(AN: I'm sooooo sorry for such a long wait! I've been busy, had writer's block, went on vacation for a week in Jamaica… yeah, you know, you know. And wow! Six reviews for chapter seven! Although one of them didn't have the best spelling or grammar, or intentions for that matter… heh. Flames make me laugh my butt off. So, thanks Lou! And thanks to my two regular reviewers and the three new (or somewhat new) faces! I hope I see you all again after this chapter! And… drumroll please… here it is!)

O.o.O

Booker was a stubborn little cuss, to be sure. Everyone knew it, even Booker, but Booker wouldn't admit it in a million years. Which, in fact, was even more proof of his stubbornness.

But night had fallen and, although curled up in the safety of Kiral the mole's underground burrow, Booker still felt a hollow feeling in his chest. He missed the farm. He missed his friends. He missed his siblings.

He missed Mom.

Yes, he missed the one person who he had run away from, the one person who sent him over the edge… his mom! Here he was, the equivalent of a human teenager—even an older teenager, really—who, by all accounts, should be getting ready to strike out on a new farm, be the head rooster—funny, he hadn't known about his upcoming rooster duties until a few days ago, but everything seemed to make perfect sense to him now. And besides all that, he had never been close to his mother. Never!

"Well, Booker, you know what they say," he mumbled to himself. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

Maybe he could go home tomor—no! A thousand times no! He wasn't about to admit to Mom and Tonya and Sheldon and everyone else that he made a mistake. No, no, no! He wasn't going to come crawling back home crying and confessing that he was—gasp—wrong.

Darn it. And now he couldn't sleep.

His eyes wandered over to where Kiral was sleeping—soundly. Booker sighed. He was jealous. He had had a very long and tiring day, and the only thing he wanted now was to sleep like that.

Feeling irritated, Booker turned his attention to Roy, in another "corner" of the hole.

Roy looked to be asleep, but in a very fidgety way. Booker felt himself smirk. At least he wasn't the only one having a restless night. Of course, Roy's none-too-peaceful slumber could just be the product of a bad dream, nothing more. But, Booker reminded himself, bad dreams could often be the result of some real-life anxieties, especially in clichéd filled fanfics like the one they were in. He would probably start murmuring things in his sleep any minute now.

And sure enough…

"Joanna…" Roy murmured in his sleep, in a sort of pained way.

Booker had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing.

How perfect was that? Roy was in love with his mom! …Well, when you think of it as his dad was in love with his mom, it wasn't too strange. But Booker was still having trouble seeing Roy as a father figure—and he probably always would. And even if he did, chickens were never the most… well, romantic, maybe. But the most committed farm animals? Hardly. Lust was there, but love? It was probably a foreign concept to most.

That had probably been what had finally driven Roy of the farm, Booker realized. When Joanna had started ignoring him in favor of Buck, Roy thought he had no reason to stay! It made perfect sense, the more Booker thought about it. Roy tried—sort of—to not play favorites with the hens, but it was always obvious that Joanna was his favorite. The two had so much in common, it was hard to imagine them with anyone else. Smart chickens belong with their own kind—however few there might be. In fact, that was even more of a reason for them to stick together.

Booker sighed and slipped over to his side. This was all very interesting philosophical stuff, but 1:00 AM or whatever time it was probably wasn't the best time to be pondering it. He closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind sufficiently so he could at least get a few hours of sleep.

But it's hard to sleep when some inconsiderate people outside the hole are talking!

Huh?

Booker sat up and rubbed his eyes and ears. Yes, there were voices out there. Who on earth would be out there—in the middle of the night?

"That's strange," murmured Kiral. Booker spun around in surprise—apparently, the noises had awakened their mole friend. "I guess I'd better go see who they are."

Roy sat up as well, rubbing his eyes, red from lack of sleep. "Who in their right mind would be conversing outside of a mole's hole at this time of night?"

"Exactly what I was wondering," muttered Booker.

O.o.O

"Mom… we're not going to find them today… actually, I'm guessing it's past midnight, so it's the next day anyway… can we just sleep somewhere?"

Joanna threw up her wings in exasperation at Sheldon's ridiculous—at least to her way of thinking—question. "I can't rest until I find your brother, Sheldon! I simply can't! Sure, Roy can take care of himself, so I'm not as worried about him, but Booker's just a child! He can't survive out here on his own!"

"We won't survive either, if we keep wandering around strange places at night without any sleep," Sheldon reminded her, sounding unusually testy.

"Look, Sheldon," Joanna snapped, "if you were a parent, then you'd know exactly—"

"Excuse me?"

Joanna and Sheldon both spun around, their argument completely silenced. Kiral the mole gave them a friendly smile.

"Look, I'm sorry to break up your, uh, conversation, but my friends and I are trying to sleep." He blinked. "Oh jeez, you're chickens too?"

"What do you mean too?" Joanna asked.

"I've got two chickens lodging with me as we speak! A dejected rooster and an angry little chick who holds grudges!"

Sheldon slapped a wing against his head. "You've got to be kidding me."

Joanna made the connection instantly as well. "Booker and Roy are down there? Are you serious?"

"Yeah, I'm serious, that's their names… why, do you know them?" Kiral asked innocently.

The good mole was rudely interrupted when Joanna, in all of her motherly fury, pushed Kiral roughly to the side and stuck her head down the hole. "Booker! Booker! Are you in there?"

