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Nine hours of driving was needed to get to the United States border. On the top of that, the kids were beginning to get on both Matt and Eric's nerves with the constant whining and the occasional crying. What seemed to have been promised to be a potentially smooth getaway quickly became a living nightmare for most of the ride. Fortunately for everyone, the kids fell asleep around three hours in, allowing Eric to ask the question on his mind.

"Say, I was wondering", Eric wondered. "Why are you both so oblivious to the fact that I'm a dragon? It seems like everyone's hating me and trying to track me down, threatening to kill me and whatnot, but not you guys. Why is that?"

"Well, I don't know", the mother - or Julia - replied with an edge to her voice. "Dragons have been myths for an awful long time, so hearing they actually turned out to exist really doesn't surprise me very much. Personally, I don't mind them. Everyone thinks they'll try to overpower us like the TFRAPs tried to do a decade ago, but I think they'd probably turn out to be mostly like you. They just want to blend in with society, but we won't let them. I guess, I just don't find that very fair from your point of view."

They approached Dryden, Ontario about four and a half hours into the drive, which was one of the only three cities they'd encounter. After a bit of discussion over security, they decided to stop at a hydrogen gas station to fill up and stretch their muscles. Luckily, the van was quite efficient for its age, so they did not have to spend very much money for the remainder of their trip.

The city of Dryden - or what little they had seen of it - was one of the only two cities in the Kenora district of Ontario. The first thing they noticed when approaching it was a giant, house-size moose, about 20 feet high. It was obviously artificial, but from afar, Eric found it to be quite realistic. The city itself had the smallest population for a city in Ontario, and it showed when no one seemed to have been outside at all, beside the fact it was 11:30. The worker in the gas station seemed to have been the only one awake, but he soon fell asleep on the counter shortly after they left.

They covered about another hour's worth of distance before Xavier - who had earlier informed everyone of being a bear TFR - began to show signs of fatigue. A bit of a debate soon broke out on the subject of what they should have done next; Xavier and Matt both suggested they drive, but Julia wanted to stop for the night. After a few minutes, they all concluded that Matt driving would have put them all at risk of capture, and Xavier was much too tired to continue to drive. They found a small dirt road, probably reserved for ATVs, where they drove for a few dozen yards before coming to a stop. With the kids already asleep, and their parents sitting on adjustable seats, there was very little room available for the two others. But, after insisting they were okay, Matt and Eric walked a little further into the woods in order to sleep. They soon lied on the ground, shifting into their mid-forms, and found a nice position in seconds. However, before Eric could fall asleep, Matt tried to get something straightened out.

"Eric, can I ask you a quick question?", Matt asked, looking at the sky.

"Yeah, sure, what's up?"

"Why did you tell them everything back at the house? You completely blew our cover by revealing our information and plans - why would you take such a risk?"

Eric had never thought of it that way, and was not sure how to answer. "I don't know. I saw something in them I can't really explain. Even after Xavier began to shift, I knew he only wanted to protect his family. When you know they don't even know half the story, you might as well try and tell them, right?"

"Yeah, but Eric, if they didn't trust us, we would have gotten ourselves in some pretty serious shit, you know that? We wouldn't be able to use the car, since they knew what model it was, and we wouldn't be able to continue our path towards Angle Inlet because, well, you revealed that as well. You can't just do things like that."

"Look, okay?", Eric stated, frustrated. "I don't know why I did it. I just had this unexplainable feeling, like some sort of sixth sense, urging me to say it. And look at where it got us! We've got a free ride across the province, with the driver helping us get to the United States border! What are you complaining about?"

"I'm not complaining Eric. Just, don't attempt things like that when the risk is too high. Luckily for us, it turned out okay, but, just, don't do it again, okay?"

"Alright, alright..." He watched Matt turn around, his ears drooping aside, clearly tired of the day. He decided to try and do the same, but after a few minutes, Matt drifted to sleep, while Eric could not. The only thing he could think of was what they were getting into. Once they would cross the border, they would lack a vehicle to drive, so how would they get to Fargo? Eric hoped Matt had this all figured out, because he knew he would not have known what to do next. Ultimately, after ten minutes, he grew tired laying there, his tail grazing the grass. He looked over to see if Matt was still up.

"Hey, Matt, you mind if I went for a fly? I really can't sleep."

