Saturday, March 5, 2011
"The nitrogen levels are still rising slightly, but the rate of change has dropped in the last half hour," Colin noted, scrolling through the log that was building on his screen. It was coming from a miniature and highly efficient gas analyzer he'd delivered to Saurial late the previous night, along with the specialized computer equipment she'd requested from Dragon. The lizard-girl and her sister had discreetly attached the device to one of the exhaust vents of the buried base during their preliminary move against Coil, then sprayed every accessible intake to the place with bio-agent, including around the door seams from what they'd told him afterward.
Ianthe's agent had clearly managed to get inside and seek out the demolition charges, as the nitrogen levels had started to rise detectably about four and a half hours later. In the last couple of hours he and his friend had kept an eye on the gas level and watched as it kept edging up, indicating the explosives were being converted to an inert form.
No apparent alarms had been given off, the other sensors they'd snuck into place over the last few weeks not showing anything unexpected, so it seemed likely that Calvert was unaware that his last-ditch plan was being rendered impotent. All in all it was a very good outcome.
Although Colin was very curious how the two reptiles had pulled off the sneaking around. Even his own sensors hadn't noticed anything, and he'd checked carefully. It suggested some impressive stealth capabilities and a lot of practice if nothing else. Possibly the same method that Umihebi had used and that they still had no explanation for. Hopefully sooner or later he could find out how they did it, but for now he was just happy that they could.
They'd confirmed that the two tunnels he and the others had suspected were connected to the bunker definitely were, and found a third one everyone else had missed, that led down to the water right at the edge of the docks in a part that had been abandoned even by the Merchants years ago. Checking old maps he'd finally discovered it was most likely using one of the oldest sewer systems that had been built in the city in the mid eighteen hundreds. There were a surprising number of old tunnels from various eras under Brockton Bay, many of which had been entirely forgotten about over a century ago. Some had collapsed but he suspected most were still intact.
Saurial had assured him that they'd dealt with the tunnel, blocking the end in a way that meant no one was going to get out without a lot of time and effort. He believed her, so if Calvert or any of his people actually ended up going out that way, they were simply going to get trapped and could be collected as required.
The other two tunnels had disguised doors opening into them from the shelter, which had apparently been expanded beyond the plans they had available, possibly simply by digging intersecting tunnels. The work was of a very high level and almost undetectable yet fell prey to the superb senses of the Family. They'd sealed those doors on the outside with a thin mesh of EDM fused into the structure and made to look like part of the tunnel wall. Cameras had been discovered in the surrounding area as he'd expected, but they were sure that whoever was monitoring them hadn't noticed anything they did.
The end result of their work was that the only way into or out of the bunker was the main door, or involved a lot of digging. Coil wasn't going to get out without someone noticing now. They'd assured him that they were sure he was still inside.
Everything looked good. Now all they had to do was wait for Sunday, then engineer a short-lived and minor, if unpleasant, diversion.
Satisfied that things were proceeding to plan, he nodded to himself. "I'm going to get a little sleep, it's been a long day," he said to Dragon.
"Good idea," she replied with a smile in her voice. "And one of the first times I've heard you say that unprompted. There may be hope for you yet."
Colin looked at her, smiled vaguely which seemed the best response, then headed for his quarters, while going over the gas analyzer results in his head and trying to work out how to increase the efficiency of the sampling intake system. By the time he was lying on his bed he'd come up with a modification to make it 2.14% smaller and maintain the same effectiveness, which was enough to send him to sleep with a pleased expression.
Circling in the breeze two thousand feet in the air, Taylor watched the sun rise on Brockton Bay, feeling pretty contented. Her small draconic aspect was cloaked so no one on the ground would see it, and small enough anyway that even without the cloak she'd be mistaken for a bird should anyone have eyes sharp enough to spot her. In her room far below her primary aspect was lying on her bed, eyes shut, and for all visible indications asleep.
Her father was genuinely sleeping, not due to wake for an hour yet. She was planning on making him breakfast and spending some time with him since recently they'd both been running around quite a lot. 'We should go out to a restaurant again soon,' she thought. 'He'd like that. So would I.'
