggs, the eggs, _Angry One_landed and made good on the name that he was given. Spinning, his tail lashed out and shattered a tree trunk to drop the plant on the weapons squad that had fired the shoulder launched LAW I saw discarded in front of them. They screamed as the tree fell, Angry One launched off the tree to drive it into the ground, and they never screamed again.

"I can't get through. There's some kind of interference!" Jackson said into his mike. Even between him in my paw, and the speaker covering my ear, I could hear scratchy static as I ramped up my efforts.

"It's me." I said, craning my head to look at Sam. "I need to set you down somewhere."

"What?"

"Later!"

"Take us over the garage low enough so that we can pop some smoke in front of it. Then put us on the mall roof!"

"Get small and hold on."

Winging upwards and away at the same time I directed others to drop things on the roof, I slued around my right wing and dove. The wind whistled past and that old familiar, terrifying, exhilaration of leaping into combat surged as I sped down towards the bristling concrete fortress. With better timing than the men I held, I nudged them to let them to know just when to drop the smoke grenades one after the other. Scales on my underside cracked and fell away as bullets strafed me including one that struck my armpit and made my hand spasm.

"Hold on!" I cried, bending my leg so that Sam could grab at my wrist as he slid. His second smoke grenade spinning away to land on top of the parking deck instead of in front of it when he flung it to scrabble at my scales with his gloved hands. His fear an icicle of emotion spearing into my head just above my eye. Already fountains of white phosphorus smoke were erupting from the grenades and giving the people of the mall a moment to regroup. My aggrieved nerves settled until I was able to get my twitching paw under control and my charge was safe in my embrace once again. Yelling and coughing came from the top of parking garage behind us. I didn't envy any of those men the medical complications that awaited them in their future for breathing in that much WP if they survived this.

"What the fuck was that?" Sam yelled into his mike, making me squawk in pain at the blaring noise of his fearful anger.

"I didn't ask them to shoot me in the armpit. I'd like to see how well you take a fifty-caliber round." I replied calmingly. Looping up and away to deposit the men on the mall. Soothing his spike of terror with a passing thought that increased the static buzzing in my ears.

As easily as shooting the broadside of a mall, the Abrams fired again, and a gaping hole opened into a department store that vomited racks of dusty clothes into the air. Part of the ceiling there collapsed as defenders scrambled for safety.

I asked just one Child to go into danger on the roof of the parking garage and clear the dismounts from it at the same time I set down on mall. Angry One didn't surprise me at all by immediately plummeting with all four of his paws held out. The coughing and angry voices in the smoke cloud turned into screams as the male threw his weight around. Men and equipment went flying into the air with blood spraying air in scarlet rainbows. Many of them already dead from blunt force trauma or after being raked by Angry One's claws. The gunfire slackened significantly, and it gave me a moment to focus and learn why the Children in the mall weren't trying to evacuate.

From many of them all I saw was darkness as if they were hiding but I could hear the near constant cracking of gunfire everywhere in the mall. Every Child had fallen into an atavistic thought pattern of protect, protect, protect and had them huddled behind the concealment of their wings. The gunmen that had managed to breach the mall already were firing unmercifully at their great bodies where they lay curled protectively around friends and family. The biggest grouping of them were clustered around the garden where Savanna and Martin had made their nest. I could feel them within the wall of scale and the panic they felt at the attack underway.

Some of them where dying, some of them had already died. Even in death, the mass of their bodies keeping their families safe.

Tears made my sight watery and Small Ones near my head gasped and sobbed, dropping their weapons to hold their heads as Fierce Dad's fading sight came to me and projected outwards. Bullets stitched up and down the spine of a body that wasn't mine as I dimly looked with dying eyes on my wife and two young sons. My youngest pled for me to promise that I would stay, and my heart broke that that was a promise that I could not make for him as he pushed on my snout with his tiny paws. His brother, my Charles, was crushed between my snout and Jessica, his mother. They pressed their small human bodies against me, screaming my name.

I kissed them one last time. They were so far away. Why were they leaving? I remember... Stay...