"Huh...?", Matt asked, clearly in a daze from his sleep. "Oh, uh, yeah. Just don't go too far and try to remember where we are."

"Sure, thanks."

Eric got up and noticed Matt had already fallen asleep. He unfolded his wings, and felt a random surge of energy flow through him. In light of this, he immediately bent his knees and jumped as high as he could, to continue the climb with his gravity-defying wing flaps. He went as high as he could, enough to see as far away in the distance as his eyes allowed. He then stopped, hovering, and looked around. For some reason, he did not find the scenery beautiful, but repetitive. He wondered if he could climb higher, in order to see if there was any difference in perception. Flapping his wings again, he climbed, and clocked 400 meters into the sky. "Meh, not enough.", Eric thought. He climbed higher, and was about a kilometer into the sky. That was more like it. At airspace level, he saw what people would normally have seen in an airplane, looking down from above.

He did not do anything after that. He simply looked around the area, watching trees for ten whole minutes. It was still boring to him. Although he loved to be a dragon, the world had no place for him and his wings; therefore, there was nothing else to do other than fly around, at night, in the middle of the woods. He sighed, stopped flapping his wings completely, and allowed himself to drop from the sky. The speed increased at an alarming rate, and the ground was racing quickly toward him, but in his view, it was fun. He began to feel alive again, like the first time he flew a few days prior. To him, it was like skydiving, only he did not have a parachute, and he did not require a plane; it was just him and his wings. When he saw the ground perfectly, he began to pull up from the descent. This was complicated, and he did not have very much experience in doing it. He gradually increased the angle of his wings, and felt the decent slowing down, but the acceleration augmented, as well as his sight of the ground. Frightened, he kept pulling up, but got carried away. Suddenly, when he went from 75° to 50° in mere seconds, he heard a "snap".

He snarled in pain as his lower wing muscle emitted a sharp pain, which ran down his whole back and arm. The forces of the earth's gravity were much too powerful for his new and untrained wings, which were not used to folding at such an angle in such a small period of time. He managed to land just fine, but his wing got very sore, very quickly, and he needed to sit down. He bent it to the front in order to inspect it correctly; no dislocated bones, and no broken tissue, just a strained muscle. Relieved, he let out a sigh, before realizing he'd have to walk all the way back.

However, he had no clue where he was.

...

Xavier and Julia were still awake. They had planned to wake Matt and Eric later on in the night at about five or six o'clock in the morning to get a nice start on the trip. Julia was not quite happy allowing them to sleep in the forest, but Xavier insisted they would be able to survive against anything they would have to face. Unlike his wife, he was still not convinced the boys were as "nice" as they portrayed themselves to be. They did not want to talk very much since the kids were asleep, but still managed to conjure a good conversation.

"So, what are we doing tomorrow?", Xavier asked, ready to fall asleep at any time. "Winnipeg or home? Because, I could really use a nice day off, but if you really want to go, we can go."

"Well, if you really want a day off, we could visit some other time. I just thought it would be a good time for the kids."

"I'm sure it would have." There was a short moment of silence. "Honey, do you really think Eric and Matt are telling the truth about all this? It seems fishy to me."

Julia sighed and turned her head away. "Xavier, don't start this again. We've already discussed this. Whether they're telling the truth or not, it's too late now. We're already half way there, so we might as well finish the drive."

"I know, but you don't consider them a threat at all?"

"No. Eric was definitely not lying. The way Matt glanced at him at home after he revealed everything was genuine. He wanted our help, and we're going to give it to them."

"I still think they're up to something."

"Well, that's your opinion. We're finishing the drive." There was another slight pause as she turned back toward her husband. "Do you think they'll make it?"

Xavier turned back around, yawned, and tried to get in a good position to sleep. "Not a chance."

...

His wing was still very sore from the descent, and he quickly got worried over the outcome of his search for the van. Everything seemed similar to him, and there was no way of knowing where to go, without knowing whether he would have gotten closer or farther from his destination. Earlier, he tried to fly up once more to get another view of the site, but the minute he flapped his wings, his nerves sent thousands of pain signals across his body, causing him to drop right back down.

Unfortunately for him, his dragon form had everything, except for an enhanced sense of smell. Of course, it was much better than his human's, but it still was not enough to be of any significant use to him. If it had been strong enough, he could have tried to pick up Matt's smell from afar and follow it; however, there were so many different scents to choose from, so there was no guarantee he would have chosen the correct one to follow.

