Biosynth 03 Hatching

One of the nice things about presentient clutches--that is, clutches where the eggbound dragonets could telepathically communicate long before their actual hatching--was that there was no need to try and guess when the dragonets inside would start breaking shell because the little creatures could speak up and tell you, and in turn, could be asked to wait just a little while longer while the candidates were rallied.

And oh, the cheerful noises they made when finally they could release themselves! Even if the sounds were only heard in the mind, the happy laughs and cheers gave Alpha Bay the sound of an elementary school playground at recess time. This clutch was the largest Schroeder had synthed since his return to SCD--the more candidates that applied, the more eggs he could create, knowing there was an abundance of homes willing to take them in and love them. And with twenty-two telepathic voices raised in eagerness, the sound was a boisterous one indeed.

It wasn't to say, though, that there weren't also actual voices adding to the happy bedlam. Little Callidei, firstborn of the clutch, pranced excitedly around her shelled siblings and tapped on their eggs with her little red claws while her bond, the unfriendly black wolfdragon Battleworn Claw, kept close to her but did not join in her glee.

Unfortunately, Schroeder couldn't say the gathering was wholly a happy one. Even as she danced around her unhatched siblings, Callidei gave her mothers a wide berth. The wolfdragon hatching hadn't been all that long ago, and the little crossbreed was still mad at Ketvia for being a "mean old bully" and scaring the living daylights out of little Claw. Ketvia herself had been in a sullen mood ever since the day Callidei had bonded--whether she'd chosen Claw, or Claw had chosen her, nobody knew!--and it was clear enough that the burly Fire was still having trouble with the "loss" of her firstborn daughter.

And that wasn't all. Today seemed to be the day for strained family tension. Aedelian Landwerlen, the friend who had brought Chiya and Ketvia to the Destiny, was present to watch… and so was the resentful daughter that Aedelian had "warned" Schroeder about, in hopes of keeping such a personality out of Chiya and Ketvia's children. The pale dragoness, Lha, sat at the back of the sponsor-candidate group, beside a humanoid friend she'd brought with her. A pitiful kind of hopefulness had flashed across Aedelian's face when Lha had first walked in, but his singular attempt at addressing his daughter had been coolly ignored, as if he weren't even there. Even now, Lha had only glanced once at the Avengaean Air--a look that had flashed disbelief and fury before she'd averted her eyes and put on an expression of indifference.

Schroeder hated to see such unhappy tensions aboard his ship, but there was nothing he could do for either of these. Aedelian wanted to be forgiven by a daughter who wanted to be forgotten, and Ketvia felt betrayed by a daughter who wouldn't be going home with her. Though no one was likely aware that Schroeder knew these things--or at least, not the precise specifics of them--knowing things he shouldn't have had never stopped him from stepping into others' problems before, but in these cases, there was nothing he could do to help and no words he could offer to soothe the pain, so he stayed quiet and stayed out of it.

But at last, all the eggs began to shatter as the hatchlings within found the right spot to kick and wriggle at, and Callidei laughed brightly as more fluffy little crossbreeds rolled onto the moss all around her, exchanging their telepathic voices for their real ones.

"I'm out!"

"I'm hatched!"

"I'm free!"

"I'm… green?"

"I'm upside-down!"

::I'm stuck!::

The mass of hatchlings--most of them white, but a few as red as Ketvia--all turned towards the single egg that had yet to hatch. Or at least, that had yet to hatch all the way! The last egg tottered around on four white paws sticking out of four little holes on its underside, and the dragonets laughed and squealed as they danced out of the way of their staggering sibling.

::Gah! Help!:: Get this thing off meeee!::

"Just hold still!" laughed a large red, scampering forward before any of the present adults could move to the rescue, halting the egg but putting his hands to its pointed front end. The egg stopped obediently, and the red reached down to the holes and started pulling away handfuls of shell.

The rest of the hatchlings watched for just a moment and then all swarmed together. Suddenly there were a dozen little hands reaching and pulling away shards of eggshell, until finally their last sibling was free.

"Phew," sighed the red-bellied white, giving himself a shake. "Thanks!"

Giggling, the dragonets milled about for a while, investigating each other and their surroundings. There was another thing to say for presentience: it fostered a social aspect within the kits when they had week after week with little entertainment outside of talking to each other.

"Why are you so much taller'n me?"

"Jeez, I am green!"

"Where's Callidei? Callidei!"

"Hey, there's Mommy!"