My shrieking roar of pain tore me back from the dead father. He was Andy, I was Tom. I shouted again, a pained howl of agony that echoed back to me from dozens of other voices. Shaking my head with claws tearing at the sides of it to draw blood. Something exploded and a woman went cartwheeling into the air. I snatched her out of her fall and swallowed her pain until her star vanished before setting her broken body on the roof in front of me. We mourned her just as we did the father 10 meters below me.

A massive tail lashed and shattered a skylight next to me from within the mall as Virginia bellowed in a fury that washed over us all with the inevitable power of a tsunami. Heedless of the damage that she was taking, the titan was cutting a bloody swath through the gunmen within the mall. Destroying what was left of the interior in the process. I couldn't get through to her. A violent haze had sealed her within her own head that was fed by the sight, smell, and feeling of the Children and Small Ones that had become her family dying while they called for help all around her.

If I didn't get more help in there to calm her. She could bring the structure down on top of the very people that she thought she was saving.

Angry One threw his wings wide and trumpeted his bloody victory from the parking garage with his head held proudly upward. Soon he was joined by tens of others who landed alongside him to peek down the ramp to the next lower level.

A female, braver than she was knowledgeable of combat operations, rushed down the ramp to clear the next level with excited zeal in an attempt to match what Angry One had done. My startled warning to wait came too late as I felt her surprise at the flash of light that preceded the shrapnel that tore through her skull.

Her body collapsed in an instant followed by spasms of her tail and the kicking of her hind legs in her death throes. Angry One yelped at the explosion before hesitantly approaching the thrashing female as a numbness fell over his thoughts that was just as terrible as the wails of sorrow coming from the others flinging their heads skyward. Taking her tail gently in his mouth, he dragged her back up the ramp to the roof that left a blood trail to mark where she had met her end. The walking battle tank, looking impenetrable with the extended spines of his fins and spiky armored scales, was undone by the sight of his friend. Lying next to her, his wings extended to cover his head and her body. Tremors wracked his body as he sobbed over his fallen friend while the others mewled and nosed at him comfortingly.

He never said a word. But I knew. I knew all too much. She was Frog Hop, and they had been everything to each other since Zero Day. She had wanted us to make them mates when Kim had awoken.

One of his companions on the roof pushed an abandoned car down the ramp with her nose and came running back up chirping in alarm with smoke pouring off her body when yet another booby trap detonated. The radios squealed agonizingly when I sent a command to the others not to go further until Small Ones could disarm the devices that must be scattered everywhere in the structure.

Looking down, I saw through the roof I was standing on straight into Virginia's brilliantly lit star. Pawing the strap off my headset, I let it fall and gave the operators a mental warning to remove their own headsets. My tail stilled as I focused, and then I projected myself into Virginia's mind with a tremendous crack of static from the commo equipment. Fighting past her rage, and fighting to keep if from infecting me, I latched onto her mind and pumped even more power into it until she could feel the connection to those around her. Those that were just as terrified of her anger as they were of the Small Ones who had now stopped shredding their scales to flee her wrath.

Standing with her eyes unfocused, Virginia froze panting with blood dripping from her fangs and her claws. The mall was in ruins, their home destroyed. They could no longer stay there. Their attackers, in a final insult as they retreated, poured accelerants and set fire to a clothing store. Smoke immediately began to billow out and upwards and I ran the length of the mall, blaring warnings, as I smashed one skylight after another with my tail spike.

"We're out of time, Delta! We need that tank gone!" I said, yelling at the three men conferencing between the HVAC units where the triage point had been established. My mind flitted over each of the casualties there. A man, his light fading, caught my interest and my arm cramped with sympathetic pain right over my brachial artery. "Get to _Luiz_Luiz! You're losing him!" I yelled at a woman sitting near by and crying into her knees. Projecting the strength she needed to save her fellow outcast. A young Child popped out of the open access cover beside her, covered in soot and with her steel gray eyes blood shot. Stopping her just in time from fleeing in panic, I asked her to add her considerable strength to staunch the arterial bleeding.

"Give us time, only the president can authorize us to bomb American soil! Asset is on station!"

"One of you in my paw with more smoke. We need that screen up again!"

