She was holding Ailurosa in her arms, her warm, furry body curled up against her as they lay in the bed together. They were crying, and Crevan was with them in bed, but she couldn't see him anywhere. She only had the knowledge he was there, because she could hear his sobs, which she had become so familiar with when Ailurosa had died.

"You didn't expect me to stay forever, did you?" Ailurosa sobbed into her mother's shoulder. "I love him, and he loves me."

"Of course you're leaving," Phoenix said, although that wasn't how she felt at all. She felt Crevan's body now, against her back, his paws wrapping around her shoulders as they had when Ailurosa had died. She didn't understand why they were leaving. Why did they have to leave? There was no reason for anything to change. Look, she wanted to say, there is even enough room in my bed for you both, so there is no reason to leave. But all her mouth would say is "Of course you're leaving."

Then she alone in the kitchen, her front and back cold from the sudden loss of body heat. Aries stood in front of her, a stretched out 15 year old, his horns too big for his head, and his head too big for his body, and his legs too long for his torso. His eyes were red with anger, and his head was lowered dangerously. Oh, I remember this happening, thought a part of Phoenix's mind, this was right before he lost his virginity. The teenager began to run at her, and she moved out of the way like a matador.

Then he was calm, standing up and smiling, becoming a different person. She knew instantly he'd slept with a girl, she didn't know who, though she could guess. It was as if all of the testosterone that was making him so angry for the past three years had dissipated with the introduction of a very adult activity that she felt he was nowhere near adult enough for.

"You didn't think you could stop me, did you?" he said, his face in a void smile. "You can't expect me to stay here forever."

She shook her head, and even though her mind wanted to say something else, her mouth said, "Of course you're leaving."

"There is nothing you can offer me here, Mother," he said. "You are old. You are weak. You are not even woman enough to accept a man who offers you whatever you ask for." The room about her began to fade into a fine, white mist, almost the same color as Aries' wool. "You aren't even woman enough to ask for anything. You are a statue, like one of your gymnastics trophies, frozen in place. How could you ever expect me to stay here?"

"I didn't…" she stammered. "I didn't think…"

"Are you surprised that Ailurosa left us?" Aries said, his vacant smile replaced by the red eyes of earlier. He pointed one of his thick fingers at her. "She left us because of you!"

"No!" Phoenix sat up in her bed, her heart thumping, sweat on her brow. The air around her was chilly, she could see her breath in pale light of the moon shining in the window. She shook her head to get the remaining fuzziness of the bad dream out of it, then laid back down on her pillow with a soft, "thmmp" and let out a deep sigh. This was the third night in a row she'd had a similar nightmare. Nightmares were a part of her sleep cycle, they ran in waves. She would have a stretch of them, and then a stretch of peaceful sleep. The conversation she had with Chategris earlier shook her up the more she thought about it. She had not seriously considered partnering up with anyone, except for Chategris himself, and she had no desire to do so. She had no desire to go out and find someone. She was fine, with her warehouse, with her garden, with her clinics, with her children.

It was the last thought, the dearest of all of her loves, that wrenched guilt up from up the bottom of her being and pulled at her heart strings. Had they considered those in front of them? She knew that while she knew most of their secrets and their doings, she didn't know all of them. She shouldn't know all of them, she told herself, even though she wanted to know. Were they fine with their warehouse, with their garden, with their crime-fighting, with her? Did they want to find a partner, someone to spend the rest of their lives with, lives that would long outlast hers?

Why wouldn't they? She derided herself. Did they not have the same desires that everyone else had? Just because they were mutants didn't mean they didn't want families of their own, or their own spaces, or their own lives.

She hadn't thought about this for a long time. Ailurosa was the only one who had come close to having a stable relationship, and she was so young. Subconsciously she had made the assumption that any pairing that might occur between her children and someone else would automatically be brought here to the warehouse, not having her children go away. Perhaps it was Crevan's long visit after Ailurosa's death, and his occasional visits, still, just to say hello or bring a gift he found that he thought she'd enjoy, that had cemented that thought in her mind. But none of her children had ever "brought someone home."

