Review Responses:

UnidentifiedWhistlingObject - I'm glad you liked the music! That seems to be pretty hit or miss for some people.

Chapter 28: First Contact

Shuttle 4

Maple leaned against the cold metal wall of the shuttle, Reggie standing right next to her. She could hardly contain the excitement that had been bubbling up inside of her since they had set off to explore the great unknown. Reggie seemed excited too, though, to a noticeably lesser extent; partially due to him having done this for a bit longer than her, and partially because he hadn't been allowed to bring the Reggie-tron due to his...lack of expertise in operating it.

Xavier and Ricky both sat in the cockpit, Xavier tapping away on a device that looked like a large tablet bent in half, upbeat music playing from his smaller tablet device that Maple now knew was called a PDA. A strange name to be sure, but after hearing about all the crazy things one could do, she kinda wanted one for herself.

She sighed, and began pacing about the shuttle's main chamber, impatiently waiting for them to arrive at the next timeline. The walls towered above her, a switch near the rear wall of the room far too high for her to reach. The shuttle had very clearly been designed for dragons, and not tiny humans like herself.

"We're almost there guys, you ready?" she heard Ricky ask from the cockpit. The mountain dragon, or SkyWing (Reggie had been teaching her the names of all the different species of dragons) peeked back at the humans through the rectangular doorway leading to the front of the ship.

Reggie gave him a quick thumbs up, and the SkyWing turned his focus back to the task at hand, gripping a U-shaped doohickey as the shuttle burst out of the swirling blue vortex.

"So Rick, where in the world are we anyway? If we're even still on Earth, that is." Reggie asked.

"From the looks of it, we're just above Possibility!" the SkyWing said jovially. Xavier slammed his tablet device shut and stared out of the window, a skeptical, but hopeful look on his face.

"Wait, I need to see this!" Reggie said, rushing over to the cockpit. Maple followed after him, vaguely remembering that he lived in a town that went by that name. Ricky extended a talon down to the two, and lifted them up on top of the control panel.

"Holy flying fire snakes!" Maple exclaimed, pressing her face up against the glass of the cockpit as she stared out at the world spread out beneath her. Vast sandy deserts stretched off to her left, gradually transitioning into dry plains that spread out to the right, trees dotting the horizon. The sun glimmered in the sky, it's morning rays bathing the landscape in a golden glow.

Is this what it's like for dragons? she thought giddily. She could hardly take it all in at once, though her eyes eventually settled upon a tight cluster of buildings straight ahead of them.

"That's Possibility?" she heard Reggie ask, "Where's all the humongous skyscrapers?"

Maple didn't exactly understand what Reggie was talking about, though there was something odd about the city. The buildings looked far more advanced than anything from her own timeline, and a little more fancy than the ones in Moss Town, based on what little she'd seen of it from a couple supply runs she'd tagged along with.

The strange part, though, was their size. The buildings seemed way too small for dragons, even the largest of them. In fact, there didn't seem to be a single dragon in sight!

Suddenly, she spotted something rising up from one of the flat rooftops. At first, she thought it was a dragon, but as it neared, she realized that it had a round, metallic body, with a long thin tail, and a pair of rapidly spinning blades on the top that seemed to be lifting it into the air. It veered towards them, stopping a distance away and hovering in place.

"Uh, should we go down and say hi?" Ricky asked.

Xavier shrugged. "I don't know what else we should do? Might as well try and make a good first impression."

The SkyWing nodded, and pushed the doohickey forward, veering the shuttle down towards the city. Maple and Reggie had to stabilize themselves, nearly slipping off of the control panel as the craft rapidly descended.

As they grew closer, Maple suddenly realized that there were, in fact, no dragons in the city at all. Instead, it seemed to be entirely inhabited by humans. Hundreds of humans. Maple didn't know if she'd ever seen so many people in her life, all gathered together in a single settlement no less!

The shuttle slowly hovered over the city, the streets full of small vehicles resembling the one on the PDA Darkstalker had been listening to, all stopping in place as the ship passed overhead. People on the streets looked up at them, some quickly running away while others stood still, holding out little PDAs towards the craft.

"What is this place?" Reggie asked, staring down at the tall, narrow buildings below. "It looks a lot like home but...where are the dragons?"

Maple was speechless. She had not been expecting something like this, though, she was starting to think that she should expect the unexpected.

"Looks like a good spot to land over there." Xavier said, pointing out at a wide grassy field in the middle of the city. Trees dotted the small slice of lush landscape, a narrow artificial river running in a squiggly loop through it.

Ricky angled the shuttle down towards an open patch of grass with a bunch of white rectangles drawn onto it. A few nearby pedestrians ran away in terror as the shuttle touched down, it's engines letting out a soft hiss as they powered down.

"Here's hoping the locals are friendly." Xavier mumbled, turning towards the back of the shuttle. He pulled the lever on the back wall, the large ramp slowly lowering down to the grassy earth below. Ricky helped Maple and Reggie off of the control panel, and the three of them stepped up next to the RainWing. White steam burst from the door mechanisms, temporarily clouding the air in front of them as the four walked down the ramp.