I raced back to the troops, and Sam swapped positions with Steve to take over the tactical field care. Something that I could see in his head he was much better trained for. He could have acted as a nurse in a surgical ward or for an anesthesiologist if it came down to it. He didn't have to keep at it by himself for long. Already the number of first responders piling up on city streets nearby were growing swiftly. Attracted and repelled both by the unusual size of the conflict even amongst the other civic convulsions the city was undergoing. The local law enforcement wanting nothing to do with a battle that involved military grade weapons and instead hid behind other buildings while keeping firefighters and paramedics back.

A course of action that might have a great deal with the fact that a pair of .50 Cal machine guns had been tasked with spraying the area that the most police had congregated with bullets. To occupy themselves in the meantime, they were busy dealing with the bystanders being killed and wounded. By the time they got to us, I didn't know how many resources they would have to spare. These ex-military traitors really didn't give a shit anymore.

That was when we saw through Star Fire's eyes that the driver of the tank had made a mistake. In its constant shifting back and forth to find new target angles and keep anyone from shooting it with something that might damage it, he had extended more than half of the barrel from beneath cover.

I sent her a thought to keep an eye on it and told Thomas to grab the dumpster beneath him. Picking up on my intention immediately, what followed next was every bit as epic and game changing as I'd hoped.

When the dumpster, overflowing with detritus from the shop next to it and not emptied since who knows when, slammed into the cannon barrel it buried it into the wall in front of it. Bending the single piece cold-rolled steel cannon at a thirty-degree angle. The commander, with his tank immobilized by the damage to it, had one last trick up his sleeve. Canisters ricochet away from the unseen turret, and soon the entire parking structure was enveloped in an impenetrable smoke far beyond what we could accomplish with our own grenades.

These men must have had pro-masks to breathe in that toxic cloud, because by the time it dissipated and the last of the attackers on the other side of the mall were rounded up, they were gone without a trace. The only survivors of the assault were caught streaming from the mall on its less exposed side by Children beyond an anger that I could reasonably control. Before the police streamed into the battlefield to take control, one woman had already been killed when a watching captor had swiped at her with a single paw after she turned to fling a rock at the Child's face. Snapping jaws and roars of unintelligible ultimatums followed that subdued the captives until they were placed under arrest.

Swinging my head to the pillars of smoke erupting from the mall, I sent an image of shovels scooping snow. Immediately, Children were shoveling snow using more garbage dumpsters to scrape it up from the blanketed parking lot and passing it to others holding their paws out through the skylights. Other children used their immensely long bodies to act as bridges to let the small and little ones of their families scurry, scale by scale, to the relative safety of the roof.

The number of casualties from the battle dragged us down badly. Every life lost by the violence of these nameless deserters dogging me until I found myself whining listlessly whenever my thoughts strayed from the task of helping to organize the first responders. There didn't seem to be any command and control anymore, and I stepped in to direct who was needed where. The city had reached its breaking point. I rightly feared that Boise wouldn't be alone in succumbing to disaster compounded by disaster.

More civilians arrived, drawn by the battle in their streets, but for once they were no longer hostile to us. Instead, discontent swirled in a cloud hovering over them as they murmured to each other uneasily at what had happened. Many knowing just what part they had to play in creating the atmosphere where these traitors could freely act.

All told, 16 Children and 103 Small Ones had died with nearly one hundred enemy combatant casualties, while our injured ran into the many hundreds. This time, there would be no help coming from the National Guard and the forces under Boyd's control. The airport, and all the critically important food, water, and medical supplies there, were burning.

At the mall, the fire was extinguished after frantic hours of effort by Children working inside and outside with the fire department. At one point even having to rip an exterior wall down by claw and tail to expose the hungry flames behind it to the truck mounted water cannons. By the time the flames were out, one entire side of the mall had collapsed, leaving the length of the central atrium exposed. The carefully cultivated garden at its center trampled into a mash of vegetation that was covered by the blood of the dead still guarding it.

The giant sentinel, Virginia, sat with a tired and desolate mien while watching the ones she was bound to protect paw through what little was left of their lives in the ruin. The humans and Children who had looked to her as a leader only to become homeless refugees for a second time. Only the cries of the children, human and Child alike, sheltering temporarily against the warmth of her long tail where they were being examined by teams of EMTs broke through her pathos to stir her to life once again.

