//------------------------------//
// Chapter 43 
// Story: Hegira: Eternal Delta 
// by Guardian_Gryphon 
//------------------------------//

Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
March 29th, Gregorian Calendar

Minos rose from behind his desk, and placed his hands firmly on the battered undecorated steel surface.

"I take it things didn't go as planned ma'am?"

Councilor Loryss marched stiffly to the nearest chair, and flounced into it forcibly.

"These species we have so foolishly invited onto our world are...  Difficult.  It is clear to me that the one you encountered is no longer in any way under the control of his superior officers."

Minos shrugged, and sat back into his chair.

"So you want me to have him eliminated?"

Loryss shook her head, and grunted.

"Too difficult.  Especially for someone with your lesser qualifications.  He's already made a fool of you once.  No.  Without the girl he has nothing.  Stop wasting time.  We focus on the objective;  Remove the asset from play, eliminate evidence, and cut any possible ties that provide means of garnering further future evidence."

Minos ran a hand through his hair, and tilted his head.

"How?"

The Councilor pursed her lips, and fixed her gaze on the man.

"The Gryphon is cut off from most of his usual military resources.  The Bureau's ConSec staff will fall in line if they see the right authorization papers.  A small detachment of men flown in in by official diplomatic-tagged transport.  In and out in less than ten minutes.  We have eyes inside the structure, so we can time it based on his routine, when the asset is at her least defended."

Minos nodded slowly, and smiled.

"They aren't expecting something this brazen, and he couldn't cope even if he was.  He lacks the connections now.  When?"

Loryss inclined her head, and smiled slightly.

"Tomorrow."





The Equestrian sky was cloudless.  As a result, in spite of the fact that most of Manhattan's infrastructural lights had been turned off, the scene was bathed in bright luminescence.

The comforting, soft blue gleam of the lunar illumination mixed well with the torchlight.  It cast the Green-Wood Cemetery in an almost comforting, natural tone.

The coffin itself was empty.  Fyrenn didn't even like the idea of burying an empty casing.  Gryphon death ceremonies involved burning a pyre, whether the body was present or not.  The gesture was meant to appeal to April's ingrained Human conceptions.

Inasmuch as he knew the moment would be incredibly painful in its own ways, he also knew from vivid past experience that it was a vital part of catharsis and healing.  Processes April could not afford to defer.  Processes no one could afford to defer, if they were honest with themselves.

Fyrenn, Neyla, Kephic, and Varan each gripped one corner of the military-issue gray capsule that represented Sonya's absent Earthly remains.  An Gryphon Kingdom flag, simple clean and new, was draped over the casing.

Each Gryphon held a torch in their free claw.  Each lugged an Enfield rifle slung to their back.  Kephic had withdrawn the replicas from the special tasks division of the armory.  They were used almost exclusively for honor-guards, having no real tactical value in the modern age.

Behind them Carradan and Skye brought up the rear, shepherding April between them.  To her credit, Fyrenn had not seen her devolve into uncontrolled weeping a single time since the previous night.

Tears had been shed on and off.  Fyrenn knew she was weeping softly even as they climbed the long path to the spot on the hill he had scouted out only hours before.  But April was cogent.  And that meant she was, on some level, starting the coping process.

After what seemed like an eternity, the group's solemn march came to an end.  The four Gryphons silently lowered the empty coffin into the space Fyrenn and Varan had hollowed out, then slammed their torches into the ground, and stood back.

Fyrenn glanced briefly out from the hill at the skyline of the city.  Most of the buildings were darkened, and the majority of the artificial lighting was clustered around the Bureau, a few high-wealth housing towers, the port, airfields, and the train terminals.

The rest were black silhouettes against a starry eastern Equestrian sky.  If Fyrenn unfocused his eyes, he could almost pretend the hulking shapes were distant mountains.

He waited for a respectful moment of silence to pass, then pulled the rifle from his shoulder.  The weapon felt unusually small to him, having been designed originally for Human hands.

There was no need for him to utter the traditional military commands to accompany the three-volley salute.  The other Gryphons were fully capable of following his motions with millimeter-fine precision and split-second timing.