Doing a loop just for the hell of it, she smiled to herself. This form wasn't for much more than fun, but it really was good at that. It would probably also be good for sneaking around in general, although with the cloaking spell she could do that with any of her forms. The tiny dragon would at least not leave enormous footprints behind.
A mental image of her as Kaiju tiptoeing around peering into sixth and seventh floor windows came to her, making her giggle.
The previous evening had gone very well. The PRT were, as far as she could tell, as happy as they got. Coil was very soon going to have a very bad time, something she and the others were looking forward to with great anticipation. Unlike the Merchant raid, which was a simple rout, this would be much more of a challenge, since their opponents were trained, experienced, and armed mercenaries. None of them expected it to be particularly difficult but since they were deliberately restricting their abilities to prevent people from working out just how dangerous they really were, it would at least be interesting.
Linda, who was very obviously having a wonderful time now she was in full Tinker mode, was well on the way towards her first proper 'Vectura' design, which was going to show off just how talented she was. And probably be entertaining for everyone… Taylor grinned into the wind of her motion, wondering what people would say when they unveiled the thing.
Circling more widely, riding the wind with twitches of her wings in a manner that had become almost instinctive, she looked down at her neighborhood, relishing the view from the unusual position. She could see people walking around, a few early risers going about their business. A number of cars and trucks were on the streets, their headlights going out as the light level rose, while the streetlights were turning off in segments for the same reason. From up here it all looked peaceful, clean, and calm, and oddly pretty. On the ground there may have been signs of decay, even though their neighborhood wasn't by any means the worst in the city, but it wasn't apparent from altitude.
Swinging around to face the docks, on the other hand, she could see large areas which even from miles away and a couple of thousand feet up were obviously derelict. Hardly any streetlights to turn off in the first place, some buildings visibly damaged, destroyed, or missing entirely. Smoke was rising from one where someone seemed to be burning garbage in a vacant lot, as far as she could see from this distance. Hopefully they'd avoid setting fire to the entire area, but she'd keep an eye out even so. The fire brigade tended to avoid that whole section of the city.
The DWU yard was the main exception to the general decay of the dock sector, the new fence glinting in the reds and oranges of the rising sun. It was noticeable from her location that the nearest warehouses were in much better condition than the ones further away, while the oldest area, where she'd met Lung, was in the worst condition of the whole zone.
'Lung. I'm going to have to follow up on that at some point soon,' she mused. 'Just to make sure that we're on the same page and nothing more is going to happen if Lisa and the others go outside the DWU. Coil's going to be out of the picture in a few days and it would be nice to know that they're able to leave. They've been stuck there for weeks.'
"I have some suggestions on a method of dealing with Lung that would probably settle things in a civilized manner which all parties would be satisfied with, Brain," the Varga told her quietly.
'Eat him?' she said with a grin.
Her friend chuckled, his voice rumbling in her head. "That is one method, yes, but not in fact the one I had in mind this time," he said.
'What were you thinking?' she asked, smiling to herself.
"Lung is, as far as I can see, a person of a type I have encountered many times before. He's basically a warlord, to put it bluntly. He has his own form of personal honor, as do you, and where it conflicts with societal norms, he tends to simply ignore them. Sometimes, or more often than not based on the facts, violently."
'He's still a criminal, though. And a killer.'
"True. I'm not suggesting otherwise. His approach to life is always going to conflict with the law if it gets in the way, and he's obviously both capable of and prepared to go through anyone who stands between him and what he desires. However, that doesn't mean he can't be negotiated with. We have already done so once, after all. I think that we can do so again, if we do it correctly, and with a little work come to an arrangement which will take him off the board entirely as far as the former Undersiders go. That's not to say that he would be neutralized permanently, we may come into opposition again in the future, but we can deal with that if and when it happens."
Taylor thought about his words. 'OK. I guess I can see where you're coming from. I don't particularly want to kill him or anything, but I don't want him suddenly deciding to go after Brian or Alec just because he spotted them in the street one day and lost his temper. So if you can figure out how to make that not happen, I'm listening.'