After ten minutes of simply wondering what to do, he started to worry. "What if I get stuck here forever?", he thought. "What if they can't find me? Why didn't I listen to Matt? Why did I have to carelessly dive like that?" His worry soon began to turn into frustration. He knew no one would hear it, but he let out a large roar towards the sky - a cry for help. He knew it was stupid of him to do so, but he was not thinking straight. In fact, he soon realized he was slowly losing control of himself. He began to think much differently, a lot less intelligently. He started to slash trees with his claws, rampaging from side-to-side. He thought he was going crazy, and he had no plausible explanation for it. He had no clue what he was doing, what he should have been doing, or what should have been done. It was all becoming too much for him to handle. He held his head in his hands, as his mind gently slipped away from his grasp. Unbeknownst to him, it was being replaced by his dragon mind, who knew he had seen just about enough. There was a long pause as Eric dropped onto his knees, staring blankly at the ground.

Suddenly, his eyes began to emit a yellow glow, as the dragon took control. "Go..." It completely ignored its pain and leaped up into the air, flapping his wings as hard as he could, in order to gain as much altitude as fast as possible. "Ignore..." The pain was unrealistically agonizing, but the dragon did not show the slightest care. "Search..." He stayed high in the air at over 300 meters and scanned the area for a position he would recognize - the road. The dragon soon saw it, dropped down into the forest, landed and felt the scorching pain of his limb burn beneath his senses. Eric tried to take control again, but the dragon did not give in. It had complete control, and it simply wanted to get to safety. "Run..." He rushed in the direction of the off-road trail he had located earlier, his ears twitching around, scanning the area, and created a mental image of everything around him. All of a sudden, he heard a sound. The dragon stopped running immediately. "Hide..." It fled quietly to a very wide tree and hid as well as possible. "Listen..." He picked up another sound - footsteps. By the rhythm and weight of his steps, the dragon deducted it was a quadruped, and estimated it was fairly large. He also heard a few sniffles, which helped the dragon monitor its whereabouts. "Defend..." It began to emit a menacing, deep growl. The animal ceased its sniffing and instinctively growled back.

"Attack..." The dragon leaped out of its hiding place, jumping directly onto the animal. It knocked over the animal, which fought back the attack with its feet; however, the dragon was quick to counter-react with his own, eventually bringing the animal's movements to a complete halt. The dragon let out a booming and frightening roar before realizing what the attacked was - a wolf. "Safety..." The dragon quickly lost possession of the host body as the struggling Eric finally broke free. "It's Matt!", he yelled internally. But before Eric could speak, he received a swift punch in the snout from Matt's mid-form arm, as he quickly got up to get some ground. Eric recovered as quickly as he could, throwing his hands up in the air to surrender. Matt, quickly noticing this, shifted from his four-legged form into his human form, - which Eric mimicked - and began his rant.

"What the hell are you doing?! You're acting like a fucking animal!"

Eric felt remorse creep up on him. "I'm sorry. I don't know what happened..."

"I told you not to go too far! Do you have any idea how much I worried back there?! I spent over ten minutes trying to pick up your god damn scent, and when I finally do, I nearly get mauled!"

"It's not my fault! I was flying, I misjudged my landing, and I injured myself. I freaked out and then... then... I... I don't know what happened..."

Matt paused. "What do you mean you don't know what happened?"

"I don't know! I just lost control over everything!" Eric started to pace around, trying to understand what occurred to him. "All of a sudden nothing was making sense and I reacted to everything by instinct... It felt like I was taken over..."

Matt let this sink in for a second, before finally coming up with an answer. "Berserk mode."

"Berserk what?"

The wolf TFR shook his head, tired. "I'll explain it to you tomorrow. Let’s just go back to bed, alright?"

"Mm..."

Matt took his friend's shoulder by the hand and pushed him gently, toward the area Eric had been looking for the whole time. He had not wandered off very far after all; only around 50 yards separated his position with the van. His upper arm was still sore, thanks to the acts of his dragon form, which made it feel two times worse. They both shifted again at their grounds, but this time Eric felt the fatigue hit him. Little did he know he would be waking up in a mere four hours, which he would definitely need the next day; the problems were only beginning.