"And Ketvia!"

"And Grandpa!"

"Hey, where's Kenedi?"

The happy babbling died down for a moment, as the dozen-or-so kits all stared at each other, then rallied again. "Kenedi!" they called.

"I wanna see her skull!"

"I wanna see her float!"

"I wanna see her fire!"

"Kenediiiiii!"

There was a little squeak over in the sponsor-group as Kenedi--a whorling who looked like nothing but a large, floating, fiery skull--drifted to the front of the pack and waved a disembodied claw at the kits. "Here I am!"

"Kenedi!" cheered the kits, and en masse, they all charged. Only Callidei and Claw were left behind, the former laughing, and the latter scowling as he pressed close to his bond's leg.

Schroeder laughed, too, as the crossbreed kits unanimously surrounded Kenedi, much to the bewilderment of their parents and all the other candidates.

"Wow, you're cool!"

"Are you gonna tell us more stories?"

"I wish I looked like you…."

"Can we ever learn to float?"

Kenedi laughed at all the attention she was getting. "Shouldn't you all… be picking bonds and sponsors?"

The kits quieted again.

"Oh yeah!"

"That's right!"

"Woo!"

"Me first!"

"Kenedi's mine!" squealed a little white-blonde female, jumping up and grabbing one of the whorling's claws in her little hands. "I'm Spera!"

And with Spera's declaration, happy chaos burst out all over again. About half of the kits broke off and scampered to the bonder-group, while the rest remained dancing around the sponsors, laughing and asking questions of all kinds as they tried to figure out where they wanted to go.

"I wanted to be first!" laughed a male with dark red pigmentation, remaining in the sponsor-group and looking around at all the faces there with a wide smile. "Eenie… meenie… mynie… hey, actually…. Hiya, Tamair!" he exclaimed, pouncing onto the elf's shoes. "You feel right, so I'll be going home with you! I'm Iudico!"

A hatchling with pigmentation the color of pale parchment bounced--quite literally--around the sponsor-candidates, cackling gleefully until he tripped right onto someone's feet. "Haha, hi!" laughed Navitas, looking up at Pendrian from where he'd sprawled. "Take me with you!"

"I still can't believe I'm green…" muttered a large male, padding towards the bonders. He wasn't all green, but the crimson red of his body was offset by a mint-green belly, wings, and extra tufts of hair. He was, in fact, the only one of his siblings to show any of Chiya's own pale green, and it wasn't exactly an attractive combination.

He found his way to the feet of a furry, icy-colored dragon with a shimmer of heat along his back, and two tails: one that burned with fire, and another that gave off a cloud of frost. Redarguo blinked at this contrast until he found the words to understand it. "Fire and ice?" Here, then, was a contradiction that made his own pale by comparison! "Well that settles it; you're the one for me, Eyre," the crossbreed grinned.

Another red wandered the sponsor-group, looking a little confused. He too was bright red, but had a white belly, orange wings, and fur-tufts that faded from orange to yellow. Finally he picked the once-human Dracothrope out of the crowd, and looked up at her with dismay clear on his features. "You're in the wrong group!" he cried.

The co-owner of the semi-infamous Ranch of Doom blinked down at the kit in confusion. "Wrong group?"

The male anxiously shifted his weight from forepaw to forepaw. "You're in the sponsor group! But I want to bond you!"

Dracothrope's eyes immediately went large and wibbly, and beside her, her friend Lha hid a grin. "You do?"

"I do!" the kit agreed. "But you're in the sponsor group!"

"No I'm not!" Dray suddenly exclaimed, and went running over to the candidate-group, where she stopped and threw her arms over the shoulders of two bewildered-looking candidates. "I'm over here! With the other candidates! See? See?"

Denique blinked, then acquired large and wibbly eyes of his own. He ran at the anthropomorph full-speed and, given he was already three feet tall, tackled her hard enough to bring her down--and the candidates she'd thrown her arms over thankfully had the reflexes to zip out from under her grasp and dash out of harm's way!

The Dyrmyst dragon standing among the sponsor-candidates, Seektalon, had attracted the attention of a red-fringed female. "You traveled through space to get here?" Erra asked, wide-eyed. "That's the kind of thing I want to do. If I go with you, can we do lots of that? Space-traveling?"

A pale red-pigmented male homed in on Deies in the sponsor-group, and made his selection known by pouncing the man's shoes and attempting to gnaw on them. Right away, Infero made it clear that we was going to be quite a handful!