"All right. My thought was as follows..." He began explaining while she pondered his words. When he finished, she nodded slowly.
'Interesting. You think that will work?'
"I give it a high chance of success although it's not entirely guaranteed. But there's no harm in trying it. You have the necessary skills now, and the rest is easy. It relies on approaching him in the correct manner but I can easily coach you on what I think he will respond best to."
'Worth a shot, I guess,' she shrugged. 'And like you said, unless we try it we won't know one way or the other. It can wait though, we have other things to concentrate on right now. We'll look into it when we have a free moment in the next couple of weeks.'
"Agreed."
Satisfied that his solution was workable and fairly easy, she resumed looking around and just enjoying the dawn over her home, while her father snored and rolled over. In a few minutes she'd start breakfast, then get ready for the day.
Taylor smiled happily. Things could be a lot worse in her opinion.
"Sergeant? Possible problem here."
"What is it, Nielsen?" Sergeant Owens looked up from the book he was reading in the night shift break room.
The mercenary at the door, a technical specialist, was looking at a tablet in his hand with a quizzical expression. "I was checking the environmental monitors for the nightly report and spotted something a little weird."
"Weird how?" Owens asked, putting his book down. "Weird dangerous, or weird broken?"
"Just weird." He turned the tablet around and showed the display to his squad leader. "N2 level is reading point four two percent higher than it should be."
Owens took the offered tablet and peered at it, then flicked back through the graphical log. He saw that the nitrogen levels had gone up a small amount around three AM and had continued to rise for a number of hours, then settled down at a slightly higher level than normal for a couple more. Now they were reading as gradually dropping again, slowly returning to what they'd started as. "You've checked the air system?"
"Yes, sir. Everything else is in the green. It's only the newer system that Coil installed six months ago which even noticed, the standard one overlooked it completely. The level isn't dangerous, but I can't work out what's causing it. We're not running on internal air so it's not a fault with the life support system." Nielsen looked puzzled and a little worried.
"Run a diagnostic on the sensors."
"I did already. They check out."
Owens nodded absently, poking around on the tablet and checking the results for himself.
"Should we alert the captain?"
Owens considered the idea and rejected it. "No." Their boss wasn't a person who liked being woken up without good reason, and he tended to make sure people knew that. Considering the foul mood he'd been in after arguing with Coil the day before, again, it was best to avoid any unnecessary reasons to attract any of the residual bile he undoubtedly still had a supply of.
They were well paid, but not so much Owens really wanted to sit through any more yelling directed at him than he had to.
'Not like we can even spend the fucking money locked away down here,' he thought irritably. 'I knew working for that skinny weirdo was a bad idea, he gives me the creeps.' It was true, but not something he'd ever admit to anyone else.
He was a professional, for god's sake!
"I think it's probably equipment error, a calibration fault," he finally said, handing the tablet back. "All the other readings are within normal error bounds, and the original system is also in the green. Just that one sensor seems to be drifting. It happens, not the first time I've seen it. It's only just outside the accuracy limits anyway. It will probably drift back to normal, possibly even overshoot in the other direction. Keep an eye on it and if it doesn't clear itself by shift change we'll replace it and recalibrate the system."
"That's a seven hour job," Nielsen pointed out.
"Which is why I don't want to do it without waiting to see if it fixes itself," Owens replied, picking his book up again. "Even if it's real, which I doubt, the levels aren't dangerous, like you said. Just monitor it and let me know if the situation changes."
"Sir." The man saluted, then left the break room. Owens sighed faintly, wishing that either Coil would lift the lockdown, or someone would give them something more interesting to do. It was getting very, very boring being stuck down here for weeks without any alcohol, women, or new books to read.
At least his bank account was steadily rising and he wasn't being shot at. He could put up with it for a while longer.
"The life of a mercenary," he snorted quietly. "Sitting around doing fuck all for weeks, with short periods of sheer chaos in between." He shook his head in mild amusement and turned the page.
The boredom was probably the better of the two options, all in all.
