I am once again so, so sorry for the massive delay for this chapter. My summer wound up way busier than expected.

Shout out to Phoebe Miller who is having a rough go of it currently. She needs some hugs.

Fact #165: Twisted words spread faster than wildfire.

Season: 5th Season

"Commander McGarrett, is it true that Lieutenant Kelly is in critical condition at the hospital?"

"No comment."

"Commander, Commander! Sources say Raul Espinoza was in your custody yesterday and then escaped. That doesn't look very good for Five-0."

"No comment."

"Commander, what do you have to say about Detective Williams moving back to New Jersey?"

"No. Comment."

Steve parked his truck in its usual spot outside his house. The furrow between his brows had sunk in deeper and deeper throughout the afternoon. In the Navy he never had to deal with reporters. There were people for that. Governor Jameson, corrupt though she may have been, had taught him a great deal about how to handle the reporters and had dealt with many of them via her office.

Denning tended to keep the vultures away for the most part, but once in a while there was just no way to keep them all at bay. They were attracted to explosions, celebrities, politicians, scandals, international cases, terrorists, and dragons, things that, unfortunately, his team were intermingled with in their day-to-day lives.

'No comment' had become his favorite phrase.

No comment.

Even when he had several comments he wanted to make. Who were these people that were trying to pry into his personal life so deeply? What gave them the right to sensationalize his traumas and hardships? It wasn't just him, though. Chin and Kono got their fair share of attention as did Danny. Usually whenever one of them was in the hospital. Spotlighting injuries gained in the line of duty, especially injuries involving his teammates, was disturbing to say the least.

A cool, rain scented breeze greeted him on his way through the front yard to the door. He glanced up at the gutters along the edge of the covered porch. The rainy season was starting. If he ever got a break from Five-0's hectic schedule he would get up there and make sure they were clean and functional. All he needed was Danny getting after him for not knowing how to do simple maintenance around his own house.

The Camaro had been parked along the curb when he arrived home, and he could smell pasta boiling when he set foot inside. He didn't think his frown could get any deeper, but it did. Danny hadn't gotten harangined by reporters on his way out of the Palace.

"Daniel!"

"What? What? Why are you yelling at me? What took you so long, huh? I managed to pick up Grace and get the water boiled before you even pulled in," Danny questioned, stepping out of the kitchen and peering at him through the doorway. He gestured at him. "I'm gonna have to ask Kono to swing by one of the liquor stores to grab a bottle of wine after she picks up Chin since you obviously didn't do it. I asked you to get one thing for tonight! Why do you look like someone told you they weren't going to be printing Guns and Ammo anymore?"

The wall of words stopped him at the entryway. Out of everyone on the planet he had met, only Danny could manage to bring him to a halt with words. He toed off his boots and grunted as he parsed through the word dump.

"I have wine in the fridge," he said.

Danny laughed. "That is not wine, my friend. That is grape juice. And you need a white wine to go with spaghetti carbonara, preferably something like a pinot grigio."

"Why can't we just have beer?" Steve asked and followed his partner to the kitchen.

"Because we live in a civilized society where we recognize different alcohols than what we can pick up at the gas station around the corner," Danny said all the while texting. Slowly. Despite how fast he talked, he was still a slow texter, Steve noticed. "But if you want to be a caveman and ruin a perfectly good Italian combo with a Longboard, then by all means, go ahead and do that."

Steve crossed his arms and leaned against the countertop.

Danny paused in chopping the red cabbage and stared for a moment at the set of his jaw. He put the knife down and scooped the cabbage into the large salad bowl. "Why were you yelling at me when you came in and why do you have Aneurism Face?"

Steve stared at the boiling pot of pasta on the stove. Little bubbles popped and hissed in the turbulent water. Danny had mentioned previously that if the island had anything going for it, it was at sea level and made boiling water as fast as it had been in Jersey.

"Would you move back to New Jersey?" he asked.

Danny picked up the knife again and sliced through the freshly washed heads of romaine lettuce next to the cutting board. The rumbling boil of the pasta and crunching of the lettuce filled the void while he waited on an answer.

"I've thought about it," Danny said simply.

"Why?" he asked.

"Why? Why would I want to move back to where I was born and raised and where the rest of my family is?" Danny asked. He walked over to a cupboard and began pulling out spices.

