As Phoebe can tell you, I fought this one tooth and nail. I don't know why it was such a pain to write, but it was.

Thankfully, Phoebe helped me walk through the problem.

Fact #121: "The vast majority of people toss around the term 'feral' without really understanding what it means when it applies to dragons. A feral dragon is not the same as a feral dog, yet it is similar enough to cause confusion. Do I know what it means? No. As far as I've traveled and as many people as I've seen, I still haven't the foggiest of a solid definition of what it means to be feral. However, I will say that I met a man in Japan whose face had weathered with the passing of years, voice had softened and faded, eyes had gone milky with blindness, who told me that to witness a dragon go feral was a mesmerizing sight."

Woodward, J. (2007) The Minds of Dragons. London: Penguin.

Part II

Kono leaned against the wall next to one of the windows. The department office was a small upstairs space that overlooked a street and a park in the small town of Durant. Five-0's office space was equivalent to a mansion compared to this. She'd counted five people who actually worked here, plus the Sheriff's friend, and then a cell in the corner.

Don't get her wrong, it was a nice place. The wood gave it a warm feeling and it smelled of coffee. It was quiet, too. But the deputies all shared the same space with small desks and there was more of a deficiency in the technology department than to what she was accustomed.

"Do you guys really police all of Hawaii?"

She tore her eyes from the woodsy decorations and over to one of the deputies sitting at a desk. The name on her uniform was Moretti, but she'd heard the Sheriff call her Vic.

"Yeah," she answered. "We usually handle the big crimes and local law enforcement handles the rest."

"What kind of trouble can tropical islands really get into?" the other deputy leaning against the wall across the room asked.

Kono definitely remembered his name. Branch Connally.

"You'd be surprised," Chin said from where he was sitting across from the third deputy. Ferguson, or the Ferg, or something like that.

"Oh yeah? Try me," Vic said.

Kono glanced at Chin and Cath. They really didn't have anything better to do until Steve and Danny were done negotiating terms and clearing their credentials with the Sheriff.

"High speed chase ending with a wrecked car and a head in a box," she said, picking what she considered a tamer crime from some of her first months on the taskforce.

"Cheyenne kids kidnapped by the Dog Soldier, only to turn up later completely unharmed," Ferguson said, sounding a bit excited.

Kono grinned. She liked his enthusiasm.

"Dead woman crashes a plane into the water. Leads us to an animal smuggling ring."

"Bear baited to kill a tranquilized and tied up parolee," Branch tossed in.

Kono pulled a face. "What happened to the bear?"

"Walt managed to get it relocated," Vic said. Under her breath she added, "After using it to threaten the guy responsible for the whole thing…."

"Sounds like something Steve would do," Cath said.

"Your boss a little bit of a loose cannon, too?" Branch asked.

Kono shrugged. "Depends on your definition. He plays it all by ear."

"Being a Navy SEAL, he usually acts first and goes by instinct," Cath said. She tilted back in her seat across from Vic and looked at the closed door to the Sheriff's office.

"Much to Danny's chagrin," Chin said

"So this inmate you guys are tracking, what's his story?" Ferguson asked.

"His name is Duncan Hughes. Convicted arsonist and murderer. Went on a spree in the fall of 2012 in Honolulu. Finally got him subdued and sent to the Ranch," Chin said. He sighed. "We thought he'd have a longer stay in there than he did."

"Apparently he barbequed another dragon in his escape," Kono said.

Vic's jaw hung open in disbelief and disgust. "Gee, it sure would've been nice if the Warden had called to let us know there was a fricking fire breathing nutcase loose in our county."

"We didn't even know we had crossed your county line," Cath said. "The helicopter Hughes caught a lift on went down a couple miles outside of your jurisdiction."

"Why didn't you call us? You guys really think just the five of you could bring this guy in?" Branch questioned.

Kono ran her fingers through the underside of her hair. She'd been wondering the same thing. She knew Steve didn't like having to coordinate with outside forces, but Danny was right. Hughes wasn't to be underestimated. He'd mopped the floor with them on their home turf, and now they might have very well been on his without backup.

However, they might've had backup now.

The door to the Sheriff's office opened. Steve and Danny filtered out, leaving the Sheriff and his friend alone behind a once again closed door.

"How'd that go?" Cath asked.

Danny held his hands up, fingers twitching with his usual nervous energy. "Well, we finally got the Warden from the Ranch on the phone to backup our story, and Steve may or may not have threatened to get our Governor on the phone."

Kono quirked a brow her boss. "And?"

"And, in a strange turn of events, Longmire persuaded Steve to not drag in politics," Danny explain, though the way he said it made it sound like the Sheriff hadn't been as cordial as that.