She knew Arcos was not in a relationship, though if he engaged in relations when he wasn't in one, she didn't know. He had gotten annoyed at all the girls he'd engaged in emotionally, and the relationships didn't last very long. He hadn't met someone whom he connected with, and Phoenix could certainly empathize with that.

Aries' relationships did not last long either, when he had them, though for a totally different reason. There was a reason why non-mutated rams have the reputation they do, and that particular trait seemed to have transferred to her middle child. She knew he had a string of women behind him, not an uncommon occurrence within the Grey Cats. She wished he used more discretion when he picked his string, but his pickings weren't too good from the pool he had to choose from anyway. He had been with Myra for quite for a while, perhaps he was in an actual relationship with her. She had spoken with Myra on several occasions, healed her on even more, and tied to be as kind to her as she tried to be with everyone else. She seemed alright, if manipulative. However, she wasn't any more manipulative than many of the other women in the Grey Cats, so Phoenix had never held that against her. But Aries had never brought her to the warehouse. Did he not plan on bringing his woman to the warehouse? Was his plan to join his woman where she was?

Medusa had never indicated that had engaged in any sort of activity with anyone, Phoenix was at a total loss as to what was going on with her daughter. She had a strong suspicion that something was going on with Razz, but she wasn't sure what, and she wasn't sure at what emotional, or physical, level. Unlike her other three, she had never come to her with questions about liking someone, or someone liking her. Perhaps her brothers had prepped her, so she didn't feel the need to come to her mother. Perhaps the need hasn't presented itself, she consoled herself.

She slept fitfully for the rest of the night, her mind running with questions when she was awake. Would they get 'married' when they decided to partner up with someone, or just be with them and that be it? How, exactly could they get married? How would they have a family if they wanted one? In all of her years, she'd never met a pregnant mutant, so she expected that something with the genetics made it not possible to reproduce. Would they join the Grey Cats, be gang members under Chategris' command? She couldn't see any of them doing that, not even Aires, but doubt crept into her heart.

She had not had "a talk" with them for years, the last one being an intimate one with Aires and Arcos about the workings of female parts and their male equivalents. But at breakfast that morning, herbed-oatmeal bowls in front of each of them, she said, "You know, that if you ever want to bring someone home, or to live with us or something, you can, right?"

The three of them looked at her as if she had crabs coming out of her nostrils.

OoOoOo

The four of them pulled up the dead and dying annuals in her medicinal garden, scattering the seeds they left on their flower heads to overwinter and sprout in the spring. The pulled up material went into the compost pile, and anything woody went into the pile that was going to carry up to the warehouse to burn. They already started fires in the evenings, the weather was getting very chilly, and they had to prepare her perennial plants to survive the cold of the winter. Aires turned the compost pile with a salvaged pitchfork, mixing in the browns and the greens to get a good heat going to break down the material.

It was a gray day, one of those days that threaten rain, but the rain never arrives. What little sun there was blocked by a cloud, and Phoenix looked up to see if the rain was actually keeping its promise.

It wasn't a cloud that blocked the sun. It was…she didn't know what it was. It was a great metal blimpy-thing. But she recognized the sickening-pink color that the lights on it strobed.

"Maaammmmaaa," Medusa drawled out, pointing up.

"I see it, Curly Que," she called, pointing at the great, round, ship that descended slowly toward the ground somewhere in the middle of New York City.

They watched it awed silence, it was huge, and imposing. Slowly, little parts of it began to separate from it, and then shoot down toward the ground. All of them jumped

Medusa was up the rope in a flash, her brothers and mother not far behind. By the time Phoenix had gotten up to the window, Medusa had turned on the TV and Arcos was dialing into a station on the radio, both in an attempt to get some information. Arcos found the news first, and Medusa turned off the television.

"The Technodrome is releasing, what looks like big pink and gray bubbles. They're pods. The pods are everywhere, Ted," said the female reporter, "and…and robots are coming out of them. They snatching people up!" The transmission stopped and became static.

"We have to get to the cargo bay," Aries cried

"No," Phoenix said, "we need to go into the city. Those are alien…pods!

Medusa was down the stairs before Aires could answer, Arcos right behind her. They ran to the back of the warehouse, and jumped in the fancy car. It was much faster than the crime fighting car. With Medusa behind the wheel, they sped out of the garage bay at the bottom of the warehouse, and toward the center of the city.

