All right, my readers are hounding me have shit start hitting the fan, so here goes. I'm going to have to progress time a bit faster than average, so YOU'VE BEEN WARNED! I'm sorry for being late, but I had a massive virus on my machine, and I didn't dare do anything that could jeopardize other computers. I did get rid of it relatively quickly considering the size of it, but it completely ruined what I had going.
It had been two weeks since Angel had picked up twelve Hives on long range sensors. All had been relatively quiet, and Dr. Wier was celebrating the fact that she wasn't having to deal with so much paperwork as before. No-body had been going off-world, and the Varden's takeover of the capital city went well. ARTs one and two had helped to deal with that situation, and Murtagh had finally turned himself in.
It was slowly getting quieter around Atlantis. Rumors were gaining strength that the eldest two of the winged children were 'together', and Wier was starting to believe it.
Max was slowly loosening up, as she began to realize that Q's gift was truly working out. The Flock wasn't in danger, and Angel's synaptic activity had not increased since the day that Dr. Beckett showed them the 81 on his screen.
Fang was slowly getting closer to Max, and he figured that within another two or three months, they would be walking down the isle. These were his thoughts, though he dared not speak them out loud.
Gazzy and Iggy had produced a ninety minute movie together, and it was good enough that the first person they had in to watch the footage thought that it was a professionally produced movie. It had been released to the population of Atlantis two days later and after many high fives the boys celebrated by flinging water balloons on a rather angry blue dragon...
Nudge was doing well with her fashion sketching ability, but had very nearly gotten into trouble with Saphira when she sketched Eragon with wings and signed the sketch. The only thing that saved the budding fashionita was the fact that Eragon decided that he actually liked the idea, and after some serious thinking about it, Saphira realized that she had been wishing that her Rider would fly on his own sometimes.
Ajax had left with Eragon, who, in his official capacity as leader of the Riders, had expressed intentions of delivering the full Rider's tutelage to Ajax and Murtagh, as well as their dragons.
Angel was helping McKay to figure out most of the stuff found in various areas of the city, as well as helping to explore what little of the city was left.
McKay was in his element, ordering his minions around, but his orders seemed to bounce right off of Angel unless she thought it was a good idea, like getting out of the way of something falling, but she was like a cat for the most part. She'd clearly learned well from her leader.
Sheppard was reading War and Peace, or hitting golf balls into the water, or wandering through the city, each in it's turn, whenever he felt like it. His 'paper-shoving', as he liked to call it, was caught up, so he rested for the time being.
Teyla practiced with her rods, finding Max and Fang to be very good students, and in the times when she was not teaching, she was meditating.
Ronon, however, was another story.
"Come in." Dr Wier said, not looking up from her tablet computer.
The Setedan walked in, and sat down on one of the chairs in front of Wier's desk.
Dr. Wier put her computer aside. "Now, what was it you wanted, Ronon?" she asked with just a hint of a smile.
"We need to start sending teams off-world again." Ronon rumbled quietly.
"Really?" The corners of her mouth pulled upwards slightly. "And who do you suggest I send through the 'gate?"
"Anyone, so long as I'm one of them. Look, it's safe here. I haven't had a thing to do except spar, and nobody wants to spar with me much anymore." Ronon stated this as if he didn't know why this was happening. Dr. Wier grinned inwardly.
"Very well, I will send Sheppard's team off-world. I suppose we do need information about the outside galaxy." Dr. Wier turned back to her tablet in a clear dismissal.
Ronon knew the gesture too well, and knowing that nothing more would be said, left. He liked the way Dr. Wier didn't beat about the bush very much, but he admired Sheppard for his scything sarcasm when under pressure. He could count on Sheppard finding something to say to infuriate his captors, and Sheppard usually came through. He sighed, then went for a run on his typical course, where he would run with Sheppard in the mornings.
As he pounded along his course, a girl, about 17 years old, came out of one of the side halls, and joined him on his run, accompanied by a black clad boy about the same age.
"What do you want?" he rumbled, not stopping.
"We wanted to go off-world with you next time you go through the 'gate." Max replied.
Ronon briefly wondered at how she knew he was planning to go off-world but kept his question to himself. He knew that the bird kids, or Flock, as they liked to be called, were unique.