"Hate to break it to you, but your Governor wouldn't hold any sway here, anyway," Branch said.

"Never mind that Walt will do the exact opposite of what a political figure tells him to do," Vic added.

The door to the office opened again.

Kono looked the Sheriff up and down. To her, he just screamed old western town lawman. The jeans, the belt, the boots, the shirt, the hat, the holster, the badge. His face looked like he had weathered some hard times, and she didn't have any issue imagining him standing up to Steve and telling him to put his immunity and means where the sun don't shine.

"Vic, call Mathias," he said. "Let him know what's going on."

"I'm guessing that means you're going to help us locate Hughes, huh?" Danny asked.

"I don't want you stomping through my county without some supervision," Longmire said plainly. "But, someone convinced me that it's better to hunt quarry with people who know who they're hunting."

Kono assumed that the someone he was talking about was his friend Henry. He seemed to be a calm and collected man, vaguely reminding her of her cousin.

Steve, with his arms crossed and his shoulders pulled back, made a minute expression that she read as him coming to terms with having had someone push back.

Danny glanced at him and then back at the Sheriff. "And it's better to work with someone who knows the land better than we do. The plains of Wyoming are not the jungles of Oahu nor the streets of Newark."

For all his tendency to argue and gripe, Kono admired Danny's peacekeeping skills. He was always the first one to try and talk down a suspect or prevent a clash between Five-0 and HPD or SWAT.

"You hear back from your ME yet about the body at the campsite?" she asked.

Longmire settled his hands on his hips. "No, but I don't think it's going to matter. His name is Kellan Heaton. His buddies came into town early this morning and reported that Heaton and their friend Whitley got into a fight yesterday. Whitley pushed him, he fell, cracked his head on a rock. They panicked."

"Whitley bolted into the trees. Two of them stayed behind to watch the campsite and make sure he didn't double back for his truck," Branch said.

"When we got out there, however, everyone was gone," Henry finished.

Steve narrowed his eyes. "There weren't any vehicles there."

"And Blue was still there," Longmire said. "They wouldn't have left Heaton's dog."

"Unless they left in a hurry," Danny said.

"I know I would leave in a hurry if I saw a dragon come out of the river at me," Vic said.

"There were tracks leading from the river, through the campsite, and east into the trees," Henry said, tapping the map where the campsite was and the direction the tracks led off. "Big claws. Odd gait."

"Sounds like our boy," Kono said.

"Tell Mathias to keep an eye out for a 2008 red Dodge Ram as well as Whitley, Lopez, and Grainger," Longmire added to Vic. He turned to the map. "Depending on what road they took, they could be out on the reservation."

"Or across the state line by now," Vic muttered as she picked up her phone and the file scattered before her.

Branch eyed Steve and stepped away from the wall toward him. "What's your guy's endgame?"

Steve shared a look with his team. He leveled Branch with a steady glare. "Chaos."

Mathias exhaled heavily.

Longmire's problems always seemed to spill over onto his reservation. He'd prefer it if the Sheriff's problems remained his problems. And this, this wasn't a problem he wanted on his land.

The truck had rolled off the dirt road into the arroyo. Not so far of a distance that it wasn't survivable, proven by the fact that no one was in the cab, but it would have been quite the ride.

Turning on his heel, he examined the tire tracks on the road.

He walked further up.

Here. The tracks skidded off to the left-hand side. Then they swerved right, then sharply left again off the road.

He looked down at the truck again, more specifically at the passenger side. The door was dented in. It could have happened when it rolled, and that's what he would have thought if it were not for the scores through the siding. Not made by rocks or brush.

They were talon marks.

It didn't take him long to piece it together. Something big had come down the hill out of the trees, nailed the truck in the passenger door, the driver overcorrected and rolled it.

But where were they now?

He looked beyond the wrecked truck to where the trees picked up lower down the hill. The line back into Longmire's jurisdiction was down there a mile away. There were no visible tracks coming back up onto the road, leading him to believe the people had fled downhill.

He traced the tree line further and further down until it flattened out into a level plain.

He cursed and grabbed his radio.

"Longmire, this is Mathias," he said, watching with a sinking feeling as white wisps curled above the crest of a lower hill. "I've got your truck here. No bodies. And I think I've found your Wyvern."

The breeze shifted and washed the scent of smoke over him.

To be continued...

Next time on "Dragons", the fire spreads and a beast lurks within, waiting, pacing, jaws of flame and breath of sulphur waiting for prey to wander too close.

Thank you for reading, reviewing, faving, and following!

And, please keep Australia in your minds with their bushfires.