A white male--the same one who had had to be rescued from his egg by his siblings--wandered among the sponsors for a little while, asking as many questions as everyone else before finally declaring, "Nah, this isn't for me!"

He wriggled free of the cluster of bodies and started to pad over to where Chiya and Ketvia sat, presiding over the hatching in their natural dragon bodies. Chiya was clearly trying not to cry, though her eyes brimmed with tears as she watched all her children clustering far away from her around all the strangers who wanted to bond or sponsor them. She almost didn't see the little white at first.

"Mom!" he called, approaching. "Ketvia! I wanna-ERK!"

Somehow or another, he managed to drop his foot through a weak spot in the mossy turf, get it caught on one of the heating tubes hidden beneath, and went sprawling as he tripped flat on his face.

Chiya and Ketvia were immediately on their feet and rushing to their fallen son, but somehow another kit beat them to him. It was, in fact, the same red that had first started the eggshell-breaking rescue.

"Geez, Vir, you're such a klutz!" he laughed, pulling the white's foot out of the hole and brushing the moss back in place.

"It's not my fault, Regius!" the white pouted, after spitting out a mouthful of the moss, and then suddenly found himself gathered up into Chiya's large hands.

"Are you okay?" fretted the Light, looking all over her son for any sign of a cut or bruise or even a little scrape.

"Yeah Mom, I'm fine," Vir answered, wriggling with embarrassment. "I was just trying to say I wanna go with you and Ketvia."

"Which means I'm going too!" called Regius.

"You?" Vir shot back, leaning his head over Chiya's fingers to look all the way down at the white-bellied red.

"Yeah, me!" Regius grinned. "Somebody's gotta help them keep you outta trouble!"

"Gee, thanks…"

"You're funny," laughed a little white-orange female, finally settling in the candidate-group at the feet of a dragon-godling named Nibori. "We're just kids; we can't be beautiful yet!"

"How about when you're older, Domina?" asked the Fire Guardian, smiling.

"Maybe. We'll see," Domina giggled.

Nibori wasn't the only guardian dragon on the station, and not just because of his sister. Two other guardian dragons, from a totally different world and pantheon, were being pondered by a pair of hatchlings. After the quartet conversed briefly, the hatchlings made their bonds: white-yellow female Alcedonia attached herself to Ignis, and pigmentless male Decolo latched playfully to Lumen.

In the bonding-candidate group, a man of rather attractive feature stood looking confident, sitting on a short stool that one of the bay attendants had procured for him and idly tapping his cane on the mossy turf. A woman--his physical therapist--stood close at hand, alternating between watching her patient, and glancing at the hatchlings that meandered about, and hoping she hadn't made a mistake in bringing the man here.

But then a little white appeared at his ankle, reaching one hand out to lightly touch his cane with nothing but the innocent curiosity of a child in her red eyes. Next she looked up at the man and smiled, resting her tiny hand over one of his feet. "Hi Everett," she said, ears perked. "We'll take care of each other, okay?"

Everett stood to accompany his new bond over to the feeding tables--tables that were lined with a rather normal-looking lunchtime buffet rather than the raw meats of most hatchings--and his therapist, Reece, followed behind with a clear look of relief.

Then she realized she was being followed. A tiny red female with orange pigmentation had fallen in at Reece's heel without a word, but looked up with a shy smile when she realized she'd somehow attracted Reece's attention.

"Hi, Reece," she murmured, bashfully turning her ears back. "I hope it's okay… that I bonded you?" she asked, knowing from Reece's mind that the woman hadn't placed her name on either sign-up register.

It was Reece's turn to blink in surprise then, but how could she help but smile, too? She bent down to little Cura and gave the hatchling a gentle hug around her neck, wordlessly saying that she didn't mind at all.

Another white female, this one pigmented with yellow that faded to white on her various tufts of fur, found her way to Bianka's side. Spotting her made Schroeder smirk a little, because looking at her made him think of Alexi, who was still around and entertaining the crew, and of Shy, who visited at least once a week. Schroeder still found the other man incredibly amusing, and outside of the semi-bond he'd brought back from the Vella Crean's final clutch, was probably the only person on the Destiny who wasn't creeped out by the man!

But back to the present. Little Lenia smiled sweetly up at the young woman. "I bet you danced beautifully. Wish I could've seen it."

