A/N: Hi again! Thank you very much for reviewing. In the first two hours or so I got two reviews. That's awesome, and thanks for liking it so far!

Okay, not to overuse this, but I'm going to use another chapter quote here:

"The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together."

- Erma Bombeck

Okay, so here is Chapter 1!

Farther away, in another world altogether, a mother was laughing and playing with her two young children. The mother, rather than being part of a species with a good reputation, was a saber. But probably the only vegitarian, deep-thinking, and childishly fun saber in the entire valley.

"Mommy!"

Adrian turned around, her dark brown eyes searching for her youngest son. "Yeah?" she asked, wondering why he would give himself up so quickly at Hide-and-Seek. Maybe he was bored. Three-year-old boys often got bored easily.

"Can we play another game?" he asked meekly.

Before she could answer her little boy, her other, not-so-little boy yelled out "Aw, come on! I was winning!"

She turned towards the berry bush behind her, rolling her eyes. "You couldn't think of a better place to hide?" she reprimanded. The boy came out, spitting out berries and pulling leaves out of his fur.

"Hey, you only counted to ten, Mom. And you wouldn't have expected something this obvious, anyway." he argued back. His odd, but somewhat true logic made her smile.

Buck, named after a famous friend of his father's the rest of the family had never met, was all of the childish mischieviousness in Adrian, with some qualities from his rambunctious uncles thrown in. His fur, when it wasn't full of leaves or mud, was a dark sun-catching gold, just like Adrian's. His oddly long fur on the top of his head had been tied back with a palm leaf (of course not native to the area) since birth.

And also since his birth, nine years ago, he had had an eye 'problem'. Both of them looked fine at first glance, electric blue and always charged with excitement. But if anyone looked closer at them for more than a second, they could see the left eye (Buck's left, their right) was duller, and coated over with a greyish glaze. As imagined, he couldn't see much out of it at all. But it never bothered him, as long as no one mentioned it.

"Yeah, you would have been searching for me all night." he bragged, trying to get his mom to laugh. Instead, she went over and tried to pick more leaves out of his fur.

"Just hold still, you're getting a bunch of berry juice in it." she said, as he tried to pull away.

"Mom, I can get it on my own. Why do you have to clean me up?"

"I'm your mother, it's my job to make you feel uncomfortable." Adrian joked, tearing out a small bur. "There you go. Torture over." Looking over her shoulder, she called out "What did you say again, Jordan?"

"Can we play another game?" her younger boy said, jumping out from behind a nearby tree. "Heroes and Monsters?"

Jordan, although very small, was the spitting image of his father. True, his head was a little smaller, and he had a meek but curious nature inherited from neither of his parents. But still, he had Diego's fur and forest-green eyes, and could catch on to new things very quickly.

"Heroes and Monsters? Sure, why not? It's your favorite game." Adrian beamed at her young son, and even Buck gave a smile. Not his regular sarcastic smile, which he seemed to have been born with, but a genuine I'm-glad-my-little-brother's-awesome smile.

"Yay!" Jordan jumped again, and ran all the way up to his mom. "I get to be the hero!"

"Always." Adrian smiled, and turned to Buck for encouragement. "Well, he did call dibs." he shrugged. "I'll be the monster, then."

"But Momma can't be the damsel." Jordan pointed out. "We need Sissy."

"Right, right." Adrian's seemingly permanent smile around her young son turned to a questioning sulk. Jordan, for all his enthusiasm, didn't notice. But Buck's right eye was always quick.

"Yeah, well, she blew Jordan and you off one two many times." he reasoned. "Just go on without her. Get Peaches to do it, or something."

Adrian sighed, and looked farther off to the river. "Wait...I think I see her." she observed.

Buck squinted, trying to see her. "Is she testing out that river goo again?"

"It's called peat moss." Adrian corrected, still annoyed. "But she doesn't need to blow off her family for it...again." Her fun childlike glow turned to angry maternal discipline in an instant. "I'm going to get her. We all need to talk. Now." she seethed.

Buck swallowed, remembering the last time his mom had had a 'talk' with all of them. "Can I still get Peaches?" he squeaked unhelpfully.

Adrian set off, her feet stomping the ground like a herd of marching mammoths. "Just make something up with your brother until I get back." she told him, a bite in her voice. "And no, don't bring Peaches over. She won't want to watch the carnage."

Marina, watching the seemingly boring ebb and flow of the tide, dug her paw into the mucky peat moss at the shallow bottom. "I think a few more sifting tests ought to do it." she added to herself, gritting her teeth in preparation. Then, with an added force of muscle, she ripped the strands away from their mother colony.