Steve didn't recall buying most of those, and was sure they had managed to migrate in due to his house being the hub of team dinners. Some of them may have even been Kamekona's doing. He knew the cans of Spam were definitely from him. Things just seemed to appear in his house. Towels from Kono, because she didn't have a private beach and made full use of his. Fishing gear and beer from Chin. Clothes and shampoo and a toothbrush from Catherine. And all sorts of things from Danny and Grace. Food, movies, hair ties, toys, houseplants, flowers, etc.

The thought of never again seeing Danny struggle to grab the black pepper off the top shelf terrified him.

"Are you going to?"

Danny raised a brow at him. "Is Grace here?"

Steve glanced around.

"No, I mean does she still live on the island?"

"Yes."

"And is Five-0 still on the island?"

"Yes."

"Then no, I'm not moving back in with my ma anytime soon," Danny said and dumped the spices into a small glass dish with a deft hand that needed no measuring spoons. He poured olive oil into the dry mix. "What brought all that up?"

Steve scrubbed his hands over his face, feeling both immense relief and dumb for his guilibility. "I got cornered by reporters. Some wanted to know about the case and about Chin, but one asked if I had a comment about Detective Williams moving back to New Jersey."

Danny's face pinched. "And why'd you go and believe the schmuck, huh? I promise you, if I ever do plan on moving back to Jersey, you'll be the first to know, trust me."

He cracked a grin at that. Then frowned again. "Did you tell anyone you were thinking about going back?"

"No. You know how much I love reporters," Danny said. His furious whisking of the dressing underscored that fact. "And I don't really complain to people other than you guys, not that I've been anywhere long enough to sit and complain to someone during the last month between the deserted island and these stupid cases, first with the snakes and then with the drug runners. What is it with the drug runners, huh? Why is Oahu a magnet for them?"

Steve shrugged.

He looked down as Grace slid next to him against the countertop, mirroring his stance.

"Wow, I'm so hungry Danno. That smells so good," Grace said.

Danny waved the whisk around. "And yet, I'm the only one cooking. All you two are, are warm bodies in the kitchen."

Steve nudged Grace. "C'mon. Let's give your dad some room."

Grace leaned in and stage whispered. "Danno can get a little crazy when he's cooking."

"I heard that Grace Elizabeth!"

They sat on the lanai outside, Steve with a beer just to defy Danny, and Grace with a can of coconut water. The sun penetrated through the clouds with dazzling golden and scarlet rays of light on the western horizon. Put on display up against the ashen gray thunderclouds building over the ocean, they looked extremely brilliant.

"How was school today?" he asked and propped his foot up on the deck rail.

"Meh," Grace said.

He just now noticed she had a pad of paper and a pencil with her. "Still having trouble with math?"

"Huh? Oh, no. This is for my Journalism class," she said.

Internally, he winced. He sincerely hoped she never became a reporter as a full time job.

"Our assignment is on overcoming challenges, and we have to interview someone who has overcome a challenge," she said.

He set his beer down on the table and looked at her. "You know who you should interview?"

Her face brightened. "Who?"

"Kono. Not many people go from surfer to cop after a knee injury."

"That's so awesome," she said and started writing on her paper. "She's coming over tonight, right?"

"Right after she gets some things your dad wants her to pick up," he said.

She smiled. "Thank you, Uncle Steve!"

He smiled and nodded. While not having Danny around would leave a major void in his life, not having Grace around would leave one, too. She was one of the only kids who hadn't been scared of him when he'd first arrived on the island, not even in all his tactical gear. And he had been more than honored to become Uncle Steve to her.

Commander was a title with authority, but uncle was one with love.

"Commander, are there any plans concerning a replacement for Officer Kalakaua?"

"What - no comment."

"Officer Kalakaua, how do you feel about the allegations made of you being physically unfit to serve on the Five-0 Taskforce?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Kono kicked off her shoes with such force that one narrowly missed Adam's shin and thumped the wall instead.

Adam glanced between the shoe and her. "Should I ask how your day was?"

She slammed the door shut. "I feel like I would get harassed less if you were still Yakuza."

Adam tailed her into the small kitchen, placing his dishes into the sink while she dug through the fridge for a beer. She would have rather gone surfing than drinking, but the approaching thunderstorms had made the waves not ideal. Of course, she had surfed in worse weather. She had been a fearless professional surfer at one point in her life before wiping out and then transitioned from someone who would face any weather for the perfect wave to someone who would face an enemy to get justice.

"Reporters or PIs?"

