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Another day, another few hours of trudging through classes. We have incredible power and yet we're made to live, act and think exactly the same as humans. I closed my eyes and flew on, landing on the Academy grounds and shifting back to my human form. I shuddered at the feeling of powerlessness and confinement that came with it and went inside to my mythology class.

“...And that's why beastlings are no different than humans." I rolled my eyes, grateful to be at the back of the lecture hall where he wouldn't notice.

“Mister Walker." Dammit. “I do hope you're paying attention."

“To the bullshit propaganda you're paid to make us believe? Not a chance." I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes, making sure he knew I wasn't buying this 'there's nothing special about us' spiel.

“It. Is. The truth. Humans and Anima are absolutely the same. There is nothing to separate one from the other."

“Oh really? When's the last time a human turned into a fox? How 'bout a snake? A dragon?" I stood up and grabbed my bag, so sick of hearing this shit I couldn't stand it. “Never."

“We are more than humans. We have this gift for a reason. And you have the gall to say we're nothing special? That there's nothing even remotely unique about us? Yes, I admit, we have our flaws just like humans. The difference is we don't kill each other because we don't like someone's skin color." I marched out of the room, leaving a stunned silence in my wake as I perched myself on my usual oak limb on campus. It wasn't long before a familiar voice disturbed my attempt to meditate, however.

“Adam, a word please."

I sighed in resigned irritation and slid off the branch, standing next to the Dean with my hands in my pockets and an irritated scowl. “If you're gonna tell me I need to listen to their 'Anima are humans' bullshit I'm wrecking the campus."

Dean Winchester nodded. “Frankly I agree with you, but being so public about it is only going to get you and a lot of others hurt. Your teacher has already made a formal report with the Department of Restraint about you. They're going to be monitoring you because of this."

“Let 'em." I growled and closed my eyes, forcing my true dragonic nature into the background of my mind. “So why are we forced to listen to how we're nothing but humans when they consider us less than animals?"

“We don't have a choice. There are too many of them." His tone was one of profound sorrow at our predicament and near enslavement. “All we can do is bide our time. Someday things will change, hopefully in your lifetime."

My true personality had calmed somewhat so I let it rise through myself before I responded. “Someday will never arrive if the humans have their way. They'll kill us before they treat us as equals."

I shifted to my true shape and took my bag in my talons but was stopped by a hand on my foreleg. “There's a small place in the Appalachian Mountains you can go. It's monitored but there's a great deal more emphasis on our inner selves there."

I nodded, thanking the Dean for the information. His response was a fatherly smile and to pull out his phone. “My pleasure. I'll inform them to expect you."

I took off after getting the location and general direction from Dean Winchester and flew off, returning to my home deep in the forest of the northern Apps several hundred miles from that wretched academy. I dumped my bag in the abandoned bunker I'd claimed as a home and flew south and somewhat west; two more hours flight put me in sight of several other airborne anima. I slowed my approach so as not to spook them and hovered over the boundary between campus and wilderness. One of them, a gryphon reminiscent of a great horned owl and a lynx, adjusted course to meet me. They chose to hold their position as well and speak in the air. “You new here?"

I nodded. “Call me Ahzidal. I prefer it to my human name." The name fit me well; given the flame-like color and appearance of my scales and my bitterness and resentment of humanity a name meaning bitter destroyer was rather apt, or would be soon enough.

The gryphoness nodded, giving me the avian equivalent of a smile as her companions began paying us more attention. “I'll try to remember, but it might take me a few times. I'm Samantha by the way, but you can call me Sam. Everyone here does. D'you mind if I ask what your given name is?"

She was staring now, her eyes were hardly blinking anymore and so I humored her, finding the attention both pleasing and a touch unsettling. “Adam. Do you mind if we continue introductions on the ground? I've flown several hundred miles to be here from the big academy out in Cleveland."

She gawked at me, almost falling from the sky when she forgot to keep her wings moving from shock. “In one day?! You flew from Cleveland to here in one day?!"

I nodded, my wings feeling heavier with every beat, and I allowed some of my fatigue to color my tone of voice. “Caught a strong air current, and frankly I'm tired. May we continue this on the ground?"

She nodded and circled around, gliding down to a clearing large enough for me to land in. I followed her approach, pulling up at the last second and using my wings to all but stop myself in midair as I touched down with a loud thud. I was no lightweight; my last health evaluation put me at just under a ton and fifty feet long. I stepped out of the way as the other flyers landed and crowded in around me, and despite myself I felt my deep fear of being trapped rising quickly. “Back away, now. You don't want to crowd in on me; it isn't safe."

They did as I recommended, and Samantha asked why I'd say such a thing. Feeling that I owed them an explanation, I divulged a simplified account of how I became so easily overwhelmed. “My father was harsh; and took a sadistic delight in shoving me into the smallest spaces he could fit me into. Ever since I've had extreme claustrophobia; even being in a crowd is enough to set off a panic response."