The quartet raised the rifles, cycled the bolts, and fired.  The process was repeated again.  And again, a final time.

The last echoes of the shots lingered for nearly half a minute as they rebounded off the gravestones, obelisks, and larger tomb structures below.

Neyla pulled another object from the straps between her wings, and jammed it haft-first into the ground above the coffin, where the tombstone would have gone.  She pulled a red ribbon from a small pouch, and deftly tied it off on the cross-guard of the javelin.

Silence reigned.  It stretched out into a long minute.  Then another.

Fyrenn nearly jumped several feet when it was abruptly broken by a sound that seemed to electrify every nerve in his body.  It took him several long moments to realize that it was Neyla's voice, broken out into song.

The notes were clear, cold, and piercing; Like new fallen snow under a starlit sky.  And they were intimately familiar.  Fyrenn quickly realized she must have discovered the song somewhere on his music player.  An old spiritual, melancholy yet hopeful.

Fyrenn only discovered he had opened his beak and joined in several moments after he had already done so.

As his voice mixed with Neyla's in nearly-perfect harmony through the chorus, he watched April grip Skye, and Carradan tightly to her, as though they were oversized childhood stuffed toys.

As the second verse began, the four Gryphons clustered around April as well, forming a protective circle of wings.

The girl's tears flowed freely, but Fyrenn was glad to see them.  They mirrored his own.  

And they were a sign that she was saying goodbye, in her own way.





"You're sure?"

April nodded meekly, and lay back, letting the pillows engulf her head like a cloud.  Fyrenn knelt beside the bed, and gestured to the window first, then the door.

"The window tint is controlled by that little blue touchbar on the dresser surface.  My room is the next down on the right.  You wake me if you need me.  Ok?"

April once again nodded silently.  Fyrenn prepared to rise, and leave, but something in her expression stopped him short.  He spent a long moment debating with himself, before he finally gave in to his instinctive response.

He leaned over, and pulled April into a neck-hug, burying her face in the feathers just behind his left cheek.

As he pulled away, April's voice once again brought him up short.

"You know, Neyla has a beautiful voice."

Fyrenn smiled, and nodded slightly.

"I haven't heard her sing all that often.  She's very talented."

April sighed, and pulled the covers close.

"Sonya used to sing me to sleep sometimes.  When I couldn't stop thinking, and thinking, and worrying..."

Fyrenn sighed, and shrugged his wings, but sat back on his haunches nonetheless.

"Well... I am not all that much of a singer..."

He watched as April's face fell slightly, and immediately held up a conciliatory claw.

"But for you.  I'll do my best."

April smiled, and closed her eyes, snuggling down into the sumptuous self-sculpting mattress in anticipation.

Fyrenn inhaled slowly, and made his best effort, selecting something he knew would resonate.

"In my wrestling, and in my doubts... In my failures, you won't walk out..."





Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
March 30th, Gregorian Calendar

"Surface Contact!  Bearing Zero-Seven-Five degrees relative.  Range;  Nine hundred meters.  LADAR signature returns positive, but no EM signatures and minimal thermal output.  Object is stationary."

The Retribution's captain nodded, and leaned forward to grip the command podium railing.

"That's our chitinous friends.  Early as usual.  Rig ship for EMCON One silent operations.  Prepare to surface.  Ready cargo hatches amidships, and get the loading crews to stations."

With a pervasive thrum and a hiss, accompanied by a soft klaxon, water was expelled forcibly from the ship's ballast tanks.  As the crew worked diligently at their assigned consoles, Retribution rose gracefully to meet the surface.

The submarine arrived gently, with no fanfare or dramatic spray of water.  The Captain had no desire to alert any nearby patrol Frigates with an unusually large displacement wave.

As the boat settled, he gestured towards the central portion of his console bank.

"Give me composite periscope feed here.  Open the starboard cargo hatches and activate the signal lights.  Standby for---"

The LADAR officer interjected loudly, a note of concern creeping into his voice as he barked out a report.  The tension was compounded by the fact that an automatic proximity alarm began to sound insistently as he spoke.