She stood up from the cool air spilling out of the fridge and popped the top off the Longboard. After a long swig, she set the bottle down.

"Reporters. Did you know they asked Steve if he was going replace me because I was physically unfit for duty? Can you believe that?" she said.

"Wait, what?" Adam's brows shot up, lines of bafflement etching into his forehead. "Where did that come from?"

"I have no clue," she said. She took another angry swallow of beer. "Last week they asked Steve if he had any comment about Danny moving back to New Jersey."

Adam leaned against the counter opposite of her. "Same reporters?"

She ran her fingers through her hair and fluffed it up off her neck. She could really do with a refreshing dip in the ocean.

"I don't know. I think it's about the same five reporters. They're not the ones with the big news channels, at least they're not the ones that usually manage to get an interview after a case. Just some nameless vultures."

"Some nameless vultures who have a source somewhere, even if they are just rumors," Adam said. He reached out and rubbed her shoulders soothingly, digging his thumbs into the tight muscles around her neck. "How about we just chill tonight? Order in some sushi from that place you like, binge some Netflix, and forget about those reporters?"

Kono cracked a grin. "Mr. Noshimori, you've got yourself a deal."

As they settled on the couch and Adam poked at his phone placing their order, Kono furrowed her brows.

"Danny. Then me. Wonder what kind of rumor is going to start about the Boss?"

Danny had seen Steve mad plenty of times. He wasn't an angry talker like Danny was, and his hands didn't fly out in every direction, so as a man from a noisy family, it had taken a while to discern his partner's body language and what was behind his short, clipped words.

To say Steve was mad after their latest encounter with the reporters was an understatement.

Danny stayed standing by the weathered adirondack chairs on the beach, too tense to sit in the chairs himself. Instead, he picked at the peeling paint with his fingers and kept his eyes on the water and the sky in alternating glances.

Dark clouds choked out the famous Hawaiian sun and the water churned nearly as dark and frothy. It was the tailend of a thundercell that had hit the island for the last week. Supposedly, it was going to clear out later tonight and leave Oahu hot, muggy, and sunny for the next two weeks. He hoped their string of bad luck with the reporters cleared out with the storm.

Because he couldn't keep himself and Steve in check at the same time. There was only enough self-control between the two of them for one at a time to be angry. If Danny was hanging by a thread where his temper was concerned, then Steve had to be the voice of reason and the steady hand on his shoulder. If Steve had gone silent and was brewing some ill-advised plan in that thick skull of his, then Danny had to talk him out of it.

But if both of them wanted to physically launch reporters off a building, who was going to stop them?

A fin curled out of a murky wave. A slender head broke through in the next breath. Water streamed off of the gliding wings and crown of horns, the semi-recently broken horn adding to his partner's rugged and scarred appearance. Without the brilliant sun sparkling on his scales and hiding all the wear and tear, Danny could see where even dragon healing had failed to completely repair some gunshot wounds, burn marks, claw marks, stab wounds, and so on and so forth.

It made Steve's already ugly expression even more severe.

"Steve."

His dark and tumultuous eyes glinted as did the pearly fangs.

"Eating those reporters won't do anything except give other reporters something to write about."

Steve stalked through the yard, tail low and nearly dragging behind him.

"This has got to stop," he snarled. He turned around and paced back towards Danny. "The Governor called me today. Needed me to clear this up."

Danny's hand darted out briefly. "I thought his office was supposed to be in charge of this kind of stuff? Did you ask him why they aren't nipping this in the bud? I've seen rumors get good officers suspended back in Jersey, and with softer rumors than this."

Steam billowed from Steve's nostrils. Danny could hear his teeth grinding from his position at the chairs halfway across the yard.

"We're going to find their source," Steve said.

Danny pressed his palms together. "And how, pray tell, are you going to do that, huh? In case you forgot, the Governor forbade us from going after the reporters so that in itself doesn't get all twisted and someone makes it look like we're trying to cover something up."

"Well what else am I supposed to do?" Steve yelled. "I'm not just going to sit here while they drag my name and my dad's through the mud!"

"You don't think I want to slap these guys around? Look, these guys are more deserving of the shark cage treatment than any of our suspects, but all we're going to do is lend credence to their rumors!"

Steve bared every single tooth in a barely muffled roar and punted the nearest object into the ocean, which happened to be a fold up camping chair.

Danny's fingers threatened to curl into fists but he just combed them through his hair. "That was Grace's chair!"