They expressed sympathy, as I expected, but then a dragoness, serpentine with feathered wings approached me and asked me to look into her eyes. I did as she requested and felt her mind within my own, as well as her voice. <Relax, friend. I wish only to know why Dean Winchester sent you to me. May I look?>

She had done no more than touch my mind, and she knew Dean winchester had pointed me to this place. I saw no harm in allowing her access to the day's memories and mentally agreed. <Proceed. May I ask your name?>

<Call me Ophelia> With that introduction she looked at my memories of the day, from the campus housing the academy provided for us to my speech in class to my conversation with the dean. She glanced over my flight, making a point to avoid seeing my home's exact location, and lingered slightly over my conversation with Samantha before withdrawing from my mind. Her tongue flicked as her eyes lost an unearthly light I'd not noticed prior and she nodded.

“Welcome to Howling Peak Refuge, Ahzidal. I take it you'd prefer to live here than fly hundreds of miles every day?"

I nodded, shifting my wings a bit to try to ease some of the soreness in them. “Yes. Is there room to accomodate my true self or will I need to revert to human form for that?"

She motioned with a wing to what appeared to be an entrance tunnel set into the mountainside, of a design reminiscent of a military bunker. “Will that suffice? It is large enough to accommodate your preferred shape and many more; it was built as an underground aircraft hangar. You'll need to hunt unless you shift to your other shape for mealtimes."

I dipped my head in a bow, her gracious offer most welcome after so long being forced to live in my human shape. “That will be more than adequate, so long as you don't mind some interior decorating. And I've no problems hunting; it's how I prefer to feed myself."

That's when trouble arrived in a government vehicle. Trouble proved itself to be a rather attractive woman, just over five and a half feet tall, striking blue eyes, sun-kissed skin, and raven hair as dark as her outfit.

“You're Adam Walker?" Her tone quite clearly said she was only in my presence because she had been given no alternative. Despite this, I couldn't help but find her attractive, not the least due to her... generous assets.

“Yes. I'd ask you call me by my preferred name but your tone clearly says you don't care enough to listen. I assume you're here to make sure I follow the government's rules." It was a statement of fact instead of a question; my true assumption was that she was there to find some petty excuse to have me sent to the prison inside the arctic circle.

“Officially, yeah, I'm your babysitter." I wasn't sure whether to growl at her snide comment or chuckle at the ridiculous image that flashed through my mind at her phrasing. “Also officially I'm here as a liaison to the Oakridge School. Unofficially I'm stuck out here because my boss doesn't wanna deal with me. Nothing against any of you, I just hate being outside the city."

She sighed and pulled a recording device out of her briefcase, which matched the color of her semi-casual outfit - black again. She seemed to have a fetish for it. “I'm gonna have to record a description of you, dragon. Lay down if you want, just don't go anywhere."

I gladly went along with her suggestion, laying down as she started describing me in her recorder. “This is Agent Reyes, D.O.R. rep at the Oakridge School and monitor of Adam Walker. My charge is currently in his animal form, appearance is as follows. He is roughly fifty feet long nose to tail, twelve feet to his shoulder and twenty to his eyes. His body is covered in iridescent orange plate-like scales, and two prominent horns project from the back of his head. His eyes are a brilliant red color, somewhere between blood red and ruby red, and two of the fangs in the top jaw project over his lower jaw, roughly where a dog's canines would be."

I laid my head on my foreclaws as she continued, fatigue taking its toll upon me as she continued to speak. “He carries himself as a quadruped and has bat-like wings, with a wingspan I am unable to determine at the present time."

I spoke at this point to provide information she required. “My wingspan is roughly a hundred and thirty feet, and I am quite agile in the air."

She continued speaking but did acknowledge me with a nod. “If Mister Walker was unclear on this recording he has informed me he has an approximate wingspan of one hundred and thirty feet with a high degree of maneuverability. Continuing with my description his legs are strongly muscled, somewhat slender but very muscular. They remind me of a shirtless picture of Bruce Lee I once saw, as an example. His torso is barrel-chested, presumably to accommodate the muscles that power his wings as well as a large pair of lungs, and his tail is densely scaled and is tipped with a pair of narrow fins attached to the last... I would estimate three feet of his tail. Descriptions of his capabilities will be given once they have been observed."

She turned off the recorder and turned to Ophelia, presumably the one in charge here. “Where do I need to set up?"

“This way." She slithered off toward the bunker, Agent Reyes in tow as the other students stared, both at them and at me.

“Dude, what'd you do to get the Restrainers on your case?"