"New contact!  Bearing One-Nine-Seven degrees relative!  Contact in motion.  Designating Track Zero-One-Six, Range Eight hundred meters, Speed seventeen Knots over-surface!"

Before the Captain could even turn to face the officer, much less demand a more thorough report, an officer on the other side of the compartment began shouting, doing his best to make himself heard over another, much louder alarm.

"INCOMING ORDINANCE!!  Brace! Brace!"

The Captain barely had time to grip the nearest railing, before the boat shook vigorously amidst the deafening roar of a dozen outer-hull impacts.  The moment the noise, and the sway, had died down to a manageable level, he straightened himself into a vaguely upright position and began shouting.

"REPORT!"

A voice filtered back from his left side.

"Contacts moving onto flanking tracks!  Multiple high-frequency EM signatures accompanied by inbound projectiles!"

An officer to the rear of the bridge spoke up as soon as there was room in the conversation.

"Damage control reports significant ablation in five locations on the outer hull!"

As the officer spoke, a series of images finally resolved themselves on the central display screens.  To the fore, and aft, familiar jet-black shapes loomed.

Changeling Outriggers were ugly, and menacing, but stunningly fast for a sailing vessel.  Fashioned from thin but tough wafers of highly polished igneous rock, and driven by green membranous sails, they were a familiar sight to Retribution's crew.

Decidedly more concerning, and less familiar, were the green flashes emanating from the sides of the vessels.  The light sources seemed to produce a faint green smoke trail every time they winked into existence.  A few moments later a sharp black object would bury itself in Retribution's outer hull, and detonate.

The Captain's face hardened, and he renewed a white-knuckled grip on his podium railing.

"It's an ambush.  Little insectoid fuckers are armed with exploding shells."

He raised one hand and pointed, bringing up the volume of his orders to ensure they would be heard over the roar of incoming rounds.

"Break EMCON Status and bring the boat up to full combat condition!  Spin up all missile tubes and deploy forward gun!  Load torpedo bays one and two!  Move us ahead flank speed!"

The executive officer began to parrot the orders into the intercom, as the lighting on the bridge descended into the dull orange-red of combat alert.

"General quarters.  General quarters.  All hands to combat stations.  Secure cargo doors port and starboard, damage control to forward bulkheads."

Simultaneously, the weapons officer spoke forcefully into his headset, communicating directly with the torpedo room, and fire control officers.

"Torpedo room: Load tubes one and two, set warheads for hull-piercing configuration.  Fire Control: Deploy forward railgun and acquire target, track two-seven-eight.  Spin up all missile tubes, short range configuration, alight a second volley and place into the reload pool.  Divide bays between hostile contacts in a staggered launch pattern.  Kill tracks two-seven-eight and one-four-nine!"

The submarine bucked, groaned, and shuddered as the recoil from her weapons, the impact of the enemy shells, and the stress of acceleration, combined to test her frame to it's upper operating limits.

Fiery streaks shot forth from the Retribution's forward railgun, tearing huge chunks out of the nearest Outrigger.  Chips of basalt sprayed in all directions, piercing the hull, the sails, and several members of the crew, mixing the black fragments of their chitin into the swirl of debris.

Before either of the Outriggers could prepare its next gun volley, dozens of sleek gray warheads blossomed forth from Retribution's VLS racks.  Rising on white and orange plumes of propellant, the missiles arced up and outwards in writhing, spiraling, graceful patterns designed to deceive countermeasure systems and defy prediction.

Though the Changelings' exploding shot had been moderately successful, their renaissance-age propulsion and armor were hopelessly outmatched.  And they had no warhead countermeasures to speak of.

In a pair of eruptions so well timed, that they seemed simultaneous to the Human eye, the Outriggers simply ceased to exist, as each became the convergence point for dozens of fully loaded anti-ship cruise missiles.

In their place, swirling miasmas of hot gasses, basalt slivers, chitin dust, and scorched fabric billowed outwards, propelled on the shock-front of two deafening explosions.

As the dust settled, the Captain of the Retribution fixed his gaze on the LADAR screen, speaking to his officers without making eye contact.