Reporters and cameraman evaded the police trying to manage the huge scene to record the haunted looks of the survivors as they were disarmed and rounded up for rapid processing of identities. An effort to control that was doomed when family members nosed aside anyone that stood between them and their much smaller kin to warm and comfort them as they were grilled relentlessly on what occurred. The dozens of prisoners captured by the defenders and my forces were frog-marched into waiting vans but it seemed clear to me that we had missed out on the leaders of this operation. I learned, eavesdropping on the nearly suicidal officers who had charged in around the wreckage of the tank, that a manhole cover leading to a large storm drain had been opened. I asked them to settle, not wanting anymore to die in what was an undoubtedly booby-trapped escape passage.

Mournful cries erupted in the direction of the parking garage as Angry One's wings threw the structure into shadow when he lifted into the air with Frog Hop clutched tightly to his chest. Her head, hindquarters and tail dangling limply beneath, he headed northeast into the forests beyond the city with an honor guard I sent after him. His escort sobbing out the pain he would not express with terrible ululating keens.

The police did not even bother to interview any of us, I noted grimly. They simply collected all the firearms and weapons they could find with a cursory search and left without any further attempts to process the scene. Leaving a great many more weapons in addition to all the bodies that lay cooling in the sub-freezing temperatures of the day. The paramedics, overwhelmed, triaged everyone with my help and the help of anyone with training to stabilize them for transport. Not in their vehicles, but upon our backs. The ambulances where needed elsewhere. Able bodied survivors, temporarily disarmed by the police, did not have to search long to rearm themselves to levels that even surpassed what they had before the start of the battle.

I had all three operators peering from my shoulders when I led the column of shuffling survivors away from the smoldering wreckage of the mall. Hundreds of healthy Small Ones crowded closely by our feet and were guarded by armed members of their colony as we dejectedly moved through the city to where my wife, children, and brother awaited us at the hospital. Which was already running overcapacity even with the additional assets of all the expansions in the parking lot. It was the only thing I could think of left to do.

By the time we got back, the propaganda campaign against us was in full swing.

Channel after channel, relayed to me by young inquisitive eyes, told me all that I needed to know. Careful editing and digital sorcery had rendered conflicts in cities across the country and world as unprovoked attacks by towering dragons. Attacks that had only been thwarted by the iron-willed defense of countless innocents from marauding aliens with citizen armies. Shadowy spokesmen put out statements proclaiming this was the future that awaited all of humanity. This was punishment for being less than pure. A purity that must be reclaimed from governments and societies who had grown weak.

Left ominously unstated was just what this 'purity' entailed for humanity. It hadn't escaped my notice that all the people attacking us had been homogenous in their groups. One man, wearing an old OCP uniform, had that blasted purity symbol on one shoulder and a swastika on the other. Just as I'd thought, the most fanatically racist and xenophobic of society had found a new rallying cry and formed the heart of this movement. Which would only get worse as millions more lost hope in the violent contortions that society was being thrown into by the collapse of the fossil fueled world.

Against the tide of this psychological operation, this devastating broadside of disinformation, interviews with government authorities were powerless. Lies spread on the internet and social media like wildfire. Outrageous accounts that couldn't have anything to do with reality. Supposed quotes from the alien masterminds. Firebrands whipping themselves and their audiences into furies on their syndicated talk shows and cable television news shows. Telling them the governments couldn't be trusted because it wasn't their party in power, or their demographic being represented. That these aliens were all a pretext to trample their right to life and liberty.

Children of the Egg such as General Boyd were shown on local news channels but disregarded or vilified on the national networks. One particularly spiteful editing had dubbed the sounds of the Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park completely over the gravelly tones of a female regional director at FEMA. Making her into nothing more than a beast who roared mindlessly at the camera despite the cloth sash she wore around her neck with her name, title, and the agency she represented printed in bold letters.