Yawning widely, Amy stretched, then blinked a few times. Rolling her head to the side she checked the time on her phone which was sitting in a charging dock on the bedside table. It was only half past seven, so considering it was Saturday she decided to stay in bed for the moment and have a rest. There was nothing wildly important until later, although she'd go over to Taylor's house well before the others arrived.
Turning onto her side she rested the tip of her tail across her ankles and punched the pillow a couple of times, fluffing it up, before putting her hand under her cheek and closing her eyes. A thought came to her and she made a mental note to mention to Taylor that she needed a second camera for her other aspect, so they could get video from both viewpoints. She definitely wanted to tape the Coil raid which, if their plans worked out, was going to be something that would make Hollywood weep.
Grinning darkly to herself, she lay there for a while working on some of the recent ideas Taylor's latest ability had sparked in her mind. Her power was poking her and suggesting all manner of interesting things, having seized the new methods and run like a bastard with them. She got the impression it was practically delirious with joy and loving every second of her life.
She understood, considering how much that life had changed recently. She certainly didn't miss her old one.
'Need to pop into the hospital and see if there's anything going on there as well,' she mused, suddenly noting consciously how little time she'd put in there in the last couple of weeks. It was a large change from her previous behavior, but on the whole she felt a healthy one. Still, her conscience was prodding her to check in and help out. She could do that for a couple of hours that morning, then go over to the Hebert's house.
Hearing a thump followed by muted swearing as Vicky apparently bumped into something and knocked it over across the hall, she smiled faintly. Her sister tended to float around her room and sometimes didn't pay enough attention to where she was going.
The blonde had been somewhat preoccupied recently, wearing a thoughtful expression a lot of the time as if she had some problem she was working through. Amy had noticed, but said nothing as she didn't want to pry. She was a private person herself and knew her sister respected that, so it was only fair that she reciprocated. Still, it had been going on for long enough that she was beginning to think she should check if there was something wrong she could help with.
When they both had some free time, she'd ask what the problem was. But it would probably keep for the moment. There most likely wasn't anything serious wrong or Vicky would already have talked to her. Amy put it out of her mind for the time being and moved on to other things.
She smiled to herself again, thinking about the afternoon and her friends at Taylor's house. It was going to be very interesting to see Lucy's response to finding Saurial there…
'Bet she spends half the time with a big smile, and the other half asking questions,' she snickered. The girl was very enamored of the Family in particular, and reptiles in general.
Wondering again what Lucy would do if she saw Taylor's mini-dragon form, Amy fell asleep once more.
Dragon remotely guided the heavy transport in to a landing in the water next to the Rig, the floats deploying from under the VTOL aircraft as it approached the waves. Settling down with a huge cloud of spray from the jet wash and a massive roar, it was finally bobbing ponderously up and down as the main turbines spooled down with a loud whine. The single auxiliary power unit in the tail provided enough electricity to run the underwater motors in the floats, allowing her to move the aircraft over to the main dock using the on-board cameras for guidance. PRT staff jumped on board as soon as it was alongside the floating dock, deploying ropes and tying the craft up while she used the motors for station-keeping.
As soon as the thing was properly moored the chief of the docking crew waved to her, at which point she shut the machine down entirely and unlocked the cargo doors on the dock side of the craft, people waiting for them to fold down and the ramp to extend. Thirty seconds later the first cargo transport sled was being driven up into the hold.
It took nearly an hour to unload all the shipping containers which were packed solid with enough new computing hardware to entirely replace both the Rig systems and those in the PRT building, with spares in case of problems. She walked around and through the stacks of boxes, checking the codes on them against her manifest to ensure that nothing was missing.
Her automatic systems in her factory at home were close to perfect, after much optimizing, but mistakes could still be made. It was only common sense to check.
Finally satisfied that everything needed was present, Dragon restarted the transport's APU and closed it up, while the dock crew untied it and pushed it off with long poles. Once it was clear of the structure she piloted it over to a mooring point half a mile away, where the bulk of the watercraft were stored when they weren't in use. A small boat accompanied it, the three-person crew quickly mooring the aircraft, then returning as the machine went silent again.