"Hidden's gonna have to fix that later…." Xavier grumbled, waving a talon to part the cloud of steam.

As they set foot on the grassy field, they found themselves surrounded by hundreds of humans, some watching the newcomers fearfully while others leaned forward, holding out their PDAs. A few humans dressed in fancy black vests attempted to keep the crowd at bay, but even they didn't seem too sure about what was going on.

Maple felt a cold sweat seep down her back as hundreds of pairs of eyes peered at her. The sun beat down relentlessly, and she felt almost ready to pass out. She faintly heard Ricky whispering something to Xavier in draconic, Xavier responding with nothing more than a shrug. The SkyWing sighed, and took a hesitant step forward, causing the gathered crowd ahead of them to back away fearfully.

"We uh...we...come in peace?" he said in syllabic. Maple heard Reggie snickering, though she wasn't sure why.

An awkward silence hung in the air, only broken by the booming noise of whirling machinery above. Three large vehicles, similar to the one they had seen flying above the city earlier, descended upon the field, hovering just above them. Humans dressed in body armor the color of desert sand hung out of the open sides of the flying machines, pointing long black guns at them (at least, that's what Maple assumed they were, based on how Reggie had described the deadly devices to her).

Suddenly, the crowd ahead of them began to part as two large armored vehicles, similar in color to the armor worn by the gun toting humans, and each nearly as large as a dragon, rolled through the sea of people. Long tubes hung out from the front of the bulky machines, and while Maple wasn't exactly sure what they were for, they certainly couldn't be anything good.

The black vested humans controlling the crowd had been replaced by more of the sandy colored ones, guns held at the ready as they formed a perimeter around the shuttle. Some of them began erecting hasty barricades to keep the onlookers out, though that didn't stop some of them from leaning out as far as they could with their PDAs.

"Reggie?" Maple asked, "Who are these guys?"

"Probably the government." he stated, looking more amused than worried. "They show up in almost every alien movie to try and capture the aliens."

Maple still wasn't exactly sure she understood what he meant by "movies", though she'd gotten the memo nonetheless. "And I assume we're the aliens?" she asked.

"Yeah, cool huh?"

One of the flying vehicles began descending towards the field, its rapidly spinning blades whipping up a small flurry of grass and dust. The intense whirring from the machine began to fade as its blades slowed to a stop, a short, stocky human hopping out of the side as they did. He wore a fancy uniform that was the same color as the body armor worn by the other "government" people, a collection of colorful badges adorning his chest. A pair of glasses covered his eyes, the lenses so dark Maple wondered how he could even see out of them.

"Well, you're certainly an interesting bunch." the man said once the blades had stopped spinning, "Now why don't you do me the favor of telling me who you are, and why the blazin' moons you decided to invade my city."

"W-We're not here to cause any trouble." Ricky began, taking a step towards the man. The soldiers around him immediately raised their weapons, causing the SkyWing to step back.

"I'll be the judge of that." the man stated in a casual, yet commanding tone. He looked over to Reggie, and then to Maple, causing her to tense up beneath his hardened gaze. "You can tell us all about it at the compound."

The soldiers surrounding them simultaneously raised their weapons, slowly closing in. Xavier let out a low growl, and for a second Maple wondered if he was going to retaliate.

He took a step forward. "Now listen here just a min…."

BANG!

A burst of flame erupted from one of the heavily armored vehicle's tubes, some sort of projectile flying out at high speed, narrowly missing Xavier and crashing into the field behind the shuttle, a massive explosion erupting from the point of impact.

In moments, the entire scene had descended into utter chaos.

The section of the crowd nearest to the explosion immediately began to scatter, sending a ripple effect throughout the area as people scrambled to get away. A cacophony of loud bangs began erupting from the soldiers guns, tiny projectiles whizzing through the air towards the two dragons.

Maple immediately dropped to the ground, clutching her ears tightly as the banging rattled inside her head. She briefly glanced towards where the dragons had been standing, the two having already sprung into the air in a hasty escape. Specs of blood were trailing after Xavier, and there seemed to be some sort of glowing shield emanating from one of Ricky's forelegs.

She turned her attention back to the front line of soldiers, the man with the dark glasses hopping back into the flying machine as it prepared for takeoff, Reggie sprinting after him.

"Reggie!" she shouted, slowly getting to her feet and running after him. The tumultuous crowd was starting to break up the soldier's line, a few daring onlookers attempting to run in to get a closer look.

Reggie had begun to near the flying machine, which was already lifting up off of the ground, when two of the soldiers tackled him, pinning him to the ground. Before Maple could get any closer, she was caught up in the seething tide of bystanders, quickly losing sight of him and the shuttle as she was dragged deeper into the frenzy.

AN:

Bit of a shorter chapter this week, trying to ease the workload while I get back into school. I hope you're enjoying Maple's PoV, it's been a bit of a challenge describing technology as she would see it, instead of being able to use words like "helicopter" and "tank". I have most of this episode thought out, though there are a few kinks in the plot that I need to iron out. Next chapter is pretty much figured out though.

Stay tuned!