Steve's breathing slowed and he blinked, but the beastly expression remained. He stalked back into the water and returned a moment later with a soggy, abused chair. He placed it back in its original spot, but the damage had been done. Camping chairs were not meant to get punted by dragons.

"I'm sorry, Danny," Steve said, his voice low and gruff as he fidgeted with the now asymmetrical chair. "I'll get her a new one."

"You better. I don't want to explain to her why her uncle kicked her chair halfway to China," Danny said.

Steve sat heavily in the grass. His anger melted into a simple frown at the dilapidated chair in front of him. "How many people know about Wo Fat being a dragon?"

The change of subject caught Danny off guard momentarily. He shrugged. "I don't know. I'd imagine a handful of nurses and doctors at King's, some of Duke's people, guards at the supermax prison. Maybe even some of Wo Fat's henchmen. Us. Why?"

Steve opened his mouth and closed it. Danny wasn't sure he had ever seen him weigh his words as carefully as he was weighing them currently.

"Grace knew Wo Fat."

A tightly clenched fist of fire knotted just below his ribcage. Adrenaline jolted through his veins.

"Steven, choose your next words carefully, because it almost sounds like you're accusing my baby girl of starting rumors, and she would never do that," Danny said very slowly and very clearly. Red creeped in at the edge of his vision.

"Didn't you tell me that she had to write a paper about her life at the beginning of the school year?" Steve asked.

"I doubt she sprinkled in all of Five-0's secrets!"

"I'm not saying she did," Steve said. He stood up and tilted his head in thought. "But she did write a paper about growing up in New Jersey and then moving to Hawaii."

"And?" Danny questioned.

"And then she interviewed Kono on overcoming blowing out her knee," Steve continued.

Danny bit the inside of his cheek. "And you think she decided to take it to the press? Or what, smart guy? How are the reporters connected to Grace? Huh?"

Steve turned away from him. Danny followed him back inside the house, considering the pros and cons of throwing a few punches his way. His fist was already formed and shielded with diamond shaped scales.

"Aren't they starting a crime blog unit in her Journalism class?" Steve asked. "That's what she told me on Monday when you were over here."

"Right, because obviously she's concocting some extremely xenophobic lies about what went down between the McGarretts and Wo Fat, oh, and everyone involved is a dragon. You are such a Neanderthal! You think my daughter would air your family's dirty laundry just to get an A+ in one of her classes?"

Steve shot a glare at him over his shoulder. "No."

Danny stopped in the living room at the bottom of the stairs, dumbfounded. Steve shifted and jogged up to the second floor, leaving a trail of water dribbles in his wake. Danny rubbed his hands over his face and listened to his partner get dressed upstairs while he started to do his own pacing.

Of course Steve would never accuse Grace of starting rumors about the team. That wasn't her. She was the girl who punched out kids for starting mean rumors, which was something they needed to work on, but at least there was empathy and kindness at the root of that.

By the time Steve was coming back down the stairs fully dressed, Danny was on the same page.

"You want to go pay her Journalism teacher a visit?" he asked.

To his surprise, Steve shook his head.

"What? What do you mean no? I thought you would've wanted to help me hang him off the roof or something?" Danny said.

Steve grabbed his cell phone off the coffee table. "I'm calling Jerry first."

Mr. Chandler waved goodbye as the last student filed out of his classroom. Seventh hour. Finally. The hallways outside his classroom were a cacophony of children opening and closing lockers and running for the pickup line and the buses.

He only had a few papers left to grade and then he would head back to his tiny one bedroom apartment to work on lesson plans and eat cereal. The life of a teacher was not a glamorous one. Years of schooling to teach kids who often didn't want to be in school in the first place hadn't been his first career choice, but it was the only one that paid.

A shoe squeaked on the floor at his door.

"Sorry, but if you didn't turn it in before the hour ended, it's only getting half-credit," he said and lifted his head up. He swallowed. "Oh, excuse me. I thought you were a student."

He had never met Grace Williams' biological father, but had imagined him taller than he was. The only reason he knew what he looked like at all was due to Five-0 popping up in the papers and on the news.

Chandler stood up from his desk, towering a full ten inches above the detective. He swallowed again. Despite the height difference, Williams managed to make it feel like he didn't need to look up to look him in the eye.

"Can I help you?" he asked. He pulled a deep breath in through his nose and let it out of his mouth. His heart tapped on his chest in growing trepidation.