A male, his red pigment possessing a slight magenta cast, had found Shamoor Marken among the bonding-candidates. "Can't be too lonely if you'll have me around, right?" asked Comitero, smiling as he leaned his head on her leg.

The crossbreed Ampilo Galiam Sentadergae had managed to snare two kits' attention, and was attempting to capture their interest by telling them all about the mercenary organization called Ampilae--or at least telling them as much as she could manage in the relatively little time she thought she had to make her pitch. "We believe that we crossbreeds are more than the sum of our parts," Schroeder heard her say, catching a fragment of the conversation. He knew all about the mess a certain Frada Meredia had caused down on Driolo, and so wasn't quite sure what he thought of the crossbreed organization… but at least there would be no abuse of bonding-scrolls aboard his ship!

"That sounds like just the thing for me!" cheered little Fortis.

Beside him, however, his dark red brother was watching Galiam's son, Matramo. The young crossbreed was attempting to sidle towards the bonding-candidate group while his mother was distracted. Though she had signed him up to be a sponsor as well, he had later on gone back and had his name switched to the bonding-candidate roster. And if that one anthro-gal had had to be in the other group to bond, then he needed to move over, too!

Finally, Paxis, the red, grinned and snickered as he extended his bond to Matramo. "I'm sittin' right here, dude. Where you goin'?"

A large female wandered back and forth between the groups, not looking indecisive, but simply not attracted to either selection. Her coloration earned her a second glance from Schroeder--her fur-fringe faded to gray! Where had that color come from?

Finally Tripudia wandered over to Schroeder himself. "These people're all nice, but… what I'd really like is to go to Avengaea. Can I do that?"

Schroeder blinked, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully. No specific sponsor from Avengaea had come to the Destiny, but… "If that's really what you want, I'm sure we can make it happen somehow." He motioned to where his assistant Devika stood, making notes on a datapad. "Why don't you go sit by Devika for now?"

"Okay," smiled the little hatchling, and trotted off to do as suggested.

A red-pigmented white was thoughtfully considering Temaie Laeranir with wide eyes. "Wow…. You're really tough! Think I can be tough, too?"

"There's no reason why you can't be, Lepori," the slayer smiled.

"Guess I'll just have to learn and practice," the kit grinned.

Back among the sponsors, a male with vibrant orange pigmentation had been conversing with Lha for a while. But not because he was as like-minded a dragonet as Lha had thought she'd might find, oh no!

In fact, Fidelan was just the opposite, and proved it when he finally asked, "You're not gonna mind if I love my parents, are you?"

"Certainly not," Lha snorted.

"And you won't mind if I want to keep in touch with some of my brothers and sisters?"

"I communicate with a brother, myself," Lha replied. "His name is Annifano."

At last Fidelan looked relieved and reassured. "Then I want to go with you."

The final kit, a red female, had wandered the bonder-group indecisively, exchanging words with nearly all the candidates before she finally homed in on Alore Calenn, the half-elf.

"Hey, I'm a half-and-half too!" Retinea laughed, when she finally realized Alore's halfbreed nature. "We must be perfect for each other!"

"Guess that's everybody," giggled little Callidei, trotting over to Schroeder and sitting by his feet. Claw, ever near, predictably gave the man a vicious glare, but settled a little when Callidei spread a wing over his back and hugged him close.

"Guess it is," Schroeder agreed. "And how about you?" he asked, even though he already knew the answer. "Where will you go?"

"Well I'm gonna stay here, o'course!" she beamed. "I wanna grow up and invent things, and when I'm older, help you make more eggs! I'll be, like, your apprentice!"

"And what does Claw think of that?" Schroeder teased, smiling at the little pair.

The wolfdragon bared his teeth for a moment, but then muttered something under his breath. Callidei looked torn between laughing and giving her smaller bond a chastising nip. "He says," she drawled, while Claw narrowed his eyes, "at least you're better than 'that monster Fire'."

Schroeder couldn't really respond to that. Even if Ketvia's deliberate scare-attack on Claw couldn't be condoned, you couldn't expect people to act rationally when their hearts were broken. "Ketvia's not so bad."

Callidei shrugged, standing up again. Claw rose with her. "Well, I'll be right back. I'm gonna go give Mommy a hug goodbye."

"And what about Ketvia?"

The little crossbreed looked back over her shoulder, and for a moment Schroeder could actually see what he already knew she was hiding under her indifferent amusement: the hurt of a child who doesn't understand why a playmate has suddenly turned mean. "Maybe if she finally says 'sorry'."