"Prepare to return to EMCON One.  Rig ship for silent running and prepare to dive.  Have damage control prioritize structural shoring actions.  LADAR: I want eyes-out until we go under.  The nearest Navy patrols can't have missed that, even if they were drunk off their collective bums."

The man sat back into his chair, and buried his face in his palms.

"XO?  Get me a microburst set up.  This is going to raise more than a few eyebrows in the Cabinet."





"FYRENN!!"

The Gryphon stiffened, his brain and body flooding with adrenaline and other combat-related chemicals.  Something about the familiarity of Skye's voice, mixed together with the obvious panic in her volume and tone, touched off an instinctive 'fight' response.

He turned just in time to see the Unicorn barrel around the corridor's curvature at full gallop.

Fyrenn extended his foreclaws, and helped her come to an unceremonious stop.  Skye was panting like a blast furnace, and dripping both sweat, and tears.

The red Gryphon fixed her with his best firm, calming gaze, and made a herculean effort to keep his voice on an even keel.

"Short, concise sentences.  What happened?"

Skye wriggled away from the Gryphon's comforting hold, and jerked her head over her shoulder towards the atrium, her eyes practically rolling into the back of her head.

"She got up from the table to get a second helping!  And then she was GONE!  Fyrenn, they took her!  I couldn't even get out of my chair, and they had her!  They were already there, they were in the room!  They---"

Fyrenn wasted no time asking pointless questions.  He brushed past Skye like a summer zephyr, panic and fury lending his muscles a tremendous energy boost.  Before he had even reached the end of the corridor, he was moving at a flat-out dash any gazelle would have envied.

He burst into the atrium of the Bureau, sparing no thought whatsoever for anyone in his path.  The astute beings got out of his way.  Those that didn't found themselves thrown aside like snow in front of a rocket-propelled plow.

He slowed his pace to a lope, as he spied Carradan just beyond the front doors of the building.  The Pegasus was locked in a heated argument with a man in official, albeit ill-fitting ConSec armor.  His shoulder markings identified him as a Colonel, and his demeanor identified him as something other than ConSec.

The pair were flanked by two genuine ConSec guards wearing Corpsman's bars.

Fyrenn pulled himself up short as he passed through the building's sliding doors.  Behind Carradan and the Colonel, a pair of light VTOLs sat idling on the street at the end of the Bureau's steps.

Several sounds reached Fyrenn's ears simultaneously.  The first was the whine of the VTOLs' engines spooling up in preparation for takeoff.  The second was the tail end of Carradan's exchange with the Colonel.

"---And I'm telling you buster!  You get out of my way, or I'll cave your ribs like meat in a grinder!"

The final, and most important sound to reach Fyrenn's perked ears, was the distinctive sound of April, screaming incoherently for help.  The red Gryphon refocused his eyes, and caught side of the girl being forced into a restraint clamp in the rear of the nearest VTOL.

In the time it took for his brain to finish firing the appropriate neurons, Fyrenn's rage escalated to a paralyzing haze, then onwards into a painfully sharp clarity and simplicity.  Everything but his objective, the steps necessary to accomplish it, and the emotions driving him to do so, fell away into nothingness.

With a graceful, silent motion, so fast that it wouldn't even register to a Human eye, Fyrenn rose to his hind legs, extended all four talons on his right claw, and jammed them into the weakest point of the Colonel's neck cowl at perpendicular angles.

The gesture pierced the light, flexible kevlar easily, severing the infiltrator's trachea and carotid artery in one precise instance of well-placed force.

To the ConSec guards, it looked as if four gushing spouts of blood had just blinked into existence on the officer's neck.  It took even Carradan's Pegasus eyes and brain nearly a ten-thousandth of a second to register the event.  It took the Human men a full four seconds to reach the same realization.

As the Corpsmen tried to work out what they had just seen, Fyrenn extended a claw to the nearest, speaking in an unmistakably dangerous flat monotone.

"Sidearm."

He glanced up at the VTOLs, noting that they were preparing to rise into the air, as the whine of their props reached a fever pitch.

The red Gryphon once again fixed the officer with his gaze, hardened his eyes into a predatory glower.

"Now!"