She turned to Colin as he arrived, looking much less tired than he'd been a few hours ago. "We're ready to start any time," she said. "Everything's here, it's all been thoroughly tested, and in theory it's a fairly simple if time consuming process to install it in parallel with the existing systems."
"Excellent," he nodded, looking around at the substantial number of containers. "We'll begin immediately. I don't want to risk finding an issue we overlooked too late to resolve it."
"All right." She sent a copy of the manifest from her suit to his. "Do you want to run the Rig crew, or the PRT one?"
"I'll take the Rig, I know the systems here intimately," he replied. "Let's get the PRT equipment loaded onto the ferry. I've got the technical squad on the way down, they can help. I'll probably be finished ahead of you and will come over to help when we're done here."
"Red labels go over there, that's the ones on this side," she said, waving at the larger stack. "Blue labels are for here."
"Good." They looked over as the cargo elevator doors opened, disgorging nearly two dozen techs, all of whom had been checked right back to the day they were born. Four squad leaders came over and saluted.
"Harrison, you're with me," Colin said to one of them. "Take your squad and move the boxes with the blue labels into the elevator. The rest of you are with Dragon, the remaining equipment is for delivery to the PRT building." All four men nodded, saluted again, then went over to the rest of their people. Very soon, the dock was rapidly emptying in two different directions.
Pleased that things were going well, the two Tinkers went their separate ways, intent on spending the day working to remove any taint of Coil from the entire network, and both somewhat annoyed that the only way to be certain of achieving this was to replace the whole damn thing.
He really was a very irritating person.
Emily read the report Colin had arranged to have hand-delivered to her first thing that morning, very carefully. When she was finished she nodded to herself. It looked like Ianthe had been entirely correct in every respect. From the readings he'd got Calvert was now explosive-free, which was a massive weight off her mind. It didn't mean for a minute that the operation would be a walk-over, but it removed the most worrisome way for it to all go to hell.
At least there wouldn't be any toppling buildings in the near future, something that she was very relieved about.
The two Family members had also managed to do their part, locating and blocking various possible escape routes. So, in the end, their quarry was stuck where he was and in theory all they had to do was go in and get him. That, unfortunately, was much easier to say than do. Even on the original plans the unfinished Endbringer shelter was of a very considerable size, some two hundred thousand square feet spread over two floors, with a number of rooms full of equipment, food, beds, sanitary facilities, and all the accouterments to allow a large number of people to survive for up to a week. Even if the entire city was flooded, irradiated, and on fire, all at the same time.
Which had actually happened more than once…
Chasing forty-some heavily armed people around in such a place, underground, probably in bad lighting, and when you didn't know the terrain, was a recipe for fuckups and bullets in places you didn't want them. That was before you factored in the likelihood that the plans they had bore only a vague relationship to what was actually down there now. He'd had possibly up to a decade to modify it, upgrade it, and extend it. The rock under a lot of Brockton Bay was fairly porous and easy to dig through, and from what Tattletale had described, the bunker was definitely bigger than it should have been. Presumably he hadn't been simply sitting down there cackling to himself, but had taken the time to make life much more difficult for anyone who came in after him.
Without the Family helping, she fully expected that they'd lose a number of people, as had happened more than once in similar raids around the country. Underground fortresses were always very difficult to assault successfully, especially if you didn't want to simply eliminate all the people inside them and most of the equipment as well. Which they very much didn't want in this case as they needed any information they could get to unravel his network.
Even with the weird reptiles, she wasn't entirely sanguine about the probability of things simply working out nicely. Calvert wasn't the sort who gave up easily. Hopefully when his mercenaries worked out there was no escape they'd see sense and surrender, but you couldn't count on that. Some mercs were extremely driven and once they started something, didn't stop until it was done or they were.
She shrugged, making a few notes on one of the pages of the report, then closing it and locking it in her desk's most secure compartment. All they could do was plan for the worst, while hoping for something less serious. One way or another, in under forty-eight hours Thomas Calvert was out of business.
"Hey, Amy, come in," Taylor smiled, stepping to the side. Her friend entered, carrying a couple of plastic shopping bags.