"I don't know if Sheppard would approve the idea of children on a mission." Ronon said. He really didn't want them along for the ride.
"Well then. We'll just have to ask him, won't we?" Max retorted smugly. She swerved into a side corridor, Fang following closely. Ronon pounded on.
Ajax:
"Go to the glade I showed you yesterday, and sit until you find no more." Eragon said to Ajax. "Later, you will be practicing your swordplay with Fredric. Go." As Ajax left, Eragon began working with Murtagh.
Not finding sense in what Eragon had said, Ajax attempted to pick it apart, word by word, and decipher the meaning.
Eventually, he gave up, and directing his mental energies into a ray, began a sweep with a slowly lengthening radius. After the third rotation, he began brushing against the minds of Eragon and Murtagh, as well as the dragons that were conversing nearby. His link with Amaranth had been left 'open' so that thoughts, images, and sounds filtered through the link. Saphira had decided that it was time for a 'riderless' aerial combat practice, and Ajax felt Amaranth drawing from his mind, looking for tactics that could give her an edge.
Top Gun had been stuck in his mind for the past few days, and he presented her with moving images from the movie. He felt her thankfulness, then she withdrew somewhat, focusing more on the aerial combat practice.
As soon as the dragons were at a suitable level, Saphira began the exercise.
Amaranth's immediate response was to invert, and dive for the forest floor, forcing Saphira and Thorn to follow her down. Due to their greater bulk, she was able to reverse directions, and begin ascending almost at once, something they could not. They shot past her, and she beat her wings hard to chase after Thorn. Murtagh had not removed the ornate travel saddle from Thorn's back, and Amaranth latched on to this, deciding what to do with her quarry.
Thorn gave a signal to Saphira, and she slid down, looking for Amaranth. Finding the green speck on Thorn's saddle, she laughed before preparing to capture the tiny dragon. Amaranth looked up in time to see a flying blue mountain stretching it's claws towards her position. She squeaked out a protest before abandoning her perch on Thorn's saddle. Saphira stopped descending towards Thorn, and he dipped somewhat, so as to clear Saphira's range.
Amaranth refused to be deterred from her target, so she landed on Thorn's snout, and used her claws to latch on to the red dragon. She was facing the same way as he was, so her tail was constantly twitching in his field of vision. He roared with frustration, his fire would not affect her, and moving his head so that he could use his leg to pry her off would have proven to be disastrous.
Digging in a little more, so as to assure a firm grip, Amaranth placed her from paw over Thorn's nostrils. The red dragon couldn't do anything, and he felt quite silly to be in this position, beaten by a hatchling.
"Dead." She proclaimed.
Thorn grunted, but descended. Amaranth released her grip, and searched for Saphira. Through her still-open link with Ajax, she found Saphira directly above her, and descending fast. Opting for fighter pilot style tactics, she spun clockwise in a straight dive for the ground. A moment later, she pulled out of the dive, going in the opposite direction to Saphira.
Saphira knew she would need some serious flying to outdo the hatchling due to the size difference.
On the ground, Thorn looked sadly at his rider.
"I am sorry to have shamed you by allowing myself to be defeated by that hatchling." He said.
Murtagh responded out loud. "There's noting to be sorry for. She beat you because she had the advantage in the air. If she was as big as you are, you'd have gotten her without a problem."
"HATCHLING!" Saphira yelled out.
"Yes, mistress?" Amaranth asked politely.
If Saphira was human, a headdesk would have been appropriate. She was not a human, though, but a dragon, and as a proud representative of her race, she would deal with this in her own way. Once, twice, three times she violently shook her head, but the impudent dragon on her snout held on, twitching her tail in Saphira's eyes. Amaranth moved for the 'kill', and Eragon looked on in concern.
"You know, if it was completely up to me, I would be up there right now, helping her." Eragon said, looking at the combatants.
"Would you get yourself up here Eragon?" Saphira said, annoyed to no end. Her voice was enough to convince Eragon, and he really didn't want to get her angry. "This, this hatchling" here she stressed the word. "Is becoming more and more of a pain." Eragon jumped into the air, and moved to land on Saphira to pry off the tiny dragoness. Before he could though, Amaranth had counted to three with her paws over Saphira's nostrils.