Foolishly, running on adrenaline, emotion, and fear, the soldier drew his rail pistol, and trained it on Fyrenn.  His voice was shaky, but his hands remained steady.

"Sir!  I have to ask you to please step back and place your claws behind your head!"

Fyrenn felt no direct animosity towards the man.  But that did nothing to dampen the speed, nor ferocity of his reaction.  He reached out casually, and plucked the weapon from the soldier's hands with one claw, while gripping the man's shoulder and ripping sideways with the other.

With a loud pop, the soldier's arm broke and fractured, in five places, dislocating the shoulder joint in the process.  As he fell to the pavement screaming in pain, Fyrenn caught his helmet, separating it relatively gently from his head to avoid causing fatal injury.

He hefted the object slightly until it was on a perpendicular axis to the second soldier's chest, then punched it with all his might.  The gear slammed into the soldier's chest with enough force to lay him out flat on the ground, ribs and lungs thoroughly bruised, head concussed.

Fyrenn reached out with his free claw, and severed the light bandages holding his injured wing to his side.  With no regard for the potential pain, he snapped open both appendages, and beat them down hard enough to propel him twenty feet into the air in a single instant.

Though he knew he should be feeling at least an ache from his right wing, there was no sensation of pain whatsoever.  His body and mind were so far beyond pain, that not even a bullet to the heart would have made an appreciable difference to his furor.

The Gryphon rose just above the VTOLs, training the rail-pistol on the nearest door-gunner.  He emptied the entire clip mercilessly as he tucked his wings, and dropped into a shallow stoop.

The door-gunner's head vanished like a watermelon in front of a canon.  The man had unwisely chosen to eschew his helmet, though it would have hardly helped.

Before any of the other occupants of the craft could process their assailant's arrival, Fyrenn slammed into them at full speed.  The talons of his right claw shredded the nearest soldier, while the pistol in his left hit a stray helmet, shattering it and killing the woman inside instantly.

He yanked the bloodied and mangled titanium casing away, and used it to viciously bludgeon two of the remaining soldiers into unconsciousness.  The last of the combatants he simply batted with one wing, sending the man sailing out through the open door, into a lethal twenty story drop.

Fyrenn spared a moment to snag a hold on April's restraints, ripping them from the wall bracket as if they were made of nothing more substantial than aluminum foil.  As he pulled the handcuffed child close under one wing, the Pilot and Co-Pilot finally managed to ready their weapons.

Fyrenn held April close with one foreleg, and stretched out the other, forming a fisted claw.  With a piercing war-cry, half lion's roar and half eagle's screech, Fyrenn launched himself forward and into the cockpit.

He flared his wings as he passed fully through the cabin partition, forcing the heads of both pilot and co-pilot to snap to the side at fatally unnatural angles.  His fisted claw made short work of the light plexiglass windscreen, turning it into a hail of tiny glass slivers that his feathers and fur easily deflected as he passed through the rainbow shower at nearly seventy miles an hour.

He turned, tucking his wings and dipping into an evasive spiral as he searched for the second VTOL, but he soon realized he was in no danger.  The second craft, seeing what had befallen their comrades, had poured on the throttle and left them for dead.  The vehicle was already halfway to midtown.

Even at that distance, due to the straight line of sight, Fyrenn could make out faces.  He made a point of memorizing each and every one as he flattened out his flight trajectory, and circled back towards the Bureau.

The red Gryphon alighted at the top of the steps, not five feet from Carradan, just as Skye, Neyla, Kephic, and Varan arrived.

He set April down gently, and began to work at cutting away her bonds.  Behind him, without the input of a pilot, and under the stress of the damage he had done to the cabin, the second VTOL plummeted to the empty street in a lazy spiral.

As the last of April's bonds came loose, and she buried herself in the comfort of Fyrenn's neck, the vehicle slammed into the ground.  The cabin broke apart into a half dozen pieces, killing any occupants Fyrenn had previously left alive.  

One engine simply turned to dust as the swiftly-spinning rotors shattered against the pavement, and sent debris backwards into the intakes.  The second abruptly caught fire, and succumbed to a series of small fuel cell detonations.