"There." she breathed, bringing the fermented waste up to the top. She didn't care that it was seeping into her fur or that it smelled like dungbeetles. She'd finally get to prove that this stuff was useful. In a way.

"All right, now where's the sifter?" she mumbled, scrambling with her other paw for the spiderweb on the twig. Finally finding it, she brought it forward and began to scrape the moss off her paw onto it.

"Okay...this is it. Four days of theory and prep work, finally realized." she said in excitement, but with a twinge of anxiety. "I better be right."

She wiped the remaining brown goop onto the grass, and moved closer to examine the web. A bit of goop there, a few strands of fur from her hand...hopefully nothing noticeable...

There! What was that? She gasped and squinted closer, hoping for the best. A small shell of some sort...bluish-black. Sheathing out a couple of claws, she pried it away and turned it around.

"Okay, this might be something." she added to herself. She set her teeth again and very carefully pried a side of the shell open with a claw, not wanting to destroy the specimen.

Yes! There were about twelve or fourteen shriveled legs inside. This was a living creature! A bug, probably, frozen in time inside the moss. Maybe it was thousands, millions of years old. This proved everything!

"Yes, I knew it! Woo-hoo!" Marina screamed, losing her head for a brief few minutes as she laughed and stared wide-eyed at the bug. "It's all true! Dinosaurs and prehistoric insects...they're all preserved in mud! There could be millions of dinosaurs under my paws right now!"

Then, sticking the bug back on the web, her thoughts drifted off. "Maybe if I get some tools-" she breathed. "-I could dig something bigger up. A Velociraptor, a Plateosaurus...even a Tyrannasaurus, maybe!" Her wide, ambitious grin broke through as she looked into the stream of water at her crazed reflection. "Marina, honey, you've made a breakthrough! You're a legend!"

"Yeah, the Legend of the Truant Daughter."

Marina yelped and looked back, startled by the voice. Her mother was a few feet behind her, glaring.

"Oh, it's only you. But I have to tell you! I've just proven my theory-"

"Yes, and also mine." Adrian interrupted, growling. "You'd rather blow off your own little brother than step away from your 'work'."

Marina was startled, the glow of knowledge in her deep blue eyes going out. She couldn't speak. Then, knowing her mother wouldn't continue without a word, she pleaded. "But Mom, this is important to me."

"And I wish some other things were important to you, too." she shot back. "Come on, we need to talk."

Buck saw his mother and sister coming back. As Jordan pretended to jab at him a few more times, Buck called out to his scowling twin "Well, well, well. Cared to join us at last, Your Highness?"

"Just shut your trap." she growled, in her usual way. "I'm already in trouble."

"You bet." Adrian added, glowering down at her. Then, her expression turned to sadness. "Marina-"

"Look, Mom, I know you said I ought to spend more time with family." she explained, moving further away. "But today was different. I found out something no one else knows yet. It's a major breakthrough. I think you should be happy about it."

"Honey, I'm the one that taught you knowledge is important. And I would be happy, at any other time." Adrian sighed. "But your brother...he always depends on you, and you aren't there." She glanced over at Jordan, still caught up in his make-believe.

"Depends on me for what? He looks fine." Marina argued.

"He just wants you to play with him. Can't you do your research some other time?" Adrian's voice raised, at last catching the attention of little Jordan. "Sissy!" he yelled, smiling widely. "Yay, Sissy here to play!"

Marina smiled at him, then turned again to her mother. "Mom-"

"Look at him. It ought to be breaking your heart every time you go away."

"You're making this too dramatic. He's just playing a game."

Adrian narrowed her eyes. "So go play with him. How is that dramatic?"

Jordan stopped fighting off his brother. "What's wrong?" he asked innocently. "Sissy doesn't want to play?"

"Sissy's gonna play, honey, don't worry!" Adrian called over quickly. Then, she mumbled to her daughter "And I can't believe it's come to this, but Sissy's going to be grounded for the week if she doesn't."

Marina sighed sourly. "Fine." she added, fakely smiling. "Can't believe you don't even want to hear my discovery, though."

"If you're a good girl, I'll listen to it later on." Adrian negotiated. With that bit of reason thrown her way, Marina dropped the attitude. "Okay." she agreed. Then, she called over to Jordan and Buck "So, what are we playing?"

"Heroes and Monsters." Buck answered. "I'd give you the obvious role, but I already called dibs."

"You can be the damsel!" Jordan cheered. Marina raised her eyebrows curiously.

"Is that a problem?" Buck asked her.

"No. But, why couldn't Mommy be the damsel?" she asked Jordan.

"'Cause she's the storyteller. When you're Mommy's age, you can be the storyteller, too." Buck said for him. Marina, not knowing what else to throw at him for fodder, stuck out her tongue.