"Dead." she stated simply. A moment later, she released Saphira, and dove off and to the side. Saphira moved to pursue, but Eragon's hand on her shoulder gave her pause.
"Eragon?" her voice was deceptively and dangerously quiet. "Should I take this to mean that you are siding with her?"
"Actually, yes I am. She did win the exercise fairly, did she not? The fact that your pride was damaged in the process is not something you should punish her for." Eragon responded.
"Dammit Eragon, I wish you wouldn't use that elven logic on me like that, it makes a situation like this even less palatable."
"Now you look here. You are a dragon, yes? Dragons are a proud and noble race, yes? To punish Amaranth for merely wounding your pride by following your instructions is neither a noble nor a proud action." Eragon responded. Through his link, he felt her subside.
"Fine, but I'll never attempt to engage her in aerial combat ever again." Saphira muttered, thoroughly annoyed. Eragon let it slide, unwilling to antagonize her further.
On the ground, Murtagh was talking with Thorn, and both were wondering why he had wings. In all their previous encounters, Eragon had not shown even the slightest hint of having wings.
In the clearing of trees, Ajax's eyes shot open, and he charged out of the thick ring of trees that had been specifically grown by Eragon for the purposes of meditation.
"Eragon? You know those human predator things that you and your cousin think you exterminated?" Ajax paused to take a breath. "I was 'sweeping', and I found no less than eight psychic blanks. I've discovered that due to the nature of the blanks, it's possible to detect something there, kind of like the same method that McKay used to detect cloaked ships. They were poorly cloaked, and while we couldn't see them, we couldn't see anything behind them either. It's the same with these buggers. They were about halfway between me and the limits of my range. The way I found them was through the energy halos around them from everything behind and around them, but I couldn't quite pick them up."
"I see. Well, can you pinpoint them?" Eragon asked, unsettled by the presence of these beasts once again.
"Yeah, they are grouped together towards the south, and moving directly away from us." Ajax paused, thinking. Before he had noticed them, his continuous sweep was picking up Lady Nasuada on each pass.
"Oh, Schitt. Lady Nasuada could be their target, and when they find that she's untouchable, they'll just take the people nearby. This could have been a trap set by Galbatorix before he died."
"Well, I don't want those monstrosities feasting on anybody." Eragon stated his right hand gripping the hilt of his sword.
"Grab your weapons, we're taking those things down."
Murtagh grabbed Zar'roc from his gear, and Eragon once more felt a pang from Murtagh's betrayal earlier. Even though it was behind him, and he had a sword of his very own, it still was unsettling to see Murtagh with a weapon that he had once called his own.
Ajax picked up his weapons, but decided to bundle them together and chucked them to the side, where few, if any people would notice them.
Eragon looked questioningly at Ajax. "Why are you not taking your weapons?"
"I'm gonna make like a Harrier jump jet, and scoot." Ajax replied. "They won't know what hit 'em."
"A what?"
"Harrier jump jet. It's a warplane with exceptional aerobatic abilities." So saying, Ajax changed to the aircraft in question, and with an increase to the screaming whistle that seemed to come with the aircraft, lifted off from the ground before beginning to go forwards at a rapidly increasing rate of speed.
As the aircraft shot towards the targets, Eragon drew his bow, and released a total of six arrows towards the vile creatures that were moving toward the city.
A bright spot of flame appeared under the wing of the screaming craft, and a moment later, the seventh Razac was killed by an explosion at his back. At this point, the eighth was aware of his situation, and began spewing his poisonous breath towards the aircraft.
"Yeah, right, 'cause breathing against an aircraft has always done so much against them before." Ajax thought sarcastically. He slowed to a stop, hovering in place, then changed to an Apache Longbow helicopter. The weapon mounted under the nose twitched, and the eighth monster was felled by a drawn out stream of gunfire.
Answers to Readers:
Master of the Blood Wolves: The 'Mirror, mirror' reference can just go be a plot hole and DIE. As for the shit…I'm working on it, but I still need to poke a stick into the hornet's nest before I can have real shit. And as for your comment than 'NOTHING beats a Nova cannon', you would be quite wrong about that. Nothing beats a Novalith cannon. Mwa.
To Avenging Angels, thanks again for making this chapter better than before. I'm not sure what I would do without the help you've given to this story. I'm not old enough to 'boost' myself yet, so…never mind.