Fyrenn felt no need to turn and survey the carnage.  His single concern was April.  Nothing else mattered.  Not even the bloodied, screaming ConSec soldiers he had brutalized without a second thought.

As April did her best to get her heavy breathing under control, the soft rumble of the burning VTOL was punctuated by a loud whistle.

Carradan shook his head slowly, and sighed, his tone nearly as deadpan as Varan's customary vocalizations.

"Well.  That escalated quickly."





"What were you THINKING?!  You brought down a VTOL, you *killed* soldiers wearing official INSIGNIA!  You sent two of our own INNOCENT people to the medbay with SERIOUS injuries!!"

To his credit, Fyrenn sat quietly, and impassively through the tirade.  His relief, and his respect for Aston, provided a surprisingly good barrier against the desire to respond in a tone that would have shaken the foundations of the building.  Hutch reached out and placed a firm hand on Aston's arm.  

"Laura.  Let me deal with this.  Please."

For a long moment, the pair locked eyes, sending and receiving non-verbal messages as they argued their point.  At last, Aston relaxed slightly, and nodded.

She shot Fyrenn an angry, disappointed glare as she stormed out of the office.  As the doors hissed shut behind her, Hutch sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain of a raging headache.

"Fyrenn...  I understand.  I do.  For the most part anyhow.  I'm not going to fault you for what you did to the crew of that helo.  So far, all the bodies match the same criteria as our other attackers.  Military reserve, no valid credentials or records for the equipment withdrawal, or mission orders..."

Hutch sat back, and sighed again, swiveling his chair so he could glance out his window at the gaggle of emergency vehicles swarming over the wreckage of the VTOL in the evening light.

The Gryphon did his best to relax his own emotions.  From the moment he had clutched a hyperventilating April to his chest, he had been struggling to flush away the cold, sharp, clear, driving sense of rage that seemed to have taken up residence permanently in his chest and his head.  So far he had made pitiful progress.

As Hutch continued speaking, Fyrenn detected no hint of anger in his voice, though there was a twinge of frustration and resignation.

"Other people are going to start asking questions though.  You're digging yourself a very, very deep hole here.  I may not fault you for what you did, but others will.  They were still Earthgov soldiers, and citizens.  And to top that off, you sent two completely innocent men into surgery.  One had to be sedated for nine hours because you put him in so much pain, and the other was within five minutes of dying.  You cracked his skull in eight places and his brain began to hemorrhage.  He may never be combat-fit again.  I want to know why."

Fyrenn shrugged his wings, and sighed, maintaining an even and calm tone.  He had known Hutch long enough to understand where the General was coming from, and he felt the man deserved a full explanation.

"There wasn't time for me to discuss the particulars of my plan with them.  One of them drew a weapon on me, the other one was about to.  I'm aware that, from their perspective, they had every reason to...  But I judged April's life to be worth more than the temporary pain I'd inflict.  They should have known better than to train a live weapon on a Gryphon.  They should be grateful to be alive at all."

Hutch nodded slowly, "That's true in some sense.  The incident is partially their fault.  We do train all ConSec and JRSF staff and troops to never provoke friendly Non-Humans.  And we warn them about the risks.  But you're also at fault.  You're telling me that you couldn't come up with a less brutal way to defuse that moment?"

Fyrenn shook his head slowly as he spoke.

"Less brutal yes, but fighting down my instincts to make it possible...?  That would have wasted time.  And it would have done nothing to deter future incidents.  I guarantee you no soldier with any brains on your staff, at least, will ever point a loaded weapon at one of us again.  Not after seeing this."

The General winced, and nodded.

"That's certainly true.  But I have to ask you...  Not as an officer, but as a friend...  Please try to go *lightly* on these men and women.  They are not your enemy, at the end of the day, and I don't want to have to knock on some poor innocent family's door this week and tell them their kid died on a home-front posting, at the claws of an allied soldier.  You *were* one of them once.  Don't forget it.  No matter what their superiors might do to persuade you otherwise."

Fyrenn tilted his head, and narrowed his eyes.  His ears flattened reflexively, and his tail began to swish.