Some news shows questioned the footage being provided and its context by providing interviews from witnesses and amateur video that often contradicted the more polished video recordings. Others asked no questions and ran it as is with breathless commentary designed to enrage and instigate. I saw video from Boise on one national news network that had me replaying in my head what I had witnessed just yesterday to make sure what I had seen was what had actually happened. I saw my self in one scene calling for others to stop. But without the translation and the context of the situation and my body language any other human viewer would merely see a creature from their nightmares. I was looming over the camera with my head extended low on the length of my neck facing the camera with my tail battering the wall of the building I was being shot at. The video had been cut and spliced out of order to change the appearance of who attacked who.

In the video of me, my mouth had been opened wide to show all those teeth and snout as saliva flew with the rising pitch of the roar and squeaking series of flutings that came from my throat. I knew that humans heard nothing but a primal blast of sound that engaged parts of their minds that they had long thought they had evolved past the need for. How terrified they were as shudders ran down their spines in the presence of a predator and intelligence so alien to their experiences. None knew how my fin, scale, and wing display was meant to convey my earnest plea for others to just listen to me. None could see through the video the plaintive begging for peace being generated by the mind behind all those teeth. How badly the awe-inspiring creature that I was just wanted everyone to stop.

No, I looked through other's eyes and saw an alien large enough to swallow an adult man whole. I saw terror on four legs each many times the height of the humans around him.

Around it. Many of the people we just fought could not think me as anything other than an it. Something to be owned or exploited. Something that couldn't possibly be an equal to a human being.

I thought I had hit rock bottom before. But I had found then that there were still undiscovered depths into the hole in which I was plunging. Cartwheeling out of control into the abyss with my wings strapped against my back, and only half of what should have been whole. Let's not forget the little detail that I wasn't entirely who I should be and still had to soldier on regardless of not knowing how to cope with any of this emotionally.

When Alex had a moment to check on me, he found me with my self as I pressed against her to feel our children safe inside ourselves. Forming one side of an enormous pile, along with Bryan, Dan, and Martin, around Savannah and where she and her mate had carefully settled their eggs into a mound of clothing taken from the mall.

They had moved their precious treasure in their own mouths across the city in my first glimpse at the instinctive (much to their confusion) way of transporting the unhatched children. It had been my work alone to soothe them and the others from becoming aggressive the whole way. Connecting their parents to their children and everyone else had been the key, although whenever the eggs became alarmed so did network. There had been no shortage of things for them to be alarmed by when their mother could not be calmed and saw danger in every movement.

Not that I could blame her. Savannah had even snorted in surprise when Virginia had drawn her and Martin both tighter against her large body. A comforting motion that had instead nearly sent her into an uncontrollable panic.

Now, I had them in a new network all their own with the other unborn. Feral emotions played back and forth from one egg to the other in nests of cloth and flesh alike. Sparks of consciousness danced across the untamed light of Savannah's children as the first hints of their senses of self began to emerge. It would have been fascinating if I wasn't so torn by the thoughts of the world that they were fated to become a part of.

"It's okay buddy. Just let it out."

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I don't know about that, but it is certainly faster to be shown than told. Knowing how precious my brother's time was, with his medical training, I showed him how I felt.

How much anger had been projected at me and the others. How I saw myself on the news, how I saw us on the news. The dissonance of knowing that massive creature that I saw really was me. Wondering if we could ever be anything other than murderous aliens unwittingly involved in the plot that had the potential of killing billions. I was under no illusion what the cost of being denied the crude oil that was the lifeblood of our society was going to be. The focus of those soldiers in eliminating us and the Small Ones with us. How scared they truly were, and how they masked it with impotent rage and their methodical deconstruction of anyone that didn't look like them into animals not worth keeping alive.

Most of all, I conveyed to him our fear of what the world was becoming. If it was ever going to be safe again for all the children to come. Human and Child. The last thing I showed him, one of the many reasons for the tears that ran from my eyes, were the grieving just a tail's length away howling their pain into the sky. The morgue had long since been filled, and now the bodies were laid out in rows of black bags. The Children had been carefully arranged curled about themselves to minimize the space their bodies occupied and then covered with vast tarps 'resourced' from home improvement stores. All the fallen had at least one living Child there to mourn their deaths. Some hadn't even known the deceased but still felt bound to cry their passing into the evening sky.

It was terrible.

It was beautiful.

It made the news.

"The Death Song" Jonah called it.

...