People were in pandemonium. They ran through the streets screaming, smoke muddied the air, making it hard to see things clearly. Robot-riding Kraang came out of the pods that had landed, and began grabbing the first living thing they could grab, humans, dogs, cats, and threw them in the pod. The pods closed, and began to ascend to the ship in the sky. The robots then began shooting.

Medusa stopped the car, it skidded to the side, and parked perfectly in an unoccupied space at the sidewalk. "Oh yeah," she bragged, as she twisted and jumped out of the sunroof.

"Where did you learn to do that?" Phoenix asked, climbing out of the door.

"I'm a natural," she called, before darting at the nearest Kraang and wrapping herself around it in a crushing embrace, while snapping her whip at one that aimed a gun at her and was preparing to shoot. It wrapped around its wrist, and a hard pull from her snapped off its hand, and sending its gun skittering across the asphalt. She released the one she was coiled around, it fell the ground, the Kraang inside not even visible with the deformation of the metal body. She darted to another one that had a large dog in its arms.

Arcos and Aries swung their weapons with precision, neither of them lifting the sledgehammer or axe above their heads. They made a sweeping motion with each one, connecting with a Kraang in the robots more often than not. Pink sludge from the Kraangs' splattered over the young mutants, and was slung about them like silly string.

Phoenix whipped out her slingshot, loaded it with two bullets, and let them fly. They whizzed through the air, hitting a Kraang nestled in the stomach of a robot. The robot fell forward. She turned to another one, it had picked up a little girl and was carrying her to a pod. She put her slingshot away, and leapt at it with her knife drawn. She landed on its back, and stabbed at its head. Her hand jarred as it made contact with the metal and only made a small dent. It let go of the girl with only one hand, and reached over its head and grabbed her collar. It flipped her over, and held her off the ground, continuing toward the pod.

The little girl began to scream louder than she had before. Phoenix couldn't reach the Kraang with her arms. She tried to kick it, but her legs were too short. The pod came closer and closer, and she began to scream along with the little girl. "Help!"

All three of her children looked in her direction, but each was engaged in their own fight. The Kraangbot threw both her and the little girl into the pod, and the pink tinged top began to close. Arcos swung his sledgehammer with such force that three of the Kraang went flying, and he ran on all fours, his hammer in his mouth, toward the pod. The Kraang that had grabbed Phoenix and the little girl stood in his way, but he jumped over it, to get to the pod. The pod closed just as he reached it.

"Mama!" Arcos cried, his paws against the transparent top of the pod. It began to lift off, and he looked around frantically trying to stop it. Then he was grabbed from behind by the Kraangbot he'd jumped.

He flexed his arms, breaking the arms off of the Kraangbot. He then turned, and with his paw closed, punched the Kraang in the torso. The robot went tumbling over the asphalt, and crashed into a garbage can, still.

He looked up and saw the pod containing his mother pick up speed, and then disappear in the swarm of other pods in the sky.

He turned back to the few Kraang that were left, there were three that were not immediately occupied by his brother and sister. With a deafening roar, his eyes clouding with fury, he drew his sledgehammer and began banging the nearest Kraang to pieces. The head flew off, the arms were knocked off, one of the legs was bent horribly before his sledgehammer squished the pink brain-like blob inside its torso.

With a backward swing, he tore the arm off of another one. Twisting, with a heft he decapitated it, and then as it fell on its back, he stepped on the Kraang inside of it.

The third one made a squeaking nose and turned to run away. Arcos leapt after it, landing on all fours, and with his mouth gripped onto its back on both sides. He swung his head back and forth voraciously, and the Kraang on the inside fell out. It began to skitter away, its tentacles waving as it did. Arcos elevated his hammer, and brought it down hard on the Kraang, which smooshed flat on the concrete sidewalk.

He turned to help his brother and sister, but they had defeated their opponents, and were staring at him with their mouths hanging open. "What?" he snarled.

"You did that in, like, three seconds…" Aries said quietly.

"What do we do now?" Medusa asked, her shocked expression turning concerning.

Arcos looked up at the Technodrome and then at a landing set of pods farther away. "We go and stop as many of those pods as we can," he said.