"I got more snacks," the other girl said as she followed Taylor into the kitchen, putting her bags on the table, then grabbing a chair and swinging it around to sit on it backwards, her tail over the edge and her arms on the back. Amy watched as Taylor went back to the stove, where she was hard-boiling eggs for egg salad sandwiches, and also cooking some pasta. "Although at this rate we're going to have enough food to feed an army. What's that?"
"It'll be a sort of tuna casserole pasta thing with mayonnaise and chilies," Taylor explained, stirring the pot with a wooden spoon. "It was one of Mom's recipes, I haven't made it for ages. She had quite a few of them and I dug out one of her recipe books to find it. That's it on the table there." She pointed with the tip of her own tail, Amy looking where indicated and picking up a hard bound notebook with 'Annette Hebert, Recipes, Book one' neatly written on the cover.
Flipping through the pages she nodded appreciatively. "Did she come up with all these herself?" she asked curiously.
"Some of them she invented, then wrote down, some are old family recipes from her own parents," Taylor explained, turning the stove down, then opening the oven to check on the progress of the jalapeno poppers she was making as well. "A few are something like four hundred years old, she said once. Passed down from mother to daughter through the generations. Although where I'd get swan I have no idea."
"You're kidding," Amy grinned.
"Nope. Page sixty-three."
Her friend turned to the relevant page, read it, and laughed. "You're not kidding. Wow."
Closing the book, she put it down, then picked up the other one that was on the table, reading the title out loud. "Recipes from long ago and far away, by T & V Hebert" she quoted with an amused look. "You've started writing down Varga's food ideas, then?"
"It seemed like a good idea," Taylor chuckled. "He's given me a couple of dozen of them now and there are a lot left. Some are really, really nice."
"I've had a few of those," Amy nodded. "I'd love a copy of this when you're done."
"Sure. Dad was pleased I started doing it too, and more pleased when I told him that if I managed to publish it I was dedicating it to mom."
"I can imagine he would be," her friend replied, leafing through the book. Taylor had only documented about a dozen or so recipes to date, but she was adding new ones as she had time. "Nice. Hey, I remember this one! It's what you made the first time I came over."
"One of my favorites," she nodded. Pulling out the tray of completed snacks, she put them to the side to cool, adjusted the temperature of the oven, then started mixing up some cookie dough.
Her second aspect formed as Saurial, casually dressed in suitably modified T shirt and shorts, who bent over the tray of spicy snacks and sniffed appreciatively.
"Hands off, they're for everyone else," Taylor said.
"But I want one!" her other aspect retorted, extending a hand.
Taylor's first aspect smacked it with the spoon. "No. Bad me. Have an egg."
"Aww." 'Saurial' looked disappointed, then picked up one of the cartons of eggs on the counter and went over to sit next to Amy, who was giggling. The lizard-girl started eating the eggs, frowning at her other aspect, who folded her arms and gave her a disapproving stare.
"Less of the passive aggressive attitude, young lady, or there won't be dessert for you."
"I'm really mean sometimes," 'Saurial' sighed, flipping another egg into her mouth. She leaned on Amy. "Hold me, I'm sad."
"You're insane is what you are," the healer grinned.
"Sometimes I get on my nerves," Taylor grumbled. "I keep bothering myself while I'm trying to work, and I won't shut up. How I put up with myself I have no idea."
"See?" The reptilian girl pointed dramatically. "I'm horrible to me. All I wanted was a snack, and I won't let me have one. Why am I like that?"
"Shut up and eat your eggs," Taylor's human aspect snapped, then started giggling as Amy nearly slid off her chair with hilarity.
"You could keep that up for quite a while, couldn't you?" the shorter girl snickered helplessly.
"Dad said it was making him doubt his own sanity after the first two minutes and went out to visit a friend for a couple of hours," Taylor smirked.
"Danny is a smart person," Amy replied, shaking her head. Both versions of Taylor nodded, the taller one eating the last egg, then the box it came in.
"He is," this one said, smiling. "Can I have a cookie when they're done?"