Then it skipped a beat entirely when another man walked into the room and pulled the door shut behind him. Though still not taller than himself, this one walked with a certain gait that screamed he was dangerous. He wouldn't be surprised if he had killed a man with his thumb.

He laughed nervously. "I take it you're not here to get a school newspaper?"

The Commander pointed. "Sit down."

Chandler obediently dropped into his seat.

Williams sat against one of the desks facing him with his arms crossed. "I think you missed your true calling."

"What do you mean?" Chandler asked.

"I mean, you could've been a novelist instead of a teacher with the fiction you manage to spin," Williams said. His hands gestured along with his words, drawing Chandler's eyes to them. They were rough with calluses. "See, I'm not much of an internet person in general unless I'm watching old hockey fights on YouTube late at night, but our friend Jerry? He knows the ins and outs of the blogger community. Specifically the crime blogger community."

Chandler scooched his stack of already graded papers aside.

"Running a crime blog isn't a crime, gentlemen," he said with far more confidence than he felt. He had specifically used a pen name so people couldn't track him down, and yet here stood two of the people he blogged about the most.

"But using one of your student's homework assignments as source material?" Williams said. "Specifically my daughter's homework assignments?"

The Commander slammed a hand on his desk centimeters away from his hands. Chandler stared wide eyed at the ex-SEAL. Somewhere at the back of his mind he knew using Grace's last assignment and spinning it like he had was crossing a line, but the story had been too good to pass up. And his readers had eaten it up.

Except now that he was looking into the storm tossed eyes of the Commander, he deeply regretted writing it. Or, at least, he deeply regretted getting caught.

He tugged his glasses off and started cleaning them on his shirt, just so he'd have something to do other than stare into an approaching storm. "You guys, Five-0, are just so easy to write about. People want to read about the famed taskforce."

"Then they can read my memoirs when I've been dead and buried for a while," Williams said. The rumors were true, he was snarky.

His chair swiveled around and he was face to face with the Commander again. The decidedly scarier of the two in his opinion.

"I expected to get dragged through the mud when I took on this job. That's fine," the Commander said. His hot breath fogged Chandler's glasses as he shakily put them back on. "But my dad was an exemplary cop. And the man you painted as the victim? Let's just say you need to do more research as to exactly who Wo Fat is. Being a dragon doesn't excuse what he's done."

"If I were you, I wouldn't publish that, though. See, when we find out someone is writing lies about us, we come talk to you like civilized people, despite him wanting to throw you in a shark cage, minus the cage," Williams said.

The Commander grunted. "He wanted to hang you off a building."

Chandler gulped. There were the creative interrogation techniques confirmed directly from the source.

"That was the nicest of the things I want to do," Williams said. He continued, "Wo Fat won't be as kind as we have been. Do you know how many breathing exercises I had to do to calm down before we walked in here? And the only reason I bothered is the fact that my daughter likes this school. I don't want her to get expelled. Anyway, Wo Fat? Your dragon martyr in your most recent blog post? While you can get creative with your words, he can get creative with how he disposes of a body. If I were you, I'd make a retraction blog. Immediately."

"I'll lose readers," Chandler protested.

"You're going to lose a lot more than readers," the Commander said.

The timbre of his voice sent chills down his spine. Writing about these guys didn't do them justice. To be on the receiving end of the Commander's wrath was one part thrilling, two parts terrifying. He waited for the threat. Something snappy, he was sure. Possibly something about his body never being found, or his only identification being a toe tag.

Something his readers would lap up in the outset of his retraction post.

"The Governor's legal team has a libel suit waiting for you."

Chandler's mouth popped open.

"See. I told you a legal threat would be more effective," Williams said.

"Libel? Are you kidding me?" Chandler asked. His brows lowered and he dared to shake a finger at the looming Commander. "I teach Journalism. I know what libel and slander are."

"Then you should understand this very well," Williams said. He held up five fingers. "First, we have our tech wizards all over your written statement. Every single post on your blog. Second, we know third parties have read your blog and thus have not only read your libel, but have also bought into it judging by all the harassment from these young reporters. Third, your statement is definitely false. The first couple were on the line. Should've stuck with subtlety. Fourth, your blogs are definitely injurious. McGarrett is the leader of a state taskforce! He has a reputation to uphold! We can't have people afraid of us because they think McGarrett or his team has something against dragons. And fifth, you are in no way privileged to know anything about us."

"The five defamation elements," Chandler muttered.

