If, during the stresses the Hathian-hydra clutch had placed on the man, anyone had forgotten that Doctor Schroeder could be a very quirky old fellow at times, Biosynth 09 heralded the return of his usual cheery persona. With the Hathydras hatched and given homes and caretakers, and showing little signs that there would be any problems rising in the future, a huge weight lifted from the doctor's shoulders. He returned to the work of Synth 09 with merry zeal, and the entire ship was reminded that this was what they did their work for--to give children to parents who couldn't otherwise have them.
It did have to be admitted, though, that Synth 09 had Schroeder acting a little sillier than usual. Since one of the donors, Hyrian, was pathologically obsessed with threes, Schroeder had gone out of his way to make the clutch as inoffensive to Hyrian's values as possible. There had been one unavoidable clash--Hyrian hadn't wanted to meet the firstborn because there was only one of him--but Schroeder was making a concerted effort to make up for that upset.
There were, for starters, not one, but three little kits romping about the moss, pouncing on their parents' furry or jelly-like tails. Firstborn Ciek had been joined by his brothers Duo and Tigo, so that there was a "perfect" group of three kits ready to meet their parents when they at last arrived at the Destiny. The three had established a triplet-bond together and would all be remaining on the ship with Doctor Schroeder, but the energetic brothers were more than happy to socialize with their parents while the opportunity was available to them.
Secondly, there were twenty-four eggs in the bay. Adding in the firstborn and his delayed twins, that made for twenty-seven total offspring for Hyrian--three times three times three. It was far more eggs than candidates, yes, but Schroeder knew exactly what he was doing. The eggs were also set in eight very clear groups of three on the mossy bay floor, rather than being scattered haphazardly, as they usually would've been. Schroeder had also made sure all the Destiny staff members in the bay were grouped in threes--he stood with Devika and Valentine, three aides stood by the feeding tables, and the ushers to the viewing stands stood in groups of three when they weren't helping people find seats in the tiers.
No one had asked Schroeder to go to these extra lengths--he'd done it entirely of his own volition. He knew it was worth the coordination as he watched Hyrian make three circuits of the bay floor, counting the egg-trios and lightly touching each shell three times, and looking on with approval at the "perfect" three-person clusters of eggs and people Schroeder had organized.
"Hold on a second," Devika muttered, looking from her datapad to the clustered candidates. "We're missing one."
"And who would that be?" Schroeder asked.
The anthro-shifted daemon tapped her little screen with a claw. "Ixin Del'Arammago. He was registered and cleared, but I don't see him on the floor."
Schroeder hmmed to himself and looked around, letting his mind absorb the bay around him. "Ah, there he is, up in the audience." The man pointed to the front row, where the drider sat with two of his sponsorlings.
"What's he doing up there?" Devika snorted. She directed a sharp thought at one of the usher-clusters. ::Somebody get that spider-taur down here where he belongs!::
As the trio she'd accosted hurried to follow her telepathic direction, the eggs at last began to crack. Hyrian returned to the sidelines, excitedly tap-tap-tapping his tail on the ground.
Shells broke away to reveal fuzzy, wingless little hatchlings. Long hair crested their heads, ringed their necks, and tufted the ends of their half-jelly-like tails. Niteshan gems lined their backs, limbs, and circled their brows, and nubby gem-like horns sat beside their long ears. Their bellies were armor-plated, but otherwise they were all fur. Some of them had calico-patterned coats, while the rest were solid-colored.
There were also triplets in abundance. Three of the egg-sets divulged kits who, even if physically the same, were very different in color. Singletons. The other five egg-sets, on the other hand, revealed trios of kits with identical colors and patterning. Schroeder looked very pleased with himself as each kit in the triplet-sets happily pounced on his or her duplicates, establishing sibling-bonds, while the singletons got a head start on the candidates.
One brown male got an even bigger lead than the others--he took off at a flat-out run. With a joyful squeal, he pounced upon Sarusaru, and the kit was plenty large enough to tumble the monkey-spirit to the mossy ground.
"I'll play with you!" Sonnyr Selamputo beamed, pinning his new bond down and merrily wagging his tail.
A large female with a calico coat in three shades of red made a determined beeline for one of the candidates. "I like your hair!" grinned Ralinesa, tossing her bright pink mane as she looked up at a girl whose blonde hair had been dyed with pink tips.
Devika squinted at her datapad as the new pair moved to the feeding tables. "Who was that kid?"
"Circumflex-underscore-circumflex," Schroeder replied.
The daemon lifted her head and stared at him. "What?"
"Well that's not what she's actually called," chuckled the doctor, "but that's how you spell her name when you write it. Here, this one." Schroeder leaned over and pointed out the candidate entry labeled only ^_^.
Devika flattened her head-crest in disbelief. "Sheesh. The things they name kids these days...."
Another calico female--this time one in shades of brown--found her way to the feet of the enkeyn Koaekaeala Maeno.
"If the way to have a friend is to be a friend," she mused aloud, "then the way to be a friend is to have one! So I'll be your first! I'm Terynesa!"
Though three of the singletons started out wandering different ways, in the end, they all converged on the same group. It only made sense that the fraternal human triplets Aziren, Neriza, and Riaren would be approached by dragonets so similar, yet different. The kits that settled at the siblings' feet all had the same orange hair, the same green gems, and the same cream markings on their feet and bellies, but each bore a different one of their goprin-father's three colors.
Aziren got the red. "I'm Kasian," he said. "Got anything I can help you with back home?"
The yellow female cuddled up to Neriza's legs, purring happily. "We'll be best friends!"
That left the blue male giving Riaren a smile. "Wish I coulda been there to help with helping your tiger-friend. But I'll be around to lend a hand next time!"