"Are you sure they're not my enemy?  Because according to Skye's account, which the surveillance feed corroborates, these men walked right past the duty officer, and into the cafeteria, and no one noticed them, challenged them, or checked their paperwork."

Hutch opened his mouth to reply, but Fyrenn sharpened his glare, and quickened the pace of his words.

"Not to mention the fact that both April and Skye screamed repeatedly for help, and no one responded.  Your 'poor little kids' stood impassively while armored faceless men dragged a little girl screaming out of this building in handcuffs, just because of the emblems on their uniforms.  Not one of them challenged these men.  Something even Carradan thought to do, and had the moxie for to boot.  So you'll forgive me if I'm not endeared to them.  I was one of them.  I had a lot of reasons for choosing *not* to be anymore.  Now I have even more."

Hutch sighed, and nodded slowly.

"You're not entirely wrong.  Or right.  Either way, I'm still asking for this favor, as your friend."

Fyrenn returned the nod, and allowed his gaze to soften slightly.

"I'm not refusing categorically sir.  But I can not, and will not, adhere to this request at the expense of April's life, or mine for that matter.  Protecting her, and protecting anyone else in my family who comes under fire, is my first priority.  Everything, and *everyone* else is secondary in the end."

The General leaned forward, and inhaled deeply.

"I understand.  Which is why I have to ask you to at least try to come up with another solution.  We can't keep going down this road, and you know it.  Today it's a few low level thugs, tomorrow?  You're ripping this mess up by the roots without due process, or thought to how it's going to impact the political situation..."

Fyrenn snorted, and rolled his eyes, rising from his haunches and beginning a slow pace between the two far walls of the room, his voice rising to fever pitch as the words spilled forth.

"Forgive my unusual vulgarity, but fuck the political situation.  Fuck Earthgov, fuck the council, and fuck centcom with a rusty railroad spike.  These morons couldn't even stop the HLF from launching a weapon of truly unethical proportions, which they themselves created, and hid from everyone, down on us.  What were all my years of black-book ops even for?  Why did they have me out there performing unsanctioned hits on our own citizens, in the dead of night, shutting down terror cells, if all I was doing was pruning the ones that wouldn't co-operate?  Is that who we are now?  Do we fund these bastards when their goals align with ours?  Is that all that separated me from the HLF?  A badge, and a redacted sealed order signed by a Councilor?"

The red Gryphon shook his head and snorted as he spun down his tirade.

"Impact the political situation?  Listen to yourself.  You sound like Aston."

Hutch nodded vigorously.

"Yes.  I do sound like Aston.  Because she may be letting her emotions get to her as well, but she's also right.  More so than you.  You are throwing matches at a powder keg.  If it goes off, a lot of other people will feel the effects one day.  This goes beyond you and this little girl, as much as I hate to admit it."

The red Gryphon inclined his head, responding in a fairly calm tone that did a passable job of covering his inner rage at the circumstances.

"I don't disagree with that assertion General.  But please try to understand how I see this.  Through a Gryphon's eyes.  When you say it goes beyond myself and April, and I agree, I'm thinking about the nameless scores of others who are a part of this child-experimentation program.  I'm thinking about future innocents who will come under the guns of these lunatics, who have the ethical abandon to torture children, and the tacit support of our own government.  I'm thinking about the internal damage being done by subversive elements inside that government.  The things they have consciened.  Will conscien."

Fyrenn paused, and narrowed his eyes once more, directing his gaze out the window.

"And I'm thinking that it all has to end somehow.  Sooner rather than later.  Because maybe a political catastrophe will kill and hurt fewer people than these assholes are killing every day with their political situation."

Hutch shook his head slowly, and threw up his hands.

"And you have to see a middle ground, if you want the best possible outcome for future Humans.  I won't object to the idea that we have to do something, very soon, about these other children.  And I certainly don't object to the idea that you need to protect April until this is over.  But if possible, we need to find a way to do that which doesn't involve you disassembling a quarter of Earthgov in a shower of blood, on live holovision, for the world to see."

Fyrenn dipped his head once more as he offered up his thoughts.