"I thought we settled this." Adrian said over her shoulder in a sing-songy exasperated voice. Marina turned her head back to face her.

"I just can't play a damsel-in-distress, Mom." she argued. "It's derragatory. The male chauvanists-"

"It's-just-a-game!" Adrian hissed out.

"A pointless game. And I think Jordan can find something more constructive to do with his childhood than go around slaying imaginary monsters and pretending he's a little hero, don't you? You constantly encourage his ego. Why?"

Adrian was struck speechless. She didn't want this to be a bigger issue than it already was, but Marina was just throwing fuel onto a fire. Buck, sensing the shock, broke the silence.

"Yeah. Maybe he could take up magic tricks, and cut off your head." he shot at her, giving Marina his sarcastic smile she always hated. She in turn, said nothing, only because she was waiting for her mom to catch her breath and see the logic behind her words.

Adrian swallowed, and forced a dry, hurt question onto her. "So...you're saying I'm a bad mother."

This wasn't going the way Marina predicted. "What? No-"

"Yes. You think that childhood is stupid, and that Jordan's not facing the real world. And that the sooner he realizes all his dreams aren't real and that the world is a cruel place, he'll be better off? That's what you're saying here."

"Maybe he could join me on one of my projects. Gain some knowledge." Marina offered. "That's all I mean."

Adrian turned away, thinking of some rebuttle. She didn't want Jordan's whole day to be ruined. "Yeah." she decided, facing her. "I guess he'll have to. Because from now on, he's never leaving your side. Buck isn't, either."

Buck, hearing this bit in the coversation, yelled "What?" at the exact time Marina did. Adrian smiled.

"That's right. If you won't stay near your family on your own, I'll make you stay. You'll do everything together with them from now on, even if I have to make you. You can still do your projects and such, but they have to be a part of your life now."

"But Mom, Jordan I can tolerate. But Buck?" Marina questioned.

"Yeah, why punish me?" Buck whined.

"Play!" Jordan yelled.

"In a moment." Adrian said to her youngest son first. "Be patient, honey. Yes, Marina, you and Buck, too. Buck, you may spend time with your family more than her-" she glanced towards Marina, then back again. "-but you've been on my list one too many times, mister. I've already talked to Crash and Eddie about your 'escapades' together, and I think even one stinkbomb calls for some punishment."

"Yeah, bring this up now. I'm suddenly the enemy." Buck muttered sarcastically. "Those turtles were asking for it."

"And so are you. You and Marina constantly fight, as I'm sure all brothers and sisters do. But, to tell you the honest truth, I'm sick of it. Really sick of it. As I'm sure everyone else is, although they're a lot nicer about it than I am. So, I think if you spend more time together-"

"We'll fight more." Marina finished.

"No. If you spend more time togther, you'll see that fighting is stupid, because you're always going to disagree on some things. And maybe you'll even start to find the things you have in common." Adrian's resonable routine was starting to wear her out, and she stared at the ground with a big sigh. "Like getting on my nerves 24/7." she finished.

There was a silent pause. Marina and Buck exchanged worried glances, wondering if she would go off again. Then, without a hint of fear, Buck mumbled to no one in particular "Jeez, talk about a tiger mom."

Adrian raised her eyes to him. They expected her to yell again, but instead she smiled. "You bet, buster." she added toughly. Turning back to Jordan, she said sweetly "Okay, honey, Sissy and Bro-Bro can play now."

A cry of "Hooray!" followed from the small cub. The dark fury went out of her eyes. "And better yet; you can be the storyteller, too!" she added. "Mommy needs to sit this round out."

As Adrian started walking back through the clearing. Marina and Buck looked at each other again.

"You really set her off, huh?" Buck commented.

"I don't want to talk about it. Let's just be nice for Jordan, okay?"

"Sure. Maybe I'll use some of Mom's screaming for my monster act." Buck joked.

Marina, in spite of their mutual animosity, gave a small smile. "Yeah. But she's right about you, you know. You need to stop with the juvenile antics."

"Hey, I can understand why it's bugging her. But one slingshot and stupid pun aren't the end of the world." He walked over to join their little brother. "Besides, I got an example to set. Jordan here needs to know the facts of life."

"Well, just simmer down." Marina tried to reason. Which normally never worked, but one day she hoped there would be a breakthrough. "We don't want to get Mom mad the rest of the day. All that yelling's bad for her you-know-what."

Buck turned his eyes to the sky, trying to figure out what she meant. "Her throat?" he questioned.

"No." She made an eye motion towards Jordan, whispering so he wouldn't hear much. "The pregnancy. The baby."