"Only if you help make them," Taylor's primary aspect said sternly. Her second one looked eager, jumped to her feet, and dashed over to grab the bowl and start stirring vigorously. Amy watched with amusement, pulling a bag of chips out of one of her shopping bags.
"Nuts. Completely nuts," she remarked. "Oh, I got you something," she added, putting the chips down and rummaging in the other bag. Pulling out a box she handed it to Taylor's human aspect, who wiped her hands on the apron she was wearing and took it. "Another camera, so you and yourself can each video things at the same time. I think we really want a record of what happens in the bunker..."
Both Taylors grinned widely. "Oh, definitely," 'Saurial' nodded. "Thanks, Amy."
"No problem. I told the shop guy it was for you and he gave me a really good discount. Have you seen he's got a poster of Cloak in the window now as well as the one of her?" She waved at the reptilian aspect, who looked pleased.
"Yep, I saw it when I went past the other day. We should all go in one by one and talk to him, I bet we can get the entire window full of Family posters easily enough," Taylor giggled.
"It's an idea," her friend grinned.
They chatted for the next hour until all the cooking was done, then all 'three' of them went into the living room. Taylor's Saurial aspect flopped down on the sofa, looking comfortable, while her other one sat in a chair, Amy doing the same in another one. They all looked at each other in silence for a moment.
"You realize how completely bizarre this really is, right?" Amy asked after a moment, glancing at both of her friend.
"Sometimes it really does suddenly catch up with me," the one on the sofa nodded. The other one suddenly disappeared, being replaced with the small draconic form, which zipped around the room for a moment, then landed on her other form's chest and curled up. "But I can do this, which is just fucking fantastic, so I can happily live with it," she finished, smiling broadly as she stroked her small avatar.
"And I find it at least as much fun," the small dragon said with a stretch of its wings, which it then folded up. The Varga raised his head and looked at Taylor with affection. "I believe the correct saying would be, 'Best… Present… Ever.'"
"You're more than welcome, my friend," Taylor smiled back.
Watching them, Amy looked impressed, pleased, and a little envious. "You two are incredible," she finally said after a long pause. "And I'm very lucky I met you both. Thanks for being my friends."
"Likewise, Amy," Taylor replied softly. Moments later the doorbell rang. The tiny dragon vanished silently. "It's Mandy, Vicky, and Lucy," she reported from her now outside viewpoint, the Varga cloaked and sitting on the porch roof, peering over the edge at the visitors. "Looks like they all managed to turn up at the same time."
"You're going to be entirely impossible to sneak up on now, aren't you?" Amy snorted, shaking her head. "You'll have a tiny invisible dragon flying over you half the time."
Taylor winked at her, then hopped up to answer the door, thinking it would be funny to see their friend's faces when 'Saurial' did it.
Vicky spotted a familiar car as she was dropping out of the sky, landing next to it and smiling at Lucy and Mandy who were just exiting the vehicle. "Good timing, Vicky," the latter said with a nod and a smile back. "Anyone else here yet other than Amy?" They looked at the blue truck parked in the driveway.
"I don't know, I only just turned up myself," she replied. "I don't think so, though, we're about ten minutes early and the boys normally arrive a little late. They've got further to come aside from just being boys."
Both girls giggled, nodding. Mandy said goodbye to her mother, who waved to all three of them, then pulled out into a U-turn and drove off. "Let's see if we beat them here," Lucy said eagerly, heading up the path. Vicky floated after her, Mandy walking alongside.
Ringing the doorbell, they all waited. Moments later the door opened.
"eep."
Saurial, Lucy, who was now grinning in a slightly deranged manner, and Mandy all looked curiously at the blonde girl.
"What's up with her?" the reptilian cape asked, sounding puzzled.
"No idea. Why are you here? It's wonderful to see you again. Is Raptaur here? How's Kaiju?" Lucy said rapidly, disappearing inside the house after Saurial, who was looking very amused. "Where's Taylor?"
Mandy and Vicky exchanged glances, then the other girl followed her friend. Vicky trailed along behind, feeling suddenly confused again.