After giving the candidates a look-about and deciding what she saw didn't really appeal to her, a tiny calico trotted over to where Schroeder stood. "Grandpaaaaaa?"
The doctor looked down with a smile as the kit batted her big green eyes up at him. "Yes, Jasinesa?"
Jasinesa flicked her tail and cocked her head, making a bit of a show over posing cutely. "Can I stay with yoooooou?"
Schroeder chuckled. Oh dear, this one would be an absolute minx when she got older! "If that's what you want."
"Yay!" squealed the kit, who then scampered off to be fed.
One little male had a pelt tricolored just like Hyrian's, though he was more blue than red. His green eyes were half-lidded with seeming indifference as he investigated the candidates, measuring them up against whatever mental checklist he had for a potential bond.
"Hmm." He stopped at the feet of the young pan-thar, Remy, looking between the youth and his accompanying hunting cat for a moment. At last, the calico male nodded. "I'm Tivian," he stated simply.
The last of the singletons was a large, mostly yellow calico male. "Think I can learn to be any good at.... at.... what's the word for what you do, again?" he asked, picking Dannen Kurt out of the little crowd.
"Carpentry?" Dannen eyed his new bond appraisingly. "Well, you do have hands rather than paws.... I'm sure we can find some way for you to help."
Halkyr smiled with relief. "Good!"
Now the triplets advanced on the candidates who were left. The trios had each other as bonds, after all, so it wouldn't really be fair if they'd robbed their singleton siblings of the chance to find a lifemate!
With three identical grins plastered across their faces, a set of browns pranced their way over to a candidate whose name had been permanently listed on the Destiny's charts ever since Biosynth 05. Dihinax Toxkepni's eyes widened in surprise as the little females clustered around his feet.
"There! Now aren't-" "-you glad you-" "-waited for us?" asked Kine, Epu, and Kula. Patience was indeed a virtue, and Dihinax had finally been rewarded for learning the lesson of it!
Ixin Del'Arammago had finally been coaxed out of the audience after about half the singletons had found bonds. It had turned out that the dragons he'd been sitting with were the ones who had put his name up for candidate consideration, rather than the drider himself! But in the end, his surprise candidacy didn't bother Ixin at all, so he'd worked his way down to the bay floor and waited to see if anything would come of his sudden change in "status".
And sure enough, here came a little cluster of males. They were rather oddly colored, being an unusual calico combination of brown, blue, and yellow--Yehenesa and Wiphyr's browns replacing Hyrian's red, it seemed.
"We'll be plenty of company for you until you're ready to leave your tower!" Rimwe, Kabiri, and Gatatu cheered in unison, darting playfully between the drider's many legs.
Three of the kits weren't interested in taking any more bonds than each other. Rather than head for the candidates, they trotted towards their parents, Hyrian, Wiphyr, and Yehenesa. Hyrian lifted his head eagerly as they approached. Not only were there three of them, but they each had the same three-color pelt that he did--red, yellow, and blue!
"Perfect!" Hyrian exclaimed, before the three could even say anything. "Hyrian is perfect, and Hyrian's daughters are perfect too!"
The three kits exchanged amused looks. "So you'll keep us?" Ekahi, Elua, and Ekolu asked together.
"Yes yes yes!" beamed the Goprin. "Hyrian insists!"
As three brown kits approached him, Kedac Na'carrah watched each one with a different head. Schroeder had to shake his head in amusement at the already full-grown (if dwarfed) Hathydra. He knew time was fluid in the Nexus and the realms sometimes connected to it, but sometimes it just got silly!
The little males blinked up at the Hathydra, and then giggled. The kits stood in a line and pressed their shoulders together, then the two on the sides held their heads low while the center kit held his high.
"Now-" "-we-" "-match!" giggled Eins, Zwei, and Drei.
The final match set was by another brown trio that approached the strange little entity that was the recycling golem, Tellys, Beldar, or Eksulktul, depending on who it was being at the moment.
When the hatching had begun, it had started out as Tellys, to be quiet and composed as most of the other candidates seemed to be. As the hatching had drawn on, and every candidate but it had seemed to be bonding, Eksulktul had grumbled louder and louder, but nowhere near enough to rise to the forefront. It took a lot more abuse than simply being passed over by dragon-kits to bring Eksulktul out, and Tellys and Beldar had still been optimistic enough to retain control--kits had stopped to examine them, after all, rather than flat-out ignoring them, which was certainly a promising sign!
But now, with three dragons approaching them, and with clear purpose as well, there was nothing to be done to stop Beldar from leaping to the forefront. Suddenly the golem shifted from a metallic biped to a plastic and rubber quadruped, bouncing around on its knuckles as a laughing trio of kits scampered around with it.
"We'll take you, no matter what your names are or what you look like!" promised Tahi, Rua, and Toru.
Schroeder laughed as the quartet--or whatever they qualified as--romped off towards the feeding tables. "Now there's irony for you," he commented to Devika and Valentine. "AL Smiths can spend years trying to come up with a sentient android that's capable of bonding a dragon--and here we just saw a simple, self-evolved recycling golem accomplish the same thing entirely on its own."
"Compared to some of the things we've seen here in these bays, that's tame," Devika snorted lightly, making the final check on her datapad. "I just want to know how you planned this so well."
Schroeder looked innocent. "Why, whatever do you mean?"
Devika pointed at the remains of the eggs. "Twenty-seven eggs all told. Nine singletons and six sets of triplets. Far more kits than the number of candidates that registered. Yet all the triplets went off in their trios, and it all worked out. It's like you choreographed them! What did you do, encode the number three directly into their brains as well?"
The doctor laughed. "Devika, you know that's impossible."
"So is how perfectly this hatching just worked out."
"But it worked out, so why question it?"
"...I swear, Reinhardt, some days I just want to throw my datapad right at that enigmatic smile of yours...."