The Commander stood up and looked at Chandler down his nose. "The lawyers will be in contact with you."

Chandler breathed a small breath of relief that was quickly snatched away as Williams shoved his chair up against the wall. He had barely seen him lunge around the desk.

"And if by some miracle you still have a job after this, if I ever see or hear you talk to my daughter again, lawyers won't be involved next time," Williams said.

Chandler puddled down into his chair as the two stalked out of his now claustrophobic classroom. He licked his dry lips as he caught the tail end of their conversation.

"Still would've preferred to have dragged him behind the jet ski."

Chandler meekly wheeled himself up to his desk and opened up his laptop. On second thought, losing readers was probably the better end of the deal compared to whatever the Commander, Williams, or heaven forbid, Wo Fat, would like to do to him. The threat of lawyers already hung over his head like an anvil.

And he thought being a teacher in a one bedroom apartment was hard. By the time the lawyers had chewed him up and spit him out, he would have to move back in with his mother.

His fingers froze over the keyboard.

Maybe they would just send him to prison instead so he didn't have to face his mother.

By the weekend, the press had been wrangled for the most part and the blog deleted. Danny had seen the retraction post with his own eyes before it was taken down. He wasn't sure they would've found the blog in the first place if it hadn't been for Jerry. Sure, they may have shaken enough reporters to get their source and maybe the teacher would have cracked, but having Jerry trawl through the blog waters for their slanderer had been much faster.

All Danny really cared about was the fact that he hadn't been harassed by the blog fed reporters in the last few days.

When he stepped back into the house after making a run down to the corner store to pick up two absolutely massive breakfast burritos for him and Grace Saturday morning, he was surprised to hear the whrrrr of his paper shredder.

"Grace?" He set the takeout boxes on the kitchen counter and followed the noise to his bedroom. "Monkey, what're you doing? I thought you would've slept in longer."

Grace sat cross legged in front of the paper shredder. She was feeding it a few sheets at a time. Danny squinted at the writing and then pressed the off button. Grace made a face at the half-eaten papers.

"Grace Elizabeth, why are you shredding your homework?" he asked.

"Because, all this did was get people in trouble and start nasty rumors," Grace said and turned the machine back on. It gobbled up the remaining half of the homework.

Danny kneeled down and turned the shredder off again. He took her arms in his hands. "Hey, hey. This was not your fault. Mr. Chandler used your homework to do his own thing. You didn't start any of those rumors."

"But I wrote about you! I kept writing about you guys, because you're awesome and all the other kids thought it was cool I'm related to Five-0."

"If I remember correctly, you wrote a four page paper about growing up in Jersey and moving to Hawaii, and you included how your old man packed up and followed you. Chandler turned that into me moving home, which freaked out your Uncle Steve a little bit. And then you wrote a wonderful piece on Kono overcoming her knee injury and joining the Academy to become an officer. He used it to imply she was unfit for duty."

Grace pursed her lips and looked sourly at the shredder. "Kono could kick his butt from here to Jersey."

Danny grinned. "Yes, she could definitely kick anyone's butt from here to Jersey, even mine. Probably even Steve's."

She sighed and gathered up another packet of papers. "But I shouldn't have written about some of your cases. I shouldn't have written about Uncle Steve's dad or Wo Fat."

Danny planted a soft kiss on top of her head. "You didn't know what Chandler would turn that into, Monkey. He told you to write a piece about what scares you, and you wrote about a monster that scares you and then he tried to paint him into a prince."

"Is Uncle Steve going to be okay?" she asked.

"He's going to be fine, okay? And he doesn't blame you for any of it, you understand?"

She nodded. "Maybe I should have just taken band."

"Because listening to you practice the trumpet at all hours would've been much better than this."

"Danno!"

Next time on "Dragons", it's a slow day and the team gets to see something weird during the lull.

I am so sorry for the delay. Again. I wound up being really busy for a week, then went traveling for two weeks, and then was busy the week I came back. I had this chapter half-written just waiting before I even left three weeks ago and only finished it yesterday and today.

I hope you guys continue to put up with me and continue to enjoy this series! Hopefully, I'll be able to get back to 'normal', but I honestly don't want to promise anything. I think the big thing is making a goal for smaller chapters. I've got it in my head that everything needs to be a big story or have a deeper meaning instead of just being entertaining.

I love you guys and hope you all are well! And sorry for any PMs I missed while I was gone!