And down in the hole, both Booker's and Roy's eyes grew wide as their pupils dilated.

"Oh crap, it's Mom," grumbled Booker.

"Oh crap, it's Joanna," said Roy uncomfortably, apparently at a loss as to whatever it was he could say to her.

Booker gulped. "I guess we'd better come out, otherwise she'll be coming in," he said to Roy.

"Yes, we might as well get my embarrassing reunion with her over with," Roy sighed.

And so, reluctantly, the two chickens made their way out of the burrow to face Joanna…

…but their attention upon entering the night air wasn't on her. It was on Sheldon.

"Who the heck are you?" they both asked in unison.

"Take a wild guess," mumbled Sheldon, narrowing his eyes.

And then, again in unison, they both realized.

"SHELDON?"

"You hatched!" cried Booker (Roy's jaw had dropped to the ground and rendered him unable to say anything else). "I can't believe you hatched! …Wow, you look really weird!"

"Don't rub it in," muttered Sheldon.

"What made you decide to do it?"

"Decide?" Sheldon cried out, getting, perhaps for the first time in his life (his life pre-hatched counted as well, of course) truly angry. "Decide? There was no decision about it! Some idiotic human thought I was an egg for eating and was going to bake a cake out of me! She cracked me open on her mixing bowl! I had no say in the matter whatsoever! And furthermore—"

"Whatever, whatever," Booker interrupted. "What are you doing out here, though? You didn't want to run away too, did you?"

"No," Joanna's voice rang out, answering for Sheldon as she glared at Booker, "your brother was worried about you and went out searching for you! If it hadn't been for you, he'd be back at the farm, safe and warm inside his shell—then again, I guess I am glad that he finally hatched—"

"Oh Mom," cried Booker in annoyance, "are you going to chide me agai—"

Booker suddenly found himself unable to say anything else, as his mother crushed him in a fierce hug.

"You little scoundrel!" Joanna sobbed into Booker's feathers. "You had me worried sick! Don't you ever run off like that again, do you hear me? Oh, Booker—my dear little son!"

Booker struggled to breathe. "Uh, Mom—I've never given you cause to care about me—"

"It doesn't matter," said Joanna, loosening her grip on Booker a small fraction. "I'm your mother and I'll always love you."

Booker made no effort to hide his surprise.

Meanwhile, Sheldon picked up Roy's jaw and sent it rolling back up, like a curtain. "Yeah, yeah, I hatched. You can get over your shock now."

Roy rubbed his jaw—apparently, having it shoot down like that and hit the ground is a painful thing to experience. "I heard your explanation to Booker, but I still can't believe that you're actually out of your shell. And…" Roy unsuccessfully tried to hide a smirk. "…you look… you look like… A FREAK!" Unable to hold his laughter in any more, Roy fell to the ground in hysterical laughter, beating the dirt and letting tears of laughter freely fall down his face.

"I know, I know!" cried Sheldon. "So I should have hatched sooner. Mom was right. I look like a lop-sided dinosaur. There. Can we stop making fun of the mutant chick now?"

"Um…" Kiral finally spoke up again. "This is all sentimental and all, but I'm very tired, so I hope you all will excuse me if I exit stage left."

"I'm going too, I'm about to drop dead of exhaustion," Booker said.

"Me too!" said Sheldon.

"Says the munchkin," said Booker with a smirk.

"Come on, lay off…"

The two chicks jumped in the hole.

Kiral smiled at Roy and Joanna. "Are you two coming?"

Joanna smirked. "In a bit… I have a few questions I need to ask Roy here, first."

Roy blushed and tried to shrink a few inches.

"Okay… suit yourselves." Kiral smirked at Roy and did a neat little dive into his burrow.

Still gradually turning redder and redder, Roy half-laughed in an embarrassed manner and stepped back a few feet.

"What are you doing?" cried Joanna, completely nonplussed.

"Ahem, well…" Roy fumbled for words. "…I just don't want you to yell at me like you yelled at Booker…"

"I'm not going to yell," said Joanna, raising an eyebrow. "I'm going to ask. I know why Sheldon ran off, and I can almost understand why Booker did too. But why you? I thought you had more sense than that."

"Well… I… you…"

"I also thought you could actually speak in complete sentences."

"You like Buck better than me!" Roy finally blurted out.

He then mentally slapped himself. Wow. He couldn't have sounded more whiny if he tried. Nice way to win her back, huh, Roy?

"Oh, for the love of birdseed… No I don't."

"Could've fooled me."

"So I liked him at first—but then I heard him refer to all of hens as… as… I don't want to say it in a PG rated fic. He treats us like… like socks."

Roy blinked. "Socks?"

"Yes. Socks. He thought we were nice until we, in a sense, got dirty. Then he threw us away." Joanna shuddered. "I'm guessing by now all the other hens hate him too. I mean, even they can't be that stupid."

"I don't know… even you liked him at first."

"Not anymore! I was an idiot, a grade-A idiot! And… I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I guess I treated you like a sock as well, huh?"

"Yeah, sock… sure, whatever…"

They were quiet for a few moments.

"Well, I think I'll be going to sleep," Joanna finally said, and climbed down the hole.

"Uh, yeah… me too, I guess…"

Roy blinked.

Well. That was awkward.

O.o.O

(AN: Hmm, my mind can't take anymore typing for now. Sorry this chapter had no Tonya vs. Buck… next chapter, I promise! Whenever that will be. See you then!)