I growled in irritation, not bothering to identify the speaker as I fought to keep my eyes from drifting shut. “I made it abundantly clear I won't put up with their 'anima are humans' bullshit. Anyone know how to open the hangar?"

“Allow me, Ahzidal." A stunning, sapphire blue dragoness parted the crowd, and as I looked into her eyes I recognized her instantly.

“Serana? Little sister?" She smiled and nodded, her deep, sapphire blue scales sparkling in the sunlight as she nuzzled me fondly.

“It's good to see you big brother. I missed you." I stood, my weariness forgotten, and rested my head and neck across hers, folding a wing across her back in a fond, draconic hug.

“I'm glad you're alright. Damn you're cold!" I released her quickly, not enjoying the sensation of near-frostbite in my wing membranes. She laughed and smiled at me, embracing me as I had her with a, thankfully, much warmer body temperature.

“I learned about that after I got dumped into foster care. Most of the foster 'parents' they put me with gave a damn about me, just the money they could get, and some actually enjoyed tormenting me because I'm Anima. It was the last asshole I got stuck with that pushed me over the edge. I turned him into an ice sculpture in a fit of rage before I'd even known what I was doing."

I felt sick as she spoke to me. I was supposed to be her brother, her protector, and I couldn't help her. I slipped out of her embrace and turned away, walking towards the forest around the school. “Ahzidal? Where are you going?"

“I'm supposed to be your brother. I was supposed to be there for you, to look out for you but I wasn't. I couldn't. You deserve better than me, little sister. I've no right to speak to you after my failure." I started to continue walking but was stopped, quite literally in my tracks, when my sister froze my talons to the earth.

She approached me from behind, stopping in front of me so we could speak face to face. The tears I saw in the corners of her eyes broke my heart, and strengthened my resolve to fight for her at any cost. “You didn't fail me, Ahzidal. They kept you; I don't know why, but they kept you and got rid of me. You had no control over that. I know you wanted to be there for me when we were growing up, but it just didn't happen that way and there's no point holding it against yourself."

She pressed her head under my chin in a comforting gesture, to both of us. It helped some, but my fires had ignited and nothing save her absolute safety would quench them. “Please, don't do this to yourself. It hurts me seeing you like this."

I sighed, heating my talons to break free of her ice before cooling them so as not to burn her with my embrace, with wing, talon and neck. “If I don't, I fear I'll fail you again. I know it hurts you, Serana, but I have have to do this to myself to prevent it from happening again. We cannot afford to forget our mistakes, lest we repeat them endlessly."

I felt her nod against me, and we just stood there, for how long I don't know, but when Ophelia returned we released each other as my handler cleared her throat. “Old girlfriend?"

I smiled, a wide, toothy smile full of the joy I felt at having my sister back in my life. “My sister, actually. Our parents, if you can call them that, kept me but abandoned her to the foster system."

Agent Reyes' eyes widened slightly, and her voice took a tone of interest as she addressed my sister. “Foster kid, really? I was one myself, had a rough time of it too. What was your number?"

My sister grinned, as if enjoying some inside joke I wasn't privy to. “I was a four to most. Six to the ones that hated Anima. You?"

It was Agent Reyes' turn to grin, clearly taking some sort of enjoyment from my sister's seemingly ambiguous admission. “I was a two, maybe a three to a couple of foster parents. I hate you had to go through that, but it sounds like you made the best of it."

My sister nodded, then imparted a tidbit she'd neglected to mention previously. “I did. And after I turned the last foster fuck into an ice sculpture I had a DOR handler of my own. They reassigned him when they sent you to my brother though, since we're both living here."

Right as she was about to reply Agent Reyes got a phone call, which struck me as odd given our location and the lack of civilization around us to provide signal coverage. A couple minutes later, she put her phone away and sighed. “Well, it seems I'm handler to both of you. Don't know how I'll monitor you when you're not together though."

I interjected, having grown tired of being left out of the conversation. “We'll figure something out. Do you have a room here Serana?"

She grinned and her eyes flashed bright for an instant, the ice pinning my other talons shattering with her unspoken command. “Yes, and it's in the bunker. Ophelia didn't know you were my brother when she roomed you with me; she just thought we would get along well."

I smiled and nodded, heading into the bunker to rest in the aircraft hangar. My sister followed me after crouching to let Agent Reyes onto her back, and once inside Agent Reyes went to the room she'd chosen to set herself up in and I laid down on a pulverized section of floor. I heard my sister sigh and I stood quickly, realizing it was where she slept. She giggled and laid down, using a wing to pull me down beside her. “I'm happy to share, big brother. Sleep well."

“And you, little sister. Thank you." My thanks was for everything, for her acceptance of me back into her life, for her forgiveness of my failure to defend her, for simply being alive. I laid my head on my talons, and as I felt her lay her head next to mine I sighed and smiled in contentment. All was as it should be, for now at least.