"There is an obvious solution.  Or at least, the start of one.  We give her Potion.  She has expressed a desire for Conversion, and it would allow us to put her firmly out of reach, where these people can't follow."

Hutch began shaking his head slowly, exhaling a long, frustrated breath before responding.

"That's not within my authority sphere to grant.  Because she's a minor according to the ACACIA law, we are prohibited from administering Potion without the express consent of all appropriate legal guardians.  Good luck getting that from Councilor Loryss."

Fyrenn threw up his claws, and grunted.

"What about legal precedent for an override?  This is Bureau land, so laws work differently here."

Hutch nodded once, but his expression fell, along with his tone.

"Normally, you'd be right.  That would be a valid precedent for almost any other situation.  But ACACIA is not just a law Earth passed, it's also a Conversion Accords Amendment.  The Bureau, and all accord races, are legally bound by the law, and the law says no Conversion, without guardian consent, before age eighteen."

The red Gryphon rose, his gaze hardened once more, along with his tone.

"Then, sir, there's nothing else you can do here.  Your best bet is to distance yourself from me, and my actions.  Please... Discharge me if you have to.  Refer me to court martial.  Order your forces to pursue me...  Whatever you have to do to stay clear of suspicion, or negative repercussions."

As Fyrenn passed through the door, Hutch leaned forward, squinting in concern.

"No promises.  But What about you?  All hell is going to break loose if you keep this up."

Fyrenn smiled slightly, and nodded.

"Oh I'm sure.  These people haven't even begun to see hell.  Keep watching though, and you'll get some idea.  We're past the point of politics.  This is unbounded warfare.  Nothing is off limits now."





Fyrenn tensed as a slight triple rap came from the vicinity of his door.  He paused, inhaled deeply, and forced himself to relax as he realized the soft sound could have only one logical source.

He reached out with a claw and thumbed the nearest control pad situated on the dresser.  The door hissed open to reveal April, head hanging down, shuffling one foot slightly.

Fyrenn smiled, and beckoned.

"Come on in.  You didn't wake me."

April's face brightened like a small star, and she shuffled in, towing her blanket and a pillow in one fist behind her.

"I'm sorry.  I just couldn't keep my eyes shut.  Not after today.  It was too quiet, and too dark.  I thought I saw a shadow move.  And then I started to hear noises."

Fyrenn rose and moved towards the child, scooping her up in his forelegs, and depositing her on his bed amongst the cushions.

"That's a natural reaction of the brain after what you went through.  That which we can't see conjures up that which we imagine to be there, which is always worse than what's actually there."

April glanced up into Fyrenn's eyes as he wrapped her blanket snugly around her, and gently beat her pillow between his claws to fluff it.

"But that never happens to you?"

Fyrenn inclined his head slightly.

"Not often.  Sometimes I still have...  Bad dreams.  But I'm not really afraid of the dark anymore.  I can see into it as clearly as if it were day.  I'm not worried by silence, because I don't ever experience total silence.  I can always hear the soft sounds of life around me."

He smiled as he tucked the pillow behind April's head, and gently brushed a lock of her hair away from her face.

"It helps that I have lots of built-in ways to kill things.  Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.  For I am the deadliest thing in the valley."

April giggled, and smiled, squirming her way down into the nest of pillows.

"So you're never afraid of anything?"

Fyrenn's face fell, and he shook his head.

"No, I wouldn't say that.  Everyone and everything has fear.  But I'm no longer afraid of things of which I don't have to be.  And when I am afraid, I have faith, and courage.  That's my nature now."

April nodded, and yawned.

"I wish..."  She paused for another yawn, and gently closed her eyes, finishing softly as she curled up.

"I wish it was in my nature too.  I wish I could be like you."

Fyrenn did his best to choke back a flood of emotions that he found difficult to fully classify.  He brushed April lightly with one wing, and moved to his desk, picking up his DaTab and dropping the screen brightness.

As he turned off the room's ambient lighting, and increased the air-conditioning setting, he realized he was facing a sleepless night.

He murmured to himself, too softly for April's human ears.

"Might as well set about ridding this valley of some of its other denizens..."